Ted’s head was full of cobwebs, but raw survival instinct got him onto his knees. The effort of getting upright made his head swim, and he braced himself to avoid falling. A streamer of blood and saliva dangled from his lips. Dull pain blossomed behind his right eye, spreading down the cheek to his mouth. It should have hurt worse, but anything was better than the fading numbness.
He had three captors. All cops. Even without their badges, he would have recognized the way their eyes darted from door to window, constant perimeter checks. Also, their trained, too-casual stance. They stood a few yards away, admiring something that looked like a child’s highchair with a three-foot wooden pyramid in place of the seat. None of them seemed to be watching Ted.
Praying for a chance to escape, Ted scanned for an exit, but the lights made it hard to see. The cops had dropped him onto a stage made up like a room in a medieval building. A banner overhead separated from the glare, and Ted read its large, white letters: EXECUTION METHODS ACROSS HISTORY. Other shapes resolved: breaking wheels, a gallows, an honest-to-God torture rack. He tried to swallow, but his throat was too dry to work.
Ted tried moving his feet. His scuffed shoes twitched. His shoulders slumped. He’d never make it off the stage without falling. All he could do was sit there and listen—try to figure out what they intended to do next. He didn’t know how long they’d driven him around before dragging him in here, but he’d spent enough time with them to know them by their voices.
“It’s darker up top.” That was Rusty, and the body matched the whiskey-and-gravel voice. Wide as two men, Rusty had a jaw that went on for miles and a nose that hinted at a first career as a failed boxer.
“You know why that is?” That was Mitch. Where Rusty looked ready to break Ted like a Thanksgiving wishbone, Mitch displayed his anger in a hungry smile that exposed crooked yellow teeth. There were dark circles, deep as bruises, around Mitch’s eyes.
Without warning, Mitch crossed the distance from the weird highchair in two fast strides and thrust out a hand, mashing Ted’s cheeks between his sweaty fingers. Pain arced from Ted’s brain down to the soles of his feet. A tooth must have come loose when Ted hit the floor, and Mitch’s grip twisted it in its moorings, scraping it against his cheek.
Closer now. Mitch’s tired, burning eyes expanded to fill Ted’s whole world. His breath was garlic and sulfur. “I said, do you know why that pyramid is darker at the top than it is at the bottom?”
Ted struggled to focus as the room swam around him. Tears oozed from the corners of his eyes. At least his head didn’t flop like a goddamn ragdoll anymore, but words…words were so hard. He had to find the ability to speak. The first key to surviving a kidnapping was to get your abductor to see you as a person. If he could talk, maybe…
“Nuh-no.”
Mitch let go and stepped back, eyebrows raised. He wiped Ted’s blood and spit onto a pant leg without noticing. “Nuh-no, he doesn’t know why the pyramid is darker up top. Dabney, tell us what the plaque says about the top of the pyramid.”
The third cop approached an engraved plaque mounted on the wall beyond the highchair. That was Dabney, he was younger than the other two, with blue eyes that shone in the overhead lights. He peered over his shoulder with a curious expression that combined hate and pity. Ted thought this one didn’t regret the kidnapping, but he wasn’t bought in on whatever cruelty his friends planned, either.
“The Judas cradle–”
Mitch clapped his hands, and the room swam before Ted’s eyes. “Try that again, Dabs, loud enough for everyone to hear. Our buddy Ted looks like he’s on something. His ears might not be pickin’ up what you’re layin’ down.”
“The Judas cradle,” said Dabney, his voice ringing from the walls so that Ted had to shut his eyes against the noise, “was used to torture and execute criminals in the medieval era—”
“Come on, Dabs, does Ted here look like a history professor? He just wants to know about the top of the pyramid. Cut to the good part,” Mitch said.
Dabney continued, “The victim was hung by straps above the cradle, and lowered slowly upon it until the sharp tip entered the anus or vagina, tearing tissue and causing severe organ damage.”
“Damn, and is this the real thing? The real Judas cradle?” Mitch said.
Dabney read: “This cradle was used in thirteenth-century Spain.”
“Hear that, Ted? That wood’s got the blood of people like you all through it. It’s seasoned!”
Rusty considered the Judas cradle with newfound respect. Dabney lowered his eyes.
“You’re gonna wanna fight this. Believe me, this is gonna hurt like a motherfucker, and we’re gonna be laughin’ the whole time because you deserve it,” Mitch said.
Rusty stepped closer, shifting towards Ted’s flank like a hunter preparing to strike. Veins stood out in thick cords along his neck. “Dabney, grab the winch.”
Dabney offered no response beyond moving to one of the pillars that supported the stage’s imaginary ceiling. He turned a metal wheel mounted there, and a leather harness descended out of the stage lights.
Ted watched, paralyzed by a combination of lingering drugs and raw horror. His breath came and went in short gasps that tugged his damaged tooth, releasing jolts of pain that penetrated the brain fog and shook his entire body. He couldn’t get his feet to work. Couldn’t stand, couldn’t run.
Dabney brought the rig of leather and chains down until the lowest straps tapped the sharp tip of the pyramid.
A name got stuck in Ted’s mind, repeating there until it emerged from his mouth in a wheeze. “Eesus-eesus-eesus-eesus -”
“Let’s get this over with.” Dabney backed away from the plaque.
“You got it,” Mitch agreed. “Rusty, let’s get Mr. Collins dressed for the occasion.”
Rusty, with his broad shoulders and brutish hands, obliged. Buttons flew from Ted’s new Oxford shirt, cloth tearing as the big cop wrenched it off, twisting Ted’s arm in the process. Gaining speed, Rusty unbuckled Ted’s leather belt. He yanked the top of Ted’s chinos, splitting the zipper and pulling them to his knees in a single motion.
The world spun when Rusty shoved him onto his back so shoes, socks, and underwear could be torn away and added to the pile on the floor. Ted wanted to resist, but he couldn’t get his eyes to focus. Tears dribbled into his ears as he lay there, exposed.
Mitch snapped open a black garbage bag. “We checked your phone records. Found you talkin’ to your lawyer friends the day before you did it. You know what that says to me? What’s that say to you, Rusty?”
“Alibi,” Rusty said.
“Lawyer-approved alibi,” said Mitch, a polite correction. He scooped Ted’s clothes into the bag.
Rusty shrugged.
Ted forced out words: “Old friend. Gone. Fishin’.”
“Is that what you call an alibi?” Mitch asked, cinching the bag with a savage jerk. “We have different words for what you did.”
“Wha’d I do?”
The young partner stepped forward, the set of his jaw and the anger in his blue eyes warning that Ted had crossed a line asking that question.
“Uh-oh, now Dabney’s pissed,” Mitch said.
Dabney leaned close enough that Ted felt his hot breath. “DNA came back, asshole. We got you, and there’s no getting away.”
Ted tried to swallow, “But…wha’d…I…”
Pain exploded at the back of Ted’s skull and lanced to the base of his spine. When the stars faded—they didn’t clear, and he feared they never would even if he managed to survive the night—Rusty was in front of him. “Listen, we won’t play that game. You want to die with or without teeth?”
“Sorry,” Ted said, and the horrible thing was, he felt recalcitrant.
“Damn right you are,” Mitch said. Those words lingered long enough for Ted to think he’d caught them off guard and might have discovered something to build on. The realization came too late, though.
Mitch clapped his hands, “Put him up.”
Rusty grabbed him, lifting him into the air as if lifting a child. Ted tried to squirm, but he hung so near the tip of the pyramid that he would be impaled if he got loose. Mitch joined them, making short work of straps and buckles until Ted’s hands were bound behind his back. Lengths of leather secured to sturdy bolts in the ceiling and walls crisscrossed his chest. Manacles on each ankle drew his legs taut, spreading them wide.
Dabney turned the winch, lifting Ted high and swaying above the tip of the pyramid.
Mitch nodded in apparent satisfaction. “Well, that was your chance to fight. All you got to do now is to clench. Tight as you can, Ted. Hold off the severe organ damage as long as possible.”
Dangling seven feet off the floor, Ted sobbed. His mouth gaped, slurring his attempts to beg.
“I can’t understand a word he’s sayin’, you got somethin’ to translate that noise?” Mitch said.
“I do,” Rusty said.
The big cop stepped forward, and Ted squinted to focus on the object in his hand, a long, slender tube. Metal glinted from one end. Ted recognized the needle as Rusty jabbed it into his bare right buttock. Heat surged around the puncture before spreading through every muscle in Ted’s body. He writhed and jigged, every nerve ending firing at once, reporting the damage of each insult from his broken tooth to the punch to the back of his head to the straps biting into his flesh.
“He’s got moves, how powerful was that?” Mitch asked.
Rusty watched a bit longer before answering. “Like twelve cups of coffee, he should be feeling everything right now, down to the hairs on his arms.”
“Good work.”
The words flowed now, but they all came at once. Ted begged and he screamed. He promised he wouldn’t tell. He told them his full name because they had to have the wrong man.
The room fell silent the moment Mitch positioned himself between Ted’s thighs, a disgusted glare contorting his face, and said, “Look, the only part of you I can reach right now is your balls. So, unless you want me to practice my speedbag routine, you shut up and take your medicine.”
Unblinking, Ted stared. His only movement was the involuntary trembling of his body.
Mitch let the moment draw out. He gestured to Dabney to release the winch.
The first jerking movement dropped Ted several inches, and for an instant, he expected to fall and die on the spot. But the harness came to a halt, leather straps seizing against his wrists and ankles, the crisscrossing bands shifting around his torso to spread his buttocks and hug his chest. He struggled to breathe.
Mitch said, “Little more, Dabs, little more.”
Something sharp and warm scraped the tender flesh of Ted’s scrotum. He strained, rising in the straps, and Mitch afforded him a grim nod.
“That’s the spirit. Almost there, Teddy. No more foreplay, Dabs. Let’s get this thing inside.”
The winch turned. The straps creaked. Rusty’s massive hands clamped onto Ted’s thighs, positioning him above the pyramid. The winch turned again, and warm wood tickled the puckered rim of Ted’s anus. Ted cried out, his screams returning from the walls and ceiling to smash him in the face. He arched his back as far as the straps allowed, and Rusty ground his molars, holding Ted in place. Now pressure, like a fist—no, an entire arm inside him. Eyes bulging, Ted hung in paralysis, unable to move without worsening his impalement.
Rusty stepped back.
A weak, pitiable moan slipped free of Ted’s throat. He dared not blink. Relaxing any part of his body would shift him lower, driving the tip of the Judas cradle deeper.
In a small, hesitant voice, braced for the beating he expected to come but also welcoming the end it would bring, Ted said, “Please…please… tell me what you think I did?”
“The kids, asshole,” Dabney said. He leapt from the winch, seeming to appear at Ted’s side. His voice was strained, and the hand he slashed through the air shook when it stopped moving.
Mitch lowered his head.
Ted craned his neck to see the young cop with the watery blue eyes. The second injection clarified everything—the whole world was vibrant and terrible—and he saw tears streak below Dabney’s bloodshot eyes.
“You took them, you fucking ate them, and the coroner could tell—some of them were still alive when you did it.” Dabney stared, challenging Ted to refute a word, his chest rising and falling in righteous fury. The tears made sense.
Bit by horrible bit, Ted showed his teeth. His lip dragged across the tooth he’d broken when he fell, but he barely felt it now.
“You absolute fuck of a human being,” Mitch said, grabbing Ted’s ankle and jerking him forward. Ted screamed as the sharp edges below the tip of the Judas cradle tore bleeding gashes inside his ass, but Dabney had lowered him too far for it to slip free. Tightening his grip, Mitch sawed Ted back and forth, back and forth. Ted howled and rolled, pleading with saucer-like eyes. His fingers clawed the air behind his back.
Mitch let go. “We were good cops. By the book. ‘til you, with your lawyer-made alibi or your insanity defense or your mistrial claims or your endless appeals. What you did? You don’t get to walk, even for a day.”
Ted’s breathing slowed. Despite the agony, he could feel the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. He couldn’t resist it.
“Just know we got you, one of the kids you left behind escaped. We found her, and she told us all about you. Perfect ID. It’s how we found you last night. It’s how we know we’ve got the right man.”
Ted’s mouth opened. He didn’t bother to fight the laughter that bubbled out. Soft at first, growing louder. The sharp edges of the pyramid chewed at what remained of his anus, yearned for him to relax and bring it into his guts, but he didn’t stop. The end was here, laughter might bring it faster. His blood lubricating the stained wood, combined with the defeat on Mitch’s face, made Ted laugh harder still.
“And there was DNA evidence,” Dabney said, brows knit in confusion as he stared up at the man sitting on the Judas cradle, grinding his own insides against its merciless edges, laughing harder despite pain that sent tears flying like spittle.
“Dabs, there wasn’t any fuckin’ DNA. He burned everything. All of it. Our only hope was that he kept some for later. Some we might be able to save. You were our best hope of finding out for sure. You still got the heart. Based on his reaction…there’s no one.” Mitch cast a glance back at Rusty, whose broad shoulders drooped. “Sorry, man. Your girl was special.”
“What?” Dabney said, but it wasn’t a question in search of an answer.
“I’ll do the rest. We gotta get out of here before the cleaners arrive. We paid them to clean, not to witness,” Mitch said.
Suiting his words, Mitch stepped towards the winch.
“Don’t bother,” Rusty said, and the big man crouched down, sucking in a great gout of breath through his crooked nose, flexing the muscles along his powerful arms. With a grunt that became a guttural roar, he wrapped his upper body around the legs of the Judas cradle and stood, bringing it with him.
The muscles of Ted’s back flexed, straining the straps, bending him backwards. He craved an end, but this was too much. The cradle twisted and sawed, angling toward his belly, and he rose along with it. A rippling torrent of gas broke free of his ruptured bowels, releasing a stream of shit and bile in gory clots.
Dabney vomited onto the wooden floor.
“Fuuuuuuuuck!” Rusty gave one more thrust, tenting the flesh next to Ted’s belly button, and slumped. Ted’s guts sagged into the cavity the big cop had created, pooling over the tip of the Judas cradle inside him.
Ted’s eyes bulged as if trying to escape his dying body. He no longer remembered words, but he pleaded with the universe for peace–for an end–but whatever had been in the injection kept him conscious and aware.
Mitch stepped forward, “Rusty?”
Whatever else Mitch might have said, Rusty answered with a cry of equal parts rage and grief and horror, thrusting the Judas cradle harder and higher than before. The tip pierced one of Ted’s testicles on the way in, driving it into the shredded mass of his intestines, stomach, kidneys, and liver. This time, there was no escape. The flesh of Ted’s abdomen rose and burst in a tangle of quivering viscera propelled by a blackened wooden spearhead. Ted’s desperate shrieks tattered his vocal cords as Rusty pumped upward–twice more, three times–before they unwound into defeated sobs and fell silent.
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