I found my brother hungrily lapping up the water that had been set up in front of him. I did not want him to be dehydrated or feel anything when I worked on him. He looked up for a second before going back to his water. He was not actively flinching, a drastic improvement from his unconscious state, which I had left him in the previous day. A miscalculation on his part had the bowl tipping from the tray onto his tattered clothes.
"Well, that was all you were going to get today, so I hope you enjoyed it while it lasted."
A good night's rest had him in high spirits again, as high as they could get given that he was still tied to the bed and had gone three days without a solid meal. There was a dim glint in his eyes as if he had reached a resolve, and his mind would realize his resolutions would be realized. I did not care enough to engage with him. Very soon, he would realize just how much he had and how much he stood to lose.
Mercy and Sunshine dragged the projector screen in before leaving to get more materials. There was a naked curiosity on my brother's swollen face which I was eager to satisfy. I loosened a knot, which gave my brother enough room to prop up if he wanted to. There was no way he was getting through the eight different locks, a pair on each limb, anytime soon.
"Today, I won't hit you. I realized you can't discipline a rock by beating it; you have to break it down first, and then you can efficiently crush it. The same principle will apply today. I hope you enjoy your break."
I wanted him to ask what I was going to do to him, but he held his tongue. Although it was a rare instance of discernment on his part, there was nothing that was going to save him from what had already happened and what was still to come. Sunshine came back with the projector, and Mercy was in town with a giant bowl of popcorn in one hand and in her other hand she balanced a bottle of liquor and three flute glasses. I helped Mercy set down the snacks onto the table, which had previously held an assortment of knives. They disappeared once more but came back a minute later with chairs, which we set down on the opposite corner of the bed.
Once we settled down, Mercy picked up her laptop and rap[idly pressed some keys. An error grin took over her face, growing wider with each stroke so that by the end of it, she looked like something out of a horror film. My brother showed his first signs of distress when he caught a glimpse of her expression. I knew Mercy on a personal level, but even I would not want to be on the receiving end if that grin's the intention.
Although originally I wanted to be solely involved in my brother's demise, having my two closest confidants do it would have to suffice. I lacked the necessary skills that were needed to truly crumble my brother's world. And nothing but his completed and utter destruction would begin to satisfy me. Today was Mercy's show, and I knew for a fact that she had lost a whole night's worth of sleep trying to make a very entertaining viewing experience, her words, not mine. She stood up from her chair and connected the laptop to the projector.
"Ladies," she said, gesturing towards us, probably to include Sunshine as well as add to the theatrics, "and beast, I give you the man of the year!" She quickly pressed the Enter button on her keyboard, and the screen came to life as a video began playing.
The high-definition camera on his iPhone captured every speck in the dimly lit room that was currently being displayed to us. The room was sparsely furnished with nothing but a giant king-sized bed and a drawer. The king-sized bed had a canopy designed, and the supporting beams had been repurposed as anchors to hold a girl who lay unmoving on the bed. A few seconds of silence passed before my brother, along with the three little piglets and two other men I did not recognize, one by one, into the frame. Six men in total waved to the camera, not a line of shame on their faces, given that they were naked. Their intentions were silent, but couldn't have been clearer. The following scenes played in fast motion, three minutes sped up to seconds, but the events were still hard to swallow, especially for the girl who gained consciousness mid-assault.
The next scene comes on, and we are no longer viewing the last room. The new room was very similar to the last one. The only difference was the color of the beds, the new one was only vanished while the last one was black. There was another girl on the bed, this one noticeably younger than the last victim. The small body was carelessly positioned on the bed while her limbs were spread-eagled and bound to the beams of the bed. Similar to the first seven naked men filed into a room where the victim couldn't have been older than thirteen. Again, the fast forward portion came, and unlike the first girl, this barely grown victim was awake for all of it.
The next room came, and it was a young, petite boy who was lying on the bed unconscious. One again, a group of naked men came into the room. My brother addressed the men, but whatever he was saying was barely audible before he walked out of the room. I guess boys were not his preference. The third video was more important than the previous two; his presence but lack of participation clearly spoke of a position of power in whatever arrangement these men had. He had to be in some way or form at the helm of the sex trafficking ring. Judging by the unconscious state of the victims, I doubt any of them consented to any of those encounters.
Different rooms came and passed with different victims. Each room broke something in me that I wasn't aware could break any further. Six rooms later, and the setting changed; this time, they were no longer in a bedroom. It was in a restaurant, but apart from their team's party, there were no other patrons in the establishment. The camera's focus was on one of the waiters, judging by his attire, or at least what was visible. He had been on the receiving end of a fist, and the result was a bleeding nose which had soiled the front of his apron and was still gushing out. Boots and fists rained blows all over his body, he only protected his face, a lesson he ah clearly learned earlier on. They beat on the boy, not stopping, long after he stopped moving. It didn't take a genius to know we had, along with the now ten thousand people who were currently watching the stream live, witnessed a murder.
More settings with increasingly morbid videos played one after another. It was an extremely hard watch, especially since most of the subjects of the videos had not only been reduced to objects but were subjected to various forms of torture. The ones that survived would have to go through various types of coping mechanisms for their trauma, that is, if they did not get crushed under the weight of their pain. In total we witnessed sexual assault and rape of 10 different individual most of them looked underage. We also witnessed a mass assault on 6 victims, four of whom did not live to see the end of the recording.
I did not even throw a glance in my brother's direction; I did not need to see his reaction to all the atrocities he committed in the company of others. Alone, he was useless, but he had managed to surround himself with a thicket of fools who enjoyed inflicting pain on others who were weaker or less fortunate than they were. They were men who relied on their privilege to protect them, and it made my blood boil knowing just how many evil men there were in the world.
Once the video ended, the credits began rolling, a nice touch, especially because Mercy had managed to track down every one of the perpetrators. According to her, my brother's box was the key to Pandora's box; it opened up a world of evil. One focused on the evil part, and Mercy focused on the key part. It was after the credits had finished rolling did the live page came on screen. I turned to my brother fully, even shifting my chair so I did not miss a second of his reaction. It took a whole minute for what he was looking at to finally sink in. When it did, I swear I saw death's shadow flint across my brother's face for a second.
"Oh, did I forget to tell you I said to get up and walk over to him? We were live streaming the video, we had close to twenty thousand people at the end, but don't worry, the live was to create a buzz, we are going to be posting all one hour, twenty minutes of you committing various capital offenses. I don't care about the rest of the world and their sentiments; our parents, on the other hand, are an entirely different story. How do you think they would react when confronted with the knowledge that the whole world knows that their son is a murderer, a rapist and a pedophile?"
Brian was on the verge of hyperventilating, his eyes were wide, and his nostrils flaring as if trying to catch our essence from the air. He knew what it meant for everyone else to know. My parents did not give a flying fuck about morals, if anything they supported loose morals as long as it got you where you wanted to go. Their reputation, on the other hand, was more precious than their lives, let alone their children.
"No no no no no no nooooooo!.... you can't do that. You don't know what you have done. They will kill me!" He yelled, all semblance of composure falling away, revealing the desperate, dangerous animal that lay underneath.
"Don't worry, big brother, by the time I am done with you, you will be begging for death. Today she broke your soul." I said, pointing toward a smug Mercy who gave a small wave, proud of her accomplishment. "Tomorrow she will break your senses," it is said, pointing to Sunshine, who was focused on my exposed chest and was too occupied to notice our attention on her. "I will finish whatever you have left. Trust me, as incredible as it sounds, you will be begging for our parents by the time we are done. Hope you had a good night's rest last night. I don't think you will be getting any quality rest anytime soon."