Let The Trial Commence

WARNING WITH A CAPTIAL W: The following piece contains written descriptions of intense horror and graphic violence that some people may find disturbing. Reader discretion is strongly advised, and you may wish to turn to a more cheerful, less grimdark post to avoid nightmares.

That said, if you can actually stomach this sort of thing, you may wish to listen to this while reading, for atmosphere.

The first sensation that Boris "The Weasel" Vandeleur became aware of when he awoke was the throbbing headache.

At first, this didn't strike him has odd - as one of the most successful smugglers of booze in the city, with a reputation of being able to get anything past anyone in the world, he had a penchant for throwing big, excessive parties in honor of the huge amounts of money and success this enterprise was making him. It was not uncommon for him, after a successful series of deals had slipped by the fuzz, to crack open a bottle of Ol' Hobgoblin and get down to a night of debauchery with his aides and co-workers. The results of this excessiveness most often boiled down to a throbbing headache similar to this one, coupled with waking up in someone else's bed and a day of exchanging awkward looks with someone he barely knew otherwise.

He briefly wondered whose bedroom it would be this time - these parties often got like a fucking mystery tour sometimes, with him ending at a different place every time. He struggled to pry his eyes open by force of will, wondering whose face would he see looking back at him. Would it be dear young Clementine again - bouncy, smiling and with an ass that could stop oncoming traffic? Would it be slim yet serious Darla, with her nose always in a book and a head for figures? Or would it be one of those new girls that recently joined up with his workforce? Hopefully it was the tall, curvy one with red hair and green eyes. He liked green eyes, for some reason.

The answer to all those questions was the worst answer he could have hoped to get: none of them whatsoever. Upon reflection, he should have twigged the moment he felt the rush of cold air around his scraggly body, but he foolishy chose to open his eyes, wondering if the central heating of this bedroom was broken. When he did so, he gave a choking gasp - not just because his headache got significantly worse thanks to a sudden harsh light, but because he was not in any sort of bedroom at all. He was, in fact, surrounded by four grimy walls of a uniform concrete grey, stained with grease and dried blood. There was a door on the other side of the room, but between him and that was a very large pit, with a single, thin rope strung out over it, like a circus tightrope. The light that had stung his eyes came from a single lamp, which idly swung back and forth like the pendulumn in a grandfather clock.

But what caught Boris's eye was the symbol painted onto the door - a two-headed eagle, wings spread, clutching a sword and scabbard in both taloned feet. This was a symbol Boris had come to fear ever since he'd gotten into the smuggling business, one he had hoped never to see in what remained of his life, which now seemed incredibly short. One look at this symbol, and a horrible realization had come to the crime boss's head like a hammer blow to the skull, and all the stories and terrors he had heard over the grapevine came rushing back to him.

He was in Purgatorio.

Scratch that - the memories were coming back. Memories of being kicked about by men built like oil tankers, of eating cold slop from bowls and being poked in the back by electrified prods. He was still in Inferno Penitentiary - he'd been carted here about five months ago, although God alone knows how those fuckers had managed to find him. He'd been in this hellhole for over three months now, and was hoping to endure the remaining two with the same dead-eyed complaince he'd put on to avoid the worst this place had to offer, with minimum fuss or incident.

So what was he doing in Purgatorio now?

-------

Solomon, Arbiter of Morality, watched through the two-way looking glass as the man known as The Weasel swore and backed himself against the far wall of the Trial Room. Remarkably, finding the lanky man hadn't been so difficult - he'd found him curled up in the gutter outside a public house five months ago, snoring his head off and with a pink feather boa wrapped around his neck. It had been merely a case of comparing his face to the official description before carrying him to Inferno Penitentiary. The feather boa had been sent to the laboratory for drug testing - the man had probably been on the Pops at the time as well, considering the sick down his front.

A shudder rippled through the officer's body as he observed the actions of the now-hysterical Boris. None would think it of such a scrawny specimin, but this man had committed a list of moral crimes that would endanger a small forest - drug trafficking and pimping among them. But his notorious alcohol smuggling, in blatant defiance of the High President Elect's 18th Amendment, was the one thing alone that had placed him on the Arbiter's list of Public Enemies. And because each and every one of his actions counted as a Moral Crime, it was his duty, and his alone, to track this man down and bring him to justice - something he was eager to do. Considering the length of the list, a stay in the Second Circle was hardly nessecary.

But it's not like he deserves this...

Wait, where had that thought come from? With a grunt, the Arbiter shoved it back into his mind, adding a mental note to not skip breakfast again. One gloved hand reached down and snatched up the microphone that stood on the table in front of him, raising it to his mouth.

"The court is now in session, Arbiter Solomon presiding..."

-------

"The accused is tasked with crossing the rope they see in front of them to reach the door on the other side. If they are successful in this endeavour, they shall serve a minimum sentence of in the Second Circle of Inferno Penitentiary. If they fail, they will be excecuted by the sawblades beneath them. Therefore, the accused has only one chance to escape this room.

"Let the trial commence."

The tannoy clicked off, leaving Boris in a cold sweat. Sawblades. It had to be shitting sawblades, didn't it? Of all the ways those draconion fuckers could have offed him in their little butcher's den, they had to pick the whirrling, hissing, arm-chopping sawblades. That wasn't how he wanted to go! He always wanted to die an obese blob on comfy cushions, wiping chicken grease from his jowls while hot babes fanned his body with palm leaves! He'd have been the best crime boss ever, embarrasingly rich off all that alien tech that kept falling from the-

The whirring.

Oh, God, the whirring.

They'd started up the blades.

With a wimper, Boris looked down. There they were, all eight of them, arranged in a big block to ensure that if he fell, there was no possible way he wouldn't hit any of them instead of the nice, safe floor. The light glinted off their rapidly-spinning edges in a manner that sent chills down his spine. "You're fucked," it seemed to be saying, in the gravelly, smokers-lung voice of his late daddy-oh. "You've done screwed yourself up this time boy, and ain't no angel in heaven's gonna get you outta this one."

There was only once chance.

He'd have to try the rope.

Carefully, he put one foot onto the oddly shiny cord...

-------

Solomon's attention was distracted by the click of the latch to the door unlocking. Without turning around, he realised at once who had come to visit him, and soon he could hear the footsteps of two other people as they shouldered their way into the room to join him. One set of footsteps formed a long, regular stride, suggesting a tall, well-built man who did a lot of running in his job. The other set was more of a shuffle than a walk, and was accompanied by the clink of a metal walking stick on the concrete floor, indicating an older man who had some difficulty with his legs nowadays. Thanks to his rigorous detective training, Solomon had become good at recognising people by their footsteps, and he knew at once who had entered - Samson, Arbiter of Violence and regular visitor to the meidcal wards, and Jonah, Arbiter of Heresy and the oldest man on the force.

The two newcomers filed up on either side of Solomon, joining him in watching Boris as he wobbled his way across the rope. For a few moments, save for the rustle of their trenchcoats, all was still.

"'Ow's this one doin'?" Samson was the first to speak, his thick Scottish accent unmistakable to all who knew him.

"He's gotten further than the last one," was the reply from the younger Solomon. "Only slipped about once. I think he stands a chance of making it."

Jonah growled in his throat. "Hedonistic scum. He deserves the fate that awaits him at the bottom of this pit."

Or does he? Solomon caught himself thinking, and brushed that thought aside before it could take root. Thoughts like that were dangerous in the Arbiters. The one thing that held the group together, despite their differences and individuality, was a very clear understanding on the punishment for crimes on a large scale - an eye for an eye and all that.. Either you accepted this and went along with it all, or you were considered a Rogue. And a Rogue usually ended up dead.

"Ach, ye'd think they'd learn," rumbled Samson as he ran one hand over his mossy beard. "Mebbe their mama's didn't spank 'em enough when they wuz bairns, or somethin'."

"A lot of good that would have done this man," sniffed Samson. "He grew up in a violent family, from what I heard. His father used to threaten him and his brother with a kitchen knife if they didn't do their chores. No amount of spanking would fix his mental trauma."

"A poor excuse for supplying drugs and alcohol to Creek Street." Jonah tapped the floor with his walking stick - the sound was like gunshots in the cold air of the viewing room. "That place is a wretched hive already, thanks to the Daughters of Salazaar clogging the streets with their profane rituals. It didn't need this man distributing his filth to the masses. He should have taken the warning when it was given to him."

"Well, we've got the gobshite," Samson retorted, "so ah guess that makes ye job easier, eh?"

Jonah could only dignify that with a dull grunt, as the trio continued to watch.

-------

He was going to make it.

Oh, of course, he'd slipped once or twice, and the unending buzz of the deadly saws beneath him was maddening him. But he was already halfway across the rope now, and the door was growing closer and closer to him, step by step. If he could get this far, then what chance did those authoritarian bastards have of stopping him now? A chuckle ran through The Weasel's thin frame as he imagined walking out of Inferno after a few brief weeks, ready to get his business back on track and catch up with his darling girls. Perhaps he could start with getting the money out of Fat Jones down in the Gravel Pit - the dumb bastard was late with his pay again, and Boris hated people who were late. They usually ended up with a bullet in their heads.

Really, he thought to himself as he took another few steps, this trial wasn't that hard. What had he been so scared about? Those nasty urban legends that got circled around were nothing but fairy tales to scare the new boys! He'd been doing balancing acts on the tops of tall walls since he was a nipper! This was a cakewalk compared to that! He'd be out of that door in no time!

Although, come to think of it, this was an odd sort of rope. For one thing, it stung his feet-

He slipped.

And this time, it wasn't one of the small slips he'd taken earlier. It was a big slip, the kind you take when your attention is elsewhere and your sense of balance decides to go out for tea while you're not looking. Boris felt the sickening lurch in his stomach as he fell, and he quickly twisted, reached out with both hands and grabbed. By a miracle, he managed to wrap his fingers around the rope he'd been balancing from a mere second ago, and coughed as his body jerked with the sudden stop. His fingers sang with pain, and he dangled from the cord like a monkey in a badly-designed zoo enclosure.

"Shit," he hissed under his breath, and looked down. The saws seemed a lot closer now, their edges sharper and brighter, the whirrling of their motors and axles much louder. Up this close, he could see they were of the old Clayton and Sons make - diamond-studded teeth on an aluminium core, originally designed for use in the motor industries his father worked in. He could almost feel their edges slicing through the air, as if they had come to life and were hungry to get at him. A thin sweat broke out on his forehead as all his nervous terrors returned, and he kicked out with both feet randomly, as if he could simply get rid of the looming presence of the things the same way one kicks a spider off their shoe.

He looked back up at the rope, the only thing that was keeping him away from the saws. His eyes scanned it's length frantically, trying to find some way in which he might easily get back up onto it and continue. The shiny surface, however, offered no holds, glinting mockingly at him in the light of the lamp. Now that he looked closer, he could see it wasn't like any rope he'd seen before. It was slivery, and the texture on his skin was more akin to metal than the woven hemp he was accustomed to. And it was hurting his fingers, the same way it had been hurting his feet from moments before as he'd been walking over it.

Curious, he shifted one hand along, wincing as another jolt of pain lanced through his hand.

And then he saw the blood.

He gasped, and withdrew his hand to look at it, now dangling from his other one. There was blood there, too, pooling out of a long series of cuts on his hand. And it had collected on the rope, trapped in the silvery weave and glinting on the sharp edges of the-

...Razor wire.

"Fucking hell..."

It was made out of razor wire.

The colour drained from the man's face as the realization hit him like an express train. All his strength left him as the shock set in, rendering his mind numb and ice-cold. As if in a dream, he saw his free hand slip away from the painful rope; as if in a dream, he saw his world tumble and twist around him; as if in slow motion, he saw the room turn to present the whirring blades that were rising up to meet him, hungry for his blood, reaching out to claim him.

Here I come, mama...

-------

There was an explosion of blood. Bits of arm and torso went everywhere. Something that looked like intestines splattered onto the floor between the saws. Samson jumped as a head, bearing a dazed expression, splatted against the mirror and dissapeared again.

There was a pause. Then Solomon, who had been holding his breath all this time, let it out steadily as he reached over to the control panel and flicked a switch. Instantly, the blood-stained saws stopped spinning, coming to a complete halt as the power was cut off from them, their teeth glinting with liquid crimson in the dim light, as if laughing at the horror of what had just taken place.

"Fiat Justitia," growled Jonah, glaring with satisfaction at the mangled remains of a former crime boss.

Let Justice Be Done, Solomon mentally translated as he watched another door open, and a team of men in white suits rush into the room, armed with brooms and hoses. Hardly justice when saws are involved.

(I WARNED YOU BOUT GRIMDARK, BRO

I TOLD YOU DOG

And yes, this is my character teaser for ZF7. Sweet dreams, all.)