Shut The Fuck Up And Die!

  SHUT THE FUCK UP AND DIE!

  By

  William Todd Rose

  SMASHWORDS EDITION

  Shut the Fuck Up and Die!

  Copyright © 2010 by William Todd Rose

  Smashwords Edition License Notes:

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  *****

  SCENE ONE

  She had quickly learned to keep movement at a bare minimum; even the slightest jostle sent flares of agony racing through her hands and coaxed beads of sweat from the pores on her brow. As long as she sat perfectly still, however, the pain was nothing more than a dull throb that pulsed in time with her heart. She choked back the waves of nausea that flooded her mouth with bitter, stinging acids and kept her breathing as steady as could be expected. She was beginning to get cold, though: chills crept over her naked flesh and she felt the little muscle in her jaw quiver like a frightened animal. It was only a matter of time before her body was wracked with shivers; and with these involuntary movements would come fresh blasts of pain, a Hell that radiated from the palms of her hands and raced along her arms like fiery serpents. So she tried picturing a beach: the sun sparkled on the blue expanse of water, warmed the sand that stretched in either direction as far as the eye could see; overhead, a gull cried out and that salty aroma in the air was nothing more than the waves leaving traces of foam as they pulled back into the ocean. Nothing more than saltwater. Certainly not the lingering tang of blood or . . . .

  Why don't they just kill me and get it over with?

  She opened her eyes and looked, for what must have been the thousandth time, at the rusty spikes that had been hammered through her palms. The flesh puckered around the metal and the inner edges were crusty with congealed blood; her skin had become so pale and shriveled that it looked as though she'd been washing dishes for hours and this made the dark scabs seem as if they were floating just slightly above the wound. She knew better than to wiggle her fingers, but fought the urge to do so anyway. Part of her mind insisted that those couldn't be her hands, that they were nothing more than some thrift store gag gift: her hands would never be nailed to a heavy, oak table; her hands wouldn't look so small and old . . . . And they definitely wouldn't just lay there with upturned palms as if praying to some cruel god in supplication.

  This sort of thing simply didn't happen to people like her. She was just Darlene Honnicker, ex-homecoming queen of Beaverly High and head cashier down at the Shop-N-Go. She lived a boring, predictable life that involved doing inventory on beer and smokes, watching TV in the evening, and occasionally splurging on the latest Barbara Kingsolver novel. No. It had to be some sort of a dream, some nightmare from which she'd bolt awake with phantom pain still tingling in her limbs. She wouldn't even care that Chewie had slipped onto the forbidden bed at some point during the night or that the mutt was infesting her grandmother's quilt with fleas. She would hug him so tightly that she'd feel the need to sneeze as his coarse fur tickled her nose and his breath would gust like a rancid wind as his tongue left a trail of warm slobbers down her cheek.

  Yeah, that's what you thought yesterday. And the day before. And the day before that, too . . . .

  Darlene glanced around the room even though the details had burned into her memor. The fake wood paneling looked as if it had been hung by a child and bits of yellowed rag stuffed gaps where the flimsy material should have lined up flush with the next section. These walls were covered with random rectangles and squares where the grain was lighter, as if pictures had hung there for years before being removed, and she'd come to the conclusion that the inset shelving had once been a window that had since been boarded over. The hardwood floor that felt so cold against her bare feet bowed slightly toward the center of the room and the entire space had that musty smell of time and age. If not for the butcher's block table that her hands were nailed to and the chair she was perched on, the entire place could have been mistaken for an abandoned house that hadn't known the warmth of a living soul for decades.

  Nailed to, oh my God, my hands have been nailed to the table, sweet baby Jesus, they've been nailed, somebody please please help me, anybody, please . . . .

  Darlene's heart fluttered with demon wings of panic and she wanted to scream, to run, to pry her tortured hands free, and fight tooth and nail until she was out in the fresh, cool air of winter again. She would thrust her fists into drifts of snow, let the cold freeze away the pain, and her voice would echo through the muffled silence of the woods like the wail of a banshee. Someone would come. They would hear and they would come with trucks and dogs and guns; they would wrap her in blankets as steaming cups of coffee were lifted to her lips, whispering that everything was fine now, that she would be okay, that it was over . . . .

  Through the cheap wood of the door behind her, she could hear the old woman whistling. It was some happy little ditty that tweeted and chirped like birds at dawn and sounded slightly familiar. It may have been one of the songs Darlene's mother had used to hum before the cancer had claimed her. One of the snippets of tune that she'd clung to over the years, that she'd tried to excavate from the trenches of memory like a precious jewel. And here this old woman was, bastardizing it. If she managed to get free, she'd rip that cunt's tongue right out of her mouth, would tear long strands of lip with her teeth if she had to. She'd make that bitch suffer and regret the day they'd ever zapped Darlene Honnicker with that taser.

  Who the fuck are you kidding? You ain't getting outta here, you're never getting outta here. Just look at the damn table, girl . . . .

  She willed the frightened little girl in her mind to shut the hell up. Anything was possible, right? If she could just deal with the pain without passing out, maybe she'd be able to grab the spikes between her teeth and yank hard enough to . . . .

  Her faded, blue eyes betrayed her by flitting to the scarred tabletop. The wood was gouged with dozens of holes, each spaced approximately a hand's width apart and surrounded by dark, inkblot stains.

  That's blood. Fuckin' blood! You think they haven't done this before? Look how many holes there are, damn it. Just look!

  She squeezed her eyes shut so tightly that her teeth ground against one another and tried to take long, slow breaths through her nose.

  Please, God . . . .

  From behind her, the door creaked like a sound effect from a horror movie. Feet shuffled across the floor and the room was flooded with a scent that smelled as if a garden of lilacs were growing in a bed of baby powder.

  The whistling was directly behind her now, making her eardrums seem to vibrate with the high notes.

  No, no, not again, please, no . . . .

  The song came to an end and Darlene could felt the old woman's presence looming in the darkness before her.

  “Open your eyes, girly.”

  The voice was thin and raspy but sounded as if it had spent a lifetime having its instructions followed without hesitation or question.

  Darlene raised her eyelids and looked at the woman standing on the other side of the table. Her hair was as white as the snow covered ground and, as always, was pulled into a bun so tightly that it almost seemed as if the bitch were punishing her scalp for some unknown trespass. Her skin looked as thin and wrinkled as tissue paper and she wore a yellow sundress today which made her normally pale flesh look jaundiced and sickly. At the same time, it als
o threw her eyes into sharp contrast: behind the wire-frame spectacles, they looked as hard and dark as two chunks of coal.

  “There's a good girl. You wouldn't want to make Mary mad, now would you? No, of course you wouldn't.”

  Darlene glanced at the paring knife the old whore clutched in her hand and her eyes immediately darted to her own arms. Once, her skin had been as smooth and creamy as any fashion model's; but now the flesh was crisscrossed with wounds. Some of them were crusted with scabs, but others still looked like lipless mouths that had somehow appeared on her body. If she flexed her muscles, they would pucker and blow kisses to her, revealing dark crags of meat within.

  “Please, Mary, just let me go. I won't tell anyone, I swear I won't. Just let me go home. I'll . . . I'll bring you a replacement! My sister! She looks just like me, I'll lead her here and let you have her, just please, please, please let me go.”

  The old woman frowned, pulling shadows into the creases of her wrinkles.

  “Let you go? Why in tarnation would I want to do that? No, I like you just where you are, girly.”

  The room wavered in and out of focus as hot tears welled in Darlene's eyes.

  “Now, why do you girls always start a'crying on me? This will all be over soon..”

  The old woman raised the knife to waist level and took a step toward her prisoner.

  “Mary, please . . . don't . . . .”

  “Shhhh . . . you hush now child, hear?”

  Darlene tensed as her heart spurted adrenaline through her system; the movement exploded her hands with a napalm run of pain, white-hot agony that engulfed her arms and raced toward her shoulders. A scream strained her vocal chords, made them feel as if they were being stripped away with glass, and she wanted so badly to pull away, to just shrink back into herself until nothing was left.

  “Now, you cut that foolishness out right this minute! I could always sew that pretty mouth of yours shut. Is that what you want?”

  Darlene whimpered and shook her head so vigorously that tears were flung from her face. She bit her bottom lip as her chest heaved with suppressed screams. Her breath escaped through her nostrils in rapid, staccato bursts and her wide eyes darted about the room as if searching for the appearance of some mystical savior.

  “No, I didn't think so. Now you just be a good girl and this'll all be over quicker 'n the lights go out.”

  The old woman placed the cool edge of the knife against Darlene's arm and smiled.

  “I need this, you see. I reckon you know that by now, don't you?”

  Darlene closed her eyes again, squeezing out tears like water from a sponge.

  “I said open your eyes!”

  Her eyes snapped open again and she felt as though she were about to throw up. Cramps wracked her stomach and her legs shook so badly that the floor below vibrated in response.

  The old woman smiled again, but there was no joy or mirth reflected in her dark eyes. In fact, she had the same hungry look that possessed Darlene's father after the month's welfare check had been pilfered away and the empty bottle of Slo Gin mocked from the trash can.

  Without so much as a flinch, the hag pulled the blade across Darlene's arm with a quick yank. There was a flash of pain as the honed edge severed nerve endings and blood oozed from the wound as if fleeing from the sting. A spark of excitement flared like an ember in the old woman's eyes and she slashed again, opening a new furrow that quickly filled with crimson liquid.

  Darlene tried not to whimper or scream, but instinct pulled her body away from the gleaming blade. She jerked back and a sickening torment erupted from her palms. And she did scream now, her throat raw and burning as the sound rattled from her throat.

  Rather than reprimanding her again, Mary replied with another slice. The old woman's mouth had formed a perfect O and her head was thrown slightly back, like a freeze frame from some geriatric porno. She held the pose for what seemed to be an eternity, but then burst into a flurry of movement: slashing, cutting, slicing, the blade opening her prisoner's too-frail skin time and time again. Cuts overlapped one another and long gashes formed bloody patterns, like the letters of some dark alphabet that had long been purged from humanity's collective memory.

  Darlene's heart pounded as if it were hammering out mayday messages in Morse code and she tried to regain control, to keep from recoiling from the fury of the assualt. But with each new slit that appeared, the holes in her palms pulled against unforgiving metal with agony so intense that splotches exploded like dark fireworks in her field of vision.

  Darlene's once pale arms were now sticky and warm, coated in blood that glistened like liquefied rubies in the dim light of the room. Numbness blossomed in her shoulder and she felt it creep down her arm, devouring sensation like an insatiable swarm of insects. Her breath escaped in ragged pants and snot bubbled from her nose as tears washed over Darlene's face and cheeks. Everything wavered in and out of focus as she slipped back and forth between the high definition reality of her torture and blessed, split-second blackouts.

  The zeal of Mary's assault began to lose steam. The cuts became less random, less frequent, and the old woman watched the blood pulse and percolate with the corners of her mouth turned up in the hint of a smile.

  Placing the gore streaked paring knife on the table, she backed away, her eyes never straying from the carnage she'd wrought upon Darlene's arm. The old woman's chest heaved with each breath and her nostrils flared wide like an excited animal.

  “Good . . . so good . . . .”

  Mary slipped the straps of the sun dress over her bony shoulders and the entire garment slid off her body like a curtain at the conclusion of a magician's trick. It bunched around her feet in yellow folds of fabric and she stood for a moment, frozen in time.

  Her naked body was just as pale and wrinkled as her face and her breasts sagged as if the nipples were actually lead weights that pulled them toward her round stomach. Sparse croppings of silver hair jutted out from the mound between her legs, giving the impression of an old dog beset by mange.

  “Bleed for Mary, girly. That's it . . . bleed.”

  She stepped out of the tangles of her dress and walked toward the table with her palms out as if she were finding her way through the dark. Her arms trembled and a soft sigh escaped through her chapped lips as her fingertips brushed Darlene's wounds. The thick liquid stained the creases and folds in Mary's palms and left long smears along her victim's bicep. Not satisfied with that, however, the old woman pinched the gashes between her fingertips and milked more and more blood from the hatch marks of slits and cuts. She rubbed her hands up and down Darlene's arm: stroking, petting, swirling patterns like a child with red finger paint.

  Then she leaned her head back, as if looking toward the heavens, and raised her blood covered hands like a prophet. Something abut her gave the impression of a woman who'd just had the best sex of her life, who was tired and spent and still tingled with remnants of pleasure.

  She took a slow breath which quivered in the back of her throat and, with eyes half-closed, her hands traced lazy circular patterns over her naked body. Darlene's blood left long streaks against the old woman's alabaster flesh as if Mary were the canvass in an abstract painting of depravity. The valleys formed in her spindly neck, her cumbersome breasts, the tops of her thighs: all were swirled with red, smudged with crimson, and the old woman's hands dipped again and again into Darlene's never-ending well.

  “I'm so pretty, now . . . so very pretty . . . . Just wait ‘til the boys get home. They'll be so pleased and tell me how beautiful and young I look. They love their Mama. Such good boys. Such fine boys. And I'm sure they'll want to play with you again as well, girly . . . .”

  SCENE TWO

  The trees on either side of the road were white, leafless, and reached up from the snow-covered forest like skeletal hands intent on raking the clouds from the darkened sky. A few pines were scattered throughout the collective, but on this moonless, winter night they were nothing more than cooki
e-cutter silhouettes with highlights of snow like frosting upon their boughs.

  The worst of the storm had passed earlier in the day but random flakes still swirled like dust motes in the high beams that cut through the night. The car that was responsible for the light that splashed over the encroaching darkness of the woods was a blue hatchback. It wove along the snaking road, occasionally fishtailing in some of the sharper bends, as windshield wipers slapped away the slush that spattered against the glass.

  The man driving the car clutched the steering wheel so tightly that his fingernails dug crescent moons into the leather cover. He leaned forward in his seat, as if trying to peer through the cone of snow that seemed to rush at them, with his lips pulled into a tight frown.

  The light of the dashboard cast a warm glow across his face and the woman in the passenger seat took a moment to admire him. His hair was dark and wavy and flowed down to the tops of broad shoulders. Even though they'd been in the car for the last nine hours, it had somehow managed to look as perfect and styled as if they'd only checked out of the motel moments earlier. It framed his narrow face perfectly, falling in just the right places to bring out the green of his eyes and accentuate those high cheekbones. She knew that if he smiled, a single dimple would appear just above his mouth and, not for the first time, the woman wondered how she had gotten so damn lucky.

  It wasn't that she was ugly. With only the smallest amount of foundation, she could cloak the scattered scars of teenage acne; and since she'd replaced her chunky, old glasses with contacts, her eyes had taken on an almost chestnut color. Or maybe that was simply her imagination . . . could eyes really change hue simply because they were no longer trapped behind thick pieces of glass? If anything, shouldn't her eyes have seemed clearer before, when the thick slabs of glass had magnified them and made them seem oddly disproportionate to the rest of her round face?