Single White Psycopath Seeks Same

by Jeff Strand

  Stan came up behind me and pushed my wheelchair forward. My body was completely numb. I couldn’t have spoken if I’d tried.

  “Okay, Andrew, we’ve got a special treat planned for you,” Daniel said, wiping some blood away from his mouth. “We had planned this for when we thought you’d be showing up as the Headhunter’s prisoner, so I’m glad it won’t be wasted. When you ask people what kind of death they fear most, you’ll get a lot of responses. Being eaten by a shark, dying of a lingering disease, getting chopped to bits with a hatchet—none of these are popular ways to go. But there’s one that really creeps some people out, and I think you in particular will appreciate it.”

  “And what could that possibly be?” asked Mortimer, as if he were on an infomercial.

  “Why, I’m glad you asked! The answer is...being buried alive!” Daniel gestured dramatically at the coffin. “What could be a more suitable punishment for a past graverobber?”

  Oh, please God, no , I thought.

  “Being buried alive is certainly a nasty way to go,” Mortimer remarked. “But don’t you have anything worse?”

  “Worse?” asked Daniel, in mock dismay. “What could possibly be worse?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m not convinced that his death is all it could be. I’m afraid you’ll have to do better than that. What do the audience members think?”

  “Make it worse!” Josie shouted. Stan and Foster pitched in as well.

  “But...but...but...I’m only a simple businessman! I can’t possibly do anything worse than bury him alive!”

  Josie, Stan, and Foster began to boo.

  “Then I’m sorry, but we’ll just have to let him go,” said Mortimer, shaking his head sadly.

  “No wait, let me think! There has to be a way!” Daniel snapped his fingers, sending a couple of drops of blood into the air. “By golly, I’ve got it!” He bent down and threw open the lid of the coffin. “It’ll be a double occupancy!”

  Inside the pine box was a partially decomposed corpse, its mouth frozen open in a shriek of unrestrained terror. Maggots chewed its eyes. It looked vaguely male, but I couldn’t tell much beyond that from its grotesque appearance.

  Thank God I couldn’t speak. I wouldn’t have been able to do anything but blubber for mercy.

  “Andrew, meet Wesley. Wesley, Andrew. He was one of my own captures, but he was a very naughty little boy and we had to shoot him. It seemed like a waste at the time, but I think you’ll be pleased to see that we’re making good use of him.”

  Mortimer walked over to assist as Foster began undoing the straps on the wheelchair. “That thing is nasty ,” Stan said from behind me. “Sure glad I’m not the one being buried with it.”

  Daniel grinned and wiped his bloody hands off on his bloody jeans. “Look at those babies squirm in those sockets! I don’t know how they’ll be able to contain their excitement when they get nice, fresh, live flesh!”

  And then I found my voice. I don’t even remember what I said. It probably made no sense. But even though my conscious mind was telling me to shut up ( Just shut up!You’re only entertaining them! ) I couldn’t stop. I was babbling and whimpering and tears flowed down my cheeks and I couldn’t make myself be quiet.

  Have I mentioned that I’m incredibly claustrophobic?

  I thrashed and flailed and screamed as Foster and Mortimer grabbed my legs, and Stan grabbed my arms. I struggled with every last bit of strength I possessed, but I couldn’t get away as they lifted me out of the wheelchair and held me over the coffin. Daniel was saying something, but I couldn’t hear him over my own screams.

  Then they gently lowered me into the coffin.

  On top of the corpse.

  I could feel it giving way beneath me, the flesh of its chest splitting under my bare back. The smell was so far beyond putrid that I can’t even explain it. My screams faded to an abrupt gasp as my head pressed into the corpse’s face.

  I could feel cold teeth against the back of my neck.

  I struggled to get free, but the lid slammed shut, giving me about an inch of room above my nose. As I worked my hands into a position where I could pound on the lid, I heard the click of padlocks snapping shut.

  Things were squirming underneath my back.

  I pounded and pounded as I felt the coffin being dragged forward. Then lifted, then lowered...dropping the last couple of feet with a jolt that drove me further into the corpse.

  Then I heard a sound that could only be dirt being tossed onto the lid. Moments after that, my mind couldn’t cope with the horror anymore....

  ...and I found myself thinking of my parents....

  ...and school....

  ...and the first time I met Helen, at the movies when she had to rush out of the theatre during a special screening of The Exorcist ....

  ...and Theresa being born....

  ...and Kyle....

  ...and........

  Daniel’s Side

  WHAT A cheap piece of junk. Who made this thing? You can’t even tell if it’s recording or not.

  Ladies and gentlemen, I do believe we’ve heard the last of Andrew Mayhem. It’s too bad the special guest thing didn’t work out, but I’ve got only myself to blame for that. My lovely wife and my not-so-lovely associates warned me, and they were right. Oh well. Live and learn.

  Hey, Mortimer, say something for posterity. C’mon! Oh, don’t be such a chickenshit, just talk into the recorder! You people are so paranoid it’s not even funny! Fine, fine. For those of you who are only listening to this, Mortimer has just made an obscene gesture and left the room.

  I guess healthy paranoia is good. You can’t be too careful. Foster is convinced that Andrew is gonna break out of his grave like some flesh-eating zombie, so he’s hanging out in the burial area with a paperback, just in case. He’ll miss out on some of the fun, but hey, whatever floats his boat, right?

  What? Oh, you can barely see it! It’s not blood, it’s water. Yes, I used the peach shampoo. Nag, nag, nag.

  Again, for those of you who aren’t really here, my lovely wife is getting all bent out of shape because my hair is dripping. If it were up to me, I’d still be covered in blood, but she’s like “No blood in the house!”

  Hey, knock it off! [ Laughter .] My lovely wife is now grabbing for the tape recorder, but she’s far too short and weak to succeed at such a task. Back! Back, you cur!

  Uh-oh, she seems to be trying a new technique. Don’t let the youngsters listen to this! So we’ll finish up here, and then head back to the operating room! I can’t wait to see what Stan has in store for the chick that gave Andrew that ass stabbing!

  This is Daniel Rankin, of Rankin Bloodbaths, signing off.

  Chapter 18

  MINUTES LATER? Hours?

  My eyes flew open and took in only darkness.

  Calm down!

  Forget being calm! I’m buried alive with a rotting dead guy!

  I began to scream.

  If you don’t control yourself, you’ll run out of oxygen!

  Do I even WANT to stay alive down here?

  The stench was so awful that I could barely breathe. I pushed up on the lid, knowing fully well that it wasn’t going to open. The corpse’s ribs had broken away and I’d sunk into it deeply enough that I could feel its spinal column digging into my back.

  And I could still feel its screaming mouth against my neck. I stopped pushing on the lid and brushed off the writhing maggots that were crawling up onto my stomach.

  The coffin felt like it was shrinking around me, becoming smaller and smaller until it crushed me to death.

  It was only my imagination, of course, but I also thought I could hear the corpse—Wesley—laughing at me, ready to bite down on my neck and rip out a huge mouthful of flesh.

  “ We’re gonna die together Andrew, you and me together forever so let’s make the most of it, shall we Andrew? ”

  Hell no!

  I began pounding on the lid with both fists, screaming and blubbering like a child.<
br />
  Stop it! Stop it! Control yourself!

  I was not going to die down here! If I had to rip the lid of the coffin apart splinter-by-splinter I was getting out of this thing! I’d figured out a way to keep Charlotte alive, and I could sure as hell figure out a way to keep myself alive!

  “ Didn’t do so well with Susan or Trevor, though, did ya? ” asked Wesley. “ And what about Thomas?He’s in worse shape than I am! ”

  I continued pounding on the lid.

  Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!

  My situation wasn’t hopeless. It was bad, it was really bad, but it wasn’t hopeless.

  Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!

  I wondered what was happening to Roger. Were they killing him now? Was he strapped to the operating table at this very moment?

  Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!

  Crack .

  I instantly ceased my pounding. Had I broken part of the lid?

  I slid my hands along the top of the coffin, and then raised my legs to what little extent I could and began to slide them along the wood as well, gathering splinters but searching desperately for an imperfection. There didn’t seem to be one.

  I braced both hands against the lid and pushed up as hard as I could, pushing until my arms felt like they might snap in two. I could feel blood trickling from the cut in my shoulder.

  Crack .

  The lid had definitely split somewhere. The maggots and decaying flesh soaking my skin were abruptly forgotten. I continued searching for the break in the wood.

  Then I found it. It was directly above my navel. I tested it with my index finger—it was small, but definitely there. Daniel should’ve invested a bit more of his fortune into the coffins.

  I continued pushing on the lid.

  No good.

  I wished I had some kind of tool, but that didn’t matter. I’d claw at that break in the wood until there was no skin left on my fingers, and then I’d keep clawing at it with exposed bone, if that’s what it took.

  Bone!

  I felt along the corpse until I located its right hand. I tested each finger. They’d all been partially devoured by the maggots, but the middle finger was the closest to being completely skeletal. I wrapped my own fingers around it tightly, and then tried to bend it backwards. After considerable strain, the finger snapped off.

  After a moment of blind panic where I was unable to locate the crack in the wood, I did find it and pushed the finger bone against it. As a kid, I’d broken my arm once when I’d been standing too close to the batter while playing baseball, but this pine lid was nowhere near as sturdy as a wooden bat.

  I pushed the tip of the bone against the crack, desperately hoping that the wood would break first.

  The bone snapped in half.

  I stared at it in dismay, even though I couldn’t see anything in the darkness.

  Don’t scream!

  I didn’t scream. There were other bones. I had all the time in the world. Until I suffocated.

  YOU WOULDN’T think that maggots squirming on your body were something a person could get used to, but I was so focused on the task at hand that it wasn’t long before I didn’t even notice them. With a twist of the corpse’s rib, the wood began to break away. I was moving the bone slowly, deliberately, but the sound of wood splintering was enough to make me want to giggle with maniacal glee.

  Then a small chunk of the wood broke, and I felt some dirt trickle in and pour on my waist. I set the rib aside and fingered the gap. It was about an inch square. I dug my thumbs into the dirt on the edge and tried to pry it apart even further.

  MY THUMBS were raw and bloody, and I’d gone through three more ribs, but more bits of wood had broken away. Now the gap was large enough that I could fit all of my fingers into it.

  As I struggled with it, there was another cracking sound. I slid my hand along the lid, and realized that a foot-long split had appeared, stretching from the square gap in a straight line toward my face.

  I continued pulling on the edge of the wood.

  IT FELT LIKE it took forever, but I don’t think it was more than a few minutes before I managed to break away a long strip of the wood. More dirt poured onto my chest.

  At this point, I had to start being really careful. I wasn’t sure how deep I’d been buried, and if too much dirt came crashing down the coffin lid might cave in and squash me like a...well, like a maggot.

  Slow and steady.

  My arms were agonizingly sore, forcing me to take a break. I rested them at my sides, closed my eyes, and tried to breathe easy.

  I imagined Wesley snarling at me. “ Get a move on, ya slacker! ”

  After a few minutes, I managed to break off another chunk of wood, and then began to vigorously scoop out handfuls of the exposed dirt and toss them to the foot of the coffin. Dirt was raining down on my face in small quantities, and I spit it out to the side.

  I HAD DUG as high as my arms would reach. The digging part was pretty easy, since the grave had just been filled in and the dirt hadn’t had time to pack itself down.

  Now I had more room to maneuver, and I set about breaking away more of the coffin lid.

  THOUGH IT was hard to breathe, my spirits were high as I sat up, scraping my already-injured shoulder badly against a jutting portion of the lid, but certain that I was home free.

  Sticky flesh clung to my back. I ignored it.

  I’M GOING to make it!

  I was filled with hope and energy. Despite this horrific ordeal, despite the fact that my chances of survival once I reached the surface might be slim, despite the fact that I might never see Helen, Theresa, or Kyle again, I felt recharged. I was getting out of here.

  Sitting up straight, I dug with an incredible fervor. My arms could stretch almost to their full length over my head, so I had to be getting close.

  I wondered if anybody was waiting above.

  Would they bother to have somebody guard a grave?

  There was only one way to find out.

  MY HAND burst through to the surface. The cold air felt absolutely fantastic.

  My other hand broke through, and I clutched the smooth ground above. It took several tries to work up the strength, but finally, I pulled myself out of the grave.

  After being in complete darkness for so long, my eyes burned in the light. I just lay there, panting, completely exhausted.

  I’d made it!

  Then I heard somebody applaud.

  “Now that was impressive. Nice work!”

  Roger! It was Roger! But had he escaped, or was he still a prisoner?

  I shielded my eyes from the light and turned around. “Rog!” I gasped.

  “Ummm, nope, not Roger. Your traumatic experience has left you a bit delirious. This is your good friend Curtwood Foster.”

  And it was. Foster sat on a folding chair, a paperback novel in one hand, and a martini in the other.

  I just collapsed to the ground.

  “Aw...is the poor guy tired?”

  Foster set his book and drink aside, and then stood up and began to walk toward me. He cracked his knuckles. “You are so, so, so very dead.”

  “You know, Foster,” I managed to say, “you were always my favorite of the group.”

  “Isn’t that sweet? You know, I could take you into the operating room, but I’m really an old-fashioned kind of person at heart, so I’m going with the traditional beating to death.”

  I pushed myself up. A violent kick to the side sent me right back down. I groaned in pain and rolled onto my back.

  “No, no, don’t get up for me,” Foster said. “I have to say, the whole time I sat there I was hoping you’d make it out somehow. I almost dug you up myself. Because I really wanted to do this.” He kicked me in the side again. I wondered if my own ribs were going to look like Wesley’s by the time this was over.

  Foster stepped away from me and raised his fists like a boxer. “Let’s make this fair. I’ll give you a couple of moments to get up. Maybe I’ll even give you a free p
unch. How’s that sound?”

  “How about you...” I had to pause to take a breath, “...give me your gun?”

  “I might, I just might. Get up. Fight like man.”

  My muscles felt like they were being ripped from the bone as I got to my feet, but I couldn’t just lie there and let him kick me to death. I raised my fists, and then lost my balance and fell back to the ground.

  “Now that’s just pathetic,” said Foster, taking out his gun. “Maybe I oughta blow off your kneecaps like I said, huh?”

  I resumed my effort to get back to my feet. “Sure, if you want to bring the others here.”

  “I don’t know, I think this place is pretty well soundproof. Should we test it?”

  My legs buckled beneath me, but I kept from hitting the ground. “Sure...if you don’t think you can beat me.”

  Foster extended the gun toward my face, and then strode over to me, keeping it pointed between my eyes the entire time. Right before the barrel connected with my face, he smacked the barrel of the gun against the side of my head, hard. I accidentally bit the side of my mouth and dropped to the ground yet again.

  “Having a bit of trouble with your balance, aren’t you?” Foster asked. “Could be an inner ear problem.”

  I wiped a trickle of blood from the corner of my mouth and made another effort to get up. Though in my current condition, even if I could get a punch in it probably wouldn’t be enough to knock a bird off its perch.

  “You do have willpower, I’ll give you that,” said Foster. “Make you a deal. I’ll end this. One shot to the gut, one shot to each leg, one shot to each arm, and then I’ll put the barrel in your mouth and put you out of your misery? How’s that sound?”

  I forced myself to shrug. “Will Daniel...reimburse you for the...extra bullets?”

  “Probably not, but in this case, it’s my pleasure.”

  I stood up as straight as possible. “I don’t mean to be rude, but...”

  “But what?”

  I motioned for him to wait while I caught my breath. “But why do you need a gun to fight me? Isn’t that kind of sad?”