Page 12 of Three
“Basically, a grill…for roasting people. It looked like an iron grid and was placed over a fire or burning coals. Some people were even coated in oil first to ensure proper…um, broiling. But they weren’t eaten afterward…probably.”
“On the contrary, I bet my Prada re-nylon backpack they were culinary masterpieces.” Lori’s teasing comment makes me smile and frown at the same time. The small brunet, fashionable twink always has that contradictory effect on me.
“I prefer more creative techniques,” Uri mumbles.
“Torture, apparently, lives on in the minds of creative people,” Sari states. “I read once about a terrifying, but I admit, creative form of torture. A hungry or diseased rat is placed in a bucket on a person’s bare stomach or chest. The bucket is then heated from the outside, forcing the agitated rat to chew its way through the unfortunate person’s flesh…and any organs it happens to encounter on its way out.”
“Don’t like rats, even less diseased ones,” Raph says.
“You’d love naked mole-rats. They’re wrinkly and ugly,” I tell the donor, but he insolently grunts, earning a well-deserved hair pulling from me. “Their sense of smell and hearing are highly developed since they are almost blind.”
“They’ve a unique mechanism for cancer resistance and can live a very long life. I wrote a paper on them in college,” Sari offers his scientific point of view.
I do really find them interesting because they developed a biophysical mechanism to shut down the activation of sensory neurons that drive pain—they evolved pain insensitivity. Kind of like I did, but for them, it was over years of evolution. For me, it was a defensive mechanism, which turned out to be defective.
“Don’t like rats,” Raph repeats.
“Never hurt an animal,” Linda reminds us of our code.
“Unless it’s to ease the pain,” Lori adds, and there’s something in his voice, a darker tone I’ve never heard before. “I’m up to try it, though,since we’d give the rat a raw-gut buffet he’d thoroughly enjoy. What do you say, Red Beard?” he asks me, turning into his creepy, teasing self again.
“Where are you going to find a rat?” Michael asks him, making me sigh while I pull hard on my beard. The sting feels good, but doesn’t lessen my exasperation.
“Anywhere. We live in Chicago,” Gabe replies.
“Bob’s your uncle,” Lori utters. This is another of his grandmother’s British sayings that nobody really gets.
My donor’s eyelids are slowly closing. He’s lost quite a bit of blood, but come on, surely not enough. I grab a couple of skewers and slide one all the way through his shoulder. That forces his eyes to open, and his mouth as well—the screech he lets out is deafening.
Nevertheless, I’m savoring every single sensation in its entirety, dreading the moment I won’t be able to feel them again.
“Answer my question, or I’ll turn you into a colander. Why were you after Grizzly Bear?” I threaten him, twirling another skewer between my fingers in a warning motion.
“He needed to die,” he chokes out.
So they wanted him dead. It wasn’t just a revenge beating. Fuck, his brother's wife must have cleaned him out.
“Here is another question, what did Phoenix want from you?”
The donor starts shaking his head. He looks frightened, more so at hearing that name than the sight of me, the person who is torturing him.
I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know who Phoenix is, but they contacted him. That’s all I could find, and I needmore.
“How much are you attached to your right foot?” I ask before letting the machete cut through the air and get stuck in his ankle. He howls and sobs as I repeat the movement a couple of times before the foot comes off.
I wipe some sweat from my forehead, well aware of the warm, wet, skin-to-skin friction. My bruised cheek throbs, reminding me of the alley and my bear. Wait, since when is hemyanything?
I focus on the whimpering shithead in front of me. “You still have the other foot for three, two, one.” As soon as I finish the countdown, the machete is up in the air again.
“Wait!” the donor chokes out, saliva drooling down his chin and dropping on his shaky knees. “Phoenix gave me a time and place to meet,” he slurs.
“And?” I prompt, impatiently waving the machete again.
“Didn’t come. Waited f-for an hour.”
Is he telling the truth? “Uri?” I ask my bro since he’s the most skilled torturer among us.
“Seems sincere.”
