Authors: Ryan Harding
It reminded him of a pornographic movie called
Gaping Anus,
naturally enough. The exposed muscle tissue would be slick and very inviting, like a mitten stuffed with Vaseline. Maybe he could even perform without bursting any more sores. This was all extremely enticing, but it wasn’t like she was going anywhere anyway. Besides, he had the attic to think of now.
He left the cellar and his little mascots—a stripper, a prostitute, two college girls (with only one anus between them now) and a nurs — all worthless whores, in other words—and climbed the stairs back up to the kitchen. He set the souvenir from Mary Jane on the chopping block, employing his thumb to slide it from fingers—it stuck like mucus. He plucked up his mallet and brought it down, effectively squashing the wrinkled flesh. From a Tupperware bowl, he produced the remaining cuts of Sue Harper’s buttocks (additional remains recovered 05/11/2002, 05/25/2002 and 06/02/2002), and cranked them through an old fashioned meat-grinder onto a paper plate. A spatula freed the compacted meat from the chopping block, which Sammy scraped on the paper plate. He threw it into the microwave and set it on high, whistling all the while.
The thumping in the attic grew more persistent in anticipation of feeding time. He heard Greg’s Nova in the driveway as the microwave beeped its conclusion. He rushed upstairs to make the delivery. He hadn’t bothered to wash his hands since handling Mom’s underwear (and himself), he realized. Sammy laughed at his carelessness. He unlocked the attic door, chucked the meat inside, and relocked the door from the outside. He heard scraping sounds as the occupant crawled to the newly arrived meal. It would taste like arse, but that was pretty much the point.
Sammy was scrambling back downstairs when Von and Greg walked in. Both parties had their own reasons to distract the other. Sammy came up with the first diversion. “You’re late,” he accused, short of breath.
Von was grateful for the opportunity to stall. “Why you breathing so hard? You just get done jackin’ down?”
“I was upstairs.”
“Upstairs jackin’ down?” Von pounced.
Sammy ignored him. “What’s the matter with you two? You look like Gillian Anderson died and had her remains cremated before you got a crack at her in the morgue.”
Von sighed heavily, feigning a sudden interest in the orange carpet of the den. It was an ugly concoction that looked to have been stitched together from skinned Muppets.
“You two morons didn’t get it, did you? The guy practically gave you his dick on a silver platter and you didn’t take it. Unbelievable.”
“That ain’t what happened, fag face,” Von shouted back. “We did the whole thing the way we talked about, no problem. It was easier than snatching a Latch-Key Kid.”
Sammy didn’t speak for a moment, puzzled. “Okay . . .
was
Gillian Anderson cremated?”
“Nuh-uh.” Von sighed again. “Look, we got in, got the package, and got the hell out. It was going great.” Von gave his cohort a disgusted look. “Until Mario Andretti over here peeled out on the prize.”
“I said I was sorry!” Greg protested, even though he’d done no such thing.
“Sorry doesn’t take the pieces of Rochester’s dick out of our pockets and make it whole again!”
Sammy didn’t bother to hold in his laughter. “You got a rocket in your pocket, Von?”
“Come on, this ain’t something to joke about. Rochester finds out Greg ruined it, he’ll use that ransom money to have us killed.”
“So don’t tell him. He’s not going to report you to the Better Business Bureau.”
“But what if he insists on seeing it first?”
“Knowing every second counts, that would take balls.”
“He’s still got those,” Greg pointed out.
“What about you, Sammy?” Von asked hopefully. “You got an extra one stashed around here someplace?”
“Oh yeah, sure, just check the candy bowl on the refrigerator. Of course I don’t. I don’t kill guys. What do you think I am, a gay?”
“No, but—” Von paused. “Wait a minute now. Me and Greg’s killed us a few dudes before. You trying to say that makes us rope smokers?”
“Not necessarily—”
“Because Greg’s the one who did all the killing, so he’s the damn queer.”
“Hey, you’re the one who had you a handful of Rochester’s pork sword,” Greg pointed out.
“Shut the hell up, Greg.”
“Yeah, Sammy, he was asking Von to use his teeth and everything!”
“Shut the hell up, Greg!”
“Both of you calm down,” Sammy interjected. “And it’s actually good that you remember these details. You’ll be able to prove beyond a doubt that you’re the ones who did it.”
“Oh right, I’m sure there’ll be all sorts of cranks lining up to take the credit for it.”
“Would you just hand someone three million dollars because they claimed to have your most prized possession? If it was me, I’m not sure I’d take the word of a dick thief at face value . . . especially one who’s a closet homo.”
“Hey, I thought we were getting—” Greg began.
Von cut him off with remarkable subtlety. “Shut the hell up,
Greg
!”
Sammy might have noticed, but a succession of thumping noises overhead mercifully distracted him and grabbed his attention. “I’ll be right back,” he offered and stormed up the staircase.
When he was out of earshot, Von grabbed a handful of Greg’s shirt. “Do you need a written invitation before you’ll use your brain?”
“What?”
“What were you just about to say? That you thought we were getting
five
million dollars, not three?”
“Well, aren’t we?”
“Yeah. And how much money do you think Sammy’ll want if he finds out?”
“He don’t deserve any of it . . . you and me are the ones doing all the work!”
“Exactly. But a man with Rochester’s money can pay to create a lot of problems for us. Like . . . hell, I don’t know, ninjas and shit.”
Greg gave this possibility a moment of reverent silence.
“So we might need his help after all. And we need his house to arrange the ransom. We don’t want to be seen anywhere near our homes, just in case.”
“But what could Sammy do against ninjas?”
Von considered this and shrugged. “This is Doctor Butcher we’re talking about, Greg. Those invisible bastards could be pissing throwing stars for the rest of their lives, which probably wouldn’t be very long if they try to get between us and that money.”
Greg looked up the stairwell, listening for Sammy. When he didn’t hear any sign that he was returning, he said, “I’ve got a better idea.”
Von was skeptical, to say the least.
“What if we kill Sammy?” Greg whispered, so quietly Von almost didn’t hear him.
“Say . . . that ain’t half-bad,” Von considered. “We get Sammy, we can cut him off and have a replacement dick. Rochester won’t be able to tell the difference.”
“Hey, that didn’t even occur to me,” Greg admitted.
“Then we can have his house at no charge, and we don’t have to share any of the money with him.”
“I didn’t think of that either! That’s even better!”
“Then why the hell did you suggest it in the first place? You must like killing other guys and dominating ‘em. Sammy’s right, you probably are gay.”
“The hell you say! I was thinking with Sammy out of the picture, we’d have Slut Necro Lambda and all those whores downstairs all to ourselves! That’s just as good as five million dollars, you ask me!”
“Slut Necro Lambda,” Von repeated with earnest reverence. “Man, I could certainly use some more of that backdoor action, no doubt about it.”
Greg grinned. “Now who sounds like the damn queer?”
At that moment, they heard more noises overhead and what had to be Sammy’s voice, the words inaudible but apparently forceful.
“Did he move all those twats up to the attic?” Von asked.
“I doubt it. I think I can hear ‘em crying in the basement.”
“Hmm. Maybe we should go find out, don’t you think? He shouldn’t be keeping any secrets from us. We’re supposed to be partners.”
Greg nodded. “You got that right, son. We can’t abide by no traitor. I’ll tell him that when we slash his throat for him.”
Von gestured to follow and began to quietly ascend the stairs.
Horace followed the Nova to a secluded two story home on an unmarked and unpaved road off Connelly Trail. The woods were thicker here, and it looked like the kind of place where toothless bumpkins would command you to squeal like a pig before bending you over and breaking you off. At this point, he was quite confident that the worst that could possibly happen to him
had
happened to him, and any subsequent cuts, bruises, and ass-poundings would be trivial at best.
When you had to crack the window of your Rabbit because the mephitic fetor of your crispified cock stump was nauseating you virtually to the point of unconsciousness, you didn’t have much further to fall. It triggered a very old memory from his childhood, an evening when his mother had melted a plastic ladle in the dishwasher, creating an overpowering olfactory assault so abominable that he’d had to seek refuse in the basement to keep from puking.
He stopped a hundred yards from the house, his headlights extinguished. He’d go the rest of the way on foot and hopefully get the drop on them. He had to wait for his eyes to adjust, although it still didn’t afford much definition to his environment. Out here was the kind of true darkness of night unknown to the city, away from all the street lights and neon, with even the stars blotted out by the heavy canopy of the trees overhead. The orange glow from the windows ahead was his only guiding light.
Was this even their house? Was his manhood being utilized in some form of ritual satanic abuse? Were they perhaps religious fanatics exacting the vengeance of their god on the “impure” heathens who sought the earthly pleasures of the flesh?
If so, it might be time their little sect learned the doctrine of an eye for an eye . . . and a life for a cock.
They found the Divided Man midway through the ascent. Greg saw him first and stopped cold. His hand seemed to have a mind of its own as it reached out and tugged at Von’s sleeve, never turning his head from the sight. Von was more eager to get upstairs and find out exactly what was so secretive that Sammy couldn’t tell them about it, and almost pulled a “Jump back, boy, you’re botherin’ me,” on him. Greg, however, was insistent, and Von finally peered back around the corner of the room they’d just passed on the way to the attic stairs.
“The hell?” Von asked. In that moment he wouldn’t haven’t been able to say why they had been so determined to get to the attic, or what the hell an attic was in the first place. Greg was still stretching his sleeve to get him to look, but he didn’t notice (neither, for that matter, did Greg).
It was the parents’ bedroom. Von always assumed Sammy’s mom and dad were both dead, especially considering the extent of their son’s homicidal forays into surgical possibilities. The evidence on display didn’t disprove his theory, but initially it appeared like a locked room aficionado’s wet dream. Cast randomly on the carpet were a lady’s undergarments (pock-marked with dried droplets of menstrual blood) and a tube sock with no equal. Beyond those, statuesque against the far wall was the upright body of a man. A network of wires had been run through an eyelet from the ceiling to keep the body in a standing position. The wire work had turned him into a puppet of flesh, bone, and organs. His torso had been cleanly divided from throat to stomach, the corner flaps of the skin held aside by surgical clamps. This strategic sculpting allowed for a view of the man’s entrails, which remained stationary against the demand of gravity due to its slightly slumped position, unmolested by any incisions or perforations. Their arrangement seemed as aesthetically-conscious as the objects in a still-life drawing, a measured integration of reds and yellows.
His sex organs had not been surgically inspected.
“You know what this means,” Von whispered.
Greg nodded. “Sure do! Sammy’s a homo, son!”
Von barely refrained from slapping him. “It
means
we have a placement for Rochester. We won’t have to cut Sammy out after all.”
Greg considered this a moment, then nodded again. His attention fell on the sock and he stooped to pick it up, apparently already distracted from the wonder of the Divided Man. “You ready for Sock Puppet Theater?” he asked mischievously. Before Von could tell him to put a sock in it, Greg forced his hand into the sock, already bending his wrist to form an elongated mouth with his hand.
He frowned instantly. “Yuck . . . it’s all wet inside.”
“Three guesses why, and the first two don’t count, slick.” Von gestured to the soiled panties discarded on the floor.
Greg looked at him blankly.
“Why the hell else do you think a man would leave a sock lying around on the bedroom floor, you ijit?” Von asked rhetorically. Then, because he understood the futility of asking Greg to make a mental leap of any kind, he answered anyway. “Sammy was filling it up with his rocket sauce, son!”
“
Shit!
” Greg palmed his forearm and yanked the sock away like someone trying to haul a tablecloth away without upsetting everything on top of it. The sock dropped to the carpet inside out, and Greg jumped back from it like it was a rattlesnake. He wadded up a bedspread and dried his arm off, never taking his eye away from the sock, as though terrified that it would jump up and try to pull itself back up his arm.
Von chuckled, but as quietly as he could, still listening for the sound of Sammy’s returning footsteps. They hadn’t heard anything from the attic for a few moments. He dug the Swiss army knife from his pocket and recoiled at the feel of the moist clumps of Rochester’s original tool. “I got the last one, boss man. This is all you.”
Greg accepted the knife a bit uncertainly.
“Get crackin’, man,” Von said. “He’ll be back any minute now. I’ll keep a look-out.”
Greg extracted the knife blade and walked over to the strung-up cadaver. This close up, he noticed the eyes were open. The lids had been removed. That was a trademark Sammy maneuver, just in case Greg had any shred of hope left that Sammy had nothing to do with this
objet d’art
displayed in the bedroom. He and Von had been up here before, but the door had always been closed. They’d never paid it any mind. Greg started trying to remember if there were any
other
doors that had always been closed to them in the past.
Just the attic.
He knelt before the Divided Man, thinking it was pretty sick of Sammy to have some naked dude with his guts on display. That girl with the dog head and tail, that would have been far more appropriate.
“Hurry!” Von commanded from the doorway. “He could come down any second now!”
Greg winced as though the tube sock misadventure was happening all over again. He reached for the man’s groin and grasped. The effect was instantaneous—the slop of immobile entrails squirmed free, a minor avalanche of the digestive tract right over Greg’s hands and into his lap. He sprang back, dropping the coils which had slickly gathered over his thighs onto the shag carpet with a surprisingly heavy slapping sound.
Their eyes both shot up to the ceiling as though it would dematerialize to reveal Sammy. When it did not, Von jabbed a finger in Greg’s direction. “Get your ass back over there and find it!”
Greg gave him a helpless look, like a little kid whose trail of bread crumbs had been eaten up by the ravens.