Benevolence, Georgia

The screeching sound woke Tommy before the impact. His eyes were now open, but he still could not see anything. His head hurt, more than it should have from hitting it against the wall of… whatever he was in. It also dawned on him that he had no clue how he got there. It was small, hot, and had a dirty, stale smell: a combination of body odor, dirt, vomit (which explained the taste in his mouth), and something metallic. The inside of the container was hard, and covered in something that felt like a very rough carpet. His place of imprisonment was also shaking violently, and loud.

Tommy tried to reach his head, to feel what exactly was dripping down his forehead, and discovered that his hands were bound with something that felt like tape, same for his feet. He rolled around, kicked out as best he could, banged against the top, but nothing gave more than a very little bit. In terror, he began to scream.

After a few moments, the vibrating and sound died down a bit, with the sound becoming more of a hum. During a pause for breath, he heard a slight clicking sound, followed by a louder one. Then the top opened, and the outside was almost as dark as the inside had been, save for two red glowing lights on the outside, one to the left and one to the right. Just as his eyes began to readjust, a harsh, bright white light shined directly into his eyes. A voice shouted out over the noise, “Shut up, you fag!” A swishing sound followed, and then a brief pain, and then the numb darkness of unconsciousness.

The next time Tommy regained consciousness, he was no longer enclosed in anything. He was outside, and someone was dragging him by the arms. He tried to ask whom it was, but found that his mouth was now taped shut. His legs still being bound, he did not even try to break free of his captor. There was no light to see where he was, and the only sound was that of his captor’s footsteps crunching leaves, and the slightly different sound of his body being dragged over the same ground.

After a bit, he could hear the murmur of voices further on ahead. He could not be sure, but it sounded like two people arguing. The one dragging him shouted ahead to them, “Hey! Are you two morons ready? He ain’t gonna be out much longer!” They responded, though through the distance and the lingering disorientation of the earlier blow, Tommy could not quite make out what they said. “Well hurry the fuck up,” replied the man dragging Tommy, who was now becoming very out of breath.

There was now a visible light emanating from what Tommy assumed was his destination, and a crackling sound. It must be a fire. He could also now hear light hammer hits. At this point he was almost fully recovered from the blow to his head, and was able to think clearly. He tried to place the voices to faces, assuming they must belong to someone from Benevolence. No one ever comes there, so he had to know them.

Perhaps if he could remember where he had been before he got here. But it was hard. He remembered a big (for Benevolence) group of people, and music. Loud music. Not a concert. There were no concerts in his town, you had to go Cuthbert for that, and he knew he had not been there. A party! That was it. He had been at a party, and he must have had too much to drink to remember much more. That would explain why he had thrown up before, too.

He could now feel the heat from the fire that was lighting the destination, and hear the other two men muttering about “it” being too heavy. Now being awake, he started, even if unintentionally, moving his muscles more. The man dragging him began to notice, and he was suddenly, harshly pulled up by his arms, straining his tendons, and dislocating his right arm. He tried to cry out in pain, but the tape blocked his scream. With tears rolling down his face, he was thrown forward, rolling to within inches of the fire.

“Now look what’s happened. He fucking woke up. Get it ready, we gotta get this done soon.” He recognized the voice now. It was Minister Williamson from Benevolence Baptist Church. He rolled himself over, and he could see him now. His short cut graying hair, his perpetual five o’clock shadow, his piercing green eyes. This was the face Tommy saw every Sunday, had seen every Sunday since he could remember. The face that he saw going to the store on those mornings when school started a few hours late. It was always such a pleasant face. But not now. He looked intense, with a power burning in him hotter than the fire by Tommy’s side. A power that hungered for one thing: suffering.

Williamson strode to Tommy, knelt down beside him, and ripped the tape off his mouth. The strength of the adhesive combined with the force of the rip pulled the skin off his lips. A brief cry, and Tommy began to speak. “Mr. Willia—“

“Shut up!” A steel-toed shoe was harshly introduced to Tommy’s gut. The blow was so great that even if had he tried to brace himself for it, Tommy would still be left with the internal wounds, the lacerations to his organs. Of course he was not aware of this. All he knew was that there was such an intense pain that he began retching. He was pulled to his feet before he had a chance to see that his bile was streaked with blood.

“You can scream as you please now, sodomizer. No one will hear you but us and God.” Williamson then threw a punch to Tommy’s stomach, “Are you ready now?”

“Yeah, bring him over.” Tommy was dragged a few more feet, and two other men, both who worked at the church, came over to him with pocket knives in their hands. They cut the bindings on his hands and feet, and pushed him against a post. Williamson walked out of view, and came back with ropes. Tommy’s arms were tied to a horizontal post that crossed the one he was pressed against, and his legs were tied to the first. The other two men the grabbed their knives again, and cut the clothes from his body.

“Lay bare the sin, so that all may see its twisted, rotting truth.” Williamson spoke in the booming voice that he so often used in his sermons. In his hands, he now had a hammer, and four railroad spikes. “’God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day.’” One of the spikes was placed against Tommy’s hand, and as Williamson pulled back to deliver a blow to the spike with his hammer, he said, “You shall see God, sinner. And then you shall be cast into the fires of Hell!”

The spike was driven through his hand with one blow, and through the wood with the second. Tommy’s mind shut down after that. The pain overwhelmed every facet of him, and he was gone. No more screams of anguish. No more spewing of sick over the ground. Tommy was as good as dead. He never knew that his other hand, and both his feet were pierced in kind. He never heard the other sermons delivered that night. He never heard that he was to die to save Williamson’s son from the sin that Tommy had brought unto him at that party, in a drunken moment of passion. He did not watch as the cross upon which he was fixed was knocked into the fire. He saw no more.