This is an excerpt from a work in progress, which is an autobiography from an interesting but nasty dude who presently has no name… I’m just taken with his personality.
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It was an unusually quiet afternoon: unusual because the road was quiet. Normally there was a steady buzz in the traffic throughout the day, continual and consistent until the sun went down. In the absence of traffic noise, the birds seemed self-conscious, half-heartedly chirping occasionally and then looking the other way. They seemed to be thinking, ‘did some other bird make that sound?’ Chirp, look away; chirp and dash away. The birds were so self-conscious that they didn’t seem to relish the idea of making any sound at all, so each instance was subdued.
The warm blanket of afternoon sun further muffled the atmosphere. Lying down under a tree at the back of the park was a youngish woman. She had an arm thrown over her eyes and gravity turned her toes outwards with the relaxation of comfortable afternoon snooze. The occasional rustle of the apple tree filled the area with a pleasant hushing, and the breeze played with the ribbon that adorned the cuffs of her trousers. It was a picture of ease and contentment. If she was snoring, it was gentle snoring, the kind of snuffling that kids make when they’re dozing but not yet really asleep. The park was deserted, and the very occasional shout of laughter in the neighbourhood came not from the park, but from the housing estate down the road.
The soft, low rumble of a well-maintained vehicle didn’t disturb the peace; nor did the gentle crunching of the tyres on the gravel drive. Even the entry of the car into the park seemed subdued. Driving slowly, the person behind the wheel appeared to have left his or her hurry behind. The woman took no notice of this entry into what was effectively her space.
The car stopped about twenty metres away from where the sunlight filtered through the apple tree onto the woman below, and the engine moved into a phase of quietude that seemed natural. The cessation of the motor didn’t change the atmosphere like it might have: the sound simply blended away into the other, gentler background noises. It seemed an age before the door opened with a gentle click. Was the door ever shut? Hard to tell when it barely made a sound as it was opened. Likewise the footsteps of the driver on the path and into the grassed area: did they ever make a sound? The only thing certain is that the woman had no idea that her peaceful afternoon was her last as she was reached, gagged, blinded, bundled, tied up, and tossed into the car.
When the vehicle left the parkland, it was as though both it and the woman had never been there, and the rustle of the tree continued undisturbed.
Compared to the peaceful existence in the parkland, the evening for that woman was full of adrenalin, and pain. She was knocked unconscious, and given a spinal block, high enough to deaden everything from the neck downwards. Paralysed, she woke up groggy, without sight, and immobile. The painkiller made it easier for her to be hooked with steel hooks in random parts of her body, each of which was pulled enough for her to feel the tug on her body as each one was manipulated. It was important that she not feel the pain of it because the tugs coincided with a pre-recorded soundtrack played closely in her ears, softly enough for it to be hard to hear further away, but like a thundering sound to her. The soundtrack simulated the sounds of tearing flesh and other odd, unidentifiable soundscapes. She, of course, unable to see, unable to feel the pain, was put through the play of an exquisite torture: she believed that the tugs corresponded to the sounds, and the torturer stood up in the background with a delicious smile on his face, playing with his living marionette.
As the spinal block wore off, the pain of the hooks became real to her. The hooks were gradually torn out of her body and she was gradually stripped of her life over the following five hours. Her screaming was warm and erotic. Her groans and whimpers were built up into rolling crescendos, and her panting and weeping formed the undercurrent of a ghastly rhythm. With a practiced hand, the musical extraordinaire used his puppet to piece together his own symphonic creation.
