Damaged (21 page)

"Yes!"

It came closer, closer… until it was an inch from his eye. Pete tilted his head back as far as it would go. Adam's finger came off the trigger and the drill silenced. He burst out laughing.

Pete stared at him, unsure… then he smiled and laughed with Adam. "I knew it was a joke! I knew it! Come on out, guys, joke's over."

Pete continued laughing, but Adam stopped, stabbed the button, and shoved the screaming bit into Pete's right shoulder—the same spot where he'd punched Adam three years ago. The victim’s laughs switched to screams. The pain was unlike anything he'd ever felt before. Like being pinched by a power-lifter with stone-hard fingers dipped in molten metal.

"
Mothafucka
!"

Adam immediately stopped the torture. Pete’s outcry was far too loud, so he let go of the power-drill and went for the Duct tape. The drill dangled heavily out of Pete's arm.

"Please, somebody, help me! Please!"

The appalling
sound
of tape stretching… then the terrifying sight of a maniac coming forward with a makeshift muzzle….

"No! No! No! Noooo!"

Adam wrapped the tape around his head numerous times, cutting off some of Pete's circulation. "Shut the fuck up, pussy!" Adam demanded. "How's it feel? I said
how's it feel!
"

Adam could not exactly decipher his response— "Mmmm-mmmurrrrz."

It hurts?

"And that's nothing yet, my friend! That's only the beginning."

Pete grunted and groaned as he watched Adam the whole time. Sweat sprouted from the victims’ facial pores and ran down his face in beads. He looked more afraid than Erica had. Adam, on the other hand, felt indestructible. He grabbed the drill handle and said, "Time for it to come out now!"

Pete’s eyes bulged. "Mmmmmm!"

An index finger pressed the button. Instead of actually pulling it back out, Adam pushed it in. The bit chewed through more tissue, two muscles, then hit something hard. Bone. The sound was unmistakable. Pete jerked violently from side to side in the chair. His eyes closed, opened, closed, opened, and the tape barely silenced his intense screams.

"Mmmmmmm! Nmmmmmo! Mmmmon't!"

"Just a little bit farther, yes. What's the matter? I thought you could stand pain? That's what you told me in school! You told me you were tougher than everybody in Blake. Since when did you become as weak as me?"

Adam's finger came off the drill. Grinning, he yanked the stationary bit out of his arm. Blood spurted from the small dark hole like warm juice. Traces of bone were stuck around the grooves of the bit.

"Mmmmmm! Mmmmmm!"

"What's that? I didn't hear you?" Adam cuffed his ear with a hand.

"Mmmmmmuuuuuu meeeeee moooooo!"

"I'm sorry, I still didn't get that. Maybe if you were nicer to me, you wouldn't be in this position. Now, don't you wish you were a better person? It doesn't take much effort. In fact, it takes less effort to say ‘what's up’ instead of ‘
hey, mothafuckin dumbass bitch’.
don't you think?" Adam knelt down in front of him. Pete tried to kick him in the face. Missed.

Adam stood up again and laughed. "That's what the fuck I'm talking about. How about we go for a more tender area?"

The drill rotated at 4000 R.P.M. Adam slowly moved it toward Pete's face. Pete struggled, screamed and kicked. The sharp, bloody spike zoned in on his right eye. He could feel the air of the spinning monster against his face. Sweat puddled and streamed.

"How does it feel? Oh, God, how does it feel now? Yes! Yes! Yes!"

Pete did all he could. He tried to fall back in the chair, but it was leaning against a wall. The twine was tied too tightly to break or wiggle through. Trace amounts of blood on the bit sprayed in every direction. The tip was now only an inch away… was only half an inch away… was—

—Pete tensed up like a stiff corpse. He jerked in the chair so harshly, Adam thought it was going to break.

"Shhhhh. Shhhhhh, it's okay. It's only your eye."

The bit punctured it right in the pupil. Blood spiraled, stained the walls, the ceiling, the floor, Adam's face. He continued laughing.

"Shhhh. It'll all be okay."

"Mooooooooo! Mo! Mo! Moooo!"

"Mo, mo, mo," Adam mocked, shoving the Black and Decker farther into the socket.

Pieces of white from the globe of the right eye, itself, shriveled up like potato skin from peeler. He was being screwed, in the most literal sense.

"You remember the time in the cafeteria when you threw that apple at my head and nearly knocked me out? And everyone laughed their asses off and pointed at me and made fun of me?
Well, that was fucking embarrassing! I didn't do shit to you to deserve it!"

"Mmmmm-mmmmmommmmyy."

"Your mommy?
Or you're sorry?"

The deadly machine stopped running. Drool oozed from the lower part of the Duct tape around Pete's mouth. He wasn't crying but was whimpering. Smiling, Adam let go of the handle. The weight of the drill was
too heavy
for Pete's eye to support. What was left of his eye popped out of the socket and fell onto his lap. A ravaged red and white bulb impaled by a drill bit. Attached to the back of the eye was a piece of tissue that looked like a small tongue.

Adam made a
yuck
face. He could see into the black cavity and into Pete's mindless brain. The bastard resembled a zombie. He drooped his head; then, from shock, passed out with Adam laughing in his face.

***

"Rise'n shine!" Adam said as he threw another bucket of cold water in his face.

"Oh my God! I just had the worst fuckin’ dream—" Pete said as he opened his eye. It was not a nightmare. The tape was no longer wrapped around his mouth.

"What did you fuckin’ do to me, man?"

"Nothing you didn't do to me."

"What are you saying? I didn't torture you—"

Adam interrupted: "Yes, you did."

"I didn't abduct you, tie you to a chair, and use a drill on you."

"The pain you made me feel makes what I'm doing to you look like a paper cut."

"I know. I'm a bad person. I got some problems, and I know, I do treat others like shit sometimes—"

"—All the time."

"Okay, all the time. What do you want out of me? We're even now, dude. We're cool, aren't we? I'll be cool with you from now on. Truce?"

Adam, who was sitting in a chair in front of him, extended his hand. "All right, I'll let you go."

"Uh, the ties, man—they're still tigh—tight. Can I ask you something? Do I look
real
fucked
up?"

Adam almost laughed again. "I cut your eye a little and your arm, but you'll live,
dude
."

Pete chuckled. "They hurt sooo fucking bad. When I get home, I'm gonna drink them away and go to the hospital."

"Sounds good." Adam stood, turned around, and grabbed something off the shelf. Pete thought it was a pair of scissors. It was the drill.

"I've always heard that one of the worst, most scary pains in this world is a punctured lung." Adam squeezed the power button and shoved the rotating bit deep into Pete's chest.

Pete's remaining eye widened so far, Adam thought it, too, was going to fall out. Blood quickly filled a lung. Adam stepped back and watched as Pete struggled to breathe. He squirmed in the chair, desperate to escape, but wasn't going anywhere except to hell, as far as Judge McNicols was concerned. Pete gagged, choked and wheezed, but air was not getting in. Blood, however, was getting out. A good ounce or more shot from his piehole.

"I know it doesn't feel good, does it? Nothing you did to me felt good, either."

Pete yanked at the twine, cutting his wrists, and stomped at the ground with his feet, as if that would somehow bring in some oxygen. His mouth widened, closed, widened, closed. A fish out of water. Adam wondered when or if he was going to die.
I thought the brain died in seconds without oxygen. Or is that minutes?

Pete's heart pumped faster. His brain began to shut down. A haze of tie-dyed-like colors slowly brushed past his vision. The smiling Adam slowly faded away like a phantom.
If I could just get one breath, I could survive!

Still, no air got in or out. His will to fight was dwindling away as surely as the world around him. The pain wasn't really bad anymore, nor was the fear. Dying was the worst part. Death was the release.

"See you in hell," Adam said.

Pete tensed up and went limp. He was over.

Two down, about 14 more to go.

Adam sent Pete's body out into the Ohio River as a sign of warning, but not without first cutting him open gruesomely with a pair of scissors.

He ended up having another peaceful night’s sleep.

***

Adam awoke at 8:06 A.M., put on his coat, and walked to Starbucks alone. He had never been there before and had never really been a coffee drinker, but he felt compelled to do it suddenly.

Today was one of the coldest days he could remember. The temperature was probably three or four, but the wind chill made it feel like five degrees below zero. Snow fell from the gray clouds above in tiny, scattered flakes. The streets were as dead as Erica and Pete, car-wise. Nobody with any sense wanted to be in this weather, Adam thought.

"I'm not going tonight. I'm locking my doors and getting my pepper spray ready," a young, semi-attractive girl said to one of her co-workers at Starbucks.

The manager, a fat, big-headed older man, responded: "I know what you mean. You know that in almost ten years, not one person in this town has been murdered? Till now. And two high school students."

"Yeah, and I just graduated last year. I'm sure glad I'm out now."

They're talking about meeeee!

Adam walked to the counter. The girl turned to him and said, "Hello, may I get you something?"

"Just a regular coffee. Black."
Oh, now you're a hard worker,
he joked to himself.

She got it for him. "Hey, you didn't happen to hear about—" she began to say.

Adam nodded. "I heard about the girl. Why, did someone else die?"

"Yes. Body washed up in the backyard of an officer, of all places. Terrible. You don't go to Blake, do you?" she asked.

"Actually, I do. Man, that's crazy."

"Be very careful. Lock your doors, especially at night."

"I will." Adam paid for the coffee and left.

The wind that brushed past him as he joined the outside world was as cold as ice. He was dressed for the Arctic and was still shivering. Heavy steam boiled from his mouth. A paper-thin layer of ice covered the ground, making it an improvised skating rink. Adam had to walk slowly down the hill so that he didn't fall and bust his ass. The nearby highways were as lonely as the streets in a ghost town, and the traffic lights stayed green, for the most part. Adam soon met with the railroad tracks and headed back home.

"Hey you!"

Adam froze, and not just because of the temperature.
Oh, shit, now I'm going to prison for the rest of my life.

"Scared you, didn't I?"

It was just Chris. He was sitting on one of the abandoned cars, smoking a cigarette. "You tensed up like someone shot you in the back. Did you think I was the killer?"

Adam turned and smiled. "No, I thought you were a cop."

Chris jumped down and flicked his cigarette onto the ground. "Have you heard about Pete? I bet you're glad. I sure am. That dude was a fucking idiot. He deserved it."

"I'm sure not sad about it," Adam said.

"Hey, you wanna go down to Ballie's house?"

"You mean the cop?" Adam swallowed.

"Yeah, where they found his body. It might still be down there. I want to see how grim it is."

Adam thought about it long and hard.
I get to see how people will react to my handiwork…

Adam nodded and they went.

***

Deputy Shane Ballie's backyard was stuffed from corner to corner with policemen, coroners, forensic scientists, and rescue personnel. Neither Adam nor Chris were allowed past the DO NOT CROSS tape and the police barricade blocking off entry to the crime scene half a block away.

"Jesus," Chris said, shocked.

Nobody was more shocked than He—the one who’d created the havoc—Adam. He expected to see a few cops, an ambulance, and a stretcher with Pete's carcass on it... not a town in uproar. A mob of people even stood by the blockade, trying to see what was going on. Emmert Gleason, the officer manning the crowd, encouraged them to back off.

"Come on, folks, there's nothing for you to see here."

"What happened? Did this have something to do with that girl that died the other day?" Roger Niamo wondered. He was the old geezer with inch-thick glasses who lived four houses down from Adam. The man was dressed for Antarctica.