Into Painfreak

by Lee, Edward

  The gunman lifted his Zippo and held it in the air like an Olympic torch.

  “Get on with it,” Sophia whispered, leaning forward. “Do it!”

  “Do you think I’m bluffing?” He squeezed her shoulders. She didn’t flinch.

  “I don’t care.”

  The masked man lit the lighter. Seconds later he tossed it on Sophia’s father’s lap, and the old man exploded into flame.

  He screamed his wife’s name as the fire consumed him, melting the clothes off his body, destroying his lungs until the screams were consumed, the thin outer layers of skin frying and peeling off as the flames danced, the thick dermis shrinking and splitting, a layer of yellow fat leaking out.

  His attacker kicked over the chair, charred flesh and clothing scattering. The body was coated in the greasy residue of immolated flesh, a smoldering pile of bones and layers of skin that the flames weren’t hot enough to completely destroy.

  His wife was hysterical, screaming and retching and trying desperately to move, to get away, to comprehend the horror beside her. Her eyes bulged in their sockets, the normally opaque sclera tinged red from exploded blood vessels. She screeched until she was hoarse, until her mottled skin changed from deep crimson to blue, until she sagged forward, dead—heart attack? Fear?

  The gunman seemed dejected. He leaned forward, shrugged, and lowered his Zippo. His shoulders slumped and he looked up at the camera.

  “Oh.” Mr. Tony seemed just as shocked.

  Sophia tilted her head as if to catch the view from a different angle.

  Mr. Tony cleared his throat. “Well that was unexpected.”

  Sophia turned her head to look back at him, her expression cloudy. She slowly started to rise. “How can you be so cavalier?” she asked quietly, her voice so tiny, almost insignificant. Not a whisper but calculated. Saving her strength. Saving her voice.

  “I’m not cavalier. Believe me! I appreciate it all. Ever nuanced detail, my dear. Every effort. Every approach. Every time you smile or cringe or have any kind of reaction, it’s a thing of beauty.

  “Do you understand now?”

  She nodded.

  “Pick up the scalpel.”

  She shook her head, her breathing deep, her shoulders moving with each breath, a lioness resting over the body of a fresh kill.

  “Pick it up.”

  “No,” she growled.

  He changed the channel on the monitor. Her daughter appeared onscreen. “I’ve run out of options. Remember when I mentioned the natural progression of death? I could kill every person you ever loved, and you would mourn their deaths. What do I have to do to get your attention!”

  He had her attention.

  And Sophia didn’t need a scalpel.

  She stumbled over to the blonde in the chair, who had grown so pale from blood loss and shock than she practically glowed in the dark, an odd translucence.

  The woman groaned and shook, vomit trickling out of the corners of her mouth around the ball gag. The blood on her severed nipple had dried and congealed, and Sophia slapped the breast several times, starting the blood flow again.

  Mr. Tony leaned in, excited, watching intently. “Oh yes,” he moaned, clasping his hands, nodding. “You finally understand. The pleasure. The pain…”

  Sophia ignored him.

  “You destroyed my life,” she barked at the blonde, who wildly shook her head and tried to lean back and away from Sophia. Spittle flew from Sophia’s mouth when she spoke. “You couldn’t keep your fucking hands off my husband, that scumbag piece of shit. You both destroyed everything I love. Are you enjoying my money, you cunt? Did you enjoy fucking his brains out?”

  The woman shrieked into the ball gag, and Sophia threw back her head and laughed. When she looked down again, her red-tinged eyes took in the naked blonde, scanned her from her eyes to her feet, coming up again to rest on her pussy.

  “And this,” Sophia whispered, kneeling now, caressing the blonde’s inner thighs, fingers slowly trailing up her legs, stroking the blonde’s pussy, her fingers gently separating the folds of flesh, thumb massaging the clit, fingers working their way deep inside. The blonde fought the feeling, trying not to get excited, to not feel the pleasure Sophia was bringing. Sophia went deeper, up to her knuckles now, four fingers fucking the blonde, working faster and faster, playing more furiously with the clit, spreading and narrowing the fingers inside her twat, trying to bring her to climax.

  Mr. Tony was fascinated watching, not understanding why Sophia was trying to get the woman off. But he enjoyed the show and was tempted to join in.

  The blonde cried into the gag and threw back her head. Sophia used her forearms to spread the woman open even further while still fucking her with her fingers. Then she leaned down, her mouth replacing her fingers, sucking the folds, pulling the lips apart, exposing the clit. She blew on it and it grew even fatter, more swollen, and she licked it, played with it with the tip of her tongue.

  Sophia looked up. “Is this what he did? Is this how he fucked you?”

  The blonde looked down sharply, brought back to the now. She looked as surprised as Mr. Tony by the question.

  “Does is feel good?” Sophia screamed before she dove back in, before she plowed her face into the blonde’s cunt, before she savagely tore into the flesh with her teeth, her hands prying the lips apart, practically folding the edges inside out, her teeth serrating the flesh, the clitoris and chunks of pussy in her mouth. She spit them out and went back down, chewing, ripping, severing what she could, the blonde flailing but not getting anywhere, her hips wildly gyrating as she tried to escape.

  But her movements were futile as Sophia continued destroying her sex, ripping out chunks of tissue and sinew and veins and anything else she could grasp. She picked up the scalpel and shoved it up her twat, savagely fucking her with it until her groin was a mound of freshly ground beef, chopped meat, a pile of twitching flesh.

  The blonde hunched forward, held up by her restraints, blood pouring out of her destroyed cunt.

  Mr. Tony’s eyes were wide, bulging, and he cried out, shocked and titillated at the same time. No one had ever reached this point so quickly. No one. Passion mixed with blood lust was an amazing combination. He wasn’t quite sure what to do with her.

  “Now…” he purred, coming up behind her, “we have an understanding.”

  “Do we?” she whispered. She stood, the blonde’s fluids dripping off her face.

  “You’ve seen what I’m capable of, and you know how it makes you feel. This has always been about you, Sophia.”

  “I know,” she said, nodding. “Now I know. You have nothing I want.”

  She looked up at him—but just with her eyes. Her face remained staring at the floor…but her eyes…her eyes took him in. her eyes were filled with an animalistic fury that made him lick his lips. He smiled at her, small at first, taking in the deliciousness of her savagery, her low-key glances…and his smile widened as he anticipated her actions, knowing full well how beautiful the dance can be, even the danse macabre, knowing that look, that pure, unbridled, unrelenting passion. Beyond beautiful. Beyond exquisite. It was a rare and amazing thing, an exotic treasure, a blue rose among weeds.

  “I can give you things you didn’t know you wanted,” he moaned, caressing her cheek with his middle finger.

  “You already have,” she crooned, pulling his finger into her mouth, sucking deeply before releasing it. “You’ve shown me…shown me things I never expected to see.” She fell to her knees again and slowly worked the button and zipper on his pants.

  “You see,” she said, pulling out his cock, her tight grip rolling it in her palm, quickly bringing it to life, “you showed me things I can never unsee. I want to repay the favor.”

  Mr. Tony prided himself on his ability to read people, and he was rarely fooled. He’d played this one so well, so expertly, so by the book—his book—bringing her to the edge and back…how many times? until he fucking owned her, until she understood the beau
tiful pain in exquisite death. Until—

  She bit down hard on his dick, the severed tip falling out of her mouth, blood gushing, mixing with the tons of fluids already soaking into every crevice of the room. She didn’t enjoy it; there was no bloodlust, no savoring the salty-sweetness bullshit everyone seems to say about tasting blood. There was no flavor and no passion, just a gush of blood that made her gag and retch and spit out. There was no beauty here, no exquisite nothing. There was Sophia, filled with a different kind of bloodlust now, remembering clearly what had been done to her mother and father and baby girl, and the savagery that took over was one of ferocity, not passion, and clearly even the asshole on the floor must know there was a difference, that the two were not interchangeable. Maybe now that he was the one twitching, it would finally sink in. This was not Sophia experiencing a new humanity. This was Sophia finally lashing out.

  She was filled with passion, all right.

  Mr. Tony had gone into shock almost immediately, clearly unprepared for her actions, clearly not as equipped to judge the human condition as he’d believed.

  Sophia shook her head, rough, catching a glimpse of her new reality, regrouping. There was no turning back. This motherfucker had killed her parents.

  Under normal circumstances she probably would have been too small, too weak…but the adrenalin was still rampant, and Mr. Tony was slumped over, cradling his cock.

  She landed on top of him and they tumbled together, her straddling him like a rapist. She slammed him into the floor, pinning him down.

  He gasped, saying something, having finally regained his voice, but she never gave him the chance to finish.

  She screamed shrilly, filled with indignation as she sank her teeth into his throat, ignoring his fists pounding her back and head, his fingers clawing at her face.

  She screamed louder as he dug his fingers into her eye sockets, trying to get her to release her grip.

  She shook the shit out of her prey until she finally pulled away, tearing out a huge chunk of meat in the process, chewing into an artery, the gaping hole in his throat a pumping geyser that subsided as his heart slowed.

  She shrieked—a long, mournful, painful cry, knowing this was the end, knowing she had gone too far.

  Sophia reached out, but she didn’t care. There was no life. Not anymore. Didn’t wonder what to do next. Didn’t think about how to escape or how to get help or even how to get out of this room with no door. She curled up on the floor and waited for death.

  When she’d laid there long enough—minutes? days?—and the adrenaline had stopped flowing and the pain in her eyes finally kicked in, she realized she didn’t want to die.

  But she had no idea how she’d gotten in here, and when she’d explored earlier—before he killed her parents—there had been no door, no discernable exit, no escape that she could see at the time.

  So—

  Then what?

  She sat up. “Help!” she screamed, long and drawn out, filled with sobs and cries and fists pounding the floor until she collapsed, exhausted. She hoped her final thoughts would be of memories of her daughter.

  Something touched her in the silence. She assumed it was a hallucination, or her imagination, until a hand touched her cheek, stroked her hair.

  “Who are you?” she asked, too weak to react, too weak to be more concerned.

  “Give me your hand,” the familiar voice said. But she knew she couldn’t really have recognized his voice. She had ripped his throat out. He was dead!

  “No,” she cried, cowering, pulling away but getting nowhere. “I killed you!”

  “Come inside,” he said, wrapping his arms around her, pulling her up. “They’re waiting for you. You have so much potential…”

  She tried to struggle but realized the futility. She could barely see. She had nowhere to go.

  “They’ve been watching…no one could have guessed the depths of your passion. Come with me…”

  Sophia let him lead her through a door. She felt warmth on her face, a comfort that had been lacking in her life, a feeling of acceptance and bliss. Through her blurry vision she could make out their forms, could discern smiles and an overwhelming feeling of welcome.

  Was this home? Yes, she decided, whatever this was…she belonged here.

  | — | — |

  The Rut

  ————

  Gerard Houarner

  They didn’t greet him like a tourist, of course. But neither did they welcome him like one of the regulars, the predators hunting prey, the tourists addicted to atrocity exhibitions, the prey who survived and returned, again and again, to writhe on the altar’s edge of their annihilation.

  “Welcome back, Mr. Taggert,” the Asian man said, his glance at the mark on his hand purely perfunctory. “She’s already arrived,” he whispered, with subtle reverence.

  He wanted to believe they recognized him year after year because he was someone special, destined to become a father of monsters. But outside of dreams, he understood they remembered was only because he was a regular as one of the oldest of the tribe’s Queen’s suitors. No different from any of the club’s potential victims.

  The tribe and its ritual were only a sideshow in the eternal enormity of Painfreak, a peculiar little thread of doomed appetite, drawing its own audience and followers outside of their kind, serving to drive the regulars further along on their journey to an inescapable ending.

  And even their brief claim to territory was shared with other tribes of their kind, with Queens and Ruts of their own. He was barely a flea with a name.

  Mr. Taggert smoothed the creases of his custom black Super160 fine wool suit. “The others, how many are already here?” Taggert asked. He’d wanted to arrive late to skip the sniffing and posturing, and avoid giving the sharper new challengers the chance to assess his vulnerabilities.

  “Good luck,” the Asian doorman said, already turning his attention to an approaching visitor.

  In the emptiness of their vanished familiarity, the other one, the scarred giant who always accompanied the Asian man, looked him up and down, as if they were rivals preparing to spar.

  Any of the Queens he’d pursued in his years in the Rut would have loved a buck like that. In the old days, their children might have ruled empires. But in these days, too many children by such a creature would have set their kind back hundreds of years.

  Against a man like that, Taggert would never had had a chance at the Queen. Hell, he’d never have lasted as long as he had, still trying to plant his seed in that ripe and fertile garden of the future.

  He bowed his head, relieved neither of Painfreak’s doormen belonged to his tribe and moved on, passing through the open garage door, picking his way through piles of old, rotted skids, the stacks of moldy boxes, his hand made Italian lace-ups splashing into pools of fetid water.

  Head to the red. Taggert didn’t need to follow the club’s hard-core adherents to the red light, dim, hidden around a corner and behind bundles of plastic tarp. He could track paths, find doors, pick the road at the crossing that needed to be chosen. These were only some of the gifts he brought to the Queen, the tribe, his kind.

  He passed through a door, down two flights of stairs. Footsteps faded ahead of him as anxious patrons hurried forward. He took his time. He didn’t know how many more times he’d have this chance. He attended to every scent—sweat, sewage, flowery perfumes, skunk scented smoke, rust—and felt his heart beat faster.

  Blood was already in the air. And sex. Even his own scent, marking his territory.

  His kind. The Queen. They were all there.

  Here.

  Last year, Painfreak had been in Tokyo when the season started. He’d come close, that last time. The closest he’d ever been in all his years in the Rut. He’d had the Queen in his arms. She’d had her eyes closed. He’d been disappointed, thinking she should have welcomed him, been more willing, rather than passive, waiting. He’d anticipated a triumphant welcome. Instead, he’d found a shadow
in his arms, elusive even in the moment of his victory.

  She’d known he would not be the one to take her that day.

  The last rival he’d put down in Painfreak’s labyrinthine back rooms had recruited allies among the club’s visitors and inhabitants. An unusual strategy, one that had never worked before, at least in the stories and traditions.

  Those others, Painfreak’s most ravenous so desperate to taste an exotic and elusive prize like the Queen, to dare her retribution and claim the rare prize of a violation denied to most, had pried him away from her. His rival returned to take him down, pummeling him on the floor while the Queen followed her nature and fulfilled her suitor’s bargain with his allies, giving them all the pain and pleasure they’d been promised.

  When Taggert stopped fighting back and the Queen had finished with her offerings, his rival took the prize.

  She’d accepted his competitor as easily as any of the other suitors who reached her in years past. Taggert had recognized that the child they made would be useful, a girl or boy capable of manipulating others for the survival of their kind. The modern world required all kinds of skills, in order to survive. A gift to the tribe.

  If it didn’t come out as a monster.

  The boy hadn’t survived the mating, however. That was always the trick, with Queens. When bucks were young, they didn’t care as much. He hadn’t. But as a mature buck, with fewer Ruts left to him with every new wound and passing year, he’d come to value a future. In his dreams, he even helped the Queen raise the cub along with all the others she’d delivered, somehow splitting time with her in her many dens in and out of Painfreak, and his own family.

  That would be his gift to the tribe—surviving Ruts, Painfreak, even the Queen, and carving a place with his caring for a Queen’s brood, another skill worth carrying into the future.

  But dreams lied, as experience taught the tribe. Blood and power kept them separate from humanity and following their own path to a future that was theirs for the taking.