#since I don't use them in anything these days

[meticuloushand]

It was a massacre. The two suits arrived but way too late as they stood in the middle of the theatre that had become a battlefield. One of them reached into the inside of his jacket, readying to pull out his gun while the other pulled out his brick of a phone to call their leader.

“Boss, there ain’t nothing we can do. Everyone of thems is dead.”

There was a moment of silence until the person on the other line finally spoke, inhaling deeply.

“I want you to find the bastards that did this to MY men and bring them to me. I want to deal with them myself and make. Them. Pay.”

And without being able to put in another word to her, she hung up.

“Ya hear that, Clyde?” “Yeah yeah... Funny she says she wants us to find ‘em but she wants to deal with ‘em herself. Why don’t she do it?”

His ally looked at him and thwacked him on the head.

“Because she’s our boss, numbnuts.” “Oh yeah huh?” Clyde replied, rubbing where he had been hit.

Clyde pulled out his pistol and his ally, Hosher, replaced his phone with a gun as well as they begun to investigate through this mess. Prior to this whole thing, the boss lady and her henchmen had all gone to the theatre to listen to a new violinist that appeared in town and had proved to be promising. All that the two suits had gotten was that something had gone wrong and the boss was rushed out during the calamity before she could even see what was happening but only she and a few others had gone out before the doors had automatically locked to keep as many of them possible inside. There was no information as to who the assailant actually looked like. They only just barely received a panicked call pleading for help before it had gotten cut.

There were bodies lining down the aisle and arms reaching towards the stage. Hosher started at the doors and quickly learned there were timers embedded into them. What understood that it activated during the lock down but what he didn’t get was why it was so easy for him and his friend to get in so easily now.

Clyde was on top of the stage when he had basically gagged loud enough for Hosher to hear him. Hosher looked back towards his direction to see there were spots of blood that had dripped down on the ceiling onto his face but from where he was, he couldn’t see what Clyde saw. He rushed over and climbed on stage only to pull himself back when he saw another suit hanging in the rafters by his own intestines.

“What kind of sicko would do this?”

It seemed like Clyde tried to answer but all he could muster was a gurgle. Obviously confused, he looked over to his ally to find him with his throat had been slit clean through. Hosher turned around to see who was there but something hit his head and everything had gone black.

When he came back to, he was in a much smaller room. He was sat up in a chair with his arms bound and only one of his legs tied down. 

“Good evening, friend.” An unfamiliar and heavily accented voice spoke. “Mind answering a question or two for me?”

Hosher, still disoriented and unable to look clearly replied by spitting in the direction he heard the voice from and dropped his head back down. Instead of the assailant replying, she crushed her heel down on his toes. He hollered in pain and forced himself to look up at her.

A woman with long black hair wearing round black glasses and a white coat was the most he could identify as his eyes did his best to focus. She pulled up a chair and sat right in front of him, crossing her legs. “My apologies, that was rude of me! My name is Dr. Clemence Zweikopf and I just want to ask a question or two. If you answer nicely, I’ll let you on your merry way and we won’t have any trouble here.” She smiled at him to express she wouldn’t intend any harm but her pearly whites only seemed more devious than kind.

Hosher winced at her, finally getting a better view of the doctor before him.

“What’s your question, ‘doc’?”

She folded her hands together over her lap and leaned in a little closer.

“Where’s the location of Miss Ida?” “You must think me a fool if you think I’mma tell you where my boss is, lady.”

Clemence stood back up and kicked her own chair away. She walked up behind him, leaned down, and placed a red, rubber gloved hand down atop his head and the other stroked his cheek.

“Please tell me? I just want to talk to her.” “FUCK no.”

Clearly annoyed, Clemence yanked his hair hard and threw his head forward. “I’m trying really hard to get over my bad habit and you’re not helping mr..........” “Hosher.” “Mr. Hosher, how quaint.”

Without even giving him a second glance, the doctor picked up a walkie talkie and spoke into it.

“Clovis when you have a moment, I need your assistance with a patient. No rush.” All that could be heard from the other end was a short sound of static as if the person did click to talk back, but just never said anything. And with that, Clemence sat back down in her chair though a little farther away from him as she picked up her violin and began playing on it. Hosher didn’t think too much about it until he remembered that his crew had come to the theatre to see a violinist.

“You caused that whole mess out there, didnt’cha?”

She paid him no mind and continued with her song and began to hum along with her tune. He tried to put it together in his head. How could one woman do all... that? No, she couldn’t have. She was just talking to someone else. This so called doctor and musician has an accomplice but still... If it were just the two of them against that many men? They practically filled out the whole theatre!

Soon, there was a knock on the door and in walked a man wearing the same white coat as Clemence and short black hair. The two just about looked alike other than his lack of glasses and wore a medical face mask instead. Clemence placed her instrument down and smiled softly.

“This is my brother Clovis. He doesn’t speak but he will be assisting me today and he doesn’t need a voice to help.”

He just stood there with both his arms behind his back only to give him a short wave before returning it behind him. 

“So I’ll ask again: Where is Miss Ida?” “I ain’t tellin’ you SHIT.”

She sighed and raised her arms up towards her brother as to gesture to him ‘Oh well, I tried’. Clovis only looked a little disappointed but not much else can be done to prevent this. If only their patient was more compliant it wouldn’t have come down to this. He walked closer to Hosher and held it straight out. The suit only then began to try to kick and fight back even though there was nothing much he could do to stop this.

“H-Hey! What the hell are you doin’, creep?!” “My brother is certainly not a creep! He’s a doctor as well and you better show him respect as such. He’s doing his job!” “Oh yeah? What’s his job then?” He asked, uncertain he wanted to hear the answer to that.

“For now, it’s to hold your leg. I think you should ask me what I’m about to do.”

Before he could even ask, she raised her own leg and stepped down the center of his straightened out leg, putting more and more pressure down. He yelped in pain as he felt his leg bend in a way that it wasn’t supposed to.

“Do you feel like telling me where Miss Ida is now?” “OVER MY DEAD BODY!”

She stopped and stepped away for a moment, turning towards a table that had a fat television set sitting atop it. Clemence unplugged the tv and struggled for a moment to pick it up and then chuckled when she finally heaved it up. 

“Goodness, this is heavy! I’ve never been much of a weightlifter myself.”

The doctor carried it over back to him and positioned it over his leg. He shook his head repeatedly and pleaded over and over again to stop. “Did you know that the femur is the strongest bone in the body? It would usually take maybe a car to run over someone’s leg to make it shatter. But there’s been cases of other mundane accidents where someone’s femur could break.” And with that, she dropped it down directly on the cent of his leg and all that could be heard was a pained wail and a sharp crack.

“Like dropping a tv on your leg!”

Clovis wasn’t even holding his leg straight anymore, it was being held up after his leg broke in half. Hosher couldn’t even look down, he just knew it was bad. All he could feel is white pain pumping into the injury. 

“Where’s Miss Ida?” Clemence repeated.

And still, no response had come. She sighed and gestured towards her brother who dropped the remainder of his leg and got up to get a case. Clemence took the seat from him and moved even closer to him. Close enough that her knee was basically brushing against his. Clovis handed her the case and as she clicked it open, he went behind Hosher and held one hand over his eyes and his other hand pinched his nose. He couldn’t see but he could hear something metal clicking and then silence as they waited for him to gasp for air. The poor man couldn’t hold his breath anymore and the second he opened his mouth, the unknown contraption was shoved in and quickly tweaked to keep his mouth from closing. 

“I’m not much of a dentist but I always wanted to mess around in someone’s mouth.”

Clovis couldn’t help but snicker at the comment.

“Hey! You stop that, not like that! Silly...” She shook her head and pulled out a pair of pliers. As she did so, Clovis held Hosher’s head in place so it would be difficult for him to really thrash around.

“This might convince you to answer my apparently difficult question. Once you want to answer, I want you to say ‘Ahh ahh!’ loud and clear for me.”

Clemence showed no mercy as she started with his front tooth rather than with a molar. She clamped down on it and yanked down hard but it wouldn’t come out. So, she wriggled it left and right and half of it broke.

“Whoops! that wasn’t very meticulous of me, now was it? I’ll just have to do it again.”

The nerves were exposed and it was unbearable. Hosher whined and tried to pull his head back but he couldn’t. The pliers were put back in and she finished the job more properly, pulling out the rest of the tooth. Blood dribbled down his chin and tears began to well up in his eyes but still he refused to use the noise to make to give in to this demon before him.

And she pulled out his teeth, one by one until there was nothing but his gums and tongue left. Every tooth she pulled out was tossed onto the ground around them without much care. Clemence leaned back in her chair, clearly growing tired and impatient.

“I’m sorry Clovis, he just doesn’t want to work with us! I can’t be nice like you in these kinds of situations. I need to use my one and only tool.”

Clovis let go of his head and sighed but understood. She reached into the case and pulled out a bone saw. Her brother turned him around so his back would be facing her.

“You know by the time we’re done with you, you ‘ll practically be a pirate! You’ve got one leg, and you’re only going to have one hand and you have no teeth! Pirates are interesting so maybe you can make a new life around that.”

Hosher squirmed in his chair only to feel the teeth of the saw grinding against one of his finger. He screamed through the contraption that was still held in his mouth as the doctor sawed off his index and went for his middle. Digit after digit, they were being discarded on the ground with no care just like his teeth were when finally he couldn’t take it no longer.

“A-AHH! AHH!”

She stopped immediately and Clovis swung him back around. Usually she would say something snarky but she just wanted this to be over. Clemence pulled the contraption out of his mouth who slowly but surely closed his sore jaw, cringing at the sensation of only having gums touching instead of teeth.

“The hurr..” He started hoarsely. “Ida ihh in the hurr...” The doctors looked at him, trying to understand what he said. They both stared in silence until Clemence snapped her fingers.

“Oh, the church! What a nice hiding spot. Thank you for your assistance, Mr. Hoser.”

With that, she pulled out a syringe filled with some kind of serum and injected it into his neck.

“This should help you pass on easier.”

Shocked, he looked at the two with fury as if he had been re-energized from the statement. “BUH YOU HAID--”

“I said if you answered nicely, I’d let you on your merry way and this whole time you have been nothing but trouble and wasting so much of my time. You didn’t have to make this whole ordeal difficult but you did. Your boss got out before the doors locked down but we didn’t notice until we went through every. single. one. of. you. So we had to stay and hope that she would send more buffoons so we could get a clear answer. And clearly we decided to take the wrong guy hostage. Your friend might have been more compliant.”

“You bih... I’ll hee you in...” He couldn’t even finish his sentence as he became to weak and heavy to speak any longer. And soon enough, he died.

“Well that was embarrassing. Let’s get cleaned up and prepare to go to the church next.”

Clovis nodded as he yanked off his gloves and the two siblings walked out of the room, closing it behind them with a resounding metallic clank.