Brain Bits To Go

Behold What You Have Wrought

“Tell us where you’ve been Clairissa.” The man was tall, in his mid-thirties and in her very objective opinion reasonably attractive.

“I haven’t been anywhere.” She’d been playing this call and response game with the tall man and his heavyset partner for about four hours and a bit. Call it four hours-twenty she figured. Within ten minutes, they were going to be swapped out for fresh players.

The heavyset one started to speak but Clairissa cut him off. “I hope you guys have a good rest. You’ve been working really hard on this.” Agent Green flashed a brief glare before resuming his stone-faced look. The tall one was named Harper. 

No first names had been offered by them or asked by Clairissa. She could only address them by their last names, while they could (and did) address her by her first name. It was power-communication 101 and she was happy to play along with it.

She was well aware that Green hadn’t really been irritated by her. It was part of his ongoing role as the “bad” cop to tall and cute’s “good” cop. There were probably people out there who were naïve enough to buy it. They probably had to at least give it a shot before moving on to more advanced approaches. That’s when the game would get interesting. That’s when the stakes went up and she would finally be able to tell them where she had been.

“You’ve been gone twenty-three years. What have you been doing? Who do you work for? Where have you been living?”

“I wasn’t gone anywhere. What I’ve been doing is no business of yours. I don’t work for anyone you know. I’ve been living here the whole time.”

As if on cue, the door opened and two new interrogators entered. Clairissa was delighted to see that one of them was female. She silently bet herself the woman would be the bad cop.

Not speaking, the woman moved around the table Clairissa was shackled to, grabbed her by the back of the head and smacked her face into the tabletop. The agent leaned her weight onto the prisoner’s head.

“This is just to help you understand that we are done fucking around with you.” She shifted her weight and ground her victim’s jaw into the edge of the table. “You will answer our questions. Easy or hard, I don’t care, but you will answer.”

The agent released the pressure and Clairissa sat up slowly and worked her jaw for a second. She looked at the second agent who had stood impassively through all of this.

“I’m guessing you’re “worse cop”.

For answer, the second agent took his pistol out of its holster and laid it on the table with the muzzle pointed ostentatiously at her.

“Alright.”, she said shifting her wrists in their manacles. “The hard way it is. Bring it on guys, let’s see what you’ve got.”

Two hours later, a battered and bruised Clairissa smiled sweetly at the sweaty, disheveled agents who had been alternately beating her and shouting questions at her.

“Frankly, the two of you are really disappointing. I was expecting so much more. I guess it’s just hard to get good help these days.”

The female agent gave a low growl and reached for her.

“Your boss is coming and they will be pissed if you kill me before getting the answers they want.”

The door of the room opened again and a neatly dressed, older man entered. He wore a dark grey sport coat over a black turtleneck sweater, light grey slacks and black loafers. The agents stepped back around the table and away from Clairissa. She offered another smile from her ruined mouth. “Good puppies. Go to your master and try not to pee on the floor!” She gave a short laugh despite the pain of her broken teeth.

The male agent, who had taken great pleasure in the pain he had cause her started to turn back but the newcomer made a small gesture with his hand. “Pass me the other chair please.” The thug did as he had been bidden.

She smiled wider. “Tell your mean toddler not to forget his pacifier. Clearly, he is going to want to suck on something later.”

The male agent picked up their weapon and put it away. “You should really get that ‘fight bite’ on your hand checked, you wouldn’t want it getting infected.” Clairissa laughed again.

The man sitting across from her gestured again and the two weary and frustrated agents left the room.

“Who are you?” he asked reasonably.

“Clearly not whoever the fuck you think I used to be. That should be pretty clear by now.”

“I see that, but it still doesn’t answer my question, and as agent Grant said, you will answer.”

“The singer may have changed, but the song remains the same.”

“My name is Wahler.”, he said taking a flat, metal case from the inside pocket of the blazer and lighting a cigarette. “I don’t know what you are trying to accomplish here, but you will tell us that too.” He blew a plume of smoke at the ceiling. “In time you will tell us everything.”

“It’s nice that I’ve gone from cheap, rental thugs to junior management, but you’re gonna have to get someone juicier to come see me.” Clairissa turned to the side and spat a mouthful of blood on the floor. “I’m a class act honey and I don’t sing for just anyone.”

Now it was Wahler who smiled. “You will sing for me. I will play you like a fine instrument and you will make such beautiful music for me.”

Reaching inside the right breast of his jacket, he withdrew a flat leather case and unzipped it revealing several unpleasant looking steel tools.

She clapped her manacled hands like a child. “You brought me toys. This is going to be such fun! I like this game so much more than the others! They were so boring.” 

Clairissa made a pouty face. “I hate boring games!”

Ten minutes later, alarms screamed and EMS people rushed in to tend to Wahler. He had been tapping thin needles under Clarissa’s fingernails when he had inexplicably selected a long slender steel spike and performed an impromptu lobotomy on himself.

She could hear running and shouting outside the room. The door burst open and all four of the agents from earlier crowded into the room. She looked at the man who had so enjoyed beating her. “I see you still have your little gun, why don’t you make yourself useful?”

Raising his pistol, he quickly shot the other agents. “Now take a long hard suck on that substitute dick!”

The ceiling was coated with brain and bone fragments.

Clairissa pulled her wrists back against the restraints feeling her skin tear. She kept pulling and the skin slid from her hands like crumpled gloves. There was more running and shouting outside the room but above the hubbub she heard the one voice she had been waiting for this whole time.

She opened the door and stepped out. The short, slender woman with the neat, greying hair and the pale blue cardigan stopped short and stared.

“It’s been a long time since you started this project. So much pain. You and the others would stop at nothing to achieve your goals.” Clairissa took a step forward, but the other woman stood transfixed tears flowing from her eyes even as a trickle of blood ran from her nose.

“You and the others tortured us did horrific things to us. One by one all of them died. But I didn’t. I slipped into the darkness and found a new teacher, a kindred spirit.” Another step closer and now the other woman trembled, and blood ran from her ears and the corners of her eyes.

“I’ve learned such glorious things, things that make what you’ve done to us, and all the others look like the nothings they are. True suffering makes true power. You’ve no idea at all what I know!” The other woman shook violently. Her hands coming up to claw at her face.

“Don’t be like that.”, chided Clarissa as to an unruly child. “Won’t you come to me? Won’t your embrace your creation, the thing you’ve been seeking all these years? Won’t you embrace your daughter?” 

She laughed as her mother clawed wildly at her own face and collapsed bleeding to the floor her blood and sanity draining away together.

As she headed up the stairs to the world above, she thought this was going to be just as much fun as her personal demons had promised.

---

The next one will be a little lighter, I promise.

Cheers,