Hellbenders

“I had the trader chased, but he slipped past the sec patrol pursuing him. Jourgensen was in a shit bad mood because he’d lost jack and face, and couldn’t even get high to make up for it. So he had the patrol chilled and called me before him.

“I’d never fucked up before—I’d have long since been chilled if that was the case, but even this time I knew that I hadn’t fucked up. Jourgensen left it nearly a day before trying the merchandise. If the shithead had any sense at all, he would have had his taster try it before handing over the jack. So it was too late for my men to pick up the trail and catch the prick who did it. Not their fault, not mine.

“But after they’d been chilled, I was told what a useless piece of shit I was, and how I was probably behind the plot to kill him. The crazy paranoid bastard had turned the whole thing into a conspiracy against him. And I was the one whose ass he wanted. Only he wasn’t just going to chill me. Oh no, he was going to make me suffer first.

“I was beaten senseless—but well, I’ve got to give them that. It was my own men who did it, but I can’t blame them. They were acting under orders, and you don’t go against Baron Al. They beat me until I was in so much pain that I couldn’t even think. Everything seemed to come to me from a long way away, as though in some kind of bad dream. But I wasn’t allowed to lose consciousness, not at any point. They knew exactly the nerve points to jolt me back if I started to fall.

“I knew I was bound to be chilled, but I didn’t give a fuck by then. Let it happen, release me from the pain. But he went too far—just that touch of fuckwit sadism that’s sealed his fate. See, he wasn’t content with it just being me. He had to bring Becky into it.”

“Who was Becky?” Krysty asked as Correll lapsed once more into silence.

“She was my woman. Mebbe the only thing—person— I ever really cared about. I never liked people that much. That’s why I was so good at my job—I could do it without getting involved, without caring. But Becky was different. She was the only thing I would have died for. Only that bastard Jourgensen didn’t give me the chance.

“While I was lying there, sec men over me, too fucked up with pain to move, he had her brought in. They stripped her, and then he fucked her in front of me. And he had the others do it, too. That was bad enough for her, she was crying like I’d never heard, looking at me like she didn’t know whether to feel bad for herself or for me, despite how much she was hurting. That chilled part of me more than any physical pain could.

“And then he got out the branding irons. He used them on the horses we have, to mark them as his own. Just a J mark beaten out of metal. He fired them up, and he did it himself. He branded each tit, then both cheeks on her ass. He made a line of them on her belly, and each time she screamed with the pain, and passed out, they’d bring her around with cold water and he’d start again. They spread her legs, and he branded her between the legs, burning the flesh and hair so that— Oh God, I can still smell it.”

Correll was silent again for a few seconds. Ryan and Krysty left him alone, waiting for him to be ready to begin again as he stroked the box on his lap.

“And then it got to the point where she was near death, and he still wanted more. I swear the sick fuck had forgotten I was there by then, and he just wanted to please himself.

“They took her out into the yard at the back of his palace, and there was a stake hammered into the ground. Kindling had been piled around it, and they tied her to the stake, bundling the kindling around her feet and legs. Two of them held me up while I was made to watch. Becky was in no kind of state to fight against them—anyway, she was just one woman and there were so many of them. They tied her against the stake, then Jourgensen went up to her and fired up the kindling. That was when she started to scream. Yeah, she’d made noises before, but all the fight had been knocked out of her. But this was different. She was wide awake, totally conscious now, and knew she was going to buy the farm. And do it in a way that— Fuck it, I can’t think of a worse way to go. The flames licked up her legs, and I swear I could see the flesh blistering as the heat got under her skin. The smell was horrible—sweet and strong, like roasting fat. I could see the flames traveling up her naked body, touching her and making her burn. I swear to anything that you can call a god that I could see her intestines roasting and burning away, I could see her bones start to show as the flesh and fat burned off them.

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