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TKR Story Hour: The Lady In The Basement

jack

jack

The Legendary Troll King
Heavy boots make a lot of noise. That’s why he chose them. The sound each one made as he put a foot down on each rickety wooden step thrilled him. Well, not the sound itself -- the look he imagined on her face. The beads of sweat rolling down her forehead, the crow’s-feet at the corners of those muddy brown eyes. The furrow and slight lift of her brow. A low whimper sounded from the darkness of the corner and he felt a shudder of raw pleasure rocket through his limbs and hitch his breathing.

The shovel in his right hand was comforting, somehow; so was the weight of the thick bundle of wool over his left shoulder. Even the musty stink of the wool was somehow reassuring. The smell melded with the smell of mold and long laid down dust of the vast shadowed space of the cellar, lending it an earthy, homey resonance that soothed his mind, eased the storm that played there just a bit. But there was still a storm; lightning still strobed in the periphery of his consciousness.

He took a few steps toward her, then dumped the blankets at the feet of the chair. “Well, good morning!” This was a lie, of course -- it was well past dusk. She didn’t know that, though. She’d been down here for days, and though a small scattering of black and white polystyrene trays told the number of frozen dinners she’d been given down here, she’d never been given any of them while awake. This was part of “The Plan”; this was justice. She had denied him the truth; he would deny her the truth as well. She would have no idea where she was; she would not even be permitted to know when she was. Perhaps -- he smiled to himself as the thought crossed his mind -- by the end of all this, she would not even know who she was.

Those eyes focused on the shovel first. And of course that was only natural, given her situation. He jammed the blade of it down into the soft, thick earth of the unfinished cellar floor, prompting a pitiable shriek from her. He smiled at that, a smile that in the half-darkness of the barely lit place must have seemed like the smile of the Cheshire Cat.

“You son of a bitch.” That wasn’t precisely how it sounded, of course, the words coming thickly muffled from around a thick wadding of old t-shirt in her mouth. But he’d heard her say plenty with her mouth full, and this wasn’t terribly difficult for him to decipher.

“I am.” he nodded. “I am a rotten son of a bitch, quite right.” he leaned against the shovel, still grinning with the sleeves of his gray work shirt rolled up, the feeble, faintly orange light of the bare sodium bulb behind him caught on his bare scalp. “But now, let’s think about that for a minute, hm? Let’s just.” He nudged the massive bundle of wool at her feet with the toe of his boot. “Don’t you think you should be nicer to me, knowing what a horrible son of a bitch I am?” She only stared balefully at him. He continued, “I mean, that just seems to me to be the smart way to play it.” He sighed, seeming genuinely disappointed. “You never were as smart as you thought you were, though.”

He put his booted heel down on the spine of the shovel’s blade, driving it down into the moist, packed sod, then leveraged it out, tossed the soil aside. “I know you can’t say much right now, dear. And that’s just fine. Who knows?” he paused for a moment to regard her with a wide-eyed look, as if genuinely taken by surprise by the thought that had just entered his mind. “Maybe if you’d been a mute, we’d still be walking rosy fields, as they say, like we were before…” his face darkened. “Before…” he couldn’t seem to force the last part of that thought past his lips. Instead, he went back to digging.

He looked up, some minutes later, to see that she’d fallen asleep again. Or maybe -- and he liked this idea better -- she’d guess just a little part of what was coming and had fainted. He grinned at that idea, well pleased by it, and redoubled his efforts. As he whistled a merry tune, the shallow furrow widened, lengthened. The blankets hunched at her feet like an idle beast. Soon enough, he’d put that idle beast to work.
 
His planning — once he’d settled on a plan — had been meticulous. He had, of course, spent a good many months fantasizing about this particular little bit of fun. Half the fun, of course, was not in the doing, but in the watching. Watching her reactions, naturally, but also watching the glint and flash and flare of his tools as he laid them out on the wooden shelf under the orange glare of that bare bulb. He was looking forward to that already as he returned down those cellar steps once more. One heavy, thumping footstep at a time.

The bundle in his arms wasn’t blankets this time. Instead, he stepped over to a rough wooden shelf, about waist height, and let the heavy duffle bag fall to the hard surface so that the sound of metal on metal would carry through the cloth. He grinned over his shoulder at her as the sound brought her out of a fitful slumber. Bound to the chair hand and foot as she was, her convulsive awakening only made him laugh.

Then the smell hit him and he wrinkled his nose. “Phew!” he made a face. Of course, he’d had her sitting there, bound like that, for uncounted days — she’d long since soiled herself a few times over. He began to hum, then to sing, “I am… smellin’ like a rose… that somebody gave meeee… on my birthday death bed…” He chuckled. “Well, my dear, you certainly do smell like a rose… Now, then!” he clapped his hands together, eliciting a delightful wince from her. “I’ve brought a few very nice toys down! Let’s have a look and see what they are, shall we?”

He unfastened the straps of the duffle and began to remove several things, careful to keep his torso angled slightly so that she could see past him to what he was placing on the shelf.

First was a pair of pliers. This got a whimper — not bad for a first effort, really, but he could do better. The second item was a long-handled pair of bolt cutters that hit the shelf with a solid thunk — these, now, these were a winner. There was a long, low moan of fear, and that very nearly ended the show for the evening. But no — no, he could hold out.

The last thing to be trotted out was a one-handed scythe with a short, crescent-moon shaped blade. “Ohhhh, now here we are…” he said with a tone that so dripped arousal that even he shuddered at the sound of his own voice. For a moment, that almost stopped him cold; it almost made him rethink the whole thing. But of course, it was far too late to stop now.

So instead, he grinned a Jack-O’-Lantern grin, his eyes wide, and stepped toward her with it, turning the handle gently one way, then the other, so that the orange light from the single bare bulb flashed across the blade again… and again… and again… a steady flare of light with each step he took toward her, like a metronome of sulphur fire. He hadn’t even reached her yet before she’d fainted dead away. The reek of her terror was stronger than the stench of her having flooded her underthings once again.

Of course, the sight of her eyes rolling back into her head while lips and jaws finally stopped working around the thick wad of dirty fabric stuffed in her mouth, the echo of her guttural wail still echoing from the dank cellar walls, put him over the edge and caused him to flood his own jeans.

Payback, he decided right then, was not a bitch. Payback was a blast.
 
This time, his steps were soft as silk on satin as he crept down the stairs, placing his feet carefully while bringing his supplies down. There would be no waking her; not yet. He wanted her well and truly taken by surprise when he finally sprang the real machinery of her fate.

The jar he set down on the shelf with all the gentle care of a lover caressing a dear cheek. The bucket of hot water found its place next to the shallow grave he’d dug earlier with equally ginger handling. He wore soft track pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt. The shirt was tucked into the track pants. The cuffs of the track pants were tucked into his socks. The sleeves of the t-shirt were tucked into a pair of thin driving gloves. A bandanna had been a last minute gesture for himself; an afterthought, almost. The smell really was reaching overpowering levels. So had the safety goggles; the bulky headset had been planned, although he’d wished he’d had something a little more appropriate. He expected the screaming would become rather shrill for at least some little while.

All in all, he looked — and felt — more than a little ridiculous. But who was going to go blogging about his fashion sense now? Not him. Not her, either.

When everything was in place, he grinned behind the bandanna and took a shovel from where it leaned against the damp earthen cellar wall, hefted it in his hands once, twice, to get a sense of its weight and balance. Then he stepped forward, angled his shoulders so that the orange glare of the bulb shone on her face. Her cheeks looked grubby, tear tracks having made little trails through the dust on her skin.

Judging his distance and the proper angle, he hollered, “Fore!” and swung the shovel in a mighty, whistling arc. The CLANG! Of the flat of the blade resounding off her skull made him laugh as she tumbled, stunned, into the shallow grave to land upon the seven layers of thick wool he’d laid out in its bottom.

He had half turned for the staple gun and the jar on the shelf when he noticed something — she had somehow managed to wriggle her foot out of one of her shoes. It still lay there next to the overturned wooden chair, lonely and pitiful. He kicked it into the shallow trough on top of her; then, jar and staple gun in hand, he knelt next to the shallow grave and wedged it between her mouth and nose and the dank earth.

Taking advantage of her temporary disorientation, he unscrewed the lid from the jar and liberally sprinkled the contents over her prone and unmoving form. He grinned as he worked -- a maniacal grin mostly hidden by the layer of cotton over his nose and mouth but still showing in the wide-eyed glee in his eyes.

He turned as he felt her eyes on him -- well, one of them, at any rate. The other was half swollen shut already, the white of it red now where blood vessels had burst and colored it. He hefted the now-empty jar. “I decided you must be lonely down here, dear.” he said, as a husband might when announcing how helpful he was about to be to his overworked, loving wife. “So I brought you some friends. Cimex Lectularius. But you probably just call ‘em… bed bugs. They oughta keep the party jumpin’ down there.” He chuckled wickedly as he re-cinched the thick leather strap that bound her wrists. “Too bad you won’t be able to do anything about the bites… that’s gonna drive you crazy!” He checked the straps at her ankles and calves as well -- you just can’t be too careful, after all. She screamed through the gag and he just laughed.

“You look cold, dear.” he said paternally. He reached across and pulled the edge of the top blanket over her, then folded the other end over it so that she was completely enveloped from the chin down, then lifted the staple gun into view and grinned broadly again when she screamed through the gag a second time. He slipped his gloved fingers into the space for them in the staple gun -- its chromed steel surfaces flared in the orange light as he pressed it down into the wool, then squeezed the trigger and listened to the Pop! as it stapled the blanket closed -- he finished the job. Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!

The job of stapling the remaining six blankets tightly around her was a long one, and mostly silent except for her muffled weeping and his low, melodic humming of a tune he couldn’t remember the origin of. After he’d finished, he rolled the whole mass over -- not without some exertion on his part. Finally, he grinned down at her as she stared up with her one good eye streaming tears and wide with terror. “You look cold down there, dear.” he mused. “Oh! How are your little friends doing in there, hmm?” he figured that, by now, shrouded in darkness and near a heat source -- to them, a food source -- they’d have started to make their way toward their living meal. Suddenly she began to whimper more loudly behind the gag, to wriggle fiercely within the constricting confines of the blankets. “Ah, there they are!” he laughed. “Good! Good! Wouldn’t want you to be lonely down here… now, let’s make sure you stay nice and warm…”

He returned with the pail of water. Steam still hovered over its surface, curled up where the water met the metal. He lifted it by the handle, watched her clench her good eye tightly shut as he upended it, pouring a steady stream of hot water over the blankets, covering her from toes to head to toes and back up to her torso again before the thick stream faded to a dribble. The blankets were now soaked -- he could only imagine that would had felt horribly confining before was now a cloying, clinging, suffocating hand, squeezing her in a hot, oxygen-denying fist that possessed neither the mercy to release her nor to finally crush her and end her suffering.

Dropping the empty pail, he took up the shovel again. She winced; he chuckled. “I’m not going to hit you again, dear. Only had to do that just the one time, you know. I know how much persuasion it takes to get you to move at anything better than a snail’s pace, y’see, so I just needed to… well… expedite matters a tad. Hmm?” He began to drop shovelfuls of loose earth into the grave, starting at her toes. She stared down at the growing pile of earth as it covered the hot, sodden wool. “You know the nice thing about your new playmates,” he mused, then pulled the bandanna from his face, took a deep breath. “Ah. Oh, now that’s much better. The nice thing about your new friends is,” he went back to scooping loose earth back into the grave. Now her shins were all but covered. “They’ll never lie to ya. No sirree, that they will not do. Never manipulate you… never get you into a place of trust and then trap you there, never try to feed on what you have… what you are…” He paused for a moment. “I suppose it was bad manners of me not to bring some friends more your speed, dear, but spiders are harder to trap, aren’t they?” he looked to the corners of the dark, cramped space. “But I’m sure they’ll be along. They love a captive meal. Your kind of people, really.”

At first, he thought she was rolling her eyes at him and felt a flare of rage well up -- until her good eye fluttered and closed. “Aw…” The job of burying her completely would have taken a few minutes longer; he didn’t intend to bury her completely. She still hadn’t come to by the time he finished; not completely, anyway. She stirred when he removed the gag -- he had to cut it away from her mouth, since there was no longer any reaching the buckle in the back and releasing it. She looked down in renewed horror, and he in unapologetic, giddy joy, at her new situation. She was buried under firm packed earth, up to her chin. He could have stood on her, one boot on the edge of the mound, and nudged dirt into her mouth with his toe. So he did.

That put a rather comical end to her hoarse scream. Not that he minded the screams, anyway, not with the headset on. It didn’t do all the job it could have -- but it was enough against the feeble job she was doing. Her throat was parched, no doubt, and her lungs constricted within the tight, hot, wet embrace of the blankets and under the weight of the earth that now held her.

“That won’t do any good!” he shouted over her next attempt. “I can say with some surety, dear, that wherever you think we are, you’re quite mistaken. We’re thirty miles outside the nearest city, and three from the nearest living human beings besides us.” he hunkered down, staring almost directly down into her good eye. “There’s no one out here whose strings you can pull. You have, let us say, retired.”

“Please…” she whispered, almost inaudibly. “Please… water…”

He feigned a look of astonishment. “But, my dear, you’ve just had a whole bucket of water!” He laughed. “Oh, I suppose a glass of water can’t hurt. Don’t go anywhere, now!” he chortled at that and headed back up the stairs. He half-expected to come back down and find that she had, impossibly, freed herself somehow. But no, his job of work had been well and truly done, and there she was. She was struggling mightily, to her credit, but it probably had more to do with the dozens upon dozens of little creatures crawling inside her soaked clothing and feeding on her pale, flabby flesh than any hope of actually getting loose. It showed only in her head, which thrashed weakly back and forth.

That muddy eye stared balefully up at him as he approached. She didn’t bother screaming anymore, and that gave him a thrill. Finally -- finally! -- she knew her place. Understood entirely her situation and her place within it. Ohhhh, how fine that felt. How wondrous! The glass of icewater in his hand was so frosty cold that it refreshed the palm of his hand even through the glove. He held it down so that she could turn her head and take a drink from it. He let her take as much as she could, then lifted the glass away -- it was still three quarters full. He took a lemon wedge from behind his back and fitted it onto the rim of the glass. “Oh -- did I forget this? Aw… and that would have been so festive, too. Well, I’ll celebrate for the both of us.” He took a few steps out of her line of sight, then returned with a folding metal chair. He unfolded it and sat, crossing one lower leg over his other thigh.

“In the interests of forthrightness -- I’m sorry, dear, I know how you hate that principle so -- I’m going to tell you exactly what’s going to happen, in advance. You might say that we’ve embarked on something of a new relationship here over the last few days, hmm? Well, here’s what you have to look forward to.” He took a sip of the ice water himself, licked his lips. “Ah, that is nice. Well, there you are, all rolled up and no place to go. And that’s where you’re going to stay. I’m not going to cut you. Or stab you, or shoot you, or light you on fire. Now, those things occurred to me, of course. A man likes to consider his options, you know. But what I decided on is this: You’re going to stay right there, nicely bundled up -- I think that’s what the medieval texts referred to it is, actually -- bundling. And those little friends I gave you to socialize with? Think of them as a ‘starter pack’, if you will. They’ll get the job done of opening up holes in your skin, but all that sweat you’re pouring out into those blankets? All that…” he shuddered, “aroma you added from pissing and shitting your pants? Sauce for the meat, as far as insects are concerned. ‘Come for the bouquet, stay for the banquet’ is, I imagine, what they insects are thinking. Insofar as insects think, of course. They’re just Nature’s little eating and pooping machines, really.”

He took another long sip of the icewater, watching her watch him drink it, practically tasting the venom in the glare of that one good eye. “You know, it should really be a fascinating question for you to ponder.” he added casually. “Will you die first or decompose first? Quite the little race involved there. Slow one, though. But a race, nonetheless. And to help even things out, of course -- don’t want to have you dying of thirst or starvation -- I’ll be bringing down some food and water for you. Rich food, very thick, very salty. Clean water. Of course, you’ll want to be mindful that you don’t drink the water too quickly. Know what happens when a person eats very rich, very starchy, very salty food without enough water?”

He lifted a hand, moved it through the air -- he watched her to make sure that one good eye followed his hand, that she was seeing what he was describing. “Normally, when a person has enough water, their shit moves through their inner workings pretty easily. But as you cut down on the water, well…” his fingers curled, his hand moved more slowly. “And then, after a good long while of that…” his fingers curled tightly into a fist and his hand stopped moving completely. “That’s why bread and water was a punishment in the old time militaries of the world. I tried it myself, about a month before you found yourself here, just to make sure the old stories are true. Ohhh, they are. It’s very, very painful. But the worst part is, dear… in a situation like yours, everything is going to back up. Your body will fill with toxins it can’t rid itself of.” he grinned broadly, uncontrollably, at her look of fear and disgust. “So! Who’s hungry?” She tilted her head back and wailed with a voice so hoarse it was little more than a tortured exhalation.
 
WOW!!!!! Bravo!!!

TS, you have outdone yourself! I LOVED it! I could easily see myself reading that story in one of my fave mags--Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Seriously!

Have you ever tried submitting anything to them?
 
I'm generally so cash-poor that I don't work on spec, Friday. If I had that luxury, I surely would. I think I need what they used to have during the Renaissance -- a patron. But, if I were to toot my own horn just a bit... yeah, that's some Poe type stuff there. :D
 
Normally I would try to find something obnoxius to say about this, but I will honesty say that I can't. That was a very well written story. :cool:

Congrads dude, I didn't know you had it in you :techman:
 
We need to have a little benefit for our author, I'm thinking.

Let's dream up something interesting.
 
And I'd LOVE to see this thing fleshed out properly.

You see what I did there?
 
Okay, well just as an FYI -- I have two half-page letters that have to be written tonight for a customer who was a naughty boy and has to do "homework" as part of his sentencing... then I have about 3 full 8x11 pages of revisions to execute on a story for one of my regular customers, an online publisher of smutty stories. Then there will be a Part 4 of Jack's story.
 
I also have to finish Act I of a supernatural thriller centered around an underserviced American urban legend. That film already has some pretty strong interest from a close friend of mine who just secured himself a job at NBC Universal in their Acquisitions and International Distribution division. There is a very strong possibility that said project will catapult me out of the small time and into the Big Leagues. I just might become the next Wes Craven, and I have no problem what-so-bloody-ever with that possibility. :)
 
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