FicWad

Death and Bloody Glory

"If I was to put a bullet through his forehead," Here he pauses and inspects the weapon in his hand, a semi-automatic pistol; you know because you've seen one before. "It would first penetrate the thin layer of skin, shatter the frontal bone and then lodge itself into the frontal lobe of his brain. This will kill him instantly." He smiles at you, a killer smile with no hint of regret or sympathy but a laughter that sparkles as he drinks in your disgust. "On the other hand, if I shot him in the stomach, it would cause huge amounts of pain, leaving him to die slowly and agonisingly from blood loss." He rubs his sleeve against the barrel again, polishing the weapon that seems to gleam at you with sardonic satisfaction. "Which will it be?" He challenges you, glancing up from the gun.
You close your eyes, your breathing getting harsher and more panicked as the moments whiz by like the lights on a fairground ride - blinding you, making you dizzy and sick. Your hands, tied to the wooden back of the chair seem to drip with sweat, a kind of terror induced perspiration.
Your cry of pain rings out in the silent basement, echoing off the concrete as he hits you hard around your cheek with the barrel of the gun, leaving the skin broken and bleeding. Soon it will turn a nasty shade of blood speckled grey to match the rest of your body.
"Answer!" He commands "Or I'll decide myself - and I won't be so kind." He beams devilishly at you.
You open your eyes, a tear trickling down the side of your face; the salt infuriating the wound. As you glance across at the other, the only silent person in the room, guilt strikes a ringing note in the pit of your stomach as you realise that it's the pain that makes the tears flow - not pity and horror.
The boy who sits, bound and gagged in a metal folding chair by the stairway, can't be any older than six. His dark skin smudges him into the inky blackness of the room, only slightly illuminated by the flicking strip lighting behind you. The white t-shirt that is draped over his painfully thin form is grubby and bloodstained - his jeans ripped and coated in mud. It's raining outside, you can hear it pattering on the walls of the rundown shack above and his jet black hair is still damp and glistening with droplets of water. He'd come to deliver a letter, a letter from someone he didn't know, to someone he didn't know and half an hour after knocking on the door, half hanging off its hinges, he had found himself locked in a cellar with a madman pointing a gun at him.
He was terrified - you could see it in his eyes, pleading so hard with both of you not to put a bullet in him. He's so young and it makes you blood freeze as your captor's voice rings out again. "What's it gonna be?" He inquires maliciously.
You shake your head pathetically, your mind heaving with thousands of pointless ideas of how to escape this situation from hell. But he just laughs, booming and scornful as he marches up to the boy and yanks his head back, the chair tilting onto two legs with him. The boy makes a muffled protest, tears flowing down his cheeks as he stares up at the man whose about to end his life.
"Answer!" The demand echoes an air of urgency, "If you don't I shall."
You gulp, closing your eyes as the words lie heavy on your tongue, sticking to the back of your throat. When you first utter them it's in less than a whisper and they don't even go further than your parched lips.
"Answer louder!" He orders, yanking the boy's hair hard and making him cry out in pain and fear.
"I said shoot him in the fucking head!" You almost yell, tears running rivers down your own cheeks "Fucking sh-" You're cut off as there is a heart rendering yelp of surprise and then sickening sound of a bullet punching at point blank range into the skull of a six year old boy.
You choke down a panicked sob and close your eyes, but not without catching a glimpse of wide, brown eyes and a mouth stretched into an 'O' of surprise. All that showed of the bullet was a small, red hole in the centre of the child's forehead.
Not daring to open your eyes you sit there whimpering as first there is the sound of a chair scraping across the floor and then his footsteps ringing out, terrifying clear against the concrete. You flinch as his hands clamp down on either side of your head, bruising your battered skin yet further.
"Open you eyes." He demands but you shake your head desperately and as best you can in his grip. "Open your eyes motherfucker!" He yells at you, so loudly that you think for a minute your eardrums have burst - at least then you wouldn't be able to hear him.
"No." You stutter "No...No...I'm not fucking going t-"
He yanks your head back, bone-crackingly hard and in shock your eyes shoot open - by the time you manage to close them again it's too late. Already a horrifically graphic image of the back of the child's head - blown completely open to reveal the mess of tangled brain and tissue that lies inside is printed on your retina and will stay there as long as you live.
You gag and as he lets go you fall forward, throwing up hard onto the blood filling floor. You're sick until everything you've eaten in the last damn year is lying in the mess of vomit and half digested food and blood and brain on the unforgiving grey concrete.
He just stands there and watches you, his expression one of twisted satisfaction. When you finally stop vomiting, leaning forward against your bonds with the ropes biting into the flesh of your stomach, he steps forward and yanks you back into a sitting position by your dark hair.
"You killed him." Your captor tells you resentfully, as if it's you, not him who has just murdered a boy in cold blood "That boy is sitting there with half of his mind blown out because you told me to kill him."
You swallow deeply, you voice hoarse and pitiful "I told you because I wanted him to die quickly." You argue, still out of breath.
"But," He reasons quietly, the first time his voice has dipped below almost shouting "If you had not told me to shoot him, who is to say I would have killed him? I might have been testing you." He smiles with disdainful glee.
Your blood freezes in your veins, your whole brain clouding over with shock and disgust and a horrible feeling of guilt that twisted its way like a knife into your stomach and settled there, making you squirm with discomfort.
He beams at you with childish delight as he sees the despair registering in your eyes and then, letting go of your hair he bows slightly. You screw your eyes shut again, not daring to look across at the body infront of you, the horrible, spine chilling realisation that you're going to be stuck with it all night suddenly dawning on you.
"Goodnight." He grins, as he shuts the door with a hollow, metallic clang behind him. "Sleep well."

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A/N: I don't normally do this but if you've read, and are going to review could you tell me whether you think you'd live or die? I might do a sequel.