Torture By Proxy

Torture By Proxy

By: Robert Goldsborough

        He fell backwards with the mean steel still clutched in his bloody hands.  I smiled through the pain and coaxed him to stand.

         "That a boy Alex.  Now your gonna want to save that for later."

Alex dropped the pink thing into the collection bucket.  He was panting and looked as if he was in mid swoon.

         "Not yet my boy.  You still have hours to go before you can pass out."

He shook his swirling brain straight and came back over to me.

         We had been at this game of ours for days now, but it would soon be ending.  I think Alex recognized this fact and was becoming impatient for its finish.  He was the one who had started this, but it would be up to me to finish it.

         I had first met Alex months ago while I taught at the local junior college.  He was just a pup slobbering to get into the creative writing class taught by the famous Mr. Foster.  I had published seven fictional novels in the genre of horror and wanted a change of pace.  Of course the small college couldn't refuse a teacher with my credentials and I also explained that my class would encompass the writing of my eighth book.  The college was overjoyed, but I don't think anyone was quite as excited as Alex.  He had signed up, paid the overinflated tuition, and took the seat at the very front for the entire semester.  Alex was the first with questions, the first with completed assignments, and the last to accept help from his fellow classmates.  He wasn't shy.  Alex just had that way of expressing his views of superiority that no one wanted to hear.  He became the class pariah, but he never seemed bothered by it.  I believe he felt that his ostracism brought us, as teacher and special student, closer together.  It was these days when I was the only person who could help Alex get his money's worth out of the class that I noticed his burning passion, but it wasn't for the written word so much as it was for my talent.  Alex had discovered that no matter how hard he tried he just couldn't write prose that could touch mine.  The fire that burned in him was sparked in the most combustible of fuels, jealousy.  Alex started asking for more and more time with me in and out of the classroom.  I tried to satisfy him, but he began to argue and demand.  I had a novel to write and my publishers weren't about to accept any excuses for my tardiness.  The semester ended, but Alex called me daily to demand my advice.  I changed my phone number and then had to change it three more times.  Late one night, several weeks after my classes had ended, Alex showed up on my porch smoking a cigarette.  I had had enough of this, so I went out to reason with him or scare him off.  I threatened calling the cops and with his hands raised he apologized over and over as he backed out of my yard.  I never thought he would try that stunt again.  That was my mistake and how I wound up in this predicament.  Several days ago Alex snuck into my quiet house after I had fallen asleep and grabbed me.  He must have used a rag filled with chloroform to make sure I would stay asleep until he had me here in this dingy basement super glued to this heavy chair.  When I woke I tugged at the wood.  The glue held fast and I tore ragged gashes down my forearms.  My blood trickled from the wounds, down the chair and over the large bolts that secured everything to the concrete floor.  Alex stared in shock when he saw what I had attempted.

         "Now Mr. Foster you can't do that.  Your just gonna hurt yourself and that has to be my job."

         "Stephen." I said.

         "What?"

         "Stephen.  My first name is Stephen.  It's okay for you to use my first name."

         "Thanks anyway, but I think I'll stick with Mr. Foster."

I tried to nod, but Alex had even glued the back of my head to the chair.  I was caught.  Alex fumbled around the dim basement looking for something; it was hard for me to see what because of my immobile skull.  He came back in eyesight with a long rusty knife, the thin tipped variety that is used to fillet a fish.  Alex waved it and danced back and forth in front of me, stabbing at the air as if to frighten me.  I think he started getting frustrated when I didn't scream or even say a word.

         "What's the matter Mr. Foster, don't think I have what it takes to use this?"

         "No, Alex I think not only are you going to use it, but you're going to use it poorly.  You'll leave nasty holes and just let me bleed out."

         "What, and you're not frightened?"

         "Not really, except of the horrible waste you'll create.  You always had a very unskilled way of destroying something that had potential."

         "You're, criticizing me? I have a fucking knife aimed at you and you want to critique my style of killing you?"

         "Why not.  You never learned what it takes to do what I do and so in your lunacy your just gonna destroy it.  Enjoy your mediocrity."  Alex stopped dancing and stared at me.  His lower jaw moved as if in convulsion, but his brain couldn't find the retort to say.

         "Well, are ya gonna start already, or am I just gonna waste away here?"

Alex slugged me hard against my chin and I passed out.  I don't know how long I was out because the next thing I remember is Alex trying to feed me a bowl of hot chicken soup.  I sputtered out the hot greasy liquid and shook the healing gashes on my arms open again.  The blood leaked slower through the dark wounds than before.  Alex dropped the bowl on my lap and I yelped as I felt my crotch burn with the soup. 

         "Damn it Alex are you trying to drown me in that foul stuff." I yelled.

         "Sorry Mr. Foster.  I just thought you might be hungry."  Alex patted my lap dry with a paper towel.  My jaw was sore from where he had hit me and as I ran my tongue through the dry blood in my mouth I felt a broken tooth.  The razor edges of the broken molar cut tiny marks in my tongue.  My tongue felt around for more damage and played with the peeling skin at its roof caused by the too hot soup.  I spit out a gob of dead skin mixed with congealed blood at the top of Alex's head.  He looked up from drying my lap and smiled.

         "Yeah, I guess I deserved that.  I've been a bad host.  I've been think'n about what you said earlier and I think you might be right.  I'm not as good as you.  I do destroy things that could become something and I've come to a decision, you're gonna help me become better."

         "No I'm not."

         "But, Mr. Foster.  I need you."  Alex's eyes began to mist and his hands balled into sweaty fists. 

         "You won't listen Alex, you never did, and besides you're too much of a coward to take my direction."

         "I swear I will.  I swear it."

         "Fine, let's see then.  First lesson.  If you want to become me what of mine do you want first?  Think hard now."  Alex flushed with thought and raised his finger several times to speak his decision, but he faltered.

         "Wouldn't you want to see things the way I do?"

         "Yes, that's it. I want your eyes."

         "Not both of them, just one.  I need the other to help in your instruction."  He nodded in agreement and came at me with the rusty knife.

         "No, no you clumsy jackass.  This is what I was afraid of.  Just kill me."  Alex looked lost and asked me what to do first.  I told him to find a hammer.  He dug around in the toolbox behind me and came back with a shiny new claw hammer.

         "Now what you need to do is hit me with the hammer hard enough to break the bones on the side of my eye socket.  This will loosen the eyeball and let it sag."  Alex stared at me for a moment.

         "Damn Alex what's taking you so long?  Maybe you should start with my genitals 'cause apparently you could use some balls."  The hammer hit me squarely along my left temple and I saw those animated stars that cartoon characters always see.  The bone had fractured into tiny fragments; I could feel the tiny pinpricks of the bone stabbing into the nerves under my skin, like dozens of stinging insect bites.  Without the bone intact to keep my eye righted the entire socket drooped.  My vision slanted into its new orientation and the room appeared to go sideways as if I was on a ship stuck on a perpetual wave.

         Alex grimaced at my altered appearance and dropped the hammer.  I goaded him to go upstairs and grab a spoon from his kitchen.  He bolted with his hands on his face.  Several moments later he returned holding a tablespoon in his hand as if the thing was cursed.  I saw bits of leftover food still on the unwashed utensil and asked him to clean it.  He rubbed the metal on his shirt until I said that that would be just fine.

         "Now Alex, since there is no more bone to impede you just dig that spoon in under my eyeball and scoop it out like ice cream."  Alex hesitated as he slid the spoon into the soft flesh under my loosened eyeball.  I felt the cool steel and the rough bits of caked on food particles as he pried at my tender face.  He was awkward and used too much pressure against the broken bone, but he managed to pop my eye free from its lids.  When I closed my good eye I could see down the front of my chest; it was a dizzying sensation.  Alex grabbed at my dangling eye with his bare hands and I cursed at him.

         "What are you doing?  Get that knife and just cut it off."  With a rough tear of the rusty fillet knife my eye came free in his hand; Alex stared at it lying there disembodied.  He folded in half and yellow vomit exploded from his mouth.  He wiped the dirty spew from his face with a shirtsleeve and looked at the prize still clutched in his hand.

         "Does it hurt Mr. Foster?"

         "Of course it fucking hurts."

         "Now what do I do with it?"  Alex asked trembling.

         "You do what Man has always done when he wanted the power of another.  You eat it."  Alex's face contorted as his eyes went from his hand to my face.  The blood from my emptied socket ran down my cheek like red tears and I tasted the copper and salt on my lips. 

         "And don't throw that up, that's very important."  Alex closed his eyes and placed the smooth white sphere in his mouth.

         "Chew it Alex.  Chew it up good."  He bit down hard on my eyeball and with a wet crunch the clear vitreous humour ran over his teeth and down his chin.  The jelly clotted on like a small beard of gore as he chomped down on the slick mash over and over.  I held my breath as he swallowed.  We both waited for the deformed orb to come back up; it didn't and I praised him for his ability. 

         "You're bleeding pretty bad Mr. Foster should I get you something?"

         "No.  Let's just continue with the lesson."  I asked him what was it that he needed next from me and he couldn't answer.

         "Look.  It's gonna get easier to take these things so you might as well get over it."  Alex asked for a break and retreated upstairs for what felt like hours.  The windows in the basement had been boarded up so I couldn't tell how much time had passed, but it felt like days were going by with only the single dim light bulb suspended over my head to keep me company.

         When Alex returned he looked refreshed.  He had had a shower and changed his clothes.

         "Okay.  I'm ready.  What do I need next?"

         "What do you think you need from me Alex?"

         "Heart! That's it.  I need your heart."

         "No you don't.  Think about it.  The heart just pumps blood.  What do I use to actually write with?"

         "Your brain?"

         "Maybe later, but how about my fingers?"  Alex looked at my hands held tight to the wood by the superglue. 

         "What would be the best way to take your fingers?"

         "Oh Alex, your hopeless.  Just grab some pliers and yank the son-of-a-bitches off."  He went in search of some pliers in the dark behind me.  A rattling of different metals meant that he had to look hard.

         "Got'em."  He showed me the mean looking pliers with their sharp pinching tip.

         "Those'll do just fine.  Now get to it."  Alex went straight for the second knuckle of my index finger on my right hand.  Good boy, I thought.  He twisted the steel and snapped the thin bones.  He readjusted his grip on the finger at the new angle he had created and tugged.  I felt tissue and meat sliding away from each other as more bits of broken bone ground their way into the nerve endings under my skin.  The skin began to stretch and tear around the teeth of the pliers and with all his weight Alex leaned back.  The skin snapped with the sound of breaking rubber and Alex fell to the ground with his prize.  He popped the pink finger into his mouth and crunched it into oblivion.  He swallowed hard and smiled back at me.

         "There ya go boy.  That's the way a real writer would do it."  Renewed Alex came at me again and again, pulling every finger off my right hand in small popping sounds.  When he said he couldn't consume all the fingers right now I told him to grab a bucket and save the pieces for later.  He smiled and started on my left hand.  The spaces where my fingers had been were tracing out red lines of congealing blood that made it look like my fingers had grown long and thin with gore.  He had taken all of my fingers within just a couple of hours; he was panting and slick with blood.  He asked for a break.  I told him to take my fingers with him and make sure that he ate every one of them down.  He agreed and went up the stairs with the collection bucket in hand.

         I sat in the dim light adjusting my mind to the screaming pain that flowed up both arms and merged with my open eye socket before meeting every pain receptor my brain could use.  I was getting closer to where I needed to be.  I knew from the start that this was the way it had to end, but the pain was searing its own fire through my addled skull.  I wasn't willing to drag this out any further.  I knew what had to come next and it was going to come soon.

         After what felt like several more hours Alex returned looking as fresh as he had before.  He was smacking his lips and stated that he thought he was acquiring a taste for me.

         "Good, because the next bit is a true connoisseur's dream.  You need my mind.  You're going to have to dig out my gray matter and consume it.  Every bit."  Alex went pale and looked as if he was going to run.  He knew, of course, that I was right.

         "How should I...What would be the best way too?"  I smiled with my distorted face and started to explain.  He was going to need that hammer again and a chisel.  There was also going to be some kind of large spoon involved as well as the collection bucket.

         "It doesn't have to be pretty," I said, "but you are going to have to be thorough."  Alex started scrounging for the chisel and spoon he needed.  I was busy thinking around the pain that was going to be coming.

         "You are gonna want to soften the skull up first to make it easier to pull back the skin.  So you want to lightly tap all around my head with the chisel before you use the knife to cut the scalp free.  The brain should be easy to get too after removing the broken bones.  Remember, eat everything and quickly because I will be passing out shortly after you get started and you want to get the whole brain down before my body gets cold."  Alex's first blows with the hammer and chisel did not render me unconscious so I had to endure that unanswerable knocking at my cranium.  The sound of the metal crushing through bone lasted for what felt years and then stopped.  I wondered if Alex was giving up when I got my answer.  The knife met my forehead at the hairline and sawed through the skin that held my head together.  I passed out before Alex tore my scalp away.  I was glad I didn't last until the finale.  The sensation of having my brain scooped out in rough gouges didn't appeal to my nature.  I am glad that he did a good and thorough job though.

         The next thing I saw was Alex's hands.  They were younger and tanner than my old ones.  I saw the fingers cleaning themselves in the cool clear water, scrubbing out blood from under the fingernails.  I let him do his own self-maintenance while I rested and waited.  It would start as Alex slept.  I would show him his deeds over and over, me eyeless, fingerless, and brainless.  He had a weak will and I had known that from the beginning.  That was why I choose him.  His conscious wouldn't last long against my practiced assault.  I had done this way too many times.  By next week Alex would be a new man and I would have my change of scenery.  It would only take a little bit of torture on my part.

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