Date: 2019-06-01 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror; Thriller; Adult; Crime
Description: SOME STAINS DON'T COME OUT... Raised in a household so filthy it was stomach-spilling, Vera involuntarily evolved into a neat freak. Upon discovering she and her disabled husband Daniel are expecting, she needs fast cash. Her obsession with cleanliness sprouts the concept that her skills can be put to use in a unique way. She takes a stab at the booming door-to-door vacuum sales business of 1988. All is going well until she arrives at the steps of a house that will change her forever. The steps of an evil that resurrects the ghastly memories she so desperately tried to wash away. Nothing will
Publisher: Maggot Press

The Slob

Aron Beauregard

Contents

Dedication

Quote

THE REMNANTS OF VIOLENCE

HOMEGROWN HORRORS

THE PERFECT STORM

ONE WEEK

THE SLOB

RED RUG

SEPARATION ANXIETY

SWALLOWED SERENITY

BETTER OFF DEAD

THE BARNYARD BLUES

THE COLLECTOR

YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT

THE CLEAN UP

SILVER FOX

PIZZA PARTY

ON A POSITIVE NOTE

About the Author

1ST EDITION BONUS ART

THE CLEAN UP CONTINUES…

Copyright © 2019 Aron Beauregard

All rights reserved.

Cover & Interior Art by Anton Rosovsky

Original Cover and Interior Artwork by Andriy Dankovych

Mix Tape Art by Katherine Burns

Cover Wrap Design by Don Noble

Edited by Laura Wilkinson

Printed in the USA

Maggot Press

Coventry, Rhode Island

WARNING:

This book contains scenes and subject matter that are disgusting and disturbing, easily offended people are not the intended audience.

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Dedication

For my family.

We are not “normal” but we are pretty entertaining.

“What if God was one of us, just a slob like one of us?”

- Joan Osbourne

THE REMNANTS OF VIOLENCE

As I laid on the red rug, I struggled to maintain my awareness. My most basic faculties were plummeting away from me at freefall speed. My brain was cloudy and shorting out like a fried circuit-breaker in a dingy basement. The knots swelling and rising all over my bludgeoned head and the gaping lacerations only expedited my descent. I was a misshapen heap; peaks of fleshy mountains with the drooping valleys occupied by a warm scarlet river of flowing plasma in between. My expression had become a metaphor for life. Its many ups and many downs entrenched in the patterns that had been savagely thrashed into my face. I felt just as utterly ruined inside as I did on the outside.

The nauseating flavors of my most personal parts had been extracted to dowse my palate. The intimate violation that he’d seen fit to drag me through was incomparable to anyone with any semblance of a soul; a tier of torment that the average mind is unable to comprehend until it experiences it.

He seemed like such a docile and harmless man, pathetic in many ways. Someone that you wouldn’t expect to be able to tie their own shoes. Someone who didn’t harbor the capacity to wash themselves properly. Yet, somehow, he was capable of such atrocity and unmatchable hatred.

In retrospect, all the signs were there. I just gave him (and the world) too much credit I suppose. I thought projecting my good intentions onto others would act as a safeguard. But benevolence, charm, and charity will be of little help once you fall into the clutches of a heartless heathen.

I had been in his godforsaken bedroom for far too long waiting for him to cook up his next assault. The worst part is knowing that he was coming back. He is always just mere seconds, minutes, or hours away from turning that grimy silver doorknob again. The mental anguish is almost as horrendous as the physical violence and defilement.

My desecrated body begged my brain, trying to convince it to agree. Posing the existential argument for death. My carnal form wished he had just finished it already while my heart ached thinking about Daniel. He’s all I have now. Well, I don’t even have him really, but I have the thought of him at least. Knowing that he needs me is my lone remaining comfort as I await the diseased mind of that fucking slob to plot the next manifestation of his diabolical values.

There are no bounds to his perversion, no moral to his blueprint, yet, somehow, I feel as if he’s still holding something back. Like there is some sort of sickening surprise that he’s kept veiled but still has in store for me. For us, I should say.

I looked back at the girl with the black garbage bag on her head. She was bound to the chair. I was too destroyed to attempt communication. She wasn’t moving or talking anyway. Had he done something to her while I was knocked silly, or had she passed out from the stress? Her still bleeding frame told a tale similar to mine. If we ever did get to talk, it seems we’d have a lot in common.

As I coughed up another mouthful of blood and gist, it splattered all over my forearm and hand. I looked up from my dripping extremity and toward the infinite piles of filth in the utterly hopeless bedroom.

The bedroom was a place that was supposed to be reserved for slumber, peace, and love. I felt like we couldn’t be farther from the most basic form of relaxation. The place of rest had been dampened with my blood and tears. It looked like the bedding of a serial killer or murder scene. It very well might be.

The scent of the violence was still in the hot stagnant air, blended with the overall stench of the rotting rubbish that filled not just the room but the entire property. It was a playground for the uninvited guests—the squirmy insects and hairy mice.

I could clearly hear the wild scampering scrapes from the army of wiry-legged pests that roamed the nightmarish hellhole with excitement. Their bulky overfed silhouettes raced around in the darkness beneath the bed. The house was a blacker degree of abyss than I could have imagined. He must have enjoyed them… were they his pets? I certainly was. I was the pet of a vicious psychopath and surrounded by the repellant reincarnations of my dirty past.

Suddenly, I felt even dizzier than before, like my surroundings were twisting around like a cinnamon swirl. I no longer had the strength to move or plan, it seemed I had entered an autopilot state. My life was being presented back to me.

Was I dying? Was this what people described as their life flashing before their eyes? There was no way to be sure, but somehow, I was back at the beginning again…

HOMEGROWN HORRORS

My preoccupation with cleanliness started as far back as I can recall. Some of the earliest snapshots of my existence consisted of me holding a rag with a pail of discolored water by my side. At first, I didn’t even realize that we were different, I don’t think anyone would until they had something to compare it to.

It took me socially interacting in kindergarten to receive that initial epiphany. I visited my best friend Caitlyn’s house for her birthday, and instantaneously, I could see a discrepancy so vast that it was damn near a crystalized black and white comparison.

There were places they could sit in their house, the couch wasn’t entirely overrun with newspapers, trash, and dated unopened mail. The walls were not filthy to the touch and there was not a slew of seemingly useless objects that just appeared to be collected for no specific purpose.

Piles of clothing that would never be worn didn’t comprise whole rooms in Caitlyn’s house. Every dish in their cabinet wasn’t soiled and heaped up around the sink or stacked in other random areas. There wasn’t mold manifesting in the corners of the walls and ceiling of the bathroom. It was easier to breathe and smelled like freshly folded laundry, not spoiled food.

Maybe the part I enjoyed most was that there was nothing else living inside the house aside from Caitlyn and her family. No dead or dying mice emitting shrill cries of agony, twitching in insensitive traps. No pellets of their feces sprinkled in their cereal and no sounds of them scratching about the walls to leave you restless at night. They drove our husky shepherd absolutely mad. Buddy was constantly barking and chasing after them.

We had even encountered a few rats in our time, so monstrous and vicious that traps weren’t enough to eliminate them. Whenever they surfaced, it would usually take my father hobbling around the house and beating them to death to resolve the issue. One time, he’d seen one walk right up to Buddy’s dry food dish and start eating out of it.

After clobbering a few, he finally got tired of it and decided to sniff out the source. He learned that they were coming up from a hole in a grimy unused toilet in the basement. He plugged it up eventually, which solved the rat problem, but there were still so many other creatures traveling throughout the property.

The mice and rats weren’t even what bothered me the most. What bothered me the most was reserved for an even creepier, stealthier type of appalling vermin—the cockroaches. A mouse wasn’t going to crawl into your ear or nose while you were sleeping. A rat wasn’t going to lay eggs in your bed that could hatch in your sleep, but those little bastards most certainly would.

A few weeks after Caitlin’s party, once I realized just how abnormal the conditions of my existence were, I found one inside my lunchbox. I pried the lid open after gym class one day, salivating at the thought of my bologna and mayonnaise, only to feel my drool dry up just as fast as it had dribbled out.

The roach was a fat, repulsive thing. It shuffled around fearfully once the light invaded the box and tucked itself underneath the plastic-lined soggy white bread. The gag-worthy bug was fully matured with thick auburn wings resting on its back. It terrified me when it suddenly flailed them and began to flutter about around my lunch noisily.

I killed it discreetly before it could alert the others. As squeamish as it made me, my reflex was to use my palm to mash it down into a juicy porridge. While the squirming prickly insect frightened me, the thought of everyone else knowing I’d introduced it into our classroom frightened me more.

I pretended to eat my lunch, but instead, I just sat there sipping somberly on my apple juice box and gazing into the roach’s guts and beige filling. I think that was probably the first time I can recall feeling shame. It was a pathetic belittling sensation that rocked back and forth inside me. It made me sick. So sick that it altered the very fabric of who I was. You can’t change what cloth you’ve been cut from but you can at least try to wash it.

After the roach incident, a fire flared up inside me. My way of life needed to change. At about five-years-old, I began to clean every inch of my room fanatically. Most kids at my age would have been concerned with going to a friend’s house, playing games with the other girls on the street, or maybe discussing their very first crushes. But not me, I was different. We were different.

The problem was, I didn’t want to be different and if I wanted a push to normalcy, it was going to have to come from within. I decided that there would be time for friends later. Plus, if the other kids understood the conditions my family and I lived in, they most likely wouldn’t be my friends for long anyhow.

I decided it was better to make my friends after the abnormalities in my home were remediated. My once frequent contact with Caitlyn diminished, and before long, we were more casual classroom acquaintances than the gossipy girls we had connected as initially. I was slowly putting up a wall, and I made sure it was cold and impenetrable. It wouldn’t drop down until things had changed… until I was ordinary.

Fortunately, I was a smart kid. That early foresight and intelligence helped me avoid the constant ridicule of my peers. That youthful wisdom came from a deep understanding of my surroundings and taking note of how others around me behaved. There were many children that were not as fortunate and couldn’t yet grasp how social settings and ruthless pecking orders functioned. If they found out that you smelled, or if you were dumber than everyone else, you were done for. Because right when they found out, the first thing they did was exploit it for their entertainment.

From that point of discovery moving forward, you were a walking punchline. I knew I needed to keep the irregularities that plagued my family close to the vest. If anything got out, I would be tortured and teased forever. Because of those sticky circumstances, for the better part of my childhood, I lived in continuous fear. No sleepovers or girls’ nights out, just the struggle to both conceal and change who I was.

It took me years to clean the house, no one else seemed to ever want to help no matter which way I sold it. Maybe it wasn’t that they didn’t want to help, more like they couldn’t. Everyone had their own specific problems that they were always faced with. There was a circle of sadness rotating within my family. It seemed like I was the only one unaffected and somehow motivated to change things. A house doesn’t just turn into hell overnight.

My father was still in the grips of the war, dealing with the nightmares when he slept that carried over to when he awoke. His leg had been blown off by a machine gun after just a few years of service. He wasn’t partial to prosthetics and couldn’t find much of a reason to leave the house anymore anyway. For the most part, he just sat on the couch and watched boxing or political speeches while he sipped his iced tea and sucked back no-filter Camels religiously.

My mother tended to him as best she could but the despair had leeched onto her as well. As I was growing up, she was always working full-time and also caring for me, my father, and my older sister, Lisa.

Looking back, I was probably still the least difficult of the group. I was a kid, sure, but I was quite mature for my age. I never generated too much worry or the darker variety that expelled itself elsewhere. My father was a handful to be there for, both physically and emotionally, so I tried to help Mom out with whatever I could. But Lisa was a much different story.

Mom’s grief was more the product of my father’s and Lisa’s spiraled together than her own. We did everything we could for Dad but it just seemed like he was set in the darkness. Maybe the war could account for that or maybe it was just shit genetics that wormed their way into both him and Lisa via our unfortunate lineage.

However, one glaring distinction was that my older sister’s situation was much more extreme than my father’s. Dad was always at a low boil, and Lisa was the bipolar opposite. She was scary to be around. We all feared for her safety but also for our own.

Lisa had a fascination with killing herself since she became a teenager, but only sometimes. It swung back and forth like the flip of a switch. Our age gap was a large one so most of my friends with a similar family structure looked up to their older siblings with a great sense of pride. It was like they were almost another parent to many of them. For myself, it was just another thing to hide, another dimension of myself to deny and pray never saw the light of day.

Over the course of a few years, I did a marvelous job of pulling the house out of its gloomy standard. My mother and father (to a less enthusiastic extent) were probably as upbeat as I’d seen them in ages. Chipping away at the rubbish suffocating the family had finally earned us a bit of breathing room.

I’d bagged and thrown out the clutter little by little, week by week, month by month. I wanted to donate the mounds of seldom used clothing but nothing really seemed salvageable. It was all chewed up and covered in mouse droppings and dead insects. It was hard for my mom to part with the items for some reason, but as I increased my persistence, she did a much better job of letting go.

Once the trash was tossed, there was finally some room to work. I was able to see areas of the walls that hadn’t seen daylight since before I was born. I washed each discolored wall in every room and also detailed all of the smudged and foggy windows. For the first time in years, the place was starting to shape up and it seemed like there might actually be changes afoot.

The mice and bugs were starting to reduce with the garbage having been eliminated. There was enough space around us now, so I was able to locate and target many of their nests. I placed generous baskets of poison pellets in close proximity and hoped they’d bring it back home and kill their families.

I had to be careful though and ensure that I wasn’t placing them in places where Buddy would be sniffing around. I swear that dog only seemed to enjoy eating things that he shouldn’t. We used to joke that his favorite food was plastic. I made sure to lock the doors where I’d set poison and keep him out of harm’s way.

The one thing I never could seem to get clean was the carpet. The damn thing was almost black in some areas. It had reached the stage where if you moved a piece of furniture, you could clearly see the outline of grime around where it had formerly resided. But cleansing the carpeting wasn’t a quick fix, you couldn’t just take a rag or mop to a carpet, believe me, I tried everything. It was 1969, that sort of cleaning had to be done professionally back then, which, of course, we didn’t have the money for. So, they just had to remain looking like filth magnets.

I finally finished cleaning up the many mountains of dishes, and even with everything else I was working on, I forced myself to consistently stay on top of the new ones being created. The less food we had hanging around, the better. I felt like this was a big reason why the mouse count had dropped and the plump, well-fed roaches weren’t as rampant.

I eventually learned the roaches required much more focus than just the cleaning. I ended up having to use the money I saved from my summer job at The Ice Cream Machine to buy a couple of dozen cans of Raid. The slogan is still “It kills bugs dead” and I was probably the most relieved person in the world when I confirmed that it wasn’t just a slogan. The stuff actually did the trick.

The house had come a long way, however, the people inside it hadn’t. Mentally, everything was almost identical to when I’d begun the purge. Actually, Lisa was much worse. Her always bizarre thoughts and behavior had taken an even darker twist once she discovered alcohol. She was now of legal age so there was nothing much that any of us could do except hope the monster stayed in its room.

One thing was certain at the time, the monster was showing up more consistently since Lisa had turned twenty-one. It was like our ears were hearing a constant pulse emitted by the house. When we heard her start slamming things around upstairs, we knew this would usually lead to an incident of some sort.

Most of the doors in the house no longer locked as they’d been broken down or punched through during her endless rages. If you just took a glance at her, you’d never believe how powerful she was or the terror she was capable of instilling. The concept of the doors not being operational in itself was adrenaline-inducing. Knowing that there was no real barrier between us and her fostered a mood of never-ending discomfort.

Whatever thoughts might be running through her mind in the evening could be put on full display at any moment. Most of the time, we were just tired. We still had the responsibility of performing our mundane daily tasks to stay afloat, but there was no break from the sinister nightly rituals we were constantly forced into. There was never a second to relax, never a moment when the question wasn’t there: what or who was going to get broken tonight?

Mom was always too afraid of what might happen if she called the police. Due to her bipolar disorder there was no way to be exactly sure how it would play out. Would Lisa be arrested and “come back and fucking kill us all” like she threatened on so many occasions, or would they be able to pacify the situation? Delay the grim reality just a little bit longer. The gamble was uncertain, so most evenings saw us walking on eggshells, praying that nothing we did would set her off.

We were just entering the 70s and mental health and its myriad of deficiencies were still mostly a mystery. The only other alternative in those days would have been to commit her, but Mom viewed that option as a death sentence. She knew the people in those places were treated inhumanely and without concern. They were treated like specimens, like some sort of low budget science project that would only serve as data to fatten their studies. No one ever came out of those places better. In fact, no one ever came out of those places at all…

Those were questions we had to ask ourselves every day. Stresses that we had to push through for what projected to be our whole lives, at least that is what we always assumed. There was a very realistic chance that she might take her own life too, we’d had a handful of close calls already.

She’d been clinically dead several times only to be revived and wake up with a perverse disappointment painted across her grimacing face. The undeniable appalling comprehension that death couldn’t be spellbound and contorted to appease her. There was no way to tame or beckon it with total accuracy, no, it was only the malicious shrouded skeleton that could beckon you. Mr. Bones wasn’t quite ready yet.

The brutalization of her body during the span of these attempts only served to make her quality of life uglier. It was a terribly dispiriting thing to watch unfold gradually but unfailingly over and over again, only to output the same traumatic results.

I can’t even remember how many nights I fell asleep with tears in my eyes and fear in my heart. Visions of her screaming at us in a drunken stupor, her throat hoarse and her eyes bloodshot and crazed polluted me. The threats felt more probable with each successive day of destruction.

The final incident was oddly the exact opposite of the outbursts at max volume and vulgarity displayed on the road that had led us there. Mom found Lisa one afternoon in August when she came home from work lying dead in her bedroom.

The last thing anyone would want is for their mother to see that. She’d broken down many times explaining to me just how backwards it was. “Children aren’t supposed to die before their parents. It’s not a natural cycle,” she’d cry to me. All I could think was that there wasn’t a tremendous amount that was “natural” about our family.

No one knows exactly where she got the gun. Lord knows my mother wouldn’t have allowed it in her house. She’d gone so far in her attempts to shield Lisa from harm that all of the sharp cutlery and piercing objects had been confined to the trunk of her car.

Not that anyone was really coming over for Thanksgiving anyway, but Mom and I had kidded privately about the thought of all the guests only having access to a butter knife. It would have made for some humorous, or at the very least, interesting dinner conversation had one been able to take place. But that was life, sometimes you had to laugh, otherwise, you’d only cry.

The funeral was a guilty one. We all knew that Lisa had never wanted to be on Earth. During her bipolar mood swings she often said that she never asked to be part of the world we were born into and, in turn, held hostage by. In a way, we understood that she was in a better place now. That she was never fit for the sort of lifestyle that most people enjoyed. But I could tell, even though it remained unspoken, there was still that bit of unending guilt gnawing inside all of us. Because we each knew deep down that we were a little bit glad she was dead.

We were downtrodden but also ashamed to admit the relief we felt that the burden was over. That the fear and abuse had finally evaporated. It took a horrific, scarring event to reach that point, but realistically, we all knew there was never going to be a cure. There could be no magic day that she would have woken up and suddenly everything would be alright.

We’d been holding out our hope for much too long. That fantasy concept had rotted away long ago, in turn, giving showcase to the grueling, unpleasant reality. The terror and dysfunction had become our way of life. Moving on from that was a bizarre process.

After the funeral, things were quiet in the house. So much so that the new silence felt deafening. I thought it would be easier given that I had been preparing myself for it since I was a child, but it wasn’t. It felt incredibly strange—the quiet, the freedom, the absence of terror and bodily harm. I had to do something to take my mind off of it, so I did pretty much the only thing I knew how to in our house. Clean.

My sister had left a vibrant mess all over the walls and floor of her room. What most people don’t know is that, when someone dies violently inside your house, the paramedics or the coroner only take the body. But until it happens, no one really understands that they don’t take the mess.

We just finished paying for her funeral—money we didn’t have to begin with—so there was no way we were going to be able to pay a professional to clean up the gory remnants. I wasn’t about to let my parents be the ones to clear their child’s brains and face off the wall. As much as I didn’t want to, I had to clean it.

When I entered the room, I wasn’t prepared for what I saw. Of course, I’d seen things like this in the movies, but in person, it was a whole different feeling. I felt queasy looking at the mashup of tissue strewn about; there was even still one of Lisa’s eyeballs surrounded by meaty slop and wedged inside the partially cracked heating vent.

I had a rather weird moment with myself, closing my own eyes and thanking my brain for keeping them in there all those years. After a few more deep breathing exercises, I paused and composed myself, summoning the willpower to push my way through.

I poured some of the potent liquid soap into a bucket of hot water and dipped the scruffy sponge inside. Once I was able to accumulate some suds and had gotten the mixture right, I wrung it out with both hands. My fingers were sweating profusely, trapped inside the yellow rubber gloves, as I began to wipe down the splattered walls.

It ended up being a fairly quick clean, which was surprising but far from easy. Scooping out the hunks of brain matter from the vent was wince-inducing. My fingers struggled to grip the battered fractions, further mushing them even as I restrained the application of pressure. Aside from that, the wall along the vent was manageable, save for dealing with the remainder of the eyeball. Once that was finished, I felt better. I was still crying but a moment of reprieve stirred inside me… until I looked down.

Those awful, godforsaken fucking rugs. I scrubbed them ferociously and wiped them repeatedly for hours and hours. Despite the elbow grease, there was so much of her blood and skull contents saturated inside the cheap flooring that there was no way I was going to be able to get it all out.

My effort was not completely ineffective, the rugs showed some signs of letting go of the stains but it was still obvious that something evil had transpired in the room. It seemed that aspect would be irreversible. Regardless of the less than perfect outcome, I’d done what I could. It wasn’t ideal but it was a massive upgrade from no action at all.

From that day forward, everywhere I lived was always shining and spotless. The nastiness that was my childhood was something I would always be trying to clean up. From the used dishes to the disorder and dirt, moving forward it all always had to be sterile and unmarked. If I started to see the filth then it brought back the memories. The horrors, violence, and despair that I tried so many times to wash away. It was like an endless juggling act, everything needed to be just right for me to remain one step ahead of my past.

THE PERFECT STORM

When the Bissell SC (self-contained) 1632 model was released, it changed everything as far as carpet maintenance was concerned. There was a newfound, revolutionary way to absolve your carpets and rugs of the disgusting murkiness that we’re all ashamed to admit somehow accumulates in every household. The experiences of my youth made my adult encounter with the machine more than life-changing. Little did I know at the time that it could potentially become the lynchpin of my demise.

Yes, the SC 1632 was a more than fabulous product. It was similar to the others that Bissell had released over the course of its remarkable history, which had begun back in 1876. For a company that had been doing business over the century mark, they still hadn’t let their foot off the gas. The SC 1632, more so than anything prior, solidified that notion. Mainly because it was their first deep cleaning device that wasn’t required to be tethered to a water source.

Now free of its proverbial dog leash, there was no need to feel restricted. You could leave any room sparkling effortlessly without the hassle of running an obnoxious length of water hose throughout your home, hence the “self-contained” moniker. The more I learned about it, the more excited I felt.

Certainly, when our porch was first occupied by a salesman dressed in a shabby black vest and a turquoise sports jacket, I had no intention of purchasing it. Not because I didn’t want to, of course, the reasons were of a more financial nature. However, contrary to the depth of our bank account, by the conclusion of the evening, all of the carpet throughout our recently purchased home would be spotless.

That outcome was relatively unlikely given the situation at hand. The sales pitch came from a hungover, disinterested man who failed to articulate any of the features or benefits of the superb product he represented. Basically, all he did was distract from them; jutting a disheveled greasy persona that made me itch. I felt like taking a bath just looking at the sad fellow. An Irish shower seemed like it would be the closest he’d be getting. The repellent aroma smacked of neglected hygiene and Old Spice unified with Evan Williams and Marlboros.

The man wasn’t the type you’d want in your home or around you in any way really, but I’ve always had trouble saying no to people. The homeless folks always seem to get a buck out of me. The people that just wanted to ask you a question at the department store, they always got their way.

Just like I felt empathy for them, I felt empathy for the salesman. It wasn’t hard to tell that he was a few sips away from his own vagrancy. So, of course, I played the role of the complete pushover when he requested that I allow him to perform a brief demonstration. I didn’t provide him a verbal ‘yes’ but I allowed him entry nonetheless.

He took a final deep drag of his cigarette before flicking it behind him carelessly. My husband, Daniel, wheeled himself into the living room having overheard some of our conversation. He probably wanted to have a look at the less than ordinary salesman who I permitted to enter our home. He was never one to hand out his trust, regardless of how innocuous the individual might appear.

His life experiences had left him a more reclusive and antisocial version of the prior ‘life of the party’ character I’d always heard about but never witnessed. It all started with God. Daniel had always trusted God, but after the war, all that changed.

Daniel’s paralysis could have been avoided at least twice by his count. Alternatively, his ability to walk was the unfortunate casualty of several very specific circumstances which came together to place him at Saigon’s Tan Son Nhat airport at 4:03 AM on April 30, 1975.

The history books will always show that, ultimately, we lost the war that day. With the North Vietnamese Army reaching the outskirts of Saigon, they’d already begun to evacuate Americans via helicopter or fixed-wing aircraft. Shortly after, the South Vietnamese president surrendered in what he described as an effort “to avoid bloodshed.”

They pointed to the fall of Saigon as the final brick to tumble, which would lead to a total collapse. The mass evacuations of over 1,000 Americans in addition to over 7,000 South Vietnamese refugees spanned just over 18 hours.

The last Americans to die in the war were two US Marines that were killed by a rocket attack that day. One detail that was mostly omitted, understandably so due to the deaths of his comrades, was that a portion of the fatal rocket shrapnel had spiraled into another nearby soldier’s spine. Daniel’s spine.

When the twisted metal burrowed into his back flesh and connected with bone, he dropped to the ground and lost all feeling in his legs immediately. Then after his own unconscious airlift, he awoke in a medical tent days later. Sadly, he would never regain the feeling from his waist down again.

As he laid silently, he isolated himself mentally and descended into what would be the deepest reflection period of his life. Simmering for weeks unending on the conditions that sparked the “perfect storm” as Daniel had often referred to it. The whirlwind of fate that had swept him up and spat him out seemed even more ludicrous considering all the idiosyncrasies.

Everything had finally started to slow down from breakneck military pace and he suddenly found himself with enough time to dissect the bigger picture. Once he did, he realized the horrible derailment of his life and future. His overflowing potential had been smothered, and the downward spiral could have been avoided on any number of occasions.

To start with, he’d been a part of the last draft class in ‘73, which was the final year America had chosen to implement a military conscription. He’d just made the age window; men born from January 1st, 1944 to December 31st, 1950 were eligible.

In his twenties at the time with his entire life ahead of him, regrettably, he just happened to have been born two days after Christmas. It wasn’t long until he got word that he’d be leaving his friends and family behind to go and kill for the government.

Daniel had never aspired to go to war. He was a mechanic like the rest of the men in his family and quite content with his routine. The news drove him into a rut, a stomach-churning tension left him without appetite or even the most remote feeling of purpose.

He’d heard the horror stories. The ones about people who had their loved ones delivered back in a black bag of pieces or maybe even worse. The ones who had come home so mentally fractured that returning in chunks might’ve been a better alternative. Neither path seemed particularly promising.

He could only have wished for the lethal alternative. Instead, he was significantly injured and one of the last people to leave Saigon on the final dreary day of the war. It was a cruel game of inches that had not leaned in his favor. It had left him stuck in a cycle of sadness, constantly crying himself into exhaustion.

I didn’t become privy and learn all of the details about my husband right away. It took time to build our slow-developing relationship. Any sort of relationship didn’t come naturally for him post-war, let alone one with a woman.

I was volunteering at an Alcoholics Anonymous group for wounded veterans when we had our initial encounter. Since my father had also served during the prime of his youth, his situation was similarly sour like Daniel’s after enlisting. Whether we like to admit it or not, girls always look for a little piece of their father in the men they seek. Something that can hopefully bring back the memories of youth and a feeling of comfort and protection.

My father was the reason that I had a soft spot in my heart for those who sacrificed so much for our country. Many of them would only come back broken and brimming with disturbing memories. At least my father’s plight during World War II wasn’t forced upon him. It was his choice to enlist, although he most definitely regretted volunteering.

He didn’t lose his full walking ability like Daniel, but what’s worse; missing a piece of yourself, or having an even larger piece still there but rendered completely useless? Phantom limbs always seemed like a creepy concept to me but the idea of having these useless masses attached to yourself bothered me even more.

I grew up understanding that they were different when they came back. Soldiers often needed the help of others. It was the least we could do after the nightmare they’d endured to protect us.

It was likely that remembering some of our family struggles during my adolescence drew me closer to Daniel. There was a certain culpability that I was never quite able to shake. Knowing that I’d never found a way to fix Dad or break him out of the funk that incased him with more layers than an onion left something inside me to be desired.

The failure made me feel like I still owed it, and if it couldn’t be to him, it would be to someone else. I needed to pay it forward before I could live it down. So, I joined the group, and that decision I always viewed as a fateful one. It was the one that triggered our paths to cross.

When he rolled in initially, his eyes were so cold and reluctant. His pitiful posture left them drooping in his chair, his face forever the stencil of misery. I was unable to gauge his temperament by tone since he didn’t speak, although I assumed he wanted to. I figured that he wouldn’t have joined the group in the first place if he didn’t.

Daniel was a very attractive man. For someone who looked so defeated, he sure kept himself well-groomed. His perfectly lined up beard was grown out a bit but still trimmed tidily. He had hair like Christian Slater that meshed with his sharp features to perfection.

It sounds cruel but, at the time, in my head, I referred to him as the handicapped heart-throb. Every time I saw his face, my chest fluttered. It took many awkward attempts before I was able to get him to engage me in any kind of casual conversation.

Breaking through his initial overall hesitancy was painful, like pulling teeth out of a pit bull. It was so agonizing that I needed to lean on an old tactic that had, at moments, worked to make my dad a little more cheerful during his downtimes.

I forced him to sit through my jokes, most of which were stupid and tasteless. But every once in a while, I could get him to crack a smile. I could see the corners of his mouth starting to curl and I knew I wasn’t too far off. If I could keep making him grin, it would only be a matter of time before he talked.

The wisecracks were usually ones I’d heard around the water cooler; the trashier the better. I knew he didn’t expect a sweet girl like myself who was there volunteering to say some of the things I did. But that was the plan, to catch him off guard with the crass line and spark some interest.

“How did Billy Squire die?” I’d asked him only to receive no answer or reaction. “Stroke! Stroke!” I yelled while clenching at my sternum and falling to my knees. I could see a little beam perking up around the edge of his mouth again; he was trying so desperately to suppress it. Just let go, I thought to myself. I knew I needed to hit him with another one fast while he was on the ropes. It felt like, after weeks of whiffing with my carefully orchestrated tactics, the nut was finally about to crack.

“What did the cannibal do after he dumped his girlfriend?” I asked, still garnering zero response. “He wiped his ass,” I said in a very calculated manner.

After the cannibal joke, he lost it. He laughed so hard that the others in the room took notice. The guy who never said a damn thing was on the verge of tears. Not the salty and debilitating tears that they were all so accustomed to, but tears of happiness. Tears of joy. Tears that he hadn’t felt since before he was blown up. It was a great feeling for him and I think he quickly realized just how good I could make him feel.

From there, our relationship only further blossomed with no foreseeable off-season. We saw the moments normally reserved for cheesy romantic comedies insert themselves into our lives on a recurring basis.

The selfless adoration and emotion that had been so absent in Daniel’s life, and also mine to some extent, was now overstocked. The laugh out loud moment was the major turning point. It was in that blissful instant that he’d completely fallen for me. It was the day that I felt like I finally became whole.

I’ll never understand why he stayed silent for so long. He was such a thoughtful, funny guy. Sure, initially, I was drawn to him by his appearance and maybe in part out of pity and the way it tied into my own complexes, but all of that seemed to become less and less relevant when I got to know him.

He was always surprising me. Firstly, for someone that was supposed to be disabled and dependent, he definitely wasn’t. At times, I felt like he was taking care of me more so than I was taking care of him.

Somehow, he’d find a way to complete most, if not all, the chores around the house while I was gone. He liked leaving notes inside my lunch bag with the kind of crude jokes or silly drawings that had initially sparked our interest in each other.

He arranged romantic dinners for us multiple times every week where he’d make intricate dishes from scratch. Not only was the food delicious but the presentation bordered on being a work of art. I don’t think he ever really knew how to cook; I think he taught himself to in an effort to spoil me. It was nice returning home from a day’s work and knowing that a flavorful meal was going to be sitting on the table that was so well-timed, it was still warm when I walked in.

Maybe the most significant aspect of our romance was that I was able to confide in him. He knew all about my quirks; I trusted him with the dark secrets of my youth. Outside of the three immediate members of my family, no one knew the full details of what transpired. I had been busy trying to project someone else to society. He knew about the scar-tissue my past had placed upon me which, over time, had developed my obsessive cleaning compulsion. When Daniel opened up to me about the murky things in his head, it allowed me to make myself more vulnerable.

He was sympathetic to my condition, so much so that many of his own days were spent on housework or devising new methods that would allow someone with his set of limitations to wipe, scrub, and clean any area of our home.

I had been working in a hotel as a maid for years. My gravitation toward hospitality was most likely a product of the monsters of my adolescence. I still couldn’t avoid them completely. They’d aligned me into a specific profession where I remained constantly struggling to maintain my surroundings. I performed in a borderline manic manner; like some possessed person flying through each room, feeling like stained pieces of the past might come back to life if I didn’t finish quickly enough. I was just grateful that I could do my job in isolation without anyone seeing my strangeness with their own eyes.

He hated to know that I was working all day and then had to come home and do the same. That’s why he spent so much time on the house. I loved how he made things incredibly easy for me, especially the most difficult things.

Before long, I began to feel like I couldn’t live without him. Daniel had alleviated so many stresses that previously haunted me. I was sure that he would be the focal point of my life forever and I would do anything to protect that.

It didn’t take long for us to marry. I remember exactly when he popped the question to me. I was sitting on the couch watching Unsolved Mysteries. As they discussed the case of a man who claimed he saw heaven for a few moments before being revived, I heard Daniel wheel himself into the parlor.

At first, I thought he’d fallen out of his wheelchair and rushed over to help him but he told me to sit back down. He started to use the couch to prop himself back up again with one of his hands before I could get to him. Then he began fishing through his jacket with his free hand. When he looked up at me, his cheeks were blushing and there was a look in his eyes like everything was on the line.

I couldn’t have been more ecstatic. Of course, I screamed yes and again reiterated just how much I loved him and how lucky I felt. The man on the television was describing heaven, but I knew he was wrong. I was looking at heaven, and it was in my Daniel’s eyes.

The purchase of our house would come shortly after our modest wedding. Only a few friends and family members had been invited to our humble but perfect ceremony.

We got married in that autumn of ‘88 with vivacious tree colors surrounding the gazebo. On that flawlessly crisp day, I stood beside the handsome love of my life. There were plenty of things I would have liked to change about my life but none of it concerned my wedding or who I was getting married to.

We weren’t rich. We wouldn’t be eating caviar at the conclusion but that wasn’t really our style anyway. We never valued our quality-of-life based on what was around us, only who was around us. And as long as we had each other, that would be more valuable than the big screen TV or VHS player.

Daniel’s disability paired with my part-time job at Hilton Hotels allowed us to live comfortably while granting more time to spend together than most couples were afforded. After I crunched the numbers, we figured that buying a nice little house in the suburbs wasn’t too far-fetched. We both wanted to start a family soon, with me having just turned thirty-four and Daniel being thirty-nine, it felt like ideal timing.

We ended up settling on a decent-sized one family. We were in love with this stunning Cape Cod-style house but I pushed for a ranch. I didn’t want Daniel to have to deal with or think about stairs. He had enough challenges in his day to day. I loved the place but not more than I loved Daniel or seeing him happy.

It had a couple of spare rooms so we wouldn’t be cramped and, more importantly, our child would have a place to grow comfortably. We aimed to spoil the baby with all the perks that were absent in our own childhoods. The place already felt warm and wholesome before we even put our own personal touches on it.

Although Daniel couldn’t feel it or enjoy the sex, he was still able to get hard and, more importantly (as far as any future children were concerned), still able to cum. I remember the night we conceived quite vividly.

We’d just returned from perusing the endless aisles of videotapes at Blockbuster and the choice ended up being an easy one for us. We’d probably seen the preview for Fatal Attraction a thousand times, but for whatever strange reason, we always ended up renting something else. It had been out for a few years already and it was finally time to come home with it.

The movie was incredibly hot due to the handful of gratuitous, well-acted sex scenes sprinkled throughout. There were so many that we couldn’t help but be hypnotized by our own lust for each other. In turn, we ended up missing all the parts of the film that everyone was still talking about. We still had no idea what relevance the bunny had…

I started by blowing him while he was sitting in his wheelchair. After ten minutes or so of that, we moved onto the couch and, just as Glenn Close appeared to be climaxing on the television, I could feel him shooting off inside me while I rode him. That would be the first of a trio of erotic sessions that evening. We had never fucked so many times in a single night.

The realization that we were going to need more financially to raise our baby the way we saw fit to was something that we understood well before we decided to try and get pregnant. It was a topic that we’d gone back and forth on many times before. Not that we were arguing but we each had separate views on how to generate the revenue.

Daniel’s most cherished possession was a ‘68 Plymouth Road Runner that his father had given him shortly before he passed away. It was a striking muscle car with a sexy electric blue paint job. The sort of thing that turned heads as you drove down the street for more than just the rumble it produced.

The car was one of the reasons a house with a garage was a must for us when we were property shopping. We got lucky enough to score one with a state-of-the-art numeric keypad, which at the time, was about the best you could ask for. Tapping in a quick code was so much more convenient than a garage you needed to unlock by key.

In spite of the fact that Daniel could never drive the car again, it was still something he cherished. In fact, his best memories in the car were never of driving it, they were of being a passenger, which was something he could still be.

He loved that car and it had nothing to do with how it looked, drove, or any attention it got on the road. Just being able to sit in it brought back an intimate rush of emotions that flooded him with a soothing nostalgia. It transported him back to a time when life was a lot simpler for him. When he could still walk but didn’t have to. When the only thing that mattered was heading to the drive-in with his pop or cruising around the parks and beaches nearby.

He didn’t ask (probably because he knew what the answer would be) if I was on board with him selling the car, he simply told me he would. He didn’t seem sad about it, instead, it was more like it was a necessity. He knew that it would be like an investment that went toward everything he’d been fortunate enough to build with me thus far.

The only problem was that there was no way in hell I was letting him sell that car. As much as he acted like it wasn’t a big deal, and maybe it wasn’t at the time, but I knew at some point, he would look into the mirror and be filled with deep regret. Furthermore, if he didn’t, I would and I didn’t want that type of guilt lurking around in the background.

There was a different solution for the financial issue. One I would be implementing soon that would avoid having to grind Daniel’s heart and soul into a mushy pulp. Instead of selling the car, I would be asking to be brought on full-time at the Hilton.

My manager loved me and undoubtedly would jump at the chance to keep me around any longer than I already was. Because of my bizarre background, my pace and detail far outweighed what any of the other girls brought to the table. My demons fueled the breakneck speed and quality of my performance. I could pick up a decent amount of extra cash by working the additional hours up until the birth of our child. The plan was seamless, we didn’t suffer any emotional hit and we would still get to give our child everything it needed and much more.

That became the plan, mostly because I wasn’t budging. I was going full-time no matter how much he pleaded otherwise. I was so adamant about making the sacrifice that he had no choice but to accept it, although he did so half-heartedly.

Everything was all about to fall into place… until that ratty salesman showed up on our doorstep. At that moment, I had no choice but to be blind to it, no one knows how the seemingly minor choices they make will come to affect them.

Sometimes it’s not even the choices themselves but immovable circumstances, like in Daniel’s case. He couldn’t choose when he was born, but starting on his birthday, he’d seen the perfect storm pushing him toward tragedy.

The salesman smirked and tipped his hat toward Daniel who sat sternly with an aggravated aura about him. The disorganized man dragged the Bissell into our living room, and just like that, my own set of unforeseeable circumstances had just been set in motion too. The old rugs stapled to the floors of our recently acquired home would be the first step in my very own perfect storm.

ONE WEEK

The sloppy salesman evaluated our home before selecting a small area behind a chair in the corner of the parlor to perform his demonstration. He claimed that, in the event I didn’t want to make the purchase, it wouldn’t be too obvious that only one tiny strip of carpet was sanitary.

It seemed logical; a corner was also one of the less frequently touched places within any home. An area that could surely accumulate heavy build-up without attracting significant attention. This would be a true test of the merchandise.

He pulled the machine over the carpet and it coasted smoothly, the wheelbase certainly was high-quality. Most vacuums demanded a harder tug to get across a carpeted surface, either because they were heavier or because they were constructed cheaper.

I was about to ask him if he wanted to hook up the tether first before I caught myself, remembering that the hose-free feature that he’d mentioned to me was one of the most attractive selling points of the product. It was especially relevant in a long ranch like the house we picked. All of the sinks were on the left side of the house, so cleaning the rugs on the right side really could be a nuisance.

The more I thought about it, I was selling this damn thing to myself. This was uncommon for me as a more calculated and frugal person by nature, but then again, was it my history resurfacing causing a bias? My deep desire for pristine living conditions? The thought of finally getting every centimeter of rug clean, in turn, keeping me sane?

A glimmer of violent imagery forced its way into the back of my head: Lisa’s brains. Then came the blood and gore, her dislodged eyeball and the substantial cups of her inner slop that had submerged itself deep into our rug. I pictured the gore mutating and growing hooks at the ends and driving these alien crimson hangers into the base of the coarse fibers. The mess that I’d left behind was still so fresh…

It was very possible that I wasn’t quite right but maybe this device was more like medication than sanitation. Half of me was trying to convince myself I didn’t need it, the other half whispered that it would protect me. It would help me avoid the filth from my teens creeping up again.

As I looked at the dirty carpet near the heating vent, I saw Lisa’s brains and blood flash yet again. I shuddered and shook my head which helped push the gruesome recreation out of my mind. There was a certain kind of Jekyll and Hyde struggle that seemed to be jerking me back and forth. It was inescapable.

In my head, I tried to be more objective about the vacuum. Just wait and see what it does. The convenience of the product is irrelevant if it works like shit, I thought.

He plugged the machine in and fired it up. Within a matter of seconds, the hot steaming water bubbled through the wide tip attachment. As the stinky salesman pulled it down the rug, I watched layers of dirt and grime that I didn’t even know existed suck up through the clear plastic. The results left behind a lone white streak that was now surrounded by the previously camouflaged nastiness. The darkness around it served as a highlight to just how amazing the device truly was.

He wanted to show me how to unload the vac next, but I didn’t need to see or hear anything else. I purchased the vacuum outright in cash, which left Daniel sitting with a perplexed expression across his face.

Before the salesman left, I asked for something that was critical to the idea that had popped into my head during his demonstration—his card. He obliged me but promptly reminded me of the generous warranty Bissell bestowed on all of their products. I assured him that I wouldn’t be calling him if something broke.

The first thing Daniel asked me when he left was how exactly I thought we could afford to pay for a luxury item like the one I’d just purchased. He didn’t know it at the time, but while the vacuum was something that fed into my cleaning obsession, the real reason I’d bought the product was far more than just my own feeling of security.

I explained to him that a quality vacuum of this nature ultimately sold itself. It was nothing that the foul product peddler did or said to me outside of his demonstration that helped me in making a decision.

“Why haven’t we seen any female salespersons? A cleaning product from one woman to another seems like a logical sell. What would a man know about cleaning anyway?” I asked him, feeling out if he was understanding the concept.

“Probably because it’s dangerous, you know, just walking into strange houses. Wait a second… what are you saying? You think you can sell these?” Daniel asked me with a hint of concern swelling in his voice.

“They sell themselves, but if someone was a little skeptical, I know I could. You saw it too, this thing is phenomenal. No one knows more about cleaning than me, Daniel, and this is by far the best cleaning device I’ve ever seen. This could be a gold mine for us! If a schlub like that can walk in here and, in about five minutes, walk away with a hundred bucks, can you imagine what someone like me could do?” I explained to him as reassuringly as possible.

“You’re pregnant, Vera. You can’t go door-to-door while you’re pregnant. You know I love you with everything but I’m sorry, this idea, it just… it just sounds crazy to me. Plus, you’ll only be getting bigger as time goes on, you should just try and stay comfortable and forget about the money. We can find a way to manage, we always do.”

I looked at him with a deflated look leaking out of me. I could see he really hated the idea but it excited me so much. I needed him to just give me a chance to prove that it could help us and that it wasn’t as dangerous as he thought.

“Just give me one chance, Daniel. I never said it had to be permanent but I think it’s a good enough idea that we’ve gotta at least explore it.”

“If you keep talking like this... I’m... I’m just going to sell the damn car.”

“No. No, you’re not. I can do this, Daniel, I know I can. Just let me try it for a week. One week. I’m still in the first trimester right now. I can call these people and just see what it’s like. I could be completely wrong, and if I am, then it will be over immediately. But I at least expect you to support me and give me a chance to find out. Can’t you just compromise with me on this, please?”

It was always hard for him to say no to me. We both probably got along so well since we were just a pair of softies. He nodded his head giving me the okay before repeating the agreement, “One week.”

I looked down at the card with a fresh eager eye. Doorway Sales was the name of the company represented on the front. I called the next morning and talked to an annoyed, unintelligent sounding man who spoke rather frankly.

“Lady, you know, they call ‘em salesmen for a reason, right?” he said, putting a hard accent on the men part.

“Are you saying you won’t hire me because I’m a woman?” I asked him.

“No, it’s just, in this business, you’re going into people’s houses a lot. I mean, are you sure you’re comfortable with that? A broad like you coul—”

“I know what the job entails and I’m telling you I want in. If you don’t give me a fair shake then I just might have to let other people know what kind of sexist practices go on at Doorway Sales,” I said to him firmly.

“Whoa, geez, lady, relax. Don’t get your panties in a bunch. You got a car?”

“Yup.”

“Alright, be here tomorrow then!” he barked, slamming down the receiver like he’d just lost a battle.

It felt like things were about to start getting interesting and they only got better when I learned how much I could potentially make. The incentive system was remarkable for door-to-door sales, something that took me by surprise.

It was $20 per unit sold with an additional $20 bonus if I sold three or more each day. If I was any good at it, I could be making a lot more than I would by going full-time at the Hilton and in a much shorter timeframe.

Daniel gave me a concealable canister of pepper spray before I left on the first day. It was easy to tell where his head was at, still thinking the worst was descending upon us. It was sweet of him though. I knew he only cared for me and wanted to be sure I made it home safe. I kissed him on the lips and promised him I’d be careful. I wouldn’t go inside a house if it didn’t feel right and I’d keep the pepper spray handy at all times no matter what.

The first day couldn’t have gone better. It wasn’t long before I noticed that the majority of the women I spoke with related to and respected my humility. I also felt I had an edge against my male counterparts in the aspect that, if a woman was home alone, they would surely be more comfortable with another female entering their house as opposed to a strange man like the one who had appeared on my doorstep. And of course, as I suspected, they loved the product. My analysis had proven correct; the Bissell sold itself.

I approached seven houses fronted by women that day. Three of them had taken my card and the other four made in-cash purchases on the spot. Another house I visited had both a husband and a wife who happened to be home. It felt even more natural to sell to them.

I articulated the features, comparing my own house to theirs, which was also a ranch. This allowed me to key in on the hose-free benefit, which suited the buyer without a hint of embellishment. The couple happily became my fifth sale of the day and I hadn’t even had lunch yet. The getting was good, far better than I could have even imagined.

I only visited three other houses that day. One being another couple who seemed to be pretty high on the product but decided they wanted to think about it, and the other two were men. They were even easier to accommodate. Unsurprisingly, most of them were overly flirtatious with their wives away or being single and ready to mingle. A little sweet talk and a bat of the eyelashes and, suddenly, the Bissell was the ideal gift for their wife, girlfriend, sister, or mother.

By the day’s end, I returned to Daniel safe and sound, and, to his delight, much earlier than expected. I was all in one piece but a hell of a lot richer as evidenced by the fistful of Jacksons that I was clenching. I approached him cheerfully, ready to spread the good word and lucrative karma.

“I think I might’ve solved our problem,” I stated, looking at Daniel.

He didn’t seem especially happy still since I’d been gone for what would usually be my day off. He was probably sore that he was losing the time we normally spent with each other. Despite his overall disapproval, I knew he understood that what I’d fallen into was going to help our future.

I was able to convince him quite effortlessly that I was going to keep selling past the initial one-week agreement. The money was just too good to turn down and, for the first time, I think while he wished I didn’t have to continue selling, he understood that I should. I’d found a niche previously unbeknownst to me that I could exploit for a small window to help us eek our way just a tad further ahead.

I began mapping out the many neighborhoods around us and charting houses that I’d sold to in addition to ones who didn’t buy. Eventually, I could also keep a tally of the houses I’d been to that had sold or changed ownership. I might be able to revisit some of the same properties again with new clients inside. That was down the road, but maybe if sales remained consistent, I could resume my routes after I gave birth.

The weeks continued to fly by and the money continued to roll in. Once I was a few weeks into the second trimester, Daniel really started to petition for me to retire, at the very least until the baby was born.

“I can see that your feet are swollen, honey, I know you can’t be comfortable out there. I don’t want you walking around in pain all day. The money is nice but you’ve already made so much extra, don’t you think it’s time you take a break so we can count the earnings?” he pleaded with me.

I wasn’t ready to stop yet, there was too much cash up for grabs. I felt greedy but, at the same time, I knew I wasn’t. I was just supplying people with high-end customer service and useful products that made their lives much more convenient. All of that effort was going into brightening the future for our baby.

I expounded further for him, “This gravy train we are on is almost too good to be true, surely it won’t be around forever, right? We need to capitalize on this while we can. This is our opportunity and we have to grab it by the horns. It’s easy money, too easy to give up on yet.”

Ultimately, we ended up compromising. We came to the exact same conclusion we had initially: one week.

I would have one more week to make as many sales as I possibly could. I’d sell a few hours after my shift and then on the days I was off, and after that, it was all over. One more week to cash in on this fluky jackpot I’d hit. Once the week expired, it was time for me to focus solely on being a mother and the best wife I could be. We made a deal and he even made me shake his hand, apparently unconvinced that he could tear me away from my newest infatuation.

After we settled on the plan, everything went just as we had agreed. I was on the verge of capping off another exceedingly lucrative week of work but still set to retire, for the immediate future anyway. Before I knew it, Friday afternoon was upon me. I’d just finished selling two vacuums in an area that was a bit further away from where we lived. I was running out of houses. If I could just sell one more, I’d be eligible for the bonus. One more sale, forty more dollars. What a way to finish.

The pickings had become a bit slimmer, at least as far as what was considered a reasonable drive for me. The last two days, I’d found myself in more rural areas and further out from the burbs. I was okay with that though, it seemed like if I could step into a house out there, I could close a sale.

The folks in isolation were typically the friendly type and probably weren’t accustomed to sweet ladies like myself popping in at random times. I wasn’t blessed with a perfect childhood but at least I was blessed with good genetics. A pretty face like mine can go a long way in a business where everyone meets in person.

I had about two hours left before I would be set to head home and concentrate on my maternity. There was a road to my left I hadn’t been down yet. Through the bushy overgrown vegetation that seemed more prominent the further I looked down, I could see a street sign. It was too faded to make out the name, although the dead-end sign beside it was clear as day.

Those old country roads went quick. Many of them didn’t have more than a handful of houses on them. Two hours should’ve been more than enough time for me to at least put a good dent in it, if not get through the whole strip.

At the time, I figured that if it was longer than I expected, I could just mark it down on the map and come back at a later time. What I eventually would come to realize is that coming back wasn’t what I needed to worry about, it was coming out.

THE SLOB

As I traveled down the road for the first few minutes, I didn’t notice a single house. Sure, it was rural out there, but after five minutes, you’d expect to see something. The concrete turned to dirt and the trek got a bit more rigid. The bouncing suspension in my Chevy Spectrum was on the fritz; it was far from an all-terrain vehicle. I slowed my speed, starting to wonder if this drive was even going to be worth it. As I began looking for somewhere to turn around, I noticed a chipped russet roof further off in the distance.

“Finally,” I said aloud in the car to myself. I was really in the sticks now; the house was encompassed by a mixture of oaks and pines. The land surrounding me had become raw and unmaintained—the ruggedness of a road less traveled. The trees were not in their infancy by any means and towered over the front of the property, isolating it from any hope of outside contact.

Pulling into the driveway almost felt like it did when you arrived at a park campsite. After finally making it to the end, I noticed a big red pickup truck parked out in front of the house. I could also hear some pheasants clucking frantically in the barn to the right of the property, this was clearly country living.

The house itself was monstrous, the wood siding looked beat to hell and the shades that hung in the windows were yellowed from ages of sun-blocking. One of the odd features of the house was the barred windows, this was more of a style that you’d notice in the inner-city, not out in the boonies. So far, during my relatively brief travels, I’d yet to see it in that setting. Some people can be overly precautious, I rationalized.

One thing seemed certain, a massive house like the one I was faced with was a real pain in the ass to keep clean. The place had a lot of potential to be an easy sell. I’d come so far out of my way at this point, I was going to be pretty pissed if I couldn’t get a bite out of the interaction. I was hungry to finish my last run with a big payday and this next sale would be worth double. It was time to wrap things up on a high note.

I pulled the Bissell up to the front door beside me, envisioning the sale before I even pitched it. When I pressed the front button, it buzzed, sounding more like a telephone from the 60s than a doorbell. I could see one of the blinds behind the set of four windows in the half-hexagon design getting pulled sideways.

It was hard to see who was looking out due to the glare but it was good to know they were home. I could hear someone closing in on the door, and once they got near, a short series of unlocking noises.

I pulled the screen door toward me ready to meet the owner face to face and sell them the dream. As the flaking black door came ajar, the sunlight crept into the darker background. It was hard to make out initially but as it continued to further extend, the owner’s presence became more apparent.

The smell made its way out well before the owner; a pungent odor a million times worse than the disheveled salesman. As repulsive as it was to me, in the cleaning business, that was the smell of success. The smell of double-payout.

My sense of smell had evolved into something unique. It wasn’t the run of the mill, straightforward type that the majority of people took for granted without thanks. I’d had an unfortunate accident when I was younger that changed me and how I picked up on scents.

I wasn’t sure if I was able to still smell everything (although I liked to believe I could) but to what degree, and the potency seemed to be the major variance. Usually, I could at least pick up on most fragrances in the air, but on more than one occasion, people have pointed out odors that I’d been oblivious to. So, when a house’s aroma was too funky for me, I knew the situation must have been dire. But that just threw up more dollar signs and raised an extra calculated awareness within me. It let me know that the client, no matter how repugnant, had a high probability of being profitable.

The first thing I saw was his teeth. They reminded me of a bumblebee because they were mostly yellow and black. They were caked with plaque that looked like something you’d scrape off the bottom of an aquarium. There was also a buildup, possibly of food in the corners of his mouth. The leftovers were both crusty and wet in some areas. His gray jogging pants looked as if they were the only pair he’d ever put on. They were worn-out at the knees and frayed in other random areas.

The girth of his gut stretched the limits of his elastic waistband. It didn’t just hang over it, the ball of fat was so large that it had grown in both directions, taking both the over and under like a bet that didn’t make sense.

Not that I believed that the bizarre man was having sex, but if he was, it would be a serious challenge to find his manhood. It would be an equally serious challenge to clean himself in the shower… again, not that he appeared to be targeting that…

One of his shoelaces was untied and the other was missing completely. He was like a child that had tried dressing himself for the first time without Mommy. The boots he wore certainly had some miles on them. The steel-toe tip of his left boot was partially exposed while the other was missing completely. This left his foot open to the public. By the looks of it, his sickening stilt could use some fresh air but this would be at humanity’s expense.

His big toe was missing the nail like it’d been savagely ripped off. The skin had regrown over the torn area and still looked fresh with wrinkles and a rawness that was painful to look at. After examining the two toes beside it, the nail’s absence might’ve been for the best.

There was a marbled combination of beige and purple that he exhibited running through the base underneath the remaining cracked toenails. All of these areas were surrounded by a thick lip of dead skin. This wasn’t your typical case of athlete’s foot—this man was sure as hell no athlete. The man displayed a special level of bodily negligence that didn’t stop there.

The “white” undershirt he was wearing had lost any resemblance to the initial product it had been on the shelf. The discoloration was bleeding out from his skin; grime layered upon grime. His permanent armpit stains had stretched so far out that it felt like there was a possibility that they might get to meet someday. Curls of hair and flakes of dried skin overgrew out of his pits and sternum.

The man’s face was by far the most stomach-rumbling aspect of his presence. The dirt matted on his skin could be seen visibly clogging his pores, and an oil forest of irritation marched around his pancake cheeks. Many of the whiteheads and blackheads had hairs emerging out from them. Other parts of his face appeared as if he’d been clawing at them like a dog. They were scabby and leaking a mishmash of clear and red fluid while mostly absent of stubble.

He looked relatively young, but his many rows of crinkles were created from the massive amounts of lard insulating his surface. The blubber was distributed unevenly, so some areas mushroomed out more than others. His nose protruded outward, each nostril ejecting two crusted sprouting lengths of hair and a large bone at the halfway point, which almost curved a bit like a triangle.

His hair truly resembled a mop, stretching down behind his head to the back of his kneecaps. People seem to use that description often but I’d never met someone who it applied to more. Large clumps of his follicles found themselves clinging together by a self-generated hair gel that used his own ingredients as a secret formula. A mixture of grease, oil, and dried skin amongst other indescribable fluids that I could only speculate had joined together to birth the gross but effective adhesive.

I’d never seen hair that long on a man before, not to mention most larger guys I knew seemed to keep it cut shorter than the curious styling he’d chosen. Actually, it didn’t seem to be so much a choice as it was the avoidance of one. After taking in most of his appearance, I returned to where every good salesperson should be looking when they make their pitch; the eyes. Still, I couldn’t quite focus yet…

His unibrow connected above a pair of glassy, crooked pupils. He was so cockeyed that it was difficult to tell if he could see me. The left eye was pulled in the opposite direction and it seemed like his nose bone might be blocking its line of vision to some extent. The right one was completely kicked out and simmering in a warm white deadness like it was comprised of curdled milk. It was sickening to have to stare at. The guy was a total fucking slob.

Initially, I was apprehensive when looking around the house. It reminded me very much of my own house growing up, a flood of vile snapshots lacquered my mind. I forced them out, instead, thinking about Daniel and the baby. I left all of that behind me, we’d begun living a different way that was separated from those trying early years. If I wanted to keep that up, I was going to have to deal with situations like this. Nasty people living in nasty places were the ones who needed my help.

Sure, just stepping foot into the place skeeved me out and so did the disgusting man, but he seemed harmless. He was just nauseating more than anything. The Slob didn’t strike me as much of a talker, so I decided to cut right to the chase. This guy obviously doesn’t care too much about cleaning but if I could just show him how it works, how easy it is, I’d have a chance to close the deal. I decided to skip all the minor chit-chat and go for the kill instead.

“Hello, sir, my name is Mrs. Vera Harlow, and I’m a representative for Doorway Sales Group. We’re running a promotion right now where we can offer you a complimentary demonstration of this Bissell self-contained 1632 model. This is the first of its kind, made specifically to cater to the consumer. No tether hose required, no hassle on your part. Believe me, because I believe in my products. I would not be representing this one otherwise. I sure would love to give you a short demonstration and make you a believer too. May I ask you, is there a rug or carpet in the house that has some build-up? I mean it, the dirtiest carpet in the house, bring it on. If you give me just a moment of your time, I can show you something that will make your life ten times easier. Would that be possible, mister?”

I said mister in a manner where I was waiting for him to respond and tell me his name. He didn’t. Instead, he just nodded his head slightly and gave a big cheesy smile like fate was on his side. He stepped aside, allowing me to enter and lift the Bissell into the house.

I walked a few paces inside and turned back toward him. He shut the door and began to lock it. Strangely, all the locks inside the door were key-operated. No wonder why it took him so long to open it up, I thought. It struck me as odd since I had never seen keyhole locks on the inside of the front door before.

At the time, I understood I was confined but I still wasn’t uncomfortable. The more I thought about it, I actually started to feel terrible about the way I’d been referring to him internally. Calling him disgusting and a slob was inappropriate. What if it’s out of his control?

Something about him struck me as gentle and kind, I pitied him more than anything. Like the homeless people I gave plates out to on Thanksgiving or the sad salesman whose life was clearly in shambles. These were people that needed the help because they surely couldn’t help themselves.

It began to dawn on me that he might be a little slow. I had a mentally challenged cousin, Benji, and knew many basic things could quickly morph into exceedingly problematic tasks for him. He was fortunate to have my Aunt Hilda there for support. Maybe this man wasn’t so fortunate.

His hygiene issues could have been avoided depending on who was there for him. He seemed a little older, maybe his folks had passed on or were not getting around as easily anymore. I always wished that more people would be willing to help and get involved with the mentally challenged, but usually, the people I encountered were more likely to poke fun and mock them before they offered a hand.

He continued without speaking, ascending the stairs while I trailed behind him. The rug that covered the steps was filthy enough to warrant a demonstration. I considered stopping and just asking to do that one, but I did challenge him to bring me to the dirtiest carpet in the house…

The old wooden boards creaked with each touch as our feet kicked up dust that was highly visible even without a strong light source. When we reached the top, we rounded the railing down the hallway which held a lone door toward the end.

I figured it would have probably been his bedroom. Shaggy carpets were pretty popular at the moment and if that was what he had, there was no telling how black the water in the vacuum might turn. The back of his legs continued to jump in and out of the curtain of hair behind him. I noticed a bald spot starting to show through the top of his skull. His long hair might be headed out of style in the near future. It might’ve been for the best with a mane that ridiculous-looking.

As we approached the door, he was still palming the bulky, circular key ring. The metal clinked together as he located the key and inserted it into the door. The lock clicked and he gestured for me to enter in what felt like a gentlemanly fashion. The room was dim and only slightly illuminated by the sun that was leaking in from the edges of the shades.

When I stepped in, he swatted the light switch on, bringing visibility to the entire room. The room itself seemed quite dated, old wallpaper with a variety of bicycle types was stuck to the walls. Many areas had tears that exposed the white chalkiness underneath. The bedsheets appeared ruffled and slept in. Some female clothing was strewn over the dresser with jewelry and make-up on each side.

What was peculiar about this room was that it didn’t have a particularly nasty carpet. It wasn’t deeply clean or anything of that nature, but it looked a lot better than the other fabrics he traced over already. I glanced at him a bit confused before confirming.

“You sure this is the one? You wouldn’t prefer I maybe do your stairs? There is usually quite a bit of traffic in those areas.”

Again, he didn’t reply. Instead, he aimed his finger over to the other side of the raised bed. I wasn’t sure why only one area would be dirty and the rest wouldn’t, but I politely obliged him. If I could just show him how the damn vacuum worked, I could score the sale and be done with the man and his offensive household.

I was there to help, but with each growing minute I stayed, I felt more uneasy. My anxious vibe was about to be amplified to an unprecedented scope. Once I reached the other side of the bed, my life would be altered forever.

RED RUG

Terror in itself is a helpless feeling that is usually injected immediately into our systems. Almost like it’s just sitting dormant, filling a needle that is already poking into our veins. It’s waiting for the perfect moment for the plunger to be pushed. It’s usually triggered by something you’ve seen or heard, and maybe on occasion a smell. The smell option was less likely for me being that my accident left my senses a series of shades duller than that of a normal person.

Anosmia wasn’t a term most would’ve commonly learned, but I learned it shortly after a T-ball accident when I was just twelve-years-old. We’d just lost the division finals and were doing a small pick-up game for fun to celebrate the season. We typically couldn’t even sniff the playoffs, so to a bunch of perennial failures, just making the finals was a big deal.

Coach Joe wasn’t paying attention to the friendly scrimmage, instead, he had his mustache aimed in the direction of Sara Sander’s freshly single mother. He was more concerned with a post-game hook-up than his kids hitting baseballs safely. With his back turned, he’d neglected to notice that there were two of us warming up in the batter’s box. It was me and this other girl named Christine Rivers.

She’d just finished a warm-up swing and, as the bat reached back over her shoulder, it cracked me right on the bridge of the nose. The Louisville Slugger hit directly in the perfect spot to generate a most unpleasant explosion. Blood flew out from the cavity everywhere, my white Landry’s Hardware jersey looked like someone doused it with paint. The end result was a deep nasal fracture which left my ability to smell faint on a good day.

That’s how I knew the man was a candidate for the Bissell. If I could smell it, then his place needed a serious cleansing. Once folks saw what I could do for them, they usually took the opportunity I offered. I had gotten a harsh hint of it when I entered the house and it continued to intensify. The closer we got to the bedroom, the more pungent it got. Once I found the specific area he wanted clean, all of the surrounding circumstances of the encounter clicked. It was like it took the last piece of the puzzle being inserted in place to understand the whole disturbing portrait.

I might’ve solved the puzzle that led me to this point, but now, I was faced with a completely different one. A stomach-churning wet pool of mutilation was the last thing I expected. Save for the mess my sister, Lisa, had left in her room, I’d never seen so much blood. Her brown hair had dried and begun to crust with her own crimson. She was naturally a brunette, but for all intents and purposes, she was now a redhead.

She was a small woman, or at least it appeared that way. However, it wasn’t obvious enough to bet on. Figuring out what was connected to what was hardly as simple as the children’s song so many of us knew by heart. She was now essentially just a pile of chunks and sections.

The torso and limbs had been divided up like pizza in a first-grade math problem. Each piece was skin-free, except for the hands and feet. The rest of the exterior casing had been ripped off and stacked up by itself right behind her head.

The other portions of her sat bone-in, the purple mass of meat still mixed in with the various organs people often picture in their heads but never expect to see in person. The disturbing jumble of violence laid out before me caused me to drop the Bissell immediately and bellow a bloodcurdling scream.

Everything I did next was all on instinct. I quickly understood that my scream alone could have been a grave mistake. The loud pitch I pushed out seemed to agitate The Slob. He made it clear to me that he wouldn’t accept that.

His puffy bulbous hand swatted me in the mouth and nose with a stiff, telegraphed backhand. His power was shocking for a man of his stature, the half-hearted blow sent me flying on my ass into the human gumbo below. It was like T-ball all over again, my uniform was covered in the horror. When I landed, I knocked the piles of woman over and my forearm scraped against the teeth in her open mouth. It left a deep slash that released some red from inside me.

I still hadn’t stopped screaming. I could see he was clearly upset with me, although the why didn’t connect so much. Was I just meant to be the next upcoming mountain of flesh? Would I be his latest destruction, or was it something else? I was still shell-shocked, sitting within the woman’s insides when he kicked me in the jaw. My upper body was sent flying backward, banging my head on the hardwood floor.

I stared up at the dingy yellow ceiling tiles above, which looked like they’d been stained from ages of exhaled tobacco smoke. I’d never had a chance to smoke in my life and I was kind of regretting it. Some secondhand intake when I was around my friends in high school was the closest I’d come. From what I understood, these were the situations that people smoked because of. It was a random thought but I would’ve given anything for a cigarette.

After he rocked my jaw, there were no longer any screams escaping from it. I felt dazed and possibly concussed. I could see him in my peripheral vision on the floor as he ventured into the corner of his closet. He rummaged about somewhat before turning back toward me.

His hands were now covered in yellow kitchen gloves that, judging from what was still stuck to them, seemed to have been used when he cut up the woman. In one hand, he clutched a black garbage bag, in the other, he gripped a long-jagged bread knife. I knew I’d already prodded the hornets’ nest but how bad was the sting going to be?

When he began to close in, I thought that bedroom was where everything would end for me. For that moment to be my definitive one would be a fantasy I could have only dreamed of. My nightmare was only just blooming. The hell that surrounded me was merely a blueprint at the time.

He dropped to his knees in front of the head, ignoring me as he grabbed the woman’s cranium. He rested it sideways in front of him and, beginning at the hairline, he started sawing around the edges of her scalp.

Once he felt he’d made enough cuts, he pressed down on her head with all of his weight using the point of his flabby knee. Then, with his hand, he pulled the hair away from it. The living wig ripped loose just as her skull caved in. The Slob’s knee crashed through the front, literally driving the thoughts from her mind.

I gawked down blankly at the pool of gooey cranial contents that lay on the carpet. He continued about his business like it all meant nothing. He tossed her scalp into the garbage bag before gathering up the remainder of the meat that was heaped up around me.

I laid motionless, only moving to avoid contacting him as he gathered up parts of the woman that were closest to me. The bag was mostly full by the time he finished, all that was left was some of the puddles and globs that had erupted or been trimmed from her.

His eyes stopped on the purse that had remained slung over my shoulder. He grabbed hold of it and tore it away from me, ripping the strap in the process. He shook it about fiercely and listened to the keys inside clink before tossing it in with the body parts.

He dragged the bag toward the door but paused before exiting. He sat down the squishy contents and his knife before returning to where I dropped the vacuum. He kicked it towards me imprecisely, brandishing his rotten teeth in the direction of my petrified demeanor. He seemed much more at ease now that I was no longer hysterical.

“Clean it,” he grunted.

His voice sounded unpredictably average, contrary to the fact that there was almost nothing else I could point to that was ordinary about him. After providing me the task, he left me in the room alone. I listened to the door lock activate behind him once he’d exited. I broke down almost immediately after he left me but tried not to let my tears make me completely useless.

I bawled as inaudibly as I could while beginning to case the room. All the doors were locked outside of the closet. But upon inspection, it only held old clothing and shoes, nothing else of value or that could be used as a weapon. I moved onto the windows only to find that they were all nailed shut, and furthermore, even if they weren’t, escape was restricted by the thick metal barring that shielded the exterior. I now knew those weren’t designed to keep prowlers out, they were designed to keep the captured in.

At least, at first, that seemed to be my conclusion. I realized laying out the next logical step wouldn’t be simple. How could I have been so fucking stupid, why didn’t I listen to Daniel? I should’ve known something was wrong with this ugly place. All the signs were there. I’d gotten too damn greedy; the money had become more important than my safety and, more importantly, the safety of my child. Our child.

The real root of the issue was that I hadn’t taken Daniel’s perspective seriously. I sat there like I knew everything before anything had even happened. While the prospect of his fears transpiring was remote, that didn’t make them invalid. If I had just shown a tad more respect for them, I’d probably be back home, by his side and preparing for motherhood.

Instead, I was rooming with the devil. An evil that people are only supposed to hear about but never encounter. A viciousness that we only see on the big screen. A monster so deviant that it seemed fit for Hollywood, but at the same time, was too real and gritty for their polished cinematography to capture.

I didn’t even have the sense to bring the pepper spray canister Daniel had bought for me. It sat uselessly in my glovebox. Not that it would’ve solved all of my problems, but maybe I could’ve given myself another option for defense or an exit.

I had started to feel like I’d become part of the gossip that people didn’t believe could happen to them. The dreadful things that happened in the world that were always in another state or another town. Except, now, they’d found me. The evil had materialized and sought me out.

The Slob was undoubtedly a ruthless killer. He slaughtered that woman’s carcass with the callousness of a butcher. It was as if she wasn’t human to him. She was just meat and nothing else. He didn’t kill me though, why? I pondered.

Instead of chopping me down, he gave me instructions and, based on his previous temper, I was thinking that I’d better not upset him again. He brought me inside to clean—to solve a problem for him. If I could make myself useful, I might just be able to stretch my lifespan a little further. It was the most sensible plan that I could think of. Just fucking do what he says.

There had to be a way out of this place. If there was, I would find it. I just needed to stay alive long enough to. I had to. I could feel a growing fear inside me for my unborn child. My motherly predispositions kicking in before I technically was one.

A new horror sunk in, the unsettling knowledge that I wouldn’t be going home tonight, if ever. There was now a very malicious force separating me from the single person I felt sick not being around. I couldn’t even remember the last time I slept alone.

I began to compose myself, searching for the strength to push through the fiendish mess around me. The best thing I could do while waiting to craft an escape route was exactly what The Slob said. If I cleaned up, hopefully, I could avoid any further danger and conflict by appeasing him. I reached over to the Bissell and plugged it into the wall socket.

Getting everything up was a process. I had to run over it about four times to snag all of the bits of biology and, even then, it was far from perfect. It was so reminiscent of what I’d done with Lisa, the sickening task was grinding the wound back open again. At least I had a tool to clean the carpet this time, a battle I lost long ago. I actually had a chance this time around.

It was just as I was finishing sucking up the remainder of the brain pool when the door unlocked. The floor still had dark red undertones but I assume the minor stain would be expected. Given the sort of massacre that had occurred upon the rug, the Bissell had worked a steam-cleaning miracle. There was no telling how long the lady had been sitting there but I felt, given the task, I’d done about as well as I could’ve hoped for.

The Slob entered again, holding a plate with both hands, which held a lump of meat with a bone inserted deep inside it. He was careful not to spill any of the gravy that was riding on top of it. He set the steaming dish among the clutter on the dresser. A soiled pair of women’s underwear spilled over into the plate. He looked at me and inspected the area I’d just finished cleaning.

“Now you will eat,” he ordered before heading back for the door.

“Wait, please, I finished doing what you asked, may I please leave now? This is all just between us. I can’t tell anyone that I helped clean-up with you anyway, it’s illegal to do that, I’d be in trouble too,” I pleaded. Trying to reason with him was pointless, he just walked out on me, not listening to a word I said.

Again, the door locked and I was left to wonder: Will I ever get out? What is the fatty-looking meat on the plate? If I don’t get away, will I be destined to have a similar fate as the woman I cleaned up?

They were all valid questions, but sadly, none were addressable. For now, there was no way I was eating anything that hideous pig gave me. Will it be that fucking slob or his food that kills me first?

He didn’t return for the rest of the day or during the evening. I couldn’t hear much outside of the familiar sound of rats clawing in the walls and rustling over the ceiling tiles. It’d been a long time since I’d heard those rumblings, I thought while slowly stroking my belly. I couldn’t sleep without Daniel. He must’ve been ill with worry. He was probably talking with the police right now, maybe he could somehow lead them to me. Maybe, but I was doubtful.

I heard a car start up out front and rushed over to the window to pull a blind aside. I peered out from my penitentiary perspective. I could see the specifically shaped headlights of my Spectrum carving their way through the darkness. He appeared to be moving the car away from the front of the house, moving it out of sight...

That meant that if someone was going to find me, they wouldn’t be seeing my car upfront. It wasn’t as if there was traffic around here and no one knew I went down this odd road anyway. It was far off the beaten path and on a dead-end.

Rescue from outside powers was seeming less and less probable. Daniel had an idea of the vicinity I was in, but how much could that help really? I was coming to grips with the hard facts of the matter; if I was somehow going to survive this depraved ordeal, it was going to have to be because of my own actions.

SEPARATION ANXIETY

I sat up in the bed all night, half expecting him to burst inside and start carving me up at any given moment. Instead, I just sat around smelling the unique odor of the mystery meat he’d brought me. Maybe the boot he’d given me to the snout during the day had opened up my sinuses. Either that or this was a very powerful smell. There was no telling what it was and the shape of the “beef” looked similar to the portions he’d chopped off of the woman that I’d vacuumed up at his request.

I decided that morning I was going to try and avoid eating until I escaped or became too weak to. But I quickly found out that strategy would be a short-lived pipedream. Nearly the exact moment I’d finished concluding the thought, I started to hear the same heavy footsteps creeping up the stairs that I did when I’d initially ascended them. Of course, they drew closer but it sounded like there was a lighter, more dainty set beside them. Some distressed grunting echoed around the house’s yellowed halls toward me.

There hadn’t been a minute that had gone by since I’d stepped into the room that I wasn’t scared, but the temporary hiatus had given me some time to think by myself. That had ended, now I was again required to interact with The Slob. When the door unlocked, the mystery of the hallway noises was explained. The explanation, however, as disturbing as it was, left something to the imagination.

The Slob entered, dragging a woman in by the arm. He was leading her because there was a black garbage bag over her head. It looked to have an air hole since I could see a speck of skin appear at times while she jerked her body trying to free herself from his clutches. Specks of red flashed inside also, which was a bad sign. There were more cherry smears on her strapless top and acid-washed jeans. There were some clues but the part that was still open to interpretation was under the bag. What about her face?

He tossed the girl on the bed beside me and looked over at the plate. The same meat was still there but it was now patrolled by a few flies and dried out. He stepped toward it and picked up the lump of meat by the tip of the rather bulky bone that protruded from it. When he bit into it with his decaying incisors, flies buzzed away and moved on to circle his head. He had to pull it violently from his clasped jaws from the gamey gristle to sever a mouthful. The chewing process was even tougher than the meat itself.

After completing what I viewed as an exhausting task, he began to close in on me. The woman beside me had stopped wiggling around, she must’ve sensed a more passive method to be the best strategy while considering the silence around her.

He extended the bone handle toward me, jabbing me to complete the task that I’d been dreading. The last thing I wanted to do was eat another person. While I couldn’t be positive that’s what I was doing, it felt like the most probable assumption.

“No, please… no, thank you,” I replied to his ghastly gesture, backing my hands off to help him understand.

In retrospect, if I could go back, I would’ve just eaten the fucking meat when he asked. I was going to have to eat it at some point anyway and I don’t know why I felt like I could somehow reach him like a reasonable person.

I’d cleaned up his aftermath, I’d witnessed his short fuse, and I was noticing a pattern. This wasn’t just some one-off thing, there was a girl with a plastic bag sucking back and forth against her mouth lying beside me. All of that had happened, and still, I didn’t think I could offend him?

He reacted in a measured manner, swiftly driving his palm into my forehead, thrusting my skull into the solid pine headboard. His hands were massive, almost wrapping around to the back of my skull. He tightened his grip and kept repeating the motion. I blacked out at some point. I couldn’t recall exactly how many times he slammed my head, but it ached like a Robert Downey Jr. hangover.

Upon my subsequent awakening, the first thing I noticed was that my pants were missing. My shoes and socks had also been removed, along with the collared shirt I’d purchased to give myself a more professional vibe while selling. It was probably a foolish investment considering I was in my second trimester, but I’d rationalized that maybe I could use it again if we had another child.

I’d been stripped down to my Billy Idol tee that I was using as my undershirt. He remained still draped over my belly which was now protruding to an even more noticeable sphere of humanity. I reached to cover myself but realized that both my arms and legs had been restrained, roped around the circular wooden balls that topped each of the antique bedposts.

All of a sudden, an unnatural feeling set in. My dread skyrocketed as I realized something was inside me. It seemed like whatever I was feeling was relatively deep. I couldn’t see all the way down but what I was experiencing was a horrifying sensation that any woman wouldn’t be able to ignore for long. It started to cross my mind that, based on the consistency and feeling, it might be the curved bone and meat wad arching its way into me. Only parts of it felt thick, that seemed like the give-away for me. There weren’t a whole lot of other objects I’d seen in the room so the possibilities were limited.

There were so many jokes that would’ve come to my mind if I was watching a movie or hearing this as some kind of secondhand story. But there was no room for humor anymore, nothing laughable was happening. I was being violated with someone else’s remains. Raped by the dead at the will of the living.

The Slob was standing over me, as emotionless as usual. He’d apparently propped the woman up in a chair on the other side of the room. I assumed she might be watching through the small hole in her bag. I’m sure she was equally as petrified and pondering her own fate.

He’d started in on me again, bashing his fat-padded knuckles into my face. I could hear it crunching, the volume of the breaks increasing each time he struck me. The pressure was so intense, I wondered if my head might cave in. He seemed to be targeting my nose and his aim was true. He’d landed so many shots that my expression was closer to a bowl of mashed potatoes than anything else. My nose was so broken and deformed that the bone had gone completely off the tracks and climbed directly into my line of vision. The bloody white glistened under the light of the dingy yellow lamp.

The Slob reached for the meaty bone that he’d left marinating inside me again. He slowly worked his disgusting hand through the lips of my vagina and began digging around again. At first, it seemed like he didn’t have any intention of trying to take the meat out of me. He seemed more interested in just toying around with me. He tickled me a little, although I didn’t react to it.

I was too busy suppressing my urge to regurgitate and also trying not to choke on the overflowing blood streaming backwards inside me. It was sliding rapidly like a waterpark luge down the back of my throat. I was scared I’d suffocate if I didn’t continue to keep swallowing some of it every few seconds when it pooled in my mouth.

Finally, he extricated the moist wad of oily gristle that was still attached to the bone he’d been gnawing on earlier. The chunk was drenched in a thin, pale and creamy substance which I knew to be leukorrhea. While it was a normal vaginal discharge that occurred during a woman’s pregnancy, it certainly was anything but appetizing.

No sane human being would want to savor a self-manufactured slime that oozed its way out from reproductive areas. No one except for the twisted psychopath that I was at the mercy of. He slurped up a dribble before scooping more back out of me with his free hand. He held it up like it was some kind of intimate gift from the gods… like an unknown delicacy that he was introducing to society.

As if the meat wasn’t disgusting enough before, now it had reached a different plane of vileness. “Hungry now?” The Slob inquired, forcing the gruesome morsel upon me.

I couldn’t fight it anymore; I was accepting the mixture of humanity as best I could from him, nibbling at it exhaustedly. The motions were simply to comply. If I could appease The Slob, hopefully, he would leave. I was slurping my slimy secretions off of the meat but he didn’t seem satisfied with my level of enthusiasm. I was so drained that it was hard to do what he wanted but I would learn The Slob was a master motivator.

He grabbed the splintered spike of protruding nose bone that was leaping off of my face and twisted. I felt it pushing down, creating excruciating pressure on my face. This ratcheted up my intensity to the point of mania. I was like a rabid animal now, biting into the meat and screaming without reservation. The more torque he turned me with, the more savage I became.

I was so reckless that I’d even broken two of my teeth and swallowed them. I was mostly ripping off chunks of meat but I was in such a primal trance that I was also clamping down with death-bites which were catching on the bone at times.

As I continued my rabid feast, before long, the bone was nearly bare. The few fatty lurking remnants The Slob was apparently willing to overlook for me. He rotated between licking it a few times himself for good measure and sticking it back inside me. After a dozen or so cycles of my absent reaction, he tossed it on the carpet.

“Dessert?” he asked me, again not triggering a response. I didn’t know what to say. I was too broken to say anything, so I just let him do the talking.

He leaned over and elevated back up, holding a 25-pound dumbbell. He must have brought it in and left it by the bedside, surprise, surprise… He didn’t seem like the type to work out, so why he had it was puzzling. But why he had it didn’t matter, what he was going to do with it did. I had no idea at first, but when he used his free hand to pull my shirt up, it became more evident. My round stomach was swollen outward and beginning to shake nervously at the foreshadowing my broken psyche was shading in.

He drove down the weight with mind-bending speed. I was already disoriented but it was on me before I knew it, mashing into my stomach with total disregard for the future prospect of life inside it. The first blow dented me momentarily, causing my limbs to strain and the collective blood in my mouth to launch out like a comedic spit-take you’d see in the cinema. As my belly retook its shape, I gasped desperately for oxygen. That was the last time my belly would hold its motherly outline as a psycho flurry of repeated strikes with the unforgiving weight found my baby’s womb.

I could feel my insides jarring with each additional motion. My stomach kept trying to push back to normalcy but The Slob was too focused on destroying it to even have a chance. His pig-like face was giddy when brandishing his rotten dentures.

His arousal was evident as he toyed with his cock, sticking his free hand deep down his trousers while he focused on the bone-crushing beating with the other. His forbidden pleasure was beaming; physically visible in his expression as sweat glistened all over his behemoth body and forehead. He snarled at me with excitement, causing a mucus and snot mixture to blast from his nostrils and dribble down over his lips.

He didn’t stop until my insides felt like they were filled with a pulverized and pulpy consistency. I tried to scream but most of the air had left my body. Each time he hit me now, I felt my ribs crack. They had to be broken but the overall pain and decimation of my torso had left it feeling like a giant fire had engulfed me.

My baby was dead. Our baby was dead. Daniel would be heartbroken and undoubtedly repulsed if he ever found out what happened. It seemed like wishful thinking as I wondered if my body would even be found after he was finished with me. While the physical agony was overwhelming, the mental portion was just as ghastly. My baby was puréed in the most merciless manner imaginable before it had even gotten to take its first breath.

No birthdays or nightly tuck-ins or teaching it to ride a bike. No happiness. It was no longer possible. Things had gotten so grotesque that the overexposure to extreme violence seemed to be seeping into my head now. I began to picture myself sitting behind a birthday cake smiling with a pile of ground gore, broken bones, and various innards near. Next, I imagined reading a bedtime story to the same pile being tucked in by Daniel. Finally, the mess sat on the seat of a tricycle as I coached the legless puddle to peddle with lackluster results. It was all ruined now, everything was ruined.

I felt my fluids ejecting from down below, all over the bed, pooling a short time until they sunk into the piss-stained mattress. When he decided to drop the dumbbell by his side, all the wind had already left me. My wheezing sounded like a fifty-year smoker on their deathbed. I was only concerned with catching my breath again and continuing to live. Part of me just wished he finished it; the kind of injuries I’d sustained didn’t promise survival or even make it seem appealing. But The Slob would give me anything but what I actually wanted.

He stuck his arm back inside me about halfway down to the forearm. I could feel him grabbing at something and pulling heartlessly. He removed a handful of wet red tissue and force-fed it to me. I still hadn’t caught my breath and was still trying to maintain swallowing the blood pools that my exposed nasal cavity was constantly refilling. I felt like I was about to drown in my own essence.

The Slob took no consideration regarding my freshly inflicted deformities and bullied my jaw open with his large knuckles. He released the scoop of tightly matted dead flesh into my gagging esophagus as I continued to cough with tears streaming down my cheeks. The Slob was the puppeteer of my mouth, imposing his will on me, forcing me to chew and eventually swallow the wad comprised of my core and my unborn. I didn’t know why but inside I felt like that seemed to fulfill him, although he remained expressionless.

“Time to clean up,” he said, almost robotically.

He moved over towards the Bissell on the floor and plugged it in. He removed the wide-lip attachment from the end of the vacuum and inserted the long aluminum tube as deep as he could within me. I started to cry aloud again just before he turned it on. His bloodied hand left a fat wet fingerprint upon the power button. I stared at it so I didn’t have to look at him. He drove it so deep that I could feel the slurping hose end suctioning to my cervix, or whatever was left of it.

I felt the hot steaming water inside me, scalding my shredded inner tissues while pulling out chunks of me and what was left of my baby. I watched in disbelief as the clear area at the base of the vacuum turned a sinister maroon shade. I fixed my sight next on the strange-looking fragments that could have been something beautiful as they whirl-pooled around the soapy crimson water. I wanted to scream louder but I just didn’t have anything left. Instead, the tears just continued to stream.

I felt like I’d dismissed every variety of bodily liquid possible by the time he switched the machine off. When he untied my limbs, he threw the stained vacuum extension at my face and looked at me. “Now clean it up,” The Slob commanded.

He just stared right through me callously, expecting me to start cleaning again right away. Like I hadn’t just been ferociously assaulted. Like the trauma I’d endured wouldn’t have killed weaker people. I hadn’t truly reflected on just how much I hated him until that moment. Mostly because I was too afraid to. After what he had done to me, there wasn’t too much to be afraid of anymore. I’d lost the one thing I cared about as much as Daniel; the product of our love.

The dim flicker of light that I clung to like a life-support plug was that I knew Daniel still needed me. But maybe now more than ever, I needed him. I needed to get back to him immediately, everything else had become secondary.

My loathing of The Slob was making evil things bubble up in my mind. What might I be able to do to him under a different set of circumstances? It seemed like some exotic far-fetched dream, but sometimes, dreams can come true…

I’m not sure how I found the strength, but I lifted my mangled frame up from the bed. Once he started to see that I was listening to him, he picked up the dumbbell and headed for the door. I turned the Bissell on like a good girl and started cleaning the bed and repulsive pool on the floor next to it. It didn’t even really make sense to vacuum a bed but it’s what I thought his broken mind required. He closed the door and locked it as usual. I suppose that I might’ve continued on for another minute or so before I collapsed and hit the floor.

SWALLOWED SERENITY

The crippling weakness that had befouled me and propelled my involuntary trip down memory lane seemed to be pushing me into a spiral of psychosis. The blackouts had been hitting me on and off for what felt like hours. I finally got a grip when the whispers in the middle of the night started. At first, I couldn’t be sure if they were my own imagination or just a part of the nightmare that had become my existence. But when they persisted, eventually, I willed my eyes open. The vacuum had somehow stopped, I must’ve torn the cord out of the wall when I fell down. The putrid soup within it still looked to contain my blood and the meats that The Slob had sucked out from inside me.

“Hey, wake up. Please, wake up and untie me. Wake up and untie me, please,” the voice kept on.

I looked in the direction I was picking up the noise from and saw the mysterious woman that The Slob had left tied up. She was still in the chair with the black garbage bag on her head, except now she seemed to be doing a much better job of controlling her breathing. She struggled, trying to wiggle free from her restraints to no avail. She needed my help. I looked around for my pants but they’d gone missing. The Slob must’ve taken them with him.

“Please help me, lady, it’s so hard to breathe right now,” she begged.

I wasn’t too trusting of the situation. The woman looked like a victim, but who could be sure? The house’s bricks and mortar were built on madness, I couldn’t trust anyone. I mustered some strength and elevated myself. My face was cruelly swollen to nearly double its normal size, the nose bone remained exposed but much of the open flesh finally seemed to be drying. My insides felt scrambled, and when I stood up, some fresh drippage was still running down my thighs.

“Listen, I’m sorry but… I don’t know you. How do I know you’re not crazy too? There’s no way for me to be sure you can be trusted,” I remarked.

“Take the bag off,” she replied.

“Why, what will that prove?”

“When you see what he did to me, I think you’ll understand that I’m just as much a victim as you. So, please, take the bag off.”

She was tied up; I surmised that removing the bag shouldn’t put me in any additional danger, so I did just that. If this woman wasn’t part of the evil in this house, maybe we could find a way through this together. Fuck it, what did I have to lose anyway?

I placed my fingers into the small hole toward the top of the bag and began to widen it. Once I had stretched it out far enough, I could see what she was referring to. Her entire scalp had completely gone missing, bloody white meat exposed made her a gruesome sight.

That was child’s play compared to the next reveal. Everything that surrounded a typical mouth was gone, there were no lips or skin any longer. Her teeth sat entirely exposed, she could be best described as resembling a skeleton that had never decomposed. She looked more like some kind of extreme Halloween decoration than a human. The sight of her face caused me to wince. I felt bad doing it with her looking at me, but it was involuntary.

“If you had to guess, taking into account your own experience with him, where do you think he might’ve sewn my lips?” she asked me with an expression that was hard to deconstruct since her face had already been. Despite the oral havoc, her speech was still clear.

It was hard to focus on what she was talking about; I couldn’t stop looking at her exposed gums and absent lips. I really wasn’t prepared to answer her question, so I didn’t. Instead, I just decided to untie her. The torture inflicted upon her had made me a believer. She was intelligent to suggest I take that bag off.

There was a strange calmness she emitted when discussing her horrors. One that seemed to rub off on me as well. Between the two of us, things felt much more rational now. In a chaotic and gravely disturbing situation, we were like two pieces of a puzzle sitting snugly that just might be able to work together.

“I heard you come in the other day; I never knew another woman to do door-to-door sales.”

“First… and last...” I muttered defeatedly.

“Yeah, I’m guessing that you wish you never took that job,” she snickered, somehow finding a moment of humor, but quickly piped down when she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror.

“I don’t know how I could be so stupid, I just thought this was another dirty house. Another quick sale. Now I’m part of it.”

“Well, I might have just a little bit of good news for you,” the woman said. It was hard to tell if she was trying to smile or not.

“What could possibly be good in this horrible place? Don’t tease me, I don’t have any tears left to give,” I warned.

“I’m guessing you’ve been up here the whole time for your relatively short but punishing stay, is that right?” she asked.

I responded with a sluggish nod.

“So, this is what I know for sure, he doesn’t keep the girls for long. He’ll abuse them for a week or so and once he’s tired of raping them or has mangled them too extremely, he disposes of them…”

“How long have you been here?”

“A little over two weeks now. There are exceptions to every rule, if he takes a liking to you, or if you make yourself useful, he may keep you around. But I’ve seen over a dozen go since I’ve been here. Some of them I’ve seen him eat and others seem to just disappear altogether. After he took the top off,” she pointed to her raw skull, “he had me sit down. Then he forced me to watch him boil my scalp and hair. I sat there smelling my own flesh fill the air of that disgusting kitchen. Then, like a dog with a new treat, he gnawed on the rubbery skin for a while before slurping it down with all my hair like you would spaghetti. He seems to really enjoy that part. I kept praying he’d choke on a hairball but I guess that’s just a cat thing…”

“I have no words for how much that makes me want to vomit,” I said without really thinking, I probably could have been a little more sensitive to her situation. I was speaking without a filter like there weren’t wads of my own fetus still caught in my teeth.

“How much you want to vomit? I had to fucking watch it.”

“What about the others? Do you know what he does with them?”

She walked over to the window and slid the shade aside. We could see the weathered, gigantic barn gave off an eerie glow toward us. It seemed so much larger than when I’d first laid eyes on it. It looked like hell. It probably was.

“Beats the shit out of me, but whatever he does, it happens in that barn over there,” she said, pointing through the barred window. “That’s where he takes them. I’ve seen many go in but never one come out.”

“I wonder what’s inside…” I pondered, proposing the thought aloud.

“I don’t, and I have no intention of finding out. I’d prefer to just escape this demon house first and let the authorities do the investigating. I’d rather learn about it years later… when I know I’ve survived—no, when I know we’ve survived. Then we can watch it on television, from the comfort of my apartment, deal?”

What a wonderful fantasy. Regardless of how outlandish it seemed at the moment, it was still a nice thought in my head where most positivity was nearly extinct. I decided to humor her, maybe she knew something I didn’t.

“Okay, deal, but how exactly do you plan to do that?” I asked in a tone that implied the options for escape felt slim to none.

“Back to the good news. Feels like it’s just about time,” she said, unzipping her jeans. I had no idea what she was doing at first but I noticed her lips had, in fact, been infused to the area I’d guessed after her initial question: her vaginal opening. The entire area appeared to be extremely raw and irritated. A cruel thick black stitching was used to sew her oral lips to her lady lips.

They dangled below like a bizarre clown-like mouth waiting to tell a circus joke. Every few seconds, it felt like they might start laughing. It was the strangest pairing I’d ever seen. My ordeal had been disturbing enough but the sight still sparked my worry. It reminded me that things could always get worse.

It took a moment for me to realize what she was doing. For a woman on the more petite side, she could hold a lot inside her. She shit out a turd that was by far the largest I’d ever seen from a woman. Grander than anything left behind in the ladies’ room and bigger than anything that’s ever come out of me. The smell of the hot fecal air invaded my yawning sinus and caused me to shudder.

She’d been holding it for a while. After all, she’d been here much longer than me. The Slob must have been force-feeding her quite often or maybe this was just her first opportunity at some privacy. After she was done, she used a pillowcase from the bed to wipe her rear. She tossed it into the closet and turned around to look at me.

“My apologies, I know this is mortifying and disgusting. Somehow, I don’t really care anymore, but inside, I know I should,” she said, beginning to sift through her excrement with a finger that was covered in a hunk of plastic from the garbage bag. Eventually the plastic slipped off her finger and she continued using her bare skin without missing a beat.

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked her, still not understanding the purpose of her rude act.

“A couple of days ago, he left me alone in the basement for a few minutes. He’d just finished carving up some girls and wanted me to wash the blood off the butcher block down there. One of the dead girls was still on the floor when he left. I searched her body to see if she had anything useful on her. Wouldn’t you know it, I found a small keyring in the back of her jeans. He came back down quickly though so I had no choice but to swallow them. I knew if he heard one jingle of metal, I’d end up right next to the girl I stole them from.”

“Keys! Keys for what?!” I exclaimed, jubilation all too real.

“There’s a gun case in the living room, I’m not sure exactly what’s in it, if they’re loaded, or if there’s ammunition, but...” she said, finally locating the small cluster of keys in the train-load of feces and extracting it. “I know it’s these because I’ve seen him open that case before. It’s clearly visible, this key has a unique tone. You see how it’s almost a green color?” she asked me, pointing toward it with a shit-smeared finger. “I made sure to memorize that.”

“What about the other two?”

“Those are a mystery. We could only hope the front door. We can’t bet the house on that though. Our safest bet is to go for the guns and kill that fucking slob first. Once he’s dead, we can take our time finding a way out.”

“No arguments here,” I said, meaning every word of it. I didn’t have any better ideas and we needed to act fast. Normally, I might have a second thought on a strategy that had my life on the line, but there simply wasn’t time.

“By the way, I don’t even know your name, I’m Sandra,” she said, offering her shitty hand to me.

“Vera,” I said, not hesitating to shake it.

“So, Vera, we have one last riddle to solve though. How do we get out of this room when it only seems to unlock from the outside?”

“Well, I guess that’s the million-dollar question now, isn’t it?”

BETTER OFF DEAD

The plan we settled on was about the best we could do considering our environmental limitations. Convincing The Slob that something even more dastardly than anything he’d done to us had occurred was the only way we presumed that he’d drop his guard. Creating a scene worse than our reality was the biggest challenge. Sandra and I had utilized some of the dishes that had been left in the room and the bone on the floor to bring our plot to life.

We scraped the bone against the side of the dresser and refined it to a point where it was a little sharper than we even expected to get it. Then we each cut ourselves as carefully as we could and squeezed our blood into a cup and a bowl that he’d left behind. We both thought the wrist might be a good place to gash. We could get a good blood flow and it would be easier to wrap up once we wanted to stop the bleeding.

It would have been nice to take advantage of some of the blood that had already been painfully drawn out of me. However, the stuff sitting inside the vacuum wouldn’t provide the effect we’d envisioned. When I examined it, I noted that it was far too watery.

Also, I’m not so sure Sandra would have been comfortable having the mixture of my blood along with that of my dead baby drizzled all over her. So, instead, we bled separately and sat with torn pieces of my used T-shirt patched upon us to help our wounds begin to coagulate.

Next, we took turns stirring our blood with the bone, I used one end and she used the other. We had to avoid letting it dry out and crust like it had on the floor and mattress. It needed to look fresh. It needed to look realistic. We needed to create the illusion that we’d turned on each other, and make our own little violent murder scene. But it would have to be staged in a believable manner. The Slob was a man who had seen a lot of bleeding and slaughter. We hoped our fresh blood would be enough to make it feel authentic.

We sat there for hours stirring our fluids on eggshells, just waiting to hear his footsteps, ready to spring into action. The tension was suffocating and we both knew if our plan didn’t work, we would most likely be annihilated. The only thing we could do to calm ourselves was to whisper back and forth, exchange some casual banter and try to pretend like the situation was a smidge less absurd than it actually was.

“So, you’re married?” Sandra inquired, gawking at the sparkle still wound around my finger.

“Yeah, we moved kind of fast. When I met Daniel, everything just seemed to fall into place. The house, the marriage, the baby...” I said, trailing off. It was like I’d almost forgotten about it for a moment and then the cutting reminder resurfaced. It made me feel like a bad person but I tried not to dwell and be strong. “I just miss him so much. I’d give anything to be back in our bed holding each other. He’s probably driving himself crazy thinking about me right now. Wondering where the hell I am.”

“I’ve never been married, I’m single. I’ll probably be single forever now,” Sandra replied with her own pitiful rendition of how shitty things had become. She solemnly looked at her lipless face and exposed teeth in the mirror hanging from the closet door. Her excruciatingly peeled and crinkly scalp was equally as hideous. Go big or go home, I thought, but still wanted to be supportive.

“Doctors can do some really amazing things now. I wouldn’t say the situation is completely hopeless,” I tried to add a minor inflection of positivity.

“The mortician is more likely to be the next doctor I’ll be seeing, or is it the coroner? You know what I mean… I’m not sure how I’m still alive, the pain is piercing but it seems like it should be worse. I just feel like I’m in some kind of permanent shock...”

I felt similar, it seemed miraculous that I was even able to function. My education told me that it was the adrenaline coursing through my system that was dulling my senses. We were both immersed and consumed by the survival mode we’d snapped into. But in time, that would eventually fade and the anguish of the brutality we’d endured would shine through.

I didn’t dare say that out loud, instead, I shifted the discussion away from our grim reality, “How did you even get here?”

“It was a night like most others for me. I was meeting some friends at this bar Olive’s I like to hang out at and I got there a little early. It’s not far from work, so sometimes I just grab a seat by myself until everyone arrives. I remember being there... I remember ordering an old-fashioned...” she explained, really digging to recall everything she could.

“You know, it might seem odd, but with all the madness around here, I haven’t really had a moment to think about it yet.” She handed over the bone to me so I could stir my bowl of blood.

“I do remember talking to someone... Yes, he was a really good-looking guy. He was funny and cute so I was really excited to be talking to him. I can’t seem to recall his name though… He had gray hair but was young, more salt than pepper. I remember asking him if he dyed it but he just laughed at me. And that was it, I can’t really remember anything else. I guess it doesn’t really matter how I got here. It only matters if we can somehow get out of here.”

“Well, I think we’re about to find out,” I yipped with a profound nervousness, suddenly nearly suffocating my words. The creaking of the stairs started up again and we both knew it was go-time. “That’s him, let’s go,” I whispered in a commanding tone.

We each moved like silent lightning, positioning ourselves in the best death poses we could remember from our practices. I crafted a strategic cut around my throat that looked really nasty but, in reality, wasn’t threatening in the least. I poured the blood all over my neck in the sliced area and rolled the cup under the dresser and out of sight.

Sandra had whittled the bone to a size where it fit perfectly into her earhole without puncturing anything important. She inserted the bone, plugging up her ear canal. Then she filled the entire orifice with blood and doused the side of her body and floor underneath.

The footsteps continued to close in on us, The Slob’s morbid obesity resonating under the weight of his sickening stride behind the wooden frame. The mere sound of his movement pushed my beating chest to a stressful thrashing it hadn’t felt previously.

They were now so close, they felt like they were on top of us. Sandra alertly threw her bowl underneath the bed and we both did our best to stop the blood from dripping down too much. Excessive movement would make things look a little too recent, gravity was not our friend in that moment.

The frightful sound we’d been rapidly conditioned to fear of the door unlocking echoed in my mind as the handle turned. I closed my eyes; it was the only way I thought I’d be able to pull it off.

What came next, I could only hear. My imagination was in overdrive conjuring the most pulse-pounding visuals. My heart was now pumping so manically I was afraid The Slob might notice the rattle inside me. I tried to meditate and control it as best I could.

I pushed myself to concentrate and think positively, praying that it somehow translated from my mind to reality like a wizard’s spell. At the very least, I hoped it would be able to calm me and keep my body still. I was aching to unleash a barrage of unrestrained tremors and teetering on starting to shake violently, but somehow, I found the strength to control it.

I heard the heavy footsteps dragging over the rug closer to me. They hesitated right when it felt like they were on top of me. I pictured his offset eyes looking down at me but also away from me. His massive foot kicked me in a primitive manner, as if that was an adequate way to validate if someone was dead or alive.

The footsteps carried away from me over to the area where Sandra had dropped herself. Again, I heard a couple of stiff kicks, nothing too sophisticated. After more contemplation, I started to hear a dragging noise. I couldn’t be sure, but if I had to guess, I’d have assumed that he was pulling Sandra’s body away. The sound continued to carry away from me, and to my relief, just as we had hoped, he didn’t close the door behind him.

I heard the body thump on each step of the staircase, he must’ve been dragging her downstairs. Once the noise had dissipated, I opened an eyelid in a way that was so subtle that it required a keen eye to be noticed. No one was near me and the door was wide open and calling to me. It was time to make a move. I retrieved the keys from under the mattress, we’d chosen to leave them there since we didn’t know which one of us might be left behind.

Sandra actually had a handgun at home. While she lived in the city, she was raised on a farm and was comfortable shooting rifles and almost any kind of firearm. If we could have picked how things would play out, we would’ve had The Slob take me instead. Her shooting experience would’ve given us a valuable advantage. We couldn’t afford a rookie mistake, so I hoped I’d be a natural.

I was taking a handful of verbal tips she’d given me about how to handle, load, aim, and shoot a gun that we’d discussed together while we were mapping everything out. And if I couldn’t remember any of that, I’d just be doing my best Arnold Schwarzenegger impression. Hopefully, it didn’t come to that.

I clenched the keys aggressively, pinning them against my palm to ensure they weren’t able to move around or jingle as I quietly tiptoed out of the room. I was almost glad that I was only wearing my torn Billy Idol T-shirt; the less clothing, the less racket. Billy’s face never looked so horrific. I couldn’t decide who’s was worse, his or mine.

The normally creaky steps didn’t seem to be an issue. I stuck toward the edges using the railings. I cautiously minimized any weight I applied and made it to the bottom without creating a stir. I must’ve hit all the right spots, go figure, maybe today was my day, I thought. I gazed down at my blood-stained hands and they now looked like a coal miner’s mitts. I must’ve scooped every speck of dust and grime off the mucky railings on the way down.

Suddenly, I remembered that Sandra was with that animal. I didn’t have time to digest the gritty details or be disgusted. I transferred my attention to the array of locks on the front door for a moment, debating if I should try the other keys. On the off-chance one of the keys did open it, I’d be leaving Sandra behind. Deep down, I knew I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. I had to get to the gun case.

I could hear some grunting coming from down the hall to the left of the staircase, which was the best I could’ve hoped for. It was the opposite direction to the parlor. I moved onward without a second thought. I hadn’t noticed it when I came in, but the case was right where Sandra said it would be. Against the far wall, near the fireplace, below the boar’s head.

I finally relinquished the death-grip on the keys in my hand, being careful not to make a peep as I pinched my fingers around the jade metal. I looked up at the wooden and glass case which had a green felt backing like a pool table. The key color made a little more sense as I gingerly inserted it into the lock. What the case was made from was irrelevant though, all that mattered was the killing device inside it.

There were no choices, only a single pump-action shotgun and a crumpled box of shells beneath it. Thankfully, this was a gun that I’d discussed with Sandra. With us being held captive on a farm, we thought it might be one of the more likely weapons to be present. I loaded it with the shells until I couldn’t anymore; it took six of them.

As gradually as possible, I pumped the handle and ejected a shell casing onto the floor. I peeled back the safety just as she told me. Apparently, she’d given excellent instructions. I was ecstatic that everything was as simple as she explained. I just hoped that she would get to enjoy the fruits of our labor, I hoped that The Slob hadn’t found out she was still alive...

For a moment, I felt like I was in a movie, except no one in the movies walked around naked with guns, at least not the kind of movies I was picturing. Once I was in front of the stairs again, I could hear the grunting start to pick up. It sounded like an agitated gorilla was pounding on something and wheezing. This was not a sound I would ever find myself venturing toward under any other circumstance.

It was still drifting out from the bedroom behind the stairs. There was a tiny slice of light creeping into the gloomy room through the mostly covered windows. I made sure to watch my shadow dancing on the walls so it didn’t distract him from his actions on the bed. I tried to keep my gun steady but there was a bit of a tremble in my arms. As I got a little closer, my angle changed and I was able to see the offensive exhibition that was unfolding.

The Slob’s ass was the first thing I noticed; it was so massive, you couldn’t miss it. It had more craters than a nuclear test zone and matching sores and blisters like someone who chose to live in one. His perspiration glistened off of it between the patches of curly overgrown hair. His minuscule penis was barely hard, it pathetically continued to slip in and out of Sandra’s puckering vagina.

The penetration was almost entirely overshadowed by the abnormal growth that looked far too substantial to be his scrotum. The sack looked more like an enormous tumor or cluster of cysts than a pair of nuts. It was so vast that each time he pumped into her he had to invest energy to drag the chafed orb over his sad sordid sheets.

I could tell it was her from the lips, they were still sewn on but were being split so aggressively it was hard to watch. The Slob had chosen the missionary position and, because he was leaning a bit forward, I could see both of their private areas clearly. The irritated unnaturally affixed flesh was starting to loosen up and gash open. It didn’t seem like it was capable of hanging on much longer.

I was impressed with how convincing of a job Sandra had done playing dead. I wanted to stop the torture for her as soon as possible. My only reservation was that the gun I had wasn’t particularly targeted from what she explained to me. Shotguns usually send out a spray fire and my fear was that my inexperience might injure Sandra in the process of trying to save the day, or worse...

I decided the best approach would be to crouch down low and sneak up from behind as close as I could without him noticing me. He seemed possessed by the moment and gluttonous pleasure that his assault was providing him. Once I was positioned below him, I could angle up and keep the shot away from Sandra.

The first step that I took I could hear, but apparently, the grunt machine didn’t. After a few more, I was almost at his back. Feeling I was close enough, I squared the gun in a way that I felt would cause it to project upward through his neck and head while not endangering Sandra. Was I ever wrong…

If—and at the time, it didn’t seem like a big if—everyone continued as they were, the plan would’ve executed flawlessly. But I guess God likes lemonade because as my finger launched itself toward the trigger, Sandra rocketed up off the mattress. She extracted the bloody sharpened bone from her earhole and drove the polished white point into The Slob’s eye. A crimson flood rushed out and down his face as he shrieked.

His massive, flabby body fell backward into me as the shell blew out. But when the gun went off, it wasn’t in front of The Slob’s face anymore, it was in front of Sandra’s. As if her head hadn’t been through the wringer enough over the past couple of weeks, this was the vile cherry on top. There was no coming back from such a catastrophic blast. Her entire upper and lower jaw left the skull and splattered against the wall.

Her left eye was also absent, but what confirmed that it was over for her was when I looked at her neck. All the tissue and most of the spine was gone, leaving a gaping hole. The disproportionate heights of the flesh looked like it had been eaten away by acid. She stayed sitting up for another couple of seconds before her spine snapped, tipping her head back behind her right shoulder. I felt an instant regret and dread, followed by a sickening envy. Her agony was over at least. Mine still felt like it had just begun.

The shotgun had fallen to the floor when The Slob’s blubbery frame crushed me. He ripped the bone out of his eye socket and, inadvertently, also his eyeball. It sat like a meatball at the end of a curved fork. He displayed rare emotion. Throughout all the moments of mayhem I’d seen him inflict, he never appeared angry, just wicked. His anger was true as he screamed and began to pound my already distorted face again unmercifully.

Like some depraved rerun repeating over and over, I was once again on the verge of the darkness traveling in and out of consciousness. His drippings continued to fall upon me. As his blood and frothing saliva rained over my ravaged face, it all went black.

THE BARNYARD BLUES

When I woke up, it was hard to tell where I was. The way whatever building I was inside stretched upward almost made it look like a church. Is this my funeral? I wondered, a little excited by the concept.

I felt a gentle roughness against my skin before eventually realizing that I was laying on a pile of hay. My newfound suspicions were confirmed when I turned my head and saw a variety of tools behind me set up near the wall. Turning the other way, I noticed I wasn’t alone either.

A heap of corpses was stacked tall beside me, the pile comprised of exclusively dead women. Each of them was deformed; mangled with their own unique and personalized signature. We were all imprisoned together in a giant steel barred rectangle; like a cage that you might see Barnum & Bailey keeping animals in. When I sat up, it was more difficult than usual and I felt the sound of metal clanging. I saw a few feet of absurdly thick chain was assigned to a spike in the ground. The other end was bolted to the steel throat collar clamped around my neck uncomfortably.

The interior of the barn appeared more like a small factory. I didn’t see any animals or the typical things a barn should have. I heard a clucking of birds, just as I had during my arrival days prior, but they were nowhere in sight.

I turned my attention to a small boombox with the cassette rotating inside it; I’d discovered the façade. There were two massive transparent vats that looked to be boiling, indicated by the thick steam they produced and three smaller capped off ones. The water was a brownish red and I saw the outlines of what looked like more corpses floating inside.

The Slob was standing on the far side of one of the vats with his back toward me. In front of him stood a large table and massive steel contraption. Diabolical blades twisted above, ready to mince and break down whatever they contacted.

He pressed a foot switch below that began to eject the contents of the vat into the gigantic grinder. It accepted the juices and meats, pulverizing the secretions within it. The noise it expelled was soul-shaking and stressful.

Moments later, he pulled the steel lever in front of him, prompting a spout on the grinder to dispense a wet puréed meat substance. Below the spout, the mixture fell into a jumbo steel can which he spat into. He stuck his greasy mitt into the hot cannibal stew and brought the handful of feminine brisket to his lips. I listened to him slurp and suck at the shredded meats and brownish waste-filled liquids eagerly. It was as if the sludge was his favorite thing in the world. He continued the disgusting display until he’d nearly cleared the entire can. There was no telling how many of those the bottomless pit had actually eaten already…

He promptly finished licking his chops and refilled the hearty can again. Then he lifted it up and dropped it into some kind of hand-cranked canning device. He only needed to twist the crank a few times to get it sealed and airtight. He had a stack of labels within arm’s reach that bore a round white sticker with the mysterious acronym “T. Y. G.”

He set the newly-filled steel down and snapped backward towards me. His eye socket was still garbled from his final encounter with Sandra. He got very excited when he saw I’d awakened and scurried over to my cage. He used his keyring to unlock the door and kicked the bodies in the entrance out of his way. Immediately, he disrobed, removing his boots and pants to reveal a stretched pair of tight, white underwear. They’d been yellowed all around with a greenish milky discharge erupted over the front.

When his battle-tested briefs came off, it got even grosser. Nearly hidden in the forest of bush, a cock that looked more like an irritated cow udder dangled. The petite teat was both crusted and slimy with the ooze and pus from his cavernous sores. A flock of pests pranced around the vast field of never-trimmed pubic hair, some finding housing on the rash beneath the scrotum. He was all balls; his nutsack riddled with an abnormal overgrowth like a wildly overinflated pink balloon on the verge of popping. He was unwell for many reasons, but it looked like due to the weight of his testicles, he was carrying a bean bag seating with him all the time. The elasticized abraded skin was ready to rip and let the soup of cysts and pools of pus run free. I would not have been surprised to learn he had elephantiasis.

He swung the keys in front of my face, taunting me with another escape attempt in his primitive manner. I didn’t react and was not amused by his retarded antics. I couldn’t fight him; he was too strong. I just let him do whatever he wanted. I settled back into the haystack and spread my legs, offering myself to him.

I watched him stroke the pus from his tiny manhood and watched the toxic clumpy discharge land on my clit and lips. He had nearly chewed all of the fingernails off of his fat digits. It didn’t surprise me that he liked ingesting his own dead cells seeing as he was eating everyone else’s constantly. He used his drool-drenched fingertips to rub the pus over and inside me as he stroked his wretched erection.

I felt it enter me like a slimy night crawler squirming around. As he leaned in closer to go deeper, his mane of idiotically long hair fell over me. His enormous gut was crushing down on me as he went in deeper. My already broken ribs cracked further under the immense pressure of his lard. I could feel the internal injuries of my empty belly being sliced deeper by the splintered bone with each barbaric thrust.

His wheezing and salivation seemed to be nearing a climax as he hunched over even further. Did he want a kiss? I prayed that wasn’t the case but his rancid lips pulled in closer to mine, his quivering tongue pattered against his rotten teeth. I looked up, focusing on the wet and runny boogers filling his nostrils to capacity. I wished he would just cum and get the grueling nightmare over with, but I knew I wasn’t that lucky.

He swooned in with the brownish concoction of female meat still drizzled over his numerous chins and I felt his saturated flab against my neck. He dragged his hectic tongue from my throat to my chin and pushed his way into my mouth. I couldn’t stop the tears but I was exhausted. I was beginning to feel a numbness, as a weird disconnect from reality was brewing inside me.

Finally, his body started to quake and his fat belly jiggled about. As disgusting as it sounded, I was excited from his orgasm. The only problem was, it wasn’t actually his orgasm…

The lumpy nut-colored feast he’d just finished chowing down must have stirred around one too many times in his gut. I imagine based on his morbidly obese stature that he was normally accustomed to the exercise he was putting in to violate me. Combining his perverse enthusiasm with the never-ending mouthfuls of dead flesh he’d consumed before entering the cage undoubtedly caused the eruption.

He pulled away from the sloppy kiss he’d laid upon me just far enough for me to watch the polluted waterfall of rancid meat explode from his throat. I tried to move away but he pinned both my wrists to the ground while the insane purge began. He wanted me to taste it, he wanted me to be humiliated even if there was no audience to laugh.

My horrified shrieks were muffled as my mouth was quickly overrun by the regurgitated corpses mixed in with his stomach bile. The most difficult part was when it landed in my face. Since it had swollen so unevenly and been cracked open severely, the vomit didn’t just roll off and to the ground. Instead, it collected in the dents and divots; particularly in my broken sinus.

I could feel the acidity of the puke stinging my raw and exposed flesh. I could smell the sour and fetid aroma of the dead soaking into my skin and core. The barf traveled freely through the hole in my face and ran directly into the back of my throat. I was choking on the brazed babes, choking on the thing that I was trying not to become.

As his stomach’s hot load continued to shoot all over my fractured face, I felt another hot load between my legs. It must have been from the mammoth ready to burst sack between his legs. He let his crushing weight rest on me and his heavy breathing, not to mention his regurgitation, made it even more difficult for me to get any kind of oxygen. He pulled out and left my opening leaking with both his semen and pus. The Slob said nothing to me afterwards, he simply exited the cage in a transactional manner.

He left the barn, shutting the doors behind him while I laid there feeling worthless. I turned on my side and used my shackled limbs to try and scoop out and wipe off the upheaval from the hollows in my face. I was utterly defeated.

That feeling wasn’t leaving anytime soon. The hours turned into days and then the days turned into weeks. I was riding a carousel of abuse, rape and humiliation without end. Sandra was right. If he took a liking to you, he kept you around. The problem was I didn’t want to be around anymore.

The Slob’s nauseating company by itself was deeply scarring but his almost daily vomit inducing violations, and ruthless poundings were enough to make me want to surrender my life. I championed the notion, going to sleep each night and waking up with an inexplicable disappointment. Is this what Lisa felt like? Is this why my sister put a gun in her mouth?

There wasn’t much else to do but think about death. The lips of my labia and vestibule were so inflamed and aggravated that my vagina had nearly swollen shut. Yet it seemed to only make the prospect of penetrating me even more enticing for that tiny peckered prick.

I still tried to think about Daniel and use the idea of reuniting with him as motivation but it was difficult. Why would he want me after something like this? I’m deformed now. My body has been desecrated. Will he even be able to look me in the face?

None of the questions truly mattered at the moment anyway. It was like Groundhog Day with John Wayne Gacy. The only thing that changed was the amount of scars and bodies that took up space in my cage. I was just meat to him, meat that he was taking his sweet time tenderizing. He made sure to keep me constantly bleeding and never let my physical or mental wounds fully heal.

My sense of dejection and the harsh reality made it feel like nothing could improve, until one day when The Slob had just finished having his way with me. After he zipped himself back up, he trotted over into the house. Then he reentered my cell and before locking it, he plopped down a few fresh corpses inside.

As I was wiping his ejaculation and lumpy discharge off both my face and vaginal area, I was suddenly interrupted by some faint sounds that were difficult to comprehend. I wasn’t sure what I was hearing, there was a good chance I could be going crazy... I continued to listen, the noise pattern becoming more familiar as it went on.

“Duun! Don! Duuun! Don! Don!”

“Ohhh! OH! Ohhh! OH! OH!”

New Kids on the Block! Where in God’s name was that coming from? NKOTB had just released their second studio album, “Hangin’ Tough”, and it was literally everywhere; even in hell, apparently. It seemed to be coming from the cadavers piled up closer to the door. I could see the shiny metal headset of a Sony Walkman trapped around the skull of a young girl that had no face.

She was close enough that I was able to get a hold of her wrist and pull her corpse towards me. I don’t know why I put the Walkman on, I suppose it was just a search for any feeling of normality. Actually, there was nothing too normal about it, I’d never had a Walkman but I was glad I did at the moment. Pop music was far from my cup of tea, I actually thought it was quite corny. However, it could be motivating…

The song was sending me a message, the sweet but still edgy Donnie Wahlberg was singing to me. He wanted me to hang tough. He wanted me to get through this. If I was going to, I would need a new plan. This one, I’d have to come up with on my own.

Poor, Sandra, I thought. As terrible as I felt about Sandra, I knew I couldn’t dwell or I’d be dead. How could I switch from being the victim to the victor? I couldn’t just let him keep raping me until I was softened and bruised enough to become a canned meat. I had to stop him.

The play button popped up while I was mid-thought. The side must’ve finished. I opened the deck and was surprised to see that it wasn’t an actual official cassette, it was the classic lovers mixed-tape. The one you give to a girl you have a crush on to let her know more about you by the music you listen to.

“Bobby’s Bodacious Mix” was written in black ink over the label. It saddened me to think that Bobby would never be seeing his girlfriend again, hopefully, he never finds out the full extent of what happened to her. I flipped over the tape wondering what might come next. It was the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, singing to the cool, clean wavy soundtrack of “Beat It.” More messages were being directed toward me from the tape. Beat it, I would…

THE COLLECTOR

I was taking the song both literally and figuratively. Figuratively in the sense that I was going to beat it, beat that sick fuck, beat The Slob. Literally in the sense that I had to use what was around me to do so and all I had around me was dead bodies. So, I started doing exactly what MJ told me to.

While blasting the songs on the cassette, I dragged each body until it was close range. I stared into their extinguished eyes and listened to MJ’s commands. His words made so much sense to me, like he had written the song for this precise moment.

I did as I was told and took hold of the heavy chain that served as my leash. I zeroed in on a woman who couldn’t have been much older than me. It looked like The Slob had taken a hammer to her cranium. A piece of it was missing and the knotty brain tissue had spilled out all over the stomach of a dead teenage blonde. Her mouth was agape and the sinister expression of dread manipulated her facial muscles with an ugly finality, thankfully exposing her teeth for me.

Michael bellowed into my ears as I cocked the thick metal back. I felt nothing when I took aim and smashed it into her tormented grimace. Several of the coffee and nicotine-stained enamel pillars shattered. Some dribbled out of her mouth and others sat inside it. I laid in several other powerful blows until she resembled an image of an old cartoon character after it’d been battered. When they smiled and their mouths looked like a broken piano.

I collected the plethora of broken teeth from the floor and even dug a few out of her mouth. Her busted oral entrance sliced my wrist and hand but that didn’t stop me. After her mouth had been harvested to capacity, I moved onto another, and then another. I didn’t stop destroying dental until I found enough to fill up both hands with molars, incisors, fronts, and canines. I had created my own den of deformity now, a land of misery without smiles. Happiness had no place in this barn anyhow.

The blasphemous act had taken something out of me. I felt closer to him now and it was appalling. He forced me to stoop to his rung of repugnance, he had gotten inside me in more than one way. But I couldn’t stop there, if I was to evade his despicable clutches, I would need to play even dirtier than him…

I found a girl whose forearm had been ripped open, exposed down to the bone. I beat on the bone for what seemed like an eternity. Again, I utilized my dense and bulky tether until it finally snapped. I was able to pull out the smaller of the two since that was the one that had splintered. The end was nice and jagged and sharp; perfect for what I was thinking.

I thought about everything I’d been through up to that point; the buffet of mayhem committed against me and the wickedness directed toward others that I had no choice but to witness. The unspeakable had been engraved into my story, carved into my cerebellum. There was no way to un-see it.

I thought about Daniel and his perfect storm. There were so many parallels I could draw to my own now. The lottery of choices that brought me to become incarcerated in this menacing barn. Why couldn’t I just have won Lotto America instead? It probably would have been the same odds.

If that bum of a salesman was maybe too hungover that day and didn’t show up, none of this happens. But no, he still somehow made it to my steps, half in the fucking bag. Even with him showing up, there were paths to avoid this. If I just didn’t let him into the house, none of this happens. If I didn’t take his grubby business card, none of this happens. If I didn’t call Doorway Sales, none of this happens.

If I didn’t go past the initial one-week Daniel and I agreed on, none of this happens. If I didn’t go down a nameless dead-end road, none of this happens. If I had turned around when I started getting weary of the long distance, none of this happens. And if I wasn’t so hungry for a lousy forty fucking dollars that I was willing to disregard the strangeness of The Slob, NONE OF THIS HAPPENS. The red flags were wet and bleeding all around me.

Daniel’s life was ruined on his last day in Vietnam, and mine was ruined on my last day of door-to-door sales.

YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT

He was standing over me the next morning with his pants off, watching me while I slept. The prior evening, I was trying to stay awake when I felt my eyes starting to burn and my head beginning to drop. I must’ve passed out at some point listening to the Walkman. The headphones were fixed to my ears still but there was no music coming out of them. The Slob was the last person anyone could hope to wake up beside.

Apparently, teasing his victims was a ritual he took great pride in before assaulting them. He chimed the keys slowly in front of me as I laid helpless and exhausted. His pitiful member rising amongst his overgrown hairiness. I could tell he was ready to go again. His wounded eye never seemed to have healed properly. It still looked reddened and infected; a yellowish pus oozing down his right cheek dripped onto my abdomen compliments of Sandra.

She was right; if he took a liking to you, regardless of how much trouble you might have caused, there would be no quick end to the bedlam. But now instead of feeling like living was a curse I was optimistic. I didn’t plan to keep rolling over anymore. Fuck all that.

He tossed the keyring back onto his pants on the ground by his feet and got on his knees. He began to work himself up, using two fingers to stroke his shaft rapidly. I could see a forsaken euphoria and menace churning in his gaze. Once he rose to full form, he couldn’t wait another minute.

He jammed himself inside me viciously, he was even more fervent than yesterday. I watched the joy on his face melt off and distort into a shaking agony. He screeched out and leaned backward to look down at himself. His tiny manhood had been spliced down the middle like when a hotdog overheats and cracks open on a barbecue grill. He howled in anguish not knowing what to do, looking down at the banana split covered in cherry.

He might not have known what to do, but I sure as hell did. As he was catching a brief glimpse of the splintered forearm bone that I’d nestled in my cavity, I vaulted up with haste. While he was still stunned and staring at his divided manhood, I flung the two handfuls of teeth I’d spent the better part of the prior night knocking out from the mouths of the corpses. The bloody and tarnished enamel flew down his yawning, horrified hatch. The Slob fell over, gagging, and I immediately snatched the keyring from the ground. There were six keys on the ring, hand trembling, I tried the first one. It didn’t work, he was still rolling around in the hay, gagging aggressively when I got to the second one. It was also a dud.

Entranced by my terror, I dropped the keys and quickly picked them back up while cursing myself. It was like I just hit the reset button and started from scratch again. I picked a random key, relaunching the process. No cigar. I tried the next one in the sequence instantly after; still no luck.

The Slob was only coughing gently now and began to rise to his feet. By the grace of a higher power, the next key I picked fit. I turned the lock on the neck restraint and heard the promising sound of metal releasing. The sounds of redemption and freedom melted into one.

The Slob’s hand regained his stance, tears rolling down one of his cheeks, pus down the other. He let out an enraged, primal shout and began to charge me. I sidestepped him and slipped out the door but he was right on my ass; deceptively agile for his build. I didn’t have much time to choose my path, the barn doors were shut and enveloped in a similar chain to what I was wearing moments prior. The only other place to go was up.

I ascended the countless steps at the side of one of the colossal vats with his agitated cries riding on the back of my neck and his wet hands swatting at my heels. The meat grinder was only a few feet away from the ladder, I needed to be careful that I didn’t slip or my final resting site would start in a can and end in The Slob’s gut.

When I reached the zenith of the climb, I set foot on a small platform that was mounted at the top of the vat. The enormous dead pool’s contents were bubbling violently. I caught a flash of its morbid contents up close and personal, knowing it was a sight I’d never forget. I could see the skinless faces of girls floating within it, the temperature was elevated to a point that saw their necrotic meat falling right off the bone.

I pushed the images of the human broth out of my mind. I couldn’t lose focus on who was giving chase. I spread my legs faster than a gymnast at the Olympics and pulled the wet, slimy forearm bone out from inside me. It was my female stash spot that The Slob hadn’t accounted for. The one that left his pathetic cock in ribbons looking like streamers at the handle-end of a child’s bicycle. Just as I got a firm grip on it, The Slob was pulling himself up onto the platform attempting to join me. I knew I needed to take action before that happened. He could easily overpower me and toss me in the boiling cauldron.

I didn’t wait for him to understand what was happening. I positioned myself low and drove the fractured bone in under his jawline. Judging by the momentum and by how much of the bone had disappeared, I assumed it reached well into his head.

Blood shot out of his mouth and nose. While his jaw remained unhinged, I could see the bone inside, lurking behind his tongue. It had run its way up through his esophagus and into his uvula. The blow’s force came from the right side of him, causing his fall trajectory to aim more toward the left.

He dropped down about twenty feet or so, landing square onto the nightmarish meat-shredding blades. The machine wasn’t on but, nonetheless, the static swords had done their damage. They’d punctured through his fat frame, skewering him through various angles. He wasn’t moving in the slightest, aside from the outpouring of blood that leaked from the many holes that had burrowed their way into his flab. But that didn’t matter to me, it was time to finish it.

I hurried back down the ladder and stood in front of the infernal machine, remembering exactly how he’d activated it. I started hearing some gurgling noises from above me. Still alive, perfect, I thought.

His impaled and destroyed head lethargically crept over the lip of the intake funnel above me. He looked down at me, smiling, like some kind of demonic angel raining down his secretions all over my face. He had touched me for the last time. As his head shook and death beckoned him, I could tell that he was trying to say something. But it was my time to talk now.

I locked eyes with him and delivered my final message: “You are what you eat.”

I reached up and grabbed a firm hold of the bone that was still jammed in his head before activating the foot pedal. A flood of boiling liquid and girls that he had snuffed out showered him. His cries were quickly muted when I pulled the lever and the blades began to spiral. Some of the vat boil seared my skin but I wasn’t letting go. As the unforgiving steel knives ground him to a hamburger, my hand remained glued to the bone until his head suddenly detached and landed on the ground beside me.

His brow was still twitching while his fat evil figure was being ravaged by the machine he’d created. The wet meat poured out, steaming in front of me. I kept it running for a few more minutes for good measure. I wanted to make sure any traces of his body were now microscopic.

I spat on the prick’s one-eyed, panic-stricken face before walking back over to the cage I’d been housed in. I removed the keys he so enjoyed taunting me with from the neck clamp. I felt awful doing it, but I peeled a pair of jeans off one of the corpses and sifted through for a shirt with the least amount of blood stains that I could locate. And go figure, I found the right key for the barn door on the first try. As I stepped outside, the warm sunlight felt like heaven when it hit my skin. I was free.

THE CLEAN UP

I pulled up to the house in The Slob’s red pick-up truck and killed the ignition. I dragged myself out from the driver seat, still barefoot. I felt grateful to feel the damp dew of the grass between my toes once again. As I limped closer to the garage door, I could sense my fingers trembling with eagerness. It was a sight I wasn’t sure I’d ever see again. It was a place I’d only recently learned to call home, but I missed it in a way you would the place you grew up.

Most of my thoughts were consumed with fear. A terror for the uncertainty of my future and the uncertainty of Daniel’s reaction to my mangled state. None of it mattered right then though, the only thing that mattered was that I was back and the code to the garage door still burned in my mind. Our wedding date: 10-10-88.

I thought about the probability of me never being able to enter this code again. The odds seemed grim yet, somehow, I’d made it. After punching all of the numbers into the keypad, I heard the familiar sound of the mechanical tract lifting upward. I guess I should’ve expected what I saw next.

The few weeks I’d been away felt more like a lifetime. It must’ve felt like a lifetime for Daniel too as evidenced by the scene that confronted me.

Daniel’s treasured ‘68 Plymouth Road Runner was all but demolished. Every window had either been spider-webbed or blown out altogether. The car’s body was plagued with dents and scratches and the interior seating was slashed all to hell.

Even smaller things like the rearview mirror inside and both side mounts had been shattered. He must’ve blamed himself for what happened to me, if I just let him sell the damn thing, none of this would’ve happened. Instead, it just became another ingredient in the perfect storm.

When I stepped into the house, I could see in the short time I was gone that things had deteriorated rapidly. Without my presence, the demons of Daniel’s past had returned. The dusk, the despair, the misery, the anxiety. They had all resurfaced in screaming fashion.

Trash littered the grounds and tables, mostly the accumulation of beer and liquor empties. Beverages that one might soak themselves in when they feel like nothing else matters. I hadn’t seen this level of uncleanliness in my home since I was a kid. The sight of it all, and everything I had just left behind, overwhelmed me.

I stood in the kitchen entryway while Daniel laid slumped over in his wheelchair, face pushed into the inside of his elbow like a child sleeping during class. He was still clenching his old friend, Jim Beam. While I wasn’t here, he needed someone, anyone. So, he was hanging out with Jim again.

I walked up to the table and leaned against it which startled him. It was almost like he’d snapped out of a night terror. He looked up at me in disbelief, most likely staring at the exposed nose bone and peppered lumping all over my face. His eyes were glossy and widened while his mouth was frozen and speechless.

“Looks like it’s time for us to clean this place up,” I said, forcing a smile.

SILVER FOX

The silver-haired youthful man sat at the bar drinking a dirty martini. The stunning twenty-something-year-old of model caliber beside him seemed to enjoy his jokes so much that she didn’t notice the small amount of mysterious white powder that had just dissolved in her Manhattan.

She drank it down in two gulps, and a short while later, the silver-haired man asked her to join him outside for a cigarette. She obliged him and they exited the tavern but not before he slyly slipped a crisp Benjamin under the coaster for the bartender.

Once outside, the girl began to get dizzy. It wasn’t hard for him to get her in the car, she was all but a puppet at this stage. Young putty for him to mold in whatever manner he saw fit. She ended up sprawled out in the backseat without asking a question.

They drove for a decent chunk of time before reaching an old dead-end road. The area was a far cry from the city life they were previously immersed in. The wavy trees around them swayed in the wind and the darkness amongst their dancing branches created a profound sense of isolation. But even if it were light out, the street sign was too faded to read…

When they pulled up to the farm, the girl was completely unconscious and drooling on herself. The silver-haired man parked close to the barn and turned off the engine. He beeped the horn twice and waited. Growing impatient he exited his vehicle and headed for the barn. Once he entered, he didn’t seem shocked by any of the repulsions sprayed within it. The mounds and mounds of murdered folks and bubbling vats filled with their fatty tissues seemed like another day at the office for him.

He rounded his way by the colossal drum of defilement and into the canning area. His calm and collected demeanor completely shifted when his line of vision happened upon a rather immense head that was plopped down on the dirt floor. The Slob’s decapitated cranium sat still oozing with the bone driven up into his skull, yet apparently, he was still unmistakable. The silver-haired man reacted immediately, running back to his car in a full sprint.

He picked up the girl and carried her back to the barn and tossed her on the ground. He removed a pistol from his inside pocket and fired a single round into the woman’s forehead. The hit was direct and everything came out of the back of her, leaving her jolting in a puddle of herself. He then looked around manically for a short time before stumbling upon what he was looking for—a gasoline canister.

He dumped its contents all over the bodies in the barn and on the structure itself before working his way back to the girl he’d just splattered. He poured a few liters of gas on her before exiting the barn, maintaining his dashing pace.

Next, he approached the front door of the house and shot the handle off to gain entry. He then left equally copious amounts of the accelerant within the entrance of the disgusting murder house. Once the gas canister had gone dry, he tossed it into the entrance.

He extracted a matchbox from his pocket and popped a Camel between his lips. He promptly struck the red-tipped flammable head against the wall and lit a cigarette in the doorway. Once he inhaled a mighty cloud of tobacco into his lungs, he dropped the still flickering fire stick onto the floor. It ignited the liquid quickly, only taking seconds to race up the filthy rug on the stairs.

He bolted back to the barn while pulling in the last few drags. It might have been the fastest cigarette of his entire life. As a haze of smoke exited his body, he flicked the cancer stick at the gas-drenched dead girl and watched her pale body become instantly overrun with flames.

They danced up onto the wooden walls of the barn and eventually latched onto the countless other bodies. Keeping his pace, he made his way back out to the car and peeled out. As he sped down the dirt driveway, he watched the budding blaze he’d initiated intensifying in the rearview. He lit another smoke and then stomped the accelerator to the floor.

PIZZA PARTY

Steffen sat around the table with his brigade of flamboyant acquaintances sipping on red wine as they all offered the latest gossip to each other. The yuppie attire was ad nauseam, and Steffen’s mansion was a playground for the elite. Some played on the billiard table carved out of gorgeously stained oak, others sat by the big screen television watching David Lee Roth prance about. A debate could be heard near the fireplace, asking who’d rather fuck JFK Jr. or let Patrick Swayze fuck them. A difficult choice for the majority of them.

Trapped in a prudish age that generally scoffed at homosexuality, Steffen had created a community where the boys could be boys, no girls allowed. Well, that wasn’t entirely true though, they did join them… Maybe just not how you’d imagine. Normally, they were brought in mashed into a fine purée, harvested and canned by a small farm buried deep in the sticks. Each can was appropriately branded with the subtle acronym, “T. Y. G” or “Tender Young Girl.”

As gay men, they were used to the bottom of the social totem pole. Steffen and his collective had seen it fit to work toward changing that. If only they could whittle down the feminine populace around them while, at the same time, pocketing some of their lady-like qualities that the boys so often enjoyed projecting. There was no better way to harness that essence than the corporation-style streamlined production that they’d methodically arranged.

Of course, places like the one they’d all come to call home didn’t pay for themselves, but they were nearing a promising transition. When you possess a product as rare as what they’d been manufacturing, there was always money to be made. On the black market, one could make a killing off of killing. He’d arranged for a tasting with aspirations to strike a deal that was potentially worth millions.

Tatsuo Matsuzaki, one of Japan’s most far-reaching “businessmen,” would soon be arriving at any moment. Steffen had sent the limo to retrieve him and his men. In a matter of moments, their paradise could be made permanent. Matsuzaki was a feared criminal figurehead but the fruits that would be reaped from the contract far outweighed any of the threat. This deal would be a game-changer. The final hurdle in their path to permanent excess, relaxation, and cannibalism.

Steffen placed his silverware against the China with a dizzying pattern and scooped the last morsel of Tender Young Girl on his plate. He chewed the wet mush of meat and played with it on his pallet.

He savored the lady-brisket, pinning it between his tongue and the roof of his mouth before slowly extracting the juice and swallowing. He approached it like he was eating cereal, not another person.

“Get all the benefits, minus the period,” he quipped, serenading his boy toys with a bit of black humor. A simultaneous chime of ritzy laughter echoed around the table as he raised his glass and washed it all down.

Their superstitious belief that they were leeching the feminine qualities from their meals had become occult-like. They constantly conversed about how their skin and hair all looked much more fabulous than ever before. It was their own maxed out macabre version of primitive black magic.

Their riot was interrupted by the silver-haired man rushing through the doors and up to Steffen’s side. He whispered for him to join him in the hallway. The urgency in his tone came off like he had something significant and time-sensitive to discuss. The boys could be heard sustaining their infatuation with each other while they stepped out.

“What in God’s name is it that you’re so jumpy about?” Steffen asked, a bit annoyed since his playtime had been interrupted.

“One of them escaped. At least one. I’m not sure when, but she must’ve killed him. I only found his head in the barn.”

“You must be joking, right?”

“Afraid not, I had to cover the tracks, I lit it all on fire.”

“Tell me you got some of it before? Yes? It’s in the car, I assume?”

“There was no time, Steffen. The cops could’ve shown up at any moment. It was risky just staying long enough to burn it down.”

“Let me tell you about risky. We have Tatsuo fucking Matsuzaki flying halfway around the world, arriving any second, and we have no product. How do you suppose he might react?” The door down the hall opened before an answer could come. “What the devil are we going to do?!”

“We could, umm... I could order pizza, if you want?”

“Pizza? Have you gone mad? You can’t be serious.”

“Maybe that will hold them off at least until we can gauge how upset he’ll be? He’s going to be hungry no doubt after a long trip like that, we better have something on hand.”

“Jesus Christ! Alright, order the fucking pizza. I can’t believe this,” Steffen finally agreed, exuding defeat.

“Well, what kind should I get?”

“Oh, umm… Definitely get two with the uncured pepperoni, I love how they curl up and hold the grease. The rest I could care less.”

“Got it,” the silver-haired man said, stepping away.

“Oh! Oh! Where you ordering from?”

“My Daddy’s Pizza…”

“Damn right you are,” Steffen confirmed, immediately turning to the guests that had now descended upon him.

“Mr. Matsuzaki! Oh, what a pleasure to finally meet the man in person. Thank you so much for agreeing to our meeting.”

Matsuzaki shook his hand and smiled, surrounded by what felt like a classroom of the absolute worst of the worst. Tattooed in surplus, flesh riddled with scars and slice marks, this was about the least friendly bunch you could ever imagine.

“It is my honor,” he bowed his head humbly after concluding his greeting.

The entire evening went without a hitch, Matsuzaki was a friendly guy and a real comedian. He must’ve been reading a gay joke book on the plane ride over because he had them in stitches. He also loved the pizza, apparently, he’d never had uncured pepperoni before which felt like a huge win. Steffen seemed much more at ease knowing that his suggestion helped to defuse a potentially lethal scenario.

Some of the goons he brought must have been local because they spoke excellent English. They seemed to be getting quite chummy with Steffen’s playboys as their casual exchange and dialog flourished about the room. It was like a match made in heaven that made the difficult message so much easier for Steffen to deliver.

Steffen divulged all the details of what happened on the farm and apologized incessantly. He assured Matsuzaki that the deal could happen in the future once they’d made further arrangements. They would need to rejuvenate the operations aspect of their manufacturing before they could complete their transaction.

He seemed to understand, not appearing upset in the least. They continued on smoothly like the hiccup was merely a pothole on their solid foundation of friendship. But after a couple more hours of mindless banter, Matsuzaki stood up from his chair to stretch his legs. He looked at Steffen and grinned.

“There is a choice you must make now,” he explained chillingly, his smile wiping away.

Steffen perked up, his bowels suddenly feeling the unexpected fright simmering within him.

“You have no deliver on your end of agreement. So now you must make choice,” Matsuzaki commanded sternly in his shattered English that was further muddled in his heavy accent.

“I’m terribly sorry. I assure you—no! I promise you! I will make it right,” Steffen offered, praying that he’d accept.

“There is no make right anymore, only the choice. I travel here, long way to meet you. You disgrace yourself; you disgrace our partnership. You no have tender young girl, only pizza. Pizza is good, yes. I like uncure pepperoni, yes, is true, but pepperoni is no human.” All of Mr. Matsuzaki’s scary unit began brandishing their guns and knives ominously.

“Mr. Miyagi… err, sorry, I’m drunk, Mr. Mats—”

“Silence! You only further embarrass yourself with speech. Now you must listen. Tonight, we MUST have tender young girl. If no, then we shall have tough young boy. You make choice.”

“But, Mr. Matsuzaki, I’ve already explained, we don’t have any more but… but we can get it soon, I swear it!”

“Decision has been made.”

Their pleading cries meant nothing. Luckily for the boys, he made the executions swift and respectful. He had them all file into a single row while holding them at gunpoint. He took each of them one by one into the bathroom to watch their beheadings.

All of the boys were forced to kneel over the bathtub with their hands behind their backs. By the end of the exercise, the tub looked like it belonged to Elizabeth Bathory. A dozen or so heads lingered, floating around in the blood pool that was pushing the capacity limit of the receptacle.

Mr. Matsuzaki was very respectful, they made sure not to dirty the house at all. After they cooked and devoured their fair share of tough young boy, they looked at each other with mixed reviews. Matsuzaki tried putting fried slices on pizza which he seemed to enjoy a little more than by itself.

They left the house clean as a whistle, and even did the dishes that they used to cook and eat the men in. They dug a large pit in the backyard on the property’s raw land where they piled the remains. The mass grave was filled in and they left a small crucifix as another sign of what they perceived as respect, not really comprehending that these were not religious men.

They all debated whether or not the trip was worth it during their travel back home. The consensus seemed to be that it was because they all really enjoyed the personalities of the men they’d eaten.

ON A POSITIVE NOTE

Things finally seemed to settle down between Daniel and I. At first, it was difficult to handle everything I’d been going through and the scarring that the truth had left upon him. His drinking was severe for a few weeks but I helped him break free of that demon again, just as we’d done together once before.

But there was always that constant reminder of the situation. My altered appearance, relentless cleaning, and apprehensive sexuality constantly prodded him. My mashed face wasn’t the same one he fell in love with but I was still holding out hope that he could grow to love this one just the same.

I was just happy to have him by my side again, to hold him at night when I was frightened; when the nightmares came back. They did so quite often now, I didn’t know if they’d ever go away. The visions were so intense and vile that, oftentimes, they evoked a physical reaction. They made me cry, wet myself, and even throw up.

I’d awake in the morning after a full night of torture, back in that house. It was a mixture of the one I grew up in and the one The Slob had imprisoned me in. When my eyes came unglued from that carnage, I’d found myself running full speed for the porcelain.

In addition to the sickness, we were having intimacy issues. Ever since I was repeatedly raped and assaulted by The Slob, I could never find my mood again. The psychiatrist said it would come eventually but it was hard to be patient when I knew Daniel wasn’t feeling loved anymore.

I was beginning to think I needed more help but I wasn’t sure what kind. Things had gotten so stressful that I figured I’d start with a visit to my clinician and figure out the next steps from there. Maybe Dr. Guyver could prescribe me something to stop the dreams. Or if he couldn’t stop them, maybe he could at least find a way to pacify them.

He said he’d do some testing on me, check my health to see if it might be anything physical or if it was all just mental. Once we figured out the root of the issue, we could better diagnose a solution.

After a few hours of questionnaires and other recommended activities, Daniel and I were waiting in the patients’ room for the doctor to return. Dr. Guyver stepped inside with a serious expression as usual and his chart in hand. He looked down at the paperwork, then back up at Daniel and I.

The words that left his mouth didn’t make a lot of sense. After the punishment I’d sustained during my assault, it hadn’t even crossed my mind that it was possible. It couldn’t be possible.

Dr. Guyver had either offered us a tasteless joke or a morbid miracle when he looked at me and said, “Congratulations, Vera, you’re pregnant.”

About the Author

Aron Beauregard loves onions. Despite his adoration for the layered vegetable, he often mispronounces the word. He could just cook them by themselves and eat them happily. Sometimes he will season them up and put them on his steak or his swine. He will eat them raw in salads or on sandwiches. Did you know that if you put an onion in your sock it can heal your ailments? He does, he’s tried it and found himself licking his foot for hours. Did you know that onions give you a higher probability of having a nightmare when you go to sleep? He’s heard that but can’t verify because most of his dreams he can’t remember. It would be so convenient if he could remember his dreams because it would probably help with his writing and if the nightmare onion thing worked on top of that… can you imagine?

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