Vignette #6 - Turned Table

It was a nice day outside.

That was what went through Valerie's mind as she took a stroll through her neighborhood. The sun peeked through one of the breaks in the many clouds above, but the weather forecast made no mention of rain. However, despite the mid-summer calendar, it was comparably cool, with the temperature lingering in the mid-60s, low enough that she wore a light jacket. ...Which served as a contrast with her shorts and flip-flops, but it was still warm enough that both were viable clothing options.

It has just passed noon, and a number of her neighbors were also out and about, either toiling in their yards or--like her--leisurely enjoying the weekend weather. A number of them waved at her as she passed, which she returned with a friendly smile. Though with the mix of rock, pop, and rap music playing in her earphones via her phone, she could hear nary a sound of her surroundings. Not that it really mattered, as she tended to mostly keep to herself.

Her neighborhood contained a number of young and handsome men, albeit mostly White. Still, she would have loved to have snatch up some of them either running domestic errands or exercising and have her own fun with them. However, that would have proved to be way too risky, as much as she regretted it; it was no wonder that she kept her prowl further away from home, in nightclubs or bars, where the flood of people would mask her actions.

She actually did visit one such club the night before and brought back one of the patrons, a brown-haired fellow who in actuality wooed her. Unfortunately, he... "expired" hours ago; Valerie figured that she was a bit too rough with him. Additionally, she had no cache of men at the moment, so she knew that she would have to go back on the hunt soon.

She really wished she could just go up and shrink the blond fellow doing jumping jacks in the front yard of the house she was presently walking past, but she quickly put such a maneuver out of her mind. Still, her mind went there, imagining the hunk of a man being compressed into a red paste by her might.

...That said, he was more of Candace's type of guy, anyway.

The scene in Valerie's mind then shifted to Candace, with that blond young man desperately running for his life to avoid being flattened by her ebony feet. For Candace, crushing those bugs was especially easy, considering that she wore size-10 shoes. She could easily slaughter a dozen of those tiny men with a single step--and once proudly demonstrated that fact to Valerie and Kyra. Valerie found herself quite envious of that fact. ...Not that she would have wanted to have such large feet, especially with her short, petite stature.

Before long, she found herself walking through the darkness of the semi-long tunnel under a nearby overpass. The bridge itself was a relic, constructed decades ago but still seeing a bit of use. At that point, she realized that she had walked rather far from her home, as this overpass was a good twelve blocks away. She had not even had noticed the houses of her neighborhood giving way to the somewhat-wooded area that preceded this tunnel.

The tunnel was quiet, almost eerily so. What little sound there was--mostly from the outside world--echoed throughout the chamber. On the sidewalk on both sides of the street were pillars made of brick and stone, slightly wider than the average man and spaced about eight feet from each other. These pillars were also worn from age, but they still did their job in providing additional support for the overpass above.

Valerie was about halfway through the tunnel, paying more attention to her phone than the path ahead, before she noticed quick motion before her. She looked ahead--at the next pillar--to find an older, scraggy man holding a knife in his shaking hands. He had a rather flustered, deranged look upon his face.

Valerie's heart started to race as she put a pause to her music.

"You heard me!" The man barked. "Gimme yer cash, and no one's gonna get hurt here!"

Valerie instinctively took a step back in shock, but so too did the man take a step forward.

"I ain't gonna say it again!" He said. "Gimme your goddamn money!!"

It was clear that this man--perhaps nothing more than a bum on the street--intended to rob her, or stab AND rob her. ...Or even do much worse than that, and THEN stab and rob her.

...Of course, she had a weapon of her own. And it was one that this maniac would never expect.

She took a quick look around her surroundings; aside from the two of them, the coast was clear.

"What, you gonna try an' run, girl!?" The man taunted. "You ain't gonna get away from me!"

"No, I'm not going to run," Valerie told the man, before pointing her index finger at him.

"I'll chop that- GAHH!!!" He was hit with a bluish-white bolt of lightning-like magic that coated his body with a similar glow that lit up their section of the tunnel. However, this illumination would quickly fade as the would-be mugger rapidly diminished in size, Valerie keeping her stern gaze upon the man all the while.

In seconds, she brought the process to its conclusion, leaving the man at only a mere two inches tall. In the darkness, his minuscule form could barely be seen, but from the frightful screaming that she heard from the tiny man, it was clear that he realized just what had happened to him.

Without a word, Valerie approached the man and almost immediately made an attempt to stomp him flat into the sidewalk. He must have seen this coming, as he bolted as soon as she started to walk and managed to dodge her sandal-clad foot.

"What!? Wait!!" The man screamed at her. "Wait a minut- AGHHH!!" He managed to avoid her second try at murdering him.

The man scrambled about as Valerie coldly went to squash him multiple times, as he pleaded with her for mercy all the while. Despite her actual intent in killing him, he managed to ward off his fate each time with surprisingly fast movements; perhaps it was no wonder that he was so confident that he would have caught her if she had tried to run before.

At that point, she had another thought. As much as she wanted to crush him like a pathetic bug under her foot, she felt that such a fate was too abrupt for him. No... He needed to suffer.

After her final stomp, she kneeled down and reached for the fleeing man. Seeing this, he screamed and tried to get away from her and flee into the darkness, but she was not having any of that. Her finger wrapped around his tiny frame and picked him up from the pavement, the man still hollering at the top of his lungs.

"Lemme go, please!!" He pleaded. "I promise I won't hurt ya!!"

"No," Valerie responded. "You're coming home with me. I have some fun plans for us." She grinned darkly.

"What- what plans!?" The man sounded terrified of what she had in store for him.

"You'll see. Now, I need you to be quiet until we get there. Or else, I'll kill you on the spot."

The man gulped audibly, and after she stood back up, Valerie hastily stuffed him into one of the until-then unzipped pockets on her jacket. Once he was inside, she zipped it up, securing containing the dirty bum inside of his clothy prison.

She let out a sigh. "What an idiot..." Still, she was hoping to find a new plaything, and one had been dropped right into her lap. She only wished that he was younger. ...And handsome. ...And even Black. But as the saying went: "Beggars can't be choosers."

She had walked far enough from her home anyway. She decided to turn around and walk the twelve blocks back to her humble abode, switching back on her smartphone's music playlist in the process.

Just as she did so, two cars drove into the tunnel from behind her, and just as quickly passed her by. She could only imagine how the scene would have played out if they were only less than two minutes earlier...

~~~

"There!" Valerie said proudly to herself, her eyes upon the platter of tools that she had compiled.

Said tools consisted of a scalpel, five pin needles, a box of matches, and a single candle. It had been a rather long while since she had broke these items out, but she figured that now was as good as time as any to get back in the groove of things, to forgo the use of her direct body parts--as fun as that was--to instead make use of these tools. Needless to say, she was quite looking forward to it; she even poured herself a glass of cherry juice to savor during the act.

Carrying the platter in one hand and her beverage in the other, she walked over to the kitchen table, where the former mugger was waiting for her. Lying on two layers of cardboard, he had been stripped of all of his clothing, except for his briefs, and his spread limbs were each bound via scotch tape to the cardboard, collectively making him appear like the letter "X". For what she was planning to do, she had increased his size somewhat, to four inches tall.

As expected, terror had completely overtaken the man's being, his dull eyes wide with fear as he kept pleading with Valerie to release him while fighting in a vain effort to free himself from his bonds.

She set the platter and her glass onto the table besides the slabs of cardboard. Then, she pulled out the chair before her, and sat herself into its plush seat.

"Well, are you ready?" she asked the mugger.

"What're you 'bout to do to me!?" he yelled.

Valerie smiled, right as she reached over and took hold of the scalpel. "Just reliving the dissections we had to do in biology class a long time ago."

"What!! NO!!" He screamed.

"You know," Valerie spoke to him, "you're pretty stupid. If you had waited until I was walking past the pillar you were hiding behind, your little plan would have worked. ...But I'm glad you ARE pretty stupid. I don't intend on dying anytime soon."

She started to bring the scalpel down onto the mugger, who started to struggle even more frantically as the sharp blade drew near as he shouted "No!" over and over again.

"...And I expect the same from you," she continued. "Don't do dying on me until I say so!"

With that, the sharp edge of the scalpel pierced the left inner thigh of the mugger, triggering a loud yelp of pain from the man. She was careful not to go completely through his flesh, though the gash was deep enough to draw blood, and lots of it. Then, she slowly moved the blade downward, widening the man's cut in the process as more blood poured onto the cardboard.

"A very nice first cut," Valerie stated as she pulled the blade back, using her free hand to take a sip of her juice. She looked at the man's face, his mouth going at it as he switched between crying out in pain and shouting obscenities at her. "Maybe I should cut out your vocal chords next?" she threatened, which had no effect on him. "...Whatever. Your screams are half the fun."

With the scalpel, she made another incision in his skin, this time on his gut, slowly and arduously slicing the cut aside his navel. The man screamed still, and his struggling to free himself only intensified. She went for a third cut, slicing another opening into his chest as blood poured out. She was careful to not get his vital organs, at least for the moment.

"STOPPIT!!" He yelled. "STOP, YA CRAZY BITCH!!!"

"Yeah, I get that a lot," Valerie casually responded.

With the blade of the scalpel dripping with the mugger's blood, she returned it to the tray and went for her next weapon: the matches. Breaking off one of the sticks, she struck its tip against its box to light it on fire. Then, she moved the flame closer to the man, his eyes widened as his head rapidly shook in terror.

"NO! NO! STOP!!!" He blurted.

"What should I burn?" Valerie wondered aloud. "Maybe your arm?" She suggested as she drew the flame close to his left arm. "Or your hair?" the flame moved close to his head, as he did his best to recoil from the blaze. "Oh! I know!" The flame moved over to his covered private area. "I'll burn your dick off! But I bet there's not much to burn. A bottom-feeder like you probably has a small dick. I bet the girls you did manage to get were very disappointed."

The mugger managed to force his right hand to flip the bird at her. "SHUT UP!!!"

Valerie chuckled. "Guess I struck a nerve."

Though perhaps mercifully, she brought the match to her face and blew it out with a quick puff of air. She dropped the spent match onto the tray, whereupon--after drinking more of her cherry juice-- she replaced it with one of the pin needles.

"W-what're you gonna do with that!?" The mugger yelled.

"The tape is doing a nice job in keeping you down," Valerie said. "But I think it could use a little bit more assistance."

"WAIT, STOP- AHHHHHHH!!!" He screamed in agony as Valerie drove the needle through the palm of his right hand, its point easily passing through his flesh and piercing the cardboard below it. "BITCH!! BITCH!!"

Valerie simply smiled as the screaming instinctively tried to move that arm, but found himself unable to do so; it had been perfectly pinned in place. She took ahold of the scalpel again, this time running the blade across the same arm whose hand that had just been piked. From his hand all the way to his armpit, she made a nice, long gash in his skin that poured even more blood onto the cardboard.

"Think about it," Valerie spoke as she cut another incision into his chest. "This is what you were planning to do to me if I didn't hand you my cash, or if I didn't have my shrink power." Her other hand brought her glass to her lips again, sipping more of her sweet juice into her mouth. "Your blood's as red as my juice."

"I'M SORRY!!!" He pleaded at the same time as her remark about her juice. "I'M SORRY I DID THAT!!"

"And now you're 'sorry'. A bit late for that, don'tcha think?" She pressed the tip of the blade right onto his ribcage, with only enough force to make a minor, mostly-bloodless breach. However, she spun the scalpel between her finger and thumb, triggering another painful yelp from the man.

"STOP!! AGHHH, PLEASE STOP!!" His body fought frantically, which only made his torture even more painful.

Valerie chuckled, just as she withdrew the scalpel again and broke off another match. Striking it alight, she then took the candle and used the match to light it on fire. Extinguishing the match, she moved the flame end of the blue stick of wax over to the man, who had not stopped yelping for clemency.

"I'm glad I didn't throw this old candle out," Valerie said as she held the flame over the man's chest. "But it takes a while to melt, but that's a good thing, I guess. I mean, don't you hate it when you're at a birthday party, and the candles get wax all over the delicious cake?"

She half-expected a response to her inquiry from the mugger, but he did nothing but whimper and glare at her. She in turn grinned as she held the flame over him for nearly a minute, though to him it must have felt much longer.

"Granted, this isn't a birthday candle, so the wax from this thing gets pretty hot... Oh! I think I see some drippage!" Valerie announced as she indeed spotted melted wax pooling at the edge of the flame.

"PLEASE DON'T DO THIS!!" The man yelled. "DON'T!!!"

Valerie chuckled again. "As if!" The sphere of liquid wax steadily grew larger and larger, until the weight became too great and it detached from the candle, dripping downward, right onto the gash on the man's lower abdomen.

The scream he let out was truly blood-curdling.

In fact, she wondered if anyone outside could have heard it; likely not, she determined.

"My!" Valerie feigned being impressed, though part of it was genuine. "That was a loud scream! I wonder if you can do it again?"

"NO, PLEASE!!" The mugger pleaded.

"'No, please!'" she mocked. "If you really want me to stop, you would get yourself out of here, but that's impossible, isn't it? ...Too bad!"

"GAAAH- WHY'RE YOU DOIN' THIS!?"

"Well, it's because you tried to jump me, really." Valerie watched as the melted wax built up again on the candle.

"I'M SORRY!! PLEASE LET ME GO!!"

"That's not happening, because then you would tell someone or they would notice the condition you're in, and then get me arrested."

"HONEST, I WON'T TELL NO ONE!!"

Valerie squinted her eyes at the man in a deadpan fashion. "...That's a double-negative. So you DO plan on telling someone!"

"NO, NO!! I AIN'T GONNA TELL ANYONE!!" The man frantically insisted.

"Hmm... I don't believe you. But it doesn't matter, because I don't intend to let you go anyway."

"PLEASE LET ME GOOO!!!"

"Whoops!!" The second drop of wax fell upon the man, striking his body right on his ribcage, garnering another scream from him in response.

Chuckling to herself, Valerie brought the candle to her face and extinguished its flame with a puff of breath, placing the stick of wax back on the tray. She took a second needle, and with it pinned his left hand into the cardboard, this one being driven through his wrist. The man screamed and whimpered continuously; Valerie could only imagine the amount of pain that he was in, and she hoped that he did not pass out from it, at least not until she was finished.

"Tape and needles... It's safe to say that your arms aren't going anywhere." Valerie commented, as she took ahold of the third needle after another sip of her drink. "But then we have your legs."

The man bellowed a loud growl behind his clenched teeth.

"Let's start with this one," Valerie said as she jammed the needle through his right foot, pressing the pin deep into the cardboard. The man yelped as she saw blood pour out beneath his sole and drip onto the surface around the impaled needle. "And to complete this..." She took the fourth needle, and like before, thrust it through his left foot and into the cardboard.

"GAAAAAHH!!! STOP!!! PLEASE STOP!!!" The man continued to cry.

Valerie looked at the man's face, and upon noticing something upon it pulled herself closer to the man. Her mind was not playing tricks on her; the mugger had started to actually cry, tears pouring from his eyes like water from a cliff. If she had any empathy, she would have felt somewhat sorry for him. If she had any mercy, she would have put him out of his misery then.

Instead, she smiled at him, before spitting a bit of saliva upon his face.

As he quickly shook his head in an attempt to rid his head of her fluid--a difficult task considering his arms being unusable--she retrieved the scalpel and made a deep cut on his left arm, where the limb met the shoulder. The mugger hollered as crimson fluid erupted from within, spilling out onto the cardboard, with more and more being pumped onto the pooling liquid. From there, she made a long, deep cut along the arm, from his shoulder to the tape at his wrist, completely splitting that arm open and exposing the flesh inside to the air. All the while, he screamed at the top of his tiny lungs; Valerie was astounded that he still has any of it left in him, but it was the surest way to tell that he had not yet passed out.

She spent the next several minutes making more incisions upon his tiny body, cutting small but still painful gashes in his skin, interspersed with quick sips of her cherry juice. Each incision she made, she did her best to inflict it as slowly and as painfully as possible, and each stroke did not disappoint. His continuous agony was like music to her ears, which she relished in as she went for the next cut. Between them, he continued to plead with her for mercy, even though she had long since demonstrated that no such thing would occur.

"Haven't you learned yet?" Valerie scolded the mugger. "We're far past the point in which I could let you go. It's like the... wait, what was it called... Event horizon, yeah! We're past that and the only way left to go is towards your inevitable conclusion."

"THEN JUST KILL ME THEN!!!" It seemed as if the mugger had finally given up. "ANYTHING TO STOP THIS!!!"

"Slow down, dumbass," Valerie chided. "You'll die when I'm ready for you to. I still have things I want to do to you. ...Like cut your chest open."

"WHAT!? STOP!!!" He yelled as the blade bore down upon its chest.

"Back in my high school bio, we had to cut frogs open and study their insides," Valerie said. "Back then, I never thought I'd end up doing the same with humans, especially live humans. But..." She made a straight horizontal cut below his ribcage. "It's more fun when they're alive."

From the center of that bleeding gash, she made a second, downward cut, slicing past his navel and ending near his waist. There, she made another horizontal cut from one end of his body to the other.

"Perfect..." Valerie purred. She went to drink her juice again, after which she examined her glass, shaking it slightly as the remaining contents splashed about inside. "Hm... Almost gone..."

"GAAAH- DAMMIIIIIT!!!" The man hollered as he beat the back of his head against the cardboard.

Using the flat end of the scalpel's blade, she worked it under the cut sheets of skin and flipped them open like a window, bringing the man's internal organs into view: his stomach, his liver, his intestines, and such. Additionally, blood was starting to pool inside; at this point, the man had lost way too much blood, more than she thought possible without succumbing to the loss. It was somewhat tragic, as she still had more plans for him--especially with the matches--but it appeared that she was running out of time.

"Just hang in there a bit longer," she told the whimpering mugger as she retrieved the candle from before. Breaking off another match from the matchbox, she struck it ablaze, which she used to ignite the candle again.

The flame was held suspended over the man's open body cavity, though unlike before, he did not react at all. His head laid flat on the cardboard, as if he had truly and completely given up and was awaiting the merciful embrace of death. Still, he was alive, and that meant that he could still feel pain. She licked her lips as melted wax once again started to gather on the candle below the fire.

"This could have all been avoided if you had just minded your own business," Valerie told the man. "If you were younger and, well, actually hot, I would have kept you around for a lot longer. Mind, you would have been killed eventually."

The man did not respond in any verbal way.

"I would have either stepped on you," Valerie continued as she waited for the wax to build up. "Or eaten you. Or squeezed you in my hand. Or... well, this."

"Urgh..." The man moaned.

"The only mystery would have been: how long would it take for me to do it? With most of the guys I acquire, they usually last a week or two; a few even go as far as a month. Sometimes I get a bit too excited and smash them the same night I get them."

The drop of wax became larger and larger, just barely hanging onto the candle.

"Here it comes...!" Valerie announced as she anticipated what would happen next.

Indeed, the melted wax broke from the candle and fell into his cavity. The once-defeated man immediately came back to life as he screamed in agony, his tiny body squirming from the intense pain that he was no doubt experiencing. After all, without his protective-but-still-weak layer of skin, now his very organs themselves were under attack. Valerie smiled as another drop of wax fell inside, triggering another violent reaction from the man. His internal organs were directly burned from both drops of hot wax, and it appeared that the intense pain combined with his blood loss was just about to send the man into shock.

"I guess we've reached your limit," Valerie said as she nonetheless kept the candle suspended over his chest. "...Oh well."

She lowered the flame right into his open chest, holding the candle in place just long enough for the flame to spread into his body. At this point, the man's screaming had become subdued; his face was contorted in a clear expression of extreme agony, but barely a sound was being emitted, or at least, not a sound that Valerie could discern.

She sighed with a pout. "No more screams? Bummer..."

Still, after extinguishing the candle's flame, Valerie took ahold of her glass of juice and watched as the fire within the man spread, inside and even outside of the opening on his chest. Though he could no longer cry out in pain, his body language told the whole story, as it writhed in pain, or as much as it could, considering its bound limbs. Having such intense pain inside of his body was something that could only truly be like Hell: extreme agony with no hope of escape.

Though without his screams, it was a rather disappointing climax. She may have spent too much time toying with him before setting him ablaze. Maybe next time, she thought.

Seconds later, the small man's body fell limp, and he himself became lifeless as the flame kept spreading; perhaps his time was finally up. Valerie was somewhat impressed at how long he lasted, and how much punishment he took before he finally succumbed to his wounds. Though at this point, Valerie had to hurry and extinguish him before the flame spread any further and caused problems for her.

Especially now with her glass of delicious cherry juice being completely depleted.

The man was well on his way to death, but just to be sure of it, she grabbed the final needle and, with pinpoint accuracy, plunged it right through his skull.



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