Splatterpunk Fighting Back

by Bracken MacLeod

  “You must be a good saver,” Alex said, whistling as he glanced up at the crown molding and tableau ceiling.

  Ana returned to the centre of the apartment, to where a white leather sofa stretched three metres across and to where Alex stood in awe. As she handed him a half-filled brandy glass, she said, “It’s not all mine. I actually share this place with two others, but we get along well, so it’s not really a problem.”

  Two others? Alex suddenly felt uneasy. Were there men here? Men who owned Ana and allowed her to live in this place in exchange for—

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Ana said as she fell back onto the pristine white sofa. It creaked and squeaked beneath her as she got comfortable. “It’s nothing like that.”

  Alex lowered himself onto the sofa. This was like a dream; a fairy tale the likes of which seldom happened to people like him. The brandy warmed his stomach as he took a long slug. “So, where are they?” he asked. “These two others? Or is it some kind of timeshare, you know? You get the place for one month, then one of the others, then—”

  “They’re probably already in the pool,” Ana said, motioning to a glass partition on the other side of the room.

  Alex could only see darkness beyond the glass, and the exquisite décor of the apartment reflecting upon it. “Did you just say you had a pool? All the way up here, a mile in the sky?”

  “Best place for a pool, don’t you think?” Ana reached down and brushed a hand against Alex’s thigh. “We use it almost every day. I like to swim as much as they do. What about you, Alex? Do you like to swim?”

  But Alex was suddenly feeling very tired. A bead of sweat trickled slowly down the nape of his neck, even though it wasn’t unusually warm in the apartment. “I’m a… I like to sw…to swim.”

  “That’s good,” said Ana, only now there were three of her, shifting left to right, right to left. Alex could not decide which of them was the genuine article.

  What the fuck’s happening to me? I’m not drunk. I’ve hardly had anything.

  The brandy glass felt heavy in his hand. He leaned toward the marble coffee table, set it down there. “I don’t feel… feel too good.” That was an understatement; he felt like shit warmed up, could feel the vomit rising in his throat. It was all he could do to swallow it back down.

  He didn’t know what happened next—everything had become a blur—but one minute Ana was sitting across from him, that beautiful smile of hers more ominous now than anything else, and the next she was sitting upon his lap, kissing and nipping at his neck, his throat, his ears.

  If you’d told him, back at the bar, that he would end the night with Ana, she of the most beautiful voice in the world and a face and body to match, Alex would have grabbed it with both hands. But now he felt nauseated, drunk, and all at once aware that something strange was happening, and all he wanted was to get out of the penthouse, to suck in the city air until the biliousness left his body.

  In that moment, he didn’t care if he offended the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. He didn’t give a flying fuck if he spoiled his chances of what might be the greatest night of his life. He just wanted out.

  “Ana…” he said, breathily, as she continued to kiss and gently bite his neck. He could no longer keep his eyes open; sleep beckoned him. “I’m… I’m…”

  Then her face filled his field of vision, and Alex tried to scream but nothing came out.

  Blood covered her chin, her mouth, dripped from her lips in thick crimson globules. Her grin was no longer a thing of beauty, but a razor-sharp smirk. Her previously emerald eyes, like neon back at the bar, were now devoid of all colour, milky-white cataracts with black pinholes at the centre.

  Alex silently screamed again. He tried to move, to force the monster from his lap, but found himself paralysed from the neck down.

  What the fuck are you?

  When Ana next spoke, her voice was thick, vague, as if the apartment had been plunged into water. “Stop trying to fight it,” she said, her now black tongue darting in and out of her mouth, seemingly savouring the blood smeared across her lips. Her voice was deeper, now. Several octaves deeper than it had been back at the bar, and dripping with contempt.

  Then she opened her mouth and began to sing, arching her back whilst simultaneously wrapping her legs more tightly around Alex’s back. No sooner had she finished the first note than Alex was lost within her again. It did not matter that she was a monster now, a needle-toothed, cataract-afflicted, bloody-faced creature of the damned; her voice still belonged to the angels.

  No! Alex, no!

  He managed to lift his arms—though they felt incredibly heavy—and plunged fingers into his ears in an attempt to drown out the witch’s warbling.

  She stopped singing, her bleached eyes widened and her smile became a horrific scar stretching the entire width of her face. She pulled Alex’s arms away from his head; white noise filled his ears once again, until she spoke. “That simply won’t do,” she growled.

  “Please!” Alex implored. “I can’t—”

  Ana yanked his right hand toward her mouth and clamped down hard on his fingers. There was an audible crunch as bones cracked, a meaty slurp as the flesh was swallowed down. When the hand came out it was without its four fingers. Only the thumb remained.

  Now Alex did scream. And Ana laughed, even as she pulled his left hand toward her bloody maw and bit down on that one, too. Alex’s bladder gave way; a warmth blossomed out from his crotch, soaking the leather beneath his ass. When Ana released his left arm, he stared at both mangled hands, sans fingers, and roared in agony.

  Unconsciousness came then, shrouding him in darkness, and it was welcome.

  Unfortunately it didn’t last, and when Alex opened his eyes, through watery, blurred vision he saw that his clothes had been removed. His back and ass clung to the white leather, squeaking slightly as he tried to move.

  Ana was down between his legs, quietly singing, doing just enough with that voice of hers to keep him subdued. At first he only saw the top of her head, the black hair, but then her milky eyes opened, and when she saw Alex watching her, she said, “The others know you’re here. The pool is being readied.”

  Alex could not speak. Perhaps he had lost too much blood; perhaps Ana had bit the tongue right out of his mouth as he lay unconscious. Instead he managed a series of plaintive groans, not nearly enough to convince Ana to let him go.

  “You’re hard,” she said, and as if to prove it she grabbed his cock and tugged it to one side. Had she been sucking it? While he was out? Teasing him with that evil black tongue of hers, taking him into her mouth, where there were daggers instead of teeth? “It’s the voice, you see,” she went on. “What happened at the club, those filthy old fuckers with their shrivelled little peckers don’t know what they’re doing. All they know is that they want me. You know. You felt it, too, only you got lucky. You’re going to get me. You’re going to get all of us.”

  But Alex didn’t want her, not anymore.

  “But,” Ana said, grasping his shaft as if it had done something to offend her, “you won’t be needing this.” Lightning-fast she chomped down on his cock; for an infinitesimal moment Alex felt pure pleasure. The pain that followed lasted a helluva lot longer.

  Ana threw her head back, spat a chunk of meat to the side and cried shrilly, inhumanly, with exaltation.

  Alex passed out mid-scream.

  Cold. A chill draught from an indeterminate elsewhere. The bitter, coppery taste of blood in his mouth. A burning agony in his groin and at the wide-open nerves of his knuckles. Alex opened his eyes as the song—a chorus of infinite sensuality—pulled him back from the brink of oblivion.

  The penthouse was empty. Ana was nowhere to be seen, although her voice was right there, buried beneath others, drifting inexorably past his ears and imploring him to come find her.

  The elevator to his right was within crawling distance. Alex knew he could make it, could even reach up to the button which would take hi
m all the way down to street-level, where help would come to him and he would live on. It was right there, and yet it never occurred to him to leave.

  The song was far too pretty for that.

  He sat forward, his feet slipping momentarily on the bloodied marble floor. Momentum carried him all the way down, down, down to the cold hard ground.

  And the song went on.

  Pulling himself across the marble, Alex knew what he must do, what Ana and the others wanted from him.

  Do you like to swim?

  The sliding glass doors across the apartment were open, the source of the freezing zephyr, and it was toward the doors that Alex found himself moving, for that was also the origin of the song. It took him fully ten minutes to get there, but Ana and the others had nothing but time. He knew that now. He also knew that, even if he wanted to—which he didn’t—he could never escape the penthouse, could never return to his life, a life before Ana, before tonight.

  Out into the freezing night he went, his knees and elbows scraping over the concrete, leaving strips of flesh stuck to the ground like old bubble-gum. Without fingers, it was almost impossible to pull himself forward, and yet he managed it as best he could, digging his thumbs in and ignoring the white-hot pain as it travelled up his arms.

  The songstresses were in the pool, their slick bodies glistening in the moonlight, their mouths open inhumanly wide, as if their jaws had been dislocated in order to allow the song to emerge unchallenged. All three of them were still, their feet planted on the floor of the pool. Ana, in the middle, led the chorus while the blonde girls either side of her—as beautiful as Ana, and just as bloody—intoned a second melody.

  Alex could not recall ever hearing such a beautiful sound, and he knew that he never would again.

  At the pool’s edge, he stared down at his face reflected in the water. He stared down at it as blood drooled from his lips and stretched down to greet the pool.

  The song went on.

  Alex shuffled forward, allowed the cold water to envelop him and the song to beguile him. Less than a second after his body hit the water, he felt warm bodies passing by him, beneath him, swimming around his sinking form.

  He opened his eyes and watched in agony—in hedonistic fascination—as the sirens slowly devoured him inch by inch.

  Melvin - Matt Shaw

  Her mouth slightly agape, the tip of the erect penis pushed in past the full lips coated in her preferred brand of cherry chapstick. Inside, it slid over her warm and moist tongue until it tickled her tonsils at the back of her throat. For the first time since drifting off into a peaceful slumber, aware of the fact her alarm would be going off in just over three hours, she awoke. Panic immediately set in as the hard, throbbing penis—detached from body at the base—continued to snake its way into her. She tried to scream but it came out muffled as the cock inched its way down her throat. She gagged out of reflex but was unable to sick out the foreign object as—still—it pushed deeper. With desperate fingers she clawed at the end of the dick before that too disappeared down her throat. Too late. Mouth empty now other than her fingers, saliva, teeth and tongue. Her hands moved to her throat as she continued to struggle to breath, desperate for oxygen that once seemed in plentiful supply. A bulge in her neck similar to that seen in a snake’s body as it devoured prey just recently swallowed. The bulge continued to move as the hard manhood inched its way down the young woman’s esophagus. She gasped—with much relief—as, finally, the object cleared her airway, oxygen back into her system. Still scared, the woman rolled from her bed where she’d collapsed in a drunken heap hours earlier, having discarded her black dress on the floor. She clambered up from all fours, clutching at her chest as an a dull yet uncomfortable pain hit her. The unpleasant feeling you get when you swallow a bit of food slightly too big for easy passage down to your stomach. With a pained cry, she crossed the messy bedroom floor, clothes and shoes all over the place, to the dressing table in the far corner. Clumsy hands knocked at the desk lamp until they found the light-switch; the small bulb flickered on allowing a clearer image of the young girl’s tired looking reflection staring back at her from the mirror’s surface. She let out another pained scream and clutched at her chest again until—relief. Whatever was there had passed.

  Claudia paused a moment, unsure as to whether another wave of pain was about to hit. She waited, nervous to move in case that was all it would take to bring the pain on for a second bout. And, then - a belch from deep within her stomach: A low rumble and a strong taste of cheese. She shuddered in disgust and then laughed when she remembered the dream that had woken her so violently: The thought of a severed cock forcing its way down her throat. She shook her head. Clearly she had had way too much to drink that night and if the dream wasn’t enough to point that out then the reflection staring back at her from the mirror was. Her skin was pasty white, her long blonde hair knotted and greasy looking, and the dark eye shadow she wore had smeared its way down her cheeks. Her eyes momentarily drifted to the clock resting at the base of the table-top mirror. 3:42am. She needed to be getting up for work in two hours now. So much for sleep.

  Confident the pain had gone, she stumbled back to her inviting bed with her brain almost functioning normally but her body still clearly pissed. She collapsed and pulled the duvet over herself - a deep regret setting in that she’d gone out with her friends in the first place. Or rather, that she’d stayed out so late despite having every intention to get home at a sensible hour.

  ‘Don’t go yet! You’ve only just got here!’ her friend had moaned when Claudia made her first attempt to leave. ‘Have another drink with me. Please?’ She saw her friend most weekends, so really there was no need to have “one more” drink with her, even though her friend was celebrating her final day in the job. They could have had their own private celebration at the weekend, when neither of them had to be up at ridiculous o’clock. Her friend couldn’t be blamed though. Claudia had wanted to stay out just as much as her friend had wanted her there. Night’s out with the girls just didn’t happen enough anymore, not since they hit their mid-twenties. Most of them were settling down in serious relationships, spitting out babies - or were too busy to come out due to having “proper” careers now.

  ‘One more and that’s it,’ Claudia had said. Her drunk friend responded with a clap and a little cheer before running off—well, “stumbling off”—to the bar to get more drinks which—of course—she didn’t pay for. Why pay for drinks when men are so happy to purchase them for you? A saying that Claudia’s friend seemed to live by. A little flirting—good eye-contact, the occasional touch, the smiles, suggestive looks and sentences brimming with innuendo—and you never had to purchase a drink in a place like this: Heavy music banging, drinks flowing and desperate men prowling in the hope of getting their dick wet that night, be it with someone they actually fancied or someone who simply had an open invitation to a vagina. Of all the clubs to end up in, it had been one of those places.

  A sudden wave of nausea washed over Claudia. She was unsure as to whether it was because of the amount of drink she’d consumed or whether it was brought about by the memory of the creepy guy who’d come over to their table. Tall, skinny, greasy-brown hair and pale green eyes —were those contacts? —and yellow teeth stained with too much coffee. His love of coffee evident from the stink of it on his rancid breath when he leaned in closer to talk to them. Even in her—by then—drunken state this guy had been the final nail in the coffin for Claudia’s night out. By the time he’d been with them—hounding them for a fuck —for thirty minutes (they had timed it), she knew it was time to call it a day and get home to bed. God, what was his name?

  Melvin. His name alone made them laugh, almost as much as his obvious desperation. Here had been a man who was clearly a virgin! With no obvious redeeming qualities about him whatsoever, even a healthy bank balance would struggle to get him laid. Claudia shuddered again at the thought of the repugnant man, especially the moment his sweaty hand touched upon
hers.

  ‘There’s not enough alcohol in the world to make me want to go anywhere near you,’ she’d told him when she had finally had enough. He just stood there, a look of hurt on his face, as she gathered her belongings and told her friend she was leaving. Her friend—of course—put up a fight but knew it was for the best. Melvin The Virgin—as they had started to call him—had all but sucked the atmosphere from the group. What was once a fun table had turned to one of frustration and resentment as he refused to leave them be. All the girls there knew that—when drunk—Claudia had a temper on her. If it was a choice between watching her explode, getting them all thrown out, and her leaving - the latter was definitely the better option.

  Another wave of nausea hit before Claudia sat up—hands clutching stomach—and she screamed out in agonising pain. Something in her gut was moving and twisting, wriggling around, tearing her up. The worst wind, an unbearable infection… Something. For the second time, she rolled from the bed and landed on the floor on all fours as her stomach continued to cramp with a pain ten times more unpleasant than what she experienced with the worst of her periods. She screamed again before rolling on her side - desperate to find a position that allowed some reprieve from whatever tore at her gut. She screamed again as the pain moved to her lower intestine.

  Claudia looked down to her bare stomach and screamed again as she saw movement beneath the skin. Something kicking from within. The skin itself bruising dark purple before her eyes as something bled heavily within her. The next scream was one for help. She lived alone and had done so for a few years now, but it was a small flat with flats above, to the side and under her own. Someone would hear. Someone would come for… She screamed again. Another intense wave of pain as the purple beneath her skin spread further down. Desperate to reach the mobile phone charging over on the make-up table, Claudia tried to stand but immediately collapsed, her inner thighs now bruised and the white cotton of her panties starting to turn red before her very eyes. Alarmed, she pushed her knickers down and let out a wail as blood seemingly poured from her pussy. Not just a heavy - and unexpected - period. The blood was dark. Another scream, with another wave of chronic pain that bent the petrified girl in two. This time the pain came from up inside her pussy. Pain and movement. Another call for help through the tears. Please make this stop. Please make this go away. It’s just a dream.