The Brutality Pack: An extreme horror collection

by Ian Woodhead

  “You sure that’s not done already? If you ask me, you’re going to burn that meat.”

  “Yeah well, nobody is asking you, are they? Look, I don’t tell you how to carve, and you don’t tell me how to cook. Them’s the rules, man.”

  My brother grumbled for a seconds under his breath but didn’t come back with any smart retort. I did lower the heat though, just a touch before I turned to finish off preparing the rest of the meal.

  The Soaper family didn’t exactly live like paupers. I found everything I needed in order to construct my two fresh steak burgers.

  The steak was very fresh.

  I had bread rolls, enough iceberg lettuce to sink the Titanic, a block of mature cheddar cheese, burger relish as well as a few cans of beer to wash this fantastic meal down our throats.

  The meal would go down in the annals of Brutality history as the best burger ever created in this shitty town.

  My brother laid the knife on the counter, next to the cooker. “Hey, Jamie. Do you remember that hiker we found near the Bishop farmhouse?”

  “Sure I do,” I replied. I gently turned the steak over, watching the blood sizzle in the hot oil. Those meaty aromas were beginning to make me drool. Why did Gavin bring up Sandy Mears all of a sudden? There wasn’t a chance that I would forget that beautiful young blonde woman in a hurry. She was my first fuck, a proper little goer she was too.

  “I recall you crying like a little baby when I made you eat both her eyes.”

  What a mean little bastard. I looked into those piggy brown eyes, and so wanted to punch him right on the nose. He just wouldn’t let anything lie. He brought this up, just because I had a go at him. He’s always got have the upper hand.

  “So fucking what? You’d have done the same, Gavin and don’t pretend you wouldn’t either. Everyone knows you have a dodgy stomach.” It’s weird how my mind brushed all the icky wet stuff under the rug and only allowed me to remember the fun bit of actually fucking the woman. Sure, I did have to wait my turn and Gavin wasn’t exactly gentle with her. He used a knife on her before he pulled down his pants.

  Thanks to Gavin’s mean words, my lovely experience with the hiker was completely ruined. He shattered my post-coital slumber by passing me his favourite knife before he sat down on Sandy’s chest. While he flicked her nipples, my brother ordered me to dig out her eyes.

  Look, don’t get me wrong here. It’s not that I minded the job. I’ve done it a couple of times before. I was kinda hoping I’d be able to get another fuck out of her first. She wasn’t all that badly damaged. The shock of taking her eyes would kill her and unlike Gavin, I wouldn’t be able to fuck a corpse.

  Thinking back, I should have mushed them up, while taking them out of her shrieking face. At least I wouldn’t have felt so horrible when I bit the first one in half and all that slimy stuff squirted all over my chin.

  I wouldn’t have been able to mutilate those eyes, it just isn’t in me to do such a thing. I’m a perfectionist. Always have been and Gavin takes advantage of that.

  The first steak was just about done. I carefully removed the meat and placed it on a warm plate, still wondering what my brother was up to. I looked at the knife and then at him. “We have a few minutes before that’s ready. Don’t you think you should be getting the other steak ready?”

  His grin deepened. “You can cut your own steak.”

  I looked back at the steak I’d just cooked and wondered what he’d do if I told the bastard that I was taking that one, and he could cook his own pissing steak? Like I even needed to imagine his response. I sighed heavily, picked up the knife and walked out of the kitchen and into the living room, with my brother right behind me, giggling like some five year old.

  Candice Soaper and her husband Damien both stared at the knife in my hand as soon as I entered the room. The man wasn’t paying as much attention as the woman. I put that down to the huge loss of blood and the large hole in the back of his leg. Considering the pain he must be in, he wasn’t doing that badly, probably putting on a brave face to help comfort his terrified wife. It did sound like the sort of thing he would do.

  The Soaper family moved in to the old Laker house when Gavin and I were both kids. Even then, we knew there was something really strange about the couple. For a start the pair of them were really nice to us. They gave us sweets and cake and pop and all sorts of stuff nobody else on the street gave us. Both mum and dad told us to leave them alone and not to bother them. It’s only much later that we were told that neither of them were from Brutality.

  Even to this day, I have no idea how they managed to stay alive for so long. I mean the pair of them. You would have though that at least one of the family would be dead by now, the woman most likely. She was very pretty.

  When we set fire to the old bag’s house, these two came running out to help put out the flames. It made the pair of us grin while watching them pull grief stricken faces when they heard all the trapped animals howling and shrieking. I even noticed tears run down Candice’s cheeks. It was very funny. Damien made it even better by handing out beer once the fire was out.

  It was my brother’s idea to make burgers from bits of these two. He even asked me if I was fine with that, in his annoying condescending manner. I saw no problem at all with his plan. After all, unlike the old bag, they weren’t born here so that made the pair of them fair game.

  Gavin altered a plan once he’d secured Mr and Mrs Soaper to adjacent wooden dining chairs, and he saw the family photographs decorating the wall above the open fire. Neither of us noticed these two had a young daughter of around twelve.

  It came as a complete shock to discover the couple had bred. Oh sure, we knew they fucked each other. I’ve seen them at it a number of times from my bedroom window. It’s just that neither of us knew. Believe me, keeping secrets in Brutality is near impossible.

  My only explanation to this oddity was some relative in another town looked after the little bitch, and she only visited her proper parents on occasion.

  That did kinda make sense. After all, who the fuck would want to send their kids to a school in Brutality? Only the proper stupid do that, or the ones who are totally blind to what goes on in town. There are a few kids not born in Brutality who go to my school and believe me when I say they regret it every single day.

  “I think I can see those tears already in the corner of your eyes, Jamie. Admit it, you’re shitting your pants at the prospect of cutting into her leg and eating the meat.”

  “Will you stop that!” He was such a child. “Look, it’s totally different okay? Those eyeballs were raw; also, I suppose it’s offal. You know, soft bits, like liver and kidney. No, as per usual, you don’t have a clue want you’re talking about. This is totally different.”

  I stopped directly in front of the weeping woman and rested the business part of the knife on the top of her yellow blouse and slowly drew it down, cutting through fabric and skin. She howled through the sock gag. “My brother probably expects me to make a similar noise when I carve my steak.” I dropped down and pulled her white sock down to her ankle. “We’ll show him though, me and you, Candice.” I took off my belt, wrapped it around the top of the thigh before tightening as much as I could. This is something Gavin didn’t do which probably explains the huge lake of thick blood around Damien’s chair legs and why he’ll probably be dead very soon. I then used the point to cut a shallow oval around the flesh. Candice did everything she could to stop me from cutting into her. Thankfully, Gavin was on hand to punch her hard in the throat to stop any such nonsense.

  My brother, who thinks he knows everything about everything, peeled off the skin before carving out the steak. That’s because he’s a fucking idiot and really has no clue what he’s doing.

  I sliced deeper, angling the blade up, towards the surface, before repeating the same action on the other side. I grinned up at Gavin as my steak lifted straight from the back on the thigh with the minimum of fuss.

  “Show off,” he mutter
ed.

  I couldn’t help myself, I just grinned like a loon. That had to be the best compliment he’s ever given me. I placed my steak on a couple pieces of kitchen paper before pushing a load of screwed up balls of the stuff into the indentation I’d just made.

  “It’s not like a fish, Jamie. You can’t cook the steak with its skin on.”

  “Yeah, I know that, it just makes it easy to remove it without killing the person.”

  “Who’s cares about that?” he replied, sniffing. “Look, can I eat mine yet?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, it’ll be ready now, the meat is nice and rested. Do you want me to prepare it?”

  He shook his head. “No, it’s cool. I think I know how to slap a steak and some salad in between a bread roll, thank you very much.” As he passed me, he looked back at the clock. “Just don’t take all day with yours. Remember, we only have about twenty minutes left.”

  It took Gavin a while to torture out the location of their lovely daughter, even longer to discover the time when she was due home. Like I mentioned earlier, my brother sure does know how to use the knife, especially when it comes to extracting information. I glanced around at the mess he’d made with cutting out his steak. Okay, probably not that much of an expect in meat carving. I could have done a better job with my eyes closed.

  His reminder did make me move my arse. My brother said that the little girl was going to be the ultimate sweet after we’d eaten our meal. It also made me silently curse my stupidity for not offering to make up his burger. It didn’t matter how much time he put into the construction, he wouldn’t be able to make one as delicious as anything I could make.

  So why the rush to please Gavin all of a sudden? Isn’t it obvious? If I made the big man’s taste buds orgasm, he might contemplate allowing me to enjoy the girl properly before him and that knife of his completely fucking ruined her.

  Gavin ran back into the living room with a tomato in his left hand.

  “You want me to slice that for you?”

  He looked at the woman briefly before turning his attention to me. “Didn’t you hear that?”

  “Hear what?” I replied, shaking my head. “Do you want me to do your burger, Gavin? I don’t mind, honestly.”

  My brother strode over me, reached the woman and clamped his big hand around her throat. “You’re such a lying little bitch,” he snarled. “She’s in the house isn’t she? Hiding somewhere, no doubt.” He leaned closer until his nose almost touched hers. “Here’s the plan. You tell me exactly where she is right now and I promise I won’t kill her.”

  The woman’s eyes had gone into full fucking waterfall now. I slowly got to my feet and stood beside my brother, shaking with rage, unable to comprehend that these two were actually able to hide this information from me and Gavin..

  “and to think I spent so much time ensuring that you’d live through this.” The man was dead, not that I cared much about this development. My knife was still on the floor, next to my steak. The blood had already leaked through the paper. Good job really. If I still had it in my hand, there’s no telling the damage I would have done to her pretty face. Thinking about it I think I would have started with her nose. “Where the fuck is she, you bitch?”

  My brother grabbed the back of my collar and pulled me away. “Like anything you say is going to make her tell us?” He let go and rushed over to the door that led to the stairs. “We can find her ourselves, Jamie. This house isn’t that big.”

  “Wait on, what about the burgers?”

  “Fuck the burgers,” he said. “Seriously, leave them. They’re no longer relevant. There’s scores to settle.”

  I dutifully followed my brother to the door. What temper I felt regarding her deception had already left me. “You shouldn’t have lied to us, Candice,” I said, watching her tears drip onto the carpet. She really should stop it with the waterworks before she ran out of body fluid. Then again, considering her eventual fate, I guess that death by dehydration would be a lot less painless to what Gavin would be doing to her once he’d found the bitch’s daughter.``

  Gavin had already made his accent up the stairs. I did consider letting him find the girl alone, while I finished off my burger. It felt like such a shame to leave it lying there. After all I’d probably only get in his way.

  “Get your arse up here!”

  I sighed to myself, so much for that plan.

  It didn’t take much fuckery to rile up Gavin. Telling a little white lie would do it. So would trying to make him feel stupid or getting one over on him, but to hit the man with all three, in front of his little brother? Well, you might as well dig your grave and jump in it.

  He stood in the middle of the narrow landing, his fingers scratching at the crappy floral wallpaper while he looked up at a wooden white board recessed into the ceiling. Gavin must believe that our prey was hiding in the loft, shivering away, her little bare arms wrapped around the girl’s tiny, fragile body. It made me shiver in delight at what my brother had planned for her.

  “Up there?” I whispered.

  He slowing nodded, Gavin turned his grinning face towards me. “You had better check the other rooms anyway. You know, just to be sure.”

  Unlike me, he made no effort to lower his voice and why should he? It’s not like she was going to escape. She was practically ours now, it was only a matter of time before I’d be able to penetrate that soft virgin flesh.

  “Why are you still there? Go do as you’re told, man.”

  Shaking my head, I peeked into the first room and found a normal, boring looking bathroom. I saw nothing out of the ordinary, and no places, apart from the bath, large enough to hide a child. I closed the door and squeezed past Gavin to get to the next door.

  This one heralded a few hidey holes. The double bed with shitty pictures of flowers on one side and photos of motorbikes on the other wall told me that I’d entered the bedroom belonging to the dead husband and soon to be dead wife.

  Gavin was watching me so I had still had to check it out. I dropped to the floor and peeked under the bed. Apart from a pair of slippers and some magazines, there was no child under there. The wall cupboard and the wardrobe in the corner of the room gave me bin bags, old clothes, a ton of shoes but no kiddie.

  The last room up here had to belong to our future pleasure piece. I left the domain of mummy and daddy and rested my shaking hand upon the door handle, knowing full well that if Gavin was wrong about her location, it would be me who’d get to her first. If I was quick enough, I might even be able to at least have a pretty decent grope before Gavin snatched her out of my hands. I twisted the handle, expecting to find my eyes bombarded with pictures of ponies and princesses.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” I said, stepping inside. There wasn’t even a hint of girly pink in here. I felt like I’d just stepped into some kind of medieval torture chamber, only for animals. I brushed past a fish tank, containing the dried up corpses of mice, rats, a couple of guinea pigs and what might have been a kitten. In the gaps between the bones and bodies, I saw razorblades in little plastic holders, glued to the base of the tank. “What kind of sick shit is this?”

  There was a three foot high metal pole in the middle of the room, with seven thick chains leading down from the top. Each one held the remains of a large animal, two of them were definitely dogs. I moved a little closer and stopped dead when I recognised the corpse of another creature on a large wooden table at the back of the room. Thick nails were driven into each paw. It looked like it had died very recently and in a great deal of pain. My mouth went as dry as sandpaper when I felt my brother standing beside me. How was he going to react when he saw what had happened to his Fluff?

  What was going on here? This is exactly how I imagined the mad old bag’s house to look like, not some innocent little girl. I slowly turned to face Gavin when the realisation finally dawned on me. “She’s like us, Gavin. The girl was born here.” Shit. That old woman wasn’t collecting for herself. She must have been hunting
for the kid.

  “Like it matters,” he growled. “Like any of that fucking matters now. I’m still going to get that girl and hurt her bad.”

  He turned around and left the room. If he had seen what she’d done to his cat, Gavin gave no indication. I stayed where I was, Trying to put this new development into perspective. “Gavin,” I shouted. “We have to leave. We have to leave now.”

  “Not a chance. She’s all mine. I’m going to split the little bitch in two. It’s that simple.”

  I turned and ran out of the room. “No, this is all wrong, can’t you see that? We’re messing with the glue that binds Brutality. We have to leave.”

  Gavin grabbed me again. This time he wasn’t so gentle. I gritted my teeth as his hard fingers dug into the flesh around my shoulders. My brother didn’t say a word in reply, he just released a low growl. Right then, I knew any more words would be wasted. If anything, me opening my gob again would probably result in finding Gavin’s fist inside it.

  He nodded to himself then pushed me away before he went into mummy and daddy’s bedroom. He’d obviously decided on some course of action, he just hadn’t informed me about it. I shrugged to myself, knowing at this point, this was totally out of my hands. I just hoped that whichever demented Gods who controlled our fucked-up town would taken that into consideration.

  After some banging and a grunt of satisfaction, my brother returned with the skeleton of a small set of drawers. The contents and the drawer components were thrown on the double bed. Gavin still intended to go into the loft to get the girl.

  This could only end in tears. If that girl was capable of doing all that horrible stuff to a bunch of innocent little animals, I hate to imagine what she could do to us, especially once she found out what we hade done to her parents and the chances were good that she already had a bloody good idea about that already.

  Gavin had gone again. He then came out of the bathroom with a toilet brush in his hand. He manoeuvred his makeshift step ladder until it was directly under the wooden hatch then climbed onto the surface. My brother gave me a single wink before using the brush to push up the lid.