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It takes a while for you to realize you are looking at yourself, that the sad face with the crooked nose and eye half-lidded by swollen, indigo flesh and blood dried in Rorschach splatters across the cheek and split upper lip is you , dear guest, it is you, all sniveling tear tracks and dribbling snot. It is your face that scrunches up in confusion at all the things you do not recognize in your grainy reflection on a laptop screen, bone-deep gouges trailing up your bare, pincushion arms, little raised bumps like goose flesh where stitches are threaded through.
(Maybe you’re remembering now how much of a haphazard job it was, quick and dirty with brown-red steel that reeked of rust; maybe you remember a suture needle like a fishing hook pressing into the sensitive flesh of your inner thigh, the way you jolted at the initial pinprick feeling, the way you whimpered at the sharp, thin press of it deeper, deeper, deeper through the meat of your leg like he was skewering a fish, how blood oozed onto his fingers and smeared over your skin.
In a day or so, it was hot and blushing with irritation. After that, it was scabbing over sick yellow with splotches of brown-black like rotten egg yolk, shiny and slick with pus. He would always tease it with the lightest scratch of his fingernails, and it would feel like he was cramming shards of glass into an open wound.)
“You look good,” he compliments you, voice muffled and soft through the fabric of a skull-print bandana tied around his mouth, empty platitudes and false praise; he isn’t even looking at you, busy repositioning the camera, making your digital reflection jerk in and out of frame. “Most people don’t hold up as well as you, but I’ve been careful. Saved you for something special.”
(Maybe the heated, infected flesh of your thigh throbs and itches, craves nails like needles to soothe it, but your hands are zip tied to the arms of a creaking chair with drips of faded brown and red frozen to its surface.)
“Please don’t do this,” you try to say with chapped lips and a weak tongue, voice garbled and strangled and hoarse. You sound unaccustomed to speaking.
Maybe you are. Maybe you have screamed and cried and squeezed your eyes shut and imagined something very pleasant—or tried to, as a heated clothes iron pressed on the expanse of your back and seared its angular shape into you with boils and blisters and you had to smell yourself burning, hear yourself crackling and sizzling, most of all you had to feel it sharp and agonizing until the nerves were dead and then it was a dull ache in your back that you felt for days.
He stops what he’s doing. When his eyes meet yours, you feel you’ve made a mistake, but it’s too late now, dearest, most wonderful guest, you opened your mouth when you must have known better. “I have to,” he says as he puts a hand on yours,
(and you squirm, instinctively fearful)
and though his tone is gentle you can surely see the smile in his eyes. “If I could, I’d keep you so much longer than this. You’ve been a real pleasure.”
(Maybe you are remembering the weight of his body and the cold, dusty basement floor, how he felt hot and turgid against the back of your thighs before he wrenched your legs open and opened you wide, and you never really saw it so you began to imagine all sorts of nightmares hard and pulsing against your inner muscles.
Maybe it grazed against the stitches throbbing on your leg and it was cum and blood and pus that he forced inside of you, that made the drag more bearable, that covered the engorged head of his member when he pulled out and told you in a low, satisfied drawl that he wanted you to turn over for him now because he wasn’t done yet.)
“A real pleasure,” he repeats himself, lost in thought. Maybe remembering something, too. “One of the best. Gonna be a real shame, but my hands are tied on this. I don’t have any more say than you do in what happens.” He leans back against the table where the laptop and camera sits open across from you. “He’s gonna tell us what happens,” he says.
You look at yourself again. You’re already crying; the sight of your own fear played back for you over the live feed, the way your face scrunches up and you brows furrow, black eye squeezed shut between lumps of swollen flesh, makes you feel sick. Text scrolls up in the window beside it too quickly for you to catch more than intimidating bits and pieces
(yes catch yes real good eyes nose ears the eyes you have to do the eyes nice color real pretty gut like a pig flay and eat on camera fuck them make sure we can see make this one last you crazy bastard bleed them out on the floor just let it drip down just shove it in shove it in their mouth make them choke on it break them make them beg for it )
and then you have to close your eyes because you can’t bear to read any more.
(But that doesn’t make it go away, dear guest.)
“Please,” you’re muttering, thoughtlessly, the words spill from your lips in a subdued panic that laces through your veins and leaves you feeling light-headed, “god, please, don’t….”
He doesn’t hear you. “I guess we better get started,” he says. He leans over and presses a key, and the chat seems to freeze, every user muted for a brief, blissful moment. You whimper and shift anxiously in your seat when he moves behind you, clamps a hand down on your shoulder and leans in, staring into the camera. You see him in the frame with you, bright-eyed, ecstatic. “We’re gonna do things a little differently today because it’s a special occasion. Happy birthday, woundfucker88!”
woundfucker88: thanks man
“Longtime viewer and regular,” he says to you as an aside, chuckling, endeared by the tears streaming down your cheeks. “Today’s gonna be a special stream. Usually I go with my favorite suggestions from the chat, but this time I’m just giving one person free reign.” You feel him graze your shivering forearm with the tip of a blade, something thick and cold and serrated. He digs in, just a little so you get a taste of what’s to come. “Don’t worry, you’re in good hands.” He chuckles. “He’s a real gentleman.”
You don’t like it. You don’t like that you can see yourself like this, shuddering and sniffling, terrified, you don’t like that there are people who can see it and they love it .
woundfucker88: hey there
woundfucker88: how you feeling?
Strade squeezes your shoulder in warning. “He’s talking to you. Don’t you think you should answer?”
Your heart beats so loud and hard in your chest you feel it in your feet and hear it in your head. You smell yourself, perspiration and filth, thick in the air. You close your eyes again. You try to leave, but there’s nowhere to go, dear guest, every hallway in your mind leads to the same basement, every window a computer monitor, every hand rough and thick and calloused, holding your legs open, keeping your wrists out of the way.
woundfucker88: just trying to make conversation
woundfucker88: haha oh well
woundfucker88: lets start simple i guess
woundfucker88: how about an eye
“An eye,” you read and your breathing picks up, your heart lodges in your throat and you’re shaking all over, what does it mean, you’re asking yourself when you already know, what does it mean, as Strade steps in front of you, the hand on your shoulder moving atop your head, and his fingers scrape over your scalp when you don’t hold still for him, they curl through your hair and pull until you have no choice but to look at yourself again and the sight of you is almost frightening.
“They’ve got nice eyes, don’t they?” he says idly, and it doesn’t matter when your eyelid snaps shut reflexively as the knife draws closer because you can see that he’s not stopping with the other, you can feel cold steel against thin, fragile skin.
woundfucker88: wait
woundfucker88: wait i changed my mind
woundfucker88: oh guess hes real focused right now haha
“Wait,” you stammer, but you’re too late again, he’s pushing in nice and slow and steady like he’s imagining guiding his cock in there instead, he’s holding you as still as he can and he doesn’t care if you’re not going to cooperate, you feel him tear through your eyelid, feel it open up around the blade, shredding on the edges, ripping like a butterfly wing, tender and soft, and you’re screaming but he’s not listening to you at all.
woundfucker88: nah dont tell him
woundfucker88: its fine
woundfucker88: but hey since its just you and me right now
woundfucker88: how about i tell you a little secret huh
You’re sobbing now, you’re body is spasming and your arms want so badly to reach up and shield your face, every muscle is wound tight and ready to run, and your hands are straining against the zipties so harshly that the plastic is digging into your skin, rubbing you raw, deep imprints and shallow cuts circling your wrists.
The knife goes in with a sick schliiik sound, pushes in easy, floods your vision with black and red and pounding headache, fills you with nausea. You feel something wet splatter across your face and roll over your lips, dripping from your chin, coppery, thick like mucus, and through your tears and through the vertigo and through the blinding pain, you see it all happen with a dizzying two second delay right in front of you, watch him pull shredded, sinewy strands out of your head like fruit pulp.
woundfucker88: im gonna ask him to do a couple things to you
woundfucker88: thats unavoidable alright
woundfucker88: but at the end i just want him to fuck you
woundfucker88: not kill you necessarily
woundfucker88: you get what im saying
It’s difficult to read the screen with one hazy, unfocused eye clouded with tears, the light the monitor gives off headache-inducing in the dim light of the basement, but it’s something to hold onto that isn’t the wet squelch of your eyeball bursting and dripping jelly down your face as he takes his sweet time, really makes sure he gets in there, saws around a little and bumps around the wet cavity of your eye socket, squishing against muscle, squeaking against bone.
woundfucker88: you dont have to die
“There we go,” Strade says with great satisfaction, wrenching the knife from your eye socket. Dozens of messages begin appearing on the screen, pushing your private communication out of sight, compliments and expressions of awe, “fuck that’s really good just like that yessssss,” that make your stomach turn.
woundfucker88: oh fuck your eye
woundfucker88: that is gnarly haha i love it
woundfucker88: look at your face real quick
You have been. You keep glancing back it, morbid curiosity, squinting through a haze of stabbing headache and feverish heat. There’s hardly anything left, just a mess of red looking like a fistful of wet, fleshy things scrambled and stuffed into a hole where you eye should be. You swallow down rising bile and try not to look at it anymore.
woundfucker88: did you like it?
woundfucker88: youre squeezing your legs together real hard
Did you like it? You want to laugh but you choke on a whimper. You didn’t even notice your rigid posture, but you’ve drawn yourself in as much as you can. You feel sweat smearing on the flesh of your thighs. The heat and the friction makes your stitched wound burn.
woundfucker88: ohhhhhh i think they liked it
woundfucker88: hey man can you check for me
“Of course,” Strade says amicably, his free hand snaking down the front of your chest and forcing its way into your underwear. He doesn’t like your squirming and encourages you to open your legs as much as you can between the armrests with a few warning taps against your thigh with the knife.
woundfucker88: whoa hold on hold up
woundfucker88: those are stitches there on the thigh right
He’s paying attention to the screen this time, and his hand stills immediately, fingers barely grazing the flesh between your legs. He doesn’t have to ask for clarification.
“From a few days ago,” he says. “I might’ve been a little careless about cleaning it, though. Used some old, rusty tools.” His eyes narrow; you think he must be grinning. “Just like you asked.”
He pulls his hand out of your underwear and touches the hot, glistening flesh crudely stitched together and you flinch, leg jerking, pain searing through you.
woundfucker88: oh sick its oozing and everything
woundfucker88: ahhh man you gotta do it
“Skipping straight to the good part, huh?” he chuckles, trailing the knife along your inner thigh and
(no, you’re thinking, no no no please no not this anything but this, you’ve taken everything he’s done to you so far but this is too much)
pulling the serrated edges along the sloppy stitching, tugging at it until it snaps on the blade. Your infected, festering flesh is soft and moist beneath the knife’s soft prodding but it feels more like he’s raking it over you, it hurts so much already but you see the look in his eye, you hear his breathing come labored and hurried, feel him tug your other leg as far away as he can get it to leave you open and exposed and he’s
(no god no please no not this)
pushing
(no no no)
harder
(nomorepleasenomoreitstoomuch)
before he’s finally inside
(and you are screaming you are screaming so loud it’s all you hear it’s an echo in your head and it makes your ears rattle and ache and your throat feel raw but it’s n o t h i n g compared to your leg, your leg, hot pulsing disgusting flesh pierced by cold-hot-terrible serrated steel teeth catching on the inside of you tissue muscle tendon tearing and ripping feel it drip as he hollows you out cuts you open so deep he must be coming out the other side so deep he’ll never come out you’re going to die you’re going to die you’re goingtodie —)
His knuckles crack on your cheekbones when he hits you so hard the chair nearly tips back, and your head is spinning and you don’t feel like your feet are on the ground, but he has you, he brings you back, he’s got a filthy pus-covered knife in one hand that he’s waving in front of your face with bits of rot clinging to it. Your body throbs. Your vision swims. You feel bile rising and there’s nothing you can do but feel it burn its way up your throat, feel your jaw tighten and your stomach heave, tears burning in the corners of your eyes
(god you’re going to die down here)
and it comes out pale and cloudy, spills over your lips and wets the front of your body, foamy bubbles and bitter acid.
“I thought you were gonna pass out for a second there,” Strade says. “Caught you just in time!”
Your eyes betray you, wandering back to the screen despite your apprehension.
woundfucker88: fuck im so hard it hurts
woundfucker88: youre something special you know that
woundfucker88: so fucking hot
woundfucker88: do me one last thing alright just one more im gonna cum so fucking hard
woundfucker88: i want him to fuck you alright
You can’t take anymore. You can’t . You shake your head, whimpering miserably.
woundfucker88: yeah hes gonna fuck you
woundfucker88: but heres the important part alright
woundfucker88: i want you to moan like its the best sex youve ever had
woundfucker88: get real fuckin loud thatll do it for me
woundfucker88: might even do something nice for you after huh
Strade grips your hair again and makes you look at him. Shakily, you meet his gaze. His eyes are gold and his gaze is burning . “You’re excited about this part, aren’t you?”
“No,” you say brokenly, the only word you can remember now, and it drags out of you as little more than a scratchy, warbling sigh.
He saws at your bindings and cuts you loose, fragments of jagged plastic dragging against your wrists as he pulls you to your feet and watches you collapse, knees and palms hitting the hard floor as you rest all your weight on the leg that isn’t dribbling blood and pus. You hear him kick the chair out of the way, see the camera lowered carefully to the ground in front of you, and then he’s stepping over you to tilt the laptop screen so you can see your own face, you can watch him stand over you, unzipping his pants, you can tell when he’s about to rip what’s left of your clothes from your body. You don’t look back; you don’t have to. Strade crouches down and sets the knife aside, parting your legs with a hand on each hip,
(running his nail around the unraveling, sticky flesh of your wound, teasing, pretending he’s going to touch the hole he carved into it and retreating just before, listening to your breath hitch in your throat)
and lowers himself onto you, pulls your hips up higher, and you feel him nestled between your legs, the head of his cock slick and twitching.
woundfucker88: moan for me
He’s inside you without warning, too hot, too big, too much; he starts to move before you’re ready, quick, violent thrusts that press you into the floor, and he’s got a hand at your hip to keep you angled the way he wants and one at your chin to turn your face towards the screen. He makes you watch his length disappear inside of you as he rakes his hands down your back, peels your skin off beneath his nails, but you hardly feel it, it’s nothing, it’s nothing.
You moan because you don’t know what else to do. Your mouth hangs open and there are stuttered breaths and whimpers and cries that come out, too, strangled sounds he forces from the pit of your stomach with a sharp snap of his hips, but you try to moan, you look over past the text and the video and you stare into the camera. You hope he looks you in the eye, too. You hope he sees that you are human and you are suffering.
(But you know, dear guest, that it must not matter to someone who says the things that drift up the screen, louder i want you louder thats it thats what i need fucking take it you like his cock huh you love getting fucked up i know you do yeah i know it)
Strade is getting close, you can feel it, you feel him unsteady and hurried behind you, inside you, you feel him throbbing as he leaves bruises on your sides, hear him cursing in German, grunting, think you feel his drool collect in the valley of your back somewhere between old burns and blisters too faded to be worth mentioning.
You moan loud. You cry louder.
Strade pulls out before he comes, strokes himself desperately and groans as he covers your back in white, sticky ropes. The sudden emptiness leaves you panting. Your knees slip on the slick floor and you let yourself lay in slick, foul-smelling slurry, let it burn against your aching thigh and your bruised body. You let your eyes slip shut as exhaustion finally claims you, wishing the floor could swallow you, wishing your heart would stop beating now and spare you whatever comes next. You don’t trust anyone who’s watched what just happened. You know better than that.
(God, you think, I’m going to die down here, and the last thing you feel before you slip into unconsciousness is relief .)
*
woundfucker88: are they dead
“I don’t think so.” Strade touches your throat lightly, feeling for a pulse. “Just passed out. Should I try to wake them?”
woundfucker88: nah thats good
woundfucker88: that was hands down my favorite stream haha thanks a lot
He looks down at you; the slightest rise and fall of your shoulders, the blood on your face. “Any last requests?” he asks. “If not, I’m just going to wait till they wake up and see if I can’t squeeze a little more fun out of them.”
woundfucker88: nope do what you want
woundfucker88: although on second thought
woundfucker88: maybe you could bring them back for an encore performance
woundfucker88: im sure im not the only one who had a few ideas
Strade laughs. He laughs, and he laughs, and he laughs. You have no idea what’s just happened, and you won’t until the next time you’re in front of the camera. You’re going to stare wide-eyed in horror until the resignation creeps in, but he’ll find a way to keep you screaming.
You don’t see it, dearest guest—you can’t—but I’m smiling in those last few seconds I get to see you lying face-down in a puddle of your own filth before the screen goes dark.