The Sensory Thief Part 6

Part 6

“Now, where were we?” The Thief growled at his victim under a smile.

With fire in his eyes, the Thief's victim swung his broken arm like a medieval mace toward the Thief’s face. He laughed at the useless weapon that almost made contact with him. He never flinched, even when his eyebrows swayed from the built-up breeze from the swing of the human mace. His narrow eyes contradicted his laugh as the desperate flaying from the victim began to die down. His exhaustion was evident from his wheezing breath, and he soon collapsed in the chair, crying at his failure.

The Thief wrapped his gloved fingers around the protruding slick bone of the victim’s broken arm. He groaned with delight as he used it like a lever to pin the thrashing man to the chair. The blood spray pulsed in time with the victim’s frantic heartbeat and painted the Thief’s calm face in a warm, copper mist. He was still and awaited the savory vibration of the victim’s shriek to travel up his arm before he cinched the leather straps over the compound fracture. The buckles bit into the raw, exposed nerves with a sickening crunch.

As he forced the flailing arm down to the chair, the Thief’s apron, a monochromatic painting of warm pulsating crimson, smelled of copper and panic. The way the victim’s body arched off the back of the chair, in a bridge of agony, only heightened the Thief’s iron grip on the protruding bones. Another grin larger than all previous ones scared the victim as hot droplets of his own blood hit his cheek. The Thief tightened the buckles until the victim’s screams were the only thing moving in the room.

He tightened the leather strap and savored the sound of raw muscles being crushed beneath the hide. He leaned down, his breath warm against the victim’s frantic, dilated pupil, and whispered a promise of silence to come.

As he put his full weight into the last notch, the victim’s arm was finally anchored to the chair, and the fight disappeared from the victim. He had come to terms with that the end, that was near.

“Don’t move,” the Thief’s cold voice cutting through the smell of copper and salt, “I need you to see the exact moment the light leaves you.”

Within minutes, the Thief slid a serrated metal tool beneath the sensitive flesh of his victim’s left eye. He ratcheted the gears until the skin of the orbital stretched so tight it began to weep a clear serum. The victim’s remaining consciousness flickered as the Thief took a fine, curved scalpel and began to trace around his eyeball. The blade made a horrid ‘scritch-scritch-scritch’ sound against the tough white sclera. The Thief didn’t cut deep yet; he just peeled back the connective tissues to expose the pulsing; red network of vessels that feed the sight he was about to steal. A hot tear of blood escaped the corner of the eye. It traced a copper path down the victim’s cheek and dripped onto the Thief’s bloody white glove. He leaned in so close his own breath fogged the wet surface of the cornea, “Keep looking at me...” demanded the Thief, “I want to be the last thing your brain ever sees.”

He hooked the optic nerve and began to slowly agonizingly wind it around the silver tool. The tension made the victim’s entire skull vibrate with pure, unadulterated trauma. The sound was a sickening, wet ‘schlick-pop’ as the internal pressure of the eye began to fail. The clear eye jelly leaked out in one continuous thick clump that mixed with the hot blood spray that painted the Thief’s knuckles. He leaned in his own breath rippled the surface of the exposed, raw muscles, and savored the way the victim’s eye darted in a frantic panic, as he reeled it out of its socket like a dying fish.

“Do you feel that?’ The Thief whispered, ‘That’s the exact moment your brain forgets what the color blue looks like.’

He went back to work and used the serrated edge of the blade to saw through the thick, white cable. With every agonizing millimeter the Thief cut, the victim’s eye rolled in panic, trying to fight against the inevitable. Then, with one last micro cut, the eye was freed from the socket. The Thief carried the eye trailing a jagged, red-slicked tail of shredded muscle and golden-yellow fat to its new home.

The eye was dropped into the glass jar without a care. The splash of the globe that hit the blue liquid made the victim’s own pulse scream. With a dead language, the Thief chanted a guttural tone that gargled in his throat like acidic vomit, unwilling to pass through his esophagus. He dropped a long sticky string of saliva that broke as soon as it hit the blue liquid. The eye came to life and began to swim within the jar like a eel. The Thief secured a lid and placed the jar on the shelf and then put all his focus back on his victim. He traced the empty, red raw hole where the light used to be with his finger. It slid over the exposed nerves that were still trying to translate the dark into an image.

“One down,” the Thief whispered, his voice a jagged vibration against the smell of blood and tears, “but you still have so much more to show me before the night is over.’

The next tool he used was a small silver spoon that looked harmless, but its looks were deceiving. He meticulously packed the caustic granules of lye directly onto the exposed, twitching optic nerve stump. The dry chemical instantly reacted. The sound was a low hiss, the ‘sizzle-pop’ of living tissue being chemically liquefied and charred from the inside out. As the granules began to eat through the delicate orbital floor, a gray, white vapor of liquified proteins smoked out of the cavity and stung the Thief’s eyes as he leaned in to savor the smell of alkaline rot and scorched iron. The victim’s remaining eye watched in terror as the smoke curled out of the empty, bubbling hole where his sight once lived. The pain was so blind and absolute that his vocal cords snap in a silent, airless scream.

“Do you smell that?” the Thief whispers, his voice excited and childlike as he watched the chemical mist, “Oh, of course not. Well, that’s the scent of your own memories being bleached into nothingness.”

The victims’ back snapped off the seat, and the leather straps over his shattered arm groaned as he tried to scream for mercy that he could no longer voice. The caustic soda forest fire inside his skull, liquefying the orbital fat and charring the delicate bone of the socket into a bubbling slurry of alkaline rot. He tried to form the word ‘please,’ but his mouth is just too raw, his throat a red cavern of wet, truncated muscle made a sickened gurgle hiss as the chemical smoke stings his remaining eye. The pain began to shatter his brain with a slow throb that robbed his mind of reality. His nerves bleached into nothingness as he teetered on the edge of unconsciousness.

“There’s no mercy in the silence,” the Sensory Thief said through the smell of scorched iron and lye, “only the perfect, clinical weight of the void I’m carving into you.”

He pressed the tip of a thin glass rod into the bubbling, caustic slurry of the eye-socket, and in a slow scraping motion, he stirred the mess like a miniature cauldron. With every pass, he peeled away another layer of the blackened, liquefied periosteum, exposed the raw, ivory nerves underneath just so the soda can bite into them with a fresh unbearable fury.

The victim’s body was a bridge of pure, unadulterated agony. His tongueless mouth opened in a silent scream that tasted of his own vaporized proteins and copper scented blood. The smell of alkaline rot was so thick it stung the Thief’s eyes, but he didn’t blink. His knuckles turned white as he dug the rod deeper into the smoking socket. The victim’s screams translated into clear vomit that exploded out of his gaped mouth. The Thief savored every second of the victim’s mind being torn apart.

“Do you feel the light being scraped away?” The Thief mocked his prey, “Now it’s time to release your second eye from that pesky socket.”

He didn’t reach for the scalpel this time; instead, he produced a slender, specialized silver vacuum needle of his own design.

“This one’s not for you,” the Thief said in a cold tone, “I need it for my son, so I’m going to drain it to collapse the socket around the eye while it’s still tethered to your brain. Ready or not.”

He slid the needle into the inner corner of the eye as it bypasses the bone to reach the deep nerves of the optic apex. The victim, helpless to do anything but watch with his one remaining field of vision, tried to keep from passing out as he felt suction of his orbital fluids drain.

The sound a haunting ‘slurp-crunch’ sound made the victim retch as the needle bypasses the bone and begins to suck the very fat and fluid out from behind his eye. The vacuum pressure made his eyeball bulge out of the socket until the white sclera began to spit up the clear jelly. The victim’s throat gurgled and hissed as the internal pressure of his skull shifted. The bone of the orbital floor cracked and folded inward like dry parchment under the force. The Thief reached into the widened gap with a pair of thin silver pliers and griped the optic nerve. The victim’s body jerked and spasmed as the Thief began to pull the brainstem forward inch by agonizing inch.

“Watch me,” the Thief commanded, “I’m reaching into the very core of your memories to pluck the light from its root.”

He used the pliers to slowly crush the optic nerve that sent a final bolt of white-hot trauma through the victim’s brain. With a sudden pop, the second globe was torn from the collapsing socket. A slicked tail of shredded muscle and golden fat steamed in the cold cellar air once it was free.

The Thief didn’t touch the heavy orb with his exposed hands. Instead, he nestled it into a small chest filled with crushed ice.

“This one stays fresh,” the Thief said. As the victim’s body slumped into a silent unconsciousness, the two empty holes in his skull were the only witnesses to the Thief’s surgical perfection.

“We can’t let you see with this eye anymore, can’t we. It doesn’t belong to you!” The Thief snapped, knowing his victim wouldn’t understand or hear his words. “Let’s sever the connection, shall we.”

The victim’s eye that swam in a nearby jar saw the Thief produce a small vial. It watched as he poured the clear, oily liquid from the vial into the raw, vacant hole of the second socket. The fluid gurgled as it filled the orbital cavity and seeped into the victim’s shattered sinuses.

With a flick of a lighter, he touched the flame to the victim’s face, and the socket instantly erupted into a pillar of blue fire. The victim’s body bucked in unimaginable agony that made the straps over his shattered arm scream under the tension. The Thief stood perfectly still as the flickering light of the burning eye socket danced and shot out like dragons’ breath toward the ceiling. The victim’s silent screams were felt through the air as the jars that held his body parts shook.

“Do you feel the warmth of my gaze? Said the Thief through his excitement. “This is the only light you’ll ever know again.”

The victim’s screams sounded like a tortured animal that tore through his throat like a wet, guttural roar. He vomited copper scented blood into the flickering blue flames that only seemed to intensify their heat. His whole body thrashed from pure, unadulterated agony, and he bucked so hard against the straps that the wood of the chair began to splinter under the weight of his trauma. Each time he heaved, a fresh geyser of liquefied fat spattered out of his eye socket and hissed as it hit the floor like molten lava. The Thief leaned into the heat, the blue flames danced across the reflection in his eyes as he let out a soft chuckle of pure delight, his knuckles white as he gripped the edge of the table to feel the vibration of the victim’s shattering mind.

“Look at the light you’re making,” he whispered, his voice cold as the roar of the burning marrow and the smell of vaporized proteins blazed on. “It’s the most beautiful thing you’ll ever produce.” His chuckles slowly turned into maniacal howls of laughter as he carried the ice chest up the stairs. The victim felt the flame in his hollow eye socket die and also, he wished for death, but it never came. Instead, he knew more pain would come before death’s mercy would find him, and that’s what scared him.

To be continued….

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