Consumed- The Complete Works

by Kyle M. Scott

  He moved away from the wall, repelled by it, just as he was repelled by his own excitement.

  He was every bit the pathetic wimp they took him for - a dumb kid with no balls, who’s only chance to be near a girl was to listen up against a wall while things were done to her by another.

  It was hard to determine who disgusted him more.

  His brother.

  Or himself.

  And there it was again, playing over and over in his head like a mantra.

  I hate him.

  I hate him.

  He deserves to die.

  All he does is ruin my life.

  All he does is cause me pain.

  Hatred welled inside Josh, shaking his small frame where he stood. Years and years of torment, humiliation, helplessness and pain, coursing through his veins like liquid fire. In the theatre of his mind’s eye, a hundred awful memories lit up the darkness like a horror movie made just for him.

  A cavalcade of degradation.

  His brother, sitting on his face, expelling wind.

  His brother, laughing as he wet himself in the school playground, only a boy of eight, while the whole school – boys and girls – all joined in.

  His brother, ripping up a drawing he’d lovingly etched, depicting the recently deceased family cat. A cat Josh had loved and adored above all else. The last and most precious thing he had, with which to remember his pet.

  On and on the memories played.

  And always at their centre…his brother tormenting him.

  The poisonous cyclone in a whirlwind of cruelty.

  Making Josh’s life a misery.

  A living hell.

  Well, Josh thought. No more.

  He strode to his bedroom door, opened it, and made for downstairs. Ignoring the moans as he passed Gerry’s room, he took the stairs two at a time. Then he passed through the living room and into the kitchen, where the afternoon sun pierced through the windows and kissed his pale skin.

  He walked past the breakfast table, past the sink and past the fridge and when he reached the walk-in cupboard, he took a deep breath.

  Then he stepped inside.

  He’d find what he needed in there.

  After all, it was where Dad kept his all his tools.

  Josh opened Gerry’s bedroom door, ever so slowly, quietly as he could. Despite the animalistic sounds coming from within, fear gripped him.

  If Gerry caught him entering his room…

  Especially while he was doing what he was doing to Brandi.

  That would be it.

  Game over.

  His older brother would beat the living shit out of him, then force him to explain to their parents that he’d been attacked by a gang of local thugs. Or fell over. Or took a tumble off of his BMX…

  It was always something.

  And they always believed their golden child.

  The door was silent as he pushed it open, just a fraction.

  He peered inside, feeling immediately repulsed.

  The first thing he saw was his brother’s naked ass, rising and falling rhythmically as he thrust in and out of the girl beneath him. Her legs were splayed to either side of Gerry’s, feet pressed against the bed, hips high, urging her lover forward, deeper.

  Brandi’s face was buried beneath Gerry’s chest as he grunted like a wild beast, his sweat-soaked flesh meshing with her own as she moaned and writhed and bucked.

  Josh opened the door a little wider. Just enough so that he could enter the room.

  He approached the bed, treading as softly as he could, his eyes never leaving the two rutting bodies on the bed. He stepped over the bed-sheets discarded on the carpet; his heart thundered in his chest as though aching to smash free.

  Gerry was biting into her neck as Josh moved behind him. His brother thrust harder, angrily, into Brandi. Josh imagined he could hear his brother’s heartbeat meet and match his own. The stench of sweat and something else, musky and sweet, hung in the air around the rutting couple.

  If his brother turned around now…

  There was no going back, even if he wanted to.

  No going back at all.

  Josh raised the hammer above his head, freezing only for the tiniest fraction of a second.

  Then he brought it down on the back of Gerry’s skull.

  The dull thud as steel connected with bone sounded more satisfying than all the Saturday morning cartoon theme tunes in the world.

  Combined.

  Gerry was coming round.

  That was good.

  For a while there, while he was positioning his brother in the chair, Josh was worried he’d hit the bastard too hard. Maybe killed him.

  That would have been disastrous.

  His brother had to see what was about to transpire. He had to see it with his own two eyes. Take it all in.

  He watched with muted interest as Gerry began blinking the blood from his eyes. Squinting as though looking into the sun, his eyes met Josh’s.

  Josh smiled.

  “Whuhthefuhsis?” Gerry mumbled.

  Maybe I did hit him too hard.

  You didn’t. He’s alive, isn’t he?

  Yes, he was alive, but it looked like the hammer blow had knocked out of his skull everything that made Gerry, well…Gerry.

  Having him brain-dead was no different to having him dead-dead.

  Shit.

  Again, his anxieties were alleviated, when his older brother licked the drying blood from his lips, focused his baleful gaze on Josh, and said, “What…the…fuck…faggot? I’ll murder you, you…little cunt.”

  Yeah…Gerry was still in there.

  And it appeared he hadn’t yet grasped the severity of his predicament.

  Josh’s mood brightened. He flashed Gerry a huge, beaming grin.

  “There you are, big brother. There you are…”

  “What…you…doing…you…little…shit…?”

  “I’m snapping, Gerry. That’s all. I’m snapping.”

  Gerry’s eyes were clearing now, the dark fog of oblivion dispersing like black clouds as consciousness dawned.

  He looked around himself, finally taking in his situation. Slowly beginning to understand his plight.

  The first thing Gerry’s eyes fell on were the ropes that bound him to the sturdy wooden breakfast chair. His legs were bound roughly together at the ankles. His wrists secured to the arms of the chair.

  Instinctually, Gerry immediately struggled against the binds, but soon realized it was no use. Josh had made sure there would be no way for him to release himself. He understood that, should Gerry get free, he’d be beaten to within an inch of his life; perhaps even a few inches more than that.

  His brother soon figured out he was trapped.

  Then, in an amazing feat of selflessness for such a cold-hearted, cruel and petty bastard, he slowly took in the environment around him, mumbling her name: Brandi.

  On the bed, Brandi writhed, screaming a muffled plea for help. Her eyes bugged out of her head as she fought to form words around the filthy gym-sock Josh had stuffed into her mouth.

  Her arms were splayed above her head, bound to the headboard of Gerry’s bed with small plastic tie-wraps.

  Her legs remained free. She twisted and flailed like a docked fish, howling muffled obscenities at Josh as he knelt down to meet his brother’s face, up close.

  Gerry’s rage was quickly being eclipsed by terror. His eyes burned with dread as he saw what Josh was holding in his right hand.

  Josh savored the fear.

  The misery.

  The horror.

  In the wide, black, startled pupils of his lifelong tormentor, he saw himself reflected back, and for the first time in his lonely, unimportant life, he liked what he saw.

  Confidence.

  Determination.

  Purpose.

  “You beginning to get it yet?” he asked Gerry.

  “Get what, you little bitch?!” Gerry was trying so hard to sound tough. Nonplussed. In
control. The tremor in his voice betrayed him. “I’m gonna fucking slaughter you when I get out this chair.”

  “When you get out the chair? What makes you think you’re getting out the chair, Gerry?”

  The golden boy was cracking. Josh watched intently as his siblings lips quivered as his own had so many times before. Gerry wasn’t a man now. He wasn’t a tormentor stood in Josh’s doorway with a malicious grin, delighted at his own cruelty…

  He was a boy. A weak, scared little boy, teetering over the precipice of pure terror.

  He was helpless, and he knew it.

  “Let me go!” he demanded, his voice cracking from low to high. It reminded Josh of his own voice a little…the way it changed in pitch.

  With Josh, though, it was puberty.

  With Gerry, it was the tremulous dawning of his new reality.

  “Let me fucking go!” he barked; his muscles tensing in his arms, his biceps rippling as he fought once more against his restraints.

  “Give it up, Ger.” Josh said, flatly.

  On the bed, Brandi continued her ridiculous flailing, cursing as she battled against her binds.

  “What the fuck are you doing?!” Gerry screamed as tears flowed over the lids of his eyes.

  Josh had never seen his brother cry before. Never in all his years. All the tears that had been shed in their happy home, had been shed by Josh himself.

  Years of them.

  Rivers of them.

  Josh reached forward, ran his forefinger along his brother’s cheek. He savored the tear’s wetness, just for a moment, before he slipped his finger into his mouth. It tasted salty. No different to the taste of his own tears, really.

  “Are you deaf, Gerry I told you what I was doing?” he finally answered his captive. “I’m snapping…”

  Gerry sputtered blood down his chin as he huffed. “You’re already all the way snapped, you fucking nut!”

  Josh raised the hammer, swiveled it in his palm like he’d seen so many of his heroes do with their swords and guns and knives. He felt something right then he’d never felt before in all his life…

  He felt…cool.

  “You’re not getting it, Ger, are you?”

  Gerry growled something indecipherable.

  Josh gripped the hammer tight.

  “That’s not the kind of ‘snapping’ I’m talking about…”

  With a grunt, Josh swung the hammer down onto Brandi’s ankle, snapping the bones like brittle twigs.

  Brandi wailed, urine pooling out from between her legs as she instinctively pulled them closer to her body, minimizing the target as best she could. Her foot flopped around beneath her already blackening ankle as Josh swung wildly. He caught her on the toes of the dangling foot with the second blow, grinning as he heard the bones crack. His heart thundered as the toes cracked under the hammer’s vicious force. Blood immediately filled the twisted digits, turning them a sickly black-blue. Brandi’s toenail – the large one – must have been clipped by the hammer’s edge. It hung by a few tiny fleshy strands, dangling like a grisly decoration from her seeping, ruined toe.

  Behind the sock-gag, she howled like a beaten down dog.

  Josh grew hard.

  Ignored it.

  Focused on the matter at hand.

  His brother was screaming something. It all sounded a little distant, as though he was hearing the foul-mouthed protestations through thick glass.

  He turned to face Gerry, lowering the hammer, letting it swing. He gave his sibling his full attention.

  Brandi would wait.

  “What’s that, Ger?” he asked.

  “Why are you doing this!?” Gerry wailed, crying openly now. A savage pride welled in Josh’s heart, seeing the golden child in so fragile a state.

  “Why…WHY?!” he shouted, spittle peppering Gerry’s face as he leaned in close. He lowered his tone. “This is about my toys, Gerry. It’s about your toy, too.”

  “I don’t…”

  “I know you ‘don’t’…you’re too fucking stupid to grasp it, so I’ll make it simple for you, big brother. It’s not rocket science, but try to keep up.”

  Gerry nodded, complaint. His gaze darted between the bawling, writhing Brandi, and the blood flecked hammer held in Josh’s hand.

  “You’ve bullied me for my whole life, Gerry. Mum and Dad don’t see it. They don’t see what you are. They never will. You’re a small, cruel, vicious parasite and you don’t deserve all you have.

  “And you have it all, Gerry…you have the world in your hands. Girls, the car, the friends…it’s all yours and it always has been. You took it for granted, Ger. All of it. Like it was your fucking birth-right to be adored.

  “You know what I had, Ger, while you had your great fucking life…? I had my toys.”

  Gerry’s frown was almost comical.

  Josh went on. “That was all I had. Nothing else. You took any chance at happiness from me like it was nothing. Made me miserable my whole life just because you could. And I put up with it. I had to. And the only way I could put up with it, was by having my action figures to comfort me.

  “They were my friends, Ger. I loved them. They were all I had, and you knew it.”

  Gerry was shaking his head – a surreal gesture of denial. Josh wondered momentarily what it was that his brother was attempting to deny to himself.

  His cruelty?

  His malice?

  His own well-earned predicament?

  It didn’t matter, Josh surmised.

  “I’m…sorry…” Gerry whimpered. “Don’t hurt her anymore.”

  There it is.

  He does care for her.

  Good.

  Josh grinned. “You’re not sorry yet, but you will be. You cracked and snapped my action figures like they were trash. You took my precious things, and you turned them into useless, lifeless, broken things.

  “You broke my toys, Ger. And now I’m going to break yours…I’m going to break your ‘toy’ till it’s as useless as you made mine”

  “No…no...”

  Josh rose to his feet.

  He felt like Thor, the mighty god of thunder, as he held aloft the hammer. He brought it down on Brandi’s kneecap. The bone pulverized beneath the blow. Blood welled. Muffled screams filled the room.

  It didn’t sound right.

  Josh reached forward and removed the filthy sock from her mouth. She gasped for air, coughing,

  Josh raised the hammer.

  Her left hand this time. The heavy hammer caught her on the knuckles, crunching bone and flesh. He struck again. This time, hearing the bones succumb, relishing the way her misshapen fingers pointed in wild directions, brutalized and mangled. Brandi screamed her heart out; begged for mercy, for god, and for her big, brave Gerry to save her.

  Gerry wasn’t saving shit.

  Josh swung again, this time, driving the hammer’s solid steel head into the small of her hip with a savage crunch.

  The sounds coming from her now were barely human.

  “How does it feel to have your things broken, Gerry?”

  Gerry was crying for their mother.

  “Don’t cry for Mummy yet, Gerry,” Josh mocked, licking sweat from his lips. “We haven’t got to the best part yet.”

  A dark, wet stain flowered from Gerry’s crotch.

  Lots of people wetting themselves, this morning, Josh mused.

  “Come on, Ger. You know what the most fun part is, don’t you? It’s not maiming someone else’s things that brings the most pleasure…”

  In his mind, dark wraiths floated.

  Dead things made of dead materials.

  He-Man. Skeletor. Luke Skywalker. Batman.

  A funhouse of plastic treasures, all broken.

  All ruined.

  Josh took a deep breath. “The most fun part, Gerry… is obliterating someone else’s things…”

  Josh gripped the hammer in both hands. He rose, stood over Brandi as her moon-sized baby blues shone with stark terror.
/>   He brought the hammer down hard on her face.

  Her nose exploded like a ripe tomato, as the bludgeoning hammer connected. Blood and snot sprayed from her flattened nostrils. Bone, splintered and spiked, pierced the skin from within, jutting out from the flattened mess where her pretty nose had been. Beneath her eyes, deep, dark bruises formed. She spat blood from her mouth, trying her best not to choke on it.

  Taking a pained, sputtering breath, she opened her mouth to scream, or plead, or beg.

  Josh swung the hammer down on her open mouth, hard as he could.

  The teeth shattered as the steel smashed through them. Tiny broken shards of her molars clung to her bleeding, caved-in gums. To Josh, they looked like little white boats, clinging to the surface of a red, churning sea. Brandi gurgled thick blood in her throat, swallowing her own teeth like bitter pills as she fought to breathe.

  His brother cursed and roared and wept.

  He raised the hammer high as he could.

  Brought it down with all his might.

  He’d meant to hit her on the jaw this time.

  He’d wanted to see it crumple.

  He missed his target.

  Instead, the flat, solid head of the hammer came down on her right eye-socket. The bone around her eyeball caved inward. The eyeball itself turned up into her head.

  Fun!

  He struck again. Same place. Harder this time.

  The eyeball erupted in a splash of jellied mulch and blood.

  Her one good eye stared at Josh, questioning.

  She was still in there.

  Even more fun.

  He swung at her forehead.

  Watched it dent inwards.

  Swung again.

  Marveled at the way her skull opened up, and how the brain seemed to push out of the wound, as though seeking escape. It was a different color than he’d imagined.

  He swung again.

  The blow hit the brain itself this time. Josh giggled as red, shiny chunks of matter spurted from the sides of the brutalized skull.

  Another swing.

  Then again.

  Then again.

  By the time Josh had worn himself out, her head was little more than a viscous soup of brain matter, splintered skull and blood.

  It looked like someone had spilled half-cooked bolognaise all over Gerry’s pillow. Steam rose from the raw, mangled flesh as Josh finally dropped the hammer, breathless. It fell to the bedroom carpet with a dull thud as he leaned in close to the pulverized meat above Brandi’s neck, studying his brother’s most precious thing.