Necro Files: Two Decades of Extreme Horror (39 page)

“But you’re in luck,” Carl said, moving to a corner of the living room that he referred to as his “office”; it was crammed with a small desk and filing cabinet. He rummaged around on the desk for a business card and copied a name, address, and phone number on it. “You might want to talk to the guy that bought it. He’s a big collector. You and he have similar interests. Maybe he can help you find another one.” He handed the card to Dennis, who slipped it into his pocket.

“Thanks,” Dennis said.

Dennis took a look at the card in his car. The name on the card—Harvey Panozzo—was unfamiliar to him. At first he wasn’t going to place the call; after all, he had to get to work and start giving his employers the impression he gave a shit about his job. But he finally succumbed to his desires and punched Harvey’s number in his cell phone.

The phone was picked up on the other end. “Panozzo here.”

Dennis quickly introduced himself and told Harvey how he came by his number. “Carl suggested I call you since we have similar interests.”

“Are you busy later today?”

“Not at all.”

“Why don’t you stop by? We’ll chat then. You have the address?”

“Yes.” Harvey was in Monrovia, just down the freeway from Pasadena where Dennis lived. He jotted down the directions and hung up, his nerves on edge at the thought that he was going to see more of the type of material he was becoming enamoured with.

The next few hours were spent at work. He made phone calls to various business contacts, did some work on the CPM spreadsheet. Bob Lansing poked his head in his cube and asked where he was yesterday. Dennis told him he’d been stuck in traffic, which was why he was late to the CPM meeting in West LA. Bob nodded, then asked him how the meeting this morning was. Dennis made something up and Bob left, seemingly satisfied with his answer.

He spent the remainder of his day cruising the internet, always making sure to keep a spreadsheet open, and to be on alert in case anybody came by. There’d been a few close calls when Dennis had fumbled with the icon at the bottom of his screen for the spreadsheet, thus blocking out whatever porn website he was on. Thank God for quick fingers.

He visited ten porn sites that afternoon including his favorite: the rape page. He also did some searches on Google for necrophilia pages. He couldn’t find any.

He left the office at his normal time and arrived at Harvey’s house ten minutes early. Harvey Panozzo lived in a nice neighborhood with tree-lined streets and ranch homes. He met Dennis at the front door dressed in tan slacks and a white shirt; he looked like he’d just come home from work. He appeared to be around Dennis’s age—early forties—and had thinning black hair and a dark mustache. He also looked like he spent a lot of time out in the sun.

“Nice to meet you,” Harvey said, holding out his hand.

“Thanks for meeting with me,” Dennis said, shaking his hand. “I really appreciate it.”

Harvey invited him inside the house and Dennis followed the man, his nerves twitching. One time he’d met an extreme hardcore fetish enthusiast in the hopes of scoring some bloodsport videos and was tackled from behind by another character who was lying in wait. Looking back on it now, Dennis realized that they were going to rape him, probably torture him to fulfill their own desires, but Dennis was lucky. Working out at the gym every day gave him an advantage a lot of guys his age lacked, and he was able to fight off his attackers ruthlessly. He was careful in meeting like-minded freaks, and now as he followed Harvey Panozzo down the hall toward a rear bedroom, his senses were on heightened alert.

“Carl is a trusted friend and ally,” Harvey said, motioning for Dennis to have a seat. “I knew you were okay when you mentioned Carl sent you. I don’t trust people that are referred to me by people other than Carl.”

“Neither do I,” Dennis said.

“You said you were going to buy the necro publication Carl had?” Harvey asked.

Dennis nodded. “Yes. He said you bought it last night, that you’re a fellow …”

“Enthusiast?” Harvey smiled. “I suppose I am.” He paused for a moment. “I take it you are interested in similar material?”

Dennis nodded. “Very much so.”

“I think I may be able to help you.”

Dennis felt a burst of excitement. “That would be great.”

“Tell me something,” Harvey said, leaning forward, elbows resting on his knees. “What do you do for a living?”

Dennis hesitated a moment, then plunged on ahead. “I’m a financial analyst.”

Harvey nodded. “I see. The reason I’m asking is that the group has pretty specific membership requirements. They like for fellow members to be professionally employed.”

“Well …”

Harvey smiled. “Don’t worry. I take it that with your job title you have at least a Bachelor’s Degree and that you make at least fifty k a year. Correct?”

Dennis nodded. Actually he made quite a bit more than that but he wasn’t going to tell Harvey.

Harvey rose to his feet. “Come with me. I think I have just what you’re looking for.”

Dennis followed him to the next room, which appeared to be an office. Harvey opened a file cabinet with a key and rifled through it. He extracted a glossy paged magazine wrapped in plastic and handed it to Dennis, who took it in trembling hands. “Is this the kind of material you’re looking for?”

Dennis looked at it. The dead girl with the severed throat glared at him, her eyes lifeless. Dennis nodded. “Yes.”

“If you’d like, I can give you some time alone with it. Perhaps thirty minutes?”

“That would be great.” Dennis tried to keep his excitement at bay.

“After that, all I have to ask of you are three things,” Harvey said. “The first: make sure you stay employed. We have our reasons for insisting on this policy, the main reason being that when you begin to acquire a taste for the type of material we’re into, it can get rather expensive. We’d rather have you indulge with money you are making honestly. We have no desire to have the police come poking around should you resort to a life of crime in order for you to pay for your habit. Agreed?”

Dennis nodded. “Yes.”

“Good. Number two, your being employed is actually a benefit. It automatically separates you from a lot of the other hardcore freaks out there. We have no desire to associate with drug addicts, ex-porn stars, the homeless, or other degenerates. What we do is in the privacy of our own homes. We don’t hurt anybody. We are simply working professionals with similar interests. Agreed?”

Dennis nodded. “And the third?”

“That when you are finally admitted to our group you bring us some materials. An offering, if you will.” Harvey smiled. “It doesn’t matter what it is … a loop of some junkie getting fucked by a Doberman … a torture flick … some chicken hawk stuff for the pedophiles in our group. But you’ll score big points if you can procure some necro flicks or some snuff. And not the fake crap, either. We’re seasoned veterans and we can spot fake a mile away.”

Dennis nodded. “Yeah, I think I can do that.”
What the hell are you thinking? Where the hell are you going to find
more
of this kind of stuff
?

Harvey clapped him on the shoulder. “I’m sure you will. Now why don’t I leave you alone for awhile?”

And he did just that. Harvey left Dennis alone in the office, pointing out a box of Kleenex and a bottle of lotion on the desk. He closed the door behind him, leaving Dennis alone.

Dennis sighed, opened the magazine to the spread of the decayed old woman, and felt his dick grow hard at the sight of the anonymous penis penetrating the rotting flesh of her stomach, and then he began to jack off.

* * *

When Bob Lansing called Dennis into his office the following day he was exiting another meeting regarding the CPM project. Dennis thought Bob wanted to pick his brain some more about the project, but as he closed the door to Bob’s office he saw his superior’s features were grave. “Sit down, Dennis,” Bob said.

Dennis sat down, his stomach growing leaden. He’d been feeling uneasy since exiting Harvey Panozzo’s house yesterday. He’d driven home wondering if anybody saw him leave the house. Ever since bringing himself to orgasm yesterday courtesy of the necrophilia publication, he felt like he was under scrutiny now, as if everybody around him suddenly knew he was different from them. It was a feeling that had chased him throughout the day.

“What’s up?” Dennis asked Bob as he settled into his seat.

Bob pushed a set of papers across the desk at Dennis wordlessly. He refused to meet Dennis’ eyes. Dennis picked up the paper and scanned the document. At first he thought it was computer code, but then he recognized it as website URLs. His eyes widened in surprise as he recognized the URLs as websites he visited at work. “I don’t understand,” he said, trying to sound casual but doing a terrible job of it.

“Those are the websites you’ve been visiting during your work day,” Bob Lansing said, jabbing a finger at the document. He looked at Dennis unsympathetically. “I got an IT tech to download some software on your PC yesterday when you were out and run a check. Human Resources gave me a call the day before that to inform me an anonymous call was placed to their Sexual Harassment hotline informing them you were viewing sexually explicit material at work, so we had to investigate. And
this
is what we came up with.”

The news was hitting Dennis like a sledgehammer. Despite the fact the evidence was staring him right in the face, he still tried to talk his way out of it. “There must be some kind of mistake,” he stammered. “I don’t—”

Bob Lansing leaned forward. “Can the bullshit, Dennis! Between you and me, it would be one thing if you were visiting the Playboy Website and looking at a little T & A. Human Resources would still want me to fire you, but I’d fight for you because I like you, and I like your work. But the crap you’ve been looking at on
our
computers, on our
time
?” He emphasized this by jabbing his finger down on the paper, his tone of voice becoming hoarse with anger. “Frankly I don’t have much respect for guys like you that get off on watching women being degraded like that.” His left hand dipped down to his desk drawer and emerged with a document and a green envelope. He slid them across the desk to Dennis. “Consider yourself fired. You’re getting off easy; if the material you’d been viewing in your cubical involved children, so help me God I would have waited until after work and then I would have kicked the living shit out of you and damn the consequences.”

Dennis was shocked; he didn’t know how to respond. Bob Lansing glared back at him with anger and disgust. “Now get the fuck out of my office. You
disgust
me.”

Dennis rose to his feet slowly, feeling the burning of Bob’s gaze on his back as he exited his office. A tall African-American man from building security was already at his cube, waiting to escort him out of the building. The security guard stood at sentry duty as Dennis gathered the few personal items he had in his cubical and then he left the department, not even aware of the furtive whispers of his co-workers as the gossip mill started.

* * *

Dennis was at home when Harvey Panozzo called. He picked it up in the extension in his study upstairs. “Hello?”

“Dennis! Harvey here. Are you ready?”

“I’m afraid I won’t be able to join just yet,” Dennis said, lowering his voice. He was still reeling from the events at work today and was pouring through his business rolodex, coming up with a list of contacts. He had enough money to float on for a while, but he would have to get another position fairly soon. “Some things have come up and—”

“Oh, but you don’t have to worry about joining, Dennis.” Harvey’s voice was soothing. “Consider yourself a charter member.”

“Well …
thanks
, but—”

“The reason I’m calling, actually, is to see if you’ve held up your end of the bargain.”

Dennis’ mind drew a blank.

“Don’t you remember? You were supposed to contribute something to the circle? A film? Photos perhaps?”

Dennis couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “I just met you yesterday. You expect me to come up with something in twenty-four hours?”

“Why not? Surely you have something in your own collection that would suffice.”

Dennis felt his nerves tremble. “Well, yeah … I guess I do.”

“Great! How about you swing by on your way home from the office tomorrow and drop it off?”

Dennis told him that was fine and hung up. He spent the next thirty minutes staring out the window. He was so involved in his thoughts that he barely noticed when Carrie arrived home with the kids.

* * *

Dennis left early the next morning dressed in his normal work attire just like any other day. He didn’t go to the office, however. Instead, he headed straight for the nearest coffee shop.

He bought a copy of the
Los Angeles Times
and sat in a corner booth, sipping coffee and circling the job listings. He also had a good breakfast: pancakes, scrambled eggs, sausage, hash browns, orange juice. He left the coffee shop at ten-thirty, taking the paper with him, and leaving the waitress a satisfying tip.

His house was silent and empty when he got home. Just as he thought it would be.

He headed straight to his study where the safe was. He got the safe opened and took out the rape video.
This should satisfy them
, he thought as he closed the safe.
They probably want something really hardcore and this is the hardest I have
.

He spent the rest of the day at the library making phone calls from his cellular phone, making connections, trying to set up some meetings. He was able to get a few interviews set up, and by the time he set out for Harvey Panozzo’s place that afternoon he was already starting to feel better.

When he pulled up to Harvey Panozzo’s home he saw the garage door was open. The silver Mercedes he’d seen in the driveway yesterday was absent. A group of kids were messing around on skateboards on the driveway. Dennis walked up the driveway, briefcase in hand. One of the kids, a twelve-year-old boy with curly black hair, looked up as Dennis approached. “If you’re looking for my dad, he isn’t home yet.”