“La Guillotine Will Claim Her Bloody Prize….” – By Jason Zachary Pott
III.
He awakens to dim lighting and his surroundings are a blur within his sight. His head hurts, starting at the back and burrowing its way to his frontal lobes—lancing straight through to his forehead. He searches his pockets for his bindle of blow, finding it soaked with urine from pissing his pants. Squeezing his eyes shut, he flexes them open, attempting to clear the cobwebs. Without his vision, he has no idea where he is. He can only smell it—musty, dank. It is cold—damp—with the trickling sound of water nearby. He can feel the dampness has soaked through his clothes. He smells piss. His. That’s right, he remembers now—
Fear grips him tighter this time—to the bone. Panic begins to set in once more.
Scrambling to get to his feet, the President cracks his head on something densely solid. He staggers backwards—arms pin-wheeling—as pain screams through his skull again. His blurry sight is replaced by a blanket of stars as he falls backward onto a floor that feels like wet polished stone. More stars as more pain racks his back.
He rolls back and forth, wallowing in the agony. Claw-like hands rake his body and he hears the tearing of fabric. They grip and throw, slamming him against the object he had struck his head on. He stumbles on three tiers of steps leading up to it and through his confusion he realizes it’s where he had fallen from.
“I know you want your freedom but there’s nothing out there for you any longer!”
That voice. It is the same one that had spoken to him in the limo—the driver!
A flabby, wet gelatinous hand with lots of strength behind it, smacks the President across his left jowl. After whiplashing his head to the right, the same hand becomes a fist, smashing his nose. It is crushed between his cheeks and the crunching bones reverberate within his ears, spurting blood as the cartilage collapses, shattered into splinters. Even more stars on black velvet appear before his eyes, instantly pouring tears from them as a new experience in pain greets him with the kiss of a runaway freight train. The putrid fist leaves a residue of fluid that smells worse than a combination of excrement and decaying flesh. The President begins to retch—his mouth opening in response to heaving stomach muscles—but gags on the flow of blood from his broken nose. Blood mixes with vomit as it smacks on the polished slimy floor.
He hears laughter—gurgling with a liquid cadence—and he turns in its direction. With his vision growing steady despite the constant violence disrupting it, the President can make out the lump of a figure standing before him. He points a bloody, trembling tiny finger of accusation at his attacker, sputtering blood. The figure reaches out with a grip of wet, rotting skin, tearing the President’s fleshy digit from his hand.
He shrieks.
“Please,” soothes the moist, raspy voice. “Please do not… panic. Here… lie down. Please… I insist….”
Two hands pick up the President’s unhealthy bulk and slam him down on a hard surface.
“Do you know the meaning of Bastille Day?”
The President sputters in confusion and pain. He then feels his hand being separated from his wrist. It takes four chops of the dull, rusty cleaver held in the figures rotting fist—the same fist that broke the President’s nose. As it detaches, fresh warmth flows and the screaming begins anew as he watches in horror as his small hand falls away.
“Do you know the meaning of Bastille Day?”
The oxidized cleaver bites into his forearm with its blunt edge—more blood spurts from the flesh puckering around the scarred, heavy blade as it sinks in deep, dividing a third of the President’s quivering arm. He screams and it pierces the dimly lit room—echoing—revealing it to be spacious—a cavern.
“No… you wouldn’t…. Not a man of your… social… class.”
Another wet chop sounds. Another child-like shriek follows.
The bubbling, grating words fade with a hiss of pleasure—satisfaction. His vivisectionist is enjoying their work.
“The storming of the Bastille was… the prelude to… the Revolution… when the lower… class…peasants!—stormed the gates of the… prison… freeing the oppressed!”
Holding up a torch, its flames wash the figure’s face with flickering, yellow light. The President’s eyes fill with terror—growing wide—as he gazes upon—
That face!
It grins at him with a sloppy, offset mouth with split skin crying trails of fluids only the dead could produce. Its eyes—puffy, shriveled—with the texture of prunes, stare at the amputated President with a somber appraisal.
And then the cleaver bites even deeper—his shoulder. This portion of his body takes six whacks to remove what’s left of the appendage he has for an arm.
“The poor turned on their masters… the aristocrats… the wealthy…. Peasants were no longer… afraid!”
Another chop—this time it’s his foot. It takes five strokes of the dull, heavy wedge for a blade.
“But you wouldn’t… understand… what this… means…. You wouldn’t even… try….”
The President begins to sob. Despite what he told his voters, he is a coward. In the face of impending death, he cowers in abject terror. He blubbers. He begs. He grovels. He strains out the words: “Please don’t kill me!”
He makes a hiccupping sound as he yelps this out and he tries to move his arms. They are not there. He then realizes something else:
“Where are my legs?”
There are cruel, wet chuckles as the bloated figure of boil covered rotting flesh looks down on its work writhing before it on the wooden, butcher block-like slab. He holds up pieces of the President’s severed legs. “Looking for… these?” it taunts.
Consumed in shock as he realizes he is showing parts of his lower appendages, the President blubbers: “I don’t un-understand… why?”
He feels himself being slid forward—head-first—by the necrotic, ghoulish figure.
“You asked… who… I am,” the thing struggles out of its withered vocal cords. “I am made up of those… who were victims… of that time… tortured and murdered by the wealthy… creatures like… you…. I was… chosen… to be their…. Avenger…. Their… voices…. Such… an honor….”
The President is on his back, looking up into darkness. If there is a ceiling, he can’t see it but he sees something—something made of wood. Black, thick wood fixed into a heavy frame. Two thick, erect squared beams—side-by-side—loom skyward with something filling the gap between them—something familiar. It gleams. Even in this faint illumination, as weak as it is, it gleams.
Two hands are pulling his shoulders, inserting his head between the two beams with the gleaming object directly overhead. His neck rests in a half-moon cut-out made in a slat of thick lumber, with its twin hovering above. As he looks at it, it is being slotted down the two beams making up the heavy frame to secure his neck, rendering it immobile. There is a slight clack as the edges of the two half-moon slats lock together.
“W-what are you d0-doing? W-what is th-this?” stammers the President from between the stocks holding him in their secure embrace.
The liquid-popping, raspy voice is at his left ear now—extremely close—and fetid excrement laced breath fills his broken nostrils as it speaks:
“The Revolution came… the poor took… took to whatever arms… they could muster against the… the aristocracy…. It was… glorious!”
The President is drowning in shock, having been vivisected. Incredibly, a new agony reaches the pain center of his nervous system which is accompanied by the exquisite sensation, as well as pungent odor, of burning flesh. He can’t see it with his head secured in the stocks but there is no doubt he is feeling it and he shits himself as he unleashes an unholy shriek. Not wanting him to bleed out, his tormentor is applying its torch to the fatal wounds, sealing them shut, providing the vengeful ghoul much pleasure. He is composing an aria with the President’s wails of agony. The foul figure’s face splits with a macabre grin, salivating at the acts of violence, watching the flesh sizzle, the blood popping, in the flames.
“Something… good… came out of… the Revolution,” the dark voice continues its visceral dissertation to the confused man-child secured to the butcher-block slab before it, hesitating in its foul-smelling utterances. “Something perfect… a remedy for… the wealthy…the politicians… the monarchy… a cure, if you will….”
The figure glistening with puss and other putrid fluids reappears at the President’s ear. It gazes at its work on the President’s nose—crushed, pulverized into an unrecognizable shape. Wet blood is still flowing while old blood dries in heavy splotches on the man’s face. The figure punches the President’s face a second time.
“What was it… you ask…? the remedy…? Don’t you know… our history…? Don’t you recognize… what it… is… I put… your head… into…? It was used… to punish… and entertain! The poor would gather… the rich… aristocracy… politicians… one by… one…. Necks in holes! Heads in baskets!”
As the gleaming object falls, in that spark of a second, the President’s mind gains clarity. He recognizes the shiny, falling, heavy device. In that brief soul severing moment, he remembers what little history he bothered to retain and the word Guillotine becomes his last thought as his head is removed from his neck.
Below, a basket waits.
“Bloodstained velvet, dirty lace
Naked fear on every face
See them bow their heads to die
As we would bow as they rode by
And we’re marching to Bastille Day
La Guillotine will claim her bloody prize”
–“Bastille Day”, Rush—Caress Of Steel.
End.
Read more from SFM Storytime Season One – A Little Death for the Holiday.
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