Crossing the Line (11 page)

Her hand moved away from his penis and she took it into her mouth. Clint closed his eyes and let the sensation
fill him. Her fingers began gently rolling his testicles between them. He felt the pressure of an orgasm building at the base of his shaft already.

She surprised him by choking down his entire length. And just when he was seriously beginning to consider keeping good on his promise to try to talk Thad into keeping her around pain sounded in his scrotum.

Tracy twisted the ball sack savagely and clinched her jaw. Her teeth dug deep into the hardened tissue between them. The taste of blood filled her mouth for the umpteenth time that night. This time it wasn’t hers, though. She shook her head from side to side, shredding the tissue.

She removed her head from his crotch and spat blood down into his face. He looked down at the ruins of his member and let out a howl of outrage. He moved to swing at her, but the pain had slowed him down considerably. Tracy dodged the knockout blow and grabbed the lamp from the nightstand at the head of the bed. She brought the thick, heavy stoneware lamp down on his forehead.

He was knocked out instantly by the blow. The lamp cracked, but did not shatter. Tracy yanked the cord from the wall and brought the lamp down on his head again. Now the bottom of the lamp cracked and fell away. Clint’s forehead was a mess of torn tissue and exposed bone. He was completely knocked out.

Tracy got to her feet and went to the bag of luggage. It wasn’t her clothes, but anything would work. She pulled on a pair of sweat pants,
flip-flops and a flannel shirt. She went over to the window and pushed it open.

Tracy looked over her shoulder at the mess she had made of Clint and climbed out the window. She lowered herself down as far as she could and released her hold on the window ledge. She landed with her knees bent and felt the make-shift first aid Clint had applied come apart. Her wounds started bleeding again, but she didn’t care. She had escaped the nightmare.

She limped away from the house and ducked behind a big tree. She looked back and saw the enormous figure climbing the wall to the newly opened window. She ignored the big man as she broke into a run away from the house.

15

Clint awoke to intense pain in his head. He felt something shoved into his mouth, preventing him from crying out. The room was dark. He tried to sit up and found that he could not move. He
then realized he could feel that he had been strapped down. Something was tying down his neck, chest, pelvis, knees and ankles. The five straps completely immobilized him. His crotch was throbbing with pain and his forehead felt as if someone had put it in a vice grip and squeezed it until his brains were ready to pop out of his ears.

Something marched across the room. He tried to look at the source of the sound and found it to be out of the limited range of his visibility. The footsteps were far too heavy to belong to Tracy. For a moment he was convinced it was the spirit of Justin come back to torture him for allowing him to die.

The footsteps stopped at the foot of the bed. The bed groaned under the weight as the killer climbed over him. Clint got a good look at him. The skull he wore over his face was still fresh. Chunks of gore clung to the bone.
His hair was no longer matted because of the time that he spent in the lake. His beard came out from beneath the skull. He looked— by all logical means— like a Viking Berserker. The name etched into his collar was very fitting,

Clint thrashed in his bindings, trying to work them loose. An enormous hand pressed down savagely on his chest. He felt three of his ribs snap under the pressure. His solar plexus cried out in anguish. Worst, though, was how hard it was to breath
e
with the gag in his mouth.
The hand rose up off of him and his lungs tingled with relief. The relief was short lived though. The hand crashed back down and he felt a snap inside his body. His diaphragm had been destroyed, but he had no way of knowing that. He was convinced that he was going to die from the injury, though it was mostly superficial.

Brute pulled the gag from his mouth and Clint tried to scream. A long, anguished wheeze came from between his lips. The crushed diaphragm made it impossible for him to make more than a slight noise.

The killer got to his feet and Clint once again heard him pacing around the room. Clint told himself that it was only a matter of time before Thad and the others came bursting into the room. Surely they would know that he was not heavy enough to cause the loud footsteps. Brute went to the bathroom and a moment later Clint heard the shower curtain being ripped away from the rod.

The killer stomped back into the room and pulled away his bindings. Clint moved to leap from the bed, but a huge hand snatched him by the hair and pulled hi
m back down
. He thrashed under the grasp as he was rolled onto the curtain. It was still moist from the shower Clint had taken with Tracy and as it wrapped around him he reflected on how stupid he was for not just killing the bitch.

The same bindings that had been used to tie him down to the bed were now used to tie him inside the shower curtain. He was cocooned in the wet plastic tarp.
One of the wet towels were wrapped around his head and tied off roughly. He struggled to breathe through the damp terrycloth and, though it was difficult, found that it was not constrictive enough to smother him.

Brute picked him up off of the bed and carried him over to the window. He was unceremoniously tossed from the upper floor. When he connected with the earth he did so on his side. His arm and shoulder broke on impact and his leg pulled out of his hip socket. The pain was brilliant, but he could not scream to display his anguish. This inability to make noise was somehow the worst of the injustices.

Brute leapt from the window after him and picked him up from the ground with a single hand. He tossed the cocoon over his shoulder and marched toward the forest. He crunched through the underbrush until he reached a small clearing. He tossed the man down onto the forest floor and looked around.

Here he had placed many of his tools in a sack. He went to the sack and pulled open the draw string. From within he produced a meat hook attached to a long length of chain. He tossed the chain over a thick tree limb, wrapped it around the trunk of the tree and padlocked it. He walked back over to where Clint was lying and used his bowie knife to cut the man free.

Clint was in so much pain that he didn’t even try to put up a fight.
Brute carried him over to the meat hook and flipped him upside down. Intense pain rang out as the hook was shoved through his leg. It smashed through his tibia and the thick muscles of his athletic leg. The killer released his hold on him and all of his weight pulled down on the wound, sending knotted pain rushing up to his brain.

The massive man returned to his bag and produced an old horse bit. He carried it over to Clint, who finally found the strength to attempt to fight off the advances. Brute grabbed him by the scalp and held his head in place. He inserted the horse bit into Clint’s mouth. The bit was old enough to be considered an antique and rusted in many places. The head harness had been modified so that it could easily fit the man’s cranium. Brute tightened it enough that the long piece of steel dug into his cheeks and pulled his mouth open into a grisly smile.

Clint thrashed even more violently after the giant released his hold on him. He only stopped when the movement caused his body to slide down three inches. The meat hook tore savagely through the bone and flesh of his leg. Intense pain caused him to spasm. He realized then that in his current plight fighting back would only worsen his condition.

Brute’s pace never increased. He showed no sign of excitement or any other emotion. He merely went about the process of torturing Clint as if it was his job. Clint wondered if to the deranged man he was nothing more than livestock. He was being butchered and he knew it. There was nothing he could do to prevent his doom, either.

The killer cocked his head to the side and looked at Clint. He seemed to appraise the athletic physique. He pulled his bowie knife and ran the tip of the blade down Clint’s belly. A small slit ran from Clint’s belly button to his darkly bruised solar plexus. The wound was not meant to be damaging, it was merely a tracing of the line between Clint’s abdominal muscles.

After a moment’s consideration Brute reached out and grabbed hold of Clint’s torn genitalia. He sliced them away and threw them onto the forest floor. Clint felt warm, sticky blood run up his stretched midsection.

The killer sliced a deep gouge through Clint’s pubic hair up to the base of his belly button. A second gash was sliced from one side of the pelvis to the next. The killer put away the bowie knife and dug a finger into the center of the criss-crossed wound. He gently folded back the skin so that it opened like an envelope.

Clint’s innards were held inside his body by the filmy sac, but completely visible. His entrails glistened in the moonlight. The grayish-peach tissue
had yet to be oxygenated so it held the color. Brute tore the sac open and took a step back as the compressed intestines unwound down to the forest floor. Clint’s vision was obscured by the thick rope of his guts.

Brute walked around the man and ran a hand over the full length of Clint’s back. The suspended man could feel the warmth of his own blood on the tips of the giant’s fingers. His stomach lurched. Bile rushed up his throat. Some of the vomit escaped around the intrusive bar in his mouth, but most of it came out of his nose.

Brute walked back to the bag and pulled out a skinning knife. He walked back to the man and began working on his back. Despite the agony it caused his leg Clint had no choice back to thrash as the blade pierced his back. The initial incision began midway through his left buttock and ran the full course of his back up to the base of his shoulder blade. A similar gash was made
on the right side of his back. Finally two small cuts were made at the top and bottom of the lines, connecting them into an oddly shaped rectangle.

The killer put the skinning knife away in the back of his waistband. He picked at the skin at the bottom of the wound until it curled up, bringing a chunk of muscle with it. He was careful not to tear the skin as he rolled the skin upward. In a couple of places it resisted and he had to slice it a bit deeper with the knife.

Clint’s body convulsed with the pain. He sobbed, but it came out as a series of wheezes. With each movement of his diaphragm inten
se pain sounded. He puked
as Brute reached the top of the sm
all of his back. Vomit
rushed out of his nose. The stomach acid burnt at his nostrils.

There were so many pain receptors sounding at once that his mind just became a blur of shock and pain. He could not think any longer. His thoughts were jumbled and
disconnected. They were more just random words than anything. Every few seconds an image would join his mental voices, but they came and went so quickly that he could not process them.

Finally the skinning of his spine ended. Brute tossed the rolled skin away and looked at the gruesome image before him. Muscle— red and white intertwined— covered the knobs of interconnecting bone. In a couple of places the muscle had torn away with the skin and here he could see the stark white of the spine perfectly.

He ran a hand from Clint’s buttock to the end of the long wound. His fingers touched each of the exposed nerve endings. Clint’s body went through a violent, involuntary spasm. The hook reached his ankle and tore through his Achilles tendon.

Brute reached out and yanked down on the leg. The hook tore through the bones and flesh and left Clint’s foot torn in half. The man was in so deep of shock that he just flopped on the ground. He didn’t attempt to move away from his impending doom. He merely lied in a pool of his own blood and bile, mere inches away from the gruesome remains of his genitals and the skin from his back.

Brute placed an enormous foot on Clint’s shoulders, driving him down further into the ground. His entrails felt as if they were going to rupture beneath him. A foggy thought passed through his mind and he wondered if he would be covered in his own shit should they pop.

Brute pulled his bowie again and dug it deep on each side of the spine just beneath the shoulder blades. Clint
knew then the intentions of his attacker and let out an insane, strangled laugh that hurt him incredibly. He remembered playing
Mortal Kombat
with his older brother when he was far too young to really understand what was going on.

The giant’s fingers dug deep into the flesh and wrapped around Clint’s spine. He used the leverage of standing on Clint’s back to pull the first five inches out of the man’s back with ease. The muscular bunches around the spine grew thicker further down and he had to carve them back with his bowie knife.

It took ten agonizing
minutes to pull the spine completely free. At the end of it Clint’s heart was barely beating and his brain could no longer process any legitimate thoughts. Brute set the spine down gently near his sack.

He picked up the converted scythe/pickaxe from beside the bag and walked over the gory mess that had been a star athlete less than twenty minutes before. With a single downward swing he punched a hole through Clint’s head with the pick. He pulled the long spike free and twisted the weapon so the curved scythe blade was prepared.