No Pain, No Reign

“I’ve procrastinated for so long. I’ve wrestled with my conscience. Should I do this tonight? Should I bring this lazy bastard into my home? Should I make him feel my pain? The answer was not just a resounding yes, but a hell fucking yeah!” The grating, raspy voice of the purple-skinned witch Dollhouse awakened Ivan Keith from the shadows of sleep. His head throbbed and pounded like rapid fire boxing blows. The water in his stinging eyes ebbed and flowed. His body weighed down on him like an elephant sitting on his slowly rising chest.

When the Sheriff of Savage Duck County tried to move, the steel bindings in his ankles and wrists cut into him like an executioner’s axe. He laid on an uncomfortable metal table in a T position and struggled some more, but to no avail and only more pain. “Don’t fight it,” warned Dollhouse as she scratched her long, wart-infested nose. The wrinkles in her visage coupled with the shadows brought on by her pointed hat gave her a constant resting bitch face, which only made Ivan’s heart race even further.

“You can’t keep me here forever, old lady,” said Ivan in his southern drawl. “I’m taking you into custody once I get off this here contraption.”

Dollhouse cackled and coughed while slapping her bony knees for extra effect. Quickly reverting back to her resting bitch face, she pointed her elongated finger and sneered, “Nobody’s looking for you, Sheriff Keith. You’ve fucked over so many people that they don’t give two shits if you live or die by my hands. Always drowning your sorrows in beer rather than facing the harsh realities of your line of work. I could have used a savior when my daughter was taken from this world. You did nothing about it but drink…and drink…and drink…and drink!”

The last of Ivan’s stinging tears rolled down his face and his vision became clear enough to see that he was in a laboratory of some kind. Tables full of bubbling potions, tools and devices covered in blood lying about, shackles holding rotted black skeletons, and even a randomly loose eyeball turned this seemingly ordinary hideout into Ivan’s personal hell. He wanted to scream, but his throat felt as though he swallowed a bone saw, so why bother with even more pain?

“Listen, lady…I don’t know who your daughter is…I get lots of cases…I’m overworked…maybe if you jogged my memory…”

Dollhouse flipped an oversized witch on the rocky wall and sent a lightning storm of pain throughout Ivan’s body. His nerves lit up like nuclear heat. Schizophrenic laughter rang throughout his head. Visions of blood-soaked monsters stained his eyes. Ivan finally did scream out and his sore throat felt as though he was being decapitated with a hot blade. Every part of his body, physical and psychological, was corrosively melting before his very eyes. And then Dollhouse pulled the switch back to its original position.

Ivan took a few heavy breaths as sweat trickled down his skin like a heavy rainstorm. “What…the hell…was that?!”

“I’ve been working on this device for years. The worst kind of pain imaginable and I brought it to life. Water-boarding? Boring! Musical torture? Better, but still boring! Iron maidens? Brutal as hell, but boring as shit! If I’m going to get some answers from a filthy liar like you, I might as well get a little bit of enjoyment out of it. What can I say? I feel like I’m a hundred years old. Got to have some fun while I can!” Dollhouse gave another wheezing cackle, which sent ice cold anxiety through Ivan’s body.

“You’re insane!” cried Sheriff Keith. “You really think this is going to work? I told you, I don’t know a damn thing about your daughter! And even if I did, I wouldn’t think twice about turning her over to CPS if she’s got a sick mother like you!”

With a thumbs down gesture, Dollhouse made a game show buzzer sound and hacked, “Wrong answer, dip shit!” before flipping the switch again. The feeling of bathing in hell’s lava while demons and skeletons laughed at his misery invaded Ivan’s body and mind again. His heart thumped so quickly that he was on the verge of cardiac arrest. His brain felt like it was bleeding badly enough to give him an atom bomb of a stroke. Dollhouse flipped the switch back to normal and Ivan once again breathed heavily enough to give him a Buddha belly. Oceans of sweat did nothing to cool him off.

“You still feel overworked or should I flip the switch again?”

“No! Please don’t!” begged Ivan with cascading eyeballs. “Oh my god…that was just…” His heart refused to slow down and his stomach refused to deflate, making putting together a sentence virtually impossible. “If you…tell me who…your daughter is…I’ll help…you find…justice…”

“No, you won’t. You’re just going to cast her aside like you did everybody else. Being tortured is your only motivator. And I’m sure if I just let you go and do your job, you’ll find Isabel’s husband and string him up for the public to see. I don’t want you to just find her husband. I want you to want to find him!”

Ivan’s breathing lessened somewhat and his sentences became more coherent. “Ma’am…I didn’t get into law enforcement so that I could laze about. Nobody does. But sometimes, cases come pouring in and we’re stretched too thin. If you were to kill me now, that would mean less personnel to help you find your daughter’s murderer. I probably should stop drinking so much, I agree with you on that.”

Dollhouse folded her stick-like arms across her dark-robed chest. “I want to believe you, Mr. Keith. I really do. But the fact is…you’ll stick up for your own kind even when they’re wrong. Law enforcement always does. Your coworkers could commit genocide and you’d still kiss their grimy cowboy boots.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“Isabel’s husband was a cop under your jurisdiction.”

Ivan’s eyes widened at the revelation. “Wait a minute…you mean…one of my own guys killed your daughter? That’s a little slanderous, don’t you think?”

“You see?!” Dollhouse croaked, causing Sheriff Keith to nearly jump out of his skin. “This is exactly what I’m talking about! Paid vacations! Severance packages! House arrest in a lovely seaside hotel! Cops never get the punishment they deserve because shit heads like you keep covering for them!”

“You think it’s as easy as tossing them in a cell?!” shouted Ivan. “There’s a whole power structure at work here, lady! You’re damn right we protect each other! Ratting out one of our own could mean the end of our careers, or even our fucking lives! I’m not taking that risk just because of a conspiracy theory you’re peddling out!”

“So in other words…you won’t help me…because you’re scared? You look so tough in that cowboy hat. You look so cool in that trench coat and those blue jeans. You look like a real cowboy. But in reality…you’re smuggling BB pellets underneath that zipper. Look at it this way, slick: if there really is a power structure at work here, you’re fucked either way. It’s all a matter of which way of dying you’d rather face. You could get shot by your own kind…or you could go through a lifetime of agony on my table!”

Ivan gulped so hard that one would swear he was chugging another bottle.

“Truth is, Sheriff Keith, I could keep that switch flipped until time itself is standing still. Sure, I’ll run up my electricity bill, but when nobody knows where the fuck you are, you don’t pay bills. Like I said before, nobody’s looking for you, Ivan. Nobody’s looking for me either. Even if you did report me to your buddies, they’d never believe that a hundred year old witch tortured you all this time. Come to think of it, they’d die of laughter before you died of ratting out your fellow cops.”

Ivan sighed deeply and tried to relax on the table, but obviously to no avail. He hated to admit it, but everything she said was right. No holes in her logic, but there would be a bigger hole where Ivan’s heart used to be if he endured another round of torture table madness. Then again…

“Let’s say I do help you find your daughter’s killer and bring him to justice. If my fellow cop is a killer…what does that make you, Dollface, or whatever the hell your name is? You built this table because you wanted justice. But in reality, you’re every bit as bad as your daughter’s murderer. Maybe you’re worse. At least when Isabel was shot, it was over with a quickness!”

“Ah-ha! So you admit it! I knew it! I bloody knew it!” boasted Dollhouse as she pumped her arm up and down in victory.

“Okay, fine, so you know who your daughter’s killer is! Why don’t you put HIM on the table instead of me?! Sure, he’s long gone by now, but I’m sure if you spent as much time finding him as you did me, you’d get your justice a hell of a lot faster! I’m just a middleman, for god’s sake! Torturing me isn’t going to do shit!”

Dollhouse sighed and held her face in her hands. “You know what? You’re right. You’ve been right all along. You’re about as useful as an asshole on my elbow. I should have never drugged you and brought you here. Yes, you’re a sheriff, but you probably got that job by putting the right body parts in your mouth. I should just let you go.”

Ivan breathed a sigh of relief, confident his debating skills have saved his life.

“Then again…if you just admitted to being useless…then that makes you an accomplice!” snickered Dollhouse before flipping the switch and making Ivan scream loudly enough to loosen dust from the walls and ceiling. The pain of a thousand gallons of acid and a million knives being poured on his body was back again, but for a much more eternal period of time. His jaw stretched beyond its means as he screamed. His tongue fell out of his head. His heart, brain, and eyeballs were time bombs ready to detonate. His bowels flooded badly enough to sag his jeans around his ankles. His underwear stunk like a junkyard after his bladder exploded.

In the end, Ivan Keith didn’t stand for something, so he laid down for everything.