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coldresolve · 20 days ago

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Moneymakers, pt.xxxiv // Nervous

One of those chapters where I have to put some warnings here on tumblr, so stop reading this blurb if you have no squicks and don't want to spoil the chapter. [CONTENT WARNINGS: Sadistic choice, graphic depictions of gore, vivisection of a limb, threats of paralyzation and nerve damage.] Previous / AO3 / Wattpad / Masterlist / Next

At least it doesn’t sound like they’re going to kill him right away.

Is that a good thing? Conrad isn’t so sure anymore. He finds his thoughts spiraling down grim paths as Renee returns with a bundle of blue nylon rope in his hands. His fear only grows when Davin gets up and takes the rope, sliding the knife out of his pocket, flicking it open. It catches the light, shine the same greyish white as the clouds outside.

Conrad watches as Davin measures out a yard of rope, bends it, and starts sawing at its threads with the knife. Then he does it again. And again. And again. Conrad’s stomach sinks beneath the floorboards. He feels like throwing up, but he just sits there frozen, even as he the breeze through the broken window tussles his hair.

“I understand,” he says quietly. A shot in the dark.

When Davin has four yard-long pieces in his hand, he throws the remainder of the rope into a heap by the wall and flicks the knife closed.

Renee watches from the sidelines, eyes intent not just on Conrad, but on Davin, too.

“You don’t have to show me what… what you mean,” Conrad says. “I understand…”

Davin pauses, looking at him. “I’m not convinced you do,” he says dispassionately. Takes a deep breath as he clips the knife back in his pocket. “Renee, I’m going to need your help for a minute.”

“With what?” Renee asks. There’s something almost cautious about his tone.

Davin doesn’t seem to mind it. “I’d like to tie Conrad to the table,” he says evenly.

Conrad feels the air seep out of his lungs, right down to the last particle.

“He’s gonna try to fight back this time around,” Davin adds, almost as an afterthought. He smirks as he looks at Renee. “Don’t take it personally. He fights when he has something to lose.”

The void in Conrad’s chest fills suddenly at his sharp intake of breath, and he staggers to his feet, head pounding. Stumbles a few steps backward, nearly pushing over the chair.

There’s a split second in which they all just stare at each other, him at them, they at him. Then Conrad grits his teeth, turns on his heel and makes it for the window.

He knew he wouldn’t make it far, but it still comes as a cold shock when Renee knocks into him from behind, sending them both sprawling to the floor. Conrad feels the sting as his upper arm slides over hardwood, lodging shards of glass in his skin, and Renee, landing badly on his broken arm, lets out a grunt, but is still quick to gather his bearings.

Before Conrad can push himself up fully, Renee has looped his legs around his waist, reaching up to yank his head back by the hair, and Conrad feels himself keel backwards, landing with his bare back against the hardwood floor, crying out as more glass bites in. At the same time, Renee has pushed himself up, straddling his waist. He puts his left hand around Conrad’s throat and stops just short of squeezing, eyes wide. “Try me, bitch.” His broken arm hovers by his side, barely moving even as he pants hard with the sudden rush of adrenaline.

Somewhere above them, Davin snorts. “Told you.”

Both hands wrapped around Renee’s wrist, Conrad pushes back against the looming weight threatening to cut off his air supply. “Davin,” he croaks out, “Davin, I understand, okay? I understand, I—”

The pressure suddenly lets up as Renee shifts his hand to get a firm grasp in his hair, and steps up, dragging Conrad along with him.

“Stomach or back?” Renee asks.

“Stomach,” Davin says.

Conrad lets out a groan at the pain in his scalp. As soon as Renee has dragged him to his feet, he lets go and pushes him towards the table.

“W-wait,” Conrad breathes, holding out his hands. “Wait, please—”

But both of them are walking towards him now, slowly, and the only thing he can do is back up, and soon he bumps into the dining table. He stares at their approach wide-eyed, feeling the dread building in his throat, and his knees start to get weak. Conrad is a cornered animal, a rabbit watching as the wolves zero in.

Renee is the first to reach for him. Conrad shies away as if his touch is pure fire, but then Davin is there, and Conrad freezes for just a moment too long, and Renee’s hand clasps around his wounded forearm, and Davin’s cold hands wrap around his other wrist.

“No!”

Conrad begins to struggle blindly, pulling back for every push and vice versa, clawing at clothes, trying to writhe out of their grasp, but it’s no use. They turn him around, and each man grabs an arm, and then they part ways, pulling him forward along the table. “Wait,” Conrad cries out, “please just listen to me, please just wait—”

Conrad’s feet leave the ground. At that point, they drag him forward with relative ease, until they reach the opposite end, and Conrad finds himself lying fully on the table.

Davin throws two pieces of rope to Renee. Conrad kicks forward with his legs to get enough leverage to twist free of the man’s grasp, but Davin is surprisingly strong. No matter which way he turns his arm, the vice-like grip never falters. “Davin, please,” he breathes, “please trust me when I, when I say I understand you, please j-just listen to me!”

The look of determination on Davin’s face doesn’t falter in the slightest, as he loops the rope around Conrad’s wrist and uses it to pull his hand further toward the leg of the table. Renee does the same on the other side, although he struggles to tie the knots, wincing as he has to use his broken arm. Neither of them look him in the eye.

“Davin,” Conrad wheezes. “Davin—”

As soon as Conrad’s wrist is secured, Davin starts making a loop in the other piece of rope. His hands work methodically, tying the knots.

“Davin, just talk to me,” Conrad says. “You can just talk to me, you don’t have to, to do anything, you don’t have to show me.”

Davin finally looks at him then.

Conrad swallows. “You can just t-talk to me.”

The man lets out a short breath through his nose. Then he walks back towards the other end of the table, grabbing Conrad’s leg and tying the loop around his ankle. Conrad lets out a yelp as he is pulled backwards as far as he can go, and the ropes around his wrist dig painfully into the abrasions, his chin hits the table. He feels the way his body is outstretched, stomach flat against wood. His heart is beating in his ears. He strains against it, but then Renee grabs him by his free leg, pulling backwards as well.

For each shallow breath, he makes a small sound. Rope against skin, pulled taught, the pinprick of discomfort as the hairs on his legs get caught between the threads. Conrad realizes he’s breathing too quickly and groans, swallowing thick as he tries to get his terror under control. Much like being strung from the rafters upstairs, he feels exposed, sprawled out like this.

Soon after the final knot has been tied, there’s a new sensation, and Conrad tries to look over his shoulder, but can’t even get enough leverage to do even that. He feels tugging at the fabric of his pants, on his right thigh, just above the knee.

The sound of a pocket knife clicking open again.

“Davin…?” Conrad manages to say between shallow breaths.

The sound of fabric being cut. The feeling of the cold air from outside hitting skin there. Another click of the pocket knife closing, sending a wave of relief through his body.

Davin comes back into view. The shoulder bag which Conrad knows carries his medical supplies stands on a sideboard by the wall, and from there, he pulls out a roll of fabric. Walks up in front of the end of the table, setting the roll down next to Conrad’s arm. Pauses.

As soon as Conrad lifts his head to meet the man’s expressionless eyes, Davin unclicks a button on the roll of fabric with his thumb, and unfurls it in front of his face.

They almost look like pencils at first, the thin objects neatly lined within the fabric.

They’re not.

They’re scalpels.

Conrad feels like his heart is pressing against his larynx. He hears Renee chuckle somewhere to his left. “Dh… don’t do this,” he says hoarsely, head spinning against a growing feeling of dizziness.

Davin’s hand hovers over the scalpels. He picks one up delicately, twisting it between his fingers, and Conrad sees the light catch in its razor sharp edge.

“Don’t do this.”

Scalpel in hand, Davin walks out of view again. Conrad twists in his restraints, watching the man disappear down his side.

“Please don’t do this to me. Please don’t do this to me. Please don’t d—”

There’s a sharp pain in the back of his thigh, starting out small but growing exponentially the further the blade cuts. Conrad lets out a whine as it rushes over him, feeling the blade carve along a c-shape. The knife lifts then, but before the pain can pass, it starts again, in the same place as before. Conrad can feel his flesh part, and he strains against his restraints, throat closing, head spinning with it. When he finally has enough air to do so, he lets out a scream.

Always starting in the same place, along the same trajectory, layer by layer.

Along with the blinding pain rippling through his ruined body, almost like the cold-hot flashes of a fever, there’s something new, a visceral feeling of wrongness, of intrusion, of the terrifying realization just how deep the blade slices. His attempts to writhe out of the path of the knife prove futile, his shaking hands claw desperately at wood, nails cracking against the surface of the table. The smell of blood fills the air he desperately heaves in.

“Stop!” he manages to cry out, “S-stop, please stop, please stop—”

Davin keeps going.

It feels like he’s carefully amputating the whole leg, one cut at a time. Feels like he’s already several inches down, like at any moment, he’s going to start sawing through the femur. Conrad can barely hear his own screams through the deafening screech of agony, feels as his grasp on the world begins to slip, as his mind cascades into a whirlwind. Up and down, left and right, they all begin to blur. It’s all he can do to keep the air whistling in and out of his lungs, heart galloping in his chest.

Time has no meaning. Conrad just screams. Screams to empty his lungs, and hauls in the next breath just so he can scream again.

The blade stops, and there is a pause.

Shuddering with the aftershocks of pain, Conrad’s cheek is pressed to the table, and he blinks, dazed. Lets out a whine, and then another.

“Take a deep breath, Conrad.”

If his heart could sink out of his chest, it probably would. Now that the immediate pain is beginning to fade, he can feel the pool of blood that has collected on the table under his thigh, feels the way it has seeped into the fabric of his pants, all the way down to his shin.

He takes a deep breath.

He feels fingers reach into the gaping wound on the back of his thigh. And then something happens.

There is a point at which pain ceases to be comprehensible to the mind, like the scope of infinity, or the vastness of the ocean. The brain lacks capacity to describe it, can only compartmentalize certain aspects of it at a time. Where it easily identifies location and kind, it suddenly struggles to pinpoint severity.

Conrad feels as though his entire right leg, from his foot to his hip, has been doused in a strong acid, set ablaze, crushed, mangled. There’s waves of it, rolling through his flesh. His screams take on an animalistic quality, tearing through his vocal cords as he mindlessly writhes in place.

And then it stops, leaving him gasping, blinking stars out of his eyes, struggling to comprehend what just happened.

Somewhere, distantly, Davin clears his throat. “What you just felt was me running my nail along two of the largest branches of your femoral nerve,” he says calmly. “One is called the saphenous nerve, and it supplies your calf. It’s purely sensational – touch, pain, heat, cold, et cetera. The other is articular and supplies your knee joint, lets you move around.”

Conrad can’t begin to understand what Davin just said. “Stop,” he whimpers.

“If I sever your saphenous nerve,” Davin continues, “I imagine it’ll feel worse than what I just did, but you’ll still be able to walk. If I sever your articular nerve, you won’t feel a thing, but you’ll be paralyzed in your knee for the rest of your life. No more fucking running.”

Conrad lets out a dry sob. It’s half-hearted and exhausted, the kind of sob that only comes when you’re at your wit’s end, rocking through his tired chest, grating in a throat hoarse from screaming.

Davin walks back into his field of view. The man’s hands held casually at his sides are coated in blood, the scalpel nearly disappearing in all the red. It drips from his fingers onto the floor. “I’m going to give you the choice, Conrad. Saphenous or articular?”

Teeth gritted, Conrad barely manages to suppress another sob, chin resting on the table. He’s too tired to even lift his head up to look Davin in the eye. “N-no,” he croaks out. “I w-won’t, I won’t try it again. I promise, I promise, Davin, I’m begging you—”

“I think you’re in the kind of mood where you’d tell me anything you think I want to hear. But you got it wrong, Conrad. All I want to hear is you making a decision.”

“No, pl-… I mean it, I won’t try anything again, so you don’t have to, to, to do anything, you don’t—”

“If you don’t choose, I’ll cut both.”

Conrad’s voice breaks. “No, Davin—no, don’t do this to me, don’t—”

Davin starts walking back to his leg.

“No, wait, wait wait wait wait!”

The man stops in his tracks.

Waits.

Conrad has already felt it once. The damage is done, isn’t it? What’s a second similar memory to the prospect of paralyzation?

His voice is shaking. “Th-the s… the s…s-saph…”

“Saphenous?”

Conrad lets out a breath. “Yh… yes.”

“Very well.”

He has to face that terror again, the knowledge of what he has to go through, a fresh recollection already missing entire chunks of time from an experience too extreme to remember correctly. Conrad begins hyperventilating as Davin disappears out of view, shuts his eyes tight. How do you prepare yourself for something like this?

You don’t.

You can’t.

Snip.

His vision fails, blinding white in an instant. There’s one hard spasm, after which his body goes rigid, from his legs to his fingers, frozen into claws. His mind slides off a cliff, tumbling into the raging waters below. The air, rancid with the smell of blood, squeezes its way past a mostly closed throat to a chest that can only move in small increments at a time. A gasp gets choked back, dies. The ringing in his ears fades into silence.

At last, Conrad lets out a moan, and slides into a deep darkness, where the pain cannot follow him.

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#belated happy nervous anniversary folks!!! 🔪🦵🎉🥂🎈#one of my fav chapters i think #self rb

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