Severed Head Beat Down

by Alan Spencer

  PREPARE FOR BATTLE

  Carrie's house was a cookie cutter property in the suburbs. The houses were in tattered condition. Bodies hung from gutter railings. Some weather beaten and rotten down to the skeleton. More heads poked out of lawns, awaiting their deaths. Buzz couldn't watch their facial expressions or hear their horrible begging. He wondered just what those people did in the living world that landed them here with these psychos.

  Karma.

  Pulling up to her driveway, Carrie opened the garage. Inside were wooden barrels with glass tops. People were inside tied by the wrists and legs. Their breaths fogged the glass.

  Buzz didn't ask any questions.

  Another wall had three dozen varieties of machetes. Some were basic, others were hand crafted, and others were triple their normal size.

  Carrie pointed at the largest one in the middle of the collection. "I cut three heads off with this baby in one swing. Just like Jason did in part six."

  Buzz caught Hayden roll his eyes underneath the woman's face he was wearing. He scoffed, "I wouldn't eat Jason. I'd just throw his meat to the dogs."

  Carrie petted the long stringy strands of Hayden's hair; the woman's hair. "He gets jealous when I mention Jason. I don't think Jason's better than you, Hayden. You're both awesome as fuck."

  Hayden was subdued. That's all he needed to hear, Buzz thought. Everybody needs reassurance.

  This place is beyond fucked up.

  Carrie and Hayden walked to a section of the garage that led to the basement. Down a short set of stairs was an iron door. Carrie removed a key and unlocked five of the locks. She didn't open the door.

  "This is where we retreat later on," Carrie explained. "They'll be here real soon."

  "Wait, so you've been planning this battle for a long time?"

  "My friends and I get bored. We think of cool ways to kill people, and we come up with ways to do it. You should see my sketchbooks. I could've wrote the manual on mutilation."

  "I bet you could."

  Buzz still couldn't believe this was the girl he played house with when they were kids. He couldn't believe if he got killed before whatever took him to a better place arrived, he'd be trapped here forever. He imagined Carrie running over his head with the lawnmower.

  Fuck that.

  A man dressed in a button up shirt, tie, slacks, and thick black-rimmed glasses approached Carrie. "The gang's about ready. I've waited for this day for so long. I never thought we could start a war. I'm glad you snatched this guy up before somebody else did."

  "We're damn lucky it worked out the way it did," Carrie agreed. "This is going to fuckin' rock."

  Buzz added, "Yeah, really glad. Lots of fun coming our way. A fucking water slide."

  They ignored him.

  "Buzz, this is Parker. He's our mechanical engineer. He's the mastermind of what's about to go down. Those assholes aren't going to know what hit them. Parker constructed the blue prints, recruited the people to build it, troubleshot the impossible, and even put his own hard work and sweat into it."

  Parker blushed. "What can I say? I love to see blood spray."

  Carrie kissed Parker's cheek. "Nothing turns me on more than a man who says that, and means it."

  Hayden removed the woman's head from his own head, and from a fridge in the corner of the garage, he pulled out a new one. This was the bald head of a man, a skin bust down to the shoulders. The sight of the man wearing semi-decayed skin was chilling.

  Buzz could've said a million things in that moment. How they were fucking crazy. Bat shit insane. Blood fetish freaks who deserved to be locked up forever. But he was on their turf. This was their place, their afterlife, their forever to be as they wanted. He was the interloper, and these people were the closest things to friends he had in this dangerous place. He had to behave.

  He still had no real grasp of what this afterlife meant versus the one he was destined to enjoy, and if he did get there, would it be so great? Buzz didn't know what he deserved. He tried to live his life being kind and fair to people. But he didn't know the criteria for the afterlife, and what actions would land him where, and who was the judge. It was nothing they taught in any church.

  Buzz bit his tongue and let his protectors do what they were going to do, bottom line.

  Outside the garage, Buzz could see and hear other people shuffling in and out of the houses on the block. What made his stomach really churn was hearing those coming in the distance. He stepped out of the garage and could see on the horizon thousands of murderers coming their way. Their purpose was clear.

  Carrie handed him a sawed off shotgun and a belt of ammo. "I figured you'd be most comfortable with this weapon. A little conventional. Whatever floats your boat floats your boat. Unless you want something else?"

  Carrie was armed with a machete holstered on each of her legs and one on her back. She had one in her free hand, the other hand offering Buzz the sawed off.

  Buzz accepted the gun, even though there wasn't enough bullets in it to save him.

  Not even close.

  WAITING

  Carrie and Hayden directed him to the upstairs living room. They crouched on their knees in front of the large bay window and watched the street. Other houses, people were moving in and out of them hard at work. Buzz heard machinery and metal. Things being started up and tested out. Buzz's stomach dropped and kept dropping. He wasn't sure what to say to Hayden wearing the dead man's head as a mask and his old childhood friend who kept eyeballing the blade of her machete with a crafty smile. They were both eager and ready. Buzz, not so much.

  Buzz imagined The Decapitator sawing through his neck, cutting his head off, stuffing it into a box, and mailing it to his daughter. It made his heart sink to imagine the last memory of her father was her old man's head in a box.

  Maybe Carrie was right.

  The son-of-a-bitch deserved to pay.

  Buzz couldn't lie to himself. He didn't have it in him to kill anybody, deserving or not. He handled guns he bought and sold at his pawn shop. He rarely fired one. And he never fired a gun at anybody, human or animal.

  He kept telling himself this was an insane situation. He wasn't alive anymore. His eternity was at stake. Live with psychos, or go to heaven? The choice was simple.

  Carrie sensed his thoughts. "Buzz, forget everything and just remember we're protecting you. You just have to live. If shit gets weird, run and hide. All you have to do is live long enough for heaven to correct its mistake. You'll cross over on your own. The angels, or heaven, or God, will take you. The clock's ticking. Any moment now."

  The masked cannibal patted Buzz's shoulder. "I got your back, Buzz. Count on it. They won't get through me. I'd bet the skin on my back."

  "The skin on your back?" Buzz started laughing. "You people are crazy."

  Hayden clicked the two mallets clutched in both his hands together. Carrie saluted with the blade of her machete, and said, "Yeah, we're crazy. Just remember, Buzz, when you're snorting coke off some angel's ass, don't forget who made it happen."

  "I hope that's how heaven turns out to be. Though I always imagined heaven being a titty bar. There's nothing better than tits."

  Buzz heard himself. He couldn't believe he was talking candidly to two psychopaths in this situation about breasts.

  The time for talking ended.

  The killers swarmed the house, crawling in by the thousands, and swiftly pounced to attack.

  The war was on.

  BEAT DOWN

  Carrie told Buzz to stay low and watch outside. He was to do as she said, and not hesitate. That could be the difference between going to heaven and staying in the dark afterlife. So Buzz did what she said. He watched out the window as the swarms of killers approached. He was nervous how fast and fearless they were moving in. They were charging Carrie's house. Any second, they would kick through the doors and force their way inside. The house was fortified, Buzz noticed. Doors were boarded up. Windows also boarded up. But that would only hold them off s
o long.

  "Hold on," Carrie said. "Any second now."

  The pounding against every window. Wood shattered by the weight of steel. Crowbars pried through barriers. Hammers and fists bludgeoned wood. The things the throngs were chanting, screaming, and cheering at the top of their lungs. Every single one of them wanted Buzz's head.

  The walls of the house would be shredded. Bodies would be crawling into windows. Minutes, seconds, any moment, they'd be surrounded and murdered in a violent mosh pit of sadistic killers.

  Buzz begged them to do something. Why were they staying in the living room doing nothing? Weren't they going to hide, or find a way to fight them? If there was a way to fight thousands of murderers. He still didn't know how many people were on his side?—and what it meant to be on Buzz's side versus "not" Buzz's side.

  Then he saw Carrie's lips moving. He could barely read her lips. This he did understand. "...five...four...three...two..."

  Hayden's body tensed up. Both biceps went taught. Hands clenching mallets. Hayden's belt of cutting tools jangling together like chimes on the wind.

  Something was happening.

  And it was happening now.

  From three houses across the street, dump truck looking vehicles smashed through the garage doors. Barreling into killers left and right, bodies were flung like rag dolls, up over the hoods, crunching bodies under the wheels. The hulking steel shells stopped in the middle of the street. Grumbling like a garbage disposal a thousand times its normal size, the vehicles kicked up exhaust fumes from hell.

  The vehicles soon showcased their potential.

  Carrie and Hayden gave each other "daps."

  Carrie clinged her machete against Hayden's mallet.

  From the back of the dump trucks, tarps were removed from the backs. Revealed were plastic tubes. Buzz imagined huge bank teller tubes. The grumble from the engine, the machines were kicked on. The killers were lifted off their feet, thrown up into the air, and bent sideways until they were sucked down into the tubes. Hundreds of bodies were hurled up into the air.

  Inside the trucks were steel machines much like meat slicers.

  "...spinning at a hundred miles an hour...Parker, you're a genius..."

  "...thousands of blades...break bones...shatter the bastards!"

  Stacked up meat slicers were rendering the sucked in bodies into pulp and soup. Blood and gore showered the throng of murders who backed up from the machine's suction. They scrambled to regroup.

  All in the name of Buzz's head.

  How could he describe the villains who weren't turned into red pureed? A man and woman duo wore construction hard hats and carried jackhammers. A plumber clutching a wrench in one hand and a bloody plunger in the other. A man with a ripped body with only jeans, boots, and a pair of black biker's gloves kept tightening and readjusting the gloves for no apparent reason. A man with a bloodied potato sack in his clutches ("Into my sack," he bellowed like a broken record). A girl on skates with leather bands on her arms with razors sticking out of her elbows to slash and run. An old perverted looking man with a Chicago Bears coat had a severed tit strapped to his head with a Velcro apparatus; in his hand a bone saw. Another girl, a gothic chick with dark black hair, had taped bricks to her hands with duct tape. Countless stalkers skulked about with a piece of wood and a length of leather, chains, or barbed wire, all tools to strangle. Another juggernaut sized fiend had hammered dozens of nails through each of his fists. An old lady with a paper sack weaved between the masses, smiling a jester's grin. A six year old looking girl had a tiny ball peen hammer and crawled on all fours, looking for a set of toes or kneecaps to bash. A person who was neuter of sex had carved their teeth like a vampires and wore black lengths of tape over their nipples. Dozens of yokels were roaming about pushing wheel barrows. Families of rednecks armed to the gills skulked about with shotguns, shovels, pitchforks, axes, anything used for farming that could double for tools of mutilation. A boy in a cowboy drove a Go-kart with a bumper covered in numerous metal pikes. A woman stood on the outer edges of the group, the eyes the only thing moving, as she clutched a single grenade. So many more killers Buzz couldn't account for.

  Carrie and Hayden were pleased by the show.

  "Come and get us, assholes."

  Carrie used the handle of her machete to smash the bay window. Once the glass shattered, she shouted out into the yard, "Buzz is in here! Come and get him if you got the balls." Aside to Buzz, "Fuckers are going to fall for it. Just watch."

  "Why did you provoke them? They're coming right for us!"

  Hayden, through the horrible flesh mask, grumbled, "That's the point."

  Up from the compartments hidden underneath the grass in the front lawn shot up steel cannons. They burst, firing saw blades. They sheared scalps, split heads in half, and dismembered limbs at fifty miles an hour.

  "Downstairs now!" Carrie shouted.

  The walls in the living room were starting to splinter and implode. Heads of axes, split-sections of snarling, eager-eyed killers were peering into the house. Hands were reaching through to gain entry.

  Buzz's body went hollow. He was walking on air, and not in the life is good kind of way, but my head is on the line, my eternity is in the balance kind of way. Gunshots pattered the carpet inches from his body.

  Minutes he'd be dead.

  A severed head.

  Through both walls on the stairs leading to the basement, fifty arms were reaching to grab him. Carrie's body was blurry motions, so fast, so agile, slicing arms from the sockets with her machete. Gouts of blood spattered Buzz's body. One set of hands would retract, and more would reach in for him, and another set of hands would be severed. Hayden's mallets would break bones, even bend wrists to the point bones would break through the flesh. Crickety-crackety-split!

  They reached the garage, and Carrie threw open the iron door that led to the basement. The garage door was broken through. Hayden was at the head of the stairs hammering in skulls, or switching tools, slitting throats, slicing open jugular and femoral arteries with butcher blades (He shouted during the killing: "Slaughterhouse meat, bleed at my mother-fah-king feet!").

  Carrie pushed Buzz through the iron barrier. She brought him in close and yelled into his ear to be heard over the deafening crowd. "Run. Don't stop. Just run. Go now go!"

  On the iron door, slathered in blood, it read in wood carved letters: FINAL DEATH RUN.

  FINAL DEATH RUN

  The iron door closed. A vault's resonance echoed throughout vast chambers unseen. Buzz was in pitch black darkness. He thought about trying to open the door, but he could hear the muffled din of all-out war from the other side. Mass slaughter. He wasn't sure what he was meant to do on the other side of the wall. Hide. Wait. What?

  Carrie said for him to run.

  So he ran.

  Buzz stayed at a jog, moving in the dark, and keeping his arms extended to avoid hitting any unexpected walls. Minutes, he kept this up. He stamped through puddles at his feet. Cold drafts burned against his hot skin. It smelled musty, moldy, and of wet concrete.

  Why wasn't this place lit up?

  How the fuck was he going to get out of here?

  Collecting his breath. Clutching his aching ribs from pushing his body beyond it's capacity of physicality. He wanted to take a break. Sleep. Replenish his body with water and food. Most of all, he wanted to know if he was really dead. Would angels come down and take him away to heaven?

  Or was it all just a crock of bullshit?

  Once he found the light up ahead in the narrow access up ahead, he'd finally know everything.

  THE DECAPITATOR

  A generator motor groaned somewhere nearby. Buzz couldn't see it yet. It fueled a ring of lights in a room made of broken up brick walls and concrete floors. Rusted over drains in the center of the large room. No obvious way out. This was a dead end. A trap. And there stood the man without his trench coat on anymore. He wore a yellowed undershirt that showed off his beefy muscles. He held a hacks
aw in one hand and beckoned Buzz on with the other, saying, "You can turn around and run. That's one option. Killers will break through that iron door and slaughter you," snapping his finger, "like—that! Or you can stay here, face me, and fight like a man."

  Buzz couldn't get the words off of his lips. All gasps and no syllables. So shocked, he could barely remain standing.

  This was a trap.

  Betrayal.

  The Decapitator was down here waiting for him.

  "Before you say anything, my friend, allow me to explain how they fucked you over. Carrie and Hayden talked with me. They said they could trap you below Carrie's house so I can have you all to myself. They wanted to face off with everybody else. Carrie and Hayden, they're like best friends. They want a challenge. They want insanity. Me, I just want your head. In the end, we'll all be happy. What? You thought you weren't in danger anymore? That mistake's on you, Buzz."

  "Wh-why did they help me earlier?"

  "So I could have you all to myself without having to compete with the other murderers. Carrie did you a favor. Remember that. She really did. Normally, you'd be dead by now. She bought you time. Time's a ticking. The angels are still coming to save you. You can go to heaven, if I don't kill you first!"

  Buzz couldn't dodge the blow of his fist. Buzz spun to the ground with blood oozing down his face. His nose was broken. He was seeing white and tasting red. Crawling away from the approaching shadow, Buzz searched for anything to use against the man. He was throwing broken chunks of brick that were scattered on the floor.

  He pictured how the man had murdered him. Cutting his head off and sending it to his daughter. What deviant was capable of such ideas? What would happen now in this world where murderers were free to perpetrate what they wished?