John of Violence

“These are not your fingers.”

Silence. The soundproofed room was empty apart from a single chair, a small table, and the three men. John worked his shoulders, his neck cracking as he rolled his head from side to side.

“These aren’t your fingers,” Gerrity said again, “not any more. These fingers? These are my fingers now.”

The man in the chair whimpered. He was an evil little shit, Gerrity, but he was good with words. Knew how to get them frightened, and keep them there. Not pushing too far, where they lost control and stopped listening. You needed them to not quite believe it was happening, so that what happened next would really send them over the edge.

John wrinkled his nose as the pungent smell of urine reached his nostrils. The man in the chair had pissed himself in fear. John stepped backwards out of the path of the stream as it wound around the legs of the chair and found the shallow drain that led to the edge of the room. It was dark and smelled strong. They had been drinking since early afternoon, and their target had preferred spirits. John knew what that did to your piss; he knew the man was probably already feeling the sting down the inside of his thigh.

Gerrity spoke again, “Did I give you permission to piss, fucker?”

It was a rhetorical question, but the man in the chair still shook his head. From the set of his shoulders, John judged he was close to breaking. Gerrity had obviously come to the same conclusion, as he started moving around the seated man as he spoke. “I don’t suppose it matters much now anyways — I reckon maybe you might get used to pissing yourself; it’s going to be difficult to hold your pizzle without any fingers.”

He had reached the man’s right side, where a waist-high table stood. The seated man’s head snapped around at his final words, but Gerrity’s hand darted out fast as a snake and gripped the man’s right arm. He struggled, but his legs and other arm were tied to the chair and Gerrity’s grip was vice-strong; slowly the arm was forced down onto the table-top, palm down, fingers splayed.

“What are you doing?!” spluttered the target; his first words since they had roped and woken him.

“Payback,” snarled Gerrity. “Mr Jericho was not happy when he found out what you’d been helping yourself to, out there in your little corner of the world where you think we can’t see what’s going on.”

It was time. John closed his eyes. He could feel the tingling, starting in his fingertips and his toes and his balls. Warmth, cleansing and pure, seemed to course through him; he felt sweat form under his arms and trickle down his side. The fitted suit that he wore suddenly felt constricting and hot. He breathed in deeply through his nose, the acrid smell of piss now sweet and fresh.

Gerrity continued, “I like to think I’m a godly man. Do unto others and all that crap. I read my Bible. Do you know my favourite part?”

“No,” said the man in the chair.

“An eye for an eye,” said Gerrity. “And you know what you’ve been doing, don’t you?”

“No,” whispered the man in the chair.

“You’ve been biting the hand that feeds you, that’s what you’ve been doing,” said Gerrity.

John opened his eyes. The dimly lit, windowless room seemed brighter than daylight. Lights flashed behind his eyes and he let out a wordless snarl as he snatched the man’s hand from Gerrity’s grasp and brought it to his mouth. The man in the chair squealed once as his arm bent awkwardly, then his voice skirled upwards into an entirely different register as his brain registered what was about to happen.

John felt his teeth snap hard together as they met in the flesh between the man’s ring finger and little finger, and a heavy sovereign ring scraped across the side of his mouth. Some deeply buried part of his brain told him that his jaw would be hurting tomorrow, but it was not a voice he could have heard over the blood pumping in his ears or flowing from his mouth. He twisted the man’s arm, tearing a strip of skin and muscle away from the side of the hand before the man’s little finger separated from the rest. John spat the gristly mess onto the floor before biting down hard onto the man’s three middle fingers as he held them tightly together. He was dimly aware of Gerrity cackling in the background as he worked the fingers between his molars where he could exert the most force. The knuckles were the best place to break through; tendons separated as he pulled and twisted on the man’s arm. The three severed fingers joined their missing fellow on the floor.

Now the man in the chair found his voice. He let out a wordless scream, guttural and raw, which echoed around the stone walls of the room. Gerrity stepped in front of him, back-handed him across the face, hard. The man lapsed into gasping moans, his breath ragged, his chest pumping. One leg was jittering uncontrollably.

John dropped the hand; it dangled against the chair leg, a torn lump of flesh. Blood dripped continuously from the tip of the thumb, the sole reminder of what it had been only seconds before. John licked his lips once, then used his sleeve to wipe the gore from his mouth. The smell of the man’s blood filled his sinuses as it dripped down his throat; he coughed and spat red onto the floor, where it mingled with the blood dripping from the hand and the stream of piss still making its reluctant way towards the back wall of the small room.

The man’s whimpering had almost died out, although his leg still shook. It takes time to comprehend, John knew, to realise that this wasn’t all just some terrible dream. Gerrity nudged the destroyed hand with his foot, eliciting a squeal of pain. “Jesus,” he muttered, almost to himself. Then, more clearly: “You’ll live,” he said, “and next time you’re tempted to bite Mr Jericho’s hand, I think you’ll remember how badly that can work out for you. What do you think?”

John opened his mouth and let the lukewarm water sluice over his tongue and soften the pain in his raw lips. His jaw was starting to ache already on one side; by tomorrow morning it would really be hurting him. He ducked his head under the shower’s spray and leaned his forehead against the cool tiled wall. When he looked down, blood mingled with the water coming from his mouth. He turned around so he wouldn’t have to look at it.

Instead he looked at his hands, held them up before his face and turned them around as if they belonged to somebody else. He touched his finger and thumb together and marvelled at the sensation of friction, but it didn’t last. The warmth in his belly was fading now; in its place was a growing weight of sickness and sorrow. He had gone too far today, he knew that now. Mr Jericho would be annoyed, although not enough to send him away or give him a different role to play. John suspected that Jericho would actually rather enjoy spreading the news of his terrible retribution, complete with all the gory details.

He switched off the shower and reached for the stained towel hanging from the door handle. With the water off he could hear the music from upstairs once more, until a banging on the other side of the door told him that Gerrity was still waiting for him outside. He dressed quickly. Gerrity gave him a curious look as he opened the door, but he passed the smaller man without a glance as he headed for the stairs that led out of the basement.

Clubbers and staff alike seemed to know to avoid John and Gerrity as they moved through the crowded, deafening nightclub. All but the very drunk or overly drugged carefully stepped out of their path as they crossed the main dance floor, skirted the tables lining the side of the room, and started up the wide, curved stairs that led to the upper rooms. Half-way up, Gerrity stepped neatly to the side of a young couple lying nearly prone on the stairs. John glanced over and saw that the young man’s hand disappeared into the girl’s underwear; their mouths were locked together until Gerrity’s shoe thudded into the side of the young Romeo’s head. They both came up for air at that, but as the young man’s bleary eyes focused first on Gerrity and then on John standing behind him, he dropped the half-formed fists he had started to raise. Gerrity cackled as the couple made their unsteady way down the stairs, the girl’s voice already raised in complaint.

Jeremiasz flipped slowly through the photographs on the camera phone he held. Reaching the end, he paged back to the start and rotated the handset, squinting at the dark photo of his former associate’s ruined hand before tossing the phone back across his desk to Gerrity. The little man sat disinterestedly, head hanging forwards and legs splayed out in front of him, mouth working as he chewed on his seemingly unceasing chewing gum. Jeremiasz turned his attention to the other man sitting across the table from him.

“Hungrier than usual, were we?” he asked.

John shrugged, but Jeremiasz could see in his eyes that he knew he had gone too far.

“What the fuck am I supposed to do with him now, you think?” he suddenly shouted, banging his desk with his open palm. “We can’t just bandage this one and send him home. You want to take him to a hospital — try to explain what happened, hey?”

“I’m sorry, Mr Jericho,” muttered John. He didn’t try to meet Jeremiasz’s cold gaze.

“Sorry don’t fix shit, dupek,” said Jeremiasz. “We are sending a message, understand? A message that if you fuck with me, you lose a finger,” — his voice rose higher — “not a message that someone is going to chew your whole fucking hand off!”

John stared at the floor for a moment before looking up. “It won’t happen again, Mr Jericho.”

“Wrong,” spat Jeremiasz, “it won’t happen again unless I say so. You get me?”

He waited until they both nodded, then sat back satisfied. Having to have the man in the basement killed wouldn’t really be much of a setback, he knew; he wasn’t stupid enough to believe that what happened within his organisation was really secret. And enhancing his reputation with casual brutality like this could only really work in his favour. He allowed a thin smile to play across his lips. Gerrity looked up expectantly.

“You will take care of the mess downstairs,” Jeremiasz said to him. The little man nodded once — no wasted movements with this one — and uncoiled smoothly from his chair. John made to stand up too, but halted at a gesture from Jeremiasz.

“You’re not done yet, my friend,” he said to the big man. John looked uncomfortable in his suit; Jeremiasz could smell his sweat from across the desk. “I’m a man short on the main floor tonight — I want you to report to Dullah in the booth and cover whatever he needs.”

For a moment he thought John would object, but finally he simply nodded and stood up. Gerrity, who had paused at the open doorway to listen to the final exchange, sketched a mock bow as he waved John past and into the hallway, letting the door swing slowly back and shut out the thumping sound of music and desperate fun.

John breathed hard through his nose as he followed Gerrity’s bald head down the stairs and back into the pounding, sticky atmosphere of the club. Without a backward glance, Gerrity headed towards the rear, going to deal with the mess that John had left when he savaged the man in the chair. Squaring his shoulders, John turned in the other direction and moved towards the DJ booth at the front of the room.

All around him, people moved as the music thumped, rattling his breastbone and setting his teeth on edge. Arms, carelessly raised with bottle in hand, described tripped-out circles in the air as he ducked beneath their aimless rhythm. Girls in short skirts and day-glo underwear danced together in faux-erotic embrace, one eye on the horny boys for whom they were really performing. Flamboyant gays, newly out or desperate to stand out, balanced on the edge of the stage as they addressed the crowd below in silent melodrama as nobody watched.

John reached the wide stage. It occupied the full width of the main room, save for space at either end for podium dancers. It was too loud to speak comfortably, but John had no trouble catching the watchful eye of the head bouncer, positioned as always beside the DJ. Dullah was a mountain of a man, with a personality to match. John didn’t think he’d ever seen him smile. With a nod of his head, Dullah indicated that John should take up station at the side of the stage. From there he had the broadest view across the club; he would be able to spot and descend on any trouble before it really got started. John nodded and pushed his way through the dancers towards the darkened corner behind the podium.

Two nervous-looking young men quickly made space for him below the corner spotlight. He watched them as they hurried away through the crowd. Dealers, most likely, and not the club’s own. He was supposed to care about that, he knew, but it was not a night when he wanted to wind up in front of Jericho again, for any reason. He folded his arms and moved further into the shadow of the podium.

The tunes the DJ was spinning blended into each other with monotonous regularity, the thumping rhythm barely changing as the night wore on. The club was full, the dance floor a squirming mass of flesh and sweat. A haze seemed to hang between the flashing lights and the bobbing heads of the dancers. As one they raised their arms in the air as the drumbeat stopped and a single note, siren-loud, was held. It made his ears ache and he turned away from the hedonistic display in disgust.

“Hey!”

John looked around swiftly for the source of the voice that had seemed to call to him, but all of the nearby dancers on the stage were either staring at the lights playing across the ceiling or doubled over, recovering the energy to continue once the beat dropped.

“Hey! You want to throw me up another water?”

This time the words were accompanied by a poke in the shoulder by a high-heeled shoe. John looked up at the speaker. He had been aware of the dancer on the podium while he had been standing there, but now that she was seated on the rear of the platform, legs dangling over the edge near his head height, he could get a proper look at her.

Like all of the dancers that Jericho employed at his clubs she wore very little clothing — black hotpants with a studded leather belt, and a carefully torn sleeveless t-shirt that barely reached her stomach — but she didn’t share most of the other girls’ pneumatic chests, teased hair and vacant expression. John passed her a bottle of Evian from the open six-pack sitting at the base of the podium and looked into eyes that shone with intelligence and subtlety. As she tipped her head back to drink, he ran his eyes over the rest of her body. Intricate tattoos covered both arms, feathers and dragons curling over and around her lithe muscles to disappear behind her shoulders. Her hair was bound up in neon tubing, bloated to twice its normal volume.

She drained the bottle and placed it on the far edge of the podium next to a handful of other empties, then used the bottom of her t-shirt to mop her forehead. John tried not to stare at the swell of her breasts revealed as she tugged the fabric up. Head dry, she looked at him, and he had the feeling that she knew what he had been thinking. Hell, he guessed she must know what most of the men — and probably some of the women — in the club were thinking when they looked up at her on the six-foot platform.

“What’s your name?” she said suddenly.

“John,” he said, taken aback. Her voice was husky, probably from long hours spent in the smoky atmosphere of the club, but the way she spoke invited openness.

“You new?” She thought he was simply another bouncer, he realised, one new face to look for if there was trouble.

He shook his head, “No — I’m not a bouncer. I work for Mr Jericho, I’m just, ah, helping out tonight.”

She nodded, her head moving in unconscious time with the pounding music. “So what do you usually do, John-who-isn’t-a-bouncer?”

The enjoyment he’d been feeling in the conversation drained as suddenly as it had appeared. He looked away briefly, the crowd seeming to move in slow-motion black-and-white, as he ran over all the possible answers that he could never tell anyone.

“I help Mr Jericho with his business.”

The girl on the platform nodded reflectively, and favoured him with a sideways smile as she got to her feet.

“Well, it’s nice to meet you, John-the-business-man,” she said as she started to move with the music once more. “I’m Kate.”