Year's Best Hardcore Horror Volume 3

by Cheryl Mullenax

  He moved to enter the building, but Mix restrained him from behind and edged in front of him instead. She held her left arm across his chest, protectively, as they crept forward; in her right she held the knife she’d stashed in her backpack, unfolded into an ugly silver talon. He didn’t know what had changed her mind about him, but he was grateful for it.

  Though barely enough light intruded into the building to see anything by, it was immediately obvious that the girl had been right: the building’s expansive interior had been scooped clean, leaving nothing but the outer walls, like the husk of an insect following a spider’s feast. A great, wet hole had opened in the earth beneath it, almost as wide as the building’s foundation. The hole looked like a gaping wound, raw and bloody, its walls sloping inward and meeting a hundred feet down in a moist, clutching glottis. Above it, the walls and ceiling had been sprayed with its meaty exhalations, red organic matter pasted over them so that they resembled the underside of a tongue.

  Bodies of residents who’d been unable to evacuate were glued to the far wall with a thick yellow resin; even as they watched, one Carlos recognized as a young cashier at a local take-out was peeled from his perch and subjected to the attentions of a cleaver-wielding surgeon, who quickly quartered him with a series of heavy and efficient chops. The cashier’s limbs quivered yet, and his mouth gaped in wonderment at his own butchering. But instead of a cry or a scream, what emerged from him was a pure note, as clean and undiluted as anything heard on Earth. Tears sprang to Carlos’s eyes at the beauty of it, and ahead of him Mix put her hand over her lowered face, the curved knife glinting dully by her ear, a gesture of humility or of supplication.

  “Maria,” Carlos said, and there she was, snuffling through piled offal in a far corner, her snout filthy, her hair matted and sticky. The laborers of hell walked around her without concern, and she seemed undisturbed by them as well. When she heard Carlos call her name, she answered with a happy bark and bounded over to him, spry for the moment, slamming the side of her body into his legs and lifting her head in grateful joy as he ran his gnarled fingers through her fur. Carlos dropped to his knees, heedless of the bright pain, of how difficult it would be to rise again. His dog sprawled into his lap. For a moment, they were happy.

  And then Carlos thought, You left me. You left me in the end. Why? He hugged his dog close, burying his nose in her fur. He knew there was no answer beyond obvious, constant imbalance in any transaction of the heart. You don’t love me the way I love you.

  He forgave her for it. There really wasn’t anything else he could do.

  5.

  Mix watched them from a few feet away, the knife forgotten in her hand. She knew why the dog had come here. She could feel it; if the old man would leave the animal alone for a moment, he would too. The sound coming through that great, open throat in the ground, barely heard but thrumming in her blood, had called it here. She felt it like a density in the air, a gravity in the heart. She felt it in the way the earth called her to itself, with its promise of loam and worms, so that she sat down too, beside them but apart, unwelcome in their reunion.

  Stupid girl. You weren’t invited. You don’t belong. You never did.

  The sound from the hole grew in volume. It was an answer to loneliness, and a call to the forgotten. It was Hell’s lullaby, and as the long tone blew from the abyss it filtered out through the windows and the doors and it caught in the reedlike parchments of skin and set them to keening, it powered the wheels of bone so they clamored and rattled and chimed, and it blended with the chorus of notes from the suspended bodies until the whole of the city became as the bell of a great trumpet, spilling a mournful beauty into the world. Every yearning for love rang like a bell in the chest, every lonely fear found its justification.

  The clangor of the song kept rising, until it filled the sky. Their ache stretched them until their bodies sang. In dark fathoms, something turned its vast head, and found it beautiful.

  BURNT

  LUCIANO MARANO

  From DOA III

  Editor: Marc Ciccarone & Andrea Dawn

  Blood Bound Books

  Fire gets all the glory, but the real action happens beneath the flames. It’s a secret spectacle. The blaze itself is just a side effect of matter changing form, a simple chemical reaction. Something transforming into something new. The change is what’s important. Combustion is the product of just the right amount of oxygen, heat, and fuel. Fuel being something that will burn. Wood. Cloth. Flesh. Actually, flesh alone isn’t flammable enough to begin a conflagration. You have to start with something else first. An ignitor, the professionals call it. The pretty flames we love—the mood lighting of many a romantic dinner, fluffy carpet fuck fest and cozy campfire—are just the calling card of transmutation.

  Watch wood change as it burns. You will see it char and then whiten as the flame advances across it like a shiny wave, a brilliant blanket. That’s a sexy dance. It’s hard not to love a spectacle like that. But it’s all style, no substance.

  Fire isn’t even necessary to burn something at all. Hot water will affect skin in much the same way. So will steam, radiation, and even long enough exposure to sunlight. That’s why they call it a sunburn. Flesh burnt badly enough will literally die while still attached, a patch of blight on an otherwise healthy organ, and become like sun-bleached leather, waxy to the touch. Or it might harden into coal-black scales, otherworldly armor.

  Watch. The skin reddens, then blisters. Fatty bubbles begin to appear like soap on the surface of still water. Small at first. Then they grow. They swell, balloon up, ready to bloom like the bulbs of some strange fleshy flower, waiting to burst open in a shocking display of new life. When they do, the freshly revealed skin is the glistening newborn result of that flickering, feverish passion.

  Watch the pretty skin. See it change. It will whiten, melt and pool, reassemble into a great and terrible new visage. Striking. Compelling. A human recreated, not in the image of a kindly God, but by the design of heat. Burn wards are Satan’s art gallery. The figure in each bed a grotesque new rendition of an alien vision for the human form, an interpretation of the old flesh. Beauty reimagined. Not beholden to the constraints of symmetry, or even function, the new flesh splits through the old, rending violently through to breathe and touch, to be touched, in a dizzying display of a striking new aesthetic.

  ___

  Losing her face was the best thing that ever happened to Vicki’s mother.

  Every year, deep fryer accidents are responsible for about five deaths in America. Catherine was almost one of them, but she lived. They didn’t think she would and, at first, she wished that she hadn’t. Recovery was slow and arduous, indescribably painful. But the best experts in the country were consulted, all of them eager to attach their name to such a sensational case study, and they were able to save one of her eyes, replace her lips—sufficient enough for her to speak—also reconstruct enough of her ears so that she could eventually wear large stylish sunglasses.

  The scar tissue, smooth and leathery, enveloped her head like the hood of a wetsuit. Thick crimson tentacles snaked down her neck in both the front, curving sensuously between her breasts, and also in back, like the seeking appendages of a parasite. The division between the new burned area and the old pale skin was a rough barrier of scale, like the hide of a primordial beast, surrounded by a tender, pinkish outline.

  Catherine took to wearing scarves and hats, wigs sometimes, but she loved masks most of all. She had an impressive collection by the time Vicki’s father left. He couldn’t look at his wife anymore. He couldn’t stand the thought of touching her. It was almost funny. Before the accident he never cared if she was in the mood or not. When he wanted her affection, he took it. She eventually learned not to struggle.

  Now Catherine wanted it all the time. She was ready, positively in heat. She strutted around the house in her wigs, her masks, and not much else most of the time. In a carnival disguise or a domino mask and scarf, lace panties peeking
out from under a sheer teddy or riding low beneath a bustier, she moaned and writhed yet to no avail. What’s the saying? She couldn’t get laid in prison with a handful of pardons.

  Dad hadn’t been around much before the accident, so it wasn’t a hard adjustment for the kids when he split. Vicki’s older brother Gregory was upset at first, but even he got over it soon enough. Besides, there were plenty of men at the house after that. There were other things for him to be upset about too.

  Deliverymen were easy. So was the plumber, the handyman and the paper boy. And when Catherine couldn’t think up a job to bring a new man over, there was always the Internet. The lawsuit settlement with the deep fryer manufacturer paid the doctor’s bills and left Catherine with plenty of cash and plenty of time at home to be available for entertaining. Though it hadn’t been true for Dad, most men will overlook almost anything in the face of a guaranteed score. If some lonely slut wanted to wear a mask, or a wig and maybe do it only from behind, what did they care? They got off just the same.

  Vicki heard her mother often in the bedroom with her men—and in the living room and in the bathroom and in the garage—encouraging them, urging them, commanding them. Harder. Faster. Deeper.

  It was as if along with her face the boiling oil had relieved Catherine of the person she had been beneath it. Where once she was meek, now she was in control. Where once she was passive, now she was insatiable; once sad, now gleeful. As her new face had torn free in a violent eruption of steam and blister flowers, so had the person she was meant to be.

  And when it got really lonely, when she couldn’t get anyone else to tend to her, Mom could always tiptoe down the hall to Gregory’s room. He was fifteen by then, after all.

  “Such a big boy,” Vicki would hear her mother coo from inside her brother’s room at night. “Mommy’s big, sexy boy.”

  “No,” he said. “Don’t. I don’t like it!”

  “But look here,” Mom would giggle. “That means that you do, baby. Looks to me like you like it a lot.”

  He eventually learned not to struggle.

  ___

  It was Vicki who found her mother dead in the bathtub.

  She was naked. Really naked. She hardly ever wore much, but she was not wearing a mask or wig either. Her wrists were severed. She’d been serious, too, cutting up and down, not across. Determined to die. Every mirror in the house was broken, smashed to bits, and she’d used one of the biggest pieces to gouge the deep, moist slits into her skinny forearms. Vicki had heard the glass breaking the night before, lying absolutely still in bed. She had been terrified, but she knew by then to stay out of Mom’s way. When Mom was in a mood, it was best to lay low.

  Catherine had tried to fuck herself back to life. It didn’t make sense to Vicki then, but later on she began to understand. Her mother’s plan had worked, for a little while. She’d filled herself with a Naval fleet’s worth of cock, and enough jizz to float their ships on, but it hadn’t been enough. She could never feel desired enough, be wanted enough, to look at herself for very long. For just a little while though, she had been happy. But Catherine couldn’t embrace the change. She got caught up in the surface. All style, no substance. The change is what’s really important, and that happens below. It happens within.

  Gregory was eighteen and out of the picture by then. So Vicki was alone when she called the police. She was alone as she watched TV and waited. She was alone when they finally arrived to take her mother away forever.

  Years passed.

  Vicki didn’t often think about her mother. Though, in another way, she never really stopped thinking about her. It wasn’t so much a case of thinking or not thinking about her, really. The memory of her mother coated every feeling she had, every action and thought, like a layer of dust that she couldn’t wipe away.

  Tonight, once more, she had her hands full of hair. Beautiful strawberry blond hair, beneath which her roommate Andrea spat and sobbed into the toilet. Devastated by another man, the comely petite girl from Minneapolis had again tried to assuage her feelings with vodka—a lot of vodka—and now she suffered on her knees before the pitiless porcelain goddess.

  Sitting on the side of the tub, leaned forward with elbows on her thighs, Vicki gathered up the sad girl’s hair into one fist and slid her other hand to her roommate’s heaving back. She rubbed small, comforting circles.

  “It’s OK,” Vicki said again. “It’s all going to be fine,” for the hundredth time. Then she said, “You’re better off.” Vicki searched for what usually came next in the speech. She came up blank though and went back to rubbing and shushing instead.

  Tomorrow would come the hangover, brutal and debilitating but a necessary period in the depressing run-on sentence that was Andrea’s love life. Then the slow recovery, until her next paramour and the accompanying, almost assured, infidelity, dishonesty and mistreatment.

  Andrea was a beautiful girl. The broken ones almost always are. But it did not make her happy. Vicki felt bad for her. She felt a lot of things for her. She’d watched Andrea for the three years they’d lived together, watched her very closely. She’d seen her desperately squeezing herself into the role dictated by the world, killing herself at fitness classes and starving herself to slip into seductive clothes. Still not happy. Andrea wanted to be the girl she thought she should be so badly. So many long, painful hours, so much time standing before mirrors analyzing and adjusting. So many trinkets, tricks, powders, gels and sprays. And she was still not happy.

  Vicki had watched Andrea alter herself for every man who came along. Hair, interests, mannerisms, they’d all been changed easier than underwear if the next willing cock in her life had seen fit to encourage, or forbid, something. They were never real changes, though. Just a surface disguise. A mask to hide behind.

  “Shh,” Vicki said in her friend’s ear. It was stretched and punctured by many heavy, twinkly, eye-catching baubles. “It’ll be OK. I promise. I love you.”

  “Thanks,” Andrea said, staring down into the toilet, head on her forearm. “I love you too, Vick.”

  Andrea didn’t really mean it. Not like Vicki did. It was just one of those things heartbroken girlfriends say to each other. Fueled by sorrow and Smirnoff, it was an easy thing to say. But Vicki could pretend, just for a moment at least, that her friend’s words meant more than that. In the darker private places of her mind she always did. But all she said was, “I’ll always take care of you.”

  ___

  Moans and whimpers are the crickets of the nighttime burn ward. Occasionally, a lone shriek would pierce the relative quiet the way a wolf’s howl might ring out over an otherwise hushful landscape. Vicki moved like a silent specter in her white scrubs among the still aberrations displayed in uniform rows, their mutations thinly veiled beneath hospital blankets and stark patches of alabaster gauze.

  Vicki often worked shifts for other nurses. She liked to be at work—especially late at night when there were less people around—and she was qualified to work in many departments. Her primary duties were in the burn ward, though. It was a specialty she had chosen without much conscious thought. It just felt right.

  Regardless, it was an excellent fit for her, and a position that not many others could handle. The doctors were all impressed with her unflinching coolness in the face of the horrors effected on humans by heat, and her attentive hands-on approach to each newly warped victim. Vicki had advanced quickly, and she enjoyed her position at the hospital. It was where she had first met Andrea.

  She paused at the foot of the bed of a man who had earned his new countenance in a car accident. Third-degree burns are more serious, more often fatal. But second-degree burns are more painful because the nerves survive. This man was covered in the latter variety, and he cried in his semiconscious, drug-induced haze. As she slipped the thin sheet down to reveal his wrecked body, Vicki absently wondered if he even knew was crying.

  Dangling tubes descended from high on metal arms to penetrate his tumescent skin and deliver m
edications and liquid food. The man had become swollen, saturated with the dripping sustenance like waterlogged driftwood. His insides strained against the confinement of his own skin, like something left in the microwave too long. Rips had begun to show, and crimson fat split though the growing fissures.

  Vicki ran a finger along those lines and remembered her mother’s husky pleas—the soundtrack to her own budding sexuality. The man’s scrotum had ballooned up to cartoonish proportions, and Vicki lightly prodded him there too. He made a pathetic little mewling sound—I don’t like that! I don’t like it!—and she imagined the strong calloused hands of working men caressing perfumed scabs. The man’s eyelids were bulgy, like rotten fruit. Vicki poked them gently, imagining they might pop.

  Tomorrow, she knew, they would cut him. As the pressure choked off blood vessels, the man’s skin would suffocate and die. He would rot from the outside in. So the surgeons would cut him free by slicing vents in his constrictive skin casing.

  She’d seen it done many times, including the long gashes sliced into her mother’s neck and shoulders. Like tiger stripes, she’d thought at the time. Or gills, like the kind a mermaid might have.

  Vicki rested a hand on his plump tummy, guts tightly corseted in overcooked leather wrapping. His entire body lay engorged beneath her touch, pulsing and warm. Like he might burst at any second.

  She reached into her pocket, took out a tiny digital camera and began to photograph the extraordinary specimen before her, all fevered tension and mounting pressure. The man made a babyish keening noise. It leaked out from between his bloated lips like air escaping from a balloon.

  Vicki crouched lower for a close-up. She wondered what the man had been like before his accident, and what he was becoming beneath his hardened cocoon.

  ___

  Days later, Vicki returned from a double shift at the hospital to the sound of Stevie Nicks. Today, she’d been subbing in pediatrics. It had been tedious and boring. She had no interest in children and it was Andrea’s day off, so Vicki could not even look forward to catching a glimpse of her roommate while making the rounds or sharing a meal break.