It was a night tailor-made for lunatics, a supermoon hanging low above the town like a giant communion wafer pinned up against the inky dark sky, the night air crisp and of a sort that made breath visible. Lyric FM and the eclectic instrumentals of Night Train filled the car, the DJ’s familiar husky drawl somehow filtering through to reach my tender ears. Picturing the two yokes sitting up front, I might’ve actually smiled at the absurdity of this scene were it not for the duct tape sealing my mouth and the distinct possibility I’d be involuntarily donating body parts in the coming hours. One minute I’m gearing up for a long overdue shag. The next I’m being folded balls-naked into the boot of a banjaxed Subaru, the air of the car thick with the whiff of diesel and dust, my head hopping off the bare metallic floor every time the cunts hit a pothole. They had the hands bound tightly behind me, cable ties biting into my wrists leaving my fingers cold and tingly, every feckin’ twig and pebble beneath me painfully needling into my pelt. Clearly, my safety and comfort weren’t too high on their list of priorities.
*
‘Why don’t you run us a nice bath,’ she’d whispered lustily into my ear during an earlier episode of Love Island, ‘and I’ll join you after this with a bottle of vino.’ The dirty wink she threw me left me in no doubt it was in my best interests to take decisive action before she went off the boil. Considering the distinct lack of anything meaningful in the rumpty department this past fortnight on account of herself supposedly enduring a protracted surge of the crimson tide – a source of much rancor between us which culminated in her hurling any amount of dog’s abuse and a pornstar martini at me last weekend during a meal in Lorenzo’s when I dared to enquire if a ride might finally be on the horizon—well, I didn’t need to be asked twice: I nearly sprained an ankle legging it up to the Jacks to get the hot water going. Inside of fifteen minutes I was reclining under a mountain of bubbles waiting for Zelda to join me, surrounded by scented candles and mellowing out with a joint in one hand as I set to work coaxing a bit of life into my cock with the other.
The next thing you know, the evening is swerving sharply off course with the arrival through the bathroom door of two hefty looking units wearing balaclavas. The first thing that went through my mind—a split second before discovering that it really is possible to piss through a horn – was the bath scene in The Big Lebowski. The Coen Brother’s best flick in my humble opinion, I immediately flashed upon an image of The Dude relaxing in the tub smoking a roach when these Kraut psychos burst in and started making shite of his apartment, one of them even lobbing a ferret into the bath with him for shits and giggles before they departed, leaving the poor man to ponder an unsavoury threat to lop off his Johnson. Unfortunately for me, the scene that unfolded in my Jacks belonged to a different class of movie entirely.
‘What manner of fuckery is this?’ was all I managed to get out before they were lifting me up out of the tub by the ears without so much as a by your leave and taping my gob shut to mute any further protestations. Dignity was in scarce supply as they frog-marched me dripping down the stairs and out the front door to be turfed into the waiting car.
*
All manner of questions run through a person’s head when they find themselves in such a hairy predicament. Whose pint did I piss in during a previous life? Did I run over someone’s dog one evening driving home well-oiled after a feed of drink? Was this some sort of punishment for the occasional hand in the till job or for dealing some snow on the side in between pulling pints above in Tully’s? And what must herself have thought of my impromptu disappearance? Would she perhaps surmise I’d popped across the road to buy extra candles before slipping naked under the bubbles to await my return? Or would she eat me without salt for thwarting her romantic overtures? Given her reliably volcanic temperament, and the fact that I was already serving time in the ‘insensitive bollox’ bad books, I felt the latter scenario was more likely.
And when the questions run dry, the mind turns to fetching up darker materials to assemble themselves in your fevered imagination. What bit of me would they break first? Was that dried blood I’d noticed on one of my abductor’s knuckles? And was that a spade I could feel down below at my feet? A mad dog howl from up front sent panicky shivers strumming down my spine and led me to the simple truth that I was in serious bother. These maniacs were all set to dish out some savagery and I was on the menu. I swore to myself that if I got out of this mess in one piece, I’d return to the bosom of Mother Church and make an ear melter of a confession.
They drove halfway around the world it seemed, hopping me off the four feckin’ walls of the boot, before finally coming to an abrupt stop and killing the engine. In the stony silence that ensued I picked out the sonorous lowing of cattle floating in on the night. Minutes later, rough lunatic hands were jamming a pillowcase over my head before wordlessly hauling me back out of the Sube to face whatever music was planned for me, the sudden exposure to the cold air raising painful goosebumps on my flesh and shocking my manhood into shriveling retreat. The undeniable proximity of a nearby gut lorry was throwing off the type of corrupt stench that would’ve floored a Connemara pony. They propelled me forward with hands under my pits, whisking me along in no particular direction I could discern. My toes curled painfully against the pebble strewn tarmac, a short pilgrimage that ended in cold slick tiles, the steadily swelling tumult of industry announcing I was probably inside a factory corridor of some description. Before long I was brought to a standing stop in a cold puddle whereupon I detected the snickering presence of others above the mechanised din.
When the pillowcase was yanked away, it was as if the air itself had turned crimson and I was struck with a dreamlike sense of the illusory. The sight of anarchy and desolation was everywhere, almost medieval in its ruthlessness. Visceral entrails lay about in great knotty piles as the crudely skinned skulls of steers eyeballed me from crates, the residual flesh on their faces twitching in silent mockery. Enormous hearts and livers quivered on metal spikes like garish baubles set next to wagging oxtails destined for the soup pot. Blood-drenched hides hung like tattered drapes as headless disemboweled beasts swung airily from motorized overhead tracks en route to final mutilation. Conveyor belts piled high with the entropic disorder of bovine innards rumbled by. If there is a hell on earth it is the place from whence our meat comes, the abattoir a blunt reminder that, at the end of the day, we living creatures are no more than skin-lined bags of blood, bones, and shite. As someone partial to the occasional Mickey D’s, the place was enough to have me seriously considering veganism.
I stood there mesmerized by the sight of a freshly hoisted animal being drained of its fluids as it dangled above a floor level trough of unknowable depth brimming with a rippling red confusion of blood, when a familiar voice drawled, ‘Man, Dunc.’ And the first stirrings of comprehension dawned as I turned to see Hack materialise from behind my abductors, a butcher’s scabbard hanging samurai sword-like against his thigh as he wiped his hands off the front of his soiled apron. Squat and well-muscled with tats to his fingertips and those watery blue grey eyes that signalled sanity was out to lunch, Donal Hackett exuded a potent aura of imminent hostility. You go handy around Donie, d’ye hear, Zelda had warned me early on in our courtship. He’s mad as a badger and prone to reactive extremes, especially when he’s in his cups, but he’d do anything for me. His sense of humour’s fucken septic. He has Dad’s eyes, and our granddad’s before him, and sure look how those two gobshites ended up.
Approaching, Hack ripped the tape from my mouth.
‘Man, Hack,’ I croaked.
Nicknamed Hack – less a convenient truncation of his surname and more a reflection of his expertise with sharp implements – my future brother-in-law grinned at me like a feral cat. With eyes wide as skim stones, he twirled a boning knife expertly between his fingers, the overhead fluorescents silvering its edge.
‘What d’ye think of me handiwork?’ said Hack, gesturing towards the exsanguinating bullock.
‘Big hoor of a beast and no question,’ I replied.
‘Cunt’ll spill out a good six gallons inside a few minutes,’ said Hack.
‘That’s fairly considerable,’ I replied. ‘But why’ve I been hauled in here to see it, Hack?’
‘Sure, we’re only having the bit of craic with you, Dunc. Relax, laddie. Just a little wind up before the nuptials proper. Can’t have you and your beloved finally getting spliced without inviting you in for a wee tour of the family business.’
‘So is this all some class of a prank? These feckers nearly tore the ears off me!’ I nodded crossly towards my abductors who had removed their balaclavas to reveal the pink shaven heads and fleshy snouts of the Hennessy twins, Pig and Hog, local thugs stacked solid as Hummers and rarely given to verbal communication much beyond bestial grunts. One thicker than the other, I could never tell them apart whenever they arrived into Tully’s trailing Hack.
‘Ah, sorry about that, man,’ said Hack. ‘In fairness, I warned them not to be too rough. Just enough to make it look genuine. Didn’t I, lads?’ Dual snorts of amusement from the twins only corroborated this brazen insincerity. ‘Sez I to me little sister, Duncan’s going to be me new brother-in-law so he deserves a proper family induction.’ Hoovering up a gobful of phlegm as he spoke, Hack let fly with a gluey pea green lunger that went scooting across the scarlet surface of the trough. He slithered behind me then, quick as an eel, and I felt the knife slip between the bindings, freeing my wrists. Rubbing feeling back into my hands, the relief that this was all just some gruesome bit of theatre designed to put the pre-connubial frighteners up me was soon displaced by the mortification of being bollock naked.
‘I’m fuckin’ perished, man. D’ye think maybe I could get some clothes?’
‘Sure, we’ll get you all warmed back up again in jig time,’ said Hack. And then his hot breath was whispering close behind my ear, words edged with reverence and the unmistakable tang of Smirnoff: ‘Jaysus, but it’s some sight to see all the same, the life just pumpin’ out of the poor fucker.’
‘One to behold all right,’ I replied. But as I watched the gush from the beast’s throat slowing now to a rusty trickle, a sly new suspicion took hold as I recalled Zelda’s cautionary words: He’d do anything for me…
And before I could turn around, Hack let fly with a lunatic cackle as his boot found the small of my back, sending me pitching forward into the trough to bellyflop into the rich red sap of life.
Phil Cummins is an Irish writer, based in Kildare. He has been published in Crannóg, Fictive Dream, Sans. PRESS, bioStories, Solstice Literary and elsewhere. His work has been placed in several competitions including the Fish Memoir and Short Story Prizes, Wild Atlantic Writing Awards, and Write by the Sea Award. He has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. He can be found on Instagram: @profphilcummins
