Five Seconds -- a V for Vendetta story

By April French

 

Rated NC-17 for graphic content, scenes of torture, general squicky-ness and the presence of Crazy!V. Please, do not read if you are weak of stomach, are underage, or dislike Crazy!V intensely.

 

Author's Note:

 

The idea for this story, and much of V's dialogue, comes from the film The Masque of Red Death, directed by B-movie master Roger Corman. Despite this fact, the movie is really very good, owing no doubt to the overwhelming performance and presence of Vincent Price. This being the case, I can claim even less credit for this story than is usual.

 

Thanks to VVeritasV for being this story's unwitting beta, and thanks as always to THE FLAMER for kicking this piece into high-gear.

 

~~~  

 

The curtain rises.

 

The curtain rises on a grinning devil in a Guy Fawkes mask. He has no name and no country, but has not called himself V by accident, and if England be not his country, it will most certainly be his calling. No part of his body is visible. He moves like a young man, quickly, with much expenditure of nervous energy. In fifteen years he will move as one who has gained some measure of control over his appetites and tempers. His pleasures will be fewer, his passions long-lasting and smoldering. But for now, he has no crusades and no cares, save the two naked men hung up, strapado-fashion, before a simple table in the disorientating and dark cavern.

 

"Let me speak to you," the devil says in a deep, velvety voice, "of the... anatomy of terror." From nothing, a long dagger appears in his gloved hand, half as long again as a man's forearm, reflecting the mask's smile with a sharp and glinting coldness. "Is it to awaken and hear the passing of time?" The arm reaches out and presses the flat of the blade against one man's inner thigh; the prisoner gasps sharply through his gag, his eyes wide and white as a colicky horse's. "Or the failing beat of your own heart?" The stink of fear-sweat is strong on the bound man, but the mask remains serene as the hand slides the paper-thin edge up, languidly, indolently up and up til it nestles between the man's leg and scrotum, a bare hairsbreadth away from biting into the skin. "Or the footsteps of someone who, just a moment before, was in your room?" The handsome blond is trembling all over, excruciatingly. "But let us not dwell on terror." With an ice-cold wind, the dagger is gone. "The knowledge of terror is vouchsafed only to a precious few." And the devil laughs. Almost as an afterthought, the blade flicks and flashes, and the two men, the blond and the other, a ginger fellow, are freed of their gags.

 

"Who the fuck are you?" are the first words out of the redhead, for, having only been pained and not nearly as afraid as his friend, he has more control of himself than his compatriot. The blond man must be at least thirty-five, but he looks like nothing so much as a small boy in fear for his life. His eyes are fixed on his captor, and he has loosed his bowels on the floor.

 

"'Who?'" The man in the mask repeats, drawing the single syllable out as though he is tasting it. "'Who?'" He brings the tip of his dagger to immobile lips, pondering. "Who... indeed."

 

The blond man--Harold--is utterly frozen and silent. The ginger man--his name is Jerry--is getting more and more angry; no surprise, really, as he has had his arms twisted and roped up behind his head for hours, and his ankles lashed together and weighted down. He is so angry, in fact, he is able to ignore the fact that his shoulder are being wrenched from their sockets. "Don't try putting me off with any philosophical shit! I want to know who you are!"

 

"Get used to disappointment." The devil points the blade at Jerry. "You want to know who I am so very badly. Why? You never cared to know my name before."

 

"Before..." Harold manages to repeat in a terrible, hoarse whisper.

 

"Before what?" Jerry demands.

 

"You mean you don't remember? I'm very hurt, Jerry, old chum, I truly am." He steps forward slowly, arm outstretched, dagger pointing squarely at Jerry's sternum. "Don't you remember how you used to drag me out of my cage to give you and your mates a bit of a laugh, seeing how long I'd last against your dogs? Do you remember how you used to plunder our meagre rations so we would starve on what was left, and you would throw us the scraps from your table so we would fight each other like wild animals? How you and your friend here would take your turns with us? Share and share alike, after all. You were so close, you and he, in the old days. Such... good... friends..."

 

Jerry's mouth gapes open. "Dear God..."

 

"God?" The mask cocks to one side, and the tip of the knife pricks hot and cold as it dips and presses firmly against Jerry's abdomen. "Can you look around this world and believe in the goodness of a god who created it? Famine, pestilence, war, disease and death--they rule this world. If a god of love and light ever did rule this world, he is long since dead. You killed him."

 

"Don't be such an arse," Jerry manages to say, gulping air frantically; he is beginning to have an inkling of what he is facing. "We were just doing our jobs. We never hurt anyone--"

 

"No, no one at all." The smooth, even voice has an edge, a bit of bite to it now. The masked man is struggling to control himself. "No one who mattered. And no one mattered in Larkhill." The devil in the Guy Fawkes mask moves away from Jerry, approaches Harold again, and again caresses the blond man's naked body with the flat of his dagger. What pleasure, if any, he derives from this action must be left to conjecture. Harold is still silent with dread; Jerry is incensed, and rails at the masked man with every obscenity and expletive that can reach his lips, but still the knife roams over Harold's body like a silvery tongue, down the spine and over the buttocks, around the hips to balance the genitals on the wide blade. The Guy Fawkes mask turns slightly to regard Jerry. "If I were to turn this blade just a few inches... what would you do?"

 

"You son of a bitch!"

 

"Would you cry out? Try to free yourself? Would you try to save his life? Or only your own?"

 

"You disgusting monster! He only did... He never did anything to you!"

 

"Did he not? What about the tiny Chinese girl you had one autumn, that was shared between the two of you until she was too weak and exhausted to stand anymore? Such a little thing, with eyes like chocolate. Can such eyes have ever known sin? But they did. They did. The two of you made sure of that." The knife turns, only a millimeter, but enough to cause a drop of bright read to appear on the spotless blade.

 

"Stop it!" Jerry shouts. His anger is now giving way to visible fear. Fear for his friend? Or for his own life? Or is it a terror that transcends all labels?

 

"Would you rather I turned my blade on you in his stead?"

 

Jerry says nothing.

 

"'Am I my brother's keeper?'" the devil murmurs, drawing away from Harold. "Yes, I remember. You were very close at Larkhill, even closer than brothers, for what brothers would have done what you did together? How often I thought and wondered, during the long nights when I no longer fathomed my own imprisonment, how the two of you had escaped my fate."

 

"You're not gettin' any answers from me."

 

"There are no answers for such as I." The grinning man turns on his heel and, with a sweeping arc, cuts Harold free. The blond man collapses into a sweaty, stinking heap on the black floor. The frozen face regards the pale, shivering lump with inscrutable calm. Then he cuts Jerry free as well. "Take your time. When you've been strung up as you have just been, it takes a good while before you can stand up again, provided the circulation hasn't gone from your legs and your arms have not been dislocated." He speaks as one who knows from experience.

 

The devil waits patiently behind his table until the two men can stand. "Walk about, if you can. You will find no way out, except through me." Though he is the weaker of the two, Harold offers Jerry his hand to help him to his feet. The masked man sees this, drops his gaze away. Jerry pushes the offer of assistance away; the mask snaps up. Guy Fawkes' stance firms.

 

"You believe in a god that preaches 'love thy neighbor,' yet the two of you lusted in darkness, while murdering others who dared to love by daylight. You will not even cry out to save the one or the other from torture. Therefore I offer you a way whereby each may have the honor and glory of saving--or ending--the other's life." He beckons them forward, and points to a fan of daggers laying on the table, each one identical to the blade he himself holds in his gloved hand. "There are five daggers here. One of them is coated with a poison that kills in five seconds." The mask nods to a small, antique clock in the corner of the table. "Each man in turn will cut his forearm, continuing on until one of you chooses the fateful blade. The one who survives, I will set free. Refuse to play..." He lets the sentence trail off into the cold air. "Begin." The two men stare at him, one dully, the other sullenly. One has been broken by his past, and needs this merest excuse to find release. The other, wishes only for the strength of his legs and arms back. The gloved hand flexes convulsively around its own blade. "Will you not lay down your life for your brother? Why then should you be afraid to die? Your souls have been dead for a long, long time."

 

His hand trembling noticeably, Harold reaches out and picks up the center dagger, cutting a small gash in his outer forearm. Three pairs of eyes go to the clock in the corner. Then, "Five seconds," he whispers, dropping the dagger. It clatters shockingly loud on the stone floor, breaching the hushed atmosphere.

 

Setting his teeth, Jerry again thinks to attack the man in the stainless mask. But he has no power left in his body, not even a dying animal's ability to reach out with its last ounce of strength to close his jaws around his tormenter. He chooses the dagger on the far right, and cuts his skin. They wait. "Five seconds," he tries to sneer, but the masked man does not react, so he pales, and drops his dagger. It slides on the stones and comes to rest tenderly against the first blade.

 

Harold swallows once. Then again. He picks the second dagger from the left. The blood from the new cut runs down his arm to mix with the first. "Five seconds..." There are three knives exhausted on the cold floor now, jumbled together and drippingly intimate.

 

Jerry can see his breath fogging in the air, but he does not feel the cold. The masked man's body is wire-tense and quivering. Jerry chooses the dagger on the far left, raises it... then replaces it in formation on the table, taking instead the second blade from the right. The masked man makes no move, and Jerry cuts his arm. He waits for the poison to creep into his brain... then lets out a long breath like a puff of good tobacco smoke, feeling the burden lift from his shoulders, feeling alive and ferocious again.

 

The head beneath the mask lowers, and the black-encased shoulders tighten. The hidden man is not pleased.

 

Harold looks at him. In his mind, he is reliving many things, many things which he regrets. He knows what is to come next. The terror is gone, replaced with resignation and calm. He looks at his lover, and at his captor. "Five... seconds."

 

He reaches for the last dagger on the far left.

 

His fingers never even graze the hilt; the grinning man flicks his wrist and sends his own dagger flying, and it buries itself in Harold's chest. Jerry hears a strangled scream echo in the cavern and thinks it is Harold. But his friend died silently; it is his own mouth that screams.

 

"The game was not played properly, so both will die!"

 

Jerry hears the masked man's words before he sees him move, and has no time to escape. Seizing his already injured and abused arms, the man drags Jerry back to the frayed and dangling ropes and binds him up again, this time with chains. Their bodies are chest-to-chest, black fabric crushing into skin; Jerry can feel the breath rushing through the small opening of the mask's mouth. In his hand, the man in black holds that last dagger. "'Come, let me clutch thee:--,'" he taunts his prisoner, grapping Jerry's thigh and draping it over his hip, bringing them still closer together. He reaches around, wraps black leather fingers around genitalia and angles the blade so that is pointing down at the pubic bone. "'I have thee not,'" he pants, "'and yet I see thee still.'"[1]

 

Jerry's body and mind are slippery with terror. "Show me your face!" he screams.

 

"There is no face of death... until the moment of your own death. Do not think yourself highly honored or unique amongst your fellow criminals. I have called many; peasant, and priest. The worthy, and the dishonest. And more will follow you. Sic transit gloria mundi."[2] The grinning devil forces the stem of a rose between Jerry's teeth and gags him again. "Have no fear," he assures his prisoner with an unaccountable fondness. "The day of your deliverance is even now at hand."

 

The dagger is raised, and the curtain falls.

 

The curtain falls.

 

~Finis~