by mike Evans
“Did you want me to drop off a cup of coffee while you’re doing your bathroom inspection?”
“Nah, it’ll only make my second shit that much later today if you bring nature’s drain-o in here.”
“You’re a poet, Mr. Piel. You might’ve missed your calling.”
“It’s a damn shame only you and the pigs get to enjoy my sense of humor and wit, isn’t it?”
Susan whispered as she walked down to the kitchen, “Yeah, it’s a damn shame. At least the pigs get put out of their misery early in life,” she turned to flick on the light in the kitchen but looked up at the row of corn and saw something taller than it moving through. “Hey, Gordie?”
“You know there’s little I need in life, this is one of those things. Shut up, woman, and cook.”
“Looks like someone is out in the north acre screwing around.”
Gordie who had hated wanderers most of his adult life pinched it off unhappily and headed outside. “What do we got, someone screwing around?”
Susan pointed out the window and the two watched the man who they realized looked big for a reason, and that was because he was a damn giant. Gordie walked back, grabbing his shotgun out of the bedroom. Susan said, “Is it loaded?”
“There ain’t any reason to have a gun that isn’t.”
Gordie stuffed a handful of shells into his bibs and pushed the door open, grabbing a Maglite as he headed out the door.
**
The Stranger was walking a lot slower at this point. He’d limped for four hours through the adjoining corn fields. He knew that he didn’t have a choice if he didn’t want to go to jail. He had already been thinking of his wife, and that she was probably calling every police office in the state telling them he was missing by now. He had to think of a good excuse and figured that he could chalk it up to the new job and a security matter he’d gotten busy working on.
**
Gordie shone the light around the property but didn’t see the masked man. He pumped the shotgun knowing that no sound was more intimidating than that of a twelve gauge being pumped. The Stranger moved through the shadows waiting on the time to be right. Gordie screamed, “You better get the fuck off my property now, or you’re going to be hurting and picking buck shot out of your ass for the next week!” Gordie stayed quiet, even when he heard a pig screaming and he ran around the corner only to find it kicking and squealing on a post with a rod through its midsection, sliced open so guts poured out onto the ground, he was silent. He looked at the size of the pig seeing he had not picked a baby. This was a full-grown male and would have been show worthy had he been into that type of thing.
Gordie did the sign of the cross as he shone the light across the grounds as the screaming grew louder until it consumed the hog’s pens. When he heard a new scream he spun around firing off the shotgun twice and decimating one of the pigs, only its head hung there and the flaps of its skin. Gordie cursed pumping the gun and when he did felt a jolt of pain and life through him that he had never before felt. His entire body felt like a foot cramp that would not end, he heard a pop and the next thing he felt was the cool concrete slab, the pigs lived on. Gordie felt something warm running down his leg. When the pain finally stopped, it felt like a wave of confusion spinning around him. He tried to move his arms but could only go into convulsions repeatedly.
“Who, who are you?”
The Stranger bent over so that his view of the sky was replaced with a blood covered white mask atop of a giant’s head. He tilted his head, swaying back and forth. He set a foot on the shotgun and kicked it away and out of his reach, not that he was able to currently use his hands effectively. The Stranger hit the cattle prod poker a few inches away from his eyes. The blue lights lit as he teased him, waving it back and forth in front of his face. Gordie said, “You know when you finish this little game, I’m going to kill you.”
The Stranger knelt down shaking his head. “You won’t be alive to do so.” He moved the prods until they were no longer teasing the man but were now making contact with his eyes. “Please, please, I haven’t seen your face. I haven’t seen your face, I won’t tell the police. What is it that you want?”
“Just your death.”
Gordie’s screams made it to the house and Susan looked out, phone in hand. She knew if she called the police that it was a pipe dream they would be able to get there in time. It was definitely a drawback but as long as she had her husband, she knew that there would be no issues…until this morning of course. She screamed, “Gordie, was it just some kids messing around out there, honey? What the hell was with all those gunshots?”
Gordie tried to say something but Matt pulled the trigger putting the electric tips to his eyeballs one at a time, watching them explode from the surges of electricity. Gordie howled in pain that echoed across the property, Susan heard this and came out running to the hog pens with a pistol and flashlight. She only knew how to use one of them.
When she found Gordie he was convulsing on the ground, white foam dripping from his clenched teeth. She saw the blue lights sparking on and off from the cattle prod, she tried to make sense of how it was going off with no one touching it and when she kicked it away from Gordie, she saw that a bloody piece of duct tape had been wrapped around the trigger. She shone the light on his face again, this time seeing his eyeballs, or lack thereof, and the bloody mess that was in their place. Tears immediately began to well up. “Gordie, can you hear me, are you okay?”
She felt under his chin for a pulse and found none. She realized that his heart probably couldn’t handle the stress. She knelt down resting her head on his chest until she heard the chain. She spun around to see overalls walking her way, and when she ran the light up the man that seemed to stretch forever she screamed at the top of her lungs. The white mask glistened with the fresh blood of her husband and the victims from earlier.
The Stranger put a finger to his lips, shaking his head no, slowly. Her lips began to quiver and that was when he whipped the heavy chain around her neck. She gasped for air as he put his foot on her shoulder pushing her back while pulling the chain until it was as tight as possible. He wrapped it through tying it off and began dragging her kicking and clawing at the ground. She could only see the fading stars overhead and heard the bolt dropping to the ground and realized she was being dragged into the livestock trailer. She gagged at the smell of the pig’s shit everywhere, stale and spoiled from the summer heat. She remembered the pistol but when she pulled it he instantly kicked it free from her hand.
The Stranger ran her chain through the support beams of the trailer. When she thought that he had left, the chain became tighter than she ever thought it could have been. She jolted up a foot at a time until she was swaying in the trailer side to side. The Stranger put a hand on her shoulder stopping her from swinging. Susan was trying to plead for help. She was pleading for God, and for him to kill her. He whispered, “The only chance you have is for death, God and my help aren’t in your cards, ma’am. I can promise though, it is going to hurt, because I have something delightfully special planned for you.”
She screamed, “Why us? What did we ever do to you?”
“Whoever said you had to do anything? You were just the first house with a truck that I came by; my next stop is going to be even better.”
“You’re going to get caught, asshole.”
“Maybe, but it won’t be tonight, and it won’t be by you. Do you hear the sirens?”
She listened, actually hopeful for a moment before saying, “No?”
He held her chin, saying, “Because there’s no one coming for you. They are too busy cleaning up the campsite I made a mess of.” She began to say something but only felt pain erupt from her abdomen. She looked down feeling her nightgown grow warm until the dripping reached her toes making a puddle on the ground beneath her. The Stranger dipped a finger into her abdomen drawing his smiley on her forehead. He disappeared, coming back a moment later with a large fifty pound bag. She saw that he w
as leaving a trail of it behind him.
He ripped the bag further open, saw her watching and shook his head. “This won’t work at all, now, will it?”
He lowered her down so that her ass was resting in the blood. He poured the contents over her and they soaked into her stomach wound and the ground all around her. She said, “Just kill me, just kill me, you piece of shit.”
“I’m working on it, perfection takes time.”
He disappeared, heading back out of the trailer, and she could hear the buzzing noise of the cattle prod gun. She wasn’t’ sure if she was more worried about that or what had been thrown over her. She could see next to nothing in the truck as the buzzing and crackling noise of the cattle prod became louder, and she could see him walking back in silhouetted by the moonlight. When the light illuminated from the cattle prod she saw what was covering her, realizing he had dumped pig feed across her. A few dozen of the large pigs, the ones who always ate first, came charging full bore. They could smell the food and the blood was something they immediately took a liking to.
The Stranger stood back, admiring his ingenuity and watching as the hungry hogs ripped into her stomach fighting to get the corn out of her. She screamed as loud as they squealed, it was a symphony of death and pleasurable as anything he had done to kill someone. She looked down when he shone the light on her and Susan got the first good look at her intestines being torn apart by the hogs as they would take away chunks and run away. Her final moments on earth were watching the animals they had made their livelihood on by selling them for their meat now gorging themselves on hers.
When The Stranger saw that she was no longer alive he walked over to her and unhooked her from the chains to drag her through the pigs still eating, out of the livestock trailer and to the poles where the other hog had been placed. Only the bottom half of her torso remained, he hefted her up onto the pole alongside the hogs and dragged Gordie, setting him up on the pole next to her. He thought that by now it was pointless trying to worry about checking into a hospital. In his blood lust for invoking horror he was confident that he’d left enough DNA behind. The police would speak with the news and finger him as a suspect and within days have the needed proof for even the FBI to start a nationwide manhunt for him. He knew he would have but one chance for medical help and that after he would have to put the beast to bed for a short time while he healed.
He made his way into the farmhouse walking around slowly, drawing smiley faces on the pictures of the two of them vacationing around the USA. Matt smiled thinking of his own wife and that his best chance was to stop at home to get clothes and his kill kits before the police showed up to let her know that there was a history of this in his family and that if his son exhibited any signs of it to treat him with kid gloves or he would be back. Matt walked to the bedroom and began looking through the drawers, finding thousands of dollars that would have been safer in the bank had the two trusted financial institutions. He pocketed it and found the keys to their pickup truck.
Matt took his time washing the wound out for the first time in good lighting. He cleaned it, wincing at the pain, and then almost felt guilty that he let himself wince when people who had been tortured by him had truly suffered so much more. When he had it as clean as possible it began bleeding all over again. He cursed, punching the mirror shattering it and sending glass everywhere. Matt stuffed a roll of gauze into his wound and placed a new bandage over it along with fresh duct tape. When he was done it was just barely seeping from the wound. The Stranger grabbed a new flannel shirt to wear and saw that it was going to be a midriff shirt if he went with it. He left the bloody shirt on and tucked it into his pants the best that he could. Matt walked outside and headed home.
Chapter 4
The sun had less than a few hours before it was going to rise and he would be under the eye of the world. The Stranger pulled the mask off as he drove through the countryside. Matt knew any back roads police running radar or taking their shift with a nap would hit a winning lotto ticket if they saw him driving. He would have hundreds of units on his ass and there would be no escape, but only prison if he was lucky. He was trying to think of all the states and places that he had lived over the years and the biggest question coming back to him was whether any of them had the death penalty. He knew that for as many people as he had killed that there was a strong chance they might try reinstating it in his honor.
Matt flipped the radio switch on and turned it to the news. “This message is previously recorded. Hello, this is Leslie Bryant and we have an update on the masked man. We showed up late last night to Big Creek State Park and the scene here is nothing less than horrific. So far police aren’t saying much but we can tell that there’s nothing but death here. If I had to guess, I’d say that there wasn’t very much natural death here last night. Police won’t say if they have a suspect but they have the forensic team on site here and a few hours ago a dog unit showed up and they headed into the corn fields. We have not seen them come back since that time. I have to say this has horror movie written all over it. Now, one interesting piece of news we just found was that the police were able to track down the owner of the vehicles. This vehicle doesn’t seem to have any reason to be here and the two men inside were both looking quite a mess. They didn’t want us to get close so Pete was able to get himself a zoom lens going on his camera and let me tell you, what we saw was not for the timid. Brains and blood, was what we saw and it did not look like there was a shortage of pain in that seat. Check back each hour, on the hour, for live up-to-date reports on the Killer in the Heartland. Updates as more information becomes available.”
Matt flipped it off pulling down a side street to his house and going slow. He knew that the police might be on to him but that they would most likely not be, yet. He saw the house lit up from the back and could only assume his wife Jamie had not gone to sleep, and had been up all night worried with fear. Matt took a deep breath, slid the pistol out of his pocket and carried it up through the backyard taking his time and listening, making sure not to ignore anything. He figured reports would have come in about the gunfire that had taken place there but that with every cop chomping at the bit to say they got to work on the case of the killer, hopefully, they were too busy trying to assist in whatever manner they could.
He walked in slowly, seeing his wife on the couch sitting up with a blanket and a stale, cold cup of tea resting next to her. He checked on his kids seeing that they were both still sound asleep and knew they would stay that way if they weren't disturbed. He went to the bedroom and then realizing that there’d be questions very soon, most of them pointing back to his career, life as a police officer and husband. He knew that his children might have special gifts that they might need to develop one day but either way they needed to have a parent who could look out for and raise them. He was not going to be the one to do that as a fugitive.
He watched Jamie sitting on the couch peaceful and sound asleep and thought that it would be easier on her in the long run if he did it now. Matt walked over sliding the mask back on, staring at her. He took a roll of packaging tape from the kitchen and stretched it out. The sound of it was unmistakable and woke her instantly, startling her out of her peaceful slumber. She started to scream but a piece of tape was placed securely across her lips. She saw the white mask and the blood and her first thoughts were not of her own safety but of her children’s. She kicked at the masked man in front of her as she tried to melt into the couch wanting nothing more than to put a million miles between the two of them.
The Stranger kicked her feet aside sending her tiny frame spinning and he sat atop of her stomach making breathing very difficult. She frantically began clawing at his legs and ribs frantically, to be let go, unable to breathe. He held one small wrist and began wrapping the tape around it. Tears formed and she thought for sure that this would be the end.
The Stranger took the other hand wrapping it tight. He brushed the tears away knowing she was losing her mind. Matt removed the m
ask and the look of shock and disappointment was evident on her face. She began convulsing on the couch for a moment before he realized what was happening. He ripped the tape from her mouth in one quick pull and spun her to her side off the couch. Vomit erupted from her, painting the wood floor below. When she had, nothing left in her stomach he asked, “Are you going to yell, honey?”
“Who the fuck—“
He placed a hand back over her mouth shaking his head. When she tried biting his hand he placed tape back over her mouth brushing her face almost gently. He said, “You know…typically I don’t use tape. Do you want to know why?” She shook her head no and he continued, “Because I fucking love to hear them scream. It’s a drug and it is one that I can’t ever get enough of. I don’t usually get to have conversations with my victims, so this is somewhat special.”
She began bucking and kicking frantically and Matt leaned over the best that he could while keeping her from moving. He hushed her and said, “I didn’t mean that you would be a victim. Don’t get me wrong…there have been thousands of times that I’ve thought of throwing you from a ladder, or out a window, or slitting your pretty little throat during the night. You know why I never did that? If I take off the tape are you going to scream again? Things might get less pretty if I have to try and explain all of this in front of our beautiful children.”
She shook her head no and this time he removed it slowly, “You…you aren’t going to kill me?”
“No, I need someone to care for our children. My father told me at a young age that I needed to learn to fit in, that if I didn’t I wouldn’t be able to survive like this.”
“Wait your father knew who…or what you are?”
“He was the one who taught me how to stay calm and to control the beast. But once in a while I slip, and well, a lot of people die.”
