Into Painfreak

by Lee, Edward

  “I don’t want her to suffer,” Devoy said weakly.

  “Want? No one needs to lie in Painfreak—to others or themselves. You need care only for fulfilling your longing, Mr. Devoy. Satisfying your hunger. We know that’s what you want; that’s why you’re a guest here.”

  He moved closer to the sleeping giant. He wanted to kneel down in front of her mouth and feel her warm exhalations flow over him. He wanted to caress the wall of her cheek. Instead, after staring at her face for a few moments, he walked around behind her, reached up high and placed his hand flat against her thigh where it met her bottom. He ran his hand down her smooth flesh. When his hand descended to face level, he stepped right up against her, both his hands now on her, and he pressed his nose into her blue flesh to draw in its scent. He closed his eyes, resting his cheek against her.

  Devoy pushed out his tongue, and licked her flesh in one long stroke.

  He was aware of another cart of sharp implements a few paces away, their blades as yet unbloodied.

  He wasn’t sure, just yet, if he wanted to cut deeply into her and remove slabs of her flesh to be cooked…to be consumed. Her blood making valentine-red gloves of his hands. Her blood filling his mouth. Or if he might want to cut an incision into the taut expanse of her belly, and push his way past her enormous coils of spilled intestines, so that he might secret himself inside her like a child.

  He might do both those things, and more, but for now he just remained as he was, cheek against her skin, eyes closed in terrible bliss, and licked Khi Ma Soo again.

  | — | — |

  Aikiko’s Blade

  ————

  Colleen Wanglund

  She stood as still as stone, listening. Goosebumps were rising on her skin in the cool, damp air. The forest was black around her but up ahead in the clearing moonlight shone down on an abandoned temple entrance. This is where she had followed the man—the Ronin who had murdered the monks but left her inexplicably alive.

  There was something wrong here, though. Aikiko listened intently. She heard the rustle of leaves in the wind but the birds were silent. Aikiko could feel it. She didn’t know what it was, but knew she would find out soon enough. She squatted with her back against a tree, eyes firmly on the clearing. She knew the Ronin would make an appearance. He wanted her to follow him. Aikiko would wait, hand grasping the hilt of her katana.

  ««—»»

  The man had been brutal at the monastery, killing all but Aikiko. In the middle of the blood and viscera she raised her blade to face him but he had just laughed, beckoning her to follow. He was a Ronin, a master-less samurai now working as a mercenary, earning money wherever he could. They were becoming more common now. But why kill the monks? There was no treasure to be had. And why let her live?

  Aikiko had been abandoned at the small monastery as an infant. The monks knew nothing of her mother except that she was from a local village and had disappeared after leaving the baby. She told them nothing of who the baby girl’s father may be. The monks had tried to find a family that would take the baby in, but the people of the area were very poor and would not accept a girl child. She would be nothing but a burden until she reached an acceptable age for marriage. Boys were what couples wanted and girls were usually drowned within minutes of birth. The monks named her Aikiko, meaning “bright child” and raised her as best they could. They taught her Bushido—the ways of the samurai and the use of the katana. She grew up to become a guardian of sorts, protecting the monastery from desperate people and Ronin alike. Her only loyalty as a samurai was to the monks. Times were hard with the local shoguns at war with one another. Now the monks were dead, her home destroyed, and only vengeance in her heart. She would make the Ronin pay with his life or die trying. There was nothing left for her now.

  ««—»»

  Just before dawn Aikiko saw movement at the temple gate. Three men emerged into the clearing. One was the Ronin. The other two consisted of a tall bulk of a man dressed as a samurai and a slightly-built man dressed in discreet silk robes of dark blue. None seemed concerned if anyone was around waiting to pounce. Aikiko found this odd. The Ronin knew she would follow. Surely he hadn’t forgotten about her? The two others went back into the temple and the Ronin turned and looked right at Aikiko. He motioned for her to follow and headed out of the clearing into the forest. Shocked but intrigued, she followed the Ronin.

  They traveled for a time with Aikiko staying some yards back. He never once turned to see if she followed but seemed confident, nonetheless. The Ronin finally stopped at a ramshackle hut tucked between two large trees and entered, finally looking behind to see if the girl followed. Aikiko stopped and waited. When he didn’t come out of the hut she slowly crept to the opening, katana unsheathed and ready to kill. Smelling the telltale whiff of smoke, Aikiko entered the hut.

  The Ronin was seated in front of a small fire and motioned for Aikiko to take a seat opposite. She complied, laying the katana across her lap. She glared at him but only saw a tired and resigned old man seated across from her.

  “I knew you would come,” he said.

  “You killed my people. I am simply seeking revenge.”

  “Don’t you want to know about your mother?”

  The question startled Aikiko. This man knew her mother? And knew her?

  “What do you know of my mother, or me?” She asked, incredulous.

  “I waited as she left you with the monks. We then went together to the special place in the clearing. It’s called Painfreak,” he said.

  Was this man her father?

  “No, I am not your father,” he replied, seeming to read her thoughts.

  “What is this place? Painfreak? Is my mother there? Does she dare come back for a daughter she abandoned?”

  “Your mother is dead,” he said. Aikiko was silent.

  “Your mother was in love with a man who would never marry her. He used her, then abandoned your mother to her fate. An unwed mother gets no sympathy in these times. She hid her pregnancy and then took you to the monks. She could not bring herself to drown you. The unbearable heaviness of her being drove her back to that place—to Painfreak—her low station in life, the rejection of the man she loved, and her overwhelming loneliness. It was a willing demise for her.”

  “And the man who fathered me?” She asked.

  The Ronin averted his eyes. “Dead.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Believe it. He may as well be, if he isn’t already.”

  Aikiko knew the Ronin was lying and the man who was her father was in the place inside the abandoned temple. She was determined to find him and believed the Ronin was meant to bring her to him.

  He got up to leave. “Stay the night. The fire is warm and the shelter will keep you dry.” With that he left.

  Aikiko lay awake for a long time thinking about her next course of action. She would go back to the old temple to find her father—that’s exactly what he and the Ronin wanted. Revenge burned in her heart. When she was done with her father she would then kill the Ronin, as well, for slaughtering the monks and destroying the only home she had ever known. Aikiko finally drifted into a fitful sleep a few hours before dawn with blood on her mind.

  ««—»»

  Aikiko awoke with a start and reached for her blade. Getting her bearings, she relaxed a bit. The Ronin had left some food and water for her. She had her morning meal and then left the dilapidated hut and headed back toward the old temple—Painfreak, as he called it. When she reached the clearing she hid in a small copse of trees at the edge and waited. For what, she wasn’t sure. Some sign of entry as she had seen the night before, perhaps. She would wait for the two men who had been with the Ronin when he left the temple.

  ««—»»

  As dusk approached torches were lit at the entrance to the abandoned temple. Aikiko had not seen them being lit and assumed she had dozed off at some point. The big samurai and the little man in the blue robes were there. The bigger of the two wa
s probably some sort of bodyguard. Even though he dressed as a samurai, he carried no sword. He didn’t need to. Aikiko moved closer to the clearing. The smaller man in blue looked in her direction. She felt goosebumps on her skin. She also felt suddenly overwhelmed with feelings of rage, despair, emptiness, and desire, drawing her closer to Painfreak. Taking a breath, Aikiko emerged into the clearing. The smaller man nodded a greeting. Hand on the hilt of her blade, she moved toward the entrance.

  “You need no weapon against me,” said the smaller man, “I am here to help.”

  Aikiko bowed her head in greeting. “Thank you.”

  “The Ronin you seek has given you entrance to Painfreak, if you wish to use it.” He pointed to Aikiko’s left arm and she saw a faint bone mark. She was confused as to how it got there.

  “I do not. I feel nothing but pain and sadness from this place. I do, however, wish to see the man who is my father.”

  “I cannot compel him to leave, but I will see what I can do,” said the man in blue silk. He turned to the big bodyguard and whispered in his ear, who then moved through the entrance of the temple into Painfreak. Aikiko moved back to the edge of the clearing and sat, meditating on what to do if her supposed father actually showed himself to her.

  ««—»»

  A few hours had passed before the samurai bodyguard emerged from the temple entrance and spoke to the smaller man. Aikiko watched intently and waited. The smaller man then spoke to her.

  “The man you claim is your father will meet you here in the clearing presently.”

  “Thank you,” said Aikiko.

  Aikiko remained at the edge of the clearing, unsure of what would happen next. Eventually a man emerged from the entrance dressed as a wealthy merchant. His robes were silk and many shades of yellow and green, decorated with cherry blossoms and gold thread. He was tall and lean with a narrow face and eyes like a hawk. He seemed rather effeminate to Aikiko. He moved with grace and assurance toward the middle of the clearing. Aikiko closed the distance between them swiftly.

  “I am told by a filthy Ronin that you are my father and the cause of my mother’s death,” she said to the merchant.

  “I claim no child. You are a bastard that has intrigued me so I sent the Ronin to bring you here to me. She said you were mine but I didn’t believe her. Many men have known your mother. I am but one. When your mother brought you to me I suggested she drown you. What makes you think I am your father?”

  Enraged, Aikiko drew her blade. “So you are calling me a liar and my mother a whore?”

  “Yes, that is exactly what I am doing. Your mother came to this place of her own free will. She fully enjoyed all that Painfreak had to offer. The men, the drugs, the attention.”

  “But she first came here because of you.”

  “I cannot take credit for her stupidity. You, however, I think would enjoy Painfreak as much as she did.”

  Aikiko aimed to take down this man who insulted her and her mother. The snap of a twig stopped her momentarily. She looked and saw that the Ronin had returned. Good. It would make things easy for her.

  The merchant smiled at Aikiko. “Your mother took the seed of men, as well as their blood. She became quite ruthless with her own blade. Painfreak had entered her very soul and she reveled in it. Did the Ronin tell you that? I see that you, too, have taken to the blade. Maybe Painfreak is in your soul, as well.”

  Aikiko looked to the Ronin and he smirked.

  “You, girl, would enjoy yourself here. All of the pain and pleasure you could possibly endure. Maybe even at the hands of myself and this merchant,” he said.

  Aikiko had heard enough, though she could not deny the pull Painfreak had on her. Maybe they were right and it was in her soul. Either way, revenge was what she wanted. The Ronin drew his blade but seemed unsure of what the girl would do. Aikiko feinted toward him but then struck at the man who she believed was her father, striking downward and slicing him open from shoulder to waist. Blood darkened his robes as he dropped to his knees.

  “My mother is avenged.”

  “Ha, you are just like your mother,” said the merchant. She swung the blade and cut off his head, which landed at the feet of the man in the blue robes standing just inside the doorway. The bodyguard took it away.

  “You will suffer the same fate, girl. I spared your life earlier in the hopes that you would come to Painfreak willingly. You have instead chosen death. You will see your precious monks and your whore mother in the afterlife shortly,” said the Ronin.

  Aikiko broke for the temple entrance with the Ronin right behind her. The small man stepped aside and let Aikiko enter Painfreak. She was overwhelmed by the feelings embodied in this place, but it did not stop her progress, seeking out a defensive position against the Ronin on her heels.

  Aikiko ran down a long hallway and entered a large chamber, dim under the light of candles, stone walls and ceiling darkened with soot. The stench made her gag. It smelled of sweat, sex, and human waste, but no one else in the space seemed to notice. Many appeared to be smoking opium while others writhed together in multiple orgies around the chamber amid a cacophonous moaning. With nowhere else to run Aikiko turned and raised her blade, ready to face the Ronin. He, however, had stopped just inside the doorway to the opium den, enthralled with what he was seeing.

  “Do you not see the pleasure you could take part in?” He asked, taking a few more steps into the chamber.

  Aikiko saw no pleasure, only pain, hunger, and debasement of the soul. It made her sick to her stomach. The Ronin dropped his blade and began removing his robes, intent on joining a group near him, thoughts of killing the girl forgotten. Aikiko charged and ran him through with her katana, drawing across the Ronin’s body and eviscerating him. He merely looked down at his fatal wound and smiled, even as his guts fell to the floor at his feet.

  “It seems, girl, as though you have ended me.”

  She removed the blade and the Ronin sunk to the floor with no one nearby seeming to notice. Aikiko took one last look around the chamber, shaking her head. She walked past the small man in blue robes and the big samurai and left, disappearing into the forest.

  Aikiko would return to the ancient temple in the clearing many years later to discover that Painfreak was no longer there. Maybe, she thought, it had moved on to claim more victims, finding comfort in the fact that not only had she avenged her loved ones, but that she also did not share her mother’s fate, though the memories of that day and that hideous place would follow her to the grave.

  | — | — |

  Divine Red

  ————

  Ryan Harding

  I.

  He’d been to the building long ago, and there was a compelling symmetry in how it stood abandoned since, awaiting Rob’s return as an adult. It had been a haunted house attraction that October. He’d stumbled down pitch black corridors through what seemed an impossibly deep maze, from one horror spectacle to another. He remembered a graveyard wedding where the bride lifted her veil to reveal a rotted green face. That stayed with him, as well as a maniac in a bloody apron chasing Rob’s group out the exit with a hatchet. He had been scared but elated, and the feeling was not much different now. The place might still have been a haunted house, too.

  Whatever commerce transpired on the block in the interim surely involved veins, lungs, throats, and cocks, for a soul-rot so deep no one ever razed it to build condominiums.

  “Second thoughts?” Alec asked. Rob detected a hint of the trademark smirk he despised.

  “Nope.” Technically true; he was closer to “twentieth.”

  In the sickly light of the streetlamps, the structure seemed enormous, with colors and textures of ocher, brick, iron, and rust. It made him think of a diseased organ in some monstrosity. He heard the faintest pulse through the walls, like a heartbeat within the corrupted edifice.

  There were no junkies, pushers, bums, or whores on the block. He almost wished there were, just to make it seem less like it was after the
end of the world. Nobody else stood at the door to Painfreak.

  “Not a very big turn-out,” Rob said.

  This time Alec did smirk. “We’re fashionably late.”

  Their limited interactions replayed through Rob’s mind like the clues at the end of a Saw film before the surprise ending reveal. Which in his case would be he trusted a stranger to take him somewhere called Painfreak, and was instead stabbed thirty-seven times and dumped in a building where ironically someone chased him with a hatchet twenty-five years ago. A gruesome end for our Darwin Award nominee.

  He was pretty sure Painfreak was real, though. Self-proclaimed authorities online insisted it was some elaborate urban legend where charlatans spun tall tales of impossible depravities. Many more claimed otherwise, detailing experiences hardcore but hardly impossible. There were pictures and videos too, which skeptics dismissed as artifacts of anonymous clubs or raves. It seemed only too “convenient” Painfreak traveled randomly like some decadent circus so that people all over the globe could add to its mythos. Like Slenderman sightings, but with more sex and mutilation. Alec claimed it was all real.

  Rob believed frauds nurtured the fantastic element but that a realistic incarnation existed—one he still probably wasn’t prepared for.

  He’d had to come anyway.

  Alec led them to a door which looked black from the street but turned out to be dark green. He knocked three times in slow motion. As the door swung wide, the faint pulse hit harder from somewhere beyond the front chamber, like the heartbeat of a beast in pursuit rather than extremis.

  The bald man in the doorway was a thick-necked wall of muscle in a cream-colored button shirt with rolled up sleeves who could probably rip someone in half like wet newspaper. Alec’s smirk dropped away in record time. He dutifully proffered his hand. Rob momentarily thought the doorman had three arms because an extra hand seized Alec’s and relinquished him a moment later, apparently satisfying some prerequisite.