by Alan Spencer
Throttling him, Buzz gasping for breath, the killer released him. The hacksaw poised in his other hand. He eyed Buzz strangely. Like he wasn't sure what to think. Those cold dark eyes were perplexed.
"You're one of them," the killer muttered. "You're not supposed to be here. You're one of the unfortunates."
Buzz wanted to ask what the hell he meant by those cryptic words.
The words didn't come.
The killer smiled. "This is nice. Re-al nice. I killed you once. Now I get to kill you again. I will deny you so many things. You'll be trapped here forever with us. I'll take your head for all eternity!"
The killer came in close and posed the hacksaw to work off Buzz's head. "Just hold still for me. This won't take long at all! GIVE ME THAT HEAD!"
Buzz should've run. He should've done a thousand other things rather than what he actually did, and that was fall on his hand's and knees. The image of his daughter's horror of seeing Buzz's severed head haunted him. Removed every bit of energy from his body.
No words of mercy. Buzz couldn't say a word.
Buzz stayed on the ground and did nothing.
"Buzz—run!"
Carrie slashed the man's face down the center with the machete. She screamed at Buzz again, "Run! I finally understand what's happening. I'll find you later, but you have to run. Don't let anybody hurt you!"
Buzz bolted up off of his feet and threw himself forward into the woods. He couldn't tell you what he'd traipsed through in the coming moments, but he did it very fast. His legs were wet up to the knees. He'd torn up his clothes on tree limbs. He clopped on mud, broke pinecones underfoot, and startled a group of deer. About to stop and collapse out of sheer exhaustion, he caught a series of lights through the thinning trees.
Buzz left nature behind, racing into the parking lot of the three story hotel.
He could call the police and tell them everything that had happened.
Buzz failed to read the hotel's sign before crossing the parking lot and stopping at the police car nearby.
It read: MURDER INN.
OUTSIDE THE MURDER INN
Two officers stood posed behind the open doors of their police car. Buzz ran to them and then remembered Officer Whitley and how he was raving insane. But these cops weren't like Whitley. They were pale in the face. Scared. They almost opened fire on Buzz.
"You have to help me," Buzz shouted. "Killers are everywhere, and I mean everywhere! Call in reinforcements!"
The cops gave each other a look. One said, "There's nothing we can do. They outnumber us. There was never ever anything we could do."
The other cop, "This is our punishment. God has forsaken us."
"Get a hold of yourselves," Buzz insisted. "Let's get in your car, and move on out of here. It's that easy."
"It's not that easy!"
The other officer kept sobbing. "...not...easy...at all..."
What in God's name!
An old woman wearing a blue flowered dress with green curlers in her hair approached the cops with a .357 Sig Sauer in each hand. She started mowing down the officers. Bullets pounded their bodies. She was shrieking and yipping in delight as both officers took multiple shots to the head.
Buzz dropped to the ground, taking cover under the police vehicle. The cops were dead before they hit the ground. Nobody could help him now.
He could see it all unfold from his vantage point.
Mayhem.
All throughout the three level hotel, people were screaming and scrambling out of their rooms. Killers lurked in every room accomplishing wicked ends. Sheets were tied around necks. The victims were dropped from the third story level only to hit the parking lot. The sheets weren't long enough to let the victims hang. The killers just shrugged their shoulders ("Oops me!").
Another killer, a woman dressed in a pink leather body suit, was firing a paint gun loaded with ball bearings instead of paint balls. Buzz saw one man go down with ball bearings stuck in his eye sockets.
A group of hillbillies who looked like mountain people with huge heads, hunchbacks, and dumb toothy grins were throwing severed body parts over the guardrails. Their family struggled to catch the pieces in plastic buckets and wheel barrows. The people throwing them over the balcony kept saying in yokel drawls, "Get in dat' der bucket!"
More cops arrived, and Sig Sauer Granny held them back, blasting them now with an M-16.
What in God's name is going on?
Behind him, a neighborhood was active with screaming people being attacked. Front doors were kicked in. Houses blew up, wicked plumes of fire reaching high in the night sky. He caught one back yard with over a dozen corpses hanging from a clothesline, the corpses flapping in the wind. A heavy set woman was adding yet another limp body to the collection, hanging them up to bleed out.
More cops arrived along with a S.W.A.T. team. All dead in seconds!
A negotiator with a megaphone tried to talk the killers down, but a hatchet split his skull in two.
It was Hayden's hatchet!
Hayden arrived out of nowhere, dressed in his apron made of leathered faces, his death mask the top half a woman's head with long flowing blonde hair. He stepped over to where Buzz was hiding and grumbled, "Watch me work."
Hayden used a flaying knife to take the negotiator's tongue, sawing it off like rope. "The man's speaks so elegantly. I wonder if his tongue tastes as elegant as his words."
Half asleep hotel patrons were thrown into the swimming pool down below. Upon landing, they were fighting to escape, slashing their arms as murderers popped up from underwater. The water went from clear to dark red in seconds. The filters in the pool burst, exploding pieces of body parts like geysers of pink batter. The tip of a finger and a molar landed on Buzz's hand.
"Aaaaaah!"
Fifty severed heads rolled down the steps; the decapitators unknown.
An older woman with a missing leg kept sorting through various severed legs, trying to pick the right one to replace her limb with. Her tongue stuck out the corner of her mouth, her face held in serious scrutiny.
Four well-built, body building champion sized killers were pulling a young teenage girl by the arms and legs in a literal tug of war. Buzz could hear her muscles give, her shoulders dislocate, and her bones break.
An ambulance rolled up onto the scene, the EMT's filing out of the vehicle and wielding scalpels to slash throats of those who weren't quite dead in the parking lot.
Other killers were stealing the female torsos, namely the "ass" and "boob" pieces and running off into the woods laughing dementedly under their breaths, "Hee-hee-hee-hee-hee."
Buzz shut his eyes to it, covering his ears, and shaking his head in furious denial. If he didn't see it, it wasn't really happening. He wouldn't really be a dead man. He wouldn't have died by decapitation. Battling truth against reality, reality against what he refused to believe, somebody lifted him up by the back of the shirt, and said, "Get up, Buzz. You're safe with me. If you run from us, you won't be so safe. I can only protect you if you stay near me."
It was Carrie.
Carrie raised him up to his feet. Her machete gleamed fresh blood. The murders at the hotel came to a halt. Killers faced Buzz and Carrie in a line. There was thirty, and more people were filing from the streets, out of buildings, and from afar.
How many murderers were here at the same time?
Hundreds?
Thousands?
Hayden walked up next to Carrie with a mallet in one hand and a giant axe in the other. Hayden, spattered in many coatings of blood, his cape of faces blowing in the wind, threw aside the mallet hammer and raised the great axe in demonstration of his killing ability. He didn't say a word.
The killers kept their distance. Whether it was in fear or Hayden or not, Buzz had no way of knowing. Thirty killers turned into a hundred. A hundred into several hundred. Several hundred into a thousand. Buzz couldn't see in the distance with the huddles of killers, murders, and psychotics surrounding them. Then the crowd
parted to allow Buzz's murderer to make an appearance.
"Back off, Decapitator," Carrie challenged, aiming her machete at him. "I'll cut your head off before you cut mine, or my friend's."
The Decapitator came in closer. The heavy beard and bottom lip. Black trench coat. Six feet tall, wide shouldered and barrel chested. Somebody that could break you in half. His skin was the white of a dead fish's underbelly. Soot rubbed into his hands. He held onto the hacksaw, the Decapitator's knuckles going white.
"You against all of us?" The Decapitator's voice was a mix of hick and broken glass. "You can't save this man. You know the rules. When a man dies, and he goes to the wrong afterlife, heaven will come and find him and take him away. He only has to make it twenty-four hours. The angels always find those they misplace by then, if not sooner. But if you know the rules, you know he's not dead yet according to the laws of the universe. That means he can die here. If he dies here, we keep him. He'll be our victim forever. No heaven for this motherfucker. Only hell."
Carrie smiled. "You're looking at this the wrong way. You want to kill this guy, cut his head off like you did in real life, and then what? That's too easy. Too fucking boring. Why not make it more interesting? A real battle. Not a slaughter. I've been preparing for months. Call it idle hands."
The Decapitator's eyes widened. He liked what he was hearing. "Then what do you propose?"
"You give us a two hour head start. The place to meet us is my house. When two hours pass, you can come after us. It'll be a real battle. No rules. Kill or be killed. Buzz's head is the trophy."
Buzz stiffened. My what is a trophy?
"You have your friends on your side, and I'll have mine on my side. How about it? In two hours, Buzz is fair game. You kill him, or you don't. You don't, he goes to where he's supposed to go. You kill him, there's nothing else I can do for him. The angels come back and pick him up, or you get to keep him. Until then, hand's off. Deal?"
The Decapitator mulled it over. "First, why are you doing this for him?"
Carrie didn't have to think on why. "Buzz is a childhood friend of mine. The better reason, I'm ready to do some serious killing. You severed my friend's head, maybe I'll sever yours? We're stuck here for all eternity. We're the misfits, the sickos, the perverted fucks; the best the world has ever seen. Victims who deserve to be here are fun to toy with, but I want something more interesting. I crave challenge. You afraid of a little fun? Buzz's life sweetens the pot. We protect him, you try to kill him. It's like capture the flag. Let's call it capture the head."
The Decapitator ran his finger down the jagged teeth of the hacksaw. He split his pointer finger open to the bone. Lust for pain, lust to inflict it, lit up the killer's eyes.
The Decapitator liked her idea.
He liked it very much.
"Two hours. Your house. The battle begins. Capture the head."
When the group of killers moved in a great mass from the hotel, only a few killers were left. They were on Carrie's side. Fifty at a rough count. Hayden and Carrie stayed by him, protecting him in case the killers changed their minds.
Carrie asked Buzz, "You ready for a fuck of a good fight?"
Buzz about pissed his pants.
CARRIE'S HOUSE
Hayden was driving the truck. Buzz was in the middle of the seat, Carrie on the passenger side. They were coasting through a main thoroughfare in a town he didn't recognize because he didn't live here. Buzz didn't care about what he was seeing; he only cared about Carrie's explanation. The sign in the road startled him on the way there. KILLING FIELD. Underscored like a small town sign, it read: HOME OF THE DECAPITATOR.
"That man back there," Carrie began, "his real name is Gerald Bloom. He calls himself "The Decapitator." He's the man who snuck into your house and cut your head off with a hacksaw. No reason. He doesn't need one. Killers pick a person out, and they kill them. Simple as that sometimes. Or the timing is right. Gerald's thing, which is sick as hell, and I wish I'd come up with it myself, he likes to mail people's heads to loved ones. Your daughter opened that box in her dorm room, and it scared the hell out of here. Your head was in it, obviously. She passed out. She's in therapy because of it. She'll never erase the image from her mind. Gerald was caught not too long after he shipped your head to your daughter. The police tracked him down and gunned him dead in his living room. This was while he sat on his sofa looking at the severed head's he'd pickled in jars and put on a shelf."
Buzz did his best to get over the image of his daughter seeing his decapitated head. How horrible. "How do you know all about this? I mean, how do you know everything about my death, the afterlife, just—everything."
"Word spreads fast in this fucked up afterlife. Killers like to share their accomplishments with each other. Bragging rights. That kind of shit. It's a pissing contest. But hold on, pal. This place gets more complicated than Gerald Bloom."
Buzz noticed other vehicles and trucks were tailing them.
"Don't worry," Carrie said. "Those are our friends. They're on our side. We're outnumbered one hundred to one. I won't jerk you around on that ratio. But they don't care. The way they see it, our side gets to kill more people. And I have a special plan of my own."
Hayden was wearing a different woman's scalp now, with the top half of her face over his features, leaving only his mouth visible.
The man was smiling big.
Carrie's eyes were big and shiny. So happy. Giddy almost.
"Wait a minute." Buzz couldn't restrain his anger. "You guys are loving this shit. This is like playtime for your sick asses. What the hell is wrong with you people? Seriously! This can't be for real."
Carrie knew his outburst was coming and what to say to shut him up. "A lot's on the line for you. You might get stuck here forever. Weren't you listening earlier? Everything we discussed is the truth. You're lucky we were childhood friends, and my memory of you is a fond one, or you'd be a victim by now. I wouldn't have helped you. You wouldn't have your head. The Decapitator wants it. Ohhhh, how he wants that head of yours. Look, Buzz, I didn't have many friends back when I was a kid, and my parents were the biggest assholes on the face of the Earth. I keep killing them when they pop up out of hiding in this afterlife. I never get tired of cutting them up."
Buzz's face was puzzled. "Wait, slow down, what do you mean you never get tired of killing them?"
Carrie tried her best not to lose patience. "Okay, stay with me a moment. And don't interrupt me. We barely have two hours to pull this off. Buzz, you're not supposed to be here. The dark afterlife, I mean. That's what we call this afterlife, among other things. Think about all the people that are constantly dying in the world. The afterlife is basically a process where certain people get shuffled to their appropriate eternities. You're a good person, you go to a good place. You're a bad person, you go to a bad place. Simple as that. Take Hayden and me, this place is meant for killers to live as they did in the living world. There's a place for different types of deviants, psychos, and the mentally ill. There are infinite numbers of afterlives based on your personal criteria. There's also a place for "good" people to go, like you. It's designed special for you, Buzz. A place where you can be happy for all eternity, and all that sappy ass crap.
"Sometimes the wrong person gets filed into the wrong afterlife. This happens more often than you think. There's so many people to keep track of, right? It happened to you, Buzz. Sure, the afterlife will send you to the right place once they realize their mistake. It's usually within a day. Anytime now. The trick is since you're not in the right place, you're technically not dead. Those killers out there know this. They would like nothing more than to slaughter you, torment you, and ultimately, kill you. If you get killed here before the afterlife shuffles you back in place, you're stuck here forever.
"Now don't ask me how that makes any fucking sense. Why was Hayden born with a taste for human flesh? Why was I born with the need to kill my parents when they shut off the movie Friday the 13th? Everybody has their plac
e to go after death. This is my place, but it's not yours, Buzz. There are victims who are stuck here as well. They did other bad things in life that didn't involve murder. They were mean. Hateful. Whatever. Extreme assholes. They're getting their just desserts here. This is like a giant food chain of Karma. You get yours one way or another, you get me?
"When we kill our victims in this place, and when we kill each other, we die for a short period of time. Then we wake up cured of our wounds hours later only to be hunted and stalked again by somebody else. This could be you if you don't survive the next twelve hours, or so. We're going to protect you the best we can. You're very lucky I've been perfecting several killing techniques with my inventive friends over the years. This involves serious engineering. Smart guy shit. I enjoy killing people, period. But I've wanted to raise the stakes. You gave me the perfect motivation. Murderers vs. murderers. It's going to be wild. There's only one way to pull that off, and that's to have something they want and threaten to take it away from them. That's you, Buzz. I have you. They want you. They're not getting you."
Buzz was terrified. Hugging himself with his arms and shaking. His teeth were even chattering.
Carrie punched his shoulder.
Buzz about dropped a deuce.
"Come on, Buzz. Quit being a fucking pussy. Look at this a different way. Maybe this is a chance for payback. Sending your head to your daughter in the mail is totally fucked up. He cut your head off. An eye for an eye. A head for a head. I'll call it a severed head beat down.
"Whatever you do, don't die. If you die here, you're stuck here. I can't help you anymore. You'll be stalked and slaughtered for the rest of eternity. But don't worry. I have a good plan. You might just make it to heaven, Buzz."
