The Sensory Thief Part 2
Part 2
He grabbed a tool that looked like something from a nightmare and held it up to the light to inspect it. “Do you know what you should be afraid of? Huh?” He waited for an answer and when he received none he continued. “No, well I’ll be more than happy to explain. Breath my friend. You should be afraid of your next breath.” He put the tool down and placed his head so close to his shivering victim that their lips almost touched. Then he whispered with a breathy sound, “People have told me my breath is like death, would you agree?” The man coughed and gagged. “Oh, yes I think you do. Well, here smell this.” He held an open jar of ammonia up to the man’s nose and watched his discomfort.
The man’s eyes rolled back, white and frantic, as the ammonia scorched his nasal passages, the chemical fire drawing a muffled, high-pitched whine from his ruined throat. The Thief didn’t pull away; he watched the mucus trail down the man’s upper lip, a glistening testament to the irritation. “Too sharp?” he mused, his voice a soft caress against the man’s ear. “Let’s find something more... organic.”
He reached into the damp shadows and pulled forth a sack that pulsed with a life of its own. When he opened it, the thick, cloying stench of bloated, sun-ripened roadkill flooded the small space. The victim’s chest heaved in violent, involuntary jerks, his body trying to reject the air itself. “The scent of finality,” the Thief whispered, beginning a low, rhythmic chant in a language that sounded like dry leaves skittering over bone.
He picked up a thin, silver wire—a jeweler’s saw—and looped it over the bridge of the man’s nose. “I am the mercy you didn’t know you prayed for,” he murmured, his rhythm never faltering. As he began to pull the wire back and forth, the sound was a wet, rhythmic rasping. Blood didn’t spray; it seeped, thick and dark like ‘bloody gold,’ pooling in the divot of the man’s philtrum.
The Thief’s chant grew louder, a humming vibration that seemed to keep the severed nerves twitching with a ghostly life. With one final, decisive tug, the cartilage parted. He caught the wet, warm lump of flesh in a jar of amber liquid before it could even hit the floor. “There,” he breathed, watching the man gasp into the red cavern where his face used to be. “No more rot. Only silence.”
To be continued....
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