The Worst Kind of Monsters

by Elias Witherow

  I listened to the violence in the storm.

  My eyes popped open, a black, hateful calm draping itself over my tired shoulders. The world spun for a moment and then righted itself. I looked in the back seat at my sister.

  I looked at myself in the mirror.

  “I fucking hate you,” I whispered.

  I grabbed the axe and hammer from the front seat, tools meant to be used on my sister, and got out of my car.

  The wind tried to rip the skin from my face, the rain beat itself against my body, and thunder rang in my ears. I cocked my head back and shut my eyes, feeling the energy and brutality of it all.

  “Here I come,” I whispered into the night.

  I opened my eyes and became the storm.

  4. DANIEL

  I slapped Daniel hard across the face, stirring him from the depths of his nightmares. He blinked a few times, then recognition dawned in his eyes. He licked his lips lazily, trying to clear the haze from his mind.

  “What the hell is this?” he asked, finding himself bound.

  I said nothing, a vicious, resentful poison filling my head at the sound of his voice. My black leather gloves cracked as I gripped the axe I was holding.

  Daniel looked at me, the last bit of fog leaving his eyes. “Hey, what the hell is going on? Why am I tied up?”

  Still silent, I walked over to his pile of tools. My eyes appraised them, noting the filth and dry blood that stained them. How many people had we killed now? How many screams had I heard? How many hours had I sat and watched him dance about our victims, slicing a little here, cutting a little there?

  “Stop fucking around!” Daniel yelled from behind me, struggling against the ropes. “I thought you’d understand, I thought you wanted me to be how I used to! I did this for us! I did this so things could go back to how they were!”

  “Nothing’s changed,” I said darkly, my back to him.

  “But they have!” Daniel said, voice getting higher. “Whatever it was, it’s gone! The anger, the frustration, the confusion, it’s all gone! I’m me again!”

  “It just had to be her, didn’t it?” I asked, my voice void of emotion. “You had to take her away from me, didn’t you?”

  “That wasn’t why!” he cried, pounding his fists against the workbench. “I just needed something new, something fresh, something I had never experienced before!”

  I turned to him, my eyes two black slits of ice. “You wanted to fuck with me, didn’t you? You thought I was growing soft and that pissed you off. You thought I was having second thoughts about our murder sprees, didn’t you? You thought I was losing the taste for it.” My voice shook, a boiling volcano of searing venom rising in my throat. “Well, let me show you how wrong you were.”

  I walked over to him in three quick steps, spinning the axe blade-side up. I raised it over my head, staring down at him, my bloodshot eyes bulging with violence.

  “I’m going to fucking destroy you, Daniel.”

  I brought the blunt side of the axe down onto his mouth, the metal clinking against his teeth and shattering through them. Blood spewed from his lips and mouth as his breath left him in a howl. He fought against the ropes, body thrashing in overwhelming pain.

  I lowered the axe and watched his face contort in agony, watched the blood leak from his mouth, watched the way his eyes rolled in his head. I waited for him to calm down, waited for his breathing to steady.

  I placed a hand on his shoulder, his eyes meeting mine, terrified and bloodshot.

  “Get comfortable,” I whispered.

  I reached into my back pocket and pulled out a screwdriver I had taken from the pile. I held it up so he could see it, twisting it in the white light.

  “I’m going to use this to rip out every single one of your teeth,” I said. My mind and body were surging with hateful energy, my heart raced in my chest, and I could feel demons in my blood.

  “Don’t do this to me,” Daniel cried through broken teeth.

  I leaned down. “I’m not. You are.” I placed my mouth to his ear and whispered, “Let me show you what Daniel is like.”

  And then I began digging into his gums, blood squirting over my hands as I worked. It took almost an hour to get them all out. But I was diligent and I was patient. I didn’t even register his screams as I went about my task, the screwdriver prodding and pulling with unflinching precision.

  When I was done, I stepped back and wiped the sweat off my face. Daniel had passed out as I ripped the last molar out. I tilted his head to the side and let the blood empty from his mouth, not wanting him to drown in it. That would be too easy.

  I went to the pile as I waited for him to wake. My hands searched through the assortment of horrors, looking for just the right one.

  I picked up a pair of needle-nose pliers. When he woke, I pulled off all his fingernails and then spent another twenty minutes breaking all his fingers.

  And I did it slowly, bending them back one by one, listening for the steady crack as the bone began to splinter. Oh, how he screamed. He begged me to stop, apologized over and over for what he had done, slobbering over himself in excruciating pain.

  I didn’t stop. I didn’t even hear him. I wasn’t me anymore. I was something else. Something dark and vengeful, something that needed him to scream, needed him to cry. I was a shadow of sanity, the bloody crack of a fractured soul. I was pain and torment with ebony eyes.

  I took the sack my sister had worn and soaked it with gasoline. Then I pulled it over Daniel’s face and lit it on fire. I sang “Happy Birthday” to myself and then beat his face until the flames went out.

  I twisted his toes off with a vise grip.

  I cut his nose off with a hacksaw.

  I bent his knees up until they snapped.

  I broke his shins with a hammer.

  I pulled his ears off with my bare hands.

  I flayed the skin from his arms.

  I made him eat lit cigarettes.

  I shattered his elbows with the sledgehammer.

  I heated nails with my lighter and drove them into his thighs.

  I made that monster suffer.

  Daniel was barely recognizable. His body lay in a stinking bloody heap on the table, his chest feebly rising and falling with short, shallow breaths. I didn’t think he knew where he was anymore. I didn’t know if he could feel anything anymore. But he was still alive. And so I wasn’t finished.

  My clothes were splattered with his blood, my eyes stung with it, and my hands cracked under layers that had dried over my knuckles. I smelled horrible, a rotten, coppery odor clinging to my skin. Sweat carved trails in blood down my face.

  “Almost done,” I said, leaning over the table and looking at Daniel. His charred, nose-less face slowly rocked back and forth, the raw muscle in his cheeks quivering.

  I held up the barbed-wire baseball bat. “Look familiar? This is what you used to kill Kate and this is what I’m going to use to kill you.”

  He moaned, his voice weak and dry. He was wheezing, his burned lips curling back to reveal bloody, toothless gums.

  I gripped the bat and tilted his head up so that his neck arched toward the ceiling. I gripped his face and growled, “Now don’t fucking move.”

  With one quick jab, I crammed the bat into his mouth, the barbed wire tearing through his cheeks and down his throat. His eyes widened and his body began to thrash as a long, drawn-out scream tried to escape. Tears pooled in his eyes as the intense anguish erupted in his nerves.

  I let go of the bat and it stayed in its place, the sharp pricks clinging to his bleeding gums. I bent down and picked up the sledgehammer.

  “I’m going to pound this down your fucking throat,” I snarled, my eyes meeting his.

  “Goodbye, Daniel.”

  I swung the hammer and it connected squarely with the end of the bat. Blood exploded from his neck as the skin popped and tore from the inside, the barbs poking from his throat like bloody ants. I grit my teeth and swung again. And again. And again.
I didn’t stop until the bat disappeared.

  Blood dripped off the table in little streams as I leaned onto the sledgehammer for support, gasping for air. My blood thundered in my ears and my eyes stung with sweat. My mouth was dry and my fingers numb. I felt dizzy and sick, the smells and exhaustion I felt sinking deep into my stomach. I looked at the work bench.

  Daniel was dead.

  * * *

  I sit here, telling you all this, so you know what we’ve done. So you know the kind of people we were. I’ve lost my taste for killing. I’ve lost my desire for everything. There’s nothing left anymore. I am broken and empty and I deserve it.

  I am no longer human. I am a soulless shell of broken sanity. If hell exists, I know I will burn forever for what I’ve done.

  And I am sorry. I’m sorry to each and every person my actions have affected. I am sorry for the sorrow I’ve caused. I am sorry for the misery I’ve created in your lives. I’m sorry for killing your loved ones. I am sorry for what I am and what I’ve put you through.

  I hope someone finds this. I hope someone out there can forgive me.

  After I finish writing, I’m going to take my knife, the one I’ve used to kill so many, and plunge it deep into my heart. It’s the only solace I can give you, knowing that I am dead.

  Daniel and I, what we did, was unspeakable, and I hope you find comfort knowing we won’t hurt anyone else. We won’t cause any more suffering.

  I don’t have any excuses for what we did. I don’t have any words to help you make sense of it all.

  Daniel and me…we were the worst kind of monsters.

  About the Author

  Elias Witherow

  Elias started writing when he was fifteen and hasn’t stopped since. As he experimented with different genres, he felt himself pulled to the darker side of fiction. He lives in New England, alone, and spends entirely too much time muttering over his keyboard and nervously looking over his shoulder. He thinks horror deserves some fresh ideas and is doing his best to breathe new life into the genre. Bloody, foul, filthy life.

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