Merciless

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by Bryan Smith


  He swallowed with noticeable difficulty before hoarsely saying, “Okay.”

  She smiled, maintaining the tight grip on his hand. It was no longer shaking, but she sensed now was not the time to let go. The physical contact was his emotional anchor. She imagined waves of strengthening energy transferring from herself to her husband, charging him up like a battery.

  “Good. That’s good, baby. Now I want you to do something for me, okay?”

  He nodded. “Okay.”

  His face was no longer quite so bright a shade of scarlet now. She could feel him continuing to calm down. He just needed a little extra babying to get him to a place in his head where he could do this. “I want you to close your eyes. Can you do that for me?”

  Grant sighed heavily and did as instructed. “Okay,” he said again, his tone somewhat less brittle than before. “I’m sorry about this.”

  She let go of his hand and was pleased to see the shaking did not resume. Now her hand went to his shoulder and gently gripped it as she said, “It’s okay. There’s nothing to be sorry about. I love you and we’re in this together. There’s nothing to fear because I’ll be with you every step of the way. Together we are powerful. Unstoppable. There’s nothing we can’t do. There’s nothing you can’t do. Do you believe me?”

  The redness was continuing to fade from his face and he was no longer sweating buckets. The way he was responding to her efforts to soothe and reassure him renewed her faith in him, at least partially. The true test of his mettle as a possible killing partner was still ahead. All would be well if she could get him to inflict a bit of genuine grievous bodily harm on the man they’d taken without having a breakdown.

  If anything resembling a total breakdown occurred, she had a bleak contingency plan to which she did not wish to resort, mainly because it would mean involving the police and engaging in a lot of serious play-acting. She’d spent her entire life pretending to be a normal human being with normal emotions and had gotten pretty good at it. Feigning a crushing level of grief over the death of her husband at the hands of the murderous stranger who’d abducted them, however, would require the acting performance of a lifetime.

  Convincingly selling that scenario to the cops would exhaust her mentally, but she believed it was something she could do. It would be an absolutely last-ditch thing, though. While she didn’t “love” Grant in the traditional way—because she was incapable of truly feeling that emotion—she did feel deeply attached to him. He was the only person to whom she’d ever dared expose the darker areas of her mind. They had shared interests in some of those areas, and he hadn’t reacted in horror when she’d confessed her desire to murder. That in itself was a miracle of sorts.

  Grant nodded. “I believe you. And, Lindsey . . .”

  Lindsey waited a beat after he trailed off before saying, “Yes, dear?”

  With his eyes still closed, he said, “I love you more than anything. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”

  Hearing him say this pleased her and gave her additional hope, but the important stuff was still ahead. “I feel exactly the same, honey. Now keep your eyes closed and walk with me.”

  He was no longer perspiring at all as he swallowed again and let out a breath. “Okay.”

  She directed a smirk at the quivering and whimpering man tied to the chair as she walked with Grant, savoring the terror in his eyes like a fine wine. Her nipples stiffened as she felt a renewed surge of arousal. She dug her fingers into Grant’s shoulder a little harder than intended as she steered him into position behind the captive. It seemed hard to believe, but less than an hour had passed since they’d fucked against the side of the truck in that clearing. He probably wasn’t quite ready to go again just yet, but there were other things they could do that didn’t involve his cock penetrating her vagina.

  But first things first.

  She relaxed her grip on his shoulder without taking her hand away. “Okay, Grant. Open your eyes.”

  His eyes fluttered open. “Okay. Now what?”

  After lingering behind him a moment longer while libidinous thoughts continued to dance through her head, she found her focus again and took her hand from his shoulder. In another moment, she was standing in front of the chair, facing her husband and their helpless captive.

  Lindsey smiled. “Later on, things will get too messy for this to matter, but what I’m interested in right now is symmetry. Shorten his other ear. Make it match the other one.”

  Grant allowed himself another moment to get as mentally centered as he could manage and then he did it. He stretched out the man’s left earlobe and, with a snip of the wire cutters, it came away from the side of his head. A fresh rivulet of blood instantly began streaming down the side of his neck. His screams resumed in that same moment and he again began bucking uselessly against his bonds.

  Lindsey laughed and clapped her hands together. “You did it! Congratulations, babe.”

  A small smile curved the corners of his mouth as he made eye contact with her. “I did, didn’t I? Holy shit.”

  After laughing gleefully a bit longer, Lindsey sighed in relief. She was glad she would not have to kill the man she’d just married tonight. Unbeknownst to him, he’d passed the most important test of his life.

  10

  NOW THAT IT WAS DONE, a tremendous weight came off Grant’s shoulders. He allowed himself an inward moment to assess how he was reacting at a physical level, fearing a return of the stomach trouble that had plagued him in the moments leading up to Lindsey’s intervention. To his immense relief, he detected no symptoms of physical disturbance. No more shaking or sweating like a pig, either. In the moments that followed, he realized he was also experiencing nothing discernible in the way of psychological distress. No traces of the moral quandary he’d wrestled with such a short while ago remained.

  Lindsey was laughing and soon he began to laugh, too. He felt so much better knowing for certain he could go through with this. Taking that first step had been harder than he’d ever imagined, but now that it was behind him, he felt reinvigorated and eager to embark on the rest of this blood-soaked adventure with his daring and exhilarating partner.

  Flicking the bloody sliver of flesh away with an uncaring gesture, he turned away from the bound man and dumped the wire cutters in the open toolbox. He spent some time sorting through the other implements inside it while Lindsey went into the kitchen nook and opened a cabinet. She fetched an old dishrag from a lower shelf and then made her way over to the living area. Grant glanced that way in time to see her wiping the bloody earlobe off the back of the sofa, where it had adhered to the leather upholstery.

  Still sorting through the items in the toolbox, he glanced her way and smiled. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”

  Lindsey shrugged. “We gotta be more careful, babe. Obviously we’re gonna have a helluva cleanup job ahead of us before we leave here, but we should be careful not to lose track of anything too incriminating.”

  He chuckled, nodding. “Such as stray body parts.”

  “Exactly. And that goes for me, too.” She directed a glance at the place on the floor where she’d ground the man’s other earlobe to mush, then frowned when she again met his gaze. “We should really have a tarp or piece of plastic sheeting under that chair.”

  Grant cocked an eyebrow at her, giving her a gently reproachful look. “Well, you know, originally we weren’t planning to do this until much later on. That included waiting to acquire certain supplies until we were on the other side of the country.”

  She gave him a sour, slightly sneering look. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I broke the fucking rules and did exactly what we agreed we wouldn’t do. It’s all my fault. I’m sorry, okay?”

  He smiled warmly at her. In the aftermath of what he’d done, he felt closer to her than ever. She truly was the love of his life. “It’s okay. You got excited, that’s all. What’s done is done. Maybe there’s something we could use in the shed out back. If not, I’m sure there’s some spare bla
nkets upstairs. That’d be better than nothing. We could take them with us and burn them later.”

  Her face registered distaste. “Ew. I don’t want to go poking around in some nasty old shed. I’ll go check upstairs.”

  She came over and gave him a quick kiss on the mouth before trotting over to the set of wooden steps and beginning her ascent to the second floor. He watched the sexy movement of her incredible ass in those tight denim shorts as she climbed the steps and felt a fresh stirring of desire. It’d been maybe an hour since their bout of impromptu roadside lovemaking, if that. He normally wasn’t ready to go again quite so soon, but these were not normal circumstances. Mutilating the captive had fired him up in more ways than one, getting the adrenaline pumping and elevating his heart rate. He felt up for just about anything now, and that definitely included fucking his gorgeous wife again.

  An odd idea occurred to him. They could do it right here on the floor in front of the bound man. Give the poor bastard a show before beginning a more severe phase of his torture. Fucking in front of a person they planned to kill would lend the proceedings a decidedly kinkier edge. He was sure Lindsey would be up for it. “Kinky” was a mild word for the shit she was into.

  He forced his gaze away from her as she arrived at the secondfloor landing and went into one of the rooms up there. Taking a flat-head screwdriver from the toolbox, he grabbed another chair from the table, plopped it down in front of the captive, and sat.

  He smiled and leaned forward a bit, bracing his forearms on his knees as he held the screwdriver loosely in his right hand and bounced it up and down. “You know what? I just realized I still don’t even know your name. Never thought to ask before you went off to la-la land. Guess it doesn’t really matter, huh? Guy like you, you’re not even a real person to me. Poor. Non-white. That makes all this a little easier, if I’m being honest. You know what I mean? You told me you work at a supermarket, right? And you’re, what, maybe in your mid-thirties?” He shook his head, sneering. “That’s some really sad shit there, bucko. Not exactly the ambitious type, are you? Based on that shitty excuse for a car you were driving, I’m betting you don’t make much more than minimum wage. My wife and I are both six-figure earners and we’re not even in our thirties yet. What do you think of that?”

  The bound man said something Grant interpreted as noncommittal, but was indecipherable behind the gag.

  He tapped the sharp end of the screwdriver against the man’s knee. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t quite make that out. Shall I take my wife’s panties out of your mouth?”

  The question elicited an emphatic nod from the captive.

  Grant sighed and shook his head in an expression of mock sadness. Behind the look of fake empathy, however, he was enjoying this opportunity to mentally torment a helpless human being. It filled him with a sense of power unrivaled by anything in his experience. It made him feel god-like. He could do anything at all to this man. Anything. He could, if he so chose, free him from his bonds and allow him to escape with no further damage done to his body. Not that he’d ever do anything so stupid, but that wasn’t the point. The point was, it was his choice alone to make.

  He had the power. Not anyone else.

  For now, anyway. Until Lindsey returned, of course.

  Still feigning a sadness he doubted even a guy like this was gullible enough to buy into, he said, “I’m afraid I can’t do that. I’d rather not listen to you babble and whine like a bitch just yet. Frankly, I’m kind of surprised you don’t want my wife’s underwear in your mouth. Her snatch is a magical fucking place. I can tell you that for a lock-solid fact, what with all the countless hours I’ve spent with it on my face. You should feel privileged to have this opportunity, you greasy piece of shit, getting to taste her like that. You’re definitely not worthy.”

  Grant was surprised by the harshness of some of the things coming out of his mouth. They were not things he’d ever say in a normal setting or situation. Moreover, the sentiments expressed didn’t reflect any long-withheld private feelings, at least not any he’d been aware of on a conscious level. They almost seemed to come from nowhere, though he realized that couldn’t be the case. Perhaps they’d always lurked inside him, these feelings of inherent superiority, hidden away inside one of the nastier dark corners of his psyche. And now the door to that part of him had been unlocked by participating in the degradation of this man. It made as much sense as anything else, he supposed.

  He stood up and moved a step closer, pressing the end of the screwdriver into the man’s cheek, dimpling the flesh. The bound man started shaking and whimpering again, breathing hard behind the gag. “How about this idea as an alternative in the meantime?” He pressed the head of the screwdriver harder against the man’s cheek, dimpling the flesh even more. Any harder and he’d probably draw blood. “How about I make a hole in your face with this screwdriver?” He laughed. “That’d help, right? An extra airway to make your breathing easier?”

  Grant increased the pressure he was applying with the screwdriver. A bead of blood appeared and began to slide down the man’s cheek. The captive whined and started panting heavily. He sounded like he was on the verge of hyperventilating. After allowing the man another few moments to exist in that state of heightened panic, he took the screwdriver away and laughed.

  “Wow!” he said, laughing yet again and shaking his head. “I’m getting a way bigger kick out of this torture thing than I ever imagined. Really thought I wouldn’t be into this part of it at all, but it’s so addicting, this feeling of power. It’s like how I imagine junkies feel when they take that first hit of crack or meth or whatever. You should try it sometime.” He fake-winced as he said this, but there was still an edge of a smile in the expression. “Oh, wait. You can’t. You won’t ever get the chance because you’re not leaving this place alive. I mean, you know that, right?”

  Tears leaked from the corners of the man’s eyes as he began to sob miserably, his chin dipping toward his chest.

  Grant grabbed a fistful of the man’s black hair and jerked his head up straight. He held the tip of the screwdriver a small fraction of an inch away from one of his eyes. “Stop that blubbering,” he said, shifting to a tone far more menacing than what he’d utilized before. “Look at you. Crying like a fucking baby. No real man does that. Then again, you’re not a real man at all, are you? A real man would never allow himself to get taken like that by a woman. Do you have even an ounce of self-respect left? I don’t think you do.”

  He gave that fistful of hair a slow, hard twist, drawing forth another loud whine of pain.

  “God, I love that fucking sound!”

  He relinquished his grip on the man’s hair and after a moment the sound abated. Sitting down again, Grant allowed the man some moments to calm down. Then, just as soon as the whining had ceased entirely and his breathing evened out, he leaned forward again, raised the screwdriver up high, and slammed it down.

  The captive screamed with even more unhinged ferocity than before as the sharp end of the screwdriver punched into his leg just above the knee. He tilted his head back and put the full force of his lungs into it, screaming over and over with everything he had.

  Grant tightened his grip on the handle and clapped his other hand around it for additional force as he gritted his teeth and worked hard at driving the length of steel deeper into the man’s leg. By the time he stopped, barely more than an inch of steel remained visible between the handle and the captive’s bloodsoaked jeans.

  Letting go of the handle at last, he leaned back in his chair and spent some time admiring his bloody handiwork. The man continued screaming and moaning for a considerable period of time.

  Grant smiled at him with his arms folded contentedly across his chest. In a few more moments, however, his smile began to slip. He turned his head and glanced up at the second-floor loft. No sign of Lindsey.

  He looked at the captive and frowned. “Huh. She’s been up there a while. I should probably go check on her. I’ll be right
back, so don’t go anywhere.”

  He gripped the screwdriver’s handle and gave it another twist for good measure, resulting in the expected vocalization of profound agony. After having a good chuckle over this, Grant got to his feet and went upstairs.

  11

  THE WHITE MAN WAS GONE by the time the pain relented enough for Jorge Mendez to open his eyes again. He was still in agony, but now it was at a level where there was room in his mind—just barely—for contemplation of other things, a state of affairs he knew would be short-lived if he couldn’t figure out how to get out of this mess.

  They were just getting started on him. These were the early stages of a process the demented couple planned to draw out for hours, perhaps all through the night and into tomorrow. They hadn’t explicitly spelled it out that way, but he’d pieced enough together from the things they’d said to know this was the case. His abduction at the roadside clearing was a thing that’d come about by chance, but this was a planned event in their lives. If it wasn’t him sitting in this chair, it’d be someone else. It’d been his rotten luck to happen along and have a vehicular breakdown at the exact wrong time.

  His father used to say the family was living under a curse and had been for generations. Jorge wasn’t a believer in such things, but it was true there was plentiful evidence of bad luck hounding the Mendez clan down through the years. His grandfather was killed by a hit-and-run driver who was never caught one day after retiring from the police force. Two younger siblings serving in the military were killed in separate incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan. An uncle he was close to accidentally killed himself while cleaning his gun. A young nephew disappeared one summer day a decade ago and was never found. And that was just scratching the surface. There were numerous other examples of the “curse” taking a heavy toll on the family, and now it was looking like he’d soon fall victim to it, as well.

 

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