His torturer stood from the chair and adjusted the arms of his dark suit. He walked to the table of implements and chose what Nick thought was a pair of pliers. He was mistaken.
The man seemed refreshed, eager to return to his work. With the fish skinners in hand, he maliciously peeled the sin off of Nick’s entire body, starting at the face. Most strips were small, the tiny cuts having weakened the tension of skin. As the skin peeled off, the man dusted the exposed dermis with table salt. It added to the pain, and minimized the much needed blood to preserve consciousness.
With his laborious task complete, the man stepped back to admire his new creation. He acted very pleased.
A full length mirror in its black stain stand decorated with chrome knobs faced the wall next to the chair. The man carefully retrieved it and moved it in front of his victim. He positioned it so the victim could see the masterful artwork he had created.
Nick saw the image. At first his mind couldn’t grasp the reflection was of a human being, much less that he was looking at himself.
Despite all the horrors he had experienced, seeing himself reached a hidden part in his mind and snapped the last bit of remaining sanity.
Hoarse laughter gurgled from Nick’s throat as he twisted his body with new found strength.
Realizing his victim was beyond the threshold of pain, the man made two incisions on Nick’s abdomen with a surgical knife. The intestines fell to the floor in a bloody mess. The man tied the large intestine around Nick’s neck and removed one of the chains from around his wrist. Tying the intestine to the free chain, the man then pushed a button on the wall which lifted the chain and tightened the intestine around the Nick’s neck, cutting the air from his lungs completely.
* * *
“Hey, handsome. Looking for a date?” the small framed woman asked, after the clomp of her six inch heels on the pavement came an abrupt halt.
A thin faced man propped against the window of a poorly lit jewelry store. His black derby shadowed his eyes but did nothing to conceal neither his large nose nor the festering sore on its tip. He made no attempt to look in the direction of the woman’s voice.
Even in the night the paleness of the woman’s skin was evident. Skin that hadn’t seen the light of day for months, if not years. Her deep purple blouse plunged at the neckline revealing flat sagging breast and the outline of her ribcage. She chewed gum in rhythm with her heartbeat, shifted her weight to her left knee, twirled her jet black hair with her finger, and waited for an answer.
The man was as motionless as a mannequin. He dressed in a black wool suit with perfect fit and fine detail. The two-button jacket sported thin lapels, four-button cuffs, and front flap welt pockets.
A match exploded in yellow flame directly in front of his face and cast aside to the ground after lighting the cigarette. The man took a long drag from the cancer stick and offered the woman one from the pack held in his other hand.
The woman took the cigarette without a word and pulled a lighter from the side of her handbag, and set it burning. Taking a puff, she asked, “You want to go down the alley or back to a room?”
The man tilted his head back, and their gazes met. His gaunt face and thin mustache made her left eye twitch in repulsion.
The man’s eyes widened. The frozen features on his face contorted in animation. “My child, it is a dark and dreary night. A time of night not fit for men of respect or women of virtue. Has life not offered you many paths? Is not the world teaming with opportunity? How is it that you have become a random piece of debris floating down a river of human sewerage?”
An unusual feeling overtook the woman. Cold fear laced its damp tentacles around her insides. Her mind told her to run, but her legs were somehow paralyzed by the mysterious man’s presence. An engulfing power surrounded her, and penetrated her mind. It was if he were reading her past of all hidden sins.
“Speak,” was all the man said.
Like a repentant child, the woman confessed. “I’ve been scared all my life. I’ve been afraid that no one loved me. Not my parents. Not my friends. No one. I was a burden to my parents as a child. My father never wanted me, and my mother resented me because of it. I was always in the way. Always a wedge between them and the other things they wanted in life,” the woman paused. Tears trickled down her face and dripped off her chin. “But I tried. Really. I tried to make them love me. I listened to what they said. I did everything they wanted me to do. I just wanted them to love me. But it was never enough.” She stopped as her tears turned to sobs.
She wiped her face with her hand and sniffed back snot, took another puff from her cigarette, and composed herself. “I tried to win friends, but all they did was take advantage of me. I tried to get men to love me, but all they did was use me and throw me away. I had no one,” she paused again. “No one! Do you hear? No one!”
“Yet I find you on the street. You are certainly with purpose now. You are no longer alone, are you?” the man asked.
“No . . . not since I met, Raoul.” She lowered her head and formed a bitter smile. “I showed up in this town off a bus with nothing. He took me in and took care of me.” The woman looked back up at the man. “He had me believing that he loved me. But he was no better than the rest.” She resisted tears. “Who are you? Why am I telling you all this?”
The man gave her a gentle smile. “My dear, I am, Judgment. Destiny has chosen you this night and will change the course of your life.”
“Look, Mister. If I don’t bring enough money back to Raoul, he’s going to change the course of my life by ending it.”
“Then I will grant you the power of judgment over Raoul.”
The sadness on the woman’s face twisted to anger. “Mister, if that were true then I would make that man pay in so many different ways. Sometimes I want to rip his throat out and chop him into pieces. If I had that power I would get my revenge.”
“Perhaps,” Judgment turned his head to the right and looked at the night sky. “Perhaps not,” and turned his head to the left. Looking directly at the woman, he reached out and grabbed her hand.
The world through the woman’s eyes changed from the dark streets to a time past where a young boy the age of ten was on the porch of a rundown house, peering through a window. The woman walked up behind the boy to see what he was watching.
It was a woman sitting in a chair giving oral sex to a man. When the man finished, he handed the woman some money. The man was replaced by another, and the woman continued her sordid act.
The woman sensed that this boy was Raoul, and the woman was his mother.
The scene changed inside the house. Raoul was now inside and the woman watched his mother suffer a beating from a man. The scene changed from one man to another. It was obvious that the abuse had been over a long period of time and with numerous men. More than she cared to count. Raoul’s mother suffered at the hand of the men she brought into her life. Raoul had learned to disrespect women from his mother’s treatment.
Judgment let go of her hand. The woman’s eyes now filled her mind with the world of the present.
“Raoul may be a perpetrator of vile acts, but he too is a victim of abuse,” Judgment said.
The woman shook her head. “I didn’t know. I never thought of it that way.”
“The time of judgment is at hand. What is the fate that you choose for, Raoul?”
Her eyes weary now, she said, “Raoul is just a sad man caught up in a crappy environment. Who knows what he would be like if his life had been normal? I don’t like what he has become. I can’t hurt him though. I . . . I can’t make him pay that way. If only I could break out of the cage I’ve grown into. I wish that for Raoul, too.”
“So as you judge.” Judgment tipped his hat, turned, and walked away.
A fat brown envelope lay on the sidewalk where Judgment had stood. The woman bent cautiously forward and lifted it from the ground. Inside was a stack of crisp one hundred dollar bills, all right side up, and facing the same direc
tion.
She stopped counting at ten thousand dollars. Destiny had certainly changed her life.
* * *
Raoul awoke in a large cold room hanging by his arms from chains connected to the ceiling. The room smelled of vomit, feces, and putrid meat. He swallowed to keep the bile down as it rose up in the back of his throat.
His last thoughts were of talking to a strange man. Someone that he would not normally become engaged in a conversation with. He couldn’t help himself though. The man had approached him, and Raoul had been compelled to answer his questions.
Raoul’s feet barely touched the floor. His arms were becoming numb from the blood struggling to flow its way up. He twisted himself around and looked about the room.
A chair and a mirror were to one side of a wall. A table with industrial tools and what looked like surgical instruments to his right, a rusty door behind him. The concrete floors were stained in black and auburn, and felt greasy under his feet.
The door creaked open. He spun around in hopes of salvation. It was the well-dressed man, the last person he had spoken to.
His immediate reaction was to curse and demand to be freed. But something about the presence of the man made him hesitate. It wasn’t fear. It was uncertainty. The man emanated a power Raoul felt he wasn’t worthy to challenge. He hung silent, and waited for the man to make his move.
Judgment made his way from behind Raoul, set a bottle of water on the table next to a claw hammer, and stood before his victim as he lit a fresh cigarette. He took a deep draw as the match lit the end, and blew out a stream of smoke toward Raoul.
“You may speak,” he said.
The grip of reverence loosened enough for Raoul to find his voice. “Let me down from here. Please.”
Judgment lifted his eyebrows. “I’m sorry. I can’t do that. You are here by your own decision.”
Raoul heard the words, but they made no sense. He didn’t ask to come here, yet there was a connection to the conversation with the man and the reason why he was here. What was it that happened before he blacked out?
He remembered he and the man were talking. Talking about problems—business problems. A territorial dispute with a Russian rival spilled over into his business district. The man had taken hold of his hand and his mind was transported back and viewed the Russian’s life growing up. When his mind returned to the present, the man had asked him to make a choice.
Raoul’s face lit up as he remembered. “Wait. You got it wrong. I said I wanted to make that Ruskie son-of-a-bitch suffer and die. He’s messing things up for me big time. What’s all of this? Why am I here? I ain’t done nothing to deserve this.”
Judgment searched the implements on the table and chose a pair of tweezers and surgical scissors. “I’ve already told you why you are here.”
He reached with the tweezers and pulled Raoul’s right eyelid forward and snipped it off with the scissors. Through the cries of protest, he repeated the action on the left side.
“There. Now you won’t be able to miss any of the excitement,” Judgment said.
“You’re crazy! Don’t do this. Please!” Raoul’s bowels quivered and cold fear made his whole body tingle. Why was this man doing this? What reason did he give? He couldn’t remember. “Why? Just tell me why?”
“So as you judge. So shall you be judged.” Judgment selected a stainless steel surgical knife from the table and started working on his next creation.
The End
New Shoes
Michael,
I can hardly bring myself to write this. So much has happened so fast. I wish you were here. I need you so bad. This is the third time I'm attempting to send this message. I finally have enough bars on my phone that I feel it should make it.
We had to leave Chalmette. Things just went from bad to worse. I don't know what you know about the situation over here. God knows we don't know what's happening where you are in Afghanistan.
The story hit the news that the dead were clawing out of their graves on April 1st. April first! Isn't that ironic? Fucking April fool's day! I was half asleep when I watched the news that night. It reminded me about last year's fake story that reported Taco Bell bought advertisement rights to the Liberty Bell and was renaming it the Taco Liberty Bell.
But the living dead story was still on the next day. I didn't understand how this could be happening. I still don't.
All of this is madness. I'm so depressed. There is so much you need to know. I don't know how to tell you. Please, please, please, brace yourself.
Kenny and Marsha brought their kids over to your Mom and Dad's so we could deal with this thing together. Your Mom went hysterical when she saw Mrs. May on television news. She and Mrs. May had been friends since they were in high school. Mrs. May had been dead for just three weeks and Mom recognized her immediately. As if seeing her wasn't bad enough, May’s head exploded from a shotgun blast right there on TV. Your Mom fainted when she saw that. But it may have been worse than that. She made have had a stroke then. We didn't have time to take her to the doctor.
I tell you this because your Mom died a few hours later. I'm sorry.
It happened during the night. We were all packed up ready to leave at the first light of day when the dead broke into the house. It was more terrifying than you can imagine.
Kenny and your Dad were well armed. I never knew your brother was such a good shot. You can only kill those bastards by shooting them in the head. Sometimes you have to shoot them twice.
It was during the first attack that your mother stopped breathing. When I noticed I tried to give her CPR but she had no pulse, and never took another breath. Your Dad didn't even get to tell her goodbye. He was too busy protecting us.
Another gang of undead came before sunup. We survived that. But just as we loaded up the van, Kenny and your Dad were loading your Mom in the back when one of them snuck up and bit your Dad on the arm. Kenny killed it with his pistol.
The bite didn't look bad. We put alcohol on it and a bandage. But not more than an hour later he started to go into convulsions. We stopped on the side of the highway and laid him down on a blanket. His body shuddered, and then he went completely crazy. His eyes were blood red, and he snarled like a wild beast. He wouldn't stay away from us. Kenny was forced to shoot him.
It was horrible. It doesn't even seem real when I put it into words. The children saw it all.
Barksdale Air Force Base is a hundred miles from where we are now. We're going to try and make it there. Kenny figures it's our best chance. I do too.
I don't know how to tell you this. I've been avoiding it but you must know. Michael Jr. was asleep in your old bedroom during the first attack. The zombies broke in through the window and entered the house that way. I was in the kitchen with the other adults.
I feel like it was my fault. I should have been there. He was so sweet. So innocent. He didn't deserve what happened to him. There was almost nothing left to his body by the time we got to him. I can only hope and pray that he went quickly. I can't bear to think of our little baby suffering. I never even got to take a picture of him wearing his first pair of shoes.
Don't hate me. I love you. I need you to be here with me.
-Katy
Need
Zelda had spent most of the first twenty years of her life alone. Not to mean that she was on an island somewhere void of human contact. She was alone in the world of normal.
The world of normal walked in step to the same beat: fashions of the season, tunes on the radio, slang language of the day. Her ascent into puberty was a stairway straight into isolation. The girls around her changed, becoming creatures of beauty, passion, and mirth. While she stood on the outskirts of notoriety, hidden in plain sight as boys looked past her as if she weren’t even there.
The four walls of her room became her refuge and the only friends she had were the books on the shelf. She filled the emptiness inside with food. Anything in plastic wrap or a can would do. It was the void she needed t
o satisfy, not the palate.
Her life came to a defining moment in the summer between high school and college when she took a stroll down one of the less traveled hiking paths at the state park.
Zelda had been walking with her mind lost in a dull gray world of her creation, on a path at the bottom of small hill. She heard screams of agony from nearby and froze in mid-step. It almost sounded animal like and made the skin on the back of her neck tingle. As the cries of anguish faded, she distinctly heard, “Help me,” from a withering voice.
Her sense of obligation won over her fears. She made the slow trek up the hill.
A handsome boy near her age lay in the middle of a spray-painted pentagram. His clothes looked fairly new and clean. Not even a hair was out of place on his head. It was as if he had lain on his back to take a nap. An odd looking ceramic pitcher set to his left side and a small fire burning in a bowl to his right. A tattered leather bound book next to him was open to a page with yellow highlighted passages.
Zelda could tell just by looking that he was dead. His body was no longer surrounded by the aura of life. She had never been around a dead body before and was surprised she wasn’t more afraid.
The wind blew her hair across her face. She brushed it out of the way while gingerly stepping toward him. Once by his side, she knelt down between the book and his body.
The wind kicked up again. The pages in the book flipped as if an unseen force rapidly turned them. She picked the book off of the ground and opened it where a thin red ribbon was sandwiched between the pages.
The words looked familiar and foreign at the same time. Scanning them quickly, she guessed the writing was Latin. The passages highlighted in yellow intrigued her. She placed her index finger under the first word and began to read aloud, “atrum sol solis orior oriri ortus, incendia est frigus, orbis terrarum inter mihi nex, ortus est totus.
Horror Buffet : Six Servings of Tasty Terror Page 2
