A Life To Waste

by Andrew Lennon

  The giant slid his index finger back and forth along the table, pointing it at each blade as he passed it. Looking like he was playing a game for which one to choose.

  “oh shit” Dave thought “eeny, meeny, miny, mo”

  The finger stopped. It looked like the meat cleaver had been this torture sessions weapon of choice. After a slow turn the freak stood facing Dave once more. He moved closed towards him, his eyes forever gazing into Dave’s. Almost looking lost, looking to Dave for an answer.

  “what do you want?” Dave’s screamed in his mind.

  The freak tilted his head again, what crazy thought were passing through his mind? What could he be possibly contemplating at this point?

  Never losing eye contact with Dave, Bigfoots arm swung up and then flew back down so fast that if you blinked you would have missed it. He looked away from Dave’s eyes at something on the wall. Then his gaze returned back to Dave’s face. Dave looked at the monster, confused, he could feel something trickling down his arm.

  He looked up.

  “Oh shit my hand!” he screamed in his mind.

  The freak had chopped Dave’s hand off with one clean swipe of his blade. Dave’s arm, no long being held by the leather strap, dropped to his side. Dave lifted it to his face, looking at the bloody stump that was left where his arm used to belong. Tears streaming down his face, he cried to scream but nothing came out. He swung his arm at the freak. His stump leaving red marks on bigfoots shoulder and chest each time it made impact. With each pathetic attempt to inflict some form of pain on the freak, Dave received nothing in return except a confused look.

  The freak dropped the cleaver on the spot where he was stood. He didn’t even look down to see it hit the ground. He turned around and made his slow exit back out of the small office room. The door closed behind him. Dave could hear the whistling getting more faint as the giant got further away.

  “if.....you.....go.....down.....to.....the.....woods.....today.”

  Chapter 24

  Holding his bloody stump up to his face, Dave stared in disbelief. The tears pouring down his face like the blood pouring from the gaping wound at the end of his arm.

  “I have to get out of here” he thought.

  He looked down to the floor and stared at his abandoned hand. Ironically the cleaver that had taken the hand had landed next to it, leaving them lying together, side by side. Dave looked up at his other arm, still strapped to the wall.

  “I need to get that arm free, I need to get out”

  With his other arm free from restraint, Dave was now able to turn his body around so he could face the wall. He reached his bloody stump up to the arm held against the wall. The leather strap had a loose bit hanging down. If Dave could push that strap against the wall, maybe he could loosen it. Maybe he could free his other arm.

  With excruciating pain shooting through his whole body, Dave used his stump to push the strap against the wall. He blood streamed down the wall like a fresh tin of paint had been thrown at it. He twisted and wriggled his arm, still holding the strap still with his stump he could feel the leather begin to loosen on his wrist.

  “it’s working, oh shit its working”

  With the pain almost unbearable, he gritted his teeth and continued to wriggle his hand. His stump never moving from holding that strap in place. He twisted his hand, he tucked his thumb, his index finger and his little finger in to the centre of his hand. He twisted and pulled his hand down. The strap under the stump slid up the wall a bit. Sending a stabbing pain right up the side of Dave’s body. Pushing through the pain, Dave pushed his stump harder against the wall. He tugged his other hand down. It was free!

  “I did it!” He thought.

  He stood for a second amazed at what he had just accomplished, his senses returned to his. He grabbed the thing covering his mouth. His was some sort of tape. He ripped it off, he was sure that in other circumstances tearing that tape off may have been extremely painful, but in light of his recent injuries, he didn’t feel anything.

  “ok what now?” Dave said to himself. “if you got free, he would expect you to run.”

  With hundreds of thoughts racing through his head, he couldn’t decide what to do. He knew one thing though. He couldn’t run. He wouldn’t get far enough without that freak coming back for him.

  Dave hurried to the pool of blood on the floor and grabbed the cleaver. He left the hand behind.

  He walked back towards the door and placed his ear to it. There was no one there. He slowly opened it. Still no one, he shuffled out of the door. He could see the light to the factory shop floor was on.

  “ok, that bastard is down with the bodies, I need to hide.”

  Dave hurried to the next door in the corridor and let himself. It was pitch black but that didn’t matter, he didn’t intend to stay there for long. He closed the door and waited.

  Dave must have been waiting for about five minutes. He was still losing a lot of blood and he was sure that if he didn’t stop the bleeding soon that he would die. He was going to bleed to death. A horrible thought ran through his mind that he had dripped blood along his path to this room. Leading a trail to his demise. No, he knew he hadn’t, he had his stump tucked into his stomach, he had looked outside just before entering this room. He definitely hadn’t left any trail behind. Had he?

  “oh god I hope not” he whispered to himself.

  He could hear the whistling returning.

  “if.....you.....go.....down.....to.....the.....woods.....today”

  It was the freak coming back, he heard the giant open a door. The whistling stopped, it was followed by an enormous roar. Dave’s host had just discovered that he was missing.

  Chapter 25

  The giant was raging. He had thrown the table across the room, sending the weapons that had been there flying across the room. He punched the wall repeatedly leaving red bloody marks from his fists in a pattern across it. He leaned over propping himself up against the wall, he appeared to be looking down at the hand on the floor. He reached down the pick it up. To retrieve the one piece of Dave that had been left behind.

  He grabbed the hand, as he raised himself back up Dave jumped onto his back. He felt a sharp pain in his neck.

  “AAAHHHH!” Dave screamed “You bastard! You sick sick bastard!”

  Dave reached around the giants next, holding himself on by hooking his stumped arm around it. In his other hand was the meat cleaver that had taken his hand. He swung it over and over again into the giant neck and shoulder.

  “Die! You bastard! Die die die!”

  Over and over again Dave kept swinging the knife into the giants flesh. Blood was firing out of the freak like a fountain, showing Dave in covers of red. The giant wasn’t dropping, Dave had been cutting him with the cleave for what seemed like forever. Why wouldn’t he die? Why wouldn’t he stop.

  Dave still hooked onto the giants back like a monkey clinging to his mother. Dave kept his stumped arm held tight around the giants neck. The freak turned back and forth reaching his arms back in what appeared to be an attempt to get Dave off. The strength seemed to have faded away from him. The freaks hands just stroked against Dave’s arms and shoulder. Still Dave continued to thrust the cleaver back and forth into this giants neck.

  After what seemed like an eternity, he dropped to the floor. Dave stood over him, covered from head to toe in blood. The room had been painted red, no where appeared to be untouched from the blood. Dave looked to the monster lying on the floor. He climbed onto his back and continued to hack away. The giant was probably long dead before Dave finally stopped.

  He sat on the floor with his back propped against the wall panting for breath.

  “it’s over” he sighed.

  Chapter 26

  Stumbling from side to side. Dave made his way down the corridor, he was beginning to feel faint. He was still bleeding heavily from his arm. He knew that if he didn’t stop it soon that he was going to die.

  “There must be so
mething around here” he said to himself. “some rope or something to stop this bleeding.”

  He managed to carry himself across the corridor and through the door leading to the factory shop floor. He almost fell down the stairs, slipping down several at a time. He eventually reached the bottom. Slumped over he looked across the factory, at the sea of bodies that we placed before him.

  “need to find something” he mumbled.

  He made his way to the rear end of the factory, perhaps now he could start thinking about saving some people. He had more time, if he could stop the bleeding. He looked up. There in front of him, he didn’t know whether he was happy to see it or horrified. There in front of him stood, the kiln, or furnace, or what ever they called it. Some big thing that had once upon a time been used to melt glass and heat metal. He imagined that recently it had only been used to heat torture devices.

  “it’s lit” he quivered.

  Dave knew what he had to do, it was simple. If he didn’t stop the bleeding, he was going to die. He took the big tongs that had been leaning against the kiln. Using the tongs, he picked up the largest blade from the pile of weapons that were still scattered on the floor. He held the blade into the flames.

  After a long time of waiting, panting for breath, trying to keep the tongs held upright while losing strength in his one good arm. He could see the metal inside the fire begin to glow. He removed the blade from the fire. He dropped the blade to the floor and leaned down. He took deep breaths over and over again.

  “ok, here we go” he said, his voice trembling.

  He pressed his stump against the scorching hot blade. Cauterising the wound on his arm.

  He passed out.

  Chapter 27

  Dave woke up. His eyes wide open, he gazed up to the high sheet metal ceiling above him. He could see dim lights hanging from wooden beams placed along the walls. He could smell something burning. It was like a bbq smell. Not quite as nice though. It reminded him of the smell of burning ants when he was younger. When he would use a magnifying glass to fry them on the pavement. He was lying on a hard concrete floor. Underneath the smell of burnt ants he could smell something else. It was a foul smell, like rotting meat. He remembered where he was.

  He tried to push himself up from the floor. Intense pain shot through him like he had just been struck by lightning. He looked at his arm. He saw his stump. The skin now burned and black, bit of dark blood dried around it. He looked to the floor to see the blade he had used to cauterise it. He could see pieces of his skin that had stuck to it during the horrifically painful process. He used his good arm and leaning to one side, managed to get himself up off the floor.

  “mum” he said to himself “I need to find mum.”

  He began his mission. He marched up and down the horrific patchwork of bodies. Looking at mangled arms and twisted legs. Trying to see if any of them were connected to his mum. He tried to see if he could pick out her face. All the faces he could see were so bruised and batter that there would be no way to recognise their owners. He looked for what seemed like forever, in fact it was probably about ten minutes. As he got further down the line he could see the damage to these people wasn’t quite as bad as the others.

  “I’ve got to get help” he thought.

  He ran back up the stairs, through the door and down the corridor through the exit of the factory. It was daylight now. He had no idea how long he had been there. He had passed out twice to his knowledge, for all he knows it could have been a couple of hours, it could have been a whole day. That didn’t matter, he needed to find a phone. Dave ran up the street from the factory until he reached what looked like a main road. He must have run for fifteen minutes before he eventually found a payphone at the side of the road. He picked up the phone, he managed to tuck it in between his cheek and his shoulder to hold it in place, he used his only hand and dialled for the emergency services.

  “Police!”

  He waited, after a few moments he was connected.

  “I’m at a payphone on Glover Street, there is a factory down the road. Windas Developmet. There are over a hundred bodies there! Some dead, some not.”

  Dave didn’t wait for any reply, he dropped the received and sprinted back to the factory.

  “got to find mum!”

  Dave remembered his thought about the “production line” in the factory earlier. How the people who were more like fresh meat where closer to the rear end of the factory. The long dead bodies were closer to the stairs. Surely his mum had to be closer to the “fresh” end.

  He marched straight down the factory, ignoring all the chopped up and mangled bodies that had been sewn back together. He tried to ignore the helpless gazes of the victims who were still conscious. He had every intention of helping them, but he had to find his mum. He searched for a while. He decided to start untying people as he moved. Some of them were so far beyond recognition that it was the only way he could keep and check on the ones he had already seen.

  The police stormed through the door just as Dave tore the tape from another victims mouth. Dave turned around to see the rush of police officers rushing through the corridor and down the stairs.

  “Dave” he heard.

  He turned around to see that he had his mum in his arm. He pulled her into his chest and hugged her. He held her close and cried.

  “I’ve found you mum, it’ll be ok now”

  “Dave?” he received a confused reply.

  “Don’t worry mum. It’s all over.”

  Chapter 28

  Police officers went in and out of the building. Some of them running out to throw up on the pavement outside. Some came out slowly, shaking their heads.

  Dave sat on the pavement outside with his arm held around his mum while waiting for the ambulance that was going to take them to the hospital. Several had been and gone, several more needed to come before all casualties were dealt with. Dave watched curiously as the officers entered the building then exited it so fast. Why did they go in there if they can’t handle it? They were told what it was like, he saw their colleagues telling them. Was it a job they didn’t want to do but had to anyway so put on a brave face and walked in? Was it morbid curiosity? They wanted to see just how bad it was, the patchwork of bodies. Eventually Dave’s ambulance arrived, he and his mum shared their escort as they were taken to the hospital. He left the police officers to deal with the hell he had just come from.

  According to the police, the news reporters, the gossipers, the nurses with loose tones, the doctors with loud voices. This was one of the worst things that had ever been witnessed in this country. Dave heard the conversations go, there had been over 260 bodies, over 100 of them dead. All the dead had been sewn together, all containing different body parts that belonged to different people. This freak had made his own patchwork quilt, he had taken off bits and pieces from people and added bits and pieces from other people. He had created his own sick and twisted work of it. A vison of hell itself.

  Dave spent a very long time in hospital, he had to get numerous treatments and injections for his arm. He had other injuries he either hadn’t noticed or had forgotten about that needed treating, like the gaping wound in his cheek from the first round of his fight with bigfoot.

  His mum, although not in quite as bad shape as Dave, had been effected mentally a lot more. She seemed to have left the vessel that was holding her, her mind had drifted somewhere else. Maybe somewhere that she would be able to cope with the sites she had seen. It was going to be a long arduous ordeal Dave was told, psychologically, his mums brain had been shattered.

  It would take years before he got her back, if he ever did get her back. This had made Dave cry, all the years he had abused his mum and taken her for granted rushed into his mind. He had flashing images on the times he insulted her, the times he had smashed the place up and she would cower in fear. Now that he realised how horrible and selfish he had been all these years, it might be too late. Now that he wanted to give back to his mum all the l
ove and care that she deserved. She might be gone. He would be alone.

  Chapter 29

  One question continued to enter Dave’s mind. No matter how many times he tried, he just couldn’t answer it.

  Why?

  Why had that horrible man done all those things? Was he abused when he was younger? Was he mentally ill? Dave had no doubt that the giant had some form of mental problem, he could see that every time he pictured those big black eyes. Behind those eyes was nothing but an empty space. There were no thoughts, no hopes, no dreams. Just darkness.

  Perhaps there didn’t need to be a reason for it all. Maybe that guy was just evil. Simple as that, he was just evil and wanted people to suffer. He certainly made sure they suffered as much as possible before putting them out of their misery.