Date: 2020-06-10 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror
Description: TAKE PRIDE IN YOUR DYSFUNCTION This assembly of putrid tales will drag you into the darkest regions of humanity. It will push extremes and test the mental and moral boundaries of those who choose to participate. Meet a woman who carries a dead baby inside her womb and also the belief that her stillborn fetus will somehow find life again. Connect with a nomadic punk-rocker who's out to make a quick buck when he's presented with a sickening conundrum. Join two teenage psychopaths as they bring hell to the suburbs on Devil's Night. Follow a child of the streets who finally steered away from a lif
Publisher: Independently published

DARK ASSEMBLY

Aron Beauregard

Maggot Press

Copyright © 2020 Aron Beauregard

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 9798652605230

Cover & Interior Art Copyright © 2020 Anton Rosovsky

TOC Art Copyright © 2020 Katherine Burns

Cover wrap design Copyright © 2020 Don Noble

Edited by Laura Wilkinson

Maggot Press
Coventry, Rhode Island

“The Baptism” & “Some Girl” first published
by HellBound Books

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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For Ryan Kershaw

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

DARK ASSEMBLY

THE BAPTISM

POPULATION CONTROL

ROTTEN EGGS

SOME GIRL

THE PROCUREMENT OF PURITY

LAST DAYS IN HONDURAS

COMING SOON!

About The Author

DARK ASSEMBLY

“We’re not really violent people… this is our first gun.”

- Ellen Griswold

THE BAPTISM

Erica had been acting more out of character by the day. We were devastated when we received the news that the baby was dead, and it seemed likely that her change in behavior stemmed from the calamity. I had never even heard of Patau Syndrome before Dr. Aguilar pointed out the telltale signs she saw in her scans. The fetus—Abigail, as we’d named her—had been undoubtedly stricken with the rare chromosomal disorder. The news left us in shambles, venturing into the darkest corners of the mind, questioning everything.

As our conception and pregnancy advisor, it was Dr. Aguilar’s duty to convey the good news as well as the mortifyingly upsetting. She tried to mitigate the grave misfortune as best she could but made it clear that there would be no happy ending. We were told we only had two options available at this point.

The first (which she strongly recommended) would be to terminate the pregnancy. Flush the limp, unresponsive sack of flesh and bone out and move forward. She didn’t say it in those words, of course, but that’s what I was picturing and I’m sure that’s what Erica was picturing dispelling from her vaginal area. The second would be for Erica to walk around with our dead child in her womb for the next six weeks and deliver the lifeless cluster of deformities.

The choice seemed obvious to me but Erica didn’t make a rash decision by any means. For the first few days after the news, she stayed silent, her motive unknown. I just tried to stay close and support her while she contemplated her options. I tried to talk with her but when she offered no response, I took the hint and didn’t press it. I knew more than anything she needed my support, not a surplus of stress.

I had never known her to be a religious-minded person during the span of our eight years together. Even when we had Sam, our firstborn, we never took him to church or instilled a devout belief system around us. We respected those views but stayed clear of inserting ourselves into them. Instead, we aimed to be “good people” by the high-level definition. So, I found it quite bizarre when she confessed that she’d begun seeking spiritual guidance by means of Saint Francis Church, a local Roman Catholic center of worship in town.

She began to spend inordinate amounts of time there, leaving Sam and I behind. Evening hours that weren’t practical for a woman in her condition, yet she continued and remained vague and private about what she was doing there or the eventual endgame she was pursuing from her involvement. She’d respond to me with phrasing like “Praying for life,” or “I’m going for Abigail,” which made a little sense.

She was reaching outside of her comfort zone for help, praying for a miracle essentially. Often times, when no earthly entity can solve an issue, people look for a more supernatural solution. Dr. Aguilar had already explained the grim, inflexible actuality of our circumstance. In Erica’s mind, it must have been too sinister, too depressing, and too unfair. It’s only human nature; when science or medicine cannot provide us a resolution, we then find ourselves in search of a more extreme or irregular outside-the-box amendment.

In one aspect, it was positive—her exhausted and dejected mind had found a way to swing her attitude and hope for a positive outcome. But there was no amount of positivity that was going to change the cold, hard fact that baby Abigail would miss her first birthday. She wouldn’t have a first meal or last, nor would she meet her family. She would be plucked from a chamber of hot fluid to brandish her inhuman appearance briefly, only to be set down in a coffin so tiny it required customization. Or she’d be dumped into an inferno and burnt to a fine dust.

From another viewpoint, I thought Erica’s budding, nebulous condition could be dangerous. She’d pushed away the scientific fact that there was a dead fetus inside her, that there was zero chance Abigail would take her first breath. Instead of focusing on making the tough choice, she was postponing it. Her procrastination was the mother of my fears. I knew why she might be avoiding it but that didn’t change the fact that hiding from our reality was unhealthy. She’d also deferred telling Sam the reality, which would be a horrible task in its own right, but stringing him along would only make releasing the news even more crushing.

Instead of facing reality, she was building a house of cards, facilitating an illusion for her child, and becoming obsessed with the Holy Ghost. Blurring her mind with biblical references and remaining idle. Yesterday, I’d seen her walk up to Sam and put his hand on her stomach and, knowing full well that there was nothing alive inside her, she still asked what I found to be her most disturbing question yet.

“Did you feel that, Sammy? It’s your little sister kicking! She’s gonna be a soccer player I bet, what do you think?” She sounded so sincere, as though she believed every single word of it.

“Really? I don’t feel anything, Mom, are you sure she’s kicking?” Sam asked, a bit confused by her words in contrast to the reality.

“It’s really gentle, sometimes you have to wait awhile before you can feel anything,” she lied.

Her delusion was expanding and becoming increasingly more alarming. I knew I had to confront her again, I might need to press a little harder than before to get a serious reply out of her. Otherwise, I knew I’d just be dotted with bizarre phrases that weren’t even really responses. They would only create more questions instead of providing answers and the exchange would only serve to drag me deeper into the quicksand. I approached her while she sat reading the Old Testament in the parlor. Sam was upstairs watching cartoons in his room so I asked her to join me for a few moments in the den. That would get us out of earshot from our son since there was no telling what sort of fantasy she might be prepared to spew out this evening.

“I know you’ve been really focused on prayer and celebrating Abigail, but don’t you think at some point we’re going to need to tell Sam what’s going on? We can’t just keep pretending that… that she’s going to be okay.” I tried to put it as gingerly as I could.

“Pretending? Who’s pretending, Isaiah?” Her expression was of stone-cold confusion.

“How can we move on without facing the truth?”

“The truth? What truth?”

My patience was beginning to wear thin, she remembered what we were told. I saw the impact in her eyes like a car wreck of flames and twisted metal all crashing down. I watched an exciting dream become mangled and malformed, then eventually obliterated. The beauty of it all had bowed, now we were only left with the ugly. I was aware of that and she was aware of that… at least at some point.

“Do we really have to go through this again?”

“Sure, you go through what you need to say, then I’ll tell you what I have to say,” she agreed.

“Just remember these aren’t my words, they’re Dr. Aguilar’s. Your doctor,” I felt it necessary to remind her but was doubtful it could make a difference against the caliber of false impressions she’d reached.

“And what did she say? What did my doctor say?”

“Well, do you recall the discussion about the cysts on the placenta or the missing bones in Abigail’s face?” I asked gently.

“Yes.”

“What about the bilateral clefts and overlapping fingers and toes?”

“Of course,” she responded confidently.

“Okay… and you recall Dr. Aguilar telling us that Abigail has no stomach?”

“Yes, I remember everything.”

“So, you know the only child that can come out of you will be a stillborn? You understand that our daughter is dead, right?”

“Yes, right now, I understand she’s dead.” The words made my gut sink. A horrible feeling that she wasn’t okay was coming to light more profoundly than ever. Her smirk was even different than I remembered, she was nimbly walking a tightrope, teetering on psychosis. I might have left her to her own thoughts for too long during a dark time. I thought it’s what she wanted but now she’s filled herself with some kind of witchdoctor philosophy, clinging to a false hope. What could she possibly be alluding to?

“What do you mean ‘right now’?”

“This is why I’ve been telling you to read the bible.”

I got down on one knee. It brought me back to the hot air balloon ride we’d taken together in Egypt, when we were just young and exploring. We always wanted to see the pyramids because we could never agree on whether God, man, or aliens built them. As we dangled thousands of feet off the ground with the hot fire blowing upward like a furious dragon, we came to the agreement that it was probably aliens. She never believed in God…

I kissed her and dropped down in the basket, causing it to bounce a little, and removed with a shaky hand the two-karat rock from my jeans. When she said yes, it was the happiest day of my life. A lot of people say that as a courtesy but, for me, it was true.

I wasn’t going to dress up the current affairs. If I started lying to myself, we’d be in the same boat on choppy waters with no guide. I was being honest; Erica’s most recent revelation had turned an uncertain evening into the worst day of my life. I was now digesting a living nightmare. I was being force-fed my once stable wife’s derangement on a daily basis. With each conversation, it was only getting worse.

“Honey,” I said with tears welling up in my eyes. “I don’t read the bible, and neither do you,” I reminded her in a tone that was begging her to reconsider.

“I do now and if you did, you’d know there’s resurrection and, more importantly, life after death. If you want Abigail to be well again, you need to read and believe, baby. We all have to believe, that’s why I haven’t told Sammy yet.”

“Believe what, Erica?”

“Believe in what the prophet Elijah did for the widow in Zarephath or the Shunammite woman’s son. Or when Jesus was in Capernaum and raised Jairus, the leader of the synagogue’s daughter. There are so many examples. Not just of children, but of men and women as well,” she explained to me, wide-eyed in a way that almost made her seem like she was on something.

“Those are just stories, Erica! Don’t you understand that? Outside of what you read, when have you ever seen someone come back to life?! You’re delusional, you can’t keep doing this to us, please!” I didn’t mean to yell but the swelling of emotions from weeks past had been mounting and it all came rushing out at once like a pimple eruption. She sat speechless, no longer looking at me. Now her focus had drifted back down to her stomach as she swirled her arms around her exaggerated belly.

“I can understand that you might think it’s a little crazy. I can’t expect you to have faith overnight but I feel, in time, you will. Maybe if you come and speak with Father Franklin, you’ll understand it better. He’s the one that set up the baptism for me this Sunday.” Her newfound worship was sustaining the chaos. What the hell was happening?

“You’re getting baptized?” I asked, still not believing the words coming out of my mouth.

“Not me, silly. Abigail.”

“You’ve lost it, Erica. You’ve completely fucking lost it. You can’t baptize a dead baby, it doesn’t work that way,” I unpacked it in layman terms for her, but at this point, I didn’t expect her to get it. A concept my five-year-old could grasp but my wife couldn’t—what alternative dimension had I slipped into?

“No, I found it, Isaiah! I found the power of the Holy Ghost! If the child isn’t washed of her original sin then God’s love will never find her See, baptism is like a vaccine against sin. You can understand that, can’t you? You know, like how we got Sammy vaccinated at the hospital?” She spoke with a passion and fire that was convincing. If she had been delivering an argument about anything else, I might have almost believed her.

I couldn’t continue the conversation any longer, there was no way to propose a second side to anything. These last few weeks had convinced her that God was going to bring Abigail back. As horrifying as the situation had become, I tried to seek solace in the fact that it would all be over in a few more weeks. Once Abigail left her body, she would understand that the glob of defective cells would never walk, talk, or cry. Erica would cry, she would be shattered, but I can only hope that being faced with the comatose corpse could pull her out of this crooked line of thought. I reconsidered my exit and turned back to her.

“I’ll go to the baptism with you. Just promise me you won’t tell Sammy,” I conceded, sacrificing my own peacefulness to keep Sammy free of the lunacy. It was the least selfish choice I could make.

“But Sammy has to go, he has to see his sister get baptized, don’t you think?” Again, she seemed confused about my offer.

I tried to show her the logic as best I could. You can bring a horse to water but can’t force it to drink. I thought about it, trying to be as unbiased as possible. Trying to understand Erica’s mentality and what steps I could take to keep us all as safe as possible in the future. What was going to help her rebound from this morbid odyssey? I decided that the three of us being together for the duration gave us the best chance. Sammy and I would have to suck this one up for her. We needed to get Erica through this window of absurdity safely, even if it meant submitting to her outlandish request. It would all be over in another week or so. If we got past this, she would have no choice but to confront the immobile dripping red truth when it fell out of her.

“Okay, we’ll go with you… but after this, we just stick together until Abigail is born. Deal?”

She nodded her head with that imbalanced grin stretching the length of her face. “You’re gonna see. When it happens, everything will make sense.” I kissed her on the forehead hearing what she said but choosing not to respond. The only thing I could think about was kicking Father Franklin’s teeth down his fucking throat.

The next morning, I called the church and asked to speak with Father Franklin. There were so many things that I wanted to say to him. Who was he to corrupt my wife’s mind with these unattainable ideas? How could he help foster this dishonest optimism in our family? Was this about money? Was he trying to capitalize on our horrific tragedy? Or, the most frightening question: did he believe what he was telling her?

“Good morning and God bless, this is Saint Francis church,” an older woman’s voice answered and spoke through the receiver.

“I need to talk with Father Franklin please,” I responded with an all-business tinge to my tone.

“Father Franklin? I’m sorry, sir. We don’t have a priest by that name here.”

“Really? Is there another Saint Francis church in Plymouth?” I asked, my rage now morphing into confusion.

“Not that I’m aware of…” the voice answered, not quite sure how to conciliate my inquiry.

“Okay, thank you. Thank you very much then…”

I wasn’t sure how to assess this most recent development. Was she lying about going to church? Maybe I misheard the priest’s name, or was it a different church? We’d already settled on the weird support system Sammy and I would provide her to get past the next few days. The baptism was tomorrow and her due date was the following Sunday. I was now faced with another delicate decision: confront her about what the church had told me or just play it out.

Since the baptism was tomorrow, I decided to avoid any conflict. The last thing I wanted was to rile her up mere hours before the ceremony as it would only stir her into a more irrational frenzy and possibly pull back the curtain a little too far for Sammy. It was going to be difficult enough sitting there and explaining what was going on inside the church to a kid that just wrapped up pre-school and had never been afforded any information on Catholic beliefs.

The next morning, I noticed Erica was missing. Before my shower I looked out the window and saw her sitting in the driver’s seat of the van, just staring forward and waiting.

It was still hours before the baptism but there she waited in isolation, a blank nothingness swirling on her face. I woke up Sammy and let him know it was time to get ready. I dressed both of us in moderately formal attire since I had no idea what Erica was expecting of us.

When we got into the car with her, she immediately took off with a sense of urgency. “Whoa! Honey, slow down a little. We left even earlier than expected, no one is going to be late.” If it was up to me, I would have preferred to drive but she’d already solidified her position hours before I had a chance to interject the suggestion.

“I’m just excited. I’m excited for you to see our baptism.”

The minor shift in her syntax bothered me. “Our baptism” were words she had not previously joined together. Was she thinking that Sammy and I were getting baptized too now? The thought made my heart pump faster. I had tried to avoid going into the particulars of the ceremony with Sammy but now I felt that could have been a mistake. Maybe it was just a slip of the tongue or metaphorical speaking, but I knew deep down it would be foolish to discount it.

The first thing I noticed was that we weren’t driving into town. The buildings and concrete faded fast and were interchanged with trees and their gorgeous golden foliage. I continued to analyze the mystery internally, straining to settle on a definite outcome with any confidence. The church must have been elsewhere. That seemed to be the only reasonable explanation I could piece together. Either that or I’d seen some people get baptized outside, it was a beautiful day and that was an option I hadn’t anticipated until that very instant.

I noticed we were traveling uphill. As we elevated higher, the roads and setting were starting to click, yes, I was familiar with them. At first, I couldn’t quite put my finger on why I remembered them but as I looked over the guardrails that lined the road’s edges, I started to remember. The cool blue ocean seawater around us, the sun shone down and reflected off the skin of the water. As our ascension continued, it struck me—Mount Fitch. We used to come here all the time when we were kids. Our old car even had a bumper sticker that read: THIS CAR DROVE UP MOUNT FITCH!

A barrage of good times flooded back, the hikes and fishing, the camping trips, and stories by the fire. It was a sweet and simple time. The imagery in my head began to feel poisoned, like a corrosive acid was bleeding all over the pictures. It melted away to reveal that exact moment in time—Erica’s state, dead Abigail, and mixed up Sammy. I would have given anything to crawl back into my head and sit beside the glowing campfire with the Erica of old. The one I understood and had never been afraid of.

Instead, I looked over at her most recent rendition that I was seated beside; the mostly mute, scatterbrained zealot. The disturbed woman that I loved. If that campfire was my hope then it had dwindled down to a flicker. But even if it was only warm ash, I would stick it out until the eleventh hour, I would never leave her behind. I had to assert myself to drag my consciousness back out of my skull again. As much as I didn’t feel like it, I knew I had to.

“Erica, are we almost there, sweetie?” I asked with the fondness I remembered I used to ooze with.

“Just about. Do you remember when I told you that you’d understand? That I could show you how to believe?” She turned to me as if trying to project her enlightenment inside me.

“Yes,” I replied anxiously.

“I need you to believe now.”

As the words left her, she pressed down with her swollen bare foot onto the gas pedal. Time froze. I wanted to scream as the van busted through the chintzy old guardrail and launched into the air. I thought the thousands of feet between our vehicle and the ocean water would close quickly but they didn’t. Instead, I had about a thousand thoughts flash through my mind at once, I felt the warmth of her demented, yet now, somehow angelic stare invade me.

For a moment, I prayed that God’s hand would stretch out from the clouds and prevent what came next. Then, suddenly, the lights came on. There was never any church or Father Franklin. She never had any intention of reviving Abigail, it was the three of us that would be resurrected in the next realm. I’d only focused on that aspect but when she initially spoke to me, she said, “there’s resurrection and, more importantly, life after death.” The only way we could be with Abigail was after death.

She wanted to make sure we got baptized together by nature's blessed waters before we broke through. Once we’d been purged of our original sin, we would make the shared sacrifice together. As the epiphany dawned, the body of the van crumpled and bonded into our vessels. The top of the roof caved in and smashed my face, part of the console ripped into my gut, and my stomach fell out of my torso onto the car mat.

I couldn’t turn to see Sammy or Erica with a broken neck, but somehow, I was perfectly positioned to look into the cracked rearview mirror. It had twisted in such a way that I could see my own reflection. I noticed two deep lines shredded through my top lip amongst the other facial destruction. As I listened to the salty ocean water fill up the van, the only thing I could think was that I looked a lot like Abigail.

POPULATION CONTROL

Ness woke up because he was starting to shit his pants. Luckily for him, the turd was solid and merely lumping up against his grimy Lee Dungarees. This hadn’t been the first time his body had awoken him in such a manner—the trials of a nosedived rocker were disastrous on the daily. His fall from a shady grace had been a brief one since his “star” had only risen enough to see his persona become notable at the squalid venues that dopeheads and transients haunted.

He was having trouble understanding where he was. The walls of the room weren’t familiar to him, but their positioning was. It took encountering the giant pile of wallpaper behind the row of black milk crates for it to click; someone finally decided to rip the discolored tacky atlas print down. Good riddance, he thought, staring at the wallpaper that seemed like it was pressed up in the sixties.

Finally, it struck him: he was standing in his room. With that revelation unearthed, part of him now conceded that it could have been he himself who engineered the makeover. Ness had a damaged brain and rugged hands designed for the breed of destruction before him. The words “RAZE” and “HELL” were tattooed fittingly in a cheap, fading ink across his knuckles. Pairing his fragile frame of mind with the sad truth that he’d grown bitter of always being forced to think about the world but never being able to see it made him the prime suspect of the remodeling gig.

Ness abided by a GG Allin philosophy, he was so nomadic and drugged out that being home confused him. Aside from his bass guitar, most of his possessions could fit into a paper bag. He needed nothing and no one since he was on the road to nowhere. The “live fast and die” mantra had left him futuristic in appearance. He looked far closer to a mid-life crisis than twenty-six and on some shit.

As he left the now-familiar cube of horsehair plaster to make his way to the commode, he took notice of the havoc that befell the kitchen. Not a square foot went untouched by the broken bottles, vomit, hollow syringes, garbage, cum, and blood. Thank God, at least everything out here looks normal…

The quiver of his intestines supplied him with a new urgency as he rushed forward. He was trying his damnedest not to lose control while fiddling with his zipper. At last, it came undone! As his faded jeans peeled down, the log ejected from him almost simultaneously. The brown steamer plunged into the nightmarish bowl occupied with a collection of personal parting gifts from the now-vanished party-goers.

He sat down feeling the speckling of piss warm against his ass. “Still fresh. They must have just left,” he calculated. Ness spread his legs and looked down at the uncovered fraction of the oval pie that his tool hung inside of. The collection of potentially hazardous waste caused him to reflect for a moment. When looking at the vile jumble beneath him, the first words that came to his skull were:

DEATH SWILL

But why did these words appear capitalized and in a dope ass font when they came into his mind? It was like Ness was constantly solving a puzzle that was missing multiple pieces. His blackouts were like a cerebral laxative—he came to the next day feeling like a baby being born. He was like a walking version of the film, Memento, as he continued to rack through the mental mush until it came: Death Swill was the name of his band. Oh, how life imitates art.

His fear spiked when, upon splash-back, some of the shrapnel clipped his asshole. While the a.m. amnesia blurred his recollection of the crowd who’d filled the toilet, based on the remnants he was observing, they probably weren’t the most conservative or classy brigade. Picking at the scabby track marks that riddled his inner arm gave him a strange comfort. He probably already had whatever nastiness he was worried about contracting in theory—the last time he’d seen the doctor was at birth.

Ness envisioned tainted cells meeting up with their identical counterpart, sort of like the Mayflower showing up filled with Indians instead of pilgrims. As the thought faded away, he looked to the toilet paper roll; barebones. Thinking quickly, he reached forward toward the magazine rack and snatched a newspaper.

The cover was delightfully crummy, just the strain of foulness one would enjoy reading while discharging their own. It read “Hard Boiled” in giant font, and he opened and read on. It was apparently about a local porn star whose penis had been severed, poached, and consumed by a pair of deranged men. The images capturing the creepy quality of the alleged parties involved were plastered all over the pages. They seemed vitamin D deficient, like the glow of the monitor was their only light source. The pair’s unkempt appearance came off as greasy and void of both style and social interaction. The coke bottle glasses sitting over the nose of the one on the right were all too predictable. Ness drummed up the intimate details of the case in his mind:

The suspects had grown irate over the fact that one single cock had arrived in so many pussies. It wasn’t fair, as their own dangled inoperably in their pants. They needed to chop off the magical phallus for themselves. If they ate it, they would gain its power, in turn, allowing their own depressing and lonely sex lives to erupt. By their estimation, the cock’s enchanted properties would be transferred to those who’d been brave enough to consume it…

It sounded plausible, especially in the scum city he was coasting through. He’d seen her ugliest parts, and with so many people in such a crowded space, you were bound to get a few sick puppies.

“New York, you gotta love it. This is clearly the most important thing in the world right now,” he mumbled, nearly forgetting why he’d picked up the paper in the first place. While it was ironically appropriate, Ness’s thoughts moved on to melancholy caused by the idea of ripping it to wipe his ass. The only other choice was a National Geographic magazine with a koala on the front. While he had no qualms about cleaning himself with the koala bear, he knew from experience that those pages were far too inky to dig the lingering wad of rich and pasty feces out of his cavity. The material also didn’t flush well…

He compromised, flipping toward the rear of the paper to avoid cutting into the thoughtfully prioritized stories. Ness tore off a sizable sheet and folded it once before gently wiping—avoiding a paper cut was the desired goal. He couldn’t help but notice the interesting back page ad that was calling to him. “Research Participants Sought For Male Birth Control Products – All participants can look forward to being highly compensated for a few hours of pleasurable work. If interested, call 718-694-8742.”

The proposition seemed intriguing—enjoyable work that paid well was hard to come by. The two-songs-and-a-bar-fight routine was getting old. Death Swill hadn’t been pulling in enough dough to cover their addictions of late. Vickie Vomit, their lead singer, was also pregnant and on the fritz about whether or not she would have an abortion. He wasn’t even sure if the band would be a thing for much longer. Something had to give or the powder keg was getting lit. The likelihood of additional violence was always looming with each window of inadvertent sobriety they faced. Given that the ad was in the back of a sleaze-press special, he wondered if it could be the kind of “research” that had lasting effects. There had to be some kind of risk if it paid well...

It was most likely a “this could result in you never being able to have kids again” situation. He entertained the idea, settling on the notion that a permanent break in procreation might be best for him anyway. He’d been running from responsibility for too long now. His gypsy approach to life had helped him sustain his elusiveness, but eventually, if he wasn’t careful, shit was going to catch up. Ness likened his path to that of a rat, based on the volume of bastard babies he had crawling around the burrows. The way he saw it, he didn’t have a damn thing to lose.

***

Ness was led slowly into the sterile, all-white room with a gentleman in a lengthy doctor’s coat seated at a desk. An examination table stood beside them with a fresh length of sanitary paper draped over it. Based on the presentation, the impression he got was that the place felt authentic. They had legit boring-looking old dudes all around who appeared as though they knew what the fuck they were doing. These guys looked like scientists or something. They reeked of Old Spice and probably had bank accounts, car insurance, and clean records. The operation must have been for real.

“Hello, Nestor! Please have a seat on the table here.” The man rose from his seat and patted the paper atop the table. It would have been noticeable to almost anyone that the scent Ness gave off was repellent by the facial expressions of those he interacted with. But Ness had become so accustomed to his own gnarliness that he thought the expression of repulsion was simply how people looked. After taking his seat, Ness smiled at the man, flaunting the rot-caked enamel on the chicklets that ached beneath his split lips.

“Hey, duder, it’s Ness. Call me Ness. So, how does all this work exactly?” Ness couldn’t have been more excited to hear the details. His words rambled out, showcasing the strung-out hunger that motivated him.

“Well, it’s pretty simple, honestly. We pay you one thousand dollars for no longer than two hours of your time.”

Ness’s ever-expanding pupils traveled even further than normal.

“Sounds like the real deal to me. What’s your name, Doc?” He extended his grubby hand.

“Dr. Vargas,” the doctor replied, hesitating momentarily before recalling his hand was gloved and thus protected from the germ farms that undoubtedly housed Ness’s human real estate.

“An absolute honor to meet you. Nestor Castro is the Christian name, although I’m not so religious anymore, but like I said, call me Ness. If you don’t mind me cutting through the bullshit a little here, I have no issues being the lab rat as long as it’s for a good cause. If I can stop babies from being born that never should have been born, well, that’s a hell of a good deed, ain’t it?”

“Indeed, it is, Ness.”

“Perhaps if this was around a few decades ago, I could have avoided my own pointless, miserable life.”

“Perhaps…” Dr. Vargas seemed tongue-tied by the depressing straightforwardness.

“Ain’t that something. I could do for others the favor that was never done for me. Now, if only time travel were possible I could… but then how would that work?” Ness was getting overwhelmed by the thoughts he was cooking up.

“Let’s try not to get too caught up in the technical aspects. Do you want to know more about the process?”

“Yeah, shoot, Doc.”

“During the first hour, you’ll be administered an injection; a formula produced by our company, Bellmore Alternatives, which, as our advertisement touched upon, is designed to temporarily stunt your ability to reproduce. Rest assured though, the dose you’ll be receiving is only good for 24 hours and will NOT have any kind of long-term repercussions.”

“You really think people are gonna just stick themselves with needles every day instead of wearing a rubber? Just saying, that seems a bit disgusting to me.” His speech sounded like it came from a high horse, but he knew damn well it was a Trojan horse. This is what his feeble brain figured Dr. Vargas would expect from a normal person. It sounded forced coming from a fidgety junkie who hoped he wouldn’t be asked to roll up his own sleeves at any point.

“This is just a prototype, Ness. It would most likely be administered in a pill form and in larger doses that cover lengthier windows once in production. We could even make it, say, dissolvable in water if we wanted… A shot is simply the most efficient means for us to transfer the effects into the subject. Bear in mind, the formula is still being refined, and this is merely the preliminary evaluation proces—” He hesitated, and after observing the blankness on Ness’s face, he decided to substitute his word choice. Dr. Vargas was determined to cater to the uneducated ears before him. “We’re still just figuring this shit out, Ness. We just need you to help us. Is that cool?”

Ness considered inquiring about just what exactly the shot consisted of for a moment, but same as he did while dropping a deuce, he quickly came to the conclusion that nothing they could put inside him could be worse than what he’d already put inside himself over the years. It came back down to his cravings: he needed the money if he wanted his veins coursing with the good shit again. He could just think of this as a precursor. Maybe it would somehow get him high still.

“Right on. So, what happens after the shot?”

“We wait for about forty-five minutes, and then for the second hour, you will attempt to reproduce.”

“Attempt to reproduce? With what? You have stag mags or something at least?”

“There is another subject that has agreed to participate in the study. You will be paired up.”

“Listen, I’m not into dudes, bro. I ain’t no faggot. I mean, I might be a street kid, but what the fuck do I look like to you, Doc?”

“Of course. I mean, I could tell right when you walked in that you didn’t swing that way. The subject will be to your liking.”

“Like a chick, you mean?”

“Yes, a chick.”

You could have knocked Ness over with a feather. Not only was he getting crazy play money from this venture, but the pussy was on the house. He started to feel a little weird though, it all seemed too good to be true. There had to be a catch. This goose was laying too many golden eggs in a row.

“So, what’s wrong with her, is she a hermie? She got one of each, don’t she?”

“No, Mr. Castro, not at all.”

“What then? She got six toes or been in a car accident?”

“Nothing like that, she’s just another normal person like you who wants to capitalize on the lucrative opportunity we’re offering.”

“I knew it, she’s a hooker, a busted-ass, retarded hooker, isn’t she? I bet I’ve seen her on fifth—”

“No. She’s pretty hot actually.”

“Well… I guess I’ll just have to trust you on that. I mean, you seem… you seem like a man with good taste…” The slim possibility of her being sexy gave him a small chub.

“I wouldn’t lead you astray, I assure you.”

Silence lingered for a moment while the wheels turned. “What if it doesn’t work?”

“What if what doesn’t work?”

“The shot, the birth control. What if my boys swim too hard?”

“Well, that’s all in the waiver. The abbreviated version is that you give the female subject the permission to abort.”

“Good deal. Okay, that’s cool then… but I mean obviously we’re going raw… because how else would you really test it?” Ness scratched his skull, allowing thick flakes of dandruff to descend onto his t-shirt. “But, like, how do I know she’s not the frisky type? How do I know she’s not diseased, Doc?”

“That’s also disclosed in our waiver. Due to the urgency of our studies, we don’t have time to test all of our subjects in advance. It also outlines that all participants should be healthy and free of medical issues. Additionally, it absolves Bellmore Alternatives of any responsibility in the event that participants involved are dishonest about their background. That agreement is strictly between the parties that are… fucking. Our female subject has already signed this document.”

Dr. Vargas held out the clipboard and pen.

What did he have to lose really? It was Ness who had the buffet of STDs just ready to shine through his skin at any moment. If anyone should be fearful, it should be the girl. But could he live with himself for taking the money and running again? Ness grabbed the document and scribbled his name down in a way that made it nearly impossible to decipher. Honesty had never been his strong suit.

“Well done.” Dr. Vargas set down the clipboard and opened a wide draw beside him. He extracted a strange device that looked about the size of an electric shaver. It had a digital readout and a slim rubber tip. He slid a sort of tiny green condom over the metallic micro-shaft and applied a finger full of lubricant to the exterior.

“Mr. Castro, as far as you’re aware, you have the ability to have children, is that correct?”

“So, I’ve heard…”

“All right then, take off your pants, please.”

“Wait, what? What’s that for?” Ness inquired skeptically.

“We have to be sure you have the ability to reproduce before we can proceed. This device will give us the necessary data to determine if you are still capable.”

Ness stared vacantly at him, a lack of digestion all over his face.

Dr. Vargas took another volley, this time keeping it more high level. “It’s a dick reader.”

“Oh, shit, man, why didn’t you just say so?” He removed his pants slowly, the vulgar perfume he’d saturated himself with earlier that morning was still prominent as evidenced by the doctor’s mannerisms. It wasn’t subdued in the slightest as Ness wasn’t wearing any underwear.

“Okay, just hold your dick out straight for me, Ness. Yes, just like that for another minute. Nice and hard like you have it.”

A tiny metal rod entered Ness’s urethra suddenly, causing him to jump.

“WOO! That’s cold, Doc! That’s cold! Could’ve fuckin’ warmed it up a little for me first!”

The top of the device continued to calculate before a bright green light overcame the entire screen. An abrupt jolt burst from the tip, releasing a mass of fluid into his manhood’s main alley.

“What the hell is that?!”

As Dr. Vargas removed the device, a trail of neon blue fluid secreted from his hole, but he felt much more lingering deep inside him. “I thought you said this thing was, was just to tell if you can make a baby still!”

“It’s both a fertility test and the shot itself. Once it clears you, it administers the injection for your convenience.”

“For my convenience?! What would have been convenient is if you’da given a heads up that you’re givin’ me a fuckin’ shot in the cock, bitch!”

“It’s in the waiver, and in fairness, if I told you I was about to give your dick a shot, you’d have been much more anxious. I did it for you, really.”

While Ness wasn’t happy, he did have a slight point.

“All right, no more surprises though, right?”

“That was all, you have my word. Now try to take a piss and clear out some of that gunk. I’ll be back to bring you to the girl in just a short time.”

Ness read over the waiver again. The doctor was right, the stuff about the cock shot was in there. Nothing else nefarious. Maybe he’d just assumed he wasn’t a reader and was trying to save him a little stress. He finally took a leak about thirty minutes later that eerily resembled the tone of his grandma’s jewelry collection. He hadn’t seen her in ages but always remembered her penchant for turquoise rings and necklaces. A short time after that, Dr. Vargas slowly reopened the door.

“So, you ready to finish this up and get your money?”

“You bet your ass I am.”

***

When Ness entered the next room, he saw traits that were similar to the previous: disinfected, hygienic, sanitized. All descriptions that anyone who knew Ness for more than a few minutes wouldn’t normally associate him with. “Not really into the romance, I suppose,” he mumbled to himself. The room appeared to be L-shaped and Ness passed a massive mirror that stretched the length of the wall to his right while he neared the corner. When he turned to look at the section of the room that was previously without vantage point, there she laid.

To the credit of Dr. Vargas, she was pretty hot after all—maybe a B-cup, with olive skin and short hair like he’d seen on a few punk-rocker chicks. Who was he to be picky? He hadn’t found himself inside a better-looking bitch in ages. Her position was a bit curious though. She’d been laid on another examination table that had four posts surrounding it, almost like a bed would. Her limbs were spread wide, each assigned to a different post with a white leather binding. She was just there for the taking. “All right, this is kinky.”

Then it struck him that her eyes had been closed the entire time and she hadn’t spoken a word or moved a muscle. The broad was clearly unconscious.

“Hey, brother, she’s out like trout. What’s the deal?” Ness played the part of the concerned good Samaritan so awkwardly.

It seemed forced because it was the furthest thing from uncharted territory. He’d finished more sleepers than Rowdy Roddy Piper. There had even been one that was clinically dead while he finished up inside of her. He had been up all night and thought it was strange that she was getting tighter as the action went on. Of course, it never crossed his mind to investigate. The following morning when he finally regained his bearings, it was obvious that she’d choked on her own puke during an overdose. He never made the funeral but didn’t lose a wink of sleep about the whole series of unfortunate events either. He justified it in his mind without issue; she woulda probably fucked me anyway… she woulda hopped on my bone with the excitement of a bitch in heat…

Ness had a conscience when it came to assuming consent, a bizarre caveat that was sort of hitting him at the moment. Doing that stuff when most of the crowd has already cleared out for the night or while you’re on the verge of blackout is one thing, BUT NEVER directly in front of people while he was coherent. That was sacrilege.

He’d been in enough interrogation rooms in his time to notice an obvious two-way mirror. While Bellmore Alternatives’ fancy waiver conveniently omitted it, there was no doubt that Dr. Vargas and his associates were observing him examine the girl at that very moment.

“She’s out cold, guys.” Ness’s voice echoed through the room again.

“She requested a sedative prior to taking part in the study. Please proceed, Mr. Castro. She has signed the consent form, rest assured, this is what she wanted.” The voice that came through the speaker sounded like Dr. Vargas, and Ness was happy to hear he’d given the green light.

All concern evaporated the moment they gave the okay. Doing things that were potentially evil was so much easier for Ness when someone was holding his hand. He unbuckled his smelly Lee’s with the primitive savagery of a cave dweller. He was already stiff, right from the moment he laid eyes on her.

His excitement rivaled that of a virgin. The potent scent of the now crunchy dried excrement caked to his butthole permeated with the shedding of his jeans. He was trying to access her and as he slid around her lips, he started to work his way into the clamped down clam. It seemed to be in a hibernating state, protective of allowing entry into the fleshy pleasure core within.

Finally, he broke in! It didn’t take but a few reps on the delicious lady for him to start to trigger. He pivoted back and forth with an Elvis-like splendor mixed with an old car that was ready to backfire. Ness’s knees buckled and he made unmanly noises, quaking about the lips.

He was cumming. It shot out with the fury of a volcano that hadn’t stretched its legs since the Mesozoic era. The long ride was over. He felt the load launch into her and immediately knew something was terribly wrong. The first indication was the screams of the formally subdued. They were not the screams of pleasure, they were nightmarish.

She awakened like she’d just been born, then lit on fire. A throat tearing shriek that pained Ness’ ears. Her restricted limbs flailed about like a slave in shackles.

“WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU!?” she barked.

“I’m… wait! Doc! You said she—” Ness removed himself from the girl and looked back at the mirror behind him as if it would offer him guidance.

“IT BURNS! IT BUUUUUUUUUURRRNNNNNSSS! AHHHHH!” Her cries were bone-chilling, and Ness had no response for what was happening. Her stomach and vaginal area deflated into her lumbar region, a melting mess of dissolving pigments and fluid. The stew of innards slithered into the slowly withering hip and thigh bones. It must have been an automatic reaction, but the girl foolishly rubbed her hands across her lower torso. She touched on some of the homicidal sperm Ness had shot into her and the flesh on her digits began to burn straight down to the skeleton.

Ness didn’t notice it amongst all the commotion, but as the liquid finished eating away at his legs, he collapsed. The top half of his body fell onto his rapidly deteriorating calves. Both of them exchanged horrified wails while their flesh bubbled, the pain starting to reach a threshold that was incomprehensible. He was no longer able to hear the girl moan, over a third of his own body felt phantasmal. His heart rate slowed as he looked back toward the mirror, ignoring the reflection of horrors. He tried to look past it to no avail.

On the other side of the glass, Dr. Vargas stood holding a clipboard and scribbling away. He’d captured a book-worth of detailed notes, watching the grotesque unpleasantness unfolding like a hawk. His peers around him were silent. His expression was stone, it was difficult to tell from his mannerisms alone if what he had witnessed was success or failure.

Once both of the subjects had ceased movement and speech, he exited the room with his associates following closely behind. They briskly singled-filed down the hall and continued to ride Dr. Vargas’s coattail into a spacious room with a refrigerator. He remained silent as he reached inside the chilled box and removed a bottle of bubbly. Dr. Vargas rocketed the cork across a small table and drank down a substantial first swig. The volume peaked as a roar of cheers erupted throughout the entire room.

ROTTEN EGGS

The shovel’s pointed tip cut through the damp soil. Max began to dig with the tool, impatiently turning over the dirt until he was about half a foot down. “Watch out! Don’t go too deep, if you break into them ahead of time it’s gonna smell like death and ruin everything,” Teddy scolded.

“I got it. I know what I’m doing. I don’t need a freaking babysitter.” Max continued recklessly until he saw the brown top of the egg carton. “Bingo.” Mischievous eagerness emanated from the boys. They couldn’t wait to make use of the foul dairy. They had buried two dozen eggs in the woods over two months ago, literally laying the groundwork for an important component of their Devil’s Night activities.

By that particularly chilly Halloween evening, they knew their eggs would have ripened to a point of ultimate repulsiveness. Anything less would be unacceptable. Teddy and Max had a long night ahead, they’d been plotting the evening for months now. They didn’t see the morbid holiday as a celebration or a night for thoughtful costumes, laughter and harvesting sweets. To them, it was much more serious—much darker.

Devil’s Night was a long-standing Michigan tradition that found its evil roots in the 70s. The mischief and crime committed during the annual evening of horror ranged from minor to grave. Everything from vandalism to murder was on record but what seemed to be the most noteworthy crime was arson. The fires had calmed down in the mid-80s but the teenage terrors were ready to change that. That night, they’d readied themselves for mayhem, primed to start their first fires and so much more.

“After everything we do for him tonight, do you think the master will finally show himself to us?” Max asked in a hopeful tone.

Teddy stared at his friend coldly, “If we send him enough people, he’ll have no choice… and if not, well, there’s always next year…”

They planned to raise hell that night. They planned to do Satan’s work. Much of it was organized and chronological, they had a schedule to stick to. The blueprint was to scorn and maim efficiently but if something fell into their lap, they weren’t too strict to resist. When Teddy saw the black cat rubbing itself up against the tree, he got an idea.

He carefully handed the two cartons of eggs to Max and unzipped his backpack. “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty. Here, kitty, you want a treat?” The cat wobbled its way toward him cautiously, purring against Max’s shin before meowing mere inches away from Teddy’s skeleton-painted face. He wrapped his rough hand around the back of the cat’s neck and elevated it off the ground. It flailed manically swinging its claws through the air.

He pulled a length of filthy rope from his bag—one end was already in the shape of a noose. “Tighten it around its neck and I’ll string up the other end,” Teddy instructed. Max did as he was told without question, the measure tightened around the feline’s throat. The cat’s once enchanting green eyes now bulged, their specific beauty ruined by the cracking bloodiness of the shattered and runny vessels.

Teddy elevated the cat to about shoulder level and tied the rope to the tree trunk for stability. “Give me the bat,” he commanded. Again, Max remained thoughtless, or maybe just on the same wavelength, stretching out the tar-toned aluminum stick to his friend. Teddy took hold of it and readied himself like a batter in a baseball stance might.

Before he could take his initial swipe at the furry fidgeting animal, two eggs cracked over its snout and chest. The rank slimy contents coated the kitty before drizzling down over the yellow and brown dead leaves below. The revolting smell unleashed was so potent, it required the boys to breathe through the mouth to avoid getting sick.

“This’ll be just like a piñata.” Teddy laughed before taking his first swing at its ribs. A sickening crunch could be heard, the sound excited the boys.

“Oh, man! That was sick! I wanna go now!” Max begged.

“Don’t worry I’ll leave some meat on the bone for you still…” Teddy explained, ignoring his pleas and taking his next swing. This strike was much more violent. It struck the cat directly in the face and with such force that one of its already popping eyes jumped out completely. Its small jaw was now useless, dangling downward similar to the eye above.

“Top that,” Teddy dared. The blood oozing from the cat’s head saturated the noose around its esophagus, it was sliding. Max stepped to the side looking ridiculous as he took a few practice swings in his ghoul attire. “And Lance Parrish steps up to the plate, after thirty-three homers last year, there’s no doubt he has what it takes to put an end to this game,” Max joked sickeningly, doing his best announcer impression. While the deranged pair laughed at Max’s impression, they didn’t notice the demolished kitty slipping free from the blood-soaked rope.

“Shit, Max! See, you were messing around and let it get away! You idiot!”

“Don’t get your panties in a bunch, we’ve got bigger fish to fry tonight anyway. Let’s get going, the real fun is next.”

Teddy couldn’t argue with his sinister grin, the sins they had in queue would be a new extreme. They put a carton of eggs into each of their backpacks and hopped onto their bikes. They had quite a distance to travel, they’d already left the city but it was a long way to Huntington still.

Normally, the rash of nasty fires were confined to the metropolis but Teddy and Max were planning to change that. They wanted to bring the inferno that Detroit was forced to deal with out into the boonies and they’d settled on a quiet suburb called Huntington to terrorize.

The streets they’d made their way down first were swarming with children. They decided that using their eggs on the little ones would make for the most fun. Once the shell exploded on the kids’ costumes, Halloween would be over for the brats. It would be impossible to do anything besides run home and try and clean off the horrendous stench brought forth by the rancid yolks.

As Teddy and Max pelted the now-screaming trick-or-treaters, they either began to cry or curse at them. Their rage depended on their age. The smell was horrid, even the boys got balance-titling whiffs as they rode by on their bicycles. One larger boy—maybe a year or two younger—had started to freak out. He was dressed as a gorilla, the fur upon the chest of his suit now smeared with the fetid bird abortion.

The boy removed his gooey mask and turned back to them. “You ruined it! You assholes ruined my costume! You’re gonna pay for this, you’ll get yours, I promise you!” This was a mistake that he couldn’t have known he was making. These were not the type of boys that frequented these softer parts, they were not the type of boys that took a threatening comment in passing. They whipped their bikes around in the other direction, rode up toward him and hopped off.

As Teddy walked up to the gorilla boy with his chest puffed out, the other bystanders dispersed. They knew that the vultures of the streets had arrived and that these evil buzzards feasted on both the living and the dead. “Let me save you the time, tough guy.” He stretched out his arms waiting for him to make a move. “C’mon, I’m right here. Didn’t you say I was gonna pay for it? Go ahead, make me pay, bitch!”

Suddenly, from behind, a candle-lit pumpkin smashed against the boy’s skull, knocking him to the ground. They ripped off his monkey mask and stomped his head multiple times while he remained unconscious. Max cut a head-sized hole in the base of the largest pumpkin near him. He pushed the orange helmet onto the unconscious boy’s head while Teddy retrieved a gas canister from his bag.

While he was dumping the accelerant onto the boy’s face, Max was removing a serrated steel blade from the black sheath camouflaged into his thigh. The cuts on the boy’s face stung as the gas touched them, drizzling through the areas that had been carved out from the pumpkin. He was beginning to awaken just as Max finished cutting his costume off. He’d been stripped all but for the pumpkin covering his skull and his piss-drenched tighty-whities. Max stabbed him in the chest half-heartedly, the slices that he continued to create weren’t intended to kill but seeing the flesh part aroused him. Next, he pinned one of the boy’s wrists with a combat boot and Teddy controlled the other.

Teddy examined him lighting the match as his eyes finally reopened entirely. “Let’s see if you can keep that promise after this.” He dropped the lit match and flames immediately engulfed the wickedly sharp features of the pumpkin. They covered the boy’s entire skull as he let loose a blood-curdling death shriek. As he pleaded for mercy, the demonic duo remained unflinching.

Parents from a nearby house eventually heard all the commotion and came out to see what the issue was. All they found was the static burning corpse of their neighbor, his face eaten away down to the bone, still spookily sitting inside a smoldering pumpkin. The screams on the street only grew louder.

Teddy and Max were long gone, riding their bikes down the winding backroads that they’d scoured for months in preparation for their rampage. The houses were less close together in the next area, this was a point of strategy. They had specifically cased a more private location to start the fires since it would require some time to arrange and build. They didn’t want someone sending the fire department before they could get the thing off the ground.

They stood outside the perfect house. Not only was the site ideal but the inhabitants were as well. This elderly couple wasn’t very mobile. The man that lived there got around sluggishly and his wife required a walker to manage. Their immobility would be the ideal complement for what they wanted to bear witness to that evening.

Watching them burn alive would be like nothing they’d ever been privy to. Sure, they had just set another boy’s head on fire and watched him squirm as the flames eventually revealed his skeleton, but this was different. Watching a mansion-like property be engulfed would create a blaze so big it would ascend to the heavens. They would surely garner the master’s attention afterward.

It would touch the privileged, it would touch the innocent, it would melt those who believed they were untouchable. Watching the old folks incinerate would be a real treat, how would they react when they awakened to the horror? Teddy looked at Max, it was time to stop wondering and find out.

Max made his way to the thick wires on the side of the house. He’d already played the role of the prowler before breaking in when they’d first cased the structure. He’d made note of which wires served to keep their telephone connected. It didn’t take long for Max to relocate the lines, and once he did, he slid the blade into them, severing any chance of outside interference.

They kicked in the basement window and worked their way up. First, they silently inspected the main floor and removed the batteries from both smoke detectors. After clearing it, they ascended the stairs where they assumed the elderly couple would be fast asleep. They doused the rugs outside of the bedroom and then the rest of the floor with the gas that remained in their primary canister. It was time to begin.

The flames spread quickly; it took a long time for the owners to even realize that the fire had started but it eventually woke them. Teddy and Max watched outside as smoke filled the bedroom. A lamp went flying through the window, shattering the glass and falling at their feet. It helped to filter out some of the smog that had accumulated inside.

The coughs and shouts began to rush out as they watched the old man’s head poke out of the window. His face looked like a coalminer’s might, covered in filth and ash. He laid over the broken window bordered with shattered glass. The cruel fencing sliced into his flesh as he pushed himself forward. As he fell from the second story, his form was awkward. His back arched like the letter C and his head cracked at the base being the first thing to hit the driveway. As the blood poured out of the crumpled figure, they could swear they heard the master purr.

What would be a nauseating crunch to anyone with a conscience was another notch on the belts of the devils that watched on. Their masterpiece was reaching climax, the sweet cries from inside began to fade. They watched the firestorm rage and house hollow out, enjoying every moment. They knew they didn’t have much time until they would need to move on. No matter how secluded the property was, they knew the smoke would send a signal.

They took off down the path toward the end of the road, it was a small trail they’d discovered that would allow them to reach their final destination efficiently. Their last stop was something they’d stumbled upon by happenstance. An old abandoned house, empty and shabby but perfect for one last fire.

They knew the other fires started would undoubtedly be attracting the minimal resources available. If they could get the second one roaring while the firemen were still dealing with the other dilemmas, it had a chance to be big. If this one spread quickly enough, it could reach the woods and maybe the whole town.

The abandoned house still looked beat to hell. The nasty siding was deteriorating and the windows had been concealed with aged two by fours held in place by rusted nails. As they pulled up to the old house, they noticed the previously boarded up door was unexpectedly ajar. The first thought they had was that some kids had probably broken inside, a concept that excited them. Lighting them on fire would be a bonus.

They quickly found out that wasn’t the case when one of the aged long boards fell from the second story above them. The board hit Max in the head, sending him to the ground. While his friend’s incapacitation had caught Teddy off guard, the tradeoff above was well worth Max’s concussion.

She looked youthful and brandished a curious smile that seemed to be targeting him. Her golden blonde hair glistened in the moonlight as she let loose a playful giggle that captivated. It was hard to tell what she was wearing; he could only see her face until she pushed another board loose. He made sure to dodge this one, Max was still out from the prior hit but Teddy was anything but concerned for him.

The girl had revealed her outfit to him—or lack of one. Her breasts held firm and round at a perfect height, the nipples hardened by the chill of the autumn air. Her striking exquisiteness left even a modern-day barbarian such as Teddy speechless. She curved her back out toward him, flexing her well-endowed figure teasingly.

“Sorry about your friend, I thought this place was abandoned!” She giggled.

“It’s cool, don’t worry about him,” Teddy replied. She could have killed him and he wouldn’t have given a shit.

“So, are you gonna just stand there or come up and have some fun with me?”

Teddy didn’t need much time to think about it, he left Max and made his way inside. They’d peered in between some of the boards before but had never been inside the place. The place was a health hazard, the ceiling was covered in black mold and it wreaked of piss and feces. But Teddy knew he could tough his way through it to spend a little time with the seductive angel upstairs.

She stood at the top of the second floor awaiting his company. She wasn’t wearing pants either, she was entirely bare from head to toe. With each step Teddy took toward the top of the flight, his smile grew. When they met at the top of the steps, she kissed him. He closed his eyes and passionately returned the favor, intertwining his drooling tongue with hers as any hormone-riddled teen might.

He touched his hand to her soft smooth breasts and rode them down her stomach. This is normally where he might unhook a girl’s bra or unbutton her pants but she’d made it easy for him. He was so randy to even notice that she’d made it too easy. Any life-seasoned soul would have known that experiences so sweet usually don’t happen organically.

Without warning, many things began to seem different all at once. As Teddy’s tongue continued to tangle with the girl’s, it suddenly no longer felt the same. The wetness in her mouth wasn’t quite what it was when they’d begun. It was still moist but now had a slight flavor to it. His mind began to wander while his palate digested the changes. Why does she taste different?

Her jaw cracked, losing any of its tension and her tongue ceased movement as he felt its weight falling dead inside his mouth. The skin his hands groped began to alter in texture, its shift was not a pleasant one. The formerly flawless and smooth surface had rapidly wilted, becoming rougher and stretchy.

When he opened his eyes, the girl wasn’t a girl at all. She’d aged lifetimes in a matter of seconds into a repellant wench. Her eyeball hung out of her skull inches from his as her bloodied face rained red all over him. Her hair tone flipped hues drastically from a young blond into a dark silver. The sudden transition frightened Teddy and as he pulled away from his kiss, he tumbled backwards down the staircase. The hag’s entire tongue fell off in his mouth and found its way down his windpipe.

She descended the steps slowly, still naked in her hideous true form. Teddy lay on the ground gagging on the old tongue while it obstructed his air canal. She watched him choke for a few final moments before the life drained out from his eyes. She placed her claw-like hands into his mouth and dragged him outside.

***

When Max came to, the noose was already tightened around his throat. As the old witch pulled him off the ground, he hung, eyes cracking in his head beside Teddy. His blue face and dead, blood-spattered expression showed that his spirit had vacated his vessel. As he struggled pointlessly to escape, he watched the decrepit woman’s appearance change.

Her skin sprouted black fur while her hands and feet molded into paw-like shapes. The one eye that remained in her skull turned green as the pupil compressed, shifting from round to vertical. Her body mass decreased to a size that began to look very familiar to Max. It was the same deformed cat from the woods. Its eye still dangling while its jaw flapped, yawning horrifically.

Max looked over at his dead friend then back towards the black cat. As a sinister hiss crept up around him while more air left his lungs, he couldn’t help but think that it now seemed certain that they would meet the master, just maybe not in the same environment they’d envisioned. And the sinister feline wasn’t the only thing that had crept up, a familiar repulsive scent had found its way back to them. As Max struggled to take in his final breath, he picked up the same nauseating, abhorrent aroma he recalled at the start of the night. Rotten eggs.

SOME GIRL

I had no idea what the fuck they were. Possibly some strange breed of worm or slug. We were too deep in the ghetto for exotic insects. Ants, flies, bedbugs, and roaches were the standard. You might see the occasional grasshopper or cricket if you trooped out to the football field but not the National Geographic level shit that was piled up and squirming before me. They had dozens of wet pupils peppering their casings. The endless overlapping sensors were riddled with spikey, porcupine-like hair. Their slimy mane was hypnotic as it churned through the vomit like a four-wheeler in thick muck. When they’d first landed, they were lethargic but their actions had suddenly accelerated to a gear that was ten times that of the fastest cockroach. Before I knew it, they had vanished…

Hours Earlier:

Store 24 was a complete shithole. It was the kind of place that got robbed at knifepoint only because the junkie wielding the steel couldn’t afford a burner. Every so often, some blackened soul would be huffing their (unbeknownst to them) final Newport outside. Death frequented the market, lingering in wait while knowing there wasn’t much breathing space in between atrocities. So, there the freaks loitered, sinking further into their hallucinogenic, deranged state. Bragging about this chemically-invented dream version of life that they claimed to be living.

Their delusions of grandeur were so sorely obvious it was laughable. The filth of the streets had left its imprint upon them and scarred so deeply, the finest magician couldn’t mask it. Their ruined exteriors were enough of a red flag to steer any decent citizen or potential employer away from conversation, but the eyes… The eyes transferred their imprisoned hell and depression in unison, until those leading a normal life broke away long enough to force themselves to forget what they’d seen.

The reaper remained hidden in the shadows that surrounded the enslaved. He watched them shackled by their ritual like a predator waiting for the fuck up. The next overdose, the next ailment, the next beatdown or knock-off. It didn’t take much to catch a bullet in the dome, and if they missed the first time, they had ammo for days. Smart brains always found a way to remain on the inside of the head, shit for brains got blown out onto the curbside and blended in with the rest of the excrement.

The godforsaken, downtrodden structure offered a consistent air of hopelessness upon contact, but the people that frequented the area were too fucking high to be blue. They were almost too high just to be. The grounds had been littered with the countless empty shells of dead junkies over the years. When they found them (usually out back by the dumpster), they’d be immersed in the filth and garbage. It was almost hard to tell they were there the way they blended in so seamlessly. My roommate, Nine, and I used to joke about it, we’d say it’d be much more practical if they built a graveyard in the massive vacant lot out back. Either that or a landfill, each would be just as appropriate as the other.

While the grounds were a haven for the thieves, addicts, and street dwellers, they could only buzz around for so long before being shooed away by the cops when they eventually popped in. They weren’t the type to lose sleep over stacking another body, so the boulevard garbage straightened up as best they could if they caught a glimpse of the blue uniforms or sparkle of the star-shaped badge. Hey, man, we’d all been there, Nine and I used to fuckin’ party too but everyone reaches a point where they have to find the answer. Only problem is sometimes it takes a while to figure the question. At some point, they all ask themselves the same one though: Do you want to live or die?

The choice was simple for guys like Nine and me, we were one and the same. I was a piece of shit by choice. It wasn’t because Daddy sucked my cock when I was a toddler or kicked the shit out of me, no. It wasn’t because Momma was a stripper with a taste for meth. I just liked the juice. I liked the week-long haze that the drugs put me in. I liked the wickedness of our derelict culture. The fear in a man’s eyes when I pulled the thang out, that moment of wonder that ran through him when he questioned if the day he met me was his last. I liked the streets. I liked being a nomadic renegade that made up the rules on the spot. I liked fucking haggard prostitutes, slapping them around and robbing them afterwards. I liked vandalizing and stealing cars. I liked throwing hands with the tough guy in the park, or beating up the pair of faggots I noticed going for a stroll by themselves too late. I loved being evil.

If you’re just dipping your toes in that sort of insanity, you still have a chance to shake it off. If you’re only doing it when you’re a minor, before your rap sheet gets too stretched, you’ve got a shot. But one thing I learned that you can count on, sure as clockwork, is if you’re still out there with a skull full of angel dust after you hit legal drinking age, you ain’t never leaving that shit. The curse infects with a deranged appetite until you’re not just dancing to the devil’s tune, you’re screaming it too.

This track-changing breakthrough first occurred when I was bunking with Nine in juvie. I’d gotten locked up for knocking out some wannabe Billy badass that cut in front of me leaving the gas station. Petty shit really. Nine was finishing up a longer stay for his masterminding of an assault and robbery of a local rapper by the name of Cliff Spliff. His punishment dropped twofold; what Nine didn’t realize was that Cliff was a made man of sorts. Turned out all that gangsta shit he was spittin’ on wax wasn’t just whistling past the graveyard, he was a card-carrying member of the CVP or Cape-Verdean-Posse.

The CVP got to his ass before the detectives did, and the perceived disrespect from the pistol-whipping and theft of Cliff’s jewelry resulted in the crew catching up with him for a pow-wow that would birth one of the most well-known handles around our way. Not only did they get the ice back, they also took a little extra by cutting off Nine’s entire fucking right thumb—hence the nickname. On that day, the stick-up kid people had referred to as “Carlos” died and a new tragic hood figure was born. A lot of things changed. Besides his name and philosophy, X-box would be a fuck-ton more difficult to play. But to his credit, like a true prince of the concrete jungle, he never breathed a word of it to the authorities. The detectives used some video evidence they’d acquired that placed him at the scene of the robbery but he still never fingered Cliff or his crew for chopping off one of his digits. In turn, the newly labeled “Nine” was looked at with a great deal of respect for not snitching.

The experience was like a mighty revelation for him, what if they had just squashed his ass altogether? He almost felt like he was given another chance at life since people he was affiliated with had been dusted for less than the stunt he pulled. The rare mercy he’d been shown prompted a reassessment of his future and altered his trajectory completely. I was fortunate enough to get paired up with him during a time when he was projecting promise, otherwise, my knucklehead might have wet the cement too.

When he’d explained his situation to me, I felt the warmth of the enlightenment he’d gained from his near-death experience. My eyes had been opened. We made a pact together that once we were out, we were done. No more senseless beef or serving dust, we were going legit. To avoid falling back into the trap, we planned on getting a spot together and leaning on each other while we found real jobs. Everything was going smooth as silk until I was on my way home and got the itch. That’s when it all started, when I first met her…

I’d just picked up a fat dime of premium haze and needed to grab a wrap (I said we were going straight, not fuckin’ angels). I usually lit one up in the evening just to take the edge off. Weed was fine, we were just aiming to keep away from the hard shit. Neither of us ever felt out of control when we smoked chronic, it was merely a relaxer. As Store 24 entered my line of sight, the flicker of the half-lit trippy sign drew me in. I knew the history but it would only take a second. I wasn’t there to chill, I’d be in and out.

I pulled the Cutlass into the handicap space and headed directly for the cashier. A couple of goons outside were grilling me but they didn’t say shit. Smartest move of the day for them. I gave the Indian woman a five for a box of green Dutch’s and split for the door just as quickly as I entered. I saw her standing by the payphone staring at me blankly through the glass doors.

She was a fine thing, Columbian if I had to guess. Her sexy caramel skin, jean shorts, strapless belly-shirt, and shoulder-length black hair were mesmerizing. The eye shadow, hoop earrings, and press-on nails made her a breathing hood stereotype, the kind of bitch I had a very specific fetish for. She brought back feelings of nostalgia and simple times.

I couldn’t help but keep my eyes resting on her as she stood stoically in the darkness. Illuminated only by the glow of the streetlight, she remained with the phone in hand. Her expression was ghostly, that of a woman speaking to the dead or maybe just listening. When I kicked the whip in reverse and backed out, my driver’s side lined up perfectly with the payphone. She’d hung up the receiver and was idle, hands by her side like she was waiting for something.

Fuck it. I knew I shouldn’t but my dick said otherwise. “Yo, what’s up, you need a ride or something?”

She set her elbows onto the car door and looked in. Her appearance still bulging with an alluring mysteriousness, the kind of weirdness and uncertainty I used to seek with regularity… “Can I use your phone? This one doesn’t work.”

“Yeah, for sure, you wanna smoke? I just got some purp,” I explained, brandishing the sticky bright green in the buff baggie. A sluggish grin appeared above her chin and she got inside. It was that easy, the bitch was a fiend—a hot fiend. She was an aimless fish in a sea of aloof losers, but unlike the rest, she was in the eye of the hurricane; somehow more tranquil than the other trash. The kind of person who’d get into a car with Jack the Ripper while his knife was still drippin’ if the payout was proper.

“I’ll let you use the phone at the house, it’s only a couple of minutes from here.” When she reached for her seatbelt, I could see the bruising and fresh track marks on her arm as she fastened it. How ironic, the bitch was somehow concerned with a fifteen-mile-an-hour fender bender but was playing Russian roulette on the reg. Blowing up her stringy overused veins with dope didn’t raise an eyebrow to her. Apparently, she never heard of a hot dose. Somebody cuts that shit wrong or fucks up a batch and boom, you’re dead. Ever since I was a kid, I’d found fiends to be comical in that way, their priorities were always so out of order.

The recent revelation of her deviancies had me making a mental note to use a jimmy hat. This bitch was fly but hooker status—no kisses, no contact without lambskin in between. No telling how much of what had been stuck inside her. I’d seen girls do some vile things for heroin, I knew how nasty it got. It was all good though, she would just be my toy for the evening. After I broke her ass, she’d be hitting the bricks anyway, this was a hook-up, not a date. I needed to bust a nut, I hadn’t been inside some pussy in weeks. It was like God seen me doing good in the world again and dropped this layup on my lap as a gift.

When I parked the Buick, then took a look around as we both stepped from the car. Some middle-schooler had been popped only just a few nights ago; straight-A student. Apparently, the kid did all the right things from what the chatter was. In this neighborhood, taking in a stray could be fatal. Around here, strays didn’t refer to ratty felines, it was loose barrel emissions of the ever-present nine milli that didn’t land in the flesh or splinter the bones of the intended target. The wild, psychotic spray that the shady masked man was dumping out the passenger window of the car with the tires peeling.

I was being bold by leading her right to the bedroom, but she didn’t object, I knew she wouldn’t. You don’t get into a car with a stranger, go into their house and then stop short of the bedroom. At that point, you’re all in, leaving your fate to the ocean waves as they lead you to your final destination. I thought they had brought her to the shark but sometimes on your journey you realize you’re not looking in the mirror, there’s just a lot of other people that cast your same reflection.

She kicked off her heels and splashed down on the under-washed gray comforter. I’d gone with a hue in the middle since straight black or white showed too much of the happenings. Nine would be home in about an hour or so unless he stopped off somewhere like I had. I was trying to get up in her box and have the bitch bounce before he got back. I didn’t want no extra turbulence in the household. He’d probably be pissed if he learned about me bringing a hoodrat back to the spot. Either that or he’d be tempted for sloppy seconds.

With a goal of haste in mind, I pulled the Nokia from my pocket and handed it to her. I wanted to let her get the call out of the way while I got the smoke ready. I removed the Dutch’s from my hoodie and sat on the bed beside her. I pulled the trash basket close to me—empty Hennessy bottle and Styrofoam container from last night’s takeout dinner from Tasty China. You can tell a lot about people from their trash, mine was clearly that of a single man. I watched her dial a few digits into the phone, it only seemed like three or four, not enough to make a call but regardless she pushed the little green button. I picked up the straight razor from my nightstand and split the cigar down the middle. I dumped the sweet-smelling tobacco guts out into the shopping bag that lined the can and set the cancer paper down with the blade.

She had the phone to her ear and was listening intently when I ripped open the dime and started to break up the bud. I grabbed the wrap and wet each side with my tongue, watching her closely as I started to roll the blunt. This bitch was acting weird. The more she listened, the more her eyes looked like they belonged to someone else. The prior beach-bum serenity when we’d initially spoken had been replaced with a twistedness, a look of void possession. She still wasn’t too strange for some strange though. I’d fucked plenty of weird whores before, I hadn’t put in this much effort to pull the plug just off vibes alone.

She hung up the phone without saying a word, just as I was finishing winding up the spliff. Strangest conversation or lack thereof that I’d ever seen. She handed me back the phone and reached into her purse. As I flicked the all-black Bic and sparked the blunt, she retrieved her needle. The shit was already loaded which I found a bit fiendish but even more suspicious was the fluid within. The orangey concoction had what appeared to be hundreds of dark lines spiraling inside it. It was like no smack that I’d ever slung or seen for that matter and I’d seen more kinds of dope than an asylum, so that’s saying something.

She didn’t ask if she could lift off, she just thoughtlessly poked one of the plethora of burgundy oozing holes on her arm. I inhaled deeply, hoping it wasn’t gonna be one of those long nights that I’d said goodbye to over a year ago. The nights that, as fragmented as they were, I had enough memories of to live off of for the rest of my life already. The nights that could potentially draw Nine back to the dark side with me. The bitch better handle her shit.

She seemed straight at first, sure her eyes were clockin’ a bit but that was normal. She laid back, grabbing hold and burying her face in a fuzzy pillow. I watched her fidgeting a bit. Her squirms indicated a search for comfort, something that would be undeniably challenging with the amount of juice running through her. Things were probably a little too intense for her now, she was attempting to corral the chaos. Who knew what the fuck she just shot up though, her confusion would most likely remain uncaged, but in truth, that was an uncertain premise.

“You wanna hit this?” I asked, wondering if she could even hear me. It probably wasn’t the best idea in the world to put another drug into the bitch but I figured it might level her out a bit. She slowly pulled the pillow from her face, revealing a pair of pupils that were the size of half-dollars. The alien exhibition was even more frightening with the drool flowing like a sudsy river from her airhole. She reached out, accepting the offering, plucking the smoldering chronic from my fingertips.

I regretted offering the weed as soon as she pulled it closer to her splurging spit crater. She nigger-lipped it, leaving enough saliva behind to foster contraction. It was becoming more difficult to prepare myself to fuck the girl, her behavior and sex appeal was trending down to a toilet-worthy status. That’s what I was thinking in my head yet, somehow, my dick was still hard. Just carnal instinct I suppose.

She set the cannabis down in the ashtray by my bedside, then began staring at the jean tent my cock had erected in my pants. She peeled off her shorts, revealing that she’d been going commando. Surprise, no it really wasn’t. A city fly slut like herself might have torn through two G-strings by now. If she was trippin’ with the needle, she was most likely fuckin’ for paper too. I probably wasn’t the first dude she was fuckin today and perhaps not the last. She bent over on the bed, letting the pillow find her face again while flexing her pussy and asshole at me and just waited.

I pulled the rubber from the stash spot in my nightstand and unbuckled my pants. It was easy to slide it on—my blood was already pumping and I was extended to the fullest. I tried to push my way into her about half a dozen times but she wasn’t wet. She was dry as cremation ash and the condom was lube-less. My girls never needed lube, they juiced themselves, but for whatever reason, she was different. I tried once more before pulling back, dick still at half-mast.

“You’re not wet,” I laughed rubbing the skin between her vag and asshole. She straightened up and turned her giant, doll-like goo-goo eyes back toward me. An obedience tangled in desire festered inside them. But what did she desire?

“I’ll get wet for you now.” Initially, I believed she was going for the weed. It felt like my eyes were deceiving me when her unnatural strawberry nails passed it altogether and instead seized the straight-razor. She perched herself back up on the bed after exposing the blade to its full length. She held the handle at the base firmly against the mattress while the gleaming sharp metal stood vertically.

It all happened so rapidly, the strange spirals of madness stemming from her, hypnotizing me, seducing me, and slackening my reactions with each tick of the clock. Everything slowed to a crawl, in the midst of the quicksand of the mind.

Normally, if I’d noticed the setup for the disturbing activity she was prepping for her blueprint, it would have been met with my outrage. I usually could have prevented or at least pacified it before commencement. But those massive whirling eyes were all I could focus on. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t move, I could only watch, and to my revulsion, watch I did.

Her dry gash was now wet as she scaled her meat curtain busily, sliding it up and down the blade like it meant nothing. The once silver steel disappeared deep inside her, reemerging with a rose hue as it sliced into her pink soft. She grinded it in such an animalistic manner that it bore into her pubic bone. The blood and tissues descended upon the bed, splattering over her hands and puddling beneath them. My trance state continued as I observed her. That’s when the quivers began.

Her body rocked back and forth, inhuman swellings knotted up beneath her crust, bulging to psychedelic dimensions. An ungodly screech commenced as she readied herself—for what I wasn’t sure but whatever it was spawned dread inside me. I wanted to cover my earholes but couldn’t. The rumbles found their pinnacle; the puke rained down at a cataclysmic magnitude. This wasn’t empanadas, plantain or a fucking skirt steak though, the contents were otherworldly. Alien, like her spellbinding gates that she stared through me with. The gates which left me to tread in the pool of odd I now felt bound to. She closed her eyes as if trying to force more up which allowed me to momentarily loosen the grip of the paralysis. That’s when I noticed the upchuck was moving.

I had no idea what the fuck they were. Possibly some strange breed of worm or slug. We were too deep in the ghetto for exotic insects. Ants, flies, bedbugs, and roaches were the standard. You might see the occasional grasshopper or cricket if you trooped out to the football field but not the National Geographic level shit that was piled up and squirming before me. They had dozens of wet pupils peppering their casings. The endless overlapping sensors were riddled with spikey, porcupine-like hair. Their slimy mane was hypnotic as it churned through the vomit like a four-wheeler in thick muck. When they’d first landed, they were lethargic but their actions had suddenly accelerated to a gear that was ten times that of the fastest cockroach. Before I knew it, they had vanished…

“Yo, X! What the fuck is going on in there? You alright, dog?” When I heard Nine’s voice, the planes of existence shifted; the singular stage now erased, I was immersed in what could only be fantasy consolidating with reality. Something snapped, the equivalent of a cerebral earthquake unfolding sadistically in my head. The genuineness of what I was witnessing—the carnage and bizarre terror I’d directed into my bed—was slapping me in the face. The pounding on the door was now rattling the frame. “Xavier! What the fuck, dude!?”

The second command resonated, it prompted me to jump up and race toward the door with the compliance of a hungry hound hearing the chow bell. I flung open the door, my flailing stone-hard cock extending toward Nine like it wanted a handshake. The crazy bitch still behind me shrieking through her dry-heaves while fucking the razorblade must have made for an offensive backdrop. Our constant chore as overly masculine males left us always going out of our way to over-verify our heterosexuality to our boys. Advancing toward your man with a raging boner had worked to undo much of my previous peacocking.

Nine was speechless, mouthing paragraphs of words that never came to be. Finally, he grabbed hold of my wrist (being sure to stay clear of my dick) and pulled me through the doorway. He grabbed the handle and pulled the door shut, trying his best to separate us from the nightmare in my bedroom. Even once he’d closed it, he was holding on for dear life, suctioning the door toward himself in an effort to keep the bitch bottled. His expression harbored a look of disbelief, disappointment, and disgust all rolled into one fatty. The motions of his lips finally paired with a voice.

“Pull your fuckin’ pants up, X! Damn, man, what’s wrong witchu?!” I was gathering my bearings back while I lifted my britches up. I tugged at the tip of the rubber, attempting to remove it with the laziness of a child. It had to be drawn-out at least a foot until it gave way, detaching with the speed of a bullwhip and accidentally smacking me in the face. It was truly some Three Stooges shit. “Is that bitch…” The words were so fantastic even a hardened child of the gutter like Nine had to pause before saying them. “Is that bitch in there fucking a knife?” I was the one searching for words now, my jaw running laps with nothing to show for it. “Who the fuck is she, X?”

It was a great question, a fair one too seeing as I’d brought her into our sanctuary. I wish I could have given him a better response but his probably would have been just a good as mine. “Some girl?” I answered in the form of a question. His face transitioned from an angry fear to annoyance. Through the floundering and confusion, I’d finished buckling my pants. I was thankful for my accomplishment—as was Nine. I’d proven I could now follow basic instruction again.

“There’s something off with her,” I mumbled, still getting the engine started.

“Yeah, you fucking think!” he yelled, still pulling the door toward him. The girl started pounding on the flimsy wood, her brainless grunting rang out, semi-filtered by the barrier between us.

“She took some kind of drug and started acting all crazy. The worms, man, the fuckin’ worms were everywhere.” In my mind, I could still think efficiently but when the thoughts came out, I was still limited in my delivery. The girl’s blood and vomit-coated hand blew through the door, clenching the gore-speckled razor firmly. She swung it about, slashing the minimal range she had access to on the other side, missing Nine’s grill by inches.

“The knife! Get the fuckin’ knife, X!” Nine’s hysteria was uncommon, if he was getting shook up, you knew you were knee-deep in some shit. I got her by the wrist and wrestled the blade from her strongman grasp. I thought I was going to have to break her fuckin’ hand to get it free but the human liquids helped grease the tracks. As soon as I had the weapon in my clutches, Nine looked at me ready for business. “Now, this tweakin’ bitch is getting knocked the fuck out.”

I’d seen Nine layout countless contenders in juvie with his infamous two-piece (sometimes a single). His lightning left was difficult to dodge even when you knew it was coming. Seven out of ten times, it was landing clean on the jawline, followed up by the shutdown right that banged on the mark’s ear and temple area. It was like having only four fingers on that hand somehow gave him an unfair advantage. While I didn’t wholly understand how he did it, the proof was in the pudding. If you counted them all up, Nine had left a mini-Holocaust worth of boys slumped and unresponsive in the yard.

It was this shady part of him he had to put in a box when they made the lifestyle switch. It was the only way to subdue his hyper-sensitive temper. But the kid was always struck with jubilation whenever he’d been required to dust his appetite for bloodshed off. However, this time, when the door came open, I could tell things were different. The thing on the other side wasn’t what he’d anticipated, evidenced by the nirvana in his gaze melting away upon face-off.

Sure, a bitch fucking a knife was disturbing, but not something entirely unheard of for us. Nine used to have a tiny trick he messed with that was a complete freak, he’d spoken to me about a sadistic harmony he’d acquired in the testing of her limits. He would stick his dick in her to loosen her walls up before fucking her with the tip of his rifle. Then he’d ask her if she wanted him to blow his load inside her, to which she’d scream, “Yes, Daddy!” Of course, when he pulled the trigger, it wasn’t loaded but the girl came harder than a Rodman rebound attempt.

Although he never did, he’d confessed to me that there wasn’t a day that went by where he didn’t think about putting a bullet in the chamber before their next session. That was the type of chilling horror Nine held back on a daily basis. In addition, he had no qualms with facing off against a chick. He was not above smackin’ a bitch if the situation warranted it. In his prison of insanity, the row of imbalance in which Nine was housed was a place few could imagine, let alone relish or find succulence in. All the pre-thoughts of potential outcomes were gravy to him, he was ready for war until he saw the adversary.

His airflow halted and I could tell that little voice in his head he called confidence had gone mute. His tightly balled fists relaxed ever so slightly. He hadn’t been prepared to digest the nothingness in her gates, the oil spill of evils expanding ruthlessly; yin eradicating the yang. He hadn’t seen her crust flustering like some kind of B-movie special effects presentation. He hadn’t seen the dangling, undefinable hell-worms that leaked from her infested mandible.

I watched his eyelids stretch a bit before they settled back down and his knuckles went white again. He just didn’t give a fuck. The left hand shot in at the chin area as usual. Although he clearly popped it, the unhinged strip of bone somehow regained its previously unfractured potential and drove its way upward. Her hideous grin clamped down on his trigger and middle fingers like a fucking bear trap, pulling the digits clean off.

The nightmarish reality struck me as both repulsively ghoulish and satirical. I’d been calling the guy Nine for who knows how long now, “Seven” just wouldn’t have the same ring to it. But how the fuck would he justify the moniker moving forward? I would have probably laughed if I wasn’t in fear for my life still. Nine wasn’t screaming, he seemed more trapped in a stupor than anything. Lost in the gates at the mercy of the surf. The potency of his shock was the degree that was normally reserved for the electric chair.

I dropped the blade in exchange for the burner stashed below the table and cocked the hammer with the quickness. We had a single revolver that was always holstered underneath as a measure of protection from a hood that wasn’t shy about crawling in your windows. Before the bitch could get on top of Nine, I let off and proved that the slug is mightier than the worm. She put her hand up just in time to let the bullet pass through it before it blew her wig all over the fuckin’ door. Fake nails, horsehair, and maroon warmth splattered everywhere. The shot had hit right in her bubbly, voluptuous, dick-sucking-lips. I couldn’t tell if the abnormal, fatty substance slithering its way out of her skin was from the bitch’s last Botox party or just more of the outlandish materials that manifested in her as a result of her “drug” use.

Her watery, black tar eyes leaked out like a runny egg the cook took off the grill too soon. A cloudy, uncooked abortion that any civil mind would’ve sent back without even considering it. The once plentiful hell-worms had again gone into hiding. Which, in addition to the fact I just dusted someone, served to only further surge my anxiety. What the fuck were we going to do now?

“Hey! Would you shut the fuck up down there! I have to get up at 4 AM tomorrow, assholes!” We heard the shouting followed by the stomping of our upstairs neighbor. He must have just thought we were partying—either that or he’d become immune to the sound of gunfire. Neither would be too outrageous to expect on our block.

“Fuck you, Marco! You don’t hear us complaining when you’re having your coke parties! Keep running your mouth and I’ll put your ass to sleep in a way that any fuckin’ noise won’t matter,” Nine hollered, seemingly back from the dead.

Marco didn’t say another word, he knew it was true. The hypocrite was bringing home noisy-ass hookers almost nightly. The guy lived paycheck to paycheck, dumping all his money into white and gnarly snatch, it was like a constantly rerunning evening sitcom. The fat, sweaty Mexican lured obnoxious, diseased crawling, powder-puppies into his apartment and let them feast on enough booger-sugar to get numb enough to fuck a bottom-feeding beaner such as he. He knew we had a legit gripe, hence the lack of argument.

Nine dragged himself off the floor, he was in pain, the crimson flowing from the sockets where his fingers were moments earlier. He hauled himself over to the sink and ran the brutalized extremity under the faucet. “What was that bitch on, PCP or something? What the fuck are we gonna do now?”

“I never seen no PCP make you throw up fucking worms, not without me being on that shit too, fam.” Drug use could induce trippy states but this was not a state of mind, this was life. “I say we put this bitch in the dumpster and clean up—” Just as I was about to finish my sentence, I was interrupted by an unmistakable vibration. The sounds of a silenced cellphone ringing against a hard surface. Nine was still slumped over, half inside the sink with the water running when I turned toward it.

My blue and gray Nokia looked like it had been fished out of someone’s innards. The drying plasma smeared as the screen lit up and the phone twisted another clockwise tick with each ring. I merely blinked, an action that can take 1/100th of a second, and the worms were all over it. Their prickly bodies flapping about, agitated, drawn in by the call. My body’s invasion happened so fast I didn’t even feel them occupy my orifices, but I could sense them beneath me. I knew with certainty that they were inside when I was stripped of all motor functions.

I could feel them squirming in my cranium, pushing against both tissue and bone. Possibly the most disturbing aspect of their decision to take lodge in me was that I was still the pilot of my thoughts. I could think about everything that was happening and the movements I made but had no control over them. I liken it to when I used to wonder if we remained in our corpses once we’d passed on. I suppose, either way, the worms would inhabit you.

As I grabbed the cell, their brothers that were once amassed upon it also found refuge inside me. They moved slower, enjoying their journey. The group that had already entered me forced my mouth open like a pimp did his trick, allowing their brethren to join at their own pace.

When I finally answered the call, I heard a peculiar communication forecasted. One that my human ears couldn’t decipher but my new-half translated quite clearly. Not into words but instead into a feeling. I could feel them rumble with excitement and I could hear them sing the praises of their message.

I needed to leave, but first I had to shit. I wasn’t sure if the worms could comprehend that a man traveling around with his drawers overflowing with feces might potentially raise an eyebrow but it felt like they could. They felt swift and stealthy, deceptive, and nefarious.

They didn’t want to be seen; I could feel it. After I slid the phone into my pants, they advanced me toward the bathroom. Nine was now silent, under the spell himself. The army of hi-jacking parasites had let the presence be known in the privacy of the apartment. The gates of evil had been unlocked.

When I sat on the toilet, the shit flooded out, a peanut-coffee color that smelled like burning hair and a freshly drained grease trap. I felt a cluster of worms eject from my anus. Their sheer bulk and the sharpness of their spines had torn my rectum to hell.

The pulsating flesh shuddered as the feces continued to flourish. The lump of nasty that just found its way into the bowl was creeping back out of it. The pain and sensations as their tortuous follicles prodded and reentered was all too horrifying to a now voiceless man. Some crawled in through the gaping hole in my blown-out cavern, others slowly single-filed into my dickhole. The burning, cutting sensation traveled up my urethra until they went for a dip in my bladder.

They maintained their manipulation, guiding me to wipe my ass as best I could before stuffing the yawning, peanut butter and jelly pit full of paper towels. When I returned to the kitchen, Nine had bandaged up his hand as best he could. They’d had him put a glove on to help conceal his ripped-off fingers. We moved forward until we reached the dead girl. We froze there, looming over her corpse momentarily before towing it out of our doorway, into the kitchen and out of sight.

The hell-worms seemed to know how to drive a car too, we had no issues driving miles away. They seemed to like our music—hip-hop and R&B in particular. I noticed when they’d had Nine tune the station into KIX 106.3 and then crank up the bass and volume some. The fucking worms even had my head bopping back and forth while I mouthed some of the words to a Cam’ron jam. Whatever this thing was, it knew us with the sort of deep and profound intimacy of a lover.

After about an hour or so, the radio station turned static, I could tell we’d traveled far as the crackle invaded the Cutlass. It had Nine tinkering with the station, but after a few minutes, he couldn’t seem to find what he wanted and just shut it off instead. I hadn’t really been paying attention to street signs or where we’d been heading, I was more so just thinking about my family and friends. Trying to accept that I was gone now. I still had Nine but he knew as well as I did that we were anything but ourselves.

The area we’d reached was a dusty, dry kind of desert-scape. The nightfall modified what the feel of its daytime appearance would have outpoured. I parked near a large, lightless circular pipe that stood about ten feet high. The protective grid that restricted outsiders from entry was damaged. Not that I suspected there was some cult-like assemblage of outcasts trying to knock the fuckin’ doors off the place; it was a sewer, not a titty bar. Although, somehow, we were there…

We trudged onward, through the foamy liquid that looked highly toxic in appearance, bleeding and possessed. The nothingness hanging in front of us, the foulest aromas squatting in the stagnant air. We’d walked for such a distance that my calves almost hurt as much as my asshole, until we saw the light. Peachy and angelic, it cast itself around the corner only a few yards away.

Our true reactions to whatever lay beyond the bend would be suffocated by the ills that polluted us but there wasn’t a whole lot left to astonish us. Perception had already been altered in a way that was undoubtedly irreversible. Our enlightenment was the breed man strove for. But once attained, it became the variety he hid from in the closet, praying for it to somehow be undone.

As the curtain came back, we were one with the source. What was revealed to us was something that many people had seen before but it wasn’t so much if you had seen it as it was how you had seen it. A god to some, a devil to the rest but it was indisputably the inclusion of all.

It was the definitive intersectionality of everything we knew and everything we didn’t. A crippling sickness swept over us as the worms within rattled with eagerness and obedience. It was like they were seeing the creator who held a beauty that trumped all else. They existed to be submissive, they existed to do its bidding.

Physically, it was an abomination. An uncontained collection of meat, fat, and muscle. The lord of the stomach purge gurgled outward; a portrait of distortion, the suction-cup-like growths allowed it to find any footing the pipe was willing to offer. Its teeth were countless and its mouth the master of linguistics; able to speak the unfathomable both here and elsewhere. The orangey midnight sauce secreted from its pores, flowing through a nonexistent tubing into a jug-like receptacle.

Its ever-changing depiction was real to the touch—a revolving door of dreams. The hells of the purgatory we referred to as Earth parading an unabridged showcase of unflinching mayhem and revulsion. Was it responsible? Was it a vehicle? I took a moment to thank whatever was allowing me to wonder still. I was seeing things that were inexplicable, a bombardment of entirely new visuals reproducing with all the worldly things I fantasized about or sought nostalgia from.

Suddenly, all was vibrant, our pilgrimage had dawned. It was the disease and addiction which we sought to share. It was the milk of mother absurdity which we hungered to regurgitate into the ignorant. We would package it to accommodate, serve it in its most palatable form until the benighted found their freedom. It would only take a moment of weakness for their superstitions to be slaughtered and we would be standing on the street corners when the time was ripe. Under the flicker of an eerie streetlamp for all eternity, ready to offer a taste.

THE PROCUREMENT OF PURITY

My nerves had risen to an uncomfortable climax as the heavy door shut behind me and regulated the cold evening draft to the exterior of The Old Canteen. I hadn’t chosen the restaurant; it was Roberto’s suggestion. Being half-Italian, I didn’t mind the cuisine selection, but tonight had nothing to do with enjoying the food I’d grown up eating. My agenda was specific, my focus was attuned with my goal. Rekindling our connection and recapturing Roberto’s interest again were the night’s only priorities.

The backend of six years is a long time, I imagined I would appear quite different to him now but that worked in my favor. My unswerving single status had led to a mass exodus of the happy fat we all gain when we’ve become comfortable and secure. Although the relationship fluff had disappeared, I still felt like I weighed the same. Had the physical baggage been replaced with the mental?

Regardless of my question’s answer, I had no choice but to wallow amongst my newfound aesthetic enhancements. I’d become less myself and more the interpretation of what I believed masculine society longed for. I wore a mask—layers of carefully applied cosmetics that worked wonders in concealing not only my inadequacies but my misery. I was dipped in seduction, attractive coats painted on my nails and my hair had found a new shade.

I had become more in sync with what the general consensus of sexy was as I twirled a finger-full of my unnaturally highlighted locks. When our gaze met, I saw him struggle to fit the image of who I was into who I’d become. I noticed a sheepish grin crop up above his chin; he must have finally gotten the versions to overlay. I pictured a crazed blood rush inflating his ash Levi’s as his manhood thickened with the sight of my evolved slender form. Jackpot.

I knew this supple version of me that he’d never met with deep cherry streaks invading my follicles turned him on. His tastes were a tad predictable and shallow. I remembered it distinctly; frequenting the seedy rock shows downtown that he seemed to obsess over, watching his eyes wander to fishnet-clad trashy goth girls draped in a mixture of midnight and obnoxiously loud neon. There was a time when I wondered if he even really gave a shit about the music at all or if he was just there to stare down club rats.

His face was absent of the boredom and swallowed disgruntlement that normally left his brow creased. Still, the furrows of his past eye rolls remained from the time we’d spent. The time before he’d found the heart to sever his ties with the old bland me that he’d buried his interest in long ago. The concept of who I was had just been reborn for him, I could see his mind cleaning it up, processing the edit and updating the file. While this meeting was arranged entirely out of the blue, this is exactly what I’d envisioned. Roberto was a single man again and I was confident that an in-the-flesh encounter might summon such a reaction, but now I was blessed with a different strengthened poise post metamorphosis.

I wanted him to feel like he was watching a movie he’d seen as a kid that was better than he recalled. It was important he framed me in that manner if I was to spend the night with him. It shouldn’t be too laborious to entice him, the man you lose your virginity to holds a unique place in every woman. They leave that unmistakable mark that literally rips into you. As I took my seat at the small square table in the corner, my psyche was showered with flashbacks. The blueish glow of the television shimmering off the clumpy batch of red wetness that I’d slimed his shaft with—the inflammation of vigor, the smell of blood.

I noticed he’d donned a similar countenance to the one that had possessed him that night. Our eyes remained dryly fixed on one another, barely stopping to blink. The values and estimations I held diverted nearly opposite to most of the girls I’d interacted with throughout the duration of my adolescence. Most females (at least the ones I’d been surrounded with) broached the topic of their virginity as problematic. It was this invisible monkey clawing at their spine, something they felt ashamed of, which I always found confusing. That always seemed like it should be more of a guy thing to me, but apparently, it wasn’t bound by gender.

This widely-accepted perception left the overwhelming majority running around spreading eagle for the first douche bag they came across with a hard-on. The object, to them, was simply to be one; to be used, at least in the beginning...

As they matured, they would exercise these promiscuous aspirations they held and journey through the strangest of circumstances on the principle that they were boosting their experience. In time, they’d become queens of the bedposts, refining their abilities until they were skilled enough to satisfy the most voracious of appetites. Only then would they be ready to find a man.

To me, those girls were all victims of themselves and each other. Their ideology fell in line with whatever the buzz of the week was. Whoever screamed their opinion the loudest must have been the smartest, right? It was peer pressure at its worst and it had crushed them all into conformity. There was no intellectual lucidity, only this cancerous groupthink. I may not have been as relevant because of my perceived “prudeness” but I felt virtuous in the choices I made. Sure, maybe I hadn’t picked the right guy but it was only one guy. I knew exactly whom I’d cautiously selected to entrust my body to. I felt vindication in where my path had led me. The proof came years later. I was at peace with my decisions and they weren’t. I could plainly see that much through their now lying smiles.

What they had failed to see initially is that most men sought purity in a partner. They wanted to be the ones to break you, to mold their woman into a posture of their choosing. In so many ways, the person they chose to hook onto the side of their arm was the ultimate representation of who they were. My whorish, used, and haggard counterparts had no bitch in that race. They’d seen more cock than Perdue and it showed. Their loose, flapping lips spoke volumes without saying a single word. All the mellowed men smelled the stink lines snaking from them and kept their distance now. Their carefully laid out blueprint had left them regulated to acting as trash toys for the younger boys.

To be clear, I didn’t think that was fair necessarily—the double standard. How a man can dive into a sea of women, free of judgement, but a lady partaking in a comparable swim resulted in the raising of labels. Whether the perception was crooked or straight, just or unjust, being branded a slut was something I’d gone out of my way to avoid and had done so successfully. Now I was once again dining beside the lone man who’d been inside me. The one who understood my limpidness better than anyone from the times which we shared.

“Gwen, wow. You look absolutely fantastic.” He wasn’t lying, the words were dripping, I could sense the salivation oozing from his tone. I couldn’t have been confronted with a more promising sign. He was loving what he saw. I hadn’t been boring myself with endless agonizing hours in the gym and blowing lunch most weekdays for nothing. It was working.

“As do you, I see some things never change,” I replied, lifting my water up to my lips. I was a bit fidgety but felt us starting to relax in unison. We always had a special connection, even now it seemed like we’d begun to unintentionally mirror each other. I wanted him to know from the jump that I was planning to lay it on thick and let the flirtation amongst us fester to a fever pitch.

“I hope you’re into this place, I remember you used to love when I made you lasagna. Theirs isn’t quite as good as mine, but it’s decent.” Roberto still had his jokes, the signature of his charm and charisma had far from washed-out.

“Can I be completely honest with you?” I could tell he was almost fearful at the thought of the inquiry. We didn’t end on the best of terms so the gulp in his swallow that I faintly picked up on was understandable.

“Of course, you can tell me anything,” he fibbed.

“I could give a fuck about this place or the food. I’m only here because you are.” His eyes widened with wonder. The timid, submissive caterpillar he’d first come to know was no more. In bloom, not only had I broken through a shell comprised of dull skin, but I’d also found my voice. His speechless state permitted me to let off another round. “Also, I never liked your lasagna. I just told you I did.” All apprehension and intimidation had left me, I was running the show now.

“Well then, what did you like?” He squinted his eyes seductively showing a slice of his teeth. It always amused me when he asked questions that he already knew the answers to. I smiled at him, gaining pleasure in knowing our minds were on the same track.

“I think we both know the answer to that.”

The waiter approached the table, smirking, he could sense that the chemistry was clicking. He seemed to feel awkward breaking our love swelling glares but it was his job to do so. “I see the lady has arrived, welcome. May I start the two of you off with a drink or appetizer possibly?”

I never took my eyes off Roberto when I spoke. “I’m not really hungry tonight, just thirsty.” That was music to any horny man’s ears; forget the food, let’s just get fucked up. He took charge and ordered us a wine that I wouldn’t have been able to pronounce, supposedly one of their nicer bottles. Was he trying to impress me? Moments later, we had the deep red fluid before us and again memories were invoked of his initial entrance inside me. I knew he was thinking the same thing, he had to be.

“So, what happened with you and Angela?” He looked a bit blindsided by my adjustment. When rejoining the company of an ex, was it not appropriate do discuss the most recent? His silence finally broke.

“I don’t know. Something changed I guess.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not really too sure, honestly, she just kind of disappeared on me. I thought it was going well, we were even talking about moving in together finally. I guess that shows how in touch I was.” His sarcasm wasn’t boiling, it was blue. “But I never got an explanation in the end.”

“Oh, she left you? I wouldn’t have figured that.”

“You and me both,” he snickered, throwing back a generous mouthful possibly due to the prickly subject matter at hand.

“So, she just randomly ghosted you?” I was pulling at his heart now. He looked up at me and even through his chameleon-like qualities, I could see the hurt he clung to although his behavior still remained ever deflective. He knew how to defer and twist his pain into something beautiful, he was a highly controlled man. Roberto wasn’t familiar with rejection and it showed. It was a new area for him but he would learn that in the gloomy hemisphere, where the rejects tread, no matter what ticket you’d been gifted the seating is always piss-poor. I could’ve explained that much for him.

“Yeah, I guess so, but when you hit me up and asked to meet again… I couldn’t believe it. I had been thinking about you right before, it was so random. I can’t remember the last time I felt so excited.”

“So, Angela never excited you?” I could tell while he didn’t enjoy me asking the question, he understood it.

“Listen, Gwen, tonight isn’t about Angela, it’s about us. Trust me, that’s over now. I haven’t seen or spoken with her in months, clearly it was a mistake. I mean, Jesus, what’s it been, almost seven years since we’ve seen each other? I’m sure you had a few horror stories of your own.” He lifted the bottle off the table and after refilling his glass, he topped off mine, still patiently awaiting my response.

“Truthfully I haven’t.” He seemed to find my response comical, mistakenly framing me the jokester.

“Lucky you, I guess there’s more than one prince charming after all.” He brushed his shoulders off gently.

“No, that’s not it.”

“What are you saying then?”

“I’m saying that you were my first and my only.”

After my unflinching revelation, he nearly choked on his drink but was able to wrangle back what would have made for an embarrassing, cinema-style spit-take. The idea that this young woman before him, whom he deflowered some time ago, had the self-control of a libido-less nun, shocked him to the skeleton. How a pretty-faced smoke show with a tight fuckable body could have avoided the touch of another since we’d last crossed paths must have seemed like pure, laughable absurdity. It probably felt downright unbelievable in this age of tech conjured “romance.” Applications had been aligning us with attractive strangers, then dispatching us to bed them for some time now. I watched him try to compute if the breed of discipline I was boasting was fathomable in his own universe.

“Impossible! You’re gorgeous, any guy would die to have you.”

“Maybe I didn’t want any guy, maybe I just wanted you.” I intentionally overlooked how his hypocritical compliment was clearly a false one since he’d already walked away from me once. Realistically, he probably meant what he said, he just meant it superficially. The comment only pertained to the new and improved version of me that sat before him.

I could tell Roberto’s disbelief was genuine by him ruling what seemed more fantastic: the fact that no one had seen my bush since he was in office or that I’d been holding out for him the entire stretch? He appeared blown away by it all but failed to let it stagger him. He’d already made his decision from the moment I walked into the joint.

“You wanna get out of here?” I looked at him with a sincerity in my eyes that was undeniable. My heart bashing against my breasts like I’d just finished a marathon.

“That’s the only thing I want.”

***

Roberto suggested I follow him to his apartment but I explained that with the wealth of time that had lapsed within our communication gap, I’d purchased a house. I proposed he allow me to show him my place and pointed out we would be treated to a more intimate, undisrupted environment there. Internally, I also had the petty craving to show him all I’d accomplished within the hiatus. I wanted to illustrate the picture of my success with as much detail as possible. He should know exactly how much discovery and change had transpired since we’d last connected. He agreed, allowing my ulterior motive to linger.

The drink had left us both comfortable, neither drunk nor sober, but we’d absorbed just the right amount to amplify our eagerness. As he followed me closely down the winding dirt drive, I stared back into the rearview. His Saab’s piercing headlights distorted any attempt to read his expression, but in truth, I didn’t need to. I knew we felt as one and just as his member was stiffening, my anxious walls of flesh were moistening. They hadn’t been undone by anything outside of an inanimate object since his throbbing bulge last bore its way inside me. The erotic memories of filthy pleasure were inescapable.

As we exited our cars, he took in what he could make of the shadowy estate I’d come to call home. I watched the comprehension arrive on his face finally as he finished digesting the notion that I’d not only flourished beyond his ceiling but soared past it. His words buckled a bit, his sureness was starting to tumble.

“This place looks… amazing.”

I avoided acknowledging his compliment for the second time that evening. There was a paradigm shift; my days of feeling hampered by an inferiority complex had subsided, the momentum had swung. My sights lasered through him as I snuffed out the traditional formalities that come before a hookup and led him straight to the bedroom. I raced past my elegant, well-kept parlor and glossy kitchen without a second thought. I no longer felt the need to show off, he already knew exactly what he’d been missing out on.

I left the lights off and guided him slowly through the abundance of darkness by hand. Once we reached my room, I gestured for him to take a seat on the bed. He obeyed and I turned toward the wall, dropping a few logs in the fireplace and getting it lit.

“Fireplace in the bedroom, huh?”

I ignored his comment and laid down beside him. It only took a few moments for the flames to erupt and illuminate the area with a romantic auburn flicker. He grazed the back of his fingers across my cheek before sending them on to run through my hair.

“I’m sorry.”

He sounded sincere, like he was trying to control his emotions. “For what?” Now I was asking the questions I knew the answers to.

“I should never have left, sometimes it just takes a little while to figure shit out. My priorities were always fucked. Back before, I just didn’t realize what I had, I couldn’t see it. I was an idiot—” I cut his speech short, unleashing my tongue to intermingle with his. He tasted the same as before.

The sex was more abbreviated than I expected, maybe it had just been so long that I’d forgotten what the average was. He came fast and knocked out cold, after serenading me with a handful of his sweetest pillow talk lines. If there was one thing I remembered about the lone man I shared a bed with, it was the fact that he slept like a rock. Back at our old place, I accidentally set the smoke detector off after lighting a joint in the pantry one night. It took me a while before I could find something tall enough to stand on and shut the annoying device off. It ticked off the neighbors below us and they sent a few shouts our way but through the duration of the ordeal, Roberto didn’t miss a wink.

As I slithered off the mattress and made my way back toward the flames, I could feel the same unusual nauseating sensation as the first time. It was beginning, just as it did when I’d drawn Angela in. Upon kneeling on all fours, I came face to face with the sign. The etching beneath my bedframe required specific placement or else it was useless. Thankfully, it aligned exactly where I surmised Roberto might end up dozing off. The purity symbol’s outline pulsated, casting a maroon light from its edges, radiant as one could imagine. I felt Angela’s warmth again as her blood reheated. When I reached into the nightstand drawer, I was overwhelmed by the smell of the cooking hemoglobin. Roberto’s body tightened and his extremities pulled in closer to his abdomen. He was no longer propelling his own actions.

The tool I retrieved was medieval and crass. It was the morbid product of my years of studies—of my total immersion into the dark arts. It was comprised of polished gravestone, stained thigh bone, and over two dozen teeth. Items, most of which had been derived directly from Angela herself or what was left of her. The stone was the most difficult really, I’d finally attained it after weeks of restless late-night effort, breaking it off of her mother’s tombstone had proven to be the most daunting task. But alas, my manipulation of one of Angela’s sentimental attributes would lead to the manipulation of her mortal ones, in turn, birthing the malicious armament into existence.

The stone had initially served as the magnet during my first ritual, the one that dragged her toward me. Part of me didn’t believe it would work. I’d tried many hexes during my lengthy period of seething but nothing quite so involved as to obtain an item so intimately connected to a person.

I sat up giggling to myself, I realized that I’d been spending far too much time alone. What a silly thing I’d done, such a silly thing. Until it wasn’t. Until the hands of my wall clock were raised to the ceiling and I heard a hesitant knocking upon my door. It was as if whoever was on the other side of it didn’t want to see it come open.

Contrary to my beliefs, there she stood, having materialized on my porch shivering with that doleful expression impressed upon her face. She obeyed me like a dog, unable to detach her stare from the stone dangling around my neck. It was everything to her cursed, submissive brain, it was the only treat the pup desired. I made her tell Roberto goodbye. I wanted the separation to seem ordinary, not suspicious. Millions of people feel like they might be with a person forever only to awake alone one day. In fact, I seem to recall having that same feeling.

I didn’t technically have to mutilate her and break away the pieces. The ritual afforded me such control that she would have done anything I asked of her. Even if it was at her own expense or for the ultimate price, she still would have done it. But I wanted to do it to her, I needed to do it to her. She had earned that much at least.

Angela became my property, to do as I say and do with as I wished. I commanded her to lay flat in the tub and took of her body only what I needed but I took it savagely. As I closed my eyes and touched the incisors that I’d fixed in macabre fashion to the outskirts of the blade, I fondly recalled the moment I’d torn them from her cracking jaws. It served her right; she represented the poisonous promiscuity that had corrupted Roberto. While he had been tarnished long before he found Angela, it was women like her who had set upon a self-serving journey. It was women like her who’d altered my path, so it was only fair that I altered hers.

The punishment was appropriate; burning her twitching remains while she was still alive presented a pleasing sight. Burning her liquids in death served as a violent omen of the horrors I was still set to conjure. She might take comfort in hell knowing that her final agonies and demise was not merely contrived out of spite. She was a pawn within a larger series of actions. I was grateful for Angela. Without her, I’d be without the means to an end.

I pulled the blankets back from Roberto and mounted his naked body. As I drove the sharpened parts of his lover inside him, the red thrust out of his splitting muscle like a fountain. His paralysis didn’t absolve him of the suffering I afforded, it just rendered him incapable of putting an end to it.

His eyes peeled open, only because I wanted him to see. I felt the strength of the excruciating pain pulsating aggressively under his skin as I pulled the sinister handle lower toward his groin. His eyes begged me to allow him his speech but he still hadn’t learned. His words meant nothing—it was his actions I’d been more concerned with these last few years. It was his actions that had brought this hell storm upon him.

He’d taken my innocence and left me broken. Ever since I bled on him on that uncannily similar and frigid night, something had been missing. In the end, it was as if my offering had meant nothing to him. He had no qualms about sending me spiraling into a self-destructive bout with shame. It wasn’t until my rebirth via Lucifer’s instruction that I was given a chance. The books led me to him, they unlocked the left-hand path. I didn’t have to be the victim, the unwanted garbage tossed into the gutter. I wasn’t going to be the cheap meat anymore.

As I gorged on his gash like the parasitic leech I’d come to realize him to be, I took boundless gratification in knowing our roles had been reversed. It was Roberto who had dictated this outcome, it was he who had pushed me toward the master. I never would have been grasping at the spiny straws dangled by the Archfiend if he hadn’t left me to drown in the depths of my desolation. When the light fails to offer the appropriate amendment, we must seek alternatives…

This bewitchment was the direct result of the motivation he’d injected me with. Its manifestation was quite a spectacle to behold. Like the Prince of Perversion, I too had been banished. I too had been pitched into the bowels of darkness and segregated. I too was left to smell the stench of the foulness and wonder what came next. But as I licked my wounds and tasted depression, he called to me. He didn’t judge my goals; he only provided me the resources to achieve them. While I only saw my failures, my rejection and my scars, he saw this day. He restored my vision and showed me, manipulated or not, an aftermath of justice. Over the course of my indoctrination, I’d had many revelations but none as defining as that moment. It was the turning point of no return.

Now the day that felt like a dream for ages had come to fruition and I sat calmly embracing its culmination. Watching his cognizance drain as the river of humanity fed back into me, continuing to defy man’s alleged limitations. The colors Roberto consisted of inside, similar to his Angela, were breathtaking. They were both so much more attractive when exposed, that much was certain.

The eerie glow I’d mothered pushed out from below the bedframe, finding its potential. Gravity became less relevant as the blood Roberto was still secreting sluggishly climbed my thighs and reached for my entrance. As the wet warmth crawled deep inside me, I felt it again; the transfer of power, the regaining of vigor.

I was almost whole again as my body levitated even higher above his ruined frame. I felt the construction within, the raising of what had been missing, what any worthwhile man hungered for. Once enough blood had pooled, the flesh reformed and firmed. Roberto looked rigid and sickly when the ritual completed. He had been utterly emptied and my hymen had been wholly resurrected.

***

It was a few weeks later when I laid down beside Jacob. I felt the same inimitable jitters as I did when we’d first crossed paths. It was unlike anything I’d ever felt before. I was fledgling and confused when I opened myself to Roberto, I lacked a familiarity with the opposite sex but that was by choice. My choice was conscious, one I’d made because I was committed to not settling. I only hunted the finest and, in turn, my formerly naïve nature and gullible deficiencies had led me astray.

Now, I was better balanced, seasoned, and damn sure wouldn’t be making the same mistakes. I’d painstakingly studied the most minor cracks of Jacob’s character. After months of meticulously assessing his sunny persona, the results were in. The few imperfections he did have that eventually floated to the surface were innocuous.

I thought of them as low-risk warts, they were petty things. Things that I felt could not potentially lead to a fracture in our relationship. Sure, he liked to pick his nose in the car and occasionally watch violent pornography. Yes, he seemed to hide the fact that he had a penchant for Salem cigarettes. But as I stalked him, I came to terms with it; he wasn’t a bad man.

His were all minor flaws that I could more than live with, some that even I myself had been guilty of. I’d occupied many years of my life observing men to finally be able to draw this conclusion. I’d found the one. It hadn’t come easy. I’d grown weary unmasking an army of secret creeps in the process. The countless hoards who hid their filth so expertly to the untrained eye had left me disheartened. There were numerous instances where I’d nearly given up but that was over now. I’d found Jacob and it was time to begin the next chapter.

Thanks to Angela’s obedience and Roberto’s renewed interest in me, all was well again. I was in control of my destiny with my freshly reacquired vigor buried safely between my thighs. My virtue had been refurbished and I once again embodied the qualities that good men sought. Who wouldn’t want me? A smooth-skinned, pure, fit, successful, and attractive virgin. I was confident in my theory and my theory held true. All it took was for us to “bump into each other” by happenstance and the rest was history.

Now, we laid beside each other fully prepared to take the next step. As I felt Jacob gently arrive inside me, I began to grasp the strangeness of what was transpiring. The excess of blood raining down upon him, to me, seemed irregular but he was unaffected. He continued on, possessed by my flesh, the passion in his eyes explained that much. The somehow prosaic transmission of energy and reallocation of dynamism felt profoundly abnormal but, in the same vein, routine. Once again, torn and broken I laid, my heart now surrendered within weeks of restoring it.

The act was painful but also heavenly. Some would argue those feelings share many qualities. Jacob showed me his love, making sure that I was comfortable as he guided me along him. He didn’t want to hurt or damage me, remaining placid and cautious with each of his motions. I wanted to close my eyes but didn’t. I stared through him, opening my mind in compliment of my body. I loved Jacob to death and hoped, for his sake, he understood what that meant. Now that he’d chosen me, it would be to his end. It would be forever.

LAST DAYS IN HONDURAS

Peter Bechtel was well aware that what he was doing was immoral, but flimsy ethics had never stopped him before. The thoughts in his mind compelled and propelled him, he couldn’t stop himself from registering a higher bid if he wanted to. With each eager keystroke, he salivated more intensely, his heart racing in unison with his mind. If he wanted the prize, he’d need to stay focused and remain alert. There was no telling who might attempt to swoon in with a last-minute bid. He held the top wager with just under twenty minutes remaining. He was almost home free.

18 MINUTES…

As Peter stared at the screen intently, the seconds ticked down. Whenever he was in a bidding war, his mind seemed to wander, reminiscing about what had brought him back to the black well again. Why was he like this? Why couldn’t he stop? He asked himself the questions like he cared but, truthfully, he didn’t.

Long ago, he’d come to grips with his condition. He exhibited close to, if not all of the traits of a full-blown psychopath. His superficial charm melted those around him. In his presence, their textures became moldable, manipulating people to his liking came naturally. He could do so while still disguising himself, even those closest to him couldn’t fathom the half of his darkness.

Since he was a young buck, he’d approached life with a plainly visible reckless abandon. Now matured, his wicked wisdom had led him to mask it intelligently. He felt nothing aside from the numbness that enveloped him all but for his compulsion. He remembered the exact moment when the switch flipped, his sickness becoming evident at the age of sixteen. He walked into the living room where his mother and five-year-old sister, Tracey, sat sobbing hysterically. They had come home to find the family cat, Marbles, dead and stiff. Everything he’d learned up until that point told him he should feel something. He waited for it… and waited… and waited. But nothing came.

Everyone he knew had found a way to feel but as he watched the tears run down Tracey’s cheeks, the only thing he could think about was if her pussy was as wet as her face. He didn’t dare regurgitate the thought that it was he who had strangled the cat and birthed her scarring horror. He had priorities. He fucked her sadistically later that evening, asphyxiating her with Marbles’ wrinkly weathered collar. He watched her tiny eyes swell and her surface blush until the old leather snapped from the stress and air finally flooded back into her lungs.

He found himself unable to climax as his mother had already triggered him twice earlier. Although he ejaculated for his haggard handler, he felt zero pleasure. His fleshy canvas retaining a blank pronouncement that mirrored the woman who watched over him. His bloodline’s incestuous defilement snaked in more directions than could be calculated. The strangeness he was born with hadn’t been conceived by his generation alone. It had been hidden discreetly and effectively, compounded over the course of centuries.

Peter knew nothing of his disgusting and controversial origins. To him, it seemed “normal.” Eventually, of course, he realized other people did things differently and that their family tree was planted on a foul and rotting foundation. He could only speculate on the larger history and often wondered if he was the seed or just a layer of the onion. How far back did it go? Were the genetics and sins of his father and his father’s father to blame? To him, the sickness was all he knew; throughout his entire existence, he had never been attracted to anyone that could form a perfect sentence.

15 MINUTES…

Thirteen months after he’d begun to touch her, Tracey jumped off of a five-story parking garage at the mall. She never told anyone why she did it and neither did Peter. When they covered her miniature casket with dirt, long after everyone left the gravesite, he remained. Simmering at the edge of the tree-line, swathed in dusk, watching until they finished. Once the help cleared out, he headed to the fresh soil and uncovered her once again.

When he pried the lid open, he was surprised to see the level of distortion permanently engraved upon her soulless corpse. He could now perfectly comprehend the purpose of a closed casket funeral service. She looked like a scrambled western omelet but the cubes of pink ham were chewed up and spat out. He tore her black dress and panties off but couldn’t get hard. After a few more moments, he quit. Instead of fucking her, he squished his soft cock into her frozen opening and started to urinate. Once he finished his piss, he buried her again. That was the last time he ever saw his sister.

11 MINUTES…

For all the unspeakable flashes and secrets captured throughout his adolescence, Peter never let the demons deter his successes. While the southern bumfuck heritage which bred him still rode his family’s coattail when they moved up north, it didn’t prevent opportunities from finding their way into his crosshairs. Pittsburg was different but he liked the city, much more so than the solidarity of the sticks. If he was to have fun, he needed people.

As his social interactions further cultivated, Peter had become quite accustomed to putting on an act. He assimilated into the businessman mentality and became just that. The young up-and-comer who understood that dress, posture, and acting like you knew what the fuck you were talking about were the secrets to ascension. He fit right in with the rest of them, no one questioned it. With each of his achievements came hefty financial gains, and with those gains, he continued to invest. Peter placed an emphasis on solidifying a shroud that blinded the public from his private affairs. He would only be satisfied when he could chew the dark fat of his deeds casually and free of anxiety.

It had been too risky for too long, his brazen attitude was foolish, yet still unavoidable. He had to feast with or without the means. The cravings which owned Peter had seen him go as far as snatching young girls in broad daylight. There had been an incident where he ended up having to stab a meddlesome man to death who’d stuck his nose into his affairs. He’d been eyeing a tiny blonde-haired angel for a little over a month when it happened. The girl frequented a playground maybe thirty minutes from his estate. He passed it every time he went to the market and the constant tease had tested him. It tested him until he needed to have it, no matter the cost.

When he finally decided to go through with the abduction, it was more calculated than spontaneous. After weeks of learning her patterns, he’d be damned if some fucking snot-nosed punk was gonna play hero. Watching the man’s meat spread and the wide gory holes gape reminded him of the assholes he’d bloodied. The nastiness he’d personally shaped provided him with an intoxicating, newfound sense of power.

However, it was getting too messy. Not that it bothered him but he didn’t want to be stopped. He could never stop now. His insatiable appetite motivated his career progress and vice versa. The speed of his financial triumphs was unparalleled. After the milestone of his first million, he invested in a slew of black-market technologies. His prior encounters had put him in contact with a former NSA agent gone rogue. A brilliant man of Edward Snowden’s caliber that knew the spectrum of cyber surveillance inside and out, and more importantly, how to avoid detection.

Before, he didn’t have the luxury of bottomless resources but that time had finally arrived; the details of his decadence had become impregnable.

His mindset had shifted, he aimed to use a virtual launchpad instead. The idea of being an illusion had become more appealing to him. The fresh method of arrangement had made it safer to toy with the demons and would most certainly prolong his horrific record. He now owned a state-of-the-art mainframe, a system unavailable to the public that was protected by a tier of encryption that essentially made him a ghost. He’d become an internet untouchable.

He wasn’t on the internet though, even the most macabre corners of the web allowed for surfing that was still too vanilla by his definition. He’d found a vile slit to slide into—a dirty slit that allowed him to retreat to a more sophisticated, ghoulish plane of perversion. HE LOVED SLITS, and this one had blown open the gates of the internet’s twisted cousin. A backdrop that offered a buffet of depravity and accommodated whatever was in the range of his illness to imagine; he had found The Dark Web.

There were virtual currencies that were untraceable in which the users would need to procure to provide payment for any variety of the horrific services offered. Peter had no trouble getting the cryptocurrency required, and in no time, found himself frequenting and exploring religiously. He’d become particularly fond of a site called “School Room.”

The user would need to pay a thousand-bitcoin fee to gain entry. Once inside, there were usually about ten children dressed in uniform sitting at desks in a mock classroom setting. It had many of the features of a real class but had a certain thrown togetherness about it. From there, those who had joined in the chat could bid to perform any act their minds could concoct on a selected member of the student body.

Peter found the strangest part of the whole ritual to be the calmness displayed in the children that watched. The screams only exited the ones being cut or raped, or cut and raped (the degrees varied). There was a bizarre sense of obedience that emanated from God only knew where. An uncanny strength that he didn’t even know if he himself, a full-grown heartless man, had. Once he watched a young Arab boy’s head being sawed off while he defecated on himself, the other nine students remained stoic as “the teacher” whipped them with a bloodied ruler furiously and cursed them.

While School Room was a particular favorite of his, he knew he couldn’t live on high definition snuff-on-demand forever. He needed to live in it. He needed something personal again, it had been too long since he felt the touch of a tiny one. At least instead of hanging around at movie theaters and roller-skating rinks like the old days, he had simple, efficient options. Now, he could easily arrange a meeting with a handpicked, personally harvested child in a day or so. It was like Amazon for pedophiles, except they weren’t getting dropped off by drones, obviously.

His proposed wager still remained at the top of the totem pole. If all went well in a short time, he’d be booking the next flight to Honduras. Peter had been there twice already, but this time, he would be using a new site. His prior go-to “Orphan Annihilator” was no longer available. Rumor on the message boards was that Anonymous (the internet shadow group of self-policers) had purged it, in addition to publishing all of its diabolical patrons’ personal information. Peter was able to sum up his feeling on the outed regulars in a single thought that kept replaying in his head. Those sad, pathetic amateurs left themselves venerable. They were destined for failure from the beginning. Their sloppy methods were quite simply unsustainable.

Just a few days ago, he’d read an article about a well-established businessman named David Brenton whose true degeneracy had finally seen light. Unfortunately for Mr. Brenton, the adored philanthropic pillar of the community lost it all in a matter of hours. Shortly thereafter, he found himself overwhelmed, contemplating a punishing and hideous future behind his dark Toscano desk.

His bottle of thousand-dollar scotch was coming to an end and he was beginning to see a parallel to his own existence. Ultimately, he settled on putting a gun in his mouth. He blew a third of his head clear off his shoulders and through his luxury corner office eighty-third-floor window. Ironically, the lump of his skull picked up such velocity during the fall that when it struck a girl within a group of middle-schoolers visiting the downtown area, it left her in critical condition. He left the world doing what he’d most enjoyed; abusing helpless young girls.

Luckily for Peter, due to his rigid precautionary measures, he didn’t have to worry about his family and colleagues, shame or prison. He was untouchable. Reevaluating his future wouldn’t be necessary, he simply needed to find a new site. He didn’t set his old tricks aside for long before he started up the hunt, which his current overly generous bid was invested in. After a few hours of perusing the suggestions of random cyber sickos, he came across a post that seemed different. The post was titled “NEEDED: NEW PARENTS FOR A DAY” and had a vile, original and intensely alluring premise which read:

“Dear Potential Parents,

We are seeking one horrible mommy and one rotten daddy to serve as new parents for a group of seven very naughty boys and girls. In fact, these children have been so bad that they are beyond repair and utterly unsalvageable. They are so evil that you mustn’t waste your time or energy on convincing them they can change. You must punish them for their misdeeds and keep their bloodline from further procreation. Mommy and Daddy will be asked to work together in destroying all of these wretched children.

The entirety of Mommy and Daddy’s activities will be documented in 8K resolution and uploaded to our site ‘The Best New Parents?’ for future participants to view as well as our community. Your identity will, of course, be hidden under a mask of your choosing and you are free to take as much time as you see fit. If you can envision yourself as the potential disciplinarian of these nasty runts and are open to collaboration snuff, please fill out the information below to learn about price and scheduling. If you’d like to watch a show before inquiring, visit our site and see our backlog of prior episodes.”

Below the writing sat a collection of GIFs displaying the various children to be punished—a couple of seconds of each trembling child’s hysteria. To Peter, seven was a wonderful number. It was enough young meat to allow him to live out any number of fantasies that, up until that point, had been confined to his mind. Sure, he would be sharing with “Mommy” but that would be a part of the project’s charm. It would be fascinating to see the kind of woman they would cast and that he could possibly be paired up to work with. Unquestionably, she would have to be wealthy to afford the ticket price on such a foul fiasco. He imagined she’d probably be educated, unique, and cold as well. She would essentially be him but with a vagina. The potential for friendship or even dare he think companionship might exist.

After only moments of pondering, he knew he needed to become a part of the community. He paid his dues to gain access to the library of episodes, watching them all from bloody start to inhuman finish. His favorite was called “Scribbles,” represented by a picture of a crayon box soaked in blood. The show began with only the “Mommy” and “Daddy” who were seated in a kitchen that looked like it was straight out of the 50s. It was very organized and meticulous detail was paid to the set design; many of the appliances and furnishings would have been considered modern for the retro period. The new parents were threaded from head to toe with attire that accurately matched the setting.

Mommy wore white gloves and black heels while her navy and white polka dot swing dress stretched to her calves. Her face was overrun with a strange latex mask that depicted features the likeness of Lucille Ball, although it was difficult to be certain if the mask was trying to exactly replicate her. Daddy wore coffee-toned pants, polished leather loafers and a white collared shirt with a black tie that were smothered by a vanilla cardigan button-up sweater. Daddy’s face was also obscured by a similar style mask, except his was more generic and didn’t appear to be modeled closely after a celebrity. Just a clean-cut man, well-groomed with nice dimples and cheekbones.

The entire production value was authentically vintage. He was streaming the video through futuristic technology, the dark web, yet it still appeared in black and white and slightly distorted at moments. Almost like the person in the 50s that was supposed to be viewing it was adjusting their bulky, tube television set’s antenna. There was a certain shaking realism, as if the viewer had been brought back to a time when people could have only used their imaginations to envision what they were about to see. When everyone wasn’t carrying live video streaming capability at all times. Processing things of such a despicable nature in what was, by most people’s standards, perceived as a glorified era of wholesomeness felt impossible. Seeing the hate on the screen in that period just wasn’t an option but the producers had somehow cultivated it flawlessly.

There was one observation in particular that was easy to notice. One that the viewer might tie into the episode’s title. All over the walls, draws, counters, and even the fridge were scribbles. They were different hues, so one could assume that if the picture was being presented in color, it would have been a rainbow of madness inscribed all over the set. Those bad children were up to their old tricks, they’d made a mess of the once pristine pantry and now it was time for them to get their due…

Peter watched as the children filed into the kitchen, listening to their tender heels thudding on the checker tile flooring. The screaming and berating pushed out sounding scratchy from his top-shelf speakers. This is how “The New Parents” chose to begin their interaction with the flock of frightened adolescents.

Most of the children appeared malnourished and lame, the fringe of an already impoverished society. If they went missing, there would be little attention aimed at them and some guardians may even find relief in their absence. Their skin tone and features led him to believe they were of Honduran descent, which meant this was most likely a little taste of the potential victims of his future. Everything that was being done, he could see himself doing. The New Parents continued to reprimand the group in an increasingly disturbing fashion.

Mommy sat down and made all of the kids eat the crayons until every color had vanished. Next, Daddy handed her a box of pencils, which she proceeded to break into quarters and have them use as a chaser to the crayons. Many of them were crying and spitting up blood and pieces of the writing utensils. Mommy made sure they picked up their soupy crimson upheaving and swallowed it again until they could keep it all down. One girl cried in Spanish while portraying through her mannerisms that she couldn’t do it.

This enraged Daddy, who took hold of the glass coffee pot that sat on the red-lit maker. It was so hot that the pot was still steaming when he smashed it across her innocent face. The contents scalded her flesh while the glass sliced into it. The head trauma had rendered her unconscious and Daddy moved on to tear out all the contents of the freezer like an absolute fucking maniac.

The ice cube trays shattered and fell to the tile, the frozen vegetables landed on the incoherent, disobedient child. Daddy pulled the fridge away from the wall a bit without unplugging it, then lifted the girl up and stuffed her in the icebox. Once he closed the door, he removed duct tape from the counter draw and wrapped it multiple times around, making escape impossible. It only got worse from there and Peter was so enthralled by the tortures that he decided to take notes of the many hideous things that happened to the children. He could potentially leverage the details during his own episode.

Peter’s Notes:

✓ A hand shredded down to the bone, mangled by a blender is forced to masturbate Daddy

✓ The melting and drinking of a child’s undeveloped genitalia by both of the new parents

✓ A child’s heart removed and replaced with Mommy and Daddy’s joint defecation

✓ Mommy’s high heel creating a hole in the throat

✓ Daddy fucking the hole Mommy made

✓ All parties urinating (some forcibly) to fill the sink with piss, then blood is mixed in to create more volume

✓ Drownings in the sink

✓ Mommy biting off testicles and microwaving them

✓ Skull mashed to a pulp via cast iron skillet

✓ Steel wool used on vaginal and rectal areas

✓ Sodomy with a carving knife (forced; child on child)

✓ Daddy used meat tenderizing mallet on his own penis, then flattens one boy’s junk until it detaches

✓ Mommy peeling flattened sausage back off of the counter and frying it like chicken

✓ All children (dead or otherwise) placed into the oven and set to broil

The end of the episode saw all the children laying in Satan’s hoofprint. They’d been destroyed, torn limb from limb and as the credits began to roll, all Mommy and Daddy could seem to do was sort of shrug their shoulders at the viewers. A masterpiece, the show was a complete fucking masterpiece.

1 MINUTE…

Digesting the show was what helped Peter validate, in his heart of hearts, that he had to participate. His lengthy trip down memory lane reaffirmed his beliefs. He wasn’t surprised that he was the last man standing as the auction clock ticked down to all zeros. He knew more so than anything he’d ever done in his entire life that this was going to be the most significant. It was his defining moment where his darkest spirits would climax. It was his fate and he was willing to payout regardless of the cost.

***

After fueling up the private jet, Peter sat by the window enjoying a ride with minimal turbulence. It was smooth enough to avoid spilling his scotch and not disturb his thoughts as he stared out the oval glass that left him partially blanketed in sunlight. It wasn’t the buffet of ungodly countless acts that he had been thinking about that made his heart race. While that did thrill him still, he’d been there before. He’d been the key component in the destruction of young life on other occasions, he was familiar with playing God from a number of experiences.

Maybe it was more the concept of playing God with a partner, with an unknown woman that made him a little nervous. When he’d committed these horrors before he felt judged to a certain extent. He was alone and unable to relate to anyone around him. He theorized by the looks of their pupils that those who were supplying him held a hidden disgust for his actions. They weren’t the same. They were selling out their people based off selfishness and the hunger for a better life, not because they were aroused at the idea of gouging out a baby’s eyes or chopping children to bits.

The concept would still stand in his mind again, the judgement would still be there, but this time, he wouldn’t face it alone. “Mommy” would be by his side, she would nourish the same hunger as he, the fresh blood would stain both of their hands. They would be one murder machine united, the artists that wielded the uncommon instruments of which they used to carve out their masterpiece. They would be a team, each supporting and motivating the other as they pushed forward to the next extreme.

At least that’s what he was hoping for. Hopefully, she would be close to that but even if she wasn’t, he was anxious for a new dynamic. Where would they differ and what would they agree on? How would they go about the creative process? The thoughts continued to swirl as he turned the bottom of his glass up after beginning to feel the altitude shift. That was probably the fastest flight to Honduras he’d ever flown, he was so immersed in what came next that the foreign land had suddenly crept right up to his lap.

In specific regions, the locals knew him well, his routine would be the same as before, save for the final destination. The airport he landed at was private and off the grid. When he deplaned, he was guided into a bullet-proof Hummer which was stored and maintained by his driver (and spoiled confidant), Osmin.

Peter had arranged for his paid hand to set in motion any affairs when he arrived as well as assist him with any required travel. Peter could have paid for security but there wasn’t much sense in it—no security team was going to join him in what he was preparing to do. There was a certain level of risk involved but that was part of the game. To those who he interacted with for these putrid dealings, he was a lot more valuable to them alive than dead but with every trip, there was always at least one moment where he had to re-convince himself of that logic.

Osmin brandished his rotten teeth upon laying eyes on Peter, for a man living in a country where one in five found themselves in extreme scarcity, his trips were always more than welcome. He never cared to ask what he was doing or where he was going. Part of him probably had an idea but the compensation he gained for himself and for his family outweighed any curiosity. It was better he didn’t know, he preferred to avoid being found legally or morally culpable. He was simply a man who randomly worked as a driver for a few days a year and kept to himself. They seldom spoke to each other, they just grinned courteously.

Peter never found himself enjoying the stench of neglect or the intrusive funk of unwashed human flesh but there was something about Osmin’s personal stench that he’d become infatuated with. He never let Osmin onto it but each time he entered the Hummer and smelled the poverty oozing from his pores, it made him hard.

Most normal men might recall the smell of a woman’s hair or a perfume they fancied to bring them back into the lust of a moment. It was different for Peter; his trigger was this distinct stink or the occasional smell of blood at the butcher shop, but Osmin’s stench in particular left him feeling a certain way. It was the trigger to what was fast approaching, the feeling you get just before the rollercoaster has reached its peak.

Upon finishing his deep fiendish breath, they made their way out from the mostly deserted regions. Housing, streets, and cars finally became visible. Peter reached over and plucked a cracker from the tin plate in front of him. There were a variety of jams that Osmin had laid out upon his landing in the already running air-conditioned vehicle. He spread the pummeled fig gel onto the firm breading and glanced out the window. As he placed the snack upon his tongue, he took notice of the endless army of poor fortune stumbling around in the dirt.

They looked exhausted, defeated, and unhealthily slender. Their malnourished frames left their overly defined bones stabbing through the rags they were layered in. The peasants took notice of the high-ticket vehicle. They began to dance around and shout excitedly as if they’d witnessed some alien technology. They imagined a celebrity might be inside, these sorts of mechanical miracles weren’t common in this particular region of Honduras. As he watched their sad, misplaced exhilaration, Peter turned attention back to the crackers and jam, this time trying the marmalade.

***

An hour or so later, the sun was starting to sag and nestled itself just above the top of the city’s dilapidated buildings. While Peter felt comfort inside the confines of the Hummer, he knew Honduras well enough by now to understand that it also brought undesirable attention to him. There were certain areas they couldn’t drive through and many places that they couldn’t stop at. The region they were en route to where the show would take place was more desolate, closer to the area they came from, but to reach it, they’d be exposed to certain level of risk.

Osmin was a damn good driver though and had proven himself to be capable of keeping Peter safe. A few years ago, on another excursion, a faction of gangsters had targeted them. They weren’t aware until the hail of gunfire was already upon them. The car’s skin repelled any harm but they were pursued for nearly an hour before Osmin was able to shake the tail. It was a terrifying experience but also arousing. The gangsters were smart enough to try shooting out the tires, and if Peter wasn’t as anal about security and ultimate preparation, he might have never outfitted the Hummer with bullet-resistant shoes. If that were the case, that unlucky day in Honduras may have been his last.

Finally, the structures they’d come into faded and so did the peril. Peter wasn’t headed to the same destination as his prior trips but it wasn’t far removed. The area itself seemed dedicated to the breed of shady sinister activity which many elites traveled for. There was a kind of hidden black market, an unsanctioned sicker world within a world which didn’t recognize the laws of man. Instead, it bowed to his creation, the belief that green printed paper held value.

Osmin pulled around to the back of the massive old building and the headlights revealed a handful of other cars—most just as sleek and modern as his—parked near a rusty staircase that led into the derelict-in-appearance structure. Now, all that was left to do was wait for the contact.

A gentleman by the name of Mr. Skelton was the orchestrator. He described himself as a sort of one-man producer. He claimed to wear many hats and did everything from produce to direct, film, audio, editing, and promotion. He’d even indicated that he “acted” in a few episodes. During their lengthy evaluation period, he even mentioned that he’d done an episode of School Room, a show Peter had always followed and found amusement in.

Mr. Skelton provided Peter with a lot of details—things that he astutely comprehended that only someone involved might be privy to. Part of the process when sniffing around the cesspools of the dark web is analyzing what’s real. He was seasoned enough to tell that Mr. Skelton knew what he was talking about, he knew the game, the lingo, the areas, the process. Peter was confident that people would be dying on film shortly and that everything leading up to the episode was kosher.

A large man, native in appearance, opened the door to the building and made his way down the metal steps. He wore oversized sunglasses and a dark green suit just as Mr. Skelton had indicated. Osmin sat calmly at the wheel as the behemoth approached the purring Hummer. He extracted a magazine from the glove box and buried his nose in it, fading out of the reality as usual. Peter exited the vehicle and looked to the large man standing at the foot of the stairs. The green suit waved him over with a mitt the size of a baseball player and began to ascend, retracing his path.

The building’s interior deeply contrasted its shell to a point where the exterior in retrospect felt deliberately trashy, as if to ward off any suspicion or interest in the happenings within. The walls were carefully painted and ingrained with a meticulous modernized attention; this was far beyond what Peter had been involved with previously. There was a deep relief that overcame him, a stress tossed aside in seeing how contemporary the studio was. Not that he suspected anything was amiss, but in an unfamiliar and potentially dangerous situation, visual confirmation always served to calm his nerves while flaring his passion.

They hadn’t encountered any other people, which didn’t surprise him. Mr. Skelton would be executing the show, he and his would-be “wife” would be executing the children. The big guy was insurance and probably making sure that nothing crazy happened. After a few more steps, they’d finally come to the end of the hall, there were three doors in total. One was directly in front of them and the other two were on both the left and right.

The large man opened the door on the left for Peter and he stepped through. The green-suit then walked toward the closet and opened the door wide. There were a series of items now hanging before him that were not particularly what he expected. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so caught off guard though, based on the various episodes in the catalog he’d watched, he understood that those whom acted in the role of the parents had always been portrayed in many different attires. They ranged a broad gamut from almost any era imaginable. Still, the costume just seemed ridiculous and would not have been his first choice.

A weathered loincloth, beige tunic shirt and brown breechcloth sat beside a colossal and feathery native headdress. There was a pair of leather moccasins beside a tall standing mirror which he assumed would be his shoes.

“Change. Then you come outside,” the oafish man instructed, handing him a tin as he headed back to the door.

“What’s this?” Peter asked, twisting the circular metal open to reveal a brown paint.

“Your skin.”

The door closed, not leaving room for any follow-up questions; Peter needed to prepare. It didn’t really feel like a costume, the garb seemed authentic, like it was hand-crafted. He spread the brown paint on his face, neck, and hands first to darken his skin with a little apprehension. He didn’t feel entirely comfortable dressing up but he knew it was part of the deal. He then quickly slid into his outfit and capped it off with the giant collection of feathers. After checking himself for a moment in the mirror, he exited the dressing room.

The green-suit already had the middle door open and was ushering Peter forward. The set was the caliber of something Hollywood might conjure up. If he hadn’t walked into the building himself, he wouldn’t have believed that he was indoors. There were trees and other various vegetation surrounding the room, which still felt to be about the same size as the room in the adored Skelton snuff “Scribbles.” Dirt laid down over the entirety of the set and there was a burning campfire in the center. The smoke that floated up was being sucked out by ventilation that Peter could only assume led outside of the building.

Sitting on a log by the campfire was his counterpart and she looked stunning. For reasons unknown, he’d pictured her to be wrinkled and haggard with an air of self-hatred hovering around her. But clearly, as he looked her over from top to bottom, he realized there was nothing to hate. Her outfit also attempted to be Native American but was far less traditional. While it bore the same overall tones and vibe, her skirt was hiked up so far that her ass cheeks were exposed. The top was cut down leaving her chest bordering on being as bare as her feet. She wore a smaller headdress and her black hair was braided in thick pigtails.

As the door closed behind Peter, he moved toward the log adjacent to the woman and found seating. The lighting was dim and the flicker of the flames bounced off their abnormally colored faces. This was the moment he’d been thinking about on the plane. Was there any kind of icebreaker that could be appropriate for this situation? He knew the answer but the silence felt so strange. He needed to talk to her, he’d been waiting his whole life to…

The first question that came to his mind wasn’t the one he wanted to ask. While it was a valid inquiry, it was more just conversational: have you spoken with Mr. Skelton yet? He decided he wouldn’t be so cowardly; he hadn’t come this far to worry about how to portray himself to a bloodthirsty stranger. There were so many more relevant questions than that. They were ones that he’d asked countless times on all the message boards but you never knew who or what was on the other end of those responses. They always felt so… inhuman and distant. For the first time, he had a chance at a legitimate answer.

“So, why do you do it?” Peter locked eyes, unflinching.

She thought about it carefully for a moment, pushing her feet back and forth, deeper into the dirt. “Because I can… and because it’s all I think about.” Her British accent was unforeseen but interesting.

“Yes,” he nodded understanding her entirely.

“At first I just needed to know what it was like. It drove me to a point where I couldn’t go on not knowing. I was paralyzed by my ignorance. And so, it then became a choice, either I remained paralyzed or I did exactly what I was fucking born to do. I thought it would only be a one-time thing but… so much for that idea…”

“I’m glad you’re here,” Peter revealed as the corners of his mouth stretched his artificial tan.

Everything was beginning to register; he was not alone. Peter’s sincerity was anything but fraudulent, his eyes began to gloss over and he took a deep breath trying to subdue his growing emotional state.

The old intercom box at the front of the room crackled like it had been activated. There were multiple black glass rectangles on the wall that Peter assumed would be where they’d be filming from. A raspy voice came over the speaker, one he was thankfully familiar with; Mr. Skelton. “Alright, we’re about to begin,” he instructed frankly as the sound of the door unlocking echoed inside the room. Peter and his partner both looked at each other, staggered, they hadn’t discussed any of the workings yet with Mr. Skelton.

“Mr. Skelton, we don’t have any weapons! And we haven’t really discussed the episode yet, is there anything we should know?” Peter yelled, becoming a little uneasy.

“Weapons? Why would you need weapons? Everything you need to know we’ve already been through,” the voice replied sternly.

“So, do you expect us to kill them with our bare hands?” The woman’s tone didn’t seem completely turned off by the concept, just more puzzled than anything.

“You can certainly try, but that may be an extraordinary task…” Mr. Skelton replied.

As the door opened, they slowly poured in—twenty or so children dressed like pilgrims, all wearing white skeleton masks. Each held a colonial tool; sickles, hatchets, knives, and hammers glistened in the light of the fire. Both Peter and his play partner’s jaws dropped open as they began to close in on them with a heartless malice pooled in all of their pupils.

“ACTION!” Mr. Skelton barked.

The ill will of the young was obvious as they pounced on Peter, screaming and slashing through his lower extremities. He tried to evade them as best he could but the buggers were astonishingly athletic. Their sheer numbers made it impossible to dodge all their blades in such a confined space. It was clear they sought to immobilize them first; by the time they’d hacked through Peter’s left shin, both of his female counterpart’s pretty feet were burning inside the fire. It was a smart plan, once they’d taken their ability to walk, they had zero chance.

As “Mommy” crawled away using her forearms and elbows, the heaviest of the flock began to jump up and down on her spine. The crunching of bone and expelling of blood slowed her. One used the hammer to bash the top of her head until knotted brain tissue began to ooze through her skull fractures. The smaller children rejoiced and pulled the squishy, warm brains from their cove and slung them at each other like kids might during a water balloon fight. The life had left her and she was probably thankful.

As the sickle slivered into his upper thigh, he thought: it’s not supposed to be like this. They dragged him over to the fire and ripped his pants off. He’d envisioned by now his manhood would’ve been throbbing with vigor instead of being so lifeless and shriveled with dread.

Although he was too stupefied to fight back with a foot and leg missing, the children grabbed a hold of his arms nonetheless. He tensed up and cried but could do little to stop them from setting his mangled nether regions onto the flames and burning coals. They watch his cock cook rapidly, transitioning from light auburn to a sore pink before finally blackening to a crisp.

***

A few weeks later, an announcement was made that “The Best New Parents” website would not be putting out any new content. The reason cited was due to the launch of a new endeavor titled “The Best New Kids.” The first episode, “Culture Clash,” was already available.

COMING SOON!

It’s that special day. The day when everything’s supposed to be perfect. The day when everyone is supposed to drink too much and party like it’s nineteen-ninety-nine. A day when family and friends show their support for the beginning of a beautiful bond.

But what if someone wasn’t there just to celebrate and have fun? What if the gorgeous remote destination was chosen for a more nefarious reason than assumed? What if someone at the ceremony held a dark secret? One that would see those in attendance slaughtered and humiliated in ways so nightmarish, they’re beyond imagination. What if they unknowingly attended a Wedding Day Massacre?

About The Author

Aron Beauregard

Aron lives in Rhode Island with his lady, dog, and chameleon, writing this filth as well as contributing to the Evil Examined Podcast. He is pumped and hard at work completing a few upcoming projects, which he hopes to release this year. Those projects include his Splatterpunk homage “Wedding Day Massacre,” his superstitious thriller “In the Hands of the Heathens,” and last but not least, his bizarre splatter-piece “Nightmare Nirvana.” He’s also proud to announce that Nightmare Nirvana will include over sixty unbelievable illustrations and an amazing cover that will feature a ghoulish rendition by macabre oil painter Zack Dunn.

Table of Contents

- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- DARK ASSEMBLY
- THE BAPTISM
- POPULATION CONTROL
- ROTTEN EGGS
- SOME GIRL
- THE PROCUREMENT OF PURITY
- LAST DAYS IN HONDURAS
- COMING SOON!
- About The Author