***
Sarah’s been with me now every night since I started chemotherapy. The feel of her cold dead flesh against me as I lay nauseous with radiation poisoning is the worst of it all. I know she thinks she’s doing me some kindness; being at my side in my hour of need. Trying to give me the comfort I’d never extended to her. But seeing her just reminds me of what I will soon become and how I hadn’t been there for her. Maybe that’s part of her plan as well; to save my soul by giving me a taste of true remorse. She no longer looks anything like the Sarah I knew. Her body is bloated with gasses and her skin looks loose and oily as if it’s ready to slip right off of her. Her eyes are gone and her hair and nails have grown long. I know that this is how she now looks lying in her coffin.
I turn to look into the empty pits where her eyes should be and feel her sorrow wafting toward me in waves. I’d had it wrong this whole time.
It wasn’t her own death or even my cruel betrayal that caused the terrible sadness within her. She wasn’t feeling sorry for herself, but for me. She knew all along that I was dying too. The tremors start and I wrap my arms around her frigid flesh as Sarah curls against me. And I’m grateful for the comfort she offers. The coolness of her bloodless flesh brings some relief from the fever raging through my dying body. I feel her cold tears drip from her cheeks onto my arms like drops of ice water and I warm them with my own. Sarah had not been so crazy after all. In the end, she was my best friend.
Pressure
Vincento turned to look at her with those beautiful silvery gray eyes that had melted so many hearts, eyes like a timber wolf, predator’s eyes. His long raven-black hair spilled damp and limp with perspiration onto the hard metal table. His brow was knotted in concentration and every lean hard muscle in his body was tense and straining. Maria knew he wanted to scream. She watched as those gorgeous eyes trailed over to look at the solemn six-year-old who sat in the corner playing with the instruments she would soon be using to torture him. He closed his eyes and shook his head vehemently.
“No! No!”
She clamped the jumper cables back onto his nipples and fired up the generator. Vincento’s body convulsed and contorted in nerve-searing agony as flaming talons of electricity shredded through his nervous system. She watched impassively as he thrashed about on the table with saliva frothing and drooling from his mouth in long ropes. He tried his best not to scream, knowing it would do no good and that it would give Maria satisfaction to hear it. She removed the cables and looked at him expectantly. Vincento’s chest heaved as he struggled to catch his breath. His body still vibrated with electricity, and his nerves still screamed in agony. He shook his head again.
Maria removed one of her six-inch stiletto pumps and punched the heel of it into his eye. She did it so fast he’d barely had time to react. There was a wet, sticky, pop as it gouged through the eyeball. Blood drooled down his cheek onto the table and Vincento cried out in horror and anguish.
“You sick cunt! You sick fucking cunt! You ruined my face!”
Maria was a very patient woman. She had all the time in the world. She would get the answer she wanted.
Vincento stopped yelling and his one remaining eye refocused on Maria with an undisguised and utterly indescribable hatred. Maria smiled.
“Are you ready to tell me what I want to hear yet?”
“Fuck you! Fuck you, you crazy bitch!”
Maria shook her head. He would need further persuading, but he would talk. They always did. Her father had taught her well.
Michael Damiano, Maria’s father, had been an enforcer for the mafia in Vegas since the days of Bugsy Seigel. He’d become quite an accomplished hit-man and was greatly sought after for his skills at extracting information. He could make anyone talk. Even after his health had begun to fail, and he could no longer withstand the rigors of the job, he had continued to take on contracts, subbing out the work to his daughter whom he’d educated in the art of pain. She’d learned very well. Soon his buddies in the syndicate found out about his daughter and tried to put a stop to it. They could not stomach the thought of a woman in harm’s way. Some of them threatened her father. Maria threatened back. She left the bodies of her competition littering the front lawns of a few of her detractors. They left her alone after that. Some of them, even while denouncing her father and her in public, had continued to send contracts their way in private. Maria was good, and even those macho assholes had known it. One thing she had excelled at, even becoming more accomplished at its delicate intricacies and nuances than her father, was interrogation. For her father, it had been a science and he had it down cold, but for her, it was an art, and each canvas had different secrets to yield.
Maria heated the scalpel on the Bunsen burner and then approached poor Vincento. She had kept him awake for two days and he was dizzy with exhaustion, hungry, thirsty, cold, damp, and scared. This wouldn’t take long she hoped. She really took no pleasure in it. It was just something she had to do. No matter what, he had to talk, and if he didn’t…well, there really was no choice. He would suffer until he broke; until he spoke.
As Maria swabbed his chest with iodine she was once again awed by how handsome he was. His tanned muscular body was like a living Adonis. Even with one eye he still looked a lot like Antonio Banderas. It was almost a shame to ruin him. She began to cut.
Vincento winced and writhed on the metal table, biting his lip and refusing to cry out, as she sliced the heated blade through the skin just over his nipples. The macho ones always had the hardest time. They tried so hard not to cry out, not to beg, not to give in to her, but in the end, they all talked. Some just suffered longer before they broke. Vincento was definitely a tough guy; as macho as they came. He would suffer a long time. But he would talk. He would talk.
She cut two parallel incisions an inch apart down the length of his chest then drew the blade of her scalpel across the top connecting each incision in sort of a long rectangle. She gripped the top of the flap of skin with a hemostat and rolled it down the way a metal key rolls down a sardine can. Now Vincento did scream. The most anguished, agonized cry the human larynx was capable of producing erupted from him as she yanked down on the hemostat and jerked the skin free with a wet, sticky, riiiiiiping sound. Maria had heard this sound before; many times. It wouldn’t be long now. He would talk.
“Tell me Vincento. Tell me what I want to hear.”
But he had blacked out. Maria tended to his wounds making sure he didn’t bleed out or catch an infection. She checked his temperature and blood pressure to make sure he wasn’t going to go into shock and die on her. Then she doused him in cold water and revived him. He sputtered and coughed as he came abruptly awake. For a second he wasn’t sure where he was. He wished that second had lasted.
“Tell me what I want to hear, Vincento.” She punched him square on the jaw and his eyes rolled around in his head. The bitch hit like a man.
“Tell me, Vincento! Tell me now!” She motioned toward the kid who still sat in the corner playing with the saws, knives, hammers, drills and other menacing-looking implements that were loaded up in the black duffel bag. She didn’t need to tell her son what she wanted. He knew the routine. She’d been dragging him along on these types of jobs since before he could walk. Being a single mother she had no one else to look after him. He stood up and carried the salt shaker over to her then resumed his position in the corner. She poured a pile of salt into the palm of her hand, tossed a pinch over her shoulder, then rubbed the rest into the six-inch rectangular wound she’d carved into Vincento’s chest.
Sweat and tears rolled down his face and he bit clean through his bottom lip. But he would not cry out. Blood bubbled up out of his mouth as he struggled to catch his breath. Maria was always prepared. She suctioned the blood out of his mouth with a turkey baster and placed a bandage over his lip after she’d stopped the bleeding with adrenaline and pressure from a damp cloth. She didn’t want him drowning on his own blood. Still, he would not talk. She looked at the
bandage on his lip and thought it looked far too merciful. She was afraid it might give Vincento some hope that she wouldn’t go all the way if necessary. She decided to cut the lip off instead.
With slow, deliberate, almost tender care, she sliced off his lower lip with the scalpel. Vincento screamed again and tried to bite her. But the straps held him firm. Then she fired up the Bunsen burner to cauterize the fresh wound. He screamed again, even louder, as she seared his wound with the hot torch. The savaged flesh where his lips had been, hissed, shriveled, and blackened like bacon on a hot skillet as she held the flame to his face. He screamed so hard that his tongue stuck out beyond his teeth and was singed as well. Once again he blacked out and once again Maria revived him.
Vincento tried to spit at her, but without lips it came out as a weak spray between his teeth that landed mostly on his own face.
“ ‘uck you! You cray ‘itch!” He shouted into her face defiantly, unable to pronounce either the “F” or the “b” without benefit of a lower lip but quite certain that Maria got the point.
Enraged, Maria bent down and bit off the tip of Vincento’s nose spitting it back into his face. Vince lost it then. He began crying and blubbering.
“Aaaaaaaaaargh! Stop! Stop! What do you want ‘rom ‘e? I don’t know what you want ‘e to say!”
“Yes, you do. You know exactly what I want to hear.”
The kid over in the corner smiled at him and giggled, amused at his predicament. Vincento wanted to put the little freak over his knee and teach him some respect for his elders. He gritted his teeth together and shook his head vehemently.
“Hell no.”
Maria pulled the pliers from her little black bag. She strapped Vincento’s head down to the table and used forceps to pry open his mouth and hold it open wide. Then she began pulling teeth out by the roots. Vincento screamed, gargled, and choked on blood and saliva, as she wrestled the teeth out of his head. She had to use the turkey baster several times to keep him from drowning. Blood and saliva drooled down his face onto his neck and chest. He squeezed his eyes shut, squirting out tears from the corners of his eyes, and his screams reverberated through the empty room like an echo chamber. Still, he would not give in. So she did the same with his fingernails.
“Aaaaaargh! Oh My God! Stop! Stop! Noooooo!” Vincento had given up trying not to scream. Still he refused to tell her what she needed to hear.
Maria removed the forceps from his mouth. Then she removed the strap from his head, allowing him to lift his head slightly off the table so that he could look down at the ruin she’d made of his body. She picked up the gardening shears.
“I didn’t want to have to do this.” She took his limp organ in her hand and it nearly shrank back up inside him, as if it knew what she was about to do and was going into a full retreat. She gave it a tug, pulling it out straight and placing it between the sharp blades of the gardening shears.
The problem with this sort of threat was that it was probably the worst thing you could do to a man, and if you threatened and didn’t follow through on the threat, then you lost your psychological advantage. You gave your captive hope that you wouldn’t go all the way if necessary. Then again, if you did follow through with it, there was nowhere to go from there. What else could possibly phase him after having his manhood lopped off? How could you top that? Maria had already thought of all of that though. She knew exactly what she was doing.
“No! No! I’ll tell you! I’ll say anything you want to hear!”
“Okay, then say it.” She continued to hold the end of his penis stretching it taunt between the shears.
“I love you.” Vincent said in defeat.
“And?” Maria asked expectantly.
“And I’ll ‘arry you.” Pronouncing the “m” was too difficult without his lower lip.
“And?”
Maria loved him. In fact, Vincento had been the first man she’d ever dared love. He had told her she was beautiful. Everyone else had said she looked like a man. The kids had called her “Stoneface” because of her square jaw and sharp angular features. She looked like she could take a left hook from Mike Tyson and keep coming. Her lean muscular physique looked to her like a runner or gymnast but many men found it too hard and un-feminine. No one had ever called her beautiful until Vincento. It was a shame things had to turn out this way. But, she had to make him understand that a woman’s affections were not to be toyed with. You couldn’t tell a woman you loved her and then just walk away.
Vincento looked over at the kid in the corner, who looked back at him and smiled. Vince shook his head and laughed, barking out a spray of blood with each chuckle.
“No way that kid is ‘ine.”
Maria’s eyes turned cold and a murderous sneer crossed her face. Vincento knew what she was about to do and terror raced through his nervous system. He struggled against the straps, bucking and jerking, and succeeding only in causing them to cut deeper into the skin on his wrists, throat, and ankles, making them run with blood.
“You can’t ‘e serious! The ‘ucking kid is ‘lack! How the hell can he ‘e ‘ine?!”
Vincento screamed. Maria brought the shears together.
“Aaaaargh! Oh God! Noooooo!”
“Shhhhhh! It’s okay. It’s okay. Medical science has come quite a long way.” She teased, holding Vincento’s severed organ in front of his face.
“You know they can sew this back on now? They can make it as good as new.”
Maria leaned in closer and peered deep into Vincento’s one remaining eye.
“Take me to the hospital! Help me!” he pleaded. Maria ignored him.
“You know what you have to do if you want to go to a hospital. The longer this remains unattached, the greater the chance of irreparable nerve damage. Oh, they might still be able to stitch it back together, but this beautiful cock of yours would be all but useless. And of course, if you wait too long, it might start to rot. Then there would be nothing the doctors could do for you.”
“You’re crazy! You’re fucking crazy!”
“Just tell me what I want to hear.”
“’uck you and your little nigger child! HE IS NOT MY SON!!!”
The little boy in the corner with the thick wooly hair and the dark caramel-colored skin showed his first sign of emotion. A solitary tear rolled down his cheek and he looked over at his mother, who was covered in blood and sweat, looking almost as gruesome as her prisoner.
“He’s not my daddy?” his bottom lip began to quiver and more tears poured from his soft dark eyes.
A white hot flash of rage went through Maria’s mind. She knew she should never take the job personal, but this one was. No way to maintain emotional detachment this time. She looked at Vincento’s movie star good looks and remembered how much she’d loved him. How he’d said all the right things, and touched her in all the right places, and made her cum harder than any man ever had. How she’d made a fool of herself over him. How he’d drained her bank accounts and fucked all her friends, and talked her into prostituting herself. He’d made a whore out of her. Pimping her to all his gangster friends, many of which she’d done hits for, and then leaving her once she’d gotten pregnant.
Vincento didn’t look so handsome anymore. His ruptured eye drooled out of the socket and down his cheek like a large bloody hunk of snot and phlegm. She’d sliced off his bottom lip and bitten off his nose. He no longer looked like Antonio Banderas. Besides, she didn’t think Banderas would have shit on himself when the electricity went through him the way Vincento had. She wasn’t so sure she wanted to marry him anymore.
“He’s not anybody’s Daddy. He’s not even a man.”
“No! No! Don’t! Dooooon’t!”
Maria stuffed the severed penis into her mouth and began to chew. Vincento had never wanted to be a father anyway. Now he would never have to worry about that.
Talent Does What It Can
Lisa was deep in concentration, thinking only of the complex notes dancing in her head sp
lit-seconds before her fingers struck ivory, bringing the lovely sounds out of her mind and into the air. Her brow knit in concentration as she wrestled the music from her soul down her arms, into her fingertips, and into the piano, relaxing in serene rapture only when the sweet melody washed over her.
Her mother sat beside her on the piano bench, humming softly along with the music and squeezing her so tightly Lisa felt as if all the air were being crushed from her lungs. She could feel her mother’s body shiver and occasionally her mother would stop humming and let out a low moan. Lisa wanted to stop, to stroke her mother’s beautiful blond tresses and kiss her forehead, but she had to keep the music going. The music was everything.
“Don’t stop playing, Lisa. Please. Just don’t stop.”
There was a panic in the woman’s voice and she squeezed Lisa tighter when she spoke, digging little half moons in Lisa’s arms.
“Okay, mother. Don’t worry. I’ll keep playing.”
For some reason Lisa’s thoughts kept returning to the fortune cookie she’d had at lunch with her shrimp fried rice. The tiny pink slip of paper had an unusual proverb inscribed on it in a neat Courier font.
“Talent does what it can. Genius does what it must.”
Lisa chuckled as her entire body vibrated with music. She heard terrible sounds all around her, audible just below the tinkle of the keys. She began singing to drown them out.
Tonight was supposed to be the day of her recital with the New York Symphony Orchestra. She was to perform a solo of Beethoven’s Fifth. It was to be her moment in the spotlight, the crowning jewel in a year of success and good fortune. She’d already received a scholarship to Juliard and would be the youngest student ever to attend at 14 years old. They called her a prodigy, a musical genius, compared her to a young Mozart. They said she could hear things in the music that no one else could, that she could see the notes dancing before her eyes. They had no idea how right they were.
For her each composition was like a painting. She knew the hues and complexions of every note, the shape and density of every octave and the pictures they would create when assembled in a score. The music spoke to her. It was like an entire language and Lisa could hear the whispered secrets hidden in every note. She knew which doors each one could unlock. Juliard had recognized her special talent and now the rest of the musical world would recognize it as well when she played on stage tonight.
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