Psycho Save Us

by Huskins, Chad

  Just like the monster, she thought. He doesn’t want to admit it, but they’re the same, and there can be only one. Just like that movie Highlander that Ricky used to like so much. There can be only one. It was insane to think, but there it was.

  “I’m s-s-s-sorryyyyyyyy,” Olga whimpered from above. The hands had now reached out and grabbed hold of her breasts, had pried them apart to get at her sternum, which they also pried part with slow care, and now reached inside to prod playfully at her innards. “Please…please…”

  “I’m sorry, too,” Kaley said. “You couldn’t stop, and now I can’t. I understand you now. I empathize. It just…it just feels too good, doesn’t it?”

  FIRE BLOOMED FROM their hands as they grabbed hold of one another, their arms crisscrossing and their hands grabbing fistfuls of one another’s clothing. The fire swirled beneath their feet, as did the tentacle, or the serpent, or whatever it was. It didn’t seem to want to interfere in this, it only swirled and climbed and caught fire randomly. Behind them, the three tortured men had started to move. The briars had started to break free, and just as they were climbing to their feet, more briars shot out of their mouths, choking them and attaching to the ceilings and lifting them into the air by their own tongues.

  Spencer saw only part of this. He and Dmitry pushed one another around and around the room of fire until Spencer wound up with his back against a dresser, and Dmitry hammered at his face with his fists. Spencer took them all smiling, the masochistic part of him savoring the pain, his mind diving headlong into the absurdity of everything around him. He caught Dmitry’s arm on his fifth punch and then grabbed him about the neck in a clinch. “This is some fucked up shit, ain’t it?” Spencer howled.

  Dmitry didn’t answer, he just jerked at Spencer’s hoodie and flung him into another wall. He was stronger than Spencer, and heavier, too. He flung Spencer about not quite like a ragdoll, but close.

  When they hit the other wall, the flames spread out, arched around them and formed a hemisphere. Tiny hands reached out from the walls, and they looked so loving, so accepting, so wanting.

  There was a flash of light, like a bolt of lightning, and the floor beneath them became as lava. The walls behind them peeled back and there was a low tearing sound, like something trying to break through. As the walls crumbled, Spencer saw the throbbing tonsils, and felt them burst and felt the pus run out of them as Dmitry pushed him farther into the wall. The arms still stretched out impossibly, pulling him in, accepting him into their fold.

  And he heard them. He heard the familiar voices. Whether real or imagined, they were all there. Dr. McCulloch shouted, “There you are! You sonuvabitch! There you are!” And then there was Kevin Baxter, the forty-two-year-old man dying of stage III-A lung cancer, and who tried to kill Spencer rather than pay back the money he owed him. “You motherfucker! You took me away from my family!” Then there were the screams of Miriam Downey, the nurse he’d killed and dumped in the Tennessee River because she’d tried to blackmail him after selling him the necessary supplies from the hospital to create their startup meth lab. “I got’choo, Pelletier! I got’cho ass now, son!”

  It fazed him, though not in the way one might think. He wasn’t afraid of these people, if in fact they were even present in the room, but he was angry at them. He felt diminished by their taunting, and was outraged at their grabbing hands. After all they’d done to him, after everything he’d done to make sure they were wiped from the world, they were still around to belittle him, to disrespect him.

  Dmitry slammed a knee into his gut, and shoved Spencer deeper into the wall. “Maybe I let them take you now, eh?” he shouted, smiling that smile that had drawn Spencer from first sight.

  And then came a tiny voice. The most taunting voice.

  “You snuck on me, Spence ol’ boy!” Spencer knew that voice. It could be no one else. Only one kid had ever called him that.

  “Hey, Miles!” Spencer laughed, his face pressed deeper and deeper into the pulsing tissue. “How’s life?”

  “You coming down here with me, Spence ol’ boy? Huh? You coming to join me?”

  “Probably!” he cackled, watching Dmitry’s face go from humored to confused. “Just not today! Lemme introduce ya to a new friend o’ mine! Dmitry, Miles! Miles, Dmitry!” The hands groped for both of them now, and Dmitry saw this. He recoiled, and Spencer rejoiced at the sight of fear on the Russian’s face. As Dmitry pulled away from the hands, he let go of Spencer and backed up to the center of the room.

  Spencer ripped the hands of the damned off of him and pulled himself away from the wall, which had welcomed him like quicksand. Fire still lived on the floor, and was breathed in and out by parts of the walls that had developed flaps of skin like fish mouths and gills.

  The flames licked up Dmitry’s right leg, and he leapt away, momentarily burned.

  “You’re startin’ to believe it, Dmitry,” Spencer said, standing up. “Don’t let it get to you. Not before I’m finished with ya. C’mon now, let’s imbue this moment.”

  Dmitry stood there, looking at his right leg in a detached state, like a man standing alone in a dream, wondering if he was going to wake up.

  Then, the ceiling swelled like pimple, and burst just as explosively. Ceiling fans and planks of wood fell on top of them, as well as objects that had been held in the attic—a multicolored tricycle, a few boxes of Christmas decorations, some boxes of old paintings and picture frames—and descending from the sky were meat hooks, at the end of which swung flayed men and women screaming. The barbed hooks clung to their sinew as they tried to wiggle free. The chains holding these people in the air went up for an impossible distance, into a great, enveloping darkness.

  The shadows began to tear apart like fabric, great swaths of it separating and cascading into the room as they took shape. A murder of impossibly black crows swarmed about the dangling bodies, some alighting here and others alighting there, pecking and tasting the buffet of dangling flesh. The people on the hooks and chains writhed, but it did no good, the crows did their work unfettered. One batted its wings at Spencer, and dashed to the buffet of hanging corpses all around them.

  “PELLETIERRRRRRR!” someone roared.

  He turned, and spied one particular man dangling from the end of one of the longer hooks. It was Aaron Schmidt, the man of the Aryan Brotherhood who he’d killed and…mutilated postmortem. He swung from side to side, trying to get closer to Spencer, who backed up calmly, though not slowly. This was the first time Spencer considered that this might actually be hell, that the girl’s ability to tap into others empathetically might’ve somehow enabled her to reach down to the pain and suffering being experienced in other dimensions, other levels of reality.

  “YOU FUCKING DID THIS TO ME! I’LL PUT YOU HERE, AND SEE HOW YOU LIKE IT!”

  Spencer sighed and nodded. “You ready?” he said to his opponent. Dmitry was standing perfectly still at the center of the room like a man who was afraid of tipping over the boat if he moved. One of the swinging corpses moved near him, an outstretched hand begging for help.

  Spencer stared at his opponent. “You ready?” he repeated.

  Dmitry looked Spencer up and down, as if seeing him for the first time. “You,” he breathed. “You did this. The girl, too?” He was a clever creature, if a punkass, him and his kind would have to be to keep this operation going for any amount of time. Dmitry was piecing it together, a man taking his first steps out of an acid trip. “I’ll kill her,” he decided. His thoughtful voice made him sound like a man deciding on what he’d have for dinner. Then, his face twisted into rage. “I’ll kill her! I’ll kill her!” He ran towards the flaming dresser and pushed it over. “I’ll kill her!” He kicked over a small table, picked up a flaming chair and tossed it at a glass window, shattering it. “I’ll kill her!” he screamed, continuing his fit as he lifted a lamp and stabbed it into the throbbing wall. A murder of crows fluttered away from one of the holes and disappeared into the darkness above. “I’LL KILL
HER!”

  Spencer smiled. “You can kick an’ scream an’ holler, but I betcha five dollars ya don’t touch her again.”

  “Out of my way. I have to kill her. She’s doing this to me. To us. We have to kill her.”

  “I don’t think you understand. I’m a Portia, bitch. I came here to eat you.”

  Dmitry screamed and ran at him. Just then, the floor buckled beneath their feet and an abyss as endless as the one above them revealed itself. Spencer leapt for one of the dangling bodies, and dug his fingers into the muscle and sinew. Dmitry did the same, only his momentum swung him towards the door, which was now an isolated floating hole of light in this dark corridor of nothingness and chains and screaming people.

  Spencer hung there, clinging to the flayed, screaming body of Aaron Schmidt. His flesh that had once donned the mantle of the AB and various swastikas was now completely gone. His fleshless arms batted at Spencer as he climbed higher and higher, pulling bits of muscle and tendons free as he climbed up to the barbed chain and started swing them both back and forth. “FUCK YOU, PELLETIER! I’LL FUCKING FUCK YER GUTS OUT—”

  “Oh, shut up, Aaron!” he shouted. “You did this to yourself!” Spencer swung to the next dangling body, which was the one that Dmitry had swung to freedom with. It was the body of Ramsay Friedkin, recognizable only by his missing right leg and half of a missing right arm, both lost to landmines in Vietnam.

  The old fucker had entered into an agreement with Spencer just before he went into prison, and while he was away at Leavenworth Friedkin had taken all his money and ran. Only not far enough, as Spencer tracked him down outside of Baton Rouge once he got out. Spencer was a hunter by nature, though a hunter of a different sort, and this vast black arena was a monument to that work, an assortment of trophies that still talked.

  “Spencer?” said Friedkin, taking on a different tone than the others. “Spencer…help me. I’m so sorry for what I done. Please, help me! This can’t be real! This can’t be! I wanna wake up! Find my mother! Please, MOTHERRRRRRR!”

  “Shut up, Friedkin. Take it like a man.”

  Flames shot down the barbed chains from somewhere far, far above, and then bathed every single one of the bodies in its baptizing heat. All his victims screamed louder, if that could be believed, and as he swung to the doorway and hopped off and back to the relative safety of the hallway, Spencer was fascinated to hear the screams almost harmonize. It seemed that when the ultimate summit of torture was reached, all human beings hit the same note. Funny.

  The hallway squished beneath his feet. When he stood up, his hands and knees were covered in a translucent green mucus. It smelled of someone’s unwashed mouth. The three men from before were now being absorbed into the meaty walls while fire licked around them.

  Spencer became convinced that they were, in fact, inside the throat of a beast, at least that’s what Kaley’s mind and his were constructing, or summoning, or both.

  You have to kill him, said the Voice. It was calm, still, supremely certain.

  “I’m workin’ on it!”

  He’s coming to kill us.

  “No shit!”

  He knows we’re doing this. Instinctively he knows. He’s coming to stop me—

  “No fucking shit!”

  Dmitry had already run down the stairs, on his way to kill the girl, no doubt. Spencer bolted for the stairs and looked down, and for a moment he got vertigo. These were not the same steps he’d ascended moments ago. Now, there was scarcely a step every few feet, and the walls and the ceiling had become lined with ribs pressing out from the meaty walls. The fire still licked up and down these walls, traveling like wind through a grassy field while the creature continued to breathe.

  Dmitry was at the bottom of the stairs, slipping and sliding down the mucus-covered floor before ultimately flopping on the floor at the bottom. Spencer took two steps down the creature’s gullet, but once he slipped the first time he just went with it and flopped belly first on the floor and slid down to catch up to his prey. Dmitry was just getting to his feet as Spencer slammed against his legs, taking them out from under him. And there they grappled, the flames blooming out from wherever their arms met.

  The two gunmen who’d come up behind them had been taken out, one by a SWAT sniper and the other by Agent Porter with a well-aimed and well-timed shot. Leon spotted Agent Porter trying to move cover-to-cover to get to his two downed agents.

  Avery Street had become a war zone. The firefight had expanded, and it appeared that they were gaining more enemies, not less. The shots were pouring out from windows and back yards. Leon now realized something that he would revisit sometime later, if he survived. They were in the dominion of the vory, of the Rainbow Roomers. They had found the cave where these creatures had kept their secret, had held council, and had carved out a place for themselves while the city slept.

  Another officer was hit, a bullet to the shoulder put him down. Leon turned and spotted a second SWAT vehicle on its way towards them. It was followed by three other squad cars with sirens blaring, but barely audible for the din of gunfire. Another chopper had joined the fight, sharpshooters raining down bullets on the house at the right, which was dishing out the most punishment. The two houses on the left had desperate men and even women running out of the house, firing wildly as they crossed the lawn and tried to get to their cars. One woman was gunned down by someone, and a half naked man was clipped in his leg as he dived for cover behind his Chevy.

  All of the houses supported one another, all except for the last house on the right at the far end of the cul-de-sac. That one was strangely dark and silent. At least so far.

  When the second SWAT van arrived the driver bravely drove it directly in front of the other police vehicles, creating a new barrier with its solid steel body. The driver hopped out and joined the rest of the team assembling at the back. Two snipers took up position at the front and the rear, firing around the sides. A third sniper crawled underneath the SWAT van and fired out the other side from cover.

  This went on for about three minutes, and finally the exchange of gunfire started to diminish, at least from the enemy’s side. Leon hopped up and ran around the side of the bullet-riddled squad car belonging to David Emerson. He almost stopped himself from going after David, and was sure that if he didn’t stop himself someone else would. But no one tried. In fact, when he glanced behind him he found Agent Porter hard on his tail.

  No words were spoken. Leon and the agent leapt over the picket fence and ran around the dead body of one vor, then made it to the side of the first house. He glanced behind him and gave a nod to Agent Porter, who took the lead, doing a slicing of the pie maneuver to clear the corner.

  There were less and less shots in the street, the most were still coming from up the street, from an exchange between Hennessey’s team and a deal of enemy combatants.

  “I’m gonna fuckin’ eat you!” he cried. Spencer head-butted his enemy, then kneed him the groin before tackling him sending them both back to the ground. They rolled around in the stomach of the creature, and as they did Spencer felt his skin burning, watched his hoodie begin to smoke whenever it made contact with the piss-colored ooze on the floor. It smelled bad in here, like bile and shit and another odor Spencer couldn’t quit pin down.

  He knew it was the gastric acids of the creature, or at least it was what passed for gastric acids in this universe they now occupied. It was corrosive, but it was only so because he allowed it to be.

  He laughed. “Did ya hear what I said?! I’ll fuckin’ eat you!”

  Spencer rolled on top of his nemesis, clawing at his face and raining down hammer fists repeatedly until finally Dmitry brought his heels close to his butt and thrust his hips into the air, sending Spencer over his head and sliding across the toxic fluids. Dmitry got to his feet, and so did Spencer. The fires had mostly gone out, but a few still lingered, being breathed in and out of nostril-like flaps of meat along the walls. Strangely though, the furniture was still here. Dm
itry’s back was to the kitchen and he made for it. Spencer knew where he was going, because it had been what he’d been thinking, too.

  They both leapt over the flayed kid who now had more imps fucking his flesh and dining on his tongue. First Dmitry hopped over him, then Spencer close behind. Dmitry made it to a rack of Ginsu knives and pulled out the longest, skinniest one and slashed out at Spencer. The blade cut across his brow and he started bleeding at once, and he liked it. Spencer grabbed Dmitry’s wrist on the second swing and twisted it down, then slammed it into the kitchen countertop. The only kitchen in hell, he mused. Hell’s Kitchen! He rammed his shoulder into Dmitry and drove him against the wall. When they one of the cabinets burst open and more hands came out, reaching, beseeching, yearning, thirsting.

  This worked in Spencer’s favor. Dmitry had been snarling at him, a ravenous creature equally hungry as he, but as soon as he saw the outstretched hands his confidence faltered and he was more concerned with getting away from them. His grip on the Ginsu knife lightened for just a moment, enough so that Spencer could wrench it free.

  But then Dmitry fought back, head-butted Spencer and kneed him in the sternum. He grabbed hold of Spencer’s right hand, now holding the Ginsu, and forced it back at his face. The knife stabbed deeply into his face, entering through Spencer’s cheek and going between his teeth. He bit down on it. Dmitry jerked at his hand, ripping the knife back out, opening Spencer’s mouth in a ghastly Glasgow smile. Blood poured out from his split mouth, down his neck. Inside his mouth, the blood quickly pooled and went down his throat. Spencer choked for a moment before he had a very simple, and effective, idea.

  Spencer gathered the blood in his mouth in one great assault, and spat a jet of it into Dmitry’s face, blinding him and causing him to reel back. Here, the hands reached out and grabbed hold of his bare skin, tugging and pulling and even ripping. Dmitry’s grip waned for just a moment, and Spencer yanked his hand free and started doing what was termed “sewing machine” in the penitentiary. He stabbed repeatedly at the stomach, one thrust right after another. Some of them got through, but others were deflected by Dmitry’s flailing arms. The Russian finally tore free from the wall, losing some of his flesh to the groping hands as he fell to the floor and rolled away from Spencer.