A World of Pain

By

Casey Stegman

After passing the beat-to-hell mutt chained to the tree outside, I enter the kitchen-turned-meth lab through the back door.

Immediately, Rottiger is on me.

He grabs me in a headlock from behind and throws me into the far wall.

“You just stepped into a world of pain, dipshit,” he says, and then begins wailing on me.

A world of pain.

I grin at this. Because everything does hurt.

It always has.

My skin, bones, organs, and whatever is underneath all that—constant and utter pain since the day I was born.

Over the decades, doctors have come up with a range of hypotheses about what it could be. But none of their treatments had any effect. What especially perplexed them was that I didn’t let on that anything was bothering me. “He thinks a level ten on the pain scale is what everyone feels,” my pediatrician once told my mom. “He thinks it’s normal.”

As Rottiger now elbows my kidneys for the umpteenth time and smashes a glass beaker over my head, he says: “How does that feel?”

I say, “Meh,” then turn and ram him into the fridge with my forearm.

His face goes flush as he strains to push me off. To regain the upper hand and start pummeling me again.

“That dog outside,” I say. “The one you got chained up. I saw the burn scars all over her body. I’m guessing you think because you can do that, you’re tough shit.”

Rottiger finally looks into my eyes. And I can tell from his expression he sees what I want him to see.

“You don’t know what a world of pain is,” I say. “But I’m more than happy to show you.”

That’s why I’ve been sent here tonight. To collect.

See, this ain’t a fight. Never was. I just needed to get him tired. Sap his adrenaline. So he could feel things without the lizard part of his brain dulling them. There’s never been any doubt about how this ends—even if it’s gonna feel like an agonizing, ungodly amount of time until we get there.

At least for him.

Afterward, I go outside and crouch about ten feet from the tree. I hold out a piece of cheese I grabbed from Rottiger’s fridge. And I wait.

I’m patent.

After a half-hour, the dog starts sniffing at the cheese. An hour later she begins to approach. Forty-five minutes after that, she finally lets me pet her.

By 2 a.m., I’ve cut the chain and am loading her into the backseat of my car.

As I drive off, I glance back through the rearview and say, “No one’s gonna hurt you anymore.”

Her eyes meet mine. After a long beat, she lays down. Inside of a minute, she’s snoring.

Pulling onto the highway, I whisper, “No more pain. No more pain.”

No more pain.

***

Bio:

Casey Stegman lives in North Carolina. His work has been published by Mystery Tribune, Tough, Shotgun Honey, Dark Yonder, Punk Noir Magazine, and Bristol Noir. He has a new story in the anthology, MOTEL, from Cowboy Jamboree Press. When he’s not typing up stories about miscreants and malefactors, he rescues and rehabilitates dogs with his wife. So, if you’re looking to adopt, hit him up. He can be found posting about his love of fiction and obscure movies from the 1980s and ’90s on Twitter/X: @cstegman