Stabbed
At long last I found this little thread again, and this post. Partial inspiration for this piece, the other half being @whumpers-monthly challenge. Javontae was last seen here.
To get to the stabbing part of the prompt, skip to past the line break. The first part includes throat gore and discussions of death. Second part includes stabbing, hand whump and gore, and mouth whump. The whumpee in the second part is mentioned to have previously drugged a 20 year old woman, but she was safe other than that. There is a comment that could be read as victim blaming. There are a few kisses at the end. Please ask to tag.
“Let’s say all you had on hand was… some wires-”
“Like from a lamp?” Javontae asked.
“Yes, exactly, but lemme finish,” the caller returned, excitedly scribbling down her notes. “So let’s say you’ve got… a lamp. A pair of scissors. And… let’s shake it up and say you gotta keep them in the house, so no transport.”
“Be still my beating heart,” Javontae joked. Already, he could remember all the previous ‘hypotheticals’ this caller had given him. Admittedly the scenario with the water hose and leaving them outside to the elements had been inspired in its simplicity. Not a day went by that he didn’t think about how literally freezing cold that poor bastard must have been. “Becca, am I to assume I can’t just slit the guy’s carotid and be done with it?”
“What makes you say it’s a guy?” Becky asked, just a tad too defensive.
“Because you have a type. Tall, lanky, scruffy hair, cat loving, crippling self doubt…”
“Okay okay! No need to call me out, Tae, jeez.”
Javontae snickered and gestured vaguely for her to continue before remembering the limitations of a phone call. “So can I slit the guy’s throat or not?”
She made a noise of contemplation, which was unusual enough that Javontae sat up a little straighter in his chair.
“Oh? Look at you, branching out.”
“I know, I know. I’m not one for just ending things, puts a bad taste in my mouth but… Yeah, I think I might try to lean into a darker twist this time. How would that work, would it be like in movies where they spray everywhere?”
“Honey, please. I am a professional.” He let out a put upon, exaggerated sigh and checked his nails like he’d seen Fran do a million times before. To be honest, it had quite the dismissive air to it and he found he enjoyed it.
“So. Throat cutting,” Becky prompted.
“‘So throat cutting’ indeed. Hollywood, as always, gets itself all mixed up. It’s not quick and clean. It’s like the CPR of death tropes, nothing clean, pretty or reliable here. It’s not a sure thing unless you’re careful to get that carotid or jugular. You know, there was one fellow who’d managed just to mangle the trachea pretty good instead. Rendered him completely mute.”
Becky gasped and launched herself to her feet. “Wait! Nope, nope. No,” she chuckled, excitedly clicking her pen as she paced. “Nope. I’m not going to go with the death. That’s the easy way out. That’s the hack’s job, that’s for people without imagination! No, taking his voice is much better symbolically and brings an end to his identity and isolates him even further. Oh you are a lifesaver!”
Javontae laughed. “Quite literally.”
“Oh, yeah, my little pet project lives to see another day, apparently. Even if he does get out of this little pickle, he’ll never forget it or be able to get back to normal.” She let out a contented sigh. “I do love when it’s an accidental hero’s journey.”
Javontae hummed his agreement. “Anything else I can help you with, Bex?”
“Yeah, actually- should I just aim not to slice through those arteries or maybe I should stab him in the throat like…?” In his mind’s eye, he could imagine her taking her pen and pantomiming stabbing herself in the throat. The choking noise really sold it.
“You’re gonna want something pretty sharp for the throat, so I dunno if the scissors bit will work well there.”
“Damn.”
“Or… you could use the wire and break some of the cartilage in his trach, then stab his thigh to check if he can still scream.”
“Yes! That’s perfect!”
At her victorious shout, Javontae had to pull the phone away briefly to check if his hearing was still intact. “Jesus Mary and Joseph, Becky, I’m happy to help but damn.”
“Sorry, sorry, it’s just all coming together so well. Crush the trachea, damage the vocal cords, check it with scissors to the thigh… I couldn’t have done better myself.”
“Don’t sell yourself too short.”
“I gotta get this out of my system before I lose the drive. You’ve been great! Thanks again, Tae, and say hi to the wife and kids for me!”
“Of course, of course. Have fun, Becky.”
The line went dead with another rushed thank you and goodbye, and Javontae leaned back in his chair, basking in the glow of a job well done. And the mental images were pretty nice, too, if he said so himself.
–––
He had free time after his shift ended because his mother-in-law had agreed to take the kids for the weekend. That gave him about three hours and two days to follow up on a lead he’d found some months back and idly kept track of in his spare time, and that had barely taken but a minute.
Becky’s proposal had sat in the back of his mind, far more appealing than the rest of the banal calls he had to sit through. There were only so many ways to warn newbies about the basics of ‘don’t play with guns unless you want to kill someone’ without losing one’s mind, after all.
But, on the plus side, his precious cargo sat bound in the backseat, nestled between the toddler booster seat and the car seat, bound and gagged with blood drying in a thin stream down the side of his face and sticking the blindfold to his skin. Periodically Javontae glanced back, the practiced motion of a parent with excitable and bellicose children in the back, and noted whenever his captive roused briefly along the drive.
It was good that the man had woken up slightly, Javontae still hadn’t heard the last of it from Milli after he accidentally cracked open a man’s skull with a bottle, believing that the glass would shatter, and ruined their evening plans. He loved his wife dearly, but man could she bring up the past.
Humming, Javontae turned up the radio as his passenger squirmed and moaned into the gag. The rope kept the man’s knees, wrists and elbows tightly pressed together, and the seatbelt held him upright. With the child safety locks in place, if by some miracle Mr. Alexander Divirgilio did manage to slip his bonds, he wouldn’t be able to go far. The only real issue was getting him out of the car and into the garage, because Millie had already pulled in, but all he had to do was snag her keys from the rack and do a little switch, Divirgilio stuck helpless even as he began to thrash in the silent car.
“You know, you’re ridiculously easy to track,” Javontae said as he dragged Divirgilio out of the car, tossing him to the floor. Without his hands to catch him, or any real knowledge of where his body was in the blackness of the blindfold, the man hit the concrete with a solid crack of a snapped wrist and secondary headwound.
“I’d take off that blindfold, but I think you’d like to come out of here alive, right, Divirgilio?”
Divirgilio screamed something into the gag. Rolling his eyes, Javontae left the man there and then moved to set up the chair. What had Becky said, cords like from a lamp, and scissors. Well, Javontae wasn’t any sort of purist by any metric, and this was more for him and his wife, not to be truthful.
An extension cord and a couple lengths of chain did well. While he was messing with the restraints, locking Divirgilio’s arms to the arms of the chair, Millie walked in with a glass of wine and a curious look on her face.
“Now,” she began, taking a sip and taking in the sight of her man at work. “Here I was ready to drag you from whatever nonsensical piece of scrap you’d brought in and give you a proper welcome. Never did I think you’d brought me home a gift.”
“Hey honey!” Javontae tossed a grin over his shoulder at her, then returned to tie a cord around Divirgilio’s neck and leashing it to the spine of the chair. “I was hoping to have this all ready for you.”
Setting down her glass, Millie approached him, hands drifting along his shoulders, layering kisses on his neck and jaw as he finished the knot.
As they both stepped back to admire the way Divirgilio was trussed up - legs and arms and back all bound to the same parts of the chair’s anatomy, rusted out chains around his ankles and old electric-taped cords winding around his wrists and neck. “I think it’s perfect. You’re too good to me.”
They shared another kiss, then Javontae asked, “Do we have a pair of scissors lying around?”
Divirgilio groaned again, a reedy, desperate sound. Millie moved over toward the junk drawer on Javontae’s work bench. “Blunt or sharp? Ohhh, baby, look!” She brandished the exacto-knife she’d unearthed, and the letter opener.
“Either will work,” Javontae answered, giddy at her excitement, then turned back to Divirgilio. “Alrighty. This is what we’ll do. I’m going to remove that gag, you can scream if the pain gets too much, but I won’t remove that blindfold. You’re not gonna go running to anyone after, considering how few allies you have left after that messy divorce.”
Divirgilio stiffened and tugged against the chair, only succeeding in tightening the noose around his neck and choking himself.
“Yes, yes, I know all about the affair… and the baby… and the lack of child support.” Removing the gag now, he continued, “And the woman you drugged up.”
“We were in a bar!” Divirgilio snarled. “She dropped the charges!”
“That’s not an exoneration of guilt and you damn well know it.”
“Nothing happened to the bitch. The charges were dropped. So she got a little too tipsy but she got home safe–”
“Don’t make me cut out your disgusting tongue.”
“Fuck. Fuck, man, just let me go.”
“No,” Millie purred, coming up behind Divirgilio to rest the exacto knife against the soft flesh under his chin, and holding out the scissors to her husband with the other. “No, that young woman got home safe because you were distracted and the security helped her home. There’s no bartender to pour you an angel shot here.”
A sickly sheen of sweat dotted Divirgilio’s brow and he began to hyperventilate. “Shit, shit, fucking shit.”
“Nicely put,” Javontae said, then took the scissors from Millie and turned them in his hand so he could slam the blades into Divirgilio’s thigh.
On cue, the man let out a blood curdling scream, jerking in place and nicking his lower jaw as Millie kept her grip steady, holding his head in place. Blood gushed up in the hole after Javontae managed to tug it free of muscle, especially as he wiggled it free.
“Yep, you sure are a screamer.”
“You could have given me a little warning, hun, this bitch nearly busted my hearing.” Nails trailing along Divirgilio’s jaw, thumb against the cartilaginous part of his throat, she moved in where Javontae had just stood a moment ago. She pressed the edge of the knife into Divirgilio’s mouth, tugging his lip aside with the very threat of cold metal slicing through flesh.
“Beg for me, Alex, beg like I’m about to flay open your face.”
He hesitated, the motion of speaking bringing his lips closer to being sliced open, but Millie jerked the blade back, cutting a notch in the side of his mouth.
“Beg, bitch.”
Sobbing, tears and blood intermingling and dripping down his face, he whimpered, “Please, God, please don’t hurt me. Don’t kill me. God, let me go.”
“I’m not really hearing the desperation. Are you, baby?”
“Nope.” Javontae punctuated his observation by slamming the scissors into the palm of Divirgilio’s hand. If the sound of crunching bone was any indication, he’d hit a bone or two. Maybe. “Are these the tarsal bones or metatarsals?” he wondered aloud, Divirgilio’s choked cries interspersed between his words. As if it wasn’t a fucking delight and a thrill, he twisted the scissors around, mangling the tendons and releasing more blood.
“I think you need to go back to anatomy and physiology. Those are the metacarpals, honey.”
“Are you sure?” Uncaring of Divirgilio’s screams, he continued to twist up the scissors until they remained upright, embedded either in wood or muscle, he couldn’t bother to tell which. “Do you still have that letter opener?”
“I do. Here you go.” Instead of handing it to her husband, Millie slammed the metal piece into Divirgilio’s leg, next to the other gushing hole. Patting the man’s cheek, hand coated now in blood and tears, she backed up and grabbed a towel to wipe the sprayed and smeared blood on her face and hands.
“I should’ve warned you to wear something old and ratty. Sorry about that.” Javontae grabbed Divirgilio by the jaw and angled his head up. If it weren’t for the blindfold, he’d be staring up at the ceiling, at the recessed lighting. In one swift motion, Javontae sunk the letter opener between Divirgilio’s ribs and was rewarded by a choked, wet gush of blood. Trembling, too pale and weak to do much more than cry, Divirgilio sagged in the chair and bled.
Pulling her husband into a hug, angling them both so his arms were around her waist, Millie sighed contently and they watched Divirgilio’s struggles lapse into stillness.
“We should clean up,” Millie said, the reluctance in her voice the same as someone saying they have to leave a party to be a responsible adult in the early morning. “I’ll drag him to a clinic if you’ll clean up the blood?”
Javontae groaned good naturedly. “You know I hate dealing with bleach. But, for you, my loving wife, anything.”
“There’s my loving husband.” With a final peck on the cheek, the couple detached and detangled and set about their respective chores.