Genital Grinder (16 page)

“Now!” Von snapped, somehow managing a scream at whisper level. He wasn’t sure Sammy would go ballistic over this, but since Sammy kept the Divided Man a secret, there might be some sentimental value attached to him. He’d undoubtedly notice the “alterations,” but maybe not before they were a few million dollars richer. And if he blew the whole episode out of proportion, they still had the option of killing him. They just better make sure that they got it right, because they would probably only get one shot at it. And obviously the guy wasn’t above surgical liberties with the male figure after all.

Greg had to step into the pile of entrails to get close enough. They squelched under his shoes. His left foot nearly slid out from under him as he tested the terrain like someone on a frozen pond. A length of intestine burst under his inquisitive weight. He reached into the obscuring mess still attached to the abdominal cavity. Everything felt like wet snakes. He had to extend his fingers and specifically pull aside various coils like vertical blinds, trying to uncover the crotch again. Finally irritated, he grabbed a fistful and yanked them like the starting cord to a lawnmower. They tore and spattered him with digestive juice. He tossed them over his shoulder and grabbed another handful. One of the cords holding the cadaver upright snapped. The Divided Man started to tilt, unbalanced, so Greg held him up with one hand as he withdrew more yellowish ropes from the other. He found what he was looking for, and then had to lean up against the body to keep it situated as he carved. It went easily, having expired soft. Greg closed his hand on it and stepped out of the gut pile. The body collapsed, its arms draping over Greg as though hugging him.

“Mission accomplished,” Greg reported, pushing the cadaver away from him. It struck the ground, face up.

Von shook his head. “You know what you look like?”

Greg gave himself a quick once-over. “No, what?”

“You look like a guy who just stepped in a heap of guts, tore some more out for good measure, and then sliced off a dead man’s wang with a Swiss army knife.”

“So you think Sammy’ll notice?”

“Only if he doesn’t fall down the stairs, break his neck, and die before he sees you again.”

As if on cue, the attic door slammed shut overheard and footsteps on the steps announced Sammy’s inexorable return. He did not fall down the stairs, break his neck, and die. He walked past the room, stopped, backtracked, did a visible double-take, and began to take inventory of the extensive damage.

The first thing he said was, “Why is that tube sock inside out?”

“Uh . . . it was like that when we got here,” Greg offered, the picture of innocence if that picture had a cracked frame. And no picture.

“Yeah,” Von agreed, painfully aware that they didn’t actually formulate any plans on how to take Sammy out. They had acted under the assumption that they would acquire the genitalia and then simply become the vessels for divine inspiration. They had a Swiss army knife between them and no powers of telepathy to coordinate exactly what to do with it.

Sammy had moved on from the tube sock to the mess of gore beyond it.

“The body was already like that, too,” Von said. “When we got here, I mean.”

“Uh huh,” Sammy said without tone. “Funny how that worked out, seeing as how it was perfectly fine when I walked past a few minutes ago . . . the body perfectly upright, the entrails neatly in place . . . the tube sock correctly oriented.”

Von remained silent, waiting for his associate to volunteer a predictably pathetic excuse. Greg did the same. An awkward silence stretched its legs.

“What’s that you got in your hand, Greg?” Sammy finally asked.

Greg hadn’t looked this surprised since his sister caught him masturbating in the shower (but slightly less so than when she’d hopped in and taken over the shucking responsibilities for him). He struggled for a good answer. What he found was, “Just . . . just some . . . gum. Like you . . . chew?”

Sammy smiled. “So chew then, Greg old buddy. Don’t let me stop you.”

“Yeah, Greg,” Von agreed. “Chew.”

If he’d been lost in the forest before, he was going into the oven now.

“Greg, you have the rare distinction of running over one man’s junk and disemboweling a cadaver while trying to procure a changeling penis, all within about 30 minutes,” Sammy said. “And you ruined a work of art in the process. So if you don’t start chewing in the next ten seconds, I’m going to tear you a brand new asshole, ‘son.’ And I will use all my surgical know-how to make sure that you live long enough to use it, too.”

Greg chewed. It may not have even been the most unpleasant experience in his life from the layman’s perspective (lest we forget other extracurricular activities with corpses, though female, whose every orifice he had lunched on, and ravenously at that), but it was altogether more humbling.

“Oh, hell,” he said between mouthfuls. “It’s . . . it’s really chewy, guys . . . Christ on a unicycle, it’s so damn
chewy
…”

It was not hyperbole. His jaws worked mechanically, piston-like, to conclude this humiliation fast enough to break the sound barrier, but the morsels resisted. They bred in his mouth, tough as gristle with the texture of the fat on a steak. He could almost visualize each part as he chomped . . . the shaft, the head, the urethra, the veins, the erectile tissue. His own size seemed to wilt between his legs with each bite.

He cried as he ate.

“Fantastic,” Sammy complimented. “You took it like man, Greg. I didn’t think you had it in you . . . although I guess you do now, don’t you? So now that I trust you two dopes have been exorcised of your little substitution fantasy, you can get your asses on the horn and start making demands to Mrs. Rochester. Unless vibrator companies have jumped into the telemarketing biz, you’ll be the most welcome call of the night.”

Greg’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. He gagged miserably, but held it down.

“Hurry up and swig some Listerine, dickbreath,” Sammy said. “The time is later than you think.”

Part III: Embryonic Necropsy and Devourment

“Make sure you dumbasses hit star-six-seven when you call,” Sammy admonished.

Von stood at the kitchen counter with the portable phone in his hand, reading over the “script” in front of him. Greg had prepared it, which in retrospect probably wasn’t the best idea. Somehow it had seemed more important for Von to watch the latest installment of a porn series called
Gaping Anus
the other night rather than iron out the script with him. It was the 24th volume, but he had to hand it to them—they were finding ways to keep it fresh. You never knew which gal would start out with a nickel-sized rectal circumference that wound up more like the ball from a shot put three hours and forty-seven minutes later. It seemed like 4 hours well spent. All Greg had to do was incorporate the points he had outlined. He now understood that the word
Greg
should have stood out to him more in that scenario.

“Haven’t you ever heard of punctuation?” Von finally asked, disgusted.

“Let me see that,” Sammy said and snatched it away. “I don’t know why you wasted your time coming up with this thing. You’re trying to ransom her husband’s junk, not sell her a magazine subscription.” His brow crinkled as he read it for a few seconds, frown deepening. “He’s right, Greg. It’s not exactly Hemingway. This ain’t even
Flowers for Algernon
. If you tried to read this to Mrs. Rochester word for word, she’d tell the police they oughtta narrow their search to guys with Down’s syndrome.”

“Or a retard,” Von said.

Greg made no reply. He stood by the refrigerator, wincing at the sour taste in his mouth. Vomiting would be worse than the actual eating, though; all those masticated chunks of penile debris resurrected. The thought was horrifying, and the prospect felt more and more likely with each slosh of his disturbed stomach juices. He had to eliminate the taste.

“I’ve got to eat something else,” he announced.

“Still hungry?” Sammy chuckled. “We could have Von turn out his pockets.”

Greg opened the refrigerator, staring at the shelves like a man beholding an oasis in the desert. He reached in with both hands and removed a large Tupperware bowl, then started yanking open drawers, looking for a spoon or fork.

“Just help yourself,” Sammy said, irritated.

Von took the script from Sammy and crumpled it up. “Hell with it. I’ll make something up.”

“Couldn’t be any worse. Follow the subject with the predicate and it’ll already be a vast improvement.”

Greg peeled back the Tupperware lid and sank his spoon into a nearly gelatinous concoction of crimson slop and glistening lumps. He filled his mouth with it, grinning idiotically. “Fine eatin’ here, Sammy. What is this, some kind of cobbler?”

“I believe the medical term is ‘spontaneous abortion,’” Sammy replied.

Greg’s grin froze on his face. He looked down at the bowl again, first seeing his rather awe-struck reflection caught by the light above him, and then the true texture of those lumps he’d first taken to be cobbler crust. The truth seemed obvious now. He prodded it with his spoon and discovered a runny film at the surface of the glop, like pond scum.

The amniotic sac . . . or what passed for it in its premature expulsion.

“There may be a few morsels of the placenta left,” Sammy said, matter-of-factly. He could have been talking about the reds in a bowl of M&M’s.

Von had paused with the phone in his hand the instant Sammy said “spontaneous abortion.” He finally dared to speak. “You mean some whore had a miscarriage and squeezed all that slop out of her joytrail? And you tossed it in a bowl and froze it?”

Sammy nodded. “That’s about the size of it.”

Von processed this for a few seconds. “Well, hellfire, Greg, why’re you just standing there staring like that freak in
Sleepaway Camp?
Get me a spoon, too!”

Greg, hand held over his mouth, surrendered the bowl and spoon to Von without a word. He looked rather green around the gills.

“You’re kidding, right?” Von asked, staring at the bowl. “I ain’t using this spoon after you. You just had a dick in your mouth, son! I don’t want no part of that.”

“I rinsed my mouth out,” Greg protested slowly, as though afraid more than words would escape through his lips if he spoke too fast.

Sammy intervened. “Are you two gonna debate dental hygiene all night, or are you gonna get this Rochester bitch on the horn?”

“Right now I’m a bit more interested in how you got ahold of this here tasty little
de
ssert,” Von said. He dipped a thumb into the mess on the outer edge—where Greg’s spoon probably hadn’t explored—and slid it in his mouth. He sucked at it thoughtfully, one eyebrow arched, then moaned approvingly. Some of it remained smeared around his lips like clown make-up.

“How I wound up with a puddle of abortion in my refrigerator? It’s kind of a boring story, really.” Sammy shrugged, but agreed to enlighten. He could have been talking about vacation slides from a trip he hadn’t really enjoyed. “I zapped this primo slut with my stun gun when she left the library, then brought her here. Slapped some meat down on her in so many different ways, I could have made my own cookbook. After a few weeks, her belly started expanding. I figured she was just bloated, but after awhile I realized there was a little Sammy on the way.”

Von frowned. “How do you know she wasn’t already pregnant?”

Sammy paused. “You know, I didn’t even really consider that. She may have been carrying some stranger’s child, at that. Well, I sure am glad that worthless skank is dead now. Got what she deserved.”

“She’s dead?”

“They don’t make ‘em much deader. I was pounding away at her ass like a jackhammer, and then I hear this tearing sound, right? So I pull back and look down, and there’s this . . . Remember how the Play-Doh Factory had that thing where you cranked and all the stuff came out in four or five different clumps? It was like that, it just started oozing out of her and dropping on my lap. Kind of lukewarm. And I was thinking this was all a bit tragic cuz it was my kid—or at least I thought so at the time—o I tried to do the gentlemanly thing and hurry up and finish my nut, right? But she wasn’t making it easy on me. All that thrashing around and resisting—hell, it’s probably what cost her the little bastard in the first place. It was messed up, though, ‘cause it was like every time I sent the battering ram home, more of that shit would squeeze out. To make a long story short, I went off, she went out, and the rest went in a Tupperware bowl to be served to—” He paused here, as though stopping himself from saying more than he intended. “For a special occasion.”

Von caught the subterfuge. “Let’s talk more about the noises in the attic.”

“Yeah!” Greg echoed. “You got cops up there, waiting for us to make our ransom demand?”

“Yes, Greg, that’s precisely it. With a basement practically wallpapered in women I’ve raped, tortured, and killed over the past seven years, the police couldn’t wait to use me to put you two crime lords out of commission. I’m getting a key to the city after your trial.”

“Hey, wait, let’s calm down a second, guys,” Von said. “Can’t you see this whole dick caper thing is tearing us apart? This should be one of the happiest nights of our lives.”

“Von’s right,” Greg said. “This is getting out of hand. I didn’t really believe you had cops up there, Sammy. Sorry.”

Von
hoped
he hadn’t truly believed it, but he had his doubts. There was something more important than that, though. “And now that we’ve established that no one is trying to short-change no one else, what can you tell us about the attic, Sammy?” he asked.

“I can tell you you’ll never see the inside of it if you don’t make that phone call. Wait a second, though.” He left the kitchen and returned a moment later with a cell phone. “Last one I grabbed had this on her, probably so she could call someone in the event of an emergency. Looks like she wasted her money, wouldn’t you say?”

“It still works?”

Sammy handed it to Von, who saw the display was indeed lit up. “Hey, speaking of the recently abducted, we’ve got a present for you in the trunk, Sammy. Assuming she hasn’t suffocated.”

“Same thing happens to her either way,” Sammy assured him. “She can wait.”

Von punched in the Rochesters’ number. “You boys ready to become millionaires?”

Greg looked more like he was ready to puke, but gave a thumbs up anyway.

Celia Rochester answered on the second ring. “Hello?”

“Good evening, Mrs. Rochester. Have you heard from your husband recently?”

“Do you know what time it is? If you’re trying to sell me something, it’s against the law to call this la—”

“Ma’am, I’m not trying to take your mon …” Von stopped short. “I mean, I haven’t broke the law …” He stopped short again. “Look, this probably isn’t what you think it is.”

“Whatever it is, the answer is still the same. He’s not here. He’s away on business.”

Von laughed. “Is that what he told you? I regret to inform you he was actually seen in the company of cheap women this evening at a local establishment called the Electra Complex.”

Her voice turned hard. “Was he indeed?”

“Yes, ma’am, and—”

“That son of a bitch! That depraved, immoral, perverted little son of a bitch! He
promised
me never again!”

Her voice was now loud enough that Greg and Sammy could hear her clearly. Von held the receiver away from his head.