Lucky

CW/TW: Violence/Gore, Human Trafficking, Sexual Violence, Torture, Cannibalism; Strong Language

No one’s going to care when he’s dead.

I know that because it’s been…days? No, weeks. It could be months at this point. In this whatever-number span of time, no one has come to check in on him. No phone calls. No annoying private messages online, either, according to his home computer. Nothing. I even started taking the gag off of his mouth when I made him scream. I’m aware it would blow my cover before my work is complete.

But he’s just so goddamn boring now.

He used to fight me more, back in the beginning. He would call me all kinds of names while I slit the bottom of his heels with my karambit…

Don’t give me that look. Couldn’t let him just walk away, now could I? I had to take assurances. Precautions. Ensure that he learned and retained my first lesson:

There is no walking out of here.

My second lesson was to not underestimate me. He failed that one a couple of times. He would get out of the chains around his limbs and chair, forgetting that the rusted collar that was too tight on his fat neck was attached to the ceiling. That was an annoying day for me. He kept his hands behind his back then sprung on me when I got too close. I jerked and fell backwards onto the floor in surprise. The short chain on the ceiling yanked, holding firm, only allowing him to get up from the chair in a partial squat. He silently seethed in anger. His eyes watched every minor muscle in my face to identify any information he could. He would find nothing. Nothing but my second lesson.

So the next sunrise…yes, I made him wait a day for his punishment. You can’t give too much, too soon with these types. They only respond to the curriculum when you hurt them. Part of the joy in torture is that you have to let them mull in the anticipation. Allow their mind to do the first half of the work for you.

It’s amazing what people like him can imagine…

Eventually, he came around and finally understood the essential question of the day: Why do we not underestimate people? It wasn’t because I threatened to kill his dog, something innocent. Or his elderly mother that I drugged and bound in the attic of his cabin. He cared less about her life than the dog’s.

It was when I cut off his testicles, pan-fried them with a propane stovetop he had on a shelf in this basement, and fed them to his dog. In front of him. Then I grabbed the karambit, the same one he shrunk away from moments before, and slit his dog’s throat. In front of him. It’s very important to kill what they love where they can witness everything. It’s the only way they learn.

After that, he stopped fighting me.

Now I’m here, sitting on the floor with my knife beside me, watching him beg for his life. Again. When did I lose the ability to empathize when another person cries? It hurts the left side of my head to try to remember. But it really wasn’t that long ago, was it? It took me almost no time at all for me to become accustomed to torturing someone.

I did not realize I had been shedding tears in front of him. Because I had started laughing.

[...]

The bitch started laughing at me. Straight up hyena cackling on the concrete floor, naked and bloody, sitting cross-legged. That big ass knife she had hidden in her purse was tightly clasped in her hand. Her eyes were red from crying and staying awake.

I knew she was going to be a problem.

Johnny was the one who grabbed this batch of girls. Usually, it’s me and The Madam, and we always know how to tell the younger ones from the older ones. Mama and I always do. Some of these millennial bitches look young with their gross fucking acne and you need to be careful. If you get even one in the batch, she’ll be a problem. Sometimes they’re just annoying. Like when they cry and beg, or they try to pretend they’re “good people” and bargain for the lives of others.

We laugh at them. They don’t laugh back.

Until Johnny went and fucked everything up. Big Will couldn’t go with him. He called us saying he had too much heat on him right now to go with him and just let him do it. I tried to tell him but he insisted that “He can’t fuck it up, they’re just girls. He knows what to do. This is just business as usual. Buyer will be here Friday.”

So we let Johnny go alone. The first test, and we failed it in a brilliant fucking show of what NOT to do when committing human trafficking across state lines. He thought he had an easy group of girls, a small group that had wandered off from the rest of the Senior class while on an out-of-state graduation trip. The school showed up to the dead mall in the metro nearby, I guess because they figured no one would complain about a bunch of noisy highschoolers. It worked for us as an additional site for picking up the product: skinny, young, petite girls. Apparently, Johnny didn’t notice that the “girl with the biggest rack” in the group was actually an employee of the school acting as chaperone. Idiot. It was obvious if you looked at her in the eyes long enough. Not her tits. That’s why she killed him first, because he was stupid.

She had decided to take a couple of the girls to one of the quieter stores to decompress from the overstimulating noise of the entire Senior class in close proximity. Her words. A first-year teacher that hadn’t gone through her second puberty yet and could have been 19 or 25 in age. I’ll at least give Johnny that. The store was one of our contacts, thankfully, and closed the storefront’s metal gate before they even knew what was happening. A perfect pickup. But Johnny had a snake hiding with the rabbits. This crazy fucking school teacher from hell.

Do they just hire anyone with a license?

Ms…I don’t remember what she said her name was. Doesn’t matter what the whore’s name is. I should have been more careful. Johnny should’ve looked for snakes. He died first. Then she went and got a hold of Big Will somehow and killed him with my powerdrill. Mama is probably dead. I knew she was when that bitch brought her up. I didn’t think she’d bring in my border collie, Butter, from outside.

Or cut off my…Fuck. I can’t even say it. I blacked out from the pain after…

I have no idea what day it is now. I lost count after 13 sunrises. How did it all go to shit so fast? My family has always lived in this rocky forest in the Midwest. Mama’s daddy started the business. Daddy and her kept it going. We had no issues. Pick up the product, take some pictures, get rough with the bad ones if you need. And if the buyer doesn’t take them all, well, we do what we want with the rest. Just have to eat them afterwards.

I thought the others would have shown up by now to check in. Especially if they called The Madam and she never responded with the code phrase. She probably killed them, too. I remember hearing a racket upstairs after she shut the power off. That was around day 10, I think.

She’s still fucking laughing at me. I jerk in my chains. She keeps laughing and doesn’t even react. My shoulders slump. That was the last bit of energy I had from all the anger I was building from each of her screeching howls. I know that bitch thinks I deserve this. That she’s teaching me a lesson. Self-righteous bitches like her get lucky a few times and think they’re better than the meat-holes they are. Fuck them, listen to them scream, kill them, then take their body parts out of the deep freezer so Mama can make some chili. The only thing they’re good for, really.

I wish she’d kill me already. She slit my heels, cut off my fingers, my balls- oh god, my fucking balls- and has me chained up in my own fucking basement like a goddamn animal. She can’t take anything else from me!

“Fucking…do it already.” The whispered words tore through my sore throat. That was probably why she took the gag off around day 8; I had screamed my way into silence. She knew it.

She stopped laughing.

“Yeah. You’re ready for dismissal.”

Little Miss Teacher stood up all tough and wasn’t letting go of her knife. That black karambit in the bottom of her purse that I didn’t see in the shadow. Bitch had a backup plan. She ambushed Johnny, hunted me until she could cover my face with a rag of our own chemicals, and freed all the other girls. That damn knife being the last thing my folks saw, the last thing Butter saw…

I tried to tell them.

She sauntered over. Weeks of her torture and making me watch her kill the others, long after she released her students, yet she never bothered to wash the blood off her naked body. Disgusting. Her skin was starting to stain from where it had dried. I could hear her gently giggling when I tried to scoot the chair back away from her.

I wasn’t scared. I just didn’t want her to fucking touch me, that’s all.

The sharp, curved edge of the blade met the fleshy part of my neck protruding from the rusty collar. She was smart enough to use our own equipment on me. To kill us off one by one and conserve her energy. To make me watch…

It’s what I would have done.

“I’ve taught you all I could.” She said with a smile and…those eyes.

I’ve only ever seen that look in my Daddy’s eyes. Pupils dilated wide to the very edge of the iris. So big you can no longer see the color. Fully black eyes, like a shark. Hunter’s eyes.

I hated the way Daddy’s fists hurt. But I loved the way his dark eyes sparkled, during.

The knife sliced across my neck, the blood that had pooled now spurting from the wound. She then brought her knife back to where the blade first pierced me and sliced along the same path again. And again. Slowly, with the same rhythm as the ham slicer in the meat department of the grocery store. Again and again.

She’s slicing. Down to the bones of my neck.

I feel…

She’s finally killing me. Fucking took her long enough. Her eyes aren’t breaking contact with mine. I can’t hear her giggles anymore but I can still make out her smiling as she’s killing me. Before the cold sets.

She just got lucky.