Darkroom Saga Omnibus 2

by Poppet

  Now there's an idea.

  “The devil was the first angel, Oleg. He was God's favorite, and more beautiful than you will ever comprehend. If you see a devil when you look at me, I'll take that as a compliment.”

  Nudging my head, my bratva release the man as a synchronized unit, Gavril moving behind me to cover the girl, and I let the rage wash through me, connecting a metal teardrop into naked skin, over and over until my ears go deaf to his screeches. I will not be appeased until I am covered in his blood and he bleeds out.

  “You will feel all the force of my anger and rage, until I am satisfied. Ezekiel 5:13. The person who sins is the one who will die. Ezekiel 18:4. For the wages of sin is death. Romans 6:23. They were destroyed by the Angel of Death. 1 Corinthians 10:10.”

  My voice stays calm, deep, gravelly.

  “I will not ignore your sins or show pity or be merciful. You will be punished for what you have done. Ezekiel 24:14.”

  He's convulsing, his countenance one of anguish and suffering, but I'm not ready to release this man from my wrath. Dropping the whip, sweating inside my leather suit from exertion, I unsheathe my blade, my palms clammy inside the gloves.

  Bending over him I rip the barbed wire from his penis to the howl 'ublydok' (motherfucker), his entire form spasming into the fetal position, so I nod to my brethren and they hold him down again, open to my ministrations, to the correction of his deficiency, and with a sure and steady hand I cleanly slice the honed edge of my skinning knife from the tip of his cock to the root, splicing his dick into two even halves, smirking inside my full head mask when he convulses against the hands of the powerful with an ungodly wail. Blood gushes with fluids, oiling his skin with penance.

  Ivan flinches, turning to look away, but I've got no pity. Jabbing the blade home in its cover I unhook the hammer, slamming it down on his left testicle.

  Oleg vomits like I'm exorcising him. I guess I am.

  You took what was mine, you sold what was mine.

  This is for Polina, you bliad'. (Whore.)

  This is for me.

  I slam down the four pound hammer again.

  ~ Chapter 14 ~

  The axe is ready to cut down the trees at the roots, every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down.

  ~ Luke 3:9

  Mikah:

  Ivan drops his sledgehammer, joining me outside for a smoke break. There's no way I was unzipping my face mask and inhaling deeply in that rotting dump, I had to come out here where the air is clean and the sky glazed with cloudy cataracts. He sits on the tree stump next to the front door, linking his ankles and pulling out his Belomorkanals. Lighting up he absently kicks the handle of his huge hammer, both of us thinking about how we smashed his knees and ankles to prevent him from fighting back once the desperation kicked in. Adrenaline is one brutal opponent in the war against sinners.

  “Sick fuck,” he grumbles, shaking his head. “Eto piz'dets.” (This is fucked up.) Then he scowls at me. “I thought you weren't smoking cigarettes, what happened to the vapor thing?”

  “After this target I'll suck on steam, right now only the real deal gives me any calm. I've never wanted to skin a man alive more than I want to strip that man sliver by sliver, carving off paper thin slices of his body until all that's left are his bones.”

  Ivan laughs, scrunching his head mask in his hand, his black curly hair too short to be messed up by it, but a film of sweat clings to his face like baby oil.

  “I cut it out at the root,” I mutter, narrowing my eyes to scan the periphery, speaking more to myself than Ivan.

  Oleg, what a twisted freak. There's stuff Alpha didn't find, kept only on Oleg's computer. I'm like a stone when it comes to body fluids and murder, but the queasiness of his home movies is stuck in my gullet like ripe shit. Needing a distraction I take out my phone, connecting to my cloud and home surveillance. I need to see her, the reason why we're here torturing a man to death. If not for her we never would have found this sinner. Someone needs to fetch the kids, someone has to clean this mess up, and I know for certain that someone won't be me.

  “If we leave them they'll die of starvation,” says Ivan on an exhalation of smoke plumes, reading my mind.

  Sometimes we're all so close it's like we share one brain.

  “Call Alpha, ask him to send the broken brides to collect those beyond salvation. An anonymous tip to the authorities should have the rest of them returned home.”

  Ivan shakes his head, arguing, “But what if he bought them? What if we return them home and they just get sold again?”

  “B'lyad Ivan, I don't know! I came out here to breathe for ten minutes, just zatk'nis.” (Fuck Ivan, - just shut up.)

  “Ostyn',” he smirks, looking out over the abandoned fields that are no more than weeds and dirt now. (Chill out.)

  Annoyed I return my focus to the screen on my iPhone, sucking on my tobacco, knowing I have to kick this habit before I look and smell like Foma. Hacking up that mucous when in pain, coughing so hard he couldn't draw breath, I don't wanna end up like that.

  I locate her with the sitting room feed and she's dutifully sitting at the TV, writing words, repeating every word slowly while she concentrates on her English lesson. Unguarded, she's beautiful. For eight months I thought she was a covert hooker working for Foma, the truth was a pleasant surprise. She's adorable with her bangs flopping in her eyes, biting her lip while perfecting the shape of the letters, glancing down and to the flatscreen non stop, relaxed in her lace panties and tank top.

  Watching her makes my hands itch. She looks sexy with bruises, especially the ones inside her thighs in the shape of fingers where the bratva held her down for the branding. She bruises easily. I bet Oleg enjoyed that too. Nothing screams owned more than a female wearing the mark of your hands. I have to break him a thousand times over, and over, and over. She spits hellfire as a defense mechanism, one that won't go down well with Alpha.

  She plays tough but I'm not buying it. One punch and that woman will do whatever I tell her, whenever I tell her. Right now she's in awe but the honeymoon phase will wane, she'll get bored, want more, be dissatisfied with everything. It's the female condition. Then she won't want to stay, by then I need to make sure she's too fucking afraid to leave.

  Touching her split lip still scabbed and swollen, I mull, You're mine, kisa. Milaya. (Sweetheart). Standing on the butt of my diminished cigarette I pull the head mask back on. We're all going to need new leathers after this. We'll have to incinerate what we're wearing because the bastard makes too much mess.

  “I'm going in,” I tell Ivan, striding past him to return inside to Oleg.

  “What ya gonna do?” he asks, killing his cigarette to suit up and join me.

  “Rape him,” I snap, urgency gripping me after seeing the innocent woman sitting in my home trying to master the basics of life on her own. That asswipe robbed her of all that was good and right. I'm done waiting, I'm done procrastinating, I just want to go home to Kisha.

  A man on a mission I don't pause, stalking into the basement to my prey, kicking him over with repeated shunts of my boot, rifling in Pasha's carryall and finding the big black rubber cock striated with fake veins. Women dig this shit? Jesus, this thing is the same size as my forearm. And there was me buying Polina the smallest dildo they had so I'd be the one to tear her open as a woman. God gave us a manual on everything but women. He told us they'd have desire for us which increases with age, what he didn't tell us is they like dildos this big. Why'd he make men an average of six inches if a) he needed fertilized eggs which a longer average would assist us with, and b) make us all the perfect girth for orgasmic stimulation? Yeah, there's a design fault. But then he did test our genes and the disciples are all taller and stronger than most 'average' men. Maybe we have a gene that marks us as His?

  Jeeez, I have too many questions and never enough answers, and I sure as hell won't be the idiot to question his wisdom or integrity. Only atheists dare to confront God.

&
nbsp; “Oleg, I'm done playing. Let's do this,” I growl, standing on his wrist and stabbing a metal skewer through his hand crucifixion style so he's stuck to the floorboards at the walkway, then I repeat the process with his left hand, completely oblivious to chokes, snot, begging, wailing, convulsing – I just don't give a shit.

  When God warned sinners there'd be a river of blood 200 miles long, why do they think he was kidding? Blood comes out like this, not with a quick kill but literally bleeding the man out.

  Picking up the four pound hammer I position the massive dildo between his butt cheeks, uncaring that it requires lube. The shit's going to die regardless and I'm ready to speed the delivery.

  Pounding the cock inside him with deathly blows on the end of the hammer handle his screams make my ears ring, and the bratva leave me alone with the man, unwilling to intrude on my personal mission, the good angels carrying the children out while I attend to the business of vengeance.

  Once it's lodged so far in his colon it'll be covered in his shit and stomach contents, I yank it out. Dropping it while grateful for my leather gloves, I yank the skewers out too (with a fuckload of effort), rolling him with my foot, opening the canister of salt and liberally dousing his mutilated genitals.

  While he's shrieking against the salting of the sacrifice I jab the mouth clamp between his mandibles, securing it to keep his mouth lodged wide, unearthing the pliers from Pasha's Mary Poppins bag of tricks, using my boot on his forehead to hold his head down while I methodically extricate his teeth one by one.

  It's hard work, sweaty work, the exertion expended enough to make me grateful for the religious hours we spend maintaining pique muscular endurance and strength.

  I thrive on the fear so leave his eyes intact, saving them for last. As long as he's lucid and conscious he'll know what's coming next, and he'll crap himself for it.

  Smiling under the impartial face of the leather mask I retrieve the disgusting dildo, ramming it in and out of Oleg's mouth to coat his tongue with his own feces.

  “Taste good, Oleg? You thought you were so powerful because you could stick your cock in holes, think again asshole. You're no more a man than the silicone dick stretching your cheeks.”

  Unsheathing my skinning knife again I get to work, slicing pieces of him off and cauterizing each gouge with salt. He's finally passed out after a bout of seizures and quivering, but I don't care, I just keep on cutting him up while his blood flows and fluids I can't identify leak from his body. Slapping him aware, I stare at the glazed blue eyes of a man beyond despair. He's broken, he's barely alive. Now comes the good part.

  Nothing hurts a man more than breaking his Adam's apple. He's not a man, a man honors God, he has no right to share Adam's apple. God gave Adam a woman, not a child, That was the lesson, yet so few wish to acknowledge it.

  “You will have no part of Adam left in you,” I state, punching his throat with all the energy left in my fatigued body.

  He'll suffocate soon, I punched him too fucking hard and now he can't breathe. Shit.

  Snapping up the chef's blowtorch I ignite the butane, burning off his eyebrows, searing his nipples so they blister and pop while he depletes the oxygen left in his traumatized body, and then I melt his eyeballs, staring at the clear lens turning opaque before the cornea loses shape, oozing clear liquid to his ears when they cave.

  The last thing he saw in this life, is me. Me. Polina's angel.

  No sinner will be spared, not on my watch. Whoever hurts her for their own gain will answer to me, and the only payment I'll accept is death. When I discipline her it will be because God loves her, he disciplines those he loves, it's a form of correction, not abuse. The difference between these two points is as far apart as the polar caps.

  He has nothing left, but I take the cock and ram it in his throat, suffocating him should he regains consciousness.

  Standing, only hearing Misha calling to me now that the red rage is fading and my ears unblock of the steady drum of my heartbeat, I uncap the lighter fluid and pour the viscous liquid all over him.

  “Mikah, grab the gear up, we gotta go! Now!”

  “Relax Misha, just have to send him to hell the right way. Don't get your nuts in a knock.”

  Dropping the still lit blowtorch on Oleg's corpse I stand long enough to watch his skin bubble and sizzle, melting away with the distinct scent of burning human. No one ever tells you the truth about what a burning human smells like, it reminds me of bubblegum. Damn, now I'm hungry. And thirsty too, fucking parched thirsty.

  Misha's jamming tools and implements in the carryall, shoving me ahead of him, up the stairs out of the basement and into the musky corridor, the passage now empty of cages, daylight gone when we exit the abode, the victims clustered together in the middle of the third field, the ones who can talk still unconscious. Good, we don't need witnesses, and this night is fairly dark, which helps.

  “What gives?” I ask, unzipping my head mask, stripping without conscious deliberation, already eager for a massive pyre.

  Let's burn this place to the ground.

  Ivan grabs my ucheniki leathers as I strip them off, my body glistening with perspiration when I'm naked. The leathers are sealed in containers of seawater and acid, destroying the DNA, and when I turn I see that the dry and brittle wood of the old barn is dark with moisture. The stench of Oleg's defecation is stuck in my nostrils with the smell of skin burning off, so I didn't smell the gasoline. They've been busy, I know my brothers, they'll have drenched every room, everything but the hard-drive to Oleg's computer which they'll have secured in his vehicle for the authorities to find. The stage is set, all it takes now is one match and the whole place will bark 'woof' louder than Cerberus.

  Sprayed with the antiseptic atomizer I take the clothes handed to me, pulling on jeans and Omega t-shirt, remembering we have a gig tonight as a cover for us being in Russia.

  Will this day ever end?

  Thanking Ivan and Misha for helping me, I watch behind us while they march me away from the scene of many crimes to the SUV, and from up here I can witness Polina's prison go up in flame, sentenced to hell.

  Gavril does the honors, the accelerant carrying the flames rapidly up to the eaves, the structure warping, metal squealing when it twists, and then we're in the black vehicle and driving away the covert route. That's why the SUV, we needed to 4x4 our way outta here. Everything we took in there will be incinerated before we board the plane for home. Thank the hosts of heaven that God gives us private transport or we'd never have been allowed on board with our tools for torture.

  “The kids?” I ask, grabbing a beer from the cooler and popping it open, guzzling thirstily.

  “Alpha will collect them, he's sending the red cell clean up crew. They'll be here in five, but we have to be gone before they get here. Compartmentalization is paramount, you know that. They don't know us, we don't know them. It's better that way,” says Pasha.

  I nod, staring out at the stars, wondering what Polina's doing now. Unpocketing my phone I check on her, smiling at the gorgeous view. The butterfly is coming out of her cocoon. When I get home she'll fly. Watching her orgasm is enough to make me uncomfortably hard and I reach for another beer, lighting a cigarette too when I cut the feed to my phone by locking the screen.

  I wish she could know what I've done for her, but that's not how this works. I didn't do this for my glory, but for God's.

  ~ Chapter 15 ~

  Knowing your own darkness is the best method for

  dealing with the darkness of other people

  ~ Carl Jung

  Mikah:

  Staying the night at Misha's I now have a neat incision in my side, across the area of my bottom rib. I doubt Polina knows how many ribs we're supposed to have so it's just for show, a perfect row of hairline stitches with medical tape holding it together so it'll close and heal without much fanfare. It's superficial, a small gift to acquiesce the woman's conscience.

  I don't mind scars, I read them like a blind m
an reads a map. Each one speaks of trauma, of hardship, of challenge. That's why I'm not a mega fan of firearms, they're simply a weapon of convenience.

  A knife leaves a mark, a physical reminder that you and someone else clashed in conflict, now you're stronger than you were before, your skin a page which tells the stories of a journey lived with ebbs and sorrows, a ridged network of the fractures of life leaving the once flawless sculpted with striations of permanent strength. A scar is thicker skin tissue than the rest of the canvas, it's tougher because you're tougher. So you spilled some blood, but the reward cannot be duplicated. It's mental, every clash conquered makes you stronger, one step closer to legion, one step closer to God. Every slash in your skin is a rung up the stairway to heaven and that's what Polina has given me, she brings me closer to Him.

  A gun against your head is just that, a psychological battle for power, a cut or scrape resulting in a scar is far more impressive because it tells of the day you wrestled darkness and survived. You sacrificed and mutated, morphing into a newer version of you, this time one step closer to invincible. This scar is a sacrifice, a physical mark that Polina is mine, just like God marks himself with our names now I have a mark on my body for her. It's my turn to mark her so we're square. I plan to cut her the way she cut me. It's fitting in more ways than one.

  All the days of our lives we wrestle darkness, our spiritual muscles are mammoth, they flex when we smile, they rip when we fall to temptation, they ache when we struggle against lust, they atrophy when we grieve.

  It takes one finger to pull a trigger, but it takes skill, speed, balance and technique to cut a man down with a knife, to battle in hand to hand combat, to crisscross skin with the embroidery of scar tissue, a mark of war – for your soul, for your life, for your afterlife.

  The fact that Polina favors the switchblade is very sexy to me, it makes me want to snap it open and hold it to the delicate veil over her carotid, to watch her eyes widen and pupils dilate while the sharpest of the phallic symbols fondles with her sanity. It's a game she plays, it's her weapon of choice, it's the first piece to fall on her chessboard. She surrendered it like a pawn to save the queen. What she fails to recognize is that I am the only one who will save the queen from falling victim and losing the game.