Tales From the Midnight Shift Vol. 1

Home > Other > Tales From the Midnight Shift Vol. 1 > Page 9
Tales From the Midnight Shift Vol. 1 Page 9

by Mark Allan Gunnells


  When I heard the door open again, I turned my head, expecting to see another rubber-dressed beauty like Lilah. What I saw instead was a shock to the system, like ice water thrown in my face. It was a large black man. He was at least 6’5”, had to be about three hundred pounds, all of it pure, rock-hard muscle. All hair had been shorn from his body: head, pits, chest, nuts. He was completely naked, his dark skin glistening with some kind of oil. Now I’m not queer, but my eyes were instantly drawn to his cock. It was massive, ten inches or more, as big around as a soda can. It thrust straight out like a large billy club of flesh, something used to bludgeon. In his right fist was coiled a thin leather belt, and in his left he held a shiny silver garden trowel.

  I had no clue what was happening or what was about to happen, but this was most definitely not what I had signed up for. I started jerking and thrashing on the bed, as much as the restraints would let me; I’m sure I must have looked like I was suffering from convulsions. I screamed into the gag, the sounds unintelligible, trying to communicate with my eyes that this was a mistake, I did not belong here.

  “I’m Robin,” the man said in a voice that rumbled like thunder. “I’ll be doling out your punishment this evening.”

  With a practiced flick of his wrist, Robin sent the belt flying out; it snapped against the exposed skin of my chest, raising an angry red welt and detonating a charge of pain like nothing I’d ever known. I bit down into the ball gag hard enough that I was sure I left teeth marks, and the world seemed to go gray around the edges. Sweat coated my body, and I felt tears leaking from my eyes. I jerked my arms as hard as I could, hoping to loosen the cuffs, but I was pinned there.

  “Oh, wait a second,” Robin said, coming up next to the bed. He was like a giant, and I a Lilliputian. His engorged cock bobbed above my face, a tiny drop like a pearl beading at the tip and dropping onto my chest. Robin idly rubbed the creamy substance into my flesh with a finger, raising the digit and placing it in his mouth, licking it clean. “Here, let’s get rid of this.”

  To my surprise, he unstrapped the ball gag and removed it, tossing it into the far corner of the room.

  “Oh, thank God,” I said, my voice coming out in a breathy rush. “There has been a horrible mistake. I’m not Dexter.”

  “I don’t give a shit what your name is,” Robin said, running the claw of the trowel lightly down my inner thigh, not hard enough to break the skin but with enough pressure to make me feel it. “You’re my bitch until dawn.”

  “I’m not queer, man.”

  “Neither am I. Doesn’t matter; that’s not what this is about. Pain is the order of the day at Asylum.”

  Robin took my left nipple between two of his fingers and pinched viciously; it felt as if he were trying to rip it off.

  “God, stop!” I said through clenched teeth. “Stop, or I’ll scream.”

  “I know,” Robin said with a smile. “Why do you think I removed your gag? I like to hear my bitches scream.”

  Robin ran the trowel down my thigh again, but this time he did break the skin, drawing blood and a high-pitched scream that erupted from my throat with the force of a missile. I felt blood running down my leg, puddling on my groin. It wasn’t deep enough to do any permanent damage, but it hurt like hell and would leave a nasty scar I was sure.

  “We’re gonna have fun,” Robin said with a throaty laugh. He stepped back from the bed and lashed out with the belt again. It snapped across my sack and I screamed so loud and long that my throat felt raw, like I had eaten glass. “Dawn’s a long time away, and I got some special surprises in store for you.”

  I closed my eyes and prayed then, something I hadn’t done since I was a kid. Prayed for escape, for freedom. Or failing that, unconsciousness.

  * * *

  I limped home just after dawn.

  After Robin had finished with me, Lilah reappeared. Though she spoke not a word, she tended to my wounds gently, almost motherly. She stopped the bleeding and bandaged me up then dressed me as if I were a child. Robin had been careful to avoid my face, and all the evidence of the night’s events—the bruises, the cuts, the claw marks—were covered by my clothes.

  Lilah allowed me to lean on her as she led me down the hallway to the door. She helped me up the steps to street level then turned and returned to Asylum, leaving me leaning against a streetlamp. I heard the door close and a lock engage. My legs were weak and I wasn’t sure if I would be able to stand on my own, let alone walk.

  The streets were mostly deserted at this hour. The shops not yet open, people not yet on their way to church. I wobbled unsteadily for the first block, but I managed to make it to my apartment without falling into the gutter.

  Once home, I ran a hot bath and soaked in it. I was sore all over, a hundred aches and pains, so many marks covering my flesh like a map. My rectum hurt most of all, but I didn’t want to think about that. I considered calling the police but couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was humiliated, emasculated, and I didn’t want anyone to know. Shame ensured my silence.

  Over the next few weeks, my wounds began to heal and I regained my strength. I still had the birthday card from Uncle Alex, and sometimes I would sit and stare at it, wondering what kind of men enjoyed that kind of abuse, took pleasure from being beaten and violated.

  There must be many, I figured. There must be many men out there who sought that kind of experience, otherwise a place like Asylum wouldn’t exist. There had been many rooms, many closed doors behind which unspeakable violence was perpetrated in the name of sexual gratification.

  It was depraved, a perversion that most people probably never dreamed existed right under their noses. I was sickened by the thought of what had happened to me, repulsed by Asylum and all it represented. Sometimes the revulsion I felt was overwhelming.

  I don’t know why I keep going back.

  CHRISTMAS GETAWAY

  I was six years old when my father went insane.

  I make it sound like it happened overnight. Truth is, it was much more gradual than that, building over time until it finally reached the breaking point. Looking back now, I can see that there were signs, subtle at first but growing progressively more pronounced, indications that my father’s grip on reality was slipping. Of course, as a child the behavior of all adults had seemed strange and unfathomable, so I can’t say that I really noticed anything out of the ordinary with my father.

  Until the Christmas Eve he tried to kill me.

  * * *

  It started that morning at breakfast. Innocently enough. My mother poured a tumbler of orange juice, set it before me and asked, “Have you been a good boy this year?”

  I smiled at her, the excitement of the holiday bubbling inside me like the carbonation of a shaken soda until I felt I was going to fizz over. “I’ve been the best boy.”

  “Let’s hope so. Santa doesn’t visit naughty children.”

  “That’s not true,” my father growled from the doorway. Neither I nor my mother had heard him come into the kitchen, and his voice startled us. Juice spilled onto the linoleum as my mother jerked. I looked up at my father, noting the fact that his hair stuck up in wild corkscrews, that his chin was unshaven, his eyes red and watery, but none of these things alarmed me. Since my father had been laid off from the textile mill a month prior, this was how he often looked, wandering through the house all day without even changing out of his pajamas.

  “Can I get you some breakfast, Carl?” my mother asked, and if there was a tremor to her voice, I did not notice it.

  “Not hungry.” He turned his eyes back to me. “What your Ma told you ain’t true. Santa does visit the naughty children, but it ain’t toys he brings ‘em.”

  “At least let me get you some coffee,” my mother said, hurrying to the coffeepot.

  “I don’t want any fucking coffee, Myra!” my father shouted, the sound of the f-word squeezing a shocked laugh from me like a gasp. “I want to talk to the boy.”

  My father sat down heavily in the chair
next to me, his eyes wide and intense, looking at me without blinking. All laughter inside me dried up, and I think it was at that moment that I had the first inkling that something was truly wrong with my father.

  “You think Santa’s your friend, don’t you?” he said in a hoarse whisper. “You think he’s a jolly old elf that loves children and rewards the good ones with treats every Christmas, huh?”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. Something about the tone of my father’s voice scared me. I looked toward my mother, but my father shouted, “Look at me when I’m talking to you, boy!” and my eyes immediately went back to him.

  My mother came up behind him, twisting a dishtowel in her hands. “Carl, why don’t you just—”

  “I’d shut that mouth of yours before I ram my fist into it.” My father’s voice was so low it was almost inaudible, but the words brought immediate silence to the room, as if even the sounds of the outside world—traffic on the street, winter birds twittering, Christmas music coming from the Haverson’s house next door—had died away. I had never heard my father threaten my mother before, but there was no doubt that he meant it. She backed up until she bumped into the stove and said nothing more.

  “Answer me,” my father said, glaring at me.

  The juice residue was suddenly like bile in my mouth, and I felt like I must have done something very wrong, although I couldn’t think what that might be. I was finding it hard to think at all under my father’s scrutiny, and I wasn’t even sure what the question had been for which he was awaiting an answer.

  “Such pretty little fairytales you’ve been told,” my father continued when I did not speak. “Kind-heated Santa riding through the night in his sleigh pulled by magic reindeer, delivering gifts to all the boys and girls of the world who’ve been good, passing over the naughty ones. That’s what you believe, isn’t it?”

  “Y-yes, sir,” I stammered.

  “Lies, all lies. Santa does not ignore the naughty children, he does not merely pass them by. He punishes them. And do you know how he punishes them?”

  “Puts a lump of coal in their stockings,” I said, remembering something I’d heard from Izzy Tanner in school, hoping it was the right answer so my father would stop looking at me that way.

  He laughed, the sound oily and unpleasant. “A lump of coal would seem like a prize compared to what Santa does to bad children.”

  From her place by the stove, my mother said, “Carl, please, you’re scaring him.”

  My father suddenly grabbed my half-full tumbler of juice and slung it back toward my mother. The tumbler shattered against the wall, spraying my mother with O.J. and glass fragments. She screamed once, loud and piercing, then stood in silence, covering her face with the dishtowel, her shoulders hitching as if she were crying though she made no sound.

  “Myra, if you open your goddamn trap one more time, you’ll be picking your teeth up off the floor.”

  I started to rise to go to my mother, but my father suddenly grabbed my wrist, squeezing so hard that I felt the bones grind together, and shoved me back down into my chair. “You wanna know how Santa punishes naughty children, boy?”

  I shook my head, feeling tears building up behind my eyes.

  “Well, I’m gonna tell you anyway. He takes a special candy cane that he’s had whittled down to a fine, sharp point and he creeps up on the bad kids while they’re sleeping, and he uses that candy cane to slit their throats right open.”

  My mother moaned from beneath the veil of the dishtowel, and I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. I wanted to turn away from my father, but his eyes held mine and I found myself helpless to look away. “When their parents go in to check on them Christmas morning,” my father said, leaning close to me, his breath smelling sour, “they find their little ones white as paper, all the blood in their bodies soaking into the bed sheets. That’s what Santa does to naughty children.”

  My father let go of my wrist and sat back, his eyes going blank as if a light had gone out behind them. He had left a red mark all the way around my wrist from where he’d held it, and the bones felt sore. I rubbed at my wrist and tried not to cry. My mother lowered the dishtowel, and I saw that her eyes were puffy and leaking tears. She motioned me to come to her.

  I had just gotten up from my chair when my father’s eyes focused again and drilled into me. “Have you been a good boy this year?” he asked, echoing my mother’s question from earlier, although he said it with such intensity that it was frightening.

  I nodded my head vigorously in answer.

  “Are you sure? You can’t fool Santa, and he’ll only get madder if you try. If you’ve been naughty, tell me now. I need to know.”

  “I’ve been good, Daddy. I promise.”

  “Okay, then,” my father said, reaching up to pat me on the cheek, a wisp of a smile flickering across his lips before fading out again. “You should be safe then.”

  My father turned away from me, staring down at the tabletop, and I ran into my mother’s arms. She scooped me up and took me out of the kitchen.

  * * *

  I avoided my father for the rest of the morning. My mother took me aside and told me that he wasn’t feeling well and it was making him have funny thoughts. He spent the hours following breakfast in the den, staring at the television even though it was turned off. I peeked in at him from time to time but took care to make sure I wasn’t spotted. My mother took him a sandwich for lunch just before noon, but he refused to eat it.

  It was after two when I heard him calling my name. Not just calling it, screaming it. I was in my room, playing with my G.I. Joe action figures and thinking about what goodies Santa would bring me, when I heard my father’s voice blaring through the house like a foghorn. There was urgency in his voice, as well as something I couldn’t pinpoint at the time. I now know what I heard in his voice was madness.

  My mother stuck her head in my room and said, “Stay here,” her voice harsher and more strident than I was used to, and she closed the door. I stayed where I was, sitting on the floor by my bed, the action figures laid out around me. I heard my father and mother speaking, my mother’s voice trembling, my father’s stern. They sounded as if they were on the staircase, and I know suspect my mother was trying to bar my father’s path to me. There was a loud, meaty smack, and my mother cried out. Then I heard footsteps bounding down the hall, and my door was suddenly wrenched open, my father filling the space, breathing hard, sweat sliming his face.

  “Boy, did you break my favorite coffee mug?” he barked.

  I stared up at him, too petrified to speak, even if I had known what he was talking about.

  He crossed the room in a flash, kneeling down next to me. He smelled bad, like maybe he hadn’t taken a bath in a few days. Possibly a few weeks. “I’ve been sitting in there, mulling over the past year, trying to think of anything you might’ve done to incur Santa’s wrath, and I suddenly remembered my favorite coffee mug. You remember the one, had a picture of Marilyn Monroe on it and said ‘SOME LIKE IT HOT’ in steamy letters. I got home from work about three months back and found it broke. Myra said she did it, it accidentally slipped outta her hands while she was doing the dishes, but I remember now that you seemed awful upset that day. You did it, didn’t you? You broke it, and your Ma covered for you.”

  “No, Daddy, I didn’t, I swear—”

  “Don’t lie to me!” my father roared, grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking me hard. My head snapped back, my teeth coming together with an audible click, biting into the tip of my tongue. Blood flooded my mouth even as tears flooded my eyes, pouring down my cheeks. “You broke the mug, admit it! I can see the guilt on your face plain as day!”

  My father continued to shake me, and I was absurdly afraid he would go on shaking me until my head rolled right off my neck. I was terrified, my father suddenly transformed into a stranger, and I blurted out the truth. “Yes, I broke it, but I didn’t mean to. Really I didn’t. It was an accident.”

  The shaking stopped a
bruptly, leaving me feeling queasy, as if I might throw up. My father backed away from me, skidding on his hands and knees, and now he was the one who looked terrified. “Oh sweet Jesus,” he breathed. “You’ve done it now. You broke the mug then lied about it, keeping it secret all this time. You’re on Santa’s Naughty List for sure, boy. He’ll be coming for you tonight, probably filing down that candy cane right now, imagining the warm spray of your blood when he slices into your throat.”

  By this point, I was crying as I hadn’t cried since I was a baby, snot coating my upper lip, my breath coming in stuttering hiccups. It was true, I had broken the mug and then let my mother take the blame. I was bad, but I didn’t want my throat cut.

  My mother suddenly appeared in the doorway, a large red welt the shape of a handprint on her left cheek. Her hair had come loose of the ponytail she always wore around the house. “Carl, what are you doing? Leave him alone.”

  “Myra, we’ve got to do something,” my father said, bolting to his feet. “It was just one little mistake, we can’t let Santa kill him because of one little mistake.”

  “Carl, please, you’re not making any sense.”

  “We’ll hide him, that’s what we’ll do. We’ll go somewhere Santa can’t find us.”

  “Carl, stop it! Let me call Dr. Henry, maybe he can—”

  “We don’t have time,” my father shouted, and suddenly he was across the room, jerking me roughly into his arms and bounding out into the hallway. “We have to get the boy away from here, somewhere Santa won’t know to look.”

 

‹ Prev