by Неизвестный
“Detroma Stantora,” the voice behind him rasped.
He swung the chair around and stared in horror. Even in his bloodiest battles in Nam, where he witnessed slaughter that no man should ever have had to witness, he had never felt the fear and loathing that he did now.
The grey drooling lips sneered at him as the black eyes stared. He slowly backed off toward a bedside cabinet. Then, and with great speed, he pulled the Ruger revolver from the top drawer.
He knew the situation was hopeless, but he aimed the revolver at the vile creature’s head as it slowly moved toward him. Now he was about to pay the consequences for getting involved. In this one instance, he was watching his world fall apart. His wife was dead and now he was about to die, he felt.
“Fuck you, Tom,” he said, as he fumbled with the cylinder, which was fully loaded. He had loved Martha, more now than he had even realised, and in an instance he knew he didn’t want to go on in life without her anyway.
Suddenly the sound of gunfire broke the silence as he blasted five of his six rounds into the demon’s head.
The white–faced, sneering girl moved toward him, unscathed, her grey lips twisted. Bill took one last look at his wife’s body, and a tear ran down his cheek. He put the barrel of the high-powered weapon in his mouth, and the creature stopped, no longer sneering. Now Bill had control of his own destiny. He would decide how to end his life. Now it wouldn’t get the pleasure of killing him.
Only now this killing yourself thing wasn’t just so easy. Suicide was a sin, he knew. But some spark in Bill’s very being didn’t want to die anyway. After all the death Bill had witnessed, he, more than most, knew the value of life. A bead of sweat ran down his forehead, and his body shook. He couldn’t do it, and he lowered the gun from his mouth and dropped it to the floor.
“Fuck you lady, bring it on,” he growled, his fists clenched.
Then, in a flash, she was on him!
***
Tom lay on the pillow and closed his eyes. Silence followed before sleep claimed him.
It was sometime during the night when the sound awoke him. It was faint, but it came from outside. Yes, whispers, something. He sprang up on the bed and flicked the light. “Dear God, he moaned, as he looked at his bloodied body, covered in red clotted blood from head to toe. A large machete lay on the bed, it, too, covered in blood. As he reached the bathroom he tore at his bloodied pyjamas. He was unhurt.
Then the outside door burst open, and suddenly he was surrounded by armed police. “On the floor now,” one of the men ordered, as Tom was manhandled to the ground and cuffed.
One of the officers pointed at the bloody machete. “Looks like the weapon used,” he whispered to a colleague.
Back at the station, Tom was placed under arrest, and two days later he was charged with the murders of his two friends, Bill and Martha Green.
The machete was found to be the murder weapon, and the fact that Tom’s name had been scrawled in blood at the Green house, by one of the dying victims the police believed, sealed his fate. This along with Tom’s DNA, which was just about everywhere in the house, closed the case.
***
It was five years later when the shell of a once proud man sat and drooled on the seat of his padded cell. He laughed loudly as a little spider, high in the corner made its way across the web to the large fly tangled there.
He wanted to reach out and touch it, but the tight white coat, and the even tighter bonds would not allow it.
No one was quite sure when the man’s mind had gone, but it was about three years into his sentence when he finally succumbed to some inner madness.
It had taken Travis five years to get the job at the infirmary, but now here he was, a simple orderly, looking after the criminally insane.
Jones and Martin were upstairs watching the big game, and he had volunteered to look after the place. Suckers, he thought.
He unlocked the reinforced door and swung it open, as he hummed an old Black Sabbath song.
“I am iron man,” he sang at the top of his voice.
The drooling trussed up figure sat unmoving. Trussed up since he had bitten his second finger off in just two months.
Now Travis had entered the man’s cell, but the drooling figure seemed unaware of him as he continued to stare at the little spider which was quickly and silently cocooning the large fly.
“Hello, Mr Sullivan,” he whispered. “Remember me?”
The man sat still, but his eye moved toward the boy. Some recognition entered his brain, just for a second. Then he looked away.
“I’ve brought you a visitor,” Travis stated, and laughed.
“Told you she came to me at night, fucking told you,” he added with a smirk.
She was standing beside him; her face white. Blue veins had appeared all over her face now, swelled and pumping. She stared at Tom through tight black eyes.
The grey lips sneered.
“Tonight,” she hissed loudly.
“Oh, I found out who I have to kill. It’s you, Mr Sullivan,” Travis stated matter-of-factly, as he held the large machete over Tom’s head.
Tom ignored them and laughed at the little spider, as they both moved menacingly toward him.
“Kiiiillll,” she roared.
***
Travis stood trance-like as he stared at the ravaged body on the floor. The blood dripped from the knife’s blade in almost a trickle, as the girl made grotesque movements with her tongue. Now they had had their revenge, and now she could have her final rest.
***
Tom had never known he was the man responsible for their father’s injuries and their mother’s death. He had been celebrating his move to his new post at the college that night, and he had been drinking heavily. The car coming toward him had skidded on to the verge to avoid the head-on as his large pickup sped around the bend on the wrong side of the road toward them. The lights from Tom’s pickup had blinded them, and they had smashed through the barrier, over the cliff.
Travis’s father had no memory of the accident, and no one knew there was any other vehicle involved that night on the dark, deserted road. Tom had gone on with his daily life without ever having any recollection of that night; unaware of the carnage he had caused to the distraught family.
Now the girl had gone, her mission complete, and Travis stood alone, bloody and shaking.
The two guards charged in and stared wildly at the young, blood-soaked orderly.
“Goodbye, Mr Sullivan,” he sobbed. “Goodbye.”
The Wooden Wheel
by Philip Graham King
Momcilo smirked to himself. When he had obtained one thousand confessions the abbot’s position would be his. Then no longer would he need to see any more of these wretches.
“Bring ’em in!” he ordered his black-hooded assistant.
He loved to see the as yet fully confessed penitent’s wide-eyed look of terror as from round the corner they came upon the contraption.
“Tie ’em up,” he barked.
The assistant would then lash the first terrified victim to the wheel.
“In the name of the Holy Father and the Blessed Virgin, how do you confess to your sins?”
Before they had chance to answer Momcilo would nod to his assistant to turn the handle and then, as he did so, would fetch more wood for the fire. At first the victim would be kept just close enough to the flames to feel the heat but far enough away not to suffer any of the effects.
They nearly all started like this – determined not to submit and hoping he would be impressed by their bravery. Usually it didn’t last long and by the time they had only moved a bit closer they would be screaming a confession. Momcilo was then supposed to release them, but regardless of having capitulated, he liked to move them closer to the flames. He didn’t really care after all if there were fewer of these people around.
Only when their eyelids had stuck together, their skin began to blister and their whole bodies spasmed with agony would he be
ready to listen again. Then finally as the blood rose from their lungs and they tried to gurgle a confession he would lean inwards to feign listening. Relishing their agony he would pretend to consider what they said and then theatrically shake his head, although by this time, their clothes singed and cheeks reddened and cracked by the heat, most had died.
However, there were a surprising number who showed great dignity when it came to the flames. Those he least expected were outwardly calm from the very first instant they saw the fiery tongues and would remain so as they were moved ever closer. To him it demonstrated purity of conscience that they could show such bravery in the face of such adversity.
These were the ones he liked; as well as the defiant, of course – those prepared to curse and spit in the very eye of death itself.
Staggering away from him in silence and disbelief at their sudden acquittal Momcilo would report later to the cardinal that they had made a full confession.
Thus, he had his own methods for deciding who lived and who died.
Tied to the wheel he saw people at their basest, truest selves. Often the judges and noblemen would try and reason with him, the merchants would try flattery, old women scorn him, young women wail and young men challenge him. He liked to let them think he was listening intently to their tales of woe or considering their appeals merely for sadistic sport.
He had terrified them all, from peasants, thieves, minstrels, seamstresses, to politicians, knights, noblemen and duchesses. Nothing altered the fact that they were all still penitents: the scourge of Holy Spain.
With the usual morning’s “duties” completed Momcilo was ready for lunch with his brethren.
Dropping another chunk of dark bread in his oily garlic soup he felt a hand clasp his shoulder.
“Brother Momcilo. I am hearing very pleasing reports of your work.”
“Thank-you, Cardinal.”
“Have you ever before taken the confession of a Holy Man?”
“No, Cardinal.”
“And would you be willing to do so?”
“Yes, Cardinal.”
“Good. Well, this morning we picked up an English pilgrim trying to teach heresy.”
“Heresy, Cardinal?”
“Yes indeed;, a terrible sin and we must ensure he does not do so again.”
“Of course, Cardinal, I understand.”
“Good, then this afternoon I will make sure he is brought to you.”
***
Momcilo had never before met a Protestant but would relish making the infidel suffer.
“What do we have here then, Pedro?” Momcilo asked facetiously over the head of an English priest.
Unheeding of the intimidation tactic the priest remained silent.
“Tie him up,” ordered Momcilo.
“Do you understand the sin for which you have been brought here?”
The priest was again silent but not with defiance Momcilo recognised, but from contemplation.
“I repeat: do you understand the sin for which you have been brought here?”
The priest remained impassive.
As Momcilo’s assistant turned the wheel, he motioned for him to begin to move it forward.
“I said slowly!”
The assistant looked surprised at his Master’s abruptness at what he always did the same way.
“Well, Mr. priest it seems like you’ve been rather over-eager in trying to indoctrinate our people?”
“I only seek to spread the good word of God to sinners,” answered the priest.
“Bah! Are our ways not good enough?”
“Forgive me I only hoped to save the souls of those carrying out atrocities.”
“So where were these ‘atrocities’ then, priest?”
“In the northern provinces.”
“Atrocities in our northern provinces? Hmmm....interesting.”
“Yes. I witnessed landowners openly humiliating and beating their workers as they tried to work in the fields. Poor people hanged for the merest trifle whilst their rich landlords went about all manner of debauchery in the inns of towns without hindrance.”
“And where were you to have come across such sights?”
“I am a pilgrim on the way of St. James.”
“So, pilgrim, you found these sights disagreeable?”
“I could not stand by and watch innocent women and children flogged.”
“Ah, so you do not care for our disciplined ways?”
“It was not discipline I, but plain cruelty.”
“So you thought a few soft words would help them?”
“I only sought to use the Gospels to bring them comfort.”
“Ah, but with some, my pilgrim friend, harsh treatment is all that is understood.”
“I don’t think cruelty ever helped anyone.”
“But surely suffering sometimes helps one to reflect on one’s sins?”
“You should not justify brutality of any sort!”
“Ah, but how much of what one suffers is brought on oneself?”
“That is not for me to say but it in no way justifies cruelty at another’s hand.”
“Well answered, Pilgrim.”
For the first time Momcilo was the one being made to squirm as the priest’s words began to make him feel uneasy. Momcilo could usually find something the person had said to either reprieve or condemn them. Unwittingly the priest was leaving it to Momcilo. Nothing he had said so far would dictate his own fate.
“So what else did you see, Pilgrim?”
“Peasant farmers hanged for not paying their taxes.”
“And so should all common criminals,” scoffed Momcilo.
“But the poor should not be made to suffer.”
“So you don’t like to suffer?”
“Willingly for my own sins, but not those of another.”
“Ha, so whose sins are you suffering for now?”
The priest yelped as a stray ember landed on his face.
“I hope only for my own.”
Momcilo had never been in the position of condemning another man of the cloth before and didn’t want the death of a Holy man on his conscience. Deep down he wanted to release the man, but couldn’t yet bring himself to do it.
“Fetch more wood!” he ordered his assistant whilst he thought what else to do.
Somehow he wanted still the satisfaction of obtaining a confession.
“Right. Move him in again!”
He hoped fear would make the priest waver.
“Slowly, damn you!”
The assistant cowered obediently.
“So you think you had every business to be in our lands spreading your beliefs?”
“I was hoping to bring knowledge to those without understanding.”
“Do you not already think we have tried to bring them that?”
“Forgive me. I did not wish to interfere with your ways.”
“So now Pilgrim or Priest, or whatever you are, do you now humbly beg for forgiveness?”
As the priest inched closer to the flames, Momcilo desperately hoped for some sign to let him live. He liked the man, or at least felt some compassion for him.
“What are you doing?” he shrieked at the priest who had begun silently to pray.
“... thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as in heaven, this day give us our...”
“What is that you are saying man? Speak to me?”
“Only the Lord’s Prayer for forgiveness.”
“No! You have to say...before our very reverend Cardinal Silva I solemnly repent of all my sins.’”
“.....forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us......”
Momcilo began to panic. This was not the end he had envisaged. If he couldn’t get a full confession he would then settle for the least sign of defiance. After all, this man was better than the other screaming wretches he had sent to the fire.
“What’s wrong with you?”
The priest hung his head in further p
rayer.
“.....for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever and....”
The priest winced as Momcilo grabbed his arm.
“Why is repenting before the cardinal not the same as before God?”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t.”
“Just repeat the words like I said and all will be forgiven.”
“I cannot obtain forgiveness from an earthly medium.”
“The cardinal earthly? How dare you!”
Momcilo had finally got what he had been looking for. He nodded darkly to his assistant to get it over with before the priest’s words further pricked his conscience.
“Have it your way then, infidel!” cursed Momcilo.
As Pedro turned the wheel slowly and deliberately to inflict the maximum pain, the flames taunted the priest. Finally, as slowly they devoured his clothes and flesh, he did not scream but kept a dignified silence. Even as the flames enveloped him, Momcilo could see his mouth moving and his eyes cast upwards as if occupied in a final devotional prayer.
“No stop it! Cut him free!” screeched Momcilo.
The assistant quickly doused the fire and cut the bonds. Momcilo supported the priest’s limp body as it slumped towards him. Only as the priest’s body began to quiver in his arms as his soul departed did Momcilo feel the dawning of compassion and to feel pangs of remorse at having made the man suffer. However, any momentary compassion was quickly over-ridden by the realisation that maybe he had made a grave error.
What if he had just martyred a saint? His fears were compounded as in the priest’s going limp his eyes suddenly blinked open as if staring at Momcilo.
With such a sin all his perceived previous good works would be undone and he would be put beyond redemption! He shuddered at the thought. Right away he would have to go for absolution to the cardinal, he realised, to hopefully redress the balance.
“So when did you come to realise he was a Holy man?”
“Only when in he was in his very last death throes, Cardinal.”
“And you did not try to help him?”
“But when I did, it was too late.”
“I see. Ah well, these things happen, but had you realised sooner he was a Holy man then you would not need have tried to have obtained a confession.”