Libertines 12: Psychopathia Sexualis

The long black car idled at the curb.  Genia stepped out of the front door of our lab, taking mincing steps and blinking in the light.  She looked around as best she could, the sun obviously overwhelming her. 

We drove north for an hour and stopped the car outside of what seemed to be an oversized cellar door standing in the middle of a abandoned sandlot.  A low stone wall divided the lot from the dirt road.  We got out of the car and the door opened… we descended the steps.

A long corridor lit with caged bulbs led to an airy underground space with a ceiling of wireglass skylights… at the rear of this unlikely chamber stood a large chair that could only be described as a throne.  Upon it sat Ferrovache, who stood and called, ‘Come, my friends, come!  I was  beginning the afternoon’s diversions in celebration of the last harvest… sixteen kilos of the finest product imaginable!  Please, come forward!’ His grin was closemouthed and his eyes were unnaturally wide and set apart… His face held an indefinable, yet powerful attraction.  He radiated jollity and civility, but we knew him to be the essence of cruelty… we would not be taken in by his facade.  He sat down and retrieved a small packet from one of the young, nude girls scattered around the room.  ’Where were we… ah yes, enema, three types.  Strappado.  Bastinado.  Amputation.  Traumatic insemination.’  Ferrovache flipped through his twisted flash (flesh) cards languidly. ‘Binding, blinding, branding.  Oh, it seems as if I have been through this deck a hundred times.  Where is the next?’  he asked with a yawn.

I saw the lightning-fast look exchanged between his two closest body servants.  One of them threw herself at his feet and whispered, ‘It is the last, m’lord.’

We stood respectfully at the head of the banquet hall, we two men concealing little Genia behind us.  We knew how capricious this bastard was, and a chance glance could spell doom for any one of us.  We watched as he reacted to his servant… ’The last?’ he said with the iciest precision.  His prostrate servant had begun to shake.

An elaborately filigreed eight-chambered revolver appeared in his right hand as if conjured there.  He flipped the chamber open and loaded a single cartridge from his breast pocket, snapping the pistol closed with a flick of the wrist.  He screwed a blunt silencer to the muzzle and aimed the gun at empty space, eyes defocusing.  ’I admire the undeniable efficacy of firearms, but the noise I cannot abide,’ he stated, waving his free hand at the standing slave.  She rushed to a position in front of the gun where it seemed likely she would be hit square in the head.  The second slave leapt to her feet, obviously well rehearsed, and placed a lit wax candle on her companion’s head, dripping wax into her scalp first to ensure the candle would stand firmly.  The candled girl gritted her teeth at the touch of the hot wax, standing ramrod straight; the wax flowed into her face in hardening layers.  She minutely adjusted her stance, eyes locked on the pistol.  ’If I miss completely, it will go worse for you,’ Ferrovache said, and pulled the trigger without warning.  The candle winked out, and the slave’s laughter exploded out with her pent-up breath abruptly… but it sounded like a scream.  

The libertine sighed, and pocketed the revolver, clearly disappointed.  Then his eyes lit up, and he stood, beckoning us to a far corner of his bunker.  ’Here’s a pretty,’ he said and pointed.  His body slaves dragged the heavy throne behind him, and he settled into it without looking.  Another slave took up position at the foot of the throne, on her back.

 A woman, really a girl, was restrained tightly to what looked like a section of telephone pole, the hue of the splintery wood darkening sharply toward the base… brown deepened to black at the very bottom, where the wood was fastened into what looked like a huge gear from a clock tower.  The top of the gear was filed into sharp ridges upon which stood the whimpering girl, who could not find a place to stand where she would not be cut by the cruel flanges.  She tried her level best to rest her weight upon the thicker flesh of her heels, giving her a strange and unnatural aspect, as if she were being blown backward, but standing still. Smeared and bloody footprints surrounded the thing, and it had quite clearly been dragged recently. Ferrovache gazed at this foul construction and said, ‘I love this game.  Quinto, come forward!’  From the trembling row of youths behind the throne limped Quinto.  He pushed an IV stand on wheels alongside him, leaning heavily on it as though it were a crutch.  Hanging from the stand was a standard liter of lactated Ringer’s solution, not quite full, and the IV line wound around Quinto’s arm and terminated in a cruelly wide-gauge Heplock-equipped venous interface.  A bloody twist of bandage circled his arm, carelessly holding the IV line down.  Emblazoned on his forehead in Kafkaesque script was the legend ’5th’.  He was favoring his right leg, which had fifteen or more slim stainless daggers sheathed in the fleshy part of the thigh, obviously tucked under the quadriceps and likely resting on the femur.  They penetrated completely through and gave Quinto sharp agonies with every step.  This living scabbard approached the throne and extended his leg, trembling and blowing through clenched teeth as he lifted the gore-encrusted mess to the level of Ferrovache’s fingers… You could see Ferrovache closely studying Quinto’s face as it reddened and sweated… ‘I give the ordinals a choice every time an intensification is necessary.’ He turned to face us and leered, his vulpine face creasing horribly and exposing the platinum canines that were his trademark, quite abruptly destroying his beauty. ‘The cardinals die at my whim.’  At this, he bore down on his slippered toe which rested on the exposed throat of the naked slave at his feet.  The number 1 was emblazoned on the hapless child’s neck, gouged and stained with nightdark ink… the windpipe’s cartilage yielded suddenly with a loud click, and we felt the kneeling form of Genia jump.  I could not close my eyes.  The writhing and choking subsided presently and the body slaves disposed of it with astonishing celerity; the victim was replaced with another young one, this tattooed with a large 3.  Ferrovache settled his toe on the throat of three and turned to Quinto, whose eyes were streaming and whose lips were bleeding…  He presented a small tray with two ampules of clear liquid upon it to Quinto. ‘One is diamorphinum, and the other curare.  The ordinal has the choice, in this single, painful moment, between life and death.  Choose now!’  The young boy plucked the diamorphinum from the tray without hesitation, and slammed the liquid home viciously.  His leg rose higher as the pain receded; his eyes closed and his breathing evened… Ferrovache then drew a knife from the deepest part of the proffered leg slowly, agonizingly… Quinto’s eyes flew open as he screamed and collapsed, overwhelmed… body slaves dragged him to his position against the rear wall.  We watched in horror as Ferrovache flicked the knife in his hand at the luckless girl on the post, the distance a full ten meters…