by J M Hemmings
‘Excuse me Mr Haraldsson,’ a short, pretty girl with auburn hair said. ‘I would just like to ask if you have our passports, and whether the papers are all sorted out? Forgive me for interrupting you, but I’ve been very concerned about this issue for the last few days.’
Sigurd’s translucent eyes seemed to grow darker as the woman spoke. He walked slowly over to her, still smiling, and rested one of his huge hands on her shoulder.
‘I appreciate your concerns, my dear,’ he said, his voice gentle and reassuring. In a nanosecond, however, his expression morphed into one of hateful fury, and he roared with rage. ‘But don’t you EVER, EVER FUCKING INTERRUPT ME! EVER!’
As he said this, he clamped his other hand over her throat and lifted her inch by inch off the ground, tightening his grip mercilessly as she struggled and gasped for breath. He pulled her face close to his, glaring with murderous malice into her eyes as her face turned red, and then purple from his suffocating vice-hold. Eventually, when she was on the point of passing out, he spat on the floor and flung her, as if she were but a lifeless sack of rags, into a corner. The other women gasped and shrieked in shock and horror, and a funereal atmosphere descended upon the room.
‘Damn you all!’ Sigurd howled, aflame with phosphoric anger. ‘Understand this: you belong to ME now! You are no longer people, no longer individuals! You are MY FUCKING PROPERTY! You will never question any man here who gives you an order. You will never, ever leave this building without one of my escorts with you. You will not speak unless spoken to. If you cry, my orderlies will beat you until you stop crying. You will not display any emotion but pleasure, feigned or otherwise, when you service the clients. You will do whatever I command you to, and you will fucking obey me like the dog-bitches you are! Do you understand?!’
The women were struck mute with terror and aghast with shock, and for a moment nobody said anything, for the silence was as violent as a grenade exploding in the room.
‘I said, DO YOU FUCKING UNDERSTAND ME?!’ Sigurd bellowed hoarsely, the walls shuddering with the volume of his wrath.
Adriana was the first to respond.
‘We understand you, sir,’ she replied in a shaky voice.
‘Good,’ Sigurd responded, abruptly shutting down his violent wrath and instead putting on a wolfish smile. ‘It seems at least one of you whores has found her tongue. You, what’s your name?’
‘Adriana Popescu, sir’.
‘Not any more it isn’t,’ he growled. ‘You forget that name ever existed. Your name is now … Storm. Yes, that’s what you’ll be known as here. Your beauty will bring me a sound profit, yes! See that you maintain those looks of yours appropriately, Storm. You see, I already have high expectations of you, so you don’t want to let me down. Trust me, I don’t like being let down.’
‘Yes sir,’ Adriana acquiesced, keeping her shivering hands behind her back and praying that her gelatinous-feeling knees would not give out beneath her.
Sigurd then turned his gaze to Roxana, and a lustful glint entered his eyes.
‘Well well, look at you,’ he remarked with a lecherous grin. ‘You must be the teenage virgin they told me about. You are a virgin, are you not?’
Roxana nodded meekly. Her large grey eyes were rimmed with tears, and her hands were shaking uncontrollably.
‘Are you sure? You never let some urchin slip his finger into that tight little slit between your thighs, did you? A pretty thing like you must have had plenty of horny teenage suitors, all too eager to get their pricks wet, I’ll wager … now you tell me the truth, you worthless cunt: are you a virgin?! And by Loki and Odin, if you tell me a lie I’ll tear your fucking lungs out of your chest with my bare hands!’
‘I’m a virgin, sir,’ she replied, her quavering voice only barely clearing a whisper.
‘Excellent,’ he rumbled, his near-psychotic wrath evaporating in a mere second and giving way to a wolfish smile. ‘And an exquisite one at that, even if you are nothing but a Slavic peasant. Hmm, and what about you, Storm? Have you ever opened your legs to let some potato-farming oaf slip his stumpy little trowel inside you?’
Adriana shook her head.
‘No sir, I, I’ve had two boyfriends, but um, all we ever did was hold hands and kiss.’
Sigurd howled at once with derisive laughter.
‘“All we ever did was hold hands and kiss”,’ he mimicked in a mocking tone. ‘How fucking sweet! Ha! Well you’re about to get quite an education, Storm, quite an education.’ The beads in his beard rattled as he chuckled, and he folded his huge arms across his barrel chest and stared intently at each of the women in turn, the power radiating from his withering gaze causing each of them to wilt with fear. He grinned evilly and then continued. ‘Now ladies, it’s time to start your first training session. My friend Hrothgar here has been gifted with an exceptionally large male organ, and I expect you all to service it with enthusiasm, in front of a camera. Not you virgins though, you two wait in the corner. I’m keeping you unspoiled so that I can auction your unspoiled cunts off to the highest bidder. The rest of you ladies, though, after you have satisfied Hrothgar, then you can eat. You’re about to eat now, of course, but it isn’t food you’ll be putting in your mouths!’
‘Please don’t make us do this,’ one of the women whimpered.
Sigurd ignored her plea as Hrothgar, grinning savagely, unzipped his trousers to haul out the python that hung between his thighs.
‘Tippawan, turn on the studio lights, get the cameras in here and rolling, and let’s get this over with. I have a meeting to get to shortly,’ Sigurd instructed gruffly, ignoring the women’s gasps and cries of horror.
The Thai man took off his aviators and stepped over to a switchboard where he turned on a number of bright lights, and then Hrothgar, with his enormous manhood now hanging out of his trousers, strolled over to a sofa beneath the lights, where he sat down and leered at the women with his pitiless emerald eyes. Tippawan left the room and returned a few moments later, wheeling in a video camera on a dolly, which he pushed over to Hrothgar and turned on.
‘The camera is rolling, sir,’ Tippawan announced.
‘Excellent. Hrothgar can have a good old time with these sluts for the next half hour or so. But first, however, you will bring me my sword.’
Tippawan bowed and scuttled out of the room.
‘You, yes you!’ Sigurd barked, pointing at the woman who had interrupted him earlier.
In another corner of the room the woman he had previously throttled was only just starting to recover from the violence he had wreaked upon her. He glanced over at her and malice crackled with the fury of hot coals in his eyes. Moving deliberately slowly, he turned to the woman who had had the gall to ask him to spare them.
‘Stand up bitch,’ he growled. ‘Come here and repeat what you said a minute ago. I didn’t hear you the first time.’
A deathly hush fell over the women, and the one who had spoken realised that she had made a grave error.
‘What are you waiting for, my dear?’ Sigurd asked, smiling sweetly, his eyes aflame with a terrible anger.
‘I’m sorry sir,’ she whimpered. ‘I’m so very sorry, I didn’t mean to—’
‘I still can’t hear you. Speak up.’
‘I’m so, so, so very sorry sir,’ she gasped. ‘I honestly didn’t mean to, I, please sir, I’ll do whatever you say, and…’
‘Well come here then. I ordered you to come here, so fucking DO IT!’
Tears were streaming down the woman’s face, and a little bubble of snot was alternately inflating and deflating at the corner of one of her nostrils.
‘I’m starting to lose my temper, whore. You don’t want me to lose my temper. Hurry … the fuck … UP!’
The woman slunk over to Sigurd, and her abject terror was painfully obvious; her limbs were trembling like boughs in a gale, and a sudden gush of urine ran down the inside of her thighs as she quivered before the huge man.
‘Repeat your plea,’ he said s
oftly.
‘I, I—’
Sigurd’s balled fist slammed into her stomach with the force of a deftly swung mace. The woman buckled over in pain, but as she did Sigurd arced his knee up in a vicious Muay Thai knee uppercut, and the point of his knee smashed into her face and sent her sailing backwards to land in a crumpled heap. Dazed and moaning, she weakly spat out a mouthful of blood. The other women suppressed screams of fright and horror behind trembling hands.
‘Let this be a lesson to you all,’ Sigurd. ‘This world is a great field, and you are the sheep. You are nothing. You are weak and helpless. You do what you are told, and you follow the flock with blind, unquestioning obedience. You do not think, you do not analyse, you do not question … you merely consume until eventually you are consumed – like the rest of the fucking flock out there! You see, whores, there is never a shortage of sheep in the world. They live to eat and follow and buy and fuck and gossip and sleep, and be just like one another, never questioning, never stepping out of line. This is how all of you vermin eke out your meagre, meaningless existences upon this rock, isn’t it? By Thor, calling you “sheep” is a compliment, actually. “Cockroaches” is what I should call you mortals. Worms, insects, lice, parasites … fucking tapeworms!’ He paused here to take a breath and straighten his silk tie. ‘Still, let’s say “sheep” though; I’m feeling generous today. So, sheep, I am a wolf. Well, a bear, in fact, but let’s keep running with the sheep and wolf metaphor. This world is run by wolves like me. We are the strong, and we feed off your flesh and your blood … and our hunger is never satiated, our thirst never slaked. Might makes right, sheep, might makes right, remember that! A truer sentiment has never been uttered; old Thucydides got it so right all those thousands of years ago when he penned that phrase. We, the strong, we take because we can. And you, the weak, you are taken from because you cannot stop us from taking. Never forget that. Never forget who holds true power in their hands. Now be good, obedient little sheep and the wolves may spare you for a time. For a time … ’ Sigurd paused here to cackle in a baritone rumble. ‘Unfortunately for you sheep though, the wolves have decided that they’re eager for dinner, and you are all looking very juicy. We’ll eat you up and shit you out, and your dismembered remains will fertilise the grass for the rest of the herd, who will simply carry on with their mindless cycles of consumption … oblivious to your tragic fate.’
Sigurd let out another bellow of derisive laughter as he finished his speech.
‘So, like I said, if you are good little sheep perhaps the wolves will spare you for a few moments longer than you deserve.’
Tippawan returned to the room bearing a Viking broadsword, the white whaletooth hilt of which was carved into a polar bear in the old Scandinavian style. With a wicked smile Tippawan handed the sword to Sigurd.
‘Thank you,’ the huge man grunted as he took the weapon. ‘Now bring out the prisoner.’
Tippawan barked out an order in Thai, and after a few tense moments two of the guards dragged in a naked Thai man. His skin was a mess of blue and purple; the surface of it was stained both with faded tattoos and fresh wounds from a recent and evidently severe beating.
‘Here is another lesson for you ladies,’ Sigurd growled. ‘Remember it well.’
Two more guards entered the room, pushing an upright wooden post, the wood of which was dark with many layers of stains. The men lashed the prisoner’s wrists together behind the post, so that he was forced to stand with his hands tied behind him and his torso completely exposed. The prisoner was wailing and babbling incoherently in Thai. He could have been pleading or he could have been praying; Adriana could not tell which, but whatever he was saying it was apparent that he understood that death was close at hand, and completely inescapable.
Sigurd paid no heed to the man’s pleas. Instead, he spun and swung the weapon about in his hands, stepping right, left, forward and back, practicing an ancient sword drill that he performed with the mesmerising grace of a grandmaster. When he was sufficiently warmed up, he turned to face the man.
‘Whores,’ he muttered, directing his words at the women but staring intently into the captive’s eyes, ‘this man was one of my guards at this facility. A trusted captain, in fact. Yet he saw fit to repay the trust I had placed in him by embezzling thirty thousand US dollars from me over a period of two years. Now in the grand scheme of things, the amount is but a trifle. Thirty thousand dollars? I could spend that in a night if the right mood took me. But, you see, it is not the amount but rather the principle of the matter that has hurt me so! What can a man do when his own friends betray him and steal from him? The world is a cruel place, yes, a cruel and cold place. Remember this and remember it well: place your trust not in men, for they will betray you, and they will fail you.’
Adriana found herself almost hypnotised by Sigurd’s words, despite the nightmarish nature of the present situation. Sigurd, meanwhile, paused for a moment to take his eyes off the wailing prisoner, so that he could gaze with an almost childlike awe upon the blade of his broadsword. He traced his fingers over the runes that were etched in the gleaming steel, and then muttered something in Old Norse.
‘Place your trust not in men. Place your trust in steel,’ he whispered, and he lunged forward with a brutal thrust, stabbing the blade with swift power through the man’s stomach and embedding it in the wooden post behind him. The impaled man howled with agony and a gurgling froth of blood erupted from his lips, and at once the women began screaming in a frenzied panic.
‘NEVER, EVER fuck with me!’ Sigurd roared. ‘This is what happens when you fuck with me!’
He stepped back, yanking the blade out of the prisoner’s body. With a grunt he gripped the broadsword with both hands, whipping it back behind his shoulders, and then with one hefty slash he took the man’s head clean off his shoulders.
Adriana almost passed out at the sight of the decapitated head tumbling to the floor in a grisly spray of blood; black spots formed before her eyes and her vision swam. An awful heat rippled along her skin and a thundering roared dully in her ears, as if she were standing next to some mighty waterfall. However, from some untapped well within her a grim resolve clawed its way through the darkness and forced her to remain upright. She knew that she could not abandon Roxana at this moment, and even as the other women screamed hysterically, Adriana pulled Roxana’s head to her bosom and clamped her violently trembling hands over the teen’s eyes.
‘Don’t look little angel, don’t look!’
The Japanese woman’s words were suddenly beginning to seem a lot less like the rantings of a schizophrenic and a lot more like strange truths.
Sigurd stood silent for a while, staring at the blood pooling around his expensive Italian shoes. He kicked the severed head softly, almost curiously, as a toddler would kick a ball, and then he handed the sword to Tippawan.
‘Make sure it’s properly cleaned and oiled or there will be hell to pay,’ he growled. ‘Get the cleaning squad in here, and then Hrothgar can get started with his gang-bang.’
He turned to the women, and his mouth was twisted into a sneer above his great barbarian’s beard.
‘Ladies,’ he said calmly, turning to the hysterical women. ‘You’d best dry those eyes and calm down. I am trusting you to do a good job of servicing Hrothgar, or you will meet a similar fate to this headless traitor here. Do you understand?’
The ladies continued to sob and wail as they cowered in a huddle in a corner, scrambling and scuttling over each other to get as far away from the huge man as possible.
‘DO YOU FUCKING UNDERSTAND?!’ Sigurd screamed gutturally, rage boiling with purple fury in his voice.
Adriana took the initiative and stepped forward, even though she could barely hold her stinging tears at bay and restrain her shivering limbs.
‘Yes sir,’ she said, almost choking on the sob that was rising up the back of her throat. ‘We understand, sir.’
‘Good. I like you, Storm. You seem to be fond of that
little teen virgin, so I’m holding you personally responsible for keeping her maidenhead intact. You two can watch the proceedings here and take some notes. Like I said, your cunts are going to make me a lot of money, but I don’t want the buyers of them to be disappointed by a dead-fish performance from either of you. I have a reputation to uphold, and God help you if you besmirch it, got it?’
‘Y-, y-, yes sir,’ Adriana stammered.
Some cleaners dressed in surgical masks and black overalls entered the room, and they wordlessly and unceremoniously dumped the corpse and its severed head into a body bag, and then began mopping the blood off the floor. Sigurd, meanwhile, ran his fingers through his platinum hair and stared emotionlessly at the women.
‘Remember, sluts, you are my investments, that much is true, but I won’t hesitate to end your pathetic lives if I see it as a profitable move – or, more simply, if you make me angry. Now as you can see, Hrothgar is rock hard and ready to go! I do believe the sight of blood is quite a turn-on for him. It always has been, ever since our days on the longships. Hahaha! Now go on and get your training started. Go, you worthless animals! Move!’
‘Yes sir,’ one of the women tittered, her voice quavering with naked terror. ‘Come on girls,’ she continued. ‘Let’s not disappoint our new master.’
Sigurd let out a malicious bellow of laughter as he left the room. Adriana watched the women creeping on trembling limbs over to the leering Hrothgar, and then she swallowed a lumpy knot of horror as she prepared for her own descent into hell.
6
SIGURD
14th August 2020. An abandoned village in Yunnan Province, Western China.
‘It fucking stinks out here,’ Sigurd growled in Old Norse as the 4x4 bounced along the dirt track through the deserted village.
‘Savages, these people,’ Hrothgar gnarled in response as he stared out of the window at the mess of crumbled cement boxes.
The gutted ruins featured caved-in roofs, smashed-out doors and windows, and had brown, crumbly rebar sticking out of them at all angles; jutting porcupine quills protruding from burnt-out corpses. Rusting, stripped-bare shells of scooters, small motorcycles, bicycles and a few broken-down cars lined the broken road, melding with the rubble and weeds in a vertical triptych of decay. Above this ugliness the brown-white sky, tattooed with a haze of industrial smog, hovered as an incomplete panel to mirror its yang – the grey, litter-strewn earth beneath it.