“How I will miss you,” James whispered, still holding his wife’s hand to his face. “What I will miss most of all… is this.” He swept her hand sensitively against his cheek, enjoying her touch, her floral scent. Remembering his audience, he gently lowered her hand back inside the coffin and faced the gathering. James had the appearance of a man that had not slept for days, jowls hanging loosely and wispy black hair, graying at the temples, disheveled and untrained. The whites in his eyes were bloodshot red. “If you wouldn’t mind,” he addressed the assembly, “I would like a few moments to spend alone with my wife.”
Harmonized murmurs of agreement and hasty rattles of china soon followed as his close family respected his wishes, all leaving in single file by the front door. Then James was once again alone with his wife.
Good, he thought. At last. Now it was time to get busy.
Amputating Barbara’s arm had not been as easy as James had expected. The job had to be done cleanly and quickly, as not to arouse suspicion from other friends and family members. Without delay, he attached a tourniquet across his wife’s upper arm, fastening it tightly to stem the already vast bleeding of the embalming fluid.
Now came the tricky part. Using a saw against her right shoulder blade, James set about removing the arm. The noxious tang of decomposition gases beneath her flesh almost made him gag. He fought back the rising bile in his throat with a grubby handkerchief from his pocket. Separating the upper limb’s humerus bone from the scapula and fibrous humeral head proved extremely difficult; he could not allow the resonating sounds of crunching bones and wet, squelching noises of tendons snapping distract him from his work. After all, his guests were only a few feet away.
When the process had been completed, he removed the arm and went into the kitchen, placing it in his freezer’s top shelf, using the space he had cleared earlier. From the fridge he grabbed a thick, foot-long German sausage he had acquired from the butcher’s earlier that morning, and set about replacing his wife’s arm with the meat. After carefully disguising the sausage in the white silk of the coffin’s interior decor, he relaxed. After all that hard work he had developed quite a sweat. He mopped his brow with his handkerchief and cleared a few wispy strands away from his forehead. For all the world to see, he was a man that had simply just been racked with tears of grief. They would have no idea.
Quite perversely, under the circumstances, he felt a flutter of pride for a job well done. There was no way anybody could possibly notice any signs of a disturbance in the coffin.
For the first time since his beloved Barbara had passed away, he could actually afford a little smile to himself.
James had always found funerals such insipid, tedious affairs, and found his wife’s was no exception. The clenched fist of emotion in his chest was not of grief, but of hatred for the sanctimonious family members of his wife’s side, crammed into their pews in cheap black suits and frocks, dabbing at crocodile tears with frilly handkerchiefs. Their hypocrisy in the face of the Lord amazed him. Especially Barbara’s sister, Joan, sitting at the far end of his pew, sobbing ridiculously and wearing a preposterously large hat with a tattered veil; the vile woman had not even extended the offer of a Christmas card over the last seven years, let alone a visit. The priest’s monotonous recitals of passages from the Old and New Testament’s only served to reinforce James’ inner-lassitude.
Barbara’s favorite Beach Boys song God Only Knows and the burial did offer James some respite, however. As each second came to pass he knew he would soon, once again, be alone with his wife’s touch upon his face. The added knowledge that his earlier endeavor had gone undetected also served as some comfort.
“The world could show nothing to me…”
He had to admit to himself that his brother’s wife, Catherine, had done a tremendous job in organizing the catering for the wake. Nonetheless, James quickly became tired of his guests, their clichéd sympathies, the social awkwardness and bleeding-heartedness that only a death elicits.
“So what good would living do me? God only knows what I’d do withooout youuuu…”
James, standing at the bar, dreamy with alcohol, remembered the days of his youth. Barbara and he had just started courting. He had acquired his first car—a terrible old banger it had been. Oh, how we’d laughed!—and the pair had agreed to visit the countryside, in a place near Buxton. Quiet, serene. Sleeping silently under the stars. Barbara twining slender fingers through his hair—thick hair it had been back then—and he basking in the warm glow of her fingertips as she smoothly caressed his face. He had fallen in love at that moment. At that precise nanosecond in time. How many people could recall the first time they’d fallen in love?
James squeezed his exhausted eyes closed, then opened them again. The last of the party was beginning to filter outside into the cold night air. Oh darling, he thought, it won’t be long. Not long before I can once again feel the warmth of your touch. Your tender loving touch.
That night, slightly unsteady through drink, James retrieved the limb from the freezer and carried it off to bed. He changed into his pajamas and turned off the bedside lamp. He snuggled sleepily against the flesh of her palm and pulled the covers up to his chin. The arm rested next to him, the hand propped up against his pillow, next to his face. He felt her fingers revivify from their discomposure, furling frigidly around his hair. In his drunken state he wondered if he were imagining it, but prayed excitedly that he wasn’t. He felt the soft stroke of her polished nail against his cheek—cold at first, making him flinch, but soon endurable—and he closed his eyes. He imagined the stars burning above, the distant chirp of crickets and that silly old car.
For the first time in a week, sleep claimed him like rainwater into a drain.
The following two days and nights provided James with consummate happiness. He felt as though they were on their second honeymoon. He would lie in bed until lunchtime ignoring phone calls and his daily work at a local factory, and do absolutely nothing but bask under the soft caress of his wife’s hand. Her arm had thawed since its initial sojourn in the freezer, and now the digits moved with a great deal more dexterity and flexibility, regularly pulling itself across James’s wispy chest hair to tousle his hair affectionately. As James slept, the limb would cradle itself gently around his shoulder, resting there until he woke.
Occasionally the limb would use its nails to lever itself to his face, a soft index finger curling lightly against his cheek. James did not mind the slight pain as its fingers dug into his skin for purchase. Not at all. The occasional winces of discomfort were a small price to pay for his overall contentment. He was in heaven. He felt as though all his prayers had been answered. If James had wanted for anything, it was for that moment, her touch as he slept and as he woke up, irrespective of her (or its) slight carelessness.
Some days later, however, thoughts jostled in James’s mind that the limb was not exactly his wife, but more of an extension of her. In spite of this he quickly pushed them away. It was nit-picking, that’s all it was. He was delighted to have her, or it, back. Really he was. No, really. The limb’s incapacity for speech really did not bore him at all, not in the slightest. Come to think of it, the limb’s incapacity for anything other than its servile indulgence of him did not nuisance James in the least. Even the smell of decay steadily emanating from his wife’s arm day by day did not unsettle him. Small sacrifices had to be made, he reasoned. Besides, he would hate to say or do anything that could hurt its feelings.
If, indeed, it had any.
Pretty soon, only a few days after the amputation, the limb began to grate James’ nerves. The honeymoon period was beginning to dissipate. James’ earlier resolve was diminishing with accelerating pace. But James fought his irritation back. His bouts of insomnia and restlessness as a result of the rising stench from the limb only served the opportunity for it to stroke and caress more frequently and over more sustained periods of time, docilely misinterpreting James’s requirements. The limb was unable to inter
pret facial expressions, did not sense the grimace and rigidity beneath its touch, nor could it see James’s tightening lips and wrinkled nose of disgust. So the limb continued with its gross indulgence of James, blatantly oblivious to his growing irritation, heedlessly tightening the knot of irritation in James’s chest even further.
One day, the limb demonstrated its ability to stand as it held its arm upright and scurried across the floor on its fingers. James had an idea. As the limb drummed its nails excitedly across the floor, dancing a jig of delight with its new sense of independence, James said, with a mild subtext of irony he was sure the limb would not interpret, “Well done! Bravo! Now why don’t you run along and fetch me a nice cup of tea?”
The limb seemed delighted with its new sense of challenge and hopped on its fingers with steadfast exuberance. James, however, relaxed in the luxury of his bed, fluffing his pillows triumphantly and folding his arms behind his head, wondering just how many more tricks the dumb piece of meat could perform for his benefit.
The answer was... quite a few. If truth were told, James hardly had to do anything for those next few days. The limb did everything for him: washed his dishes, brushed his teeth, cooked his meals, and fetched his morning paper from the front doormat. James, adapting quite easily to his new effortless lifestyle, did not even see the need to change channels with the TV remote. What was the point of doing it himself when the limb, subservient as it was, was more than willing to do it for him?
As more demands were bestowed upon it, the limb carried out its tasks energetically and without compromise. James had noticed the limb’s skin beginning to darken into a grayish color, small chunks of rotting flesh dropped out of its stump, and the smell was definitely getting much worse, so much that James wrinkled his nose in disgust whenever it was within even a few yards proximity. James soon banned the limb from his bedroom altogether.
“From now on,” he ordered it, holding out a finger in a regimented posture, “you shall carry out your chores downstairs. As far away from my sight as possible. You shall sleep in the dog’s basket on the kitchen floor. You shall wake at approximately 7:30 a.m. each morning to prepare my breakfast. And don’t forget to knock before you enter my room!”
The limb, as always, did as it was told with absolutely no perception of James’ mounting unkindness towards it. As the days went by, the limb appeared more and more tired. Its dynamism was soon supplanted by drudgery in its movements, preferring to drag itself around languidly by its sharp nails than to poise itself upright and skip around merrily.
James had forgotten the exact point in time when he had ceased to refer to the hunk of dead meat downstairs as his wife. He tended to think of it as more a cat or a dog. No, perhaps that was more of an insult to those animals. He quite liked cats and dogs. Dogs could be subservient, yes, but not overbearingly so. Even the limb’s servility had begun to bore James. Cats kept themselves to themselves for the majority of time and kept themselves relatively clean. James hadn’t even the stomach to look at the limb nowadays.
One night, as the limb went about its chores in the kitchen downstairs, James could hear its nails clattering industriously against the linoleum kitchen floor. The rising irritation in his gut stretched and snapped. Enough was enough.
James leapt out of bed for the first time that week and crept slowly downstairs. The limb was occupying itself with the vacuum cleaner in the living room. James crept slowly behind it and went into the back garden. He found a spade in his tool shed and a spot in the center of his garden and started to dig. He returned to the living room some minutes later to find the limb finishing its chores, dragging itself across the fireplace with a duster in its hand. James crept up and grabbed the limb by its elbow. The limb, unaware of James’ purpose, flexed its wrist immediately in panic. Its shock turned to pleasure, seeming pleased that James was touching it again. It tentatively flexed its fingers to stroke James’ arm, blatantly misinterpreting its master’s intentions. Even as James abandoned it in the garden—casting it forcefully into a deep hole—even as its fingers slowly submerged into a pool of thick, wet mud as James smothered the limb with dirt from his spade, it stretched its palm outwards, begging for reciprocation.
Sleep that night did not come as easily as James had envisaged. Rainfall had not relented, and the tapping of raindrops against his window pane did nothing for his tattered nerves. In a mad, fleeting moment, he had considered that this agitation may have taken root in his conscience, but he doubted it. The limb got what it deserved. It had become a damn nuisance! It was then he felt a stirring coming from outside his bedroom door. Though the firm knowledge that he was alone in the house crackled through him like lightening, he dared not move an inch. He heard it again. Shuffling. Moving up the stairs.
James pulled the bedcovers tightly across his mouth, his eyes darting left to right, his breaths draining him in short and harsh gasps. Watching with eyes rigid with fear, he saw the bedroom doorknob twist, the door open a fraction. He could not see the floor from the end of his bed. Terrified, James then heard the thump-thump of something heavy crawling across the floor. He felt a weight across his bedcovers at the foot of the bed, felt something grabbing for leverage on the fabric, hauling itself up. James strengthened his grip on the bedcovers, the whites of his eyes broadening still. He wanted to scream but the air had completely drained his throat.
The limb moved with such speed and agility across the bed that if James had the capacity to move, or scream, the opportunity would never have presented itself. Its mud-encased fingers were around his throat in a nanosecond, tightening, blocking his esophagus, restricting his air. Outside, the patter of rain against the window pane served as a soundtrack to the scene, and James wrestled with the limb under the glow of soft moonlight offering itself through the gaps in the thick curtains. James desperately battled to pull the limb from its vice-like grip around his throat, kicking out and tugging with all he had. But the limb did not release any pressure until James’ kicking feet eased softly and rested on their sides. Pretty soon James rested his arms and they flopped to his sides too. The fight was over.
Unfurling its fingers from James’ throat, the limb then positioned itself next to the rigid corpse, elbow angled slightly, its fingers once again lightly caressing a now-prominent stark blue vein of his cheek. One of its fingers trembled slightly, as if it were to sigh. The limb rested then, against its pillow, and it never did move again.
Pumpkin Soup
by Jessy Marie Roberts
Kaylee winced as the tip of the long kitchen knife sliced into the pad of her left thumb, splashing blood on to the diced white onion she was chopping on her wooden cutting board. She dropped the blade onto the counter and stuck her thumb into her mouth. She gagged as metallic blood mixed with the sharp, onion tang, assaulting her taste buds.
“Shoot,” she muttered, watching as the root vegetable soaked up the crimson droplets of blood, staining itself a light shade of red. It was the only onion she had purchased and she did not have time to run to the grocery store to replace it. Her company would be arriving in less than an hour for her annual Halloween dinner party.
The ghoulish goulash was baking in the oven, the Van Helsing Bread, with extra garlic and chives, was buttered and ready to be warmed, and a nice blood red burgundy wine was chilling in an ice bucket on the well-dressed, festive table. All that was left to finish was her pumpkin soup, the traditional opening course to her Halloween meal.
She glanced at the clock above her stove again. Fifty-three minutes until her five costumed friends would be knocking on the door, hungry and ready to be fed. She hurried to the bathroom and grabbed a small box of bandages to dress her shallow cut.
Back in the kitchen, she fished a sauté pan out of a cupboard and set in on the stove at medium heat. She measured out two tablespoons of imported Italian extra virgin olive oil and one tablespoon of butter and tossed them into the pan. When the butter melted, she scraped the blood-tinted onion into the fat. The diced ve
getable sizzled, the red seeping into the oil.
Nobody will ever know, she thought, as she stirred the onion mixture with a flat-tipped wooden spoon. She turned her attention to the half a pound of russet potatoes she had peeled earlier and soaked in cold water. She made quick work of dicing them, and then tossed them in with the onions to brown in the oil.
She pulled out a standing cheese grater and placed it over a bowl, picked up one large chunk of pumpkin and rubbed it against the sharp, stainless steel teeth of the grater. She moved her hand up and down faster, hurried.
Her hand slipped and her knuckled collided with the metal grater. Layers of skin sliced off of her fingers until the tip of her bone was exposed at the joint of her middle finger.
Blood flowed freely down her hand and dripped all over the cutting board and the counter, dressing the grated pumpkin resting in the bowl. It reminded her of raspberry vinaigrette. She grabbed an orange dish towel and wrapped it around her hand, the blood soaking through almost immediately.
Another glance at the clock told her she had forty minutes before dinner was scheduled to be served. She was usually good in the kitchen, at ease working with the dangerous equipment.
Determined to serve dinner on time, she tied the orange towel around her hand and began grating the pumpkin again. When she was finished, she threw the grated orange fruit into the sauté pan, stirring to coat it with oil and butter.
She saw thin, translucent slivers of skin shrivel as they fried in the oil, eventually disappearing into the pungent mixture.
Nobody will ever know, she reminded herself.
She put a large stock pot on the stove and fetched a quart of whole milk and a pint of heavy cream from the refrigerator. She popped the lid off a large can of chicken broth and dumped it into the stock pot, then added the sautéed mixture to the broth and stirred well.
Ruthless: An Extreme Shock Horror Collection Page 6