Now they would be together in heaven.
Lucy woke with a start. It was a nightmare about Aggie, and it seemed so real that she found herself hyperventilating. Her heart rate was going a mile a minute. She hadn’t had such a vivid dream in years.
No doubt it was guilt. She hadn’t seen her sister in months, and hadn’t done a very good job of keeping tabs on her. Part of her wanted to stay strong and keep administering the tough love that she vowed she’d adhere to. There was nothing else she could do for Aggie. She just couldn’t be an enabler anymore. But, at the same time, there was that sisterly bond. And more than that, they were twins. No matter how differently their lives had turned out, they still had an attachment that predated their birth.
Lucy slowed down her breathing. She got out of bed, realizing yet again that she was alone. She and Armand had broken up only a week ago, and she still missed the way he’d hold her in her sleep. That sense of loss wasn’t about to go away any time soon. She just hated sleeping by herself. It didn’t happen very often. Even when she was a kid, there had been Aggie. They shared the same bed until they were teenagers and they finally wanted separated beds. Their parents had never gotten a big enough place to give them separate rooms.
I have to find her, Lucy thought, walking down the hallway to the kitchen. Just to keep an eye on her. Make sure she’s all right.
There was a bottle of port on the counter near the microwave. Lucy pulled out the reusable cork and took a long swig. It wouldn’t be long before she was relaxed again and heading back to sleep.
“I haven’t seen her,” the girl with the black eye said. Her name was Mandy. Lucy remembered her from last time. She wondered how long this girl had been on the streets. She seemed young, but didn’t quite look it. There were so many lost souls floating around the city.
Lucy was going to ask about the eye, but then decided not to. What was the point?
“What about the other one?” another girl said.
“Huh?” Lucy turned to her. But the girl was talking to Mandy.
“The other one. The one she was always with. The sisters.”
Mandy looked at Lucy and grimaced.
“What’s she talking about?”
“Aggie found a friend. They used to score dope together,” Mandy said. “They were always together. Girls used to call them ‘the sisters.’”
That hurt. It made Lucy realize that, even though she’d pushed Aggie out of her life, her sister had gone and found someone to replace her. Suddenly, it all rushed back to her. The intervention with the family, the refusal to help her out anymore, the list of grievances. Lucy had participated against her better judgment. She hated being a part of such a thing. But they’d all convinced her it was the only way to really force Aggie to get back on her feet again. The girl was just spiraling deeper and deeper into the abyss, and there was nothing else they could do to stop her descent.
But Lucy was almost certain that pushing her away would just make her fall all the faster to the bottom. Now, she knew she was probably right.
“You know, when I first saw you, I thought it was her,” the other girl said. “You look just like her. I thought she’d gotten all cleaned up and got some nice clothes. That she’d picked herself up.”
“We’re twins,” Lucy said. “It makes sense.”
“For a moment there, I had a twinkle of hope. That she’d gotten her life back together. That maybe there was a chance for me, too.”
Lucy looked at her. The other girl lowered her eyes.
“So much for that,” Mandy said. She lit another cigarette. “Honestly, I haven’t seen her in a couple of days. I’d tell you if I had.”
Lucy gave them both twenties for their time and went back to her car. She’d asked any girls on the strip who looked familiar, but they all had the same story. They hadn’t seen Aggie for at least a day or two. And they hadn’t seen the girl they called her “sister” either, some girl named Esmeralda.
Sister, Lucy thought. I’m her fucking sister. And I wasn’t able to protect her, yet again.
There was a good chance Aggie was somewhere, high as a kite, huddled in some dark crack den, oblivious to the world, but alive.
But Lucy doubted it.
It was that dream. That vivid dream. She was sure Aggie was dead.
Either way, she needed to know for sure.
Paolo was working.
Normally he would have taken the sniper route and picked the guy off from a distance, but something about his new weapons made him want to get up close and personal. He wanted to feel the flesh ripping apart. Get some blood on him. Get sloppy.
He knew this was bad. That in his business, it was a dumb move to get so close to his prey. But he couldn’t control himself.
Besides, a mutilated corpse was a bigger message to strike fear in people’s hearts than any clean gunshot. It would tell any would-be smart guys to back the fuck off. Cross Johnny Swayne and this was the kind of thing that happened to you. You got filleted like a fish dinner.
Paolo grabbed the guy near the docks, hauling him into the alleyway. Before the guy even knew what was happening, Paolo had ripped his belly open, and then sliced his throat. The messy remains hit the pavement and Paolo was already out the other end, in his car, high-tailing it as far away as he could get.
His adrenaline was pumping to such a degree he thought he could explode all over the dashboard. Shooting someone had never felt like this. He could have been a robot, pulling a trigger. But this was different. This was a lion stalking its prey and bringing it down. This was visceral and real and satisfying. Like great sex or a good meal.
Everything that told him this was wrong was overridden by the instinctual certainty that there was nothing more right.
All that money he had made from past jobs. He didn’t have any hobbies. He didn’t have any extravagant needs. He didn’t need a top-of-the-line car or a penthouse apartment. And there was no one else to share it with. No one else to lavish it on. No one who ever stuck around for very long.
So, to stave his boredom, he started getting into body modification a few years ago. First it had been the usual stuff, the tattoos and piercings. But the thrill of those didn’t last long, and they didn’t add anything substantial to him. They didn’t make him any better. Any more dangerous.
Then he’d gotten some more pragmatic alterations. Like the retractable fang that worked like a charm if he got close enough. He was a human rattlesnake. A gaboon viper. A king fucking cobra.
And now he had some other delightful toys to go with the set.
“I saw her with some guy,” the platinum blonde said. Her roots were growing out and they were dark, clashing with the dye job. “Her and the other one.”
“This was three nights ago?”
“I think so,” the blonde said. “I lose track, sometimes.”
“Had you ever seen him before?”
“Yeah, he comes out here a lot. A lot of the girls have been with him. Even me. He’s an intense son of a bitch, but I don’t think he ever really hurt any of us. Not badly, anyway.”
“Where did he take you?”
“With me, it was a motel room. Likely the same with them. He didn’t take anyone to his place very often. Maybe once in a while. But I don’t think he wanted to get his home dirty.”
“If you saw him, would you recognize him?”
“Sure,” the blonde said. “I told you I fucked the guy. I seen his face up close.”
“Will you call me if you see him again?” Lucy asked. “I just want to talk to him about my sister. I just want to find out if he knows anything. You’re the only one who saw her before she disappeared.”
“Yeah,” the girl said. She wore a big white, fake fur coat that had lots of stains on it. It made her look like a dirty stuffed animal.
Lucy noticed that a lot of the girls had cell phones. No matter how destitute they got, they always had phones. Probably unregistered numbers that couldn’t be traced to anyone. They were su
pposedly pretty easy to get. It was funny how cells were everywhere these days. Like a virus.
“Thank you,” Lucy said.
Then she drove another block down, to ask more questions. To try to find more clues. To find any breadcrumbs she could that revealed the trail Aggie had taken away from her.
“You’re getting too messy,” Johnny Swayne said. “I want to leave a message and you leave behind a blood bath.”
“It ramps up the fear,” Paolo said. “Keeps people in line. They’ll think twice before they cross you.”
“It’s getting so I don’t need the extra attention. It’s making everyone real antsy.”
“So what are you saying?” Paolo asked, sitting in front of the big man’s desk, feeling the bone blades on his forearms rubbing up against the leather of his sleeves, slowly cutting through.
“I’m saying to tone it the fuck down,” Swayne said. “I’m saying to lay low for a little while and give things a chance to go back to the way they were.”
“What about work?”
“You’ll get more work when you learn some self-control,” Swayne said.
Paolo got angry at that. He got up from the chair.
“Like I said, lay low for a bit,” Swayne said. “I’ll call you when I need you.”
Paolo said nothing as he left the room. He went outside and lit a cigarette. It was starting to rain again. It had been raining on and off every day, all week, and he was getting sick of it.
I need to get out of this city, he thought. I need to go someplace where people would appreciate what a man like me can do.
In the middle of the night, he woke up, startled. He’d had a nightmare. About that hooker, the one he’d given the poisoned hickey to, the one who watched as he decapitated her friend. What was her name again? Maggie? He didn’t remember.
Of all the people he’d killed over the years, all the blood that was on his hands, why would he think of some nameless skank he’d picked off the street for one night of fucking and slicing? And why the fuck was this nobody in his dreams?
He usually slept like a baby on Ambien. Without a care in the world.
And why was he out of breath, with his heart racing?
At least it didn’t take him long to get back to sleep.
“That’s him,” the blonde said.
She’d called Lucy and told her where to meet. It was raining again. Lucy was in her car at the time, making her rounds, and she was close enough to get there quickly.
“You sure that’s the guy?”
“Yeah. He likes to look the girls over. He gets out of his car and checks them out. He’s picky like that. I’m surprised, though. He usually doesn’t come looking this soon after the last time. There’s usually a break in between. I get the idea he doesn’t like to shop much.”
The guy across the street was wearing an oversized leather jacket that looked odd on him. He was chatting up some young-looking thing in a beehive hairdo. You could tell it was a wig, but she had a look at least. The bitch was trying to be a street-corner Amy Winehouse.
They both went to his car. He wasn’t a gentleman and didn’t open the passenger side door for her.
She was snapping gum and Lucy could almost hear it from where she stood.
Lucy paid the girl who called her. She then got into her car and followed the man to a motel. She tailed him when he dropped the girl off at the street corner where he’d found her, and then Lucy followed him home.
She saw the building he went into. She waited awhile, and then she went home herself.
The next night, when he arrived home, she waited for him, sitting on the stairs. She looked up when he approached.
Her. The girl he’d killed that night.
Aggie. That was her name. Agnes.
It all came back to him now, thanks to the dream, and now this. He knew she was a ghost, that she probably wasn’t real, but he held the door open for her anyway. She was dressed similarly to what she’d worn the night he brought her home. She didn’t say anything as they took the wooden elevator up to his loft. He just stared right at her, and she stared back.
When they got to the right floor, he lifted the carriage and she slipped out.
“So,” he said. “You’re haunting me, now?”
She smiled and nodded her head. No reply.
He’d killed some of the biggest swinging dicks in town, some of the most hardcore bastards you could meet, and he didn’t blink an eye. Didn’t break a sweat. And now this sad little thing was going to throw him off his game. Put some kind of fright into him.
It almost made him laugh.
“So, can you enter my home if I don’t invite you in?” he asked. “How does it work?”
She didn’t respond. Just stood there at the threshold.
“C’mon in,” he said.
He poured her a glass of wine, and she seemed real enough as she took it from him. Maybe she was tangible after all.
Maybe he’d be able to kill her all over again.
Although this time, he’d really let loose.
“So how does this work?” he asked again. “You’re here to freak me out for killing you. To make me regret what I did? To scare me? I know you’re not real. I dumped your body myself.”
An odd emotion flickered in her eyes.
“Well, lady, I don’t scare. I ain’t afraid of anything, not even you.”
She drank her wine in silence.
The way she didn’t say a word really seemed to bother him. And though he claimed he didn’t know fear, she could see the fear in his eyes. For someone who was so dangerous, he sure was quick to believe that she was a ghost or some kind of spirit of retribution. He didn’t even consider the fact that she could be a living, breathing human being that just happened to look like a woman he killed. The thought hadn’t even crossed his mind.
“I don’t know what you’ve got planned for me,” he said. “But why don’t we have a little fun first? Might as well fuck if you came all the way here to see me.”
She thought about this for a few seconds, then nodded her head.
He led her to the bedroom.
There was a bathroom adjoining the bedroom, and he went there for a moment. She just stood in the middle of the dimly lit room, waiting for him.
She looked at the bed. This was probably the bed he’d fucked her sister in. The one he’d killed her in. For some reason, she was sure it hadn’t been in a motel room. It had been here. And she knew that he’d done it. He’d admitted it to her face without a second thought.
He came out, dressed in a robe with big sleeves and saw her standing there, waiting for him.
“Get comfortable,” he said. “Get out of those things.”
She hesitated.
“If you can drink wine, then you can do this. Can’t you?”
She started to take off her clothes. He stretched out on the bed and watched her. He seemed spellbound by her movements, like he’d never seen someone getting undressed before, like he was a child watching an especially fascinating magic trick.
There was a scar down her belly. It started between her breasts and went all the way down to her pubic mound. He hadn’t noticed that the first time he killed her. Then again, maybe it was a remnant from what he’d done to her, back when she was alive.
“I never did it with a ghost before,” he said. He couldn’t hide his enthusiasm.
She smiled at the sheer childish innocence of his reaction. It caught her off guard. He wasn’t acting at all like she thought he would.
“Come here,” he said, patting the bed in front of him.
She slowly approached the bed.
He grabbed her wrist and pulled her down toward him. Then she was on her back and he was straddling her, holding her wrists down as he fucked her. He opened the robe and threw it off. He was above her like some kind of vulture, but instead of wings there were scythe blades of bone.
He seemed so damn proud. Like a peacock in all its glory.
“I am goi
ng to kill you,” he said. “Just like last time, except even worse. And if you show up here again, I’ll do it again. And again. And you’ll rue the day you ever came to haunt me.”
She reached up and touched her scar. She pressed down on it, and there was a seam. He watched with curiosity as she grabbed the edges and opened her skin like a coat.
Her intestines darted out of her like giant serpents. Two ends grabbed his wrists, keeping the blades away from her. He struggled, but the fleshy tubes were too strong.
A third abdominal serpent wrapped around his throat, constricting like a python, snapping his neck in an instant. He didn’t even have time to think about what was happening to him as it squeezed the life out of him. Then her intestines threw him to the floor.
His arms were spread out at his sides, playing the vulture even in death. His glassy eyes stared up at the ceiling, lifeless, and a mixture of blood and drool oozed from his mouth.
It had all happened so quickly. She hadn’t given him a chance to fight her off, to slash at her with those blades of his. It had all been fast and efficient—and final.
Lucy coaxed her intestines back into her abdomen and closed the seams. Once again, they sealed and became the scar.
She slowly dressed, staring at his corpse.
It didn’t bring Aggie back, but Aggie was a lost cause anyway. She was bound to have died one way or another, probably after some final drug binge. Even so, she didn’t deserve to be killed by this guy, carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey.
Zippered Flesh: Tales of Body Enhancements Gone Bad! Page 12
