Allan Leverone - Mr. Midnight

Rae Ann’s expression had become more and more horrified during Milo’s short soliloquy, and now sheer panic took over. She bucked and writhed and tried to scream into her gag, still not accepting after all this time that nothing of any value was going to come from any of it. Milo concluded that the response meant, yes, she did understand where he was going with this. In fact, he decided she now knew exactly how her short but eventful attendance at Milo University was going to end.

And he loved it. The utter, naked terror in her eyes and indeed in her entire body was the biggest turn-on imaginable. He could not understand how everyone else in the world could not be excited by this type of display.

It had to be a classic case of people not realizing what they were missing. If they could see for themselves how enjoyable torturing a helpless victim was, there would be a run on prostitutes not seen in this country since the national conventions of the major political parties, Milo was sure of it.

He readjusted his jeans to provide a little breathing room for his massive erection and got to work, lining up his tools on the floor in the order he expected to use them. The last thing he wanted was to be in the middle of the session and have to bring the slicing and dicing to a grinding halt in order to search out the proper tool. Preparation was essential.

During prep time, Rae Ann provided the most enjoyable background music imaginable. She bucked and she moaned and she begged and all the while, Milo whistled happily, like a man who truly enjoyed his work. Because, of course, he did.

Finally, he was ready. So was Rae Ann, judging from the looks of things. Red splotches covered her face. Tears tracked down her cheeks. Another of those fucking snot bubbles had appeared in her right nostril. Milo decided she must have medical issues, nasally speaking, perhaps a deviated septum from snorting coke.

No matter. The snot problem was easily remedied, and soon Rae Ann the Schoolgirl Hooker would have much bigger things to worry about than hygiene, anyway.

In fact, she already did.

Milo grabbed a tissue and patiently cleaned her face. It was the least he could do, considering the pleasure she was giving him. Besides, what was to come would be much more enjoyable if his guest didn’t look like a disgusting pig.

Wrinkling his own nose, Milo tossed the tissue onto the floor and got started. Soon he was lost in his work, tearing and ripping and stabbing and cutting. Blood flowed and limbs cracked and muffled screams continued with renewed frenzy for a short time, and Milo was glad he had not surrendered to his misguided desire to remove the gag.

Then the screaming died away, and a few minutes after that so did Rae Ann the Schoolgirl Hooker. It was a long time before Milo noticed, and when he did, he didn’t care.

Cait tossed clothes into her bag, not bothering to fold them, barely even looking at them. On the bed next to her, Kevin did the same. They had taken some time to play tourist before heading back to Tampa, walking the Freedom Trail and taking a Duck Boat excursion around the city. “We might as well enjoy the sights,” Kevin had said. “Who knows when we’ll be back here again, if ever?”

For Cait, though, the sightseeing had felt forced and unnatural. Her focus was still solidly on Virginia Ayers and the strange story her long-lost mother had related before politely asking her daughter to butt the hell out of her life and never return.

The whole situation was bizarre. Even if everything she said was true, why kick Cait to the curb now, just hours after meeting her? Virginia claimed she hadn’t seen Cait’s twin brother in thirty years, and as long as he stayed in Seattle or Minnesota or New Mexico or wherever he had ended up, there was no danger anyway.

And if the danger was long past, why couldn’t Virginia have welcomed Cait with open arms? Why reject her outright?

The pain throbbed and pulsed inside her like an infection. If she had known this was how she was going to feel after finally meeting her mother, Cait thought she might have decided to forget about learning her family history. Just let the whole thing drop and go on living in ignorance in Tampa.

But of course she would never have done that. It simply wasn’t in her nature. Cait Connelly had more than once been compared favorably to a bulldog by her fellow lawyers: relentless, unstoppable, moving resolutely forward until either achieving her goal or exhausting every last possibility. It was that personality trait that made the current scenario—packing her bags and returning home before learning her brother’s identity or establishing a relationship with her birth mother—so objectionable.

“Maybe I could…” she began, only to lapse into silence.

“Or what about…”

She realized she had stopped packing and resumed with renewed vigor, taking her frustrations out on her clothing, slamming the offending outfits into the suitcase. Kevin was right. There was no way to force herself on her mother, and if the woman wanted to live in fear of an unrealistic and paranoid scenario, there was nothing she could do about it. Maybe someday the woman would come to her senses. Maybe someday—

—Cait dropped straight down, landing face-first on the bed, falling onto a silk blouse before rolling sideways and crashing to the floor. Her eyes rolled up into her head. She was vaguely aware of Kevin picking her up and cradling her in his arms, calling her name, his panicked voice sounding much too far away, but she was incapable of answering him, incapable even of acknowledging him.

The Flicker roared into her head like a runaway freight train and it was terrifying. The vision was of the man she had seen in yesterday’s awful Flicker. It was the man whose predatory lust had frightened her so badly, the man who had daydreamed about doing twisted, evil, hurtful things to an unsuspecting prostitute with his trusty pair of pliers. It was the man Cait had wanted to notify the police about, but had not done so because she had no proof.

And this Flicker was one hundred times worse. The man was getting down to business.

Bad business.

The young girl was being held prisoner in what appeared to be a small, nearly empty apartment. The place was dingy and threadbare and littered with trash.

The girl had been immobilized, her arms and legs duct-taped securely to a solid, blocky wooden chair. Several strips of the silver duct tape circled her head and covered her mouth, preventing her from crying out, although it was not for lack of trying.

The girl was being tortured. The man had been fantasizing about using his pliers in the previous Flicker, and now he was doing it. And he was using other implements of torture, too. The scene was horrifying. The girl was naked and covered in blood; it flowed from wounds in at least a dozen different places.

Her captor studied her appraisingly, looking exactly like an artist examining his canvas. He tilted his head sideways. Took a step back. Then he advanced, plunging the pliers into his victim, wielding them like some demented sex toy, ripping and tearing the soft flesh of her inner thighs as she bucked and thrashed. Fresh blood flew, splattering the man’s hands and wrists, dripping down the insides of her legs in thick trails.

Cait wanted to avert her eyes, she tried to avert her eyes, tried to close her eyes to the horror, but she couldn’t, because her eyes didn’t matter. She was seeing the ghastly sight with her mind, and there was no shutting down her mind, no closing her mind to a Flicker. She had no choice but to experience it until it ran its course.

She tried to scream, to cry out for help, but she could not. She wondered if she was going mad, sinking into her own personal hell, where she would live out her days doomed to watching this depraved horror show inside her head.