by West, Sam
She inched closer, shuffling and wriggling sideways on her bottom.
“And where do you think you’re going?”
She froze on the spot, heart hammering. Only when she realised he was talking to Ryan did she breathe an inward sigh of relief. Ryan was trying to crawl away from his tormentor, he had even made it onto the floor and was attempting to wriggle away on his stomach like the spineless slug he was.
“Fuck it,” Edward grumbled, making his way back over to Megan. If he’d noticed that Hazel had moved, he didn’t say anything. “I won’t beat your sorry arse if you just pick up that damn phone and film me.”
Ryan groaned. His nose was bloody, and the side of his head with the missing earlobe was a gungy, sticky, bloody mess that saturated his t-shirt and dripped blood on the floor. Despite this, he managed to pull himself together. Hazel watched in morbid fascination the way his gaze grew sharper and his body grew still. She could see the mental and physical process of gathering. How he rounded up his scattered thoughts and took control of his battered body once more. With remarkable steadiness, he got to his feet and resumed his position on the sofa like the little hiccup had never been.
It seemed that Ryan badly wanted to live and to fucking hell with the rest of them.
Edward looked at Hazel and rolled his eyes like they were the only two privy to some great joke.
“Now, let’s see, where were we? That’s right, we were filming Megan’s coming of age.”
Just a few feet from where Hazel sat, Edward proceeded to unbutton the fly of his jeans.
Do something, Hazel. For the love of God, you have to do something…
But she didn’t. She couldn’t. What was she supposed to do? Whilst Edward removed the secateurs from Megan’s crotch with a wet plop, and stuck his hard cock into the tight little hole that had once been her vagina but was now a gaping wound you could easily get a fist in, was she supposed to jump on him? The very idea was preposterous.
Edward appeared to be lost in the moment. His hips pistoned into the unconscious girl and his eyes were half-mast in pleasure. His white buttocks, visible above the rumpled waistline of his jeans rocked back and forth, his cock red and shiny every time it came into view.
Never mind what’s in the rucksack, the secateurs are so close. All I have to do is make a lunge for them and stick them in the fucker’s back.
She noticed the switchblade then too, the one she had knocked out of his hand during their scuffle, just beyond Edward’s bobbing, flexed shoulders.
Come on, Hazel. Do it. Kill him.
Good sense won out. She’d never manage it, it was hopeless. The ever-near tears spilled down her cheeks and in that moment she didn’t even try to stop them. Hatred and fear mingled together in her throbbing head as she watched Edward reach his climax. His back stiffened and he moaned, then his entire body went slack.
“Now that’s what you call a split-beaver,” he mumbled into the unconscious girl’s neck. “Not as tight, but really fucking wet.”
When Hazel glanced over at Ryan, he was sitting there white-faced and bug eyed and had obviously filmed the whole lot.
You think that will save you? You’re pathetic.
Edward got to his knees and rubbed his still-exposed, still-hard cock. His hand came away red. He brought it up to his face and inhaled deeply, closing his eyes in apparent bliss as he did so.
“Oh God, that was so good. But fear not, Hazel, it’s you I want, and there’s plenty left for you. Just give me half an hour or so, I am a young man after all. I’m young and fun and full of come.”
He snorted at his own pathetic joke and stuffed his blood and gore splattered cock back inside his jeans. It left a dark wet-patch on the front.
When he crouched down next to her and tilted her head back with a finger under her chin, she couldn’t meet his gaze. The sight of him and the feel of him sickened her to the very core.
“We’re just getting started, baby” he said softly. “From here on in things are going to get really interesting.”
CHAPTER THREE
Thankfully, Megan still looked out of it. Even when Edward produced a pair of pliers from the rucksack and got to work on her nipple. Hazel couldn’t take it anymore and looked away as soon as he placed the curved little blades against the puckered bud. She curled up on her side, facing away from both Edward and her boyfriend who was still filming Edward’s fun and games.
She let the tears fall – anything to drown out Edward’s heavy breathing and the rustling, shuffling sounds. The noise reminded her of one of those annoying, sofa-squirmer types who fidget when you’re trying to watch something on TV. Except Megan wasn’t moving of her own freewill; she was being manipulated and mutilated by a madman.
Edward grunted, followed by a wet, ripping sound that made her clench her teeth together in mental agony.
“Look, the nipple came off real easy.”
Hazel had no intention of looking, and when she heard his footsteps draw near she drew her knees up even higher and closed her eyes even tighter, wishing that she could just die before he could so much as speak to her again.
“I must say, I find your dismissive attitude a little irritating, Hazel. Your boyfriend is joining in the spirit of things, I would really appreciate it if you did too.”
“Leave me alone,” was all she could say, hating herself for begging but no more able to stop than she was able to will herself dead.
“Silly girl, you will do as I say.”
She gasped in shock when she felt a sudden weight on her right shoulder, crushing her left shoulder into the ground. A stinging slap across her face caused her eyes to involuntarily snap open and a breathy, inverted scream rushed past her lips.
“Look at me, Hazel.”
Now he was squeezing her cheeks with the thumb and forefinger of one hand, yanking her head painfully round until it felt as if her neck might snap. When she saw what he dangled in front of her face in his other hand, she thrashed and squirmed and writhed with all the remaining strength she possessed. It had no noticeable effect and Edward rode it out, the fingers steadfastly digging into the flesh of her cheeks.
“Do you want to eat this?” he demanded, spittle flying from his snarling lips. He rubbed Megan’s severed nipple over her clamped shut mouth. “Because I’ll make you fucking swallow that and a whole lot more if you don’t fucking watch what the fuck I’m doing.”
Hazel thrashed her head as much as she could, which wasn’t much considering the tight grip he had on her face. The damn thing felt awful against her mouth – slimy and warm and rubbery. She screamed into her pressed together lips, her mind teetering on the edge of a black abyss of madness. How tempting it would be to plunge off that edge and never have to deal with anything ever again.
“Are you going to behave yourself now? Are you going to watch? Jesus Christ, woman, you are witnessing the making of groundbreaking documentary. Stop being so fucking ungrateful and get with the fucking programme.”
She stopped thrashing and closed her eyes for a second, pulling back her inner-self from the brink of madness. To her relief, she felt the sickening pressure lift from her mouth, swiftly followed by the loosening of his fingers on her face.
“Better. Now sit up and watch, or else.”
Trembling violently from head to foot, Hazel meekly sat up with her legs tucked up beneath her and her hands clasped in her lap. She really didn’t want to find out what ‘or else’ entailed. Because she felt certain that being forced to eat her friend’s nipple would be the least of her problems.
So she watched. She stared hard at Edward leaning over her unmoving friend. She stared so hard that it made her head ache and her vision blur. She stared so hard that she wasn’t actually seeing them at all anymore. The scene became jumbled and meaningless in her brain, and for gratifying moments at a time it was like she was looking right though them.
But sometimes it wasn’t like that. Sometimes she could see them all too clearly. Like when Edward took
out a three-pronged garden fork from the rucksack. He inserted it into the soft area of her flat, lower stomach and dragged the instrument upwards, all the way to the valley between her breasts. For the briefest of seconds it left three perfect track-lines in its wake before they welled with blood that flooded over her once flawless body. Oh yes, she saw that alright before she zoned out into her special, quiet place.
She also saw the dull glint of the rusty hand-held saw he had produced from the rucksack, because that’s when Megan woke up. Thankfully, it wasn’t for long, but while her high-pitched screams lasted Hazel had to close her eyes, despite Edward’s warnings to the contrary.
When her screams abruptly died, all Hazel could hear was an ungodly sawing noise. She forced her eyes open - what choice did she have? Before she could re-visit the empty zone in her head, she bore witness to what he was doing. The hand-held saw was at her neck, dragging back and forth over the delicate skin of her throat. The whole scene was a macabre bloodbath. Edward was now drenched in blood from head to toe and it was impossible to see what colour his clothes had once been. He sawed hard, grunting with the effort, his arm jerking.
Hazel was dimly aware of Megan’s head detaching from her neck. Her mental protective barriers were up, so the grizzly sight of the blood-soaked Edward getting to his feet and casually swinging the head by the side of his leg by the lustrous brown hair didn’t truly penetrate.
“Catch,” he called over to her, lobbing the head in her direction.
She didn’t move in time and it struck her on the side of the head, knocking her sideways. Fresh pain flared in her already throbbing skull and she saw bright lights before the room faded to a grainy black and white. Hazel sank thankfully into the blackest of sleeps.
When she came to, her mind was a momentary blissful blank. Everything hurt though, especially her head and what the hell was she doing lying on the floor..?
“…back to us then?”
The horribly familiar voice made her feel sick with terror, and when her brain caught up, her eyes snapped open. Edward loomed over her, no less blood-splattered than what he had been before she passed out.
“God, I thought you were never going to wake up, you’ve been out for almost half an hour.”
She groaned, and tried to sit up.
Fuck, my head…
Not just her head, she miserably noted. Her muscles ached like she had run a marathon and god, was she thirsty. Vaguely, it struck her as obscene that she should be thinking about how thirsty she was when her best-friend had just been butchered alive.
“Megan,” she croaked, her already strained heart hammering all the harder as the full-force of her nightmare situation rammed home.
“I don’t think Megan can hear you, somehow.”
He bent over to pick something up off the floor and when Hazel saw what it was, she screamed hoarsely.
“Shut the fuck up!” Edward snapped.
Hazel did. She knew what he was capable of, knew very well that the head he was currently holding could very easily be hers….
“ Megan? Can you hear me?” Edward said, raising up Megan’s head by her lush brown hair and speaking into her ear. “How are you feeling right now? Is there anything you want to say to your best-friend? Like, you’re sorry for fucking her boyfriend, perhaps?”
Megan’s wide, lifeless eyes stared down at her, her still prettily rouged mouth open in a silent scream. Hazel whimpered, propelling herself backwards on her rump by her heels.
“Don’t move, bitch, or I’ll…”
“She’s all gone,” Ryan said, suddenly appearing at Edward’s side and effectively cutting off Edward mid-threat.
Hazel noticed he no longer had the smartphone on him and that he looked puffed.
“Good. Although you know it’s rude to interrupt? I was just telling Hazel that if she keeps playing up I’m going to have to cut off your head next.” Ryan visibly paled and Edward smirked. “All the parts are tightly wrapped in bin-bags?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve stashed them at the back of the basement? We don’t want any nasty smells alerting the neighbours too early to the earthly remains of dear Megan, now do we?” Miserably, Ryan shook his head, and Edward turned his full attention back to Megan. “You missed quite a show, Hazel. A lovely little snuff show. Still, I suppose you can watch it later, Ryan did an excellent job of filming it. You’re gonna love how I sawed her up into eight separate pieces. All body parts are now safely stowed in the basement. Apart from the head, of course, I’ve grown quite attached to that.”
Why is Ryan just standing there? Why is he actually helping the psycho? I can’t believe this is happening…
Hazel began to cry again, she couldn’t help it. Poor Megan, oh God, poor Megan.
Edward sauntered over to the sofa and gently placed Megan’s head on the middle cushion. She seemed to be staring reproachfully right at Hazel.
Why did you let him do this to me?
Why did you fuck my boyfriend, Megan? she answered in her mind.
Oh God, was she going mad? She squeezed her eyes tightly shut for a second and licked her dry lips.
“Stop whimpering, woman, you’re starting to bore me. And Ryan?” Ryan silently turned to look at Edward’s approaching figure, his expression vacant. “I have this for you.”
Ryan gasped and doubled over. “You stabbed me,” he said stupidly.
Edward stared thoughtfully at the small knife he had produced from the waistband of his jeans. Hazel and Ryan stared in disbelief at the growing puddle of red that saturated the left side of the already blood splattered t-shirt.
Absently, Edward wiped the wet knife on his gory jeans. “No shit, Sherlock. Just call it my present to you for helping me with the filming, and everything. I know, I know, don’t thank me.”
“You fucker,” Ryan sobbed, backing away from Edward. “You promised.”
“I guess the moral of that is, never trust a psychopath. Didn’t your mother teach you anything?”
“Fuck you,” Ryan said, clutching his side and turning away, making a lunge for the door that led to the hallway.
Even now, when he had nothing left to lose, he was still being a cowardly shit. He should stay to fight him, he’s fucking twice the size of him… Despair and sadness washed over her in equal measure when Edward threw her a happy grin.
“He’s a piece of work, isn’t he? And nothing if not consistent…”
With that, Edward charged him, easily knocking the wounded man to the floor. Ryan went down like a sack of spuds, landing flat on his stomach with Edward straddling his backside.
“Does this hurt?” Edward asked as he clawed at the wound in his side. Judging from Ryan’s pitiful wailing, it did. A lot. “Why. Don’t. You. Shut. The Fuck. Up.”
Each time he uttered one of those words, he brought the man’s head slamming down onto the ground. Hazel winced every time her boyfriend’s forehead connected with the floorboards, feeling his pain deep in her soul. By then time Edward had got to ‘fuck’, Ryan was completely still.
“I was going to torture him and everything, you know, for my film, but I really can’t be arsed. He’ll probably bleed out soon anyway, I got him deep with the knife. Nah, fuck him. He doesn’t deserve to star in my movie, the two-timing scumbag…”
Edward lifted the knife high above his head and brought it down at speed, right in the middle of Ryan’s back. Then he went into a stabbing frenzy. Over and over he stabbed Ryan’s back. Hazel turned her face away but she still caught glimpses of his frantic movements out of the corner of her eye when she dared to open them.
It felt like it went on forever, when in reality it couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes.
“All done,” he said, wiping the sweat and blood from his brow. A distant part of her mind wondered why he bothered; all he did was smear the blood around some more. “Now we’ve got to get this sorry fucker into the basement with his little fuck buddy. I’m gonna need your help, though. D
on’t worry, you don’t have to do much, just film it. Here.”
He came over to where she sat and handed her the smartphone. “Take it, then. You really don’t want to piss me off. Especially when you’re the last one standing.”
Hazel let out a choking sob when he shoved the phone into her bound hands.
“How am I supposed to film it with my hands tied?”
“You’ll manage,” he said, his dark eyes glittering in the sea of crimson.
Briefly, he showed her what buttons to press before going back over to Ryan.
I can’t actually film this. Oh God, won’t that make me an accessory to murder?
Ha! I think that’s the least of your worries, a nasty little voice whispered back. I very much doubt you’ll live through this.
Oh my God, what the fuck’s he doing now?
Edward had got to work, hacking at Ryan’s body with the little hand-held saw. He had started at the right arm and was sawing just below the shoulder.
Sweet Jesus, I can’t believe I’m actually filming this…
But in a perverse kind of way, it was almost a blessing. She just had to focus on the mobile phone rather than the horrific scene unfolding before her. God only knew what Edward would do to her if she didn’t ‘watch’, as instructed. It was so much easier to let her vision blur and focus on the fuzzy, moving shapes in the viewfinder. Her brain was shutting down, bit by bit, and for that she was grateful. Only when the blurry shapes had morphed into several blurry shapes, and Edward was making brief trips out of the door with various body parts cradled in his arms, did her vision suddenly snap into focus and her brain clear.
Escape.
That one word in her head, crystal clear and razor sharp. Every time he left the room, she listened for his footsteps in the hallway, straining her ears until she could no longer hear them descending the basement steps.