Chapter 2 REICH
REICH
“YOU MOTHERFUCKER!”
The words ripped from his throat, rough and raw.
His voice cracked under the strain, breaking apart into something else, something unrecognizable.
It was the final, desperate wail of a man who knew his gods had already abandoned him.
A sound meant for no one and nothing except to remind himself that he still existed, if only for another moment.
Each scream he unleashed was another note in the symphony I had spent years perfecting. There were conductors of music and conductors of war, but me?
I composed agony.
Orchestrated suffering with precision.
I stood still. Silent. Watching.
He thrashed, limbs spasming against the steel coils of razor wire that encased him like a grotesque cocoon.
The more he fought, the more the wire dug in.
Sinking deeper into his muscles and tendons.
Each jerking movement carved long, jagged tears in his flesh, opening him up like a fruit being split at the seam.
Blood seeped from his wounds in dark rivulets, tracing paths over his ruined skin and running rivers to the concrete beneath him in a spreading pool of failure.
He was drowning in his own pain now, submerged in my entrapment of wire, bleeding out from a thousand tiny incisions and dozens of deep gouges.
His body shuddered, spasmed with every twitch, every reflexive movement.
It only made things worse for him. Every contortion, every desperate thrash, deepened the wounds.
Turned cuts into tears. Turned tears into gaping wounds that exposed pale muscle and glistening bone.
I didn’t flinch.
Didn’t blink.
The screams from his pain didn’t unsettle me. It was… expected.
Necessary.
His eyes bulged, red-rimmed and glassy, as his face had twisted itself into something unnatural—a mask of rage and hopelessness, contorted so violently he no longer looked human.
More like some malformed exhibit, the kind you’d find behind cracked glass in some backwater carnival sideshow or one of those grotesque displays in Ripley’s Believe It or Not, where people paid a few bucks to gawk at the impossible, but this wasn’t entertainment.
This was work.
This was purpose.
And if I did it right, Ali Parrish wouldn’t just be another name crossed off a confidential ENA ledger no one read twice. No, with my hands, I would make him something permanent. The next exhibit in a gallery of consequences.
A warning and a legacy.
I’d hear people always say the most beautiful thing in the world that they’ve ever seen is either their wife on their wedding day or the first look of their newborn child’s face.
But not me.
I’ve watched the light fade from the eyes of men who thought they could get away with being sadistic predators. Who believed they could devour innocence and walk away unscathed.
That light? When it flickers out for the last time, leaving nothing but the cold, empty shell behind?
That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
Parrish wasn’t there yet, but he would be.
His screams echoed off the cold, concrete walls of my basement, otherwise known as “The Pit”.
“YOU’LL FUCKING PAY FOR THIS, REICH!” he howled. His voice broke again, splintering into something wet and ragged. Blood sprayed from his cracked lips with the force of it, flecking the floor between us.
He spat my name like it was a curse.
I smiled. A slow, cold twist of my lips. The kind of smile that held no warmth. No pity.
The kind that men saw right before they died.
“Funny,” I said softly, unphased. “I think I said the same thing to you… what was it? Thirty-six hours ago?”
I watched the anger hit him. It struck hard and sudden. His pupils flared, blown wide with disbelief and sudden clarity.
Ali Parrish had his chance.
Twenty-four hours to turn himself in to the ENA.
He thought he was clever. He thought he was untouchable.
And he thought wrong.
So, I dragged him here to pay for his mistakes.
My brother, Castor, and I were made for this.
From the time we turned eighteen, we were groomed for sanctioned violence.
Taught that morality was just another tool in the box, one you could pick up or put down as needed.
We were taught to be good soldiers, to serve higher purposes and not ask questions.
By the time I graduated college, I’d traded any major I once cared about and the white-picket-fence life that came with it, for something darker.
Something real.
Something that was supposed to matter.
And I had never looked back.
The ENA’s web was deeper than I had ever known.
Once you were inside it, you didn’t get out.
Not in one piece. Not alive.
So, I stayed.
Adapted.
I became the thing they needed me to be.
A weapon.
And Parrish? He was easy.
Cocky. Greedy. A predator who’d stepped too far over the line.
The ENA had finally decided to collect his debt.
And that’s why he was here in the Pit.
From an outsider’s perspective, the Pit was nothing. Just a slab of reinforced concrete buried beneath my house. Twenty-four feet by twenty-four feet of cold indifference. Flickering warehouse lights above and solid clear coated cement floors beneath.
But as an insider and its owner…it was a church, and I was the priest.
The tools lined the walls, neat rows of metal and wood, all polished to a dull gleam. Pliers. Wrenches. Blades. Hammers.
Nothing special. Nothing dangerous in the hands of someone soft.
But in my hands…
They were scripture.
My sermon and an offering to the gods of vengeance and justice.
Behind me, Parrish choked, hacking up blood and bile, the wet sounds echoing to fill the space between us. I ignored it. My fingers drifted over the tools, slow and thoughtful, like a sommelier selecting a vintage bottle of fine wine.
I was in no rush.
The best things took time.
His coughing grew louder. More insistent and desperate. Until finally— “I know who you’re after…” he rasped, voice raw and shaking.
I laughed. A low and dark, humorless sound.
“Doesn’t everybody?” I asked.
He twisted in his bonds, wire scraping bone. His panic was a living thing now, breathing in the air between us, and taking residence in the emptiness.
I circled behind him, my boots heavy against the floor.
Every step was deliberate. Then I grabbed a fistful of his filthy, blood-clotted hair and yanked his head back hard.
His neck cracked against the tension of the wire as his face turned up to mine, eyes wide and rimmed in red.
His mouth curled into a sneer, but there was no defiance left. Just hate and fear.
“You’ll never catch him,” he spat. “He’s too clever for you.”
Wrong.
I smiled, then reached into my pocket and flicked open my knife. The blade gleamed under the harsh light, a flash of silver in the dull gloom of this place.
I pressed it to his scalp, feeling him shudder underneath me as I dug it in.
And then peeled off pieces of his skin, bit by bit.
His screams tore through the Pit, sharp enough to almost make it feel like the concrete would vibrate. His body convulsed, jerking hard against the coils as I worked in precise, practiced strokes.
Justice isn’t clean and it isn’t quick.
It’s slow.
Relentless.
And meticulously carved into the flesh of men who thought they were above consequence.
The ENA called it their spiritual atonement.
I called it Tuesday.
But I still never asked questions.
Didn’t care about the reasons.
Especially when I knew by now that with the ENA, the answers were always worse than the nightmares they left behind.
I finished the strip, let it fall with a wet slap to the floor, and stepped back, wiping my blade clean on his shredded clothes.
“Anything else you want to tell me?” I asked, my voice low, casual, like we were sharing drinks at a bar instead of sitting in a slaughterhouse.
His breathing came shallow and labored but his hate still burned.
He glared up at me through cracked lids. “Fuck you, Reich,” he hissed. “He’s already… won.”
Wrong again.
I worked in a methodical and precise rhythm.
Every incision, every cut, brought forth his wails, adding another verse in a new kind of song only I would ever hear. This was my show.
My mosh pit.
And Parrish?
He was just another body in the crowd.
Were these the right choices?
Hell if I knew.
But Castor and I were still breathing and that was all that mattered.
I made the last cut.
And Parrish stilled.
Another masterpiece.
Another monster erased.
I exhaled slowly.
Rinse. Repeat.