Mr & Mister Danvers: Initiation - 12. EPISODE 11: THISLEBAUM'S BRIDGE

EPISODE 11: THISLEBAUM'S BRIDGE

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At Garrick Street, where I trudged down the path on my way to the bus stop, the road was silent—a clandestine meeting place for secret lovers and elopers.

Static suddenly cut off our conversation as I was in the middle of my video call with Nathan.

I tried calling him again, but there was no signal.

I reasoned to myself that he must have woken up for me, so it was better to give him time to sleep.

There was a patch in the road where it was fully grim, with nothing but the darkness to accompany me until I reached the next street lamp to console my spirits that I’m not alone, walking in the dark.

The silence made an eerie monotone in my ear, like an ear-splitting pierce at the crack of midnight.

And the wind exacerbated this ominous feeling of dread that loomed above me.

Squish… squelch… squish… squelch, my shoes were the only noise that broke the drumming noise in my ear.

Squish… squelch… squish… squelch, I felt shadows lurking near and following me.

I looked ahead to calculate the distance to the working street lamp.

It would take a minute less to reach the lighted passage before everything was clear as day and I could see the things around me.

That my imagination had bested me and that every fear coiling in my mind was nothing but fiction.

I tried walking faster, but sure enough, I heard another rhythmic clop of feet, concluding there were three of them. The trudging was heavy, and they circled around me like vultures awaiting the last breath of a warm corpse.

Putting my bag in front of me, I could use it to swipe some heads, hitting them until I could run away.

The most important thing when stuck in a place where assailants were out to get you was to know your enemy when you least expected it.

And right now, I was scrambling in the dark, touching walls in thin air, without so much as a clue to what it is I’m feeling.

Seconds later, I arrived in that small, lighted space.

The lighted area was a blessing at this point, as I could see a part of it in the darkness.

Feeling my surroundings, I tried to sense where my attackers were.

But it was no use.

They were around me.

I stopped on the tenth step I had taken forward, my pause involuntary.

The back of a man’s head, the outline of his baseball cap, the sight of another man hovering around me—the way he hit the hood of the car to make a noise as it shuddered me from my step—it was de ja vu all over again.

Somewhere in the past, the forgotten past, but remembered now in the dark folds of my sleep, in the dark trusses under Thistlebaum’s Bridge, a hand clasped my mouth; I was naked; buffeting winds were followed by three men laughing around me on a clear, moonless night.

I heard the muffled cries of a woman.

She was a friend, my closest friend.

Someone heavy was on top of me, on my back, arching and pressing agitatingly.

I was locked to the ground; my lower half was numb.

I was insensible to the varying degrees of pain except for the burning sensation on my back and the blood all over me.

My face was kissing the street, and my nails were digging into the concrete floor.

I had lost several nails from all the scratching, and the muted cries had taken up all my voice.

My fingers bled.

No one would come save me.

And no one did.

What was it?

Where was it?

Why did this memory come to me again?

I have always tried to bury the past, but it comes as a wounded friend seeking solace in the most intimate of shelters.

The cap-wearing thug stopped in front of me as I swivelled my head to look for him.

The other man, standing under the light of the street lamp, strung the metal with his bat before we made contact.

The other sat on the hood of the car across me; a face I could barely see in the darkness.

The metal made a piercing shriek.

They were coming for me.

I shouted, "Who are you? What do you want from me?"

But the three dislodged my enquiry, pretending not to hear me.

Instead, I heard four words and the jolt of a single bullet fired across me as a warning shot.

"You like that baby? You want it bad?"

The man in front of me sounded unsure of why he’d said it.

As though instructed to trigger something, it opened up the rage I had locked up inside me upon hearing the same words said to me repeatedly by the same men who had held my face on the ground—the same men who had abused me.

I whipped up the silence with my raging thirst, and the deathlike stench of my bloodlust rippled in my veins as soon as I heard those words.

My blood boiled, and I clenched my fist.

I then became a different man.

A man whose intention was to kill.

Dropping my bag, I ran to him and tackled him head-first.

He was down on the ground as he slipped a foot under my feet.

Nestled on my haunches, my hand supported my weight.

I crawled on top of him, landing the first blow; blood trickled on his chin.

And I didn’t stop.

I pulled back my fist to draw out the best impact and punched him again.

The man grabbed my neck to manoeuvre and to displace my weight so he could twist himself on top of me.

But I wasn’t having it.

I whisked his hand, grabbed his shoulders, and punched him the third time.

After years of training, bulking up, lifting those makeshift weights, and countless years of doing pushups and pullups, every strike of my fist bore a heavy weight.

Every punch had the help of gravity and the years of my trauma trying to shove back the horrors from my past.

He was feeling it.

More than feeling it, his face was absorbing every thwack my fists had offered to the god of respite and absolution.

I was ready to offer this man as a sacrifice for my savagery.

A baseball bat hit my back.

I disregarded the pain and continued to pommel the face of my aggressor.

His face was turning red, bloody red, unrecognisable from all the murderous jabbing and trashing my fists had brought on to his heel, and I felt the plumpness of his swollen eye with my fingertips.

Why did they have to awaken this side of me?

Did they want to die?

I certainly would want to kill them now.

Suddenly, a pair of hands plucked me on top of the man I was aiming to kill; his hands clung to my shoulders and threw me a good distance from my prey.

Though I wasn’t finished with him, his face was bloodied, wrecked, and disfigured as he made grunting noises, his hands surging to whatever he could hold onto, heaving on the ground, and probably clutching for his life.

Even though a 12-wheeler truck looked as if it had capsized on his face, this man was still alive.

I had to finish what I’d started.

My ego was begging me to perform the finishing blow.

I had to teach him a lesson: you don’t threaten me and get to walk out alive.

I hobbled pathetically towards the man with the baseball bat, gritting my teeth about my handicap

His extended bat aimed to hit me.

I raised my hand to shield myself from the impact, and my crippled figure knelt on the ground.

Then I saw the tattoo of a cross around his neck.

A sheen of partial light reflected the huge embossed streak of a scar lining his face.

He certainly was one of the three stooges that threatened my family.

This was the bald thug who had scared my son and dad into submission; he was a part of the ruffians who had entered my house uninvited.

I thought Nathan had paid for the three of them to go away?

Why are they doing this now?

Why are they on to me again?

The bald thug, now wearing a cap, slammed the bat straight into my forearm as I tried shielding my face.

I grunted from the pain; he might have broken my arm.

Then this ugly fucker smiled.

He was enjoying this.

He aimed his bat, this time at my face, gearing himself as he swivelled his torso to thrash my face with his weapon.

He said, "I’m gonna enjoy this pretty boy. I’m gonna enjoy smashing your face to bits."

But I grabbed his bat, hoping to turn the tide.

The man blinked, trying to pull his bat from my grasp.

Then instantly, a lightning strike—a gut punch—went straight to his midriff, and the bat rolled off to the ground.

I punched his gut again to reel him to the ground.

Weakened from the impact, I stood up, my eyes lunging at the shadow of a man sitting on the hood of a car, just plainly observing me, and grabbed the bat.

My eyes sharpened themselves, and I gazed at him, whoever the fuck he was, and said, "You’re next."

I went back to the bald thug and flung the bat in his face several times, over and over and over, until he collapsed to the side of the street, landing face down. I wanted to strike him again.

I want to hit him badly.

I was gripped by a berserk fury tantamount to a caged lion set loose amongst a crowd of poachers, meted out with an assault rifle pointed at its face.

The bald thug peered up and met my eyes, his eyes glinting with hope of being saved, but his mouth was wincing against his pride that he had been bested by the pretty boy he’d thought didn’t have the instinct of a killer.

The corner of my mouth curled upward; it was a sadistic grin reserved for my victims—the arseholes who’d always underestimated me.

You see, there’s this satisfying thrill of hitting a man—a man who’d initially wanted to attack you and was down on his knees praying for mercy.

As I swung the bat upward, about to hit his face, electricity whirred throughout my body, and I was tased from behind.

"That’s enough," said a voice, his shadow coming from where he’d been sitting from the hood of a car. The accent was heavily Welsh. "You’re such a tease Greg."

He walked over to me as my body was seizing on the floor from the high voltage absorbed by my body.

"How dangerous you are, Mr. Danvers," he said, while my eyes tried searching for his face, but the night was too dark. "Now sleep." He kicked my head.

And then I blacked out.

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Waking up startled by this unbearable headache, I was sure I had a gash somewhere around my head.

When I opened my eyes, all I saw was white.

It looked like a woven sack—a polypropylene rice bag wrapped around my head.

My wrists were tied, and I was hanging upside down.

I was touching the skin of my arse with my hands tied to my back.

I was sure I was naked.

The one thing that formed in my mind was, am I going to be raped?

This sent me into a spiral of convulsions as my body thrashed with my limited movement.

Swearing, staggering, and flailing wildly—not this again, I thought.

Oh god, not this again, as I prayed.

Having been violently assaulted once, it had been the crux of my burdens that I had learned to temper underneath my skin.

A quiet untold shared with the sheets from the tears of my nightmares I had shed every night.

If it were to happen again, I’m sure I’d turn into a lifeless sprig.

Kicked.

Tossed.

Shuffled into a stream like a mote burning into nothingness.

I would then turn empty—hollowed, uneven, with nothing to give.

I had to get out of here.

But how?

Then, my blood curled all around my head as it dripped from the tip of my head.

It was migraine-inducing to the point that I wanted to vomit.

The sound of blood falling onto the hard plastic covering my head was like a clock on a timer.

Drip, drip, drip, was all I had heard.

I didn’t know how many hours I’d been unconscious.

Nor how many hours I’d been hanging upside down.

But the adrenaline I’d had that gave me the superhuman strength and resilience to withhold every hurt and thrashing from the altercation I’d had in Garret Street was now gone.

My jaws were aching.

My broken ribs now felt like they were slicing parts of my lungs.

My arm that shielded my face, shattered from being struck by the baseball bat, was shaking.

Tremors of pain engulfed my arm, and even as I was bound and tied, I could feel it shaking and clenching uncontrollably.

And worst of all, the severest pain I could ever experience from this was that the faces that presented themselves in my state of hallucination were the faces of my family.

I have no idea if Brady got to eat breakfast, if he ever got to school, or if pops had shit on his diapers and he needed some washing.

At this moment, when my life was flashing right before my eyes, I thought of them—my loved ones.

They’re the fuel that keeps me going; they're the ones who help me strive harder.

Seeing how I was in this position in the sick and corrupted minds of the people who nabbed me, my instinct was to think of how I’d failed them.

And how I had failed my son, and how I had failed my dad.

Because for certain, I knew I was going to die.

How will they survive when I’m gone?

Dad would be sent to a hospice.

The worst would be for my child to be sent to foster care.

The dread in my head began to accumulate, which made me scream for help.

HEELLLLLPPP!

I cried. But there was no one.

HELP ME!

I screamed.

Silence abetted my condition; there was no one to help.

I heard a door open.

"Hello," the voice said.

There was nothing distinct about the voice; in fact, it sounded automated. A robot or an A.I.

Yes, those programmes were set to modulate the voices to a different timbre and quality.

Yes, that was it.

There were footfalls.

I heard three.

One of them walked closer behind me as the A.I. sounding voice asked, "The boss—who is it?"

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

Then there was an excruciating lash; it felt like I was being lashed by a whip, and a pronged tip hit me right in the arch of my back perpendicularly.

The pain was so exhausting that I didn’t scream.

I just bit my lips, and my teeth embedded in my lower lip started bleeding as I could taste my own blood from the roof of my mouth.

"I will ask again. Who is this boss? Is this from a syndicate, a mafia, or a crime gang?"

"I have no clue what you’re talking about."

And then the painful jolt hit my back again.

This time, it was a branding iron thrust into my back several times.

I imagined the hot copper steel hitting my skin, crisping, toasting, and burning the area like livestock cattle in a barn to be sent to the abattoir.

This level of pain was draining me.

A few more of these, and I will pass out.

Or worse, I’d be dead.

"Please answer this time," said the AI. voice. "Is Danny Fadel a recruiter? What is he recruiting for?"

"I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about!"

It immediately crossed my mind that this might be the government torturing me for information.

I might be held at a secret facility by the National Security and Intelligence Agency.

Based on the hush-hush talks back at the precinct, torture was their least approved method but a highly effective measure of extracting information.

This was clearly done to extract something from me.

Whatever that information was, I don’t think an escort agency would hold sensitive national information unless one of its clients was a threat to the whole of Britain.

However, why would they come for me?

I’m not yet even employed by the company.

Danny had literally only recently texted the boss about me.

Hang on, is Danny the snitch?

"Who is your contact?"

"I DON’T KNOW!" I said, getting tired of the questions, as I got another lashing in my back.

I screamed this time, and I was hit again...

And again...

And again...

And again.

Back and forth, the A.I. voice kept asking me questions regarding Danny.

But I’m not dropping him, not yet.

If he’s the one to blame for this, I’ll keep this information to myself so I can personally ask him why he did this.

This was the kind of friendship I’d expected from those close to me.

If loyalty was the currency required by a friend, I’d give it my all in exchange for the same.

If this treachery was the kind of loyalty Danny had offered me, I'd give it back threefold or more.

The lengthy interrogation, which lasted for more than several hours with breaks in between, left me dizzy from my atavistic fears and instincts about my impending death.

Torture, it seemed to be, was more than callous in breaching my breakpoint to the likelihood of my suffering and the gossamer web of rationality that at any moment now, my body would call it quits and eventually expire.

Despite this fate, my mind was a stickler for the fact that I had to be strong, but despite all the mental acuity I’ve inspired in myself, my body was not.

The last whip from a truncheon-like object finally drained me.

Consciousness ebbed away...

And I fainted.

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My sight was bleating through the achromatic colour of my vision; I was sure I had seen some figures.

Maybe I was hallucinating these shadows.

I had expected my brain to confuse me at this point, where my body was tired and exhausted and my mind had turned frail and numb.

No longer hanging upside down, my body was slated to rest on a steel surface while my hands were tied to my back.

I could no longer feel a bag wrapped around my head or the bareness of my arse; I just felt my eyes covered by some kind of gauze or a transluscent cloth, for all I saw was white.

And my hands were cupping some kind of fabric wrapped around my bottom.

Then I heard people arguing in the background—their voices modulated to sound like an A.I. was speaking.

A robotic tone of similar quality without any distinct difference between the two voices.

Both sounded alike.

It seemed like a device had been installed inside my ear.

I may not see or feel it, but its purpose was definitely at play: to make everything I hear sound ambiguous, muffled, and not real.

"You promised me he’s supposed to be taken next month. That-that-I, that I still had time."

"I’m sorry. This was out of my control. The (BLEEP) decided he needed to be a part of the programme right away."

"So that’s why you didn’t tell me."

"How could I? I wasn’t aware of this."

"You lied to me. How could you (BLEEP)! You’re telling me that you have no clue when he’ll be taken in. You know everything that goes on around here."

"I’m sorry. I’m new to this job (BLEEP). I’ve only been sworn in when (BLEEP) died. A year ago, I had no idea this thing existed, that you’re even alive, and that you’re a part of this. If there’s someone who had been lied to, it’s me."

"Everything changes now. You promised me he'd be safe. Look at him! LOOK AT HIM (BLEEP)! He’s your (BLEEP)! This isn’t what you promised me (BLEEP). ."

"There are certain standard procedures he has to undergo—and you of all people know that. You can’t put that on me."

"So you plan on putting him through all of that? He’s not going to survive this."

"He has to. He doesn’t have a choice."

"I’m taking him out of here. You can’t do this to him."

"You’re not going to do that." I felt the boom of the voice echo inside the room. It seemed one of them had shouted the words. Then I felt someone unlocking my cuffs. The release of the cuffs on my wrists was an intercession I desperately needed as I felt the chafing finally end. "Stop that now (BLEEP). You know I’m in charge. Please...don’t make it harder for me than it is for him. As long as he never finds out about you, you and I know that he’ll make it out alive somehow.”

"Alright. You win. But if you won’t let him go, then I guess he has to know."

“Leave my brother out of this (BEEP)." I heard a door opening followed by a loud bang. "(BLEEP!), come back! Come back here! We’re not done talking (BEEP)."

But there was no answer.

I felt alone in the room.

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I woke up, seeing only the gleam of light shining through the cloth mesh or fabric wrapped around my eyes.

I had no idea how many days I'd been bound and tied up in this room.

Fingers—all five of them—began brushing my hair.

And someone’s lips danced around my forehead.

I caught a slight whiff of this person’s breath, which smelled familiar but not entirely.

Then the A.I. voice translated into my ears.

"I’m sorry. If only I had known. If only I had known better, I could’ve saved you from here. Please forgive me, Gregory."

I hadn’t heard my name said like that in the longest time.

Someone’s hand kept stroking my hair.

I whispered, "Do I know you?" my voice barely my own as I sounded hoarse from all the screaming I’d done from my torture scene.

Several droplets of liquid ran down my cheeks; they were the stranger’s tears.

"Just promise me—promise me you won’t hate me, pumpkin."

I had an eerie feeling about who this person was.

It can’t be, I thought.

Then I heard footsteps entering the room. "(BLEEP), it’s time."

"I’ll wait for you till the end. Please...live."

Everything turned dark as they injected me with a sleeping agent.

I wondered who that person was.

I wondered if this person was a friend or a foe.

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