Peace XII and Chance

d’Neronique

(Dee-nerr-ON-ih-cue not Duh-nee-ron-EEK, mkay?)

Part III

It wasn’t so much an interrogation room as death closet. At this point, the Peace was working, and I was constantly being assured that our goal had almost been reached. I figured this meant that the power we gained from the fear was more important than the answers screeched out by our prisoners and improvised accordingly.

My days were perfect. Wake up to screams in the morning, washed my hands with blood for lunch, and followed my nightly fucks with a steaming bath of apathy. I was told that while it would be a bit too risky to be frolicking around and terrorizing the world in the open, the Peace would still deeply appreciate my sociopath skills scaring the shit out of the miscellaneous fucks they brought in to abuse and torture. I was basically told I could do whatever I wanted with them as long as I let a few here or there survive long enough to be able to tell the world of our treachery. And I was pleased to oblige.

My first day on this particular duty was a little awkward. Without much explanation or tips or a briefing of what to expect, I was shoved into a little room –probably about the size of a bathroom – with nothing but a frail looking woman bound to a chair, facing away from me. The walls were completely white, obnoxiously white, really. She was horrified, naturally: she heard the door open behind her, but being in the way she was bound, completely unable to turn around and look. She was shaking. I smiled, knowing she wouldn’t be able to see it, but hear it. “There, there, babe. Don’t be afraid. Just tell me why you’re here and everything will be all right.”

Something in my words seemed to affect her greatly, for she immediately burst into tears. Despite her best efforts, there was a large degree of mighty fail in the manner in which she attempted to communicate. “I… I… nothing… I swear… It was an ax…uh…. accident! Please, please!”

I grabbed a back chunk of her hair. It startled her, obviously, and her tears only fell more. “Oh, god! Please, I don’t know!”

In all honesty, I didn’t give a shit why she was there, or what information she probably didn’t have, or any of that. My mind was more preoccupied with pain and how best to inflict it upon her. I always had a knife on me, a habit I picked up from Steart. I took it out and placed it gently, blade outwards, against her cheek so that while no blood or pain was being drawn, the woman was very aware of the fact that a knife was resting against her. She stopped wiggling and begging immediately. Perhaps a gasp or whimper here or there because she couldn’t help it, but for the most part, I had her undivided attention.

I made a disapproving sound, but continued to smile, because I knew it made me sound creepy. “Honey, honey. I understand. I know that you’re scared, and that’s why you can’t successfully string words together to convey any idea in the world – except, for maybe, unintentionally spewing your illicit retardation into the air and polluting my airwaves. Simply unforgivable.” I lightly tapped the blade against her chin. It still shouldn’t have hurt her, but something deep and fearful managed its way out of her throat. “But more to the point, dear, I don’t really give a fuck why you’re all strapped in like this. I decided, the moment I walked in, that these white walls needed some decoration, and you – my dear – will provide the inspiration. Now I was thinking,” I tightened my grip on her hair and for the first time rolled the knife around so that the blade was directly over her skin. I knew it hurt – almost immediately, a sliver of blood appeared. It wasn’t a deep hurt, and it probably felt like an oddly placed papercut, but damn, did this woman turn on the waterworks at this. I wondered if this was the moment when she knew that she was going to die. I decided it wasn’t. After all, humans are incredibly prone to disbelief. “That maybe these walls need a little red.”

Completely ignoring her “No, please, no!”’s, I decided that I wanted to scalp her. Completely remove her hair and flesh from the top of her head. Smiling, I didn’t tell her this, of course. She would find out soon enough. Putting it to the back of my mind that I really had no idea about the technical logistics in the art of scalping, I decided that a good place to start was making a deep and intentional cut along her forehead.

Without warning, I did just this. Oh, she screamed, wiggled, tried to get out of it, but any attempts really were useless. Not only was she expertly secured to the chair, her head was in full control of my hand. And don’t be mislead by my age and love for anal sex, as a young teenage boy, the strength in my arms was immense and continuously growing: this nameless woman wasn’t going anywhere.

Once had I had a satisfactory section of her forehead ‘unzippered,’ I braced myself against the back of the woman’s chair and pulled as hard as I could. At first, all I could really register were the deafening screams of the poor bitch whose hairline I was maiming. Then I realized that I had only partially succeeded in my task: the scalp, sure enough, was torn apart predictably, but somewhere in the middle of the skull, something weakened, or my pull wasn’t hard enough, or maybe too hard – but at a strange midpoint in the skull, the flesh had stopped coming off of the head, and instead just completely ripped from it. In my hand was a half-scalp, the rest of it still fully attached. I laughed, but I was completely overpowered by the screams. I threw the half-scalp at the white wall in front of her. It bounced back onto her lap, and it made a nice little gruesome red mark on the wall before her. As the pain cleared just long enough for the woman to realize that the haired and bloodied blob on her lap was indeed part of her own head, she just seemed to lose it, screaming and crying and begging and trembling with no end. She even vomited a bit, covering herself with the skankiest smelling puke. I couldn’t handle the noise. I slit her throat nice and deep and watched satisfactorily as the screams diminished at more delicious red blood painting the walls (and me). The first thing I mentioned as I left that room was that I wished I had more tools. “Also, don’t clean up the blood and vomit. Just remove the body. I want the others to see it.”

As it was, both of my wishes were granted. I was given the oddest assortment of weapons and tools to assist in my torturing. If the poor bloke was facing away from me when I entered, I made sure to choose something noisy like a screw driver. If they were facing me, I chose whatever I felt like, because as long as it looked like it could cause pain, they were just about ready to shit their pants anyway. With the exception of the fist woman, it was typical that people facing away from me when I first walked in got to live, albeit maimed, while people facing towards the door died. Sometimes I got the sense that a person might actually be very important – in fakely interrogating them, I’d catch something that sounded significant or worthy of knowing and dying for. Other times, I got the impression this was just a random unlucky fuck some other Peace member grabbed off the street to terrorize people properly (it seemed like a task I would have gladly done, had I not known about the torturing side of it all).

The ones that lived certainly did their job in making the world terrified of us. Of me, that is. One or twice, I made a conscious point to mention to one of the ones that was going to live that I was Boy X and my reign of terror wasn’t quite over yet. Although I’d leave these ones alive, I made sure to mangle their face and body pretty thoroughly, so there was that dramatic visual effect when people saw them. No one wants their eyes scooped out, limbs removed, or jaw unrecognizably smashed in.

I once walked into to see a young boy facing me. Facing me, so he was going to die. But what struck me was not that he was young – pre-pubescent, although it was extraordinarily rare – but was how fearless he was. I walked in, and I could tell he’d been there a while, perhaps jailed beforehand, not well fed and beaten. I walked right in with a gun in my hand, and he didn’t even flinch. He didn’t look afraid or broken or any sorts of fear of the inevitable pain he was about to endure, as made evident by the blood on the walls and the horrific stories in the media. No, he just looked at me, his eyes clearly accepting the fact that he was going to die very soon, and not regretful one bit. My first instinct was to keep him – like a pet, or like how Steart kept me – but decided against it. He looked feral. My second instinct was to have sex with him. That didn’t seem like a good idea either. The only real thing that could have been done was force him to suck my dick, but it seemed likely he would have bitten me. “Well aren’t you adorable!”

He didn’t say anything, just glared at me. Maybe he was just pretending to be brave. I wondered how fast I could get him to break.

“It seems as though they have you faced in the killing direction. But you don’t look very upset about it.” I paused and watched him. His expression twitched a bit. “Maybe you don’t believe we’d kill a little boy like you. Maybe you’re thinking that it’s much more strategically sound to just torture you up some bit and then release you to the world. Maybe I’m thinking the same thing. But ‘maybe’ aside, I know for certain if you’re facing me, then your number has been called. Your time is up. And you’re going to die. I don’t make these decisions, sorry kiddo.”

We engaged in a staring contest for a while, neither of us moving. I smiled and leaned in close. “You know, I was about your age when I joined the Peace.”

He surprised me when he suddenly spoke. “If I join you guys, you won’t kill me, right? You don’t kill your own kind?”

It seemed too easy. “If I said yes, are you prepared to accept the duties assigned to you? To completely obey and love the Peace and everything it stands for?” When he didn’t have any reaction one way or the other, I smiled, my teeth showing. “Because it’s kind of hard to believe that you’d be very successful in giving up all your hate you were just showing me a while ago. I don’t think I could, on good conscious, boy, willingly let someone into the Peace that intends to do them harm.”

Something manic had begun to shiver in the boy’s eyes. Something determined and forceful, as though every second was a goldmine of opportunities to suspend his tragically young death. I had to admit, I liked this kid’s survival instinct. He blinked. “But you don’t kill your own kind, right?”

I didn’t answer right away. To completely confuse him, I stepped out of the room a moment and brought in one of the clean-up guards that usually waited outside in with me when I returned. Both of them were completely confused. I cleared my throat and addressed my fellow Peace member. “Sorry, this may seem a little weird. But as you know, this boy here is going to die. So young, but just as mortal as the old. If he lived, this would have been a valuable lesson. Right? Everyone dies.”

The other Peace member kind of grunted at me. I didn’t know his name, but I’d seem him a few times around the room, usually cleaning up or handing me new weapons. While he never struck me as someone intelligent, he seemed to have the most amount of apathy while cleaning up the guts from the floor, so I had grown to hold some respect for him.

“Anyway,” I continued, gesturing towards the boy, who had begun to cry a little bit. It must be humiliating for him. I also hoped I was making him a little hopeful. “He wants to join us. You know, to live and all that. I mean, we don’t kill our own kind, right?”

“Course not.” This answer was satisfactory.

I could see the kid’s face, how he thought, if even for just a brief moment, that he might honestly have a chance to live. “Not your own kind.”

I smiled, completely towards the boy this time. “You’re right, I don’t kill my own kind. Then again,” Without flinching, I flung my arm up and shot my fellow Peace member in the head, spreading his brains all over the wall. “No one’s my kind. Sorry, kiddo.”

Without further ado, I pressed the gun to his forehead and pulled the trigger. I think he might have been trying to cry out a “No!” but if anything, only the “N-!” managed to get out. I was giddy with my own wittiness.

Unfortunately, there was a wide-spread disgust about my killing of a Peace member, just to fuck with the brain of a child for a few seconds before killing him. Apparently, we weren’t supposed to kill ‘our kind.’ Also, the fuck had been some nephew of some important Peace member’s best friend or some shit like that. Whatever, the point is that it didn’t go un-noticed. I was given stern glares wherever I went, and a deep seeded lack of trust began to form between me and my former friends. Things would quiet when I entered rooms. Execution lagged when I gave an order. Dirty looks abounded. Even Steart seemed colder. “You’re a fucking asshole, Chance, you know that? You’re in deep shit. Deep shit.”

Just how deep of a shit I had gotten myself into was revealed as time went by. One day, I was ‘fired’ from being the torturer. They put me on clean-up duty after that. It was pretty humiliating. But sooner or later, the buzz of impeding victory around the Peace had grown loud, and people began to get cold feet. Most were completely aware when they signed on that when the goals had been realized, they would accept their eternal reputation as a war criminal, accept their conviction and serve a lifetime in jail, or be executed – depending on how horrid their crimes were. As news of a complete possible cessation seemed inevitable, more and more people just began leaving. Without saying anything, they just were gone one day. Deserters. Cowards. Traitors. I hated them.

There was a time frame of three or so weeks where it was my job to actually execute a few of the ones we caught whether by effort or they just failed to leave properly. After all, we couldn’t have all these fuckers running loose to mess up our glory. While it was a far cry from the adrenaline filled perfection that was torturing, the clean executions these fuckers got from me was much better than cleaning up after another’s fun-time with the scythe.

And then it was over. No more deserters. No more torture victims. No more assassinations and shady deals and terrorizing the general public. We’d won. The Insurrection of the Twelfth Peace had realized all of its original goals, and would rest peacefully (as all Peaces rest) until the Thirteenth was ready to rise. The moment I was told this, I strange kind of nostalgia and regret washed over me. After all, the Peace had been my entire life. I had unthinkingly accepted membership on the grounds of ‘nothing better to do.’ And now I was expected to be rounded up and executed in a cruel mirroring of my own duty the past month. I was having a hard time accepting it.

“To tell you the truth,” Steart was trying to comfort me, to help me accept the end of my legacy. “I knew you didn’t understand what it meant for us to win. I even knew that you probably preferred us to be at war forever.”

“It’s true.” I mumbled, trying to hold back tears. To defend myself a moment, here, I’d like to inform that my current depression had only a little to do with my own death. I was more concerned with the news that Steart had laid upon me – that he was ‘scheduled’ to be arrested tomorrow.

“For some Peace members, it will take months, and possibly years to be caught. We don’t want to make this seem too planned out, you see. But me? My time is tomorrow. There’ll be a ‘random’ raid in some abandoned building where they ‘collected’ intelligence of my whereabouts. I’ll be dead before the year is out.”

I couldn’t handle that this was my last night with Steart. “You’re the love of my life, you know that?”

He simply smiled. “I know. You have no idea how much I believe our meeting was destiny.” He paused a moment, hesitation. He seemed to stiffen a bit. “Which leads me to the next topic of discussion. Your death.”

“Oh great.” I was dripping with sarcasm, leaking it through the floor. “When is that scheduled? Are they gonna have some great scene planned out where the infamous Boy X is finally brought to justice? Followed by a long, drawn out and highly publicized trial at which I am put on the fast-track to lethal injection followed by a deafening cheer from the world at my demise?”

“No,” The answer was a little dry. I should have suspected something. I guess it didn’t matter. Steart took me by slight surprise by gently holding my chin and kissing me. When he broke apart, he didn’t distance himself my anything more than an inch. “Chance, I’m so sorry.”

Without letting go of my jaw, Steart’s eyes didn’t leave my own as he shifted a little. They didn’t answer all my questions. But his knife certainly did.

I didn’t see the knife. I just felt it. Delivered expertly and swiftly through my ribs, right into my heart. Even in tremendous pain I had to lovingly admire the expertise in which my lover handled the blade. Hating myself for feeling slightly sexual at the moment, I let out a guttural grunt as he twisted it a bit inside me. I coughed up some blood and I was still close enough to Steart that some of it transferred onto his lips and face. I wanted to cry, maybe I was already crying. Oh god, I was dying. The love of my life, the love of my death. “Steart… why?”

“You think you’re dying, Chance, but you’re wrong. This is the only way you’ll live forever. Please understand, I’m so sorry.”

As I felt myself dying – a strange feeling, but not altogether unpleasant, even under the circumstances – I did understand. They’ll get Steart tomorrow. In three years, almost all of the Peace members will have been caught and convicted. But they’ll never catch me. There’ll always be that forever hanging legacy, that mystery of whatever happened to Boy X. And as I lie dying in the arms of Steart, I forgave him. I tried to smile. but it w

THE END

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Author’s notes: I apparently have a liking for ‘uke kid (with older, presumably grosser companion) does illegal shit with/around dead/dying people, becomes well known and publicly criminalized, goes crazy and dies’ type stories. Guess I’m just a morbid cunt! Only this was a lot harder to write than the Nayslayres. Extreme pedophilia and blatant torture is too much, I think. I prefer subtle distortion over this shite. Either way, it’s been interesting.

Also. Chance speaks way too eloquently for not really having a proper education. Still, I’d hit it. I can has award for corny ending dialog nao? (Don’t do drugs!)

This should have taken place in OUTER-SPACE. It would have totally kicked Gundam Wing’s mecha ass.