Crossing the Line

by Bobe, Jordan

  He opened the bedroom door and froze in terror. Standing in the hallway was the biggest man he had ever laid eyes on. The man’s size alone was intimidating, but his décor made him downright terrifying. A skull covered the top half of his face. His torso was bare, revealing muscles that Stan had no idea even existed. Tied to one of his arms was a length of a spinal cord.

  Stan stepped back into the room and slammed the door. He pressed all of his weight against it, but that did absolutely no good. The door flew out of its frame, tossing Stan through the air with it. Both he and the solid oak door smashed into the bed. Pain rang out in the back of his head when a splintered piece of wood pierced his scalp.

  He felt the door being yanked away from him and screamed as loud as he could.

  18

  Marty was halfway up the stairs when he heard the scream. He turned around and ran back down to the main level of the house, completely unconcerned with how much of a coward he must have looked like. He hadn’t so much as caught a glimpse of Stan’s attacker, but he had no doubt it was the same killer that had taken out Tommy.

  “He’s in the house!” he screamed as he nearly tripped over Thad. “The killer’s in the house!”

  “Jesus Christ,” Quentin said. He looked around the room for some kind of wisdom, but found only walls. “What the hell are we going to do, man?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know what the fuck we can do.”

  Quentin mused over this for a moment and then nodded his head, confident that his logic made sense. “We can untie the girls and we can all leave together. There are plenty of cars out in the driveway. There will be room for all of us.”

  “You want to leave with the girls that we raped? I don’t want any of them to die, man, but you might as well be turning yourself over to the cops right now.”

  “Would that be so bad? I’d rather do a couple of years in jail than spend any more time in this house with some psycho killer knocking off our friends!”

  Marty weighed out his options and nodded his head. “Okay, fine, we all leave together. What are we going to do with Thad, though?”

  “He can be bait. The killer comes down here and sees him lying there all ready to be murdered. It may buy us enough time to actually get out of here.”

  “You want to leave Thad to die?”

  “If we hadn’t knocked him the fuck out he would have already killed both of us. Fuck him! We are wasting time even considering trying to bring him with us!”

  Marty looked from Thad to the girls. He stared at Chandra’s corpse for a moment and then looked over at Justin’s. “Shit, goddamn, you’re right. Fuck it. Let’s untie the girls and get the fuck out here.”

  Each time one of the girls was freed from their bindings they told them to stand against the far wall. Marcy was the last to be set free. Quentin wrapped an arm around her narrow shoulders and pressed the gun to her head.

  “If you don’t want to be responsible for Marcy getting her head blown off you won’t try to fuck us, okay?” he said. The traumatized women nodded their heads. “Okay, good. Now, we need keys to your cars. We may as well only take two of them. There are not enough of us left to worry about all three. So grab the keys to the two closest to the end of the driveway and do it fucking fast!”

  Lynne and Anna went to the purses and dumped them all out. They found the keys and showed them to the men.

  “Good, now some of you are pretty hurt. We’re going to need to pull together to get through this. Whoever is in the best shape help the girls that might slow us down, okay? We’re going to move as one solid group toward the cars. If something spooks us we are going to stay as a single group. None of you are going to try to run off, okay?”

  The girls nodded.

  They moved en masse to the front door and Anna opened it. No sooner were they all on the front porch than a spotlight fell on them. Quentin lowered his gun and raised his hands in the air. Marty tossed the fire poker aside and, too, held his hands up in surrender.

  They both had enough experience with the police to know that they were about to be arrested, though. The fear of the psycho was enough to make the terror of their forthcoming incarceration seem like nothing, though.

  “There’s someone inside! I think he’s killing our friend!” Quentin cried out.

  “Stay where you are with your hands where I can see them!” The order sounded threatening in tone.

  From inside the house came a piercing scream of pain.

  19

  Stan looked down at the bottom half of his left leg. Blood was pumping from the stump and dousing the floor near Gabby’s feet. Brute was standing over him with the blood dripping off of the curved blade of the sickle. He had already sliced strips of skin and flesh from Stan’s arms and chest. The pain was immense, but Stan was just as angry as he was hurt. How dare this skull wearing freak make him look bad in front of his girl?

  Stan refused to cry. Every time the blade sliced through him he choked back tears. Even now that his leg was halved he sucked in his breath to keep from allowing tears to fall.

  Brute grabbed him by the right ankle and lifted him from the floor. He got swung through the air as if he weighed nothing. He felt the hand release him and flew across the room. Stan’s back smashed into the wall and one of his shoulder blades cracked. As he fell his body rolled so that his chest and face connected with the top of the solid oak dresser. He bounced off of the dresser and his leg snapped at the knee while the stump smashed against the floor.

  Stan’s pain was so intense that he could not even try to get away from the psychopath. He didn’t so much as whine. His body was sliced up and broken, but he refused to allow himself to be reduced to tears.

  He had spent his childhood being beaten until he would cry just so his mother could tell him that he would never be a man. She was such a prim and proper Christian that the only passage from the Bible she actively followed was “spare the rod, spoil the child”. A few broken bones and cuts were nothing compared to the beatings he had suffered as a child.

  Brute approached him slowly. The giant tossed the sickle down on the bed. Its curved blade landed in the pool of blood and feces. More memories from his childhood came flooding back. Though the killer did not look like an avenging angel, but perhaps the details of what such a creature looked like was withheld from him. In his heart he knew that the killer was there to punish him for the things he had done in his life. He was going to be torn apart by the angel of death because he had forsaken his soul.

  Stan coughed and blood sprayed from between his lips. He knew something had been damaged internally, but it didn’t matter anymore. He would be dead within the next few minutes.

  “Go ahead and do it,” he said. He looked at Brute without any fear. “Kill me for what I’ve done. I know I deserve it and I don’t give a fuck. Do you honestly think I am afraid to die? Do you honestly think I feel bad for any of it? Fuck no, I wouldn’t change a thing I’ve done. I enjoyed every minute of it. Fuck you and the God that sent you here to kill me!”

  Brute stopped and cocked his head to the side. His massive chest rose and fell slowly. Blood dripped from his fingers and made small pools at his feet. After a moment he reached up and pulled the skull from his face. Stan could now see the angel in his full glory. Brute’s hair fell around his scarred face. His mustache and beard were so filthy that they almost looked like they had been purposely dreadlocked. One of his eyes had been damaged at some point in his life and only opened a slit. The opposite cheek looked as if a bite had been taken out of it.

  Brute opened his mouth as if he was going to speak and instead let out a deep throated growl. His lips peeled back to reveal teeth that had been sharpened to points where they weren’t broken. His growl turned to a deep voiced bark.

  He replaced the skull over his face when Stan still did not seem impressed. He stomped over to the injured man and punched him across the face. Stan fell over roughly, smacking his head off of the dresser. His eye socket crushed against
the hardwood and the force of the blow tore open his face from the corner of his eye to the side of his mouth.

  Brute pulled his hair until he was sitting prone again. Blood ran down the side of Stan’s face and ran into his mouth. He smiled at the killer, revealing his blood stained teeth. The smile seemed to infuriate Brute as the next punch he threw was twice as hard as the first. When Stan’s head connected with the dresser this time his wound spread so that the skin flapped away from the muscle beneath. His eye slid out of its destroyed socket and hung by the network of optic nerves.

  Stan forced his body to right itself again. He looked the huge man in the eye with the eyeball that remained in its socket. “You’re a fucking pussy,” he said. His voice was strangled by the damage that had been done to his jawline and the swollen tissue in his bruised neck and chest. Blood poured down from his wounds and as he spoke the simple sentence it sprayed from between his lips in a fine mist that covered Brute’s skull mask.

  Brute snarled and lashed out his huge hand. His fingers drove past Stan’s lips and wedged between his teeth and his cheeks. He squeezed his fingers toward each other. Stan’s teeth cracked under the pressure. Long roots tore from their gums and sliced deep into the muscle of his tongue. Shards of the broken teeth rolled down past his uvula and gouged up his the inside of his throat.

  Brute pulled his hand free and wiped the blood down Stan’s naked chest. He cocked his head to the side, awaiting a response from his victim. Stan forced his stretched lips into another smile. He licked at the blood running from the corners of his mouth with his gruesomely torn tongue.

  “Fuh-in puh-ie,” he said. He forced his torn throat to allow him to laugh. He used his good arm to smack the killer across the face.

  Brute snarled and barked in frustration. He ripped the eye off of the optic nerves and squeezed it until it popped between his fingers. Still Stan laughed. The wounded man smacked the killer across the face again.

  “-ivin muh a bo-er,” Stan said. He motioned to his flaccid penis. “Suh fer muh.”

  Brute picked Stan up by the throat and threw him on the top of the bloody, shit covered sheets. The giant kicked the bed. It collapsed under the strength of his blow. The mattress flipped over on its side. Stan was pinned between the inner spring and the wall. His stiff lover lay cold beneath him. He reached out, meaning to attempt to crawl away from Gabby’s beautiful corpse before it was completely covered in his blood. His hand fell on the handle of the sickle instead.

  He grabbed up the weapon and held it even as Brute kicked the mattress and drove him into the wall. The blood loss weakened him and his head began feeling as if it weighed nothing at all. He fought to maintain his consciousness.

  Brute threw the mattress across the room with a single arm. He lunged at Stan unaware of what Stan had in his hand. The sickle sliced deep into Brute’s side. The big man stumbled back and let out a howl of agony. The curved blade entered his side just beneath his ribs and came out in the middle of his abdomen.

  The killer tripped over Gabby’s corpse and fell on the remains of the bed. Stan cackled with excitement when he realized the sickle was still in his hand. Blood dripped from the flesh covered blade. He had wounded the beast! It was a hollow victory, but at least he had managed to damage God’s messenger.

  Pain rushed through his body as he inched forward. When he was close enough to strike Brute’s legs he swung the sickle again. Another howl came from the killer. The razor sharp blade sliced deep into Brute’s leg just below the knee and emerged from the other side accompanied by a gush of blood.

  Stan raised the sickle to strike again, but never got the chance. Brute sat up quickly and grabbed him by the weapon wielding arm. Stan felt his elbow pop as his arm was twisted around completely. The massive injured leg kicked Stan in the chest. As he fell back he actually heard the loud rip of his flesh being torn. He landed with his head nestled in the cold, dead flesh between Gabby’s thighs.

  His arm was not torn off as he had expected, but there was a long tear running from his elbow to his wrist. He could see straight into the jagged wound. The muscle glistened in the moonlight coming in from the room’s window and for a moment the wound did not bleed. When the blood flow began though it rushed just as quickly as the steady stream coming from his stumped leg.

  Brute stood. He growled with agony when his enormous weight came down on his wounded leg, but he seemed sure footed despite the clutter around him. When he reached over his shoulder and grabbed the axe just below the head the deep gouge in his side opened like a grinning mouth. Blood poured from the wound, but the big man did not seem to notice.

  He pulled the axe free of its shoulder holster and appraised the man lying on the floor. Stan’s blood loss had finally caused his mind to lose some of its coherency. His thoughts jumbled in his mind. He imagined what it might have been like to have fallen in love with Gabby. Perhaps they could have dated through college and then gotten married. He knew he would have never been an abusive father.

  His mind jumped then to the summer of his fifteen year. That was the first time he had fallen for a girl. He couldn’t even remember her name, if he had ever known it in the first place. Like so many that came after her she had refused to even acknowledge his existence. He had watched her undress once through her bathroom window. Even then he knew he abhorred pubic hair. It reminded him of his mother’s filthy cunt.

  Finally his thoughts drifted back to the little girl he had purchased in Mexico. He wished now that he had killed her as he Gabby. He could only imagine what it would have felt like to have the child’s cold sex wrapped around him.

  He was so far away that he did not even notice when the axe was brought down between his legs. The force of the swing shattered his pelvis. His deviant penis and testicles were severed from his body. He felt only the slightest pain at that moment.

  The second blow cut his right leg off of his body. Instead of paying attention to the blow his mind envisioned a pile of corpses. His mother’s dead body was on the top with her nakedness covered by pages of the Bible that had been torn from the book and burned. The smoldering paper barely covered her disgusting body. Poised between her legs was Brute. He was thrusting in and out of her with a cock the size of a normal man’s leg. Even though the bitch was dead she still moaned with pleasure.

  The first blow to the side of Stan’s neck did not completely severe his head. It left behind a knot of muscle, His head lolled over to his shoulder. His blank, dead eye stared up at Brute without emotion.

  The next blow destroyed the remaining eye and the side of Stan’s face. The axe blade lodged itself in the dead girl beneath Stan’s crotch. Brute pulled it free and a good portion of Stan’s head was flung away across the blood soaked room.

  The final blow severed the remaining muscle keeping Stan’s head connected to the body. His injuries had drained so much of his blood that only the smallest bit spurt from the stump of his neck.

  Brute put the axe back in place on his back and picked up his sickle before leaving the room. As he made his way down the hall he stopped in one of the bedrooms and pulled the covers and pillows off of the bed. He tore the comforter and folded the long strip twice before wrapping it around his wounded leg. Using one of the decorative throw pillows as an enormous gauze pad he kept it over the sickle wound by tying the fitting sheet around his torso.

  Once he was patched up enough that he would not bleed to death Brute began making his way through the house. He was limping slightly and with each step he whined with pain— not the whine of a man, but the high pitched whine of a dog.

  20

  The second police vehicle pulled up shortly after the survivors had emerged from the house. The two officers had taken Aaron aside. Ivy watched as the men spoke softly, but with a lot of passion. She reached out and flipped the safety off on the shotgun. There was something unsettling about the exchange the men were having. She looked from the rearview to the windshield. Her friends and two guys she vaguely recognized from sc
hool were standing on the porch. The spotlight made her invisible to them, she knew. There was a lot of terror in their eyes. Something very bad had happened in the house.

  Aaron said something in the same hushed tone, but the way his voice snapped Ivy could tell it was an unhappy end to the conversation. He walked briskly back over to the driver’s door and sat down heavily in his seat. After a moment of drumming on the steering wheel he snatched the radio’s microphone from the dashboard.

  He keyed the microphone for a moment. The empty absence of sound was unsettling coming from the car’s loudspeaker.

  Two white vans with the word “Ambulance” crudely stenciled on their sides pulled in behind the police vehicles. Aaron looked in the rearview and shook his head passionately. “Fuckers all show up at the same time,” he said.

  He keyed the microphone again and held it in front of his face. “The two men must step back into the house. Once the men are inside I want each of you young women to come forward one at a time and the EMT’s will put you into the ambulances.”

  “There’s a— inside!” one of the men screamed at the top of his lungs, but at least three of his words were lost in between the porch and the cruiser.

  “There is no negotiating. You will be taken into custody once all of the women are safe!” Aaron yelled into the microphone.

  The outspoken young man said something else. This time Ivy could make none of it out. One of the other police officers pulled his service pistol and stepped forward. He took caution in aiming before he fired the single round. It struck the house just above the man’s head.

  “Step inside,” Aaron said into the microphone. “The next shot will not be aimed at the house.”

  The outspoken man flipped the police men the bird and stepped back into the house. His terrified friend followed after him.

  “Now, one at a time I want you women to come over here,” Aaron said into the microphone.