by Alan Spencer
Paula drew him in for a kiss.
She puked up blue detergent into his mouth.
He woke from the nightmare choking on the taste of blue meadow.
15
Spinal cord breaking in thirteen places. The pelvis shattering. The hips, the femurs, every leg bone snapping, they were each giving to the pressures of being folded in half by Norma's hands.
"You can't let them win," she said to her father. "So many continue to suffer. Somebody has to stop them. You've been a lazy piece of shit your whole life. Opportunity has passed you by, and you didn't care. You can't sit on your hands anymore, Dad. I love you. Do something. Save yourself. Save everyone."
Norma gripped a woman's head and her feet at the same time and bent her in half like a fold out bed. Larry winced at the uncouth sounds. Could bone really sever through flesh and muscle like that?
Larry watched on in disgust.
Motivation. Ambition. A burning desire to conquer one's problems. He couldn't think of anything but how to save his ass.
16
The entire room was table saw after table saw. The walls, the floor, the ceilings, and from wooden posts, table saws sliced people into thin, long pieces. Sawdust as flesh and blood. Faces were cut into cross hatched pieces. Larry woke with a circular blade carving through his sternum. He watched all four atriums of his heart burst as the blade spun and churned, propelled by steel teeth spinning at hundreds of miles an hour. He landed on the floor in spatters, the floor six inches deep in blood. In the distant background, he heard the washing machines turn. They sounded so much like doldrums.
17
How did one plan a retaliation when they had seconds, maybe minutes, to come up with a plan and act it out? Larry woke from his mental holocaust with question marks on his mind. Somehow he had to buy himself time. Hide. Think. Plot. Execute. Survive.
He had to buy time.
Larry was hanging upside down from a tree by the legs. Men and women in masks, hoods, and stocking caps like stalking murderers bashed him with a baseball bat until they beat the very life out of him.
18
Larry had an idea while his body parts were spinning and being washed in the machine.
There was only one way to buy himself time.
If only he had the opportunity.
If he had the opportunity, he'd execute the plan.
19
Larry was naked on the floor, cowering against the concrete. Another head whopped him on the backside. He shouted in bloodcurdling terror. "Stop! Stop! Staaaaaaaaaawp!" Heads kept rolling towards him. A hill of talking heads, spitting blood out their mouths, and speaking in slushy tongues, "What's your plan, Larry?" "If you've got a plan, why don't you go ahead with it, you stupid son-of-a-bitch?" "He doesn't have a plan." "He's like the rest of us." "Run through the machine for too long." "He's not going anywhere." "Fucked like the rest of us, ol' Larry." "You're no better than what's cleaned out of those traps." "Go back to your washing machine, because that's where you belong."
"I'm not going to die like this!" Larry shouted, neck deep in human heads. Swimming in them. "I do have a plan. I DO HAVE A PLAN!"
"You're good at lying to yourself." "Asshole's got too many bubbles in his brain." "You huff too much detergent, it'll rob you of your ambition." "If you ever had any ambition." "Thumb up your stinky ass!" "Thumb up your stinky ass!" "You'll never amount to nothing." "Look at you. No wonder you're their victim." "You don't have a plan." "You don't got shit." "You just got your thumb up your ass."
The giant washing machine positioned across the room kept pitching severed heads at him until he was buried in them. Even then, he kept screaming, telling the heads that he did have a plan. HE DID HAVE A PLAN!
20
Lips kissed his bodily ache into submission. She knew how to cup his balls when he was close to cumming inside her. Paula knew how to tweak his nipples hard, but not too hard. She could say the right things at the right time to really get him going. Paula amped up the sexual talk. She licked around his ears, while breathing hot, lurid words into his ear.
"You'd like to fuck my sister. And I'd let you. I'd love to watch. I'd like to fuck her too." She didn't have a sister. It was just part of the bedroom talk. She yanked back a tuft of Larry's hair. "But I feel better than her my sister. You fucking say it. I feel better than my sister's fucking dirty pussy. Say it, you fucker." He said it. He shouted praises about her pussy. Pussy poetry.
Paula could be real dirty when she wanted to be. Their sex was hot. They'd taken their love making to many new places. But this time was new. This wasn't what Larry had experienced before. He wasn't afraid to take sex into a dark, weird place. But this wasn't right. It was fucking wrong.
Larry and Paula were making hot steamy love.
Larry and Paula's bodies were human sheets flapping in the breeze, banging into each other and bringing each other climax, after climax, after shocking climax.
21
Norma and Paula had him restrained to a chair. Leather straps contained him. He couldn't move. Norma shoved a plastic funnel into his mouth. They each wore white pants and white uniforms. Sweatshop workers. Paula was pouring liquid blue detergent into his mouth.
"If you have a plan, now's the time."
Norma repeated the words. "If you have a plan, now's the time."
His insides were filling up with liquid detergent. His insides burned as if being eaten by acid. Human screams. Human suffering. Larry lived deaths unheard of by the average killer's experience. The detergent was life, death, blood, pain, misery, murder, anguish, a pure living hell in liquid form.
"Now's the time."
"If you have a plan."
"Now's the time."
"If you have a plan."
Emptying one bottle, Paula threw it aside, picked up another bottle, and emptied it into his mouth. Larry was so full of liquid detergent, it dribbled out his ass. It dripped down between his legs, trailing down warm and smelling of lavender and shit. The more that dribbled out his clenched anus, the more he heard screams, the more blood he smelled, and the more deaths he lived through his own body.
"If you have a plan...
"...now's the time."
22
Larry was almost as deaf as a post. Shirking whistles, tea kettles, and burning locusts blared in his eardrums. He watched the sun sneak through the tree tops. Somewhere out there, someone was having a nice day, and it sure wasn't him. He was out in those deadly woods again. The area was full of trip traps and deadly pitfalls. Larry peered down the length of a canvas stretcher, like the ones medics used in wartime situations. His feet were piled at the edge, along with sizzling heaps of guts. Various people dressed in those hoods, facemasks, and fear-inducing gear wore thick plastic gloves. Together, they collected blown bits of Larry's body. He had stepped on what he believed to be a tripwire attached to an explosive of some kind. Nails and fish hooks were embedded in his skin down deep. Other bodies were being carried on stretchers, some alive, others very dead.
Someone placed his singed black genitals on top of the hill of guts.
Larry blacked out.
How he wished to never wake up again.
23
His father was on the ground. Blood leaked out the top of his head. His hard hat had a deep concave dent at the top. The hard hat wasn't enough to prevent the dropped scaffold from damaging his skull. Barry Koche. His poor father. Poor bastard. Barry was young back then. He was in his early twenties working construction on a new hotel. He was sitting there, eating his lunch, when the scaffold toppled over and landed on him. He was trapped underneath networks of metal poles. Pinned down for a half an hour. The man's tuna salad sandwich was pitched yards from his body, thrown mid-bite. His thermos of coffee had spilled, mixing with the red of his blood to create a shade of something much darker. Barry was semi-lucid in this moment. He couldn't move, pinned down by the weight of the scaffold. Out his mouth came the involuntary moan of pain.
Barry came to, an
d he met Larry's eyes. He was standing over his father, trying to help him, trying to help the construction workers who were also trying to save his father, when his old man said to him, "Every job is thankless, son. You work hard. You bust your ass. You do good things. You try to play by their rules. You pay taxes. They still break it off in you. Once they're done with you, loyalty doesn't matter. Sure, I'll get a settlement out of this accident. Then I'll work that tollbooth job for the rest of my life. You were good to follow my example, son. Nothing's worth breaking your back over. Ambition's for pussies who are too afraid of themselves to give themselves a break. They keep themselves over-busy so they don't have to look inside themselves. But me, I'm not afraid to see into myself. Are you afraid to see into yourself, Larry? You're going to have to dig real deep to get yourself out of this mountain of shit you're in."
Barry's limbs did a jitter. His brain neurons weren't firing correctly.
This had actually happened.
But Barry came out of it alive and with little brain damage.
But in this vision, Barry was coughing up blood, stroking out. Through his red foamy words, Barry shouted in panic, "If you've got a plan, now's the time!"
24
He was a worker drone again. Larry stood in front of the empty machine, digging into the deep trap. There were fewer drones in the warehouse today. Five others, counting himself, were shambling from empty washing machine to empty washing machine cleaning out the traps. He dredged out gold crowns from teeth. Another set of faded eyeballs. A retainer. A driver's license belonging to Emily Anne Jenkins. A hair clip. A black shoe string. A water soaked tampon. A brown toupee. A gold necklace. Two broken fake nails. A white tongue. A wad of chewing gum...
25
Through the foggy glass window of the spinning machine, Larry's head could barely make out a murky image of a person looking in at him. They were eyeing him closely. Leaning in to catch each of his mutilated pieces slosh, mix together, and bang, bang, bang into each other. Larry didn't know how many times during the process his long intestines had tied themselves in a knot or how many times he swallowed his own tongue only for it to spit out his neck stump and go right back down his throat again. These people running the show were here twenty-four seven.
Did they live on the premises too? Somebody was cleaning up their remains, shoving them back into the washing machines, overseeing them, and making sure nobody escaped.
But there had to be a way out.
These people had to sleep sometime.
He kept spinning in the wash. Larry counted how many times his skull clunked against the metal washing machine basket.
56...57...58...59
He thought he had a plan.
60...61...62...63
Larry really need a plan fucking.
26
Larry was crawling inside of a duct system. The way was dusty and sneeze and gag inducing. Sweat trailed down his body, the grit and nasty accumulation in the narrow passage sticking to his body. His elbows and knees were bruised and bleeding. His lungs stung like he'd inhaled insulation. A steel pole carved into a deadly point pierced through the duct just ahead of him.
"Where are you, you little bitch?"
He didn't mean to weep so loud at the question. He woke up in this duct and had been fighting for his life, to avoid agony and a terrible death for what seemed like hours.
"I'm gonna get you, you bitch! Cry! I want to hear you cry."
Another pole was driven through the duct, cutting into the back of his calf.
"Cry like this pole's shoved up in your shitty little ass!"
Three poles pierced him through his chest.
"Cry!"
"Cry!"
"Cry!"
The smell of gasoline covered him, a stream of the caustic stuff coming at him from both ends of the duct system. Someone put a flame to the streams of gas. Burning bright, he was cooked, bashing his body against the duct's walls, and all he heard was, "Cry!" "Cry!" "Cry!"
27
Norma folded a woman so her feet were behind her head.
"You're not thinking straight, Dad."
She took the folded woman and forced her legs in half. Both kneecaps went off like bone shard grenades. The sounds. The dismantling. The breaking. The bleeding. Larry could only cringe and beg her to stop.
Norma refused.
"If you don't have a plan, get one, Daddy. The fear is building up in you. They win when you're afraid of them. Soon, your body will be theirs to do as they wish forever."
She bent the woman's arms like rubbery chicken wings and broke them in four places.
"So what's your plan, Daddy?"
He still didn't have one.
She knew it too. Her face was so forlorn. She wept, shedding blue detergent down her cheeks.
28
Paula was naked in a bathtub. This was at home eight years ago. Their marriage wasn't as hot and sexual as it used to be, nor was it dire straights. They were at their peak. Once the peak occurred, nothing was new anymore, and they didn't care to keep it new. It happened when Norma moved out to attend Wisconsin University. Full ride scholarship and out of their lives. Their daughter was the glue that held them together. Without her, the past didn't mean much, nor did the future.
Larry enjoyed watching Paula lather up her legs for a shave.
She smiled as she shaved. That sexual cat in heat smile.
"You're scared. You can't be scared."
She shaved her calf.
Larry tried to make her understand. "What the hell do I do? I can't leave. My body won't let me. My body works against me. I want to leave. I swear to God I can't, Paula. I would. I swear to God I would if I could."
Paula frowned. "Should you be running at all?"
"I don't understand. Why can't you just tell me what to do? Just—tell—me!"
"I can't, honey. You have to come up with your own plan. You never did have a plan for your life. You being this old, don't you think it's about time you started taking care of matters yourself? That's life, dearest. You keep acting like a scared child all of your life just like your father did, you might as well roll over and die. Your father was a chicken shit scared of life. Just because he had that accident. You can't live your life in the past. You can't stay scared. So get a plan and act on it, or cry and die like a bitch!"
She nicked her leg in her fury.
Blue detergent bled down to her ankle.
29
The washing machine cycle paused for three seconds before switching onto the "Spin Dry" cycle. Larry could see through the glass front. Many faces were peering in at him. Some wore hideous masks, while others wore their normal faces (just as hideous in the circumstances). He heard one of them say, "He's coming along just fine."
30
White detergent flakes were shaken over him. Spring breeze scent woke him up with the power of a cracked ammonia tablet. Corpses to the left, corpses to the right, and the corpses at his feet were stirred awake. Larry knew the gun would go off any second. He had been through this dozens of times. The bodies would run for their lives. The bodies in tattered, war torn clothes would run across the open field, hide into the woods, and enter the maze of death. He knew to enter would be certain death and dismemberment. He would feel every dose of pain. Every nerve ending would break. He was tied to the place. Bound by something. He couldn't leave.
It didn't matter what he thought.
Ba-BOOM!
The gothic dressed woman fired the bullet into the air with an eager wanton expression. She'd fuck death if she could, she enjoyed killing so much.
The group of people fled across the open field. They ran for their lives.
The plan.
You have to have a plan.
If you don't have one, get one!
Legs pumping, body panging with thoughts of impending doom, he threw himself across the open field and between the trees of the woods, dodging the other frightened victims. Bombs exploded. People exploded. Traps were tripp
ed.
Larry wasn't sure where the voice came from, but it came from within, and out of nowhere. His brain was cycling thoughts, emotions, and memories, and when living life under amped up distress, words tended to pop into your mind without reason.
Barry's voice came to him. It was shortly before he died in the old folk's home. His mind was about gone. Alzheimer's ravaged him. But he said one thing to him behind the curtain while using the commode.
"If it's one thing I'll take to my grave, son, is that it's always best to do nothing."
Do.
Nothing.
That was it, Larry thought. Do nothing.
He stopped running. He lowered down and burrowed himself under a bunch of dead leaves. He piled up dead tree limbs and more leaves on top of himself. More coverage, he couldn't bury himself deep enough.
Larry waited and did absolutely nothing.
31
The sound of violence continued for another half hour. Guns blasting. Screams shrieking then falling silent. Cries from partially wounded victims slowly dying and bleeding out. There was nothing Larry could do. These people would pick up the pieces, send them through a washing machine, pour detergent flakes (what were they really?), and resurrect them only to slaughter them again. Sick. So fucking sick.
Staying deadly still, the war woods went silent. That half hour of waiting turned into hours of hearing footsteps crunch through the woods. The clean up crew didn't talk much. The only words they shared was in the name of the job.
"The head's here."
"Half the skull's over here. The rest is between those rocks."
"How did the guts get all the way up there? Je-sus. That's a tough climb."