Storymania - A Job Well Done by Kimball

A Job Well Done
Kimball

     Jared always believed that if you had a job you loved you would never work a day in you life. Jared had a job he loved. It required him to be meticulously careful and took weeks of planning and it paid very well. But Jared didn’t care about the money. He was passionate about his job.

     Not many people would have liked Jared’s job, but it gave him freedom and allowed him to express his creativity. Jared killed people for a living. It wasn’t the killing he enjoyed; it was the breaking of the mind to achieve an inner peace. He loved nothing more than to slowly break someone over a person over a period of days, or even weeks. He liked being hands on. He never did the impersonal picking someone off with a rifle from 100 yards. He liked getting to know his victims first. He liked knowing he was setting them free. Only through pain could the soul be true. Pain was the truest of feelings. You didn’t always know when you were in love, but you knew when you were hurting.

     Jared smiled at the young woman dressed in a blue knee length skirt and a white button up blouse. She was bound by duct tape to a chair in front of him. Her name was Amber and she was 28 years old, lived alone, had two old brothers that lived up state, and was a secretary for some big law firm in the city. Oh and she had recently divorced a man who had thought she had gotten too much out of the divorce considering the marriage had only lasted two years. Jared preferred to stay out of his clients business. He didn’t care why they wanted someone dead, as long as they wanted someone dead, but this guy felt like sharing his life story. He went on and on about how she shouldn’t have gotten the house, or the kid, or the car. It got to the point where Jared had just told him to shut up, which the man did.

     “Michelle,” the young woman sobbed.

     Michelle was the woman’s baby that was now propped up against the wall, smiling a bloody double smile from the jagged slice in her neck. Jared hadn’t enjoyed killing the baby; he had just done it because it would hurt the woman. And it had. Her eyes no longer looked like the eyes of a wild animal, they were the eyes of a caged dog that had been beaten down and no longer wanted up. Oh but there was worse to come.

     Jared left the young woman tied to the chair, still crying to her now deaf child, and went outside to his car. Amber’s house was located on 35 acres of land and the nearest inhabitants were a field of cattle half a mile away. No one would hear her screams. No one but him that is.

     Jared popped the trunk to his black mustang and removed several items and placed them in a sack and headed back towards the front door. As he strolled down the crushed gravel driveway he ran his fingers along the elegant body of Amber’s cobalt blue Mercedes. His hands were hot with excitement and the cool steel felt wonderful on his fingertips.

     He opened the door and found Amber struggling with her restraints. In fact she had almost managed to get one hand free.

     “Now now, that’s not a very nice thing to be doing. Were you trying to escape on me? But I’m here to help set you free. I’m here to help you reach nirvana,” Jared said calmly as he wrapped more duct tape around her wrists and ankles. He left her mouth uncovered. The screams would bless his dreams later.

     He stroked her hair softly, the blonde strands standing out harshly against his tanned skin. He traced his fingertips down the side of her face and she jerked her head aside quickly.

     “Don’t worry. You’ll soon learn to love my caress,” he told her as he removed a small pair of needle nose pliers from his sack. Her eyes watched the pliers intensely; follow the gleaming metal tool as it went from Jared’s right hand and into his left. Fresh tears began to stream down her face and she began begging him to let her go, how she’d give him anything he wanted. How he could have sex with her all he wanted if she would just please oh please let her go.

     “What I’m gonna get from you is so much better than sex. You’re beautiful now, but when I’m through with you, you will be breathtaking,” Jared said as he got to work.

     He grasped her left hand in his right and pressed it fiercely against the chair arm. Using the pliers in his left hand he grabbed the tip of her neatly manicured pinky finger and gave a hard yank. The nail left with a fleshy rip that could still be heard over Amber’s scream. Within five minutes he had removed all the nails on her right hand, cherishing every drop of blood that oozed out of her exposed flesh. Amber’s screams had subsided after the third nail had its fleshy roots torn out. She just sat and sobbed, tears and blood pouring from her body.

     “Are you scared yet?” Jared asked the bound woman. “No, not yet you aren’t. You still think there is hope for you. There is no hope left. I am your salvation. I will bring you peace. You don’t know the true meaning of pain, but you will. When I’m through with you, you’ll be on very personal terms with pain.”

     Amber struggled briefly and weakly against her restraints, but they held tight this time. Jared plunged into the darkness of his sack of tools, and after a brief feel around, extracted a pair of pruning shears. Common household items made up a large part of Jared’s professional paraphernalia. He undid the safety and opened and closed the shears a couple times. Smooth as silk. He grabbed her right hand and extended her pinky finger from the ball of a fist that she had made. She struggled but Jared was stronger than her. He placed the open shear blades on either side of the last knuckle on the pinkie and squeezed tight. The joint left Amber’s hand with a beautiful pop and landed a few feet away on the plush carpet. Amber didn’t scream this time, she wailed. Even though there was no one around for miles, Jared became nervous. He stopped from his finger exorcism and picked up the roll of duck tape and began rolling a strand around Amber’s head until she could utter no more that muffled whimpers.

     With out having to worry about being heard, Jared went bag to pruning off fingers at various joints. Some fingers had lost only the tips, while some were no more than nubs. Jared was beginning to quite enjoy himself, but he made sure to remain professional. He couldn’t let himself get lost in her rebirth. He had to be finished today.

     Once he was done with his hand sculpting, Jared took out a tiny scalpel from his shirt pocket. He kept this razor honed to a perfect sharpness. Over the next half hour he sliced thin cuts into her exposed flesh, leaving her body covered in hundreds of what were effectively paper cuts. Blood oozed from ever piece of revealed skin, and down her face ran years ran, washing away the blood and creating a multitude of rivers down her cheeks. When Jared was done, he wiped the blade of the scalpel and put it back in its protective case.

     Walking in to the kitchen, Jared searched for a special item. While this item was not necessary it was very helpful. And fun too. He didn’t find any in the cupboards or the fruit bowl that sat on the kitchen table. Searching in the fridge, he found something that would do the job, a bottle of all natural lemon juice. He picked it up and shook it briefly. Sounded pretty full. Good he’d need plenty of it. Whistling “Hey Jude” as he walked back into the living room where the helpless Amber waited, Jared glanced at his watch. 12:30 already. My how time flew by when you were enjoying yourself. A rumble in his stomach set his mind back to its task. Once he was done with this step to the path of nirvana, he’d grab a bite to eat.

     He unscrewed the cap off the green bottle and tossed it over his shoulder. There wouldn’t be any left to keep in once he was finished.

     “Amber?” he asked softly, “This will sting a little, but cherish the pain. The pain is real. It is the realest thing you will ever feel.” And with that he began pouring the lemon juice over her cut body. The response was immediate. Amber had appeared to be nearly unconscious but as soon as the first drop of juice struck her body, she was writhing in pain. While she was tethered to the chair quite securely, the chair was secured to nothing. Both her and it fell over backwards. A bit more writhing and it ended up on its side where it came to a rest. Her body still jerked as the juiced leaked into her cuts, but there was nowhere else for the chair to go. So Jared continued pouring. Once the bottle was empty, he threw it into one of the corners and went back into the kitchen to see what there was for him to eat.

     The pantry contained piles upon piles of instant noodles, several cans of baked beans (Jared couldn’t remember being in a house that didn’t have at least 5 cans of the stuff lying around) and several other unappealing or overly complicated items. The fridge wasn’t much better. Sliced ham, sliced turkey, sliced chicken, tomatoes, lettuce, bell peppers, cheese. Enough for a sandwich at least. Jared made himself a tomato, cheese and lettuce sandwich (he thought slaughtering an animal for meat was barbaric, and couldn’t bear to eat meat) and sat down at the kitchen table to eat his fairly plain lunch while listening to Amber weep in the other room. Nothing helps an appetite more than a morning of hard work. There was still plenty of work left though. She wasn’t anywhere near being pure.

     Jared finished eating at about 1 and resumed where he left off. The stinging of the lemon juice had peaked already and was beginning to subside. A new level of pain was on the way though. After sitting Amber and the chair back up, Jared removed a ball peen hammer from his bag and slipped off Amber’s left shoe. No response from her. Her eyes were glazed over and she didn’t seem to notice him. He picked up the hammer, and hefted it a few times. Its weight felt perfect in his hand. It was his favorite implement, and it usually caused the best results.

     He slammed the flat end of the hammer against Amber’s big toe, causing a starburst of blood and flesh to fly across the carpet. Ambers’ eyes flew open and her muffled sobs increased in volume. The pain was setting her free. The next few minutes were spent shattering key areas of the body. The heels, ankles, shins, knees, wrists, elbows, collar bones all splintered under the steel head of the hammer. He never struck her head however. She needed to remain conscious to be set free.

     After the hammer’s work was done, Jared removed the scalpel from his shirt pocket again. Up until now it had all been procedure. But she was close now. Now he could get creative. He ran the blade of the scalpel down her nose, slicing through cartilage and flesh with ease. He removed an ear, then an eye lid. He ripped off the duct tape with a savage tug, but she didn’t react to the strands of hair being ripped from her scalp. She probably didn’t even feel it. After throwing the ball of duct tape and hair across the room, Jared cut off Amber’s top lip. The blade didn’t even affect Amber anymore. She had reached her pain apex. She was free. Jared took a brief moment to admire his work before picking up the hammer and smashing it full force into Amber’s forehead. Her head caved in and blood oozed from her forehead and her remaining ear. Jared felt for a pulse, found a weak one and felt it ebb away against his fingertips. His work was done. He picked up his tools and gave them a quick wash in the kitchen sink and then placed them back in his sack.

     Jared left the cooling body on the chair, grabbed his sack and went back out to his car. He put his sack in the trunk and removed two five gallon gas cans and a smaller half gallon can and carried them inside. Police would suspect foul play, but would never be able to pin it on him. If they got to her ex, he wouldn’t be able to give them anything either. Jared always made sure not to meet his clients in person and always arranged details from randomly picked public phones. He poured half of one of the five gallon cans in the living room and spread the rest around the various rooms of the house. There would be nothing left when he was done. Jared knew he had to protect his hobby. Others just didn’t see it the same way as him.

     The remaining five gallon gas can was left under Amber’s chair. With the half gallon can, Jared poured a trail that led out the front door and about 50 yards down the driveway to where his car was parked. He took a pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket and removed a battered cigarette from it. He lit it with a match removed from a small booklet that he took from his shirt pocket and puffed it a couple times. He then placed the cigarette inside the matchbook and placed it on the end of the gasoline trail. His simple fuse would give him a few minutes to get away before the house went up.

     He ran through a quick checklist to make sure he hadn’t missed anything before getting into his car and driving off. About half a mile down the secluded country mile he felt more than heard a far off WHOOP! Another day, another job well done.