Chapter 44 Snuffed #2
“Where are we going?” I dared to ask, my voice low with caution.
Darren’s jaw tightened, the muscle flexing as his fingers curled around my throat.
“You’ll see,” he answered just before the elevator dinged and the doors opened.
Circling to the back of my neck, Darren wrenched me out of the elevator, whistling for Camaro to follow.
The doors opened into a dimly lit hallway.
There were no other doors, and the hallway seemed to stretch on pretty far.
It must have been some sort of tunnel that connected the main house to somewhere else on the property.
But as Camaro’s claws clicked against the white tiles, my stomach clenched with dread.
I knew something bad was going to happen, either to me or to someone else, probably me.
But if I was the target, Camaro was usually removed to avoid her trained interference.
When I wasn’t the target, she wasn’t exactly dismissed either, her presence more inconsequential than anything else.
But it seemed this time that Darren actually wanted her involved. And that made me even more nervous.
“Darren, what’s going on?”
“Quiet,” he clipped, his eyes focused on the path ahead.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
The tunnel seemed to go on for ages, but well before it ended, we finally stopped at a door on our right.
Darren pressed his thumb into a small screen beside a security panel.
The door then clicked open, and Darren pushed me inside, waiting for Camaro to cross the threshold before shutting it behind us.
I blinked as I observed the room around me, its familiarity hitting me like a punch to the gut.
I hated this room. It was the underground chamber of the “shack” that Darren utilized for some of his more gruesome “activities” that I was lucky enough to witness at times.
The place made my stomach sour, the scent of blood and bleach always tainting the air.
But the room wasn’t barren like it usually was.
There was a plain white mattress laid out on the floor in one of the corners, with a bright spotlight pointed at it and a camera placed on a tripod.
About ten feet away sat two sturdy-looking metal dog cages placed about one foot apart from each other.
Oh God, what the fuck is this?
In the opposite corner, another camera and spotlight were also set up and pointing at an old wooden chair that was clearly bolted to the floor. A small metal table stood against the corner wall with silver-looking instruments laid out.
In front of both settings, a large metal table was bolted down in the middle and allowed for a perfect vantage point of both scenes.
“What the hell is this?” I asked as I struggled to pull away from Darren’s grip.
Without answering, he just shoved me forward and pressed my upper body onto the large metal table.
Three seconds later, my wrists were forced down onto the frigid tabletop, my cuffs magnetized to the metal.
Fighting against the magnetic pull, I only managed to move my wrists a single centimeter, the strength of the cuffs impeccable for their size.
Darren stepped away and walked over to one of the cages, opening the door and whistling for Camaro.
She followed the command and settled into the cage without complaint, lying on her belly while her tongue peeked between her teeth.
Darren crouched down and placed something around her neck before shutting the cage door.
“What did you just do?” I asked, failing to hide the panic in my voice.
He ignored me as he came back around to the table and stood directly behind me.
A few seconds later, I could hear people coming down the stone steps of the shack, the sounds of a struggle echoing throughout the room.
Scott came into view first, leading the way as two guards dragged a woman down the steps, followed by another two carrying another woman in the same manner.
Both of the women seemed to be somewhat drugged as their struggles were pathetically minimal as they were carried away to the opposite corners of the room.
One was dropped onto the mattress in the corner, the two men not even needing to hold her down as a chain bolted to the floor was wrapped around her neck and padlocked closed.
It was difficult to tell her age with her matted brown hair covering much of her face, but she looked deathly skinny under the baggy T-shirt and shorts that hung from her small body.
The second woman, a blonde, looked a bit younger but had a much heavier build than the brunette. They actually had to squish her into the small chair before tying her limbs down with scratchy-looking rope.
When both women seemed to be properly arranged, all but one guard left, the other moving to stand by the camera near the crying blonde, seemingly waiting for his next set of orders. Scott then turned around to nod at Darren and my stomach immediately dropped to my feet.
Ah, fuck.
I could hear Darren release a heavy breath from behind me before his steps carried him to the front of the table so I could see him clearly. With his hands in his pockets, he stared down at me with a blank expression I couldn’t read worth a damn.
“Do you know what snuff films are, Jaden?”
I closed my eyes and sighed, turning my head away as my stomach soured, hoping to regain some composure before answering him.
“Yeah,” I replied with a nod. “I know what snuff films are.”
You mean murder porn.
“Good,” Darren said. “Daniel used to run quite the little production set at his home, but since it’s been burned to the ground, we’ve had to improvise a temporary location to keep up with the demand of his clients.”
Clients?
“Daniel has clients that actually pay to watch people get murdered? Seems like a waste of money when they can just watch slasher movies,” I commented.
Darren smirked. “They don’t pay just to watch, Jaden.
They pay for their production,” he replied darkly.
“Specifically, just for them. They hand us the script, and we make it happen. There’s no mass distribution or reproduction, no marketing scheme or promotion.
Just a single tape, no editing or copies. It’s an incredibly simple process.”
I internally groaned with disgust. “Sounds too simple.”
Darren shrugged. “Not everything has to be complicated.” He turned around and nodded to the man still patiently waiting by the camera. On command, he stepped into action, securing a black ski mask over his head that depicted a white skull on the face.
The second the terror washed over the blonde’s face, I found myself yanking against my restraints.
“Argh! Why do I need to be here! Haven’t I witnessed enough torture for you?!”
Darren turned around to stare down at me, a knowing look in his eyes.
“Because I’m hoping these will have a much more effective impact on you,” he answered.
“I know how much physical pain you can take and how the threat of it doesn’t seem to inspire your obedience anymore.
And while I thoroughly enjoy beating and fucking that stubborn willfulness out of you, the circumstances have changed.
I can no longer afford to have you thinking you’ll just take your whipping and move on.
Not when you’re putting your life in jeopardy because of it. ”
I gaped up at him, disbelief and horror blurring my vision at what he was implying.
“It’s time I reinstalled a healthy dose of fear in you, to remind you of who you belong to and what I’m capable of.
” I felt my stomach roil with anxiety as he glared at me intently, the pure malice radiating from his cold gaze making me shiver.
“I told you that you had disobeyed me for the last time, and I meant it. There will be no more leniency. From now on, your transgressions will be paid for by another, and you will watch every second of it until it finally sinks into your head that disobedience is no longer an option, starting today.”
Darren nodded at one of the other men, who immediately moved to stand behind the camera and pressed record.
What happened next was a scene that rivaled the movie Hostel. This poor woman was systematically cut apart, piece by piece. Her nails, her toes, her tongue, even some of her teeth had been slowly removed to create the greatest amount of suffering.
Only when he started to remove the rolls of skin from her stomach did she finally bleed out, and even then, her torturer didn’t stop. He took her apart like a puzzle and unceremoniously dumped what was left of her into a giant trash bin.
Throughout the entire scene, I couldn’t seem to catch my breath, my heart pounding into the metal table below it as my body shook with horror.
Every time I closed my eyes, every time I looked away, Darren would activate my collar and shock me until I returned my gaze.
He had to do it three separate times before I finally found a brick in the corner behind the scene to focus on instead.
But averting my sight barely helped compared to what I could still blatantly hear and smell.
Her screams were deafening, the shrill sound sharp with so much pain, it made my stomach churn with nausea. I’d never been so grateful to forget to eat. I was honestly surprised Camaro hadn’t reacted more than she did, but she was trained to ignore screaming unless it was mine.
But while I was forced to watch the atrocity carried out in front of me, it sickened me even more knowing that someone had paid for these specific requests. Someone had not only paid for her to die this way, but they also paid to have it filmed so they could enjoy it as often as they pleased.
What had this girl done to deserve such a horrific death? Who was she to the person who demanded such agony? Did Darren even know? Did he even care to ask?
“Who was she?” I finally managed to croak out, my voice barely a broken whisper.