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PROLOGUE
The room is dark, musty with the taint of blood. One figure sits, bleeding; one stands, hands cupped to ward off any intrusive draft. The lighter clicks the flame to life, feeding the hand-rolled tobacco of a slim cigarillo until a red eye glows in the blackness. Footsteps follow the ghastly glow as it hovers across the room, leaving a trail of sweet acrid smoke behind. Flickering to life, an old mechanic’s light draws the scene in bitter detail: a pool of blood has formed beneath the sitting man, tied as he is to a sun scorched office chair that appears as though it were rescued from a municipal dump. A butcher’s stainless steel table extends immediately to his right, although age and wear have brought stain even to it.
Eyes begin to adjust to the harsh cone of light, and we see the man with the smoke at last, his bald head reflecting the glare of the lamp obscenely. His face draws deep shadows in the valleys of the various pock marks and appears withered so that the flesh hangs paradoxically stretched across a canvas too small and yet limp and seemingly lifeless, as though the clammy flesh of a cadaver. Across his head he wears a pair of surgical goggles, deeply tarnished with the unwashed remains of dried blood. Taking a deep drag from his cigarillo, he smiles, pondering something for a moment before donning a surgical jacket too stained to be considered white any longer, and a pair of yellow rubber gloves, standing out as they are by their bright color and new appearance.
Pulling the cigarillo from his lips, he speaks.
“Sorry that took so long Bob. May I call you Bob?”
Silence.
“Well, Bob, like I was saying, I hate that it took so long for me to get back to you, but you see I had to calm my compatriots down. You know, Bob, if it weren’t for me they might have already killed you, and we can’t have that, now can we?”
Silence.
“But, all is well for the moment, and I was happily able to retrieve my instruments from upstairs, and a couple of treats as well.”
Slinging it from his shoulder, the bald man sets an aged and cracked black leather physician’s bag on the table, and reaching into it begins to lay out the contents on the metal surface, naming each in turn.
“Let’s see what we have here, scalpel, metal file, hammer, oh where are they? Ah, yes, the treats.” Removing a small grey box from the bag, the man very carefully clicks it open and examines its bounty.
A antiquated looking metal syringe flashes in the light and the first signs of life begin to seep into the man bound and gagged in the chair. His muffled cries are barely audible, his straining futile against the duct tape binding him to his seat.
“Yes, like I said, the treats. Well, here’s the first,” taking another hypodermic from the small box, “and here’s the second.” Swiveling the bloody man around so that he can see the table directly, he holds up both vials explaining each in turn. “The first is a treat for me, really. You see, I have one very simple question for you, which I will tell you in just a moment. If you answer correctly then I won’t get the pleasure of using this on you, although I will be rewarded by the excellence that is truth.
“However, if you choose to either A, lie to me, or B, I don’t know, decide to be all big and brave or some such nonsense, and tell me to ‘fuck off’ or something equally pseudo-heroic, then I will have the great pleasure of using this on you.
“Do you want to know what it is, Bob? No? Well, if you have ever had any oral surgery, you will likely recall that you are given the choice of a local anesthetic or laughing gas, right? Well, imagine for a moment if instead of an analgesic you were injected with a special drug that rather than numbing those nerves in your mouth and face it enhanced them, accentuating rather than diminishing the excruciating pain.
“Have you ever taken ecstasy Bob? No? Well, essentially drugs like X enhance your pleasure receptors so that pretty much everything seems pleasurable, like someone touching your face or watching pretty lights… it’s why so many of those clubs are filled with brain-dead zombies that just sit around stroking each others arms and so forth.” The ember on the end of the cigarillo had gone out and he quietly flicked the ashes off and tucked it behind an ear.
“So, Bob, imagine a similar drug, except instead of making the pleasure bits of your brain dance, it makes your pain receptors go all haywire, firing at the slightest sensation. Imagine then a precise cut along a nerve, something very touchy, like a tooth’s root, or, my favorite toy,” stroking the metal file with the edge of a pinky finger. “Yes, this isn’t a usual tool of the dentist trade, I must admit. But for my purposes it works brilliantly, you see, because it’s the introduction, the prologue to the symphony of agony. After injecting you I’m going to carefully file away at those teeth, exposing very gradually and painfully the nerve bundles beneath all those layers of enamel and protective sheathing. I’m sure that would hurt in any event, but add in my chemical blend and you’ve got yourself a real party going on in your mouth!
“You know, Bob, there are all sorts of schools of torture out there, and they’ve got some great stuff. In many ways, torture is such an unrefined art form, discouraged as it is by humanity’s sense of morality, but if affected properly the torturer becomes an artist of the highest ilk. For instance, I’ve heard that if properly executed, a person can pound the sole of your foot until you die from the pain, honest to god! It has something to do with all the nerve endings in your feet, funny stuff, huh? Especially considering that those nerve clumps are the stubs that we walk around on all day!
“But seriously, Bob, you know why I like dentistry so much? No, no, not because my dad was one or that’s what I wanted to be when I was a kid; no, I like fucking up teeth because it gives you access to the most active and immediate nerves in the body. Essentially they’re hard-wired directly into a person’s brain. Sure, you can cut off toes, pound on gonads, or shove bamboo under finger nails, but you want to know what really makes that brain scream in agony? Teeth.
“Did you know that the ancient Egyptians were the first recorded culture to figure out dentistry? No, no, for real! You see, everything they ate had little bits of sand in it, on account of them living in a huge desert, and after years and years of munching sandy bread there wasn’t much left of those teeth, so they pretty much had to figure out what to do about it, not much choice really…
“But I digress. In all seriousness, Bob, if you don’t tell me what I want to know then we are going to have a real pickle on our hands. See, I know those big bullies up there beat you up pretty severely, even knocked a couple of teeth loose in the process I imagine. So you’re probably thinking, hell, this isn’t that bad, right? Wrong. This nerve cocktail, as I like to call it, will only start by letting you know how bad your mouth already hurts, you know why? See, right now you have already been subjected to a large amount of pain, especially since they beat you to a pulp and I’m sure cracked not a few of those ribs in that chest of yours. Well, when all that was happening, your body began to release endorphins to numb the pain and keep your brain on edge; its nature’s way of giving you every opportunity to get your ass out of trouble when you get hurt. A wonderful little defense mechanism, no?
“Well, that’s what makes my cocktail so magnificent. In short order it not only blocks those happy head chemicals, it replaces them with its own wonderful blend of something that will reverse the effects. In fact, if I hadn’t worked so long on the combination to make it ju-u-u-st right, I might be disappointed because you could go into shock, pass out, and maybe even die because of the overload, and we can’t let that happen, can we, Bob?
“So, the final ingredient in this triune devil is a chemical agent that will accelerate your heart while at the same time keeping you conscious, essentially a nice perversion of adrenaline. You will have no choice but to remain conscious, terribly conscious, and aware of every sensation over your entire body. Minutes will seem like hours, and each moment you are alive will seem like a lifetime in the darkest pits of Hell. Thus, I can assure you that you will be here for every second of the excruciating pain and misery that will soon follow.” Calculatingly slow, the Surgeon places the syringe on the table with a precise yet almost gentle touch.
“Now, if you decide to cooperate, god forbid, and tell me what I need to know, then you can have the prize behind needle number two: a quick and painless death. Instead of unbearable agony, you will be rewarded for your patience and good nature with a compound not unlike the one that robbed the world of Socrates. This herbal and chemical blend will overcome your senses with a pleasure as intense as a thousand orgasms and as sweet as a field of flowers. You will float off into a bliss that few can imagine, and death will take you with all the force of a drowsy kitten.
“You know, Bob, in my travels I came across a peculiar notion of the significance of death. I can’t rightly say whether I agree with it or not, but it is beautiful in its simplicity either way. Have you ever had a computer seize up on you, Bob? I’m sure you have, haven’t we all? Well, you know how the last thing on the screen is often what is displayed there, frozen in time, at least until you pull the plug? Well, imagine as you die whatever frame of mind you were in at the time you are blessed, or cursed, with for all eternity, as if your life froze and the last moment that you experienced never ends. I know, I know Bob, it’s some jagged edge stuff to think about. Well, let us then postulate that this is, in fact, the reality of the situation. It makes the issue of how one dies a bit more imperative doesn’t it?
“In fact, certain ancient peoples were more concerned with how a person died than when or where, or even what kind of a person he or she had been before that moment? Take the Vikings for example, their heaven,
“Let us return to our current predicament then, and make our context the issue at stake in the here and now. Imagine the quality of eternity you will be afforded at the hands of either door number one or number two… Do you want to spend the rest of your immortality feeling the razor edge of the worst kinds of pain ever experienced by a human being, or do you want to have it filled with hard-ons and sweet delights?
“Well, Bob, the choice is yours, so as soon as I take this gag from your mouth I will give you a single chance to tell me what I need to know. You now have complete understanding of the gravity of your decision, and thus I leave it to you to make as an informed agent.”
With a single swift motion, the Surgeon takes up the scalpel from the table and clips the leather band holding a rubber ball in the man’s mouth, and it falls discarded to the floor.
“So Bob, we come to it at last… where are the other hostages?”
Spitting up blood mixed with bits of broken teeth, words sound from his broken lips in response, “I don’t know, and even if I did I wouldn’t tell you, you fucking weird shit.”
Shaking his head, “Tsk, tsk, tsk, Bob. Language now young man. Well, let’s see, unfortunately you have fallen into the utter fallacy of the ‘even if I did’ line, how cliché of you, Bob. I must say I expected more from you. However, that means that of the two of us, I will get the pleasure, in this case by ripping out the information that you obviously know from you, one tooth at a time. Sadly, I can’t say that this will hurt me more than it will you, but at least know in your last moments, Bob, that I gave you every chance and warning to make this right, and it was in the end your own decision that brought us to this conclusion.”
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