Snuff Club: An Extreme Horror Novel

by Sam West

  “Do you want to kill Julie?” he asked. “It’s a bit close to home, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it is. I don’t want to, but if I have to, I will. Hey don’t look so worried, I told you last night, we’re fucking untouchable.” He headed for the door. “We’re going now. We’re gonna catch some shut-eye this afternoon and you can hold the fort, yeah?”

  “Sure,” Steven said quietly.

  Mark left him alone in his bedroom with his thoughts, his mind whirring with the possibilities of what the hell he was supposed to say to Julie. His heart beat faster just at the thought of speaking to her, and his hard-on sprang back into full life.

  I don’t want her to get hurt, he told himself firmly.

  But the more he thought about her naked and hurt, the harder his cock grew.

  Whatever I say to her, I’d better make it fucking good. Because if she suspects us of anything, then she’s dead meat…

  The window was right next to his single bed and absently he peeled back the edge of the permanently drawn, grubby curtain and peered out at the busy main road beyond the small patch of concrete that was there front-garden.

  Of course.

  It was bin-day today and neither they, nor next door had put their bins out on the pavement. It was an added bonus that Grant’s transit wasn’t there, which meant he was already on his way to work so there was no chance of Grant putting the bin out. He figured that the gods must be smiling down on him because it was the perfect opportunity to catch her outside in a natural situation. The bin-men didn’t usually arrive until at least nine, so all he had to do was watch out for her putting out her bin, then ‘accidently’ meet her on the street doing the same…

  Genius. Now all he had to do was work out what he was going to say to her.

  *****

  Julie groggily opened her eyes and peered at the bedroom clock; it was eight-thirty. Instinctively, she slung her arm over the other side of the bed searching for Grant, but the space was empty.

  Her eyes snapped open.

  Grant left for work two whole hours ago, she reminded herself. She sat up in bed, feeling vaguely uneasy and not quite knowing why.

  I don’t want to be alone.

  She pushed aside the strange thought – God only knew where that had come from – and sat up in bed.

  I guess those nightmares are messing with my head.

  She frowned. Sure, she was no stranger to bad dreams, but she hadn’t had any for ages.

  Until now.

  Sighing heavily, she stood up, pulling Grant’s oversized t-shirt that she always slept in over her head, and padded naked over to her underwear drawer.

  As her fingers grazed the handle of the drawer, she remembered it was Thursday.

  Shit. The bin.

  All half-baked thoughts of showering forgotten, she quickly pulled on a pair of plain white knickers, stepped into the jeans she had been wearing yesterday, and tugged on a fitted white t-shirt with a picture of a spider’s web on the front.

  Just as she hurried barefoot down the stairs, she heard the unmistakable clatter of the bin men a few doors down.

  I still have time...

  She lurched for the front door, slipping her feet into the flip-flops she always kept by the matt for such emergencies, and hurried outside.

  She grabbed the brown bin and tilted it, dragging it behind her down the short driveway towards the pavement.

  “You forgot too, huh?”

  The familiar voice made her jump – so intent was she on the job at hand that she didn’t notice Steven from next door doing the exact same thing.

  “Yeah. I’m such an idiot.”

  “Me too. I only remembered when I heard them just now. Glad I didn’t forget, Mark would’ve killed me.”

  There’s something different about him, came the sudden thought.

  He was smiling at her, his blue eyes gleaming with…

  With what?

  With confidence. And lots of it.

  Usually he came across as such a shy, sweet kid, but for a moment there she was sure that he leered at her breasts. Instinctively, she wrapped her arms around her chest, wishing with all her might that she had bothered to put a bra on just now. She never went out without a bra as her breasts were a D cup and she hated how much attention they got at the best of times.

  Grant’s words echoed in her head: The kid’s got the hots for you.

  “Yeah,” she said, feeling uneasy. “I’m glad I got the bin out in time.”

  She turned to go back in, keen to get away from him. The bin men drew up to her house, the clatter of their heavy machinery naturally terminating their conversation.

  Or so she thought.

  “Have you got the day off today?” he said over the fence, keeping pace with her as they both walked the length of their front-gardens.

  Against her better judgement, she stopped to face him. She didn’t want to be rude, after all. From this distance, the bin men weren’t quite so noisy so there was no real excuse not to exchange a few neighbourly words with the boy.

  “No, my shift starts at two.”

  “My brother’s got a new job. Well, I say a job, it was more of a trial run thing, if you know what I mean. That plastics’ factory in Leigh wanted him to do some deliveries for them at the crack of dawn.” He laughed. “I guess they wanted to see if he could be bothered to get up so early or not.”

  Her mind flitted back to last night – to the first nightmares she’d had for years, and to Mark and his fat friend getting into the van at three in the morning.

  Three is hardly the crack of dawn. It’s the middle of the night.

  She shrugged it off. Who cared anyway?

  Her laughter joined in with his, but it sounded fake to her own ears. All she wanted to do was get back inside, stick the kettle on, and put all thoughts of the next door neighbours out of her head.

  “That’s great, Steven,” she said, none too convincingly. “I hope it goes well for him.”

  She turned away from him, the safety of her front door beckoning her.

  “Have a great day, Julie,” Steven called out to her.

  “Thanks, you too,” she said without turning round.

  She couldn’t get inside fast enough.

  *****

  Steven watched Julie’s retreating figure, his heart hammering in indignation. For a few more seconds he just stood there, staring at her shut front door, the bin men’s heavy machinery roaring in his ears. He had always thought that it was his inherent shyness that had prevented them from ever having a ‘proper’ conversation, but now he understood that that was not the case.

  They’d never talked for long before because she was a stuck-up bitch.

  The noise of the garbage truck receded, along with his flash of temper, but disappointment clung to him.

  I was so sure she liked me. I was so sure we had a connection.

  Once he was back inside the house, he pressed himself against the hallway wall that separated her house from his. He cuddled the peeling wallpaper like it was her, tracing small circles with his fingertips, imagining it was her flesh that he was exploring.

  What are you doing right now, Julie? Are you putting on a fucking bra?

  He thought of her untethered breasts and felt himself stiffen.

  “Fucking, stuck-up bitch,” he whispered, sinking to his knees and freeing his cock.

  Image after image slammed into his mind; squeezing and twisting her big tits until they turned bright red in his hands; ramming as many fingers as he could up her juicy little cunt until he split her; fucking her in the arse until her blood and shit soaked his balls….

  He shot his load over the shabby wallpaper, figuring that no one would notice one extra stain.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Angela Lewis – or ‘Candy Kane’ as she liked to be known – stood on the street corner, shivering in her too-short, leather skirt and black, strappy top. Her feet ached in the too-high heels and she was painfully aware of her misera
bly-throbbing bunion and the weeping blister on her right heel.

  It was a slow night, tonight. So far, she had amassed the grand total of thirty quid, which equated to one blow job and a wank. Cars streamed past her on the busy ringroad in central Manchester, unsympathetic to her need to buy more cocaine. She was running low, and if she didn’t get any more tonight, she was seriously going to go off her fucking nut.

  At last, a beat-up white van pulled up just up ahead of her and she tottered towards it.

  “Hey sweet-stuff,” she said, peering in through the wound-down passenger window. “Are you up for some fun tonight?”

  Oh. There’s two of them.

  Instinctively, she stepped away from the window. She was strictly a one on one kind of girl. The last time she had taken on two guys, they had handled her so roughly she hadn’t been able to sit down for a month. It just wasn’t worth the hassle.

  She backed away from the vehicle.

  “Sorry, sugars, I only do one on one.”

  “We’ll pay,” said the guy in passenger seat.

  He flashed her a smile and she thought how good-looking he was. How good-looking both of them were. The guy in the passenger seat was classically handsome, had dark eyes, messy dark hair and was as buff as.

  The guy driving was equally as tall and buff, and had the same black hair, although his was cropped close to his scalp. He was paler, his eyes a glittering, powder blue. His features were a lot heavier, his nose quite large. He was still gorgeous though, even if not in the conventional sense. He had the whole, ‘mean and moody’ thing going on with an air of danger about him.

  Danger.

  Yes, she really should listen to her instincts.

  “Sorry,” she said, although she was sorely tempted. They were fucking lush.

  “One thousand pounds,” said the smiling man in the passenger seat.

  She hesitated. “Show me the money.”

  The guy reached into his pocket and her eyes lit up at the big wad of cash. Already in her head she was spending that grand.

  Oh God, this is a bad fucking idea…

  The man pulled out a thick wad of ten and twenty pound notes and dangled them just out of reach, level with the window.

  “It’s all yours if you slide open that side door and climb on in.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You got seats back there?”

  “Sorry, baby” he said with a wolfish grin that she felt in her knickers. “But we ain’t got far to go, just to Tyldesley.”

  “I ain’t happy getting’ in the back. And I don’t normally go home with clients.”

  That was a barefaced lie; she often did if she trusted the look of them and their place wasn’t far away.

  The good-looking guy’s grin didn’t waver for a second. “Don’t want the neighbours seeing, do we? My mate’s missus is away for the night and we was hopin’ for a bit of fun. What do you say? We should be done by midnight, then we’ll drop you back. We got coke, too.”

  Angela’s heart lurched in anticipation.

  Coke. Oh yeah.

  “Your mate don’t say much, does he?” she said, peering at the guy in the driver’s seat.

  He was staring resolutely ahead, refusing to look at her, his mouth set in a hard line.

  “He’s the strong, silent type. He ain’t never done this before, he’s a bit nervous.”

  The man swivelled his head, his icy-blue eyes settling on her breasts. A little shiver ran through her.

  He’s a naughty one, this guy.

  “Yeah. I’m really nervous. Do wanna come back to ours for a party or not?”

  The handsome one elbowed him in the ribs, and the surly one scowled all the harder.

  “Don’t mind my mate, he ain’t much of a charmer. But we’ll show you a good time, I promise.”

  “And it’ll be just you and your mate?”

  “Yeah, sure will, baby.”

  Fuck it, she thought, taking a step forwards and snatching the money out of his hand. She rolled up the notes into a tight wad and shoved it down the front of her bra.

  Here goes nothing, she thought, swooshing open the side-door and crawling ungainly inside the starkly empty back of the van.

  She wrinkled her nose. It smelt funny in here, of cleaning fluids and something else – something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

  Like someone had a massive crap in here.

  Or there was a fucking dead body back here.

  She pushed aside the ridiculous thought and pulled the door shut behind herself, sealing her fate.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “They’re a long time.”

  “Relax, Steven, it’s only been a few hours. They’re probably stuck in Manchester traffic.”

  Steven marvelled at the fact that both Curly and Dairy were calling him ‘Steven’ now, and he wondered if the novelty would ever wear off.

  “Yeah. Probably.”

  Steven sat on the armchair, his leg jigging up and down. Curly sat on the sofa, staring blankly at ‘Coronation Street’.

  He wished that his brother had asked him to go ‘on the prowl’ with him instead of Dairy.

  That’s ‘cause Dairy is tons better looking than you.

  “Will you stop that?” Curly asked, not taking his eyes off the box.

  Steven stilled his leg, sighing heavily. He cast his gaze around the living-room. The familiar surroundings were rendered unfamiliar by the plastic sheet that covered the entire floor, and all the furniture – such as it was – had been pushed back against the walls.

  To better wrap the body up in when we’re done, Mark had said. And now we can indulge in a bit of blood-play, too.

  Curly almost looked funny in his clown costume. But mainly he looked like a scary freak. They had bought them online first thing that morning, choosing same day delivery. The yellow clown suit with bright red bobbles running down the front made Curly look massive. His full-head mask lay on his lap, as Steven’s did.

  A big, fat, killer clown, sitting there watching Coronation Street.

  His own costume was identical to Curly’s, except his suit was red with yellow bobbles down the front, and his mask had frizzy green hair while Curly’s was orange.

  He felt a bit of a twat, but he knew the effect would be worth it. Because Clown costumes were the ‘in thing’ now, right? So why the fuck not, as Mark had said. It would be fun to make their films trendy.

  They sat there in silence, the telly blaring out, a sense of unreality washing over him. His stomach somersaulted and it took everything he had not to pace the small room. The only reason he didn’t was because it would piss Curly off and he was at least five stone heavier than him.

  When the time comes, will I be able to do it? Will I be able to kill someone?

  Deep in his heart, he knew the answer.

  Yes.

  The flimsy, mock-wooden blinds suddenly glowed red, signalling that the van was reversing into the small front garden, its taillights illuminating the oblong window.

  “They’re here,” Curly said almost reverently, getting to his feet.

  Both of them were barefoot. Not only had they decided that the ridiculous length of the clown-shoes would encumber their movements, after committing two murders last night they’d had to chuck away the clothes they’d been wearing, including their trainers. None of them wanted to lose another pair of trainers – those things cost money – so they had opted to go shoeless.

  The engine died, and they walked into the kitchen, shutting the door behind themselves. On the kitchen table, an array of household weapons were neatly lined up. Steven lightly ran his hand over the block of kitchen knives, then gently trailed his fingertips over the pair of rusty pliers that they had found under the kitchen sink and finally the chunky kitchen scissors.

  He settled on a big, flat-edged knife, and Curly went for the biggest one – a breadknife with a serrated edge.

  The front-door opened, and they nodded to each other, pulling the masks over their heads.
Voices and laughter drifted their way from the small hallway:

  “Go right on through to the living-room, we’ll be right behind you,” came Mark’s harsh, Northern tones. “We need to get changed into something more comfortable.”

  More laughter, then the sound of the front-door closing. The door to the living-room creaked open, and Steven imagined that Dairy was opening it for her as Mark pocketed the key to the front-door.

  He could just picture her wide-eyed look of surprise, her open-mouthed, ‘what the fuck’ expression as she took in the plastic sheet on the floor. He was longing to savour her rush of blind-panic.

  “Now,” Curly said, bursting through the door, knife held aloft.

  Steven was hot on his heels, bounding into the room after him. Dairy held the girl to his broad chest, one arm round her neck, the other clamped over her mouth. Mark was already upstairs, changing into his clown costume. In less than a second, Steven took the entirety of her in.

  She wasn’t as pretty as he’d hoped she’d be. In fact, she was pretty rough. Still, at least she was young, either a haggard twenty or somewhere in her late-twenties. Somehow, he suspected the former. She had thin, bleached-blonde hair that hung limply to her shoulders, like it had given up on growing any longer years ago. Thickly applied make-up couldn’t hide her dull complexion, and her legs were twig-thin beneath the leather mini. Not much meat up top, either. Her ribs were visible through the skimpy black top; Steven thought how great this looked in an airbrushed photo of Kate Moss. But in real life? Not so much.

  There was no doubt about it; this one was a hooker.

  His brother and Dairy had talked about perhaps going into a boozer and picking up a girl or two. They had wanted to do that, but decided that they would probably end up just picking up a prostitute. Far easier and less risky.

  Even though Steven had, deep down, been expecting this, it was still a little bit disappointing.

  “Surprise!” Curly said, pushing his mask right up into the terrified girl’s face. “We’re gonna have ourselves a good old party.”