Page 93 of Below The Surface
I grab his feet while she pulls him out by the armpits. We’re not gentle. Why would we be?
It takes a bit of effort to get Charles into the abandoned building and right where we want him. The sedative will keep him out a little bit longer, then we can play.
The chair in the middle of the room isn’t as solid as the one back home, but it’ll do. We zip tie him to the arms and legs. His head will be able to move freely and I don’t like that at all, but this is sort of a last-minute booking to the death hotel for Charles and I guess he can have a bit of comfort.
We did, however, pick up a muzzle and modified it for a human face. I really hate the idea of him biting me and a gag justisn’t my thing. Who knows what kind of bacteria he harbors? It’d be my luck that he bites me, then it gets infected and I die. I’m not taking that chance. Not at all.
And because I can’t help myself, I break his pinky finger while he’s still out. I want him to suffer immediately upon waking and I’m sure this will do it. I thought about driving a nail through his foot, but decided against it.
We rig up all the cameras I bought from Big Mac weeks ago. There are less angles than I like, but can’t be helped. Kendra leaves me to sit in the room next door and get set up herself. I’m in my torture gear, but the store didn’t have black gloves, so the nitrite gloves are blue this time. I’m not sure how I feel about it, but again can’t be helped.
I hold my balaclava as we wait for Charles to wake. After getting us secure for a Nightmare show in an hour or so, Kendra joins me again. We want our time with this fucker before we let our audience decide his fate.
“We’re set for midnight.” Kendra squeezes my shoulder.
“Plenty of time.” My voice sounds strange to my ears. I pull the smelling salts from my pocket and wave the container under Charles’s nose.
He comes to with a start, then a moan. He bucks in the chair, which annoyingly does move a few inches. We might need to figure out a way to secure it before the show.
“Orion.” A slow smile slides across Charles’s face.
I fucking hate that name. Well, I hate it for me. Objectively, the name is pleasant, but to me it’s torture. It’s memories. It’snotme. He turns to Kendra and looks her over.
“Who are you?” Thank fuck he doesn’t recognize her. He probably only recognizes me by my hair and eyes.
I hold up a thick nail and a hammer. “You’re not the one asking questions, Charles.” I press the tip of the nail to the top of his hand.
“You’re too scared to do anything like that.” Charles grins again, as if he knows me. Knows who I grew into.
I squat so I’m not towering over him. “See, that’s where you’re wrong. I’ve grown up, father. I murder people like you.” I bring the hammer down and watch the shock of pain wash over his face.
“People like me?” He grits out while trying to wriggle his hand from being impaled. Silly man.
“Rapists,” Kendra says. “Pedophiles.”
Charles laughs. It’s entirely too joyful. It grates on my nerves and my psyche. There’s something that snaps inside me and I jam the nail ripper part of the hammer into the meat of his thigh. He chokes on that fucking laugh.
Charles’s hands fist and he grits his teeth. “I treated you like royalty and you ran away.”
“Royalty? What was the point of the Servants of the Divine cult?”
“Cult?” Charles laughs again. “That was an experiment. To see if I could get people to do exactly what I wanted. Come to find out, yes. You and a few others were exceptions. But people areso fucking gullible. Especially if you promise a bunch of ridiculous things in the afterlife. Which one was your Divine? There’ve been so many that I’ve elevated to god status I can’t remember.”
“Dorian,” Kendra and I whisper together. I’m numb. He used us all as an experiment?
Of course he raped more kids to turn into “gods”. All for an experiment. To see if he could.
“Ah, Dorian cried during his ceremony. He could have been the greatest of us all. The lips on him when we practiced?—”
It’s as if the world stops spinning. I straddle the man and choke him with my bare hands. It’s the least efficient way to hurt him by the way he’s laughing. The chair tips back, and we crashto the floor. His head bangs loudly on the concrete, but I don’t let go.
No, I squeezeharder.
He wheezes, but the glint in his eyes spurs me on.
“Kay,” Kendra says and pulls me off Charles. “He’s trying to bait us.”
“It’s fucking working,” I growl out. It always has.
