Storm of Retribution

Discretion Advised:
​This short story contains depictions that may be disturbing to some readers. It may not be appropriate for readers under 18 years.
| Horror | Thriller |
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It was her first day of rest in weeks. The first day she had no obligations, no engagements, and the only thing demanding her attention was her one hundred-pound Supermutt, Artos. He was sniffing his way through the yard now, investigating every scent trail that piqued his interest while she smoked the day's first cigarette. The air was cool and damp under a grey sky, a mist lingered from the passing storm. She lived for days like this. For the scent of the trees, and for the rejuvenated curiosity of Artos as he sloshed around the wet grass. A sense of contentment settled around her. She whistled and Artos trotted through the open door, he sat to the side waiting to be dried off—that was his favourite part—while she finished her cigarette just outside of the door.
She stepped inside and reached for the towel draped over the shoe rack by the door, but Artos didn’t hop as he typically would. Instead, he stayed still, his watchful eyes focused on the open door. She looked over her shoulder, fresh rain overfilled the gutters and cascaded over the awning.
“It’s okay, bubba, it’s just the rain.”
She took a playful step in his direction, and he sidestepped, his trained eyes never losing focus. Thinking distant thunder may be to blame, she reached to close the door, but something stopped it before it could latch. Her hands pressed against the resistance and the door burst open, jamming her shoulder and upsetting her balance. A sinister male figure filled the doorway, Artos lunged forward as the man forced his way into the room.
The door bounced off of her and slammed shut, a clap of thunder seeming to answer the call of chaos descending on the house. The unknown man struggled against Artos, his body colliding with shelves as he tried to keep his footing. Adrenaline rushed through her veins and instinct took over, her hands swept over his shoulders and looped around his upper biceps, linking together behind his back. Grip growing tighter, she tucked her head low and leaned back and Artos pounced at the man’s groin. He keeled over and stepped into Artos who swept his leg right out from under him, she never let go. The air escaped his lungs under the weight of her, she spun her legs to the side and braced herself on her knees. One of those knees connected with his face when he turned his face away from Artos, and his body went limp.
When he came to, he found himself bound with zip ties, her sitting in a chair a few feet away—staring at him, Artos at her feet. Overcome with confusion and rage, he began to thrash and yell obscenities, all the things he would do when he got free…if he got free. She sat silently, watching him wriggle, waiting, weighing her options from this moment. While he was unconscious, she emptied his pockets and used his thumb to surpass the lock screen of his phone and banking app. His accounts were negative and his messages sporadic, his social media was full of troll activity and misinformation posts, conspiracy theories, and hate groups. A real winner, in his own mind though, to be sure, and that’s to say nothing of where he finds himself now.
“I’ll gut you, fucking bitch!”
“Now, is that any way to speak to a lady?”
Her contemptuous tone pushed him into another frenzy, and spittle accumulated around the corners of his thin, dry lips. His phone was drowning in a cup of cleaning fluid, and when he noticed the profanities again began to fly. She pressed record on her audio recorder.
Some time passed and storm outside intensified, torrential rainfall poured in thunderous applause. The room filled with men she’d never met, and whom she’d likely never see again. None spoke, simply nodded at the index finger pressed to her lips. Still uncertain of what would come next, they all waited for their mutual acquaintance to arrive. Somewhere around the third hour of his profane ranting, she had decided to call someone whose world was vastly different than her own. Someone whose world she had hoped would never cross over into hers, but she now found cause to enlist their expertise. There existed no doubt in her mind that the recordings of the man’s provocative ranting would be convincing enough to elicit a new veneer to their alliance.
He opened the door and knocked gently on the doorframe; the pad of her finger stopped the recording. The gathering of men spoke quietly amongst themselves while she greeted the man at the door, the man that they all knew. He found a seat and she removed the bound man’s belt and folded it several times, placed it between his teeth, reached for the duct tape. She silenced the ranting with an effecting bit, and sat next to the visitor, but said nothing. Instead, she pressed play on the audio recorder and waited. The room was again void of any sound other than the desperate, vile declarations of a weak man rendered powerless in his pursuit of the illusion of power. It did not take long for the putridness of his existence became clear, and the strong index finger of her visitor brought silence to the room again. After a pause, he spoke directly to her,
“What do you want to do?”
In all the hours since subduing her attacker, she still could not decide what to do with him. Not for lack of options, bit more for what was feasible.
“That depends—what’s possible right now?”
They spoke, at length, about the bound man’s social connections and the likelihood that he would be missed. Her eyes rarely left his bound and gagged body on her living room floor, she watched him struggle to absorb the reality that took form around him.
“I have an old mattress protector, but that does nothing for his blood in the mudroom; this carpet needs replaced…”
Her visitor’s eyes widened slightly in unanticipated surprise. His tongue rolled across his teeth, his hand toyed with his bearded chin,
“Leave all that to me…,” he leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, matching her posture, “what do you want to do?”
She turned away from their subject and rested her chin in the crook of her shoulder, unsuccessfully searching for a more eloquent way to say,
“…I want his balls, in a jar.”
He made little effort to restrain his glee, scooching forward with a smile growing across his face,
“Okay—and what do you need?”
Together they made a list and some of the gathering dispersed in intervals to acquire various necessities, including a few bacon cheeseburgers to reward Artos. Every possible angle was considered in graphic detail, every consequence weighed, alibis created, contingency plans outlined. A perfect crime was curated, so to speak, in fantastical detail, right in front of the subject’s eyes and still he chomped and grunted against his bit. Her attention again turned toward him, the established internet troll who spouted inflammatory hate speech for reasons that amounted to sheer entertainment. Since he had regained consciousness, she had not engaged with him once and still he found it appropriate to spew venom in her direction. Even now, she had few words for him. She retrieved her tactical knife from the coffee table and closed the space between them. The knife opened with a flick of her wrist and the room again grew still, and with his face in her hand the troll, too, became still. With skillful finesse she fileted the duct tape from his cheek, shearing his days-old stubble smooth. He swallowed hard but never moved, her guests on an edge far sharper than her blade. Leaving half shaven, she ripped the rest of the duct tape off in one swift motion and stood. The man on the floor writhed in pain, flailing against his restraints, grunting and cursing her once again. She returned to her seat, roll of duct tape and belt in hand. She sat back and toyed with the items in her lap, methodically folding the belt and securing it with the tape.
“When you’re finished moaning, I thought we might have a chat.”
He grew quiet and rolled onto his side to face her,
“About what, whore? Huh? You can spare me the details of your fuckscapades with all your friends, alright—I don’t need hear anymore of gabbin’; I’m callin’ your bluff.”
A smile grew across the visitor’s face, but she expression remained emotionless, her hands still busy with the belt and tape. She allowed her pensive silence to the air, broken only by the sound of tape stretching and tearing. Before he could open his reeking mouth to speak again, she crossed the room with a new bit and secured it in place,
“Now that I won’t be interrupted, we can move forward. A bluff this is not, and you would do well to come to terms with everything you’ve heard about your immediate future. I am not one to play games, and to be quite honest, you’ve made this far too easy a decision to make.”
She shook the old mattress cover out over the open floor and a few of the men helped move him onto the vinyl cover.
“Strip him, leave his wrists and ankles bound. Stand him up.”
Her eyes scanned every part of his naked flesh,
“We’ll have to remove the tattoos.”
A sturdy folding stool was brought around, and he was helped to his knees, his chest pressed against the seat of the stool. Several jailhouse scratch pieces covered his back and shoulders, the classic mix of anti-Semitic, xenophobic symbolism to match the drivel he’d spouted at every opportunity.
“Blow torch.”
From that point forward she spoke with direct, concise commands, and in what felt like minutes he became unrecognizable and unaffiliated. She stopped once he fell unconscious, cleaning and treating his wounds and burns with homemade salves and poultices, waited for him to come to, then repositioned him for the next phase of his disappearance. Somewhere between the searing removal of the fifth tattoo and the disintegration of the third fingerprint, she noticed his resolve dissolve. It wasn’t until the red-hot, two-millimeter rod pierced his orbital socket that his fate truly sunk in, but his defeat was superficial compared to what she had prepared for him.
She sat on the coffee table across from him, he on his knees, she leaned forward and rested her elbows on her thighs. He met her gaze; she watched his blood begin to boil. She nodded at one of the men standing beside him; the man removed his bit.
“Glad to see you’re still hanging in there. How’s my bluff?”
Her guest choked back a laugh, but a renewed loathing rage filled his eyes. She waited for him to speak. Most men in his position would beg mercy and forgiveness, even swear to change their lives, but not him. No, he was bred and born of the toxic waste that poisons society, and he chose to maintain the same constitution. Having spent his life inciting chaos, at thirty-seven he finally found himself in the wrong place, testing the right one. She sat straight and slid her slender fingers into a fresh pair of black nitrile gloves,
“Burning me up don’t change the fact that you’re a whore—don’t change nuthin’.”
He had developed a slur, drool dribbled down his chin. She stood and placed a jug of formaldehyde, syringe, and a specimen jar on the table then slowly paced the room a moment and came to rest with him at her feet.
“Ya know, I keep trying to feel bad for you, to feel some semblance of empathy or sympathy—pity, ”
That familiar sound of tape forcefully separating from itself again filled the room, only, he flinched this time. She wore her smirk proudly. Duct tape gripped his phallic shaft and the back of her gloved hand held it against his mons, her other hand working the tape to secure it against his pelvis. The men on either side of him held him in place, but he didn’t resist much at all until her gloved hand tightened around his testes,
“Now that’s disappointing,” her hand released him, “is there anything about you that isn’t underwhelming? Little balls, little dick, big ego…but still, not the biggest—or the smallest,” he tried to spit in her face, his rancid breath barely reaching her. She grabbed him by the face as she stood, pressing her thumb hard into his jaw, “It appears your mouth is dry,” and she spat between his forcibly parted lips.
The blow torch clicked on behind him, but he was too busy thrashing and cursing her existence to notice. She found it intriguing, the way he hyperfixated on his hatred for her, a hatred he had held long before this moment. He stalked her, attempted to rape her; she’s not likely to have been his first. The embodiment of involuntary celibacy, if the forums and social media groups she found on his phone are to be believed.
Lightning flashed in the windows, punctuating the wind that ripped through the shudders.
“We wouldn’t want your sugar to drop,” she shoved the severed teabag into his gullet and covered his mouth, one hand held him hard at the nape, “swallow.”
He gulped hard; choking and gagging on blood and sac skin, struggling against an empty gut that wretched and heaved, nothing coming up.
“I wanted to keep these,” she held his exposed testicles in front of his face, “hence the jars behind me, but honestly, these dainty things aren’t fit for Artos…”
Artos sniffed the at her offered hand and tasted the blood that dripping from her knuckles, he huffed and walked away.
“I almost expected them to be bigger, worthy of display, given the cojones it takes to be so loudly and proudly…impuissant.”
She popped each titchy testicle into his mouth and pressed her palms across his mouth and nape,
“swallow—that’s a good boy.”
A new set of three men walked into the room, led by her guest. She tapped her fingers across the troll’s cheek and rose to greet the new guests. Slipping her gloves off, she nodded at the new men. These men, whom she would never see again, bowed ever so slightly and offered her a small box encrusted with black opal and onyx. Delicately she accepted the gift box and nodded in appreciation and gratitude, but the man with the box gestured that there was more. Her thumb opened the clasp and she lifted the lid, her hand reflexively cupped her throat. She glanced at the men, entirely in awe of their gesture of gratitude. The box alone was worth a small fortune, and the gifts it concealed were far more sentimental than she could have ever anticipated. It wasn’t until she exhaled that she realized she was holding her breath, she drew in slow, deep breaths as she again bowed to her newest guests and placed the box on the safety of the bookshelf.
She grabbed Artos’ old training collar and secured it around the eunuch’s neck and yanked him to his feet. Were it not for the two men beside him, he might not have stayed upright while she fastened a handwoven leather lead to his new collar. Then she sliced a hole in the center of an old sheet, slipping his head through the middle, securing his new attire at the waist with a leather strap. What remained of the salves and poultices was packed into a small satchel that was the hung around his neck. She led him over to her foreign visitors and bowed respectfully, offering the braided leather to the men. They looked him over, scrutinizing every inch before graciously accepting the exchange. Their heads bowed one last time, and without a single word they turned and led the eunuch out through the mudroom.
The shelves were re-mounted, the carpet replaced, the house deep cleaned like it was going up for sale. Standing in her steam-filled bathroom, she gazed at her exhausted reflection. She hadn’t slept in what felt like days. She dressed and walked through the house to sit with her only remaining guest.
“Why’d you call me?”
Thunder rumbled overhead, and she opened the door to her patio. Standing in the doorway, she lit a cigarette and drew in a long, slow drag,
“I knew you’d come.”
They sat in their pensive silence, listening to the rain. She snuffed out the butt of her cigarette and crossed the room to him,
“Let’s get some rest,” she helped him up and gestured toward the guest room, “sleep well, love.”



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