Troll Kingdom
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TKR Story Hour: The Lady In The Basement
- Thread starter jack
- Start date
The Question
Eternal
Well, you mark my words, Jibbles aul' son: I am the literary scion of Poe, Lovecraft and King; the cinematic torch-bearer of Craven and Raimi. I won't have a deal like this running for very much longer. Jack's got his custom short story. How many people will be able to say they've got an item like that depends on how many people gird up their loins, as it were, and hit up my email with their wish-list and contribution. Now is the time for all good men (and ladies, let's not forget) to seize the day. You've got an opportunity in front of you now -- five years from now, you'll be watching interviews with me on national television and wishing you'd jumped when you could.
Tootin' my own horn? Like Dizzie goddamned Gillespie, yes, you bet. Is my work worthy? You've read it, you tell me.
Jibbles
Shit Lord, Esq.
You still care enough to respond to me, Jacklerchat.
I'm good at getting others to feed me. Are your feet wet yet? (I can pull "see what I did there?"s too)
The Saint - many, many people in the world at good at X skill.
Not even the most renowned and best are the best. The best is a title for those that struck a low probability of being "the best".
Do you follow?
Hopefully you'll be one of the few, I wish you the best in that regard.
I'm good at getting others to feed me. Are your feet wet yet? (I can pull "see what I did there?"s too)
The Saint - many, many people in the world at good at X skill.
Not even the most renowned and best are the best. The best is a title for those that struck a low probability of being "the best".
Do you follow?
Hopefully you'll be one of the few, I wish you the best in that regard.
The Question
Eternal
Oh, I know I'm not "the best" -- but I also know that I'm as good as any of the best, if you see the distinction I'm making there.
Loktar
Pinata Whacker
I work for free and in return I get to see a free dance recital by the members of Retard Half-wits.
Jibbles
Shit Lord, Esq.
Hmm. Did you realize that "Retard Half-wit" is redundant?
Sit down and take better notes at Trolled Kingdom Remedial.
Something tells me you don't get it. How's it feel that the "redundantly stupid" person is besting you? This is the part where you neg. rep. me and inform the board that you feel my post is "lame".
:bigass:
Sit down and take better notes at Trolled Kingdom Remedial.
Something tells me you don't get it. How's it feel that the "redundantly stupid" person is besting you? This is the part where you neg. rep. me and inform the board that you feel my post is "lame".
:bigass:
The Question
Eternal
Time for me to head to bed. Hopefully Jack will have had a chance to read and share the full version of his story tomorrow. I'm looking forward to the reactions to the final product. :bigass:
Jibbles
Shit Lord, Esq.
Now to sleep. That's where I'm really a viKing(you saw what I did there, right?)
No flame, just for the lulz.
Loktar
Pinata Whacker
Yes, just like you.
Jibbles
Shit Lord, Esq.
No, you.
jack
The Legendary Troll King
The Finished Product. Ready to be published. I'm completely fucking psyched.
October 7th, 2011
It’s taken awhile. All of this has taken so much time. I thought that after awhile, I
wouldn’t care anymore about what she did. I won’t use her name in here. Smarter that
way. (strikethrough)She’s already done enough to(/strikethrough) I finally found her,
that’s the important thing. She’s so good at pushing buttons. So lazy about cleaning up the trail of people she’s lied to. None of them knew what they were helping me do, but they were all only too happy to help. Now she’s down there. I don’t know how I feel about that. She’s down there, and I don’t know whether I’m afraid or giddy. My hands are shaking so bad it’s hard to write in this notebook, but I want to remember this. I want to get all the little details that fade away. I want to keep them all. I’ve earned them.
I had the cellar already set up and waiting for its new guest. I don’t know who the
owners of this place are. Were. It looks like it’s been abandoned for at least ten years,
maybe twenty. The front is completely boarded up, the yard -- if there ever was a yard -- it must have went back to being prairie before they even left. This house is filthy but I don’t feel like I should clean any of it up. I don’t want anyone to guess too early that there’s life in here again. Plastic tarp on the couch is about all I’m going to allow myself. There’s a stream about a quarter mile south I’ve been getting water from. The water is cold and clear, but I don’t want to take any chances. The charcoal filter works fine at making sure the water is as healthy as it looks. It would almost figure that I would finally make her pay for what she’s done just to have the universe step in and get me in the process with some water borne parasite or something. The universe is just a big old prankster like that.
I have to remember not to leave these notes laying here. I need to make a point
of that with myself. Almost time to charge the lantern’s batteries. Tomorrow the fun starts for real.
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.
October 7th, 2011
It’s taken awhile. All of this has taken so much time. I thought that after awhile, I
wouldn’t care anymore about what she did. I won’t use her name in here. Smarter that
way. (strikethrough)She’s already done enough to(/strikethrough) I finally found her,
that’s the important thing. She’s so good at pushing buttons. So lazy about cleaning up the trail of people she’s lied to. None of them knew what they were helping me do, but they were all only too happy to help. Now she’s down there. I don’t know how I feel about that. She’s down there, and I don’t know whether I’m afraid or giddy. My hands are shaking so bad it’s hard to write in this notebook, but I want to remember this. I want to get all the little details that fade away. I want to keep them all. I’ve earned them.
I had the cellar already set up and waiting for its new guest. I don’t know who the
owners of this place are. Were. It looks like it’s been abandoned for at least ten years,
maybe twenty. The front is completely boarded up, the yard -- if there ever was a yard -- it must have went back to being prairie before they even left. This house is filthy but I don’t feel like I should clean any of it up. I don’t want anyone to guess too early that there’s life in here again. Plastic tarp on the couch is about all I’m going to allow myself. There’s a stream about a quarter mile south I’ve been getting water from. The water is cold and clear, but I don’t want to take any chances. The charcoal filter works fine at making sure the water is as healthy as it looks. It would almost figure that I would finally make her pay for what she’s done just to have the universe step in and get me in the process with some water borne parasite or something. The universe is just a big old prankster like that.
I have to remember not to leave these notes laying here. I need to make a point
of that with myself. Almost time to charge the lantern’s batteries. Tomorrow the fun starts for real.
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.
jack
The Legendary Troll King
The Finished Product. Ready to be published. I'm completely fucking psyched.
October 7th, 2011
It’s taken awhile. All of this has taken so much time. I thought that after awhile, I
wouldn’t care anymore about what she did. I won’t use her name in here. Smarter that
way. (strikethrough)She’s already done enough to(/strikethrough) I finally found her,
that’s the important thing. She’s so good at pushing buttons. So lazy about cleaning up the trail of people she’s lied to. None of them knew what they were helping me do, but they were all only too happy to help. Now she’s down there. I don’t know how I feel about that. She’s down there, and I don’t know whether I’m afraid or giddy. My hands are shaking so bad it’s hard to write in this notebook, but I want to remember this. I want to get all the little details that fade away. I want to keep them all. I’ve earned them.
I had the cellar already set up and waiting for its new guest. I don’t know who the
owners of this place are. Were. It looks like it’s been abandoned for at least ten years,
maybe twenty. The front is completely boarded up, the yard -- if there ever was a yard -- it must have went back to being prairie before they even left. This house is filthy but I don’t feel like I should clean any of it up. I don’t want anyone to guess too early that there’s life in here again. Plastic tarp on the couch is about all I’m going to allow myself. There’s a stream about a quarter mile south I’ve been getting water from. The water is cold and clear, but I don’t want to take any chances. The charcoal filter works fine at making sure the water is as healthy as it looks. It would almost figure that I would finally make her pay for what she’s done just to have the universe step in and get me in the process with some water borne parasite or something. The universe is just a big old prankster like that.
I have to remember not to leave these notes laying here. I need to make a point
of that with myself. Almost time to charge the lantern’s batteries. Tomorrow the fun starts for real.
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.
October 7th, 2011
It’s taken awhile. All of this has taken so much time. I thought that after awhile, I
wouldn’t care anymore about what she did. I won’t use her name in here. Smarter that
way. (strikethrough)She’s already done enough to(/strikethrough) I finally found her,
that’s the important thing. She’s so good at pushing buttons. So lazy about cleaning up the trail of people she’s lied to. None of them knew what they were helping me do, but they were all only too happy to help. Now she’s down there. I don’t know how I feel about that. She’s down there, and I don’t know whether I’m afraid or giddy. My hands are shaking so bad it’s hard to write in this notebook, but I want to remember this. I want to get all the little details that fade away. I want to keep them all. I’ve earned them.
I had the cellar already set up and waiting for its new guest. I don’t know who the
owners of this place are. Were. It looks like it’s been abandoned for at least ten years,
maybe twenty. The front is completely boarded up, the yard -- if there ever was a yard -- it must have went back to being prairie before they even left. This house is filthy but I don’t feel like I should clean any of it up. I don’t want anyone to guess too early that there’s life in here again. Plastic tarp on the couch is about all I’m going to allow myself. There’s a stream about a quarter mile south I’ve been getting water from. The water is cold and clear, but I don’t want to take any chances. The charcoal filter works fine at making sure the water is as healthy as it looks. It would almost figure that I would finally make her pay for what she’s done just to have the universe step in and get me in the process with some water borne parasite or something. The universe is just a big old prankster like that.
I have to remember not to leave these notes laying here. I need to make a point
of that with myself. Almost time to charge the lantern’s batteries. Tomorrow the fun starts for real.
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.
jack
The Legendary Troll King
Part 2.
October 13th, 2011
I don’t think I’ve ever had this much fun. I wish I had thought to bring a camera
out here to get snapshots of the looks she’s had on her face. On second thought, it’s
better that I didn’t. I wish I didn’t have to be so fucking careful about this. I wish I could just cut loose and go totally nuts, but that would be suicide. This isn’t gonna be a pyrrhic victory.
I found a mattress in the laundry room this morning, and it was crawling with
bedbugs. That means that somebody has been here some time in the last year.
Everything I’ve been able to look up says they only live about that long without
somebody to munch on. Hard to do a lot of checking on that from a phone, though,
especially with reception as piss poor as it is this far out in the boondocks. All that really means is that I need to be really careful with how long I use this place and making damn sure to not leave a trace of what happens here. That means no blood. Damn, I hate having to be so careful.
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, crescentmoon
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.
October 13th, 2011
I don’t think I’ve ever had this much fun. I wish I had thought to bring a camera
out here to get snapshots of the looks she’s had on her face. On second thought, it’s
better that I didn’t. I wish I didn’t have to be so fucking careful about this. I wish I could just cut loose and go totally nuts, but that would be suicide. This isn’t gonna be a pyrrhic victory.
I found a mattress in the laundry room this morning, and it was crawling with
bedbugs. That means that somebody has been here some time in the last year.
Everything I’ve been able to look up says they only live about that long without
somebody to munch on. Hard to do a lot of checking on that from a phone, though,
especially with reception as piss poor as it is this far out in the boondocks. All that really means is that I need to be really careful with how long I use this place and making damn sure to not leave a trace of what happens here. That means no blood. Damn, I hate having to be so careful.
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, crescentmoon
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.
jack
The Legendary Troll King
Part 3.
October 19th, 2011
Everything is just about ready for the main event. Not the finale, just the main event. I can’t get this damn grin off my face. Remembering how bad she stinks helps with that, though. She has to have pissed herself and shit herself a lot by now and you can really smell it. Just opening the cellar door last night it hit me like a wall of stink. The leather straps on her wrists are going to have to be burned, probably the same for her ankles, although I wasn’t going to get that close to her feet even if she was asleep. She’s rubbed the skin right off parts of her wrists trying to loosen the things, and her forearms are looking pretty raw, too. That has to hurt. I wonder how much of her crying is from what she thinks I’ll do to her and how much is just from the skinned wrists. It would probably be a good idea to keep an eye on that. I don’t know if a person can actually nick an artery doing that, but if they could, she’s putting in a world class effort at doing it.
I’m guessing that with that much pain, tomorrow morning is a good time to cut her loose of the chair and give her a friendly nudge into her new “bed.” LOL
I’m going to have to sleep light tonight. Don’t want to get interrupted before tomorrow’s festivities.
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.
October 19th, 2011
Everything is just about ready for the main event. Not the finale, just the main event. I can’t get this damn grin off my face. Remembering how bad she stinks helps with that, though. She has to have pissed herself and shit herself a lot by now and you can really smell it. Just opening the cellar door last night it hit me like a wall of stink. The leather straps on her wrists are going to have to be burned, probably the same for her ankles, although I wasn’t going to get that close to her feet even if she was asleep. She’s rubbed the skin right off parts of her wrists trying to loosen the things, and her forearms are looking pretty raw, too. That has to hurt. I wonder how much of her crying is from what she thinks I’ll do to her and how much is just from the skinned wrists. It would probably be a good idea to keep an eye on that. I don’t know if a person can actually nick an artery doing that, but if they could, she’s putting in a world class effort at doing it.
I’m guessing that with that much pain, tomorrow morning is a good time to cut her loose of the chair and give her a friendly nudge into her new “bed.” LOL
I’m going to have to sleep light tonight. Don’t want to get interrupted before tomorrow’s festivities.
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.
jack
The Legendary Troll King
Part 3.
October 19th, 2011
Everything is just about ready for the main event. Not the finale, just the main event. I can’t get this damn grin off my face. Remembering how bad she stinks helps with that, though. She has to have pissed herself and shit herself a lot by now and you can really smell it. Just opening the cellar door last night it hit me like a wall of stink. The leather straps on her wrists are going to have to be burned, probably the same for her ankles, although I wasn’t going to get that close to her feet even if she was asleep. She’s rubbed the skin right off parts of her wrists trying to loosen the things, and her forearms are looking pretty raw, too. That has to hurt. I wonder how much of her crying is from what she thinks I’ll do to her and how much is just from the skinned wrists. It would probably be a good idea to keep an eye on that. I don’t know if a person can actually nick an artery doing that, but if they could, she’s putting in a world class effort at doing it.
I’m guessing that with that much pain, tomorrow morning is a good time to cut her loose of the chair and give her a friendly nudge into her new “bed.” LOL
I’m going to have to sleep light tonight. Don’t want to get interrupted before tomorrow’s festivities.
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.
October 19th, 2011
Everything is just about ready for the main event. Not the finale, just the main event. I can’t get this damn grin off my face. Remembering how bad she stinks helps with that, though. She has to have pissed herself and shit herself a lot by now and you can really smell it. Just opening the cellar door last night it hit me like a wall of stink. The leather straps on her wrists are going to have to be burned, probably the same for her ankles, although I wasn’t going to get that close to her feet even if she was asleep. She’s rubbed the skin right off parts of her wrists trying to loosen the things, and her forearms are looking pretty raw, too. That has to hurt. I wonder how much of her crying is from what she thinks I’ll do to her and how much is just from the skinned wrists. It would probably be a good idea to keep an eye on that. I don’t know if a person can actually nick an artery doing that, but if they could, she’s putting in a world class effort at doing it.
I’m guessing that with that much pain, tomorrow morning is a good time to cut her loose of the chair and give her a friendly nudge into her new “bed.” LOL
I’m going to have to sleep light tonight. Don’t want to get interrupted before tomorrow’s festivities.
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.
jack
The Legendary Troll King
Part 4.
October 24th, 2011:
OMG that was amazing! The sound of the shovel when it slapped her upside the
head almost made me piss myself laughing! BONGGGG! LOL! I got a look at the spot
under the chair -- had to throw her shoe in with her cause it fell off when I smacked her
-- and there were only a few drops of blood, so I guess she must have stopped trying to
get out of the straps. I don’t know how to put in words how satisfying that is. She has
given up. That feels SO good. The bedbugs are keeping things lively. She was still
thrashing her head around and screaming when I left, but I guess she must have
screamed herself hoarse behind the “gag” already. Well… dirty boxer shorts tied in
place with a bandanna. How’s that for a “gag”? LOL
I need to give some thought about what to do next. Can’t leave her down there
obviously. Somebody found this place before me and squatted here. Even if somebody
hadn’t, I found this place. So it’s a sure bet somebody else will come along again. Don’t
want them finding her down there all half eaten by bugs. She’d probably hop right up
and spin them some kind of story too knowing her. Night of the Living Sob Story. LOL K
time for some serious planning.
There was no need to step quietly down the stairs now. This would be the last
time. The sun was down, but for once, it was warm in the cellar. He rubbed his temple in
puzzlement at that; there was the small portable heater upstairs in the decrepit living
room, but it was kept low, and anyway, heat rises...
The peculiar warmth of the cellar drifted from his attention as another sensation,
unpleasant and almost overwhelming, demanded his attention. It was the smell. It
wasn’t just human waste -- it was human decay. The low, horrible sound of what must
have been squadrons of flies filtered out of the darkness to his ears. He clapped a hand
over his mouth and nose, the thin barrier of the bandanna doing nothing to mute or even
dull the stench now. “Oh, God...” his voice was pained, muffled.
The job was the job. It had to be done. He couldn’t leave a trace of the goings-on
here, and he sure as shit wasn’t about to leave a... was she a corpse? As he drew
reluctantly nearer, she turned her head at the sound of his footsteps on the dirt floor and
his face stretched, twisted with the overwhelming, simultaneous urges to laugh and to
retch at what he saw.
Her dark hair lay plastered in matted strings on her forehead and around her
temples, the flesh of her forehead pasty, the color of death. One muddy eye stared at
him with the dull half life of a dumb animal that is dying and knows it. A trail of viscous
fluid had leaked from her nose on that side and chased the edge of her upper lip. She
had vomited, too, a thick coating of brownish black gunk coating her chin and part of the
blankets. Flies seemed almost to dance on the congealed mess.
But it was the other side of her face that had flashed that collision of glee and
revulsion onto his face. Blood so dark it seemed black in the harsh rust-orange light of
the lantern caked gaping craters of flesh carved out of her cheek by battalions of slick,
squirming maggots.
And where that eye had been almost two weeks ago, there was now the faintest
outline of a white, milky residue. So voracious had the tiny attackers been, and with her
bundled and buried, helpless to stop them, they had attacked and destroyed the
eyeball, feasting now in its nearly empty socket.
She must have screamed that hoarse, guttural whisper of a scream all through
the days and nights he’d spent writing, sleeping, eating; while he’d been upstairs or, by
night, out in the field cleaning his few belongings and himself by the stream, she had
been slowly emptying the huge plastic tub of bread and gravy he’d left her for food,
even more slowly emptying its twin filled with water.
He looked to the thick plastic straws that lay where her lips and tongue could
barely reach. The straw for the water was clean enough. The straw for the food, like her,
was crawling with maggots and beetles. Which meant that when she wanted to eat...
she would had to have eaten them first. Despite the rolling of his stomach, he laughed
at that.
She had to have been in unimaginable pain. The thick, rich food mixed with so
little water would no doubt have done its work by now, solidifying into an immovable
paste inside her guts. It would have been enough to double her up in agony, he
imagined -- except that she couldn’t double up. Forced flat as she was, there was no
way to stave off the mercilessly crushing fist of her own organs striving and failing to
eject the waste from her body. The sickening pallor of her skin told the story of full body
sepsis, as did her rapid, shallow breathing.
“Golly, dear.” he remarked, “You look like caca!” Her lips moved, idly, and no
sound came out. Her remaining eye rolled slowly in her head, from side to side, up, then
down again. He took hold of the shovel and got to work.
It took half an hour to dig her out; the ground had grown colder, harder. He finally
saw the dark, drab greenish-gray of wool just as the stench of rot grew so intense it
nearly drove him back away from the excavation. Fighting back the urge to vomit, he
retreated to the shelf where he’d so many days ago thunked various entertainingly
sharp implements down on the wood and retrieved a pair of thick, elbow length rubber
gloves.
He used the small hand scythe to rip and tear at the thick layers of wool, fighting
desperately not to void his stomach into the seething mass of maggots and beetles that
the sharp blade discovered. Turning his attention to her ankles, he sliced through the
thick leather belt that cinched them tightly together. Finally, he was able to reach down
and seize hold of her shoulders with both hands, thanking Christ for the thickness of
the rubber between his skin and the filth they pulled at.
He straightened his legs and it took no small effort to get her upright. Her eye
fixed itself on him for just a moment, then rolled away again -- her whole body seemed
to heave slightly, and he turned her away from him barely in time as a thick gush of
blackish substance tumbled from her mouth, down her chin and onto her already thickly
crusted blouse. She began to tremble violently, a full body shudder that felt to him as if it
went on forever.
He didn’t remember how he managed to get the shambling thing up the stairs;
nor did he remember precisely how long it took, though it seemed to him, inhaling that
godawful stench of shit and rot and vomit, that it must have been days. He half
staggered, half danced with her as he guided her out through the creaking cellar door
and into the kitchen -- across the filthy floor, barren but for bits of ages-old garbage that
maintained their defiant occupancy.
The flies swarmed about her ruined face still as he maneuvered her out the back
door; they orbited her stringy hair, necrotizing face and gaping eye socket like tiny
astronauts, confused and angered by the inexplicable relocation of a whole planet of
food. He continued to guide her out past the remains of a knee high wooden fence that
jutted from the ground like a jaw full of yellowed, broken fangs... and then let go.
He stood watching for a moment to see if she would stop -- to see if she would
turn around, or just fall over and finally die. She did none of those things. Instead, the
sounds of whispered half words spilling from ravaged, torn lips and falling into obscurity,
she continued to trundle forward through the tall, yellow grass.
He smirked, then chuckled darkly. “Happy Halloween, bitch.” he murmured, and
saluted her retreating back with one finger.
October 24th, 2011:
OMG that was amazing! The sound of the shovel when it slapped her upside the
head almost made me piss myself laughing! BONGGGG! LOL! I got a look at the spot
under the chair -- had to throw her shoe in with her cause it fell off when I smacked her
-- and there were only a few drops of blood, so I guess she must have stopped trying to
get out of the straps. I don’t know how to put in words how satisfying that is. She has
given up. That feels SO good. The bedbugs are keeping things lively. She was still
thrashing her head around and screaming when I left, but I guess she must have
screamed herself hoarse behind the “gag” already. Well… dirty boxer shorts tied in
place with a bandanna. How’s that for a “gag”? LOL
I need to give some thought about what to do next. Can’t leave her down there
obviously. Somebody found this place before me and squatted here. Even if somebody
hadn’t, I found this place. So it’s a sure bet somebody else will come along again. Don’t
want them finding her down there all half eaten by bugs. She’d probably hop right up
and spin them some kind of story too knowing her. Night of the Living Sob Story. LOL K
time for some serious planning.
There was no need to step quietly down the stairs now. This would be the last
time. The sun was down, but for once, it was warm in the cellar. He rubbed his temple in
puzzlement at that; there was the small portable heater upstairs in the decrepit living
room, but it was kept low, and anyway, heat rises...
The peculiar warmth of the cellar drifted from his attention as another sensation,
unpleasant and almost overwhelming, demanded his attention. It was the smell. It
wasn’t just human waste -- it was human decay. The low, horrible sound of what must
have been squadrons of flies filtered out of the darkness to his ears. He clapped a hand
over his mouth and nose, the thin barrier of the bandanna doing nothing to mute or even
dull the stench now. “Oh, God...” his voice was pained, muffled.
The job was the job. It had to be done. He couldn’t leave a trace of the goings-on
here, and he sure as shit wasn’t about to leave a... was she a corpse? As he drew
reluctantly nearer, she turned her head at the sound of his footsteps on the dirt floor and
his face stretched, twisted with the overwhelming, simultaneous urges to laugh and to
retch at what he saw.
Her dark hair lay plastered in matted strings on her forehead and around her
temples, the flesh of her forehead pasty, the color of death. One muddy eye stared at
him with the dull half life of a dumb animal that is dying and knows it. A trail of viscous
fluid had leaked from her nose on that side and chased the edge of her upper lip. She
had vomited, too, a thick coating of brownish black gunk coating her chin and part of the
blankets. Flies seemed almost to dance on the congealed mess.
But it was the other side of her face that had flashed that collision of glee and
revulsion onto his face. Blood so dark it seemed black in the harsh rust-orange light of
the lantern caked gaping craters of flesh carved out of her cheek by battalions of slick,
squirming maggots.
And where that eye had been almost two weeks ago, there was now the faintest
outline of a white, milky residue. So voracious had the tiny attackers been, and with her
bundled and buried, helpless to stop them, they had attacked and destroyed the
eyeball, feasting now in its nearly empty socket.
She must have screamed that hoarse, guttural whisper of a scream all through
the days and nights he’d spent writing, sleeping, eating; while he’d been upstairs or, by
night, out in the field cleaning his few belongings and himself by the stream, she had
been slowly emptying the huge plastic tub of bread and gravy he’d left her for food,
even more slowly emptying its twin filled with water.
He looked to the thick plastic straws that lay where her lips and tongue could
barely reach. The straw for the water was clean enough. The straw for the food, like her,
was crawling with maggots and beetles. Which meant that when she wanted to eat...
she would had to have eaten them first. Despite the rolling of his stomach, he laughed
at that.
She had to have been in unimaginable pain. The thick, rich food mixed with so
little water would no doubt have done its work by now, solidifying into an immovable
paste inside her guts. It would have been enough to double her up in agony, he
imagined -- except that she couldn’t double up. Forced flat as she was, there was no
way to stave off the mercilessly crushing fist of her own organs striving and failing to
eject the waste from her body. The sickening pallor of her skin told the story of full body
sepsis, as did her rapid, shallow breathing.
“Golly, dear.” he remarked, “You look like caca!” Her lips moved, idly, and no
sound came out. Her remaining eye rolled slowly in her head, from side to side, up, then
down again. He took hold of the shovel and got to work.
It took half an hour to dig her out; the ground had grown colder, harder. He finally
saw the dark, drab greenish-gray of wool just as the stench of rot grew so intense it
nearly drove him back away from the excavation. Fighting back the urge to vomit, he
retreated to the shelf where he’d so many days ago thunked various entertainingly
sharp implements down on the wood and retrieved a pair of thick, elbow length rubber
gloves.
He used the small hand scythe to rip and tear at the thick layers of wool, fighting
desperately not to void his stomach into the seething mass of maggots and beetles that
the sharp blade discovered. Turning his attention to her ankles, he sliced through the
thick leather belt that cinched them tightly together. Finally, he was able to reach down
and seize hold of her shoulders with both hands, thanking Christ for the thickness of
the rubber between his skin and the filth they pulled at.
He straightened his legs and it took no small effort to get her upright. Her eye
fixed itself on him for just a moment, then rolled away again -- her whole body seemed
to heave slightly, and he turned her away from him barely in time as a thick gush of
blackish substance tumbled from her mouth, down her chin and onto her already thickly
crusted blouse. She began to tremble violently, a full body shudder that felt to him as if it
went on forever.
He didn’t remember how he managed to get the shambling thing up the stairs;
nor did he remember precisely how long it took, though it seemed to him, inhaling that
godawful stench of shit and rot and vomit, that it must have been days. He half
staggered, half danced with her as he guided her out through the creaking cellar door
and into the kitchen -- across the filthy floor, barren but for bits of ages-old garbage that
maintained their defiant occupancy.
The flies swarmed about her ruined face still as he maneuvered her out the back
door; they orbited her stringy hair, necrotizing face and gaping eye socket like tiny
astronauts, confused and angered by the inexplicable relocation of a whole planet of
food. He continued to guide her out past the remains of a knee high wooden fence that
jutted from the ground like a jaw full of yellowed, broken fangs... and then let go.
He stood watching for a moment to see if she would stop -- to see if she would
turn around, or just fall over and finally die. She did none of those things. Instead, the
sounds of whispered half words spilling from ravaged, torn lips and falling into obscurity,
she continued to trundle forward through the tall, yellow grass.
He smirked, then chuckled darkly. “Happy Halloween, bitch.” he murmured, and
saluted her retreating back with one finger.
jack
The Legendary Troll King
Epilogue:
October 31st, 2011:
Well that’s it. It’s good to be back in civilization again. Too bad she can’t say that.
She can’t say much of anything anymore I guess. Hard to talk when you spent almost
two weeks eating a mix of a pound of bread and meat gravy with only 20 oz. of water a
day. The smell was so bad the bandanna didn’t help. And the way she looked was bad.
There’s all kinds of words for it but none of them are bad enough so what’s the
difference. It was real bad. I didn’t know there were flies down there but there were. The
bed bugs must have done a number on her cheek and her eye, the one that got all
bloody after I hit her with the shovel. It being dark all the time down there, I guess they
couldn’t tell night from day. They opened up a few good sores in her cheek and then the
just flies went to work on it. Looked like half of her face was just getting eaten, even her
eye. Maggots all over that whole side having a party. When I cut open the blankets I
about got knocked on my ass by the smell and the sight of all the little wrigglers in there
just feasting. It was the smell of a corpse, but she was still just barely alive. I didn’t want
to touch her but I had to get her up the stairs and out of the house. She tried to fight me
-- at least I think she did. It was either that or she was just trying to fall over so she could
die. I didn’t let her. I got her out back of the place and into that big fluffy prairie, then just
let go of her. I don’t know how much of a living thing she still was, cause she didn’t turn
around. She didn’t even try to talk. She just kept stumbling forward like a real life
zombie. The smell got to be too much and I bent over with my hands on my knees and
just puked like you wouldn’t believe.
Then I got the place cleaned up -- took big trash bags down into the cellar -- I
puked again down there, but it was on the blankets, blood and bugs and shit all over in
them. I got everything all bagged up and I still had dry heaves until I got out into the
night air again. I looked out back and she was farther away then, still shambling through
the grass. It was creepy. Looked like something out of a ghost story. I’m don’t know how
far she made it. Maybe as far as the creek. Nobody’s going to be drinking that water
anymore. Happy Halloween, bitch.
October 31st, 2011:
Well that’s it. It’s good to be back in civilization again. Too bad she can’t say that.
She can’t say much of anything anymore I guess. Hard to talk when you spent almost
two weeks eating a mix of a pound of bread and meat gravy with only 20 oz. of water a
day. The smell was so bad the bandanna didn’t help. And the way she looked was bad.
There’s all kinds of words for it but none of them are bad enough so what’s the
difference. It was real bad. I didn’t know there were flies down there but there were. The
bed bugs must have done a number on her cheek and her eye, the one that got all
bloody after I hit her with the shovel. It being dark all the time down there, I guess they
couldn’t tell night from day. They opened up a few good sores in her cheek and then the
just flies went to work on it. Looked like half of her face was just getting eaten, even her
eye. Maggots all over that whole side having a party. When I cut open the blankets I
about got knocked on my ass by the smell and the sight of all the little wrigglers in there
just feasting. It was the smell of a corpse, but she was still just barely alive. I didn’t want
to touch her but I had to get her up the stairs and out of the house. She tried to fight me
-- at least I think she did. It was either that or she was just trying to fall over so she could
die. I didn’t let her. I got her out back of the place and into that big fluffy prairie, then just
let go of her. I don’t know how much of a living thing she still was, cause she didn’t turn
around. She didn’t even try to talk. She just kept stumbling forward like a real life
zombie. The smell got to be too much and I bent over with my hands on my knees and
just puked like you wouldn’t believe.
Then I got the place cleaned up -- took big trash bags down into the cellar -- I
puked again down there, but it was on the blankets, blood and bugs and shit all over in
them. I got everything all bagged up and I still had dry heaves until I got out into the
night air again. I looked out back and she was farther away then, still shambling through
the grass. It was creepy. Looked like something out of a ghost story. I’m don’t know how
far she made it. Maybe as far as the creek. Nobody’s going to be drinking that water
anymore. Happy Halloween, bitch.
