Book Club Life

The string was meant to remind Tori of that evenings book club meeting. She was terrified she would forget what with her addled brain due to Jess and his "profession" practice on her. It was rather strange, but she had truly enjoyed this months book choice and was avid to discuss it and the practical applications that she had gleaned and put to use.
That was the point. To read, glean, practically apply. Jess figured out too late that Tori had done just that. Both hating and admiring Tori, he shook his hands as hard as he could thinking it might rattle the chains enough to attract someone's attention.
"Shake, rattle, and oh, no!, you can't roll", Tori sang off key. Jess, hold still, I need to clamp this helmet on your head. It is my final touch. Are you proud of me? You taught me well. Of course, the book gave me the perfect idea.

He hadn't thought Jess had it in her. Now, he on the other hand could easily have written the book. How To Torture Your Torturer. After all, that was his profession. The key was to never allow yourself to become attached. Just enjoy. Some were paid to kill, assassinate, he was paid to torture to death. His clients hated their targets that deeply, or were psychos to begin with. He enjoyed his profession and the money it brought.

Tori was a lifer. He had been paid handsomely to keep her for life and perform different non life threatening tortures on her to perfect his profession and keep himself sharp. She had, he thought, come to accept and even be challenged by her life's fate. How she fooled him.

The letter sat waiting for two things, a stamp, to be read. The reader would know what horrors Tori had suffered for the last three years and that would explain the chained man with nails clamped to his head, like something out of Hellraiser. She adjusted the curtains so that Jess's coffin faced out the window like a store mannequin, the chains holding his body in place from the ceiling and the nail helmet lying on the floor at his feet. It was to explain all the bloody holes in his face, slowly torturing Jess to death. She intended to be a "lifer" no more, in any way. She was free.