Consequence

[pbenvin]

Consequence
By Paul Benvin

Walking to work was a welcome change for Craig Johnson. Every once in a while he just wanted to leave the stress of stop and go traffic behind and enjoy the scenery. He would take his time on days like this, cherishing the way the buildings towered over him like prehistoric monsters. Sometimes he would stop in the middle of the sidewalk and peer straight up the side of one of the skyscrapers, admiring the sun as it exploded off of the darkened windows. A slight smile crossed his face then, and looking at everyone else around him he couldn’t help but marvel at the fact that when everything was positioned just right, the construction that rose up from the ground draped these sheep in elongated shadows. That made him feel like the only one on the planet that mattered, and it was at this precise moment that he felt the most powerful. He felt like he could conquer the world.

On his way he stopped and bought a coffee at the local doughnut shop, a rare occurrence seeing as he was always stuck in gridlock at this time. Everything seemed to be right with the world on this incredible day. As he rounded the corner, he sipped his drink and reminisced about all the malevolent things he did to that woman last week. How she had pleaded for him to stop and that she had a small child at home. Please don’t hurt me, she had said. I’ll give you anything, she begged. Damn right she did. She gave him everything and more. When he was finished with her she had two black eyes, a broken nose, and three broken ribs. She wouldn’t be forgetting his name any time soon, but what was hers? What was that stupid cunt’s name again? Oh yeah, Marlene. She was a real wild one. While he sipped from the steaming cup he held in his right hand, he let his mind take him back to that breathtaking night.

They met over drinks at Spencer’s, a pretty popular dive located on the south end of town. After a long day of filing massive amounts of paperwork and listening to Bill Martin, a rather arrogant little prick with an obscenely large admiration for himself, chatter on about insignificant information – who’s fucking who, who makes the most money, who’s going to win the Wings game tonight – he bid goodnight to his secretary and stepped out into the balmy night air.

“I need a drink,” Craig said out loud as he climbed into the driver’s seat of his white Mercedes. The overwhelming urge to indulge in a little self-destructive behavior had suddenly come over him, and he knew just where to go. Not only did O’Grady’s have the best damn burgers in town, but if he was lucky he might possibly be able to score a little cocaine as well. Not to mention the fact that the women who usually frequented his favorite little watering hole tended to be a little on the loose side. After a few beers and a line or two it never took Craig long to get one back to his apartment, where the night really took off. Yes, Spencer’s sounded just peachy to him at the moment.

“Hey Mark,” Craig said to the owner as he opened the screen door. A sign taped to the front read, “Please close the door behind you. We have enough bar flies,” which always made him chuckle. Mark was a mountain of a man, with a gleaming bald head and a bushy gray goatee, which truly made him look like a goat. He was standing in front of the industrial size grill that ran the length of the wall to Craig’s right, cooking one of his famous “Marky” burgers that everyone loved so much.

“You got my money, monkey,” Mark asked without turning to look at Craig. He flipped the hamburger he was cooking and slapped a large metal cover over the meat. Craig could hear the faint sizzling sound it made from where he was standing.

“Not today. A few things came up. Can I give it to you next Friday?”

“I guess so, dickhead,” was Mark’s booming reply. Even though he looked and sounded mean, in reality he was a real approachable guy. The name-calling was just a formality to keep you in line. It was Mark’s way of letting everyone know that he was nice, but if you fucked with him enough he would have your balls in a vice.

“Thanks,” Craig said as he sat down on one of the revolving stools lined up at the bar.

He glanced up at the Keno screen, noticed that his numbers hadn’t come in yet, and began filling out one of the forms. After filling in the appropriate numbers – 10, 31, 78, and 18 – he handed the paper slip to the girl behind the bar and ordered a Bud Light. Craig watched the numbers bounce around the animated pinball machine, but not even one of the numbers he played hit. Oh well, he thought, try and try again.

By midnight, Craig had downed more than a dozen beers and drank a shot or two. He was also in luck, because Mark had sold him a half-gram for $45. He promptly took the powder into the bathroom, locked the door, and snorted it in two lines. There weren’t the usual array of women to choose from, but there was one that had caught Craig’s attention earlier in the night. She was a very attractive woman, with long flowing blonde hair and spectacular blue eyes. Her body looked like something out of a women’s fitness magazine, and Craig could tell she was proud of that. All night their eyes kept meeting, if only for an instant. She would laugh at something her fat friend would say and casually look across the room at Craig, as if she wanted to see if he was paying her any attention. Craig was, but not in the sexual way she was hoping. He had some very special things planned for her, some very medieval things indeed.

Craig got Marlene back to his apartment, which turned out to be a lot easier than he had anticipated. It turned out that her friend, the one with the sloppy gut and double chin, had to be up early the next morning and had to leave early. Marlene was feeling a little tipsy and reckless, so she decided to stay behind. Besides, she could always find a cab if the cute guy at the end of the bar didn’t want to give her a ride home. Not a big deal at all.

As Marlene sat on Craig’s white leather sofa, the short red skirt she was wearing pulled up seductively to show the tops of her silk stockings, he went to the bathroom and rummaged through the medicine cabinet. He was looking for the bottle of Valium he kept stashed for occasions such as this, but so far was having trouble locating it.

“I love your apartment,” Marlene called from the living room.

“What,” Craig replied disinterestedly. Where were those fucking Valiums?

“Your apartment,” she said a little louder. “I love it.” She had undone two more buttons on her shirt, allowing him a nice look at her ample cleavage.

“Uh, thanks.”

“What are you doing,” she asked coyly. Her panties were moist with anticipation, and her hands fell between her legs.

“I’m looking for, uh, some hand lotion,” he said anxiously. “My skin gets really dry sometimes.”

“Well hurry up, you. It’s not nice to keep a lady waiting.”

At last he found the pills behind a large jar of Vaseline. He popped the cap off and emptied three of them into his hand. After thinking about it, he took out two more and replaced the cap. He took one himself, swallowing it dry, and flicked off the light in the bathroom. He then went to the kitchen and poured himself a shot of Jim Beam, gulped it down, and poured her a double. He plopped the four sedatives into the glass and watched joyfully as they began to dissolve, stirring the potion with a long black stir stick. When he was satisfied the slut wouldn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, he brought it to her and smiled inside when she took the whole concoction down in one drink.

She set the glass on his oak coffee table and closed her eyes, concentrating hard on the liquor that was trying to make its way back up her esophagus. It felt like lava in the pit of her stomach, boiling and frothing. Saliva filled her mouth, and she had to swallow hard to keep herself from vomiting all over the floor. She suddenly wanted out of here, to be away from this stranger and his white leather sofa. She wanted to go home.

[pbenvin]

While attempting to maintain herself, she didn’t even notice Craig walk back into the kitchen. He opened one of the drawers and pulled out a large, bulky meat tenderizer. The solid metal head was square, with jagged points protruding out from both sides. As he admired the weight of it in his left hand, his right hand came down and began molesting the bulge that had formed in his pants. It was time.

Craig stealthily glided over to where Marlene was sitting. Her eyes were still closed, her head lolling on the back of the sofa. He could see small beads of sweat glistening on her forehead and thought with a little dismay that she might be asleep. He wanted her to feel what was coming. He never took his eyes off hers as he walked behind the sofa, the meat tenderizer pressed tightly against his thigh. In position now, he raised the weapon above his head and told her to wake up.

Her eyelids fluttered slightly and she stirred a little. Bringing her hand to her face, she righted herself and forced her eyes open. The room was a blur, the shapes and images coming in hazy blobs. As if on instinct, she turned her head to the left to look behind her and met the blow from the meat tenderizer half way. The force of the impact knocked her unconscious and sent her sprawling to the floor, the large gash below her left eye beginning to spew blood. Craig walked over to her prone body and bent over, checking for a pulse. Satisfied she was still alive, he hit her one more time, just for fun.

“Please, please don’t,” Marlene squeaked as she came to. She was completely naked except for her socks, which Craig had left on. Her arms and legs were shackled to the four bedposts with torn strips of her pants, and blood was oozing from the cut above her right eye that Craig inflicted with a screwdriver. Her left eye was swollen completely shut from the half dozen punches he rained down on her, and her bottom lip was hanging by a thin thread of skin.

Craig was standing over her, full of gore and breathing deeply. In his left hand he held a serrated knife he took from the kitchen drawer.

“Ready for round two,” he hissed.

She shook her head from side to side, round splotches of blood hitting the walls like raindrops.

For the next three hours Craig poked, prodded, and cut Marlene. Every twenty minutes he would put his utensils down and have sex with her ravaged body, making her call him “daddy” and calling her a slut as he did so. If she didn’t say something loud enough, or if she made the mistake of trying to resist, a fist would come crashing down on her face. The last time she tried to shrink away into the sheets – sheets that were once white but were now so saturated with blood that it felt like a waterbed had popped – he punched her so hard that two of her teeth shattered and gouged through her upper lip. When it was finally over, she couldn’t even find the will to cry anymore.

“Go clean up,” Craig said disgustedly as he dismounted her. He climaxed inside her for the seventh and final time. “You look like shit.”

Marlene didn’t move.

“I said get up, bitch. Don’t make me drag your ass to the shower.”

Still Marlene didn’t stir. Craig tried to rouse her again, this time kicking the edge of the bed hard enough to wake her up.

“H-h-help me,” she whined as she held out a bloody hand. “I have to go home.”

Craig let out a laugh and took her hand in his. His muscles strained as he yanked on her arm, pulling her out of the bed and onto the floor. He bent over, picked her up under the arms, and began dragging her to the bathtub. As he backpedaled, Craig began to mumble under his breath as he noticed the large wet streak of blood her broken body was leaving.

“If those Valium’s didn’t fuck you up so bad, I’d have you clean that too,” he whispered in her ear. A stringy rope of drool dropped onto her contorted face.

He turned the water on and waited until he could see the steam rising from the tub before turning the knob to activate the showerhead. He had a fleeting thought to just shove her in and watch as she writhed in agony, the scalding water turning her skin into a boiling mass, but decided not to. He wasn’t in the mood to dispose of a body tonight.

“Hurry up,” he said to her as he left the bathroom. “I want to go to bed.”

With his conquest properly cleaned and clothed – he gave her a pair of old sweatpants to wear – he led her to the vestibule, where he offered her a fistful of money. When she didn’t take it, he opened the door to his apartment and shoved her out into the hallway. Her blonde hair blew over her shoulder in waves as he slammed the door behind her.

When he was confident she was gone, Craig stripped the bloody rags from his bed and stuffed them into a black garbage bag. He then poured some bleach and a capful of Orange Clean into a large bowl and began the task of mopping up all the blood she had left behind. It was on the floor, on the walls, some had even made it onto the ceiling. It took more than an hour and a few of his good dishrags to finally get it all, but at last he was finally done. He dropped the rags into the garbage bag with the sheets and calmly walked down the hall to the garbage shoot, where he listened as all the evidence of the night’s crimes clanged into the dumpster below. Comfortable in the thought that he would never see Marlene again, let alone get punished for what he had done to her, Craig Johnson began to whistle a tune as he stepped lightly back to his apartment.

Craig brought his hand up to his nose and noticed it was bleeding.

“Well I’ll be a son of a bitch,” he said as he pulled a tissue from his coat pocket and dabbed it at his nostril. He had a ringing in his ears that was steadily growing louder, and now his vision began to blur. It came on almost at once and made him so lightheaded he had to sit down. Suddenly a sharp pain shot through his left arm, and he let out an immediate yell. The sensation coursed through his body, causing him to double over. Flashes of anguish now penetrated his entire body from head to toe. No longer was it isolated to just one particular area, but hit every inch of him all at once. A few bystanders that had noticed Craig’s plight now rushed over to offer their assistance. He was in such distress he couldn’t even talk, and the blood from his nose was now covering the front of his white sport coat.

“What happened,” a professional looking woman asked in a shaky voice.

“I don’t know,” said a man in a neatly pressed business suit. “He was just walking by and sat down. I never saw anything.”

“Jesus, he’s bleeding pretty badly. Someone call 911,” said someone else.

Craig began to cough and retch as the pain steadily drummed at his body in its unforgiving melody. It felt like his entire being was in a vice that was steadily getting tighter. The street was now filled with concerned onlookers, each one expressing their amateur opinions as to the cause of Craig’s predicament.

“It’s a brain tumor,” said a young looking man wearing a read and black flannel shirt.

“No way, this guys in deep shit,” said another man wearing a dark blue running suit. “Brain tumors won’t do that to somebody.”

“Help…me,” Craig managed to croak out as he clutched at his throat.

In all the commotion, no one paid any attention to the small child standing across the street with the demented grin on his face. His mother, standing behind him with a comforting hand laid gently on his head, still displayed the grotesque bruises covering her face. Clutched between the boy’s tiny hands was a crudely made doll, and with every squeeze Craig writhed in agony.

“Die,” the little boy whispered. “This is for my mama.”

The little boy, his dark blue eyes transfixed on Craig from across the street, was frantically twisting the doll in his hands. His blonde hair blew across his face as the wind picked up, but he didn’t seem to notice. All his attention was on the man that had hurt his mother. He watched as people gathered around Craig, staring with horrified helplessness as he convulsed on the ground. When the little boy was satisfied the bad man was gone forever, he simply threw the doll into the metal wastebasket in front of him and looked up into his mother’s adoring face.

“All done, mama,” the boy cooed. “Did good?”

“Of course, honey,” Marlene whispered. “You always do good. Always.”

When the paramedics arrived, they covered Craig with a white sheet and carted his lifeless body away. The police took statements from the witnesses, and before long everything was back to normal. No one would remember Craig Johnson a week from now, and as the last of the spectators left the area, one proud mother and one loving child walked off hand in hand.

[pbenvin]

Hmmm.....does that mean you like it or what?

[Shitface]

I loved it.

[allmykids]

It was ok!!

[Vodstok]

bumpity bump bump