Shadow in the Dark - An Assassin's Tale

I rested my left hand on his right shoulder as I walked to in front of him. When I was front and centre, I stopped, and didn't move.

He looked up.

I punched him in the broken nose.

Not very hard, really just a solid tap, but it accomplished its purpose: he cried out in pain.

"Now that you know that I mean business, I'm going to ask you for the very last time: where can I find my husband?" I asked, slowly and measured. "I won't ask again, but if you tell me I'll stop the pain."

He straightened up in his chair, set his jaw, stopped groaning, and looked me dead in the eye.

I smiled.

I stared back into his eyes, saying, "You think you're strong, and you may be right..." I trailed off slightly, while taking hold of the knife still embedded in his thigh, and slowly twisting it. For a while, he did nothing - no movement, no flinch. The more I twisted the blade, the more excited I grew, until I smacked the hilt of the knife with my free hand, driving it downwards and chipping his femur bone.

He winced, ever so slightly, and I gasped with pleasure and withdrew my grip.

"...but you're not strong enough." I finished, turning away from him to the table against the wall. On it was an empty needle, once holding sodium pentathol (A combination 'truth drug' and knockout solution), a collection of knives, a lighter, acetic acid, roughly five times as acidic as vinegar (about 4.25 Molar), two jumper cables, and an electrical transformer, which I had hacked into the building's wiring with the aid of two other jumper cables.

It was towards this last that I now moved, picking up the jumper cables, or rather, the alligator clips at the ends of said cables.

I took the red clip, and clamped it on the man's ear. Immediately, a small amount of blood began to leak from the area.

The other cable, the black one, I spun around whilst talking. "In a lot of movies, electrical torture is achieved through the wrong ways. Direct transfer, bizzare ways, and most commonly, through normal water. Pure water, you see, is an insulator - it doesn't conduct electricity. It is only when the water has ions in it, specifically negative ions, that it becomes conductive. These ions are usually added by adding some sort of salt to the water."

As I talked, I walked, pacing the area in front of my victim, and spinning the cable, never letting it near the water.

"As you could probably taste, and can feel seeping into your broken, bloody nose, this is salt water. This, of course, means-"

I cut off, mid sentence, and allowed the cable a fuller arc.

This new trajectory took the alligator clip through the ion-rich salt water. As the the copper of the clamp touched the surface of the water, electricity jumped along the cable, from the clip to the water, through the water to my victim's legs, up his legs, through his torso, through his head, out into the other wire from his ear, and along that wire back to the transformer.

His back arched in the chair, ankles and wrist pulling at his constraints. A shouting groan tore from his throat, a sound he had no control over. The flesh of his ear around the clamp sizzled as electricity arced between it and the alligator clip.

In less than a tenth of a second, this was over, and I caught the end of the black wire.

He whined in the chair.

I did not ask or say anything, but stood, waiting for him to say something. When he did not, I went back over to the table.

I picked up one of the knives, a SpyderCo Jumpmaster knife, and carried it over to him.

This was a knife designed with rough cutting in mind - one side of the blade had serrations for tearing through ropes, cords, parachute webbing, anything basically.

I had other uses in mind.

I walked to his left side, and grabbed his pinky finger.

I paused for a split second, then cut off his finger. The serrations tore straight through skin, ligament, and bone alike, while he screamed.

I returned to the table, swishing the knife through the water on the way.

You always clean your knives.

I picked up the lighter from the table, and returned to him, holding knife and finger in the other hand. I started the flame, and then held it against the bloody nub of what was left of his finger. This had two purposes: it hurt him, and it cauterized the wound, to stop bleeding.

It just would not do to have him die.

Not too quickly, at least.

After I was finished, I had to wait for the screaming to die down.

When he was quiet, I started to talk, but was cut off before I had the chance.

"You crazy bitch!" He screamed at me, and spat at me. It only got about halfway to me, but it was the principal of the thing.

I stabbed the jumpmaster into the thigh not yet occupied by a knife.

He screamed.

I waited.

When he was once more silent, I spoke, holding up his dismembered finger. "I have nine more fingers, and ten toes to go before I cut off more important extremities." To emphasize my point, I tossed his finger at his crotch.

"I won't tell you anything!" he yelled, not for the first time - but it had a different quality to it this time...less measured, more frantic.

I smiled at him, and said, "Oh, we've already been over that..."

I reached down to his thighs, and tore out both knives, wiping them off on my pants.

I returned to the table.

I put the two knives with the others, and picked up the acetic acid. It was carefully measured - not enough to kill, but enough to cause pain.

I started by sloshing it onto his thigh wounds, then I put a hand on his forehead, forcing his head backwards. His face was pointed straight up now, and I reached down with a finger to open one of his eyes.

When I had done so, I poured a bit of acid into his eye, then the other. I returned the acid to the table, turned around, and punched him in stomach.

He grunted, and I slammed both fists down on his legs, centred on the stab wounds.

He grunted again, sounding more pained this time.

I stood up, and kicked him in the face, right in his twice-broken nose. Well, thrice-broken now.

He let out a little cry, and tears began to stream down his cheeks.

I retrieved another knife from the table, a larger one - a Kershaw Outcast bush knife - similar to a modern machete.

I walked over to him, and chopped off his left hand, revelling in the sound of his scream as I did so.

I returned briefly to the table, getting the lighter, and lit it, using the flame to heat the blade. About a minute later, It was not quite red hot. I quite liked this lighter - a pressurized butane one - which shot out two blue jets of flame.

I seared his bleeding stump with the hot knife blade.

He kept screaming, and the longer he did, the more excited I got.

"I have as much time as I need. I doubt that you do," I said, looking him in the eyes, and holding the blade against his flesh. I started tracing it up along his arm, not removing my eyes from his, and when I got to his throat, he stopped me.

"No, wait!" he cried. "I'll tell you everything I know! I swear! Just for the love of God, stop it!" At this last exclamation, his voice cracked.

I hesitated for a second, then withdrew the knife. "Okay," I said. "Go."

He gasped in breath, trying to calm himself. Between gasps, he told me, "Your husband is being held in one of our weapons testing facilities. It's an old Ar-army outpost near the Mojave desert. He's being guar-guarded by A small division of m-men, maybe ten or twenty, I d-don't know." He started stuttering in fear as I slowly raised the knife back to his neck.

"That's all you know?" I asked him.

"Yes, yes I swear!" he pleaded. "I don't know anything else, please, you've got to believe me!" He was begging now.

I removed the knife, and leaned in to him, whispering in his ear, "I...don't...have...to do...anything..." I trailed into silence, and he started crying again, quietly whimpering, "no, no, please..."

I put the Kershaw back on the table, switching it for a pair of SpyderCo Spots. I liked this knife - essentially brass knuckles minus the guard with an inch-and-a-half blade attached. It allowed for so much creativity, so much improvisation.

I punched him in the gut with one, followed immediately by a swift stab to the arm with the other. I alternated much the same way for a while - punch, stab, punch, stab, head, leg, chest, stomach.

As I did this, I became rapidly more and more excited, and frenzied. My strikes came faster and less predetermined - stab, punch, stab stab, chest, nose, stomach.

Quickly this became not enough, and I dealt away with punches, just poking holes in him with the blades: arm, leg, neck, chest, stomach, face.

Somewhere, distantly, I was aware of a noise; a combined crying, whining, pleading, screaming, moaning, groaning, shrieking sobbing sound.

I didn't care.

I struck like a person possessed now, stabbing and slicing as though my life depended on it. As I did, I became more and more frantic, and I started to hear another noise. A low moan, rising in pitch and volume.

It took a second to realise that it was me.

I was moaning as I destroyed this man, not in pain, or effort, but something fer deeper rooted.

Pleasure.

I liked this, but it was getting to not be enough. I threw the knives down into the water, and pulled him towards me, tipping him into the water. He started struggling, and I stepped on the back of his head, crushing it beneath my boot.

I moaned, and groaned, and screamed with pleasure as I ground his lacerated face into the concrete below the water, and continue until no more bubbles came up.

Then I jumped over to the table, and threw the black cable into the water.

Electricity coursed through the water, into his body, but I was protected by the rubber boots. He started convulsing again, and I ran over and started kicking him, stomping on him, anything I could do to hurt him.

It felt so good.

I had never felt something like this before, it was so...pure, so primal. So powerful.

After about a minute, it was clear that he was very dead, and I turned off the transformer, however I was still very excited.

I exited the room, closing the door, and heading to the bedroom of the rented hotel room to attend to some...personal business.