they made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. “We can hang you upside-down by a meat-hook through your asshole,” they’d been kind enough to explain, “and then blow-torch you to death, or…”
««—»»
“So how long’s it take, Doc?” Vinchetti asked.
“Oh, twenty more minutes perhaps, before the copper sulphate adequately saturates the duodenal blood vessels.”
“And where the hell’s Tony?”
“I believe he’s trying to locate a camera, sir.”
“The fuck?” Vinchetti complained. “What’s taking him so long? We got more cameras in this joint than Paramount. Jesus Christ.”
“They were making some snuff tapes in the basement last night. Remember? The deputy police commissioner’s children?”
The memory rekindled on Vinchetti’s expression. “Aw, yeah, that’s right—the baby triplets. I’ll bet that’s gonna be some sweet work.”
Dr. Prouty frowned to himself. He remembered seeing the crew bring in the pit bulls.
A chuckle, then: “Teach that fuck cop to bust my guys,” Vinchetti continued. “Fuckin’ guy’s been on our pad for five fuckin’ years, and
Prouty felt a twinge in his belly, in spite of his now-well-honed clinical detachment. But getting back to his own predicament, when given the choice of hanging upside-down from a meat hook in his rectum or working for Vinchetti, the doctor had unsurprisingly picked the latter. This involved an expeditious relocation to one of Vinchetti’s compounds on the outskirts of Pennellville, New York. The facility was part safe house, part recovery ward, and part full-tilt mother-fuckin’ chamber of horrors. Its remote location made it perfect for all of the above, especially the video end. All manner of illegal and homicidal pornography was made on the premise: snuff flicks, nek flicks, “wet” S&M, and various other types of productions the likes of which could make even the lowest demon queasy. But Dr. Prouty had little to do with the videos; his chief purpose at the compound entailed changing appearances. Two weeks of cold-turkey withdrawal had cured him of his Demerol addiction, after which he’d begun to utilize his clinical expertise in order to pay back his gambling debts. Whenever it was looking like the feds were going to grab one of Vinchetti’s men cold, said man would come to the compound and, thanks to Prouty’s skills, leave several weeks later with a new face. Simple. And Prouty didn’t really mind at all. They gave him a little room to live in, three meals a day plus all the satellite channels, and it sure as hell beat hanging from that hook. Escape was impossible; the compound was constantly locked, full of guards, and close to fifty miles from any other dwellings. It was this or the hook.
This worked.
These little side jobs were another matter, though. Not only was the compound used as a production stage for the most unimaginable endeavors in visual pornography, it was a stage, too, for Vinchetti’s own personal desires for vengeance. Whenever somebody stole from Vinchetti, or lied to him, insulted him, slighted him in any way, it was Dr. Prouty’s job to initiate a creative revenge which Vinchetti would personally witness and have video-taped for posterity. The deeds definitely tested Prouty’s intestinal fortitude but then…there was always the hook…so he simply did what he was told and didn’t morally question himself about the victims. Hell, they were all probably bad people anyway.
Quite often, Prouty kept them alive for as long as possible. Non-anesthetic lobotomies were another Vinchetti favorite, as were full body flensings, acid catheters, and “trunk jobs.” Genital mutilation comprised so much activity in this place that it had actually grown blase; you could only dissect some many penises, remove so many scrotums, poach so many testes, and gun-brush so many urethras before it lost its thrill. Hence, Vinchetti kept pressing the doctor for new and original spectacles.
Like this one.
The woman’s name was Darcy, one of Vinchetti’s part-time paramours. Vinchetti liked them skinny and trashy (such women reminded him of his New Jersey childhood) and Darcy definitely fit the bill. Ninety-five pounds, tiny-breasted, and with a mouth more foul than the bottom of a slaughter house dumpster, Darcy had made the faux pax of telling one of the other girls: “Vinch has a little dick. It’s teeny, like my pinkie.”
Big mistake.
The other girl had ratted and now here Darcy lay, side-strapped nude to Prouty’s work table. It was an odd sight, to say the least: Prouty thought of conjoined twins connected at the mouth. See, Darcy shared the lab table with another of Vinchetti’s employees, one Hymie Levy. Hymie was a young mathematics whizz-kid who’d graduated with honors from Georgetown Business School, and now—or it should be said, until very recently—he’d served as one of Vinchetti’s accountants. Standing at a full five-foot four, Hymie weighed—easily—three hundred pounds, and the reason he occupied space on the torture table was simple: he’d been skimming money from Vinchetti’s trough. Hence, the mandate. If you stole even a nickel from the boss, you got the table. It was the principle of the thing.
Vinchetti was wincing at the site of Hymie strapped naked to the table. “Christ, Doc, that’s a lot of matzah balls; he looks even worse with his clothes
“I wouldn’t be too hasty in accusing the obese of a lack of will-power,” Dr. Prouty pointed out. “Recent research from John’s Hopkins indicates that perhaps as much as forty percent of obesity in America can be attributed to a previously unidentified icosahedral virus. Nonstructural protomers in the viral shell allow it to roam undetected by immune responses and directly attack the mitochondrion mechanisms in human fat cells. The result is a cell that cannot effectively turn glucose into energy—hence, an excess storage of adipose matter. Obesity is a tragic disease, not an instance of willful over-indulgence.”
“Aw, put a lid on that liberal bullshit, will ya, Doc? The fat motherfucker’s fat ’cos he can’t keep his fat fuckin’ hands out of the fuckin’ refrigerator. He eats six fuckin’ meals a fuckin’ day. He stuffs his fat motherfuckin’ face every fuckin’ chance he gets. It ain’t no fuckin’
Prouty knew the futility of taking exception. “Of course, you’re quite correct, sir. Pardon my oversight.”
Vinchetti smiled subtly. “Damn straight. And this fat fuck’s defnitely had
“Actually, sir,” the doctor reminded, “if you give the matter some abstract consideration, they’ll both be spending their final moments of life…eating with quite a bit of gusto.”
Vinchetti’s eyes dimmed for a second, then, “Oh, yeah! I get’cha, Doc! Man, is this gonna be sweet!”
Then he’d…connected them…at the lips.
Vinchetti was leaning over, peering at their faces. “So how’d you do their lips, Doc? What, you
It was actually the simplest chore of all; the only “tough” work was suitably arranging Hymie’s incredible bulk on the table. “With this,” Prouty said, and held the instrument up.
At first glance, one might think the doctor had raised a chrome-plated curling iron, or even an electric steak knife. A power cord led to a shiny oval-shaped housing which fit comfortably in Prouty’s hand. From the front end protruded two very narrow steel tubules, whose gap could be adjusted by a knob at the base. “It’s a McCrath Model SS40-C, Series S, top of the line.”
“The fuck’s that?” Vinchetti queried.
“It’s a surgical stapler.”
And a fine one at that. It functioned similarly to an ordinary office stapler, though its feed mechanism was much more intricate. The impact tubule, containing the foot-end, ran parallel to the loading tubule. The two objects to be coupled were merely fitted into the gap at the end of the device, and—CLACK!—the power button was applied. The ends were joined while a curvicular one-millimeter surgical-grade staple was fired and shunted to the foot-end—and anything between it. The instrument was mainly used for long lacerations over deep wounds and re- attaching mesenterial tissue during primary abdominal operations. In
