WARNING!
This chapter contains graphic violence that can only be considered torture. If you're squeamish, please take this warning seriously and do not read any further. My imagination is vivid, and the nature of this fan fiction is to show how I think Riddick would react in this situation. I won't ruin the plot, but please be warned that what happens in this chapter is not for children or people that can't handle extreme and vivid violence. You have been warned.
The Fallen
Chapter Two: Torture
Riddick didn't lie. He often bent the truth, or walked around it, changing subjects, avoiding answers, living through vague answers and half-truths. But Riddick usually prided himself on telling the truth, on honesty, even if it was something no one would expect from an escaped convict.
So now, standing before the bound and gagged merc, Thomas Clark, who had stolen away the most important aspect of Riddick's life, Riddick knew where he was going to start, and he already had the other man's pants open and pulled down around his knees.
Riddick didn't take any sort of pleasure in seeing other men naked. It was something he'd avoided as much as possible in the slam and something he wasn't even remotely interested in. If he wanted to see a man naked, he'd strip down and look in a mirror. But right now, at this moment, the beast was reveling in the sight of Thomas Clark stripped down and tied to a chair.
"As I said before," Riddick began, pulling out his blade and twirling it deftly between his fingers, "I'm starting with your balls."
Clark twisted and squirmed and Riddick watched in sadistic amusement as the other man's balls contracted up into his body. "You're not going anywhere," Riddick growled and pulled a thick rubber band out of his pocket, stretching it out around his fingers then reaching down and wrapping it around Clark's scrotum, nice and tight.
"This hurts," Riddick said as he put the rubber band on carefully. "But it has to be done, because when I cut them off you're going to bleed a lot, and this will work as a tourniquet. I want to start with your balls, not end with them," Riddick continued. Riddick didn't tell Clark that his plan was to cut into his balls just enough to give himself the start he needed to rip them off by hand.
At this point, Clark was shuddering and rocking the chair back and forth, doing anything to get away from Riddick and the metal shiv that glittered wickedly in his hand. Riddick was spinning it between his fingers again and it danced and skipped along like an extension of his hand. It was short and curved, with a thin blade and grip that fit the exact size of Riddick's hand.
"Ready?" Riddick growled in a deadly whisper, leaning forward so fast Clark didn't even see the movement.
Clark howled something around his gag that sounded like, "No!" but it was too late. Riddick flicked his wrist with the slightest of movements and the blade skipped across the left side of Clark's scrotum, deep, but not all the way across, halfway severing just one nut.
Riddick's prisoner shrieked around his gag, rocking the chair so furiously that he almost tipped over. Riddick roared and stomped down hard on the seat of the chair, between Clark's legs and almost on his injured balls. "Nothing to save you now," he hissed, leaning over his bent knee to place his nose just inches from Clark's.
With a grin full of hate and rage twisting his lips into a parody of humor, Riddick put his foot on the floor and reached down to grasp Clark's slightly bleeding balls in his hand. "Gross," he muttered, just before he squeezed Clark's balls tight and ripped them off.
The scream that issued from Clark around his gag was ear shattering. Riddick knew, somewhere deep inside where the beast didn't control him, that this was something that would make even him sick normally. But not now, in this moment, where the man before him, writhing in pain, was the one that Riddick was torturing.
The beast that was Riddick dropped the severed scrotum into a plastic bag with a sneer of disgust on his face. He turned away from Clark, who was moaning and rocking the chair, desperately trying to clench his legs together against the bonds anchoring them apart. Riddick walked to the kitchen sink of his ship and washed his hands with soap and boiling hot water. It burned his skin but he didn't care.
"Just the beginning," Riddick continued, turning back to his captive. "See how well that rubber band works?" he commented absently, noting that the flow of blood was minimal, the wound pinched together by the tightly wrapped elastic.
Clark was still now, his eyes rolled back slightly in his head and his face deathly pale from shock and pain.
"Now, what should we try next?" Riddick questioned, drying his hands on his pant legs. "I've made dying slow for a lot of people, but the things I'm gonna do to you…" Riddick paused and grinned before letting out a low whistle of awe. "These things are gonna be special, make no mistake." The shiv twirled between his fingers as he moved to stand directly in front of Clark, a smirk on his lips.
"How 'bout one tiny slice after another? I'm guessing, if I'm real careful, I can get all the way to a thousand without you dying. You'll start bleeding out slowly, but I'll keep the cuts away from any major arteries to it'll take hours… maybe even days." Riddick circled around behind Clark, trailing the very tip of his shiv around his captive's collarbone. "You're a man that can appreciate torture that lasts for days, aren't you, Clark?" Riddick asked. "I mean, that's what you did to her, isn't it? Three days before you left her for dead?"
Riddick shrugged. "Ah, well. Whether or not you appreciate it, you'll live through it until I decide to let you die. My profession as of late has made it necessary for me to carry a number of medically advanced devices on board my ship. I can even produce blood if I have to. Give you a blood transfusion to keep you alive. You'll die when I say you can die."
The sheet of plastic that Riddick had spread over the floor of his ship crackled beneath his boots as he continued to circle his prisoner.
"One cut at a time," Riddick continued. "Getting closer and closer to arteries, deeper and deeper until you can feel my blade hit bone, scrape your ribs." Riddick hunched low in front of Clark and smiled. "A thousand cuts," he whispered.
Then with delicate precision, Riddick flicked the tip of his blade over Clark's right shoulder, cutting just deep enough to draw blood.
"One."
------
Three days had passed and Riddick could feel that the beast was almost satisfied with the results of its labor on Thomas Clark. The roar in his ears had subsided to a growl, but the fires of hate and pain still burned in his heart. The hate kept the pain at bay, fighting at the deep, dark depression Riddick knew would set in when he was finished with Clark.
"You don't look so good," Riddick stated, leaning against the counter behind him as he stared at Clark indifferently, his arms folded across his chest, legs crossed at the ankles. "In fact, you look like death warmed over." Riddick paused and then laughed humorously at his own twisted joke.
"Like death warmed over" was an understatement if there had ever been one. Clark was chalk white with blood loss and shock. He was oozing blood from the promised thousand cuts that covered his body. Infection was setting into some of them, and the fever caused him to hallucinate. Riddick found himself speculating about what Clark saw him as now that his mind was going. The constant barrage of torture was quite obviously taking its toll.
"Are you ready for this to end?" Riddick questioned, stepping toward Clark. "Are you ready for the last segment of our time together?"
Clark shuddered and managed a nod, blinking his eyes twice for "yes." Eyes that were red with hemorrhaged blood vessels, caused to rupture from all the stress he was under. From the pain coursing through his broken body.
"You want this to be the fast part?" Riddick continued. "I can just draw my blade across your throat and it'll be over so fast, you'll barely feel the end."
Two blinks.
Riddick pulled the scent of fear, horror, torture, blood, and hate into his nostrils, rolled it over his tongue, felt it slide down his throat. It tasted like burning. His muscles ached to be quick, the beast howled for that final rush of blood and pain, his mind screamed for the too-real clarity to finally break so that he could collapse into the pit that was his darkest nightmare. The nightmare he knew was waiting for him beyond this final act of revenge.
With the lightning speed that was his trademark, Riddick shot forward and leaned in close to Clark so the other man could feel his breath as he spoke. Riddick smirked. "Tough." Then he reached out, the blade once again in his hand, and ripped it deep across Clark's abdomen, cutting through flesh, muscle, and membrane to the intestines beneath the surface.
Clark howled and shook, but was too weak to rock his chair this time.
Riddick laughed and stuck his hand into the incision and grasped a handful of Clark's innards. Then he pulled.
------
Clark's body was still. His intestines were spilled across his lap, dragging on the floor. Like a morbid, blood-slick rope, Riddick thought to himself as he felt the beast calm and slowly begin returning control back to him.
It was truly over now.
Riddick stared out the port window at the stars for a moment, thinking of how she'd loved them. Then he quickly rolled the body and the chair up in the plastic sheeting he'd used to cover the floor and threw the whole mess into the incinerator, where it would burned to dust and then be jettisoned into space, not even a memory.
Strange, he thought absently as he flicked the switch that would start up the incinerator, thought I wouldn't feel so numb. Maybe there's something left to do.
