Masochist
( Eng/Ital ) (Russ)
I should've run faster.
Branches slapped against my face as my lungs screamed in pain in my chest. My boot caught on a root again, but I could keep myself upright this time. I didn't have the luxury of falling anymore. Not with them on my tail like hounds on the scent of blood. Not after I had ripped from the wrong damn place.
And not when the fucking river had swallowed half of what I stole. Half of what I think would be a part of my right to live.
That bag — my one chance, my one brilliant fuck-you to a world that never gave a damn about me — had already lost half its weight. I'd watched the medal--or what it seemed to looked like-- slip through my fingers like silver guilt and sank into the waters depth without a sound. It was probably worth more than my life, and it was gone.
"Vaffanculo," I panted, wiping at the blood that was running from my nose.
The voices behind me kept bawling—thick, staccato, furious. Clearly, they were fucking Russians. I couldn't make out one goddamn word, but I didn't require a translator in order to recognize the danger lurking within each syllable. One of them was laughing, and that was worse to me than the gunfire that echoed through the trees.
I didn't know whose I'd ripped off. It was just some plain warehouse that was outside the house of some rich prick. It did have guards, but then half the buildings in this town did.
I opened the lock and slipped in, taking what I could carry and making a swift exit. It was to be simple and quick.
It never was.
Until a motherfucker sets his eyes on mine the moment a branch made a noise beneath my foot. Fucking blind.
I emerged from the woods and entered a clearing, and there was the sudden flash through the darkness of headlights — damn. There were already a number of trucks encircling the clearing, their engines growling in the stillness of the night, and the shadows that lingered in the dark recesses of the woods crept closer, taking refuge behind the folds of my coat.
I ran straight away and flipped on the other side automatically, body past its limits, chest heaving on every pump I take for my own two legs, knees soon tiring. I fell, my legs collapsing the moment they hit the softest cushion-like spot of ground, but I caught myself immediately, and ran again. And again.
There was yelling to my right. Another to my left. I was fucking surrounded.
I took the most narrow path, dodging branches, my heart just keeps pounding so hard against my eardrums that I could hardly hear myself think. I didn't know where I was. Just that I know I had to keep going.
My foot landed on something slippery—mud, I suppose. I slipped and fell quite heavily on my side, grunting as the pain ran through me from the shock to my hip. The bag fell from my fingers, rolling into the bushes next to me, where the blackness had swallowed the space.
"Shit!" I said, quickly moving my body and hands towards it.
As a large boot came crashing down on my wrist, preventing me from grasping the strap, my breath was caught in my throat.
They found me.
The man above me bark, his eyes twitching, "Sneaky little mudak". I snarled in his face and roll until my back felt the mud beneath my jacket and tried to push his iron body away as his hands hovered to grab me, barely seeing through the blur of panic and fury, throat dry from yelling, "Cazzo!! Let go of me!!"
He yanked me up from the ground by my jacket collar and slammed my face against a tree. Hard. Fearing of what I might feel is sweat turns to blood sliding down my face. I guess a non-living thing can turn so harmful. Another man appeared, laughing, and drove a punch into my stomach when the man that get ahold of me turned me to face him.
I folded like paper.
They didn't let up. Or perhaps time didn't. Arms wrapped around me from the back, pinning me against the tree. Another blow. And another. A punch into my leg, blood trickling the same way my own tears did. The world whirled in my line of sight. I fought to kick out, punch someone's jaw, and got slapped across the face so hard I could taste metallic blood. Yummy.
I shouted every fuck you that I could. My smile wide as I encouraged them to continue on and on and on. I called them pigs, monsters, bastards, bitches — I did not care anymore. I wished that they could see. For already they appeared like I called them.
They didn't.
But they definitely knew what their next step would be.
I hope I knew.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
The warehouse seemed to have been built to hold the dead.
It creaked with oil and age. The air reeked of rusting metal and gasoline-drenched wood. They pulled me through a loading dock and down to the concrete underworld of the building. I struggled.
I did.
But I was already half gone—bruised, bleeding, and dizzy. It was nearly like a feeling that one would get just before dying.
They hung me aloft in chains, like a block of meat. Real chains, like a nightmare. When they lifted me off the floor, my wrists howled in agony — just enough for my toes to brush the floor. My shoulders hunched up, and a burning pain shot through, and tremors began to take hold of my body.
There was nothing but shadows around me. Shadows and faces I did not understand or hardly see the features of. They surrounded me like wolves, conversing with one another in that stiff, foreign tongue — barking and laughing and waiting.
I breathed hard through my nose, just for lungs that coils from the tightness of not enough oxygen. I gritted my teeth and stared at the floor. If I showed pain, they'd give me more. If I cried, they'd enjoy it. If I struggle, they'll end it. Killed.
I wouldn't give them shit. I grin.
One of them stepped closer, his shoes thumping the floor with ease, deliberate — a tall, broad--shouldered man, and a scar running down the side of his face. He didn't say a word. And let the silence spoke. Just raised his hand and slap me at the back of it, hard enough to snap my head sideways. Another showcase of blood dancing in my brain. Chuckling, I turn my face and look up at him, my eyes widening.
And then came the baton, snatching my dear breath away. Oh, motherf—
The first struck my ribs at the precise spot that have been itching to escape. The second, my thigh to the immediate left of my dick. I breathed in sharply at the sensation. A third — along my stomach. My entire body jerked back violently with the force of it, the chain above creaking.
They began to laugh. Dark and sounds like from the depths of hell.
I wanted to spit on them, to fuck them, but my mouth was parched. Too tired.
Another man stepped forward, this one with a crowbar clutched in his left hand. A unique brand of doing things up. His black empty eyes were colder than the others that hung in the walls, they were quiet now, waiting for me to bleed. Because that's what I saw. No grin. Only brutality. I glance up and slowly locked eyes with his, the air in here gets heavy, causing me to gasp hard, defiant even when I was trembling. Perhaps 'cause of the cold.
He looks over his shoulder at the others, "Leave us alone". A man opens his mouth, as though he would like to say something to him, but one glance had shut him up, so he keeps quiet. And they moved back. Like that.
He turned to me and walked even closer; his head raise high. Then he raised the crowbar.
Pain is a funny thing. It teaches you how loud silence can be. My brain stopped forming some coherent thoughts the moment minutes pass so slow it felt like a lifetime. And all I could hear was my blood running in my ears, the dull wet thud of steel against flesh, and my own voice screaming before I could stop it. Tears pricked my eyelids. It hurts. Everything is. But my body won't fucking listen. It follows the metal when it withdraws and stills when it connects again.
I didn't realize how long it lasted. My jaw was clenched so hard my teeth hurt. The instant I lost control is a haze — all I know is the cold, humiliating wetness spreading between my shaking legs. Then one of them laughed when they figured it out.
My arms were numb, and I dropped my head forward. I must have fainted, because they threw water from a bucket over me and brought me around. Alive. Dead. Alive. And dead.
He threatened me with a gun. I couldn't quite grasp what he was saying. But the expression on his face conveyed the feeling of farewell.
I did not flinch. My body would not. I was tired. I wanted it to be over. I closed my eyes and mouthed, "Basta. Just fucking do it."
And then—
Bang.
A scream. Not mine.
I blinked in shock. The gunman was on the ground, holding his hand—or what was left of it. There was blood splattered all over the floor, as if someone had spilled a glass of wine.
Silence dominated the room.
And then the slow, heavy tread.
I shifted my head, hardly able to do it. My bruised body hung in the chains, shallow breathing, blood drying on my neck.
A person entered the warehouse.
He didn't say anything initially.
He didn't need to.
He strode as if he controlled gravity. As if the air moved around him. Tall, wide shoulders beneath a black overcoat. Hard eyes — pale, unreadable, cut out of some stone colder than this room.
He raised the gun again, but did not fire. His eyes wandered over the men. Then me.
I couldn't identify him. I didn't know him. But even amidst the blur of blood and agony, I knew this man was something worse.
The others moved aside.
He said one word — voice quiet, controlled, not like them.
"Enough."
And they obeyed.
No shouting. No argument.
Nothing but silence, as if the very air had heard.
I stared at him through swollen eyes, and a whisper crawled up my throat. "Chi cazzo sei tu?" He kept quiet. He just stared at me, as I was a piece of broken rubble on the ground—something he wasn't searching for, something that made him question whether he should save or destroy