Dreams and Shadows

chapter FORTY-TWO

EXTRAORDINARY RENDITION

Tell us a story, storyteller,” hissed the redcap through gnarly, jagged teeth. His breath smelled like a burning Dumpster, fire and soot passed over swelling rot and rancid produce. Before Yashar could answer, the redcap clenched his fat, clawed fingers into a fist, and splintered his cheekbone with a single blow.

Were he not strapped to a chair held in place by two giddy redcaps, the force of the hit would have toppled him over. Spitting through blood and broken teeth, Yashar looked up, drenched in stoic bravado. “I don’t think I have any stories left worth telling,” he said. He smiled a bit, attempting a laugh, but once more a plump fist connected with his chin, spun him around as far as the straps would allow. Slowly he turned his head back and, in his best Bruce Willis, said, “I can do this all night.”

“We know you can,” said the voice in the corner, “so cut the dimestore crap, Bottle Jockey, and tell us what we want to know.”

“And just what do you want to know?” asked Yashar.

“Everything,” said the voice.

“Everything?”

“Every last little relevant detail. Where they came from, where they might be going, and everyone they might turn to when this gets as bad as it is about to get.”

“That’s not going to happen.” Yashar glimpsed the chalk outline on the floor. It was perfect—a meticulously drawn pentagram sized just right to keep him in, straps or no. They’d even sealed it with matte-finish spray so they wouldn’t accidentally scuff it with a misplaced boot. He wasn’t going anywhere; he’d have to continue taking hits until the redcaps had each bruised their knuckles to the point of crippling fatigue. That was how he would best them—he had to wait them out. There wasn’t a person on this earth who could kill him—at least not one who would—and he couldn’t think of a single thing that these cretinous little goblins could do to him to deliver anything beyond the passing shadow of pain.

“Dietrich, get the salt,” said the voice.

Except that.

The redcap smiled, his malformed jaw dancing sickly in the breeze of his own breath. Redcaps were loathsome creatures, this one particularly hideous, his large eyes not quite set properly, casting an eerie, lazy-eyed leer over a thrice-broken-and-reset nose. He reached down to a small wooden table beside him, pulled from it an empty, rusted tin cup. Then, pushing aside an animal-skin tablecloth, he pulled from beneath it a wooden bucket of raw, unrefined sea salt. Dipping the cup into the bucket, Dietrich hesitated, giving Yashar one last chance to respond.

“Hmmm?” The redcap shook his head, already knowing the answer. “No.”

He needn’t empty the entire cup at once, but the little bastard did it anyway. Dietrich didn’t just carry a grudge, he bore it on his back with pride and schlepped it like a trophy. Now, at long last, was his chance to unburden himself.

The sea salt sizzled, popping against Yashar’s skin, his exposed chest bubbling like smoky bacon. Blisters swelled, erupting, raining fatty pus down into his lap. Yashar let out a cry so loud that it shook the walls, its bass deep enough to rumble a mile away, its treble shrill enough to pierce eardrums.

Knocks sat in the corner, smiling, drinking deep the agony of the man howling desperately before him. He rose from the shadows, delighted in the work of his minion.

“Wait, wait,” Yashar begged, but Knocks was already buzzing off the anguish, soaking in the heroin bliss of a junkie high, shouting over the pleas.

“Hit him again!” he cried out in ecstasy. “Hit him again!”

Dietrich plunged the cup back into the bucket. The salt sailed through Yashar, carrying chunks of him with it. The floor was a thick morass of salt and sticky gobs of flesh. Yashar’s screams were unbearable now to all but Knocks, redcaps recoiling from the raw power of Yashar’s agony. When he howled, he howled an outrage that could level a field of trees, shaking rocks from their moorings—that the walls of the dilapidated warehouse still held at all was a miracle to the redcaps who glanced around to ensure their integrity.

Yashar writhed. He’d never felt such excruciating pain; never seen fluids leak so readily from his chest; never seen meat cleaned off the bones of his own rib cage—but there it was as his own soft tissue melted before him, down onto his stomach, off the side of his leg, onto the floor. This wouldn’t kill him; he knew that. But for the first time in his long life he began to think that maybe, just maybe, there were actually things worse than death. Clenching his teeth he looked up, one eye squinting shut, his face boiling off. A gooey drip of his forehead streamed down over his brow. He looked Dietrich dead in the eye. “When I get out of this,” he promised, “and I will get out of this, I will tear your arms off and feed them to you one at a time.”

Dietrich glanced back at Knocks. Knocks nodded, and Dietrich smiled so wide he revealed hidden teeth even he never knew he had. “Hit him again,” crowed Knocks. The cup plunged into the bucket once more. “Then put him back in his bottle and bury him at the bottom of a salt mine. I don’t want any of his friends getting any bright ideas.”

“Wait!” shouted Yashar. Exhausted, burnt beyond recognition, he shook his head. “I give.”

“That’s all you got?” Dietrich spat out.

Panting, Yashar nodded, his head wobbling at the end of his neck. “That’s all. That’s all I got.”

Knocks smiled contently. “So you’ll tell us a story?”

“Yeah, I’ll tell you a f*cking story.” Yashar once again spat on the floor, losing two teeth with it. “It’s not like I was ever going to be remembered as one of the good guys anyway. What do you want to hear?”

“Why don’t you begin by telling us where we can find Ewan?”

Yashar sighed deeply.