FACIAL

A novella by Jeff Strand

Facial copyright 2014 by Jeff Strand

Cover design by Lynne Hansen http://www.LynneHansenArt.com

All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the author.

For more information about the author, visit http://www.JeffStrand.com

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ONE

Greg

"You don't get paid extra for killing innocent bystanders! Are you kidding me?"

Dirk leaned forward in his chair, resting his arms on my desk. "You hired me to kill one person. I killed four. That's going above and beyond. I'm not saying that you should quadruple my fee, but I think an extra ten percent per bonus victim is reasonable."

"Are you out of your mind? I should deduct ten percent for each one! I shouldn't pay you at all! This is a major screw-up!"

Dirk stared at me for a moment, as if trying to decide whether he should jam a very large knife into my face. Then he grinned. "Relax. I'm messing with you. I wouldn't botch a job like that. I only killed Tommy. Nobody saw a thing."

I let out a sigh of relief. "And did it look like an accident?"

"Sure. If he accidentally dropped a chainsaw and cut off his leg, and it bounced back up and cut off his other leg, and then it bounced back up and cut off both of his arms and his head."

"What?"

"Messing with you again."

"Well, could you stop? I don't need you trying to lighten the mood." I wiped some sweat from my brow. I wanted to gulp down half a bottle of Peptol-Bismol but I wasn't going to do that until after the assassin left. I'd never had anybody killed before, and it was stressing me the hell out.

"I brought you his hand," said Dirk.

"Enough. Seriously."

Dirk dropped a severed hand onto my desk.

I gasped. "What the fuck is that?"

"Sorry, I thought I'd already provided you with that information. It's Tommy's right hand."

"You can't just drop a goddamn hand on my desk! What's the matter with you? You said you made it look like an accident! How can it look like an accident if you're carrying his hand around?"

"I should point out," said Dirk, "that your exact words were 'Make it look like an accident if you can.' I couldn't. He tried to get away and I had to stab him in the back a few times. Then I decided that you might want proof."

"How is this proof? How the hell would I know what Tommy's hand looks like? I don't spend time memorizing people's hands, you stupid idiot!"

To be fair to Dirk, the hand did match Tommy's skin tone, and it was the correct size, and the couple times I'd seen Tommy he was constantly biting his fingernails, so it was indeed an indicator that the job was done. Still, I didn't need to have it dropped on my desk. And this whole situation had turned me into the kind of guy who would say something like "stupid idiot." I usually hated that kind of redundancy.

"Take the hand back."

"You don't want it?"

"No, I don't want it! You're getting DNA evidence all over my desk!"

"Relax," said Dirk, picking up the hand and tucking it back into his jacket pocket. "Just spray some Windex on it. Nobody is going to dust your desk for fingerprints. This will never come back to you, I promise."

"You know what? I have a great idea. How about you take the other half of your payment, and then get the hell out of my office so that I never have to see you again? How does that sound?"

"That sounds perfect. Of course, there is still the matter of the goat."

"What goat?"

"The goat Tommy was sacrificing before I killed him."

"What?"

"Got you again."

I shot him in the face.

To clarify: I did not shoot him because of the goat joke. Killing him was the plan before he even showed up at my office to tell me the job was done. The goat joke just made me feel less bad about it.

His body slumped to the side and tumbled out of the chair.

We had an intercom system, but I never used it because it made me feel like the kind of asshole boss who would call people into his office through an intercom. "Jasper!" I shouted. "Get in here!"

Jasper opened my office door. "Aw, Jesus," the big guy said, gaping at the assassin's body. "You shot him in the face."

"Where did you think I was going to shoot him?"

"I don't know. His chest? I didn't think you were going to shoot him in the face!"

"Stop whining and get him out of here."

Jasper pressed his hand tightly over his mouth.

"Are you gonna puke?" I asked.

Jasper shook his head.

"I swear to God, you'd better not puke. I mean it. One drop of vomit and you're getting the next bullet."

Jasper nodded his understanding, but he didn't remove his hand from his mouth.

To clarify: I wasn't really going to shoot Jasper if he vomited. But I was having enough trouble holding it together myself, and I didn't need my assistant making things worse.

"He was a hit man used to a world of danger," I said. "If I'd shot him in the chest, it might not have killed him right away. What if he'd had time to grab a pen from my desk and stab me in the throat with it? What then?"

Jasper shrugged, hand still over his mouth.

"I'm going to step outside," I told him. "If you need a couple more minutes to get yourself under control, fine, but I want this body moved. Got it?"

Jasper very carefully removed his hand from his mouth. "Yes, sir."

I pushed back my chair, stood up, walked around my desk, and vomited when I saw the corpse on my floor.

I dropped to my knees, coughing and retching. So much blood! So much blood! Oh, God, Jasper had been right—I shouldn't have shot him in the face! His nose—his nose was completely mangled! It was horrific!

Jasper helped me to my feet and led me out of the office, quietly assuring me that everything was going to be okay, that I had nothing to worry about, and that he'd clean up the mess, no problem.

We walked through the waiting room, which only took a few steps, and then went outside. It was a cold, rainy night, and this strip mall didn't get a lot of business at 2:00 AM, so it was just Jasper and I in the parking lot.

Excluding the three empty places with "For Rent" signs in the windows, the strip mall had five shops: a hairdresser, a bad Chinese place, a worse pizza place, a nail salon, and my résumé    writing service. Most people who needed that kind of service these days took care of it online, but I catered to the clientele who wanted to just sit across the desk from somebody and answer questions while they wrote their résumé for them.

No, this business wasn't a front. I wrote résumés. Damn good ones. It didn't matter if you'd been fired from your last job at a fast-food restaurant for peeing in the fry grease or you enjoyed the occasional midmorning hit of crystal meth, I could make your skill set sound impressive.

I took off my glasses, which were fogging up in the rain, and scratched the back of my head, the only place where hair remained. "It needed to be done," I said.

"Yeah."

It didn't need to be done. Both of us knew that. Tommy had been executed for the crime of banging my wife, and, let's face it, that's a reason you want to kill somebody, but you don't need to do it.

I mean, I hadn't killed any of the other guys. Michael, Gary, Lester, Franklin, Mac, the Jerry/Johnny sandwich, etc. I resented them, but I didn't try to get revenge. And I approved of Melissa and Sarah, even though it's not like I got to watch or anything.

That's the state our marriage of twenty-three years had been in for the past five years. Felicia was cheating on me every chance she got, and I'd hit the point where it satisfied me that she at least had enough consideration for my feelings to try not to get caught.

Oh, believe me, she wasn't trying all that hard. All I had to do was monitor her e-mail and text messages to figure out what was going on. She did change her password on occasion, but only the last number, so it was pretty easy to keep track of the various lovers she was juggling. Presumably there were more with whom she didn't keep in touch afterward.

Tommy would have simply been another name on the list, except that he e-mailed me a picture.

I don't know if Felicia gave permission for it to be taken, since she wasn't facing the camera. The subject line of the e-mail was I Bet She Didn't Do This Even BEFORE You Were Impotent.

I wanted to strangle the son of a bitch. But I was a nearsighted potbellied non-exercising cowardly forty-eight year-old. I wouldn't be strangling anybody. And if I drove straight to his house (a nice one, according to my online search) and shot him, I'd probably get caught and go to prison.

I never mentioned the picture to Felicia, and I let Tommy be my wife's friend with benefits for another seven months before I hired Dirk to kill him.

In addition to my inability to achieve an erection, my business was in the crapper. This meant that when hiring an assassin, affordability was a key issue. I had to hire the kind of lowlife dimwitted jackass who would bring back his victim's hand when it was supposed to look like an accident.

The advantage, however, was that I could shoot this lowlife dimwitted jackass in the face and nobody would miss him. It let me tie up the loose end of Tommy's death while providing me with a freshly killed corpse.

It's entirely possible that you're wondering why, exactly, I needed a freshly killed corpse. I'll let my brother explain.

TWO

Carlton

I didn't go down into my basement often, so I don't know how long the dead lion had been there. A week, maybe? You could see a lot of bone, but it was still clearly a lion, so a week sounded about right. I'm not really familiar with decomposition rates.

The scent was appalling. It reeked like rotten meat, which I suppose is logical. I wish I could say that I was surprised that I hadn't smelled it from upstairs, but truthfully, the standard aroma of my home was not roses and lavender. Self-respect was not a major component in my life at the time.

I made five or six gagging noises, and then I stumbled forward in a state of disbelief. A lion! How the hell did a lion get into my basement? I didn't live in Africa--I lived in North Carolina! In the suburbs!

We didn't have lions just wandering around the neighborhood, and if one had escaped from the zoo, wouldn't that have been newsworthy? I watched a shitload of TV and hadn't heard anything about it.

My basement had windows, but none of them were large enough to admit a lion. The wooden stairs weren't all scratched up like you'd expect from a thrashing clawed predator, and no police had shown up to investigate suspicious roaring, so the lion had presumably already been dead when it was brought down here.

Who would do that kind of thing?

This was completely baffling.

I could see plenty of writhing maggots. Though I'd never before spent money on cleaning services, I was going to have to bite the bullet this time.

I turned around and started walking up the stairs, trying to decide if I should call the police or animal control.

"Stop!"

I didn't recognize the voice. It definitely wasn't the lion. It was a low, masculine voice. Very loud and booming yet also muffled.

I stopped and turned around.

"Come back here!" said the voice. It was a demand, not a request.

"Who is that?" I asked. The more specific question on my mind was, "Are you currently pointing a gun at me?" but I didn't ask that one yet.

"Come back here or die a ghastly death!"

There was a ton of junk in my basement. Lots of places for a gun-wielding maniac to hide. I walked back down to the cement floor. "Please don't kill me," I said. I didn't say it in a shameful pleading manner, but I also didn't cop an attitude.

"If you do as I say, you will live."

I tried to figure out where the voice was coming from. It sounded like it was coming from the lion, which was impossible, since it was both dead and a lion.

And the lion wasn't moving. Presumably a magical dead lion would move when it spoke.

"What do you want me to do?" I asked.

"Move this infernal creature off of me."

"Excuse me?"

"I am not one to repeat myself."

"Repeat yourself just this once."

"Move this infernal creature off of me."

I hope I have painted a detailed enough visual picture that you understand that somebody underneath the lion would have to be squished flat or extremely tiny. I don't mean tiny like a little person. I mean tiny like an action figure.

No, my reaction was not, "Oh my God! An action figure is talking to me!" My reaction was, "Okay, okay, some prankster put a cell phone under a dead lion."

And it all became clear: somebody was making a hilarious video. The focal point was a rotting carcass, so this probably wasn't for network television, but it could definitely be cable or YouTube.

I wished I'd washed my hair more recently. I only showered every three or four days (see: aforementioned self-respect issues) and brushed my teeth with the same frequency. I shaved every day, because my facial hair was completely gray now, and my forty-eight-old self was not equipped to look at that in the mirror. I didn't mind living in filth, but I couldn't handle being old.

"Screw you," I said, turning back around. Even if there was a tiny person trapped under the lion, I knew he didn't have a gun pointed at me.

"Your death will be slow and painful!" the voice shouted. "You cannot imagine the suffering you will endure! Your shrieks of misery will rattle the walls! Drops of your blood will stain the grass for miles and miles!"

"Bullshit."

"Do not make the fatal mistake of believing that I am bluffing! Shards of your bones will be splinters in the feet of countless young children! Your intestines will--"

"Okay, fine," I said. I faced the lion again. "What do you want from me?"

"I have said it twice already: move this beast."

"Not gonna happen."

"It will happen."

"Nope."

"Then you will feel my rage."

"I'm not touching lion guts. Look how gross they are." I pointed to something I couldn't identify. "Especially that one. Disgusting. You want me to catch a disease? Ick. Yuck. Ick."

"It is unwise to ridicule me."

"Whatever. Joke's over."

"The joke will end with the punchline of your veins being yanked out through your eyeball sockets!"

"I've heard worse. What do you call a dead baby in a microwave?"

"Your family will die as well."

"I'll let my brother know."

The voice let out a muffled sigh. "Move this goddamn thing, all right? For fuck's sake, are you not even curious? I am speaking to you from underneath a lion corpse! Do you not want this mystery to be solved?"

"Of course I do," I said. "I just don't want to be played like a fool."

"Nobody is going to play you like a fool. In fact, I can promise you untold rewards. Treasures beyond your wildest dreams."

"I think you're just making stuff up."

"Please..."

There was something about the way he said it, something genuine. It was not the kind of emotion you'd expect to get from some obnoxious guy hosting a hidden camera show. I suddenly felt kind of sorry for the voice. I supposed that if I were trapped under a dead lion, it would be a very traumatic experience, and I'd be extremely frustrated with somebody who refused to help.

What was the worst that could happen? I'd be embarrassed on a reality show? I'd have to sign release forms before they could use the footage, right? Especially when it was illegally filmed in my home. They couldn't humiliate me without my permission.

Screw it. I'd do it. My existing plans for today were: watch television, eat stale graham crackers with stale marshmallows, and cry a little...so why not? It was a break from the norm. I could quit at any time. I'd make it clear to the possible viewing audience that I was in on the joke.

"All right," I said. "I'll do it."

"Thank you. You and your family will not die tonight."

I walked over to the lion, recoiling at the smell. "How do I do this?"

"What do you mean?"

"I can't move a whole lion by myself."

"Am I really going to have to talk you through every step of the process? Get a wheelbarrow. Or move it in pieces. All you have to do is scoot it two feet away from where it is right now. This is not rocket science, a warlock spell, or brain surgery."

"I don't have a wheelbarrow."

"Then select the other option."

"The one about moving it in pieces?"

"Yes."

"I don't know..."

"Never mind. I do not care. I cannot deal with you anymore. Just allow me to die under here."

"Fine, fine," I said. "I'll move it in pieces."

No matter how bad you think it might be to cut apart a rotting lion corpse, I assure you that the reality is worse. (If you've done it, you know what I'm talking about.) It was terrible even though I didn't just reach into the muck with my bare hands; I put on rubber gloves, wrapped a towel around the lower half of my face, and got a saw from the garage. Then I went to work.

I simply cannot do justice to the sheer awfulness of this experience. There is literally not a single positive thing I can say about it. So I'm going to do an H.P. Lovecraft and write that it was so horrible that it cannot be described, and leave it at that.

As I dragged away a particularly large, moist, and sticky chunk of the lion, I saw what was underneath it, and I did a lot of screaming.

THREE

More From Carlton

There was a bloody face on my basement floor.

The blood itself presumably came from the lion, leaving me with the still-disturbing fact that there was a face on my basement floor.

I don't mean that somebody's face had been skinned off, Leatherface-style, and left on the floor. I mean that there was a face actually imbedded in the floor. So maybe it's more accurate to write "there was a bloody face in my basement floor," though it protruded above the floor, as if somebody had tilted their head all the way back and then been buried in cement up just past their ears.

The bits of the face that didn't have blood on them had the color of Caucasian flesh. It was larger than a regular human face, but not significantly so. Just enough that you would think, wow, that guy has a pretty big head. Not that I could see the whole head--just the face.

One eye (the blue one) was larger than the other (the green one). Its nose was small and flat. Its mouth was wider than a normal human mouth, and the ends curved down too far. There was no visible hair or ears.

"Stop screaming," said the face.

"You...you're...you're a...you're a...you...you're...you're a...you..."

"Correct."

If you weren't there, I suppose you could come up with some theories about what I was seeing. A puppet, for example. Smear some blood on it to hide the imperfections, install a remote control system, and make Carlton The Wacky Nitwit think there was a face in his basement floor.

This was no puppet.

I wasn't dreaming. I wasn't on drugs. No government agency had slipped anything into the water supply. This was totally real, and standing around saying "This can't be real!" wasn't going to accomplish anything.

I decided that, until I was given reason to believe otherwise, I was going to assume that I was not in danger, and conduct this conversation without fear.

"What are you?" I asked.

"A traveler."

"Are you human?"

"Technically."

"Why was there a dead lion on top of you?"

The face smiled. Its teeth were very small but there were a hell of a lot of them. "A traveler must prove himself worthy. Do you know of a more noble creature than the lion?"

"Nope."

"I successfully slew the lion, but this kind of travel is an imperfect art to say the least, and I ended up here. I am quite unhappy about it."

"So...is your whole body stuck in there? Or just your face?"

"It is a complex issue."

"Is there anyone I can call for you?"

"No."

"Do you want me to wipe off some of that blood?"

A slimy white tongue protruded from the mouth and licked the blood off its lips. "That would be much appreciated."

I removed the towel from around his face and patted at the blood, making sure not to get my fingers too close to its mouth in case it was a biter. I didn't do a very good job, but it wasn't as if the face could see itself.

Or could it? How had it seen me from underneath the lion?

"How did you see me from underneath the lion?" I asked, thinking that it was a question that should have occurred to me sooner.

"I see all."

"No, you don't."

"I see much. These eyes are blind, but I see."

"Okay. Well, I'll be honest with you. I feel like I should call the police."

"Do not do that."

"Wouldn't you, if you were me?"

"I would not. Great power awaits you. What is your name?"

"Carlton. Yours?"

"You have no need to address me by a name. I am unlikely to be confused with others you know."

"All right."

"Carlton, is it fair to say that your perception of the world has changed?"

"Very fair."

"I have brought a lion into your realm. I can bring other things. Women, riches..."

"Wouldn't the women freak out?"

"Perhaps. You would have to restrain them."

"I'm not doing any rape stuff. That's totally off the table. Also, no dead women. You know what, let's not bring ladies into this at all. There are just too many ways that can go wrong."

"Riches, then?"

"What kind of riches?"

"Gold."

"Seriously?"

"Yes. All the gold you can imagine."

"I think you're just telling me what I want to hear."

"Not at all."

"C'mon, I can imagine eighty thousand trillion billion pounds of gold. You won't be able to make that happen for me."

"Then perhaps something more reasonable? A solid gold coin in exchange for a favor."

"I just did you a favor by dragging the lion off you. Where's my gold coin?"

"First, I must restore my power."

"What do you need to do that?" I asked.

"Flesh, blood, and bone."

"Lion flesh, blood, and bone?"

"No."

"Fish?"

"Human."

"Mine?"

"No. I would not waste you, Carlton. You are the one who will bring them to me, so I can regain my ability to reward you."

"So, if I'm understanding you correctly, and let me know if I'm not, you're saying that you want me to bring people down here so you can devour their flesh, blood, and bone. Is that the basic gist of it?"

"Yes."

"Okay, well, fuck that."

"Take some time to think about it."

"Nah, I'm comfortable with my gut reaction."

"Think about it."

Despite the chemical imbalance in my brain that I don't like to tell people about, I am a firm believer in taking responsibility for my own actions. The fact that I lived in filth was nobody's fault but mine. I make my own choices.

That said, when I told the face that I would take some time to think about it, it didn't quite feel as if I was the one saying the words. It wasn't like I was hypnotized, necessarily, but more something along the lines of a Jedi mind trick. Not that I know what a Jedi mind trick feels like; I am, of course, aware that the Star Wars movies take place in a fictional universe. And that's not even a good comparison, because the Stormtrooper who said that those weren't the droids they were looking for was unaware that he'd been bamboozled, whereas I had this distinct feeling of Wow, it's really weird that I'm not rushing to call the cops on this face that wants me to bring it prey to devour.

Subconsciously, I suppose I could have been worried that if I brought the authorities downstairs to investigate, the face would be gone.

ME: But...but...but it was right there!

UNAMUSED COP #1: Uh-huh. And just how much marijuana did you smoke today, sir?

ME: Not a puff! I'm morally opposed to the use of recreational drugs, excluding alcohol and caffeine! I swear to you, there was a face on my floor and a dead lion and I had to...stop looking at me like I'm crazy!

UNAMUSED COP #2: He's acting crazy! Taze him! Taze him!

ME: Aaargh! My bodily functions!

UNAMUSED COP #1: He's still twitching. Decapitate him.

ME: Huh? What? Seriously?

UNAMUSED COP #2: Oh, yeah. We're way more corrupt than the cops you see on TV. Could tilt your head down a little to make it easier? A little more. Yep, just like that.

SOUND EFFECT: Thwack! Thump. Roll, roll, roll.

That scenario seemed unlikely, though. Really, it was just this weird thing in my mind where I wanted to consider the face's offer, even though it was completely obvious that I should decline.

"While you are thinking about it," said the face, "do something with the carcass. I do not mind the smell, but the lack of dignity is bothersome."

So, yes, because the face told me to, I cleaned up the dead lion's remains. Once again, I don't possess the writing skills to describe the sheer disgustingness of this task. I put the chunks into garbage bags (double-bagging them, of course) and piled them next to the staircase. By the time I was ready to start mopping, my clothes were completely covered with gook and maggots.

"You should keep the tail as a souvenir," said the face.

"I probably won't," I replied.

To be fair, the face had been quiet through most of the process, letting me do my wretched work without behaving like an asshole.

After mopping up the floor, I took the longest shower of my entire life, got dressed, loaded up my car with the garbage bags, and drove to the city dump. You weren't supposed to dump animal remains there, but it's not like anybody was X-raying the bags.

Hmmmmm, I thought, as I drove home. Completely disposing of the lion like that has eliminated some of my proof that this really happened. I should have at least taken some pictures. If for any reason I need to convince the police that there was indeed a dead lion in my basement, I'm screwed.

Again, I'm not trying to blame mind control tricks. I'm simply saying that to overlook this kind of detail wasn't like me.

I drove back home and went down into my basement.

I hope the face is still there, I thought. I didn't even consider that it was a weird thing to have thought, what with the whole "flesh, blood, and bone" aspect. The logical thing to think would be I sure hope that face is gone.

The face was still there.

"Hi," I said.

"Hello, Carlton."

"Lion's gone."

"Good."

"Can I have a gold coin?"

"No. That was not the arrangement. I still need to regain my power."

"I can't bring you a dead body."

"I disagree."

"It's not like I have access to a morgue or something. I do website design from home. Sort of. It's more of a hobby. Some stocks really paid off a few years ago so I don't really have to supplement my income. Where would I get a body?"

"It is very simple. You start by finding a body that is alive. They are all over the place."

"I'm not killing anybody!"

"Think it over."

"No!"

"I am not rushing your decision. Take your time."

"You're talking about murder!"

"Is that problematic?"

"Yes!"

The face sighed. "I understand your hesitation. Usually when somebody asks you to kill for them, you have known each other longer."

"I'm not killing for you."

"All right."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"Oh. Good." I smoothed out my shirt. "Is there anything else I can do for you?"

"Not right now."

"What about a dog?"

What the hell was I saying? I loved doggies! I'd walked out of movies where dogs died. Reading Where the Red Fern Grows as a kid had traumatized me for weeks.

"Do not insult me by offering a dog," said the face.

"Sorry. A cat would be insulting too, right?"

"Yes."

"I don't know what to tell you. I wish you'd teleported into the basement of a bloodthirsty serial killer or somebody who could help you out. If I could get you a body, I would, I promise, but it's just not possible."

"You will see, Carlton, that these things have a way of working themselves out."

My cell phone began to vibrate in my pocket. I took it out and looked at the screen. Greg. I hadn't talked to my brother in a couple of months.

"Hi, Greg," I said.

On the other end, Greg just sobbed.

FOUR

Greg

I started sobbing as soon as I heard Carlton's voice. I hadn't planned to confess to anybody, since that seemed like the kind of thing that only a stupid person would do, but I was drunk off my ass. I really should have locked up my phone before I opened the bottle of whiskey.

"Carlton...oh, Jesus, Carlton, I'm sorry I called, I just needed to talk to somebody...is this a bad time?"

"No, it's fine."

"I've done something terrible."

"What?"

"It's Felicia...you know she's cheating on me, right?"

"Sure. We talk about that every time you call. Are you getting a divorce?"

"No."

"You should, Greg. You really should. Just because you can't perform doesn't mean you should have to live with that. How many men is she up to now, fifteen?"

"No, she's not up to fifteen men!" I shouted into the phone. "What the fuck is the matter with you?"

"Thirteen men and two women, then?"

I knew that Carlton wasn't trying to be a jerk. We had the kind of relationship where we were very straightforward with each other. For example, I felt free to tell him that he was a disgusting slob, though I would either use "disgusting" or "slob" and not both. He had plenty of money to hire a housekeeper, but he was cheap and also a bit mentally ill.

"What terrible thing did you do?" he asked.

"I hired somebody to kill one of them."

He didn't answer right away.

"Are you still there?"

"Yes," Carlton said. "Maybe this is something we should discuss in person."

"I shouldn't have called."

"You definitely should have called. This is exactly the kind of situation where you call somebody to talk it out. I'll be there in twenty minutes."

I spent the next twenty minutes drinking whiskey. The truth was, Carlton and I weren't all that close, and I didn't even like him much of the time, but he was somebody I could always trust.

He knocked at my door twenty minutes later. He glanced around the apartment after I let him in. Carlton had showered recently, which was unusual, and he looked kind of spooked, which I suppose made sense since he was here to discuss an assassination.

"Is Felicia here?"

"Nope."

"She out banging somebody?"

"Presumably."

"The guy you're having killed?"

I shook my head. "Nah. They get a hotel during his lunch break on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I think tonight she's doing Franklin."

"The black guy?"

"There was a black guy?"

"I thought you said she was screwing a black guy."

"Franklin's the black character in Peanuts. Maybe that's what you were thinking of."

"Yeah, that could be it," said Carlton. "So which one are you murdering?"

"Tommy."

"The uncircumcised one?"

"There was an uncircumcised one?"

"Wasn't one of her boyfriends uncircumcised, and you found out about it because she e-mailed another one of her boyfriends to say how it weirded her out but once she got used to the texture it wasn't so bad?"

"Probably. I don't remember."

"He kept wanting her to use her mouth."

"Enough! That's not who I'm talking about!"

"Is Tommy the one who sent you the picture?"

"Yeah."

"If any of them deserve to die, it's him."

I plopped down onto my couch. I almost missed.

"I'm serious, Carlton. I really paid some guy to kill him. I can't believe it. I've become the kind of man who would pay a man to kill a man. How did that happen?"

Carlton sat down next to me. "Well, we either have to blame Felicia or your penis."

"We'll blame Felicia."

"So you literally hired a hit man?"

I nodded.

"Is he reliable?"

"I don't know. It's not like there were online reviews. Jasper knew a friend of a friend of a friend who could help me fix the problem. I met with him and he seemed like a solid guy. Off the grid. Doesn't pay taxes or anything. God, I'd give anything to be able to just disappear like that."

"Is it too late to call off the hit?"

"Nah. I've already paid him half, though, and I'd forfeit that." I sighed. "This is insane. I don't know what I was thinking. There's only so much a man can take before he lashes out, you know what I mean? It was good talking to you, Carlton. We need to do this more often. I'll cancel the hit. It was a stupid idea in the first place. Tommy doesn't deserve to die."

Carlton cleared his throat. "So, can I ask you a question that might seem odd?"

"Sure."

"Do you get to keep Tommy's body?"

"That's actually an odder question than I was expecting."

"Do you?"

"No. He's going to Tommy's house. He's supposed to make it look like an accident."

"Damn."

"Why 'damn'?" I asked.

"I was expressing disappointment."

"I got that. I didn't understand why."

"Can I have some whiskey?" Carlton asked.

"I thought you quit drinking."

"No. I just quit buying alcohol. I still drink it."

I handed over the bottle and Carlton took a swig. "Thanks. That's good stuff."

"You were getting ready to explain why you were disappointed that I didn't get to keep Tommy's body."

"Oh, that. Yeah." Carlton took another swig and swished the whiskey between his teeth before he swallowed. "Before I explain, I want it noted for the record that you just admitted you'd hired a hit man. So we're both on shaky moral ground tonight."

"Understood."

"I need a dead body."

"Are you coming out to me as a necrophile?"

"No."

"Are you coming out as gay?"

"No! Are you trying to say that gay people are all perverts who would screw a corpse?"

"Not at all. But Tommy is a dude. Maybe you were trying to shock me with the necrophilia thing so that I'd be less surprised when you said you were gay."

"I'm not gay or a necrophile."

"Okay," I said. "Just so you know, you're my brother, and if you're gay, you will always have my love and support, and you and your partner are always welcome as guests in my apartment. If you're a corpse-fucker, it's going to take me longer to accept. I'm sorry. That's just the way it is. Maybe it's a lifestyle choice that I don't understand...hell, maybe I could get into it myself if I gave it a chance, but until then, I'm not sure I can stand by and let you--"

"Let's continue this conversation when you're sober," said Carlton.

"Yeah, that's a good idea. I'm saying some dumb shit. Do you see my phone anywhere?"

"Who do you need to call?"

"Gonna cancel the hit. I really can't afford it anyway."

"That's a shame."

"Not killing a human being is a shame?"

"Sometimes."

"I called you over here to talk me out of my insanity."

"I thought you called me over here to confess." Carlton stood up. "Having Tommy killed is a big deal. I'm not trying to downplay that. But, let's face it, the guy got your wife to do anal. She never did that for you. So he deserves to die."

"I can't give you Tommy's body. It'll bring too much heat."

"The hit man. You said he was totally off the grid, right?"

"That's what he told me."

"Maybe you could kill him."

I just sat there for a while, absorbing the fact that my brother had suggested that perhaps I could kill the man I'd hired to kill one of my wife's many boy-toys.

Absorption was slow.

To Carlton's credit, he let me sit there and be stunned without prodding me for a response.

Finally, I spoke. "Did you put shrooms in my whiskey?"

"No."

"I'm not going to kill anybody."

"Okay. I didn't think you would."

"I'm glad you thought that."

"You're not going to tell anybody that I'm looking for a dead body, are you?"

"I assure you that I'm not."

"Thanks."

"No problem."

"Was there any other emotional support you needed?"

"Nah," I said. "I think I'm just going to drink whiskey until I pass out on the floor. Felicia will throw a blanket over me when she gets home."

"Sounds like a plan. Do you want a hug before I go?"

"Nah."

"I could bake some cookies."

"Since when do you bake cookies?"

"I meant the premade kind, where you just break off however many pieces of dough you need and most of the work is already done for you. I thought I saw those in your fridge last time."

"We ate them."

"Oh. That's too bad."

"I'm not in a cookie mood anyway," I said.

"What if I paid you to kill the hit man?" Carlton asked.

"I beg your pardon?"

Now that I'm sober, I could probably sit down and compose a list of six hundred and twenty-nine thousand appropriate responses. Examples include "Get the fuck out of my apartment!" and "Step away before thou contaminate me with thy contemptible insanity!"

Instead, my response was: "How much?"

FIVE

More From Greg

It turns out that my price for committing murder most foul is six months' rent paid on my shop in the strip mall. Hey, it's three times what Dirk got for killing Tommy. (Or would have gotten. Obviously, after I shot him in the face, I kept the second half of his payment.)

I wouldn't have killed a child, or even a woman, or even a man who was a decent human being. But Dirk was scum. His death meant that his future victims would live. By shooting him with an unregistered gun that another friend of a friend of a friend of Jasper's had sold me, I had done the world a favor.

"It's almost like we're heroes," I said to Jasper, as we drove toward Carlton's house.

"It's really not like that at all," he replied.

"Yeah, you're right."

"Your brother's not going to screw the hit man's body, right?"

"He swore he wasn't."

"Because if I feel like things are starting to move in that direction, I'm outta there."

"I understand."

"If his hand so much as moves toward his zipper, that's it for me. I'm done."

"That's not what this is about," I said.

"So what is it about?"

"I don't know. He wouldn't say. But not that."

"I'm trusting you, Greg. I will be psychologically scarred by the sight of your brother making love to a dead body. If it happens, that scarring is all on you."

"Nobody's making you tag along."

"No, I want to come."

I pulled into Carlton's driveway. He had a nice home in a nice part of town. As always, his lawn needed mowed. If I lived there, it wouldn't get like that.

Carlton opened his front door as we got out of the car. "Hi, guys," he said with a smile. "I can't tell you how much I appreciate this."

He shook hands with Jasper and said that it had been a while. Jasper agreed with his assessment about the length of time that had elapsed since their last encounter.

"Is it in the trunk?" Carlton asked.

"Yeah."

"Let me open the garage door, then."

* * *

"This place stinks," Jasper said to me.

"I'm standing right here," said Carlton.

"Your place stinks," Jasper said to Carlton.

"You're right. I keep pizza around longer than I should. It's a known issue and I'm working on it."

The three of us (four, if you counted Dirk, who was wrapped up in several sheets, but you don't have to count him because he wasn't an active contributor to the conversation) stood at the top of the staircase leading to the basement.

"What you are about to see may alter your perception of what is and what is not possible in our realm of existence," Carlton said. "If you are not prepared to handle that, now is the time to leave."

"I'm cool with it," said Jasper.

"Me too," I said.

"I'm not exaggerating," said Carlton. "Greg, do you believe that a face could suddenly appear on your basement floor and ask you to bring it a freshly killed human?"

"No."

"You will."

We slowly walked down the stairs. Carlton didn't offer to help with the body, which was the kind of laziness I'd expect from my brother, but since he was paying us I didn't complain. There was a white cloth in the center of the floor, and also...

"Is that a lion's tail hanging from your ceiling?" I asked.

"It's a souvenir."

Jasper and I gently set the body on the floor. Obviously, we weren't concerned about hurting Dirk; we just didn't want to make a mess on Carlton's floor, which looked like it been recently mopped.

Carlton lifted away the cloth.

There was a face on the floor.

Jasper leaned closer. "Is that a puppet?"

"No," said the face. "I am totally real."

I screamed. Jasper screamed. I cancelled out some of the work Carlton had done mopping the floor.

"Knock it off!" said Carlton. "I told you guys that there was a face on the floor! Why didn't you mentally prepare yourselves?"

Jasper and I continued to scream.

"Guys, c'mon, seriously. It's just a face."

Jasper quit screaming, though I continued for a few more seconds.

"So, anyway," said Carlton, "that's the face that wants to eat the hit man."

"Hello," said the face.

"Kill it!" I shouted.

I lunged forward, ready to stomp on it numerous times, but Carlton tackled me and knocked me to the floor. My younger brother had always been able to kick my ass.

He held me down for a moment. "Are you calm now?"

"No!"

He slowly counted to ten. "How about now?"

"Yeah, okay."

"This traveler can bring us incredible power," he explained. "But you can't go around shouting 'kill it.' You have to play it cool, all right?"

I nodded. Carlton stood up, and then helped me to my feet.

"Allow the one who leaks to change his pants," said the face.

* * *

"They brought you a fresh body," Carlton told the face, after I'd changed into a pair of his pants.

"Then they shall be rewarded along with you."

Carlton smiled. The face also kind of smiled. I did not smile, because I was too busy contorting my mouth in an effort not to shriek, "There's a face on the floor! There's a face on the frickin' floor!"

It was a creepy-ass face, too. Why the hell would anybody get involved with it? You could tell just by looking at it that it was evil. This was going to end with me having to bash Carlton's head in with a shovel, I just knew it.

Carlton unwrapped the body. He recoiled a bit as he saw that I'd shot Dirk in the face, but he didn't comment about it, which I appreciated.

"Is it really going to eat the body?" I asked.

"Yes," said Carlton.

"No," said the face.

"No?"

"Not the entire body. I have no need for the nourishment of lungs or a heart. Merely the head. Cut off its head for me."

Carlton winced and went a bit pale.

"A head in exchange for three gold coins."

Carlton nodded and took a deep breath. "Okay. Just give me a minute."

Jasper raised his hand. "I don't want you guys thinking that I'm some kind of psycho or something, but I wouldn't mind cutting off his head."

"Are you serious?" I asked, gaping at him.

"What? When am I going to get the chance to do something like this?"

"You were getting all judgmental when you thought my brother was a necrophile."

"And I stand by that. I'm not going to do anything kinky. I'd just like to be the one to decapitate him if nobody else volunteers."

Carlton stepped away from the body. "Hey, you're more than welcome to it. I'll get you a hacksaw."

"In case you were wondering," I told Jasper, "I do think you're some kind of psycho. I absolutely do."

"That's fine. At least I didn't shoot him."

"Killing somebody is less depraved than severing their corpse's head."

"No, it isn't."

"Yes, it is. Everybody knows that. You shoot somebody, it's revenge. You do shit to their dead body, it's deviant."

"Only if I get sexual excitement out of it."

"That's not the rule."

"I'm doing this because it would be an interesting new experience. And it's something that needs to be done. If I saw a dead body on the street, there's no way I would offer to walk over and decapitate it, but this body needs decapitating, so what's the problem?"

"I didn't say there was a problem. All I'm saying is that you don't get to play the 'I'm Just A Regular Guy' card."

"Enough!" said the face. "If he wants to sever the head upon which I will feed, let him sever the head! Why complicate this?"

"Fine," I said. Jasper could do whatever he wanted. I didn't care. I didn't say that out loud, because it would sound like I was being pouty, and I assure you that I wasn't.

Jasper sawed off Dirk's head. He did not giggle while he did it, nor did he lick his lips, nor did he breathe quickly in a manner that might indicate sexual excitement, nor did he cackle, so ultimately I was okay with it and actually kind of relieved that we hadn't been forced to draw straws or something.

Carlton picked up the head by the hair. "All right," he said. "Let's do this."

SIX

Felicia

"In my face," I said.

"For real?" asked Chester.

I nodded.

"You mean it? I'm allowed to do that?"

"Uh-huh."

"That's the most awesome thing ever," said Chester, standing by the side of the bed and stroking to finish himself off. "I've seen it in movies and stuff, but chicks in real life are always, like, 'Eeew! No!' I can't believe you're really gonna let me do this. This is so great."

"Are you almost there?"

"Yeah, almost. What if I get it in your hair?"

"That's fine."

"I'll try not to, but I can't always predict where it's gonna go, you know? Oh, man, I really can't believe I get to do this after all this time. You should probably close your eyes."

"I'll be okay."

"No, really, if I get it in your eyes I'd feel like crap. I still can't believe I get to do this. You know what, though, let me move my pillow. I don't mind getting it on the bed but I probably won't do laundry until the morning and I've only got that one pillowcase."

I picked up the pillow and tossed it to the foot of the bed.

"I didn't mean that you had to do it. I was going to do it. But thanks. I guess I could flip the pillow over, but that would be kind of nasty. I should buy another pillowcase. It's just not something I think about when I'm in town, you know?"

"I need you to finish. I need to get back home."

"No snuggling?"

"My husband will wonder where I am. Since when do you care about snuggling?"

"Well, I guess I don't, but this is a special occasion."

"Do you realize that you've now spent more time playing with yourself than you spent inside of me?" I didn't mean for this to sound bitchy, but my spur of the moment decision to let him finish on my face wasn't supposed to turn into an actual conversation.

"Hey, I could have kept going. I can go for eight or nine minutes sometimes. You've been there, right?"

"I apologize for that," I said. "In my face. Let's go."

"I'm just saying, you were the one who--"

"Chester, finish now or finish by yourself."

Chester began to stroke himself more vigorously. "This is so, so incredible. I've dreamed about this. Literally dreamed about it. I don't know why it's such a big deal for ladies. It washes off. Maybe they think it's humiliating. But you don't feel humiliated, do you?"

"No."

"I wouldn't feel humiliated if women could do that to guys. I'd be all over that. If you were lactating..." Chester considered that. "I take that back. That would be gross. It may sound sexist but it's just the way I feel. You wouldn't be into that, would you? If you were pregnant?"

"No."

"I used to think that having sex with a pregnant chick was kinky and weird, but then I realized, no, pretty much any couple with kids have done that. You don't take a nine-month break. And even if it's not your own kid growing inside there, it's still not that weird, if you really think about it."

"Are you having problems?"

"No, no, no, no, no, I'm almost there. Almost there. You better get ready, because it's going to be a gusher. Seriously, you should close your eyes."

I closed my eyes.

"Almost there...seconds away...oh, yeah, I can feel it...getting closer...oh, man, am I gonna make a mess...I told you that my hot water heater is broken, right?"

"Wait, what?"

"Yeah."

I opened my eyes. "Then no, you can't get it in my hair! I'm not taking a cold shower!"

"I could heat up some water on the stove."

"Are you kidding?"

"I was just trying to be considerate by telling you beforehand. I didn't have to do that."

"Can you finish up? Please? This isn't making productive use of our time."

Look, I'm all in favor of a guy who can last. The longer the better, most times. But there are also occasions when you should be considerate of your partner and finish the job without a lot of chit chat. If you moan, "Ohhh, I'm gonna come," and I say to do it in my face, there should be a delay of no more than ten seconds before the big release.

I'm not a bitchy lover, I swear to you. It's just that when you're doing something really nice for somebody (and I knew this was one of Chester's fantasies--he'd mentioned it a few times before), it can be frustrating when they turn the moment from something beautiful--well, not beautiful, but fun--into something annoying.

I'd keep Chester around, because he had an extremely large penis and I was in favor of extremely large penises, but if he didn't make this happen soon, I was going to flick his balls like I was flicking an insect off a windowsill.

If I had to guess, I'd say that your sympathy for me right now is pretty minimal. That's what happens when you start your portion of the narrative with a moment where you're asking a guy to come in your face. I understand.

I never expected to be the kind of woman who would cheat on her husband en masse. Greg is the one who deflowered me, after various issues kept me a virgin until my early thirties. Hell, I wanted to wait until our wedding night, but I succumbed to his charms shortly after I bought the dress. It didn't hurt anywhere near as much as I'd expected, and I regretted not getting started with this aspect of my life much sooner.

It was great for about fifteen years. Not that I had a basis for comparison, but overall, I was completely satisfied.

Then Greg had what we discretely referred to as "issues down there."

That's fine. Everybody gets performance anxiety sometimes. It becomes a problem when you're unwilling to do anything to fix the issue. If I'm down there, being extremely generous, you can't just sputter, "It's not working!" and give up after thirty seconds. You can't refuse to talk to your doctor. You've got to work through the humiliation and make an effort. You can't just quit.

What was I supposed to do, slip Viagra into his drink?

The first time I cheated on him, it just happened. I know, I know, that's a complete cop-out excuse. It doesn't "just happen." What I meant is that it was unplanned. Brett, the server at the Tex-Mex place where I often went for lunch, had always been harmlessly flirty, but when he asked why I was crying, I forced myself to give him a brave smile and said that it was nothing, just the problems everybody has, no big deal. He said that if I ever wanted to talk, let him know.

He was young and fit and apparently into older women, and the next time I went there for lunch, I flirted back, less harmlessly.

I called Greg to let him know I'd be late from work.

Now I had a basis for comparison, and oh my freaking God had I been missing out.

I felt sick with shame. I was now a woman who would cheat on her husband. A cheater! A reprehensible cheater! And when Greg found out, he'd divorce me for sure, and everybody would know what I'd done, and I'd be an outcast, and I'd deserve to be an outcast because I was a cheater.

But, damn, it had been good.

And we did it again.

One evening, maybe three months after this started, I realized that Greg had been poking around in my e-mail. An e-mail from Brett that I hadn't read wasn't in boldface. His e-mail didn't say "I certainly enjoyed sliding my erect penis into your vagina and thrusting repeatedly," but it wasn't innocuous, and it was clear that something was going on between us.

I was sick to my stomach, physically trembling, waiting for Greg to confront me.

He never did.

A week passed, and he didn't say a thing.

I vowed to quit. I'd break it off with Brett, chalk it up to temporary insanity, and go back to being a loyal, faithful wife.

Instead, I created a secret e-mail account and joined one of those websites for singles.

I made a lot of new friends (and they were all friends--I wasn't seeking a romantic relationship). Yes, I'll admit that the number was getting kind of high, but if I'd had one boyfriend a year from the ages of eighteen through thirty-five, nobody would shout "Oh my God! She's the worst slut ever!" I'd simply gotten off to a much later start and had my lovers in a more compressed timeframe.

Greg knew. He had to know. His genitals didn't work but his brain did.

I kept waiting for him to say something. He never did. Was he too cowardly to confront me? Did he not even care? I started to resent him. If he wasn't going to say anything, why shouldn't I have fun? Why shouldn't I have my physical needs met like never before?

Sure, I felt guilty. Especially when I did things that had been strictly off-limits with Greg. The thing is, when you ask in a different way, and you're careful to ease into it, and you bring plenty of lube, I'm more receptive.

Like I said before I went into the backstory, I'm not a bitchy lover. There are simply different levels of longevity for different circumstances. If we've got a hotel room and three hours of free time, then I want you to pound away at me in a marathon session. If I'm going down on you in a parking lot, and there are people wandering around with shopping carts, it's in both of our best interests for you to climax in an efficient manner. When I ask you to come in my face, do it!

"You've got ten seconds," I said.

Chester nodded. "Ten...nine...eight...seven..."

"Please don't do a countdown."

Chester nodded again, and continued to nod down the rest of the count. He squeezed his eyes closed, tilted his head back, and jerked with such fervor that I worried that his penis might tear off, pop out of his hand, and hit me in the face. Since there was a very specific reason I kept Chester around despite his personality defects, it would probably give me a concussion.

Finally, finally, he got there, letting out a moan of victory like a caveman who'd killed a bison.

"Oh...oh...oh, yeah...that was so awesome...I just can't even...oh, man...I never thought I would...oh, yeah...I love you."

"It got in my nose," I said, wiping my face in disgust.

"You sound like you have a cold."

SEVEN

Jasper

Now that the job was done, I felt sort of self-conscious about my enthusiasm for cutting off the dude's head. I shouldn't have admitted anything. I should have volunteered with more of a "taking one for the team" attitude than an "Ooh! Ooh! Me! Me!" one.

I'm not a weirdo. It's never been my fantasy to chop off a head. I'd always thought it was as vile as everybody else did.

Yet when the opportunity came up, it seemed kind of...cool.

And you know what? It was. It was fun. I wanted to sing while I was moving the hacksaw back and forth across his neck. (I didn't.) Instead, I made up a song in my mind:

Cuttin' off a head.

Cuttin' off a head.

He's already dead.

So he won't need his head.

It wasn't a great song, but it had a catchy tune. I kept singing it to myself as Greg's brother knelt down next to the face on the floor.

"It's not going to fit," said Carlton.

"It will if you are persistent," said the face. It opened its mouth wide.

I had to agree with Carlton. No way was that head going to fit. I'd happily saw it in half or quarters, but I didn't think it was a good idea to volunteer.

"Just do it," said Greg. He was a nice boss, easy to work for, flexible with me arriving late or leaving early, but ever since he'd hired the assassin the dude was unpleasant to be around.

Carlton placed the head on the face's mouth. It wasn't even close to fitting. Carlton picked the head back up. "Maybe we need to slice it."

"Just push," said the face.

"I don't want to hurt your teeth."

"You will not hurt me. Push."

Carlton glanced at Greg, and then at me, with an expression that seemed to say, You guys are witnesses, right? He asked me to do this. It's not my fault if his teeth all break off. Then he set down the head, face down on the face, and pushed.

The face's mouth opened wider.

Wider.

It was a struggle for sure, but you know what? He got the head in there. I couldn't believe it. Dirk's head disappeared from sight, the face closed its mouth, and we stood there for a few moments, listening to crunching sounds.

I thought it would be funny if the face let out a belch, but it didn't.

Finally the chewing stopped. The face licked its lips. "I thank you."

"Where's our reward?" asked Carlton.

"Have patience."

"You'd better not be reneging," said Carlton. "I'll go get some dog crap from my neighbor's yard and drop it down there if you're reneging."

"I will pay my debt."

The face closed its eyes. It began to glow with a soft, otherworldly blue light. It opened its mouth and a beam of that blue light shot out, quickly growing in intensity until it almost hurt to look at it, but I kept looking because when else are you going to see freaky shit like this?

Suddenly the light disappeared.

Three small items landed on the ground with a clink. Greg stepped on one of the gold coins before it could roll away.

"Those were salvaged from a sunken pirate ship," the face informed us. "They have great value. Spend them wisely."

"We're rich!" I shouted, even though I had no idea how much gold coins salvaged from a sunken pirate ship fetched on eBay.

We each picked up a coin. This could have turned into a situation where one of us picked up two coins and it became a tense standoff, but that didn't happen.

"Are you sure you don't want to eat the rest of him?" asked Carlton, nudging the headless assassin with his toe. "Otherwise we'll have to bury him somewhere."

"Then bury him. You have done me a great service, but further rewards await you, if you are willing to let go of your moral qualms."

"Oh, yeah," said Carlton. "Qualms are gone. We'll definitely kill more people for you, no problem."

Carlton and Greg both looked at me.

It was not a fun look.

To be fair, there were only four of us in the basement to look at, and to be additionally fair, when a comment like "We'll definitely kill more people for you" is thrown out there, it makes sense to look around at the others in the room to gauge their reaction.

But considering the circumstances, I don't think that it was too big of a stretch to think These fuckers are gonna kill me!

Was it overkill to grab the hacksaw and start waving it around? Was it going too far to shout, "You sons of bitches aren't going to get me!"? In retrospect, yeah, it was. Though it was less overkill than when I actually swung the weapon at my employer.

I got him in the upper arm. It was a good hit with a lot of force behind it. Unfortunately, a hacksaw isn't an axe, and you can't really lop off a body part in one hit.

I was by far the biggest guy in the basement, but it was two against one, and one of them had picked up a mop. He whacked me on the back of the head with the wooden handle, and I fell to my knees, and he whacked me again, and they both started stomping on me, and I apologized for my behavior, but I don't think they heard me, and then my part of the story came to an end.

EIGHT

Carlton

"Do not damage his skull!" said the face.

I stopped my foot in mid-stomp, feeling a bit sheepish because I'd been about to do exactly that. "We can wreck the rest of him, though, right?"

"Yes," said the face. "But leave his skull unbroken."

So we beat Jasper to death without hurting his head.

I'll be honest and admit that there's a point, even if you aren't a trained medical professional, where you can pretty much figure out that somebody is dead. We went far beyond that. It was as if Greg and I were trying to find out how much we could flatten him out. We had gold on our minds, and when I was a kid I'd read that you could take a piece of gold that weighed less than a couple of packs of chewing gum and pound it thin enough to cover a football field, so maybe that's what I was thinking.

Not that we stomped on him anywhere near that much. That would have been depraved.

Finally my legs started to get tired. I think Greg's legs were tired, too, but he didn't want to admit it. We quit crushing Jasper and stood there, catching our breath.

As you can probably guess, things were suddenly very awkward.

I've already said that I'm a man who takes responsibility for his own behavior. I don't go around blaming the ills of society for my problems. But hear me out. If you stomped a man to death, even in self-defense, and you kept stomping and stomping while bones snapped and organs squished and flesh split and fluids spurted, is it really so far-fetched to suggest that there may have been other forces involved? Greg and I squashed the fuck out of Jasper, a guy I'd always liked. Doesn't that seem unusual to you? Again, I'm not trying to deflect the blame away from myself, but it's worth considering.

The face opened its mouth wide.

Jasper's head had already come off, so there was no need to argue about who would handle that task. I picked up the head and shoved it into the mouth, with much less effort this time because apparently the mouth had widened.

More blue light. Two more gold coins.

To me, the payment shouldn't have been reduced just because there were fewer of us now, but then again, the face had tripled its original offer after we jammed Dirk's head in its mouth, so who was I to complain?

"Again, I thank you," said the face, in unison. It said this in unison because there were now two of them, side by side. The eye colors and nose shapes were different, but they kind of looked like siblings.

"Is that other face you?" I inquired.

"I am many," said the faces.

"That's weird as hell," I said.

Greg was wiping the sole of his shoe off on my bottom stair, which, even though there was splatter all over the floor, seemed kind of inconsiderate. This lack of courtesy was, to me, the real reason his wife was having affair after affair after affair.

"So," I said to Greg, "Jasper. He won't be missed by anyone, will he?"

"He's got a wife and two kids," said Greg.

"Damn."

"With a third on the way."

"Fuck."

"We shouldn't have murdered him."

"Hey, if somebody has a pregnant wife, they shouldn't go around waving hacksaws at people. It's irresponsible. We wouldn't have killed him if he hadn't been aggressive like that."

"I don't know. I have to admit that I was sort of leaning in that direction before he picked up the hacksaw."

I sighed. "All right, I was, too. Screw him. He's not family."

"He was a good employee. Always reliable. Always available to talk. He's the reason I didn't need therapy. If he hadn't been there for me every Tuesday through Saturday, I don't know what I would have done."

Greg looked like he was going to cry. I hadn't seen him this upset since last night's confession that he'd hired a hit man to kill Felicia's lover.

"Still," I said, "the hacksaw is an important element of what happened. You can't succumb to paranoia like that without consequences. Look what he did to your arm."

"It's barely even bleeding."

"True. But only because you took action. Don't think for one second that he wouldn't have stood there and sawed your arm off if you'd let him."

"Doesn't it bother you what we did?" asked Greg. He gestured to the gore that covered the floor in a twenty-foot radius. "This is the kind of crime they make documentaries about. Why would we do this? We've always been so passive."

"Honestly, I think it looks worse than it really is. This floor wasn't designed for drainage, so stuff is spreading out. Is there any blood on the ceiling? Nope, not a drop. Is there any on the walls? Yes, but only one wall, and this basement has four."

"What about his hands?"

I looked around but didn't see them. "Where are they?"

"I don't know, either! You know why? Because they're no longer recognizable as hands!"

"Calm down," I said, pointing to one of many, many wet red blobs. "That's part of one. You can see the fingernail."

"I'm not trying to add tension to what is already a very stressful situation," said Greg. "But I feel like we were a little out of control."

"Fine. That's fair. I'll admit it. If we'd taken the time to think things through, it probably would have played out differently. Not our finest moment by any stretch of the imagination. On the other hand, hey, we got the job done. Not all brothers can work together so well."

"We're horrible people."

"No. Horrible people would steal Jasper's gold coin. We're not going to do that. In fact, we're going to give it to his family. Not in person, of course, since his wife would think it was kind of bizarre for us to give her gold from a pirate's lost treasure, but we'll slip it under the door or put it in their mailbox or something, we'll figure it out, maybe we'll sell it and send them a check for the cash value, but however we handle it we're not going to steal it, and I'll bet you that ninety-eight percent of the people in our situation would steal that coin, the thieving bastards."

"Yeah, maybe."

"I'm not trying to say that today you and I didn't suck. We did. There's no argument. But we didn't suck as much as we could have, and I think that's something to be proud of."

"I guess," said Greg.

"May I interject?" asked the faces.

"Sure," I said. What was I going to say, no?

"Few would deny that today's act of violence was more hostile than necessary. But where you saw mental illness, I saw passion. A passion for one's work that is rarely seen in contemporary times. If a custodian was sweeping a floor, and he continued to sweep until nary a speck of dirt remained, would you think him a madman?"

"A bit OCD, maybe," said Greg.

"Then today the two of you succumbed to obsessive-compulsive disorder about the task you were completing. Nothing more. You did your job with pride, and much like the aforementioned custodian, you are to be commended."

Greg and I stood there for a moment, taking in the face's words of wisdom. He was right. Any disinterested minimum-wage-earning slacker could lop off a head, but Greg and I had proven our dedication to the craft.

We weren't merely not wrong about what we'd done; we were right.

Greg and I smiled at each other, and Greg let out a sheepish little chuckle. "I'm sorry," he said. "I just get so nervous sometimes. I doubt my moral compass. It won't happen again."

We gave each other a hug.

I laughed. "I'd feel guilty about hugging you like this if we didn't both already have blood and guts on us."

"I don't have any actual guts on me, do I?"

"Yeah. There's at least one."

Greg laughed as well. "Wow. Whatever that is, it must've had quite a trajectory to end up on my shoulder."

We both laughed some more. (Although only for a few seconds. It wasn't minutes of laughing. Just some extra chuckles at the absurdity of it all.)

"I was thinking--" we both said together.

"You first," I said.

"No, you first," said Greg. "I want to make sure that what I'm thinking isn't as dark as what you're thinking. What were you thinking?"

"Killing spree."

"Oh, yeah, yours is way darker. I was thinking of another victim, not a whole spree."

"Spree may have been the wrong word. Three to five more. Maybe six."

"Let's not commit ourselves to six quite yet," said Greg. "We'll start with one, and if that works out, move on to two, and if we're still cool with the idea we'll go to three, and then from three we'll probably be able to figure out if we actually want to do the whole six, don't you agree?"

"Excellent plan," I said.

My doorbell rang.

"Did you order a pizza?" asked Greg.

I shook my head.

"Could somebody be delivering a pizza to the wrong house?"

"Conceivably."

"Do you have nosy neighbors? Jasper did a lot of screaming while we were killing him. What if somebody heard it and called the police?"

I cursed. "That's a definite possibility. I mean, I don't know how much lungpower Jasper had, but I got the impression that he was screaming at the top of his lungs. So, yeah, I suppose it could be the authorities investigating. Damn. The noise level is something we really should have thought about."

"Well, we can't think of everything."

"No, you're right."

The doorbell rang again.

"Do you think they'll just leave if nobody answers?" Greg asked.

"I can't help feeling like they won't."

"Yeah, you're right."

"So, killing the cop is off the table, right? If we do that, they'll just send more cops. I mean, granted, that would help us get victims for our spree, but they might send a whole bunch at once."

"No cop-killing," said Greg.

"That's my stance, too. Just making sure we're on the same page."

"Answer the door," said the faces.

I wiggled my hand, shaking off several drops of blood. "I'm not really dressed for company."

"Answer the door."

"I can't," I said. "We're drenched in gore. Everybody knows you don't talk to the police when you're drenched in gore. It's supremely suspicious."

"I have now asked you to answer the door twice," said the faces. "Do not make me ask a third."

As you read this, it's important to me that you understand that I knew that answering the door while covered in gore was not a smart thing to do. It's just not. I don't want you to read this and think, Holy crap! What a fuckin' simpleton! I was with him until now, but if he's going to answer the door in that condition, then fuck that guy. Fuck him with a steel-toed boot, which is way up there on the list of unpleasant ways to be fucked!

I get what you're saying. The thing is, I had to trust the faces. I just had to. After all this, why would they lead me astray? How could they benefit from giving me poor advice? If the face(s) said to answer the door, I had to answer the door.

Greg and I walked upstairs and over to my front door. Okay, the faces' advice wasn't perfect, because we were dripping blood on my carpet, but still...

I looked through the peephole.

"Is it the police?" Greg asked.

"Yes."

"Do you think they're mad?"

"We'll find out."

I opened the door. It was only one cop, and except for his scary mustache, there was very little about him that was intimidating. Okay, he had a gun. That was about it, though.

"May I help you?" I asked.

The cop raised an eyebrow. "Have you been painting?"

"Yes, sir."

"Really? What room of the house have you been painting...in blood?" He pulled his gun out of its holster and pointed it at me.

This is where I started to feel kind of silly for treating the face as a fountain of wisdom. When a homicide-encouraging face on your basement floor tells you to do something, maybe the best course of action is to do the opposite.

Greg and I exchanged a glance, as if to say, yep, this time we really stepped in it.

Interestingly, though, the cop did not shoot point-blank into my neck. He tucked his gun back into its holster. "You know," he said, "is it really my place to butt into other people's business? Who am I to judge what is and what is not appropriate behavior? If I wanted to do that, I would've become a judge. And, just between you and me, judges could stand to worry a little bit more about themselves and a little bit less about other people. I apologize for bothering you."

The cop turned to leave. I have to admit that I wanted to ask him some questions, because even the laziest of police officers would at least ask to take a peek inside the house. As I have repeatedly stressed, I take responsibility for my own actions, but we're talking about the actions of the cop now, and I simply couldn't shake the feeling that there was some kind of mind control going on here.

At the bare minimum, shouldn't he have swiped a finger across my chin and tasted it? Or asked a non-invasive question, like "Why do you have all that blood on you?" or "Hypothetically, if somebody was screaming bloody murder in your basement, who might that individual have been?"

So I really wanted to get his perspective on what was happening. Yet I couldn't have him suddenly realize that, yes, there was mind control at work here, and that it behooved him to investigate further.

We watched him leave.

"We both know that was strange," I said to Greg, "so there's no reason to discuss it further. There are a lot of men out there who've done you wrong, so let's get started on our killing spree."

NINE

Professor Sebastian Snowberg

In a world without consequences, what are the rules that govern morality?

I believe that we are all fundamentally decent. I do not believe that anybody is born evil. Nurture, not nature. It is my firm stance that even the child of a sadistic husband-and-wife serial killer team could grow up to be an upstanding member of society if he was raised by different parents.

Yet I also believe that it is possible for each and every one of us to commit atrocities against our fellow human beings. If a kindhearted man were offered a one-dollar bill in exchange for the brutal murder of his local pharmacist, would he accept? Almost certainly not. What if the offer was raised to ten dollars? Would he accept? Again, almost certainly not. One hundred? Five hundred? A thousand?

Almost certainly not.

The truth of the matter is, to convince an otherwise kindhearted man to murder his pharmacist would require a sum of money that's out of reach for virtually everyone who would want a pharmacist killed. Because even if you offered him a million dollars, the kindhearted man would still worry about the consequences. What good is a million dollars in prison?

A million dollars is some good in prison, of course. One could bribe guards or purchase cigarettes to use as currency. Still, is having a million dollars in prison better than not having a million dollars at home? Almost certainly not.

But what if there were no consequences? What if you could assure this kindhearted man that he would never be caught? What if you could promise him that he would be able to spend every cent of his million dollars without the risk of even a single night behind bars?

Would he do it?

These were the kinds of questions I was asking myself while I went down on Felicia. I suppose it goes without saying that I was not an attentive lover.

"More to the right," she said.

I moved my tongue a bit more to the right. Based on her reaction, it was the correct distance to have moved, and I went back to my philosophical thoughts.

* * *

"But why?" I wailed. "Why?"

"Because," said the non-kindhearted-looking man, "you were boning my wife."

That information helped, but didn't narrow things down all the way. I couldn't perish without understanding why I was being killed, and yet admitting that he could be one of four husbands might increase his hostility towards me.

"I don't know what you're talking about!" I said. "I am the gayest professor you'll ever meet. The impurity of the thoughts I'm having about your brother would amaze you."

He'd introduced the other man as his brother. It worried me that he was sharing the status of their relationship with me, since it implied that I would not survive to make use of this knowledge, yet he hadn't told me either of their names, implying that my death was not a certainty.

"Bullshit," said Greg. (It would be awkward and disingenuous to continue to refer to him as "the man," since I now know that his name was Greg.) "At the very most, you're bi."

Truth be told, I was a little bi, although not for Carlton. I'd never done anything with a man, but there'd been times over the years when I'd made eye contact with a gentleman from across the room and thought there could be worse uses for the restroom stall. Sadly, the one man who'd offered me his finger was rather unattractive, and after a few seconds of consideration I'd politely declined. Now that I was facing possible death, I regretted that decision.

"Please don't kill me," I said. "I'll do anything!"

That wasn't entirely true. If these men had lined up a row of babies, handed me a machine gun, and told me to mow them down, I would have refused, sacrificing my own life for that of the babies, a sacrifice that might turn out to be a waste if they went ahead and killed the babies themselves, but a sacrifice that needed to be made regardless.

They did not line up a row of babies. They also did not hand me a machine gun, which was disappointing because if they were that foolish, I would have turned it on them.

Instead, they threw me into the trunk of their automobile and brought me down to Carlton's basement.

I was not prone to shouting things like "Gaaaahhhhh!!!" but how articulate could one expect me to be when I gazed upon five hideous faces on the basement floor?

"Will he do, master?" asked Greg.

"He will indeed," said the five faces in unison.

And then Carlton held me down while Greg decapitated me with a shovel. At that point, I died, so I wasn't really present in the moment, although I'd get to watch it later.

TEN

Greg

To clarify: the faces didn't make me call them master. I just started doing it because I thought it was funny.

ELEVEN

Felicia

Five of my previous boy-toys had gone missing in a week. In my defense, I'd started to suspect foul play after the second.

"Quite a few disappearances in this city recently," I said to Greg, as we sat at the table, eating the microwaved dinners that I'd over-microwaved.

"What are you trying to say?" asked Greg.

"Just making conversation."

"If you're accusing me of wrongdoing, why not come out and say it?"

"I'm not accusing you of anything," I insisted. "But you've been spending a lot of time with your brother, who you only barely tolerate, and every night this week you've come home with blood behind your ears."

"Why are you looking behind my ears?" Greg asked. "Can't a man have privacy in a single crevice? Maybe I should ask what's behind your ears, hmmm?"

I showed him that there was nothing behind my ears.

"All right, well, fair enough, it was just speculation," said Greg. "It wasn't an accusation, unlike what you've done with me."

"I specifically said that I wasn't accusing you of anything."

"And yet you wanted to know why there was blood behind my ears. If that's not an accusation, I don't know what is." Greg frowned for an instant, as if momentarily doubting his understanding of the word accusation, but he quickly returned to his look of indignation.

"I don't want to live in a world where I can't question the presence of blood on my husband," I said.

"What if I'd been hurt? What if I had nasty gashes behind my ears? How come you didn't express concern for my health?"

"I did," I insisted. "I asked you about it every night this week. You told me not to worry, that it wasn't your blood."

That had seemed like a sufficient explanation each time, even though on Tuesday and Thursday there'd been so much blood that it was dripping onto his shirt. I couldn't see an actual wound, so it seemed completely feasible that he was telling the truth about it not being his blood.

But that left me with an extremely important question: whose blood was it?

Was there a connection between Greg coming home with blood on him, and some of my former lovers going missing? He had a pretty good reason to dislike them. If our roles were reversed, I'd be upset with the women he was banging.

If he were on some sort of killing spree where he wiped out my former lovers one by one, the final body count would be astounding. I'm not an attractive woman, and my best years are far behind me, so it could take a lot of effort to rebuild my boy-toy empire...but frankly I was less worried about that than the tragic loss of human life.

I really should have confronted Greg about this sooner.

"Are you killing people?" I asked.

"Why would you ask such a thing?"

"Because I want to know if you're killing people."

Greg pushed aside his plastic tray of turkey and mashed potatoes. "That question is disrespectful."

"Why?"

"It just is. Do I go around asking if you're killing people? Do I?"

"The difference, Greg, is that I haven't given you any reason to suspect that I've committed murder. There's not a drop of blood on me. We can't say the same about you."

"Why do you immediately associate blood with murder? Maybe somebody accidentally bled on me. What about that?"

"Did somebody accidentally bleed on you?"

"Well, no, but you could have started there instead of going straight to me being a murderer!"

"You never answered my question," I said.

"Are you fucking other men?" he asked.

"Excuse me?"

"Has your vagina admitted bonus penises?"

I glared at him. "You've known that I was screwing around for years. The only way I could be less discrete is if I 69'ed one of them at the foot of our bed while you were watching TV."

"More like you 699'ed them."

"Huh?"

"I know you had a threesome."

"But what does 699 represent? What's the second 9 doing?"

"The numbers don't matter. What matters is that you've been unfaithful. You've used my impotence and my lack of interest in trying to fix the problem as an excuse to go out and seek your own sexual gratification. Slut!"

"Did you kill any of them?" I asked.

"How many of them spanked you?" Greg demanded. "Did you use the p-word in your bedroom talk? Because you rarely use it with me!"

"I don't remember."

"Is that so? One of the filthiest words in the English language and you don't remember if you used it? How is that possible? Oh, you get all high and mighty when you accuse me of slaughtering people, but I'm supposed to just sit back and watch you--?"

I interrupted him. "I didn't say you were slaughtering people."

"You did so! That's why my mood is so poor!"

"I said killing people, not slaughtering them." I looked at Greg in horror. "Are you slaughtering them?"

"No!"

"Are you sure?"

"No! I mean, yes! Stop trying to twist my words! This isn't about the people I've slaughtered; it's about the people you've screwed! And don't think I don't know about the women! Obviously you didn't screw them, but you've done things with them! You've done things with your fingers, and tongue, and, yes, I even know about the elbow!"

"How do you know about the elbow?" I asked.

"The subject line of the e-mail was 'Luv Your Elbow.'"

"Oh, that's right. Have you been killing my lovers?"

"Stop trying to change the subject away from your lovers!"

"I'm not! We're still on-topic, but I damn well need to know if you've been killing them!"

"Why?"

"What do you mean, why?"

"Why do you need to know? What purpose will it serve? Will you warn them? Will you ask me to stop?"

"Yes!"

"I asked you four questions. I'm not sure which one you're answering."

"The last and the second-to-last ones."

"I don't remember what they were," said Greg. "I'm sorry--I'm getting kind of worked up over this." He began to cry.

"Are you crying?" I asked.

"No."

"Yes, you are."

"Well, wouldn't you cry if you'd committed several acts of cold-blooded murder? I chopped off their heads! All of them had heads and now they don't! I touched a rib bone! I know what a spleen looks like! I tried to rip out a heart but it wouldn't come out! I know how a neck looks when there's no skin on it! I'm a monster, Felicia! A monster!"

Now I was crying, too. "But why?"

"Because I'm killing people! Haven't you been listening?"

"I wasn't asking why you think you're a monster. I was asking why you're killing people. Is it for revenge?"

"That's a fringe benefit, yes."

"But also...?"

"But also, this scary face appeared on the floor of Carlton's basement, and it gave us gold coins in exchange for feeding it severed heads, and we figured that if we had to kill people, it might as well be people who are cuckolding me, so I'm a monster!"

"Oh my God," I said. I would have fallen into my chair if I hadn't already been sitting.

"Do you believe me?" Greg asked.

"Yes."

"Seriously? I just told you about a severed-head-eating face on Carlton's basement floor."

"I believe you."

"I would've held on to doubt for a while longer, but whatever." Greg dabbed at the corners of his eyes with his napkin and then blew his nose into it. "Anyway, that's why I had blood behind my ears."

"Are you planning to kill more people?"

Greg shrugged. "Yeah, I think so. Not necessarily the entire list of your men, but a few more, at least."

"Please don't."

"Maybe you should have thought of that before you cheated on me."

"I should have thought of a carnivorous basement face?"

"Even without the face, I would have snapped at some point. You know that."

"Take me to see it."

"Okay."

TWELVE

Jasper

Nothingness.

Somethingless.

I float, and yet I do not float. I sink and yet I rise. I scream and yet I am silent. I have no eyes and yet I have a million eyes. I am obese and yet I am physically fit.

This bites.

We, the lost souls in the land of eternity, spiral endlessly in a world of blackness and all colors, conversing with words that we do not speak.

I'm the only one here who didn't get to bang Felicia.

Sure, Felicia is no great prize, but apparently she was quite the little hellion in the sack. Not in a "Hi, I'm Felicia, let's do double penetration" way, but, as the others explain it, if you were sweet to her and brought her flowers and complimented her dress, different acts would be unlocked, like levels on a video game.

I don't feel jealous or anything. I just wish I had more to contribute to the conversation.

By the way, we all hate Greg. He'd damn well better hope he doesn't end up here with us...

THIRTEEN

Greg

Carlton was going to be really mad when I showed up at his house with Felicia, but he'd get over it, just like he'd gotten over the fact that the gold coins were worthless.

"Completely worthless?" I'd asked the appraiser at the coin shop.

The appraiser nodded. "More worthless than gold-foil-covered chocolate. At least with those you get the chocolate. Didn't you think these seemed kind of light to be gold?"

"How the fuck should we know how much gold coins weigh?" asked Carlton. "Do you think we walk around with gold coins in our pocket? Look at the way we dress!"

"Sir, I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to refrain from using coarse language while in my shop," said the appraiser. "That kind of talk is fine at your Targets or your Wal-Marts, but not here."

"How about you open wide and suck my--no, you're right, your store, your rules," said Carlton, grabbing the coin from the counter. "Okay, if we were so easily duped, then maybe one of your other customers will be, too. Wanna buy it?"

The appraiser shook his head. "No, I don't believe so."

As soon as we'd stepped out of the boundaries of the shop, Carlton said, "Fuck."

"The face lied to us."

"That son of a bitch. I almost don't want to kill for him anymore."

"Almost?" I asked.

"I know that we did it for the treasure, but oddly enough, I still feel that it was a valuable use of our time. We were productive, weren't we?"

"Very productive."

"It's not like we were goofing around on social media."

"Nope."

"So my vote is that we keep killing Felicia's lovers, and when we run out of them, we start killing people who wanted to sleep with her, and when we run out of them, we start killing random strangers who are walking alone at night."

"All right," I said.

* * *

"What the hell is she doing here?" Carlton demanded.

"Can we come in?" I asked.

"No, you can't come in! Are you crazy?"

"Let me in, Carlton," said Felicia.

"Absolutely not. That would cause complications."

"I'm not leaving until you let me in."

"If you come in, here's what's going to happen: you'll get eaten. Now, I'm sure that a godless tramp like you is thinking, 'Ooooh, sounds good to me!' but I assure you that this is the bad kind of getting eaten."

"Greg already told me about the face," Felicia said.

Carlton looked at me. "You what?"

I nervously scratched my arm. Felicia and I had agreed that she'd reveal her knowledge about the face somewhere around the four-minute mark of this encounter, and we were barely thirty seconds in.

"You what?" Carlton repeated.

"She was going to find out eventually," I said.

"I suppose you're right. But I accept no responsibility for what happens if she goes down there. Felicia, are you willing to sign a waiver?"

"Sure," she said.

"I don't actually have a waiver, of course. That would be insane. I just wanted you to confirm that you'd sign one if it was available."

"I would."

"Well, then prove it, because I do have a waiver!" Carlton reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. "I'm kidding. This is a pizza receipt."

Felicia leaned over and whispered to me. "Your brother is acting strange."

"I read your lips!" said Carlton. "You think I'm acting strange! You haven't seen strange yet!"

Carlton proceeded to do something strange, which I will not describe here out of respect for his dignity.

"In retrospect, I wish I hadn't done that," said Carlton. "It was a below-average thing to do. It won't be repeated."

"Thank you," said Felicia, still traumatized.

"If I take you down to the basement, do you promise not to get upset?" Carlton asked.

"I do not."

"Okay, that's not the answer I wanted, but you know what? Screw it. Let's go."

* * *

"What you're going to see will shock you," I warned Felicia. "If you feel the need to run back up the stairs and scream about unholy abominations, you go right ahead. You won't hurt anybody's feelings."

Sometimes life is filled with irony. For example, you tell your wife that what she's about to see may shock her, and that she won't hurt anybody's feelings if she runs back up the stairs screaming about an unholy abomination, but then when you actually walk halfway down the stairs, it's you who wants to run and scream about the abomination thing.

By "you" I mean "me."

To clarify: I wanted to run back up the stairs screaming, but I didn't actually do it.

The faces were still there, but they'd been joined by at least fifty more. They covered the basement floor so thoroughly that there was barely a path to walk past them. Some were the size of the original face, but others were half its size, while others were twice its size.

And they were no longer limited to the basement floor. Six or seven of them were on the walls.

"Where did all of these come from?" I demanded. "You've been killing people without me, haven't you, you cheating bastard?"

"I was faithful to you, I swear!" Carlton insisted. "They just started multiplying on their own!"

"Why would they do that? That doesn't make any sense!"

My brother and I'd had our differences, but he'd always been the one person I could trust. So this hurt. It really hurt.

"I didn't kill anybody without you!" Carlton wailed. "I would never do that! Okay, one! I killed one person! He came to my door asking if I'd seen his son. What was I supposed to do?"

"You could have waited for me!"

"He was searching for his missing child! He wasn't going to hang out and have a cup of coffee! And my house is a pigsty. There. I said it."

"I should stab you with a lobster!" I said, a perplexing statement even to me. A couple of weeks ago I'd been thinking that it sure would be nice if I could afford a lobster dinner, so maybe that was the origin of the comment.

I meant to check on Felicia's reaction to this whole thing. I'd get to that in a second, after I was done yelling at Carlton.

"Silence!" shouted all fifty faces at once. Dark liquid flowed from their mouths as they did so. And now they had thick black tendrils. When the hell had they acquired tendrils?

It was, I must say, the scariest shit I'd ever seen.

Terrifying.

Frightening beyond compare.

And so I did what you're supposed to do when confronted with unimaginable horror: I clawed out my eyes.

The process was not as speedy as I would have thought. I assumed you just dug your fingers in there and gave your eyeballs a good yank. Not the case at all. It took several minutes. Fortunately, Carlton was kind enough to wait patiently and not try to rush me. I couldn't hear what Felicia was doing, but presumably she was ripping out her own eyes, too.

Finally, I stood there, blood gushing from my empty sockets. I didn't feel all that much less scared, but at least it was a little better.

The floor began to vibrate, and there was a loud rumbling sound.

"So beautiful..." said Felicia. "So beautiful."

How was she seeing something beautiful? I couldn't see shit. Had she not torn out her eyes in horror? Had I jumped the gun?

"Gaze upon me!" shouted the faces. "Gaze upon your master!"

"I can't gaze!" I said. "Somebody tell me what's going on!"

"Shhh!" said Carlton. "The faces are speaking!"

I felt a slimy tendril wrap around my left ankle.

"I demand another sacrifice!" shouted the faces.

"When did they become sacrifices?" I asked, utterly confused. "I thought the heads were food! Somebody tell me what's going on?"

Blood was still pouring from my eye sockets. How frickin' long did that stuff take to clot?

"Give me the eyeless one," said the heads.

That sounded like a perfectly fine idea. Why not give the eyeless one to the heads as a sacrifice? There was no downside that immediately came to mind, and so...

No, wait.

I was the eyeless one. I didn't want to be sacrificed.

But somebody had to be sacrificed, right? It might as well be me.

No, wait.

That thought process didn't make any sense. Had I poked my brain while I was ripping out my eyes?

"Carlton, no!" I said. "You can't do this! We're brothers!"

"Nobody likes a guilt tripper," Carlton informed me, shoving me down the stairs.

I don't remember exactly what I said as I was tumbling down the stairs, but it was impolite. I struck the cement floor, hard, and my right hand came down on something very slimy and tongue-like. As it licked my palm, I thought, yep, that's a tongue. The sensation really wasn't all that unpleasant, at least compared to the prior sensation of falling down the stairs, or the next sensation of two of my fingers getting bitten off.

I remember exactly what I said then, but I don't think there's a spelling for it.

The face I'd landed on proceeded to bite off the remaining three fingers. I shrieked. Some blood from the stumps would have squirted into my eye, so from a "glass is half-full" perspective I was spared that discomfort, although I wasn't feeling particularly blessed.

"Since when do the faces eat fingers?" I cried out. "I thought they only ate heads! What the hell has happened to the world?"

"I think they felt bad for us having to bury all of those bodies," said Carlton.

That was a blatant lie. We'd been stacking the headless bodies in the corner of his living room. The relationship between my brother and me had been damaged beyond repair.

I suppose the best course of action would have been to turn around and try to climb back up the stairs, but I was blind, disoriented, and in extreme agony, so I ended up crawling forward. A mouth bit into my knee. Another mouth bit into my other knee. A third mouth chewed on my toe, although I was wearing decent shoes and its teeth didn't break through the rubber.

I was glad that this was--no! I wasn't glad at all! Getting devoured by these faces was literally the worst thing that had ever happened to me. Felicia could make rambunctious love to a guy right next to me on our bed while I was trying to watch TV and this would still be worse.

My arm that had a hand that still had all of its fingers went into a very large mouth, plunging in past my elbow. I tried to pull it out (obviously) but the mouth chomped down before I could do so.

"Aaah!" I said. That probably doesn't convey the full impact of what I said, but I don't wish to overwhelm you with capital letters and exclamation points.

The mouth chomped and chomped.

The teeth had broken the skin, but not the bone, so I did have another opportunity to withdraw my arm. I'm not certain why I didn't. After all, the pain was significant and I wanted relief.

"Why?" I bellowed in what I hoped was the direction of Carlton and/or Felicia. "Why?"

"It is the will of the faces," said Carlton. "It must be done."

An arm bone cracked.

"Please, master!" I shouted to the faces. "I've served you well! Why must you...actually, I'm sure you know what's best. You wouldn't be biting off my arm without a good reason. I withdraw my question."

The mouth bit off my arm. I said, "Aaah!"

I continued to crawl, as more mouths took bites out of me. I would not wish this agony on anyone, except maybe Carlton for pushing me down the stairs, but I figured I'd get over it. It did kind of hurt my feelings that Felicia wasn't making any attempt to assist me. Though I didn't expect her to put herself at risk of getting devoured by creepy basement faces, she could at least have provided lip service and said, "I'll be right there!" I had no eyes; I wouldn't know if she was telling the truth.

Speaking of my eyes, the sockets still hadn't stopped bleeding. I was starting to feel kind of woozy in addition to the excruciating pain. I regretted my earlier decision and wished that I could shove my eyeballs back into their sockets, but of course that was silly, since I'd discarded them immediately after their removal.

"Your death will not be in vain," said Carlton.

"Not to rub salt in his countless open wounds," said the faces, "but in the interest of total honesty, when you told him that his death would not be in vain, you were incorrect."

"I thought it was a sacrifice?"

"No. I don't need sacrifices. Just food. Just heads."

And then one of the faces ate mine.

FOURTEEN

Greg Again

Hi. I apologize for not handing this over the way I was supposed to, but I feel like my last sentence downplayed the ghastly nature of what happened to me. I didn't wish to imply that my head was gulped down in one bite. It took dozens of bites, as I dragged my ravaged body across the floor, the amount of flesh attached to my frame decreasing with every second. Soon I had no arms left to drag myself with, so I rolled, which seemed like it was working until I rolled onto my side and jostled one of my ribs that no longer had any cushion, and the pain became so unbearable that I just lay there, weeping, waiting for it all to end, longing for the joyful time of ages ago when I wasn't being eaten.

It took a long time for the teeth to crack my skull. I believe I was being savored, but I don't know for sure. That could just be me being prideful.

Eventually, though, one of the faces really did eat my head. I don't need to describe how that felt; you can probably figure it out.

Anyway, I wanted to make it clear that my death was outrageously miserable.

FIFTEEN

Felicia

"So," said Carlton. "That just happened."

"What the hell is going on here?" I asked. I was having difficulty sorting through my emotions. I wasn't happy that Carlton and I had stood there for twenty minutes watching my husband get devoured, but I wasn't especially bummed out about it.

"I want you to know that I didn't lure Greg here to kill him," Carlton insisted. "It was completely a spur of the moment decision."

"Uh, I know. We came unannounced. You were upset about it."

"Right. Good. That confirms my story, then."

"What are those faces?"

"Travelers. Well, one traveler. I don't completely understand the logistics. Are you going to push me down the stairs?"

"No," I said.

"You sure? Because your arm went up a little."

"Why would I do that?"

"The world isn't as normal as it used to be."

"I'm getting that."

"Did Greg tell you there was a dead lion down here?"

"No."

"There was."

"How did a dead lion get down here?"

"It's complicated. I'm not going to get into the whole thing right now."

"Let's sit down," I said, hoping that if we were both seated, neither of us would entertain thoughts about pushing the other down the stairs.

We sat down on the steps.

"First, I want to make it clear that I'm not going to try to hit on you," said Carlton. "Greg was my brother and I loved him dearly, so I would never betray him that way, and also, you're a fresh widow and, I assume, not looking to hook up anyway, right?"

"Right."

To his credit, Carlton did not seem disappointed. "Anyway, that's the big secret. I'm not proud of it, but I don't see why I should get all mopey, either."

"It's okay," I told him. "I understand."

"Really?"

I nodded. "If Greg had tried to explain it on the drive over here, I guess maybe I would have thought it was a messed-up idea, but being here, there's this...I don't know. I'm not opposed to it."

"Well, that's awesome. Because I do need a new partner."

"I'll have to think about it. I might go solo."

"That is an excellent idea," said the faces. "A most excellent idea indeed."

"I haven't decided for sure," I explained. "I don't want to rush into anything quite yet."

"Fair enough."

Speaking to the faces was a lot less freaky than I would have expected. I'm not saying that it was like chatting with my mom, but it wasn't as uncomfortable as the pillow talk right after my first back-door experience.

"How does it work?" I asked. "A new face for every murder?"

"No," said Carlton. "I haven't killed anywhere near this many people. I only killed three without Greg."

"You told him it was one."

Carlton was silent for a moment.

"That may have been a fib," he admitted.

"It's all right."

Carlton sighed. "Also, I was fibbing about the three. It was five. One of them was a nun. I went out of my way specifically to kill a nun. I'm less proud of that than anything else I've done recently. And it would have been impractical to sneak her out of there, so I left her dead body behind. I didn't even feed her to the faces." He glanced down at the faces. "Sorry."

"We already knew of this," said the faces. "We know all."

Carlton looked back at me. "They keep saying they know all, but I think they're exaggerating. They do know a lot, though. I'm not trying to take anything away from them."

"Why are there more faces than corpses?" I asked the faces.

"You count incorrectly."

Carlton started pointing to the faces, one at a time, whispering his count.

"You count the corpses incorrectly," said the faces, sounding much less annoyed than I would.

"I don't get it."

"You are not the only provider. My influence expands."

"Do you think that's bad?" I asked Carlton.

He shrugged. "Not really. I've never been the jealous type."

SIXTEEN

Others

Honestly, I didn't feel bad about ripping out my father's throat with my teeth. I did, however, feel stupid about doing it while he was doing seventy miles per hour on the freeway. Timing is everything, I guess.

* * *

I buried my face in my hands and silently wept.

"I'm sorry," said Dan. "I'm really, really sorry."

"I just try so hard to make you happy. That's all I care about. I quit my job to raise the children and give you the family you always wanted. I always try to look my best for you. I do nice things for you all the time. How could you say that to me?"

"I'm so sorry," said Dan, lifting the mug to his mouth. "I didn't mean it when I said that your coffee smelled like rat poison. Here, I'm drinking it now. Mmmmmm. Good."

* * *

"Are you sure we don't own an anvil?" I asked.

"Of course I'm sure," said Mom. "Why would we own an anvil?"

"Never mind. I need to hurry before she moves." I looked around my room and picked up my Blu-ray player. It wasn't very heavy, but Grandma was pretty frail, and she was too distracted by her gardening to brace herself. If I threw it from my second-floor window just right, she'd break.

* * *

"Guns don't kill people," I said. "Okay, they do, but it's way less fun than using a crowbar."

The guy in the bar nodded his agreement as I split his skull. A couple of the other patrons raised their glasses in admiration of my technique.

Then a pool cue went through the back of my neck. I'd heard the woman at the other billiards table break it in half, but it hadn't occurred to me that she was trying to give it a sharp end. I'm such a dumbass sometimes.

* * *

"Guns don't kill people," I said. "People kill people."

I thought this was an important message to convey as I fired bullets into the crowd. It's unlikely that they heard me over the sound of my semi-automatic rifle, but sometimes you need to speak the truth even if it's not heard.

* * *

I took down the "No Swimming - Alligators in Area" sign, sat by the lake, smiled, and waited.

* * *

"Is that a bomb?" the security guard asked me.

"No, sir," I said, even though it was quite obviously a bomb that I was pushing into the hockey arena in a shopping cart.

"I would have let you through with it if you'd just been honest," said the security guard. "But now, get the fuck out of here."

I hung my head, stepped out of line, and pushed the bomb away. I'd learned my lesson, and was honest with the guard at the other entrance.

* * *

[Translated from French.] I pushed four people off the Eiffel Tower before I was pushed. I like watching the fall, because my plummet is almost acrobatic. I don't like watching the impact.

* * *

[Translated from Chinese.] We no longer have a population problem. I wish I was still around to enjoy the extra space.

* * *

What bothered me the most is that he'd bought me the meat cleaver as a present for graduating culinary school. It was my meat cleaver. Not his. Mine.

You know what? I think I'm misremembering. What bothered me the most is that he was stabbing me to death in the first place. Eight years of marriage and he didn't even try to do a quick slice across the neck.

Let me rewatch it.

Oh, yeah, I'm totally bawling and screaming and carrying on. A lot of people here claim that they took a casual approach to their murder, I get that, I really do, but for me it was a pretty upsetting experience.

By the way, you don't get to watch your entire life. That may be what you were thinking. Now that would be great--you could watch yourself as a little kid, see your first kiss, relive all of your birthday parties from one to thirty-two, but no. All you get to do is rewatch your death.

I won't lie--it was kind of cool the first time. But after a while it became kind of depressing.

Don't worry, it's not like you have to watch your death over and over on an endless loop. It's totally voluntary. Everybody watches it at least once, but I don't want to give the impression that we're in some kind of hell where you never get to stop watching the blood pour down your forehead.

It's not so bad here. For a black void, anyway. Sure, I miss having a body, but it's not that hard to communicate with the others in the void, and, hey, you don't have to worry about gaining weight!

Not that you eat anything.

Or drink, or sleep, or make love, or sense anything.

Honestly, it sucks.

The one upside: you get to meet lots of new people every day.

SEVENTEEN

Jasper

Once Greg showed up, we all pretty much stopped being angry with him. There's no reason to hold a grudge.

EIGHTEEN

Greg

Bullshit. They absolutely hold a grudge.

NINETEEN

Felicia

The street was covered with faces.

There were faces all over the homes.

All over people's lawns, even though they were harder to see.

In fact, there were now some faces starting to appear in midair, which was extremely disconcerting.

Whenever they spoke, all of the faces spoke at the same time. The earth rumbled. Windows shattered. Trees fell. I once saw a guy fall to the ground, clutching at his ears as blood trickled between his fingers.

Everybody wears earplugs now. Fortunately, the faces don't talk every often. Maybe once a day. It gets louder every day, of course, and it's only been two weeks, so I can't imagine what it's going to be like in a month.

"This is a lot more apocalyptic than you would've thought, huh?" I said to Carlton.

Carlton didn't respond, because he didn't have a lower jaw.

Or arms, legs, or really much of anything except for what remained of his face and a torso. I'd felt like I should kill him, and I started to do that. But you know what? I'm stronger than the others. I can resist.

Carlton is the one who started this whole thing, and I want a fitting end to the story that the faces are honoring us with the request to tell, so I'm doing this right.

I'm saving him for last.

TWENTY

The Traveler

I am not a traveler.

Though I have never been to distant planets, I have encountered those who have, and I was happy to become their plaything.

"Prove your bravery!" they said. "Slay this lion!"

And I did kill the lion. The odds were stacked in my favor, since the lion was in a cage, but my knife had a short blade and there was still a strong element of danger.

"You have proven yourself worthy," said the travelers. "We have no interest in this world. We will allow you to rule it."

"I do not wish to rule it," I said. I was in a truly dark mood, because the lion had slashed my face, taking off most of the skin. "I wish to destroy it."

"Perhaps you should make this decision when you are filled with less pain and rage."

"No."

"Very well. We will give you a new face with which to influence your fellow humans. Make your will their will. Consume this mildly interesting planet and then toss it away."

I smiled with my mangled lips.

* * *

So cower in your closets. Hide under your beds.

You will be found.

In the end, all of you will be found.

Were you surprised to find this book amongst the worthless coins I spat out for my amusement? It is unlikely that you were tempted by the coins, since even solid gold would be of no use in the current world, but I assume the book captured your interest.

Did you think it would tell you how to stay alive?

Sorry to disappoint.

I merely felt that if you survived this long, you deserved to know a little more than those who died sooner than you.

I wish to thank those who were generous enough with their time to contribute their perspective. Particularly Felicia, who is going to die before you finish reading this sentence.

Poor Felicia.

And poor Carlton, who now has nobody to feed him.

They were not the last, but perhaps you will have that honor.

Perhaps.

Now put this book away. It is not a good time to be distracted.

Remember: Readers who leave reviews deserve great big hugs!

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Books By Jeff Strand

My Pretties. A serial kidnapper keeps women locked in cages that dangle from the ceiling of his soundproof basement. But he may have met his match in the two young ladies using themselves as bait...

Ferocious. The creatures of the forest are dead...and hungry!

Bring Her Back. A tale of revenge and madness.

Sick House. A home invasion from beyond the grave.

Bang Up. A filthy comedic thriller. "You want to pay me to sleep with your wife?" is just the start of the story.

Cold Dead Hands. Ten people are trapped in a freezer during a terrorist attack on a grocery store.

How You Ruined My Life (Young Adult). Sixteen-year-old Rod has a pretty cool life until his cousin Blake moves in and slowly destroys everything he holds dear.

Everything Has Teeth. A third collection of short tales of horror and macabre comedy.

An Apocalypse of Our Own. Can the Friend Zone survive the end of the world?

Stranger Things Have Happened (Young Adult). Teenager Marcus Millian III is determined to be one of the greatest magicians who ever lived. Can he make a live shark disappear from a tank?

Cyclops Road. When newly widowed Evan Portin gives a woman named Harriett a ride out of town, she says she's on a cross-country journey to slay a Cyclops. Is she crazy, or...?

Blister. While on vacation, cartoonist Jason Tray meets the town legend, a hideously disfigured woman who lives in a shed.

The Greatest Zombie Movie Ever (Young Adult). Three best friends with more passion than talent try to make the ultimate zombie epic.

Kumquat. A road trip comedy about TV, hot dogs, death, and obscure fruit.

I Have a Bad Feeling About This (Young Adult). Geeky, non-athletic Henry Lambert is sent to survival camp, which is bad enough before the trio of murderous thugs show up.

Pressure. What if your best friend was a killer...and he wanted you to be just like him? Bram Stoker Award nominee for Best Novel.

Dweller. The lifetime story of a boy and his monster. Bram Stoker Award nominee for Best Novel.

A Bad Day For Voodoo. A young adult horror/comedy about why sticking pins in a voodoo doll of your history teacher isn't always the best idea. Bram Stoker Award nominee for Best Young Adult Novel.

Dead Clown Barbecue. A collection of demented stories about severed noses, ventriloquist dummies, giant-sized vampires, sibling stabbings, and lots of other messed-up stuff.

Dead Clown Barbecue Expansion Pack. A few more stories for those who couldn't get enough.

Wolf Hunt. Two thugs for hire. One beautiful woman. And one vicious frickin' werewolf.

Wolf Hunt 2. New wolf. Same George and Lou.

The Sinister Mr. Corpse. The feel-good zombie novel of the year.

Benjamin's Parasite. A rather disgusting action/horror/comedy about why getting infected with a ghastly parasite is unpleasant.

Fangboy. A dark and demented fairy tale for adults.

Kutter. A serial killer finds a Boston terrier, and it might just make him into a better person.

Faint of Heart. To get her kidnapped husband back, Melody has to relive her husband's nightmarish weekend, step-by-step...and survive.

Mandibles. Giant killer ants wreaking havoc in the big city!

Stalking You Now. A twisty-turny thriller soon to be the feature film Mindy Has To Die.

Graverobbers Wanted (No Experience Necessary). First in the Andrew Mayhem series.

Single White Psychopath Seeks Same. Second in the Andrew Mayhem series.

Casket For Sale (Only Used Once). Third in the Andrew Mayhem series.

Lost Homicidal Maniac (Answers to "Shirley"). Fourth in the Andrew Mayhem series.

The Andrew Mayhem Collection. All four novels for one low price!

Suckers (with JA Konrath). Andrew Mayhem meets Harry McGlade. Which one will prove to be more incompetent?

Gleefully Macabre Tales. A collection of thirty-two demented tales. Bram Stoker Award nominee for Best Collection.

Elrod McBugle on the Loose. A comedy for kids (and adults who were warped as kids).

The Haunted Forest Tour (with Jim Moore). The greatest theme park attraction in the world! Take a completely safe ride through an actual haunted forest! Just hope that your tram doesn't break down, because this forest is PACKED with monsters...

Draculas (with JA Konrath, Blake Crouch, and F. Paul Wilson). An outbreak of feral vampires in a secluded hospital. This one isn't much like Twilight.

For information on all of these books, visit Jeff Strand's more-or-less official website at http://www.jeffstrand.com