by Spencer,Alan
David sprang to his feet. He was searching for a place to retreat. He thought Chomps was going to attack with double the intensity because of what had been done to Lizzy Borden.
He was wrong.
Chomps lost himself. He was hysterically laughing as Lizzy's half-headed body landed with a sharp thud onto the floor. His face was a sick show of dangling strings of flesh, hunks of bone, and spinning metal.
He could see other killers lurking at the opposite side of the hall. Demo was clutching onto a new stick of dynamite and jamming it into the socket of a severed arm. The intestine bikini woman was posing under a light to show off her naked and bloody body. She acted like a stripper to show off her pert nipples, round ample tits, and abdominal walls of muscular curves.
The killers were after him personally, David realized. The more times he escaped death, the more they would crave his death.
He could use that in his favor.
They would battle each other to get to him.
David ripped the K-bar knife out of Lizzy's Borden's hip, kicked Chomps' knee, and charged through one of the broken doorways to find new shelter. Maybe a new safe box. Anywhere but here, he thought.
When he was challenging the unknowns of the next twists and turns, he realized one thing for certain. He may not live through this. He probably wouldn't. His death would be horrible, and painful, and creative. But one thing he would gain through this harrowing experience.
He hadn't lost his fuck you.
He was getting it back.
He was now an economy package of fuck you.
David clutched the K-bar knife ready to slash and survive.
Luke Bloom stood in the viewing room where David Smith had evaded Chomps and Lizzy Borden in a shocking show of self-defense. He mentally fist-pumped the moment. David Smith was still in the running to win this thing. That man was his ticket to hell. The fifteen guests in the area with him were disappointed David wasn't twitching and bleeding on the killing field. After a few minutes of gawking out of the window, they decided Mr. Smith could be killed just as easily around the next corner by somebody else.
Luke took a moment to throw back a burning hot mouthful of bourbon. He ate a few tiger shrimp from the hors d'oeuvres table. He kept touring the viewing rooms to ensure everybody was having a good time. He was missing the live bits of entertainment. He was jealous of his wife. Bliss didn't have to glad hand and hob knob. She could float from viewing room to viewing room freely.
Where is she? I haven't seen her anywhere. My father's missing in action too.
That feeling of concern washed over him again. Something wasn't right. He couldn't put his finger on it. The longer he dwelled on it, the worse he felt.
He didn't have time to explore his concerns about Bliss and his father.
He had a job to do.
This was the Bloom's event.
The standard of quality had to be upheld.
Do your job.
David Smith is still in the game.
You still have a chance to win that trip to hell.
He adjusted the blue tooth attached to his ear. It was about that time to do his host's duty once again. He eyed the television screen in the corner to get a confirmation. The screen flickered on. Yes, he had visual confirmation. Bert Toller, the person in charge of all the cameras and communication and lighting in the arena, confirmed through the blue tooth that one of the killers wanted to do a live interview from the killing field.
That killer was Ed Gein.
Luke groaned.
Ed Gein was a dry interview.
On the TV, Ed was currently standing there in a red and black flannel shirt and faded gray jeans. He looked like the greasy hayseed dumb country fuck that he was.
I can't believe they based Leatherface on this asshole.
Ed was clutching the headset with one hand and was talking into a small microphone with the other. The stiff killer looked uncomfortable with any piece of technology.
"Can you hear me? Are you there, Mr. Bloom?"
"We sure are, Ed. How's the newest batch of victims looking this year?"
"Good."
That's all he said.
Goddamn it.
Can you elaborate? 'Good'.
This guy's a fucking motor mouth.
I might as well be interviewing myself.
Looks like I'll have to be creative.
You'd be a terrible date, Ed.
"I always have to ask this of you, Ed. You're a classic. Many films have been based on your famous exploits. You're an iconic figure in the field of debauchery. My question to you is what brings you back to The Event year after year?"
Ed tucked his lower lip into his mouth.
He concentrated on the question.
A long hmmmmmm escaped his throat.
Ed Gein was really giving it some thought.
The man's answer is going to come from the heart. Ed Gein. A man of poetry and emotion. Speak up, buddy. The opening to hell only stays open for so long.
Ed's eyes flared with intensity. "The honest answer? Well, I'm looking for a woman who looks like my mother so I can kill her, bury her, dig her up, and have sex with her body. That's about it, really."
Ed nodded once, then his head followed a woman who was trying to sneak away behind him unnoticed.
"Hey, wait. She kinda looks like my mother. Perty like her too. She'll work."
Ed dropped the headpiece and stalked the woman. The man was surprisingly stealthy on his feet. He had a bottle of chloroform already out of his pocket and a rag in the other. He quickly went to work. There was a shrill scream that was snuffed out in three seconds. This was all out of the camera's eye.
"Ed, you still there? Ed? Hey Eddie?"
Ed didn't return.
The killer had moved on.
"Well, that was Ed Gein. The good news, folks, I'm hearing we have another interview. Oh, this is something special. This guy is anything but shy. He loves the attention. You missed your calling, buddy. If you were born in this century, you could've been a movie star. It's our old friend Vlad the Impaler."
The image on the television screen captured the stark pale white figure of a tall man. His bald head reflected a red stage light above him. He was a hard muscle bound two-hundred and forty pounds. He was standing in front of the jungle gym flexing his arms. Dead corpses hung between the bars wearing harrowing death expressions. Vlad leaned on his giant sledgehammer. His face was molded by intense thought and concentration. His corner lip twitched with the many things he wanted to say.
Luke knew it.
The crowd watching knew it.
Vlad loved the limelight.
"It's good to see you, Vlad. I see you've had an active day. How many kills are under your belt tonight?"
Vlad closed his eyes for a second. "Let me count. I've got eleven under my belt. It should've been a baker's dozen. I was about to close in on two sisters. All in one swing of my sledgehammer, you get me? I wanted to swing so hard, it would decapitate them both. It's hard to pull off. You every try it?"
"No," Luke said with a smile. "I'm a bit of a wimp. I can't bench press my own weight. You clearly don't have that problem."
"It's not about bench pressing your own weight, Mr. Bloom. It's about force. A wrecking ball can be small and still level a building. It's about speed and concentration.
"I was closing in on attempting a double decapitation, right? Then Mickey Acid shows up. He simply throws a cup of that boiling shit at them, and they both melt. Talk about anticlimactic.
"I'll admit it. I congratulated Acid afterwards. He got them just right, the sisters' faces melted and fused together. I've never seen agony in so many colors and consistencies. He's still an asshole, though. Fucker stole my kill."
Vlad gave a thumb's up to the camera to indicate he was a good sport.
Luke decided to throw out another question. If he didn't, Vlad would blab on and on aimlessly. In the right circumstances, the powerhouse blood-drinker could b
e a Chatty Cathy doll.
"Vlad, I have to ask you something. What's with your new choice of weapon this year? This is the first time we've seen you with a sledgehammer. Any special reasoning behind it?"
He was delighted by the question. He lifted the sledgehammer, swung it at the air, and held it over his shoulder like a lumberjack would an axe.
In the background, a man was crawling forward with his legs missing. Before he died, Albert Fish snuck up on the man and shot him eight times in the head with a Desert Eagle pistol.
"Yeah, well, I've used sharp edges most of my career. I've drained blood from arteries and drip dried my kill ounce-by-ounce. It becomes a bit mundane if you don't change things up. This year, I wanted to use smashing as a motif. I'm all about expanding my horizons at this point in my afterlife.
"And before you ask me another question, I'm making a declaration. That ugly asshole David Smith is going to pay. Nobody takes my sledgehammer and uses it against me. He might've got the upper hand on me earlier. He won't again. I'll crush his head, and I'll drink his blood. And speaking of that bastard, I hear he's caused Lizzy Borden trouble. She doesn't have a face right now. What a turn of events! I gotta go, Luke. We'll talk later when Mr. Smith's good and dead."
Vlad took the time to swing the sledgehammer dramatically with both hands one more time before he charged off to an unknown corridor to stalk his prey.
"There you have it," Luke declared into his microphone. "The latest from Vlad the Impaler. Keep your eyes and ears open. We'll be giving out our famous prize package to one lucky audience member next. Be back soon. Let the massacre continue!"
David clung onto one strategy.
Run.
Like.
Fucking.
Hell.
The Event had turned into a game of opening doors and hoping what lurked behind them didn't kill him. He had run through corridor after corridor of doorways and odd twists and turns. Some had no doors at all, while others were busted, punched, or even exploded off their hinges. He had to crawl on the ground through one stretch of hallway that was cobwebbed with barbed wire. He could see the hunks of flesh caught on the barbs from previous victims. He could imagine a killer throwing someone into the sharp trap just to watch them writhe in pain.
Once he bypassed the barbed area, there was a longer stretch with hanging tarps flapping hard in the wind. That wind was an industrial fan blowing air. The lights above him were dark blue. Every room, corner, and open space was a dramatic arena for battle. So far, he hadn't spotted any defect in the walls or possible way of escape. Then he thought about the man who called himself Demo.
Demo would help David's cause, if he made a mistake. If a blast of dynamite was placed right, the structural integrity of this place could be compromised. Then again, the cavern walls could topple and crush them all dead if an explosion went wrong. Game over for everybody, including himself.
He was right back to his original situation.
Fucked.
The hallway opened up. There was four direction to go in this time. Black and white tiles covered the floor. The lights were now a dark green. The ends of each hallway were black in shadow. There was no real way of making an educated guess as to the safest route possible.
Suddenly, the green lights went black.
A wild, shrieking scream followed the darkness.
"Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"
Straight ahead, David could see the dimensions of a room for a split second. There was a woman sitting in an electrocution chair. A man wearing a leather hood and a BDSM suit had thrown the switch. The woman's head immediately caught on fire. Sparks and blood mushroomed from her eyes. Bolts of blue electricity shot down her body so hot, it boiled her skin.
Seeing this, David ran to the left. No strategy behind it. He was still in darkness.
Something stepped hard in the corridor.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
"Come here," a sharp growl. If a bear could talk, David thought, it would be this guy. "Make your choice. Be grateful it's me who's going to kill you, and not everybody else. I'll be merciful. I can talk him into it, or I'll damn well try."
The green lights came back on. The electrocution was finished. The lights lit up David's challenger. The man, the thing, the misfire of nature, had two heads. One had a normal face, and the second head was a mutant. It had glowing red eyes, a strange cartilage beak, and lipless teeth. The mutated side had a giant fleshy crab claw for hand. He pictured the pincers squeezing someone to death.
"Don't hurt anybody else," the human head begged his ugly twin. "You've killed enough already this year. I have to watch it all. You know what that does to me? My dreams are nightmares!"
"Shut up, you pussy," the mutated head growled. Foamy slobber rolled down both sides of his lips. An ugly purple slab for a tongue sucked up the excess saliva with a wild slurping sound. The pincer hand tensed. Ready to crush. Wild, thick, nasty veins jutted up from the jilted hand. "I'll squeeze your head off, and finally, I won't have to listen to your bleeding heart bullshit anymore. I can't believe you followed me into hell.
"When I killed myself, I shot YOU in the head. I laughed watching the brains leak out of your forehead. You even made us shit our pants. Can you imagine sharing bowels with a coward? I want to kill you, but you keep coming back. There's no way to be rid of you!"
The pincer hand squeezed the other's neck. "I'll pop your head off. I don't care. I can't stand you! I wanted to go to hell by myself, you annoying fuck puke!"
The mutant eyes trained hard on David.
"So what's it going to be, pal? Strangulation? Infection from insertion? You want to run and fall on a knife? Or, wait, I could hold a butcher blade on its side, and you can run at it and slice your own head off! How about it, huh?
"No. I can do better. Wait. Let me think. How about this? You could dig out your own eyes. Better. I can do better. Much, much better.
"I could punch you to death. I got a mean swing. It would take three punches, five max, and you'd be a goner. You could shit razors. I could arrange it. A nice razor enema does well for your constitution, am I right?
"Better. I can do better. Let's get inspired. You could choke on a tit. There's tits all over this place. Good tits. Every other step in this place, there's a cut off tit laying around.
"How about it? You got any ideas? Don't stand there looking like a dumb fuck. You could--Vlad, wait, no!"
A figure stalked the hallway and challenged the hideous two-headed threat.
A great swoosh of air silenced the mutant.
Stone against skull, David watched the sledgehammer take off both of their heads. The necks were geysers of hot blood. The heads slammed into the cavern wall so hard they stuck there.
Vlad stood there with his chest puffed out. He was in awe of his work. The juggernaut kicked aside the headless body and faced David straight on. He aimed the bleeding sledgehammer in his direction.
"It's a headache being murdered by the Tompkin twins. They talk too fucking much. One's whiny, and the other spends too much time giving you choices. It's all so very annoying. I'd slit my own wrists just I wouldn't have to hear another word."
David clutched his K-bar knife.
The thickness of Vlad's body, he wondered if steel could penetrate his rock hard concrete facade. He didn't want to get close enough to find out.
Vlad's sneer showcased his rage.
"I'm not going to ask you how you want to die. No, no, no. I'm just going to kill you."
Vlad was charging.
The sledgehammer was raised above his head.
He was going to wallop him to death.
David's back was against a dead end wall. Bared wood walls had changed to brick. This place was a maze of random construction.
He only had one option.
The K-bar knife.
He had to pick a place to stab Vlad. He skipped the premeditation and lunged to strike.
"Fuck you, Vlad!"
David
sank the knife into Vlad's rib cage. The sledgehammer dropped. Vlad collapsed onto his knees and hugged his midsection.
The knife was still lodged in Vlad's midsection.
He didn't care. He wasn't reaching out to reclaim the knife.
The switch to electrocute yet another screaming victim caused the lights to go out again. He spotted a single doorway bordered by a yellow light. He vaulted for that light. When he reached that door, opened it, and threw it closed and locked it, he was face to face with Jeffrey Dahmer.
Luke Bloom couldn't figure it out.
Where the hell was his father and wife?
He couldn't shake that uneasy feeling. It was getting to the point he wasn't enjoying the evening's festivities. The fine vintages of spirits and the over-the-top eats tasted like shit on his tongue. Things were spoiled for him, and only him. Everybody else around him was having the time of their lives. Until he understood the reason why, he wouldn't be able to shake that wrong sensation.
He decided to be proactive about his concerns and entered the security room. This was a small box that recorded every audio and video live feed in the arena. The cameras were rigged about the battle ground to automatically record when motion was detected. When nothing was happening, the recording stopped. It made creating a highlights DVD for their guests that much easier. An engineer oversaw the wiring and the feeds to ensure the show was being filmed correctly.
That engineer was named Bert Toller.
Currently, the man oversaw the panel of live feeds with his big gut piled on top of the edge of the desk. A pot of coffee was always percolating to his right and a cigar was constantly smoldering in a glass tray to his left. Bert was in charge of this operation since the Bloom family took over The Event from the McMannis family. That was when The Event was getting stale. The McMannis's didn't want to spend the capitol to pull off a worthy show. Even the killers stopped showing up. Bert and the Blooms had a solid working relationship. That's why Bert wasn't concerned when Luke entered the control room.
"How's our host? You get to see your favorite serial killer in action yet?"
