Russian Roulette: Family secrets [2021 version]

Ch. 52: Ha, take that, you shitty birds

His throat killed him.

The way John had made him scream during the electro-torture had been award-winning.

Bolt after bolt of electricity had shot through him. Making his muscles twitch and cramp. Sometimes in one place, others in more. And regrettably, at times, everywhere. The current had felt unusually strange to him and had blurred his mind.

The only thing he had remembered as a coherent thought was to scream. Nothing else had entered his mind in those agonizing minutes of torture. Scream to survive. Simple. 

Fucking painful and exhausting, but simple.

Gareth could not imagine how that would have felt if John had not pumped him full of painkillers, and the current he had received was in a low setting. Poor, unfortunate soul who experienced the real deal at full current.

At least it had confirmed that John had not lied to him.

Yes, Gareth had felt it, a weird buzzing through his body, at first. In the end, it had hurt, because he had been exhausted. The muscle contractions were the worst, not the pain. Forty straight minutes of non-stop electrocutions, not even the strongest of painkillers had averted his mind from that ordeal.

It irked him to admit to himself, but if that current had been on max, and he had not been drugged into delirium, then he would probably have agreed to anything to make it stop.

Or simply died when his heart gave out.

When John's clock beeped, the torture had stopped instantly.

Though he tried, Gareth remembered little from the experience outside the spasming of his muscles and that buzz through every nerve. He had concentrated on screaming and clearing his mind. It was not until after it had ended that he noticed the manic laughter from Grychenko.

The sound had been more horrific than what he had just endured.

Ok, Gareth got it.

They were not exactly friends; they defined themselves as enemies. But laughing at his enemy, Gareth would never do. Maybe he would torture him, or maybe he would just kill him and let it be over with.

One thing was certain.

Gareth would never laugh.

Grychenko had to be bipolar or plain insane. Nobody changed as he did without underlying mental issues. Naturally, he was not to blame for a diagnosis like that, but it might explain his behavior. The man Gareth had met at the airport and at the mall, compared to the man who had sat laughing at him, was like night and day. Gareth had trouble reconciling with that. It made no sense to him. 

Then again, he could not exactly say he was as sharp as he usually was. He was too tired, exhausted, to be frank. Sore in every muscle and his brain had seemed to run at the lowest capacity possible. Nothing had made sense to him in his condition, and he had grabbed the first plausible reason he found.

He had been thankful when it ended.

Grychenko had enjoyed his fun and hummed with delight when his men had come in and released Gareth from the crate and locked him to the mattress, while John packed up his things. They had left after Grychenko promised the fun would continue later.

Later could not be far off.

Though Gareth had passed out from exhaustion, his body's need for the bathroom and craving for food and water woke him up. He tried to sleep more but settled for just relaxing, thinking about all his wonderful memories with Mackenzie and the guys.