Twisted 50 Volume 1

by Wessell, Stephanie

  But then Boss found him, recognising the notorious face in every recent news report. Boss approached him, saving him. Just like Simon approached the struggling patient now, scalpel held ready. Boss had turned Simon’s life around in that dingy backstreet. Simon supposed it was good manners that he showed the same kindness to the strapped-down female before him.

  The scalpel slashed across the patient’s chest. Blood spilled down the precise incision. There could be no better way of turning a life around than turning it into death.

  Simon went to take another implement from the trolley behind him. Looking into the shadow-infested darkness, Simon regarded the sealed bags hanging from every part of the wall, the preserved organs within ready to be taken away by Boss’s men.

  With scalpel in one hand and orthopaedic saw in the other, Simon turned to the patient, still struggling weakly. He didn’t understand why they did that. Couldn’t they see why they were here? Didn’t they know their donation would help a lot of people? Then again, Simon only loved human anatomy. Why they did things remained a mystery.

  The scalpel split the skin further. Simon pried it apart to a cacophony of moist squelching. The orthopaedic saw whirled noisily, cutting straight down and through the breastbone. Grasping the smooth, hard ribs, he pulled them back. Crack, crack, crack. The breaking noise lashed the silence. Supple bones rotated on the spine’s hinges. Flesh tore open.

  Her chest gaped, innards exposed. The archways of ribs welcomed the intrusion of Simon’s scalpel and its severing of the tendons and valves.

  Out of the blood-soaked cavern, Simon’s hands emerged, grasping the precious heart.

  It was small. A fluttering butterfly beating its wings at 180 furious beats per minute. Between his fingers, the tiny heart would continue its fibrillation for another three minutes. From this gaping female he needed the scrupulously clean liver and kidneys. Sadly, the heart couldn’t be kept alive and useful for more than an hour. Even then, it would require complex machinery not in Simon’s possession. As such, Boss was kind enough to let Simon explore his true passion.

  From underneath the heart, his right hand came up to his lips. His tongue skirted across them, tasting the splash of metallic blood. The tongue extended. Coarse flesh licked his red-stained finger in one long, sensuous stroke. His left hand brought the heart to his face. Stained lips against it. Clammy warmth throbbed through them.

  Simon popped the bulging, undulating muscle between his teeth and bit down. It was tender, rupturing easily in his mouth. He was so lucky to experience the divine explosion bursting past his lips. But that was to be expected. The child patient was his lucky number, twelve years old, after all.

  The Audition Altar

  by Leo X Robertson

  “So what brings you here today, Geoff?”

  Geoff Harkness sat opposite Zoe Trope. She leaned forwards over a cheap plywood desk. He stared into the flashing red light of the camera behind her, answers to her question cycling through his head. From the wall hangers stared winking bug-eyed cartoon demons, the type idiots get tattooed on their ankle for their eighteenth birthdays: ‘Jimmy Crowley Presents: Sexy Sofa’ the demons proclaimed. He went for, “Well, as you know, the economy isn’t so…”

  The economy! Jesus…

  She flicked a hand back and forth and closed her eyes smugly. “Just relax, Geoff. I’m not trying to grill you. I just want to get a sense of who you are, and if we’re a good fit for you.”

  What a joke! They’re offering a job, right? Fit complete!

  “Right,” Geoff said, sighing. Feeling an oncoming slouch, he became rigid, and wondered what the hell to do with his hands, especially without looking at them. Even the lovely new suit his parents had bought him for graduation began to cause anxiety, showing wear after a few years of interviews alone.

  “What I mean is,” she continued, peering over her square glasses at the CV he’d handed her when he came in, “are you interested in the kind of work we do here?”

  “If I’m honest, I’m not sure.”

  I should get out of here. There’s surely another job vacancy.

  She laughed through her nose. “Granted, many find it difficult with the camera on. Not to be intrusive, but”, she snorted, “you’re a man: I assume you’ve engaged in similar activity off-camera?”

  “No! I never… I would never… not at all to say I disapprove, or I wouldn’t be here either… I mean, I’d love to be considered. Here. Today.”

  “I get it, Geoff.”

  “You’ll see there,” he said, looking in the reflection of her glasses to gauge where she was reading, “that I have a great number of references who would attest to my professionalism. If that’s a concern of yours. Before we get started. Well, you’ll decide when we start, but, you know…”

  Interrupt me, please! Interrupt me!

  “You’re impressively overqualified for the job. Although saying that, you have a woeful number of Twitter followers! Anyway, as you can imagine, the kind of people who come in here don’t normally present their CVs.”

  She laughed, and he laughed with her, stopping just after she did. She was younger than him, wasn’t she? Something about her attitude, but she didn’t look it. He with his blonde locks and smooth skin; her with her general look of dehydration and fatigue. She was dressed well enough, but wore professionalism like a costume: ill-fitting pinstripe suit, extreme scrape-back of ponytail, dots of white powder in violently plucked eyebrows.

  “I’m sorry about that,” he said.

  “No, don’t apologise. I only read your CV since you brought it in. But really, the ones who succeed in this industry are able to act natural, you know, relax, be themselves…” She swung her shoulders about.

  “Uh-huh.” He scratched his neck and looked around. His heart sped up as his eyes locked on the famous black leather sofa behind him, lit in unsexy fluorescent light.

  “Mmhm,” she said, and nodded. “I just had an idea!”

  “Please. I’m happy to be fully flexible to your needs.”

  “Could we conduct the interview during your… evaluation?”

  That sounded like extra pressure. But in just one hour it could be over, either way.

  “Yes! Absolutely,” he replied.

  Too enthusiastic!

  There was a difference between emphatically pretending you’re a team player versus bigging up the interviewer’s every simple suggestion. Zoe looked like a woman who could tell when a man was faking it, or at least liked to think she could, as demonstrated by the return of her smug smile.

  “Great!” she said. “Over by the couch. Geoff? You’re still in that suit.”

  “Oh.”

  As expected, he had to strip. If he got the job, hopefully he’d get more comfortable taking his clothes off, enjoy it, even - though from what he’d already seen of the market, he’d just be chuffed if the pay was indeed competitive, as their advert had boasted. He removed his jacket and hung it on the back of the plastic chair, took off his trousers and folded them on its seat.

  She motioned for him to face the camera, but not to look into it. She herself stripped down to a PVC bra and pants and put on a pair of matching fingerless gloves, to which she looked much more accustomed than the suit.

  When he was almost finished, she said, “Just down to your pants is fine, Geoff. Unlike other companies I won’t name, we like to leave some illusion.” He smiled with relief, but his face fell again as she removed a long leather belt from the drawer. She slapped it in one palm and said: “Highest education level?”

  “Bachelors with First Class Honours. Finance. Top of my year.”

  “Only a Bachelors’ degree?”

  In one fluid motion, Zoe lassoed the belt around his neck from across the desk. She made her way round to him and flipped a perfectly manicured foot up against the buckle, effortlessly choking him.

  It hurt. It was real. Real! But surely what happened next wasn’t real? The acting in the audition tapes he’d seen, the shoddy s
pecial effects - it always looked so fake. It had to be.

  “Tell me about your final thesis. What attracted you to your chosen – ” His tongue protruded thick and purple, and she couldn’t help but laugh. Dropping her leg with Olympic grace, she slipped the belt’s tab into the hole that gave him a finger’s worth of space away from asphyxiation, and dragged him to the couch with the remaining strip of leather, pressing his red hot face into the couch, which he luckily found to smell only of hand sanitiser.

  She straddled him from behind and angled his face to the camera, sitting on his back and reaching beneath the couch, sliding a tray along the carpet. A number of metal objects jangled together.

  “So, Geoff,” she said, reaching down for an object from the floor, “tell me about your work experience.”

  “Well…” he said, swallowing to stop from coughing, “you probably saw from my CV that in my undergrad I performed an internship each summer with three of the world’s leading – ”

  He felt the rake of a sharp knife down the flesh of his back. Once, twice. Zoe performed this with a professional deftness but caught the knife a few times as it staggered down, tearing centimetre-deep flaps from his skin. He tried screaming to release the lancinating throb that followed, but quickly came the slap of a PVC glove on his cheek.

  She leaned in: “If you’re going to scream, make sure they can see your face. You’re doing just fine.”

  “Leading management consultancy firms,” he continued, “where I was fortunate enough to work with – ”

  She connected two of the large cuts with a horizontal slice and worked her fingertips into the bloody opening, tugging the skin downward like the red plastic strip on a polythene package, which felt like a hangnail of this magnitude ripped back instantly.

  “‘Fffffff – ” He gritted his teeth and she tightened the belt, which choked off his next scream. “FIVE OF THE TOP TWENTY FORTUNE 500 COMPANIES!”

  “Oh yeah!” she said, riding him and using his skin and the belt as reins. “Me likey!” She licked her lips. She’d make sure that when he could see the extent of the damage, it would be too late to escape. “Name them for me, you slut.”

  Blood soaked into the white cotton of his boxers and dripped down the couch. Whispering with the least movement of her lips possible, she said, “You’ve got them right where you want them. Don’t fade now.”

  She released the belt and flipped him over, tugging his hair to keep him awake. Geoff’s vision was smattered with black dots. Through them, he saw her smiling at him against the tube lamp’s glare. He smiled weakly back, then his attention turned to the large bloody hook clutched in her left hand – all of this is just for show, right? – and gradually his vision picked up smaller details: the safety blades sticking out her bra; the slender knife shining cleanly in her other hand; the Hydra-like shadow of three long wavering necks that took over a third of the ceiling.

  “They’re here,” she whispered, holding back tears of excitement to keep her make-up intact.

  “Exxon,” he said. Her smile broadened. His suffering bloomed into a dull warmth. A smell, like a rubbish bag of rotting teeth, filled the room.

  “‘Hewlett – ” He gasped as the blade flew across his face and sliced his cheek open at one side. “P-packard!” With the “p”, he spat out stinging fresh blood. He tongued his cheek’s new flap: she’d really cut him!

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “General… Electric.” Now she tugged at his hair and drew the blade across his forehead. He protested with a weary shake of the head, a weak flailing of his arms, as she peeled back his flesh. Was all his blood loss some anaesthetic? To Geoff, the scalp-peeling just gave a vague tugging sensation.

  From the floor was the sound of sticky foul creatures emerging from a primordial pool. The warmth of blood running across his forehead was unmistakeable. He closed his eyes, fading mercifully into fevered dreams.

  The plasterboard of the wall erupted and more slick-sounding slops spilled into the room.

  He heard her soothing voice: “Okay, Geoff. It’s okay. Just give me one more. Just one more.”

  He gave a tired laugh. “You’ll… like this one…”

  “Give it to me, Geoff.”

  “A…aaa…”

  “Could it be? Say it, bitch. Say it. Oh God! In all the time I’ve done this, I’ve never seen them come so fast!”

  “Ppppp…”

  “The whole thing. It’s just one word. Tell me it’s true and this is all over, I swear.”

  Scalp from his hairline was now tugged back to the crown. Around both their legs squirmed cold creatures.

  “…Apple.”

  “APPLE!” she screamed, leaping into the mass on the floor and digging the knife into Geoff’s belly, wrenching it back with full force to reveal ruby red bowels, which began to spill off the couch and into the carpet like bloody vomit from a newly carved mouth. The lights glowed blindingly bright and bulbs exploded, showering the room with a snow of glass and phosphor dust. He made no sound.

  She backed away into the darkness. “I never thought we’d get this deep.”

  “Zoe…” It was a voice from the room’s growing mass, speaking in a thousand dead tongues.

  She waded back to the couch and sat beside Geoff, steadying herself against the slip of his blood. She took off a glove and with this hand stroked his bleeding face. She placed a hand inside him and felt his organs pulse with the staggered movement of his diaphragm.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I was just amazed by how much he took, how he barely even resisted! I know I wasn’t supposed to… ‘enjoy myself’ this much, but I never thought he’d be the one you want!”

  The cold pool was up to her knees.

  “See how much you still had to learn at entry level, impatient girl? For your disobedience…”

  A squelch echoed through the room’s remaining space, sharply followed by Zoe’s screams and the crackling of a hundred of her bones breaking at once. Geoff felt her rag doll corpse flop on top of him. Soon came the slithering ribbed tongues all over him, lapping up his blood, running along the rips in his flesh, thus restoring them, like Prometheus’ liver, to be torn out again and again in their home dimension of pure pain.

  In their many mouths with putrid breath, the tongues said: “Geoff?”

  “…”

  “You got the job.”

  The Beholder

  by Stephanie Wessell

  You know that feeling when someone’s watching you, but you don’t actually see them? It’s like a physical touch, making you raise your hand to the back of your head, or turn around to see who’s there. I googled it. It’s called scopaesthesia. And I’ve got it.

  I want to be an etymologist when I’m older so I investigated the word to test its truth. It has Greek roots: scop comes from to look and aesthesia means sensation. That figures: this is a real, physical thing that makes my skin sort of jiggle. I’ve had it on and off since Year Nine last year, but it’s perpetual now. That means without intermission or interruption.

  I can be alone in my bedroom – a stupid baby pink because Mum went before she could do her promised re-paint – and feel eyes studying me. There’s a heat to this scrutiny: it drills into me, like one of Dad’s power screwdrivers that makes smoke rise from the friction. The gaze is usually behind me, but I turn my head and it seems no one’s there.

  It feels like a man. Someone adult. I call him The Beholder, which comes from the old English behalden, meaning to keep. I think he does keep me. I’m like his pet. That’s not why I chose the name though, I chose it because of the phrase beauty is in the eye of the beholder. He seems to like my body. I want to think that his intentions are good, but I haven’t always been sure that they are. It’s confusing.

  The Beholder is elusive, meaning difficult to catch, even when I’m feeling brave. Sometimes I feel like he wants to linger, looking at my chest, but can’t because if he were in front of me I’d see him. So I actually purposefully close
my eyes and let my arms fall to my sides. I put my shoulders back – correct posture makes you look and feel better, Mum drummed that into me – and I can feel his intense assessment. It’s scary and exposing but somehow exciting, until the heat gets too much and I flick open my eyes, crossing my arms. I expect to see him, leering right in front of my face, but he instantly jumps behind me. It’s playful and sick, all at the same time.

  He used to scare me but I suppose he’s kind of helpful, because knowing he’s there makes me think about how I look. I try hard with my make-up, count the calories, and save my pocket money for what the magazines call the five key accessories that make an outfit. I wear a padded bra. When you’re constantly on show, you have to be aware of your appearance. That’s what Mum used to say. “Make sure you’re presentable, Hannah, you never know who’s looking.” It worked for her; she said she “turned heads” when she was about my age. Possibly she had scopaesthesia too.

  Even now, Dad says I should slow down. He says many things. Mostly: “You’re not dressing like that on my watch.” He looks at me in funny ways too, but I see him do that, as well as feel it. He wants to still treat me like a baby, so I certainly don’t want to be his pet anymore.

  Mum was still here when the Beholder first came. I was doing my homework when she came into my room and placed some Veet strips on the desk beside me. I’d never really noticed the hairs on my legs before, but she said that I was growing up and it was time for me to “start maintenance.”

  Now, looking back, this was a funny word for her to use, because it means the process of preserving a condition. Was maintenance going to keep me like a little kid? No - the pain of pulling those wax strips off convinced me of that. “Your new beauty regime, get used to it,” Mum said.

  Afterwards, as she made me parade my smooth legs in front of Dad, the complicated look in his eyes proved that I might really be becoming a woman. He said quietly, “She’s too young,” and left to test the Wi-Fi access in the shed.