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Send to FriendThe memories soon came flooding into him. He was the owner of a corporation that specialized in building toys for children—Williams Toy Industries, which he had inherited from his father at the age of nineteen—bringing joy to young boys and girls throughout the United States while making a hefty profit to boot. He was married to a charming wife—Juliet Williams, along with two small children: a son—Terrance Junior, age five—and a daughter Carole, age seven.
His children would be safe at him, but not his wife, of course since she had been with him at the time of their capture, and as he thought of this, a mounting panic crept over him as his body broke out in gooseflesh that secreted cold perspiration. “Juliet,” he called in a choked voice, then coughed and gagged the last of the bile from his throat. “Where are you, darling? Please…please still be alive.”
“I’m over here,” she called back in a strained voice from across the room.
Williams lifted his head as his eyes began to get used to darkness and his night vision set in, and saw sitting across from him, restrained in her own chair bolted to the ground the same way he had been restrained had been the dark silhouette his wife Juliet, her radiant beauty somehow lighting up the darkened atmosphere. Her head remained bowed and long, flowing hair draped her face as she let out a few hoarse sobs, and then coughed and cleared her throat.
“Oh God, Juliet, are you okay?”
“I think so, she sighed with perplexity. “But where are we, and what the hell happened?”
“I’m not sure,” Williams replied as his thoughts and memories began to fuse and focus, like the pieces of a puzzle slowing coming together.
He could remember leaving his children at the house—not an entirely elegant house because Williams hated the idea of squandering his money on mansions and meaningless luxuries when there were far better uses for it, such as giving to the poor, donating to charity, and giving back to the society that had blessed him throughout his entire life. He was rich and could easily afford the biggest mansion in the entire state and to live life in the lap of luxury yet chose not to be miserly and selfish, but to help those downtrodden and less fortunate while at the same time giving his wife and children everything they needed to survive and be happy. The house they lived in was big enough, of course, located in the upper-middle-class neighborhood—a three-bedroom colonial that provided the Williams family with everything they could ever want and need and the loving and virtuous family had each other as well to cherish and care for.
Earlier tonight Terrance and Juliet Williams had gone out to see Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ together, which both found to be a brutally violent flick, yet powerful and compelling at the same time, reinforcing their faith in the love of Christ as they witnessed firsthand on the big screen what He had gone through for the forgiveness of sins. They had left their two children at home with a babysitter, of course, since the movie was obviously not appropriate for children, but for the two parents, it was a chance to get in touch once more with their faith and draw closer toward one another as they grew closer to God at that same instant.
Williams could remember walking out of the theatre that night, the crescent moon shining above as he walked with his wife held tenderly in his arms toward the car. She sobbed as tears flowed radiantly from her eyes and Williams looked at her with a smile, feeling a sentimental teardrop falling down his own cheek before kissing her on the mouth. He was so enraptured in the love of Christ as depicted in The Passion that he hadn’t noticed until it was two late the cold crowbar swinging toward his face.
Juliette’s mouth flew open with a piercingly shrill shriek of terror as the cold metal smashed across Williams’ brow, splitting the flesh above his eye and snapping his head loudly back upon the sudden impact of the cold metal ridge of the crowbar. Footsteps slapped across the pavement signaling the approach of men surrounding the young rich couple as Williams’ feet shuffled drunkenly over the blacktop, the gash on his head blazing agony as blood oozed thickly into his eyes. Juliet shrieked once more before Williams felt a cloth smothering his face. He inhaled the chloroform and the world began to gray out before his field of vision. Briefly, he struggled yet the hands holding the cloth tightened over his face and he suffocated and drowned in the chloroform until the gray world before him darkened and he finally lost consciousness.
“I think we were kidnapped,” Williams said now, shaking his head uncertainly.
He could remember nothing after having been smothered in chloroform and even those memories had been confusing, like a barrage of fragmented sensations coming at him all at once, perhaps loosely related yet seemingly having no overt correlation with one another. The kidnapping itself had happened much too fast for him to process anything other than his struggle and the way they had knocked him unconscious. He had no idea how many people had been involved in this heinous crime, what they might have looked like, or who they were. How they had been transferred to this building or even where this building was located had eluded him as well and he could only stare ahead perplexed and fearful, begging for God to protect him and his wife from whatever predators lay ahead, waiting to do them harm.
“I don’t understand,” Juliet said, unsettled. “Why would anyone want to hurt us?”
Williams sighed with equal perplexity. “I have no idea.”
The question burned within his mind as his temples continued to throb painfully and his brain seemed to swell within the tightening confines of his skull. Who would want to hurt an innocent young rich couple, and why? Had it been to steal their money, they could have easily made off with their wallets and the pearl necklace around Juliette’s neck without laying a finger on either of them. It seemed the kidnapping had been an elaborate plan, but for what purpose? Neither Williams nor his wife had made any enemies capable of this, and while there had been quite a few organizations that Williams Toy Industries had been competing with, he couldn’t fathom the owners of such corporations to be capable of a ploy such as this.
While being rich, Williams had still been a pillar within the community and extremely generous, donating both time and money to better the lives of everyone around him to the best of his ability. While within the Christian faith, he had practiced the doctrines of the Bible without fanaticism or harassment of those with differing beliefs or opinions and spent his time instead helping people in need and earning the love of nearly everyone in the community. While some might have been initially intimidated by his vast wealth or perhaps jealous, within time most people were warmed by Williams’ heart of gold and recognized his virtue, generosity, and compassion. He always donated copiously to the church each Sunday mass and while his was a multi-million dollar corporation, he had made sure to donate at least half of his profits (after taxes) to charities to help sick children, the poor, and to donate to organizations trying to fight against diseases like cancer and AIDS. He spent a great deal of his free time cleaning up litter, feeding the homeless at the homeless shelters, and doing other voluntary work like reading to sick children. And through it all, he still managed to make time to be there for his friends and family. He helped everyone who needed it, often times at his own expense, and always stayed out of trouble whenever he could help it. He couldn’t imagine possibly having an enemy, especially someone going to such lengths as this to torment and perhaps kill him and his wife. It was unbelievable, unfathomable, yet happening still, and he felt powerless to do anything about it, or even to learn what this was truly all about.
Williams thought now of his children—Terrance Junior and Carole—who should now be at home with their babysitter and wondered if they had been safe, or if the people that had captured Williams and his wife had captured the children as well. Fourteen-year-old Katrina Vincent had been the babysitter and she was the daughter of Williams’ best friend, so he had every reason to trust her, yet she could be in danger as well. Williams didn’t want to believe it, and wanted to tell himself that in all likelihood they were safe at home, blissfully oblivious to the horrors that he and their mother may soon be subjected to. Yet impending doubt and worry haunted him, even in the face of his own possible demise and that of his loving wife, and he couldn’t help worrying about them, couldn’t stop the reinforced panic at the thought that his children and their babysitter might be in danger as well.
“Please God,” he whispered in prayer, “keep them safe.”
The door behind Juliet opened and light filled the room, revealing it to be more of a small basement, with each of the four walls being solid concrete with a clustering layer of dust and mold clinging to the surface, while bits of plaster sprinkled down from the ceiling. The ground had been an old linoleum floor with pictures of a faded and discolored pink rose over each tile that blended into the dusty shade of white that was the background, where black mildew grew thickly between each crack and crevice. The door itself squealed noisily on rusty and corroding hinges and itself was nothing more than a slab of rotting, splintering wood that was infested with maggots and termites, who ate away at it along the cracks that spiraled along the grain.
As the door opened, in walked a slender man standing around six feet. Through the dispelling light from outside this room, he appeared first as a black silhouette, darkening with each step he took until he hovered over Juliet and brushed a hand through her flowing hair, causing her to abruptly turn away in terror and revulsion. The man was draped completely in black; wearing a black jump suit as well as a black ski mask to conceal his features. Williams could see only his eyes through that mask, which shone with predatory delight. “Looks like our subjects have awakened,” he said cryptically, and when he spoke, his voice sounded eerily familiar, yet distant and mysterious at the same time; a voice Williams could have sworn he had heard before—perhaps in another lifetime—but the memory had eluded him.
“Who are you people?” Williams demanded.
“What do you want with us?” Juliet added with equal terror.
The man in black threw his head back with derisive laughter. “Ah, Terrance and Juliet Williams. Two pillars of the community. Rich, yet virtuous at the same time; such a rare combination of traits in any given time or society.” He paused, rubbing his hands together in evil contemplation, and then chuckled. “Oh yes, we’re going to have a lot of fun with you.” Williams could’ve sworn just now that he could actually see the man grinning through his mask.
“What do you want with us?” Williams demanded again, yet with a trembling voice. “Who are you people? Where the fuck are we?”
“Such a dirty mouth for such a devoutly religious man.”
“Just tell us what you want with us…please!”
With his thumb and forefinger, the man in black grabbed a lock of Juliet’s hair and brought it to his face as if to inhale deeply her sweet aroma. “Such a lovely wife you have. You’re a very lucky man, Terrance, you know that?”
“Please, don’t hurt me,” Juliet pleaded.
“Oh, the things we’re going to do to such a lovely creature,” the man in black explained with a sexual moan. “She will first be chained naked to a bed in Room 144. We’ll start off lightly: A few stinging slaps to the face or rough handling of her breasts. Things will eventually intensify from there. We will proceed to taking a guitar pick and scraping her eyes with it and her nipples will be cut off with a pair of rusty shears. From there, her eyes will be gouged out with toothpicks and her eyelids will be sewn shut. A long needle will be placed into her ear as well. Blind and deaf, she will be all the more sensitive to sensations of pain and from then on, the fierce agony will be all she knows and all she can possibly experience. Juliet’s fingernails and toenails will be slowly pealed off one at a time and her toes will be bitten off one at a time, but not her fingers, for we wouldn’t want to enable her to slip her wrists through the cuffs. The wounds on her feet will be cauterized with burning hot coals so she doesn’t bleed to death, thus preventing her early expiration. One piece of hot coal will be shoved into her vagina while another will be placed inside her anus and both orifices will be sewn shut. Her hair will be savagely torn out. All of her teeth will be pulled out one at a time and then burning hot nails will be pounded into her mouth. Her lips will then be sewn shut. From there, Juliet will be given a tracheotomy and a swarm of irritated bees will be introduced into her throat before the tracheotomy is sealed closed. More than likely, this will kill her, for if the bees sting her throat it will swell, cutting off oxygen and putting a swift end to her torment. In the event that she survives this, we’ll simply cut her stomach open and strangle her with her intestines.”
“Why?” Juliet sobbed, horrified by what she had heard. Her entire body quivered and jolted as though someone had applied an electrical shock. Her face was now drenched in perspiration and she inhaled deeply, panting and gasping for breath as her trembling jaw dropped, leaving her barely able to speak coherently.
“Because we can,” the man in black answered coolly.
“Don’t hurt her, please,” Williams begged. “You can do whatever you want to me, but please don’t hurt my Juliet.”
“Well, that’s the other option,” the man in black continued. “Juliet can avoid her horrific fate simply by killing her husband.” The man produced a .45 caliber handgun and weaved it before Juliette’s teary eyes. “All she has to do is shoot her husband in the back of the head. It’s a quick and painless demise. Terrance won’t feel a thing and Juliet will be set free, completely unscathed.
“If—on the other hand—she cannot take the life of her husband, she will be subject to all the tortures I’ve outlined and Terrance will be set free completely unscathed.” The man paused and gazed ahead in deep contemplation. “Hmmm…I wonder how the virtuous Terrance Williams could possibly live with himself knowing of the tortures his wife had to endure just so he could avoid a quick and painless death. Where would the honor be in such a situation? How would you be able to sleep at night?
“In any case, Juliet, the choice is entirely yours.”
For a quick moment of weakness, Williams almost hoped that Juliet would choose not to kill him despite the tortures and atrocities that lay ahead should she refuse to do so. But as quickly as they came, he banished such deplorably selfish thoughts from his mind, knowing full well that he couldn’t live with himself knowing his wife would be tortured so he could be spared. Tears of anger, sorrow, and self-disgust welled in his eyes and he blinked them back, squeezing his eyes shut as a lump rose in his throat.
“The choice is yours, Juliet,” the man in black repeated. “So what’s it going to be?”
“Do it!” William exclaimed, pleading and sobbing as tears flooded down his cheeks. “For the love of God, please kill me! I can’t bear the thought of you suffering that much. Please, you have to kill me. God will forgive you and in death I’ll pray for you. Someday soon we’ll be reunited in Heaven and I’ll look forward to that day, but for now, to save yourself from utter Hell here on Earth, you have to kill me.”
“I believe it’s Juliet’s decision.”
“You want me to kill my sweet Romeo?” she said in great sadness and fear. “Romeo” had been Juliette’s pet name for Terrance Williams, based around Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet and the diminutive fit perfectly, for they were a pair of star-crossed lovers in many ways. Their families hadn’t been enemies, yet neither family had approved of the budding romance, for they had come from two different worlds: Terrance was born into wealth while Juliet was raised in poverty. Juliet’s family felt a siege of jealousy and intimidation, seeing the rich as elitist scoundrels who view the rest of the world with the deepest contempt, peering down upon them like insignificant ants to be crushed at their leisure or tools to be used and abused at the discretion of the wealthy. Terrance’s family distrusted Juliet and feared she might be a whore who cared only for what was in his wallet and bank accounts rather than loving him for what was in his heart. Yet Terrance “Romeo” Williams and Juliet Harris continued to see each other despite their families initial reservations and the families eventually warmed up to their children’s budding romance and Terrance and Juliet had been happily married now for the past eight years.
Williams wondered morbidly now if he and his wife would suffer the same fate as depicted for the s tar crossed lovers of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Williams envisioned his wife shooting him in the back of his head and then turning the gun on herself so the two could spend eternity together and he shuddered as fresh tears filled his eyes.
“I can’t do it,” Juliet sobbed, weeping openly but still blinking the tears from her eyes. “I can’t kill my sweet Romeo. Please don’t make me.”
“Then you willingly submit to the tortures that lay ahead?” replied the man in black and Williams could easily picture the widening sadistic grin through his mask.
“Torture me if you will, but I could never harm my husband.”
“Then the decision is made,” said the man in black as he cracked his knuckles.
“No, you can’t do this!” Williams shouted, perturbed by Juliet’s final decision as well as enraged that such a decision had been forced upon her in the first place. He struggled vainly to throw himself from his chair, feeling the tight pull of the restraints on his wrists holding him down and making his hands ache from the strain. “Oh God, this can’t be happening,” he sobbed with great anguish, feeling his heart being ripped to shreds by the grim news he had just received. While he had no desire to die until God declared it his time, his own merciful death was the lesser of the two evils when her suffering and torture had been the only alternative.
Williams wondered bleakly if they had any intention of releasing him, or if they planned on killing him anyway after Juliet had been tortured and her threshold had been stretched beyond its limits. Perhaps they would subject him to similar torture after she had been dead, for she would no longer be able to put any protest to such a reversal of their bargain. Perhaps had she killed him, they would have tortured her regardless, for they held the power, and the deal could easily be made or modified upon their terms and releasing one or the other would be imprudent because they could easily report the incident to the authorities.
It doesn’t matter, Williams thought in bleak resignation. Negotiating with these butchers gives us at least a chance…a hope that one of us might come out of this unharmed even if it is possible that they might decide at the last minute to back out on their deal, or if they were planning on having us both murdered since the beginning, to suit whatever twisted agenda they may hold.
Williams watched in defeat as the man in black released one of the restrains holding Juliet to the chair, and then the other. Once released, Juliet stood beside the man in black in somber resignation, with only a few errant tears scrolling down her cheeks to betray her fear and anguish. With grim submission to her fate, she spared Williams one final tearful glance, her right hand caressing her left wrist. With a sniffle and a sob, she bit her lip, her mouth hanging ajar as it began to quiver.
Run! Williams wanted to shout at her. Forget about me, just bolt out of this room and out of this building and don’t look back. Call the police and get them involved later on, but for the time being, just get the hell out of here and save yourself please!
“I love you, my sweet Romeo” Juliet said and could say no more.
“I love you, too, Juliet,” Williams said, weeping uncontrollably himself.
Juliet lunged toward Terrance and their lips locked together for a final kiss, one final display of the passionate love they held for one another. With their lips glued together, they melded into one, with their tongues probing against one another as Williams tasted his wife’s sweet juices, his heart rapidly beating as tears filled his eyes. There was a sense of ambivalence to the kiss, for it was a magical kiss and the fire of the love they held for one another continued to burn in a raging inferno of passion. Yet it was their final kiss and afterward he would no longer have his wife at his side to lean to for support. No longer would they be able to make love or hold each other in their arms. No longer will he see her smile or laugh because he had made her happy, nor could she bring happiness to his life, for after this the flame would finally be extinguished upon her painful demise, leaving him only to mourn her passing with a stinging guilt in the knowledge that it should’ve been him who had perished instead of her. She took his breath away one last time, and after this kiss, Williams knew that only bleak emptiness and regret lay wait in his future.
The man in black tore Juliet abruptly away Williams’ longing embrace just as Williams could feel whatever joy might have remained being torn mercilessly from his heart. He struggled to raise his hands in protest yet feeling the painful tug of his restrains once again as perspiration secreted profusely from his face, seemingly pouring down from him as abundantly as had the tears from his eyes.
The man in black held Juliet by the waist to his bosom while slipping his other arm around her neck as if to kiss the side of her neck. His eyes swiveled across the room, and then darted back toward Williams as the man laughed heartily. “Oh the pleasures we’ll experience upon her torment,” he said with great excitement, his lustful eyes taunting Williams. Beneath his mask, the man in black made a smacking sound from inside his mouth, and then informed Williams matter-of-factly: “Someone will be over here momentarily to release you.”
Juliet uttered a final wretched cry, her body squirming from the man’s hold, before the man in black carried her out of the room, closing the door behind him and leaving Williams once more in the darkness of his own reflections, where his mind continued to torment him with the implications of such a wretched agreement his wife had made to save him.
“Please God,” he implored through prayer despite being unable to bring his hands together. “Protect her somehow from the abuse she is about to endure. I don’t care how, just save her from such horrendous tortures. She is a good woman, a devout Christian like myself, and although not perfect, doesn’t deserve to be subjected to such horrors. Please save her.”
Within moments, as promised, another man dressed in a black ski mask and black jump suit entered the room, spilling sallow light from the hall, which splashed along the moldy concrete walls. This man in black had been just as slender, yet shorter than the last, standing only at five and a half feet. And unlike the previous, there had been no sadistic pleasure within his gaze, for it was one of only cold indifference and complete apathy, as though he knew what he had to do, yet derided neither pleasure nor misery from the task at hand, but instead seeing it as boring routine, merely business as usual. He held a .45 caliber hand gun but his finger was not poised at the trigger, but instead squeezed at the butt of the gun, seemingly unprepared to use it, though probably not opposed to utilizing it if he absolutely had to.
“Are you here to kill me after all?” Williams inquired with little emotion.
The shorter man in black shook his head. “No, I’m here to release you. You’re free to go. But if you tell anyone what went on here, we’ll come after you, and we’ll make your children suffer as well.”
Williams bowed his head grimly with a sigh of defeat. “I won’t tell anybody.”
“Good, see that you don’t,” the man said brusquely as he unlatched the metal cuff holding Williams’ left wrist securely to the armrest of the chair. “Bad enough your wife has to suffer. You wouldn’t want to subject your children to such a horrific fate, now would you?”
Williams shook his head wearily. “No, definitely don’t want that.”
“Good,” applauded the shorter man in black. “You’re a smart man, Mister Williams.”
He undid the latch holding the right hand firmly to the armrest and Williams was now a free man. He felt a wave of vertigo overtake him for a few seconds as his wrists began to feel as though they were swelling slightly from the onrush of freedom they had just attained. As he bent his fingers he could almost hear a faint crunching noise from the movement of the joints and as he breathed it felt that his breaths were coming in short seismic bursts through his lungs. Sweat stung his eyes as he looked around the room, then back up at the man who had released him with a sense of dull hatred but impending rage.
“All you have to do is leave and never look back.”
Williams sprang from his chair and throwing his arms outward, tackled the shorter man, scooping the man’s arm around his own arm as he took him down. The man staggered back as Williams weight pressed down upon him, forcing him further back. The gun that the man in black held slipped from his fingers as a single gunshot thundered, lighting up the room momentarily in a sudden flare, like lightning flashing from behind. The bullet ricochet off the corner of the wall and burrowed into the ceiling producing an increase of plaster dust which rained upon the floor. There was another loud crack as the man’s arm snapped from the sudden pressure, breaking in two places. He struggled to free himself from Williams’ grasp, yet Williams continued to force him back until his head smashed hard against the cement wall. With his head sandwiched between Williams’ chest and the solid concrete of the wall, the man jerked with sudden spasms overtaking the small of his back and his legs, letting out a wretched belching sound as he slide slowly to the floor.
It was then that Williams released his hold upon the man and peered down with dwindling rage as the man in black lay crumpled on the cement wall, muttering a few incoherencies in a seemingly unheard of language. The short man lifted his head, or tried to, before it dropped again and hit the floor, though not as hard as it had previously come into contact with the wall. His legs twitched convulsively as one arm crossed his flank and the other lay askew on the floor, the fingers jittering and wriggling as if typing on an invisible keyboard.
Williams turned away and saw the gun the man had been holding laying by the foot of the chair that Williams had been previously restrained to, with smoke billowing from the muzzle. Williams scooped the gun into his hand, looking down upon the muzzle and contemplating briefly if he should use it on himself. The cold metal of the gun slid over the sweaty surface of his palms and his heart raced. Grief-stricken guilt tore at his heart when thoughts of what Juliet might be suffering from at this very moment because she couldn’t bring herself to kill him.
If I kill myself, then her sacrifice would be in vain, Williams told himself with little conviction, caring surprisingly little of what Juliet’s sacrifice represented and concerned only with the fact that he was indirectly responsible for her tortures in the first place. I can’t live with myself knowing what she’s going through just to save me, Williams thought with great dismay before pressing the barrel against his temple, preparing himself to pull the trigger.
The amount of perspiration over his brow redoubled as his arm trembled and the gun nearly slipped from his fingers. He blinked, and the finger he held over the trigger stiffened as though encased in cement and completely immobilized. It seemed as though the nerves in his hands would not allow him to take on such a cowardly and sinful action like suicide.
It IS cowardly, and what’s worse, it’s an affront against God.
His cheeks were soaked in sweat mingled with tears and his entire body shook convulsively as he tried once more to squeeze the trigger, but to know avail. He blinked, let out a gasping sigh before stroking a dry tongue along the roof of his mouth, and dropped both hands to his sides.
Williams couldn’t bring himself to take his own life because suicide was a mortal sin, and one that was unforgivable in God’s eyes because the sinner was no longer able to repent his misdeeds. He who takes his own life forfeits his ticket to Heaven, Williams reminded himself as he squeezed his eyes shut and hunched forward. With that decided, Williams bit lightly against his lower lip, his heart still tremoring inside his chest, and left the dark room. Worst of all is my children, he thought bleakly. How will they get along with both parents dead? I have to get out of here. I must be there for my children.
The corridor outside at first looked like little more than an underground catacomb with twin rows of sallow lights running parallel across the ceiling. The floor had been carpeted, yet the once burgundy carpet was now blackening in some spots and splitting in others, shedding fibers every which way while loosening strings just barely held the carpeting together. The plaster on the walls chipped away, exuding a fine mist of powder through each nook and cranny, while spiraling cracks that were rivers of mold and mildew radiated throughout. Rows of doors lined endlessly on both walls and spanned both directions, leaving Williams unsure of where to go to get out of this nightmare building. Each of the doors had been assigned a number and the number of the door Williams stood before now was Room 144.
The room where Juliet was being held.
He heard no screams from that room and at first assumed the worst: the torture had already been performed and it was now too late to save her. Yet while it seemed like hours had passed since his departure with Juliet, Williams knew that in reality it couldn’t have been more than ten minutes, nowhere near enough time to complete such a list of atrocities. Thus, the absence of screams signified that the tortures had yet begun.
Williams considered briefly leaving and getting the police involved, but by the time the cops arrived, it would surely be too late to save Juliet.
He had to somehow save her himself.
This can’t be happening, he thought frantically as specks of dust clinging to the baleful beams of light danced before his eyes. The hall took on a dreamlike quality and his thoughts grew distorted along with this entire surreal atmosphere. Williams breathed heavily as he looked down in disbelief upon the .45 held with a sweaty, loosening grip and barked nervous laughter at the absurdity of this entire situation.
This can’t be real, Williams thought with feigned conviction. It’s a dream. It has to be. Right now, I’m at home safe and sound asleep and Juliet is asleep next to me and perfectly safe as well and none of this shit is fucking happening!
Williams’ senses grew keener as the panic seizing his nerves intensified. His eyes widened as they zoomed in through the distance of the dimming light ahead and saw a large rat scurrying over the dusty floor and eventually disappearing into the blanketing darkness. Every spider web hung from the ceiling and clinging to the walls was picked up with such clarity that every thread was distinguishable even from a distance. Flies droned dully from a distance and he could also hear the sound of maggots crawly wetly through the decaying wood and plaster of the walls. His eyes watered and his sinuses burned from the acrid stench of dust and rot clinging to the air.
And inside his head he could hear the echoing screams of his beloved Juliet mingled with the sadistic laughter of her tormentor.
Quit stalling, you idiot! If you don’t move your ass now and save her, it will be too late. They’ll probably get started with her any minute now!
Williams closed his shaking hand—which was slimy with sweat—around the doorknob for Room 144 and the doorknob offered some resistance probably due to the rusting of the gears inside, but it opened easily enough with the grinding of corroded metal. His heart and stomach felt as though they were tearing apart from strain; his heart from incessantly beating so rapidly while his stomach from being so tightly coiled into itself. Yet with marginal reluctance, Williams forced himself through the door into Room 144.
Room 144 was like the room Williams and Juliet had previously been held in, in that the walls were solid cement with a thickening layer of mold and dust clinging to the vertical surfaces of each of the four walls. On the left hand wall had been a series of pipes sprouting cobwebs along each curve as a fine mist clung the threads of the webs and condensation layered thinly over the metal pipes themselves. The atmosphere within this room was hotter and moist from the leaking pipes. As the humidity rose it exacerbated Williams’ already high level of perspiration. He could almost hear the steam sizzling from the pipes themselves, exhaling hotly from the cracks in a heated gust of wind that burned his watering eyes even from a distance.
The bed which Juliet lay on was little more than a cot on a creaky metal stand that looked as though the legs had been trembling knees, shaking and barely able to support even a minimal amount of weight before they would unhinge and collapse to the floor. The bed would fit two people and had a brass headboard with bars. It was these bars that the cuffs wrapped around as they restrained Juliet to the bed. Juliet sat with both her hands cuffed and raised above her head in a sitting position, completely naked. Her breasts vibrated slightly with the steady rising and falling of her chest and her legs remained splayed in such a way that left her vagina exposed and clearly visible from the doorway. She appeared in a panicked trance, gazing ahead and awaiting uneasily for her fate to be administered. At first she barely noticed that Williams had entered her room, and then her eyes lit up hopefully when reality finally pulled her from her submissive trance and she realized that her rescuer had arrived.
The original man in black stood to her side, unarmed now, but still masked and draped completely in black. He appeared prepared to strike Juliet, to commence upon the horrible tortures that he would take great enjoyment in administering when Williams burst into the room. Surprised by the sudden intrusion, the man in black’s head jerked toward the doorway, his entire body jolting with shock as his feet took a few staggering steps back and he nearly slammed his head against the wall behind him.
“Get away from her, you son of a bitch!” Williams shouted, his fear now completely departed and replaced with a blind rage and fierce protectiveness for his wife as his finger, still covered with sweat, remained poised at the trigger as he aimed the gun at the man in black’s temple.
“‘Thou shalt not kill’,” quoted the man in black as he raised his hands with an uneasy stammer in his voice. “Doesn’t it say so in the Ten Commandments?”
“Shut up!” yelled Williams as his thumb went over the hammer of the .45. His eyes stung from the rising humidity of the room and colors of red, pink, gray, and yellow bloomed and danced before his field of vision, but he remained focused and his aim remained true. He bared his teeth as his reddening eyes glowered in murderous rage. “I don’t know what you were planning or why, and I don’t care. The deal’s off!”
“You’re not going to kill me, are you?” the man in black cooed. His inflections betrayed his mounting terror, yet he remained clearheaded enough to try for his manipulations, struggling in vain to regain the control he had lost. “Killing is a sin, you know. If you kill me, you’ll be a sinner.”
“We’re all sinners,” Williams retorted restlessly. “And I’m sure God will forgive me, given the circumstances.” He blinked sweat and tears from his eyes, stepping closer to the man in black. “But I won’t have to commit another sin if you just stand there and do exactly what I say. I’m in control now.”
“All you had to do was leave and never look back.”
“Shut up and release her from that bed right now,” Williams ordered hastily.
The man in black crouched to the floor and picked up two keys on a single ring that lay hidden beside his feet. He held the key ring with his thumb and index finger into the air before applying one of the keys to the left cuff and the other to the right cuff.
The cuffs holding Juliet to the bed snapped off and her wrists had been free. In modesty, she attempted to cover her breasts with one arm while her vagina with the other, not so much from Williams, for she had seen her naked before, but from her captor. She hadn’t blushed, but appeared humiliated all the same at having been exposed against her will and almost raped by such a brutal man. She gasped and let out a sigh of relief as tears once more flooded her eyes.
Williams drew closer to his wife while still keeping his gun aimed directly at the man in black. “Are you okay, hun?”
Juliet nodded, still in shock. She opened her mouth to say something, and then closed it again, quivering as the tears redoubled. She bit her lower lip and swallowed.
Williams turned his attention back at the man in black. “Take off your mask.”
“I don’t think you want to see me,” the man in black said.
Williams shook his head. “No, I want to see who you are. Your voice is familiar, but for some reason I can’t quite place it. I can’t remember upsetting anyone enough to warrant this, or making any enemies of anyone. But maybe if I see your face, it’ll jar my memory. Maybe it’ll come back to me.”
“You won’t like what you see.”
“You kidnapped my wife and me and threatened her with torture if she wouldn’t kill me. I want to know what this is all about. I want to know why. I want answers. Now take off your fucking mask!”
The man in black did as he was told and had been right, for Williams didn’t like what he had seen and stood aghast at the revelations of the man behind the black mask as the mask slipped slowly to the ground by his feet. The man had been going bald, yet still had a few thin strands of graying hair over the top of his head as well as dark hair around the side and back of his head that was graying at the temples. His features were similar to that of Juliet’s, yet remained masculine, and his eyes had been the same shade of hazel Juliet’s had been as well.
The man in black had been Jack Harris—Juliet’s older brother.
“I told you you wouldn’t like what you see,” Jack Harris said, blinking.
Williams’ finger remained poised at the trigger, yet his eyes rose in horror at this new revelation as he stood flabbergasted by all of the implications for what he had seen now. “Why?” he began, struggling to speak coherently. No longer were tears streaming down his cheeks and he felt even the rage slowly departing. Only a cold numbness now gripped his heart. He desperately struggled to rebuke what he saw, yet to no avail. Indeed it had been Juliet’s brother, for Williams had seen the man earlier this morning before going to work. His memory of the features of Juliet’s brother remained fresh on his mind, debunking any possibility of mistaken identity. “Why would you go through all of this? Why would you threaten to hurt your sister—your own flesh and blood—just to get at me?”
Jack Harris shook his head. “The truth is that I was never going to harm Juliet in any way. It was all part of the act, you see.”
“What act? What’re you talking about?”
“It was our ploy to get you here, to mess with your mind, and then to destroy you,” Harris chuckled loudly. “Just ask Juliet. It was her idea all along.”
Williams turned to Juliet, who now stood, still naked, at the other side of the bed. She blinked, rubbing the back of her hand against her nose, and then grinned with a giggle of her own. “I know you must be upset,” she said as her light fit of giggling tapered off, “but you must admit one thing: I’m a hell of an actress.”
“How could you do this to me,” Williams cried. “I thought you loved me!”
“The truth is,” Juliet explained coldly, yet with a widening, gloating grin plastered over her face, “I never loved you at all. I know this hurt, and I’d be lying if I said I was sorry and felt bad, because the truth is I want to hurt you. I want to see you break down emotionally, and then destroy you.”
Each word Juliet spoke was like a dagger jamming into Williams’ already broken heart. He could feel everything in his life now slipping away as he realized to his utter horror that his marriage had been a sham after all. As she spoke, tears were brimming from his eyes yet he no longer fought them off, but let them slide down his cheeks, for he no longer cared. He felt like a man losing his religion. His faith in everything shattered as the love of his life revealed to him her true colors. It was then that the distraught Terrance Williams came to know that not only had his love been unrequited, but that the object of his affection saw him as a disgusting, worthless creature deserving only her scorn and antipathy.
“Your parents were right about me when they said that I loved you only for your money,” Juliet went merrily onward. “But actually, that’s not really true either, because I only loved the money and didn’t care for you at all. You were just the source of that money and nothing more. You’re a good man, Terrance, and you always treated me right and tried so hard to make me happy. You did make me happy, because money makes me happy; money enables me to buy things that bring me joy. You never did anything to anger me, but I still saw you as an obstacle in the way of the life of total luxury that I wanted to live. You always donated all your money to charities to help the church, the poor, and the less fortunate. It made me sick to my stomach knowing such precious money was being foolishly squandered on charities when it could’ve been spent on me. I know you loved me and wanted me to be happy, but that didn’t matter, because while I was at first indifferent to you when we got married, as time went on I grew to despise you. I pretended to love and cherish you, but that was a lie. I’m a hell of an actress and very convincing. You never suspected a thing, did you?”
Williams shook his head, aghast and unable to speak.
“You loved me more and more with each passing day, but the more you loved me, the more I hated you. It came to a point where I realized that the only way I could ever truly be happy was to have you killed and inherit your fortune and your company. It’s stipulated in your will that I get everything, and you never suspected that I’d use it against you.” She burst out laughing joyously and cheered at the way things had developed as if to applaud herself and her cohorts on a job well done.
“Why…why not kill me yourself?” Williams sobbed as he squeezed his eyes closed and felt the lump in his throat expanding as the tattered pieces of his broken heart crumpled into dust. “Why go through all this trouble?”
Juliet laughed once more, seemingly unable to stop. When her laughter subsided to a quiet fit of giggling, she looked at him once again and brushed a hand through her watering eyes. “Where’s the fun in that?” she answered and her grin widened. “At least this way, things are more interesting. And I knew that you’d come to my rescue. You love me too much to find it in your warm but foolish heart to leave me to die.
“In any case, Terrance, you are about to die right…about…now.”
As if on cue, what sounded like a sudden bolt of thunder boomed from behind and what felt like the sting of an angry wasp enflamed the small of Williams’ back, forcing it to arch upward. His stomach distended before it ruptured with a sudden regurgitation of gore that left both Jack Harris and Juliet Williams completely drenched in crimson fluid. Williams’ gun slipped from his hand as his legs buckled and staggered backward and his upper torso swayed back. It was as his knees finally unhinged and he felt the blood rise in his throat and flow from the corners of his lips that Williams realized he had been shot and that his tattered shirt and pants were now completely saturated in hot blood that burst forth from his exit wound along with his intestines, which slithered outward like snakes suffering from a convulsion. His arms and legs were cold with numbness, yet his stomach was set afire with agony and his head was pounding with the return of his throbbing headache as nausea scraped against the back of his throat. There was a sudden onrush of air as his back slammed against the ground and he lay there, wincing in agony as his blood and organs continued to spill forth abundantly from the exit wound in his stomach.
From a distance, he could hear Jack Harris speak: “All you had to do was leave and never look back, and none of this would’ve happened. You would’ve been able to get away, and never would’ve learned the painful truth about your wife. But we knew you couldn’t do that and counted on you coming to the rescue of a wife who in reality hated you and everything you stand for. It was your own good nature that finally led to your downfall.”
A baleful of faces hovered over Williams’ dimming, graying field of vision: the faces of Juliet, Jack Harris, and of a third masked man in black—the man who had shot Williams from behind. Each face leered down at him, grinning and taunting him. Their faces seemed to elongate into demonic caricatures amidst the black dots that were now dancing before his eyes. Sadistic laughter echoed from each of the three as their faces grew more and more distorted, their derisive cackling pounding against Williams’ eardrums until he could take no more and it finally shattered his mind the way it had shattered his heart.
“If this is the way it must be…then just let me die right now,” he gasped and heaved as blood bubbled from his lips. “Better yet….just kill me now…and spare me anymore pain.”
“Oh but my darling sweet Romeo,” Juliet said as her forehead appeared elongated and what looked to be devil’s horns sprouted from her temples. “The point of all of this was to make you suffer as long as possible before finally finishing you off.”
As he lay there and the syrupy darkness slowly consumed him, Williams for the first time wished that he had been wrong about an afterlife and longed now only for complete annihilation of his soul so that he would be spared having to dwell upon memories of Juliet’s false sacrifice and betrayal because his memories and consciousness would be completely destroyed. Yet perhaps if Heaven were real, God in his mercy could take away such cruel memories of his time here on earth. These thoughts offered him little solace as the cold hand of death had finally completely engulfed him and Terrance Williams finally slipped mercifully into the void.
The End.
May 02, 2004
May 06, 2004
Author's Note: What inspired much of this story had been the 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade and the character of Juliet in the end would probably fall more under de Sade's Juliette which I have not read at the time of this writing, but the references to Shakespear's Romeo and Juliet do add a nice touch, if I say so, myself. I could have very easily given this story a happy ending, of course, or at the very least made the ending less tragic, but that would have defeated the whole purpose of this story, which was to see those who are evil, greedy criminals prosper happily while the good and benevolent perishes in complete misery, completely betrayed on all sides. Of course I realize that vice might not always triumph over virtue, but sometimes it does while other times it does not, and I try to reflect that in my fiction as best I can, making a nice balance in which sometimes good wins and other times evil wins, and in this story I really wanted to make evil stand victorious. This probably doesn't make that much of a tribute to de Sade, since we don't have huge orgies of perverted middle-aged men (some of them impotent) raping virtous young girls and women, but to a certain degree a small portion of the philosophies are present, and hopefully at the very least it made for a decent yarn.