Shut The Fuck Up And Die!

by William Todd Rose

  All of her life, men had simply taken what they’d wanted from her. First Uncle Louis with his promise of kittens in his basement. Then Mr. Chambers, asking her to stay after class so he could give her individualized attention. Her brother. After her father had joined in, that bastard didn’t even bother to drug her anymore. And she’d simply swallowed it all. She’d let the shame and guilt and anger fester into a burning ember in the pit of her stomach. She’d choked back the protests and sobs, had eventually learned to just lay there and accept whatever disgusting thing they wanted to do to her. On some level, they’d managed to somehow convince her that she really was asking for it. That it was her fault and they were just giving her what she actually wanted. That she would never amount to anything more than a slutty whore . . . .

  Until Matt had come into her life.. He’d shown her the beauty that was in her soul. It was like a radiant jewel so deeply hidden within her that their thrusting dicks could never hope to shatter it. They could leave her bruised and aching and make it hurt to walk for days afterward . . . but they would never own her. They’d never control her. And, once Matt had taught her what it meant to take the power back, they would also never violate her again.

  And she’d be damned if she was simply going to lay there and let this degenerate, redneck animal do whatever the fuck he wanted. It didn’t matter if it was a prick or a pick . . . nothing entered her body without her permission.

  The little weasel had stopped stabbing and had her shirt clenched in both hands now. He yanked it so hard that her torso rose slightly off the ground and Mona could tell by his expression of stupid bewilderment that he’d simply expected it to rip right off her chest. He pulled again, but still the fabric held and he clenched his teeth as frustration flared in his eyes.

  “Stupid fuckin’ whore!”

  He spat the words from his mouth as he glared at her breasts, totally oblivious to Mona’s balled fist until it smacked into the center of his throat. Something between a cough and a gag erupted out of him and Daryl’s hands flew up as if to protect his neck from another assault. Mona, however, had anticipated this reaction and, as she struggled to sit from the waist up, drove the heel of her palm into Daryl’s solar plexus.

  She’d hoped the blow would send him reeling away from her, but instead his body fell forward. His weight crashed into her and the little progress she’d made at sitting up was instantly neutralized. She fell back against the old woman’s corpse again and her right hand reached out in attempt to break her fall. Instead of hitting the floor, however, it sank into something cold and squishy, something that felt like she’d just plunged her hand into a vat of chilled jelly.

  Before it even had a chance to register in her brain that her hand had fallen into the old hag’s sliced abdomen, though, her left hand formed into claws and raked at Daryl’s watering eyes. The pain broke through the temporary paralysis that had overtaken him and he yowled as he tried to roll to the side.

  Not getting away that easy, you piece of shit!

  With her hips free, Mona managed to coil her legs around Daryl’s waist. She crossed her ankles and squeezed as he squirmed like a worm on the end of a hook

  “How do you like that, mother fucker? What, you don’t want my legs wrapped around you anymore? You don’t want any of this?”

  She ground her crotch forcefully against him as she yelled, causing him to whimper. At the same time, he seemed to remember the ice pick in his hand and he thrust it downward in an attempt to break free of her grasp. However, blood streamed from the deep furrows that Mona’s nails had carved into his face and the salty liquid trickled into his eyes. Momentarily blinded, the pick missed its mark and pinged against the concrete floor so hard that the shock waves traveled up Daryl’s arm. His hand reflexively opened and his only weapon rolled across the uneven floor as Mona squeezed her legs more tightly.

  At the same time, she pulled her hand out of the old woman’s body. However, something sharp sliced through her palm before she’d even managed to free it. She’d spent so many hours cutting her arms with razor blades as a teen that Mona instantly recognized the stinging sensation for what it was: a sharpened blade.

  Part of her mind couldn’t help but wonder what the hell a blade was doing inside the old bitch’s body; but this was the same part that always watched passively while the more primal portions maintained full control. Those parts of her consciousness didn’t question the improbability of the situation at all. They simply saw an opportunity presenting itself and made her grasp at the blade again.

  Mona yanked at the broken knife, hoping that it would pull free of the dead flesh and provide her with a weapon. However, the cold metal was so slick with blood and gore that her hand simply slipped over it again, opening a new wound in the process.

  Daryl doubled his efforts and thrashed about on the floor as he tried to pull Mona’s ankles apart from each other. Though unable to free himself entirely, he’d twisted around so that his back was now facing her and, in the hopes that he might connect with her face, threw his head backward again and again.

  The wounds in Mona’s thighs and hips protested with searing waves of pain but she squeezed even more tightly and ground her teeth against one another to keep from screaming. She knew she had to do something soon: she couldn’t simply keep the man in a leg lock indefinitely. Sooner or later, pain and exertion would get the best of her and the bastard would manage to pry his way free. The blade of the knife, however, was stubborn. Time and time again, it stayed lodged within Mary’s carcass as it slashed fresh incisions into Mona’s palm.

  The most recent injury had cut so deeply that her hand had balled into a fist afterward and, when it did, it had closed around something that felt almost like a coil of wrinkled, fleshy rope. Slippery, cold, and spongy to the touch, Mona’s mind instantly seized on what it was.

  Still clutching the organ, Mona yanked hard. There was a moment of resistance but then, with a sound that was partly a squish and partly a slither, her hand pulled free from the old woman’s body. At the same moment, Daryl had thrown his head backward again and Mona took the opportunity to rise up just enough so that she could throw a loop of the intestine over his head. Then she pulled back with every ounce of energy she could muster.

  Daryl fell on top of her and she tugged on the guts as tightly as if they were the reins of a horse she were trying to control. Passing one hand over the other, she curled the intestine around his neck again, forming a garrote of sorts.

  His fingers clawed at the entrails like a man frantically trying to loosen a tie that had become so tight that it was cutting off his air. Mona, however, pulled on them so forecfully that her arms shook with exertion and his grasping fingers couldn’t even wedge themselves between his throat and his mother’s viscera.

  Daryl’s heels kicked at the concrete floor and his neck truly was red now: the flesh looked as if it were swelling up around the length of intestine and his carotid artery bulged as his heart tried to force blood through the restricted passage. His face, however, was now nearly as pale as the corpse whose bowels he was being strangled with and his eyes looked as if they were about to pop from him head. Though Mona couldn’t see them, his lips flapped wordlessly: not so much as even the softest wheeze passed through them as his thrashing grew progressively weaker. Within minutes, his arms flopped to the floor and his entire body was limp and still.

  Mona, however, had learned her lesson about taking chances. Despite the cramps which wracked her arms and the throbbing pain in her legs, she didn’t ease her grip on either his torso or the old woman’s intestines. She mentally counted to one hundred three times before allowing her body to relax.

  She pushed Daryl’s body off her own as easily as if it were nothing more than a bag of laundry and he stared at the ceiling with unblinking eyes while Mona wriggled out from underneath him. She sat on the floor for a moment, catching her breath and wincing as her fingers probed the wounds on her leg.

  For some reason, Daryl had foc
used entirely on the right side of her body; so, as Mona attempted to stand, she placed all of her weight on her left leg. The basement seemed to swim around her and she reached for the freezer in an attempt to steady herself. After taking several deep breaths, her eyes swept the room and finally alighted on a pair of rusted crutches that peeked out from a mound of moisture-bloated boxes. She hopped over to it slowly, afraid that if the dizziness returned she would fall and be forced to crawl.

  The short trip, however, proved easier than she thought it would be. She pulled one of the crutches free and wedged it beneath her arm. The top was made of some sort of foam that had become hard and brittle with age and it almost felt like an oblong rock pressed into her armpit; but at least she was able to walk with minimal pain again.

  Going up the rickety stairs would be tricky, she knew, but she hobbled to them, intent on getting the hell out of the basement and perhaps finding some bandages. Pausing at the bottom, she took one last look over her shoulder.

  Daryl’s body was sprawled across the floor with Mary’s guts connecting the two like some bizarre umbilical cord. When his body went limp, his arm had had fallen in such a way that his left hand lay gently atop his dead mother’s fingertips.

  “How fucking sweet . . . “

  Mona spat on the floor and looked up at the stairs, mentally working out the best way to traverse them with her crutch. She was cold, bloody, and her body felt as if she’s just ran a marathon . . . but, at the same time, there was still that overwhelming rush that always accompanied a kill. It was more than just the adrenaline and endorphins pumping through her body.

  It was power.

  It was control.

  It was everything that made life worth living . . . .

  SCENE TWENTY

  Matt watched the gun bob and weave in front of him and wondered if Earl would actually be able to hit him. The large man looked as if it were taking every ounce of his willpower just to remain on his feet: his knees were buckled slightly and, even through the snow, Matt could see that there was a glassy haze to his eyes. There couldn’t be much life left in him: with the freezing temperatures, the arrow wounds scattered across his torso, and accompanying loss of blood, it could only be a matter of time before Earl collapsed. It seemed as if he barely had the strength to even hold the gun, much less pull the trigger.

  Still . . . he’d somehow managed to dig the weapon out of the snow, haul his sorry ass through the woods, and make his way back here. Which meant that he had the heart of a survivor. A lesser man simply would have laid out there in the wilderness, closed his eyes, and allowed death to claim him. But this brute . . . he was something else.

  In a way, Matt almost respected the man. He saw in him a lot of the same qualities that he’d recognized in Mona. You could teach a person to be a marksman; they could also learn how to stalk prey and not strike until just the right moment. If exposed to enough violence and bloodshed, the same person could even be trained not to so much as even blink as they watched the life drain out of another human’s body. But the innate hunger to persevere, to push your mind and body well beyond its limits for the achievement of a singular goal: that was something you had to be born with.

  It was also what made Earl as dangerous as a hand grenade that may, or may not, have had it’s pin removed. Fate often had a way of watching over those with the drive for dominance. Maybe it was evolutionary or perhaps the person’s personality was simply so strong that events unfolded according to its influence. Whatever the reason, Matt had seen a time and time again. A bitch in the woods who took three shots to the head before she finally stopped stabbing Matt’s father with a broken limb. The husband in Roanoke who’d had a pistol fall right into his lap when the night stand toppled over onto his dying wife.

  And these rare moments were what made it all worth it: everything else was nothing more than a passing amusement, the souls of the dead like tokens spent in the arcade of life. But times like this one, when Matt felt as if he were facing down a true contender, those were the instants when he truly felt most alive. Here in the snow, surrounded by the desolate wilderness and dilapidated farmhouse, he and Earl were like gladiators facing off in an empty coliseum. Only one would taste the blood of his enemy. Only one would emerge victorious.

  “Let’s do this thing.”

  With a battle cry that burst from his mouth in plumes of breath, Matt charged at his worthy opponent. He weaved through the snow, darting back and forth erratically as Earl tried to follow him with the muzzle of the gun. Closing the distance rapidly, he was ready to rip out the bearded man’s tongue out with his bare fingers if he had to. And that was when Earl squeezed the trigger.

  Rather than a roar that boomed out like thunder in a snowstorm, however, there was only a soft click. Earl’s finger pulled the trigger again and again, but each time the result was the same. With a laugh, Matt stopped; still ten feet away from the other man, he shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he were seeing.

  “What’s the matter, big guy? Out of ammo there?”

  For a moment, Matt’s eyes flittered over Earl’s shoulder and his smile broadened until it looked as if he were shooting a dental commercial in the midst of a blizzard. When he next spoke, his voice was much louder as he squatted down and picked up a handful of snow.

  “Killing your mother . . . that was something else. A real hoot, as you’d say. You should have heard her. The screams, the crying . . . the way she clung to me like a frightened kid just before I tossed her ass down those stairs.”

  By this time Matt had stood again and he drew back his arm like a baseball player winding up for a pitch. Hurling the snowball at Earl, he continued talking, his voice loud and rapid.

  “You should’ve stayed down out there in the forest.”

  Earl tried to dodge the projectile but it splatted against his face squarely and exploded in a shower of snow.

  “You should have just laid out there and let the storm bury you and then things might not have turned out this way. If nothing else, you could’ve hid out there in the woods. Let us think you were dead and then come crawling back home once we were on our merry way. But, no. You had to think you were Mr, Tough Guy, didn’t you? You had to have your revenge. How’s that working out for ya, sport?”

  Earl staggered forward as if barely clinging to consciousness. He’d turned the useless gun over in his hand so that he now held it by the barrel and brandished it like a club. Matt, however, seemed nonplused by the man’s stop and go aggression. He continued scooping handfuls of snow from the ground, rolling them into loose balls, and lobbing them at his attacker. And the entire time his monologue continued in its rapid fire delivery.

  “Your little plaything’s dead. Your mother’s dead. Your brother’s dead. And soon, you’ll be dead, too. See, me and Mona we’ve been at this a long, long time. That I-77 killer they’ve been prattling on and on about on the radio? Yeah, that’s us. You won’t be the first family we’ve killed, not by a long shot. But I can say this: you were certainly the most interesting.”

  A snowball thudded against Earl’s chest as Matt hopped from foot to foot.

  “You know what your downfall was, Goliath? Your anger. I had to teach my wife how to channel hers, just like my Daddy taught me. But you? You let it blind you. You let it lead you into my little trap out there in the woods. It’s the reason you’ve got more arrows in you than a flowchart. And it’s also the reason why you’ve been listening to me prattle on and on without every realizing that this was about to happen.”

  Earl never heard the whoosh of the crutch as it cut through the air. Just as he’d never heard Mona making her way through the snow as Matt’s taunts covered the sound of her progress. One moment, he was simply trying to focus on the snowball tossing asshole in front of him; and the next, pain shot through the back of his skull as a flash of brilliant light exploded in his field of vision.

  He fell to his knees and wobbled there as his hands touched the back of his head and came awa
y bloody. Before he’d even had a chance to comprehend what this might mean, however, Mona swung the crutch again. This time, it thudded against his temple and, as the world went dark, Earl Gruber fell face first into the snow.

  At first, he was only aware of muffled voices that sounded as if they were originating from somewhere in the back of his head. No real words. Just a lull that rose and fell in volume. Bit by bit, the sounds began to string themselves into words; with comprehension there also came a pounding pain in the back of his head that was ten times worse than any hangover he’d ever suffered through.

  “ . . . sit him up.”

  “Damn it, Mona, I’m doing my best. He’s a big fucking guy.”

  His body was being jostled. He could feel his rolls of fat jiggling as he was shifted and positioned and, somehow, he knew that was no longer outside. It smelled like home here. Slightly musty, a trace of Mama’s powder lingering in the air . . .

  His eyelids fluttered open, but there were only blobs of color where detail should be.

  Was he sitting up? It felt like he was sitting up . . . .

  “Shit, sweetie, he’s coming to. Be a dear and whack him again, okay?”

  His head jerked to the side as something hard and unforgiving slammed into his cheek. Darkness overtook him again and when reality next reasserted itself, it did so with pain unlike any he’d ever known.

  It’d taken a lot of work, but Matt and Mona had managed to drag Earl’s unconscious body into the house. By the time they’d made it through the front door, they’d both collapsed in the foyer and lay there, panting in each other’s arms and grinning like a young couple who’d just lost their virginity. Earl had moaned once or twice, but every time the large man had seemed to be coming around, Mona would swing her crutch with a well placed shot to the temple.