Authors: Michael Bray
6:14
Had a lovely chat with father. Told him what I did, then ate his face. It was delicious. Threw up all over myself. Just blood and sleeping pills.
6:17
There. That’s an hour, now please just let me die.
6:20ish
Am I dead, is this what it is? A perpetual agony? Is this hell? God, I’m scared.
6??
I'll fucking kill that old Mr. Simms. This is his fault. How could I know it would hurt so much?
Bastards all of them. Hard to9 type now, coordination bad but I’ll xfc keep trying..
6:666452rfgc
So mch painm i.,. cnt stand.,fd mucjh morew…
6:40
I'll call him Bertie. Berhgie the biter who’s bloood I…
No thast wojhnt work. Zdf
How about:
Bertie blod on a littel neesafdle,
All I needfg to keep j me evil…
Please just die.
6:44
Night fever, night fever weeeeeee!
God I'm hungry. Something rare and bloody. Father agrees, and heeeeees been dead for years hahahah! gsth
6:52
Cant vbreathe5 i thindk thiss is it.
how longhg did I lastg????
I’m so so hungry, I think itsgd timew to stepkl outside for a bite to eat.
[This is a bit of a departure from the norm for me. I normally don’t stray into anything too graphic or extreme (although recently I have dabbled in this area in some co-authored works with Matt Shaw. Before all that, this was my first foray into the extreme. This story was written in mid-2013, and had been part of a Splatterpunk anthology. I present it here for the first time as part of this collection.]
I HAVENT MOVED for hours Lying here in the dark, ignoring the cold and damp, and the mildew smell of this rotten shithole of a house, I wait. My brain is a stew, a melting pot of emotions. I realise that I am as cold and barren as this room. The floor is bare apart from the army of empty vodka bottles which stand as a testament to the lifestyle I chose. They shimmer in the moonlight and remind me that I have a pretty severe drinking problem. Rats scratch and scurry in the walls, and rotten pipes drip their monotonous song. I’ll be the first to admit it. This house is a shithole, but at least it’s mine. I don’t have power or hot running water. The walls are thick with black mold that spiders up from the floor, and the sickly yellow wallpaper hangs off in great, wet sheets. Still, I can’t complain. I manage to get by. Cold baths are the perfect penance, the ideal way to cleanse me after I have done the work, and that, as I lie here is what I’m contemplating. I turn my head, feeling the clammy touch of the filthy pillow – the one I use to sleep on and, when the mood takes, stick my dick in. It's crusty familiarity doesn’t bother me, nor does the smell, not anymore. Outside, is a typical English October night. Winds rock the broken house, and drizzle tickles the window pane. I can almost imagine that it is calling to me, telling me to venture out into the night and do what I do best.
As much as I tell myself that I can’t really be bothered, that I’m not in the mood, I know it's bullshit. Like any addict, I know I’m a slave to it, and a little rain won’t stop me. Hell, I would go out if fireballs were raining from the sky. Welcome, my friends, to addiction.
I feel something stir in my gut; the dark thing that lives there demands to be sated. Blood rushes to me, and I find myself stiffening. It’s only the anticipation of what I’m about to do that usually makes that happen, and I’m resigned to another sleepless night. I pull the pillow from under my head and push down my tatty shorts. As I slide myself between the pillowcase cover, I start to think about the act.
The warmth of viscera as I squeeze it like tripe between my fingers, the taste of hot, copper blood as I drink it from dying, depressurised veins. God, it’s divine. I think about my first, a sweet girl who I met at a bar. For all the days that blend into each other, I can still remember her. Brown hair, blue eyes. Strong cheekbones. A moan escapes me, and I increase the tempo of my movement and arch my back, pushing my head into the mattress.
I remember the way she looked as I strangled her, the desperation in her eyes as I squeezed her neck hard enough to burst the blood vessels in her eyes. She wept tears of blood, and as that image came to me, so vivid and detailed even after eight years, I shot my warmth into the pillow, gritting my yellow, gappy teeth in ecstasy as I murmur my bitch of a mother’s name.
This is my life. This is the life of a killer.
I’m addicted to two things. Sex and murder. Neither seemed to do it for me alone and so it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to combine the two. I’m still not entirely sure if I’m going to venture out or not tonight, but the black thing inside that guides me seems active, so you never know. Anyhow, let me tell you a little bit of my modus operendi, as it were.
I always like to strangle my victim. Always from the front so I can see the light go out in their eyes. That’s when I open them up. Pubic bone to the ribcage. I have a really good strong knife for that, part of an old doctors kit that I picked up at in a second-hand store a few years back. I love to see how people tick. Such complex things. I like to feel the textures, to get the insides outside. I like to squeeze the intestines like tripe. I like to touch the slippery livers to my face, I like to open the stomach and see if I can identify what they last ate.
I also like to fuck them.
There is no shame in that. It’s just how it is. Some cultures fuck their dead until they start to rot. It’s nothing new. Not really. Besides, I do it a little differently. I like to straddle the head and fuck the mouth whilst I explore their insides. It’s such a rush. I don’t care who it is. Men, women, young old. All are the same inside.
I can feel myself stiffening again as I think about it, and although I’m tempted to give my pillow another going over, I really do feel like I should go out and find someone.
You might wonder if I feel guilt or remorse.
I say a resounding no on both counts.
One of my victims once told me that god would strike me down, and I couldn’t help but laugh. If he even existed, he would have struck me down long ago.
No, there is no god. No afterlife. No fucking white light at the end of the tunnel. The planet is full of animals. All of us trying to live and learn, cheat and play, scheme and fuck our way to the top of whatever society deems we should be striving for.
Screw that. Let me tell you something about life.
The only guarantee is death. I’m sorry if it sounds blunt, but that’s just the way it is.
Death is a good thing. It’s an escape from the monotony of this pitiful existence. It’s something which I believe in wholeheartedly, and something which I have devoted my life to. To date, I have killed sixty-seven people. Forty-nine men, the rest women. I have also killed eleven dogs and twenty-four cats. I know what you must be thinking. That I had a troubled upbringing, or that I was abused as a kid right? Wrong. My upbringing was normal. I was raised in a middle-class home with a loving family who always tried to give me what they could. My father worked long hours every day to put food on our table. I have a brother and two sisters, all of which are, as far as I know, perfectly normal. I just knew I was different. Some people excel at sports or music, others in politics or science. My brother plays guitar like a fucking beast. My skill was killing. I turned out to be damn good at it too. The rain continues to probe the glass, breaking me from my train of thought, and I’m having second thoughts about going out tonight. I wonder if I can get another few days out of my last one.
I can see her bloated, blue gray corpse propped up in the corner of the room, sitting in a puddle of her own putrid liquefying skin and organs. I can almost imagine that she is still alive and breathing, but I know that it’s just an illusion – a trick played by the army of maggots which are feasting on her. Her open mouth is packed tightly with them, a writing mass of the little bastards. Same goes for her nostrils and even the hole in her arm where the flesh had putrefied and fallen away. Love never lasts for long, and I realise that soon enough I’ll have to put her under the floorboards with the others. I had half hoped that she would last longer, maybe I thought that the cold weather might keep her fresher for more than a couple of weeks. I wonder if I should have bought that chest freezer the other week?
I give my bloated companion a quick once over, casting my professional gaze and trying to gauge the level of decay. I have become quite good at it actually, and my instincts tell me that perhaps I better go find a new one. God knows I need someone with me. I can’t stand to be alone here. I need the company.
“Shall I go out tonight?” I whisper to the rotting thing in the corner. She, of course, doesn’t answer, but I hear her voice anyway, sweet and encouraging in my head. The dark stuff bubbles and my dick stirs. I half consider jamming it into her mouthful of maggots, a final farewell if you will, but decide against it.
Besides, there are always plenty of opportunities out there in the streets. Plenty of people walking around thinking they are safe, either because they have a misplaced sense of self-confidence, or more likely that they have forgotten that monsters like me still exist.
I roll off my stinking mattress, wiping my hand on the sticky, come stained pillow and get to my feet. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and immediately look away. Too thin, too pale. Too dirty. I really must get rid of that fucking mirror.
I dress slowly.
All the clothes are second hand, begged or borrowed from shelters or charity shops. Not because I can’t afford them, but because I want any flecks of DNA that might be on them not to be mine. I also put on five pairs of socks to hold the shoes – which are deliberately two sizes too big for me – in place. Fuck you forensics. Ha!
I tuck my greasy, graying hair under a black beanie hat, and shrug into my hoodie. The rage is growing now, it knows the time is close. I spare a glance at the maggoty thing in the corner and feel as if its remaining milky eye is judging me.
“I’m heading out for a while,” I croak in the darkness.
It looks at me, only the constant wet shuffling sound of the maggots for a response.
“It was never going to work anyway,” I add, feeling sorrow and shame and even guilt towards her. She knows I’m planning to replace her. I can see it in her watery eye.
Still it looks on.
Why can’t she just respond?
It’s too late now because the rage is close to taking over. I can feel it spreading from my stomach and through my veins. I know what is going to happen, and I know it won’t be pretty. I explode and am across the room it two strides. I grab her by the face, intending to pull her to her feet, but the skin is putrid and rotten, and her entire head comes off, bringing a snake of rotten flesh and skin with it. Displaced maggots fall back to her body, looking for new dark places in which to fester. I look her in the eye, squeezing my hands hard into her cheeks, teeth gritted as I watch my palms sink into the slippery flesh, which slides over her skull in such a way that I think, for a second that she is wearing some kind of mask. It's then that I hear her in my head. She is laughing at me.
They always laugh at me.
The smell is enough to even make me retch, but despite myself, I have a point to prove, and manage to shove my shorts down with a fumbling hand, and guide my way into her mouth, pushing the maggots aside. The sensation is both wonderful and repulsive as they write against me, and I finish within seconds.
It would be rude not to.
I toss her severed head down by her body, and wipe myself clean, using the trusty pillow to do it. I’m ready now, ready to go out and find a fresh companion. I’m feeling it now, the full flow of the rage and I’m ready to kill.
It’s almost two thirty am on a Saturday night. The streets will be crawling with people, too drunk to care that they are walking home alone, and too out of it to be afraid that someone like me could be lurking in the shadows.
Maybe tonight is my night.
Maybe tonight, I’ll find what I’m looking for.
[This story, like a few of the others in this collection, was originally released as a standalone kindle only title. The idea came when we experienced a power outage just like in the story, and because it was getting late, I was going to stay at home and wait for the repairman to come. I got to thinking what would happen if when he arrived, he wasn’t exactly normal, and how it would be to have to face that in a house without light or access to phones etc. This was the result of that thought process and is one of my favourite stories.]