Page 19 of Horror and Chill

HolySpite's address narrows in faster than it should.Amateur.College student. Male. Lives alone.

Perfect.

We’re already moving.

He livesin a rental house just off campus. The siding is warped and faded, the lawn dead and patchy, littered with fast-food wrappers and crushed cans. A single porch light flickers overhead, casting shadows against the peeling door.

We stand outside for a moment, watching through the gap in the blinds. He’s in his chair, slouched forward, headphones on, one hand wrapped around his cock like it owes him something. The screen glows with her face. He pauses to rewind, clicking back to the part where she moans around the needle sliding into her thigh. He watches it again. And again.

It isn’t the act that disgusts us. Everyone touches themselves. It’s the hypocrisy. The way he gets off on her pain, her power, her vulnerability, then spits poison into her chat like he has the right to shame her afterward. He worships her in secret and wounds her in public.

We knock. Just once. Not too loud.

We watch through the break in the curtain on the window to the left of the door as he freezes then pulls his headset down around his neck. He shuffles toward the door, still tugging up his shorts, irritated and distracted. When he opens it, his face shifts to confusion. We keep our expressions calm. Neutral. Friendly enough to lower his guard.

“Package for Noah Spivey?” we say, lifting an empty envelope.

He blinks, glances at the porch, then back at us. “Uh… yeah, that’s me.”

“Perfect.”

Then we move.

The door swings inward, slamming against the wall behind it. He stumbles backward, arms flailing for balance, and slams into the chair. His laptop crashes to the floor, screen still frozen on Agatha’s face.

He doesn’t have time to scream. Not yet.

We’re already inside, hauling him to his feet by his shirt. We drag him toward the kitchen, his feet trailing behind him on the dirty tile. He kicks out once, makes a pathetic noise behind the tape we press over his mouth, but it doesn’t matter. The old table in the center of the room is covered in trash and sticky crumbs. We clear it without speaking. Takeout containers hit the floor. Bottles roll into corners. The legs of the chair screech against the linoleum when we yank it into place.

He struggles as he’s forced down into the chair, but panic makes him clumsy. We tape his ankles to the legs of the chair. Then we pull his arms back behind the chair and wrap more tape around his wrists until his fingers go white.

He cries when the bag we brought with us is opened. Not loud. Not yet. Just shallow little sobs under the gag, like he knows something awful is coming and can’t stop it.

We hold up a needle.

Long. Thin. Surgical steel. The kind used in medical piercing.

He thrashes harder.

“You watched her moan while these were going into her skin,” we say quietly. “You watched her breathe through the pain, watched her body respond to every single one. You stared at her with your hand around your cock like she was something to be consumed. And then you spat bile into her chat. You called her disgusting. You told her to repent. You told her she made you sick.”

The first needle slides through the meat of his thigh.

He arches off the chair, but the tape holds. The scream behind the gag is muffled but raw. We pause. Let the pain simmer. Let him feel the truth in his own body.

“She turned pain into art,” we say. “You turned it into a weapon.”

The second needle goes into the other thigh. Slower this time. We watch the skin stretch, the puncture bloom, the tremble starts in his knee and crawls up into his belly.

We take our time.

Needles through his upper arms. Through the soft skin above his collarbones.

The tremble becomes a full shake, and still we don’t speak again. There is no point in telling him anything else. He understands now. He understands the difference between someone choosing pain and someone having it forced on them. He understands the weight of what it means to mock someone for being brave enough to turn pain into performance.

We thread the last needle behind his ear. It slips in with barely any pressure, but he sobs like we’ve gutted him.

Then we crouch in front of him. We meet his eyes.