Merciless

by Bryan Smith

  Someone who wound up dead instead.

  Jorge’s eyes brimmed with tears.

  It was over. All hope was lost. There was only dying left to do, along with a whole lot of suffering and misery.

  17

  GRANT GASPED AND JERKED HIS hand away from the girl’s chest when he heard his wife come into the cabin. He shot to his feet and moved away from the girl, who was mumbling again and stirring closer to consciousness. His face flushed red from embarrassment at having been caught in the act of molesting the helpless girl. He felt more like an awkward and naughty schoolboy than a grown man when he met Lindsey’s withering gaze.

  She stood there staring at him from the open doorway a moment before turning away from him to close and lock the door. “What the actual fuck were you doing with that girl?” she asked, after turning to face him again. “Were you about to rape her?”

  Grant scowled. “No. Of course not.”

  Even to his own ears, he sounded defensive and cagey.

  Stepping over the body of the man she’d murdered earlier, Lindsey walked over to where he’d dumped the bound women and sat on her haunches as she gave them a once-over. She frowned as she tested and pulled at the layers of duct tape wound around the teenager’s ankles.

  Turning her head about, she looked first at Grant, then at the cluttered surface of the table, nodding as she did so. “I need more of that tape. The way you did this would never hold. They could easily chew the tape off their wrists given the chance.”

  Grant’s face reddened again, this time more from a burgeoning anger than from embarrassment. He’d never cared for being chastised by anyone for anything, but criticism of any kind was especially galling coming from the woman who’d betrayed him by fucking his cousin. The rage that had gripped him while attempting to strangle her earlier was flickering to life again.

  Lindsey looked at him and rolled her eyes in disdain when she saw how angry he was getting. “Fuck it. I’ll get it myself, you sensitive little baby.”

  She got to her feet, grabbed the tape roll he’d used earlier as well as an extra one, and resumed squatting alongside their new captives. Over the next several minutes, she worked at reinforcing the work Grant had already done, interweaving numerous layers of tape between wrists and ankles. She also sealed their mouths shut. By the time she was satisfied with what she’d done, she’d used up all the tape on both rolls.

  Standing up again, she directed a smirk at Grant. “They won’t be chewing their way loose from that any time soon.”

  He nodded. “Okay.”

  He could see she was right. Given the amount of tape she’d used, the only hope the mother and daughter had of walking out of here would be for someone to cut them free of their bonds. Unless someone else unexpected showed up, the odds of that happening were close to nil.

  Lindsey’s smirk deepened. “Come on, baby. Tell the truth. You were thinking of violating that poor, innocent little girl, weren’t you?” She laughed when she saw his eyes widen with anger again. “No need to get bent out of shape about it. We both know what I saw. I’m not judging you for it.”

  His brow furrowed when she said this, confusion beginning to drive back some of the anger. “You’re not? Really?”

  She shook her head. “Of course not. How could I? Baby, take a look around you.” She turned in a slow semi-circle, gesturing with her hand in a way meant to encompass all the plentiful evidence of violence and depravity in the cabin, which currently looked a bit like it’d been used by fugitive members of the Manson family during a long weekend of drug-fueled murderous shenanigans. “We’re way past moral considerations of any kind here. There’s no bottom to this anymore, no lower place we can go. Even the devil would be disgusted with us. You know what that means?”

  Grant had an inkling, but he still couldn’t quite come out and say it. Not until she said it first. He frowned again. “What does it mean?”

  She smiled. “It means there are no boundaries. No restrictions. It means you can indulge in all the sickest desires you’ve ever harbored. You want to fuck that girl? Go ahead. I won’t stop you. Hell, I’ll even help hold her down.”

  Grant almost couldn’t believe what he was hearing. In his heart, he knew the truth at the heart of what she was saying. There was no coming back from the things they’d done tonight. Cleaning up the physical mess and burning the evidence would never scrub their tainted souls clean. Yet a small part of him was still clinging to a lifetime of societal conditioning. He was astonished by the depths to which they’d sunk within such a short time. What had been intended as a relatively small act of dark marital bonding had exploded into something far beyond that. Even now, it was hard to truly comprehend the scope of it all.

  “Did you kill the other kid? That boy?”

  She nodded.

  “And the baby?”

  Her mischievous smile made her look extra cute even beneath the coating of gore on her face. “Gone, too.”

  From the floor came an anguished cry. The daughter was fully awake now and glaring at them. Her mother was beginning to stir slightly, but her eyes were still closed. The girl hurled angry curses at them that were almost fully intelligible despite the layers of duct tape covering her mouth. Tears welled in her eyes and spilled down the sides of her head. The display of emotion over additional losses tugged very faintly at something inside Grant, but the feeling evaporated almost instantly. He recognized it now as nothing other than a helpless mental reflex, an echo of something that had died within him rather than a real spark of humanity.

  Lindsey looked at Grant, her expression shifting as her features took on a more seductive cast. “I’ll help you with her now if you want, but to tell you the truth, I’d rather you use that hard fucking dick on me.”

  Without another word, she pulled the formerly white, blood-spattered shirt off over head and let it drop to the floor. She looked him in the eye as she unhooked her bra and cast it aside, too. After stepping out of her shoes, she wriggled out of her denim shorts and panties and stood wantonly naked before him. His cock strained painfully against the fabric of his jeans as he stared at her gorgeous naked body. He was still experiencing some residual emotional distress in the wake of seeing those enraging photos, but as far as Grant was concerned, everything about her on a physical level remained perfect. Her body was exquisitely toned from all the running she did. Unlike a lot of women who worked hard to stay fit, however, her frame was not overly muscular, retaining a lush feminine softness. Her breasts were a nice size. Bigger than average, but not too big. The curvature of her figure was also incredibly pleasing.

  Compared to the naked girl on the floor, his wife was an objectively superior physical specimen. Lindsey was a grown woman, whereas his young captive was still developing. Under ordinary circumstances, choosing Lindsey would be a given. His lust for her continued to intensify the longer he stared at her enticing naked form, but he kept thinking about the many intriguing things she’d said. She’d essentially issued him a free pass to do as he wished with the girl without fear of marital consequences. In a way, following through on that almost felt sort of necessary. Perhaps by doing so, it might balance the scales somewhat, make things even between them again. Maybe they’d even be able to go forward as a couple after tonight, something he wouldn’t have believed possible just a short while ago.

  He looked at the girl and imagined savagely fucking her while she cried for her lost family members. As a newly uninhibited wallower in filth and evil, the idea was deeply appealing on an animal level. He could almost see himself laughing in her face as he repeatedly thrust into her hard enough to hurt.

  Lindsey came over to him and grabbed him by the crotch of his jeans, squeezing hard. He groaned as his cock spasmed and was just able to hold himself back from the brink of early ejaculation. She squeezed hard again, twisting this time. He whined and came even closer to creaming his jeans.

  Lindsey laughed. “Let that be a lesson to you. There’s no one like me. Not for y
ou. Ever. Get out of your fucking clothes, you piece of shit.”

  Grant needed no further inducement. It was like they were in his basement dungeon back home with Lindsey in her usual role of dominating mistress, except she wasn’t wearing the usual black latex and had no whip to crack at him.

  He began tearing his clothes off as fast as he could manage. While he was undressing, she pulled a chair away from the table and turned it so it was facing the bound women. At her direction, he sat in the chair, his inflamed cock standing up like a flagpole. He spread his legs wide as she put her back to him and lowered herself to his crotch in the reverse cowgirl position. Gasping loudly at the moment of penetration, he grabbed her by the waist for something to hold onto, otherwise he would’ve come immediately. She shoved his hands away and began bouncing atop him with abandon. Within seconds, she was screaming and warning him not to come too soon.

  By then, however, he already knew there was no way he’d be able to last longer than maybe another minute. The buildup to this had been too intense. Knowing for certain that moment of orgasm wasn’t far away, he leaned to his left in order to see around his wife and get a clear view of the girl’s face. The moment he saw that teary visage, his dick became even stiffer. He stared at the girl through the rest of it, imagining it was her lithe little body atop him rather than that of his wife. He whined at the intensity of the pleasure coursing through his body in those moments.

  An instant later, he exploded inside Lindsey.

  She screamed.

  There was intense ecstasy in that sound, but there was also rage. Even as the waves of euphoria continued washing through him, she climbed off his still-inflamed cock and reached around him to grab something from the table. Before he could ask her what she was doing, she dropped to her knees on the floor, raised the long nail high above her head, and slammed it down.

  Along with several other items, they had acquired the oversized nails during a recent shopping expedition to a hardware store. The purchases they made that day were all in preparation for the murder they intended to commit during their honeymoon trip across the country. That had been a fun day. After noticing that they’d been browsing for an extended time, a store employee offered his assistance. Based on the quantity and variety of items in their shopping cart, he assumed they were prepping for a big home improvement project.

  They teased the employee with implications of darker reasons behind some of the things they were buying. Mostly it was Lindsey doing this, of course. She was always the bolder one. This one with a propensity for risky behavior, but Grant hadn’t been overly worried at the time. The plan was to commit murder on the other side of the country. A one-time, isolated event. This guy would never hear about it and authorities would have no reason to ever question him. The employee played along, undoubtedly never believing for a second that this prosperous and attractive young couple would ever actually do anything truly terrible. The big nails were his suggestion.

  “For all your crucifixion needs,” had been his witty remark at the time.

  Grant and Lindsey smiled and laughed. They eyed the nails and exchanged playful glances. The five-inch nails were significantly thicker than any nails either had ever used for common household purposes. Lindsey jokingly called them “railroad spikes”. This was an extreme exaggeration, but they both instantly saw the potential the nails had as useful torture accessories.

  And now, for the first time, one of them was being put to use.

  The tip of the nail punched through duct tape and the flesh beneath it, sliding deep into the girl’s mouth and leaving perhaps slightly more than an inch of shiny steel protruding from her cheek.

  Awake now, the girl’s mother started screaming.

  18

  THE GIRL’S EYES BUGGED OPEN wide as the pain caused her to sit bolt upright. Lindsey punched her in the face, driving the nail in slightly deeper even as the head of the nail painfully scraped the backs of her fingers. She laughed as the girl flopped back down to the floor and squealed in agony.

  The mother was making loud sounds of distress while attempting to scoot closer to her daughter. It was sort of a useless gesture. There was nothing practical she could do to help with her hands wrapped in so much tape, but the motherly instinct to protect compelled her to try anyway.

  Lindsey got to her feet and kicked the woman in the face. There was a loud crunch of cartilage as her nose snapped and blood gushed down over her tape-covered chin. She screamed again as she flopped onto her back and stared up at the ceiling through eyes overflowing with tears.

  The visages of both women were a study in abject misery. Lindsey found this a pleasing sight to behold. They looked so helpless and hopeless. Imagining the psychological torment they must be in also pleased her. Most gratifying of all, however, was knowing they were completely under her control. It was a glorious feeling, having that kind of power over other human beings.

  She turned away from them and faced her husband with a sneer. “I told you not to come too fast, you fucking asshole, but you didn’t listen. You were thinking of that little cunt when it happened, weren’t you? Well, look at the bitch now. She’s got a fucking nail in her face. Still wanna fuck her?”

  Grant withered under the intensity of her glare, averting his gaze as he spoke in a voice barely above a whisper. “I’m sorry.”

  He sounded strangely subdued, perhaps even shocked by the sudden savagery of what she’d done. He might even be temporarily in the grip of one of his occasional fake moral quandaries. She could imagine the thoughts rolling around in his stupid head.

  How did I allow myself to sink to this level? Why did you let this happen, God? Why, why, why?

  She snorted.

  He was an idiot. A fucking diletantte. He’d gone along with the whole murder scheme largely to please her. She was the one with the real passion for this stuff. If she hadn’t come along, he likely would’ve been content to spend the rest of his life keeping his darker urges contained to the realm of fantasy. At heart, he was a dithering coward. She could only feel contempt for someone like that. The only positive was that she’d learned the truth about him relatively early on.

  “Sorry’s not good enough.” She sighed and shook her head. “Fuck it. I’m gonna go take a shower and get all this blood off me.”

  He looked at her now, a corner of his mouth lifting in a small smirk. “What’s the point? You’ll only get more on you later.”

  She showed him a smirk of her own. “Okay, you want to know the truth? That one-minute fuck did not satisfy me. Not even close. So, since you have failed utterly in your husbandly duties, again, I’m gonna take a few minutes to take care of my own damn self. And, hey, you know what else would be swell? It’d be really super-awesome if you’d try your hardest not to fuck anything else up while I’m gone.”

  He frowned. “Me? None of this mess is my fault. If we’d stuck to the plan—”

  Surprising even herself, she backhanded him across the face, making him yelp in pain as a thin trickle of blood began to leak from a nostril. Despite the rage frothing inside her, she experienced a small flicker of regret almost immediately. Yes, she was angry with him, extremely angry, but she needed to remember how close he’d come to killing her while in a rage of his own. She sensed she hadn’t quite pushed him over the edge again yet, but it might happen if she continued lashing out at him so severely.

  He rubbed his chin and gave her a stern look. “I guess I get why you’re upset, but you don’t want to do that again. I mean it. You hear me?”

  She seethed inside at this warning, but managed to suppress her instinct to retort with something equally provocative. Despite everything, the evening remained rife with potential. She had multiple captive human beings at her mercy and was yearning to exercise her sadistic imagination on all of them. Going to war with Grant again might ruin all of that.

  She huffed out a begrudging sigh. “Fine. Possibly I overreacted. But I’m still taking that shower. Please don’t kill any of them
while I’m gone.”

  He glared at her a moment longer before his expression softened. “Oh, don’t worry,” he said, smiling. “I won’t start the fun without you. I’m not the one who perforated a girl’s face in a moment of sexual frustration, after all. I’ve got more restraint than that.”

  Lindsey again held back the instinct to lash out.

  Fine. Let him have the last word. For now. The son of a bitch may yet get what’s coming to him.

  She rolled her eyes to express her disdain, but kept her mouth shut as she moved away from him and climbed the stairs to the loft.

  19

  HE’D HAD A NAME ONCE, back in the days when he lived and worked among men, but those days had ended long ago. Now, after decades of living alone in the woods, he no longer recalled what that name had been. In truth, he rarely attempted to remember anything from that previous existence. On the rare occasion when some faint memory of that time floated close to the surface of his conscious mind, he immediately shoved it back into the darkest recesses of his psyche. That was where the past belonged. Buried. Locked down in the shadows. Memories of those painful years couldn’t hurt him there.

  The old hermit lived in a decrepit shack deep in the woods. He’d built it from scavenged materials gathered from various construction sites scattered across the mountainous region, mostly discarded wood scraps no one would ever miss. The cabin had no windows. His construction skills were too primitive for that, his access to the necessary materials too limited. He had a few rusted pots and pans. Some utensils for eating. Tools for hunting. There was no electricity. He kept warm in the winter by swaddling himself in tattered blankets stolen from the privately-owned cabins he sometimes broke into when his need for critical supplies became too great. This was something he did only when absolutely necessary. Too much of that kind of thing might attract a level of attention he didn’t want. He didn’t want to be forced out of hiding or arrested. He’d rather die than return to the world of men.