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“Stand there and look dangerous,” Bill says to me, as he hands me the Beretta to place in my pants.
“Keep it visible,” he says, pushing back the edge of my jacket to make sure you could see the gun.
Bill is a fat man: a very fat man. He has long, stringy hair that never seems clean. His face is
pocked and blemished. His beard, if it can be called that, is patchy at best. His eyes are of
unknown color. His smell is a clash of sweat and poison, which he posits regularly on his clothing.
The sweat comes from his obesity. He even sweats in the middle of winter. The poison come from
the drugs he constantly ingests.
We are in a huge warehouse about twenty-five minutes outside of downtown. There are some crates
strewn about haphazardly. Some shelving is off to one side in various forms of disuse. Very near
us, there is a bathtub, a tool cabinet, an open crate and a large wooden chair. Over all the space is
very empty.
Just then this big Lincoln comes squealing into the warehouse and stops just short of us. Skeech
and Tommy jump out of the car. Bill walks over to the car and says to Skeech, “Open it up.”
Skeech is tall and skinny. He makes Auschwitz survivors look healthy. To date, I have never seen
his complexion any color but gray, although I had always seen him at a distance before. Closer up
I can see the track marks that lead you to the truth of his appearance. He opens the trunk and
helps Tommy lift out the package. Tommy is a mousy, twitchy soul. He never is still for very long.
Even sitting he is always bouncing a foot or tapping his fingers. This is probably due to a constant
diet of cocaine and crystal meth. The package turns out to be Josh. I can tell by his belt buckle. It’s
this big gaudy thing his grandfather bought in Vegas years ago. It has a silver dollar mounted on a
huge silver and green, damasked buckle. It’s kinda Josh’s trademark. He is average height and
weight. His hair, when visible, is brown and wirery. He’s got a bag over his head, so I figure he ain’t
in Bill’s good graces. The guys are none too gentle dragging him out of the car. They are no more
ginger as they dump him into the awaiting bathtub.
Tommy takes one of Josh’s cuffs off and pulls his hands around to cuff them in front. He struggles
so, of course, Skeech and Tommy beat him quiet. Tommy finishes handcuffing their victim and
Skeech walks over to a panel with some buttons. As he punches the lower buttons, this huge hook
on a chain lowers from some overhead crane. Bill and Tommy get Josh up and loop the handcuff
chain over the large hook dangling from the rafters. Bill nods to Tommy and he uses the crane to
lift the bound man to a relatively standing position. Bill walks over to me.
“You with me?” he asks me.
“You have to ask?” I say.
“This ain’t gonna be pretty,” Bill says, “Just stand over here and stare at Josh. No emotion is best,
but no pity, and definitely no getting sick. You got it?”
“I’ll do my best,” I say.
“You puke, I’ll shoot you myself,” Bill tells me.
I remove the clip and deftly field strip the Beretta to be sure there is a firing pin. Once re-
assembled, I put a nine slug from my pocket into the chamber. I look at the clip to check the
rounds. They look real enough, so I replace the clip.
“Not if I shoot you first,” I say with a sardonic smile and take my position. We each know the other is
entirely serious.
Bill walks over to Josh and removes the hood from his head. There’s this look of fear in Josh’s
eyes. He’s got that desperate wide-eyed look folks get when they are genuinely terrified: Life and
death terrified. The fear has started to work on Josh’s body chemistry and you can smell it in the
little area around the tub. Even though we’re in a huge warehouse, there’s no airflow. Smells and
smoke cling to our little space, reluctant to spread and decrease its density. Josh’s got a piece of
duct tape covering his mouth, but he’s trying like hell to speak in spite of it.
“What seems to be the problem, Josh?” Bill says.
He stares at Bill for minutes, unsure of the question. Josh begins a long and spirited soliloquy. It’s
made all the more difficult because of the duct tape, but he gives it best shot.
“Why did you bring me here tonight, Josh?” Bill asks.
Josh starts another response and then stops himself. He gets a strange look in his eyes and just
stares back at Bill. While all of this was going on, Tommy had wandered off behind the
performance. He returns with a large fire hose. Bill tears the duct tape off Josh’s mouth, Skeech
hoists Josh in the air and Tommy turns the hose on him, as Bill waddled out of the way. The water
looks cold and at the speed it’s hitting him, it must sting like a very bad belly flop. Tommy is having
a blast catching him in the mouth, because it blows out his cheeks like a chipmunk. He and
Skeech giggle incessantly from the first time it happen, with eruptive fits every time it’s repeated.
After twenty minutes of this non-stop, gut-splitting humor, Bill calls an end to it. Josh is lowered
back down to the tub.
“Why did you bring me here tonight?” Bill asks Josh again.
“I…I…ah…don’t know what you mean,” Josh says, gasping to regain his breath.
Bill turns his back on Josh and Skeech hoists him again. Tommy disposed of the fire hose and
returns with a whip of some sort. It appears to be a cat-o-nine tails that has barbed wired
incorporated with it. Tommy starts to whip at Josh’s legs and feet. Josh screams. Tommy whips
harder; Josh increases the volume of his scream until his voice cracks. Each time He tries to say
something to Bill, Tommy hits him more violently. Finally, I get bored and take out a cigarette and
light it. I’m getting enough second hand smoke from everyone else, but it gives my hands
something to do.
“Excellent,” says Bill, quietly and then nods to Tommy.
Tommy stops whipping Josh. Skeech lowers Josh back down so Bill can look him in the eye. Bill
waddles his four-hundred-plus pound blob over to Josh and looks at him closely for several
minutes. He takes Josh’s face in his fat little fingers, squeezing his cheeks he asks,
“Why have you brought me here, Josh?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Josh says weakly.
“WHY HAVE YOU BROUGHT ME OUT HERE?” Bill screams at Josh. He punctuates the
question with the strike of a sap held in his other hand.
“I didn’t mean to,” Josh says in almost a whimper. His eye begins to swell shut where Bill struck him.
“Didn’t mean to what, Josh?” Bill says.
“Whatever you think I…” Josh says but he was just off by another swift sap across the face. Bill
waddles back out of the way and Skeech and Tommy walk over with baseball bats. I notice during
the baseball bat therapy that Skeech and Tommy are truly enjoying the abuse of their fellow
human. They’re relishing the pain and suffering, which they’re causing. That’s a weakness, and a
danger. Maybe one of the reasons I’m here, but I doubt it. Bill prefers other forms of torture,
although he’s doing a good imitation of enjoying this type of torture as well. Skeech and Tommy
have to be reminded not to kill Josh, and stop when they have beaten him senseless. It was about
this time that Tommy receives a call on his cell phone. He walks off to one of the unlit sides of the
warehouse and Skeech takes a folding table out of one of the packing crates nearby. After he sets
up the table he sets up several folding chairs from in the box around the table. Tommy returns with
a pizza and several liters of soda. They all sit down to eat. Bill offers me a slice but I decline.
I walk over to Bill’s car and take out a baggie of some coke. I sit in the driver’s seat, pick out a
yellowish hued rock the size of a bar of soap and start shaving off bits. I say rock, but it slices off
more like soap. I start chopping it on the mirror until its fine crystalline powder. I roll up a dollar bill
and with two quick snorts, I have all the energy and sustenance I need. I light another cigarette and
walk over to where I was standing before and wait for them to finish their food.
When they finish up eating, Tommy and Skeech take a car battery charger out of a box in the
warehouse and power it up. It now dawns on me, why they wet him down earlier. They wheel the
device over to the tub. Josh’s toes are dipping in the collected water and blood in the tub. Skeech
takes the positive clamp and attaches it firmly to Josh’s right pectoral muscle. Blood streams down
from where the clamp tears the skin. Skeech attaches the other clamp over a particularly bruised
and swollen area above Josh’s left pectoral. The hematoma burst open in a spurt of blood. The
pain of this arouses Josh from his slumber.
Josh’s body is starting to take on that yellow and purple tint of pure abuse. Several of his ribs were
cracked during the bat therapy. Blood has drenched his tattered jeans from the barbed wire
whipping. Seems to me that Bill’s just getting warmed up.
Bill’s form of electro-shock therapy differs from the psychiatric applications, but appear to have
been thoroughly tested beforehand. Torture can be so mind-numbingly boring; I tune out most of
the electro-interrogation. There is Bill’s calm voice followed by the hum of electric build up
culminating in prodigious screaming from Josh. Over the next several hours he admits he has
been stealing in one form or another and promises to never do it again. I know from experience,
Bill will assist him greatly in keeping this promise.
Josh looks a little worse for the wear. When he is able to open his eyes, you can see he has burst
some vessels in left eye. It is not attractive. His tongue is swollen and his body is battered and
bruised, as he is finally lowered from the hoist. Skeech and Tommy remove his bindings and help
him in to a large chair near the tub. He sits there gasping for air. Bill walks over to him and in a
cheesy European accent of indistinguishable origin he says,
“Now we are past the little questions. How you could skim from the profits. How you could betray
my trust. These we are past. Now we get to the interesting questions. Now we get to learn about the
real you. Have you read the writings of Shan yu?”
“Jeez, Bill, that’s not your line. You stole that from Firefly, you cheese dick,” I say.
“Yea, but I just love that line,” Bill says as he swings the large hand-sledgehammer in a wide arc,
ending on Josh’s right foot. The scream is ear piercing.
“Starting to look like hamburger down there. How do you like your burgers, boys? Boney?” asks Bill
The spot that used to be Josh’s big toe is now a red and white stain of blood, bone, and sinew. The
sound the hammer made hitting the foot was quite memorable. It was sort of a snap, crackle, and
squish. Bill doesn’t spend too much time tenderizing Josh’s feet before he gets bored. He walks
over to the box that contained the battery charger and returns with a long nail. To me, it looked like
on of those long gutter nails, but seems heavier. What Bill does with the nail makes me cringe.
Skeech and Tommy spread Josh’s legs apart in the chair, and Bill placed the nail right in Josh’s
crotch. I am not sure what part of Josh’s anatomy got nailed to the chair, but his cry made me
positive I don’t want mine nailed there. Josh lapsed into unconsciousness again. Smelling salts
remedy that, bringing him back to full consciousness. Bill returns from the tool cabinet with a pair of
pliers and removes Josh’s fingernails one by one. Josh spits at him, so Bill gets a box stapler and
clamps his lips together. That gets a bit messy. Bill hits Josh hard on the side of the head with the
staple gun because he bled all over Bill’s shoes.
Bill and the boys decided to take a joint break. I had switched from cigarettes to joints during the
electric show. Now I took the opportunity to refresh my cokehead. They boisterously smoked two
joints with me looking on like a voyeur. When they return to Josh, they discover he is no longer with
us.
“Shit, Bill, he’s dead,” says Tommy checking for a pulse.
“Want to see if we can wake him up with the battery charger?” asks Skeech, hopefully.
“Nah, just take him to Joy,” Bill tells them referring to a local dog food producer. He looks at me
and nods toward the car. I walk over and jump into the driver seat of the car; Bill gets into the
passenger seat. We leave through the same door we came in earlier. I take my nine slug out of the
Beretta and return it to Bill. We drive home silently. The night has not changed me. It has been a
night of ugly paled by a life of ugliness. I take three valiums to ease the coke rush. I sleep well.