The truck was hijacked without difficulty. The driver had a gun put to him as he stopped for a light on a lonely stretch of road. He was tied to a light pole and left there for the authorities to find. Richard and his partners wore masks. The driver couldn’t give a description even if he wanted to, which he didn’t. Nothing of his had been stolen. Why put his head in a noose? Richard drove the load to the farm. They left it in the barn and went to find a buyer. This was always the best way to off a hot load—not in a hurry, shop it around. In fact, it took them eight days to find a guy who’d buy the entire load at a fair price, COD. They returned to the farm for the load. The barn was empty, the truck gone. The man who owned the farm—a tall, skinny dude who needed a shave and a bath, had long hair, was missing front teeth—said he had “no idea” where the truck was, looking the three hijackers square in the eyes, scratching his head as he did so.
“What?” Richard said.
“I have no idea what happened,” he said.
“My friend, there is no way anyone could have driven off with that load without you knowing. Do I look stupid here?”
“I have no fuckin’ idea what happened to it,” the owner repeated. “I swear!”
“We paid you good to stash the truck here. We want it. Where is it?”
“I don’t know—I swear on my mother’s life, I don’t know,” he said, adamant.
Richard took a long, deep breath. “Don’t make me hurt you—I will hurt you bad,” he said. “Where’s our truck?”
“Honest, guys, I don’t know! It was just suddenly gone.”
“My friend…this is a your last chance—where’s our truck?”
“I’m tellin’ you, I don’t know!”
Richard had John and Sean tie the guy to a tree near the barn. This was a very desolate place, no other houses around for miles. That was one of the reasons they had chosen it. Now the skinny guy was pleading and telling them how he knew nothing. Richard slapped him a few times.
“I swear, I don’t know!” he wailed, a little blood streaming from his lip.
A diabolical idea came to Richard; he calmly walked back to the car. He had two red flares, the kind used for road emergencies, in the trunk. He grabbed one and returned to the guy. “I’m telling you I’m going to hurt you bad. Where’s our load?” he asked, showing the man the flare.
“Buddy, I don’t know!” The skinny man’s bleeding lower lip was quivering now.
Richard had Sean and John take off the guy’s shoes and socks. It was a nice spring day. Birds chirped. The sky was clear and friendly. The sun shone. Butterflies danced in the air. Richard lit the flare. A sudden tongue of white-hot flame leaped from it. Richard brought it to the man’s left foot, just close enough to blister the flesh, not burn it. He was trying to give the guy a chance to talk, to spill the beans.
“Please, I’m telling you I don’t know—I swear!”
With that, Richard shoved the burning flare against his foot. The guy screamed and screamed, but denied any knowledge of the truck. The smell of burned flesh filled the air. Richard knew how intensely painful this was, and he was beginning to think that maybe the guy really didn’t know. To be sure, Richard kept it up. When the guy’s left foot looked like a charred piece of meat, Richard stopped. The bones of his toes were plainly visible; most of the flesh was gone; it didn’t quite look like a foot anymore.
“Where’s our truck?” demanded Richard.
“On my mother’s life I don’t know, on my mother’s life!” he screamed, crying, his face a mask of tormented sincerity.
“Tell us and we’ll take you to a hospital, you can get your foot taken care of, and we’ll be on our merry way. There’s no way anyone could have gotten that rig off this farm without you knowing. It sounds like a fucking jet taking off.”
“I wasn’t here twenty-four hours a day, I swear I don’t know!”
Richard smiled his deviant wolf grin, went to work on the other foot, soon burned that to a bloody, seared mess, all the while the guy screaming bloody fucking murder.
By now the first flare was all used up. Richard, John, and Sean walked off to confer.
“I think if he knew he’d’ve told,” said Sean.
“So do I,” John agreed.
“Yeah, I’m beginning to think so too,” Richard said, watching the guy crying like a baby. “Maybe he really don’t know,” Richard said.
But something, a sixth sense, told him the guy did know. Richard walked back to the car, retrieved the second flare, and went back to the distraught farm owner.
“Why,” Richard asked, “are you causing yourself to suffer like this? Tell us. We’ll drop you off at the hospital and it’ll all be over and done—”
“But I don’t knowww!” he pleaded.
Richard lit the second flare. “Okay, here goes, now I’m through playing fuckin’ games here. No more games. You tell us where our fucking load is or I’m burning your balls off.” He brought the white-hot flare to the guy’s crotch.
“Jesus Mary mother of God, I don’t know!” he wailed, his eyes popping out of his head, cartoonlike.
With that Richard calmly pushed the flame up against his crotch. The intense flame quickly burned through the fabric, and Richard held the searing heat to the man’s suddenly exposed testicles. He screamed and wailed, begging, promising, swearing he didn’t know. When the man’s balls were burned to a shriveled knob of flesh, Richard took away the flare. The guy was so distraught now he could hardly talk.
Richard, a bona fide sadistic psychopath, felt no sympathy for the guy. John and Sean were slightly appalled. It was hard not to be. The man was a sorry sight.
“Where’s our load, my friend?” Richard asked. “This is just the beginning.”
“I…I…I…don’t know,” he managed to cry.
“Okay, here goes your dick,” Richard said. “I’m going to burn your fucking cock off.” He brought the flare to him—
“Don’t! I’ll tell you! I’ll tell you!”
“Where is it?” Richard asked, really pissed now.
“On a farm down the road. My friend Sammy has it.”
“Sammy has it,” Richard said. “You fuckin’ moron. Why didn’t you tell us in the first place and avoid all this?”
“Because I thought…I thought I could fool you,” the farm owner gasped, as if he’d been running full out.
“Does it look like you fooled us?” Richard asked.
“No.”
“You could have avoided all this pain.”
“I didn’t want to do it. My girl needed an abortion. I was
“You think money is worth your balls…. My friend, you don’t have any balls anymore.”
“I knooow,” he wailed.
“Idiot,” Richard said, “fuckin’ idiot!”
Richard sent John and Sean to the farm while he stayed with Burned Balls.
Sammy came walking out of the door of the farmhouse when they pulled up.
“You got our truck?” Sean said.
“What truck?” came the reply.
“Here we go again,” John said.
“Jon Atkins says you got our truck.”
“Jon said that? I don’t have any truck,” said Sammy. He was a short burly guy with a big round head. There were food crumbs in his beard. Flies buzzed around his huge head. If you looked up “white trash” in the dictionary, you might very well see a picture of this individual. Sean called Richard and told him what Sammy had said.
“Put some hurt on him,” Richard suggested. They whipped out their guns and began to pistol-whip Sammy. He immediately gave it all up, said the truck was behind a stand of trees out back, took them there, and lo and behold, they finally found their truck.
Back at Burned Balls’ farm, Richard decided both of these guys had to die. He figured it would be just a
