D.O.A. Extreme Horror Anthology (18 page)

The pacing stopped. The voice was off to his right. 

“You are right handed, correct?”

Johnson nodded.

“For the sake of clarity, please verbalize all of your answers.”

“Yes, I am right handed.”

“Good, very good. Your answers should be as succinct as possible, yes or no where possible. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good. The rules state that you must answer every question. Now it is very important to remember, you must answer truthfully and you must answer correctly.”

The voice had continued to move until it was directly in front of him again. Johnson peered into the darkness still struggling to see the speaker.

“Which is more important, honesty or intelligence?”

“Uh, I am not sure,” Johnson stammered nervously. “They are both…”

The voice cut him off.

“Don’t worry. We have not started the game yet. I am just interested in your opinion. Let me phrase it a different way. Which is more abhorrent: someone who is wrong, or someone who deliberately lies?”

Johnson’s throat dried up. He rasped out his answer. “Lying is worse.”

“We agree. It is far better to be incorrect then deliberately deceitful. So, we come to the final rules of the game, the rules regarding punishment. If you answer a question incorrectly, you will lose a finger on your left hand. However, if you do know the answer and provide one which you know to be false, you will lose a finger from your right hand.”

Johnson sobbed quietly.

“Now remember, the rules state that you must answer every question. Failure to answer will be considered a lie of omission and will result in the same punishment as a spoken lie. If you are not sure about an answer, it is better to guess. If you are wrong, you will only lose part of your left hand.

“Bear in mind, by answering you at least have the possibility of providing a correct answer. Failure to answer is an assured wrong answer. It is better to chance an educated guess, just like the SATs.”

There was a slow scraping sound, like metal being drawn over stone. Johnson looked up. A long cruel looking knife gleamed in the light. The hand that held it was encased in a blue glove made of latex or rubber. The blade rose slowly until it was pointed at Johnson’s right eye. He pulled his head back as far as the chair would let him.

“Twenty questions, Mr. Johnson.  You have only to answer twenty questions. Of course, if you run out of digits we have to move to other parts.”

Johnson turned his head, pressing it into the seat back.

“Let’s begin.”

“How long have you lived at your current address?”

Johnson blinked. Was that really one of the twenty questions? Were they really going to be that easy?

He squeezed his eyes shut, wondering how accurate he needed to be? He had moved in the fall a few years ago. It had been after he had gotten his new job. He was due for a five year pay bump next month.

“Your answer please.”

“I have lived there for four years, ten months—”

He was stopped by a chuckle.

“There is no need to be that specific. Four years will suffice. I would have also accepted ‘almost five years.’ Don’t worry about these first few questions, they’re easy. If I need you to be precise, I will let you know.”

The voice sounded relaxed, almost charming.

“How long have you lived alone?”

The voice did not ask for precision, but in this case it would be easy to provide. He could answer down to the minute, if he knew the current date and time.

“About 18 months.”

“And before that?”

Johnson wondered if that counted as one of the questions. “Um, before that I was living with someone, Linda. She...she left.”

“Yes, she did.  How long has it been since you have been on a date?”

“A date?”

“Answering a question with a question is a stall tactic often used by people who are about fabricate their answer. Think very carefully about what you want your response to be. How long has it been since you have been on a date?”

“I haven’t really dated anyone. I don’t go out.”

Silence.

“Do you have to go out to be on a date?”

Seconds ticked by, then the realization hit him.

“Well, on-line dating. I have dated in Virtual World, the on-line...” his voice trailed off.

“So you have dated.”

Johnson swallowed hard.

“Meaning the answer you provided was incorrect.”

The voice came from his left side.

“No, wait! I did not understand the question!”

There was a flash of pain. Johnson looked down in time to see the knife blade, bloodied, retreating from the light. Then a burning pain shot through his arm. Blood spurted from his left hand—his pinky finger now ended at the first knuckle. He strained forward in the chair. On the ground was a growing puddle of his blood. At the edge of it sat the other two-thirds of his finger.

Johnson opened his mouth to scream. He passed out instead.

***

This time it took more than water to bring him around.

Johnson opened his eyes just in time to see a slim figure retreat from the light. There was a stinging sensation in the crook of his right arm. He looked down and saw a single orb of blood nestled there. As he watched the orb swelled and burst, releasing a trickle of blood across his arm. Its source was a tiny puncture in his vein.

He had a brief moment to wonder what he had been injected with before the throbbing started. With the pain came the memory.

A quick glance at his ruined left hand confirmed it. A bloody lump of gauze was taped to the side of his hand. He lifted his hand as much as the bindings would allow. It came away from the arm of the chair with a sticky wet sound.

Johnson started screaming again.

There were no words. His shriek was the raw sound of panic, fear, and disbelief. It lasted until he ran out of breath. He tried to suck in more air and begin again, but before he could, a hand connected with his cheek. It was much harder than the previous slap. The hand seemed different, too. Harder, stronger.

“Mr. Johnson, it’s time to continue. We still have a lot of questions to go.”

The voice was coming from the left side. The slap had been from the right. There were at least two different people in the room with him.

“Now, we have established that you ‘date’ in various on-line scenarios. We will return to that in a moment. What other internet activities do you perform?”

“The same as everyone else, I guess.” Johnson did not know what the voice was looking for, but did not hesitate to answer. “E-mail, look up stuff, pay bills, surf the net.”

“And when you surf the net, what do you look at?”

“All kinds of stuff. The usual stuff. What everyone looks at.”

There was a glint of steel and a blaze of pain. The flat end of the knife blade rapped down on the stump of Johnson’s severed finger. Pain lanced up his arm. The blood begin to flow again, pooling on the arm rest before dripping to the floor. He stifled another scream.

“A non-answer. Tread carefully, Mr. Johnson. You are perilously close to a lie of omission.”

Johnson gulped air. The pain subsided to a throb. Each beat of his heart fueled the suffering. He closed his eyes for a moment and concentrated on his breathing.

“Better now?” the voice asked. “Good. Then I ask you again, what do you look at when you surf the net?”

“Amazon,” Johnson blurted. “I buy books all of the time. I go to my bank’s website. I...I look stuff up, you know, videos, cartoons, funny stuff. I watch movie trailers. I read the news. Sometimes I watch old episodes of TV shows.”

“What else?”

“I don’t know what else.  Honest I don’t.” 

His voice climbed higher, whining, pleading. The knife appeared again. The tip grazed his left arm. It was dragged gently up the arm to his shoulder. The knife was sharp enough that the faint scratch was enough to draw a line of blood the length of his arm.

“What else do you use your computer for?”

An image popped into Johnson’s mind. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came forth.

“Tick, tock.”

The man in the chair shook his head. He had an answer. He was just unwilling to give it. It was too horrible to admit. There was no way they could know.

He saw movement to his right. He tried to pull away, momentarily forgetting the leather straps. His hand slipped forward and tightened on the edge of the arm rest.

He felt the knife bite into the meat at the side of his hand. Johnson gripped the chair harder. He watched in horror as the little finger on his right hand was replaced by the knife. Blood gushed over the blade which was wedged partially in the arm rest, partially in his hand. The tip had nicked his ring finger. His pinkie was gone at the base.

“What?” Johnson screamed. “What do you want you dirty, mother—”

What he could see of the room dimmed. The circle of light he sat in seemed to shrink. The edges of his vision became gray. He shook his head to clear it. 

When his sight cleared, he saw that his right hand had been roughly bandaged. He did not remember anyone coming close enough to wrap the gauze around it. Had he passed out again.

“Typing has now become significantly more difficult for you,” the voice said in a mocking tone. “Before it becomes even harder for you to operate your computer, why don’t you tell me what else you use it for?”

“Chatting,” said the man in the chair.  “Instant messaging, chat rooms, all of that.”

Johnson slumped in the chair.  Even his voice sounded drained.

“And who do you chat with Mr. Johnson?”

He wanted to say ‘friends.’  He wanted to say ‘family.’

Instead, he answered truthfully.

“People like me.”

“And what does that mean, exactly?”

“People who...collect things.”

“What sort of things?”

“Pictures.”

The voice remained silent.

“Trophies.”

No response.

“Bodies.”

“Excellent.”

“I’ll tell you everything. I’ll give you names. Please, just, no more. Please.”

“How long?”

“How long what?” Johnson asked.

Movement, pressure. The knife was poised for another cut.  It rested on the ring finger of his right hand.

“You said people like you. How long have you been like you?”

“I don’t know, honestly, I don’t know. I never—”

The knife blade moved with the efficiency of a Benihana chef. The finger spun away into the darkness.

“This is becoming tiring. When was the first time you visited the website?”

Johnson did not have to ask which website. The excruciating pain provided clarity. “I read about it on-line, in a thread on another website I frequent.”

The words were pouring out of him, gushing forth like the crimson pumping from his ruined right hand.

“I think it was a couple of years ago. At first I only looked at the welcome page. I was too scared to put in my credit card number so I didn’t sign up. I just looked at the pictures on the first page.”

The knife came down again, severing the two remaining fingers of Johnson’s right hand. As the blade descended, there was a squeak and a curse. The voice, or whoever was employing the knife, slipped in the blood puddled around the chair. As a result, the knife did not land as planned. The third finger was detached cleanly, but the index finger was not. Instead of hitting the joint, the sharp edged steel lodged in the bone between the hand and the first knuckle.

Metacarpal
, thought Johnson as he screamed. The tunnel vision returned.

Someone threw a towel at the man in the chair. The blue gloved hand shoved it onto the wound with a savage thrust. The pain cleared Johnson’s mind.

“You got lucky, that time.” The voice sounded ragged. The labored breathing could have been caused by anger or exertion.

“Lucky!” Johnson shrieked. He meant it to sound sarcastic, but the accompanying laugh held a tinge of mania.

“Yes, lucky. Your IP information is on record. You visited the site for the first time just under a year and a half ago. You watched one portion of one video, then signed up. You provided false information, but a correct credit card number. You spent over an hour on the site that same day.

“That was a deliberate lie and a lie of omission. That should have cost you two fingers.”

“Fuck you.”

“I didn’t think I was your type. However, while we are on the subject—what is your type, Mr. Johnson? What was that first video that enticed you to join the website?”

“No type.”

“Pardon?”

“No type, no video, no answer.”

“Defiance? This late in the game? And you are so close to the lightening round.”

Johnson tracked the voice. Although he was barely able to hold his head up, he shifted his eyes to the left. He was certain that was where the knife wielding maniac was standing.

Which was why he was shocked when someone grabbed his right arm. The top of a big, bald head filled his vision. Johnson lashed out, trying to butt heads, but his assailant was just out of his reach.

Strong hands gripped his forearm. They were rough, calloused, bare. These were not the hands which held the knife, but they could have been belonged to whoever had hit him last. 

One of the hands remained on his forearm while the other gripped the sodden towel. There was a moment of probing then the grip tightened around his remaining finger. The hand twisted and pulled. There was a snap, then the feeling of something tearing.

The towel dropped to the floor with a wet plop. It was the last sound the man in the chair heard for quite a while.

***

Like a swimmer rising to the surface, Johnson slowly regained consciousness. Something had changed. The quality of the light was different. How long had he been out this time?

A pain, which lanced through his right arm, all but drowned out the steady throb of his left arm. Still, around it all, he felt a different kind of discomfort. He looked down and saw tubing running from a needle in his arm and disappearing somewhere behind his head. A yellowish fluid was being pumped into his vein. 

His right arm was no longer strapped to the arm rest of the chair. A plank of wood was affixed to the chair, creating a second arm rest on that side. This one rose up at a 60 degree angle. His right arm was suspended from it.  The hand was completely wrapped in gauze stained pink with his blood.  All except for the thumb, it sat naked and alone on the wood.