the poughkeepsie tapes (2025)

by Anonymous

Summary:

For several blissful moments, time stood still and reality twisted itself into something unrecognizable, something slow, something safe; he was both heavy and weightless, leaden and floating through still air like a feather. It did not occur to Strahm, not for a long while, that the limbs attached to a torso attached to a head were all his own—for he couldn't move them much at all, and quite the exertion it was to so much as cause the tips of his fingers to twitch.

Notes:

title taken from the poughkeepsie tapes (2007). mind the tags. have a blast.

Chapter 1: cheryl dempsey

All was quiet in the engulfing, oppressive darkness of the room. No sound save for the gentle echo of droplets hitting a puddle somewhere not so distant—plip… plip… plip—and somebody’s hoarse, ragged breaths. The sounds bounced off the walls, both the room’s and of Strahm’s skull. For several blissful moments, time stood still and reality twisted itself into something unrecognizable, something slow, something safe; he was both heavy and weightless, leaden and floating through still air like a feather. It did not occur to Strahm, not for a long while, that the limbs attached to a torso attached to a head were all his own—for he couldn't move them much at all, and quite the exertion it was to so much as cause the tips of his fingers to twitch.

Panic greeted him at last like an old friend when it became easier to cobble together a thought. The very first one was this: his whereabouts were of the highest degree of uncertainty, the means by which he'd found himself here (wherever indeed here was) were unknown to him, and perhaps the most troubling of all—the most recent of his memories, blurry though they were, were of angry, icy eyes, of rough hands upon his body, of the sharp bite of a needle sinking deeper and deeper into the tender flesh of his neck.

Strahm called out. He did. He was sure of it. Only, no sound came from his throat and indeed his ears caught no such thing—only a lame, dry croak; like a crumpled up piece of sandpaper forced through a small pipe.

He gave up after that, for what seemed like a while; he couldn't determine so with much certainty, anyway, though he'd like to think it. Moments stretched, stretched, stretched—like a dollop of sap inching towards the ground, thinning, thinning thinning until it finally snapped in mid-air. The snap was audible.

Or was it?

Or was it the harsh, sudden clang of a door first opening and then slamming shut? Being slammed shut, maybe. Heavy footsteps thudded closer and closer, and then—flick. Darkness became extinguished, light bathed the room; not so much of it that it exterminated every shadow, though plenty to illuminate the face of one Mark Hoffman, looming above him. He looked menacing in this light, not unlike a child pointing a torchlight directly under their chin and telling a scary story.

Only tenfold more dangerous.

Memories didn't come rushing back, not exactly—not the way movies or books would have you believe. It wasn't a floodgate bursting open, rather something closer to a trickle of water eroding a crack in limestone; becoming wider and wider still until vague scenes free-floating in ether slotted together like pieces of a fucked up puzzle. Him and his prison of glass, him and the invasive gush of stale water up his mouth and nostrils, him and the dull throb at the root of his throat, him and the distorted silhouettes bouncing about his vision.

Silhouette, now that he thinks about it.

Strahm would never have guessed it if asked, yet… staring up at Hoffman—at his deep-set, cold eyes—it almost made sense. He could almost imagine, now, him shedding the skin of a Detective and donning on the pigskin of a killer, dusting the surface-level empathy of a law enforcement officer like lint off his coat, stepping into the boots that have stepped into gore and viscera—proverbial and literal.

His voice crackled like static, yet this time he forced himself to push the word past his lips: "You."

You.

You?!

…you?

In equal measure an accusation and a question and an expression of disbelief.

Hoffman grinned, teeth and gums and contempt. "Me. Surprised?"

Sure, a second ago, a lifetime ago—one and the same.

Hoffman brought a syringe into view. It wasn’t hard to guess its contents. “Didn’t dose you quite enough, did we, big boy?” he flicked the small plastic cylinder obnoxiously in the imitation of a doctor, and from it a couple droplets emerged as he did so, and landed on Strahm’s cheek. “Is that what I should be saying? Boy?” and Strahm’s face must’ve screwed up, his muscles must’ve twitched just so despite the sedative running through his veins, because the man above him added: “Don’t look at me like that, now. You know I had to peek, see what we’re workin’ with. Wasn’t expecting that, to tell you the truth—wouldn’t have guessed.”

Strahm tried to fight it, fight the big paw splaying over his chest to keep him down—keep him from struggling as the thin, long needle pierced the skin of his neck and sunk home. His body gave a few pathetic jerks, much to Hoffman’s apparent amusement; but not even he—the stubborn, pigheaded (no pun intended) federal agent—could resist the effects of the drug that clawed at his alarmed consciousness and cooed its sweet nothings in the back of his mind ‘till those eyes above him were nothing but a mere memory, as fleeting as a sunset and as engulfing as the night.

-

When he next woke—and came to his senses just as painstakingly slowly—Strahm came upon the realization he was in a bed. It was far from a comfortable thing, a janky metal frame to which his wrists had been cuffed, and a squeaky bedspring that immediately betrayed the fact he’d returned to the world of the living. (For the most part, at least.)

He took stock of his surroundings.

A lightbulb burned above him, faint and occasionally flickering.

The bed which contained him had been shoved into the corner of the room.

Opposite of him, a workbench. A cup of coffee perched upon it—steaming. A chair. The usual dungeon memorabilia—loose chains, odd metal rings, a pair of pliers (a shudder coursed through Strahm at the unpleasant plier-related thoughts forcing themselves to the forefront of his mind.)

Dungeon. It was the first word that came to mind, and perhaps aptly so—still, the room he was in seemed more akin to that of a nook in some old warehouse. Pipes lined the walls and snaked along the ceiling, rust licked up the metal legs of the desk and the bed. The air was humid and rank, clinging unpleasantly to the back of Strahm’s throat with every breath he took.

Hoffman was there.

The realization was rather abrupt. Had he come in or materialized? Had Strahm missed that terrible creak of a rusty door hinge or had he come together, atom by horrible atom within a split second, before his eyes?

The sight of his face jogged another memory, something that should’ve already alarmed him yet hadn’t the chance to, what with that tranquilizer.

Is that what I should be saying? Boy?

You know I had to peek, see what we’re workin’ with.

Wasn’t expecting that, to tell you the truth—wouldn’t have guessed

His first instinct was to clamp his legs shut, and perhaps there was something laughably predictable in the action—surely there must’ve been, though Strahm couldn’t tell you much about it, because Hoffman laughed. Heartily so. It was a wonder he hadn’t smacked his thigh for it—must’ve been that his hands were too busy reaching out, each pressing between Strahm’s legs to force them open. In his weakened state, it was a struggle to resist their unyielding push.

At length, Hoffman spoke, “Is that what you think I’ll do?”

Yes.

Strahm shook his head, but his lie must’ve been an obvious one.

“Why?” his voice dropped an octave and he leaned in, conspiratory-like, “Has it happened before?”

Does it matter?

Strahm didn’t move a muscle.

Hoffman leaned away and there wasn’t relief in that, not as such—yet his body, taut like a bowstring, expelled a shaky breath. Torture alone, then. Good. He’d been trained for it, much as any agent.

And then, Hoffman shattered that brief and hard-won sense of safety: “Good! Then you’ll know how this goes.”

Chapter 2: edward carver

Notes:

wow!! i honestly forgot i'd written this. a comment kicked me into action, so there we go. lowkey i wanna take this off anonymous soooo bad but the fandom police would arrest me. anyway, enjoy!

It didn’t happen immediately. Really, it didn’t happen for a while—ridiculously, for a longer while than Strahm would’ve preferred. If only for the fact that the anticipation was nauseating, though he suspected Hoffman was keenly aware of this. His eyes tracked the man—the beast, the pig—like a hawk as he moved around the room, as he sat and swivelled upon his squeaky office chair, as he leafed through a nondescript pile of yellowed papers, as he obnoxiously slurped at that coffee for what seemed like an eternity.  

Slurp. 

Slurp. 

Slurp. 

With each one, Strahm came closer to insanity. 

Rattling the cuffs didn’t help him any, nor did thrashing about, nor did shouting expletives of varying degrees of severity. Hoffman didn’t flinch at the mention of John, at the mention of his mother, at the mention of the vulgar activities his mother might’ve partaken in, at the mention of his mother’s intellectual abilities (… or lack thereof)—though a shadow crossed his face at the mention of his sister. Instantaneously and with a mere levelling look, Strahm remembered the extent of Hoffman’s depravity, of danger that he posed, of his cruelty. 

That shut him up. 

- 

When it had happened, Strahm wished—in some twisted, half-ironic and half-hysteric way—that Hoffman had been rougher. Angrier, more forceful—as though opportunity had finally arisen to cash in on many months of bitter resentment, channelling the same into every thrust, every twitch of his hips, every bruise and bite. He wished Hoffman hadn't paid him any mind, that he’d forgotten the living, breathing, sentient being beneath him—that he’d tuned out any pained cries and just gotten it over with. (Or else, if not tuned out, that he’d relished in them, that he’d hurt him proper.) 

(It would’ve befitted the brute, such as he was.) 

That’s not how it’d happened. 

Hoffman wasn’t gentle—far from it; he could be rough in his ministrations, careless in the way he’d arranged him—but what he was, was curious. Too curious for Strahm’s comfort. 

Another fact: Hoffman liked him on his back, each foot on a makeshift stirrup, leaving him belly-up and vulnerable. That was how it’d usually start: Strahm, prone; Hoffman, curious. 

Was he touching him now? Strahm couldn’t tell. To that end, thank the cocktail of drugs he’s been fed over the course of... however long, muddling the ever-shifting line between reality and the horrors cooked up by a damaged mind, the needle deep in the crook of his elbow—are those track marks, is my princess a junkie? —or, perhaps and equally likely, the small fact that, or so it seemed, Hoffman was never not touching him. A poke here, a caress there, fingers combing through his sweaty hair, a warm palm smoothed down the scar-streaked length of his thigh. (A jeering voice: I thought only girls did that to themselves. Oh, wait...) 

Provided he’d found him sufficiently out of it, Strahm could even forget to loathe it. (Not always, not for long—but, inevitably, caught unawares he’d push into the warmth of Hoffman’s paw on his cheek, his head, his shoulder. Hoffman liked that, Strahm could tell.) 

(Strahm, though... wasn’t as enthusiastic.)  

Most assuredly, however, the touch he felt between his legs just now, jostling him awake—that was real. 

(Perhaps not awake; he hadn’t been asleep, that much he knew. Only, as of late he’d found that the state a person could be in, in these respects, wasn’t a binary, a this-or-that. There was something else, something in-between, something unclear; a certain detachment from the body but not the mind, a sheet of plexiglass set between himself and the world making muted all the noises, the colours, even the sensation of chill on bare skin. 

There, behind the plexiglass, the echoes of the warehouse became replaced by the call of songbirds he’d learned to mimic as a child, the smell of rusty metal permeating this space became the flowering magnolia wafting in the wind, and the janky bed he lay on became the softest patch of moss anybody could rest their head upon. It was his childhood home he returned to, in these moments. Though that house, such as it was, had never been a place of comfort, not with the spirit of his father haunting its very halls, Strahm saw it in a different light now. An idyllic light. A rose-tint, a farce, a fantasy, some fairy-tale thing his daddy would’ve laughed in his face about. But it didn’t matter. Not now.) 

(A lot of things, Strahm found, didn’t matter now.) 

On the other side of the plexiglass, somewhere far away: “Sweetheart? Where’d you gone off to again?” 

Strahm forced his eyes into focus, two baby-blues taking in the sight of Hoffman (always Hoffman.) He didn’t answer, he wouldn’t know what to say. 

Home? 

Away? 

It’d be silly—he was, after all, still there. Wherever there was. 

Sweetheart. He hated that. Always sweetheart, always honey, always his girl, his princess, whichever cloying turn of phrase Hoffman landed on that day—he hated it. Hated it nearly as much as he hated the wetness he knew coated Hoffman’s fingers now, nearly as much as he hated the hand closing around his tits, both tiny enough to fit in it—tiny, but still there. Still soft, still enticing.  

“You know I like to make you feel good, baby, c’mon. I know it does, show me,” going into one ear and out the other; Strahm chewed on each individual word to make sense of it. And was true; Hoffman had never let him lay there and take it, not even when Strahm begged him to—begged, cried, pleaded, bargained, cried some more. If there were things in this world worse than exposing God’s honest truth of the matter—that Hoffman had learned how to touch him just right—Strahm couldn’t think of them. 

“It’s always so much work with you...” a heavy sigh, as though he’d been inconvenienced; as though there were countless other things Hoffman would much rather be busying himself with right now instead of this. As though Strahm wasn’t trying. “Don’t get me wrong,” he continued, impossibly self-satisfied, “I know you’re no ordinary girl—but me, heh, I’ve never had trouble with the ladies.” His fingers hadn’t breached him, not yet; the pad of a thumb outlined the rim of his hole, pushed lightly against it as if it wouldn’t give with minimal effort. Strahm wanted to snap, just do it already. “Come on now. Only one today, yeah? I haven’t got much time. They think they have a lead—the boys at the precinct, I mean—’bout their missing Special Agent. They’re wantin’ me to look at it, they think they got it this time. Funny, right?” 

Strahm shut his eyes, gripped the chain securing his wrists to the metal headboard. Only one. Only one. Only one, and he’d have another 24 hours to himself—or so. Only one ‘till he’s back with his songbirds, his magnolia, his bed of moss, his haunted house. 

“There we go,” he must’ve relaxed, must’ve given a nod in assent—he wasn’t sure. He didn’t need to be sure, anyway. A finger massaged the underside of his tit, skirted over a hard nipple, pushed down against it for good measure. The sound of a belt unbuckling, a zipper coming undone—an afterthought. Nothing out of the ordinary. 

(Though the distinct feeling of danger that he may become split in half when the tip of that cock pressed against his entrance, that hasn’t ebbed yet. He couldn’t unlearn it, even with Hoffman’s soft assurances from above.) 

“Won’t take a minute”—though it always did—“Now, you just relax... such a pretty thing, s’like I always forget,” he pushed in, punching a mewl out of Strahm, “hush, now, they make ‘em just for this, sweet girls like you... won’t hurt a bit” a slow, agonizing drag, a thrust, repeat, “Think I’ll put a kid or two in you tonight, how’s that sound? Good? I bet.” 

Songbirds. Magnolia. Moss. His daddy. 

A firm but gentle touch to the nub at the apex of his sex, strokes timed with the pace Hoffman had set. (Loving, if not for the circumstances.) Songbirds. Lips kissing up the freckles speckling his sternum, teeth gingerly digging into a globe of soft flesh. Magnolia. A pulse, a release—not his own. Moss.  

Careful ministrations ‘till tears pricked at his eyes and something coiled low in his gut, something that strung him taut. 

The inevitable. 

An emptiness, the click of a lock, the chill. 

Plexiglass. 

Silence. 

Notes:

ngl i've had this half-finished in my drafts for the past month. hoping that posting it in increments (hopefully no more than 2, lol, that'd be a bummer) might kick my ass into gear sufficiently