by Anton Palmer
The first image was of a bare foot with a familiar floral wallpaper in the background. With her heart in her mouth, her stomach twisting into sickening knots, she pressed a finger against the image to open the video.
She could barely bring herself to watch and after just a brief moment she found herself staring out of the kitchen window listening only to the audio:
“Ohhh…suck it baby…oh that’s so good. Oh yeah…do that thing with your tongue again…”
She dragged the slider along a bit;
“You like the taste of my pretty pussy, baby?”
“Mmmmm…”
“You like the taste of my hot, wet hole?”
“Mmmmm….”
Victoria’s finger dragged the slider further;
“Oh fuck…oh fuck…oh my god, my pretty pussy loves being filled with your cock…oh god, fuck me harder, fuck my pretty pussy harder…fill it with your hot cum…”
The grunting of Marcus’s exertions grew louder and more frequent as he obeyed Anna’s wishes. The sloppy wet sounds that accompanied them turning Victoria’s stomach.
“Oh that’s it, baby. Keep going…keep fucking my pretty pussy hard and fast. Oh fuck…fuck…fuck…don’t you dare stop…oh god, I’m coming…oh FUCKKKKKKK…!
Victoria turned the video off. She had seen and heard enough.
It was time for Anna to be punished for her sins.
Victoria returned to Anna’s most recent text message and hit reply:
M - I’m at Victoria’s house. Get here ASAP.
Come through the back door.
Can’t wait to taste that pretty pussy of yours XX
Anna replied almost immediately:
A - I’ll be there in half an hour.
You’re going to be so excited when I tell you my news J
I’m going to give you a special treat…XXX
Victoria didn’t really want to know what the special treat might be but thought she’d better respond to the bait in order to keep up the pretence:
M - What special treat is that? XX
A - I’ll give you a clue – I won’t be the only one ‘coming in the back door’ lol XXX
Oh you dirty fucking whore:
M - Oh fuck. Can’t wait baby, see you soon XXX
***
Victoria raced upstairs to the bathroom and hurriedly discarded her blood soaked underwear before stepping into the shower cubicle. She set the water to a comfortable heat – no freezing water today, she was doing her Father’s will - and leant against the tiled wall as the steaming jets rinsed her clean, the water in the shower-tray turning a deep red.
Her old towels were still stacked neatly in the airing cupboard and, pulling one from the top of the pile, she swiftly dried herself off. She needed to keep her dress clean for later so, despite not really wanting to have to set foot in there, she reluctantly entered her old bedroom. The state of the room shocked her for a second. She hadn’t realised just how much mess she had made when she trashed it earlier. The bedsheets, pillowcases and quilt littered the floor. The mattress lay bent double against a wall, a ribbon of wallpaper left dangling where it had been struck.
Attempting to dismiss the scene before her, she opened her chest of drawers and pulled out a grubby white nightdress. This was her old ‘time of the month’ nightwear. Faded blood stains were visible from her occasional night-time leakages and the garment therefore seemed appropriate for the bloody tasks ahead of her.
Despite her father’s orders, Victoria had decided not to kill Anna. Anna was vain, proud of her looks, proud of her sluttish behaviour and lack of morals. She thrived on the sexual attention she garnered from men. For women like her there were fates worse than death. Besides, Victoria had resigned herself to the fact that she would almost certainly be spending many years in prison for killing Marcus. She decided that the one thing that would help her through the long miserable days of incarceration would be that the physical and psychological torment of Anna’s daily existence would be far worse than hers.
The sound of an engine alerted Victoria to Anna’s arrival and she quickly descended the stairs to the kitchen, grabbing the saucepan from the worktop before pressing herself tight against the wall beside the back door. From this position she would be hidden from Anna’s view until the whore had fully entered the kitchen.
She stood still and silent, pushing herself as flat against the wall as she could. The sound of her racing heart, her ragged breaths that caught in her throat seemed loud enough to give her away as she waited, listening to the faint crunch of Anna’s footsteps on the gravel drive. Fear, nervousness, dread, adrenaline and a deep, dark excitement were building to a dizzying cocktail of emotions and hormones as the footsteps got louder. Closer. Sweat dripped from her forehead as a dizzying nausea threatened to spoil her plans.
Anna seemed to be taking forever to reach the back door, the wait stretching on for an agonising eternity in Victoria’s head, but finally she heard the click of the handle as her rival cautiously opened the door and stepped into her trap.
“Marcus?" Her voice was little more than a whisper, “Are you here?”
She suddenly spotted the crumpled heap of clothes on the worktop and stepped towards them. With a sickening dread, Victoria could make out bloody hand prints on the garments and knew it would only be a second or two before Anna spotted them too.
“Marcus?” As Victoria stepped forward, saucepan raised, Anna turned. Her shrill scream was silenced before it had barely left her throat as the base of the heavy pan struck bone.
After her earlier exertions from shifting Marcus’s dead weight around, Victoria expected that fatigue might slow her down, but the adrenaline surging through her veins combined with Anna’s much lighter frame meant manoeuvring the prone woman felt almost effortless.
***
Anna came to just a few minutes after Victoria had hauled her upright on the chains.
A little groggy at first, the fact that she had succumbed after just one blow from the saucepan meant any concussion was minimal and she was quickly alert enough to be aware of her predicament. She was naked, hanging by her wrists, her clothes strewn around the basement, the cold metal of her shackles biting painfully into her flesh. Victoria stood in front of her, dressed like a poor man’s Halloween ghost in her long, white nightdress - her shower-damp hair hanging dark, lank and lifeless.
“Good. You’re awake. Now the fun and games can start…”
“What the fuck is going on, Victoria? Where’s Marcus?”
“Oh, Marcus is here – in body if not in spirit. In fact…” her eyes scanned around the dirt floor until she located what she sought. She disappeared from Anna’s view as she went to retrieve the item, shaking the dirt from it as best she could. “I think Marcus was really quite fond of you, Anna. I think he’d have liked you to have his heart.” She held up Marcus’s heart, sticky with drying blood, coated with grains of dust and dirt, for Anna to see for a second - before jamming it into her mouth. Semi-coagulated blood poured into Anna’s throat and dribbled over her lips as Victoria placed one hand on the top of Anna’s head and the other beneath her chin, pressing her jaws together, forcing her victim to bite into her lover’s offal. As Victoria released her grip, Anna spat the heart out, gagging and retching blood as she did so.
“That was fun, wasn’t it?”
Anna shook her head, tears streaming down her cheeks, mixing with the blood from her lover’s heart.
“No? But I thought you loved having Marcus inside you?” Here, let me remind you. Victoria played back the video on Marcus’s phone, enjoying the look of fear in Anna’s eyes as she realised that Victoria knew everything.
“That’s right, Anna, I know. I know all about your filthy, sordid affair with my…dear departed husband. I also know about your plans for your ‘back door’ tonight…”
Anna’s eyes widened, her distress visibly increasing. Victoria was a religious nut - normal sex with her husband was one thing, but perhaps the thou
ght of anal was the pinnacle of depravity and sin as far as she was concerned…
“Don’t worry, Anna. Look at all my late father’s tools…” she waved her arm at the shelves on the wall, “I’m sure there’s something we can use to entertain your back door…”
“Oh Christ! Victoria, please. There’s no need for this…come on…”
“Oh, there’s a need alright, Anna. There is most definitely a need.”
Anna decided her best bet was to appeal to her tormentor’s religious sensibilities. “Victoria. Vic. Vicky…you’re a good, God-fearing woman. Is this God’s way? Is this what God would want you to do? I thought forgiveness and mercy was your thing.”
“Anna. Earlier today, I demolished every fucking bible in the house – destroyed the word of God. Then, after that, I tortured and killed my husband because he fucked a slut, a bitch – a whore! So, I think my place in Heaven has been well and truly fucking cancelled and the Devil is preparing a warm, cosy space for me as we speak.”
Hearing the f-bomb spewing venomously from Victoria’s normally chapel-chaste lips was enough to tell Anna that her captor had fallen over the precipice of insanity. There was to be no reasoning with her - she was going to die at Victoria’s hands. Her bladder suddenly gave way at the thought, a flood of hot urine splashing into the dirt beneath her feet.
“In case you were in any doubt, Anna, the slut-bitch-whore is you! And now, you have to pay the price. But don’t worry. I’m not going to kill you – well, at least not on purpose anyway. For a slut like you, I think there are worse things than death. I am going to make sure the world knows what you are and that no sane man in existence is ever going to be attracted to you again.”
“Oh God, Victoria, please…this has gone far enough. Come on, I’m begging you, please - let me go!” Anna twisted on her chains, attempting to grip the dirt, her polished toenails scraping shallow trails in the piss-soaked dust.
Victoria turned her back on her victim, ignoring her pleas, and walked over to the racks of paint-stained shelving.
“Victoria…I need to tell you…” Anna cut herself short. She knew something which might persuade her captor to release her but decided not to tell her, not yet at least. She would save the information for later – as a last resort. Victoria had already stated that she didn’t plan to kill her, but if she knew what Anna knew, that might just tip her far enough over the edge to change her mind.
Rummaging around the various tools, Victoria returned with a pair of well-used secateurs. Her mind was momentarily filled with recollected images of her father using them for pruning the rose-bushes in the garden. Satisfied with her choice of weapon, she opened a drawer in the workbench and located the other item she sought - a pair of long-nose pliers.
Anna watched her captor’s every move, panic etched deep into her face, her skin visibly blanching even under the thick layers of make-up.
“What are those for?”
“These…” Victoria held the tools out in front of her, “…are for the first part of your…re-modelling. I’m going to turn you into a much nicer person. Not physically nicer, you understand…I imagine by the time I’m done you’re going to look so repulsive even your own mother will find excuses not to look at you, but you will be a much nicer person…morally…spiritually…”
“Please, Victoria. You’ve had your fun…I even fell for the fake heart thing, didn’t I? I’m a right gullible cow, aren’t I?” She smiled, tried to laugh, desperate to get Victoria to admit this was all some kind of twisted joke. Victoria smiled back at her, attempting to portray a look of pity in her eyes. Pity for the bitch who tormented her, the slut who humiliated her, the whore who stole her husband and with him, her dreams of motherhood. The smile faded – there was no pity or mercy to be had – those attributes she had once cherished now lay in tatters among the spilt pages of the riven bibles upstairs.
“You think this is all a joke, Anna? That Marcus isn’t dead?” She grabbed Anna’s hips and twisted her around on her chains, holding her in place long enough for her to comprehend the sight of Marcus’s corpse, his torso stripped of nearly all its skin, shiny strings of muscle glinting in the dull yellow light and a gaping black hole in his ribcage.
The scream which spewed from Anna’s mouth filled Victoria with a strange sense of pride, as if her shrill screech was a sick compliment for a job well done.
She let go of Anna’s hips, her victim twisting back around on her chains, her head drooping as she sobbed uncontrollably. Victoria waited patiently for a few minutes, allowing Anna to have her moment of grief…
“I hope you can see now, Anna - this is not a joke. Marcus is dead. He died in agony as I flayed the flesh from him and ripped his heart out with my bare hands.”
Anna’s sobs turned to howling screams of heartache and anguish, her body twisting and writhing in a futile attempt to escape her bonds.
“Shut the fuck up!” Victoria slapped her face hard, shocking her out of her hysteria. “You have no fucking right to grieve…he was my husband!”
Stunned into silence by the stinging pain of Victoria’s rebuke, Anna slowly raised her face and stared into her tormentor’s eyes. Two pairs of hate filled orbs seared into each other across the dimly lit room, each woman’s gaze competing to scorch the other into submission, until finally, Anna looked away.
Victoria covered the steps between herself and her nemesis in a heartbeat, thrusting the pliers towards Anna’s face. As Anna opened her mouth to scream, the pliers were jammed in, locking down on her tongue. Victoria pulled the tumescent flesh out of her victim’s mouth, her fingers clamping down hard to keep her grip and, opening the secateurs with her other hand, she quickly sheared through the twitching meat, as close to the root as she could. Gouts of dark blood spurted from between Anna’s lips as the ruptured stump of her tongue retracted back into her mouth.
“There you are…you’re a slightly nicer person already. This…” she held up the bloody portion of tongue like a trophy, “…this is the...cancer…that enabled you to spread your malicious gossip, to humiliate people, to talk your way into the arms of other women’s husbands, to speak your filthy slut-words. Well not anymore!”
She ground the chunk of flesh into the dirt beneath her bare foot before flicking it across the room with her toes.
“So, what shall we tackle next? I know…how about your vanity! You are shamefully vain, Anna – always touching up your make-up, applying more hair-spray, checking your reflection in anything even remotely shiny. How much do you spend on your hair by the way? I bet you’re in that hairdressers every week - having a cut and blow-dry, getting your roots done, gossiping with the hairdresser.”
Victoria delved around in another of the workbench’s drawers and retrieved a box of matches. They were of the long variety, the sort where you could hold a lit match for a good minute or more without risk of burning your fingers. Victoria remembered asking her father once why he always used matches, never a lighter. He had told her he liked the smell. She recalled thinking at the time that it seemed odd – a religious man enjoying the smell of sulphur – on reflection, perhaps he knew where he was destined after his demise and wanted to get used to it.
She returned to her victim and sniffed her hair. The scent of hairspray was overwhelming.
Good - should go up well.
Lighting a match on the first strike against the edge of the matchbox, she held the burgeoning flame at arm’s length, carefully raising it in front of Anna’s terrified face, guiding it slowly towards her forehead. There was a sudden crackle as Anna’s fringe caught alight, the hairs shrivelling and melting. Anna screamed, more blood pouring forth from the riven stump of her tongue, as the sickly stench of burnt keratin filled the basement. Victoria walked behind her, teasing the back of her neck with the burning match, allowing a few ends of hair to splutter and spark before she buried the flame in the thick hair at the back of her head. This was where Anna used the bulk of her hairspray and, a second later, a loud ‘w
hoomph’ was followed by her whole head being engulfed within a bright orange ball of flame.
She shrieked and thrashed about wildly, attempting to beat out the flames with her hands only to find her shackles prevented her reaching her fiery head. Within a few seconds the flames had evaporated, her expensive hair-do reduced to a few patches of shrivelled black, like scrubby, withered bushes on the desert of her reddened scalp. As Anna choked and gagged on the fumes from her scorched hair, Victoria rummaged again through the workbench drawers. She pulled out her father’s Stanley knife and recalled how she had watched him laying carpet, the blade easily slicing through the matting as he trimmed the edges. On the side of the knife’s black body was a silver button and as she slid it forwards, the wicked looking blade slid out. It looked a little rusty on the edges, but she remembered that there were extra blades stored inside the knife itself, she just needed to undo a screw and the tool would separate into two halves, revealing the spares within. She placed the blade against the edge of the workbench and sliced along it - a thin sliver of wood peeling off along the razor-sharp edge.
She smiled – there would be no need for a screwdriver.
“Just one more detail to attend to, Anna, then I will show you my handiwork so far. Now, you know what you are. I know what you are…but I want the whole world to know exactly what you are…” She grabbed Anna’s cheeks with her left hand, digging her fingers painfully into her jaw to keep her head still. With fingers trembling through both excitement and blood-lust she slowly and carefully began slicing through the skin on Anna’s forehead with the Stanley blade, smiling as the blood began to seep with every delicate cut, the red fluid pouring faster as she retraced her steps, taking thicker chunks to make her work stand out.
