Ruthless: An Extreme Shock Horror Collection

by Shane McKenzie

  She glanced up at him, distracted, rubbing her hands nervously together. He could see she’d been crying. Her pretty blue eyes, usually illuminated with flecks of gold, were red and clouded. “Hey, Will,” she said, barely above a whisper, not meeting his gaze. “Sorry. Can’t really talk now.”

  Her wispy, golden-brown hair stirred in the breeze, making his heart flutter. She was like an angel. The divinity was made flesh in her. In her goodness as well as her beauty. He loved her. “Can I help?”

  She seemed to hesitate a moment. “Have you heard from Karen at all since…you know, since she came to the clinic?” A desperate hope entered her eyes.

  His stomach twisted with guilt at the thought he might be the cause of her pain. He forced himself to keep his eyes level with hers. “No. I’m sorry to say I haven’t.”

  Her face twisted in pain as she put a hand to her forehead. “The last time I saw her…she asked for help, and I was so cold…” She started to cry, and he felt terribly for her. He reached out to take her hand. “I should have been there for her. I hated what she decided to do, but…I shouldn’t have turned away from her like that. If she’s gone…If that was the last time I…” She completely broke down. He put his arms around her and held her close.

  “Don’t feel guilty,” he said softly. “She was lost; on the wrong path. And you couldn’t take that path with her. Deep down, I’m sure she knew she was wrong, and that you only wanted what was right for her.” He felt her heart beating against his, and it stirred him. Not in a sinful, animal way. It was right. It was holy. “All we can do now is pray for her. Don’t be afraid. She’s in safe hands, as we all are. God has a plan for everyone.”

  She stepped away and wiped away her tears. “You’re so kind, Will,” she said, managing a slight smile. “You never lose faith, do you?” She ran a slender, perfumed hand across his face. He trembled, a cloudy haze passing over his eyes. “Thanks.” She kissed him lightly on the cheek and patted his arm as she walked away. “Please let me know if she calls in, okay?”

  “Uh…yes, of course I will. Take care.” He felt lighter than air. A wave of joy and wonder swept through him. They were meant to be together. Of that he was certain. Deep down, he’d known it from the moment they’d met. She’d never dismissed him as a freak or a mama’s boy, as all the other students did. They were so wrapped up in their shallow, hedonistic lives that they never saw what was beneath the surface. She was special. A kind, caring soul so close to God. She understood. She loved him. Many young men on campus had expressed an interest in her, but she’d turned them all away. He turned his eyes to the bright blue sky and thanked God with all his love.

  For a moment, he felt a tiny bit guilty about the surveillance device he’d planted on Linda’s jacket when he’d held her. But, he had to make certain she didn’t know anything that could possibly lead the police to him.

  ***

  The picture was fuzzy, broken by static as Will struggled to bring the monitor screen in his lab into focus. The cluttered interior of a dorm room came into view. The jacket had been hung on the back of a chair. The vid/audio transmitter robot he’d planted on the collar was as tiny as a spider. It sprouted tiny mechanical legs, crawling over the hills and valleys of the row of silver studs along the collar’s edge. The robot slowly swiveled on its base, its micro-lenses focusing. The picture clarified.

  The room was dim, the only light coming from a small desk lamp. Linda stepped into the frame of view. She sat crosslegged on a pillow, setting a holo-recording pad on the floor before her. She activated it, and Karen appeared, a shimmering ghost on the dark, smoky air. He felt a little dirty invading Linda’s grief like this. But it had to be done, for the good of his mission. She would understand it all one day, once they were married.

  Linda bowed her head before the hologram, as though in prayer, the multi-colored light of the flickering image playing off her white tee shirt. “Hey. Hope you can hear me. I believe you can. I’m so sorry for the way I treated you. That was weak, and I’m sorry. I couldn’t accept the choice you made, Karen. I still can’t. But I still love you. I know you loved me.” She stopped crying, then collected herself and continued with effort. “We made a promise once to stay together, no matter what. I would have taken you back, darling. Even if you’d…” She choked and threw her head back, tears running down her cheeks. “I told myself I couldn’t go on being with you after you’d done it. After you’d aborted your pregnancy. I told myself it was because of my faith. Because I believed abortion was wrong. I still believe it’s wrong, but…that’s not really what hurt the most. I could have forgiven that, I think. For you, I could have forgiven it.”

  Will’s jaw dropped. She couldn’t have meant that. How could she?

  “What really hurt the most was that…you didn’t want to have the baby with me. We could have raised her together, love. Our little daughter. She could have been ours. We could have been a family.”

  Will’s head was reeling. He couldn’t be hearing this right. He couldn’t be!

  Linda passed her hand through the hologram as though trying to touch Karen’s face and hair. “We had such plans. You were going to tell your parents about us. We were going to be married at a Quaker church in Vermont. Just you and me forever, my love. Remember?”

  She adjusted the holo-pad control and the view zoomed in on the heart tattoo on Karen’s shoulder. ‘Forever.’ Will’s blood ran cold as Linda lifted the sleeve of her tee shirt, revealing the matching tattoo on her shoulder. ‘Forever.’

  He screamed in blind rage, picking up the wireless monitor console and hurling it across the lab, smashing it to pieces. He ran wild, smashing everything he could get his hands on. Tools. Furniture. Everything. A working knife lay on the floor near a tool box he’d strewn open. He desperately wanted to kill himself, but the M chip prevented it. Then he wanted to kill Linda. But the chip wouldn’t allow that either. He glared hatefully at Karen’s living head, seemingly mocking him from its place on the shelf. He took a step towards it, wanting so much to rip out the life-support tubes. But, again, the chip stopped him.

  He fell to his knees on the concrete floor, weeping, his fists pressing into his eyes. How could she? How? How could she have deceived him? Betrayed him? What kind of devil was in her that could…that was it! She was evil. Pure evil. Everything she was an abomination against God. She had to die.

  They both had to die. He looked at Karen’s head again. And this time, he could make his legs move toward it. He could make his hands rip out the tubes and wires. Karen’s eyes snapped open in a moment of shock as he snatched the head from its perch and smashed it to a bloody pulp against the concrete wall. He laughed in mad satisfaction. The M chip wouldn’t allow murder for the sake of jealousy, but ridding the world of a sodomite didn’t count as murder. He looked down at the knife on the floor. And this time, he could make his hand reach out and grasp the handle.

  He slipped the knife under his jacket and started towards the door, intent on seeing Linda one last time. Then, something occurred to him. He looked with disgust at Karen’s headless body and remembered something. The genome mapping studies conducted back in 2029 had indicated that the homosexuality gene, though usually recessive, was often inherited. He had to find out.

  Accessing the A.I. via the bio-scanner, he quickly programmed a standard genetic scan on Karen’s unborn child. “Scan Fetus #4 for gene #117071.” He waited nervously as the seconds ticked by.

  SCAN COMPLETE, the artificial intelligence intoned. GENE #117071 PRESENT AND DOMINANT.

  He wasn’t sure why, but he felt strangely relieved. Then, he knew why. He didn’t want any trace of Karen to survive. And now, he had the means to destroy her offspring. The M chip’s motivational imperative against taking innocent life had one overriding subroutine: The abominations had to be destroyed. Evil could not be allowed to exist, even in fetal form.

  Smiling in wicked, animal delight, he ripped the umbilical feeding tube from Karen’s stomach. Blood and sic
kly gray fluid gushed from the hole in her belly.

  “Die, you…”

  Red lights flashed and deafening alarm klaxons sounded. He looked around, startled. SYSTEM FUNCTION INTERRUPTED, the A.I. announced, its built-in security protocol activating. SYSTEM COMPROMISED. The camera lens on the ceiling swiveled in its base and fixed on Will. EXTERNAL THREAT IDENTIFIED. NEUTRALIZE.

  All four headless bodies began to move, the A.I. manipulating their limbs cybernetically through the autonomic neural relays. They surrounded him, their cold, clammy hands clutching at his throat with superhuman strength. He struggled, short of breath, as the undead things cut off his air.

  He was wrestled to the floor, his arms and legs pinned. He saw one of the zombies pick up a tray of surgical instruments from the work table. His heart raced. He realized he’d never bothered to install a morality program into the A.I. Its only programmed function was to protect the unborn lives it was charged with. That was all it understood.

  “Override,” he forced out of a strangled throat. “Priority Daubson!”

  OVER-RIDE COMMAND NOT RECOGNIZED. DAUBSON NO LONGER VALID. INITIATE CONTINGENCY PROGRAM 1.

  One of the headless drones leaned toward him with a scalpel. The last thing he saw was the heart tattoo on its shoulder. ‘Forever.’

  ***

  Elias Weatherby, the president of Williams University, writhed in exasperation as the policeman fiddled with the magnetic security lock on the door of the abandoned basement. “Detective Brock, I really must protest this unwarranted violation of University property.”

  The middle aged black woman standing beside the policeman sighed and rolled her dark eyes. “Nothing unwarranted about it, sir. Not according to Judge Madsen,” she quipped, holding up a computer pad with the warrant scrolling up the screen.

  Elias scowled in irritation. “You’re building a case out of nothing and you’re generating ugly rumors about the University! Will Daubson is one of our best students. He can’t possibly be involved.” He sweated, imagining the headlines.

  “We know he embezzled money from the University to rent this basement space, sir. And his email accounts indicate connections with pro-life extremist elements. That doesn’t exactly track with his taking a job at a women’s healthcare clinic, now does it?”

  He loosened his tie and collar. “Look, that clinic doesn’t perform abortions. They just occasionally make referrals to other healthcare providers who…”

  The security lock clicked open. “We’re in, Detective,” the policeman said.

  Detective Brock drew her gun, pushed the steel door aside, and led her men into the dank basement. Elias held his nose as he reluctantly followed them in. The place stank of alcohol. He nearly fainted as he saw what was inside. A girl’s shattered head lay strewn on the floor. Three more like it, their brains exposed and wired, stood in a row on a shelf. One of the cops scanned it all with an image recorder.

  “Oh, God, no,” Elias muttered, slumping against a wall and mopping his sweaty face with a kerchief. He could almost feel the alumna support slipping away. He noticed an odd sound, a strange, repeating squishing noise. On the far wall, on the other side of some shelves, he saw shadows moving in the dim electric light. Shadows of oddly-shaped bodies and quivering strings, like life-sized marionettes.

  Detective Brock stepped from behind the shelves and holstered her gun, looking like she might be sick. “Fifteen years homicide, and I never…” she muttered, shaking her head. She looked up at him and beckoned him forward. “I’ll need you to have a look at this, sir.”

  He trembled as he hesitantly followed her past the shelves into the next room. He froze, his jaw dropping, his eyes snapping wide.

  Will Daubson’s severed head lie on the floor amid spattered splashes of his blood and his roughly discarded clothes. Three headless, naked women stood nearby. But the scene playing out just beside them, that was what finally stopped Elias’ heart. A headless male body was copulating with a headless female body. The two interlocking cadavers rocked and pumped with a repetitive, machine-like rhythm, wires and cables controlling them like puppets. Then, the motion stopped, and the other three female corpses disconnected the male corpse from the life-support system, as though he were a tool which had served its function and could now be put away.

  IMPREGNATION COMPLETE, a metallic voice said. SYSTEM BALANCE RESTORED. NORMAL FUNCTION RESUMED.

  Saucy

  by Nate Burleigh

  My razor slid through the vessels of his throat as I felt him release inside of me. The spurt of blood and his climax simultaneously brought me to orgasm. My toes curled. I screamed with voracious glee as he flopped next to me, grasping his throat with both hands. The look in his eyes sent me into overdrive and I came again. My fingers slid across my tummy, basting the blood spurting on me while I watched him struggle to stop the bleeding. Turning on my side, I placed two bloody fingers over his lips. “Shhhhhh,” I said. He gurgled one last time and stopped breathing.

  Did I give a fuck who he was? No. If he had a wife and children, even better, he shouldn’t have picked up a hooker in the first place. But that’s not the worst of it. He sucked in bed.

  When I stood, the rest of his man-fluid started sliding down my leg in a slow stream. Blood trickled down my belly and streamed down the other leg as if it wanted to race the other stuff to the floor. I placed my bare foot on his throat and pushed. A shudder of pleasure shot from my genitals to my heart as blood gushed from the wound. All venous now, the carotid stopped pumping when his heart stopped.

  Kneeling next to him, I opened his mouth and pulled out his tongue. With a single stroke of my razor, it separated from his body. I quickly slipped it into my mouth and swallowed it whole. The feeling reminded me of how he’d caressed the back of my throat earlier with a different body part. I’d almost bitten it off then, but I like the feeling when they finish inside. No condom. I don’t like them and have never asked a John to use one. Ninety percent of the time, they agree. I’d get to that short stack of buttons a little bit later. Right at that moment, I wanted his heart.

  My tools were in my purse. I’d placed it on the table in the kitchenette of the hotel. When we’d moved to the floor, he didn’t even realize there was a tarp under the blankets. He’d been too busy, I made sure of that. I pulled the small hacksaw out. I’d sharpened it the night before.

  I gutted him to make room because I liked to start at the xiphoid process and cut up to the sternal notch. The saw flowed through the bone easier than I thought it would. A good sign I’d sharpened it correctly.

  After I pulled his ribcage open, exposing the visceral lining over his lungs and heart, I cleared it out of the way. The mound of cardiac muscle, haplessly sunken into his chest and held tight by surrounding vessels, made my mouth water. I almost shoved my face inside and started nibbling right then, but I could wait. It didn’t take long to cut it free.

  This piece of shit lying in front of me really reminded me of…him. The bastard that locked me in his basement for three days, raped me, and basically ate me inside out. His name was Eric Vandermort, a prominent physician and fucking pillar of the community. We started dating shortly after I finished college. But my morals got in the way of our relationship because I wanted to remain a virgin until I got married. It’s how my mom did it, and it’s how I wanted to do it. My goal was to wear that damn white wedding dress with pride and give myself to the lucky man on my wedding night. It garnered me the nickname, ‘Tight Teri’, in high school.

  He pushed and pushed and finally I said I’d stroke him and get him off that way, but one thing led to another and soon he started forcing me to perform oral. He choked me until my gag reflex gave out completely. I guess that’s why I got so good at it. But in the end, I wouldn’t let him touch me, not even rub on top of the clothes. There’d been this girl in high school that got pregnant when the guy came on her panties during a rubbing session and I wasn’t going to get pregnant, even if it did look like Immaculate Conception.r />
  I tried to break it off.

  He offered a truce and said he’d stick with the oral. I said, “Fuck off and die.” He didn’t like that much. One minute I was in my apartment, sleeping soundly and when I woke up, I found myself strapped face down on one of those massage tables. He had my head Duct taped with my face stuffed in the donut hole. The table tilted at about a forty-five-degree angle and I knew all I had on was my night gown and panties. I couldn’t talk because of a small rubber ball he’d taped into my mouth. I could barely breathe through my nose.

  I don’t remember how long I lay there, in the pitch black, before the light came on. He didn’t say anything. He slid my panties off and pulled my nighty up over my head. Tears started streaming from my eyes and it got harder to breath from the snot building up in my nose. His finger lightly floated over my genitalia and my body responded. I got a little wet. He started licking between my shoulder blades and slowly worked his way down.

  He lapped at me, endlessly it seemed, and then I felt him on me. He rubbed up and down. I whimpered from that and he actually stopped. Then, without any kind of warning, he rammed it into me. I felt him tearing me inside and then he let go. I screamed as much as I could through the ball and tape. It really hurt. To my surprise he cleaned me up, put a pad in my panties, and left, turning the lights out.

  The concept of time eluded me like a criminal in a subway. There weren’t any windows in the room and nothing to look at but the bare ass brick wall two feet in front of my face. I awoke when the lights came on. I didn’t even remember falling asleep. He raped me again and it hurt like a mother. He never said a word.

  I stopped counting how many visits he made and figured he would just starve me to death. My throat felt like someone had lit a fire inside of it. The burning sensation seared the inside of my nasal cavity and I knew I had a sinus infection. I figured that would kill me. I blew out as much snot and blood as I could and still only had half a nostril that worked. The feeling of impending doom overwhelmed my soul.