Kate abruptly stood up and shoved her seat away. It fell on the floor with a loud clang that made Adam’s ears hurt.
That will definitely wake the neighbors if the shouting didn’t already.
“The size of a fucking pea,” he whispered under his breath.
Chapter 3
The pain in Adam’s head was unbelievable, like a butcher had been given free rein to hack away at his brain with a cleaver, and then reach inside with an egg whisk and give his neurons a spin.
He couldn’t feel his arms or legs. His whole body was completely numb.
“Good morning, sleepyhead,” said Martin. His voice was a distant echo in a hollow space.
Adam’s eyelids had never drooped so heavily. His eyes opened a crack at first, then fluttered as streaming bright light flooded his vision.
Martin slapped Adam’s cheek hard enough that his skin smarted. At least he could once again feel something, even if it was pain.
Adam tried to form words with his mouth, but there was a gag tied around his head, holding a wad of soggy material in his mouth. It tickled the back of his throat and made him want to throw up. He looked around. He was lying on his side on some kind of operating table, naked, and hogtied.
The room was filthy. It was tiled from ceiling to floor in white and black tiles that reminded Adam of a subway station, or a slaughterhouse. Broken tiles on the wall were covered in dried blood splatter, and the stench reminded him of meat long past its expiration date. The floor was a mess of brown stains, skid marks, and dead insects.
Martin appeared in front of him, holding a narrow tube in his hand aimed at Adam’s face. A stream of cold water flowed from the tube, which he sprayed onto Adam’s face and body. The icy water woke Adam completely from his drug-induced haze. His whole body shivered and shook.
Martin crouched down an inch away from Adam. He had an evil grin spread across his lips, such satisfaction in his eyes.
“Now he’s awake,” said Martin.
Adam tried to shout, but with his mouth gagged all that came out was muffled noises.
“I’m sorry,” said Martin. “I didn’t hear what you said.”
Martin pulled the mushed fabric from Adam’s mouth.
Adam screamed like a man possessed. “YOU FUCKING BASTARD. I’M GOING TO FUCKING KILL—”
Not the slightest bit impressed, Martin shoved the gag back into Adam’s mouth. “You have a filthy mouth, American.”
Adam squirmed on the table as movement returned to his limbs along with pins and needles.
“You’re probably not going to enjoy this next part,” said Martin as he moved around the table behind Adam, out of sight. “But it is important I do this.”
Martin rammed the stiff tube inside Adam’s anus, flooding his rectum with water. Adam developed the sudden need to take a shit as his guts churned and groaned.
Martin strolled casually across the room to collect a bucket which was sitting in the corner.
“I must admit,” continued Martin. “This is my least favorite part, too. But at least I am not on the receiving end.”
He ripped the hose from Adam’s ass and held the bucket in its place. Adam lost all control of his bowels. Watery shit came spraying out, hitting the bottom of the bucket with the force of a powerful hose. A minute passed of intense cramping and squirting out his guts.
When Adam had no more left to shit, Martin said, “And now we do it again.”
Martin lodged the hose firmly up Adam’s rectum for a second time and flooded his colon with more ice-cold water. This time he left the hose in place while he poured the bucket of fecal matter down a drain in the center of the floor.
Adam’s belly swelled and his guts threatened to explode. He wanted to be sick. He’d never been so desperate to take a shit.
As soon as Martin pulled the hose free, a cascade of dirty brown water exploded from Martin’s ass, missing the bucket completely, and covering everything within a few feet of the table.
Martin looked down at his scrubs in disgust, and the spray of shit that had soiled his clothes.
“You fucking disgusting American.” Martin dropped the bucket down, revolted.
He put his finger over the end of the hose to increase the pressure, and water blasted Adam and the table clean.
Adam bucked on the table and pulled against his restraints. He screamed through the gag in his mouth. Martin grabbed Adam’s mouth and blocked his nose at the same time so he couldn’t breathe.
“Fucking animal!” Martin tossed the hose onto the ground. The water washed down the tiles and swirled down the drain. “No one can hear you. For the next…” he looked at his watch, “... half an hour it’s just you and me down here. You can scream as loud as you like, but all you’re going to do is piss me off.”
Martin continued his tirade. “Pieces of shit like you come to my beautiful country. You fuck our beautiful women. You fuck our young boys.” Martin grabbed a handful of Adam’s hair and wrenched his head back. “You spread your diseases. Did you know that we had the lowest HIV infection rate in the entire world? Until you pieces of filth came and fucked everything up. I despise you. Well, now it's your turn.”
Martin raged. He was shaking with fury as he fumbled with the drawstrings on his scrubs. He was hard before his pants hit the floor.
Martin spat a wad of thick saliva into his hand and lubricated himself.
“You want to know what it's like to get fucked, to get kicked when you’re already down?”
Martin rammed himself deep into Adam’s guts. Adam’s stomach turned as his insides ripped open.
“It’s like getting fucked up the ass by a big Eastern European cock.” Martin laughed.
Adam closed his eyes and sobbed gently. Time expanded to infinity while Martin continued his hateful tirade aimed at the selfish, capitalist scum, every hard word accompanied by a jarring thrust of his hips.
Adam tried to stop himself from crying. He tried to think of all the good things in his life, but his list came up remarkably short. The only thing that kept coming to mind was the thought of Kate. His beautiful Kate who had been so steadfast and loyal by his side, through all the tough times she’d stayed with him, and they’d succeeded as a team. How could he have taken her for granted?
What hurt more than the ache in his guts was the knot in his stomach from the overwhelming guilt he had never acknowledged.
How could I have treated her so badly? My Kate. My angel.
When Martin was finished with Adam, he wiped away the evidence, and tied up his scrubs.
Martin bent over and picked up the hose, still streaming water from its nozzle.
“Scum,” Martin spat on Adam’s back and forced the hose inside Adam again, repeating the degradation over and over until the water ran clear and Adam was completely purged.
Adam sobbed like a child, curled up in the fetal position.
“What… doing… me?” He mumbled through his mouthful of cloth.
“What was that?” asked Martin. “What are we doing?” He curled his top lip and shrugged his shoulders. “Nobody likes the twist at the end of the story to be ruined.” With the kind of glee that only psychopaths can take from torturing another human being, Martin leaned over, a smile on his face from ear to ear. “You must wait and see. It’s a surprise!”
What the fuck? Is this some kind of over the top, sick fucking joke? I’m going to die. Why is this happening to me? Fuck. Fuck! FUCK! Okay, think, Adam. What happened in the hotel? What was the last thing I remember? I was standing, holding Iva in my arms. Then all I wanted to do was sleep. They drugged me. That’s right. She put something in my glass of water.
“How is the expression in English,” said Martin. “Cat got your tongue?” He chuckled sadistically. “The good news is you probably won’t survive this … experiment. The bad news is I plan to make sure you feel everything. And not because I’m bad at my job, but because I don’t like you.”
He smiled and turned the hose off. Martin
crouched down beside Adam’s head. The stale odor of sweet alcohol and cigarettes from last night’s escapades still lingered on his breath. Adam turned his head away and gasped for fresh air, but Martin held firmly onto his jaw and forced him to inhale the toxic byproducts of his respiration. Knowing the air he was breathing had just filtered through Martin’s lungs made Adam sick to his stomach. He wouldn’t want to share anything with this man, not even oxygen.
Martin shoved Adam’s head hard against the table and let go. Then he left the room without saying another word, leaving Adam alone, cold, and afraid.
Chapter 4
Adam was about five years old. They were still living in the house he used to call The Castle. To a child the house seemed like it had a hundred rooms, and infinite places to play hide and seek. He hated that house. So lonely and cold.
“Why can’t we live somewhere there are other children nearby?” Adam would ask his mother almost every night as she prepared to put him to bed.
“Because my darling, we get to live in this beautiful house in the countryside.” She smiled down on him, and Adam remembered what it felt like to truly love someone. “You like living here, don’t you?”
Adam shook his head. “Can we move back home? I miss my friends.”
His mother laid a hand on his heart. She had a forlorn look on her face. He knew she was hiding something from him.
“Time for bed, my darling.”
“When is he coming home again?” Adam asked, fear in his voice.
“Your father is away on a business trip. He’ll be back on Friday.”
Adam counted the number of sleeps in his head, though any number was too soon. His father was a monster who lived by the Old Testament rule that to spoil the rod was to ruin the child. Though the Old Testament never stopped his father from molesting him every time he came home, while his mother lay crying in her room waiting for her turn.
They were prisoners in that beautiful, big house. Far enough away from any neighbors that no one could ever hear the screams or the tears. To the rest of the world they were the epitome of success. But that success hid a secret that was rotten at its core.
Adam’s mind drifted to a different memory, of a day when he walked into the kitchen to find his mother crying while chopping vegetables.
“Mommy?” said Adam. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing my darling,” she replied, wiping her eyes with her wrist. “It’s just the onions.”
Though the only onion sitting on the kitchen counter was untouched.
His mother took a large swig from her glass of champagne. Adam wondered what she was celebrating. He only ever saw his mother drinking the bubbly wine when something good had happened.
Adam opened his arms in the air as a gesture for his mother to pick him up and place him on the counter. She lifted him up and sat him down beside the prep bowl.
“When I grow up,” said Adam, “will I be a businessman like Daddy, or a chef, like you Mommy?”
His mother wiped her eyes again and smiled. She put the chopping knife down and tickled the end of Adam’s nose.
“When you grow up, you can be whatever you want to be.”
He recalled how happy this revelation had been at the time, and the joy that filled him. He’d dreamed of being an airplane pilot, of soaring through the skies and traveling to exotic locations. The ancient wonders of the world he would one day see, and the smells of faraway lands he would never be able to forget.
But there was already a plan for his life, one that his father had mapped out for him. He was to follow in his father’s footsteps, as his father had done before him.
His mind drifted to another memory. The year of his eleventh birthday, when everything would change for Adam. One particularly cold winter afternoon, Adam had just come back indoors from playing outside with his imaginary friends in the nearby woods.
The house was eerily silent, except for the faint sound of a tap dripping, which echoed through the house.
“Mom,” called Adam. “Are you here?”
The only reply he heard was the echo of his own voice.
“Mom?” he called again.
The dripping sound grew louder as Adam entered his parents’ bedroom. The room was foggy with steam that was escaping into the bedroom from the open en-suite bathroom door.
“Mom?” said Adam in a quiet voice. “Can I come in?”
There was no reply, only the dripping.
He walked across the threshold into the bedroom, territory he daren’t enter when his father was home, or risk getting beaten to a pulp.
As he walked across the plush bedroom carpet, the adjoining bathroom came into view. He pushed open the door which was an inch ajar, and tried to see the reflection of the room in the large mirror that faced the doorway. But the mirror was fogged up, and all he could see was his father’s shaving razor sitting on the sink.
He opened the door ever so slightly.
“Can I come in?” whispered Adam. “Mom?”
No response.
He wanted to turn and run back to the hallway, afraid that his father might catch him where he shouldn’t have been. But something made him press on.
He pushed the door wide open and stepped inside the bathroom. His whole body froze as if the life had simply exited his body leaving nothing but a hollow shell. He couldn’t make sense of what he was looking at. His beautiful mother lay in the bathtub, full of blood-red water, one arm draped over the side, water trickling down her elbow, over the deep gash in her wrist, and dripping from the tips of her bloody fingertips into a puddle of crimson liquid on the tiled floor.
He’d never seen her so peaceful, so serene, so deathly pale, with a small smile on her face. She looked happy, free of all the injustice and loneliness. But she’d selfishly left him behind.
Adam launched himself on her body, splashing waves of bloody water over the edge of the bath and across the floor. He held her in his arms and cried his heart out. Her body was still warm. She hadn’t been dead for long. If he’d only come home a few minutes earlier he might have been able to stop her. He could never forgive himself for dawdling on his way back to the house. A few minute's hesitation had cost him the most precious thing in his entire world.
Adam lay with his mother until the water turned icy around them, and his body shivered with cold.
Chapter 5
There was a loud crash of metal on metal as a door slammed shut in the distance. Adam heard voices and footsteps echoing, coming toward him. The voices were unmistakably Martin and Iva’s, engaged in lighthearted chatter.
Adam realized he’d fallen asleep. His body ached to stretch, but his binds were too tight. He calmed his breathing and examined his options. There was nothing special about his captors. The only way they could control him was through fear. They breathed, shit and bled the same way he did. Adam just had to find a way to free himself and fight back.
Martin and Iva entered the room, bringing a squeaky stretcher trolley along with them.
Iva was wearing the most ridiculous naughty nurse outfit, like something stolen from the set of a porn film, complete with a white cap emblazoned with a Red Cross. Her tits were pushed up so high they were almost falling out of the too small top. Her lipstick was several shades too red for her lips, with makeup caked on so thickly she looked like a stage performer.
Martin strolled up behind Iva and slapped her hard on the ass. She leaned on the table beside Adam, giggled and popped her pert behind out for Martin. He ground himself against her ass and ran his hands across her cleavage, kissed her neck and whispered sweet nothings to her.
Adam closed his eyes to shut out the performance he was being subjected to watch. He wondered if Iva knew her boyfriend was a rapist, or whether she even cared.
Adam opened his eyes in surprise as Iva’s soft lips connected with his mouth and kissed him gently. She grabbed Adam’s flaccid cock and gave it a tug.
“You don’t like me any more?” she asked, sounding surpris
ed.
Like her? If Adam could have taken an axe to both their heads, he would have done it in a heartbeat.
They pushed the stretcher up beside the table and locked the brakes in place. Martin took the head, and Iva the feet. They transferred Adam roughly onto the stretcher which groaned under his weight. Adam’s shoulder popped and the sudden excruciating pain that ripped through the joint took his breath away.
“He’s going to fight,” said Iva.
“I have something to help with that,” said Martin.
Martin pulled a drawn up syringe out of his pocket and twisted Adam’s dislocated arm to access an IV line sitting at the base of his bicep. Adam groaned in agony, almost passing out from the pain.
The medication tickled Adam’s veins as it traveled up his arm and to his heart. The pain in his shoulder melted away and his eyelids grew heavy. Martin slipped an oxygen mask over Adam’s face and snapped the elastic bands tightly behind his head.
“There, my own special cocktail to help you relax,” said Martin with a sadistic smile.
Martin kicked the brakes off the stretcher and they wheeled the trolley into a long adjoining hallway. Every bump sent another painful jolt through Adam’s shoulder, and more tears welled in his eyes.
Most of the ceiling lights were out, and the few that remained flickered constantly. Flies buzzed around the air vents covered with slime and mold. The rusted wheels on the trolley squeaked with every revolution, grating on Adam’s eardrums. Whatever they’d given him in the anesthetic room was making him woozy and exhausted. He fought the chemicals flooding his brain, slowly switching off the parts that kept him awake. The stretcher rocked and swayed, lulling Adam toward sleep.
Chapter 6
Adam woke with a searing pain in his shoulder. He was blinded instantly by the bright overhead surgical lights shining down upon him.
There was a soft beep every few seconds coming from the IV pump set up beside his head. Adam blinked his blurry eyes and squinted at the text on the screen. It read DOWNSTREAM OCCLUSION. Nothing was flowing down the IV line.
Headhunter: An Extreme Horror Story Page 3