Bruce Pinner

Beyond Freedom and Dignity

By Christmas Eve I had been awake for over 48 hours and things were starting to get a little blurred around the edges. We were at Little Anthony’s room at the Princess Motel. Me, Carl, Billy T., and Ricky were working our way through a batch of Anthony’s bathtub crank while he showed off his latest acquisition, a young runaway from Fontana named Justina. Justina was wandering around the room aimlessly wearing only filthy, loose-fitting bikini bottoms, her long hair tangled in greasy fuck-knots from being repeatedly violated by Ricky and Billy T. while Little Anthony taped the festivities with a stolen camcorder. Little Anthony claimed to have found her hustling outside the Friendly Tavern, and over the course of a week broken down her personality and brainwashed her using a particularly potent strain of LSD (“approaching CIA quality,” he had gloated) and mind control tactics he learned at the School of the Americas. The room was littered with various types of restraints and sex manuals, several books by B.F. Skinner, an assortment of dildos, rubber masks, and a large tank of nitrous oxide from a dentist office we had burglarized.  I never stopped to consider why Anthony had all this shit in his room to begin with. I stopped trying to figure people out a long time ago. 

“Watch this,” he had said earlier that evening, stepping naked from the jacuzzi tub and leaving us there with Justina, passing her roughly back and forth among us. When he returned he was wearing a rubber Hillary Clinton Halloween mask and holding a small tape recorder. He switched the tape player on and “Turkey in the Straw” began to play, and Justina immediately started to shriek and thrash around the tub uncontrollably. Little Anthony did a little jig around the edge of the jacuzzi, his limp cock bouncing and slapping against his thigh in rhythm with his palsied movements. Justina began to scream louder, clawing at her eyes with her dirty fingernails and hyperventilating in terror. 

“Okay, we get the idea,” Ricky said, obviously impressed. “Now make her shut the fuck up!”

  Little Anthony shouted “Justina! Platz!” and she sprinted out of the tub and crawled under a table in the other room, shaking and breathing heavily. I was less than impressed with Little Anthony’s display of mind control over Justina. I explained to Ricky that Little Anthony hadn’t actually brainwashed her at all, only traumatized her into a dissociative state of shock. Conditioning and shaping an individual’s behavior is a slow and meticulous process that requires and ongoing regiment of reinforcement and punishment to have any significant and lasting effect.  It’s not something you can pull off in a week with a few hits of acid and a bag of dildos. Naturally she will suffer for years from her painful ordeal at his hands, something akin to post-traumatic stress disorder, but she would definitely recover and she was definitely not brainwashed. 

Ricky rose slowly from the tub and leveled an accusing finger at Little Anthony. “Is that what you did? Are you practicing pseudo-science here?” 

Before he could answer Ricky picked up a cattle prod from the bathroom sink and chased Little Anthony across the room. He cornered him near the door and repeatedly shocked him, bellowing “What did you do? Tell me! What did you do?” Little Anthony collapsed on the floor, covering his genitals with his hands and screaming incoherently through the Hillary mask. Billy T. grabbed him by the legs and dragged him to the other side of the room and handcuffed him to the bedpost, and we took turns beating and torturing him for a while, violating him with the same sex toys he had used on Justina. 

By early Christmas morning the novelty of having a new slave to play with had worn off and we had become bored of tormenting Little Anthony. Ricky dressed Justina and gently led her to where he lay on the bed, trembling and pissing himself in terror. “I want you to finish him off, “he said, handing her his belt. She dropped the belt at her feet and stared blankly ahead, tears welling in her eyes. Ricky picked up the belt and placed it back in her hand, then produced his switchblade and held it to the side of her throat. 

“I said… Beat… Him… Now!” 

Justina hit Little Anthony slowly at first, sobbing loudly as the belt bit into his flesh, but as we yelled encouragement to her she soon quickened her pace, the large brass Harley Davidson belt buckle striking his back and tearing off large strips of skin. We had to step in and stop her when she began beating him in the head with it, afraid she might actually kill him. 

We left Little Anthony tied up in the room and walked across the street to have breakfast at Dennys. No one was very hungry because of the massive amounts of speed we’d been ingesting over the past few days, and we sat there pushing our food around on our plates with our forks, no one saying anything. Justina began to scream again when Ricky threw a ketchup bottle at a waitress, and we were quickly asked to leave the restaurant. 

Out in the parking lot Ricky hot-wired a car, some nondescript Japanese model that wouldn’t draw any attention. He placed Justina in the driver’s seat, buckling her seatbelt and selecting a radio station he thought she might like. He set a pile of bills on the dashboard in front of her, then cupped her face softly in his hands and tilted it up to meet his eyes. 

“Today is your lucky day. Drive away from here and don’t come back, ever. You’re going to forget everything that happened here and tell no one about it. Not the cops, not your family, not your priest, no one. Do you understand?” 

Justina nodded her head to show that she understood, but whether or not she really got it was anyone’s guess.  

“Oh yeah. Have a Merry Christmas,” Ricky said, thrusting his hands in his jeans and turning away from the car window. We watched Justina weave the car slowly out of the parking lot and head toward the highway. When she had disappeared from sight we turned and slowly walked back to the motel.  Back to our friend Little Anthony.