Karen said yes to the picnic.
They set off at around 11:00 a.m. He drove at a steady pace, and the ride to the isolated location he’d chosen by the lake took just under twenty-five minutes. But this time Lucien didn’t subdue his victim inside his car. There was no surprise attack. No needle to the neck. Lucien did actually prepare a picnic, with sandwiches, salads, fruit, donuts, chocolates, beer and champagne. They ate, drank and laughed like a couple of best friends. It was only when Lucien poured the last of the champagne into Karen’s glass that he added enough sedative to throw her into a deep, dreamless sleep for at least an hour.
It took less than five minutes for the drug to work.
When Karen reopened her eyes, there was no more picnic, no more outdoors. She came to very slowly, and the first thing she realized was that her head ached with such ferocity, it felt like an animal was inside her skull, clawing at her brain.
In the poor light and through the pain, it took her eyes four whole minutes to finally regain focus. As they did, she struggled to understand her surroundings. She was sitting inside a dark, stuffy and soiled room. The walls seemed to be made of plain wood, like a large tool shack in someone’s back garden. But something inside her told her that she wasn’t in anyone’s back garden. She was somewhere else. Somewhere no one would find her. . a place where no one would hear her if she screamed. And as that realization dawned on her, that was exactly what she tried doing — screaming. And that was when she became aware that her lips weren’t really moving. Her jaw wasn’t moving either. Panic took hold of her body and she tried to look around her. Her neck wasn’t moving.
Oh, Jesus!
She tried to move her fingers.
Nothing.
Her hands.
Nothing.
Her feet and toes.
Nothing.
Her legs and arms.
Nothing.
All she could move were her eyes.
They stirred down to her body, and she saw that she was sitting down on some cheap metal chair, unrestrained. Her arms were loose and falling down the sides of the chair.
For a second, she thought she was dreaming, that she would very soon wake up back in her bed, that she would laugh and wonder why her brain had produced such tormenting images, but then there was movement in the shadows to her right, and the fear she felt growing inside her told her that this was no dream.
Her eyes darted in that direction.
‘Welcome back, sleepyhead,’ Lucien said, stepping out of the darkness.
It took Karen just a few seconds to notice that everything about him seemed different, starting with what he was wearing — a long, lab-like, plastic, see-through coverall. His sneakers were also covered with blue-plastic shoe covers.
Lucien smiled at her.
Karen tried to speak but her tongue felt heavy and swollen. Only undecipherable noise came from her throat.
‘Unfortunately, you won’t be able to say much,’ Lucien explained. ‘You see, Karen, I’ve injected you with a succinylcholine-based drug.’
Fear exploded inside Karen’s eyes.
Succinylcholine is a neuromuscular-blocking agent. It blocks transmission at the neuromuscular joint, causing paralyses of whichever skeletal muscle was affected. In Karen’s case, her entire body. The nervous system, though, stays intact. She would still be able to feel everything.
Lucien checked his watch. ‘You’ll be in this state for a while longer.’ He stepped closer. ‘You know, I’m not a big fan of tattoos. I’m not sure if I’ve told you that before, but I will admit that that design you have on your upper right arm is very nice. Japanese, isn’t it?’ As he said that, he moved his right hand from behind his back, and the metallic blade glistened in the dim light.
There was no room for any more fear in Karen’s eyes. They just teared up as more unrecognizable sounds escaped her throat.
Lucien stepped closer still.
‘The main reason why I paralyzed you,’ he said. ‘Was because I wouldn’t want you to wiggle about and mess this up. This is very delicate work.’ He looked at the blade — a laser-sharp surgical scalpel. ‘This will hurt a little bit.’
Tears just rolled down Karen’s cheeks.
‘But the good news for you is that. . I’ve done this before.’
Sixty-Six
Karen implored her body to move. She tried to gather together all the strength she had left inside her, all the will-power she could muster, but it simply wasn’t enough. Her body just wouldn’t respond, no matter how hard she willed it to. She tried screaming, talking, pleading, but her tongue still felt like a huge hairy moth inside her mouth.
Slowly and skillfully, Lucien used the scalpel to rupture the skin at the top of Karen’s shoulder blade. The first blob of blood came out, and he used a piece of gauze to clear it up. He proceeded to gradually slice and very carefully pull the skin off her arm.
Karen’s head had been paralyzed in a sitting-up sleeping position, slumped forward and slightly to the right. Her chin was low and almost touching her chest. Lucien had placed her in that position deliberately. He knew that once the drug had taken effect, Karen wouldn’t be able to move her neck, only her eyes. He wanted her to be able to see.
And so she did.
As Lucien moved closer, her eyes shot right and she saw the scalpel pierce her skin and the blood come out of her arm, but she was so scared that the pain effect was delayed. It took several seconds for a sharp and deep penetrating pain to finally hit her, releasing an animal-like, guttural growl that came from deep inside her.
The skinning, together with Karen’s contagious fear, filled Lucien with a mind-numbing satisfaction he couldn’t explain. Much better than any drug he could think of.
The entire process didn’t take him very long, and at the end of it Lucien was floating on air, high on the chemicals his brain had released into his bloodstream. He would’ve completed the skinning in half of the time, but Karen could only manage a few minutes before she passed out. Lucien wanted her awake, he wanted her panic, and so he interrupted the skinning process to bring her back to consciousness before starting again. That took time.
When he was finally done, he waited for Karen to come to again and lifted the bloody, tattooed piece of skin to show her.
Her internal organs weren’t paralyzed, and as her eyes caught sight of what used to be part of her upper right arm, her stomach shot half of its contents back up her esophagus and she vomited all over herself.
‘Don’t worry, Karen,’ Lucien said as he began to clean her up.
Karen shuddered inside at his touch.
‘That’s the only tattoo I want from you. I will not be taking any of your other ones.’
Karen had five tattoos in total.
‘But I do have a surprise for you.’ Lucien got up and disappeared into the shadows for a moment.
Karen heard a muffled scratching metallic sound, as if Lucien had begun dragging a beer keg across the floor. When he reappeared, she finally saw what he was dragging, and it was no beer keg. Lucien had with him a couple of metallic tanks, very similar in appearance to the large oxygen tanks one would find in hospitals. But somehow Karen knew that the contents of those tanks wouldn’t be oxygen.