Subject: Vengence Most Foul (Very Long - Save - Read later at leisure)
Date: Sat, 31 Oct 1998 05:14:29 -0000
From: "Duke Henry Plantagenet" <_no.spam_@_thank.you_>
Newsgroups: alt.tasteless


Very Long - Save and read at your leisure. Enjoy!

-----------------------------------------------------------

The early morning lingers in the autumn here.  Like some headache from
drinking cheap wine the night before. Light enough not to make you vomit and
find the relief that comes after your body has finished heaving and spewing
out the poisons you have inflicted on it but just irritating enough. The air
is damp and unpleasant, and hangs on you like a raincoat which was hung up
wet some days before in a closed cupboard and wearing it now afflicts the
nose with musty smells and age old body odours awoken by it's soaking.

A resplendent figure stands in the middle of a courtyard looking down a
track fading into the grime covered mist.  A fine cloak of red velvet hangs
from his shoulders over a gold satin and wool doublet - the very figure of
feudal supremacy enshrined. He sneezes and the image is lost to us as he
fumbles for a handkerchief and blows loudly into it.

"Shit, I feel ghastly..." he mutters to himself and closer now we see the
unbrushed hair and blackened, sleepless eyes peering into the pale gloom.

A horse drawn cart lumbers into view and we see three well dressed figures
in red livery coats. One has the reins of the proud black horses pulling,
the other two are sitting casually on the sides. They are smiling, relaxed
and pleased with themselves. Occasionally, they kick something in the bottom
of the cart. The horses come to a standstill, their nostrils blowing clouds
in the still air.

One of the figures, now fairly obviously female jumps down and kneels. She
is blonde, tough, cheerful and has blood on her hands. Someone else's blood
and quite a bit of it. "My Liege! We bring two of them!"

"Excellent work, Steward. Bring them out."

The second figure on the cart leaps down, a dark haired and jolly female.
"Good morrow, my Liege, may I present for your delight...  Scott J Nieto
 quoting 23 lines of a thread which was already
lacking in tastelessness and should have gone to email long before with no
ObT in sight, only to add a lame one liner of 'are people this dumb?' on
top..."

"Ah, yes Chancellor, I recall a certain degree of bitching between Aemilia
and Lenore Levine this week. Lacking in the ObT somewhat, but a one liner
lamer should be made an example of occasionally. Far to many of them
recently."

The two women drop the back of the cart down and drag out a bound and gagged
youth with wild staring eyes, one half closed with a purple lump under it,
and a split lip which is oozing blood into the gag. With a casual flip, they
send him head first into the dirt.

The Steward turns back and reaches into the cart again "And this loser
posting his Binary of a perfectly ordinary roadkill onto the group. One
Jake, I believe."

"Indeed. This *road_warrior*..." The Duke's tone is level but mocking. "I
think we can find something for him."

The object dragged into view called Jake, is not a pretty sight. He didn't
have much to start with. Now with tufts of hair ripped out, one ear is
reddened bright and his nose is distorted and dribbling blood at fresh
intervals. He is hauled out and let to fall off the back of the cart and is
kicked in the stomach on the way down.

The third, the slim woman with the short, spiky hair dyed a wild pink, leans
down from the cart and extends her hand to The Duke. "My Liege."
He clasps her arm as swordsmen do. "Good work, Squire."

She nods down at the softly moaning form of Jake in the dust, "Opened his
front door with his face on the way out."

An impression of a pained look crosses the Duke's face, "Careless, I would
have thought he would have learned how to, by now."

The Squire spat down on the motionless wreckage in the dust, "The fuckwit
hasn't even learnt how to read an FAQ for starters."

"Put the horses out and fire up the Henry-Pearman, I have an idea in mind
for our brave 'road_warrior'..."

"Yes, my Liege."

"And Squire ... Why Pink of all damn colours?"

She laughs and runs her hand through her hair, "All the little girlies fall
for it."

The Duke smiles back up "Very well, just leave some for me, won't you. Go on
with you. The Pearman will need the water level checking, remember." He
turns as a gurgled cry sounds behind him.

The Chancellor has prised 'Jakes' mouth open and is stuffing a lump of horse
droppings into his mouth, "Try spewing that shit, Loser!"

"Hold! We are going to attend to master Nieto here first."

"My Liege, I was just going to give him something to ponder while he
waited." She slams a length of rag over his mouth, twists his head over and
ties it tight.

"I see. 'Food for thought' was it? Let's deal with Mr.One Line Loser..."

-----------------------------------------------------

Scott Nieto sits miserably in the darkness. He was dragged down a flight of
stone steps by his legs and hauled into the seat of a large wooden desk
framed in heavy black wrought ironwork.  The glare of a bright computer
monitor is burning into his eyes, but he cannot turn his head away as it is
being tightly held in a vice like restraint. A set of shackles secure his
legs back under him and the sharp edge of the seat bits into the underside
of his knees. The desk has a battered look about it, and countless dark
stains which Scott wishes are not blood, but he does not feel hopeful about
it. There is an old metal cased keyboard sitting on the desk. It has a
raised sharp edge at the front and someone has stuck upturned drawing pins
onto the key tops. Two of the three women who dragged out of his house, beat
him up and carried him here, now stand either side behind him. The man they
had called 'My Liege' is leaned against the wall, twisting a tissue which he
inserts up his nostril and extracts a long slimy strand, waves it
experimentally for a few seconds before flicking it into the darkness. He
speaks,

"Scott, first, this is nothing personal. This is just putting into practise
one of the tenements of the alt.tasteless FAQ - 'Post quality. Encourage
quality. Discourage crap.' When posting to UseNet as a follow-up, quote but
quote sparingly, it only takes mere seconds to remove empty space and sig.
files and condense the quote to about 6 lines, just enough to remind people
of the context and content you are following up. Quoting a whole article
makes tedious reading and responding at the top before the quote is bad
form. Making people page down though reams of stuff they have already read
makes them angry. And you know what makes them really angry? Lame One
Liners. Type out what you wrote..."

Scott blurts out "wot? you kiddin man?" staring at the evil looking keyboard
in front of him. Surely the maniac wasn't serious??

" Steward, Chancellor, help him out here." They each grab one of his
arms and prise out his fingers. Key by key, they push his fingers down onto
the drawing pins on the key tops, and with each one, he screams in agony.
Each pin punctures his finger and scraps on the bone, one pin is driven up
under the fingernail, which splits in two and is prised away from his
fingertip. They press his wrists down on the keyboard edge slicing deeply
into his flesh and his hands turn into a glowing mass of pain. He cries in
agony, and finally they drop his arms again. Though his tears he stares at
his tormentors - only smiles of pleasure on their faces - how can people be
so monstrous?

The Duke looks into his face and speaks slowly, "People read alt.tasteless
to be grossed out, to enjoy the sicker joys in life, they want you to
disgust them or at least amuse them. Thinking about it, you would be hard
put to disgust them. Most of all they want quality postings of
tastelessness. What they don't want to read is pathetic meaningless
comments. You post to a.t, articles about things which are tasteless. Look
at your post before you send it. Ask yourself, is it tasteless?"

"If it isn't tasteless - DON'T POST THE FUCKING THING!!!"

"I can not understand why people can't grasp this straight forward concept,
I must ask the same question as you did - 'Are people this dumb?' - notice I
can use a shift key, you should try it some day - and all I can say is yes,
they really are that dumb and you have answered your own question by
example. People really can be dumb enough to re-quote a whole steaming
article just to add one feeble line like that. Was your post tasteless? NO.
What you were replying to was losing tastelessness fast. You could have
added a gross ObT of really sick immensity and dazzled us all into saying
'This man Scott is Mr.Tasteless 1998!!', or you could have just ignored it
and gone onto the next thread. This is not a bloody chat conference, even if
it gets that way sometimes."

"Undo his head." Scott breathes again, perhaps they will let him go now, and
stop hurting him. Then with one single blinding move, the Duke rips up the
lid of the desk, grabs his hair and pushes his face - ARRRGHHH - into a ...

<<< SLAM >>>

The Duke pauses for a moment then raises the heavy desk lid. The unconscious
form is face down in dirt and broken pottery shards.

"My Liege, why did you leave a cacti in the ClueDesk?"

The Duke glanced at his Steward, "I just thought it would be a nice
finishing touch and anyway I can't stand the stupid plants. Call it style."

The Chancellor smiles, "Or was it, you thought he was a complete prick?"


"Perhaps, indeed, perhaps..."


Then the three of them climb out into the brightening morning, leaving the
silent form of Scott in the depths of the ClueDesk.

-----------------------------------------------------

Jake looks up at the approach of them. The spiky haired girl had looped
metal straps round his wrists and ankles. These loops were now secured on
iron spikes driven into the ground. Further restraints in the form of metal
loops round his thighs hold him helpless on the ground. He had tried to get
up and escape from here, but she had struck him across the head with a bar,
stunning him and leaving a trickle of blood running down from his forehead.
The loops are cutting into his flesh and all his dazed mind can think of is
the pain and the disgusting taste in his mouth.

The Duke looks down at the spread out figure. "Jake, let me just explain why
you are here. You posted a picture, incoded in Binary format. alt.tasteless
is a non-binary newsgroup. You don't post pictures here. Simple. Pictures go
to alt.binaries.pictures.tasteless, they don't go in here."

"Don't understand me Jake? The internet is not all run on big, powerful
machines with masses of hard disk space. Some parts are run on from small
servers which cannot cope with high volume. A flood of binaries can choke a
server and crash it. Many people who read a.t depend on these small volume
server providers."

"If you start posting binaries into a conference, a low volume sysop will
pull the plug on a conference. People will lose the very conference they
love to read and enjoy. Some of us have to pay for our connection. Some of
us have to pay the phone bill at the end of the month. If the feed is slowed
down because some twit has posted a load of binary rubbish, I end up paying
for your stupidity. You either didn't read the FAQ or you just ignored it.
Fuck up here and you suffer."

The ground trembles. A metallic rumbling sound, with hisses and spits is
getting louder, driven by a rhythmic thumping sound. In to view from round a
corner comes a brightly painted Traction Engine blowing clouds of steam from
it's stack.  Clouds of steam fill the air, and it grinds to a halt a few
yards from the group. The Duke pats the bodywork with affection. "Isn't it a
beauty, Jake? A Henry-Pearman Traction Engine built at the beginning of the
century. Over 40 tons of metal, top speed 20 mph, high capacity boiler,
found in a barn near here, it was one of six in it's class. It can pull it's

own weight again and has been carefully restored to full working order. And
today we are going to play with it. We are going to play _Chase the Bunny_"

The traction engine starts up again, Jake realising, now sick with terror
that it is rolling straight towards him!! It slows. The Duke calls up, "Take
it very slowly, I want this inch by inch. I want you to saviour this." The
wheel is heading directly across Jake's legs, over the ankle.

"The front wheels are about a foot wide. 12 inches to a foot. Did you know,
Jake, that you have got about 100 small bones in each foot? Or do I mean
*had*?" The wheel now rests against the ankle, the helpless man is wildly
trashing about in the restraints which are cutting into him. The first foot
is bent under the wheel, then above the hissing of steam and clanking of
pistons, above the ghoulish muffled shrieks, is a distinct cracking sound.
The leg is squeezed to an improbable taper under the wheel and blood begins
to ooze out under the edge. The leg twists then with a crunch the wheel
bites though the bone and the leg breaks free. The body twists in agony, the
eyes are staring one second, clenched tight shut the next, tears wrung from
them each time. Now the next foot is bending under, wrenching the leg round,
once more slipping from view, once more the crunching sound, like a stiff
paper sheet being twisted into a ball and as the wheel turns, a sticky mat
of flesh, skin and bone comes slowly into view. Blood dribbles from the
crushed stumps.

Jake is still now. The eyes are half closed, and his consciousness has ebbed
away. The Duke waves up to the Squire, "Hard down, turn till you are facing
away from him with the way he is lying. Line one of the back wheels up on
him - I want a serious roadkill here. I get to see all sorts of wildlife
pancakes round here.  At least, this will be different. Wait a minute, throw
some water over him, I want him to enjoy this next bit too."

<<>> Groan. Jake's eyes flicker, close tight, then open wide and
staring, at the back of the slowing reversing, steam hissing monster. Just
visible over his chest, a huge wheel rolling straight up to him. The last
traces of sanity vanish, with eyes rolling, throat gargling and body
trashing, the restraining straps shred his flesh, sliced open veins gush
blood. The huge rear wheel reverses up onto the leg stumps, squelching
through the puddle of crushed fresh meat left by the one at the front, their
width taking in the whole body. Deliberately, it grinds the stumps under,
one knee splits open, splintered bone tearing through the skin, thrusting
pinkish-white into the air, before disappearing. The thighs bulge out,
breaking the restraining metal band free, to no avail. The body twists and
arches as the pelvic bone snaps apart, and the eyes bulge, a mass of fluid
spilling out round them. The stomach begins to disappear under and the body
lifts up to meet the wheel surface, the head dangling back and the arms
straining against the metal bands which hold them, torn deep red flesh
striped away from bone, the posts pull loose and the arms swing inwards in
one last grotesque embrace of the iron death, as the chest cavity collapses.
Finally, the head, now twisted onto it's side, is ground under the wheel,
and only now does the huge machine seem to notice the human ant it has trod
underfoot and it lifts slightly, then drops forward as the skull rolls over
and explodes spreading blood and brain tissue out to the sides before
disappearing from view.

The Duke regards the carpet of broken flesh and bone, "That was a bit more
entertaining! Good one, Jake. Won't ask him to stand up and take a bow,
mind."

He appears thoughtful for a moment, then says "I know, drop Scott down the
Obliette, then we can shovel this mess into a bin bag and drop it down for
him. That will finally get rid of both our problems. But first," He turns to
his assembled Household, "a bottle of Mead each and a toast to a better
UseNet!"

"Cheers to you all!"

The End


------------------------------------------------------------


I had a ranging temperature yesterday and slept though a fever, I actually
dreamt all these. *That* is a sick imagination. The third section looked a
lot more graphic than I wrote it. I am not a man of letters or prose. Just
have to use your sick imagination...

Thanks for reading it.

    Source: geocities.com/sunsetstrip/disco/3645/archive

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