Trigger Warning: Extreme Horror: Contains Strong Sexual Content, Violence, Drug Use, and Language. (2 page)

“You got the girl?” I asked Tubs.

Tubs pointed to the back of the store…toward the Kill Room.

I moved through the video aisles (mostly porn, horror, and children’s flicks) into a skinny white hallway with a heavy steel door at the end. A light-up dancing Snowman (leftover from Christmas) stood next to the door, its eyes glowing red, its stick hands waving back and forth as it sang “Frosty the Snowman.”

I kicked Frosty aside and slid the bolt back. These words were scrawled on the door in red spray paint:
NO EXIT
.

Inside the Kill Room: eggshell cartons covered the walls, splattered with a coppery brown substance. Chunks of grey clay crunched beneath the heels of my shoes—cat litter, to absorb the blood. A trick I learned when I worked at a gun range and a man went in, not to fire at targets, but his own fucking head. My boss shrugged, went into a backroom, retrieved some cat litter, and dumped it on the body. “Shitty way to go out,” he said, and laughed. I laughed too.

In the center of the Kill Room: a girl tied to a chair, gag in her mouth. Her eyes wide, terrified. Mascara dripping down her cheeks. Nothing original. Typical shit you’d see in any horror flick you’d let the kiddies watch—but this is motherfuckin’ reality, ladies and germs.

Steve Cheese—long ratty hair pulled into a pony tail (called it his “p-tail,” fuckin’ queer), Hawaiian shirt, cross around his neck, joint between his thin pale lips—had a camera on a tripod pointed at the girl.

“Hiya, Alex. Whassup, my man?”

I grunted.

Greetings are for pussies.

Steve offered me the joint. “You wanna hit?”

“No,” I said.

“Alright, alright. Let’s kill this bitch.”

On the floor, lying in cat litter, were several torture instruments: chainsaw, ax, hammer, nail gun, wire snips.

I reached for the chainsaw, because I’m classic.

I like the simple things in life.

I put my foot in the rear handle and tugged the starter cord, squeezed the throttle, and the
Texas Massacre
Instrument revved to life.

The girl thrashed in the chair, red ball gag in her mouth—wet and dripping with her saliva and tears.

“Okay, we are ROLLIN’!” Steve announced, staring into the viewfinder, his yellow rotting teeth grinning from his droopy acne-pocked face.

He pointed the camera at the action—but I could care less about the snuff films we released on the deep web and rented out to horny teenage boys. I was just in it for the kill. The thrill.

I am the devil, and I like to have fun.

“You wanna fuck this? You wanna suck this?” I screamed at the girl.

I held the chainsaw centimeters from her face so she could feel it vibrating in her fillings, feel the wind coming off the spinning chain.

She screamed and cried behind the gag.

In some pansy-ass liberal college the professor would probably want to know the girl’s point of view. What’s she feeling right now? Who are her family and friends that will miss her? Does she have a boyfriend or husband, kids? Or is she bisexual, a dyke? What does this scene say about male privilege and its undeniable connection to violence against women?

Who gives a fuck?!

I touched her eye with the spinning chain and it spread open like a fresh cunt. Blood sprayed. I reached into my pants and started jerkin’ it.

“You’re makin’ me so hot, bitch! Suck it! Suck that metal cock, you filthy fucking whore. You cunt!”

Steve giggled. “Good shit, man. Good shit!”

…PRESENTLY

Alex

I wake up in a dark, cramped room. No, a confinement chamber. With the kinda wallpaper you’d expect to find in the house of some old bitch with lots of cats: yellow with flowers and fucking smiley faces ever-fucking-where. The windows have black garbage bags duct-taped over them. The only light comes from a dim bulb that swings on a chain above my head.

I am bound to a steel chair, which is bolted into the floor, rusty chains wrapped around my waist and ankles, my hands tied behind my back with twine, and seated in front of a small fold-out table.

A wave of nausea rolls through me. The inside of my head feels like a garden of barbed wire…probably effects from the sedative the bastard bunny used on me.

Fuck! FUCK!

A clown enters the room. I shit you not.

“
LET ME OUT OF HER E OR I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU!
”

“You’ve been a bad, bad boy, Alex,” the clown whispers into my ear through its latex mask-hole, “…and the wages of sin is death. At sunrise, the Lord will reveal his face to you. He will cast you into the valley of darkness.”

The clown giggles and then leaves the room. The door clangs shut, the bolt sliding home (much like the steel door to the Kill Room) and I just sit here, bound to this chair, fear creeping into my guts.

No, not fear.

Fear is for pussies.

Anger.

Rage.

Creeping into my balls.

MUST. KILL.

On the table in front of me: a box of Captain Crunch, a bowl of soggy cereal, and a rusty spoon; a small sticky note next to the bowl tells me to
EAT UP! :)

Not fucking likely.

A newspaper, also spread out before me, tells me the time for sunrise, highlighted in yellow:

6:09
.

An alarm clock with red digital read-outs warns that it is currently midnight. In other words:
You have six hours to get the fuck out of here, bitch.

Before this, before this shit, all I remember is the girl crying and the camera rolling and the stench of sweat and pussy and blood and I was laughing and the blade was at her neck and I was getting off on this and I had a raging hard-on and she wouldn’t quit screaming and this fact only made me harder and want to butcher her more…and then this guy in a rabbit suit popped up out of fucking nowhere and said, “You’ve been a naughty boy, Alex,” in this high-pitched faggot’s voice and started giggling madly and poked me with a syringe and I thought he was injecting me with AIDS and I was about to cut his throat with the machete but then I woke up here.

Across the table from me is another man chained to a chair: Steve Cheese, aka The Film Guy (but that’s not possible). His face looks like it’s been sewn on. His throat has been slashed; his Hawaiian shirt stained a dark red. On the wall behind him, scrawled in blood (his?), are a cross and the words:
HE LOVED YOU THIS MUCH!

A scalpel is clenched in Steve’s cold dead grip.

“LET ME OUT OF HERE YOU FUCKING JESUS FREAKS! LET ME OUT!”

Robert

I wake up in darkness, a red pulsating pain throbbing between my eyes; the thick stench of sewage putrefying in my nostrils. I retch onto the concrete. I retch until there is nothing left but strings of acidic bile hanging from my chapped lips. And then I wobble onto rubbery legs, stumbling through the darkness, heart pounding in the base of my throat, until I collide with a stone pillar—which I lean against for support.

Swallowing deep breaths, I wait for my eyes to adjust to the room. There is a faint green glow, which tints the walls and floor—the latter spotted with black puddles of some noxious smelling substance. I squint, rub my eyes, and realize my hands are covered in it: Mud? Shit?

I scan the room. No, not a room. A chamber. The size of it startles me. Concrete walls and floor, no windows. Some parts of the floor are covered in gravel. 

My heart skips and I nearly scream when I spot someone else in the chamber: a girl, blonde, sitting against the far wall, her knees drawn up to her chest, mascara smeared all over her cheeks. She’s wearing a mini-skirt and halter top and big pumps. Looks like a cheap whore.

She doesn’t acknowledge me. Stares at the floor.

“Where the fuck are we?” I try to yell, but it comes out a soft quiver. Almost sounds like a cry.

She doesn’t answer.

“Hey!” My anger comes out this time.

The girl looks up, glaring.

Startles me.

“Who are you? Where are we?”

“I…don’t know,” she whispers, and it echoes eerily off the concrete walls.

Her face scrunches up, and she starts sobbing.

“Hey. Don’t cry. It’s going to be okay. I’m a cop. They’ll come looking for me.”

“They say you’re the reason we’re here.”

Warm dread flowers in my chest.

“What? Who?”

“The bunny,” she says.

I lean against the pillar, hands shaking. I take a deep breath, choking on the humid stench of rot and shit.

“The bunny.”

“They’re wearing masks.” She breaks down sobbing again.

“Pull yourself together. Who are you?”

“J-J-Jennifer.”

“Okay…Jennifer. Just calm down. Everything is going to be alright…I promise.”

“They said you’d say that.”

A chill racks my body, despite the fact that it’s hotter than hell down here. “Wha—who?”

“The bunny,” she says.

I sigh and sit down on the floor, against the pillar.

“They said you’re an expert in evil.”

I run my hands through my hair—greasier than a lubricated rat.

“What do they mean by that?” she asks.

“I don’t know.”

…YESTERDAY

This is the part where we do a flashback to how my life used to be, before all this shit happened. Okay, well here it is.

It was a Saturday and my wife Cindy was in the kitchen baking lasagna and pulling down bottles of wine, red and white, but hopefully not planning to serve both to each of her guests or else the house was going to be full of flatulence.

I had just got done with a 16-hour shift and was pulling into the driveway in my squad car, when I imagine Cindy spotted me through the kitchen window, wiped her hands on one of those gaudy wedding towels her parents bought for us, and rushed to the door to invite me in.

She was the perfect drone…I mean, housewife. She fit our cookie-cutter lifestyle and her gender role to a gingerbread woman T.

We were white, upper class, Christian (meaning we went to church occasionally—Christmas, Easter, whenever someone we kinda knew croaked or got married), straight, and cis. No confusion about our sexuality, gender identity, or otherkinness. Nope. We were normal normal normal normal.

Average.

Ordinary.

We were chameleons that could blend in and fit in anywhere, rendering us completely safe from predators…mainly, our own kind.

What more could you want out of life?

“Hi, Rob. How was your shift?” Cindy said, white teeth gleaming, blue eyes sparkling. I imagined if I shot her face open, there’d be nothing but wiring and circuit boards behind that mask.

“Alright,” I said.

I moved past her, slumped down on the couch, and did what any average Joe would do after a long day’s work: turned on the tube.

“Ryan and Brandi are coming over tonight,” Cindy said.

The thought of socializing after a 16-hour shift instantly filled me with anxiety and rage, but these feelings were too dulled by exhaustion and apathy for any of it to register on my face, or in my eyes, which were blankly fixed on the evening news: a new virus may wipe out humanity. Oh god, if only.

“Who?” I asked.

“My friend Brandi and her husband.”

“Oh God, not that cunt.”

“Be nice, Robert. Brandi is not a…
c-word
.”

“I wasn’t talking about Brandi.”

“I thought you liked Ryan.”

“No,” I said. “I never said that. You’re living in your own fantasy world. You don’t listen to anything I say.”

“But Ryan’s a nice guy.”

“There are no nice guys.”

“What about Brandi? Do you like her?”

“I don’t talk to her. She’s
your
friend and you don’t even like her. Last time she was here all she did was complain about the wallpaper.”

“It’s not that I don’t like her, it’s just that…”

“She’s a vacuous bitch?”

“What’s your problem?”

“I don’t have a problem. I spent my night chasing meth heads down Sunset and the last thing I want to do is hang out with Brandi and her numb nuts husband.”

“You just need to get to know Ryan better. I’m sure eventually you two will get along fine.”

“Just like every other husband you try to hook me up with? Why do we have to socialize all the time? Can’t we just…be left alone?”