“No, sir…that’s not true, sir.”
“Shut your whining, boy.” The headmaster stepped over to the umbrella stand beside the door and retrieved his cane. “Bend over my desk, I’m going to beat your sodomite ways out of you and you will fucking thank me for it!”
“No, sir…please…”
McManus pushed the boy’s face onto the desk and pulled his trousers and underwear down. He noted with disgust a brown trace of fresh excrement in the seat of the underpants. “You filthy little bastard…”
The cane whacked down hard onto the desk, inches from the boy’s face. Curtis started visibly, sobbing with a renewed vigour.
“Six of the best should be enough to make you think twice about what you do with that filthy backside of yours…”
The first strike of the bamboo cane raised an angry red welt across Curtis’s cheeks. The boy thrust his fist into his mouth, biting down on his fingers to try and distract himself from the stinging pain and stifle his cries.
The headmaster brought the cane down hard again, almost hitting the same spot, exacerbating the existing raw weal and extending it afresh. Curtis bit down harder, his teeth pressing against bone. Surely McManus was hitting him far harder than was legal?
BLOOD!
McManus paused mid-stroke, momentarily confused by the words in his head.
I WANT BLOOD…
The words were louder this time. Clearer. Commanding. He heard them not just within the confines of his skull but within his entire body. The muscles in his arms – so long ago destined for sporting glory – bulged under the influence of the imperative. A decade of frustration-fuelled anger raged through every sinew, the headmaster’s grip on the bamboo cane now white-hot.
“You want blood, boy? Then, my God, blood is what you are going to get… you sick little fuck!”
The cane thrashed down, splitting the already raw skin apart. Again, the rod found its mark, the flesh of the boy’s buttocks gaping wider, blood flowing from the exposed meat. The headmaster whipped the cane against the boy’s backside over and over, the bamboo slicing deeper into the yawning wound, tearing out chunks, dark red blood pouring from the fleshy chasm and running down Curtis’ legs, soaking into the trousers gathered around his ankles. The boy was screaming freely now, the agony too much bear in silence any longer, the teeth marks embedded in the skin of his knuckles bearing testament to his efforts at restraint. Despite the fury that fired him, McManus’s arm was beginning to tire, his aim getting sloppy. He brought the cane down on the base of the boy’s spine, this new agony bringing a fresh wave of torment. Again the bamboo rod smashed into his coccyx, stunning its array of nerves. Curtis lost control of his bowels, a lump of reeking excrement landing on the headmaster’s foot.
“You filthy fucking bastard!” McManus screamed at him, his disgust igniting a new found strength of venom. The cane hit the tailbone, again and again, stripping away flesh to reveal the gleaming white vertebrae. The assault continued, the cane whacking against bone until the bamboo began to split at its end. The signals to the nerves in the boy’s legs were finally jammed by the swelling of his injured spinal cord and he collapsed into a puddle of his own blood and shit.
But still, McManus’ fury was not spent. Grabbing the boy from the floor he threw him face down onto the desk like a slab of meat.
MORE BLOOD!
“More?”
McManus screamed at the top of his lungs, the veins on his neck pulsating, his face purple-black with rage, sweat dripping from his brow. “You want more?” He pushed the splintered tip of the cane into Curtis’ anus, blood lubricating its entry. “I’ll give you fucking more…” He thrust the cane with all his strength into the boy’s rectum, bearing down with his body weight. The bamboo burst through the wall of Curtis’ colon, dark blood mixed with liquid excreta, pumping in thick, foetid gouts from his anus. The headmaster bore down harder, forcing the cane onwards, piercing the loops and coils of intestine, rupturing the stomach and liver before finally tearing out through the boy’s neck, above his left clavicle.
McManus stared at the ruined body on his desk.
Blood and waste matter smothered the wood, soaking into exercise books and paperwork, running off the edges into dark pools on the floorboards beneath. He tugged hard on the end of his cane, twisting and pulling until it eventually slipped free from the body’s anus, stinking lumps of god knows what plopping out of the raw, gaping hole after it.
McManus stepped towards his desk drawer to pull out the whisky he kept secreted within. A floorboard squeaked under his foot, two dark knots in the grain staring up at him for a second before they disappeared beneath a splash of blood seeping from the desk. Swallowing the contents in several gulps, the liquid burning its way down his gullet, he tossed the empty bottle into the bin under the desk and held his beloved cane up before him. He allowed most of its gore-slicked length to slip through his palm, grabbing it tight six inches before reaching the shattered end. The broken shards had rendered the tip as sharp as a razor, little strings of viscera hanging from sticking out splinters.
The headmaster placed the pointed tip against the hollow beneath his Adam’s apple and, with two hands gripping the cane, pulled it hard and fast into his throat.
6
With planning permissions still to be confirmed, the demolition crews were, as yet, a far-off threat. Unofficial deconstruction, however, had begun almost as soon as Chillingworth House had been vacated. Vandals had put through almost every window - jagged holes corrupting the
