None More Black

by Williams, Brett

  The box had contained a pregnancy test.

  Brant dug through the contents of the wastebasket, looking for the test stick. Not much filled the basket, just a few facial tissues, a discarded mascara wand, and a toilet tissue roll. Brant actually got the impression that some of the facial tissues had been used specifically to conceal the pregnancy test. He found test at the bottom of the basket, rolled in tissue. A blue plus sign indicated a positive result.

  Brant stormed out of the bathroom waving the stick in the air.

  “What the hell is this?” he demanded.

  “Daddy, I can explain.”

  “Why am I asking you? It's obviously a pregnancy test. You're obviously pregnant.”

  “I'm sorry!” Katie began to sob.

  “Weren't you going to tell me?”

  “Yes, Daddy. I promise I was going to tell you.”

  “You're on the fucking pill. You can't be pregnant.”

  “I know, Daddy. I take my pills. I don't know what happened. Honest!”

  “Fuck-fuck-fuck!”

  “Maybe I missed a day. Maybe I got sick and...” Her chin started to tremble.

  “Goddamn it. You can't keep it.”

  “I know, Daddy. Please don't hate me. I'll get a...”

  An abortion.

  So the child wouldn't be born with deformities.

  So there would be no chance of repercussion if the fine state of Texas – and Brant wasn't sure – had any laws against incestuous relationships.

  “I'm such a bad li'l girl,” Katie blathered. “Please don't hate me, Daddy. I'll do whatever you say. I'll call a doctor first...” She sniffled. “First thing in the morning and make an appoint... appointment.”

  An idea began to take root in Brant's mind. Something he'd read in one of the books...

  “Such a fucking disappointment,” Katie continued. “A li'l fucking slut. I hate myself. Hate-hate-hate.”

  She had started to lose it and her impending outburst infringed on Brant's thoughts.

  She tugged at her hair and said, “I'm a fuck-up. A piece of shit. Daddy, don't be mad. Please-please-please don't be mad at me. I'll get a coat hanger and take care of it now. Maybe I'll sterilize myself in the process, then you can love me again. Right, Dadd—”

  Brant slapped her across the face before emotions drove her into a full-blown tantrum.

  “It's okay, sweetheart. I'm sorry I was short with you. Daddy made a mistake.”

  “A mistake?” Katie shook her head, unable to understand, unable to keep her emotions in check. “Daddies don't make mistakes. Daddies always know what's best. I was bad. And I should be punished. Please punish me, Daddy. Please.”

  Brant slapped her across the face again, harder, because that's what she wanted. That's what she needed.

  He set aside the pregnancy test and grabbed the bottle of whiskey by its neck – he'd left it on the nightstand while tending to Jenna's coke habit – and took a shot from the bottle. Then he offered the bottle to Katie. “Here. Drink this.”

  “I don't wanna.”

  “I don't care what you want. Daddy says take a drink, so take a fucking drink. It will help calm your nerves.”

  She reluctantly sipped the liquor.

  “More,” Brant urged.

  He took another shot before capping the bottle. He said, “You're not calling a doctor tomorrow. You're not calling a doctor at all.”

  “I don't understand,” Katie, sufficiently calmed, said.

  “I'm happy for you, sweetie.” Brant combed fingers through his daughter's hair. “I made a mistake to get mad. I'm thrilled that you'll have my baby.”

  “Really?” A smile lit Katie's face. “Promise.”

  “Cross my heart, hope to die.” Brant kissed her passionately. “But you were bad and you deserve to be punished for hiding this from me.”

  “Yes, Daddy. I do. Please.”

  He slapped her across the face for entertainment. His own, perhaps hers, and to draw the attention of Shadow Man to their room. In the next room he could hear the two dudes having their way with Jenna, so Brant upped the volume on his own activities with Katie. Using one of the many props she'd purchased over the past year, he whipped her repeatedly across the back of her thighs, her buttocks, her back, until her body blushed a glowing red.

  She was on her knees, fingering herself with a toy in her rectum, drool dripping from his scrotum to her breasts as she sucked his erection when Brant felt the presence of Shadow Man enter the room. That's when Brant began to violently fuck his pregnant daughter.

  28

  “I'm not diving into that shit-hole,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “For starters, it stinks. Plus, who knows what the fuck is in there.”

  “You have a point.”

  “I don't know why you even brought me here.”

  Don't know why I brought you here? Gary Dowdy thought. Because those snuff videos, or whatever those violent sex videos really are, piqued your interest.

  Becky continued: “But if dumpster diving gets you off, be my guest.”

  “Dumpster diving doesn't get me off. You get me off.”

  “Yeah, perhaps I should rethink that.”

  Gary hugged her, kissed her, said, “Let me know if you see the fuzz,” before climbing up and over the edge of the trash container to stand in what appeared to be primarily discarded computer manuals, printouts, and other office material.

  “I see fuzz.”

  Holy shit! “Seriously?” Gary scanned the street.

  “Yeah, right up the leg hole of your shorts, on your balls.”

  “Be serious,” Gary said. He knelt down and started sifting through trash. “There are a bunch of five-and-a-quarter inch floppies in here,” he said, referring to ancient computer disks.

  “I'll make it a seven-and-a-half-inch stiffy, if you'll please climb your ass out of there,” Becky said. “I thought we were going to a sci-fi/fantasy convention, not digging through trash in Cow Town, U.S.A.”

  “Those were alpacas we saw,” Gary said. “Wow. If the manuals in here are for the computers inside, it's no wonder we couldn't access the information. Here's an owner's manual for a Compaq luggable PC.”

  “What's a luggable PC?”

  “It's a precursor to the laptop. It looks like a suitcase and weighs as much as a bowling ball.”

  “Yeah, well, get your rocks off and get out of there. I could really go for a Starbucks. Not that Cow Town has a Starbucks.”

  “There's a McD's,” Gary said as he tossed aside assorted manuals pertaining to HP MPE/iX commands and utilities. Under those he found a few manuals to an ancient Texas Instruments system he'd never heard of before. What he was looking for, though, were discarded scraps of paper, such as printed email, old Post-It! Notes and the like, that offered someone's password.

  “Fuck McD's. I hate those clowns.”

  “Hey,” Gary said, “check this.”

  He'd found discarded clothing, an entire garbage bag, actually, and held up a random article of clothing for inspection.

  “Jesus,” Becky said, “that looks familiar.”

  “Really?” Gary had simply noticed its juvenile attributes of bright primary colors and a cartoon character on front.

  “Yeah. I'm pretty sure. Hey, wait. Is that blood?”

  Becky took the blouse for a closer look as Gary dug through the bag for something that looked familiar to him. He thought he found something, a pink and white skirt that a flogged and fucked teenaged-looking girl had warn in one of the video clips, which looked familiar, but he couldn't be sure.

  “This is definitely the right place,” Becky said as she tossed the article of clothing back into the dumpster.

  After nearly fifteen minutes, Gary gave up and climbed out.

  “Find what you were looking for?” Becky asked.

  “No. Not really.”

  “Can't you just hack in like an uber-geek from your command center?”

  “First
of all, this isn't television. Second of all, yes, I can. I shouldn't have to, though. I have links to what I want, but—”

  “But when you click them you pull up dick.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So, let's go inside, check it out.”

  “I don't know about that.”

  “Why not? We're already here. Besides, the place looks vacant. Nobody will mind.”

  “What do you mean vacant?” Gary said as he swung a leg over the side of the dumpster.

  “Clothes and computer stuff thrown away. There aren't any cars around. And did you see that cinder block by the front door? Someone packed a bunch of shit out of there. I bet there's nobody inside. And even if there is, who cares? We play dumb if we have to.”

  Gary dropped down to the cement slab behind the building and, dusting off hands, said, “Maybe you're right.”

  “Of course I'm right.”

  “Wouldn't hurt to try. It's not like we've done anything wrong.” It really wasn't much different, at least until they verified the vacancy and then trespassed, than phoning a company and social engineering their way to a login, which, unfortunately hadn't worked in this case because nobody had ever answered the telephone. Which only reinforced Becky's notion that the place was vacant.

  They went around front of the building, and, after scanning the neighborhood for potential Nosy Nellies, Becky tried the door before Gary could knock.

  “You really think someone would leave the door unlocked, especially considering what's inside?”

  Becky shrugged.

  Gary, feeling stupid and not knowing what he'd say if someone answered the door, knocked anyway. Several times, very loudly.

  “Nobody is going to—”

  “No problem,” Becky, hefting the cinder block, said. She used it to bash a small metal box clipped to the top of the door. The box came unhinged and opened.

  “My mother is a real estate agent,” Becky said. “I noticed that lock box earlier. That's where they keep keys sometimes.”

  “Well I'll be damned.”

  “Count yourself lucky you found a smart woman like me to hook up with,” Becky said as she fit key to lock. With a twist of the wrist, the door squeaked opened.

  Inside they found an empty room with a door opening to a corridor.

  “Notice the black marks on the floor,” Becky said. “Scuff marks left when they moved shit out of the building.”

  “You're like Nancy Drew or something.”

  “Fuck that bitch. Let's see what we can find.”

  They found what appeared to be a vacated computer lab, complete with discarded cabling and a ream of unused green-and-white-striped tractor-feed computer paper. They also found an old telephone with a dial tone and electrical power.

  “Whoever left didn't leave long ago,” Becky mused.

  “Let's hope they don't come back.”

  “Don't worry so much. Let's take the stairs, see where they lead.”

  The stairs led down to the apartment-like film sets.

  “I recognize this room,” Becky said as they went into a room with pink walls with My Pretty Pony border around the top. “Even without the bed where those pervs screwed those little and not-so-little girls.”

  “The living room looks familiar to me, too,” Gary said. They'd seen a few video clips of teenage hanky panky in a similar room, though it was tough to say with the furnishings gone. The room, however, did look very familiar. The video clip of the legal-aged woman with the platinum blonde hair and Gothic purple and blue pigtails came to mind.

  “Just think of all the people who got fucked in this room,” Becky said as she hooked Gary's waist with an arm. “I can smell the sex. Can you?”

  “Smells like dirty feet or the gymnasium in grade school, if you ask me.”

  Becky shrugged before wandering away.

  They entered the stairwell and continued to the next level. Gary said, “I can't believe there is so much space down here. How deep do you think it goes?”

  “All the way to Hell, baby. The devil's own escape route.”

  “Shut up,” Gary said with a shiver. While a warm May morning outside, here, deep under the ground, the air was cool, however that isn't what had caused the shiver. “This place is creepy as all get-out.”

  “You don't molest little girls and kill teenagers at the Hilton.”

  “Ha. Ha. Not everyone drinks blood for breakfast and feasts on the flesh of the dead like you, darling.”

  “You should try it sometime,” the Goth girl jokingly suggested. “You might like— Holy fucking shit. This is it. This is the room.”

  They'd just entered a level of the building that Becky apparently recognized.

  “This is where they killed her. Right. Fucking. Here.”

  Gary, about to ask how she could tell, noticed the symbols on the floor. There were also stains, stains that could be anything. Stains that could be blood.

  “There was a table right here,” Gary said.

  “Not a table. An altar. They had her chained to it, arms and legs, while they took turns fucking the unholy hell out of her.”

  Gary recalled vividly, along with a few more shivers, the gang-rape which took place on the video.

  “And then they used daggers—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Gary interrupted, “I saw the video.”

  But Becky didn't stop: “They carved up her tits and penetrated her body like those blades were more cocks wanting to fuck her, each creating its own orifice to—”

  “Okay, okay. I get it.”

  “A girl was murdered here. Her life snuffed out.”

  “No way. It can't be real.”

  “Are you shitting me?” Becky said. “You can't fake shit like that. Not that good and with such an obviously low budget.”

  “Sure you can,” Gary said. “They make it look low-budget even when it isn't.”

  “Give it a break. Even Blair Witch Project didn't attempt to fake that sort of shit. There's only so much you can do with a digital camera from Best Buy.”

  “All right. Someone was killed here. Let's go.”

  “Oh, no. Not yet,” Becky said, adopting a poor Western accent. “You dragged me down to Cow Town, cowboy. Now that I'm hot'n bothered, you ain't ridin' off into the sunset. No way, pardner. Time to cowboy up and hop in the saddle.”

  Oh, lord, Gary thought as his girlfriend pressed her body against his and nibbled his neck.

  He wanted to get out of here and get gone before Johnny Law showed up to read them their rights. But he knew it wasn't happening. Not until Becky GothGrrl96 got her freak on.

  Gary hoped he could get it up because right now his penis was shriveled up inside him like he'd just cannonballed into a pond in Alaska before it froze for the winter.

  When Becky knelt down before him to remove his frightened penis, it took all Gary had to concentrate on his girlfriend and what she wanted to do to him instead of thinking about the heinous pics and vids he'd played for her from the links at KaosKansas.com.

  As soon as she got him hard he had undressed her and, as quickly and efficiently as he could get her off (down on the floor amid the stains), he busted a nut, he stood up and said, “I've seen enough. Let's get out of here.”

  “All right, Speedy. But don't forget you owe me a Starbucks coffee.”

  “I haven't forgotten.”

  In the stairwell, though, Becky did a double-take and changed her mind. “We can't leave yet. Not till we see how deep this place goes.”

  “Fine.”

  Gary didn't want to, he wanted to leave, but it would be easier to appease her than to argue. Besides, this place couldn't go deeper than one more level. Right?

  Wrong.

  They found a room with a bunch of open cages and shattered and bashed computer equipment.

  “What the hell?” Becky said.

  “Apparently someone wanted to destroy this equipment rather than move or remove it.”

  “But why?”

  “W
ho the hell knows. By the looks of it, most of the equipment was removed. But some of it, the older stuff I believe, met its demise on the business end of a Louisville Slugger.”

  “Kind of like the laser printer in Office Space.”

  “Someone capped its ass,” Gary agreed.

  “There's more, though,” Becky said, taking Gary by the hand. She led him to the stairwell, to where concrete gave way to chiseled rock. They passed through a carved tunnel which opened to a cavernous room. This room, lit by candles burned down to nubs, of which many had died out, truly terrified Gary. Here they were, deep underground, trespassing, and now without electricity, only a few remaining candles.

  Again, Gary shivered.

  “Look at that.” Becky pointed. “A pentagram on the floor.”

  Gary saw it and didn't like what he saw.

  Becky said, “Some evil shit's been going on here.”

  “No joke. I've seen enough, now let's go.” Gary took Becky by the hand and started to retreat. “This time I'm serious.”

  Don't leave me, a phantom voice said. They hurt me here.

  Gary and Becky turned toward the sound to find a little girl holding a doll. A once-pretty dress covered her body but its blood splatters and the gore running down her legs alluded to the atrocities she'd had to endure.

  They make me do things. Very bad things.

  Gary's heart seized and Becky exclaimed, “Holy fuck.”

  Please take me with you.

  “Bitch, please,” Becky said. “We're so out of here.”

  They raced out of the building so fast, taking steps two and three at a time, that Gary's pulse didn't stop racing until they were thirty miles away, in the parking lot of Starbucks.

  29

  City lights glided by as the automobile prowled the night. The air, crisp, cool and refreshing, poured through dashboard vents. Mick Jagger wanted to Paint It Black on a classic rock station, at a very low decibel.

  “I like this,” Brant said. “Driving through the night.”