A Sliver of Light Read online

Round 2

  Franklin was dragged into position by one of the armed guards, his howls of protest fell upon deaf ears. Stephen noticed how lifeless the guard seemed – he was neither enjoying his tasks nor disgusted by it. To him it was as mundane as putting out the trash.

  There were several in their circle who were pleading for their reprieve. Now that the game was most certainly real, they all knew the risks and the dangers. The offer of money was made again by #9. Didn’t he realise that doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result was the very definition of madness? Stephen noticed that she (#10) was stony silent, as compliant as he was in being led into position.

  Those that didn’t want to be there, who knew that they had been duped, were about to enter a stage of anger. All it would take was one of them to crack and the rest would follow. The guards knew it –Zoran knew it; and Derek knew it. Although Stephen couldn’t see the body to whom the voice of the Derek belonged, he could sense that he was in the room somewhere. He knew that the controlling Derek was acutely aware of every action, every thought.

  That Zoran nutcase can see right through you. He knows who you are, what you are...and what you’ve done.

  Shut up – please!

  The demon waited/bided.

  Bets began to be made as those who weren’t involved in the orgy began to wager amongst themselves. Each person bet against another one on the outcome for a particular competitor. Some had left the orgy to see the game – place a bet and therefore dive deeper into the mire of evil in which they had chosen to partake. A naked man stood to Stephen’s left, his erection started to flag as he made a wager with someone on the other side of the room that Stephen would get his head blown off.

  “Number 2 here get’s his head blown clean off - $500.00!” He yelled out to his colleague. He grabbed his flaccid member, squeezing it to pump blood back in. He shook it in front of Stephen. “And if I win, I get the little head here blown as well!”

  The other man (who was dressed in an expensive woollen three piece suit, crocodile skin shoes, tailored shirt with French cuffs and links and wore a gold Rolex on his left wrist, the face on the inside) took the bet with a guttural grunt. The cash was on the floor in front of them waiting for the round to begin.

  Stephen noticed the naked man’s legs, grotesque varicose veins snaked their way under the skin – swollen calves and pale blotchy skin. The man’s pot belly folded over his waist; the “man-boobs” with enlarged areola wobbled slightly as he laughed. It was a deep chesty laugh that provoked a coughing fit, spraying Stephen with creepy wetness.

  Good, thought Stephen. At least cancer or heart disease will get you soon you bastard. And that will be a lot more painful death than mine!

  Stephen then felt the demon’s presence within him. Its irregular visits were annoying but it always announced its imminent arrival and Stephen knew he was coming again.

  Over the intercom, Stephen heard Derek speak: “You know the rules here people so let’s do this orderly and –

  You worthless toad; are you really serious with this little plan of yours?

  Shut up, just fucking shut up please.

  You can’t shut me up – you need me. I’m the only thing you can rely upon, you pointless excuse; you’re a disgrace; you’re a waste of skin...

  – so that we can end this properly,” finished Derek.

  Stephen had no idea what had been said – the demon blocked it all out. How could he concentrate with that thing in his head? Surely someone else must have heard it too? But no-one was looking at him – everyone concerned with themselves only.

  See? No-one loves you like I do Stephen.

  You don’t love me.

  Of course I do – I am the only one who tells you the truth, tells you who you are and what you’re capable of.

  I KNOW what I’m capable of, thought Stephen and instantly wondered if he said that out loud just then. He looked around to see if anyone was looking at him funny – if he said it, no-one heard it.

  He felt the demon leave for a moment, but he knew he’d be back

  The bets continued to be placed and Franklin had stopped protesting. He was beginning to accept the futility of his situation.

  “Hey Franklin,” Stephen began...

  “What?”

  “It’s okay. If the gun goes off, you won’t feel a thing.”

  “How do you know?”

  Good question, thought Stephen. He didn’t really know.

  “Death will be instant – that’s it.”

  “Not always,” Franklin said. “Sometimes people survive being shot.”

  “What? In the head?”

  “Yeah!”

  Stephen did, of course, know this but some small part of him wanted to convince Franklin otherwise – offer him some consolation and some reassurance.

  “I don’t know about that Franklin. I don’t think I’ll miss from here.”

  “You don’t have to miss. The bullet can ricochet around my skull. I could end up in a coma or something...” Franklin was getting worked up again, thinking about being a vegetable in a coma which, to him, was worse than being dead.

  “A coma? Well, you won’t feel anything then either will you?”

  “You sure?” Franklin’s voice lifted, spurred by the small twisted version of hope Stephen offered.

  Oh yeah I’m sure, Stephen thought. Before he could reply to Franklin, Derek’s voice resounded again

  “Gentlemen – hand out the weapons!”

  After Round 1 the guards had collected the guns and they were taken from the room – along with the dead body of #7. They were now re-primed with a single bullet and sent back in – total random chance. They were all the same revolver – a Smith & Wesson M&P340 .357 Magnum, matte black and great for close contact. For what they were playing, contact doesn’t get much closer.

  Each gun was pulled from the box by one of the naked slave girls – this skinny redhead wore no clothing except for a blindfold (if a blindfold can actually be called an article of clothing) which now hung low around her neck. She handed the weapons to a guard who passed them around the group in numerical order, starting at #4 this time.

  The slave was interesting to Stephen. She was certainly voluntary and was there for the amusement of the patrons. Men and women toyed with her at their whim – some spanking, nipple twists and the like. One of the women, wearing a man’s tuxedo, held an electric prod – like a small cattle prod – that emitted a small spark at the end when a button was pressed. She used it on the slave’s ass, vagina and breasts. There was slight smell of burnt hair each time and the slave squealed – then came back for more. She was fucked, choked, gagged with violent oral sex and double penetrated. She protested that it hurt and, when it stopped, she begged for more – a grin of demonic pleasure upon her face.

  Stephen wondered how her night would end.

  She could be you.

  Go away!

  She could be Sarah.

  Oh you bastard, that’s below the belt! How dare you?

  How dare I? Oh, I dare alright...I’ll fucking dare and dare and dare until you can’t stand it any more...Sarah, Sarah, SARAH!!! See?!

  He knew how to hit the right spots. The slave looked vaguely like Sarah too – well, like she used to look anyway.

  The guns were being handed out as Franklin continued to mumble to himself. Stephen heard a few others doing similar – one of the druggies was pleading with a guard for a fix.

  “Come on man, I know you’ve got it somewhere.”

  Silence was the reply.

  “I’ll suck your cock. You can fuck me, piss on me, shit on me I don’t care!” Increasingly desperate. “Hell man, I don’t care what you do, just get me some gear!”

  Some of the punters started to laugh at him.

  “Look at that pathetic wretch,” said a young guy in his early 20’s with slicked back hair in a ponytail. He wore only a pair of braces over his shoulders and tight bicycle shorts. Next to him sat
a woman aged around 40, her long dark hair tied up in a tight pony tail as well. Her thick-rimmed designer glasses were fashionably perched upon her nose and she draped herself across her younger companion, gently playing with his nipple. On the ground between them, a boy of about 16 was giving the man oral sex.

  “I know,” she said, her educated private school background evident in every syllable she uttered. “As if pleading like that will make any difference. They never cease to amaze me.”

  “What sort of worthless, pointless life does this wretch live? How does it survive? And why?” The man’s boredom and curiosity towards the addict was evident – like a languid courtesan devoid of entertainment.

  “I don’t care,” she said as she stroked the boy’s hair. “There has been a certain lowering of the calibre of participants in recent times. I do hope this isn’t the shape of things to come. Feeding upon destitute addicts and society’s outcasts!”

  “$500 he survives,” wagered the man.

  “No bet.” And she pushed the boy’s head down firmly on her man’s cock.

  “You’re no fun.” He smiled, his teeth fang-like and decadent.

  She pushes herself up to him and they kissed deeply. When they broke apart, she said, “O.K. – it’s a bet! I hope his fucking head explodes!”

  “If it does,” he said, “I’ll come straight down this boy’s throat,” and they kiss again.

  Stephen stopped concentrating on this grotesque ménage a trois and tried to hear other conversations. The music and the groans of pleasure in the orgy drowned out most of it, along with the cries of the competitors.

  “Last bets,” Derek called, signalling only a minute to go.

  The orgy quietened a little as the tension mounted in the room. Stephen was given his gun and levelled it at Franklin. He concentrated on the swirl of hair on the crown of Franklin’s head, trying to convince himself that it wasn’t human. The more he looked at the whirlpool of sprouting hair, the less human it looked – good. That made things a bit easier.

  He closed his eyes briefly and as he did so the demon filled his vision, the same as it had done many times in the past. His whole world went red as the face of the demon filled him, it’s long jagged teeth looked like shards of broken glass in its mouth. Blood poured out from the base of the two horns on its head, the eyes were flames that licked out towards him, trying to reach and sear him. A low guttural howl emanated from its throat as it opened its mouth to devour him. His eyes snapped open to rid himself of this vision – one that had begun to haunt him again.

  He felt the gun behind him bump his head and then retreat. His potential assassin wasn’t as nervous now and didn’t press it so hard.

  “Ten seconds,” came the call and Stephen waited.

  BANG!

  A gun went off behind him and the whole room paused for what seemed like an hour. Then Stephen felt the gun behind him drop onto his shoulder and then the floor – followed by the unmistakable sound of a body slumping onto concrete. The back of his head was wet with blood and brain, his hands shook and he struggled to hold his own weapon. His killer was dead – prematurely.

  “Wait for it!” Yelled Zoran but he was too late. Everyone took this false start to be the real thing and squeezed their triggers – clicks reverberated around the room followed by a second loud bang.

  Someone yelled: “two for one!” and the crowd was in uproar, money changed hands. They drank. They took their drugs – lines of cocaine on the tables, bowls of various pills.

  Stephen’s gun clicked again, sparing Franklin the release that he didn’t realise he needed. The back of Stephen’s head, neck and shoulders were sticky with the remnants of his killer.

  “End of Round 2!”

  Man Made Monster

  What do the soldiers do when the war is over?

  That was the question Zoran asked Derek when the Balkans war was finished. For a career soldier like him, Derek Giles simply moved onto the next conflict, the next employer. His years of SAS and contract work left him with some influential and well-resourced contacts – he knew he’d never be without work.

  But Zoran was different – he was fuelled by hate and driven by anger. His hate was a hole that could never be filled, no matter how much pain and anguish he caused. But he couldn’t continue that after the war; he’d end up in jail or dead.

  Even back then, right after the war finished, Derek knew that there would certainly be war crimes prosecuted. He had been around long enough to know that conflicts like this, especially ones so well publicized, always end up with the losers being tried for war crimes. He didn’t know the full extent of the massacres, the ethnic cleansing, the genocide. But, in his own small way, he had helped in some of that. Derek was also very confident that all he needed to do was leave and that would be the end of it for him. He knew had committed acts that would be classed as terrorism, or murder – but it all depended upon perspective. The losers are terrorists, the winners are war heroes.

  But for the likes of Zoran, this was his country. He didn’t want to leave – however if he stayed, he’d certainly be tried and found guilty of horrendous crimes.

  “I fucking cut the throat of anyone who speak of me!” he spat at Derek once. Derek knew him well enough to know that he wasn’t speaking about Derek, threatening him. Zoran knew Derek was staunch, but he was serious on his threat.

  “Easy Zoran,” Derek said, “You can’t do that anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “There is no war – you can’t simply kill someone because they are against you, or want to prosecute you, or want to arrest you.”

  “War or no fucking war – it is life and death. If I go to jail, I die – that is life and death. In life and death, I kill before some man, he kill me.”

  For five years, almost a quarter of his life, Zoran had lived like this. He simply did not know any other way – or he couldn’t remember it. For him it was very black-and-white.

  Kill/Be Killed

  Live/Die

  There were no grey areas and there was no way that a monster like Zoran could ever function in any peaceful democratic society – which was what these beautiful countries were hoping to be. That is one thing Derek never got to terms with over there, just how strikingly gorgeous the landscape was. From spectacular mountains with ski resorts and alpine wonder, to the Mediterranean coastline with sub-tropical islands that left the Greek ones for dead – this was a land worth fighting for. He could understand people fighting to defend such a breathtakingly wonderful place.

  But that wasn’t what the war was all about. These things were about who did what to whom in World War 2, World War 1, and long before that. It went back so far that no one really knew why they hated each other – just that they did hate each other, always had and always would.

  But then it was all over and Zoran was a war-monger in need of something to fight. A warrior without a battle.

  He needed an outlet to unleash his endless retribution upon. From the skinny, hard-nosed kid to a seasoned killer/torturer/rapist, Derek had seen him change. He knew how to control Zoran – but it was a challenge.

  Zoran respected Derek.

  Zoran feared Derek.

  Derek did things he was not proud of – things that any soldier would be ashamed of. The dichotomy between what Derek did out of a sense of duty to his employer and what Zoran did never passed Derek by. But there was bifurcation – Derek knew he wasn’t like Zoran at all.

  He had been taught the art of killing. It was a career – a lifestyle. There were literally thousands of ways to kill another human being and Derek was taught by his own government many of those ways. The SAS was a breeding ground for killers and the majority of guys in there won’t admit to just how much they enjoy taking life from something – or someone. If they did admit it, or even inadvertently indicated this in any psych testing, they would be out of the regiment.

  The thrill of the kill was a drug that, once taken, was hard to give up. Derek knew that
and used that as justification to assuage his feelings – his innate human ability to know right from wrong.

  In Croatia/Bosnia/Serbia, Derek mutilated people, tortured prisoners for information, shot people. He shot a number of people through their front windows, sitting down to dinner with their families. He didn’t shoot children, but he didn’t care either that a child just saw his father’s life end at the dinner table either. It was all justified –

  “This man is a bad man, he did this (some description of an atrocity against the Serbs)”

  Or

  “This evil bastard has done this (some description of an atrocity against the Croats)”

  It didn’t matter – the excuses all ran into one and in the end Derek didn’t even want to hear the justifications anymore. After some time in this war he came to the conclusion that anyone left alive in this shit-hole had done some bad and evil shit to stay alive. Therefore if he was sent in to kill someone, they were guilty just by being alive.

  Derek taught Zoran the skills he needed to become effective. As Dr. Frankenstein, Derek created the monster and held control over it.

  Zoran learned from him. He taught him restraint, taught him how to be precise and clinical.

  Zoran ran on emotion – hate, vengeance, lust and all of those emotions were what gave him the impetus and drove him on. A little later he discovered the chemicals that would help sustain and highlight those emotions (such as cocaine, ecstasy, speed), but before then Derek taught him how to harness these emotions and direct them into improving his efficiency and effectiveness.

  And that was why, after the war ended, they had to get the hell out of Europe and do something else. Zoran would never function in the real world, he simply wasn’t programmed that way. Zoran was still young enough to want to continue this forever.

  And there was a killing to be made in the business of killing.

  Especially so for two morally corrupted individuals like Zoran Vlasic and Derek Giles. Their travels took them to numerous places in most continents in the world. They saved each other’s life on more than a few occasions and continued the march towards hell with no signs of abating.

  Derek always knew that eventually he’d end up either dead or so sick and jaded that he’d probably take his own life. This was a fate he had accepted over the years and it seemed inevitable that, one day, that would be how it would all end.

  But, as time grew on, Derek realized just how much he actually appreciated life, that he relished every day and wanted more of it. Sonja helped him realise that – she showed him that there was love in the world and that even a damaged old warhorse like him still had the capacity for love. And to be loved.

  The work he did started to take a back seat and he left a lot of the strong-arm stuff to Zoran.

  It was in Namibia that Derek came to the conclusion that he needed to retire. By the late 1990’s, Zoran and Derek were working for a large diamond firm based out of Windhoek. They would help the firm locate and efficiently operate mines in and around Namibia.

  “Locate and efficiently operate mines in and around Namibia” Derek said to Zoran one day – relishing in the rhetoric. They both knew what that really meant.

  Basically they were employed to make sure no-one stole diamonds and to ensure that there were enough workers available.

  They kept out any other “traders” by all and any means necessary.

  They used press gangs.

  They hunted and shot deserters and thieves.

  There were several instances where outside gangs infiltrated the workforce to extort the company and/or steal as many diamonds as they could. The thing about diamonds is that their value is not due to the rarity of them – nor is it due to the demand for them. The value is determined by supply.

  There were plenty of diamonds out there and, if the truth was known, there were stockpiles of thousands and thousands of them. Derek knew because he’d seen them – he’d even been paid in some of them. By keeping out poachers, thieves and other criminals, it kept diamonds out of the markets (black or otherwise) and maintained a high price. If the world was flooded with more diamonds than it needed, then the prices would fall and the companies would not make the profits they want. It swas by controlling the supply parts of the Keynesian economic model of supply/demand that these firms made so much money.

  Zoran and Derek regularly ran insurgency raids into Angola. With Angola in civil war, it was easy for them to raid across the border and set up make shift mines in areas that the company’s geologists knew were packed with diamonds. It didn’t matter to them that the lands were occupied by people – those people were more concerned about living and dying than some white guys mining for rocks. The diamonds might be valuable to the company, but to the local people with no means of selling them, they were simply rocks.

  For a few years or so this was simply a well-paid job and one of the easiest ones Derek had ever had. There was very little, if any, resistance and he knew that Zoran started to get bored. In the first few months or so, as they established the mines and their reputation, there was a lot of action for Zoran. They quickly developed a fearsome name and that worked in Derek’s favour – but not Zoran’s. Derek enjoyed the reputation of fear – of getting subservience and co-operation by simply being who he was. But Zoran needed action – his soul needed the nourishment of blood and pain, of humiliation and destruction.

  Derek knew there were times when Zoran teamed up with the NDF (Namibian Defence Force) to quell and uprising here and there – tales of his merciless slaughter in the Caprivi region during the uprisings there spread all through northern Namibia and into Angola. His love for Russian Roulette continued as well, often unloading a revolver and then re-loading with one bullet, pointing it at prisoners and taking bets on the outcome.

  But, after a while, he too slowed down, got bored…he needed something else. Derek was reluctant to leave – he could make more money there than he had ever dreamed of before. He couldn’t spend it all and Derek had set up offshore bank accounts to look after it. He had a reputation that was never challenged, he simply demanded what he wanted and no-one ever challenged it.

  In the early days, those that stood in his way suffered horribly – you only need to do that once or twice and then let the bush telegraph take care of the rest. Over time your deeds get exaggerated distorted and blown out of all proportion. After only a few kills, Derek was known as the “White Demon”. To him, that notoriety was a vindication of his past and the work he had done.

  The locals called Zoran “Pale Death” and they were even more afraid of him. Zoran’s irrationality, his psychosis... that scared them more than anything. But to Zoran, it meant that he couldn’t sate his needs.

  Derek’s needs, however, changed when he met someone Sonja– the woman that could ultimately take him away from his old life and escort him into the light. She would be take him from the darkness and the carnage that he caused and perpetrated and show him a world which was beautiful.

  Zoran could never survive in a world like that – he fed upon the ravaging and the destruction. But Derek knew that he could, now that he had someone to light the way.

  It killed Derek to be apart from Sonja – especially because it was her that insisted it. If he knew that the reason she needed them to be apart was because of Zoran, he would have put several bullets in Zoran’s head without question. He had been with Zoran a lot longer than he had with Sonja – 17 years versus seven, but the future was with her...not with him.

  And now, as Zoran and one of their former ex-NDF colleagues dragged the bodies from the arena, Derek thought again of the diamond mines in Namibia and all over Southern Africa and how far away from them he was. And from her.

  His heart wasn’t in this anymore. He saw Zoran operate as a killing automaton, desperately trying to fill a bottomless pit with the anguish of others.

  Derek wondered if it was worth it.

  He thought about futility, about destiny, about pointlessness.<
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