The Late Night Horror Show (24 page)

Because how could he ever live with the knowledge that he had butchered Marie?

He should have guessed it from the beginning. He saw that now. How obvious it was. It was tragically absurd that he’d ever managed to convince himself some stranger had come into their apartment and done those awful things to Marie while leaving him completely unscathed. He had blinded himself to the truth. The massive quantity of alcohol he’d consumed was largely to thank for that, but now he was as sober as he had ever been and there would never again be any hiding from what he had done.
 

The only solace available now was the sweet oblivion of death. He had no doubt these sick bastards would grant him that release eventually. But they clearly intended to stretch the process out as long as possible.

He sat at a round kitchen table. Long, thick nails had been hammered through his hands, pinning them to the table’s surface. The flat heads of the nails rested flush with his bloody flesh. He was missing three fingers at this point, two from the left hand and one from the right. The stumps of his severed fingers were sickening blackened lumps. One of the guys, a tall blond guy the others called Rob, had cauterized the wounds with a welder’s torch. A gorgeous young woman with hair an even brighter shade of blonde sat in the chair next to him. She was scantily clad, wearing only tight denim cutoffs and a bikini top. Her skin was flawless and her hair looked like she was freshly emerged from an expensive Hollywood salon. Except for the meat cleaver grasped lightly in her slender right hand, she looked like the poster child for the American youth’s beauty ideal.

Sometimes the others called her Mercedes, but mostly they called her Heidi. It was strange how they randomly alternated between the names. John supposed Heidi was her real name. Not that he cared. By any name, she was a sadistic bitch.

Heidi, smiling, lifted the cleaver and placed the sharp edge against the pinky finger on his right hand. “Ready to say goodbye to another little piggy, Johnny?”

John sniffled. “Please…just kill me.”

His crying earned their mocking laughter. Little did they know the primary source of his emotional misery was something other than their heartless cruelty.

In reality, he was no better than them.

The way her flesh yielded so easily to each thrust of the heavy butcher’s knife had come as a revelation. The first time he had rammed it into Marie’s body he’d been consumed with a storm of emotions. Rage, first and foremost. He had been out of work for so long. All he did was sit around the house and drink beer. He was drinking too much and getting too fat. He wouldn’t easily be able to find another job if he kept on being a fat, drunken pig.
 

These were some of the things she told him prior to her death. Normally she was so quiet, and so prone to keep things to herself. But not that day. That day she finally let it out. All her frustrations. All her disappointments. She’d had enough. She was thinking of leaving him. She couldn’t go on living with someone so lazy.
 

And so he had snapped. He was stronger than her. And she was so tiny. She never had any kind of chance. Despite his rage, he felt a great sickness at what he was doing in the beginning. But that subsided as the assault continued. It got easier each time he thrust the knife inside her. And easier still each time he ripped it from her body and saw the blood leap from the rents in her flesh. An unfamiliar, strange kind of madness rode roughshod over him for the duration of the assault. He’d never felt anything like it. And it allowed him to glory—to
gloat
—over the savaging of his wife’s body, which concluded via the pulping of her head with the heavy lamp base.

After it was over, he’d thrown the knife under the bed. And had changed clothes. Somehow, despite the madness and savagery of it all, he’d the presence of mind to do that. He recalled thinking he might concoct some kind of cover story, but realized the forensic evidence would show the truth plainly enough. That was when the wild elation of what he’d done gave way to reality and despair. He sobbed and sobbed, truly regretful for what he’d done. Not knowing what else to do, he drank until he passed out.

Until he couldn’t remember having done that awful, unforgivable thing.

Heidi abruptly raised the cleaver and slammed it to the table. John howled in agony yet again as the sharp blade punched easily through his little finger, separating it from the rest of his hand with a terrible ease that seemed fundamentally wrong. She swept the blade away from his hand, sending the severed digit spinning toward the center of the table. John’s whole body shook from the pain. Then he convulsed again, harder this time, as Rob leaned in with the torch and applied the flame to his bleeding flesh. The agony was searing and for long moments made him forget all about what he’d done to Marie.

The aroma of sizzling meat assailed his nostrils and stung his eyes. But the smell had more than one source. His singed wounds were one, of course. His stomach churned as he watched another girl pluck the pinky finger from the center of the table and carry it over to the stove, where she dropped it in a pan with the rest of his missing fingers. He heard the snap and spark of spattered cooking oil, a sound repeated when she dumped in some seasonings.

Heidi smiled. “Six little piggies left. Why don’t you pick the next one to go, Johnny?”

He glared at her. “Go…to…hell.”

Heidi tossed her long blonde locks and laughed as if she’d never heard anything so funny. “That’s a riot, Johnny. Wanna know why?” She leaned closer to him, her big, leering grin twisting in a way that conveyed a gleeful sadism and savagery. “Because I’ve got a long life ahead of me. I’m young and I’m gonna have a lot more fucking fun before I’m done. But you, Johnny…” she rapped the edge of the cleaver blade against the table, laughing at the wince this elicited from him, “…
you’re
the one who just bought a one-way ticket to hell, you fat bag of shit. Because you know what, Johnny? I do believe in heaven and hell, Lord Satan and God above, and all the rest of that shit, too. But I don’t fear damnation because I know Satan watches over me and sees that I serve him well. I’ll have an exalted place in hell when my time finally comes.
 

“You, though, you’re just a blubbering blob, a fucking waste of humanity. You killed your wife, sure, but Satan sees your regret. Eternal torment awaits ordinary, regretful sinners like you.” Her eyes sparkled with a malign hatefulness. “An eternity that’ll be beginning in just about, oh, five more minutes.”

Despite the enormous pain still gripping him, John listened to the girl’s speech with an increasing fascination of the morbid variety. He couldn’t recall confessing to the murder of his wife out loud, but there’d been many moments of intense, agony-induced delirium, so it was hardly surprising. Also, he’d understood from the outset that he was dealing with a group of uniquely deranged and cruel individuals, but now it was clear they were far more unhinged than he’d even imagined.

“You’re…Satanists?”

Heidi giggled. “Yes, silly.”

The one called Rob lit a cigarette from a pack of Marlboros and blew a cloud of smoke over John’s head. “From birth, boy. Folks raised us to follow the left hand path.” He tucked the pack of Marlboros in a shirt pocket and circled the table to hover over John’s left shoulder. After blowing out another puff of rancid smoke, he held the lit end of the cigarette close to John’s left eye. “Care for a toke, boy?”

John started shaking again. He was certain the kid meant to put the burning end of the thing out in his eye. Despite his terror, a part of him couldn’t help being irked by the way a punk two decades his junior kept calling him “boy”.

“Fuck you…boy.”

Heidi scowled. “He’s a lippy old fuck.”

A grunt from Rob. “Maybe we should cut those lips off the fat son of a bitch.”

Heidi gasped and smacked the table with the cleaver again. “Yes! Somebody get me a razor. I’m cutting his lips the fuck off.”

The other girl moved away from the table, walking out of John’s field of vision. He heard a drawer open somewhere behind him, followed by a sound of various metal things clanking against each other. Then the rooting-around sound stopped and the drawer was thrown shut.
 

Heidi set the cleaver on the table as the other girl stepped back into view and passed her a long, thin piece of metal he recognized as an old-fashioned folding razor, the kind commonly used by men for shaving generations ago.

Heidi flipped the blade open. “Last time I used this I cut a guy’s dick off and fed it to him. What do you think about that, Johnny?”

John looked at her and said nothing. The lit end of the cigarette was still an inch from his eye. He sort of wished Rob would stop fucking around and just jam the thing into his eyeball. Sure, it would be horrible, but at least that misery would distract him for a time from the no doubt even greater level of misery Heidi had in mind. But then Rob tapped ash from the end of the cigarette and pulled it away from his eye.

This should have come as a relief.

It did not.

Heidi leaned close to him again and placed the edge of the razor blade against his throat. “I bet you’d like me to open up your throat and just let you bleed out, huh?”

John sniffled yet again. A snot bubble emerged from one nostril and popped. “Yes. Please.”

Heidi nodded. “Thought so. And maybe I’ll do that.” Her expression turned savage again. “But first those lips are coming off.” A giggle. “And then they’re going down your fat fucking throat.”

A general round of deranged laughter from her siblings.

John opened his mouth to say something.

But a scream emerged in place of words as he felt a hot sting at the nape of his neck.

Rob and his fucking cigarette.

He tried to jerk his head away from the burning sensation, but Rob seized a handful of his hair and held his head in place as he continued to press the red-hot end of the cigarette against his sizzling flesh. Tears leaked from his eyes as the burning seemed to go on and on forever (even though it was likely only a few seconds). At last, Rob flicked the squashed-out cigarette butt to the table and relinquished his grip on John’s hair.
 

John sobbed through the pain, listening while the sadists gathered around him made fun of him for blubbering like a baby. In truth, the pain caused by the extinguishing of a cigarette on his flesh ranked considerably lower on the pain scale than most other things they’d done to him so far, but the cumulative effect of it all was grinding him down. Each fresh assault brought him closer to a breaking point. Soon his mind, unable to endure any more of this hell, would snap utterly.

He hoped so.

Because he didn’t see how he could take any more of this and hang on to anything resembling sanity.

Heidi stood up and pushed her chair back. She glanced at Rob, who was still standing behind him. “Hold his head still again.”

John whimpered.

More tears came.

Rob did as instructed.

Heidi smiled and slipped the edge of the razor inside a corner of his mouth.

And then, gripping his chin, she began to cut.

The door came open and the guy who had chased her through the woods slinked into the room. He was clearly trying to be stealthy and his attention was on the bathroom door the whole time. Though he wasn’t wearing his mask and he’d changed out of his Leatherface-wannabe clothes, Lashon knew he was the chainsaw guy, from his build alone. He had a bulkier and more muscular physique than any of his siblings. No way would she have stood a chance against him in a direct confrontation. So it was a good thing she had moved into position behind the door as it came open, out of his range of vision. She waited until he was fully inside the room and had taken his first step toward the bathroom before pouncing.

She launched herself at him and plunged the big knife into the side of his neck. He let out a squawk and swatted at her as she ripped the blade free of his flesh. A spray of bright red blood jumped from his wound as she reeled backward, avoiding possibly disastrous contact with his flailing fist by mere inches. Blood continued to spurt from the big gash in his throat as he spun about and gaped at her in terrified astonishment.

Lashon jammed the knife into his gut.

Tore it out.

Slammed it in again.

All in the space of just a couple seconds. Her struggle with Ashley had taught her valuable lessons. For instance, in life and death struggles, there is no value in hesitation. And even less in pausing for even an instant to listen to your conscience or weigh moral considerations.

Barry, as she recalled Ashley referring to this guy, took a weaker swat at her, but all this earned him was a vicious slash across an outstretched palm. He squealed in agony and staggered backward, panicked instinct propelling him away from the source of his injuries and pain. Lashon came at him again and his panic made him try to move faster, but his weakened condition soon betrayed him, causing him to trip over his own feet and tumble to the floor with a resounding crash.

Lashon fell upon him, straddling him across the waist as she delivered the death blow, a savage slash across his throat that tore it open nearly to his spine. She felt him twitch beneath her and then go still. Though she knew he was dead, she slashed at his throat again for good measure, nearly decapitating him this time.