My torture victim refuses to die

Yeah, I’m not gonna lie. I think I’m gonna give up on this soon. It’s been like 2 or 3 days now, and this guy’s still breathing. Still laughing like a maniac, begging for more pain.

He made it easy for me. Put up no fight, rode silently in the passenger seat, and didn’t ask a single question. Usually, the people in his position would be begging for me to change their fate by changing my mind. And usually… they all fail.

Not this guy, though. No, he basically led the way to the shed in my backyard. Almost like he was happy to be there. Happy to finally get this opportunity. As if to amplify the point, once he pushed the door open and pulled the string to bathe the room in light, he dropped his jacket on the floor and turned to me.

“Well…” he taunted. “I’m waiting.”

He was kind of taking the fun out of things. He went as far as to strap himself down to the table until only his left hand was left unrestrained.

“Little help here, bud? I’m getting a little anxy.”

I decided firstly to slap him around a bit. Bruise up his face, black some eyes, that kinda thing. All he did was laugh at my attempts, mocking me while I beat the life out of him.

“Gonna have to try harder than that, bud. I read about you in the papers. If this is all you got for me, then I’m in for a real tickle fest, aren’t I, you naughty boy, you.”

He laughed loudly, grinning at me from ear to ear. This gave me an idea. I could almost hear the lightbulb above my head flick on.

With a pair of pliers, I went digging around in his mouth, gripping each tooth one by one while I smiled right back at him, subconsciously trying to outdo his insanity.

The task proved fruitless, however, when, with each tooth I yanked from his mouth… he smiled harder. Blood and spittle ran down his mouth and dripped from his chin, and through it all… he… was fucking… smiling.

“I needed to grow new ones anyway,” he gummed out, breaking into a cackle.

Frustrated, I tossed the pliers to the side. I sat at my chair for a moment, thinking on where to go next. As I sat in my deep thought, the man spoke again… only this time… he was borrowing my voice.

“Come on, champ, you still got it. I believe in you. Who cares that you’re older now? This will be the one, buddy. This will be the one that makes them actually remember your name.”

At this point, I had a new mission. I didn’t want to just kill this guy. I wanted to hear him scream.

I tried inflicting the most physically painful acts upon him that I could think of. Breaking his knees with the sharp part of a hammer, slicing his eye with a razor blade, hell, I even tried putting paper cuts between each of his toes.

It was pointless.

All he did was mock me in my own voice.

“C’mon, son, you’re surely better than this…?” “Why are you moving so slow? Have you always been like this?” “I guess you’re just past your prime.”

I knew he was right. I was past my prime. I’d been in the business for nearly 20 years now. My body didn’t work the way it used to. I was getting winded just cutting this guy’s throat.

In a gargled voice, like he was underwater, the man choked out:

“Oh, so close. Unfortunately, this isn’t horseshoes. Gonna have to try a little harder, buddy.”

I continued to saw, deeper and deeper into his neck until the teeth of the saw reached the cloth of the operating table.

Triumphantly, I removed the head from his shoulders. I could only relish in my success for no more than a moment, however, before the newfound silence was snatched away from the room.

“Awww, look,” laughed a voice from my hands. “I get to be a trophy.”

From that moment on, all I could do was sit there, listening to him shoot off increasingly absurd comments.

“Would you looky there, seems as though I’ve lost some weight.”

“Hey, real quick, can you saw off my arm? I gotta scratch my nose.”

“Look, just sew my head back on. We’ll grab a beer after. Pretend this whole thing never happened.”

And after three days of trying… I think I’m finally going to give up and do what he says.