CW: 18+, nasrdev, drugs, noncon, bondage, gore, snuff
1
Red and orange and yellow. Green and blue. Wide, fuzzy circles of light seemed to sway in his field of vision. Devon watched them dance, fascinated in how they contorted and pulsed, as though respirating at different rates. The fact that they did not keep time with the music playing from the noisy speakers of his laptop made him vaguely queasy, but it didn’t stop Devon staring. He angled to the side, attempting to have them dance in tempo. Perhaps he could undo the churning of his belly.
“. . . Pa rum pum pum pum…”
His voice echoed back at him, hollow and far away. He’d been listening to the same song for what felt like an hour, but every time he went to change it, his laptop seemed to draw further and further away. The cool glare of the screen was a wash of white against the more pleasantly colored lights, and so he turned away from it again. And again.
“. . . Rum pumpum pum…”
His toes slid through something wet as he stepped. Where was it? Where was it? His fingertips scuttled along the mottled wood of the shelf before him. It swayed and undulated in his vision, covered with dancing reflections of dancing lights. He found the orange plastic after a long moment of hunting, his thumb leaving a lurid smear of red across the label of the medicine bottle as he turned it about. The top was off, and the inside proved to be empty even when he dipped two fingers within to be certain.
“Shit,” he spat rudely at the shelf.
Feeling about turned up very little that he wanted. There was a hammer, a piece of wood that might have belonged to a picture frame, a few bent nails. No more pills. He fumbled about, nearly knocking the box of washer detergent from the corner of the shelf, and finally laid claim to the switch blade that he’d laid too far from the bottle. It was cold to the touch, and sticky in his hand. Or maybe his hand was sticky. It was so difficult to keep track.
The music was back. Not that it had gone, but he’d managed to forget about it. It sounded sweet to him, even with the static of a dying speaker. The whining that sought to interrupt it was less pleasant. It came from the dark spot in the center of the room. The void that ate at the dancing of the lights and was now fighting with his music.
“So to honor him, pa rum pum pum pum,” Devon sang loudly toward the blackness, hoping to drown out its spiteful efforts. The whining turned to louder whimpers.
Devon’s shoulders slumped, and he heaved a sigh. Swayed. There was little to do but go again to fight the void. To end its darkness. To let in the light and the sound. He shuffled one step closer. Another. The bottoms of his feet were sticky. Itchy. They tickled. Maybe he should cut them off. They wouldn’t tickle anymore of he did. No, no.. First he had to stop the void. He so hated the void.
Devon shuffled and swayed closer to the center of the room. The lights were dancing and shifting. The music seemed so very far. So very distant. He could make out silhouettes and the edges of textures as he stepped nearer. Nearer. The darkness trembled before him. The wide white beam that ran from ground to ceiling was there, a crossboard nailed to it some five feet up. He caught the gleam of teeth in a flicker of orange light. There was the monster, staring at him with one wide eye. Devon had taken the other one earlier.
“Little baby,” Devon sang, all but whimpering. He knew it was not the lyric that was spewing from the speakers of his laptop, but he could no longer hear. It was the next lyric, and that was all that mattered. “Pa rum pumpumpum.”
Skin shifted. Brown with dirt, with life. The thing on the cross simpered. It wanted to end the music. It wanted to suck out the light. It stank. Stank of fear and of filth, of urine and blood. Devon swayed closer, raising his voice in abrupt, shrieking defiance.
“I am a poor boy too, pa rum pumpum pum!”
The thing went quiet. Its eye slid back into the blackness. Devon panted, licking at his lips, and swayed slowly closer. Closer. He hated the void. And yet. And yet. There was something about it. Something.. When he had it under his power. His control. His tongue slid along his lips, little rays of light fracturing away from their soft globes as they speared into the darkness at the center of the room.
“I have no gift to bring,” Devon whispered.
He brought his free hand up, turning his painted fingernails to the tips of the thing’s fingers. His touch lingered there, feeling how slack the other hand was for how it curled. Devon’s index finger unfurled, and he slid the tip along the head of the nail he’d placed in the creature’s palm. It was warm and sticky, the flesh around it hot and so swollen that Devon nearly couldn’t find the nailhead.
“I had to go to the hardware store to find these long enough, pa rum pum pumpum.”
The demon of the void did not respond, but Devon saw its eye roll open again. He leaned near, breathing in the smell of it. Terror and aged sweat. Devon closed his eyes against the glare of a red light in the distance. His nose bumped to the soiled fabric that wrapped the thing’s head, ensuring its relative silence. He slid the tip of his nose along the coarse fibers, feeling the skin beneath with his lips. It was a deceitful thing. Salty and tempting.
Devon swayed closer, closer, until his chest was pressed to the thing’s chest. He could feel it shiver. He could feel its heart race. Devon turned his head up, trailing nose and lips, and let a soft pant pass through coils of oily hair and into the delicate shell of its ear. His skin was tingling, and his blood was on fire. He slid his tongue out, letting it pass soft over the harder swells of earlobe, tracing out the curves and folds.
“Shall I play for you?”
The void monster gave another piteous whine. Devon wondered if it was cruel of him to keep it trapped as he did. To keep it nailed to a cross in the basement. His stomach gave a flutter, and his cock strained against his jeans. He rocked the swell against the thing’s leg, as though he might somehow make the nagging urge to rut go away. Maybe it was cruel. Maybe it was dangerous. He should have killed it yesterday. He knew that, and yet there it was. There he was. He gave a slower rock of his hips, and hissed against the creature’s gag when his cock slid against his zip. The metal was not painful, but neither was it pleasant.
“You think you’re so clever,” Devon growled. “You thought you would just get away with it.”
The knife was up before he could think to stop it, or even to raise it. His hand had a will of its own, or seemed to. It was righteous, and had come to smite the void and all of the things that sprang from its darkness. And yet.. Yet.. The knife did not plunge into its belly, nor slide across the thing’s grimy little throat. Instead the sharp, angled edge pressed into the skin at the juncture of the elbow, and eased steadily up. The blade was sharp, but Devon was slow for how the world seemed to breathe around him.
The thing screeched against its gag, and Devon hummed for it. The same song that had been playing for an eternity. Maybe more than an hour. Maybe for days. Or years. He watched the blade slide along. He watched it carve skin from flesh as though he were peeling an apple. But apples didn’t bleed. Not even blood that gleamed blue, and orange, and green in the shifting light. Light that reached in to illuminate the scene before him as he cut into the thing. As he cut into the darkness.
“Are you a king?” Devon squeezed his eyes shut, and the knife went still. “Are you my king?” The chest beneath his own heaved. Ribs strained. “Should I worship you?” Devon’s ass clenched, thighs tensing, and he gave a short little buck into the limbs pinned between himself and the beam. The music was coming back.
“They’re like angels,” Devon whispered breathlessly. A children’s choir singing the same song over and over, and over again. “But not you. You thought you could hide with the angels? You thought that, when the world is ending?”
His hips rolled and shifted. His zip grabbed at him. Devon hissed, his eyes rolling open to let in more of the hard angles of variegated light. The knife became inconvenient, and he stored it in the long stretch of seeping arm. The thing wriggled against him, shifting and straining, and Devon’s heart sank a little lower. His stomach lurched, but he ignored its twisting. His blood was hammering, and the urge to buck was painful. His fingers were slick and sticky as he fought with his fly.
“You shouldn’t have thought that,” Devon growled. His hand fumbled past the parting of his zip to grab and squeeze. “There’s no hiding now. There never was.” He pulled his cock free of his jeans and shoved the rumpled denim out of his way. “Not for you,” Devon rumbled into the thing’s ear, leaning close as he pulled along the shaft of his cock. “Not for me.”
He drew the blade from the void creature’s arm as he palmed and stroked, nudging the seeping head of his cock against grimy flesh. The creature screeched against its blindfold. Hellish and awful. Devon’s nose wrinkled, and he bit at its cheek. The gag caught under his teeth, but he didn’t care. He just wanted it to stop. His hips worked, rocking, thrusting, his hand in a rhythmic slide. Eager flicks of wrist had him smearing the thing’s leg as he worked into it. Devon’s teeth eased as the thing’s screeching rolled into muffled sobs.
“Pa rum pum pum pum,” Devon whispered.
The music was reaching through the dark. It tangled with the lights. It was light. The light was sound. There was rushing in his ears, and his cock was sending pulses of feeling through his entire body. Feeling that speared up his spine, through the base of his skull, and plunged down again from throat to chest. His toes curled, and he rutted eagerly.
Chest crushed to chest. Devon’s fingers found ribs. The hellish thing was so thin. So delicate seeming. He dug his knuckles into the gaps between the slender curves of bone. His knife grazed negligently as he felt, leaving little nicks and slices in its wake. More spots to glimmer red and orange and yellow. Green and blue. He liked the red the best.
Devon let go of his cock. He pressed it to the thing’s leg and thrust again and again. The soft skin slid, smoothed by slick dribbles of precum, aggravated by the dirt and grime clinging to his prey’s leg. But that grit and grind as as tantalizing as the slide and stroke. Devon sought the hard edge of bone, the soft shift of muscle and fat around it.
Devon’s hand instead located itself to the beam, grasping for purchase as he took to rocking and rutting hard, bruising no doubt. The thing was sobbing near his ear. Devon bit at it again. Again. Skin stretched, muscle compressed, bone resisted. Fabric stole the spittle from his lips, and mingled it with the cool damp of that which it had stolen from the thing. Devon bit it again, tasting blood. His, or the miserable creature’s?
The music was gone. The darkness was back. Devon’s pulse quickened.
“You won’t win,” he whispered between heaving pants. He drove his cock forward, ass clenching, and scarcely drew back before tensing forward again. “I won’t let you win.”
His heart hammered to fill the silence. A wash of red slid across his vision, and for a moment everything was clear: The spots of grease on the floor. The drain near the base of the post. The Christmas lights that were strung in layer after layer around the room. The old washer, the remains of the dryer. The hardware where the clothesline once was. The clothesline that helped bind the boy he’d nailed to his makeshift cross. The boy who was missing bits and pieces, but still alive. Who was sane enough to be terrified in those moments. Who wept as Devon’s cock drove against his leg. As Devon’s teeth dug at cheeks that had been thick with baby fat not so long ago. For one moment, one instant, not even so long as a heartbeat, Devon saw. And he was that boy. And that boy was him.
The moment spun, teetered, and was gone. Devon’s breath hiccuped, but returned all too soon. The clarity was forgotten. The darkness was again at the center of the room, where even the numerous lights could not touch it. The music was returning. Devon jerked erratically, his cock twitching, his fingers digging. He wanted to cum. Wanted it so badly. He whimpered and panted against the creature’s cheek. Why couldn’t he? Why couldn’t he? There was so much built up. So much pressure. So much longing. But that burn was steady and no longer mounting. The promise of release was just out of reach, and his cock began to ache in unpleasant ways. Devon’s hips slowed, then stilled. The thing simpered near his ear.
“Nonono,” Devon whispered.
He hugged the post. Hugged the body between himself and the wide wooden beam. He crushed close, one arm slung tight, and drew the knife down the ladder of the creature’s ribs. He slid it between one pair, and then the next. The blade was so sharp, and the flesh gave so easily. The thing gave a muffled cry of surprise to its gag, and then a pained groan. The sound of the knife working the flesh was too loud against the music, but Devon sank it in again. Again. His hand was warm, and slippery, and he was distantly aware that he’d cut his own fingers. Their blood was mixing. Would he die? Would he become that thing?
The heart that beat so rapidly in the chest beneath his own began to slow. Its rise and fall tapered off in time. Devon crushed himself closer, intent on smothering it even as it bled out. Even as it drowned on its own blood. His knife sank in again. Again. His fingers stung. It was becoming difficult to hold the thing.
“I played my best for him,” Devon croaked.
The music was so loud as the body on the post went slack. Slowly at first, and then all at once it was still. Dead and cooling. So much meat. The colors of the shifting lights burst through the darkness. Red and orange and yellow. Green and blue. Devon tilted. His feet were wet. His hands too. His stomach gave another churn. He was so thirsty. Red and orange and yellow. The ground rushed up to meet him. The music roared in his ears, perfect past the static. Devon gave himself to it. He was floating. The lights were all about him, washing him clean. Touching him as the music rippled through.
“Rum pumpum pum…”
Red and orange. And red. Red.
2
The smell was the first indication that he was conscious again. The smell was also the first indication that something was very, very wrong. It was the stink of roadkill made ripe by the sun, and maybe turned over with a pitchfork for good measure. It filled his sinuses, spilled into his throat, and set his eyes watering as he gagged. Devon rolled, clutching his side, and slowly opened his eyes.
He was still high, but not high enough. It was too easy to think, even with the electronic clicking of the lights amplified within his ears. There were too many colors. Devon squeezed his eyes shut.
“Weeeeeeelly well well. Looks like sleeping beauty finally woke the fuck up. Was startin t’think I’d have to find your faggy ass a prince or somethin’. Shit.”
Devon’s tongue was too thick, and it was stuck to the roof of his mouth by a mixture of spit and bile. He worked it about slowly, dug his teeth into the side, and breathed out a groan.
“Yeah, yeah. That’s what all the bitches say,” Nasr giggled.
Something ropey and wet smacked against the bottom of Devon’s foot. He opened his eyes again, but immediately regretted having done so. They clenched tightly.
“Go ‘way,” Devon grunted.
“Really? I been gone all this time and that’s the welcome I get? Go away?” As he spoke, Nasr’s voice sank from its high tones of playful offense to something darker, something more dangerous.
“The fuck ever. You want me all teary eyed like some military bitch? You just leave me fifty bucks and tell me to lay low for a few days and I’m supposed to be over fucking joyed to see your nasty ass when you bother to show the fuck up again? Fuck off, asshole.”
“Hey. Heyheyhey. I left you fifty fuckin’ bucks. I didn’t haveta.”
“Yeah. That’s good for what? Two days? It’s been months, cocksucker. I thought you weren’t coming back.”
“Well,” Nasr said, his voice drifting nearer to Devon, “shit happens. Almost didn’t come back.”
Devon opened his eyes. Two glowing, hellish eyes stared back, drifting closer. They were wrapped in darkness.
“Wonder whatcha woulda done then, huh? Y’big baby,” Nasr growled.
Experience and instinct both told Devon that he should keep his mouth shut. He didn’t.
“I woulda thrown the mother fuckin’ party of the goddamn century.”
Nasr drew to a halt, a burst of sound barking from his lips. It might have been a laugh if mocking and derision could make laughter.The lights bled through the darkness to catch on the edges of the demon’s horns where they curled from the dark coils of his hair. Splotches of color tickled across the rusty coloring of Nasr’s arm, which had been thrown wide and was bonier than Devon remembered it being. Nasr’s long, claw-tipped fingers were extended in mockery of salesgirl display, gesturing to the body mounted on Devon’s makeshift cross.
“And invited aaaaalll yer little friends, yeah?” Nasr taunted.
Devon stared quietly at the corpse. There was a head, and there were arms. There were shoulders, and a chest. All of it mutilated, but certainly present. Beneath the glistening protrusion of exposed rib, however, there was a long span of darkened support beam. The stumps of two feet were nailed in a foot or so from the ground, breaking the gap between bone and floor. Devon’s stomach lurched. Had he done that? Surely not. His head hurt, and once again, he shut his eyes.
“Ah, ah, ah,” Nasr chastised.
The same wet, fleshy smack as before struck Devon’s bare feet. Again. Again. Incessant and steady until Devon opened his eyes.
Nasr’s face was in his own. The demon was gaunt, his skull frighteningly defined beneath skin and muscle. His teeth were pointed and yellow in his smile. Devon cringed away.
“I told you to lay low, Devvy,” Nasr rumbled.
“I’m out in the middle of nowhere, ain’t I?”
Nasr’s tails rasped against one another. It was a sound that Devon had come to know well.
“This,” Nasr giggled as e held up a fleshy lump that glistened in the shifting light, “ain’t layin’ low, Dev.”
“I got bored,” Devon whined.
“I know.” Nasr smacked the meat to his cheek in mockery of a sympathetic pat. “I know. Guess what else is boring. Go on, guess.”
Devon flinched backward. His bare hip stuck to the workbench, but peeled away as he went scooting. Every impulse sent the same signal: Run. Runrunrunrun.
“Aw. Not even one little guess, Devvy Wevvy? Just gonna squirm around when I ain’t even done anything to you?”
Nasr’s tail caught Devon’s in a scaly slide. It was hot, nearly scalding. Devon grunted, but he was still just high enough that he didn’t care about the discomfort as much as he should. He was much more concerned with the what than the pain.
“Get. That. Fucking. Shit. Offa. Me.”
“Hmmmmm. Nuh uh.”
One skeletal hand shot out and caught Devon by the forearm. It gripped tight, bruisingly so, and cut where Nasr’s claws caught at pale skin.
“I don’t fucking know,” Devon screeched, his voice breaking in his throat. “Get that shit offa me!”
“Watchin’ your ass sleep off your high is fuckin’ boring, Dev. Knowin’ you was fuckin’ up again is fuckin’ borin’. D’ya wanna end up with your hand in another goddamn garbage disposal? Huh? Cus I can make that real fuckin’ borin’ real fuckin’ fast.”
Devon jerked, thrashing as the edges of his vision grew dim, and everything else turned fuzzy. Nasr’s touch was fire. Devon’s ears took to ringing. His skin was too tight. His insides were twisting and burning. He was coated with sweat, and not the healthy sort.
“Fuck. Fuckfuck fucking fuck,” Devon hollared.
“Nnn. Eeheehee. I told you,” Nasr exclaimed between giggles. “I told you to stay off that shit. Lookit this fucking mess.”
Devon panted, his breath seemingly impossible to catch. He wanted to vomit, and he couldn’t stop trembling. Everything stank even more than it already had, and the lights had gone from soothing to annoying.
“Fuck,” Devon gasped.
“That’s what you’ll be if they get ahold of you, Dev. That what you want? Wanna be proper fucked, huh?”
Nasr’s tails went twisting and turning. They snaked their way up Devon’s legs even as the demon’s impossibly strong hands gripped at Devon’s arms. He was hauled up, ass and head dangling. The world spun and flashed. Nasr’s giggles filled his ears and burned at his thoughts.
“Dun want that t’happen, do we?” Nahnahnah.” Nasr reeled Devon in close. Breath poured along Devon’s cheek, hot and fetid. “You’re my fuckin’ toy, goddamn it. Not theirs.”
Devon’s stomach gave another threatening twist. He pulled against Nasr’s hold, but the man seemed to have grown even taller than he already had been, and in so doing he was stretching Devon further. Further, and well beyond the bounds of comfort. Devon’s spine popped. His head dangled and lolled. His joints ached. It was becoming increasingly difficult to breathe, and his quickened pants had turned to shallow gasps.
“‘Sides, Dev,” Nasr purred, “you did your crucifix all wrong.”
The world lurched again, and Devon’s heart leapt into his throat. The tails about his legs gripped, jerking his legs up. Nasr released Devon’s arms at the same time, so he was left flailing as he toppled backward, caught like a hare in a trap. Devon’s head struck the gore and gristle on the floor, and beyond that the cement of the floor itself.
He heard his head impact an instant before the pain set in. It was so intense that he found it difficult to breathe. His arms dangled, heavy and limp. He wanted to catch his balance. He couldn’t see. A handful of simultaneous thoughts ran through his mind, but the blow had him unconscious before Nasr had raised him from the floor.
–
With Nasr, a lack of consciousness was a blessing. Devon sometimes suspected that it was given only for the sake of the demon’s convenience. Like a cat giving a mouse a sound smack before relocating to play with it elsewhere. In this case, they had not relocated far.
He woke to find himself bound to the post, suspended upside down with his arms stretched wide. His palms and feet were nailed through much the same way he’d nailed the boy’s, but more than that he was constricted. Tied into place with thick, smooth rope. His hands and feet were throbbing balls of pain, and his head felt fit to burst. Devon was cold and shivering, and whatever dampness clung to his skin had seeped into his eyes to leave them stinging for their irritation.
“Y’anno who Saint Peter is, Devvy?” Nasr’s voice echoed about him, bouncing off of the high ceiling and distant walls.
The twinkling lights had been shut off. Instead Nasr had flicked to life the single bare bulb that dangled from a length of chain and wire at the far end of the room. It swayed slowly back and forth, though there was no breeze, and set the shadows to swaying with it. Devon squinted at Nasr, peering up at the demon who was silhouetted one moment, and lit along the plane of cheek and curve of horn the next.
“Don’t fuckin’ care. Gonna saint your fuckin’ peter if you don’t let me the fuck down,” Devon snapped. Or, he meant to. It was not as vehement as he would’ve liked. He couldn’t breathe properly, and the words were more groan than growl. How he wished his head would burst as it seemed intent on convincing him it would.
“So, this mother fucker, he gets himself arrested for being Christian. Now, he’d been arrested before, and got outta that shit, but not this time. This time, Nero was in a bad fuckin’ mood over these fires that were goin’ ‘round, and he decided he was gonna blame the strange fuckin’ Christians for it. And as we all fuckin’ know, the Romans loved their goddamn crucifixions.”
Nasr stepped around Devon as he spoke, circling the cross so that the bouncing of his voice continued to shift and distort at different angles. Pain lanced up Devon’s left leg and into his gut, and he was left choking on a curse from something so simple as an idle flick of finger to toe.
“And,” Nasr paused to giggle uproariously, “And this motherfucker— This motherfucker, he goes ‘Wait!’ Like the Romans are gonna listen to his ass? He was such a fuckin’ little bitch the whole time that they went and nailed his ass in instead of just tyin’ him. So they get this old man all strung up, and he’s whining and bitching like you’d expect some motherfucker on a cross to do, and then this fucker. This fucker! He goes, ‘No! Wait!’” Nasr pitched his voice high in mockery. “I have an even better idea!” The demon paused his story, and his circling, to giggle anew. He snorted and horked as he quelled the roil of sound. “Fuckin’ says he ain’t worthy to die like that illegitimate bastard brat. Says he wants them to raise his cross upside down.”
Nasr’s silhouette stopped in front of Devon. It tucked in on itself as he laughed. It wasn’t the good, jocular sort of laughter that meant that Devon got to share in. It was laughter that was dark in its mirth, and unpredictable in its promise. It set Devon to whimpering, his bindings flexing for how his chest heaved.
“Course you know, they fuckin’ did it, cus that shit’s hilarious. Best fuckin’ part is now all these little baby wanna-be Satanists are running around with ‘I-ain’t-worthy’ crosses round their necks.”
“Yeah, well,” Devon croaked thickly, “I ain’t no fuckin’ saint.”
Nasr tittered and leaned down to smack Devon’s cheek. It was a mockery of affection, too hard to be comfortable.
“No,” Nasr agreed. “No; you ain’t.”
Nasr stepped back, then turned away from Devon entirely.
“How long you think it’ll take you to die that way?” Nasr went rifling through a misshapen pile that Devon could not see clearly in the hard, but limited light of the single bare bulb. Devon could hear the thump of a plastic jog, a slosh of something wet. The clatter of metal against metal was dull and then high, and something gave a wet, flashy slap to the cement flooring. “Maybe you won’t.” Bare feet smacked their way over.
“Maybe you’ll just hang there for fuckin’ ever,” Nasr taunted. A small, limp, and cold hand flopped against Devon’s face. The stink of it through the reek of the room had him choking. “Keep your fuckin’ ass outta trouble, huh?”
Nasr’s teeth caught the light when he turned, all sharp, glistening edges past the wicked curl of his lips. Devon coughed and wheezed. His face was starting to tingle, the pressure to bother him less. Rank, lifeless fingers probed at his nostrils.
“What you think, Dev-o? Think you’n keep yer nose clean?”
Nasr laughed. Devon did not. His stomach twisted. But then.. then he felt it. That distant dulling of sensation. Maybe he really would die like that.
Alas, it was not to last. Devon woke again to a cold splash of water over his face. Nasr had flipped on the dying florescent tubes recessed into the drop panel ceiling. Devon sputtered as the water ran from his chin to his chest, sluicing toward his feet for how he’d been turned upright while he was out. The demon was all grins, and he dropped the bucket he’d been holding with a loud clatter. The basement stank, and it seemed there was blood everywhere. Even Nasr’s bare torso and grungy jeans were mottled with the stuff.
“Again, Dev? Your ugly ass don’t need all that beauty sleep. Shit.”
Nasr’s fingers pinched a fresh bruise to Devon’s cheek. Devon worked what paltry bit of spit through his mouth that he could sum up, then sent it flying with all of the force he could muster. The result was a pathetic trail of drool that hurled itself down along his chin and dribbled cool onto his chest.
Nasr pointed with one long, nearly human finger. “HA! Poor widduh baybeeee.”
Devon grunted against the pain that continued to run through him in waves of hot and cold.
“Fuck you. Fuckyoufuckyoufuckyou. Let me the fucking fuck down from here you fucking cocksucking mother fucker.”
“Nahnahnah. We’s havin’ a history lesson here, Dev!” Nasr stepped wide around Devon. “Now this. This is closer to how that so-called fuckin’ son of the Almighty was crucified, yeah? ‘Least in your pretty little stories. Now, I ain’t got no lance…”
Nasr raised a paint stick with one of the cheap steak knives from the kitchen strapped to it. Devon stared at the wads of gray tape that circled the thing rather than at the blade. It made things easier that way. It still didn’t stop him from thinking about how dull the blade was, though.
“Put that fucking shit down.”
“… but I figure this’ll do,” Nasr continued as though Devon hadn’t interrupted. “So this guy, he wants to see if this fucker is dead before they break his legs to hurry him along, cus he sure is taking his sweet fucking time. And he takes his lance like, and he sticks good ol’ Jesus right here like this.”
The knife caught Devon in the ribs, right through his bindings. Devon hollered, his head dropping as he reflexively sought the wound to gauge its severity. It was impossible to see past the coils of gray, dead intestine that wrapped him. He pulled his head up again, gasping eagerly for air as he did so.
“Or was it here?” Nasr asked lightly.
The knife struck carelessly to the other side. The blade was dull and nicked. It tore a ragged path through Devon’s skin and pierced into muscle in a burning shot. Devon roared at Nasr and made to thrash, but that set him to stilling and shrieking as he encountered the resistance of the nails embedded in his hands and feet.
“Naaaaah,” Nasr mused right through the volume of Devon’s agony. “What about.. heeere?” The knife drew a fine slit through soft tissue before plunging past and into the heat of Devon’s belly.
Devon choked. He shuddered and broke into sobs, tears rolling hot and fast along his cheeks. It was too much, even with all that Nasr had put him through. Being wrapped in that boy was bad enough, but the pain went beyond agonizing. Every time he started to adjust to it, Nasr would find aw ay to bring it screaming back again. He couldn’t even die to get away from it.
“Wait, no. I think I had it right the first time.” Nasr leaned close with a smirk. “Ohohoh! I almost forgot. Good ol’ Jesus had himself a crown of thorns or some shit, yeah?”
Nasr dropped the knife to the floor as he turned away, adding to the collection of blood around the beam. He stepped around Devon, but returned in short order with a filthy, battered ball cap that looked to have been fished up from the bottom of a dumpster. It had half a logo embroidered on the front, and it stank of shit and rotten food. Small brass circles gleamed about its base.
“Now, I ain’t got no thorns, but I pulled some real Martha Stewart shit here.” Nasr hooked the cap onto Devon’s head. It prickled and poked in a tight circle, the points of inlaid tacks digging at his skin. The demon’s grin was full of glee and teeth. “It’s amazin’ whatchu can do with carpet tacks, ‘ey Dev? Maybe I should get me my own fuckin’ talk show.”
Nasr’s too-large hands pressed along the base of the cap, securing the circle of tacks into Devon’s skin. The discomfort escalated to join the hymn of pain resounding through Devon’s body, turning briefly blinding. He licked at the tears and snot on his upper lip, and blinked rapidly against the rivulets of blood that ran into his eyes.
Nasr stood back to admire his handiwork, hand propped to chin. Just when it seemed his grin could go no wider, it did so anyway. The demon stepped nearer to Devon, then leaned to press himself close, chest crushing against chest past the malleable loops of intestine. A long, hot trail of spittle eased the passage of Nasr’s tongue along Devon’s cheek. Nasr bumped the tip of his nose under the ridge of Devon’s cheekbone, his breath rolling over skin and saliva both.
“These fuckers’ll do more than crucify you if they get ahold of ya, asshole.”
Nasr’s teeth needled and tugged at Devon’s lips. Devon’s heart raced for the bursts of silvery pain that shot into his cheeks and sinuses for it. His heart raced, and his eyes watered anew, but he didn’t dare move. Even moving to sob had hurt. A soft, strange grunting filled his ears. It reminded him of the noise rabbits make in their death throes, but he was distantly aware of the fact that he was the one making the sound.
Nasr released Devon’s mouth and turned away. The demon’s tails twisted and dragged behind him, jutting from the filthy skin above Nasr’s waistband. One long finger hooked over the switch near the base of the stairs, flicking it down even as Nasr’s head went turning to peer over his shoulder. Devon gasped into the darkness, his head rocking back against the beam. A single, malevolent eye glowed in Devon’s direction.
“You just lay low, Devvy-poo. I’ll see ya in three days.”