by A. R. Braun
Dirk whipped out a pack of cigarettes, shaking one out and lighting it. We could smoke in here—we could do anything we wanted in here. $10,000 bought one hell of a night. I thought later I’d stick my cock up Macy’s asshole again and then pull out and cum in her vivacious hair.
After the alcohol had driven away our inhibitions as Keith’s band played soothing pop-rock numbers, dinner was called. Were my feet ever light tonight! I waltzed off the dance floor, headed toward the dining area. Everyone took a seat at the long redwood table. I sat next to Macy, who’d really latched onto me after our last encounter. Women—no matter how innocent they acted, they were the nastiest people alive. Satan takes the babes, you see. He’s a murderer of innocence.
We all knew the drill. When the second course after the salad, the sorbet, had been set before us, whoever received a random cherry would be the main course. The others would take part in the kill. I sipped my wine and worked on finishing the salad, but I must admit, I drooled when I mused over hacking and slashing the unlucky participant into steaks, sushi and testicle oysters if a male, a twat soufflé if a female, served to the guest of honor. Tonight, it was the vice president: the best candidate for VIP.
The most important people, the politicians and the stars, were never served the cherry.
Which left . . .
I finished my salad. Waiters and waitresses cleaned away our plates, and the sorbet was placed in front the other diners, the kitchen staff moving in my direction. The delectable scent of the dish enchanted me.
I’d never given much thought to the risk of attending this event, but now the danger crept into my mind like a madman breaking into my home.
The sorbet with a cherry in the middle was placed in front of me.
I gasped. My mind raced. This can’t be happening. I just stared, couldn’t take my eyes off it. The other diners applauded.
“Oh, poo,” Macy said. “There go my plans for the evening.”
“In the old religion, this was called being King for a Day,” KK yelled, “like the unlucky schmuck stuck with the fava bean—fool for tomorrow.”
Sweat shellacked my face as I looked up. My heart beat like a speed-metal drummer. The room spun as I became dizzy, and I had difficulty breathing. I could run, but they’d catch me. Good Lord, is this really the end of the line?
Before I could endeavor to escape, the other diners rose from their chairs. They ran toward me, seemingly in slow motion because of my panic, with daemonic grins on their faces. Like banshees helping a death-bringing goddess with a kill. Trembling, I reached for Macy but was pulled away. Handcuffs strapped my wrists behind my back, and Dirk’s strong hands went into my armpits. He hoisted me out of my chair like cannon fodder. Then he squeezed my neck in that certain place, and the lights went out.
I woke screaming as horrid spikes of pain encompassed my left foot. I raised my head to see I was bound to a long table with leather straps. Underneath me, a wet, icy-cold cutting board tortured my underside with a frosty chill. They’d taken off my clothes, of course. I snapped my head to the left and to the right. The guests of the dinner were now arrayed in white chef outfits.
Dirk pounded my left foot with a tenderizing hammer!
Macy grinned, holding a gleaming butcher knife that looked sharp enough to saw through wood, directly under my testicles.
KK and the porn stars raised meat cleavers over my bulging paunch.
“Oh my God,” I sobbed. “Don’t do this. I want my money back.”
“No refunds,” the vice president said, holding a serrated spoon and a bowl.
“Please, not while I’m conscious!”
Sierra Starr, the blonde porno actress, licked my cheek. “But sweeter the taste when the victim’s awake. Fear makes the meat so succulent.”
Dirk used an electric meat saw to sever my foot, his handsome face speckled with dark crimson as his eyes bulged above an insane smile. I moaned and keened like a little boy. The blood poured out of my stump as I watched it flow into the drain in the yellow, tile floor.
Macy laughed. “Your ex-wife probably did this already.” She sawed at my balls. I yelled because of the white hot pain, even worse than when I broke my arm skateboarding as a child. When she’d cut most of the way, she pulled, and the testicles came off my crotch with a disgusting ripping sound, the skin pulled from a chicken. The white gonads fell free from the sac, and Macy picked them up like dice, then dropped them in the small metal bowl the vice president held with sickening plops. The torment infected my mind, driving me nervous as anxiety crawled through my brain like insects.
While I’m dying, I’ll lose my mind! And then I’ll go to . . . HELL . . . for eating those other people!
I coughed up my own blood and winced from the metallic taste. Whimpering, I was winking out.
The meat cleavers hacked into the flab of my stomach, but the pain now seemed distant as all light began to fade. KK and the porn stars cut more slabs of meat from me with nauseating hacks. The enormous amount of blood I’d lost was taking my consciousness.
Laughing, whooping, yelling, and female squeals of delight were the last things I heard before I fainted.
I woke, my mind cloudy as the smoke-filled atmosphere of a conflagration. My teeth chattered and I shook from the cold temperature. I hung upside-down like a bat in a winter cave.
Is this what hell’s like? Cold instead of hot?
The door whooshed open, and light filled the space, revealing it as a cooler after the fluorescents buzzed to life. I hung upside-down from a meat hook stuck through my right foot. I couldn’t move my arms because they’d spiked something sharp through my hands behind my back. I was nailed almost in reverse cruciform, and the agony made my mind swim. As I snapped my head left and right to scan the meat next to me, I recognized the corpses of the nobodies that had died before me, businessmen and women who’d become the kills of earlier dinners, their eyes wide in horror. Most of the meat had been removed from their bodies. The front of their torsos, their sexual organs, and their legs had been cut away. They hung from hooks stuck up their anuses.
Then I noticed they’d cauterized my wounds to keep me alive as long as possible.
I screamed when I saw the rugged-looking chefs, these two staff and not dinner guests, bearing electric meat saws.
One of the dark-haired youths, a young man with severe black eyes, pointed his blade my way. “They want seconds. We need to cut the tongue, legs, and rump roast from the new one.”
The other chef held a blowtorch in his other hand.
They ignored my pleas for mercy and grabbed onto my meat.
I’d been a pawn in a game of kings and queens, the stars and the politicians. How long would it be before Macy found a cherry in her sorbet? The gorgeous nobody would probably be the next dinner’s main course.
I’d lived like a king but had been a fool, and tomorrow had come.
As they hacked off my ass, legs, and tongue, I realized this could very well be hell. Perhaps I’d be here forever, watching as they took choice cuts from my body, piece by mutilating piece.
I know this tale still seems unbelievable, yet I call to you from my icy hell. All I ask is, when you make the big-time connections, please refuse the RSVP.
It may just be your last supper.
Every Witch Has Her Day
Why were some people so alone, so desolate?
Taylor asked himself this as he pulled into the driveway of his house. His hands clenched whenever he recalled his boss’s comment. You’re not committing to this job, Taylor. All he’d done lately was commit to it, working long hours and neglecting his family. See if that ever happens again.
The leaves from the ancient maples sent a shivering cascade of color onto the lawn, thanks to the mild wind. The other porches sported versions of jack-o-lantern carvings. His wife had lit their pumpkins, strange candles flickering in the twilight.
Watching his nine-year-old, Nia, performing cartwheels on the front lawn, Taylor hopped out of
his car, He chuckled as Nathan, his six-year-old, barked like a dog. The scent of burnt pumpkin skins and bitter leaves wafted over to him. Indian summer warmed his flesh and his heart.
“You pull each other down and you pick each other up, that’s what friends do,” Nia sang as she whirled like a windmill.
“Is that a song you learned at school?” Taylor asked.
“Yes,” Nia answered, “in music class.”
“Daddy!” Nathan cried, running up and hugging his leg.
“Adorable.” He turned to Nathan. “And you’re a puppy?”
“No! A big dog, Dad.”
“I’m the puppy!” Nia cried, yipping.
Taylor bent and ran his hands through her hair. “And you’re a cute one.”
The fetching woman in black walked by then.
Goose bumps formed on Taylor’s flesh, and he hated himself for becoming aroused. He rose.
She fluttered her eyelashes at him as her heels clicked down the street. Her huge pentagram amulet gleamed in the sun, and her glasses hung to the bottom of her nose. A large pentagram ring on her left hand caught the sun’s rays, creating a prism. Coal midnight hair hung down her shoulders, legs that seemed to go on forever sticking out of her short, black skirt.
She was thirty, Taylor’s age, and blessed with an hourglass figure, full lips covered with glossy lipstick and milky-white skin. Taylor lived at the end of the block and hated passing her house on the way to work, the way a black, upside-down cross in a red frame hung over the door. The dilapidated wooden privacy fence was missing panels, and the black exterior needed a paint job.
Her lingering gaze enchanted his soul, her bewitching eyes searching out his dark secrets, all the bad things he’d ever done that he never wanted anyone to know about, not even his wife. The times he’d stolen posters and CDs as a teen, the times he’d told his parents he was staying over at his best friend’s house when they were really getting drunk with his buddy’s big sister, and getting kinky with her too. Just kid stuff, really, but exposed, making him feel vulnerable.
And there was the clandestine taboo he didn’t dare mention to his wife.
The sun hid behind the clouds as if absconding from the woman. The warm temperature dropped. Lightning struck in the distance, and thunder rumbled. A strong gust of wind picked up, the children’s hair blowing around their heads like hay in a farmer’s barn seconds before a tornado obliterated it. The same gust carried the witch’s scent, incense mixed with sweet Cherry Vanilla perfume, blending with the autumn air and burning pumpkin skins, an intoxicating aroma.
Nia gave her the stink eye as the woman continued to shuffle down the block. “There’s that weird lady again.”
Nathan scrunched up his face as he eyeballed her. “Crazy lady.”
“Kids, let’s go inside.”
Taylor’s wife, Stacia—a blond, busty beauty with a tan—was blasting Metallica’s Master of Puppets CD. She smiled and turned it down as the children came in. “You’re home early, hubbie.”
Taylor pointed at the stereo. “That’s one of my favorite albums.”
“I’m taking a break from hip hop. I couldn’t resist.” She walked up and gave him a smooch, then resumed preparing dinner.
Taylor nodded. “Don’t take too long of a break.” He crossed his arms like a rapper. “We need to keep it real, pfft, what?”
Stacia erupted in laughter.
“Come on, kids.” Taylor led the children to the couch. “Have a seat.”
Nia made a face like a gopher. Nathan gazed up at him with wide eyes, giving him his undivided attention. Taylor was his idol, no doubt about it.
“Are we having a family meeting?” Nia asked in a munchkin voice.
Nathan echoed that sentiment.
“No, not quite.” Taylor sighed. “Kids, I’m aware that you know better than to have anything to do with the lady in black, but I don’t want you going by her home at all. I want you to avoid her.”
“Aw nuts,” Nathan whined. “Jimmy lives on the other side of the street.”
“Then tell him to visit you here. Let the other boys and girls know your dad said no, or you’re grounded. Got it?”
“Yes, Dad,” they droned.
“Halloween’s tomorrow night, and you know not to go looking for candy there, I assume?”
Nia said, “None of the kids want her stinky candy.”
“All right, you can go play.”
They rose and traipsed outside.
His rueful thought: I can’t always be around to protect them.
After supper, Taylor mused over the gothic woman as Stacia washed the dishes. He and his family never went to church. Yet as much as he tried not to remember, he couldn’t help recall the teachings of the witch of Endor from Sunday school when he was a teen. Witchcraft had worked in the Old Testament, the teacher had claimed. This particular Biblical wizard had worshiped Ashtoreth. Was that a name for Satan?
Can’t I say it? Even in my mind? She’s a witch, the kind of person hurling curses at whoever doesn’t like her.
He had children to protect. There’d be no consorting with stranger danger, not for his little ones.
Taylor sighed when he remembered her name, Jezzy Balkenheim. He lay in bed, trying not to think about her, but the task proved impossible. His wife slept next to him, exhausted from cleaning all day, which she’d complained about after dinner.
Jezzy had been a goth girl in high school, the one who’d slept with anybody.
Then the memory came upon him like a rushing flood, the taboo he couldn’t bear but had been thrust into this head. Is her spell forcing this recollection? Can she break into my mind?
Jezzy had hit on Taylor after sneaking into the boys’ bathroom. He’d been weak and given in to one adolescent fit of lust. Later, Taylor courted and married Stacia, his high school sweetheart. He’d bragged to his buddies about his conquest with Jezzy but never went near her again. She’d wanted him to steal a goat so they could slaughter it. He’d refused, she’d become enraged, they’d exchanged shouts. Taylor had called her crazy.
She’d been following him ever since.
One time, he’d caught Jezzy shooting up heroin in the smoking area with three other goth girls. His friends had gasped. Taylor’s eyes had goggled when Jezzy’s wolfpack laughed and flashed their tits and asses outside where the principal could’ve come walking over. They’d asked Taylor and his friends if they wanted to get high while drinking Everclear straight from the bottle.
No scruples.
Now she dwelt in his neighborhood, the unwanted denizen that wouldn’t go away, like a cockroach, a cancer, a defacing of an otherwise decent community on the north side of the city of Mowquakwa, Illinois.
That kind of person just didn’t live here.
At least she never bothered him and his family now that they’d grown up. Witches like Endor’s didn’t exist today.
No, some were worse, worshiping the devil.
Taylor rolled over and entered the land of dreams.
Halloween night came. Taylor thought Nia looked like a kewpie doll in her fairy princess outfit. Her wand and wings spotlighted her shoulder-length blond hair Stacia had fashioned into curls. Nathan had gone for the skeleton costume, the little man lighting up the sidewalk in his glow-in-the-dark outfit. His brown cowlick stuck out of the back of his skeleton mask.
Taylor had insisted on taking them trick-or-treating, even though he’d promised they could go alone this year. After pondering Jezzy’s presence in the neighborhood until the wee hours of the night, he couldn’t leave them on the street by themselves.
The usually quiet block of McMansions with turrets, patios, and pillars now roared with the sounds of yelling, squealing children hiding their faces behind masks as a defense against spirits that had penetrated the thin veil between the living and the dead. Lines formed in front of every house—except Jezzy’s—and glowing jack-o-lanterns watched over the proceedings. Caricatures of Frankenstein’s monster and Dracul
a sat stuffed with candles instead of mixed body parts, or, in the count’s case, blood.
A biting chill permeated the atmosphere, a portend of destruction or the promise of a frosty winter looming around the corner? Taylor wasn’t sure, but he couldn’t help wonder.
He walked with his arm around Stacia as his two gleeful children made their way toward the back of another line.
Jezzy came out of nowhere, putting candy inside the trick-or-treaters’s plastic pumpkins. The treats she put into each bag were wrapped in cloth and tied with a frilly bow. She grinned as if in the throes of an orgasm. “Awww, such beautiful children, all dressed up for Halloween. Don’t we have a vast array of spooks and ghouls?”
The children stood statue still.
“I don’t want tricks, so I’ll give treats,” Jezzy continued. “There’s no need for soap on my windows or toilet paper in my oak trees.”
Taylor was about to voice his objection when Jezzy pulled her glasses up to her eyes and smiled at him, flashing movie-star teeth.
“Taylor Marks, so good to see you,” Jezzy said. “This must be your lovely wife.”
He hoped to hell she wouldn’t reveal the forbidden sex he’d had with her in the high-school bathroom. “I must object to your putting candy—”
“And these must be your adorable children,” she continued as she looked them over.
Nia and Nathan stayed frozen.
“Why, aren’t they filled with the love of life.” Jezzy added. “So many possibilities. I could be looking at our future presidents.”
Taylor’s wife reached out and shook her hand. “I’m Stacia. These are our kids, Nia and Nathan.”
Her mouth formed an O. “How nice, the two N children. Aren’t they cute?” Jezzy met Taylor’s eyes.
Taylor forced a lachrymose smile.
“I’m Jezzy.” She shook with Stacia. “Well, I’ve made the children the tastiest delights—marshmallow treats with sprinkles of red sugar. Actually, it’s made with artificial sweetener, so the little ones won’t ruin their diet.” She stared at her black watch with green, glow-in-the-dark hands. “Happy Halloween, Marks family, may it be the loveliest time of the year. Good evening.”