Dillard Stone

One-Star Dungeon

“Does that hurt, you fuckin’ piece of shit?” asked Dwayne, grinding the tip of his cigarette into his victim’s bare chest.

Anson knew he shouldn’t reply, but his anger was even greater than his pain.

“Do you know any words besides ‘fuck’ and ‘shit,’ you illiterate douchebag?” asked Anson. “You’ve already used both of those words half a dozen times. If you’re going to kill me, at least don’t bore me to death with your eighth-grade vocabulary.”

“What the fuck, man?” Dwayne yelled. “I mean, Jesus Christ! You shitty … you asshole …”

“Still shit-related, I’m afraid.” Anson smirked behind the bag that covered his face.

Dwayne punched him in the head.

Anson forced a laugh. He had a new idea. If he couldn’t escape, he could at least taunt his captor into killing him quickly.

“You’re laughing?” asked Dwayne in disbelief.

“I’m not laughing with you; I’m laughing at you,” Anson explained.

Silence.

“You don’t even understand the joke,” sighed Anson. “I have occasionally had nightmares about dying like this, but my dreams always involved a brilliant serial killer who had successfully eluded capture for years. You probably couldn’t even avoid a parking ticket.”

“Hey, you … you bastard!” said Dwayne. “I’ve killed two people besides you! And no one has caught me yet!”

“I salute you for using a new insult, but I’m afraid I don’t believe you about the murders. You’re just too damned stupid.”

“Stupid?!” Dwayne’s fingers closed around the handle of his favorite skewer. Almost without thinking, he plunged it into his prisoner’s chest.

Anson felt the searing shaft of pain, while noting with regret that the weapon had penetrated the right side of his rib cage rather than the left. Even in anger, his tormentor had reflexively avoided driving the skewer through his heart, which would have ended things too quickly.

With considerable difficulty, Anson suppressed his scream. He tensed his muscles against the coarse ropes that bound him to the chair and spoke with measured contempt.

“Now I’m certain you’ve never done this before. Any experienced killer would have shown his victim the tray full of glittering metal instruments before using one of them. I’m afraid your knowledge of psychological terror is severely lacking.”

A hand grabbed the top of the burlap sack covering Anson’s head and yanked it off. The rough cloth sandpapered a patch of skin off the tip of his nose. Anson hoped it wouldn’t bleed.

“There!” screamed Dwayne. “There’s my tray of instruments! I was going to show them to you earlier but you made me mad!”

“You were already mad. As mad as a hatter.”

“Alice in Wonderland? The tea party? What are you talking about?”

Maybe he’s not as stupid as he seems, thought Anson. I must be careful.

With the bag off his head, Anson was able to take in his surroundings. An unfinished basement with a bricked-up window. Raw pine beams running overhead. An old white water heater a few feet to his right. He was dismayed to see that the heater was lightly speckled with crimson dots. His captor apparently did have some experience in this line of work.

Anson sniffed the air. He had released neither his bladder nor his bowels into his pants, for which he was grateful, but he smelled something decidedly unpleasant. He looked up at his host and noticed the large sweat stains under his arms.

“God, you stink,” Anson said. “Didn’t your mother teach you to wash up for guests?”

Dwayne gave him a brutal open-handed slap across the face.

“I use deodorant!” he bellowed. “But I sweat a lot. And you’re heavier than you look. It was hard to get you into the trunk of my Crown Vic.”

“Hey, Stinky, you’re no lightweight yourself. When’s the last time you saw the inside of a gym? Or a shower?”

Anson was hoping for an explosion but was met with silence. Too long a silence.

“My name is Dwayne, not Stinky,” his captor said at last, with chilling calmness. “I don’t mind telling you my name because you’re never leaving this basement. You’re not in control here. I am.”

“Whatever you say, boss.”

“You’re just a little piece of shit who’s going to suffer like the fucker you are.”

“Oh, Jesus, we’re back to ‘shit’ and ‘fuck’ again. You’re a bore and this is not a well-run dungeon. One star. Would not recommend.”

Dwayne balled his fists and knelt in front of his captive. His face moved close to Anson’s, like a nervous teenager leaning in for a first kiss.

“You are going to die. Slowly and painfully. You don’t seem to understand that, you shitty fuck.”

A tear squeezed out of Anson’s eye and rolled down his bruised cheek. He opened his mouth and faint raspy sounds emerged.

Dwayne leaned closer, hoping to hear his broken captive’s pleas for mercy.

Anson’s head snaked forward. His open mouth clamped shut on Dwayne’s lips, teeth slicing into soft flesh. He bit deeply and felt the sticky warm blood as Dwayne’s lips tore away.

Anson slurped the lips into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed as his captor shrieked blood into the air.

“You shitty ’uck! You ’ucking ’uck!”

Anson smiled into the bloody teeth that shone from the lipless mouth.

“Well, at least I took one word out of your pathetically limited vocabulary.”

Anson felt the skewer pierce his heart and laughed.