Page 13 of Ruined

But Angelo isn’t thinking about being captured, because he has already taken someone else. Someone who doesn’t have the luxury of sleeping semi-shackled in his house and receiving haircuts from his very own hands.

We drive into a warehouse, the massive doors of which open for the vehicle, and I must assume will open for no other short of those equipped with a battering ram. The sight I spy there as the car swings around to reveal the contents of the place is as unexpected as it is unpleasant.

VanDinn, a tall, broad bear of a man is tied to an outlandishly small chair next to a small pink table with little pink cups and saucers. It looks like a child’s tea party, except nobody has ever been so afraid at a child’s tea party before. I can see the terror in his eyes even from a distance. I can also see he was thoroughly beaten before being tied up. One of his eyes is closed from a previous blow, swollen and purple and blue. His lip is busted open. He’s wearing a bloodied shirt also torn in several places. I think he tried to fight when he was taken, and I think he was shown no mercy whatsoever.

VanDinn is lit by a bulb that hangs on a very deliberate length of cable from the ceiling. The entire scene has been staged to create drama. If Angelo had used the lighting that came standard with the building, the whole place would be brightly lit with a fluorescent glow. That would ruin the horror tableau laid out before us. Instead, he’s ensured that there’s just a single light that illuminates the oddness and casts everything else in deep shadow. Everything he does is intentional.

Angelo opens the door and gets out of the car, leaving me behind in the back seat. I stay where I am. There is nowhere for me to run. Nowhere more for me to go than poor Mr VanDinn. I do not want to be a part of this. I don’t want to see it, or hear it either.

Hiding inside the vehicle, I know I have to witness as much as possible for the purposes for future prosecutions. I can’t shy away from anything Angelo and Bobby do. I have to not only watch, but take careful notes, committing all these events to memory.

I find myself sliding forward to the very edge of the back seat, staying technically inside the shelter of the vehicle, while exposing myself more fully to whatever horrors are about to come.

“You must be hungry, Mr VanDinn,” Angelo says, his tone cordial and his intention dark.

Bobby gets out of the driver’s seat, carrying the box of cupcakes, and the bottle of orange soda. He is smiling more broadly than I have ever seen him smile before. He is quite handsome when he smiles. If only it weren’t out of pure malevolence.

VanDinn’s eyes dart to Bobby, and he pales a little further. I am now almost certain that the injuries he has sustained so far are from Bobby. It’s not that Angelo wouldn’t beat the hell out of someone, it’s that he would be more methodical about it.

I have to assume that this is some attempt at the polar antonym of blackmail. They must want something from VanDinn, something they are attempting to intimidate him into giving them.

“You have to let me go, Vitali. You know you can’t kill me.” VanDinn doesn’t bother to talk to Bobby. I wouldn’t either. Angelo is the master who holds Bobby’s leash.

“Not kill you, no, of course not.” Angelo sets the box of cupcakes in front of the bound and bloodied VanDinn, carefully moving the little pink plastic tea set pieces out of the way to make room for it on the table. “I am well aware that you are what you imagine to be untouchable. I cannot kill you. But I can take you apart. The question you must ask yourself this afternoon, Mr VanDinn, is do you want to eat a cupcake, or do you want to eat something else?”

VanDinn shoots him a look of pure horror. I feel the same creeping awfulness, and I am very, very glad that Angelo decided to spare me in his own twisted way.

Angelo follows the strange and frightful question with a clarifying statement.

“I cannot kill you. But I can geld you, VanDinn.

“Christ…” The word escapes me as a soft whimper. Angelo is not looking directly at me, he is at a three-quarter turn from me, but I see his eyes flick very briefly back toward the vehicle where I am now cowering.

VanDinn is a very bad man. The sort of man that would have to be kept in solitary confinement in prison if his many and varied crimes were known. Angelo has chosen to humiliate and belittle him, and now I am almost certain he intends to mutilate him.

“It is a pity that you were correct earlier. I cannot kill you. There are too many who need you. However, I can absolutely punish you. I can make every moment of your life a living hell from which you are desperate to escape and yet cannot.”

“I can kill myself,” VanDinn says.

It’s astonishing that Angelo has done nothing besides put a box of confectionary in front of VanDinn, and yet he already has the man willing to end himself.

“Not an option I would encourage you to take. If you think I am a devil, imagine what true devils await you on the other side, VanDinn. Men like you and I must cling to life as we can, knowing what dark treasures we must have stored up in the hereafter.”

Angelo reaches into his pocket and pulls out a very elegant and well-made switchblade. It’s a street weapon, but in his hand, it looks like a fine tool. Angelo warps the world around him, makes what should be common and basic somehow elegant and admirable. I am watching two criminals shake down another criminal. There should be nothing here to engage me any more deeply than a superficial judgement. But Angelo has made this art.

The light from the bare bulb catches the blade as it swings out on a short but potentially brutal arc. The blade is clean, quality steel. It hasn’t been used on anything besides flesh, I think. I am at a distance, but the pure shine on the thing makes me think there are no marks on it that would indicate baser uses.

VanDinn has clearly faced Bobby before, but I am getting the impression he’s not had to tangle with Angelo. Bobby must have done the initial abduction and beating, perhaps alone. He must have been the one who set up the tea party. I wonder if that was on Angelo’s orders, or if Bobby is becoming more creative in his sadism, developing in Angelo’s shadow.

“Take his pants down, Bobby,” Angelo says.

“Fine!” VanDinn shrieks the word, rocking back in his chair as if to try to escape, and relenting on something he must have previously stood very steadfastly against. “I will do what you asked me to do. It is going to bring ruin to us all, but I will do it.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Bobby snaps the cap off the top of the soda bottle. “I thought we were going to have a tea party!”

Tea party definitely doesn’t mean anything positive and sweet here. I have an awful feeling that each and every little plate on the table was intended to hold a treat, not from Angelo’s box of freshly baked cupcakes, but from VanDinn’s own body.

“If Mr VanDinn agrees to give us what we have requested, then I’m afraid we will have to have a different affair.” Angelo picks up one of the cupcakes and offers it to VanDinn, who is smart enough to know that refusing a softening offering from Vitali is a bad idea. He takes a bite, and I see a look of surprise on his face as he is treated to a truly delicious piece of baking. I can only imagine how it tastes after however long he has spent here, tied up, bloodied, in a mad, dark Wonderland.

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