Bile rose in my throat and I swallowed back its citrusy flavor. I was witnessing the rampage of a maniac, a psychopathic murderer. Sage was more than a young woman with a bizarre fetish; she was a monster. And without her cousin’s mob hits or her job cleaning up with Ryker or a willing cutter like me, she would no longer have access to the gore that turned her on. Seeing her wrath, I had no doubts as to what she’d become in order to satisfy her sexual appetite. There would be more homeless people, more prostitutes, more innocent victims. And she was rich enough to get away with it. If Sage couldn’t find gore, she would make it. She would spill every last drop of blood to make herself happy, and somehow she would find a way to make me do it with her.
I reached out for her and she shoved me off. As I stumbled back, she drew her nail file out of her pocket and began stabbing Dom in the throat in fast thrusts. She must have hit a major vein, because blood shot out of his neck like a geyser. I reached for Sage again, more to save her from herself than to save Dom, and when she turned toward me this time there was a crazed ferocity in her eyes that made my bowels turn to ice.
She lunged at me with the bloody nail file.
I raised the pistol and fired twice.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Sage was already so covered in blood when I shot her, it was hard to tell if I’d hit her at all. She stumbled backward but didn’t fall over. At least not at first. She just stopped in her tracks, blinking as if she’d just awoken from a strange dream.
“Mike?”
Her words came out wet, the bullet hole in her throat opening up in a red wink. Blood poured from the wound and dribbled down the corners of her mouth. Her eyes grew glassy and as she stumbled backward again, I ran to her—an instinct—catching her before she could crash into the concrete. She was a sticky rag roll of dead weight, but she was still breathing, still alive. She cooed blood-bubbles through her new hole as I lay her on the floor.
“Mu-mi-Mike . . . ”
I stared into her eyes.
By the time I’d shot Sage, Dom was already dead. Not only had he bled out but, apparently, her snow boots were steel-toed, because the back of his head was an indented mess. I supposed it wasn’t a big loss, as I did believe he really was a child pornographer, but it still ruined my plan to pin the deaths on him. I hadn’t shot Sage in an effort to save Dom. I hated to kill another person, but she was a danger to everyone, especially me. Even if she hadn’t been trying to hurt me seriously and was only slicing at me with the file to get me to back off, she had a strange hold on me, and no matter how hard I tried to fight her charms she always managed to drag me back into her dark and vile world. Killing her was just as much self-defense as killing Lester was, and yet it was more than that. I was protecting myself, as well as society, but I also had what was best for Sage in mind when I pulled the trigger.
It was a mercy killing. She had an incurable sickness, an addiction she had no desire to kick. The woman had gone hopelessly mad, probably long before I’d met her, and her depravity was now uncontainable, for she always swam as deep into it as she could, searching for a bottom that did not exist. The horrific inner universe of Sage Jaworzyn was endless and without stars—a cruel, black infinity. Her death benefited her more than it did anyone else.
I hovered over her, an executioner turned nurse. Sage’s hand went to her abdomen and from that slight pressure a deluge of blood rose up through her clothes. I gently took her hand away and rolled up her shirt to reveal the second bullet wound, just above her right hip. I patted her head, my face close enough to kiss her, hoping to distract her from what we’d seen.
“It’s okay,” I said, stupidly. “It’s okay.”
But it wasn’t and never would be.
“Mi-Mike . . . fugh—”
She coughed, spraying me in the face. I batted my eyes and turned away to spit out the warm gore, and her hands fell upon my shoulders, gripping them. When I looked back at her, one of her hands slid down my chest and pinched my nipple.
“Fugh . . . m-mu-me . . . ”
Her hand went lower as the blood began to pool beneath us.
“Sage, just try to be still, okay?”
She turned her head and hacked up a bloody, yellowy sludge. Her breaths whistled through her neck wound. With her throat cleared for the moment, she finally got out what she was trying to say. Her last words. Her last wish.
“Fuck m-m-me, Mike!”
Her hand went to my crotch, petting as sweetly as a virgin’s. I stiffened everywhere but where she wanted me to. My chest grew tight as horror returned to me in a black squall. Sage was dying beneath me, by my own hand, and she wanted me to give her one last screw. There was no panic in her eyes, no stages of grief flashing across her face. There wasn’t even anger toward me for shooting her. There was only desire, as pure and unflinching as that first day I’d fucked her in the ripe gore of children.
“Fuck me, Mike!”
I gasped but shouldn’t have been so shocked. Sage had a compulsive, sexual obsession with blood and guts and she’d done just about every perverted thing a person could do with dead bodies. There was only one depravity she had left, and only one chance to partake in it.
“Fuck me . . . in m-my own blood.”
I started to draw away but she grabbed my belt and pulled me closer.
“Please, Mike. One . . . last tu-time.”
As she unbuckled me, I gazed down at the soft and lovely girl who’d possessed me. Even drenched in blood and hacking up bits of herself, she was sexy—dead sexy. Most men wouldn’t have seen her that way in this moment, but I’d gotten so used to gore, disturbingly used to it. Over these past months of madness, I’d gone from not being bothered by bodily waste to being able to fuck a pile of corpses without even a hint of nausea. I could look past the blood a woman was slathered in to see the beauty below the surface, even below the flesh. And Sage was beautiful; always had been and always would be, at least in my memories of her. She was a sick, twisted monster, but she’d also given me so much, all the things a love-starved man needs to get his soul back together after it’s been swatted down by rejection. I’d had to shoot Sage in self-defense, but while that was my best and perhaps only option, I still mourned letting her go. I still cared about her; even loved her.
I felt I owed her one last request.
If I could fuck the dead, I sure as hell could fuck the dying.
When she took me out of my pants, I popped open hers and slid them down as well as her panties, pulling one leg out so I could spread her. There was no time to get any further undressed, no time for foreplay. I just spat in my hand to open her pussy and pushed my cock in. When she moaned, blood clicked in her trachea, but when I looked at her, she was smiling with eyes aglow. I pumped into her a few more times before she scooched back, popping me out of her, and turned slightly on one side. At first I thought she wanted me to help her turn all the way over so I could fuck her in the ass, but she took hold of my cock and guided the head toward a different hole.
The bullet wound at her side was warm and tacky as she guided me in. Sage groaned—part pain and part ecstasy—as what little I could get of my dick went into her fresh opening, my stiffness prying the meat apart like a crowbar through an animal carcass. Blood trickled down my shaft, the red drops dangling from my ball hairs. I quivered, aroused and yet disgusted and even a little afraid. Not of Sage, but of myself. I shoved, feeling her wound give a little, opening it wider. It oozed and sucked me in. Her entire body clenched but she made no motions for me to stop as she let out another wet groan. Her eyes rolled. Her toes curled. I pushed harder, trying to plow my way through her damaged stomach tissue to find the soft innards beneath. It was warmer than vaginal and even anal sex, and while blood makes a poor lubricant there was enough of it to keep my cock slick and hard. Sage’s tissue tore, a quarter inch at a time, each thrust deepening and widening the laceration. I fingered her cunt while I fucked her belly, and she squirmed and shuddered and spat up blood, lost in the sexual
insanity of it all as she entered the throes of death.
When I felt my ejaculation coming on, I considered coming inside her wound, but then it dawned on me that this time I could finally come inside her pussy. I had always pulled out to avoid knocking her up, and only ever came inside her ass or mouth. But there was no need to worry about a dead woman getting pregnant. I slid out of her lesion, but before I could enter her Sage slid down beneath me, as she often did when I was about to come, so her head would be close enough to either let me give her a facial or have her put my cock in her mouth and suck out every last drop. Guessing that was what she wanted, I crouched above her and jerked off, but she pulled at my hips, bringing me down so my cock slapped at her collarbone. She scooted closer, smiling wide as she guided the head of my dick into the bullet wound in her throat.
The meat here was softer, more yielding. I entered easily, the homemade tracheotomy opening in a wet pop, parting the flesh curtains of her neck. My cock slid over her tongue, going in the opposite direction it usually did when she blew me, and I grabbed her hair in both fists as I plunged into her in a reverse deep throat. I felt the back of her teeth touch the head of my cock as I ejaculated, and when I opened my eyes I saw my dick poking out of Sage’s mouth, her lips squeezing it tight as my semen spattered across her bloody face. Her eyes went wide, then rolled into her skull, death and orgasm coming in one sweet, simultaneous shudder.
***
Thank Christ I had a van. It was the only way I could’ve transported three bodies at once. Sage, Lester and Dom were loaded in the back, side by side with the tarps draped over them. I was driving without a destination—teeth grinding, nerves split.
The first blue light of sunrise was fading on the horizon. I made sure to stay just below the speed limit. I doubted myself for not just dumping the bodies in the river. It would have been quick and easy and I wouldn’t be driving around with three dead people in my van. But I had a different idea—one I hoped would get me off the hook with the Endrizzis.
If I had dumped the bodies right by the warehouse, they would have washed up eventually, been found, and then what had happened would be relatively clear to the Endrizzis—at least the part where there’d been a violent struggle I was the sole survivor of. But if I thoroughly cleaned up the warehouse, which I had, and managed to get the bodies somewhere else, and buried them deep so that they were never found, it might make it seem like everyone had simply disappeared, and that might make the Endrizzis think Lester had taken off with Dom, that Dom had managed to pay him off or hook him up with the rival mob he’d been talking about. It wasn’t a great plan, but it was better than crying for someone to come and save me like I had for Mrs. Cummings when I’d defecated myself.
***
The solvents fizzed on Lester’s exposed flesh.
In the hole I’d spent the early hours of the morning digging, Sage, Lester and Dom lay side by side, the chemical solutions ready to eat away at their tissue. I’d undressed them and burned their clothes in a fire pit I’d made in the forest, far from any hiking trails or communities. This was the secluded place deep in the mountains where I’d used to take my family camping, so we could enjoy nature without other people ruining it the way other people ruin everything.
I blew Sage a final kiss, then watched as her lovely face disintegrated. I liked to think that my perversity melted away with her. I didn’t want to end up as stark raving mad as she’d become. From now on I would stick to good old standard, straightforward American sex. There would be no more cadaver cuddling for me.
I refilled the bucket with my cleaning chemical combo, and when I poured the next batch on Dom’s face he shot up screaming.
“Ahhh!” he cried, his skin chaffing and slipping from his face like boiled cabbage. “Help! Help me! Hel—”
He couldn’t finish because his lips melted away and ran down his chin. All he could do was scream. I was so startled that I screamed too, and as I jolted away from the shallow grave the bucket slipped from my hands, turning upside down as it fell into the pit, dousing Dom in the devouring green slime.
I shook. “Jesus Christ!”
Flesh dripped from his body, his skull revealing itself as his cheeks turned soggy and fell from his face in chunks of pus and hemoglobin. His eyes boiled and exploded. When he reached toward the sky his fingers withered like worms under a magnifying glass on a hot summer day.
I could have sworn he was already dead. Guess I should’ve checked his pulse.
As his screams died to wet gurgles, the melting man fell flat, still sizzling as he died for good this time. The solution ate through his stomach and it popped like a water balloon. The foul stench of human offal filled the crisp air, his stomach acid, undigested food and fecal matter spewing out in a lumpy gravy.
Once the three carcasses had sufficiently eroded, I took one last look at what remained of Sage, pitched my shovel into the dirt, and flung the first of many shovelfuls down into the mass grave, putting an end to my strange love affair.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“I wanna see them.” I was doing my best to keep the tremor out of my voice. “I want to see them today—right now.”
On the other end of the line, Rachel huffed. “Mike, they’re going to school in a few minutes—”
“They can stay home sick today. I wanna see them, Rach. It’s important.”
I didn’t have much time before Lester’s criminal buddies started looking for answers and followed a trail that led right back to Mike Ashbrook. This might be my last chance to see my daughters. Classes and skating and high school Shakespeare could wait a lousy fucking day.
“You don’t sound good,” my ex said. “What’s going on?”
“Damn it, Rachel, I don’t ask for much, you know. You still get to live with them! You don’t know how hard it is not to see them every day. They’re my girls too, you know.”
“Of course they are, but we’ve been over this and—”
“No! Don’t give me that shit again. Now I don’t put my foot down often, but I am putting it down on this. I’m on my way over to pick them up and that’s final. If you send them off to school I’m just going to go there and take them out, so you might as well cooperate with me here. Please, Rachel, I’m asking you as nicely as I can, okay?”
The line was so silent I thought she’d hung up on me.
“Hello?”
“Yes, I’m here, Michael.” Her voice was soft and low. “Alright. If it means that much to you, come see them. I don’t know why it just can’t wait, but fine, whatever. You’re their father; you can be the one to explain to them why they have to drop everything to do what you want.”
She was trying to manipulate me. It wouldn’t work. Not today.
“Fine. I’ll be there in forty minutes. Do not let them get on that school bus.”
I hung up before she could change her mind. The sun was almost over the mountains. The world was waking up to another day, one that might be my last. I hoped I wouldn’t be endangering my daughters by going to see them, but figured I had some time before the Endrizzis looked into the warehouse after not hearing from Lester. I pumped the gas pedal and my van shuddered forward.
When I reached the old neighborhood I had to stop behind several buses as kids loaded onto them, so I arrived at the house a little later than I’d expected. I’d changed out of my filthy clothes into the spare set I always carried around when on a cleanup job, and had given myself a whore’s bath with bottled water, wet wipes and air freshener. My sneakers were the only thing I didn’t have another pair of, so I wiped them on the doormat, smearing something reddish-brown across Santa Claus’s face.
Fuck Santa, I thought. They should’ve taken down the Christmas stuff by now anyway.
I knocked and the door came open. Carmen stood in the jam but didn’t open the door all the way or welcome me inside.
“Why aren’t I at school?” she asked, giving me her favorite snarky look.
“Let me in, honey. It’s cold o
ut here.”
She huffed, reminding me of her mother, and walked back down the hall, leaving the door wide open. I grimaced, thinking of the thermostat, but then realized I wasn’t paying that bill anymore. To hell with it. Let her heat up the whole neighborhood. I walked inside and still shut the door behind me. Entering the living room, I looked at all the changes in the furniture and décor. Every trace of masculinity I had contributed to the house had been eradicated, replaced by flower arrangements, soft earth tones, modern art and women’s magazines fanned out on the coffee table, purposely displayed as part of the motif.
On the sofa, Fay sat next to a cat I had never met or even heard about. She was still in her winter coat and her backpack sat at her feet. Carmen was in the adjacent kitchen, noisily sifting through the cupboards so she wouldn’t have to interact with me. I heard Rachel walking about on the floor above us.
“I’m here,” I announced.
“We know,” Rachel called down. I envisioned her brushing her hair and applying makeup in the master bathroom, which she had claimed all for herself even before I’d moved out. “I called the school for you.”
“Thanks.” I looked to Fay and she glanced up at me, gave me a weak smile, and then her attention fell back to the orange tabby. “You got yourself a new friend there, Fay?”
She nodded.
“When did you get her?”
“I didn’t,” Fay said. “This is Sox. She’s Chuck’s cat. We’re just watching her while he’s in New Jersey.”
I didn’t know what the fuck she was talking about. “Who’s Chuck?”
Fay’s face went white. She looked side to side the way she did when she was caught in a lie. She’d said too much.
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