paulgenovo
Virgin
- Joined
- Apr 28, 2009
- Posts
- 2
Hi. I apologise if this belongs in another forum. Criticism and advice woul be appreciated.
...
Unfound Treasure
I can beat them. I’ve been crawling around in a dirty vent for around an hour now. No…dirty isn’t the right word. Repulsive. Yes. The dust, clotting in the corners where the edges of the vents meet, makes it dirty in my book. The green slime dripping down from the ceiling of it makes it repulsive. All my life, I’ve been able to deal with anything, to handle any disgusting matter, as long as it wasn’t liquid. My childhood fear was to ever have to clean up garbage after a rain. Part of the repulsion was in knowing that the stuff could get inside you if it could flow.
I clenched my mouth shut and kept on crawling, wrenching myself forward with my head on the vent-floor from tiredness. I’m light, sixty kilograms at five feet nothing, always got the occasional “You should be a jockey, son” comments. I’m light, but tired, and the creaking of the vent as I slide along is only really audible if you were looking for someone really desperately. Like they’re looking for me. But I go on, trying to remember the layout of the place. Goddamn it, I should know. I designed the factory.
I designed the factory, the basement, sub-basement, and the secret chamber further below, down a secret stairway. They are hunting me, the architect, because I’m their only chance.
I sent a fax to the Pentagon, alerting them of what is happening. The men that seek me had to come without excavation equipment, and U.S. forces are gonna fry their asses if the rebels don’t find me first.
That’s if the reinforcements are coming. If.
I see an opening ahead. Yes.
Then
A human body blocks out the light at the end of the vent. A man has been ordered to search the vents for me. I slither back around the corner from whence I came, backing out of the man’s sight. He’s moving faster, now, though. I can hear his knees thudding on the steel as he efficiently commando-crawls the space between the opening and the corner, around which I have stopped to catch my breath. I have no weapons. Nothing.
I wrench myself smoothly around the corner, feet first. He’s right there, and is startled when my boots hit him sharply in the throat, but not for long. He yells out to the men at the other end: ‘He’s here! I’ve found him! He’s h-’ I put out his left eye with a thumb, driving it up into his central lobe. Why do people always assume architects are queers who can’t defend themselves?
They guy was dead, but for all I knew there could be a whole platoon outside that now knew where I was. Damn. I had to move.
The pressure was on now, and the adrenaline hit my head jut as my nervous stomach ache came on again. I was moving much faster, shuffling down the shaft, knowing that they had maps of the ventilation system. I was as good as a rat in a maze now. I had a chance, though, if I could get to the employee quarters before they did. The entrance to the secret staircase was located in the last place they’d look: behind a door marked EMERGENCY FIRE ESCAPE. I was reaching the opening to the crew quarters now, and I popped open the hatch on its swivelly hinge. Forgetting my fatigue, I collapsed rather than jumped out of the vent and some guards must have heard me, because I then detected footprints making their way to my position. I took a moment to survey the room, and remembered where my long-ago-planned place to hide was. Hidey-hole. Under the third bed on the left.
I ran, dived and slid under the bed and crawled into the recess behind the head of the bed. I think it was where Charlene Dupree slept. The cute little redhead who’d sold us out to the National Instigation Faction. Deliberately bland name. She hadn’t known as much as I had, hadn’t slept with me long enough to find out where the staircase was. But she’d known enough, oh, yes, to set them on my ass. I’d have to hang, draw and quarter that bitch. If I ever got out of here.
So I was snuggled in the recess, and I could see their leather boots race around the room in circles, looking everywhere but nowhere really. The grunts had more interest in looking busy and getting paid than actually finding me. And they were soldiers, a paranoid, second-guessing breed, so there was a high chance they’d think they imagined the noise I made when I fell into the room. They left after a spell, and I kept a silent vigil in the recess until the room was completely silent.
I crawled out, and there they were, their eyes extending into rifles looking down at the fool who thought he’d won. I was reminded of the way pheasants are shot and killed just when they think they are safe, on the wing home. I had to give credit to the cunning and intelligence of my foes. They’d certainly snookered me good and proper. Splendid uniforms, too. The Gestapo had nothing on these guys.
These thoughts made it to the stage of meek laughter just before they dragged me off the floor with the barrel of a gun at my head. A tall, blonde kid with greased hair took charge and sat me on the bed, predictably asking me just where the staircase was, or would I like to spit blood? It wasn’t Josh Krantz, though, and that alone was a great relief. Krantz was the head of the NIF, had been since before I was born. The NIF had a very secure way of compartmentalising information, and it’s possible that Krantz alone knew that I knew what I did. So I had a chance of bluffing this kid.
He looked to be about nineteen or so, and I guess he came to lead the thirty-year-olds in the NIF team through money and talent. It had to be both. Something in his eyes told me he was green deep down, though, and that I was sharper than he was. I’m sharper than nearly anyone, though. Not in a crawl-in-vent-and-be-captured way, though. More in a crooked, snaky politician’s way. You’ll see what I mean.
I grinned the sun at him ‘Okay, you got me. My turn to play the good guy?’ Stony, silent faces stared at me, not getting or not appreciating the joke. Man, these guys could use getting laid sometime.
‘This is not a joking matter, Mr. Sullivan. We need to know where the Big Score is kept, and you need to somehow get out of here without your eyes blinded and eardrums punctured. This can be arranged, but you will need to deliver first.’ Oh. My. God. The young man grinning slyly at me now had just referred to the money as The Big Score. Pretty close to what we’d called it when we’d started construction on the factory. Only we’d referred the twenty-million dollar slush fund in the deepest cellar as The Big Gambit.
Americanisms aside, he’d just informed me that we’d been infiltrated pretty damn well from the start. Snookered. Oh my god Charlene Dupree was going to get it now.
He seized me by the lapels of my jacket, and spoke in lucid, albeit infuriated, tones. ‘The Big Score.’ His lips thinned. ‘Where is it?’
‘I have no idea.’ I said, ‘I guess you’re gonna have to shoot me.’ The young man chuckled, shook his head; ‘Oh no, Mr. Sullivan, we’d much, much prefer a more creative punishment for such an articulated individual such as yourself. Come with us.’ He turned and strode away towards an open door, and I felt the guards behind me nudge me forwards with their rifles. I followed, helpless, surrounded by the escort of guards a little behind their leader. I watched their faces and movements intently for any break in concentration, through which I might escape, but they were perfect; they manoeuvred down the hallway (with me in their midst) in cold, well-drilled unison.
As we came to a stop, I sensed a stark chill in the hall, though fear held me in its warm, sweaty grip, my heart beating staccato triplets endlessly.
Another door opened ahead, and I realised where they were taking me: the storage facility that was filled with surplus equipment. Sure enough, I was then jostled past the employee toilets and further down the hallway to the storage room itself. The guards and I drew ahead of the young captain as he hung back and closed the door behind him.
My guards marched me over to the opposite side of the room and turned me around, pushing me into a seated position on an upturned barrel. I looked up at the captain as he retrieved a small box from a shelf, held it behind his back and walked over to me, a wide smile on his face. My guards held me tighter, and my heartbeat quickened again as he spoke; ‘I have decided upon a more decadent activity for you this evening, Mr. Sullivan.’ He brought out the box of nails from behind his back.
I felt a sweaty film on my forehead.
‘Are you familiar with Russki Barrel Torture, Mr. Sullivan?’ My eyes widened as I shook my head.
I suddenly perceived how grey the world was; The walls were grey, the uniform of my enemy was grey, and the nails he shook from the box onto a nearby table were dull, deadly grey.
As the guards roughly pulled me up and opened the barrel on which I had been sitting, forced me bit by bit into it, and sealed the lid again, I realised I did know of Barrel Torture. I recalled an essay a close friend of mine had written while at university: the subject was Stalinist Russia and it examined, albeit briefly, the methods of torture used upon prisoners of the State. Barrel Torture was a popular one, preferred even to The Hot Seat for extraction of information.
I heard the boy speak from outside the barrel: ‘I am going to ask you again, Mr. Sullivan, of where the Big Score is being hidden. We are alone in this complex, and I of all people know just where to stick these eight inch nails.’ A few of the guards started to snigger, but they were cut off; ‘Enough…so…’
The captain raised his voice: ‘Where is the Big Score being kept?’
I gritted my teeth. I wasn’t about to tell him. Not now.
Not ever.
A minute of silence passed, and my feeling of foreboding grew steadily until the first nail was hammered in, directly into the stringy muscles of my left shoulder.
I screamed, whinily through gritted teeth, a fresh plate of sweat making its presence known on my brow. After the initial stroke the nail was tapped further in, thence the tip of it touched bone and I pulled away sharply, though I could barely move.
The pain ebbed slightly as the captain asked a second time: ‘Where is IT!?’
A pause. ‘We are going to drive a nail into your left eye this time, Mr. Sullivan.’
I wheezed a little.
‘Where is it?’
Oh God. I struggled to raise a hand to my eye, feeling the soft bulge. If I-
‘AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!’ I screamed, ‘IN THE NAME OF GOD!!!’
I howled again, inside my wooden chamber.
I could feel the puncture near the untouched front of my brain. A sudden lurch overcame me, and I vomited heavily, uncontrollably, inside the barrel, onto my knees and dirty hands. I started to shiver, and my wounds scraped against the nails in a jagged rhythm, drawing blood from deep within me. Each time the one in my shoulder hit the bone I screamed hoarsely.
Outside the barrel, my youthful tormentor spoke again: ‘This will be the last time, Mr. Sullivan. The third of these nails will be hammered into your jugular, shortly after which you will bleed to death, should you not co-operate with us. We strongly advise that you do.
I blinked, considered his words. I was going to have to tell them. The score of funds amassed in the course of the Company’s life was not worth mine. I was going to tell-
Into my neck. Blood then flowed around the nail protruding from my neck, and seeped down, cutting jagged courses down my chest and mixing with the sick in my lap. I fainted.
**NEW MESSAGE**
Dear Chairman,
After searching all related areas of the factory we have found neither Gary Sullivan himself, nor any evidence possibly pertaining to his sudden disappearance.
All doors and security checkpoints were just as we had left them on our last routine inspection, though all hallway camera footage from the 20th of June was found to be missing. We suggest further investigation be taken into this matter.
Our unit, once satisfied with the above, took a light lunch in the main storage facility, where we found an unused wine barrel. We tapped it.
Just between you and I, it was wine of a very strange flavour. I must find out where I can obtain more of the same.
Sincere Regards,
Colonel F. geiza
...
Unfound Treasure
I can beat them. I’ve been crawling around in a dirty vent for around an hour now. No…dirty isn’t the right word. Repulsive. Yes. The dust, clotting in the corners where the edges of the vents meet, makes it dirty in my book. The green slime dripping down from the ceiling of it makes it repulsive. All my life, I’ve been able to deal with anything, to handle any disgusting matter, as long as it wasn’t liquid. My childhood fear was to ever have to clean up garbage after a rain. Part of the repulsion was in knowing that the stuff could get inside you if it could flow.
I clenched my mouth shut and kept on crawling, wrenching myself forward with my head on the vent-floor from tiredness. I’m light, sixty kilograms at five feet nothing, always got the occasional “You should be a jockey, son” comments. I’m light, but tired, and the creaking of the vent as I slide along is only really audible if you were looking for someone really desperately. Like they’re looking for me. But I go on, trying to remember the layout of the place. Goddamn it, I should know. I designed the factory.
I designed the factory, the basement, sub-basement, and the secret chamber further below, down a secret stairway. They are hunting me, the architect, because I’m their only chance.
I sent a fax to the Pentagon, alerting them of what is happening. The men that seek me had to come without excavation equipment, and U.S. forces are gonna fry their asses if the rebels don’t find me first.
That’s if the reinforcements are coming. If.
I see an opening ahead. Yes.
Then
A human body blocks out the light at the end of the vent. A man has been ordered to search the vents for me. I slither back around the corner from whence I came, backing out of the man’s sight. He’s moving faster, now, though. I can hear his knees thudding on the steel as he efficiently commando-crawls the space between the opening and the corner, around which I have stopped to catch my breath. I have no weapons. Nothing.
I wrench myself smoothly around the corner, feet first. He’s right there, and is startled when my boots hit him sharply in the throat, but not for long. He yells out to the men at the other end: ‘He’s here! I’ve found him! He’s h-’ I put out his left eye with a thumb, driving it up into his central lobe. Why do people always assume architects are queers who can’t defend themselves?
They guy was dead, but for all I knew there could be a whole platoon outside that now knew where I was. Damn. I had to move.
The pressure was on now, and the adrenaline hit my head jut as my nervous stomach ache came on again. I was moving much faster, shuffling down the shaft, knowing that they had maps of the ventilation system. I was as good as a rat in a maze now. I had a chance, though, if I could get to the employee quarters before they did. The entrance to the secret staircase was located in the last place they’d look: behind a door marked EMERGENCY FIRE ESCAPE. I was reaching the opening to the crew quarters now, and I popped open the hatch on its swivelly hinge. Forgetting my fatigue, I collapsed rather than jumped out of the vent and some guards must have heard me, because I then detected footprints making their way to my position. I took a moment to survey the room, and remembered where my long-ago-planned place to hide was. Hidey-hole. Under the third bed on the left.
I ran, dived and slid under the bed and crawled into the recess behind the head of the bed. I think it was where Charlene Dupree slept. The cute little redhead who’d sold us out to the National Instigation Faction. Deliberately bland name. She hadn’t known as much as I had, hadn’t slept with me long enough to find out where the staircase was. But she’d known enough, oh, yes, to set them on my ass. I’d have to hang, draw and quarter that bitch. If I ever got out of here.
So I was snuggled in the recess, and I could see their leather boots race around the room in circles, looking everywhere but nowhere really. The grunts had more interest in looking busy and getting paid than actually finding me. And they were soldiers, a paranoid, second-guessing breed, so there was a high chance they’d think they imagined the noise I made when I fell into the room. They left after a spell, and I kept a silent vigil in the recess until the room was completely silent.
I crawled out, and there they were, their eyes extending into rifles looking down at the fool who thought he’d won. I was reminded of the way pheasants are shot and killed just when they think they are safe, on the wing home. I had to give credit to the cunning and intelligence of my foes. They’d certainly snookered me good and proper. Splendid uniforms, too. The Gestapo had nothing on these guys.
These thoughts made it to the stage of meek laughter just before they dragged me off the floor with the barrel of a gun at my head. A tall, blonde kid with greased hair took charge and sat me on the bed, predictably asking me just where the staircase was, or would I like to spit blood? It wasn’t Josh Krantz, though, and that alone was a great relief. Krantz was the head of the NIF, had been since before I was born. The NIF had a very secure way of compartmentalising information, and it’s possible that Krantz alone knew that I knew what I did. So I had a chance of bluffing this kid.
He looked to be about nineteen or so, and I guess he came to lead the thirty-year-olds in the NIF team through money and talent. It had to be both. Something in his eyes told me he was green deep down, though, and that I was sharper than he was. I’m sharper than nearly anyone, though. Not in a crawl-in-vent-and-be-captured way, though. More in a crooked, snaky politician’s way. You’ll see what I mean.
I grinned the sun at him ‘Okay, you got me. My turn to play the good guy?’ Stony, silent faces stared at me, not getting or not appreciating the joke. Man, these guys could use getting laid sometime.
‘This is not a joking matter, Mr. Sullivan. We need to know where the Big Score is kept, and you need to somehow get out of here without your eyes blinded and eardrums punctured. This can be arranged, but you will need to deliver first.’ Oh. My. God. The young man grinning slyly at me now had just referred to the money as The Big Score. Pretty close to what we’d called it when we’d started construction on the factory. Only we’d referred the twenty-million dollar slush fund in the deepest cellar as The Big Gambit.
Americanisms aside, he’d just informed me that we’d been infiltrated pretty damn well from the start. Snookered. Oh my god Charlene Dupree was going to get it now.
He seized me by the lapels of my jacket, and spoke in lucid, albeit infuriated, tones. ‘The Big Score.’ His lips thinned. ‘Where is it?’
‘I have no idea.’ I said, ‘I guess you’re gonna have to shoot me.’ The young man chuckled, shook his head; ‘Oh no, Mr. Sullivan, we’d much, much prefer a more creative punishment for such an articulated individual such as yourself. Come with us.’ He turned and strode away towards an open door, and I felt the guards behind me nudge me forwards with their rifles. I followed, helpless, surrounded by the escort of guards a little behind their leader. I watched their faces and movements intently for any break in concentration, through which I might escape, but they were perfect; they manoeuvred down the hallway (with me in their midst) in cold, well-drilled unison.
As we came to a stop, I sensed a stark chill in the hall, though fear held me in its warm, sweaty grip, my heart beating staccato triplets endlessly.
Another door opened ahead, and I realised where they were taking me: the storage facility that was filled with surplus equipment. Sure enough, I was then jostled past the employee toilets and further down the hallway to the storage room itself. The guards and I drew ahead of the young captain as he hung back and closed the door behind him.
My guards marched me over to the opposite side of the room and turned me around, pushing me into a seated position on an upturned barrel. I looked up at the captain as he retrieved a small box from a shelf, held it behind his back and walked over to me, a wide smile on his face. My guards held me tighter, and my heartbeat quickened again as he spoke; ‘I have decided upon a more decadent activity for you this evening, Mr. Sullivan.’ He brought out the box of nails from behind his back.
I felt a sweaty film on my forehead.
‘Are you familiar with Russki Barrel Torture, Mr. Sullivan?’ My eyes widened as I shook my head.
I suddenly perceived how grey the world was; The walls were grey, the uniform of my enemy was grey, and the nails he shook from the box onto a nearby table were dull, deadly grey.
As the guards roughly pulled me up and opened the barrel on which I had been sitting, forced me bit by bit into it, and sealed the lid again, I realised I did know of Barrel Torture. I recalled an essay a close friend of mine had written while at university: the subject was Stalinist Russia and it examined, albeit briefly, the methods of torture used upon prisoners of the State. Barrel Torture was a popular one, preferred even to The Hot Seat for extraction of information.
I heard the boy speak from outside the barrel: ‘I am going to ask you again, Mr. Sullivan, of where the Big Score is being hidden. We are alone in this complex, and I of all people know just where to stick these eight inch nails.’ A few of the guards started to snigger, but they were cut off; ‘Enough…so…’
The captain raised his voice: ‘Where is the Big Score being kept?’
I gritted my teeth. I wasn’t about to tell him. Not now.
Not ever.
A minute of silence passed, and my feeling of foreboding grew steadily until the first nail was hammered in, directly into the stringy muscles of my left shoulder.
I screamed, whinily through gritted teeth, a fresh plate of sweat making its presence known on my brow. After the initial stroke the nail was tapped further in, thence the tip of it touched bone and I pulled away sharply, though I could barely move.
The pain ebbed slightly as the captain asked a second time: ‘Where is IT!?’
A pause. ‘We are going to drive a nail into your left eye this time, Mr. Sullivan.’
I wheezed a little.
‘Where is it?’
Oh God. I struggled to raise a hand to my eye, feeling the soft bulge. If I-
‘AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!’ I screamed, ‘IN THE NAME OF GOD!!!’
I howled again, inside my wooden chamber.
I could feel the puncture near the untouched front of my brain. A sudden lurch overcame me, and I vomited heavily, uncontrollably, inside the barrel, onto my knees and dirty hands. I started to shiver, and my wounds scraped against the nails in a jagged rhythm, drawing blood from deep within me. Each time the one in my shoulder hit the bone I screamed hoarsely.
Outside the barrel, my youthful tormentor spoke again: ‘This will be the last time, Mr. Sullivan. The third of these nails will be hammered into your jugular, shortly after which you will bleed to death, should you not co-operate with us. We strongly advise that you do.
I blinked, considered his words. I was going to have to tell them. The score of funds amassed in the course of the Company’s life was not worth mine. I was going to tell-
Into my neck. Blood then flowed around the nail protruding from my neck, and seeped down, cutting jagged courses down my chest and mixing with the sick in my lap. I fainted.
**NEW MESSAGE**
Dear Chairman,
After searching all related areas of the factory we have found neither Gary Sullivan himself, nor any evidence possibly pertaining to his sudden disappearance.
All doors and security checkpoints were just as we had left them on our last routine inspection, though all hallway camera footage from the 20th of June was found to be missing. We suggest further investigation be taken into this matter.
Our unit, once satisfied with the above, took a light lunch in the main storage facility, where we found an unused wine barrel. We tapped it.
Just between you and I, it was wine of a very strange flavour. I must find out where I can obtain more of the same.
Sincere Regards,
Colonel F. geiza
