Apeshit (23 page)

ment,” Jason says.

“Fuck you,” Desdemona says to Jason. Then she

turns to Crystal. “Why would you even want to do such a

thing?”

“It’s going to be hot,” Crystal says.

“What?” Desdemona says.

Jason stabs the machete into the female’s upper thigh.

Its screams make Desdemona’s skin crawl.

“Stop,” Desdemona says.

Jason stabs again, cutting deep. The male cries out

as it watches his mate being tortured.

“This is fucking crazy,” Desdemona says. “Let’s go.”

Crystal turns to the female and stabs at its other thigh

with her butcher knife. When she stabs, she moans with

sexual pleasure. Desdemona watches in horror as her friend

erotically cuts open the creature’s flesh.

“Stop,” Desdemona says.

The two of them continue cutting and moaning,

fucking the creature with their blades.

“I said
stop
,” Desdemona says.

Des leaps at her friend. She wraps her intestine

around Crystal’s neck and pulls her back.

“What are you doing?” Crystal cries, tugging on the

rope of meat squeezed around her throat.

“What are
you
doing?” Desdemona says.

“That’s it,” Jason says, throwing his machete on the floor.

He staggers towards Desdemona and rips her away

from Crystal. He drags her by the waist across the floor.

“Let me go, fucking asshole!” Desdemona says.

Jason tosses her into the basement and latches the

door.

Desdemona almost falls down the stairs, but some-

thing holds her up as she dangles on the edge of the top step.

Her intestine is caught in the door. She grabs the meaty rope

and holds on for dear life. The steps are steep enough that

she could break her neck if she tumbled down them back-

wards.

After she regains her balance, Des squats down by

the basement door. She tries the handle, but it won’t budge.

Even though the door is no longer barricaded and the latch

has been weakened, Desdemona still can’t get it open. She

puts her ear to the wood. There are screeching wails, flir-

tatious giggles, and sawing sounds coming from the living

room.

They’re fucking crazy
, Des says to herself.

Crystal screams. Desdemona can’t tell if it is a scream

of agony or a scream of delight. Then there is silence.

Desdemona waits for some sound. She listens care-

fully. There are slight clicking noises. There are faint whim-

pers. The screaming, however, has stopped.

This worries Desdemona. She wonders if one of the

creatures broke free. Those things could get loose and kill

Jason and Crystal. If they did, Desdemona would be trapped

down in the basement by herself. She decides that she needs

to find a way out of there. She needs to find something in the

basement to break down the basement door.

Desdemona pulls on her intestine, but can’t get

it free. It is completely stuck in the doorway. Shaking

her head, Desdemona realizes that she has only three op-

tions. She could wait here until somebody or some
thing

opens the door for her, she could unravel the entrails out

of her torso until she has enough slack to move with, or

she could bite the intestine off like an animal biting off a

limb to escape a hunter’s trap.

She decides to go for the third option.

Desdemona didn’t know the taste of her entrails would

be so vile as she bites into it. She can taste salty mucous as she

puts it into her mouth. The skin of the intestine makes a pop-

ping noise as it breaks open, like the skin of an Italian sausage.

A glob of sour feces squeezes onto her tongue like toothpaste.

She spits it out and rubs her tongue against the wood of the

door to scrape all the flavor away. The taste of shit is bad

enough, but the intestine has a lining of rotten build-up that

tastes of aged feety cheese mixed with road kill.

She tears through the intestine the rest of the way

with her hands and then wipes the slime onto the floor.

Without the weight of her entrails, Desdemona feels

lighter as she walks down the steps. She doesn’t feel much

pain anymore. She only feels the cold concrete under her

bare feet as she reaches the bottom.

Crystal and Jason managed to take all of the tools

that would have been of any use to Desdemona. She was

hoping to find a pickaxe, but nothing like that is to be seen.

There are many boxes, chests, and crates under the stairs.

They are packed tightly and evenly, but none of them are

labeled. She takes two boxes down and goes through them.

They are filled with clothes. She takes several more box-

es down, and goes through each of them. They are just

clothes, blankets, pictures, cassette tapes. Behind the stack

of boxes, Desdemona finds a red crate. She climbs onto the

boxes to get it open.

Des wasn’t expecting to find Jason’s grandfather’s

gun collection. A crowbar, a hammer, or even a screwdriver

would have been fine, but this arsenal is even better. They

aren’t packed very well, just stacked on top of each other.

All of them are hunting rifles. Desdemona looks for some-

thing smaller, but can’t find any handguns. She also can’t

find any bullets. She takes out a shotgun that was resting

on the top of the pile. There aren’t any shells inside. She

tries another rifle, a .22 single shot. The chamber is empty.

The third is a Remington semi-automatic hunting rifle. Des

discovers there are some bullets in the magazine, but it isn’t

full. She examines the gun, tries to figure out how it works,

how to unlock the safety.

The bullets don’t look very big. She isn’t sure if

she’ll be able to shoot off the latch through the basement

door. She decides to use one of the heavier empty guns as a

battering ram.

`

Desdemona breaks through the door and slips on a

puddle of blood in the hallway. She gets to her feet and fol-

lows the stream of blood into the living room, where the car-

pet has become a red swamp and the linoleum kitchen floor

is a pool of gore. Chunks of meat are scattered throughout

the room.

On the wall to Desdemona’s right, body parts are

nailed to the wall. The parts belong to the lobster boy. He

has been cut into several pieces. His arms and legs have been

quartered and nailed to the wall, his torso has been skinned,

stretched, and pinned up like a raccoon fur. His head is still

in one piece, hanging from the wall by its dead fetus limbs.

When Desdemona sees the creature, she covers her mouth

with her hand.

The creature’s eyes roll towards Desdemona.

Desdemona steps away.
It’s still alive. Why is it still

alive?

The thing opens its mouth to speak, but it makes only

a smacking sound as its tongue moves inside its lips.

There is moaning coming from the kitchen. Desde-

mona turns the corner to find Jason naked on the counter,

licking the neck of the freak woman. The female creature is

crucified to the kitchen counter. Her hands have been sawn

off at the wrist. The blades of her claws have been stabbed

into the sides of her ribcage, with the palms of her severed

hands lying across her breasts as if they are groping her.

Her legs have been cut off at the upper thigh and are curled

around each other on the bloody linoleum floor like orphans

cuddling together for warmth. The creature’s tongue has

been cut off and her lips have been stapled shut so that she

couldn’t scream anymore.

As he licks the freak woman’s flesh, Jason caresses

the woman’s swollen belly with the tip of his machete. He

has already cut her open from her vagina to her belly button.

Crystal is lying against a wall, moaning loudly. Her eyes are

locked on the pregnant monster. She is naked and mastur-

bating with a glass dildo shaped like a baby arm. Her mouth

is wide open and her tongue is licking the edges of her front

teeth. Her left breast is dangling by a string of meat.

Jason digs his hands deep into the gash in the crea-

ture’s belly, all the way up to his elbow, and pulls out a tiny

gray arm. The fingers of the infant’s hand curl softly around

Jason’s thumb, embracing him. Then Jason raises his ma-

chete and chops the arm off against the counter. Crystal’s

moans grow to a high pitch as Jason holds the severed fetus

hand up for her to see.

“I’m going to cum,” Crystal says. “Quick, take it

out. Take it all out.”

Jason nods. He puts the machete down. Then he digs

into the creature’s womb and rips the fetus out of her. It isn’t

a whole fetus. Several pieces of it have already been cut off.

There are holes in its head and chest where the chunks of

meat have been torn off. Jason rips the umbilical cord out

of the woman’s womb and lets it dangle from the mutilated

fetus like a tail. The baby’s cries are scratchy and a bit like

television static. Besides the gray skin, the odd screams,

and the pieces of flesh missing from its body, the baby isn’t

a mutant like its parents. It is human.

“Kill it,” Crystal says, masturbating furiously now.

“I want to watch you kill it.”

Jason places the screaming fetus on the kitchen table,