by Alan Spencer
A Roman orgy took up the left side of the library. Between pillars, a coliseum formed. Thirty naked women were thrown into a pit, armed only with shield and sword. Once ravished by men with brutish sex appeal, they would now be ravaged by hungry lions.
"...any means necessary for the truth..."
Jude Butterman's throat was being torn out by a well-dressed European vampire in a moody Transylvania castle.
Gertrude Rhine was laying on a layer of animal pelts, the eighty year old ready to be pleasured by a trapper from Manifest Destiny times, when the trapper took a step back, and out from under the pelts, snapped the oily hinges of the giant bear trap.
Stacy Lewman was passionately kissing a man who suddenly came down with the Black Plague, his kisses laden in black hiccups of bile. Her flesh actively bubbled and popped.
Jessie Parker was being hacked to pieces by the Donner party. She was screaming in a dark cave, her features drawn in terror by weak firelight. A woman (her lesbian fantasy) was kissing her only to rip out her tongue and chew on the tough morsel.
"Im making your fantasy come true, Velma! Just like in your books! All you fucking bitches like it!!!"
The F.B.I. agent strapped on a flame thrower and blanketed Velma in a wicked plume of flames.
Fat fucking bitch. Watch her eating that food. She'd eat me if I was on the menu.
Bruce Parnell was sitting at the water fountain watching the woman eating a cake at Debbie's Cake Creations. She ate a three tiered cake all to herself.
They don't call her fat fucking Franny for nothing. Eat a bunch of food, fuck the closest guy who'd let her cry on his shoulder. Fat fucking Franny. Why don't you fuck me?
Franny crashed through the front window and ran right for him.
"Who are you calling Fat fucking Franny, you heartless son-of-a-bitch!"
Bruce couldn't believe it. She was hurtling towards him. Rage in her eyes. Hands bent to choke him.
How can that fat bitch move so fast?
"How dare you say that about me? I'll kill you!"
George never met a bottle he didn't like. He'd trade his second kid for a shot of the hooch. He knocked up his wife without remembering it, he was so drunk.
A kitchen knife whizzed by his head. George was right behind Bruce, furious. "I'll cut the tongue out of your mouth, you fucking weasel!"
How did they know what he was thinking?
Bitch loved her cancer. All the attention she got. It's fucked up, man.
He wasn't thinking these things. Something else was thinking them for him.
After everything this town has been through, Chris can't admit he's gay. He worships dick! Come on, get over it already!
The words were coming out of his ears as if speakers were projecting them.
Everybody could hear everything he was thinking.
Hordes of people were coming after him, flooding from doors, driving in cars, and appearing out of everywhere incensed at each thought that blasted from between his ears.
Bruce did the only thing he could.
Run like hell.
* * *
Chuck Flynn pushed his cart of animal meats to the grill outside for the lunchtime barbeque. People waited at the tables, enjoying beer, talking, and waiting for the master of the grill to put on a good show. He was ready to give them that show when he swore in the far background, he saw his father.
The Meat Man.
The rotund man was only a speck from a distance. Featureless almost, but Chuck knew it was his father. The man of his nightmares. What was he doing here? He didn't belong in Meadow Woods. Only good things belonged here. Peaceful things.
Then the man was gone. Like he was never there.
On the wind, Chuck could smell the man's burning stogie.
About to throw on the first slab of ribs on the cooker, one of the picnic tables in the parking lot of his restaurant was upended. The wooden benches were flung upwards, the people sitting in them thrown in the air and landing bone-breaking hard on the pavement. Table after table was upended. The roar of an engine came next. The cough of exhaust fumes, so choking and black on the air. Horse-powered rage, the engine throbbed like a demon's laugh. There it was, what looked like a giant riding lawnmower as long as six cars side by side. The body of the machine reminded him of a meat slicer, the blades spinning longwise like some aerodynamic machine. Riding on that machine was his father, but the man wasn't human.
He was monster.
Bison horns jutting out of his head a sick color of yellow. Dog jowls at his mouth like thick raw hamburger meat. Eyes like that of a cow's. His facial features were that of a bull meets a centaur with the snout of a pig. Black hair of a stallion horse. Muscles as bulging and lean as a thoroughbred's. Hooves for hands and feet. Leathery tail. Face full of evil.
The Meat Man rode the meat slicer on wheels. Chuck's customers who were strewn on the ground, trying to react to their broken bones, were sucked up under the machine, then pushed through twelve rows of spinning meat slicer blades. Out one tube on the side shot bone. Out another tube, guts, organs, and useless tidbits. Out yet another tube, volcanic eruptions of blood. And out the final tube, thinly sliced cuts of meat that piled up around Chuck's grill. Raw human cutlets. Rib meat. Breast meat. Calf meat. Rump roast. Choice cuts.
Oinking, barking, chortling, and garbling like a meat monster would, "Eat my meat, Chuck. Eat all my meat until you tummy fucking explodes!"
The Meat Man kept riding his machine, seeking out new humans for slaughter, as Chuck wept and cooked human meat on his grill. He wept, not only in sheer repulsion, but in horror as his stomach growled for a taste of his own finest meats.
Lindsey Jenkins had her fliers for tonight's festivities printed hot from the local printers. She kept the stack in a tote bag and spread the word on foot. She placed fliers in mailboxes, on doors, on the counters of businesses, and passersby. She expected compliments. How she was the best at coming up with community events and fun soirees.
Instead she received screams.
Why were they screaming?
She wasn't sure what to think until she actually checked the flyers. They were distinctly different. Instead of holding a mock speakeasy at Meadow Woods community center, her eyes tripled reading such events as:
SLIT YOUR WRIST FESTIVAL
BOBBING FOR RAZOR APPLES SUMMER BASH
WATERBOARDING EXTRAVAGANZA
LEPER COLONY FUNDRAISER
DIG UP THE DEAD MIDNIGHT CONCERT
BRAIN BASH BASEBALL TOURNAMENT
SODOMIZE YOUR NEIGHBOR GALA
ORGAN TOSS SEMI-FINALS
MINCEMEAT PIE EATING CONTEST (GUESS WHO YOU'RE EATING) HOSTED BY THE MEAT MAN HIMSELF
From every corner of town, she could see the actual events unfolding.
Lindsey passed out from the shock. Her body was immediately delivered to the SODOMIE YOUR NEIGHBOR GALA.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The small amount of light provided by the coming dawn revealed the woman ahead of Mark in the woods. Reyna Hawkins was racing out of the woods, bawling, and covering up her eyes with fists that were wet with blood. "Don't look at me! Bad things will happen! Don't look my way! Dooooooon't!" The last words she shouted before disappearing out of Mark's line of vision: "It's going to rain!"
Mark wanted to flag her down, but she was hurrying on too fast.
Reyna was correct about the weather. It was indeed going to rain. The sky was aqua green. Tornado conditions approaching. The acidity in the air continued to build. The winds picked up, whipping at twenty to thirty miles an hour, and increasing. Mark continued to move forward. He called out to Reyna again, but when she insisted he stay clear of her.
After ten more minutes under brooding, churning skies, he regretted not pursuing the woman. He reminded himself that her hands were covered in blood. Her expression was one reacting to unfathomable horrors.
Reyna had covered her eyes for a damn good reason.
The faint drizzle of cold rain
fell from the sky. It finally felt like September, the month it was in reality, though in Meadow Woods, reality was constantly a questionable thing.
Mark was relieved to find the three story hospital ahead of him. There was no sign of town, any people, or other landmarks he recognized. The hospital was the only place to go, he decided, when it started to full-out rain.
Parked cars were dented by the downpour, the sound of dinging steel grating to his ears. Windows in the hospital were shattered. Tree limbs split and shattered. Cracks in sidewalks widened and were smashed into smaller rubble. Mark ran faster until he was struck on the left shoulder and driven onto the ground. He got right back up, forcing his aching shins and ankles to function. He kept his head covered in fear of being hammered on the skull on the flying corpse pieces falling from the sky.
Gangrene and fetid body parts rained down with torrential force. Any sign of dawn was blotted out by the storm of corpse parts. Kicking through the pieces, he caught an eyeball blink from a severed head. A set of fingers reached out for him. A throat without a head burbled blood. A heart in a broken sternum beat, albeit a flaccid coughing thing. Arms reached out to him, trying to trip him up. Mucous logged moans begged for him to stop and observe their suffering, or to help them, to do something to save them, something Mark knew he couldn't do. You couldn't save what was rotten and long dead. You just couldn't!
Racing faster through clay-soft torsos and smashing internal organs, his legs were wet with gore up to the knees. The body rain kept pounding down harder. A head had pitted itself on a lamppost. Hundreds of bits and pieces came down like fleshy hail. One body stuck out from the rest. She was complete, except for a set of arms.
Elizabeth.
His wife.
Her flesh was a creamy green, black rot spreading over her once milky canvas. If he was to touch her, his fingers would easily plunge through the skin. Her eyes were loose in the sockets, rheumy and diseased, yet a hint of love remained in that stare. Those deflated lips, those white wads of wormy skin, spoke only in whispers. He read those lips, for he couldn't hear over the bashing and smashing din of rain that refused to let up.
"Kill him, Mark. Then commit. Commit, and you will live on."
Then she sank into herself, the remains turning into black liquid.
He retreated from the mess, the street that reeked of death, and he stamped on, praying he could make it to the cover of the hospital before another piece could harm him.
The concrete awning over the entrance was stacked with bodies posed in horrid death positions. Those bodies kept writhing and bemoaning their pain.
Mark wouldn't be spared these spectacles within the hospital.
The automatic doors came open. The stench of urine, shit, and baby powder hit him. Walking through it, the patient rooms had drastically changed from the last time he'd been here. Instead of patients becoming better, where the halls were busy with families bearing gifts, balloons, and get well wishes, the rooms were dungeons and medical torture chambers. Corridors where blood was drawn with syringes by maniacal nurses with nicotine yellow skin were delighted by human suffering. Bags and bags of blood were stacked in the corners as the patient continued to be drained and drained of their vital fluids. The patients' bodies were now sagging bags of skin.
Another chamber of horrors ahead, a pair of doctors and nurses continuously channeled butterfly needles into flesh, each needle a higher gauge than the next, until they were ramming pipe-thick steel through bodies to inject what he assumed were painful elixirs. The patients howled in torment. Torture echoed from everywhere. Other patients were attached to machines that ran on gasoline, the motors churning noxious fumes. Plagues were injected into patients in other rooms. Boils and cancers grew, spitting puss and diseased juices onto the sheets and walls.
Mark was moments from running back outside, from evading this torture place, when they appeared at the emergency exits. They stayed vigil at the windows, painting the glass with their black blood. The dead bodies outside had risen up and blockaded the exit ways. Smiling their slit smiles, their once self-pitying notes of discord were now a berating challenge to kill Mark. No escape, they promised.
An out-of-breath man spoke over the intercom, pleading directly to Mark, "I know you're in here, Mark. You must get to room 312. It's the only way out! Please see me!"
Mark rushed the emergency stairs, escaping the horrible things trying to crawl through the windows. He had nowhere to go except to room 312. The dead would catch up to him no matter where he went. Doctors and nurses were everywhere, inflicting harm, implementing torture. If Dr. Albert was still alive, he could ask the man questions. Maybe even find the sick son-of-a-bitch who was allowing this to happen. He hadn't found Cassie or Peyton. He kept wondering if they were still alive.
Mark quieted his thoughts when doctors helming bone saws in each hand, nurses clutching bleeding axes and adorning red spattered smocks, evil orderlies that owned fingers that were razor sharp scalpels, pointer and index fingers that were needle and thread, or surgeons carrying living, twitching, moaning patients on stretchers whose mouths had been sewn shut came and went. Other patients were surgical experiments. Atrocities of the body, atrocities to mankind, atrocities to sanity.
Sneaking up two floors on the stairs, he arrived at the third floor unscathed, though the eyes of medical staff were suddenly very interested in him.
Mark quickened his step.
The third floor was calm and without a sound. The patient rooms were full of sleeping dead people. Dead bones stirred beneath blankets. Cobwebs and insects crawled in and out of eyes and noses and orifices, the human body their home.
Mark searched for room 312, and it wasn't long before he found it. The door was thrown open for him, and when he entered, Dr. Albert immediately threw it closed behind him.
The doctor's steely eyes penetrated Mark's.
"I've made a great sacrifice to tell you these things I'm going to tell you. We'll both be in danger momentarily, but first, you're going to need to hear me out."
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
"It's a deviant who's causing this to happen. Our savior is dead and has been replaced by a madman. I sense him in the air. The warped bastard has turned my hospital into a psychopath's playground."
Mark struggled to respond to the doctor, and couldn't.
"I feared consequences since day one. It was too good to be true. I had liver cancer, and poof, it was gone. So impossible, just as everything else we've enjoyed in this town, and now, now it's all in chaos. We can die for real now, but this time, we won't come back. This is a nightmare. A far worse death than originally intended."
Mark said he didn't understand. Dr. Albert didn't hear him, and said, "You, Mark, and only you, have to find this person. Everything's been moved in town. Landmarks, buildings, everything's been shuffled around. I can't say where this person is, because I don't even know who's doing it for sure, but they must die. It's been a mystery how we've been cured of our sicknesses since this all began. We committed, followed the instructions, and only good things came of it. That was enough. Why question what's good? I don't know what else to tell you, Mark. You're the only one who isn't under this power. You're independent of our angel. The angel hasn't touched you."
"An angel?"
"An angel that's dead now, yes. He died in the woods. Someone butchered him."
Mark noticed they weren't alone in the room. A patient was laying on the bed. Patricia Lake. The hypochondriac. Her hair and skin were greasy, her features molded in distress. She itched at her arms. Bit her lips. Scratched her scalp. Checked under the sheet to peer at her body constantly.
"There is nothing wrong with you," Dr. Albert barked at Patricia. "You're a diagnosed hypochondriac. Your symptoms are coming back in full now that we're not blessed anymore. Here," the doctor suggested, walking to the cabinet and removing the jar stocked with suckers. "Take a cherry one. They're your favorite."
The doctor stuck it into her mouth, the candy c
lacking against her front teeth. She sucked on it with the vigor of a baby on its pacifier.
Mark, "Why can't you, or anyone else, kill this person?"
"I'm in his control, as we all are. But you, you're not in his control. We've committed. You have not committed. You are not under his control."
In a rush of fury, Mark swiped the jar of suckers off the counter and shattered it against the ground, shrieking, "What does the hell does that even mean?"
Dr. Albert was alarmed. He bent down, picking through the shards of glass, to the suckers. Clutching a handful of suckers, he placed them on Patricia's stomach. Just in time, she spat out the empty sucker stick and unwrapped another one and went about sucking a grape flavored one.
"What's with her?"
"It makes her feel better. Look, we don't have much time. I have to tell you something very important."
"For Christ's sake, tell me what I need to know. Everything."
A line of red trickled out of Patricia's left eye and streaked down her cheek.
Dr. Albert's face lost its color. "Oh no. It's after us now."
"You didn't tell me anything I need to know to fight this person!"
The doctor unwrapped sucker after sucker, and he waved for Mark to join in, so he did. The both shoved the candy into Patricia's mouth until twelve sucker sticks jutted out her closed mouth. Patricia sucked on them, trying to alleviate her condition, what had caused her eye to bleed. It kept swelling with blood as if the orb could burst any second.
Dr. Albert said what he could while tending to Patricia. "Don't get hurt. Don't die. Search town. Kill the man who's doing this. That would solve all of our problems. In less than two days, the town was supposed to commit again. If we don't, we die forever." Seizing Mark's collar, he shouted, "Forever, you get me? We die forever. It's up to you to save everybody."
Mark threw off the man's hold and backed up into the wall, observing what was happening to Patricia. Dr. Albert worked more suckers into her mouth, but it was too late. Over the intercom, the evil voice he'd heard berate him from the sky announced,"Code Blue in room 312. Ah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah!"
