Sean was reliving his long nightmare experience. He knew this, but he couldn’t manage to bring himself out of the pit of horror that was his memory.
Chapter 3
This chapter is a bit dark. If you can't handle a little gore, don't read it.
Sean was reliving his long nightmare experience. He knew this, but he couldn’t manage to bring himself out of the pit of horror that was his memory.
He felt the initial slamming blow of the car hitting him, flying through the air and realizing he couldn’t stand, that his leg had broken. The sick pain of realization that it hadn’t been an accident as the skinheads piled out of the stopped car and began hitting and kicking him.
“Oh yeah, we got us a fuckin faggit!” the boy had a maniacal expression twisting his face into a demon mask as he drew back his foot for another kick.
“Hang on, man!” This from one of the others. This one had an excited look on his face. “I got an idea. We got this one where he can’t get away, let’s have some real fun with him!”
A boot connected with Sean’s head, propelling him into darkness, away from the agony.
He swam back up into awareness, pain radiating through his entire body. He expected to be in a hospital, but it was so cold, and he smelled the stink of shit and blood. He tried to move but he was tied down to something, and even trying to move brought fresh waves of pain from his legs and arms. He blinked as the skinhead who had kicked him in the head came into his field of vision.
“You awake, huh? Hey boys, get over here! The faggit’s awake!” He leaned closer, his foul breath competing with the rest of the stench in the humid air. “You going to hell, you fuckin faggit! God hates your kind, you sick freak! We just gonna have a little fun with you before we send you to burn.”
“Hey Wade, prop his head up with that block so he can see what we doin.” Another of the men moved around behind Sean, and he felt his head being tied to a block, propping him up so he had to look down at his body, tied spread eagled to a piece of plywood.
“We just gonna give you a little taste of what you gonna get in hell, freak.” The one who seemed to be doing all the talking brandished a pair of vise grips. Sean tried to flinch away as the man clamped the pliers over the end of his penis, only realizing after a minute that it was his own voice he heard screaming with a fresh wave of pain that made him want to vomit.
His torturer tied a rope that hung from the ceiling around the pliers so that they held his abused organ straight out from his body and went out of sight for a moment, reappearing with a blowtorch in his hand.
He sparked it to life, adjusting the flame to a blue hot cone. “We gonna have us a weenie roast, and you gonna get some dinner!” Sean watched in horror as the man brought the torch down to his crotch and began screaming again as fresh waves of searing agony assaulted him, the stench of burning meat filling his nose as the manheld the flame on his scrotum. He could see the flesh blacken and shrivel, could see as his testicles were roasted in the hot flame.
He writhed with the hellish pain that roared in his mind, trying to escape the torture, screaming till he thought he was going to rip his throat out. Even the broken leg hadn’t hurt this badly, and he heard himself pleading for mercy, crying for help, anything to make it end.
He could see the torch burning through the tissue that held his testicles to his body, watched his torturer stab one, then the other with a skewer. A second later, the man was waving them in his face.
“Open your mouth, freak!” he screamed. Sean tried to keep his mouth closed, but one of the others hit him on his broken leg, and as he screamed, the one at his head quickly stuffed the smoking lumps of meat into his mouth. He gagged and tried to spit them out, but the man clamped his hand over his mouth and he couldn’t.
“Now you gonna chew and swallow or you gonna die right now!” he hissed.
There was nothing else to do, he couldn’t breathe through his nose, so he made some chewing motions and swallowed, forcing the scalding lumps of meat down his throat as quickly as he could, fighting back the urge to vomit.
It seemed to take hours, and he didn’t think it was possible to feel that much pain, but the scenario was repeated with his penis as they cooked it in the flame of the torch and made him eat it. Then they moved up to his nipples and simply burnt them to a crisp. Somewhere during this time he seemed to detach from his body, and though he still felt the pain, it was a remote kind of thing. He was sure he was dying, and welcomed it.
They finally untied him and he tried to crawl away. More pain, as one of them seemed to stab him in the rectum, but at this point he was so remote from his own feelings that it just didn’t seem to matter anymore, and he just lay there while they kicked him again and again, finally surrendering to the blackness that dragged him down.
He was awake, in a way, and could hear traffic somewhere close, but all he could see was a steep hill. He tried to make sense of his surroundings, but it was hard to think, and it seemed like every nerve in his body was screaming with agony. He just lay there for a while, and it finally penetrated the fog in his mind that the traffic sounded really close, like just a few feet away, just over that hill.
“Help.” He tried to scream it but could barely hear himself over the traffic noise, and it was so cold and he just wanted to sleep, to make the pain go away. A little part of him, in the back of his mind, kept telling him that he couldn’t sleep, that he had to climb that hill and get to the traffic, so maddeningly close, so, he rolled over onto his front and tied to get up.
Another sickening jolt of pain from his broken leg made it plain that wasn’t going to happen, and he vomited, feeling broken ribs grate against each other as he spewed forth is last horrible meal. He almost passed out again, but somehow he held on to the thin edge of awareness and began to pull himself uphill. It took forever and he was about to give up when he looked up and noticed that he was almost to the top of the hill.
A guardrail! His heart leaped with the nearness of success, then dropped in the next moment. How was he gonna get over that? There just wasn’t anything left, he couldn’t push himself any further, but he had to. Another eternity of screaming agony later, he toppled over the top of the rail and began the crawl toward the traffic again. Now he could even see the passing cars, but he was still in the tall grass next to the road and knew they probably couldn’t see him.
Finally, he felt the roughness of asphalt, pulling himself into the emergeny lane with the last of his strength, collapsing again and again. Awareness faded in and out as he heard cars pass. Suddenly, there was a voice shrilling through his mind.
“Hank! Hank!, It’s not an animal, it’s a person, call an ambulance, they look hurt real bad. Hank, call 911! Get some help!”
Sean wanted to tell her to shut up and leave him alone, he just wanted to die now, but she wouldn’t go away. He felt the woman stroking his back and knew she meant to be soothing, but his raw nerves made it feel like he was being scrubbed with sandpaper.
Another voice, a man’s voice this time. “Honey, the lady on the phone says not to move him. You sure he’s alive?” His voice changed in tone, incredulous. “My god, Sue, it looks like he’s got a tent stake up his ass. What the fuck happened?”
“Yes ma’am, the bridge just past exit 215. Tell em to hurry, this guy’s been tortured or something. It looks like he’s got a tent stake up his ass, he’s got a broke leg, there’s blood and dirt all over him, but he seems to be breathing. No ma’am, I can’t tell if he’s conscious or not.”
Then his world was filled with a roaring sound through which he could dimly hear the couple talking for a few moments, then a siren which mercifully stopped.
“You found him like this?” another man’s voice penetrated the roaring in his mind.
“Yessir, we haven’t moved him or anything, just like the lady on the phone said. You got an ambulance on the way?”
“Yeah, they should be gettin here in about five minutes. I’ll get a blanket to put over him, he’s gotta be in shock, and I gotta call for some backup on this, yawl watch him for me, ok?”
Sean knew that rescue had finally come, but the little voice in the back of his head kept insisting that he should stay awake. The blanket seemed to help a little, but he was so cold and the pavement pressing into his burns and scrapes was agony.
“Alright, there’s more officers on the way. Sir, can you hear me?” He felt the cop take his pulse.
Sean managed a very weak “Yeah.”
“Do you know where you are?”
“On the side of the road?”
“What’s your name?”
Sean told him.
“You got any allergies? Anybody you want us to call?”
“No, no allergies.” It was getting a little easier to talk, but drawing a breath was sheer agony. “Call Charlie.” He managed to give the number and the cop went back to his car to radio it in.
The roaring in Sean’s mind was beginning to fade a little now, and he tried to move his head so he could see something other than that hated foe, the guardrail which had nearly defeated him.
“No honey, don’t move, they said not to move you, so just lay there, ok?” The woman sounded worried.
“Okay”
Another siren nearby, and suddenly there were more voices asking him questions, hands feeling him for injuries, professional tones, meant to be soothing, but sounding hurried. Hands held his head still as more hands lifted him onto a hard board, still face down.
He’d heard what had been said the whole way and was now thinking clearly enough to realize they were trying to keep him as still as possible, and that they wanted him to stay awake because of concussion, so he cooperated, even though he just wanted to escape into sleep to get away from the pain.
