“Are you ready to tell me what I want to hear yet?”
“Fuck you! Fuck you, you crazy bitch!”
Maria shook her head. He would need further persuading, but he would talk. They always did. Her father had taught her well.
Michael Damiano, Maria’s father, had been an enforcer for the mafia in Vegas since the days of Bugsy Seigel. He’d become quite an accomplished hit-man and was greatly sought after for his skills at extracting information. He could make anyone talk. Even after his health had begun to fail, and he could no longer withstand the rigors of the job, he had continued to take on contracts, subbing out the work to his daughter whom he’d educated in the art of pain. She’d learned very well. Soon his buddies in the syndicate found out about his daughter and tried to put a stop to it. They could not stomach the thought of a woman in harm’s way. Some of them threatened her father. Maria threatened back. She left the bodies of her competition littering the front lawns of a few of her detractors. They left her alone after that. Some of them, even while denouncing her father and her in public, had continued to send contracts their way in private. Maria was good, and even those macho assholes had known it. One thing she had excelled at, even becoming more accomplished at its delicate intricacies and nuances than her father, was interrogation. For her father, it had been a science and he had it down cold, but for her, it was an art, and each canvas had different secrets to yield.
Maria heated the scalpel on the Bunsen burner and then approached poor Vincento. She had kept him awake for two days and he was dizzy with exhaustion, hungry, thirsty, cold, damp, and scared. This wouldn’t take long she hoped. She really took no pleasure in it. It was just something she had to do. No matter what, he had to talk, and if he didn’t…well, there really was no choice. He would suffer until he broke; until he spoke.
As Maria swabbed his chest with iodine she was once again awed by how handsome he was. His tanned muscular body was like a living Adonis. Even with one eye he still looked a lot like Antonio Banderas. It was almost a shame to ruin him. She began to cut.
Vincento winced and writhed on the metal table, biting his lip and refusing to cry out, as she sliced the heated blade through the skin just over his nipples. The macho ones always had the hardest time. They tried so hard not to cry out, not to beg, not to give in to her, but in the end, they all talked. Some just suffered longer before they broke. Vincento was definitely a tough guy; as macho as they came. He would suffer a long time. But he would talk. He would talk.
She cut two parallel incisions an inch apart down the length of his chest then drew the blade of her scalpel across the top connecting each incision in sort of a long rectangle. She gripped the top of the flap of skin with a hemostat and rolled it down the way a metal key rolls down a sardine can. Now Vincento did scream. The most anguished, agonized cry the human larynx was capable of producing erupted from him as she yanked down on the hemostat and jerked the skin free with a wet, sticky, riiiiiiping sound. Maria had heard this sound before; many times. It wouldn’t be long now. He would talk.
“Tell me Vincento. Tell me what I want to hear.”
But he had blacked out. Maria tended to his wounds making sure he didn’t bleed out or catch an infection. She checked his temperature and blood pressure to make sure he wasn’t going to go into shock and die on her. Then she doused him in cold water and revived him. He sputtered and coughed as he came abruptly awake. For a second he wasn’t sure where he was. He wished that second had lasted.
“Tell me what I want to hear, Vincento.” She punched him square on the jaw and his eyes rolled around in his head. The bitch hit like a man.
“Tell me, Vincento! Tell me now!” She motioned toward the kid who still sat in the corner playing with the saws, knives, hammers, drills and other menacing-looking implements that were loaded up in the black duffel bag. She didn’t need to tell her son what she wanted. He knew the routine. She’d been dragging him along on these types of jobs since before he could walk. Being a single mother she had no one else to look after him. He stood up and carried the salt shaker over to her then resumed his position in the corner. She poured a pile of salt into the palm of her hand, tossed a pinch over her shoulder, then rubbed the rest into the six-inch rectangular wound she’d carved into Vincento’s chest.
Sweat and tears rolled down his face and he bit clean through his bottom lip. But he would not cry out. Blood bubbled up out of his mouth as he struggled to catch his breath. Maria was always prepared. She suctioned the blood out of his mouth with a turkey baster and placed a bandage over his lip after she’d stopped the bleeding with adrenaline and pressure from a damp cloth. She didn’t want him drowning on his own blood. Still, he would not talk. She looked at the bandage on his lip and thought it looked far too merciful. She was afraid it might give Vincento some hope that she wouldn’t go all the way if necessary. She decided to cut the lip off instead.
With slow, deliberate, almost tender care, she sliced off his lower lip with the scalpel. Vincento screamed again and tried to bite her. But the straps held him firm. Then she fired up the Bunsen burner to cauterize the fresh wound. He screamed again, even louder, as she seared his wound with the hot torch. The savaged flesh where his lips had been, hissed, shriveled, and blackened like bacon on a hot skillet as she held the flame to his face. He screamed so hard that his tongue stuck out beyond his teeth and was singed as well. Once again he blacked out and once again Maria revived him.
Vincento tried to spit at her, but without lips it came out as a weak spray between his teeth that landed mostly on his own face.
“ ‘uck you! You cray ‘itch!” He shouted into her face defiantly, unable to pronounce either the “F” or the “b” without benefit of a lower lip but quite certain that Maria got the point.
Enraged, Maria bent down and bit off the tip of Vincento’s nose spitting it back into his face. Vince lost it then. He began crying and blubbering.
“Aaaaaaaaaargh! Stop! Stop! What do you want ‘rom ‘e? I don’t know what you want ‘e to say!”
“Yes, you do. You know exactly what I want to hear.”
The kid over in the corner smiled at him and giggled, amused at his predicament. Vincento wanted to put the little freak over his knee and teach him some respect for his elders. He gritted his teeth together and shook his head vehemently.
“Hell no.”
Maria pulled the pliers from her little black bag. She strapped Vincento’s head down to the table and used forceps to pry open his mouth and hold it open wide. Then she began pulling teeth out by the roots. Vincento screamed, gargled, and choked on blood and saliva, as she wrestled the teeth out of his head. She had to use the turkey baster several times to keep him from drowning. Blood and saliva drooled down his face onto his neck and chest. He squeezed his eyes shut, squirting out tears from the corners of his eyes, and his screams reverberated through the empty room like an echo chamber. Still, he would not give in. So she did the same with his fingernails.
“Aaaaaargh! Oh My God! Stop! Stop! Noooooo!” Vincento had given up trying not to scream. Still he refused to tell her what she needed to hear.
Maria removed the forceps from his mouth. Then she removed the strap from his head, allowing him to lift his head slightly off the table so that he could look down at the ruin she’d made of his body. She picked up the gardening shears.
“I didn’t want to have to do this.” She took his limp organ in her hand and it nearly shrank back up inside him, as if it knew what she was about to do and was going into a full retreat. She gave it a tug, pulling it out straight and placing it between the sharp blades of the gardening shears.
The problem with this sort of threat was that it was probably the worst thing you could do to a man, and if you threatened and didn’t follow through on the threat, then you lost your psychological advantage. You gave your captive hope that you wouldn’t go all the way if necessary. Then again, if you did follow through with it, there was nowhere to go from there. What else could possibly phase him after having his manhood lopped off? How could you top that? Maria had already thought of all of that though. She knew exactly what she was doing.
“No! No! I’ll tell you! I’ll say anything you want to hear!”
“Okay, then say it.” She continued to hold the end of his penis stretching it taunt between the shears.
“I love you.” Vincent said in defeat.
“And?” Maria asked expectantly.
“And I’ll ‘arry you.” Pronouncing the “m” was too difficult without his lower lip.
“And?”
Maria loved him. In fact, Vincento had been the first man she’d ever dared love. He had told her she was
