Timothy D Brone

Timothy D Brone

         “How do you want to die?”

         Timothy barely heard the question. Sleep still dulled his senses, and he blinked his eyes several times to awaken. Two blinks later and the haze of unconsciousness instantly vanished. Fear gave spontaneous clarity. From a drug induced slumber to a fight or flight reactive mind, every muscle in Timothy’s body pulled, jerked, and flexed violently. Yet even with adrenal glands wide open, Timothy’s twenty-five year old body found movement impossible.

         The man who asked the question as Timothy awoke also remained motionless. With less than three feet separating them, the two sat across a stainless steel table from one another. Timothy’s eyes darted about wildly, trying to make sense of his new enviroment. While the other man’s eyes stared intently on Timothy.

         The man’s left forearm rested on the edge of the table. His left hand loosely encircled his right elbow. The right forearm extended up allowing his chin to rest upon the crease of thumb and palm. His index finger ran up his cheek and rested under the duct of his eye. The other three fingers covered his mouth, and when he spoke Timothy could make no movement of his mouth.

         As from an unmoving, ventriloquist dummy, the voice came across the table and while spoken softly, hit Timothy like a sonic boom. “How do you want to die?”

         Timothy’s mouth and vocal cords were possibly the only parts of his body capable of movement, and he used both to produce a booming, guttural scream.

         The man across the table never twitched from the sudden outburst. Merely closed his eyes slowly, and waited for the eruptions of sound to subside from Timothy.

         Eyes slowly open, and his soft monotone voice again came from unseen lips, “Apologies for the confusion. I thought the question was simple. How do you want to die?”

         “What the Fuck do you want?” Timothy screamed leaving himself out of breath as the last word escaped his lips.

         He stood, neither hastily nor leisurely, but steady without a unnecessary waste of movement, and grabbed Timothy’s wallet which had been lying unnoticed on the table. Flipping open with a quick glance the man spoke once more. “Timothy D Brone make peace and decide. I’ll return in roughly twenty-four hours. I will expect an answer. How do you want to die?”

         “What are you talking about? I don’t want to die! Mother Fucker, don’t walk away from me! Who are you? What the Fuck do you want!” the man opened a door and left as Timothy continued to rant.

         Timothy screamed obscenities, questions, and curses at the door after it closed. Many minutes later after unanswered cries and pleas of help and mercy, Timothy finally quieted and tried to concentrate on taking notice of his surroundings.

         A simple room approximately ten feet wide, ten feet long, and ten feet tall. A full mirror covered the wall across from Timothy except a door in the left corner. The ceiling, left wall and right wall were also fully mirrored, allowing Timothy a clear view of nearly every part of the room. The wall behind him was either simple wood. The only furniture was the steel table before him, the chair his captor left, and the chair he sat in.

         He looked at himself securely fastened to a heavy duty steel chair. A two inch wide strap wrapped around his forehead, pulling it tightly against a cushioned backing. Another, snug but not chokingly tight, ran over his throat. More straps criss-crossed over his shoulders, across his chest, and beneath his armpits. Two straps on each bicep pinned his arms back. Another over each forearm and each hand, went around the chair’s arms and held firm. With legs and feet attached in similar fashion, movement other than that with eyes or mouth were impossible.

         Unnoticed until now, Timothy realized all his clothing had been removed. He sat, strapped naked in the steel chair, which like a toilet left his private of privates exposed to the open air below. A fart escaped, and he blew a raspberry with his lips. Timothy laughed and sobbed at the absurd situation he found himself in.

         For one brief moment Timothy regained some composure, starred himself in the eye through the mirror, “Well tough-guy, what the Hell are you gonna do now?” Then the laughter and crying took control till he passed out.

         He awoke with a mere moment of thought of the awful nightmare he dreamt. The fleeting moment instantly replaced with the realization he lived in an awakemare.

         His eyes darted about, looking desperately for any options of escape. His bladder felt the need to empty, and after a short pause to hold back, Timothy decided there was no need to wait, and let the flow of urine loose. The chair evidently was made like a toilet, and his feet remained dry. Numb but dry.

         A lack of circulation caused both hands and feet to be numb, and Timothy wondered how long he had been strapped to the chair.

         “Make peace,” he said aloud, wincing at the pain the words caused in his dry throat.

         Thoughts flowed through his head, but in the silence of the room, Timothy found it difficult to concentrate. He heard his heartbeat thump and echo off the walls, and it sounded to be the theme to Jaws.

         “Well, I don’t want to die by being ate by a shark. Stay out of the ocean boy, ain’t at the top of the food chain in the ocean. Stay out of the ocean boy.” Timothy spoke aloud to hear his voice and drown his heartbeat. The pain of speaking felt better than that sound.

         As he reminisced over his violent life, Timothy understood he knew nothing of God, except God would never want anything to do with a man like himself. “Make peace, Fuck you!”

         Timothy never recalled seeing the inside of a church. He grew up hard, with both parents being users of every drug in their reach. He learned to use and deal early in life. Street sense being way more important than book sense, his parents pulled him out of school extremely early, and most second graders exceeded his reading level.

         He watched his mother overdose and die in her own vomit on his twelfth birthday. Shortly after turning 15, Timothy watched a shotgun completely eliminate his father’s head. He inherited that shotgun after planting a knife in the trigger puller’s neck. And over the years, Timothy took the heads off four other humans with that shotgun.

         Minutes dragged. Hours passed. Maybe days turned into weeks. Timothy slept. Timothy woke and thought.

         Slept.

         Woke.

         Thought.

         And every thought turned any fear into anger. Actually every emotion turned to anger. Timothy would kill this man who imprisoned him and left him to rot strapped to a steel toilet.

         Slept.

         Ice cold water awoke Timothy with a jolt of non-movement. It hurt. It tasted better than anything Timothy ever knew. He lapped his lips dry. Gagged, and gulped more when another cup full splashed into his mouth. Through blurred vision Timothy glared at his captor and snarled with demonic sincerity, “I am gonna kill you mother fucker!”

         Without emotion, the same soft monotone voice replied, “You are still confused,” another splash of water in the face, “How do you want to die?”

         “Who hired you?”

         “Timothy D Brone, how do you want to die?”

         “Who hired you?”

         “I am the only one here, and the only one responsible. I give you one more opportunity to choose. How do you want to die?”

         “What? Davis hired you didn’t he?”

         Silence.

         “Ronald, yeah that fucker hates me.”

         Silence.

         “What the fuck is your deal then? Why? Fuck you!”

         Silence.

         The man started to move around the table. Timothy followed with his eyes as he thought, ‘Here comes the chance, he cuts you loose fuck this son of bitch up!”

         Instead the man stopped behind the chair and moved his feet slightly. A click triggered a flushing sound, and Timothy felt the water swirl air around his hanging testicles. Another two clicks the chair leaned back, and Timothy breathed erratically as he was wheeled backwards.

         He heard the door open and felt his wheeled chair cross the threshold to another room. While lit, the new room did not have nearly the level of bright light as the mirrored room, and Timothy’s eyes fought to adjust.

         As his eyes bounced about his new surroundings, Timothy noted he now sat in the middle of a type of workshop. Peg board walls held various tools. Chests lined the spaces void of tools, and a large stand alone table island in the center of the room.

         His captor opened a drawer, pulled out a syringe and small bottle. “Wait you son of a bitch! Don’t you dare O D me you fuck!”

         Hands paused at taking the safety cap from the needle.

         Silence.

         Fingers gripped at the cap to remove.

         “Shoot me you bastard! Get a shotgun and blow my fucking head clean off you coward fuck. Blow my brains out!”

         Without speaking the man stopped, placed the needle and bottle back into the drawer and closed it. Walking to the back of the chair, and titling it slightly, the man began wheeling Timothy again.

         “Coward bastard! You think you got the balls to pull the trigger. A shotgun makes a real mess. Brains all over the place. My skull and blood gonna rain over your pretty face. Cover the walls. Soak the floor. Fuck you!”

         The chair stopped rolling in a plain room of white concrete walls. Timothy heard footsteps as the man left the room. He screamed after him, “I am gonna fuck your white walls up mother fucker!”

         Silence.

         An erratic Jaws theme heartbeat pounded out of Timothy's chest.

         “Let me out of this chair mother fucker! I'll show you how to pull the trigger. You coward bastard!” His throat, once again dry, sent signals of pain to Timothy’s brain with every word.

         The pain was better than silence. “Fuck you!”

         Footsteps approached.

         “Coward bastard!”

         The man came around to the front of Timothy. He held a black, police style, pump shotgun with pistol grip handle in one hand, a shotgun shell in the other. He pumped back, faced the chamber in Timothy’s direction, placed the shell, and pushed forward.

         Timothy trembled within. Outwardly he masked any and all fear with anger. “Fucking coward bastard!”

         The man knelt before Timothy and placed the muzzle with deliberate perfection under Timothy’s chin.

         “Make peace.”

         “Fuck! You!”

         Once pulled, the trigger let the firing pin spring forward into the primer creating a gunpowder explosion that sent the plastic wad holding eight pellets out the barrel into and through Timothy’s jaw and head.

         As Timothy predicted, hair, skull, blood, and brain covered the ceiling, the white walls, and even splattered onto the trigger puller.

         The man stood without wiping any of the bodily debris from his face. He glanced at the fist size hole in the top of Timothy’s head, then stared into his face and lifeless eyes.

         “Timothy D Brone, your face is full of so much anger. Yet your eyes show much fear. You were a very, very poor choice. So very, very afraid. Why should I have expected something else from one like you.”

         As he spoke the man began the laborious task of loosening all the straps connecting the corpse to the chair. “Poor choice. Must put more thought into the next one.”