Becoming...

by Jacob Rayne

  Deep in shock, he vomited on the floor of his living room.

  Another scream from Otis echoed around the room, making him jump.

  Unable to listen to any more, he pulled the phone cable out of the wall-socket and sat in the corner, crying and trembling, fearing for his life.

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  ‘The bastard’s hung up on us,’ Luke said, disappointed. He was surprised that Otis wasn’t dead judging by the amount of blood that was pouring out of him.

  He re-dialled Johnny T and again the answer phone came on. Luke continued sawing until he had cut through Otis’s wrist.

  Otis was now in such agony that he couldn’t keep quiet, but for the entranced Luke it was like the scene had been muted.

  Luke lit the blow torch and held it above Otis’s severed wrist, enjoying the pained look on his face.

  Luke made sure that the answer phone was still taping his ‘message’, then turned the lit blowtorch to Otis’s wrist. Beads of sweat stood out on Otis’s forehead as the blowtorch drew closer. He tried to hide his stump from the searing flame.

  Luke laughed at how pathetic he looked. Otis screamed when the blowtorch began to sear his flesh. The skin turned red and started to blister, making a horrible crackling sound as it burnt. The thick smell of Otis’s burning flesh filled his nostrils.

  Luke laughed as he played the blowtorch over Otis’s screaming face.

  He turned the blowtorch off and let Otis’s pained utterings settle for a while, then called Johnny T’s answerphone again.

  ‘You want to play?’ Luke asked the clown.

  ‘No, man. You’re an artist. It’s a privilege to watch you at work.’

  Luke snorted laughter and picked up his kitchen knife. Otis stared up at him with eyes as white and prominent as golf balls.

  ‘Y’know, Otis,’ Luke said, his tone of voice making it obvious that he was smiling. ‘I’m reminded of an incident about eighteen months ago. Let’s see if I can refresh your memory.’ He paused dramatically, like an actor trying to think of his next line. ‘Ah, yes. A friend of yours said, “What about cutting off his lips and making him eat them?” But you had a better idea, didn’t you?’

  The clown looked at Luke, unsure of where this was going. He enjoyed the pain hewn into the youth’s features. The masked man was clearly disturbed, and was getting something off his chest here.

  Somehow, Otis’s face dropped further. This confirmed the identity of the killer beyond doubt.

  ‘Do you remember what you did to me, Otis?’ Luke asked, his tone now deadly serious.

  Otis gulped and nodded. His eyes were glued to Luke.

  ‘Now, I’m not sure if you know what I did when I got home, but I’ll enlighten you.’

  Otis’s whole body trembled.

  ‘After you tattooed my face, I went home and stared in the mirror. Then, using a knife very similar to the one in my hand, I cut off most of my face to get rid of the tattoo that you had put on me.’

  Otis let out a shrill cry when he realised Luke’s intent. The clown whooped and clapped his hands together. Neither Luke nor Otis paid him any attention.

  ‘Do you see where I’m going with this, Otis?’ Luke said, the smile back on his face.

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  Otis nodded, making little whimpering noises in his throat.

  Laughing, Luke moved in. Otis tried to crawl away, but his shattered legs were useless.

  The raw stump on his arm blazed with agony when he used it to try to drag himself away. He let out a forlorn cry as Luke sat on his chest.

  Luke savoured the panicked look on Otis’s face as he brought the knife closer with agonising slowness.

  Alfred watched with an immense grin. It felt like all of his birthdays had come at once.

  Luke took another few seconds to enjoy his enemy’s anguish, then he brought the knife down to Otis’s right temple.

  ‘I started up here,’ Luke said, pressing the blade hard against Otis’s face so that a bead of blood snuck out of the wound.

  Otis let out a cry. Then Luke traced a path round Otis’s eye in the same way he had his own.

  Otis screamed, his stump flapping towards his face in an attempt to hold the wound.

  Luke moved the knife slowly, wanting Otis to feel every millimetre of the blade’s progress.

  After what seemed like an eternity to Otis, Luke had taken the blade in a full circle of Otis’s right eye. ‘Then I grabbed the skin and tore it off,’ Luke said, his hands taking hold of the loose, blood-slicked skin at Otis’s temple.

  He paused for a second, to let Otis aware of what was going to happen, then he tore it loose. Part of it got stuck, so he stabbed the knife in and worked the skin free.

  Otis screamed and writhed beneath Luke. Blood coursed down his face.

  The clown watched, open-mouthed.

  Luke held him down for a minute, letting the pain fully sink in.

  ‘Please, just fucking kill me!’ Otis screamed.

  Luke laughed. The death mask around his real mouth moved out of sync with the noise of the laughter, creating a deeply disturbing sight for Otis. Luke’s eyes looked dead. The blood-spattered mask was a vision of hell.

  ‘This is the last face you will ever see,’ Luke told him, again the mouths of mask and face not quite in unison, further adding to the nightmarish scene in which Otis found himself.

  Luke looked blankly into Otis’s eyes, feeling no remorse, no pity, only hate.

  Without warning, he thrust the blade through Otis’s left cheek. A jet of blood sprayed into Luke’s face.

  He laughed insanely as Otis convulsed in agony, his screams echoing around the grounds of the house.

  ‘I then sawed through my cheek and cut off the smile that you had put on me,’ Luke said.

  Otis screamed as the knife continued its path down towards his mouth.

  Each inch of its progress sent more blood spewing from the wound. The thick gore flooded into Otis’s mouth and nose, choking him with his own life fluid. He tried to scream but it came out in a liquid gurgle.

  ‘Are we having fun yet, Otis?’ Luke laughed.

  Otis tried to beg for his life but the blood filling his mouth and throat strangled his cry.

  Otis faded in and out of consciousness for the next few minutes, screaming and flailing when he was awake. Blood pumped from the wounds in his face.

  He came round for the last time, his bulging, terrified eyes staring up at Luke who had just finished tearing away the left side of his cheek and his upper lip. The pain barely registered now.

  ‘It’s looking good, Otis,’ he said, then started laughing again.

  Otis let out a weak cry that sent more blood bubbling out of his mouth and nose.

  The maniacal laughter echoed around Otis’s head. Though his eyes were now too weak to stay open, in his mind’s eye he could still ‘see’ the mask moving out of time with Luke’s mouth. It was his final, terrified thought.

  ‘I said it’s looking good, Otis,’ Luke said.

  Otis did not reply this time: the last of his blood had drained onto the paving stones.

  Luke neither noticed, nor cared.

  He laughed and gripped Otis’s head with his free hand. With his other hand, he continued his reconstruction of Otis’s face.

  When he’d recreated his own facial wounds on Otis, he stared, entranced, at the body.

  When he came out of his trance he noticed that the clown had gone back into the house. He sawed Otis’s head off his neck, wrapped the body and dumped it in the pool.

  Johnny T’s answer phone tape was full of Otis’s misery and terror.

  Luke was going to make sure that the gang leader heard every second of it.

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  Luke woke to find it was four am and still dark.

  He went up to Peth Vale, leaving the bag containing Otis’s head in his car, and knocked on the clown’s door.

  Alfred took an eternity to answer and seemed less than impressed at being wok
en.

  ‘I’ll do this one,’ he muttered. ‘But after that I gotta get some fucking sleep.’

  They drove around until they located the houses of Johnny T and Tommy, the two remaining members of the Marshton Eight.

  Choosing to visit Johnny T first, Luke looked the house up and down, then unzipped the sports bag and looked at Otis’s severed head. He had been an ugly motherfucker – lucky that Luke had killed him, to be honest.

  ‘What’s the plan here?’ Alfred asked.

  Luke pointed to the open skylight on Johnny T’s roof. ‘I’ll climb up on the flat roof near the bathroom and get up to the skylight and open the door for you.’

  ‘Thank fuck for that. The flat roof’d be a piece of piss but I’d never have got up on that roof.’

  ‘Just keep an eye out in case there are more of them.’

  Leaving the sports bag hidden in the back yard, Luke carefully climbed up the wall and onto the flat roof, which he used to climb up the cast iron drain-work to get onto the roof.

  He inched his way across the wet tiles, trying to be as quiet but as fast as he could – he was easy to spot up here. He tugged at the skylight, smiling to himself as it lifted, then carefully climbed in.

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  He looked around Johnny T’s house, allowing his eyes time to adjust to the darkness.

  There were three doors on the upstairs landing. One was clearly the bathroom as it had a lock on it. One door was open. Luke crept to it and peered inside. It looked like some kind of office; there were files on the shelves and many metal filing cabinets.

  Luke silently slid open one of the drawers. Inside were hundreds of small bags containing fragrant green herbs.

  So, it seemed Johnny T was dealing drugs.

  Luke smiled, reckoning he could use this to his advantage. He looked through all of the drawers, finding a set of electronic scales and a wide range of drugs, all packaged up and ready to sell.

  One drawer in particular caught his eye. There were a few small vials – they looked like the tubes that the doctor used for urine samples – which were labelled ‘Special K’ and contained a clear liquid.

  Luke knew that this was ketamine and reckoned this could be of use to him.

  A small key hung on a nail above the cabinet. This unlocked the next row of cabinets. In the second drawer down he found some hypodermic needles. He unwrapped one and filled it up with the drug.

  He crept along the passageway to the third door and slowly turned the handle. The door creaked as he opened it.

  Luke silently cursed and ducked back behind the wall. He waited, his heart almost pumping out of his chest, then looked through the doorway.

  Johnny T slept on while Luke made his way across the darkened room. He was halfway across the room when a floorboard creaked.

  Johnny T stirred and turned towards the doorway.

  With a feeling of dread coming over him, Luke realised that he had been spotted.

  Johnny T sat up in bed, grabbing a flick knife off his bed-side table. While he fumbled the knife open, Luke dived at him and punched him in the face.

  Before Johnny T could react, Luke twisted the knife out of his hand and stabbed the needle into his neck. His thumb pushed the plunger down.

  Johnny T struggled wildly, hitting Luke in the face and driving him back. The blow made Luke angry and he slugged Johnny who threw up his hands in defence, then suddenly stopped.

  The drug had taken effect quicker than Luke had expected. Luke refilled the syringe and injected Johnny T with another two doses – he was a big man and Luke wanted to make sure he had drugged him sufficiently.

  The effect of the Ketamine left Johnny T frozen on the bed.

  Luke searched downstairs and found the answer phone, still unplugged. He brought it upstairs and plugged it in. The device beeped and declared that there were fifteen new messages.

  Luke turned the volume on the machine to full and pressed ‘Play.’

  Otis’s final moments of misery echoed around the room.

  Johnny T lay, conscious but paralysed, forced to endure every scream, every tear, every ragged, agonised breath of his friend’s torment. The colour drained out of his face.

  Luke went downstairs, leaving Johnny T to his recorded symphony of screams. He found a key to the front door, unlocked it and beckoned Alfred in.

  He took Otis’s head out of the bag and brought it inside as a surprise for Johnny T.

  They both laughed at the thought of the gang leader finding the mutilated head – especially after he had endured the tape containing his friend’s torture.

  They waited in the front room until Johnny T could move again.

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  When the paralysing effects of the Ketamine wore off, Johnny T, traumatised by the tape of Otis’s suffering, dragged himself off the bed. His eyes were wide and staring, his legs tingling as the feeling flooded back into them.

  Now that the answer phone tape had finished, he could hear the TV downstairs.

  Instinct told him that he needed to get the shotgun from behind the settee in the front room and get the fuck out of the house, in case the guy with the dead face came back.

  His skin crawling, he moved downstairs. The TV gradually grew in volume as he neared the front room.

  Fear raked icy fingers down his spine when he saw Luke sat on the settee, swigging a beer and watching TV.

  ‘Come in, sit down, let’s discuss the tape,’ he said, without looking round. It sounded to Johnny T like he was smiling.

  As Johnny T moved into the doorway to the front room, he saw Otis’s mutilated head sat next to Luke on the settee. He recoiled in horror at the gruesome sight.

  ‘You should see your face,’ Luke laughed.

  Johnny T’s eyes darted to the gun. Luke leapt to his feet and saw the shotgun leaning against the wall behind the settee.

  As Johnny T lunged for the gun, Luke kicked him savagely, his shin connecting with the gang leader’s face in a typical Thai boxing roundhouse kick.

  The impact knocked Johnny T off his feet, but he got up almost as fast as he had fallen and punched Luke hard in the face, sending him reeling back.

  Johnny T grabbed the shotgun and ran to the front door. Heaved it open.

  In front of him was a big, blood-spattered clown smoking a cigarette. A huge black grin was painted on his face. He gurgled laughter like a broken drain and moved towards the terrified Johnny T.

  Johnny slammed the door shut, knocking the clown back with the force of the slam, and ran upstairs, terrified.

  Luke spat blood onto the carpet and chased him, furious at himself for not seeing the gun until it was almost too late.

  It was lucky Johnny T wasn’t thinking straight, or he would’ve pulled the trigger and taken out him and the clown.

  Luke kicked the bathroom door, splintering the lock away from the frame.

  The door bounced back as it hit the makeshift barricade that Johnny T had created.

  Johnny T let out a cry of terror and continued digging around behind the bath panel for the box of shotgun shells that he had hidden there. He cursed, realising he was shit out of luck as he saw that there were only two shells remaining. If only he and Otis hadn’t wasted them shooting at squirrels down the park last weekend.

  He swung the bathroom window open and ducked under it. The door behind him again brayed against the cabinet he had used to brace the doorway.

  As he moved out of the bathroom, he saw the grinning clown running across the flat roof towards the open window. A blood-stained cleaver glinted in his hand. He let out a maniacal laugh as he saw Johnny T.

  Johnny T was too scared to even pull the trigger. He stood for a second, too terrified to move, as the clown raced towards him.

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  Whimpering with fear, Johnny T hauled himself back through the window, landing in a heap on the bathroom floor.

  The door slammed against the cabinet again, making him scream.

  ‘Hey, Jo
hnny,’ Luke laughed. ‘We’re gonna cut your fucking face off like we did to Otis.’

  Johnny T whimpered again. He managed to slam the window shut just as the clown reached it.

  The clown’s face appeared at the window, his black grin contorted and enlarged by the frosted glass. He let out a high cackle that chilled Johnny T’s blood.

  The clown’s fists slammed against the window, leaving slick trails of blood down the glass.

  Johnny T wanted to curl up and die. He knew he had two shells, one chance to take out each of the leering madmen who were intent on slaying him. He snacked the shotgun and aimed it at the window.

  The clown loomed large, filling the whole window. Johnny T smiled, reckoning it was damn near impossible to miss.

  The shotgun discharged, shattering the glass and letting the cold night air flood in.

  ‘Have that, ya fucker,’ Johnny T roared, his sense of triumph momentarily taking over his blind terror.

  The door shoved open behind him. Johnny T screamed at the sight of Luke’s sinister death mask. Up close, it was even more disturbing than he had thought.

  Johnny T turned from the horrid apparition forcing its way through the open door and ran to the window.

  The clown couldn’t possibly have survived a blast at such close range. He peered out of the window and almost jumped out of his skin when the clown popped up in front of him.

  ‘Missed me,’ he laughed.

  Johnny T ducked back inside the bathroom.

  Luke was almost through the door.

  The clown was most of the way through the window.

  Johnny T had only one shell and after that he had to fight off one or both of the hellish freaks unarmed.

  Deep down, he knew he’d never survive. He’d heard every second of what they had done to Otis and wanted no part in that. No, better to go out quick and painless. He tripped back over the edge of the bath as he stepped away from the clown.

  ‘Fuck you both,’ he screamed, jamming the barrel of the shotgun into his mouth.

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