Paul Cleave - Blood Men

She doesn’t even think about it. “Does it involve hurting him?” she asks, and nods down at Bracken.

“That a problem for you?”

“You can save your cash, sugar,” she says, the fear gone now. “This I’ll do for free.”

“Then we better get started,” I say.

Torture is all about balance, and more often than not, proves to be an extremely ineffective way of getting information. It comes down to pain thresholds: inflict too much pain and the victim will end up saying anything to make it stop. Problem with that is it makes the information unreliable. Don’t inflict enough pain and they’ll continue to resist. Inflict way too much and the body shuts down. I think it comes down more to fear than pain. I have under thirty minutes to create as much fear in Bracken as I can before it’s too late.

I don’t know why I suddenly seem to know so much about torture. It’s as if a section of my mind has been unlocked, a hidden vault of knowledge opening its contents up to me. The monster has something to do with it. I think to myself, this entire ordeal could be more Disney-oriented if I gave the monster a name-Mickey. Mickey is telling me how to torture a man. Mickey is begging me to kill him. But Mickey isn’t in control here-not yet anyway.

Bracken is starting to come to, and he’s noticing that his entire world has changed in the last few minutes. He’s resuming transmission and finding himself naked and tied to a chair. He’s shaking and he’s cold and scared. On the dining table there are two tools: a steak tenderizer from his kitchen drawer that looks like a wooden mallet, and a very large chef’s knife. The knife has a stained handle and is worn, the blade is chipped near the end but still very sharp.

I feel nothing.

Good. You’re coming along nicely.

Detective Inspector Schroder hasn’t resumed transmission yet, so maybe he took a harder knock-or it’s an accumulative thing for him, having been drowned an hour ago. When he wakes up he’ll find he’s been dragged inside and propped up against the living-room wall with a clear view of the show, his hands cuffed behind him and his feet bound in front of him. There’s a gag in his mouth because, truth is, I’m sick of hearing him talk.

The woman, who may or may not be a prostitute but who probably is, is also in the living room. Bracken blinks a few times, bringing his new world into focus. He sees the steak tenderizer and the knife and his imagination is conjuring up his future.

“Where’s the money?”

His first impulse is anger. “Go to hell,” he says, and I jam a dish towel in his mouth and swing the tenderizer as hard as I can into his knee. Something in there gives, and he lurches forward with so much force the chair jumps off the ground and nearly tips over. His leg can’t kick forward because it’s bound to the chair. His face turns red and then almost purple as tears stream from his eyes. He bites down so hard the dish towel is the only thing stopping his teeth from snapping off against each other. I give him two minutes to thrash around uselessly on the chair until he gets himself back under control.

The woman says nothing, just keeps on watching, all quiet now, maybe not so sure now about helping me out.

I pull the gag out.

“I’ve never figured out why they start with this kind of bullshit in the movies,” I say. “All this torture foreplay. I’ve always thought I could do better. Thing is, I’ve always been a simple man with simple pleasures. That’s all. I had the most beautiful woman in the world as my wife, we have an amazing daughter together. . and the things that made my dad who he was never touched me. But in those movies where guys like me torture guys like you, they never cross the line. They break bones and cut skin, and the guys they’re torturing always seem to stand up to it. I figure there are two ways to make a man talk. You either go through his eyes or you go through his dick.” I pick up the knife. “I’m gonna start with the latter, so you can still watch.”

“Wait,” he says.

“Too late,” I say.

I move the knife to his groin. His red face suddenly goes pale. “My bedroom. In the closet,” he says, the knife above his dick. “Under the manhole in the floor in the wardrobe. The money is in there. Take it. It’s yours.”

I put the gag back into his mouth before handing the knife and tenderizer to the woman, who looks at them as if they contain the Ebola virus. Then she takes them. She hefts them in her hands and gets a feel for the weight. “What am I supposed to do with these?”

“If he moves, then do what makes you happy.”

“No problem,” she says.

I head into Bracken’s bedroom and open the wardrobe door. There aren’t many clothes hanging in there, and most of what is there are all dark pieces, a size too big for me. I push them to one side, the hangers grating across the iron bar. There are shoes on the floor and a couple of cardboard boxes. I kick them out, exposing the floor. I get down on my knees. The stitches pull at the wound in my leg; I feel a couple of them pull through. I drag back the piece of carpet. There’s a manhole cover with a hole drilled into it for me to hook my finger through. It leaves a gap one man could fit through, but not two.

I reach in and find a strap. I pull the bag up just as a muffled but unmistakable scream comes from the living room. I race out there. The woman has taken a few steps away from Bracken. She turns toward me and there’s a line of blood, not very wide, arcing up her body from her midriff, across her chest and neck and over her face. Bracken’s eyes are wide open and he’s staring down at his body, which is exactly how it ought to be-except for about ten centimeters of steel coming out the bottom of his stomach. The other ten centimeters of the blade is nowhere to be seen, but it’s obvious where it is.

“Shit,” I whisper.

“He moved,” she says.

“You didn’t have to-”

“Didn’t have to what?” she asks. “You said if he moves, then-”

“I know what I-”

“So that’s what I did.”

“Shit.”

She reaches forward and grabs the handle.

“Wait,” I say, dropping the bag, but it’s too late. She pulls the knife out. She gives it a distasteful glance before offering it to me. Blood is overlapping the edges of the wound. Lots of blood.

She drops the knife on the carpet and moves against the wall. She has that look about her that people get when they think they had a really great idea but it hasn’t turned out how they pictured; the thing she thought would make her happy is making her sick.

“He deserved it,” she says. “He was a piece of-”

“I don’t care,” I say. I hunt around for something but I don’t know what, then settle for the dish towel in his mouth.

“Oh God, oh God, oh Jesus,” he says. “Oh Jesus.”

I wad the dish towel up and push it against his stomach and he flinches back. I apply as much pressure as I can without jamming the dish towel right through his spine.

“Ah, ah fuck, ahhh!”

The blood keeps pouring out. He’s scared and tired all at the same time, and a whole lot paler than when he answered his door earlier.

“I’m. . I’m sorry I took it,” Bracken says.

“I bet you are.”

“The guy, the guy was. . was. Dead. I figured. . it wouldn’t. . Ah Jesus, hurt any. . anybody.”

“It hurt me. It got my daughter kidnapped. It got people killed. Almost got Detective Schroder here killed too. And it got you stuck with a knife.”

“Oh Jesus, please, please, you have to help me.”

“I’m trying.”

“Call an ambulance.”

“I want my money,” the woman says, looking down at the bag.