Pieces (3 page)

The fans moved the air across the surface of
the concrete, drying it quickly. When he awoke an hour later, it
had dried enough that he could not move. He wiggled his hands and
feet, desperately trying to free himself, but to no avail, he was
stuck.

He called out, knowing it was futile as his
only neighbor in a mile was gone and no one would hear him, but it
was the only thing he knew to do, and besides, it was worth a
shot.

“
Help me! Somebody please help me!” He
yelled, looking up at the steps, hoping for someone to come running
down saying, “What? What is it?”

The stairs stayed empty. No one came to see
what was happening. He was alone in a house in the woods, trapped
in the cellar. His voice already felt hoarse and raspy from calling
out, and that cursed rat was watching him from the darkness of its
once covered hole.

The rat stepped out of the hole and ran over
to where Austin lay trapped. It stood on its hind legs and looked
at him.

“
What the hell are you looking at?”
Austin asked, fear creeping into his voice. The presence of the rat
at a point when he was so vulnerable made him nervous.

“
I’ll get up from here, and I’ll kill
you, you stupid rodent. You’d better not bite me again! I’m not
afraid of you!”

The rat turned and looked at the hole in the
wall, drawing Austin’s attention to it. Another rat exited and
joined the first. Then another, and another, until ten rats, all
just as big as the first, stood in front of Austin.

“
Holy shit,” he muttered. “Where did
all you guys come from?”

He suddenly shifted from nervous to
deeply afraid. Something didn’t feel right about the way these rats
were acting. It was almost as if they possessed some kind of pack
intelligence and were waiting for the right moment to attack
him.
Would rats really attack a full-grown
man?

More movement caught his eye and another
group of ten rats joined the first, all intently watching him. The
first rat walked to his hand, and sniffed a wound incurred from his
fall. Austin shook his hand at the rat, trying his best to scare it
away.

“
Get away from me,” he said, his voice
cracking in fear as he noticed the other rats gathering around his
exposed body parts. One of the rats rushed in and bit his top lip,
tearing the soft pink flesh. Fresh blood ran down his chin, pooling
in the hollow of his neck and he howled in pain. Excited from the
smell of blood, the other rats darted in to take small bites from
his face. He tried to scream, but his fear was so great that voice
simply left him.

The rats mauled him with their sharp
teeth. The rats were gaining confidence and coming at him quicker
with each passing moment. He was able to grab one of the rat’s
plump bodies when it climbed into his hand and he squeezed as hard
as he could. The rat screeched its rat scream and the other rats
came to its rescue. Sharp teeth chewed at the back of his hand,
tearing veins in two and separating tendons from bone. His fingers
and toes were being eaten one small piece at a time. The captive
rat continued to scream. His hand relaxed a bit as he could no
longer make a fist, and he suddenly felt his index finger pop free
at the knuckle. A rat, carrying his finger in its mouth, passed in
front of his field of vision. He sobbed and hoarsely screamed over
and over, helpless to find any relief. He knew he was dying, but he
still held on to the hope that this would somehow stop. If they
stopped right now, he could probably survive.
Stop! Please Stop! I can’t stand the pain! Oh, God! Please
make them stop!

Even more rats came out of the wall to join
the fray. Small teeth shredded flesh from his exposed areas. Blood
began to fill the cracks in the concrete around his body and
several rats lapped it up from the growing pool like small dogs.
The rats worked quickly and efficiently and his extremities came
apart fast.

The skin from his face was gone and rats had
started shredding pieces of his ears. Biting and tearing, biting
and tearing. They pulled strips of skin from his head and ferried
away their prizes, dragging long sections of hair and scalp behind
them. His left foot was the first to come free and now he felt them
begin to burrow into his calf. A rat was now under his skin and
working its way up his leg! He could feel it at his knee, where it
seemed to have gotten stuck and began chewing at his tendon and
muscle, trying to find a way past. Other rats had also forced
themselves into the same opening.

Another rat had begun chewing at his
exposed neck which sent Austin into a new level of panic.
No! No! Stay away from there! That’ll kill
me!
The rat bit through his carotid artery and blood
gushed from the wound.
Holy Shiite Muslim.
I didn’t even get to kill the one bastard I had in my hand. This
can’t be how it ends!

As he died, more rats joined in on the neck
feast and he felt them clawing their way in.

The blood flow slowed, but the pieces that
were left of his body rippled and moved as the rats poured out of
the wall and dug into his carcass trying to get their share of the
fresh, warm meat.

The End

Read an
excerpt from

The scream ripped through the hospital room
and shot down the sterile hallways, the echo not having a chance to
return before the next scream drowned it out. The dismembered
finger dropped into the stainless steel pan with a light metallic
ping and the doctor moved the bone saw to the next digit.

“
Gunnar, keep him quiet!” The doctor
hissed. “I can’t think with all the racket he is
making.”

“
Yes doctor.” The large orderly
snatched a towel from the table and shoved it into the patient’s
mouth.

The bone saw sliced through the next doomed
finger with a quick thrust from the doctor’s skilled hand and the
patient screamed again, but the towel effectively muffled the
sound.

“
Much better, Gunnar. Now keep him
still, he’s moving too much.”

Blood ran down the gutters of the Gleason
embalming table and pooled into the glass mortician’s jar. With all
of the fingers removed from the patient’s right hand, the doctor
moved to the other side of the table to gain easier access to the
left hand. He stopped at the head to gather more data points. He
spread the patient’s eyelids and moved his hand in front of the
patients face. The patient’s terrified eyes followed his movements,
hoping the torture would end soon.

“
Patient is still fully aware and there
is no evidence of lethargy, despite the blood loss. The pain is
pumping adrenaline into his system, providing a temporary relief
and slowing the effects.”

The young, female nurse in the corner dipped
the quill into the India black ink and scribbled the doctor’s notes
onto stiff paper. She had been the doctor’s research assistant for
the past year, witnessing many disturbing things. She stayed with
him because she thought the information gained was worth the lives
of the maniacal inmates they tested, but her conscience grew
heavier with each “patient”. The amount of money they paid her also
helped ease the guilt. Non-intrusive brain research was the wave of
the future and she wanted to be on the cutting edge of it. This
research could prove invaluable one day.

The doctor continued around the table and
picked up the patients left hand. He held the tip of the thumb and
brought the bone saw down and across the connecting knuckle. He
watched the patient closely, observing how he coped with the pain.
He wondered if the brain possessed mechanisms that could turn off
pain when needed. If so, how are they accessed and how much pain is
required to make them react. As the thumb separated from the hand,
the patient’s eyes glossed over and took on a faraway stare. His
skin turned pale and clammy, and he shivered despite the heat from
the gas lamps. This time the patient only grimaced and closed his
eyes; there was no scream.

“
Patient is exhibiting signs of shock.
I believe this is where the brain is shutting down the pain
sensors. It is going into survival mode; even the bleeding has
slowed. The patient has lost a lot of blood and may not last much
longer; we need to get this data while we can.”

The nurse carefully transferred the doctor’s
dictations to paper. It was hard to keep up with his quick,
staccato voice and still keep the writing legible.

The doctor was in ecstasy, the thrill of
medical research and discovery through experimentation overpowered
any other emotion or thought. He was doing valued research into
human limitations and it was worth any price. Specifically, the
lives of some of society’s worst human beings, murderers, only good
to sacrifice in the hope of improving the future of the masses.

He put the stethoscope to the patient’s chest
and listened. His heartbeat was fast, arrhythmic, and the doctor
knew he was going to die soon. He grabbed the bone saw, intent on
seeing the body’s reaction to an emergency amputation, and quickly
sawed the arm from the body. The patient, already in shock, did not
react. He did not scream, or thrash in any manner. His eyes fell
open, but didn’t focus and by the time der doctor was finished…he
was dead.

“
Damn it!” The doctor howled in
frustration. “Why did he die so soon?”

He spun on his orderly and grabbed his throat
with both hands. The doctor pushed him against the wall, seething
with anger and squeezed the orderly’s throat harder. Gunnar tapped
on his shoulder, as if trying to say, “Excuse me old chap, but I
believe your shoe is untied.”

The doctor closed his eyes and squeezed even
harder, feeling the cartilage of Gunnar’s esophagus begin to crack.
The tapping continued, somehow polite and submissive. The doctor
was furious…

Suddenly, he opened his eyes and saw a small
imp standing before him, tapping him on the shoulder.

“
Master,” it said and bowed low when
Fresinnius glared at it. “You told me to wake you when it was time
and… it is time.”

Fresinnius’ head cleared instantly and then
he was on his feet. He snatched something small and shiny from the
table and strode from his chambers into the halls of Hell. He
walked outside and made his way to the massive gates made from the
rib bones of the Gorgol, a huge demon from ancient times whose time
in Hell was cut short by desiring to be in the master’s place. How
ironic, Fresinnius thought, and motioned for the gatekeeper, a
small bald demon in the form of a man, to open the gates. Balzac,
Satan’s second in command watched Fresinnius from afar with
hate-filled eyes as he walked out of the gates and began his
journey into the material world.

Mark Tompkins is an American author with a
passion for horror and an insatiable need to entertain his readers.
Influenced by the great masters of the genre, his horrific tales
will send your psyche cowering into the darkest corners of your
mind. His love for horror lives in his highly imaginative and
descriptive novels and short stories.

marktompkinsauthor.com

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