Flesh Factory: An Extreme Horror Novel (7 page)

Three
things
hung from the high ceiling from thick rope. Each
thing
had once been a person. And technically
was
still a person, she thought darkly. Each person had a head, a neck, and some of their torso, to a lesser or larger extent. Everything else was gone. They appeared to be lined up in order of size – what remained of the man on the left was so miniscule it defied comprehension and the woman on the right was intact to her hips. Intact, that was, apart from the fact her shoulders were entirely gone as well as her limbs, and her neck went straight into her body. The woman was beautiful, with immaculately blow-dried, blonde hair in the style of Marilyn Monroe. The fact she had a full face of make-up on was even more disconcerting, that someone would put make-up on her after operating on her and sticking her in a god-damn basket.

Each person was placed in a size-appropriate, old fashioned wicker-basket that put her in mind of the baskets old ladies carried when popping down to the bakery for their morning loaf. The baskets were attached to rope that tied round each handle, the ends of which knotted around thick hooks in the ceiling.

How can they still be alive?

Maybe I’m tripping, this can’t be real.

Oh but it is, and you know it
.

They swayed slightly in an invisible breeze, the white dressing that tightly bandaged what was left of their bodies streaked with red.

Mick pushed her into the room and she stumbled forwards, almost head-butting the guy on the left.

“Help us,” said the man over the other two’s muttering and whimpering.

“This is Fred, most resilient chap, I must say. He shouldn’t still be alive, he really is a little miracle.” He laughed. “Little being the operative word. The other two lost their minds along with their limbs.”

Hope watched in mute, dumbfounded terror as Mick went to the woman at the right of the macabre line-up. She gabbled nonsense at him, thrashing her head from side to side. Big, plastic looking breasts poked out between the gaps in the bandages, and wobbled slightly with the twitching of her torso.

“June here still has all her insides, but only for another ten minutes. When the doctor comes he will trim her down some more. The liver and kidneys will go, along with most of the colon. He shall make the cut here,” he said, tracing an invisible line across the woman’s neat waistline. “Her hipbones will go, as well as the bottom part of her spine. This is a very tricky operation, as I’m sure you appreciate. Less than one in a hundred survive it. Apart from Frank and James here. Although I don’t think James will be with us much longer.”

Hope looked at the middle guy. He appeared to have been severed at the waist and his bandages were saturated with blood. It dripped through the gaps in the wicker-basket and pattered on the slightly inwardly sloping, tiled floor. His eyes rolled back in his head and he seemed oblivious to his surroundings. He drooled and muttered incomprehensibly to himself, completely gone.

Frank, however was entirely lucid. “Please,” he said in a surprisingly strong voice. “Please kill me.”

Hope’s eyes locked with his. They really were quite beautiful eyes; chocolate brown and sorrowful, like a puppies. It struck her how handsome he was, his fine bone structure enhanced by the black hair elegantly greying at the temples.

Looks a bit like George Clooney
.

The nausea rose up out of nowhere and she doubled over, heaving violently. The yellow sick slid towards the plughole, and she remained crouched over, tears and snot clogging up her face and airways.

Mick let out a hearty laugh. “Silly girl, why would you go and do a thing like that? Lucky for you there’s a drain in here, or I’d make you eat it back up again. Look at me when I’m talking to you. Stand up straight.”

Hope straightened up, trembling violently. The sight which greeted her made her want to throw up again, even though she was completely empty. Mick was groping the woman in the basket, palming her breasts like playdough and

(dearGodno)

actually
kissing
her on the mouth. The basket swung with his attentions and after a moment or two, he broke off the kiss.

“I am going to miss June’s cunt and arsehole. Still, never mind, plenty more cunts and arseholes in the world.”

He threw her a meaningful look and she cringed inside.
He’s going to rape me.

Of course he’s going to rape you, why else are you here?

The moment passed, and Mick was all business again.

“Goodbye June, enjoy your surgery. The doctor will be here any minute now,” he said, checking his Rolex. He turned his attention back to Hope: “They are well looked after, my guests receive nothing but the best medical attention. Aha, and here is the doctor now.”

A man entered the room; a perfectly ordinary looking, middle-aged bloke with neat grey hair wearing a white doctor’s coat.

“Good Afternoon Mr Cooper, your staff told me to come straight through.”

“Afternoon, Doctor. Yes, yes, very good. Hope and I will leave you to it, the operating room is free.”

“Thank you. Will you be joining us today, Mr Cooper?”

“No, not today, Doctor, I’m entertaining my guest.”

“Very good. Enjoy your afternoon, Mr Cooper.”

Mick nodded and ushered Hope out the room with his hand in the small of her back. Outside, a beautiful woman in a nurse’s uniform, whose skirt was much shorter and tighter than the skirts usually seen on nurses in the NHS, wheeled a metal gurney over to the room they had just vacated.

Mick ignored her and led Hope to the next door along.

“Are you ready to see the next little project?”

“Please,” Hope said in a voice that sounded pathetic to her own ears. “I don’t want to see anymore. Please –“

Mick slapped her hard across the face, killing her words dead. She stared up at him, wide-eyed. The slap hadn’t hurt her, perhaps because of the numbing effect of the LSD, but it still had the desired effect. He was in charge, and unless she wanted to end up in a wicker-basket between Frank and James, she’d better start doing exactly what she was told.

“Now, Hope, you are hugely privileged to be here now, with me. You need to start showing me a little respect. Do you understand?” Ever so slightly, she nodded. “Good. Then let’s continue with the tour, shall we?”

Mick led her to the second hatch along, and slid it across. The rooms must have been soundproofed up to the nines because the second he opened it, the sound of screaming assaulted her eardrums.

As before, he grabbed her head and forced her to look.

The room was much the same as the room before it; small and bare, light and bright. This one too had a drain in the middle of the floor. But this room had no furniture in it whatsoever. Only
chains
.

“This project is one of my favourites. I love the idea of body modification, who knows, maybe I’ll do something similar to you. On second thoughts, why would I want to do a thing like that? You are perfect as you are.”

Hope could only stare at the poor girl in the room in horror. She was screaming and twitching pathetically, her ankles and wrists bound by metal cuffs, which in turn were attached to lengths of chain attached to the walls and ceiling. Her arms were stretched high above her head, and she was naked. Her body just looked plain wrong. Her breasts were oversized, like those girls with the obscene implants that sometimes made an appearance on late-night documentaries on Channel Four. Her skin was stretched taut, like a water balloon about to burst.

But her waist was the worst. If it hadn’t of been for the chains holding her upright, it was painfully obvious that the poor girl would bend in the middle and possibly snap in two. There was no way that a waist that small could support the weight of her upper body, even without the grotesque implants. Hope could only stare at the whittled waist in horror; it wasn’t even as wide as her kneecap.

“Beautiful isn’t she? Her waist is eight inches wide, which makes her measurements forty-seven – eight – thirty-five. Playboy would snap her up. Unfortunately for Sara, snap is about right. She can just about stand up by herself with the aid of a corset, but without one…” He made a snapping sound in the back of his throat, and smiled at both of them. “Six ribs were removed to achieve this shape and her internal organs were redistributed. Unfortunately, they were redistributed to such an extent that there is a high risk that blood supply will be severely impaired, thus, some vital organs may will wither and die…  Still, she was pretty while she lasted.”

“You’re sick,” Hope said, unable to stop the words escaping and instantly regretting them.

The girl called Sara stared beseechingly at her, her puffed-up, collagen filled lips making Hope think of a fish…

…
Which is exactly what the poor girl is. A fish on a hook
.

The girl’s screams gave way to pathetic sobs. “Please, it hurts so much, just please, make it stop…”

“Shush, don’t cry,” Mick said soothingly, gently stroking the girl’s long blonde hair which hung down her back as long and as thick as a Barbie doll’s. “You have always been so vain, so obsessed with your looks. You’re the one that wanted to be a model, remember? Well, now I’ve made you more beautiful than any of them. And don’t you ever call me sick.”

He turned on her so fast that Hope barely had time to comprehend what was happening. One second he was cooing at Sara, the next he had shoved her up against the wall, both hands around her neck, squeezing the life out of her.

“Don’t you
ever
backchat me, bitch. I
own
you.”

Spittle flew from his lips and his face blurred and dimmed above her. Hope couldn’t breathe, her head felt like it was about to pop and bright lights exploded before her eyes.

He’s going to kill me
, she thought calmly.

Just as the room dimmed around her and the girl’s screams and pleas for help grew more and more distant, he let go. She fell to the floor and curled up in a foetal position, clutching her bruised neck and gasping for air.

“I haven’t finished with you yet,” Mick said, his voice barely discernible over the ringing in her ears. The ringing eased and the woman’s screams resumed at full volume once more. “Get up.”

Hope got to her feet, retching and shuddering.

I don’t know how much more of this I can take
…

She stared at Mick, who stood there placidly watching her, his expression unreadable. Without a word he marched her out the room and shut the door and bolted the hatch. Hope was relieved not to have to look at that pitiful woman anymore, or hear her screams.

It was silent out in the big room, or foyer, or whatever the hell it was. Her head still felt tight and strange, and black shapes swirled in the corner of her vision. It took a moment for her to realise that the swirling blackness wasn’t the after-effects of being strangled, but the shapes were in the room.

She spun round, trying to look directly at the swirling darkness, but she never quite managed to see it properly, it always danced just on the edge of her vision.

“Are you seeing things, my dear?”

Of course. She was on drugs, she’d forgotten that all-important fact for the briefest of seconds. As soon as Mick had posed the question, the swirling blackness intensified. Now she could look at it directly. It was like smoke, except it was the densest black. Her head tilted backwards when the almost-smoke curled upwards and engulfed the chandelier. As it touched it, the chandelier seemed to bend with the darkness. The light in the room flickered and dimmed, throwing shadows over the white walls and doors.

Hope flinched in a fresh rush of fear. Some of those shadows looked like people.
No, not people. Demons.

The shapes crawled over the walls, as if seeking an entry into the room.

“Don’t let them get in the room,” Hope said, grabbing hold of the sleeve of Mick’s expensive grey suit, forgetting for a moment that he was the enemy. “If they find a way in, they will kill us.”

She didn’t know how she knew this, she just knew it to be true. Those shadows, those
things
were from the other side. From
Hell
. And once they crossed over, they wouldn’t ever go back.

“Tell me, what do you see?”

“I see… darkness. Darkness and shadows and devils.”

Mick laughed loudly, like she had just told a really good joke. “And you will be seeing a lot more of that in the days to follow. Come, we have one more room to visit before you may eat, drink, and rest.”

The shadows grew more frantic around her and she closed her eyes, still clutching the sleeve of his suit. “No, you don’t understand, they want to hurt us…”

“And you, my dear, are tripping. It will make what you are about to do all the more exciting. Come, he’s waiting for you.”

Ever so gently, like he cared for her and hadn’t tried to strangle her a few seconds ago, he prised her fingers off his sleeve and cupped her under the elbow. Hope allowed herself to be led to a door on the opposite side of the room. The shadows/demons danced on the walls all around her – a kaleidoscope of evil intent.