by Adam Millard
“Is that a nun getting pissed?” said Sam Treat, motioning to the punch bowl. As a supermodel, she thought she’d seen everything, and now, she could safely say that she had.
The nun, for it definitely wasn’t a talking penguin, had eschewed the ladles completely and had gone for the kill, face-planting the punchbowl as if it was nothing more than an oasis, liable to disappear at any given moment.
“Must be having a bad day,” said Martha. “Mind you, if I was a nun, I’d get pissed at every opportunity, too.”
“Looks like she’s being reprimanded by Hunter now.”
Harry Hunter had dragged the nun out of the punchbowl by her legs and was giving her a thorough dressing down. The nun’s response was to kick the ageing lothario in the shin, and as the host hopped about screaming blood murder – actually he was screaming, “Fucking nuns! Bastards think they own the world!” but that was neither here nor there – the nun was ushered away by a young couple and a man who looked like he should be mayor.
“This party keeps getting weirder and weirder,” said Sam.
“Doesn’t it just?” said Martha.
*
Larry didn’t know where to look, for there were naked pigs as far as the eye could see, all commingling to create some sort of giant sexy swine monster. They were far too busy rutting to notice the impossibly sharp axe he now wielded.
“Squeeee-cough-cough-eeeee!” said he, lunging toward the beast with nine backs.
*
“Just having a bit of fun,” said the nun, peeling a slice of orange away from her forehead. “You fuckers need to lighten up.”
“We’re here for Pigface,” said Amanda. “Remember? And we need you sober. Latin’s a bugger of a language at the best of times.”
“I don’t do Latin,” said Sister Geoff.
“What?”
“It’s a dead language. What’s the fucking point in learning a dead language?”
“But you’re a nun,” said Freddy. “All nuns speak Latin.”
“This one doesn’t,” said Sister Geoff. “Spanish, a little bit of Klingon, and English, of course, but that’s all you’re getting from me.”
“Fucking marvellous,” said the mayor. “How are we going to vanquish the demon now? I’m pretty sure yelling at it in Klingon isn’t going to do the trick.”
Just then, an ear-splitting Squeee™ echoed around the mansion.
A second later, a severed pig’s head landed in the punchbowl.
*
Go for the one with the little dick! screamed the mask. Take his fucking face off!
Larry swung the axe down and watched as it thunked into he of the tiny phallus. “How dare you pretend to be pigs!” he bellowed. “Pigs are noble creatures. You lot are a disgrace!” He yanked the axe free and turned on the next naked pig – a sow he recognised.
“Why are you doing this?” Cynthia screeched, pressing herself up against the wall.
Larry’s answer was short and to the point. “Squeee!” he said
Of course he did.
He swung the axe once again.
*
“Everybody calm down,” said Harry Hunter, who had taken to a makeshift podium – a white chair, in fact – in the middle of the room. “This is all part of the show.”
“No it’s bloody not!” someone from the frantic crowd shouted.
“If you could all calmly make your way out onto the driveway – and what a splendid driveway it is, if I do say so myself – that would be fantastic.”
But there was no calming down this crowd, who hadn’t anticipated a massacre when they’d climbed out of bed that very morn, and were a little bit pissed off they were in the middle of one right now. But that’s the thing with massacres. You don’t see them coming until it’s too late, by which time you’ve got an arm off and you’ve shit your knickers…
“Has anyone seen Ivana?” Hunter said, scouring the room for his wife. And then he too to shouting.
“Ivana!”
“Ivana!”
“Bloody hell, where is she?”
*
Ivana was, of course, in the arms of a waiter, whose name was something like Marco or Frederico or the like, not that it mattered as this Italian stallion hadn’t even been given a line thus far and would therefore be dead by the end of this section.
“Did you hear something?” said Ivana, climbing sluggishly out of bed.
“I dida nota heara anythinga,” said the Italian.
“Knock it off with the accent,” said Ivana. “We both know you’re from Boston.”
Marco pulled his trousers on. “What did it sound like?” said he.
“It sounded like someone said squeee,” said Ivana, peering through the crack in the door.
“Be careful with that,” said Marco. “It might be trademarked. You don’t want to end up in a one-bed apartment eating beans from a can.” He walked across the room, picked up his tray – vol-au-vents, if you must know – and was about to leave the room when the door exploded inward. Ivana Hunter flew backwards where she clobbered into a wardrobe, but she didn’t rest on her laurels (she didn’t even know what laurels were) and quickly clambered back to her feet.
“Who the fuck are you?” gasped Marco, addressing the pig-masked maniac standing in the doorway. That axe of his looked ever so shiny, beneath all the blood and gore. Sharp, too.
“They call me Pigface,” said Pigface. “And I’m about to—”
“Who does?” interrupted Marco.
Pigface slumped about the shoulders. “Excuse me?”
“Who calls you Pigface?”
“Them,” said Pigface. “The…the people who know about me.”
“I don’t know about you,” said Marco. “What should I call you?”
“Oh come on!” said Pigface. “You can call me Pigface as well. Actually, scratch that. It doesn’t matter what you call me because you’re going to be feeling the sharp end of this in a second.” He raised his axe. A hunk of someone’s face slipped from the blade and slapped the carpet beneath.
“Look at the mess you’re making!” screeched Ivana. “Can’t you see that everything’s white!? Blood’s an absolute nightmare to get out of—” She stopped speaking, as one is apt to do when one has an axe sticking out of one’s face.
“Squeeeeee!” squealed Pigface.
“Bleurggggghhhhhhh,” went Marco, bringing up vol-au-vents by the bucketload.
Pigface stalked across the room, pulled his axe out of the woman’s face – thusly unpinning her from the wardrobe to which she was presently attached – and turned on the Italian stallion, who was ralphing his guts up next to the bed. By the time he realised he should have been making good his escape, it was too late.
Pigface was all over him like a mullet on a redneck. “Owa, thata hurtsa!” screamed Marco as Larry set about him with the axe.
“Shut up and take it like a man,” said Pigface. “And everyone knows you’re from Boston.”
*
“We have to get out of here,” said Sam Treat as she tried to battle her way through the screaming throng. “It’s that maniac, the one that killed all those people. And now he’s going to kill everyone in here because it’s a sequel and the body-count has to be higher.”
Martha Blankenship had taken to punching people in the head; even the ones who weren’t doing the pushing. “Try to remain calm!” she grunted, open-hand-slapping a passing old lady. “We’ll be out of here soon enough, if everyone would act rationally and calmly!” She head-butted an old man, who was about to complain about Martha’s treatment of his fallen wife.
“I’m going to die in here!” screeched Sam. “People like me don’t survive situations like this. We’re usually the first to go.”
“Well you’ve done well getting this far then haven’t you?” said Martha, elbow-dropping a child (who shouldn’t have been at the party in the first place, but that’s what you get when you employ bald gorillas to man the doors).
“I’m not ready to die!” gas
ped Sam. “I’ve got so much to give!”
The irony was that people were more likely to get whatever it was she had to give once she was dead and gone.
*
“First floor!” Amanda said, snatching a knife up from the kitchen counter. It had been used to slice lemons, and so would sting a bit should she manage to slice the bastard with it. Then again, he was semi-immortal (just like Bob Hope and Bruce Forsythe) and therefore probably didn’t feel pain the way he once had.
They were halfway up the first flight of stairs when the mutilated body of an Italian man – he looked like a Marco or Frederico to Amanda – toppled over the bannister and landed in the middle of the hall below with a sickening crunch.
“Bet Hunter’s regretting opting for white now,” said Freddy.
“Look!” said the mayor, pointing up to the landing. “Is that the murderous bastard?”
Standing there, glancing down at the mayhem unfolding below, was Pigface. Now, three things happened in quick succession: Firstly, Pigface’s gaze was drawn to the movement upon the staircase to his right. Secondly, he recognised two of the four people standing there, and thirdly, a nun flipped him the bird.
“You!” said Pigface. “You bitch!”
“I think he’s talking to you,” said Freddy to Amanda. “Must have made quite an impression.”
“Must have,” said Amanda, slowly traversing the staircase, unable to take her eyes off the maniac awaiting her on the first floor. So this was it…this was what it had all been building up to. The final showdown. The last stand. The—
“Will you be quiet,” Amanda said.
“Sorry,” said Freddy. “I must have been thinking out loud.”
“Well don’t. There’s a good chance that, as a finale, this’ll be a bit of a let-down.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” said Freddy. “It’s going to be tres exciting. How could it not be? We’ve got a nun and a mayor.” There was a joke in there somewhere, but for the life of him he couldn’t find it.
“He’s got an axe and a grudge,” said Amanda. “I think that makes us about even.”
And up the never-ending staircase they went. So long was this staircase that by the time they reached the first floor, Pigface had sodded off to somewhere else.
*
“Remind me why we’re in here again?” said Dee.
“Hunter wants this bastard caught,” replied Dum, slipping into his knuckleduster. “And what Hunter wants, Hunter gets.”
“He must have really wanted Chlamydia,” said Dee. “Hang on a minute. Where’s my knuckleduster?”
“Did you have one?”
“No, but up until ten seconds ago, neither did you.”
“I found it in my pocket,” said Dum. “I think the director or author of this little fiasco is trying to help us. Check your pockets. You might be pleasantly surprised.”
Dee did some checking, and came out with a banana. “What the fuck is this?” said he.
“Looks like a banana,” said Dum. “Surprise!”
“SQUEEEE!” said Pigface as he leapt out of a broom cupboard. If this was a film, the audience would have just thrown popcorn all over themselves and the nervous-looking guy three rows back would have excused himself to the toilet, but it isn’t, so there’s no need to dwell on it.
“Prepare to die,” said Dum.
“Yeah,” added Dee, and he threw the banana at the pig-faced lunatic. As it bounced off and landed harmlessly on the white hallway rug, he said, “I thought it might have been a grenade in disguise, or something.”
Dum rushed the maniac and managed to get a few punches in before the tables turned, and my, how they turned! Pigface grabbed onto the burly man’s arm and, with a quick flick of the wrist, snapped it to the side. There was an audible crack and then the big man began to sob uncontrollably.
“I’ve got him!” said Dee, and he picked the banana up, located the pin (you didn’t think it was a normal banana, did you?) and pulled it out. He rolled it along the hallway, and even though bananas aren’t known for their rolling prowess, this one went just far enough. “Fire in the hole!”
The explosion was immense. There was a blinding white light and then an awful lot of fire. Dee flew back through the air – in super-slow-mo, no less. Somewhere, someone made a Wilhelm Scream. It was like something from an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, one of the ones without the pregnant man or Danny DeVito. For a banana, that thing really packed a punch.
When the dust and viscera settled, Dee climbed to his foot (the other one had been blown off) and stared into the smoky hallway. “Dum?” said he. “Say something if you’re alive.
From the smoke rolled a head, and it was a head Dee recognised well. “Oh, man!” he said, dropping to his knees. “Oh, I am so sorry, bud.” He picked the head up and cradled it. “Fuck, we didn’t even get a chance to see ACDC, like we said we would. We didn’t skydive or go to one of those paint-your-own-teapot parties people keep raving on about. OOOOOW!” he said, for it was only then that he realised he was missing his left foot – the one made famous by Daniel Day Lewis.
From within the smoke, something clattered. Dee dropped his friend’s detached head. “No,” said he, cutting through the gloom with sore eyes. “It can’t be.”
But it was. It bloody was! The lunatic in the pig mask came staggering forwards. “Who throws a banana?” he said. “I mean, really?” He raised the axe, and was about to bring it down on Dee’s bald pate when…
*
Freddy thumped into Pigface, sending him back into the smoke. From somewhere behind, Amanda screamed, but it was too late for Freddy to change his mind now. This had to end now. Enough people had died – though technically, not enough to warrant a third in the franchise. It was, Freddy thought, time to stand up and be counted. He had a shot at being the hero this time around. The Final Boy. Like Jamie Lee Curtis, only with one extra bollock.
“Squeeeee!” said Pigface, holding the irritating boy at arm’s length.
“Change the record, Porky,” said Freddy, kicking the porcine maniac about the kneecaps, to no real effect.
“Get the bastard!” said the nun. “Send him straight to Hell, do not pass go, do not collect seventy virgins.”
“You brought a nun!” Larry howled. “What’s she going to do? Latin me to death?”
“Actually, she doesn’t know Latin,” grunted Freddy, putting a few feet (and a couple of arms) between himself and the beast, “so the joke’s on you. Ha!”
Amanda stepped forward so that she was level with Freddy. “You were dead,” she said. “We killed you.”
“Best thing that ever happened to me,” said Pigface. “Obviously not at the time. It smarted like a sonofabitch. But like any good slasher, I’m back, and this time I’m bringing home the bacon.”
“What a terrible joke,” said the mayor, and he’d been to a Joan Rivers gig.
“I haven’t got a lot to work with,” said Pigace. “And anyway, who the fuck are you? This is between me and the final girl, who, by the way, is the reason for all this.”
Amanda visibly slumped. “You lie,” she said.
“Only about masturbating on the back of my pig,” said Pigface. “And occasionally when I want to get out of doing the dishes, but apart from that, I’m as honest as the next man.”
“Why are we even conversing with it?” said Sister Geoff, and with that she pulled out the shotgun she’d been itching to use for the last hundred pages or so. She cocked it and unloaded both barrels into Pigface’s piggy face.
“Squeee!” said he, and it was a lot louder than usual on account that the hole in the front of his face was suddenly a lot bigger. But then, something remarkable happened. Something that shouldn’t have been possible. The chewed-up flesh and shattered bone that made up the lunatic’s exploded phizzog began to writhe and squirm. It was like something out of an early Peter Jackson movie, before he started piddling about with Hobbits.
“Shoot it again!” said Mayor Ke
tchum.
“Got no more shells!” shouted the nun, though quite why she shouted she wasn’t sure. She took a tentative step forwards and slammed the butt of the shotgun into the thing’s pulsating face. The head snapped back a little, but apart from that it was something of an anti-climax.
“Hit it again!” yelled the mayor.
“Didn’t you just hear the narrator?” said the nun. “It’s fucking pointless!”
“The snout’s back!” yelled Freddy.
“Why are we all shouting!?” shouted Amanda. “Quick, pin it down!”
At first, those present weren’t sure they had heard correctly, and so there were a lot of frowns and a lot of exchanged glances. Amanda, however, was already leading by example, and had latched onto Pigface’s right arm and was dragging it down to the ground.
“If you say so,” said Freddy, and grabbed Pigface’s left arm. Between them, they manage to get the bastard onto his back, and still his face continued to reconstruct itself, and what an ugly face it was, too. A face only a mother could love, and even then only in small doses.
“Get his legs!” Amanda squealed. And the mayor, who had nothing better to do – not without a pair scissors and a ribbon, anyway – dropped to his knees and sat on Pigface’s legs. He bucked about a bit, but he’d once come fifteenth at a rodeo and so thought he could handle it.
“Sister Geoff!” screamed Amanda. “Do your stuff!”
And that was where the whole plan came to a crashing halt, so to speak, as Sister Geoff hadn’t the foggiest what she was supposed to do. “Ghuy'cha' qagh Sopbe'!” she bellowed.
“Is that fucking Klingon?” said Freddy.
“Whatever it is,” said the mayor, almost losing control of Pigface’s left foot – the one made famous by…oh, we’ve done that one already – “it’s not working!”
Amanda looked expectantly up at the nun, who looked down confusedly upon Amanda and shrugged. “I didn’t think we’d actually catch up to the bastard,” said the nun. “I thought you’d all get killed and then I could piss off back to the convent to live out my days as a semi-celibate ruffian.”
“Now’s not the time for dreaming,” said Amanda. “We’ve got one shot at this, one chance to send this bacon-flavoured bastard back to Hell, and we’re wasting it! Now pissing hurry up and do something”