Morning sun shimmered on the lake. Dragonflies flew among the reeds. Marty was six years old, sitting on a picnic blanket with his beautiful mother, while his father fished at the end of the pier. After lunch, she would read Marty poetry from classic poets like T.S. Eliot, Emily Dickinson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and some from his mother’s journal. Her poems and short stories took Marty on adventures to faraway lands where fairies and talking animals lived. His favorite fable was about a little boy who got lost in the woods and befriended a black bear. The bear protected the boy from a pack of vicious wolves and helped him find his way home.
Marty was reliving that story, feeling the warmth of his mother’s love, enchanted by her soothing voice, when an empty beer can hit him in the face and snapped him out of his dream.
Seth said, “Doggy, who said you could sleep?”
Marty growled like a dog.
Seth waived his arms. “Woooo, I’m so scared.”
Zane smirked, looking content after finishing off a joint.
Tara kept nosing through the journal, her lips moving as she read silently to herself. What Marty hated more than anything was someone reading his private thoughts. His poetry was sacred. He didn’t want her to read the dark poems. Those were between him and the lake.
Tara walked along the water’s edge, tearing pages from the journal. “Hate this one. Hate this one. This one’s okay. This one sucks. Ugh, this poem’s just creepy.”
Deep inside a monster grows
A dark embryo who knows
Twisting throes, thrusting toes
Water breaking in gushing flows
‘Til through bloody birth he blows
“Not your best stuff, Marty.” She tossed that poem and tore out another and then another. The pages floated through the air and scattered across the lake’s surface.
A fury burned inside Marty. His arms began to tremble. He needed to write before the bad part was let loose. He needed his journal.
After a couple beers, Seth stood up. “I gotta drain the lizard.” He started to unzip in front of Marty’s face.
“Piss on me and I’ll bite it off.”
“Whoa…” Seth laughed. “Doggy’s getting feisty.” He walked over to a cluster of pines and sprayed the trees from side to side like he was making a game of it.
Zane pulled out his hunting knife and sharpened it against a whetstone. Since he was inebriated now, he did a sloppy job of it, missing the stone a few times. He looked at Marty with a fucked-up stare. “Nut sack, did you know that beneath that pretty-boy face of yours is another face? Right beneath the skin. See, people are always hiding behind these masks. But I can see their true selves, their hidden faces, and I’ve got a talent for bringing them to the surface.”
“Zane is an artist with a blade,” Seth said, returning to his seat on a log. “You should see some of his masterpieces.”
“Thanks man.” The two stretched around the fire and bumped fists. Then Zane looked back at Marty. “I’m looking forward to bringing out what’s underneath your skin.”
Marty retreated within himself, sinking deeper within the tar pits of his mind. A cold blackness oozed over him and a voice that didn’t sound like his own said, “You shitheads have no idea who you’re fucking with.”
Zane and Seth looked at each other and burst out laughing.
Tara read the poems at the middle of the book, written when Marty was an angry teenager―when his soul was the blackest. She scowled and glared at him. “You can be a real sicko, Stalker Boy.” She tore out more pages and threw them into the lake. Dozens of pages now floated across the water.
Marty’s jaw tightened. The muscles around his eyes ticked. He squeezed his fists so tight his nails dug into his palms.
“Ooh, this is getting juicy,” Tara said. “Now he’s writing about Mommy and Daddy.”
Marty flinched as she read part of another poem out loud.
I was not a bad lad
But a boy of unjust penance
Living with a madman
Was my childhood sentence
Daddy beats me and Mommy
When he’s drunk for several days
Daddy is a nice man
But loves in different ways
She read a couple more verses and then stopped. “Oh, my…” Tara looked at Marty with a pouty face. “Did Daddy kill Mommy?”
An image of a knife stabbing his mother over and over flashed in Marty’s mind. Blood spattered his father’s face as he looked up and found nine-year-old Marty watching in a state of shock.
Marty shook his head, willing the memory away.
“Daddy went to prison, didn’t he?” Tara said in a cold voice. “Went all bat-shit crazy when you and Mommy discovered what he’d been doing.” She held the book open to the section where Marty had pasted several newspaper clippings that documented his father’s arrest and trial. “You look a lot like him.” He cringed at seeing the mug shot of his father. “Listen to this, guys, Vernon Weaver got sentenced to life in prison for stabbing his wife twenty-six times. Police found Marty covered in her blood. They also found, hidden in the basement, the remains of several missing teenage girls. Sounds like Daddy was a total whack job.”
When she ripped out the page that had a photo of his mother taped to it, Marty snapped. Rage wailed from his throat. He grabbed a log and smacked Zane in the temple. Seth reacted too slowly and Marty hammered him with the log, knocking him down. Both guys rolled along the ground, cursing and rubbing their heads.
Tara yelled and started running.
Marty growled and chased her down the shoreline. He caught up to her and grabbed the book of poems. “Give it back!”
“No, it’s mine!” She wouldn’t let go. Marty was surprised how strong she was.
“Mine, mine, mine!” She twisted the journal loose from his grip and hurled it into the lake.
Marty’s cries turned to anguish as a lifetime of writing sank beneath the surface.
Tara giggled. “Serves you right, Stalker Boy.”
Marty slapped her face, hard.
Tara looked at him with stunned eyes and touched her reddened cheek. Her eyes turned cold.
He pulled away his hand, shocked that he’d struck a girl. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”
She screamed and attacked, beating his chest and head. A swipe of her nails clawed his face. A wild fist busted his lip. He held up his arms, trying to keep the crazy girl at bay.
Seth jumped on his back, bit into his ear. The side of Marty’s head erupted with fire and spurted blood. He cried out and ran backwards, slamming Seth into a tree. They fell to the ground. Marty rolled over, gripped Seth’s dreadlocks, and smacked his head against the ground, over and over, growling with an unstoppable fury as Seth cried out, pleading for mercy.
Zane rammed Marty from the side and tackled him hard to the ground. He felt an explosion of pain inside his shoulder and wasp stings along one side of his face. Several blows to his stomach and ribs knocked the wind out of him. Marty gasped. Tasted blood. Then his blurred vision filled with three people standing over him, kicking and kicking and kicking. Marty curled into a fetal position, shielding his face.
Part Two
Animal Games
Chapter 5
Sometime later consciousness returned. Marty felt bruised and cut all over. The side of his head where his ear had been bitten ached the most. A dry, burning heat made him feel like he was imprisoned in hell. He opened his eyes to see orange flames devouring logs. And beyond the crackling embers, three animal masks stared with cartoonish grins. A weasel with dreadlocks held the video camera on his shoulder. A toad with a muscular, tattooed upper body anxiously passed the hunting knife from one hand to the other. Closest to the fire stood Tara wearing a white rabbit mask, grinning like a deranged Easter Bunny.
“How’s the lighting?” she asked her cameraman.
“Move a little to the right,” said Seth. “Woof, right there. Perfect.”
“Be sure to get
a close up of my cleavage. Razor loves that.”
Tara had changed into knee-high boots and a black and red corset that made her waist extremely thin and pushed her breasts together. She wore a spiked collar. Each of her bare shoulders was decorated with matching tattoos of black roses and thorny briars that spread like vines around her arms. She gripped a long machete that had red tape wrapped around the handle.
The campfire flames raged high now, the logs having been stacked like a pyre. Marty wondered if he had fallen victim to some satanic cult and was now the sacrifice of their ceremony. They had stripped him down to his underwear. A leather collar choked his throat and a chain leash stretched around the fire to the rabbit’s hand.
Marty grabbed at the collar and tried to pull it off. She yanked the leash a couple times, pulling him closer to the flames. “Behave and do everything I tell you, or you’ll be severely punished.”
Marty lowered his hands. At least they hadn’t bound his wrists or ankles. He thought of yanking on the leash and pulling Tara into the fire, but that would only get him killed. Maybe they just wanted to have some fun and would eventually let him go. As humiliated as he felt right now, bondage and discipline weren’t anything new. He’d been tied up and molested a number of times during his year under foster care at the Crowleys’ house.
Just play along, let them do whatever, and maybe they’ll let you live.
Now, he could see by the red light on the video camera that he was being filmed.
The weasel waved. “Smile for the camera, Marty. You’re the star of our next movie.”
Marty’s first thought was, what if this video gets posted on the Internet and Jennifer sees it? His shame would be immeasurable if that happened.
The toad looked at the rabbit. “How do you see this one ending, baby doll? Beheading?”
Rabbit slowly shook her head. “We gotta keep changing things up to keep our client happy.”
“What would give him the biggest hard-on?” Zane asked.
Tara said, “He only buys snuff films that are creative and unpredictable. Not the samo-samo.”
Seth said, “How about we douse this one with lighter fluid and torch him? I can record him running down the shore like a human inferno. That would be a hoot.”
“Already made that movie,” Zane said. He put a hand on his girlfriend’s shoulder. “Baby, you’re the creative one. How should this go down? Are you going to let me cut off his face?”
While Tara thought a moment, Marty hugged his knees to his chest, rocking back and forth. Not even during the worst of his foster care days had he been so terrified. These three psychos were going to torture him beyond pain and then kill him. All he could do was hide in the tar pits and pray the bad one who lived in the deepest darkness of his mind would return.
Cerulean. Cerulean. Cerulean.
The white rabbit snapped her fingers. “I’ve got it. First, we need some mood music.” Tara walked around the fire to a boombox with an mp3 player and scrolled through a list of songs.
“How about some black metal?” Seth suggested. “Behemoth or Mayhem.”
“Too hardcore. I want this film to be poetic, like our star.” She chose a slow song with a woman’s voice that sounded both hypnotic and erotic.
Holding the leash, Tara seductively danced in front of Marty, swaying her hips, rubbing herself, as if he were at a strip joint getting a private show. She ran her machete blade along his shoulders and head, lifted his chin with it. “Up on your knees.” She tugged on the leash, pulling him forward until he was resting on his knees. “Arms at your sides.” He played along. Then she circled him in her high-heeled boots. He followed her with his eyes until she was out of sight. He could feel her dancing behind him, her fingers ruffling his hair. Her breath on his neck made his skin crawl.
Several feet away, Toad Face rocked back and forth to the beat of the music, caressing his muscled pecs. His fingers played with a gold loop that pierced one nipple.
The weasel silently filmed the rabbit seducing Marty. She hugged his back, held the machete blade against his chest, and said:
“Stalker Boy deserves only the best.
So a poem to Jennifer I’ll carve on his chest.
And then one to sweet Mommy on his back.
Because she didn’t survive Daddy’s attack.
Then after I’ve made him into a human journal,
We’ll flay off his skin until he is dead eternal.”
“Dibs on the legs,” Seth said.
“The face is mine,” Zane said.
“Boys, you can do whatever you want to him. All I care about is that we make him scream loud for the camera. That’s what excites our client most.”
Zane held up his knife. “I’ll make him scream.”
Inside, Marty felt the cold darkness spreading from the core of his chest, filling his entire body with a chill so icy he started shaking. Tara circled back in front of him and looked at the camera. “Now, let’s make a fucking killer movie.”
For a moment, Weasel filmed Rabbit and Toad as they danced with each other to the rhythm of the music. Marty noticed that ash caked the ground around the campfire. He reached down and grabbed two fistfuls, feeling the sting of hot cinders. As the animals moved towards him with their blades, he snarled and threw ash in their faces.
“Shit!” Zane backed away, rubbing his eyes.
Marty’s fist struck the toad in the jaw. He shoved Zane into Seth, who fell back on his ass. White Rabbit screamed, charging with the machete above her head. Marty punched her in the pubic bone. She let out a painful cry and doubled over.
Seth and Zane struggled to untangle themselves. In all the chaos, the video camera landed on the ground near Marty’s feet. He smashed the camera, tossed it into the campfire.
Seth leaped onto Marty and they grappled on the ground. Two painful punches hit Marty’s jaw. He grabbed the weasel’s hair and tore out dreadlocks. Seth screamed and backed away.
Marty jumped to his feet, turned to run, when he felt a sharp sting in his side. He looked down to see a machete with a red handle sticking out of his hip. A bloody rose blossomed across his underwear. He looked at Tara in shock.
She yanked the machete out and pointed the blade at him. “I want that asshole dead! Kill him!”
Marty stumbled away from the campsite. Every step fired off bolts of pain from his hip. Blood soaked his underwear, streamed down his leg.
Behind him the animals hooted and howled. They ran in circles around him, sticking his back and shoulders with their knives.
He fell to one knee, fought through the pain, and stood back up.
“Cerulean, help me…Cerulean…Ceru…lean…” He hobbled towards the shore. The dark lake, his old friend, went in and out of focus.
The animals laughed, as round and round the cartoon faces went.
More slices across his arms. Another knife stuck his buttocks.
Growing weak from so many stab wounds, Marty had nothing left in him to run. He stood at the edge of the lake, teetering. Tears filled his eyes. He whispered to the lake, “Save me.”
Two people grabbed his arms.
Zane said in his ear, “You screwed up big time, nut sack.” Then to Tara: “How do you want us to kill him, baby doll?”
Tara shrugged. “Just make it quick. This one’s a botch.”
They dragged him into the lake and dunked his head beneath the icy water. Marty screamed for air, bubbles rising up his cheeks. With his last ounce of strength, he fought against the two men, trying to rise, but they held him underwater until the last breath sputtered out of him.
Chapter 6
Still wearing her rabbit mask, Tara watched them drown the poet. She yawned, growing bored, and felt herself coming down fast. She needed another snort of coke. “Pull him out,” she ordered.
Zane and Seth dragged the limp body and dropped it onto the grassy bank. The back and buttocks were punctured with a dozen cuts and holes pooling with blood.
Tara leaned
over him. “Is he dead?”
Zane rolled him over and punched Marty’s stomach. Bloody water dribbled from his mouth but he remained still. “Dead and done.”
Seth hopped up and down. “Woo, did he put up a fight. A lot more than the last guy.”
Darkness Rising: A Novella of Extreme Horror and Suspense Page 3
