Dark Things IV

by Stacey Longo

  In late 2009, MediMinds Industrial unveiled its new wave of contraception, aptly named The Iron Maiden. The device, molded of high grade plastics and vulcanized rubber, was meant for insertion into a female’s private region, as one would a tampon. With two small clips, it clung to the outer rim and even allowed the passing of urine. But upon penetration of that region, by finger or penis, there is only one way in and absolutely no way out. Not without the clips being released, where the device would undock from the woman and be temporarily attached to the man, an “iron maiden” of stiff sharpened plastic spikes clinging to the flesh. And so the rape was prevented, and the man would have to call the phone number dictated on the device to have it removed, bearing the shame of what he had been demoted to for the rest of his days, a rapist caught in the act, registered by the doctors of MediMinds into a registry and filed along with their police reports.

  When the question was raised as to what would happen when jealous girlfriends started using the contraptions to get revenge on innocent boyfriends, Doctor Hannah Powers scoffed, “This isn’t about the sanctity of the male population. This is about the female race feeling comfortable in her own skin, once again. We will live without fear, from here on out.” She spoke as if there were men batting down her door for a shot at her prize, but in reality, Doctor Hannah Powers was “two jaw surgeries short of the Elephant Man”, as her ex-husband would claim to the media in revolt against his wife’s sin against his sex.

  Kiki Malone had heard murmurs of the device through the Christian abstinence group she had joined in June of her graduating year. They had read aloud an article on the matter, that of the bizarre Iron Maiden device. The original iron maiden had been used to punish both men and women, but the modern iteration of that barbaric cast-iron device was used to punish those who deserved the most punishment, particularly aspiring rapists.

  In the summer of 2010, Kiki Malone became one of the first American females to put an Iron Maiden into place inside of her, swearing to rid herself of the whorish image that she had built for herself through the years. This would be her crowning moment, an example for loose-legged women everywhere. She had ordered the device direct from Doctor Hannah Powers, and it had arrived (free of charge) with a note in the package, that said, “Happy hunting.”

  ***

  Hank the Shank glared at the device, his jaw agape at what could only be the most horrific thing he had ever seen, save for the time he watched a video of a snake swallowing a hippopotamus on the internet. “No fucking way, bro. No fucking way that thing’s on your shit.”

  “Get it off!” Jimmy blasted in the parking lot of The Big Grind, fighting to conceal his shame. He had decided that he would beat Kiki’s face into pulp once he had the contraption free from his body. In the distance, Jimmy heard somebody groaning sexually in their car in the parking lot, as he had been engaged in previously. He felt an overwhelming need to warn the other guy, were he not so concerned for his own well-being at the moment.

  “It looks like it’s got big teeth inside of it. Let me pull on it real gentle-like,” Hank the Shank said, wrapping his hands around the device and pulling slowly, a millimeter at a time. He watched Jimmy’s reaction as he did so, gauging the outcome of his intervention.

  Jimmy yelped in pain. “No, no, no. Worse! Way worse! Stop!”

  “It’s like a Chinese finger trap. The harder you pull, the worse it gets. Right?” he stated, looking now at the underside of the contraption, noting the printed label. “The Iron Maiden? This thing’s got a cocksuckin’ name? Jimmy, it’s got a fucking serial number and a bar code!” The good folks at MediMinds were thorough and professional, to say the very least.

  “What?” Jimmy asked in confusion, unable to see the underside of his trapped penis without a mirror. Hank the Shank would have to serve as his mirror, and Jimmy noted to himself that Hank would have to swear to never mention this terribly awkward moment to anybody, especially among their crew. Jimmy’s embarrassment would be eternal.

  “A serial number. A-7-2-6-G-G. Like they made tons of these. And there’s a damn website even. www.StopTheRapists.com. And a phone number. Jesus, Jimmy. How many of these things you think are out there?” This seedling of thought would cling to Hank’s brain for some time.

  “Read me the phone number,” Jimmy demanded of his friend while he pulled his cell phone from his breast pocket, the pangs of pain tormenting his entire physical being. Pain would ebb and flow, growing and receding with transmissions of agony, like a raw burning infection.

  Hank read the phone number to Jimmy, noting on the side, “That Kiki bitch actually deserves to get raped for this kind of shit, you know what I mean?” He looked into the back seat of the car where Kiki was nestled. Now that she no longer had the device in her, that was an option for Hank. Lightning can’t strike twice.

  “I’m not a fucking rapist!” Jimmy hollered, looking around and hoping that nobody else in the half-empty parking lot had heard him. Many of the patrons were filtering out of the club, and so they would be all alone very soon.

  While the phone rang, Jimmy imagined the thing on his penis as though it were a rodent, nibbling away on his tender area, wanting to consume him in his entirety by the end of the evening. The Iron Maiden was more than just pain, it was universally tormenting him at a base level of masculinity and ego. Kiki would pay for what she did.

  “Hello?” a woman’s voice answered, and Jimmy felt a dart of relief tunnel through his body.

  “Get this fucking thing off me!” he shouted into the receiver of his cell phone.

  “Oh, delightful…I can assume you’ve met Doctor Powers’ device? Isn’t it just a hoot, rapist?” the woman replied, a tickle in her voice that only served to invigorate Jimmy’s seething anger. How dare she accuse him of rape. Jimmy Grant was not a rapist! “Is it bleeding yet?”

  He looked down at the contraption in disbelief, mumbling to himself, “I don’t know. A little bit. I see red.”

  “If it hasn’t started, it will eventually. That’s part of the punishment. You’ll always remember those little red drops. Every time you try and stick your dick in another helpless victim, you’ll imagine that bloody mess and you’ll think twice about spreading your seed via aggression. Won’t you?”

  “I’ll hunt you down and cut your fucking throat if you don’t help me get this thing off right now, bitch.” He growled like an animal, which only caused a twitter of laughter on the other end.

  “Well, threats are only going to prolong the matter. You need to think about who’s holding the cards here. Your dick’s on the guillotine, not mine. So why don’t you ask a second time, maybe a little nicer this time around?” He could hear her smiling on the other end. Once he was free of the Iron Maiden, he would beat her to death, guaranteed. Nobody fucked with Jimmy Grant. Nobody. His father had not raised a coward. When a fight came your way, you took it head on.

  “Please get this thing off my dick,” he begged calmly. If she wanted to hear him beg, he would satisfy her.

  He could feel something moving over the surface of his trapped member, armies upon armies of red ants working away at the flesh. Would the invisible ants take his penis away, shouldered upon their backs for the good of the Queen?

  “That’s better. Now, we have a recently implemented Iron Maiden response team in every one of the forty-eight continental states. If you give me your address, we’ll have somebody there lickity-split. How does that sound? Doctor Hannah Powers, the inventor of the Iron Maiden, would like to make every visit herself, but we’ll send one of our specialists, each of which is hand-picked by the good doctor herself.” She paused at the end of her pitch, congratulating herself on sticking to the script, though she wanted to rub salt in his dick wounds so very much. “Now how about that address, rapist?”

  ***

  When Doctor Natasha Welsh arrived, the first thing she noticed was that Jimmy’s near-victim was still unconscious in the back seat of his vehicle. She knew the patient immediately by the ch
aotic look upon his face. He sat in the driver’s seat, with another man in the passenger seat. Their faces were rigid, like stone, in the deepest throes of a prolonged shock that they (particularly the rapist) never felt they would return from. Doctor Welsh had only made three calls since the inception of the Iron Maidens in the United States, but she had already grown to adore that frightened puppy sort of face that they all got when faced with the extinction of their male virility.

  Their car was submerged in the darkness of the parking lot. The club had finally let out two hours earlier, and the sun had just started to creep up over the horizon. It had taken Doctor Welsh more than five hours to arrive, and so she knew this would complicate things, that Jimmy would lash out at her from the start, already feeling the abandonment that every one of his rape victims may have felt at one time or another. She needed to continually remind herself, per Doctor Powers’ Rules of Engagement, that she was in control, and that it was in her rights to take her sweet time. She was “the man” that the potential rape victim could not be, and so had turned to their God-sent device of retaliation and protection. The poor young woman, thought Natasha as she studied the girl with chunks of food attached to her cheek.

  “Are you Jimmy?” she asked when he rolled down the window. His eyes were blood-shot and it looked as if he had been crying for some time, perhaps exhausted of any more tears, emptied by his harrowing evening of doubt and pain.

  Rule of Engagement One: Find your target and let him know that you are the one with the power. He is shit. He is nothing. He is a rapist pig and deserves what has befallen him. Make him squirm, for that is the only way he will fully realize what he has done to the female race.

  “Stupid fucking bitch. Yeah, he’s Jimmy. The one with the booby-trapped pecker,” Hank the Shank piped up from the other side of the car, glowering at Doctor Welsh as if she had been the inventor of the Iron Maiden, or even worse, that she had been the one to implant the device on him.

  “Watch your mouth, young man. I can turn my car around and leave him with that thing biting on his cock for the rest of his life,” she replied with a calm demeanor, pursing her lips and placing her hands on her hips, pushing away the folds of her lab coat and dangling a bright yellow plastic key in front of her. “This key is the only chance he’s got.”

  Rule of Engagement Three: Never let the target see the key until the moment of release. Welsh had always been one to break rules, even the ones that were meant to protect her. She was bolder than the rest, a reputation that preceded her, much like Kiki.

  “What if I beat your skull in and then take that fucking key away from you?” Hank the Shank shot back, Jimmy still only staring straight at Doctor Welsh like a frightened child, unable to separate his lips and enunciate any words. He had broken already, but that did not mean that he had learned his lesson yet.

  “I would advise against that course of action,” Doctor Welsh whispered just as two broad-shouldered men exited her tinted-windowed SUV, stepping up behind her like Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. Each looked big enough to serve as the entire defensive line for any professional football team, singlehandedly. Hank the Shank shuddered at the sight of them and decided then and there to keep his mouth glued shut. He had been in plenty of altercations, but never with somebody who wasn’t drunker than he was.

  “Please step out of the car, Jimmy,” Doctor Welsh said, intoning her inner police woman.

  Kiki Malone snored loudly from the back seat, completely oblivious to what had transpired since she had been at the bar, quietly circumnavigating the idea of sleeping with Jimmy Grant. She had not intended to allow Jimmy to get so far in his attack, to feel the wrath of her Iron Maiden insert. When she awoke in two hours’ time, she would look upon the hell she wrought, with both horror and delight. She was a good girl. Not a whore.

  Jimmy swung open the door and staggered free of his vehicle, a hobble in his step.

  The semi-transparent device had filled with a pool of blood, as evidenced by the crimson tint that the instrument had taken. Jimmy’s pants were down around his ankles, his buttocks quivering in shock. His hands and knees wobbled. Jimmy was on the verge of passing out from the spiky gutter of pain he had been dragged through since taking on the conquest of Kiki. “Please,” he groaned, tears welling at the corners of his eyes. “Please,” he repeated, nothing more than that one word.

  “Look at that. That’s the nastiest result I’ve seen so far. Looks like you’ve lost a lot of blood, young man.” Doctor Welsh noted on a clipboard in a very scientific moment of observation. Her bodyguards snickered at the sight of his situation. “And have you learned your lesson, Jimmy?”

  “I’ll do anything. Take this thing off me,” he blubbered, touching his ensnared penis.

  “I asked you a question. That being if you have learned your lesson.”

  “Yes...yes, I have.”

  “You’re just saying that.” She sighed. “They all say that.”

  “Please, I swear,” he mumbled between bouts of torrential tears. He could no longer feel the sensitivities of his manhood, gone as if the nerve endings had been put to sleep with Novocain. Jimmy had started to wonder if it was possible to have a disabled penis, dead and limp forevermore. Could doctors fix him?

  “I don’t believe you’re sincere about this. I think you’ll do this again. You and your little friend in there,” she noted, looking past the slumped over mass of Jimmy, towards Hank the Shank, “Your type thinks it’s okay to take whatever you want, to trample all over our kind.” She said “our kind” as if she and her legion of females were aliens from another dimension, and not simply of another sexual identity. “You kick and bite and stomp and steal and murder and pillage. And we forgive you, don’t we? We always forgive you. And you’re good for awhile. A month, two months, maybe even a year. But then you revert back to that Neanderthal pig that you have buried deep inside of your psyche. We can’t fix that, but we damn sure try. And every time you tread over us again, you remind us of how weak we’ve all become, you and I, as human fucking beings.” She was raging now, her face flush with bitter contempt.

  Rule of Engagement Two: Never lose your cool, no matter how angry the target makes you.

  “Come on, lady,” Hank the Shank pleaded, consciously dropping the word “bitch” from his usual vernacular, she noted. “He’s dying over here. How can you let this go on? He learned his damn lesson already!”

  “Shut your mouth, kid. I’ll take it off when I damn well please. I’m in the driver’s seat here, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  Jimmy started into a new fit of desperation, “I’ll pay you. I’ll pay you anything.” The blood had started to seep from the rim of the Iron Maiden, a river of red blood trickling down his thighs. His vision had become increasingly blurry and he fought to stay awake long enough to be free of the damn thing, to see himself through to being a better person, right after he beat the doctor to death. He breathed in deeply, shaking the stars and dancing constellations from his muddied head.

  “Money? That’s your next plea? Money? I don’t give a damn about money. Money doesn’t give you back your innocence. In fact, it kills it just a little more. Haven’t you learned anything?” She shook her head in disappointment. He was just like all the rest.

  “Take this fucking thing off my cock, you dumb bitch!” Jimmy blasted in one of his last moments of wakefulness. He had gone so very pale that he was nearly as translucent as the Iron Maiden itself.

  “Sure. I’ll take care of that,” she replied, leaning over and grabbing hold of the Iron Maiden in her right hand, giving the plastic key to her bodyguards with her left hand. Jimmy studied this with confusion. Didn’t she need the key?

  When she tore away the contraption, with his penis still inside and very much a part of it, from his body, the blood gushed forth like a hose. It dumped from his body in a perfectly tubular stream, splattering on to the pavement of The Big Grind’s parking lot, marring the yellow painted lines. The sight of this brought forth an
immediate yowl of terror from Hank the Shank, but Jimmy made not a sound. He slumped over at the vision of his missing manhood, his eyes blank and distant. Falling head first into the pool of his hastily evacuating life juice, he trembled in a state of shock until he simply seized and went to sleep forevermore.

  Jimmy Grant was not a rapist.

  Rule of Engagement Four: Be certain that the target’s plague will never be brought to light again. Trophies go only to the victor.

  Doctor Welsh rolled her trophy up in cellophane as Hank the Shank threw every feminine slur in the book at her. The bodyguards glared at him, a warning that this day was never to be spoken of, if he appreciated his current livelihood. Given a long enough time line, Hank the Shank would forget his lesson, and he would meet up with Doctor Welsh again, under more troubling circumstances for him than the simple loss of his best friend. For now, he was to be their witness, to spread the word of their vengeance to the rest of his horny and petulant friends and acquaintances.

  Doctor Welsh gripped the detached penis in her hands and felt a power surging through her body.

  This part of her job never got old.

  “It was a pleasure doing business with you,” Doctor Welsh whispered through the back window of Jimmy’s car, at the limp snoring bulk of Kiki Malone, who was most assuredly not a whore.

  About the author:

  Eric Dimbleby lives and works in Maine. He can be found polishing his assortment of deadly guns, working on an old Chevy engine that interminably sits in his kitchen, drinking whiskey from a coffee pot, and generally being macho...but only on “Guy’s Weekends”. The rest of his life is spent picking daisies and singing lullabies. Learn more at www.ericdimbleby.com.