Merciless

by Bryan Smith

  Despite the rupture in their relationship, Lindsey couldn’t help feeling a spark of jealousy.

  “That’s interesting,” she said, voice dripping disdain. “Do you think people will still give you things now that your face is fucked up?”

  Kelsey took still another hit of coke and shrugged. She sealed the packet and dropped it in her bag before glancing at Lindsey, showing her an unfazed expression. “With all the money I’ll be inheriting, I’ll be able to afford high-end plastic surgery. I’ll be fine. Assuming you honor your word and let me live after I do this, that is.”

  Lindsey frowned. “I don’t lie, bitch.”

  Grant snorted.

  She shot him an angry look. “Got something to say, husband?”

  He smiled. “Not at all, dear. You are a paragon of truth and honesty. I’d never suggest otherwise.”

  The overt sarcasm in his voice pissed Lindsey off. So did the wink he directed at the girl. Her anger was close to boiling over for a moment, but she managed to rein it in, not wanting the girl to believe she could be manipulated to the point of explosion so easily. She was the adult here, goddammit, and the girl was just a kid. The only acceptable option, for now, was to act above it all and project an air of not giving a damn.

  Later, of course, both of these shit-stains would face severe consequences.

  She rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Let’s get on with this shit.”

  A short conversation about how to proceed ensued. Once everyone was in agreement, things began to happen swiftly. Lindsey fetched a clean silver baking pan from the kitchen. She set the pan on the table and returned to the kitchen to clean the knife the girl would be using, wiping the blade off with a paper towel after running it under hot water for a minute.

  The next part was fun.

  After setting the snoozing brown-skinned man upright in his chair again, Lindsey went to work with the nails. The thrill that went through her as she pounded them through his feet and deep into the floor was electric. His screams were a wicked delight. This was the shit she’d gotten into this for. The joy of torturing another human being. It was so intoxicating she decided to forego making the girl nail her mother’s feet to the floor. She would do it herself and enjoy another dose of pure, uncut human misery, a high she was certain was far more exhilarating than anything the girl’s narcotics could deliver.

  The mother’s screams as Lindsey pounded the big nails into her feet were so loud and so shrill it was like having your eardrums perforated by a dentist’s drill. After banging home the last nail, Lindsey glanced at the girl and was pleased by the way her face had turned deathly pale. She seemed a lot less defiant and a lot more vulnerable than she had only a few minutes ago.

  Kelsey had been hovering meekly in the background as all this happened, but now it was showtime.

  Lindsey smacked her ass. “Get to it, bitch.”

  The girl needed a moment to compose herself.

  Then she went to work with the knife.

  27

  THE PAIN WAS BEYOND ANYTHING Piper had ever imagined. She had small feet. Those big nails had punched through them with shocking, devastating ease. The presence of those thick pieces of steel inside her flesh felt unnatural and obscene. Every tiny twitch of her violated flesh sent more jolts of agony sizzling through her body.

  Even worse was the contemplation of what was still to come. She’d come close to sliding into unconsciousness at one point, but she’d heard the bulk of her daughter’s horrifying conversation with the crazy couple. Hearing Kelsey agree so readily to do such awful things hurt her in a way that was almost as bad as the physical pain. She’d said such mean things. They were things said under extreme duress, of course, but she’d heard the underlying conviction in her daughter’s voice.

  Kelsey believed every word of it.

  She hated her mother. No, more than that. Despised her.

  And now she appeared to be going through with the sickening act she’d agreed to perpetrate in exchange for her life.

  Piper turned her head and watched as Kelsey yanked out the screwdriver lodged in the Mexican man’s leg and tossed it to the floor. The man howled miserably as the metal came out of his flesh. The man and woman laughed gleefully at this confirmation of his suffering. They were evil beings disguised as humans. Demons. Thinking of it this way was the only way Piper could even begin to process what was happening.

  She watched her daughter climb atop the Mexican and straddle him like a stripper giving a lapdance to a junior ad executive. Her late husband’s much younger cousin touched his genitals as she did this. A wave of disgust washed through Piper as she watched him fondle himself. The bound man’s next scream came as an almost welcome distraction.

  The crazy woman was standing behind the screaming man now. She looped her husband’s belt around the middle of the man’s face and pulled his head backward to keep it still. Kelsey then applied the sharp edge of the big knife to the skin just beneath the man’s hairline. She held it there a moment, unmoving as she appeared to hold her breath.

  The woman screamed at her, spewing threats.

  Kelsey exhaled and began to saw into the man’s flesh. Blood immediately began to leak from the initially small incision below his hairline. As the incision widened all the way across his forehead, the blood fell out in a sheet of crimson. The captive screamed and bucked violently in the chair, but Kelsey and the crazy woman managed to keep him in place by working together. The woman was also screaming throughout this, but her screaming was imbued with a mocking quality. Her screams alternated with bursts of wild laughter. Grant Weatherby continued to hang back and watch, his penis stiffening slightly as he tugged at it. He didn’t seem quite able to achieve full arousal, at least not yet. It was about the only thing Piper could be grateful for as she continued to watch this horrific spectacle unfold.

  Bile rose into Piper’s throat as she watched her daughter grip a handful of the bound man’s hair and tug it upward. She heard skin tearing as the edge of the man’s scalp peeled away from his forehead. Her stomach churned as Kelsey slid the edge of the blade inside the widened gash and began to saw at his flesh again along the side of his head toward the back. The bound man’s thrashing became even more frantic. Piper saw the way his feet were jerking against the nails that had been driven into them and knew the pain from that alone must be almost impossible to bear. What Kelsey was doing to his poor head on top of that had to be absolutely hellish.

  Piper wanted to close her eyes and pretend none of this was happening. She didn’t want to see the daughter she loved so much doing something so evil. She wished she could unsee it, erase it from her memory entirely, but wishful thinking was worse than useless in this situation. All she could do was pray for the soul of that poor man. Maybe it wouldn’t do any good. She didn’t know. Probably it wouldn’t. She did it anyway.

  Kelsey stood up somewhat straighter while still straddling the man in the chair, almost in a frenzy now as she continued to saw harder and harder at his scalp. Sounds of frantic exertion sprang from her mouth as she at last took the knife away from the man’s head, grabbed a handful of his damp hair, and pulled at it as hard as she could. Strands of bloody tissue snapped as the scalp began to peel loose, exposing the skull beneath. Kelsey cried out in triumph as it came all the way free. She held it aloft as she disengaged herself from the man she’d disfigured and stood there breathing heavily for a moment.

  The man and woman whooped it up, sounding like football fans celebrating a touchdown. Meanwhile, the man in the chair whimpered and trembled continuously. It struck Piper as particularly horrible that he was still alive after that. He’d probably be better off dead at this point.

  Kelsey approached the table and carefully set the bloody scrap of hairy flesh on the silver baking tray. She took a few moments carefully spreading it out and arranging it in a way that was almost loving. Or maybe that was a twisted misperception of her own fracturing psyche, straining to find evidence of something still human inside
her daughter.

  A moment of unexpected quiet ensued.

  The deranged couple’s almost identical expressions of maniacal joy faded, yielding to looks that appeared more thoughtful. No one moved or said anything. Piper sat perfectly still despite the awful pain still consuming her. She wished that moment could go on forever, that the personal horror awaiting her could be delayed indefinitely.

  Then the moment of pause ended. Again, nothing was said, but Piper felt it like a change in atmospheric pressure. Still without saying a word, the three of them approached her and stood arrayed around her. Kelsey was in front of her with the knife. The crazy woman was behind her with the belt. And Grant was off to the side, cock in hand again as he leered at them.

  Kelsey’s expression was flat as she said, “It’s your turn, Mom.”

  Not I’m sorry or I wish I didn’t have to do this.

  Just It’s your turn.

  All syllables uttered without a flicker of detectable emotion.

  The crazy woman looped the belt around her face, pulling the leather taut over her eyes.

  Then Kelsey applied the blade to her mother’s hairline and began to cut.

  28

  HAVING SUCCESSFULLY REMOVED ONE HUMAN scalp already, Kelsey had a better idea of how to efficiently perform the procedure when the time came to do the same thing to her mother. This was a good thing, because above all else, she wanted it done quickly, hopefully in no more than about a minute or two. She reckoned that would be about half the time she’d needed to get the Hispanic man’s scalp off his head.

  She had lots of issues with her mother. Both of her parents had been sort of absent and inattentive, especially over the last several years. Her father had been trying to change that recently, but even before he died it’d been a case of too little, too late. The family was too dysfunctional to fix, at least not without a lot of years of therapy. Which would never happen now.

  The bitterness she felt toward her parents did not, however, mean she didn’t love them. She did now and always had, though she often wavered regarding which of them she sympathized with more. That was not the case now. Her father was dead and no longer part of the equation, whereas her mother was still alive, albeit likely not for much longer. Despite the terrible things Kelsey had said to her to impress the crazy couple, she didn’t wish to cause her more pain than was absolutely necessary to get the job done.

  She worked even faster than she’d hoped, cutting and tearing away her mother’s scalp in barely more than a minute. As she worked with the knife, she clenched her teeth tight and made a loud, continuous grunting sound in an effort to distract herself from her mother’s desperate screaming. She felt queasy upon glimpsing the exposed top of her skull and immediately reeled away from her. Choking back the vomit her stomach was trying to expel wasn’t easy, but she managed to do it as sweat broke out on her brow.

  The crazy man and woman were watching her closely with an obvious air of expectation. She could tell they were waiting for her to break, believing it inevitable. Well, she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. Instead of being sick all over the floor, she again held the scalp aloft and made a sound of primal triumph, as if she were some sort of savage cannibal woman of the jungle. Those expectant, leering looks again gave way to smiles and nods of approval. The guy especially looked pleased. He winked at her again and she smiled in return. The beginnings of an idea were coalescing in her head. She thought she might be able to seduce the perv and turn him against his woman, maybe even goad him into killing her.

  The woman wasn’t stupid, though. Far from it. She was probably the sharper of the two by a wide margin. Kelsey was no psychic. She couldn’t know the inner thoughts of either of these fucking maniacs, but she had a clear sense the woman was already worried about the possibility of her husband turning against her and hooking up with their young captive.

  Bitch was right to be worried.

  Kelsey definitely meant to strike fast and kill the woman when the right moment came. It would happen as soon as she was certain she could attempt it without fear of retribution from the husband.

  She carried her mother’s scalp over to the table and set it on the silver baking tray, after which she spent some moments arranging the long blood-streaked blond locks attached to the flap of flesh she’d carved off her mother’s head. As she did this, she listened to the screams and whimpers of her mother and the other man. The sounds were nonstop. They grated on her nerves and she had some moments where she wished more than anything she could silence them. Just suddenly cut their throats in an act of mercy and spare them the horror of what was still to come.

  She couldn’t do that, though.

  It would go against the prolonged exercise in sadistic cruelty she’d promised her captors. Her victims needed to be alive for it. This was a core component of what she’d described while making her pitch to them. Even the guy might turn against her if she failed to deliver, and she was determined not to lose the headway she’d made with him. Her life probably depended on it.

  Kelsey opened the box containing her mother’s cross-stitch kit, removing and setting aside a square of white fabric and a wooden hoop. Next she removed the needle and several packets of thread, all different colors. She opened a packet of blue thread, licked the end of it, and fed it through the eye of the needle, neatly tying it off.

  Her mother wasn’t really a cross-stitch kind of person, but Piper Weatherby had some leftover supplies that had belonged to her mother, who’d succumbed to cancer a few years back. She occasionally made half-hearted attempts to get into it, but didn’t really have the patience for it. Prior to leaving on their doomed excursion to the cabin, she’d impulsively announced her intent to try again while they were away.

  Kelsey, however, had been a natural cross-stitcher as a young child, learning quickly under the guidance of her late grandmother. She and her brother had spent two weeks with their grandparents every summer back in those days, while their parents went on extended trips to exotic locations around the world without them. She guessed her parents had actually still been truly in love with each other back then, which was weird to think about now after the years of apparent indifference.

  Once she had the needle and thread ready, she grabbed a handful of her mother’s blond hair, lifted the scalp off the tray, and carried it over to where the Hispanic man remained bound to the chair. She straddled him again and waited a moment while the woman again looped the belt around his face to keep his head from moving too much.

  She then carefully set her mother’s scalp atop the trembling man’s exposed skull, smoothing it into place as best she could. It wasn’t a perfect fit. Of course not. Their heads were different sizes. But she did the best she could. Perfect wasn’t even really necessary. She was hoping to get it so it would remain functionally attached for at least a short while. Long enough for these lunatics to have their fun and be satisfied by what she’d done for them.

  When she was satisfied with the placement, she lifted up her mother’s hair on one side and used a bobby pin to clip it in place. This would allow her to begin the transplant relatively unimpeded.

  The man started screaming again when she pressed the tip of the needle to the line of bloody skin below the exposed top of his skull. She pushed the needle through the skin, felt it touch the skull, and then angled it upward, pulling needle and thread all the way through until she had several inches of slack thread with which to work. Next she lifted up the edge of her mother’s scalp and pushed the needle through the slippery, bloody flesh. Keeping a firm enough grip on it to work efficiently wasn’t easy, but she did her best. The man bucking against her didn’t help matters any, but at least it wasn’t quite as much like riding a wild bronco this time. She guessed his strength was fading some, which she supposed was to be expected.

  Once she’d made the first few connecting stitches, it got easier. The crazy man and woman kept giggling and making sounds of amused astonishment. For the time being at least, the woman se
emed so impressed she’d at least temporarily set aside her burgeoning resentment and suspicion of Kelsey.

  The frayed line of skin at the base of the man’s skull was stretched tighter now as a result of her work with the needle and thread. She had to use her long fingernails to peel it back from the skull and resume the stitching job. After another several stitches, she paused to undo the pinned-up hair and smooth it down the side where the stitching was already complete. She then lifted the hair on the other side of the man’s head and used the bobby pin to clip it in place. More peeling and stretching of skin was required to complete the job, but by then she had such a feel for what she was doing that it had become disturbingly easy.

  At last, after what felt like a lifetime in hell, she was finished. Her mother’s scalp had been firmly sewn into place on another human being’s head. She unclipped the hair pinned up atop the man’s head, smoothed it down, and eased herself off the whimpering captive. Though she felt disgust for this terrible thing she’d done, she took some moments to study her work and appraise its quality. Given the tools at her disposal, she believed she’d done the best possible job a person with zero surgical training could do. Even so, on a purely visual level, the result was something that looked both ridiculous and horribly surreal. Her mother’s salon-styled hair was heavily flecked with blood, but the long blond locks looked absurdly out of place attached to this burly guy.

  The crazy man and woman were laughing hysterically.

  To her dismay, Kelsey found she could understand why they were so amused. A small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. She made it go away as another surge of self-disgust rose up inside her. What kind of person would commit this kind of atrocity to save their own skin?