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Nick Andreychuk is a Derringer Award-winning author. His stories can be found in Bullet, “By the Chimney with Care", Crimestalker Casebook, “Fedora I” and “III”, Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine, Hardbroiled, Shred of Evidence, Techno-Noir, and Who Died in There?, among many other publications. Nick's work can also be found in “Bullet Points”, an upcoming anthology of short-short crime fiction that he co-edited. Readers can contact him at nickandreychuk@hotmail.com.

Bleeding Heart by Nick Andreychuk

(Originally published in Murder by Six, 2003)

"Dimitri! Wake up, Dimitri."

I felt my wife’s tongue slide playfully across my cheek. That woke me up! "What a nice way to start the day," I said, without opening my eyes.

"You like that, huh?" I felt the tongue on my lips this time, just as it registered in my brain that the voice didn’t actually belong to my wife. It was an unfamiliar man’s voice.

Who the hell––?

I tried to sit up and open my eyes at the same time, but was terrified to discover that I was unable to do either. Now that I was fully awake, it was obvious that I’d been blindfolded, and my hands and legs bound. I couldn’t see, and I could barely move, but I could still talk. "What the hell’s going on?" I asked.

A low chuckle was the only response. Then someone licked my face again, leaving a disgusting trail of slobber.

"Stop that! What are you, some kind of pervert?"

"I thought you said it felt nice," the man replied, then laughed. His laughter was joined by another masculine voice.

"Where’s my wife?"

"She’s right beside you, except for her tongue."

"I swear, if you hurt her, I’ll––"

"If we hurt her? If? James, I don’t think that Dimitri here is paying attention to me." James snickered, then the first man continued. "I’m holding her tongue in my hand, Dimitri. Do you really think the process of removing it didn’t hurt her?"

Suddenly, something that tasted like a slab of raw liver was shoved into my mouth.

I must have passed out, because the next thing I knew, I was being revived by slaps across my face. The severed tongue had been removed from my mouth, but the foul taste remained, making me want to retch.

"You disappoint me, Dimitri." It was the same man speaking, and he sounded more amused than disappointed. "Don’t you get it? The reason why we cut out her tongue instead of yours was so that you wouldn’t black out from the pain. And then you go and wimp out on us anyway! Not that I should be surprised, since you’re such a bleed––"

"I’m going to rip your tongue out, you sick son of a bitch!"

"Go ahead and try."

I lunged forward with all my strength, but the bonds held firm, and all I managed to do was dislocate my right shoulder. I tried to hide the pain I’d inadvertently inflicted, but it must have showed on my face because the bastards burst out laughing.

"Hey James, I think we’ve got ourselves a masochist. That’ll make our job easier––we can just stand here and watch him torture himself."

Job? So this wasn’t just some random attack. Maybe I could offer them more money than whatever they were getting paid. And maybe they’d respond to humor. "That’s right, I am a machinist. A well-paid machinist. What say I double whatever you’re getting paid for this job?"

"Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. We’re not getting paid for this, although you could call it payback."

The more I listened to my tormentor speak, the more familiar his voice seemed. But where had I heard it before? And payback for what? "What the hell’d I ever do to you?"

"You cost us millions of dollars in fines, you whining little bleeding heart. Did you think we wouldn’t find out that it was you who ratted us out?"

Fines? Shit, now I knew where I’d heard that voice before––at staff meetings. My tormentor’s name was Clive Davis––the company’s primary shareholder and CEO. And the man with him had to be James Braddock, Vice President of Marketing. Davis didn’t seem to be trying to hide who they were––were they planning on killing me? I decided to play it safe and not let on that I’d figured out their identities.

Being in the same room with heartless polluters like them would have disgusted me under the best of circumstances, so I couldn’t help but respond to their blame casting. "People were getting sick because of that toxic sludge you dumped into the lake!"

"It’s not like anybody died. At least, not yet."

"You got off easy with those fines! You should have been thrown in jail. You’re going to be now though, for what you’ve done to my wife... if I don’t kill you first!"

"There you go again with the threats. You should be thanking me. I could have killed you––but I’ve decided to spare your pathetic little life instead."

"Don’t expect me to spare you."

"Oh, you won’t lay a finger on me. In fact, you’re going to go back to work tomorrow and act as if nothing ever happened. And you’re going to ignore whatever you happen to see and hear about our new disposal site. Then, every few weeks or so, you will send false reports to your government contact. You will tell them that the company is no longer doing anything that is harmful to people or the environment, and that the company is definitely not doing anything remotely illegal. You got that?"

"Sure, you want me to turn a blind eye when you dump barrels of toxic waste wherever’s most convenient for you. And let more people get sick? Let people die so that you can get richer? Never."

"I’d reconsider if I were you."

"Screw you."

"Three strikes and you’re out."

"Better yet, you two should screw each other."

"James, open Dimitri’s right hand."

Both my hands were balled up in fists. James pried my fingers open, but I immediately closed them again.

"Hold them open."

James did as instructed, and then one of them placed a small, sticky ball onto my hand. James let go of my hand and I closed my fingers gently to try and figure out what they’d put there. The ball was soft and moist. It felt disgusting.

"Open his left hand."

James opened my other fist, and a similarly squishy ball was deposited.

"Do you get it yet, Dimitri? We’re not going to kill you. But if you don’t do what we demand, your wife will suffer the consequences."

I wanted to lash out at him, but I couldn’t even make fists, for fear of what I might be crushing. Instead, I bared my teeth like a caged animal.

Davis took my silence as defiance. "It’s your own fault, you know. You wagged your tongue, and your wife lost hers. Then you refused to turn a blind eye, and your wife lost her eyes…."

"Noooo!" What have I done? Why couldn’t I have just lied, said I’d play along?

Oh my god! Ava! My five-year-old daughter was asleep in her bedroom down the hall. If they’d touched a hair on her head, I’d never be able to forgive myself. I almost asked if she was all right, but I didn’t want to draw attention to her. Maybe they didn’t know I had a child. I could only pray.

Davis slapped me again to get me to stop screaming.

"Now, pay attention," he said. "You will go back to work tomorrow, and you will keep in touch with your government contacts, and you will tell them exactly what we want you to. There’s no room for bleeding hearts in the business world, Dimitri. Cross us again, and the next thing you’ll be holding is your wife’s bleeding heart."

Someone placed a cloth with a chemical scent under my nose and I blacked out. When I came to, all of my bonds had been removed.

My wife lay next to me. I checked her neck for a pulse and was overjoyed to discover she was still alive. I lifted up her eyelids and was shocked to discover her eyeballs intact. Her eyes had a glazed look, as if she’d been drugged, but they appeared to be undamaged. Feeling hopeful, I opened her mouth. Her tongue was still there.

I searched the bed, but whatever "props" the bastards had used were gone. Then I noticed that they’d soiled my wife’s nightgown. There was a bloody red X over her heart. I got the message.

"DADDY!" Ava.

I jumped off the bed and ran down the hallway.

Ava was sitting up in her bed, screaming and crying. She appeared to be unharmed. But her puppy wasn’t. Her pet’s lifeless body had been placed next to her on the bed. Dried blood ringed its mouth and its empty eye-sockets. The puppy’s chest was ripped open, its heart missing.

Then my heart nearly stopped beating. Ava’s pajamas were red, so at first I hadn’t noticed the dark red X over her heart.

***

I went in to work the next day and went about my job as usual. As before, it wasn’t hard to find out through the grapevine when the next midnight work detail would be. But this time, I kept my mouth shut. As far as outside sources were concerned, the company was no longer illegally disposing of hazardous waste.

In fact, I even volunteered to help out with the late night disposal. I arrived early though, to make sure that all the lids were sealed tight to avoid leakage... and so that I could add two extra barrels of scum.

THE END