Trevor’s final words stuck with me. They made me afraid. There was such conviction in them, such sureness.
They are ready. They will come now as children.
As I drove home, I pulled out my phone and dialed my wife.
I needed to know what my son was doing.
3
Empire Snuff
I love to write. I love to write horror in particular. There’s something about the creative freedom it allows, the flexible walls of reality you’re allowed to bend. It’s a place where you can put down your darkest thoughts or wildest ideas. It’s a space you enter with no light, no sound, and there’s already blood on the walls. Horror is a sticky, upsetting ordeal where you engage in a contract with the author that gives him or her permission to get inside your mind and rip out your insecurities by the gory handfuls.
As scary as it can be to experience these things as a reader, it’s worse for the author. Imagine taking your most demented thoughts, examining them, asking why they’re in your mind, and then placing them on a platform for the world to see. You present it under the white light of a blank page and then bleed its twisted, black blood into words. You craft monsters and motives with the sickest intentions, you breathe life into characters you plan on tearing apart. You give these people families and loved ones you intend to destroy. You become a fictional god of death, a puppet master with knives for fingers, slicing them over your keyboard in brutal strokes of cruelty.
I don’t write this to promote what I do. I don’t do this for some kind of warped respect. There is no honor in becoming a psychopath for the duration of a story. There is no glory in holding out the broken remains of your characters for the reader to see. Horror is a disturbing business, a cold and lonely road with no happy ending.
When you finish writing a story you sit back and exhale, relieved that these things are finally out of your mind. You’re relieved that you survived the journey and that you could make sense out of the darkness that has been screaming to be released.
I’m sure there are those out there that turn their nose down at horror. And why not? It’s developed a bad reputation over the years. Recycled ideas, cheap scares, girls with black eyes and cryptic messages. We’re all familiar with the clichés. We’ve all seen the steady decline of fresh content. We’ve all groaned as the big reveal unfolded and it turned out they were dead the whole time (gasp!).
Now, I have no misconceptions.
I’m not going to change the horror world. I’m not going to think of an idea that is so revolutionary it will flip the way we think about horror on its head. I’m not going to come up with a plot so incredible that publishers are going to throw piles of money at me.
No…I’m here to tell you that I’ve found the end of that long dark road. I’ve found where it leads, tracked my steps with an anxious mind, and come out the other side.
I’ve seen where horror can take you.
And I’m here to tell you just how far you can go.
* * *
I stared at my computer screen with numb eyes. I cursed the blinking slice of black on the blank page. I willed it to move, begged it to take the first steps of my new story. If I could just get a paragraph down I knew I’d be able to slip into the comfortable flow of a moving narrative.
I racked my brain, scrambling for the words to start my dark tale. I needed to write, but my mind stubbornly refused to communicate ideas to my fingers. The space between my ears soared into the demented realm of terror, desperately clawing at possible entries into this new endeavor. I didn’t know what was wrong with me; I had written SO many of these things. Never had I suffered such crippling writer’s block and the mountain of immovable clichés threatened to suffocate me with the mundane.
I had already tried the usual brain stimulation: long car rides with loud music, sitting in the dark while chain-smoking, watching my favorite horror movies. Nothing seemed to tickle that muscle in my head that sparked my supply of spooks and scares.
I sat up in my chair and ashed my cig in an empty beer bottle. I took one last drag and then shoved the butt down the neck of the bottle, listening to it sizzle in the dregs. I pulled another one from my pack and lit it, begging the nicotine to ignite my mind into action.
Smoke rose from my lips in waves of indifference and I rubbed my face in frustration. I wanted to do something big, something that no one had done before. I wanted to create a name for myself in the world of horror, a legacy that remained long after I did.
I just wanted to write! I had done fairly well for myself in my recent literary excursions, building a small following in some online communities. Most of the feedback was positive, which in turn fueled my desire to do something bigger and better, really give my readers something that would WOW them. It’s the dream every young author goes through when they first start out.
But then the ideas begin to fizzle and you burn through all your good material, much like an aging comedian, but you know…with more gore and severed heads.
I took another drag from my cigarette and drummed my fingers on my desk. Maybe I had nothing left? Maybe I had exhausted all my ideas and now was left with nothing but “fresh” takes on old ideas. It was discouraging, frightening. What if the inspiration I had so passionately begun this journey with was now diminishing into the frayed remains of worn-out tropes?
No. No, I couldn’t accept that. I had so much more to offer, so much more to give. There was a black fire in me that I hadn’t revealed yet. There was a hunger buried in me I hadn’t yet explored. I had lived with it my whole life, shielded myself from it, denied it.
But it was there and it burned hotter with each day. The more I immersed and dedicated myself to all things horror, the more I wanted to push the limits. With each successful story, I was fueled to take the reader to darker and darker places.
And in doing so, I felt my hunger expand and rise, its gaping jaws begging for forbidden flavor. I knew where I was headed. I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to experience things that were not talked about. I wanted to live stories that should be left in warped imaginations. I wanted to extend my parched tongue and drink the drops of unspilled blood.
“Goddamn it,” I muttered, stubbing out my cigarette and pulling up my web browser. I needed to do something about this intolerable writer’s block, to find some way to get the wheels turning.
I browsed a couple of my favorite horror sites, flicking through the images and articles with eyes that weren’t really paying attention. I had done this in the past and I felt like I had squeezed all the juice of possibility from these pages.
Today I needed to delve deeper.
I had played around on the deep web before, the hidden Internet behind the Internet. Today, I was going to really emerge myself in it, really soak my mind its twisted machinations.
It didn’t take long to find some hidden sites. I had been here before; I knew the channels I had to take to reveal the shadow the surface web cast.
I sat up in my chair and scrolled through a site that portrayed animals being crushed in clear plastic bags. My mouse hovered over one video titled “Fat bitch crushes little bitch.” The thumbnail showed an image of an obese woman standing over a small dog. I rolled my eyes. No thanks. I wasn’t on here to observe weird fetishes.
It didn’t look like I was going to find anything that interested my dark desires and so I jumped over to another site. This one seemed to be a black-market Craigslist. As I scanned the page, I saw an assortment of items on sale, ranging from hardcore drugs to murder. This tickled my interest and I clicked on an ad that boasted: Hitman for Hire! I quickly read the summary of the services offered and chuckled to myself. This couldn’t be real, could it? Apparently this guy would kill anyone you wanted for ten thousand euros.
Like I said earlier, I had been on the deep web before, but not like this. I had merely dipped my toe into the cesspool, a curious peek beneath the curtain. Back then, when I had first started writing, darker issues scared me. Not personally
of course, but professionally. I was worried about the content I was confessing. I didn’t want to allow my readers to wander too deeply inside my mind.
But now I felt like maybe I could. I felt like I had gained enough confidence in my craft to shine a little honesty on my stories. I wanted to illuminate the black corners of my thoughts and create stories I had only fantasized about before. I wanted to shock them, throw them down the dark hole of my mind, and see if they could survive.
I idled on the page a while longer, my interest dwindling. After exhausting my patience, I decided to check out a site one of my friends had talked about a few months ago. Apparently it was a snuff site, a place where you could watch real people being killed.
I stared at the ceiling, trying to remember what he had said it was called. I pulled out my phone and sent my friend a quick text. As I waited for his response, I mentally prepared myself for what I was hopefully going to see.
I had never actually seen anyone murdered before. What better way to stimulate the mind? I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought of it earlier. It excited me, a nervous anticipation for the horror I was about to experience. How would I react? Would I be disgusted by it? Would I be able to handle it? How far could I push myself?
My phone chirped and I smiled to myself as I read the message. My fingers raced to the keyboard and soon I was staring at a red and black website. In bloody font were the titles of literally hundreds of snuff films. I sat there with my mouse hovering over the top video link.
I paused. Did I really want to go down this road?
You’ve known for months this is where you were headed…
I smiled and clicked the video.
The screen faded to black and then showed two middle-aged men on their knees. Their hands were bound behind their backs and one of the men was wearing a straw hat. It looked like there was a barn behind them, its red wall a foretelling of the violence to come. For some reason, I was surprised to see it was being shot in the daylight. I leaned in closer to my screen, licking my lips, eyes lighting up.
From the corner of the screen, another man walked into the shot. He was holding a knife and he went and stood behind the man with the hat.
Without a word, he grabbed the man by the hair and began slicing into his throat. My heart jumped into my mouth and I audibly gasped, gripping the sides of my chair.
I couldn’t believe how much blood there was.
To my shock, the victim wasn’t screaming. He curled his chin down to his chest in an attempt to escape the blade, his mouth opening and closing in silent agony. The other bound man turned his head away, his mouth forming a thin grim line. He didn’t want to see what awaited him.
The man holding the knife stopped cutting and tilted the victim’s head the other way. He placed the bloody blade on the untouched side of his neck and began to saw inward toward the throat from the opposite side. I watched in fascination as streams of thick blood gushed from the wounds, splashing to the earth.
After a few seconds, the executioner hit bone and I could see his muscles bulge with effort as he struggled to sever the head. With a tearing sound, he finally managed to rip it from the body. He held it up for the camera to see and then tossed it to the side.
And then he started on the other man.
My heart was racing in my chest as I watched a repeat of what had just happened. My tongue slid between my lips as I concentrated on every detail, drinking it in. I realized that very few people had ever seen what I was now seeing. As the thought rippled across my mind, I shivered with excitement.
Once the video was over, I grabbed a cigarette and lit it with trembling fingers. I gasped down the smoke and couldn’t help but smile, my eyes alight with wonderment. This was incredible. I had just seen someone die. I had just watched a human being executed.
I hastily clinked on other video.
And then another.
And another.
And another.
I couldn’t stop watching them. The morbid stage before me was an untapped vein of shock and brutality that I had never experienced before. It was like having sex for the first time, the surprise of euphoric pleasure blocking out everything else. I wanted more of it, wanted to repeat the experience over and over again, each time bringing with it new and undiscovered ways of enjoyment.
Hours rolled by, my state of consciousness completely enveloped by this new pastime. I continued to chain-smoke, eyes held captive by the vicious images displayed on the screen. I indulged my mind with video after video, a starving glutton for the raw violence. I could feel my mind digesting it all in voluminous chunks, a carnivore for carnage.
Before I knew it, the sun had set and was rising again, the magnificent beauty of its spanning color a contrast to the depraved, pernicious images.
I stared out the window, blinking as the light crept over the horizon. My mind was fatigued, enervated by the monstrosities I had witnessed. I rubbed my hands over my eyes, pulling sleep from them like cobwebs.
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered to no one.
My life began to develop a predictable pattern after that night. I would go to work, come home, and watch hours and hours of snuff. I would close the curtains, smack a cigarette from my pack, and dive back into the deep web. It was all I wanted to do and I found myself going to bed later and later, the nighttime darkness adding to the savage nature of what I was devouring.
After a couple weeks, it was all I could think about. I floated through my days, working my day job in a dreamlike state, and then rushing in hopes to repeat the cycle. The more videos I watched, the more my hunger grew. I felt something emerging from inside of me, that deep darkness I had kept hidden for so long. It crept out from its lair and began to fill me, its long tendrils coiling around my mind in an obsessive grip.
After a couple months, I began to seek out more graphic material, tearing the Internet apart for the highest quality videos. I wanted to find the bottom of the well, the absolute peak of human cruelty. I ignored the moral warnings that occasionally shot from my subconscious, pushing away the fragile arguments that bubbled to the surface.
And just when I thought I had reached the end of the road, just when I began to wonder if I had seen everything there was to see, I found them.
I found Red Rooms.
It was almost an accident, my finding them. I was chasing a link down an endless rabbit hole when I found myself on a site I had only dreamed existed. After a few minutes of excited exploration, I realized that what I was looking at was a live stream.
A couple feet from the camera was a man bound to a chair. He was weeping and seemed to have given up any hope of escape. On the sidebar there was a list of items with price tags next to them. Hammer: $500; Crowbar: $300; Blowtorch: $600; Hacksaw: $900; Needle Nose Pliers: $200; and the list went on and on.
I couldn’t believe it. I could buy instruments to torture this man? Is that was I was looking at? Just the thought sent a shiver of raw excitement down my spine. Who was watching this right now? How many people were sitting at their computers pondering this man’s suffering?
There was a timer at the top of the screen that read 3:17 and was counting down. Below the clock was a list of items that had already been purchased by the unseen viewers. My eyes ate up the instruments of agony and I felt a smile slowly stretch my face. I was going to see this man crawl to his death, ripped apart piece by piece in a grand showing of live snuff theater.
I pulled my feet up on my chair and lit a cigarette, watching as the clock gradually counted down to zero. When it did, the numbers faded and a graphic of a round green light lit up next to the video feed.
Two men entered the screen wearing ski masks.
And then they began to torture the bound man, working their way down the list of purchased tools.
And I couldn’t get enough of it.
This marked another turning point in my life. From then on, I became infatuated with Red Rooms. I found out when they were being streamed (usually every three wee
ks or so) and managed to save enough money to purchase an instrument of torture at every live event. The first time I did it was…breathtaking. I spent $200 for a pint of bleach and watched, absorbed in the sick display, as they slowly dripped it into the man’s open eyes. The thrill of knowing I was responsible for his screams excited me in ways I had only dreamed possible. I felt an energy rush through my body as a diadem of darkness settled over my mind. I wanted to do more, spend more, stretch the limits of pain into realms unreached.
Weeks rolled into months, my money squandered away and saved until the next live stream. It was all I thought about, all I wanted. What little social life I had slowly faded to nothing. I didn’t talk to anyone outside of work, didn’t go out, didn’t seek out company or companions. Death and snuff were all I wanted, all I thought about. It was the only thing that stimulated me, the only thing that got my heart racing.
Now, I didn’t worship death, didn’t think the world needed to be eradicated. I didn’t hold a grudge against humanity, I wasn’t angry at society. I just found live murder absolutely enthralling. The unflinching act of what I watched, the splash of human blood, the screams of a person in agony…it was all so real. It was unfiltered human suffering, boiled down to its most basic form. It was a forbidden wickedness, a proscribed evil.
All thoughts of writing were gone. I tried once but gave up after half a page. How was it possible to write about such savage acts? How could I translate the howls of pain into black and white? How could I describe the way a person’s body slumps when they finally die? Trying to describe it on paper felt cheap, like I was robbing the act of its shocking brutality.
I realized it wasn’t possible to write in color.
The Worst Kind of Monsters Page 5
