Windy, With A Chance Of Rain

How did he know?

How

did 

he 

know?

How did he bloody well know!?

“You bastard! Let me go! You can’t do this to me!”

For what must have been at least the tenth time, Jonathan rattled the chains and tried to break free. The gesture was futile and robbed him of precious energy, but he had to do something. 

Something.

Anything.

Anything at all to escape this dire eventuality.

In a wicked twist of events, he cried.

His tears of anguish and humiliation wet his cheeks and as he felt them, the crying transitioned into laughter.

You bastard! 

You bastard! 

You bastard! 

You bastard! 

You bastard! 

He didn’t even know whether he was saying this out loud. Not that it mattered. Nor did he care.

It hurt like a bitch. 

Worse than a bitch. After all, bitches were bastards, only more bitchy. He tried to think about which was worse and why, but his mind lost track. It derailed itself as the pulsing pain took centre stage yet again.

He’d never felt pain like it.

At first it was discomfort, a familiar discomfort that was there to warn him of a pending regular event. But then this had built and built into something excruciating. What made it all the more awful was that there was no end in sight. 

Then awful gave way to terrifying.

His mind gave him enough room to have odd and random thoughts. He could feel it scrolling through these thoughts. Right now he was remembering an episode of a strong man contest where men with barrels for chests, arms and legs held out before them a lorry battery at arm’s length. At first they may as well have been holding a bunch of daffodils, but then the pain train pulled into the station and veins began struggling to exit skin. Eyes bulged and breath pistoned in and out, in and out. The arms themselves seemed to bow as they trembled with the increasing strain. Each man shook their head feverishly as they denied their pain and gave defeat a firm NO! And yet it was obvious that they could not prevent gravity from doing its job. They were strong, but in the end nature and its allied forces would win.

His current predicament was the same. He was straining and straining and he knew he was struggling against a certain end. He’d been tricked into this by a person or persons unknown and that added a strange dimension, worse still, he had the feeling that he was being watched. That this was entertainment for sickos who played with people in the very worst of ways.

He was going to die, of that he was becoming more and more certain.

It was the manner of his demise that crushed him. No one should have to check out like this, especially him. Particularly him.

How did he know?

It had to be a he, didn’t it?

Sickos like this were always men.

Unless it was a couple. That happened sometimes. Two people in a twisted relationship where love had been exchanged for something dark and terrible. Alone those two people were bad enough, but together they became an elemental force that chilled the bones of the very devil himself.

Breathing was becoming difficult now, as though there was no room for his lungs to expand. In a way, this was true. Add in the cramps and the pressure breathing created and this was turning into something akin to being crucified.

“Please! I’ll do anything! I won’t tell!!” he yelled across the room. 

His voice sounded disjointed and pathetic in the confines of the bare concrete room. Windowless, he guessed he was in a basement. Somewhere where no one would hear him and no one would find him. Not until it was too late anyway.

They’d tricked him.

Repeatedly tricked him.

How stupid could he be?

Well, the answer to that was very stupid indeed.

“Incredibly bloody stupid!” he shouted.

Shouting felt good in the moment, but then the pain reminded him who was boss and it hurt all the more.

Drugged. 

He’d been drugged.

Not only a knock out drug, there was more to what they had given him, but he wasn’t to know that when he woke up on the cold concrete floor wearing nothing but his underpants.

The room was lit by a single bare lightbulb and at that time there was nothing in it except a very large water bottle. The bottle was branded and sealed. He’d checked it. He wasn’t that stupid to drink something that might harm or even kill him.

But how he needed a drink!

He’d experienced a thirst like he’d never had before. A crazy and insatiable thirst. It were as though he’d been dried out in the sun, then place placed in a smoke room and to round things off, made to swallow a kilo of salt. He was so thirsty that he lost his mind. Drinking and drinking again until he was upending that five litre bottle of water and shaking the last drops out.

He recalled staring up into the empty bottle, the light of the bulb made ethereal by the blue tinged plastic and hanging around in that moment.

Then nothing.

They’d drugged him again. 

Somehow they’d gotten to that sealed bottle. Probably injected the bottle with a tranquilliser through the plastic side. He wouldn’t have noticed that. Besides, he was too thirsty to have inspected the bottle that thoroughly. 

Knowing the details didn’t really help him. In fact it made it worse somehow. Knowing seemed like a part of the joke, and the joke was entirely on him.

This time, when he awoke, he was hanging from the ceiling. Not hanging in the way he’d seen in films, he wasn’t on his tip toes or anything like that. He had plenty of room for the flats of his feet to make contact with the floor. 

That was the point.

The floor had changed. He was stood on a mesh of metal and before him, but tantalisingly out of reach, were two crocodile clips. He’d tested the trap they had made for him by spitting on the metal grid he was standing on. 

That had been a mistake. He’d damn near ended himself there and then. He’d screamed and he’d writhed and he’d nearly lost it completely. As the liquid landed and completed the circuit it had fizzed and come to life and so had the grid, sending a huge jolt of electricity up through his feet.

That’s what they want.

That’s what they want.

That’s what they want.

That’s what they want.

That’s what they want!

He couldn’t last out much longer now though. He knew he was almost done and when he was done he would complete the circuit and he would sizzle and fry.

Then he was back on that stage in front of all those grown-ups.

Back where it had happened.

He’d been dressed as a shepherd and his trousers were white. The very worst possible colour in the circumstances.

He was so excited about the play. He’d been so looking forward to it.

So he’d forgotten again.

He always forgot, especially when he was excited.

He didn’t know why.

I’m sorry Mummy!

I’m so sorry!

I didn’t mean it!

He was properly crying now and he knew it was all but over. 

He could see a sea of faces and in the midst of them was his mother. She was so angry and upset and he was so ashamed.

And frightened.

This was the worst moment in his life and it had left its mark.

Mummy!

That was the last word he uttered as his bladder let go.

Then the screaming started.

It took him a surprisingly long time to die.

The assembled watchers got their money’s worth.