The Scarlet Anniversary

by Lubowa M. Planet

  As Katie processed and analysed what was happening, the inevitable happened; Sleep began to overtake her and she found herself drifting off into an immobile troubled stupor.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Katie woke with a start. She saw that they had been moved. They were now in a different room – A dark, wet, horrible place that was bathed in a sickly green light. She saw Portia standing in front of her – She was bound with barbed wire to a wooden cross, the wire wrapped around her so that she had no chance of moving. Portia was obviously in agony. Blood poured from a multitude of wounds that were scattered across her body and each time she moved, a fresh cut would appear. The poor girl had barbed wire wrapped around her head giving the scene a blasphemous edge. It was like a perverted idea of the crucifixion.

  Katie tried to move but found that she was strapped to a wooden chair. Leather belts fastened her wrists and ankles to the arms and legs of the chair and a strap over her head meant that she couldn’t turn away. She was gagged with a large, hard ball that was fastened tightly into her mouth.

  ‘Katie,’ Portia begged. ‘Please help me!’

  There was nothing that she could say, even if she hadn’t been gagged so effectively that would help. She pulled against the straps, but with every move she attempted, it seemed that something hurt Portia more and as she turned her attention to the floor she saw that there were wires leading from the chair to clamps on the wire that was wrapped around Portia’s feet.

  ‘Every time you move, her agonies are increased!’ The woman said from behind her. ‘You are to blame for all of this Katie!’

  She sensed movement as the woman moved into her field of vision. She was dressed in a Nun’s habit but her face was obscured by a full leather mask. The woman turned and looked at her. ‘You know when you tried to escape that we had promised to punish her and yet you still did it.’

  ‘Katie, please, please – they’re going to kill me.’

  ‘Oh dear Katie, your selfishness has doomed poor, Portia. I hope you realise that?’

  Katie could just watch as the woman moved over to Portia and began to stroke her hair. ‘Now Portia, what punishment should you get?’

  She turned to a table and looked at a number of objects that were hidden from Katie’s view. When she turned around she held a blow torch in her hand. Not one that you would find in a mechanics workshop – It was one that a chef would use in a kitchen. She switched it on and a jet of blue flame shot from the nozzle.

  ‘Katie! Please! Please do something!’ Portia screamed as the woman turned to face her. Katie watched as the flame was held closer and closer to her fellow captive’s porcelain face. She was screaming but as the pointed blue flame started searing her skin, the screaming became almost unbearable. Katie closed her eyes but the smell of burning flesh and the screams were too much to ignore. She opened them to see Portia’s cheek bubble and split as the flame literally melted the flesh away from her face.

  ‘This is your fault! This is your fault you fucking bitch!’ Portia screeched as the flame consumed her face. Katie shook her head as the woman moved the flame up the side of her face, the fire finding clear flesh to destroy. Where the flame touched would blacken at first and then turn red as the fats and juices sizzled. The blowtorch was then lifted and aimed at Portia’s eye.

  ‘YOU DID THIS TO ME YOU FUCKING BITCH! YOU DID THIS!’

  Portia’s left eye began to sizzle and warp as the flame drew out the moisture and cooked the jelly of her lens. Katie screamed into her gag as the eye sizzled and cooked until it burst. The smell was awful, but the audible popping sound as it lost all form was worse than the screaming or the scent of burning flesh.

  Katie closed her eyes and wept as Portia’s head hung, the pain having mercifully robbed her of consciousness.

  ‘Katie?’ She looked up and saw that her brother was standing there, bound to the cross, his face a ruined, scorched mess. ‘What have you done?’

  The woman in the nun’s habit turned and looked at her. ‘Yes, Katie, what have you done?’

  She began to laugh as she removed the leather mask and Katie watched in confused horror as the mask fell away to reveal Portia’s face. ‘What have you done?’

  YYY

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Katie opened her eyes, she was bound to the table and Portia was bound to her table. She had no idea how long she had slept but her body was stiff and throbbing with a dull ingrained pain that made her wince. She looked into the mirror above them and saw that Portia was asleep and she groaned as she tried to, but the chains hadn’t loosened; In fact if anything, they seemed to have tightened.

  ‘Your body will have swollen a little, the chains will be tighter.’ A voice spoke from behind her. It was the man’s voice. ‘You shouldn’t have tried to escape; We wouldn’t have used so many chains on you if you hadn’t tried to escape.’

  David got up from his chair and limped towards her so that she could see him.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ She croaked, her throat and mouth drier than she thought would ever be possible.

  ‘Why do you think?’

  ‘Why do I think you’re doing this? I think that you are a couple of sick perverted bastards and that you get turned on by having people in your power!’

  ‘Then why would you ask me that question,’ David took off his glasses and started cleaning them with the edge of the dressing gown he was using. ‘Of course that’s why we do it. That’s why we’ll continue to do it.’

  ‘So, it really is that simple?’

  ‘No, of course it’s not that simple,’ David sighed and put his glasses back on. ‘I’m not even sure we do this through choice any more. Don’t get me wrong it started off that way but now it’s just the thing we do – Like anything in life, routine can become dull Katie.’

  ‘Would your wife be happy to hear you say my name?’

  ‘She has her rules and I have mine,’ David shrugged. ‘Maddy, my wife feels that giving you personality makes this worse, but I don’t think it can be worse. We have brought you here, robbed you of your movement and personality and we will eventually kill you. One day you had a presence and place in the world and soon you won’t. There won’t even be a grave to mark where you’re buried and I really don’t see how you can make that worse.’

  ‘You talk about this so casually.’

  ‘What would you prefer? Would it be easier if I was a Hollywood serial killer? I mean you’re an actresss, so would you like it if I sneered and spoke in poetic terms of how meaningless your life was and ultimately how meaningless your death will be? Would that really help you accept this?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m an ordinary man Katie and my wife is an ordinary person. We both live ordinary lives most of the time.’ He reached out and touched her arm. ‘This is the only extraordinary thing that we do.’

  ‘Well, it’s a fucking shitty way to express your individuality!’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘No, you don’t know – It might be that you have somehow managed to convince yourself that we don’t matter, but we do. You might get through the messier sides of this by seeing me as little more than a sex object, a woman who is tied up and helpless and ready for you to do whatever the fuck you want to her but you don’t get to think that! My middle name is Lisa, that was my grandmothers name by the way. My favourite movie is Die Hard, my favourite band is ‘The Whitlams.’ When I was seven, I won a prize for a poem I wrote about dolphins. It was shit but I was seven.’

  ‘That’s enough Katie.’

  ‘I have a twin brother and when he nearly died of leukaemia it tore my family apart, but he lived so even when you’ve done what it is that you plan to do to me, then the pain you cause will resonate. It will touch people that live thousands of miles away and if that’s something that makes you feel extraordinary then you are a pathetic piece of shit!’

  ‘I’ll gag you again!’

  ‘Fine, do what you want – I’m chained up so won’t be able to
stop you – but everything that I’ve said, it’ll still be true! All of it! So when you start stabbing me or burning me or dripping acid into my face, I hope that you remember who you’re torturing!’

  ‘It’s not that simple though, is it?’ David shouted a whine in his voice that he hated. ‘You see me as a pervert that has kidnapped you, but I’m more than that you know!?’

  ‘No,’ Katie looked at him. ‘No you’re not.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Do you honestly think that anything you have done before this or will do after this will define you more than this will? How many girls have you done this to?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘You’re right, it doesn’t because from the moment you first took someone against their will, tied them up and killed them, that was the moment you became the sick fucker that kidnaps and kills women. That is what defines you – and it always will.’

  ‘I wrote a book, a children’s book…’

  ‘So fucking what? You’re a serial killer! You could invent a cure for cancer and it would never excuse what you have done you selfish, stupid bastard!’

  ‘No, that’s not true!’

  ‘Yes it is and if you have anything resembling a brain, then you’ll know that!’

  David glared at her and she returned it with unflinching intensity and for a moment it looked as though he was going to start crying.

  ‘Nobody is innocent,’ he finally said in a quiet voice. ‘Not even you.’

  ‘I’ve never murdered anyone though, so don’t try to justify this.’

  He lowered his head and she saw that his fists were clenching and then unclenching and she thought he might start punching her. It didn’t matter though; She had no physical power but the fact that she had hurt him, even a little bit was good enough for her.

  ‘What are you doing?’ The woman’s voice spoke, it was low and brimming with anger and David turned to face her.

  ‘I was just checking on them!’

  ‘Don’t speak to it.’ The woman moved over and gazed into Katie’s face. ‘It will say anything to try to save it’s life. It still has hope and perhaps it should be shown something?’

  ‘Yes,’ David nodded. ‘Yes she should – sorry, it should be shown something.’

  The woman smiled and moved to behind Katie’s table. Using the gap between this one and the one that Portia was chained to, she loosened the cuff from one of her wrists and fed the chain through the ring that was securing her hands above her head. Katie was helpless to resist as the woman forced her hands in front of her and refastened the leather cuff.

  ‘Remove its chains; I will make sure it doesn’t do anything stupid!’ Katie winced as a knife was pressed at her ear, the blade hovering dangerously close to her eye.

  Portia laid still and quiet as she heard the chains that bound Katie to the table being loosened and she wondered if the stupid loud mouthed Australian had perhaps gone too far. What she had heard had been interesting, useful, but she still needed Katie alive. She needed someone to direct the anger of these two idiots towards. She had not slept, not at all. She was never someone that needed a lot of sleep and had spent the long hours almost in a state of meditation. She would not allow these two dull, boring individuals to kill her and she had begun to formulate a plan of action and to her pleasure she found that Katie had ham fistedly and clumsily began to sow the seeds that she would reap. It didn’t take them long to fully release the huge amount of chains that held her fellow captive to the table and she sensed Katie being hauled from the table and pulled away from the tables.

  Briefly she wondered where they would take her and then dismissed the curiosity; she didn’t care as long as the woman came back alive. She smiled slightly as she heard the door closed and it was only when she was sure she was alone that she opened her eyes. Her reflection was still there and she was still wrapped in chains but in her mind, she saw something else – Something far more pleasing.

  She moved as much as the chains would allow her and smiled as she closed her eyes. She had time for a short nap before these two bastards began to realise just who they had kidnapped.

  It would be good to see them suffer.

  Very good indeed.

  YYY

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Katie hung from chains that were fastened to a hook in the ceiling above her head. They had brought her to a small windowless room that was built onto the back of the shed. The woman had insisted that she be gagged again and David had seemingly been happy to make sure that she couldn’t talk anymore.

  It had proven to be a short relief having the huge amount of chains removed from her body and now as her hands were bound above her head and her feet were bound together with rope that was fastened to a ring in the floor, she felt a new level of agony spear her body.

  There were television screens surrounding her, all fastened to the walls and all with built in DVD players. She watched as her captors loaded a DVD into each of the televisions and as a slow realization began to dawn on her she began to feel nauseous. It was clear what they were going to show her and as the woman turned to look at her, Katie could barely look at her.

  ‘Did it really think that it might be able to escape?’ The woman smiled. ‘Did it think that it would be able to talk its way out of this?’

  Katie stared at her with hatred and the woman stared back at her with an unreadable emotion. ‘Perhaps if it saw what we have done in the past it will realise how futile it’s ridiculous attempts at gaining empathy are?’

  She moved around the room switching on television sets and as soon as the screens flickered to life the DVD’s started. Each one showed a woman, either blonde or brunette, either in a white or black dress and each of them bound and gagged, some to tables, some to chairs, some to posts – but all of them restrained and helpless. There were fifteen screens in the room and as her eyes darted from television to television she saw that these women were all about to die. Some of them looked as though they had been severely tortured beforehand and some looked as though they had been freshly kidnapped.

  ‘This is the first one we took. We didn’t have this place and the video quality isn’t as good as we hadn’t bought an HD camera then, but you can still see what we did to it.’ The woman indicated a screen on the top left of the wall opposite Katie. ‘This one here – it was the most recent. Enjoy what you see because these videos indicate what the future holds.’

  The woman turned and looked at Katie. She moved forwards, slowly and put her hand on Katie’s left breast and began to massage it gently. To Katie’s disgust, she found her body responding to the invasion favourably. She tried to pull back but the ropes around her ankles and the chains stopped her from moving. Maddy moved her head forwards and started to gently lick Katie’s throat and as she did so the videos all began to play. Katie struggled as much as she could as the woman kissed and nibbled at her throat and neck, squeezing and playing with her breast and on the wall the women were all subjected to horrors with blades, skewers, tools, anything that could cut, rend, tear or stab. Their muffled screams served as a soundtrack to the abuse that was being delivered onto her bound and helpless self. She yelled angrily into the gag, thrashing impotently as the woman humiliated her. She felt her buttocks being grasped as the woman pulled her body forwards, forcing her torso against her own. Katie felt nausea rise in her throat as the woman fondled and kissed her and the screens, on the walls started to run red with blood.

  Suddenly, without warning, the woman let her go and punched her hard in the stomach. Katie felt the air being forced from her body. Maddy grabbed her face and held it up, forcing her to look at the screens.

  ‘See what we have done and know that we will do the same to you!’

  If Katie had been able to think of anything other than what she was seeing unfold on the screens then it might have occurred to her that for the first time, this woman had referred to her as a person rather than as an object. However her senses were being assa
iled by the images of women, bound and gagged being skinned alive, having their eyes punctured and gouged out by screwdrivers, having acid poured onto their stomachs. The catalogue of death and violence filled her mind and as she watched, she could see that these women, half of them anyway, looked very much like her. The brunette victims were so similar to her that it was almost as though she was watching her death over and over again.

  She screamed into the gag, urging the murdering bastards to stop but of course it was futile anger. These things had happened and for the first time, Katie could see what her kidnappers had done. It wasn’t all imagination now – it was real. These weren’t special effects – these were things that had happened. The women on the screens had lived lives that had been snatched away from them by two strangers. They had been grabbed from the streets, made to vanish from society by two people and had been robbed of their freedom, their dignity and then finally and terribly their lives. As she watched, she saw fifteen individuals who had been tied up, gagged, abused and then sent from life in the most horrific of ways.