Depravity

by Woodhead, Ian

  He had no idea why her malfunctioning brain should blurt out that it was soft and wet and was going to be crunched up, but it sure did freak him out, he almost slid his scalpel blade across her throat right there, in the corridor.

  Kevin was glad that he hadn't allowed his irrationality to rule his otherwise calm exterior though. Unlike the males, he wanted to try something different. He wheeled the trolley into his inherited 'preparation room' and rolled the girl's body off the trolley and onto the large stone slab that dominated the room.

  This place had changed significantly since his dad was last lying where this girl was. The man known as Mr Morris thought of himself as a neat person, a systematic man who possessed a methodical way of working. Gone were the Victorian tiles, coated in countless layers of dried blood. He had ripped out all the old lighting and replaced it with a modern equivalent. He had even replaced the floor tiles with lino.

  It made for an altogether, more hygienic environment. Dad should have been ashamed of himself for allowing the place to be in such a vile state. To Kevin's mind, this was still a food preparation area. It surprised him that neither of them ever managed to live past their tenth birthday without dying from severe food poisoning.

  Kevin wrapped a steel hooped rope over the girl's ankles and hoisted her up into the air. He was looking so forward to the next procedure. A couple of nights before, He had searched through the older works in his library, and studied the illustrations. Those ancient artists had created the techniques in exquisite detail. Kevin didn't need to read the old text, he just needed to follow the photo-realistic diagrams as they showed exactly how they killed and butchered their human victims.

  Once the girl's head was level with his chest, Kevin placed a thick plastic clear bag over her head and made sure it wouldn't come off by tying a length of cord tight around her neck, not enough to choke her. The illustrations clearly showed her exact method of execution. Obviously those ancient people didn't have any plastic bags, they used a glass box. Kevin just improvised, guessing that the end result would be the same. He then made a tiny hole in the plastic with a thin metal skewer. This was the exciting part. Kevin gripped the handle tight and pressed the point against the side of the girl's neck, watching his improvised instrument create a perfectly round pink crater.

  Rebecca James released a tiny moan and one eye fluttered open. Fine mist formed on the inside of the bag. Kevin always felt like God at the moment of ending a life, but his prior experience paled in comparison to the multitude of synapses firing in his brain. The skin broke, allowing a single droplet of bright red blood trickle down the length of the skewer.

  Both her eyes now opened wide, her self-preservation had finally kicked in. that soon stopped when Kevin pushed the skewer all the way through. The illustrations showed him exactly what would happen next. Kevin couldn't remember a time since he was so excited. He pulled out the skewer and clamped his thumb and forefinger over the hole he'd made. Hot blood burst from the hole, splashing hard against the plastic before streaming down to the bottom. He'd never seen anything like. It was like a tiny scarlet fire hose. It was very exciting.

  The bag quickly filled up, covering lovely Rebecca's face, until the fluid reached her mouth. In the books, the ancient killers had used a tiny stopper to plug the hole in the glass. Kevin used a small square of thick tape. Kevin left the body to drain and set about scrubbing the slab, in readiness for the cutting. He decided there and then to read through the rest of the books to see what else he could pick up.

  3

  He had been right about her body. Kevin had cut off an enormous amount of usable food, more than the amount he had sliced from dad, a worry considering she'd been half his mass. His only concern had been how long she had lasted. Kevin gazed at the platters, still feeling a little guilty at using enough food for four meals. His sister had adored the meat, telling him (using hand signals and wall marks) that it was the best she had ever tasted.

  Would she share this with her new play-toy, now that was a good question. Angela never enjoyed sharing anything.

  4

  The girl calling herself Rebecca James had been the first female to taste any of his instruments. His sister had tasted girl flesh before, many times in fact. Whilst growing up, Kevin had noticed the more adventurous spirit had seemed to reside in the opposite gender.

  He had never killed a girl until now because his father never allowed it. The old bastard wouldn't even allow him to participate in any of the butchery. Kevin was taught his trade with male only cadavers.

  Back as a precocious teenager, the boy then convinced he was called Kevin Morris had no idea why his father wouldn't allow him access to dead female meat. He certainly didn't buy the crappy lie about cutting into a naked female corpse would taint his experience with the sexual pleasure he received from the girl in the cellar.

  Kevin was no idiot. The simple truth was that the only other permanent male member in Richmond Point didn't want to share. Dad's sexual appetite outmatched the man's love for food and fucking two women just wasn't enough for him.

  Kevin Morris reached the cellar door. He set the tray down on the metal shelf that ran parallel along the wall and fished in his pockets for the key. The family had an enormous collection of specialist books in their private library. Most of them dealt with the art of eating human flesh. Depending on which parent he asked, the books had been collected by their descendants for the past five hundred years or the dusty things had always been here, and who gives a fuck about a pile of mumbo jumbo.

  His father had supplied the last one, and somewhere deep inside the boy called Kevin, his dad's answer sounded more believable. Neither parents restricted his access to the volumes. Believing that whilst he was in the library, the boy wouldn't be under their feet as they ran the hotel.

  It took him an age to search through the hundreds of dusty books to actually find any written in English. He had no idea why anybody would collect books written in a language you couldn't understand, although, Kevin did find some of the illustrations in them rather interesting. Of all the books he investigated, only five were readable. Kevin digested a great deal of information from those five books over the years. He believed they helped him to become a master at his trade, his father only knew what his father had taught him. The man only followed the template, never changing, never experimenting.

  He slowly turned the key, keeping his ears open, wondering how his new arrival was adjusting to his new life. It had been several hours now, Kevin guessed the pair of them would be rutting like sex-starved rhinos by now.

  His dad should have read those books. Their depictions and opinions on jointing the kill differed but they all agreed on how important it was not to cause the live specimen any stress prior to the kill. The modern volumes explained that extreme fear released a torrents of chemicals into the bloodstream, these in turn could taint the meat, ruining the taste. The older books described a similar caution but used words like spirit of the body and humors. It all amounted to the same practice of ensuring the kill is clean.

  No wonder his sister couldn't get enough of this meat. “Count your lucky blessings, Rebecca,” he whispered, turning the door handle. By the time his father had finished with his females, Kevin was surprised that the meat was even edible. He didn't just torture the girls, he violated them, both alive and dead.

  “I cater for a more refined palette.”

  Looking back, he did wonder if maybe his father was fully aware of the stresses he caused on the end result but just didn't care. That made sense. Fuckbastard was not known for his subtlety. There was one more reason that Kevin hadn't considered until now. He might have done it on purpose. That made even more sense. After all, bad tasting meat would last longer due to the girl in the cellar not eating so much.

  He gazed at the stack of food as he descended and quietly sighed. Did this mean that he had missed out on an excellent opportunity to explore a woman other than his sister? He could never be as brutal as his dad. That
man was an animal once his blood was up and his own chemicals ran riot through his body (Was this why Dad's flesh took an age to cook?) The act of using the girl alive or dead as a sex doll hadn't even occurred to him, he'd just gone ahead with the dismembering.

  The man snatched from the arms of his real mother looked down at the sleeping pair and smiled. They looked so sweet, all curled up together and holding hands. The boy didn't look like anyone's sex-toy. It looked like his sister had found her own cuddly teddy bear. Kevin followed the line of the girl's other arm and discovered her hand on the boy's penis, her tiny fingers gripping his thick shaft. Kevin choked back a chuckle. So much for that idea. Had the boy worn her out, or had she exhausted him? He felt a pang of jealousy, wishing he could be in the new arrival's place.

  He quietly set the tray on the floor and crept back towards the stairs, then again, maybe not. His sexual prowess had never been that high. As soon as he had orgasmed the once, Kevin just wanted to go to sleep. It usually took him at least another two more days until the urges came back.

  5

  Kevin sat back down in his favourite armchair, noting two glasses were still on the table. He could have seriously pinched himself for leaving signs that he had earlier company on display. It didn't matter that this room was off limits to guests. He had kids staying in the hotel and Mr Morris had been in the business long enough to understand that areas supposedly off limits attracted little fingers like jam drew wasps.

  Still, it was late, the kid should be sleeping by now, and sleep was one task that Kevin believed he was owed. It had been a difficult day. Most days were hard nowadays, especially with no staff to help him out. Kevin fought the urge to shut his eyes and took his guest's glass back over to the cabinet, he gave it a quick wipe and hung it upside down, before returning to his chair. With that task complete, Kevin sat back down and poured himself a celebratory glass of wine. The day had been a difficult one but at least he could relax knowing tomorrow would be easier. He only needed to convince the Sanderson's to call back into the hotel on their way home. He didn't think that task would present a problem.

  “The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades.”

  Mary Collins's son frowned, wondering why he had just said that. He'd heard that before, was it a line from an old song? He swallowed a mouthful of wine, he was tired, that's all. Kevin felt his eyelids dropping down, he didn't fight the action.

  As Kevin dozed, he allowed his mind to ponder over the only hurdle in his otherwise most excellent plan. Where would he keep the living female Sanderson until he was ready to end her existence? The cellar was obviously off limits. He dreaded to think what would happen if another woman joined his two guests. His only other option would be to keep her in the old section of the hotel, where his parents once lived. Kevin had blocked off that part of the building once his dad was dead.

  It wasn't an ideal option but it was workable. He would need to fetch the spare chain from the garage, the one that was once around his ankles. Kevin did not want to damage the woman. He wanted her whole. Kevin brought back the memory of her easy smile at the dinner table earlier, imagining just how fantastic it would be to wake up to that every morning. Her husband was such a lucky man. Kevin decided to make him suffer first, just out of spite. So it would spoil the meat, so what? It just meant that the kids in the cellar would gobble up their food so quickly, meaning he'd have more time to play with the woman.

  Could she grow to love him? He'd like that. Waking up to her lovely smile every morning, before the pretty lady glided her naked body over him and did rude things to him. That sounded like perfection. Kevin knew the reality of the situation though. He'd wake up alone, just like every other morning. If he wanted to do rude things to her, he'd have to cross the hallway and enter his parent's old quarters. Still a more preferable option to his present situation. Waking up with the urge meant having to get dressed, before travelling throughout half the hotel's corridors and rooms in order to get to the cellar. On most mornings, by the time he reached the door, his urge had left him.

  Thanks to his rash decision, even that option was now off the table.

  The tantalising thought that the woman might grow to love him grew like a soap bubble, but soap bubbles never last long before they pop. Another mind, buried deep in Kevin's dozing brain made sure that this idea didn't anchor itself. The boy had already committed a huge mistake by allowing a meal to live already.

  The other mind gently steered Kevin's sleeping thoughts to something far more pleasurable, the memory of his first ever kill.

  Chapter Four

  More trouble for Michael

  1

  At just past seven o'clock on the following morning, while five miles away, on the edge of town, a hotel owner was still dreaming of his first unsupervised kill and dismemberment, Michael Sandhurst snapped open his eyes.

  He too had dreamed but unlike the hotel owner, his dreams hadn't been of fond nostalgic memories. Michael's sleeping mind took him to a grimy two bedroomed apartment, close to the border of Scotland. He had never seen the inside of the tenement block where his wife was born, but as he walked across the threadbare brown carpet, stained with old dog shit, spilled beer and the occasional damp patch, (he knew that this could have been either human or dog piss) he knew that this was exactly how Jodie remembered the life she fled from.

  He counted three doors, two in front of him and one on his left. Michael wanted to take the left door, knowing that would lead him down a narrow corridor, one side piled with tied up bundles of old newspapers, the other side empty, apart from a Victorian dresser, its glass front broken and lost, the insides full of darts and pool trophy cups. The corridor ended at the pale blue door that led out onto a balcony, overseeing a concrete communal square. Getting out of this evil place was his only thought.

  Jodie wasn't here, neither were any of her vile family. Something else now wanted to enter this place, something far more rancid than Jodie's thuggish father, who had an unhealthy attraction to his only daughter.

  Michael moaned in frustration when he found that his feet had ceased to function. He fearfully tipped his head down. His eyes gliding past crushed lager cans and half eaten takeaway boxes, their cold contents congealing on the floor. “No way!” he uttered. “This can't be happening.”

  The carpet fibres had grown up and over his black boots, stopping him from moving. The fibres hadn't stopped expanding. They twisted and wound around his ankles, reaching up and past his knees. The smell of old tobacco and mould accompanied the advance. He slammed his hand over his mouth, instinctively knowing their destination, as the detritus scattered across the carpet now included human bones and scraps of shredded clothing.

  His eyes bulged in their sockets as he saw narrow cracks expand from the corner of the walls, each one spreading along the top edges of the ceilings. They opened up and syrupy dark red fluid bubbled out from the cracks and flowed in long narrow streams down the stained pastel wallpaper. The jellied substance also ran along the ceiling, heading towards the two doors in front of him. As he moaned, the sounds muffled by his fingers, Michael saw the one of the doors creak inwards.

  Before the interior presented itself, Michael's waking mind had stepped in and dragged him back to reality. While he ran his hand over two-day stubble, Michael decided to treat his consciousness to a well-deserved steak dinner. He didn't know what was waiting for him behind that door but he guessed that it would have been a far worse fate than finding that living carpet growing into his mouth.

  “Come on, Jodie.” He murmured, gently rocking the sleeping body beside him. “Time to wake up, beautiful. The sun is shining, and the sky is empty of clouds.”

  Michael sat up, feeling surprisingly good, considering he slept downstairs on the floor. Their two guests were stirring as well. Both Fern and Trevor and managed to get comfortable on the sofa, a task that Michael hadn't believed possible. He'd only fallen asleep on that a couple of times and on both occasions, he'd woken up feeling like somebody
had attempted to fold him into a small suitcase.

  They had declined the offer of the spare bedroom, stating that if their hosts were going to rough it, then they were too. Jodie had suggested they sleep in the living room, a few minutes after Trevor and Michael had returned. Both Trevor and himself had made a beeline for the beer and were already halfway through their first cans. Not actually moving from the beer mountain had definite appeal.

  2

  Between their new house and the main road that led into the small town, lay half a mile of rough dirt track. It was only ten minutes on foot to walk the distance, and hardly any time by car. Both Michael and Jodie had done the walk. Jodie's idea of course, stating that it was another one of those first moment experiences.

  Their last pleasant stroll, hand in hand with his beautiful wife had passed through his mind as he struggled to keep his balance on the water-logged wet mud path whilst carrying the sleeping girl tight against his chest.

  Three hours had passed since Maddie's unexplained episode (He didn't buy Fern's explanation that she'd only had a fit) and two hours since the rains had stopped. From the living room window they had watched the terrible weather turn that dirt path into a raging mud stream. Nobody would be going anywhere until some of that water had subsided.

  The burden hadn't been his alone to carry, Trevor had taken the girl off him about halfway down, a task he'd been silently grateful for. The girl wasn't that heavy, and although the route was difficult, if hadn't been much of a challenge. The appreciation came from having such an attractive girl in his arms. Her close proximity had played havoc with his distracted mind.

  Having her so close to him had awoken Michael's intense hormones and they'd hadn't wanted to slip away without whispering a few lewd suggestions. Her soft lips were just inches from his head and the faint scent of lemon had been tickling his nose ever since he had picked her up. It hadn't been too much of a jump to imagine her in the shower, slowly rubbing gel up and down those young, firm legs, her slender fingers caressing her inner thighs, letting out a quiet moan when the tips of those fingers reached a little higher. He then saw himself opening the shower cubicle, her mouth opening to allow that tongue to run over her wet lips, as her hungry eyes roved across his firm body, just before she gripped his buttocks and dropped to her knees...