John Lindqvist - Little Star

They all took a step back, arranged themselves in a circle around the benches, and contemplated their treasure. Max Hansen was gradually coming round. His body jolted back and forth as best it could, fettered at every corner. The sack rustled as he jerked his head, billowing in and out as he screamed, inhaled, then screamed again.

‘Let me go, what’s going on, who are you, what are you doing?’

Teresa picked up a Stanley knife and sliced through the bag over his face. His skin was bright red with exertion and fear. His eyes opened even wider when he caught sight of Teresa.

‘Hi,’ she said. Theres passed her a wide strip of gaffer tape and Teresa placed it over his mouth. She thought it was a shame she wouldn’t be able to hear him scream, but it wasn’t worth the risk. Three of the others cut off his clothes, then stepped back.

Everything had gone according to plan-slightly better than expected, actually. The fact that Max Hansen had banged his head might well have saved those charged with bringing him in a split lip or a black eye. Now he was lying in the correct position. Ready for use.

Teresa found his naked body just as repulsive as when she had seen it on film. A flabby, calloused lump of pale flesh. Seeing him lying there now, it was difficult to imagine that he had been a real threat to them for a while. She couldn’t help smiling. Then giggling.

She was still giggling when she fetched the pieces of paper with names on, and a staple gun. Max Hansen jerked and squealed like…yes, like a stuck pig when she stapled ‘Melinda’ to his shoulder. Teresa said, ‘Lie still.’

Human beings are strange. They always struggle, to the bitter end-no matter how hopeless the situation is. With the tiny, tiny amount of movement Max Hansen had with his fettered arms and legs, he kept on trying to twist out of the way as Teresa rapidly stapled ‘Linn’ and ‘Cecilia’ to his thighs. There was the sound of splashing on the plastic covering the floor as he wet himself, and Teresa had to walk around the puddle as she moved across to fix ‘Anna S’ to his other shoulder.

She continued until all the names were stapled to his body, like a blanket made of pieces of paper. Ronja had to help hold his head so that she could finally fix her own name to his temple. Theres fetched the tools laid out on the bench at the side, and handed them out to the girls.

With their weapons in their hands they closed the circle around Max Hansen more tightly. His eyes darted from their faces to the tools, back and forth, back and forth until something happened. His body, which had been tensed in an arc, as far as he could manage it, suddenly relaxed. The expression in his eyes altered, and his head sank back.

Teresa couldn’t believe what she was seeing, but obviously the others could see it too, because they stopped dead and just stared, like her. Slowly, slowly Max Hansen’s cock began to rise. His eyes were looking up at the ceiling. The expression in them was hard to read because the tape over his mouth distorted his features, but Teresa thought she could see…yes, peace.

She looked from his stiff cock to his face. She shook her head and said, ‘Do you understand what’s going to happen?’

Max Hansen nodded faintly, his eyes still fixed on the ceiling, without losing that expression of tortured bliss.

Teresa thought it was best to start with a safe bet, so she nodded to Ronja, who had a small, sharpened screwdriver and whose name was fastened just above Max Hansen’s right hip bone. Ronja stepped forward, pulled a face at the defiant erection, and without further ado drove the screwdriver straight through her piece of paper, all the way to the handle.

Max Hansen screamed through his nose, snot spurted out, sweat poured down his forehead and his body quivered for a few seconds before becoming still once more. The erection didn’t subside, but remained sticking up about three centimetres below the handle of the screwdriver; it was about the same thickness.

It was Linn’s turn next. She had to stand on tiptoe to stab through the label below the right collarbone with her slender chisel. Max Hansen’s back squelched sweatily against the bench as he reared up and fell back down. Blood was trickling out of his wounds and dripping slowly onto the plastic.

Teresa had worked out that if they left the tools in place, it would take longer for him to bleed to death. She had also made sure she chose thin, short spikes and blades. He wasn’t going to die until everyone had done what they had to do and played their part.

Caroline was the sixth in line, and when she drove her knife through the label in the inside of his right thigh, Max Hansen let out a completely different kind of groan as he ejaculated with such force that the semen spurted into his face and over his head. Miranda, who had been standing behind the bench, squeaked in disgust and wiped her top with a cloth.

By this stage a fairly large pool of blood had begun to gather on the floor, and Teresa waved the girls forward more quickly so that they would all have their turn before it was over. Max Hansen’s penis finally collapsed and he was hardly even twitching as he was stabbed now.

In the end only Anna L, Cecilia and Teresa remained. Theres had said that she would prefer to watch, and was following the procedure curled up on the workbench at the side, humming ‘Thank You for the Music’.

Anna L stepped forward. She had been given a fine awl, because her label was dangerously close to the heart. She frowned, raised the awl and looked at Max Hansen’s eyes; only the whites were visible now. Then she shook her head and lowered her hand. With tears in her voice she said, ‘I can’t. This is crazy. It’s wrong. You can’t.’

Theres jumped down and went over to her. ‘Do you want to sit in your car?’ she asked. Anna L shook her head as tears welled up in her eyes, and she said, ‘I just can’t.’

‘You can,’ said Theres. ‘You have to.’

‘But this is crazy.’

‘It isn’t crazy,’ said Theres as she gripped her wrist, moved the hand holding the awl to the correct position, ‘it isn’t crazy at all’, then she thrust Anna’s hand down so that the awl went in halfway. Theres banged it with the palm of her hand, hammering it all the way in, then climbed back onto the workbench. Anna L crouched down by the wall with her hands over her head as Cecilia drove in a long nail.

Max Hansen’s body was limp, perforated in thirteen places and white from loss of blood. Shafts and handles stuck up through sticky pieces of paper, moving in time with his shallow breathing. A film covered his eyes as the pupils rolled back into place, and his gaze fixed on Teresa. He moved his head as if he wanted to say something, and since Teresa didn’t think he could possibly have any strength left to scream, she pulled off the tape. He looked at her and whispered, ‘Teresa…’ She leaned closer to his marble-grey face. ‘Yes?’

Max Hansen’s lips didn’t move and the consonants were no more than faint puffs of air. ‘That was fantastic. That was fantastic…that was fantastic…that was fantastic…’

‘Just one thing,’ said Teresa. ‘That stuff you’ve got on Theres. Is it going to get out?’

Max Hansen made a movement with his head, the hint of a shake, a no, then he carried on whispering, ‘That was fantastic…that was fantastic…’

Teresa shrugged her shoulders. ‘Glad you thought so. Bit of a shame, though. You might change your mind now.’

She picked up the drill that had been charging all day, pressed the button. The bit, which was the thickness of a little finger, was spinning around at twenty revolutions per second. She showed it to Max Hansen, revved the motor a couple of times then pushed it into the label attached to his temple.