Hand Of God
He awoke to the metallic clank of chains shifting somewhere in the dark. His mind felt sluggish at first, the last fragments of memory slipping away like water between his fingers. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he realized he wasn’t alone. Four others were huddled in the same narrow space, each of them bound by thick, rust-flecked chains anchored to the concrete floor. The air smelled of damp rot and machine oil, and faintly—just faintly—something coppery beneath it.
At first, the strangers didn’t notice he was awake. They were too consumed by their own panic, tugging fruitlessly at their restraints, their voices cracking with desperation.
“Help! Please—”
“Let us out of here! We’ll do anything!”
The sound was raw, jagged, more animal than human. But even through their terror, it was clear they already knew their efforts were pointless. The room wasn’t just locked—it was designed to hold people like them. Steel mesh covered every gap. The only door was a reinforced gate of welded iron bars, bolted into concrete so old it had hairline cracks like veins running through stone.
Then a shadow shifted beyond the bars. The man standing there was utterly still, watching them without a flicker of emotion. He was tall, lean in a way that seemed almost malnourished, his dark hair clipped short, his face half lost in shadow. There was no anger in his eyes, no pity either—only a cold, clinical interest, like a butcher studying livestock.
“Good,”
He said, his voice as flat and toneless as the bare walls.
“Now that you are all awake… we can begin.”
He stepped forward, a sheaf of papers in his hands. They weren’t random document. Each one bore a face. Their faces.
“Public records,” he said simply.
The first two men shifted uncomfortably as he read theirs aloud. Child predators. Four counts for one, six for the other. Each case like a nail hammered into their coffins. The crimes were laid bare without embellishment, each word a surgical cut that left them squirming under the weight of their own histories. The third captive was a woman, her hair a tangled mess over a face that tried to maintain defiance. Her record was different, but no less monstrous: repeated, intentional vehicular assaults, deliberately targeting crowds in multiple states.
The final two captives were quieter, watching the man with wide, calculating eyes. Their files were almost identical with sexual misconduct with foster children. Both had once run foster homes in different states, given positions of trust and care… and had used them to prey on the most vulnerable. The man at the gate lowered the papers. His silence pressed down on the room heavier than the chains.
“The system,”
He said at last, his voice still low and without heat,
“failed to properly manage and punish misfits like you. So God… blessed me with that honor.”
They began speaking all at once, pleading, promising, swearing they’d change. They’d stood in courtrooms before, they insisted, but they’d learned their lessons this time. They’d do anything if he let them go. But their voices were the same voices that had lied under oath years before. And the man knew it.
Without another word, he turned to a small table behind him. A screen flickered to life, bathing the room in an icy blue glow. It showed a survey—its title blocky and plain: COMMUNITY PUNISHMENT RECOMMENDATIONS. The screen cycled through crime categories, each with its own grim verdict.
The woman’s category, intentional vehicular assault, was accompanied by a unanimous suggestion: death by lawnmower, slow and deliberate, enough to prolong suffering before the inevitable end. The child predators’ category scrolled past next. The punishment list was longer: amputation of hands, legs, ears, and eyes.
“If they cannot walk, their legs will not take them to prey. If they cannot see, their eyes will not seek. If they cannot hear, their ears will not hear the cries. If they cannot touch, their hands will not harm.”
The foster home abusers’ punishment was almost too cruel to read—an even split between being drowned and being burned alive. A tie breaker, the survey noted,
“should be determined by chance, for their fate was determined by the chance given to the children in their care.”
The man let the screen fade to black. The darkness that followed seemed thicker, heavier, as if the walls themselves absorbed the cruelty of what had been decided.
“Your words,” he murmured, “are as hollow as your souls.”
He moved to the wall and pulled a rusting lever. Somewhere deep within the prison, hidden machinery stirred.
The woman heard it first. A low, sputtering growl of an engine. From the shadows at the far end of the room, a battered, old fashioned lawnmower rolled into view. Its blades were nicked and pitted from years of use, glinting under the weak light like teeth in a predator’s mouth.
The two child predators watched as a mechanical arm descended from the ceiling, each joint clicking into place with unsettling precision. At its end, clamps and surgical instruments hung like ornaments from a steel claw.
For the foster abusers, the preparations were simpler but no less chilling. To their left, a tall, cylindrical tank filled slowly with water. To their right, a pyre of split logs waited, soaked in accelerant. A heavy coin sat atop the woodpile, waiting to be flipped.
The captives screamed. They thrashed until their wrists bled against the manacles. Their voices overlapped in frantic waves—pleas, bargains, prayers—but none of it reached the man at the gate. He watched them as if he’d seen it all before, as if their pain and fear were simply parts of a process that had been in motion long before they awoke.
As the machinery moved closer, he stepped back into the shadows, his voice drifting over the noise of engines and chains.
“Justice is served… as God wills.”
The sounds that followed were not quick. The room filled with the grind of metal, the whine of engines, the heavy thunk of the coin landing somewhere unseen. Above it all, the cries of the condemned rose and broke, then grew hoarse and raw, until they were nothing but wet, rasping sounds.
When the noise finally stopped, the prison seemed to exhale. The air was still, almost peaceful. The man returned, his face unchanged, stepping over the pooling water, over the smoldering embers. He checked the chains—empty now—and collected the files from the floor. He stacked them neatly, placing them in a cabinet against the wall. Dozens of other files were already there, each labeled with a name, a date, and a verdict carried out.
Locking the cabinet, he glanced once more at the room. Shadows had crept back into every corner, covering the stains, erasing the evidence. Soon, there would be nothing left to see. The man turned and walked away, the echo of his boots fading into silence. Somewhere above, the outside world carried on—blissfully unaware that, in a place no one would ever find, justice had been done.
And in the cold darkness of the homemade prison, the chains waited patiently for whoever came next.
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