John Patrick Nelson is a writer/Emmy-nominated editor living in Los Angeles. You’ve maybe seen his work at Popcorn Fiction, Pulp Asylum, or Guilty Crime Story Magazine. Go party at www.johnpatricknelson.com
Dust came to with a headache, eyes bulging, looking at a concrete floor.
Quickly realized he was hanging upside-down.
He panicked a second, terrified he’d fall and crack his skull open. Tugged his hands. Couldn’t move them. Rope? He shifted his shoulders, heard clinking metal.
Chains. Of course.
He wouldn’t fall. Briggs wouldn’t want him accidentally dying before he could kill him.
Dust was too heavy for his stomach to be dangling above his mouth. He was like an IV bag, all the liquid in his gut following gravity’s pull. He could feel the reflux burn in his throat, choked it back, tried to keep from spitting acid.
A door opened. Briggs walked in, holding something.
Dust squinted. A blowtorch.
Darn. This was really gonna hurt.
He hoped he could hold out. Grand idea now, but he knew when he was blind with pain, his balls on fire, holding out would seem less important.
Briggs looked him eye to eye.
“So,” Briggs said, “Pretty sure you know what I need outta you.”
Dust sighed, choking back more bile.
“Why make it tougher?” Briggs said. “Just tell me.”
Dust wished he could just will himself to die. All his life, he was always one step away from a heart attack, a stroke, a diabetic coma. Always dreading the day it was gonna slam into him. Now he mentally begged for it. Just a little heart attack, it wouldn’t take much. Shit, he practically had a stroke walking down his driveway every morning. And now, blood pooled in his head, heart hammering, you’d think it wouldn’t take anything to get it started. Maybe he could hold his breath, see if he could bust a blood vessel.
Briggs clicked a striker, once, twice. On the third, Dust heard the flame’s WHUMP.
Anytime now, God, Dust thought.
“Last chance,” Briggs said, lifting the torch so Dust could see the blue flame, feel its heat.
Dust had a notion. Not a great one. But a last little bit of rebellion.
“Okay,” he said.
Briggs lowered the torch, leaned in.
Dust quit clenching his gut, and threw up on him.
He was delighted to see it was orange, yellow, and ropey. Smelled like shit, too. Dust belly laughed.
Briggs cracked him a good one, right in the nose. Dust felt it mash, saw blood drizzle on the concrete below, mix with the spatters of bile.
Didn’t stop him laughing.
Briggs mopped his face with an oily rag. Grinned, eyes flashing. “That was good,” he said, “My mouth was open. Nice one.”
Dust felt his stomach drop, a weird sensation when you’re upside-down.
“Now me.”
Dust felt the flame on his chest. Didn’t even feel pain, just a hot push as his nerve endings cauterized. He knew the pain was coming, in a second he’d be blind with it. He was screaming, he could feel it in his chest, even if he couldn’t hear himself.
Then the pain hit. Exquisite, piercing. So big it was his entire world.
And this was nothing, he knew. The real pain was still to come.
A thought flashed through Dust’s brain, so quick, he didn’t even have time to consider it, before he seized on it.
He yanked his neck up, felt the muscles tear. Briggs jerked, tried to pull the torch away, but Dust had already clamped down on it with his teeth.
Again, he didn’t feel the pain first, just the force of the heat, tongue dissolving, teeth burning. The worst dentist visit ever.
Briggs yanked the torch out, took a few teeth with it, but the damage was done. The pain was kicking in, but Dust couldn’t help himself, he laughed again. As blood and bile and puss and teeth hit the concrete below, he brayed. Can’t make a man talk when he’s got no tongue to speak, asshole.
He was still laughing when Briggs clicked the torch to life again, and came at his face. And as the world disappeared in white fire, and he screamed his last, up in his guts, Dust got to feel a little glimmer of triumph.
~ fin ~
John Patrick Nelson is a writer/Emmy-nominated editor living in Los Angeles. You’ve maybe seen his work at Popcorn Fiction, Pulp Asylum, or Guilty Crime Story Magazine. Go party at www.johnpatricknelson.com
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