Chapter 33
Sharks of pain swam through Eddie’s mind consuming him in whole chunks. Long jagged teeth sank into each heel and into his calf muscles. The pain was dizzying. Not a dull throbbing pain, but a hard chomping pain that made his body shudder with each bite. Sweat escaped from every pore of his body. Blood dripped from his ankles.
“See that, Eddie? She’s letting you know just what she thinks about you,” Nicholas said.
Eddie wanted to answer, wanted to say, he didn’t care what she thought about him. He was doing what he had to do to survive, but he couldn’t say it. The pain wouldn’t let him.
With his thumb Nicholas flipped the gleaming blade of the straight razor open then closed then open. Seeing it, Eddie struggled against his bindings, started shaking.
Paige banged against the glass, but he couldn’t bear looking directly at her. Thank God this was happening to him and not her.
“Do what you have to do,” Eddie said. “Just don’t hurt Paige.”
The blade came up, slashed, ripped, hacked. Eddie’s eyes blinked through the flurry of movement. Nicholas forced a piece of cloth into Eddie’s mouth partially suffocating him and causing him to gag. He thrust his head forward, spit the wadded up piece of cloth out. Snorting for air, Eddie fought to shove aside his terror.
He wanted to run. God, how he wanted to run, to fill his lungs with strength-giving air and run to Paige.
Nicholas stepped away from him, tilted his head, and studied Eddie as if he were a menu board. He didn’t look pleased with his options.
“Do you know what evil really is, Eddie? It’s anything that crushes artistic expression.”
It took Eddie a few seconds to realize he hadn’t been cut. His clothes had been slashed from his body and now lay in a shredded pile at his feet. Dimly, he realized his boxers were damp. Had he pissed himself? A stream of wetness dried on the inside of his right leg. He had.
“Still want to take the blade for her?” Nicholas asked, nodding in the direction of the house.
Eddie wouldn’t look at the house. He knew Paige was standing at the window. He looked at the ground, wished she wouldn’t watch, wished she would go away. He didn’t want her to see him like this. Eddie turned his eyes up to Nicholas’s.
“Yes. I want it.”
Nicholas brought the blade forward again, and Eddie clenched his eyes shut, almost desperate for a swift release, but no such release came. Only the sensation of his boxers being cut and tugged away from his pelvis. He was nude now, the wind drying the dampness on his body.
“Please don’t,” Eddie said, knowing it was useless.
His tears ran freely. His breaths tumbled out of him in hot gasps. He tried to relax, willing the tension from his muscles to give his fear an opportunity to ebb a bit, so he could think, figure out what to do, but fighting his body was like wrestling a swarm of killer bees.
A prickling pain began at the edge of Eddie’s right armpit and a shudder rippled down his spine. Eddie opened his eyes but saw nothing through his tears but the bright light of the flood lamp and the blurred form of Nicholas standing nearby. Eddie tried to blink away the blur. The pricking twisted into a deep sting that flared into searing pain, filling his mind.
Nicholas was cutting him.
The blade slowly moved through the flesh of his armpit. It was a long time before Nicholas stopped, but even when Nicholas did stop, the pain didn’t. Instead, the pain blossomed into something he couldn't get his mind away from. He fought the pain, the raging pain, thrashed in his bindings against the pain.
“You realize this has to be done, don’t you?” Nicholas said. “You’re an evil disease, a cancer. You must be cut from her life. She cannot be free until you are removed, erased from existence.”
Eddie tried to answer him, to tell him where he could stick it, that he already knew that he wasn’t worthy of Paige, but the pain halted his ability to speak. He could only scream.
Nicholas's form, filtered through wet eyes, circled around him.
Again, Eddie felt the flesh of his armpit being cut, felt the same slow movement of the blade, only this time it was on the left side of his body. Eddie hard-blinked several times, and his vision, like a soaked windshield cleansed by the wipers, finally cleared.
Nicholas stood at his side, one hand firm on Eddie’s shoulder, the other guiding the blade. Nicholas looked to be in a trance-like state unaffected by Eddie’s struggles.
Eddie wanted to escape the pain ravaging each of his ankles and each of his armpits, to shrink from reality into some safe place deep within his body, but he knew he could do nothing but accept his fate and watch his own mutilation. There was no place his consciousness could go.
Nicholas stepped back and circled him once more.
“The Chinese have a torture technique where they make one cut at a time with a very sharp dagger. Each time the person refuses to talk, they cut again and create a seemingly endless barrage of pain. As long as the cuts are shallow enough, an individual can live until the body is drained completely of blood. The torture can go on for days, months, even years by simply allowing the person’s wounds to heal.”
Nicholas cut on Eddie’s chest until Eddie was covered with blood. No words, and no tears moved Nicholas from his purpose. The louder Eddie screamed the more Nicholas cut. It was as if his very screams drove Nicholas forward. In those places where he screamed loudest, Nicholas did the most work.
The world began sliding out from under Eddie, tilted up at an odd angle. Out at the edge of his vision everything had gone black. It crept closer. The pain forcing the light from his eyes. He saw it fading out.
Nicholas stopped in front of Eddie and slapped him across the face.
“Don’t you pass out on me,” he said. “If you pass out, I’ll bring Paige out here. Do you hear me?”
He slapped Eddie again and the blackness at the edge of Eddie’s vision retreated two steps.
“Look at me,” Nicholas said. “Show me that you’re still there.”
Eddie’s chin rested on his chest, but he looked up at Nicholas, into a dead face communicating a murderous resolve.
“It isn’t as bad as you’re making it out to be,” Nicholas said. “The cuts aren’t that deep yet. In the African community of Dogon they perform female genital circumcision on adolescent girls without any kind of anesthetic. They don’t pass out, and they’re being cut on one of the most sensitive places on their body. By comparison, I’ve hardly touched you.”
Nicholas squatted down and began cutting on the top of Eddie’s thighs. Eddie banged his head back against the trunk of the tree in an attempt to force his mind away from the pain. His vision flickered for a moment. Eddie screamed at Nicholas to stop, called him every foul thing he could think of, but Nicholas didn’t respond. He continued to cut.
Trails of blood ran down Eddie’s stomach and legs. It dripped from his armpits as well as his heels. He was nearly beaten. He knew that. Regardless of what Nicholas said, he would not be able to take a whole lot more of this. Once the pain reached a certain point, he would do nearly anything to make it stop.
Paige was still in the window. She was frantic now, banging her fists against the glass and waving something. Eddie wasn’t sure what it was. With the glare from the floodlight in his eyes and with all the pain, he wasn’t sure he could trust his eyes anyway. But seeing Paige gave him a burst of resolve and strength. He didn’t know how that could be, but there it was. He couldn’t let anything happen to her. Suddenly, he knew he could take whatever Nicholas could give.
“So you’re finished,” Nicholas said. “You’re ready to trade places with her.”
Eddie was breathing hard, but he managed to spit out a defiant, “No.”
“I knew you were a coward, but I hoped you would last longer. I’ll bring her out here to take your place,” Nicholas said.
“I said no, you bastard. I’m not finishe
d. I can take a whole lot more. I can take everything you can give.”
“See, this is my favorite part. When things begin to get a little hazy, you aren’t exactly sure what you’ve said and what you haven’t said.”
“You’re not listening to me. I said keep cutting me. I won’t trade with her. You’ll have to kill me.”
“Oh, I heard you quite fine between your screams. You may have changed your mind now, but that’s not the way this game works. You begged me to stop, said you were finished, and you are, for now.”
Eddie couldn’t help but wonder if Nicholas was right. Had he said that he wanted to trade places? Maybe he had. Maybe when he had been screaming, maybe when he’d been out of his mind with the pain, he’d said something he didn’t mean to say. Or maybe Nicholas was screwing with his mind. He didn’t know. He just knew he didn’t want Nicholas to touch Paige.
Nicholas turned away from Eddie and went to the door of the house.
“No!” Eddie screamed. “Do whatever you want to me. Just leave her alone.”
“Take it easy, Eddie. She won’t be as big a baby about it as you. You’ll see. She’ll do just fine. She’s much stronger than you could ever be.”