For the TerribleMinds flash fiction challenge, That Poor, Poor Protagonist.

The water woke him. It was, as always, cold as ice. It poured onto the back of his head, around his naked shoulders, down his naked torso and over his multiple wounds. He could drink it, if he wished. They couldn’t stop him from doing that.

He tried the manacles again. Despite how slick his arms became with water and blood, he still wasn’t able to free himself. The manacles offered scrapes, not freedom. Their chain was fixed to the thick hook fixed to the stone ceiling, near the spout for the water.

Soon they’d come take the chain from the hook. Then they’d heat their chain whips and start again. Cold followed by hot followed by cold… days and days it’d been like this. He’d lost count of how many. His torturers had two rules: don’t kill and don’t mutilate. Their master wanted him whole, the better to break into a willing servant.

He’d welcome death first. But apparently even the Collector of Souls had forgotten this dismal place.

He expected the water to last for a long time, as it usually did first thing in the morning. Instead, it ended soon after it began. He blinked droplets from his eyes as light bloomed outside the archway leading to his cell. The light belonged to an oncoming torch. Were they changing the routine? Usually they let him linger in the pitch darkness before coming to begin their grisly work. Instead, he saw shadows, shapes moving against the stone walls outside his cell door.

Moments later, the beefy cellmaster was unlocking the gate. Before becoming cellmaster, he’d been a town crier, speaking out against the sultan’s rule. After two weeks in the dungeons, he’d begged to have his tongue removed in exchange for an end to the torture and a lifetime of servitude. The dungeons, they said, broke everyone eventually.

The cellmaster stepped out of the way and allowed two of the torturers to enter. They carried the torches, and the figure between them carried nothing. While the torturers wore their leather vests and trousers, weapons and other implements of pain within easy reach on their belts, the other wore a robe of the finest silk, brocaded with precious stones, rings on his fingers and in his ears and nose. He approached with a smile.

“A good morning to you, my gentleman thief. I hear my friends here are having some trouble with you.”

Anger coiled tightly in the thief’s belly. “I give them nothing.”

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t. You came to my palace to take, not to give. You are far more inclined to take than give.”

“We’re alike in that, no?”

The sultan smiled. “Taxation is not thievery, my friend. I am a protector of the people, responsible for their health, their food, their infrastructure.”

“And when you annex the lands of your rivals?”

“Not all of my peers are my peers, or cut out for sultanhood. If their people suffer unnecessarily, I intervene to take that suffering away from them.”

That got a laugh from the thief. “And yet here I am.”

“You were already suffering when you came here.” The sultan eyed him. “You think me cruel, perhaps, but I am not without mercy. I will show you.” He turned to the torturer on his right. “Gag him.”

The torturer did so, shoving the bit deep into the thief’s mouth. A moment later, another torch was visible in the corridor. The thief’s eyes moved to the cell door. He felt a chill worse than any caused by the water flow through him. Escorted into the cell were two women, one his age at thirty and one roughly half that age, both in sensual silk veils the same color as the sultan’s robes, the torchlight accentuating their curves through the semi-transparent fabric. The sultan chuckled.

“Your wife and your daughter. So similar in beauty and form they could almost be sisters. Your daughter’s just beginning to blossom, my friend. Had you not noticed?”

He growled through the bit. The women didn’t look at him. They’d likely been threatened that if they did, the whipping would begin. The cellmaster behind him carried the heated chains, the metal links giving a dull glow in the half-darkness. The sultan touched the thief’s wife’s cheek, then his daughter’s. He favored them for a long moment each, then nodded slowly.

“Yes. They are pleasing. Take them to my chambers. I will be along shortly.”

The cellmaster gestured, and the women left willingly. The sultan clapped his hands once, smiling.

“You see? I have not harmed them. I have welcomed them into my home. No harm shall come to them while they stay here.”

The torturer removed the gag. The thief spat. “As long as they’re your slaves!”

The smile vanished. “They do my bidding. You will have access to them if you confess to your crime and throw yourself on my mercy, which pales in comparison to my wrath. And my wrath is considerable.”

“In that, we’re alike.” The thief glared at the sultan. “If you release me all you’ll get from me is a dagger in the throat.”

The sultan studied him for a long, cold moment. Then, sighing, he shook his head.

“Begin again, my friends. Twice the normal regimen, every day. I will be in my chambers. See I am not disturbed.”

They left, the torturers to sharpen their tools and the sultan to… No. He wouldn’t think on it. He’d endured the whips, the clamps, the stretching and the broken fingers. But the sultan had involved his family. The family for whom he’d stolen bread, fruit, water, gold.

Fury and sorrow warred within him when the torturers returned. He waited for them to unhook his chain. They were two, armed and rested. He was alone, weary and bound.

Crying out in rage and hate, he attacked them anyway.

For the terribleminds flash fiction challenge, The Flea Market

The elderly man was comfortable, resting in the expansive bed that dominated the master bedroom of his suburban home. Under the babble of the talk hosts on the television was the constant, mechanical sound of the respirator. He’d told the doctors he didn’t need it, but they’d insisted. He’d accepted it, grumbling all the while, repeating that he’d taken two bullets for his country and he wasn’t going to let some clump of cells the size of a golf ball take him out now.

Of course, now it was the size of an orange, and getting bigger.

The door opened. The man looked up from the television, past the framed medals on the wall, to the figure walking into his room. He was tall, as tall as the man had been in his youth, with the same short blond hair and green eyes. They were eyes the man had seen before, a long time ago, before he’d gone to war.

“My God…”

The young man said nothing. He closed the door gently behind him. He knew the nurse was downstairs, but she’d be out for groceries in a few minutes. He looked down at the bed, at the war veteran laying there, his once strong cheeks and neck withered by time. The young man reached into his pocket, placing an action figure on the veteran’s rolling tray.

“Do you recognize this?”

The old man looked from the doll to the stranger and shook his head.

“This was my very first G.I. Joe. A Real American Hero. I found this one at a flea market, but I had one just like it when I was little. My mother told me that my father was a man like this. So I watched and read all I could on soldiers. How they were noble, brave, smart and polite. How they sacrificed for their country.”

“Who… who are you?” The veteran’s voice shook like branches in a strong wind. The young man continued.

“So imagine my surprise when my father never comes home. That he was apparently killed in action. Only, he wasn’t. There was a clerical error. He was wounded in action, not killed.” The young man looked over his shoulder at the medals. “Purple heart, right? And next to that? Is that one for the civilians you killed?”

“Get out of my house.”

“No.” The young man seemed to loom over the bed. “When you came back, you didn’t go back to the girl you’d left behind or the boy she’d given birth to while you were gone. You came here. You started over. And do you know why?”

The young man produced an old newspaper and slapped it down on the tray, toppling the action figure. The headline read NEW YORK ALLOWS GAY MARRIAGE.

“Because you didn’t want to live in a New York City that tolerated fags.”

“Marriage is a holy sacrament! They defile it! It’s in the Bible!”

The young man slapped him.

“So you turn your back on the woman who loved you and a son you never met because God told you it was the right thing to do? I thought God was love! What love was there in pretending we never existed, Dad?”

The veteran stammered. The young man seemed to compose himself, producing another paper.

“I know you weren’t sitting idle while this was going on, either.”

The paper now on top of the New York one bore the headline MULTIPLE HIGH SCHOOL YOUTHS FOUND DEAD.

The veteran felt his mouth go dry. “We… we were…”

“Doing God’s work? Hard to justify to parents who won’t see their sons grow up, go to college, fall in love, start lives of their own.” The young man picked up the paper and began to read. “‘All five victims were members of a new student organization aimed at helping kids in the LGBT community survive the bullying and derision they face every day. Apparently they were walking home when an eyewitness reports seeing an unmarked van pull up next to them…'”

“Stop. Please.”

The youth glared at him, then continued. “‘… They were found two weeks later in a defunct paper mill’s basement. Their bodies had been dissolved using lye and other chemicals to hide the means of death, but while the case has been ruled a homicide, police admit they are having difficulty finding suspects.'” He put the paper down on top of the other one. “I guess the war never ended for you, did it, Dad?”

“Please… son, I’m sorry…”

“No. You don’t get to say you’re sorry and walk away. You don’t get to lay here in comfort and spend your last few years agreeing with Fox News and shouting at the Democrats. You haven’t earned this. You had a great life, love and a family, and you turned your back on it out of hate. You disgust me.”

The old man’s jaw twitched. “You’re one of them, aren’t you? You’re one of those abominations before the Lord.”

“No. I’m not. I’m just the son you abandoned, here to collect a debt.” He reached over the old man to grab one of the pillows from the bed. “You’re a real American hero, Dad. You should die fighting.”

He pushed down with the pillow onto the old man’s face. The veteran struggled, trying to slap the arms away, but he was too weak. His nails found no purchase on his son’s coat. His cries were muffled by the soft down and expensive cotton cover.

The young man kept the pillow there. He kept it there while the veteran fought him. He kept it here when the slapping stopped. He kept it there until the old man’s bowels were empty and the room stank of death.

He stood up, picked up his flea-market action figure, and tucked it away.

“See? Killed in action after all. The Army was just ahead of its time.”

With that, the young man walked out.