by Park, J. R.
But it was when a noise came from upstairs that Kathryn’s suspicions were aroused. Cassandra became flustered and agitated. When quizzed in a direct manner the obliging hostess explained that she lived alone, but her dog was unwell and had been shut away to rest.
It was hard to put a finger on it, but that didn’t sound like a dog moving around; that coupled with the sudden, but subtle panic in Miss Brown’s eyes made Kathryn want to check her out further. Her face was strong but revealed a secret. A hidden chaos lurked underneath all the order.
Did she know something about Henry?
Was that Henry upstairs making that noise?
It was all just hunches and a sense of unease, but she needed to be sure.
For the last hour Kathryn had been sat in her car, watching the house from across the street.
How could she have fallen asleep!
Stupid girl!
If her sister where still alive she’d have kicked her ass for such a thing!
The private investigator stepped out of her car and felt the sun, warm against her grey suit. Frustrated that she had missed what Cassandra had put in the bins she decided to go check for herself.
Casually and calmly she crossed the street and sidled up to the plastic bin. A man sat in a deck chair in next door’s garden. His skin glowed a light pink as he snoozed amid the fading summer sun.
Carefully, so as not to wake the sleeping neighbour, Kathryn opened the flip top lid. Digging her blue, painted nails into the black, plastic bin bag she made a hole then pulled her fingers apart, increasing the size of the tear. As she did so one of her fingers caught another piece of plastic inside the bin bag. She felt that rip too and thick, cold liquid ran over her fingertips.
Pulling them from the dustbin she was shocked to see them soaked in what looked like red paint. Sniffing the substance she recognised the unmistakable smell of blood.
Digging her fingers back in she tore the hole even wider and watched the sun reflect off its contents. Shielding her eyes from the bright light she made out pinks and reds. As her eyes adjusted she was able to focus and saw chunks of bloodied flesh, vacuum packed and sealed in clear bags!
She could make out the shape of hands, and elbows, hacked to pieces and preserved in these plastic wrappings. Other parts were unidentifiable, just strange, misshapen balls of muscle, skin and fat.
Kathryn stumbled back, unprepared for the gory view she had just witnessed.
As she did so the heel of her boot caught the front step to the house. She fell backwards, crashing against the front door.
Panic filled Kathryn’s thoughts. She was not equipped to handle this kind of situation and needed protection.
Racing back to her car she started the engine. Putting her foot to the accelerator she sped off, hoping to be out of sight before Cassandra came to the door to find out what the commotion was.
Kathryn was staying in a hotel across town and this was her destination. She pulled up, got out the car and ran up the stairs, too impatient to wait for the lift. Hurriedly she fumbled with her key, unlocking the door and throwing the door to her apartment wide open.
Every second was going to be crucial.
Opening the drawer on the bedside cabinet, she took out a cloth bag. Unwrapping the dirty rag she revealed the cold steel of a Glock 17 handgun. She clenched the grip tight, feeling the unusual weight in her hand. It had been a long time since she needed to use this.
Adrenalin pumped round her body. It made her feel slightly groggy and nauseas, as she turned round to race out the door and back to that vile house of death.
But as she was about to set back off on her journey she caught sight of her own reflection in the mirror on the wall opposite her bed.
Kathryn looked at herself and saw a glimpse of her sister in her image.
She weakly smiled as a tendril of thought crept back to her past.
They had both trained as police officers together, joining the force at the same time and rising through the ranks at an equally impressive rate. Having tired of the bureaucracy that accompanied government accredited law enforcement they decided that together they’d leave the police and set up as partners in their own private investigation business.
Her sister had always been the tough one, perhaps too tough.
It was a shock when she had been killed, hit by the car of an escaping kidnapper. She had gone in to the disused warehouse, determined to find the hostage. Kathryn had hung back and called the police; worried they were getting in over their heads. If only she’d been with her sister she might never have died.
This time it was going to be different; she wasn’t going to hang back. This time she was going to be ready and she was going to prove that she was just as tough.
Kathryn squeezed the grip of the handgun tighter still.
For the honour of her sister’s memory she would single handedly put a stop to whatever barbaric atrocities had been happening at Cassandra Brown’s.
As she made her way out of the apartment Kathryn felt her legs grow heavy. She fell to floor as her vision turned fuzzy and her balance grew disorientating and unstable.
She held her head in pain and felt her tongue growing numb.
What the fuck?
Despite her urge to stand up and fight, her body would not listen. One by one her muscles began to relax, lacking the strength to support her weight.
She must get to the house. Must get to the house and save Henry.
Must call Gary. Must save Henry.
Must get to the house.
Dark spots, like ghostly shadows appeared before her eyes. Those spots grew until the darkness engulfed both her vision and thoughts. The last thing she saw was the Glock 17 resting in a palm that had lost all sensation.
It was the sound of hysterical screaming that woke him from his slumber.
Henry had grown used to the sound over the last few days as it bounced round the walls and filtered through the floorboards towards his ears in the basement.
Was it a few days?
He had been held prisoner in this darkened room for so long he’d lost all track of time. Day and night, hour and minute, it all passed with little relevance. The only way he knew time was passing was due to the aching hunger that gripped his belly.
The darkness had initially held comfort in hiding his own wounds, but his eyes soon adjusted to the gloom, meaning this small reprieve from his continual torment had now been lost.
Henry had been forced to sit on a chair and then, one at a time, two metal rods were driven into his thighs. They had both gone straight through the muscle, coming out the other side, ripping through the seat of the chair and embedded into the ground. The second rod had bounced off the bone, tearing an even larger hole in his flesh, and most likely breaking his leg. It had certainly felt that way.
Knowingly the rods were pushed in at such an angle as to force his legs wide apart leaving his naked manhood exposed.
Even if he had the courage and strength to pull himself free of the six foot rods, this was made impossible by the chaining of his hands to the back of the chair.
He’d exhausted all attempts to escape since he’d been held prisoner, but peering through the darkness he had become accustomed to his surroundings.
Unlike any basement he had ever seen, this one was kept immaculately clean.
The floor was bare, the walls were nothing more than exposed plasterboard and the furnishings were almost nonexistent, just like any other basement, but this one was dust free, clear of cobwebs and smelt of air fresheners.
In front of Henry stood the steps where her heavy feet pounded on when she came down to see him.
He shuddered at the thought of her.
At the thought of Cassie.
Beside him was a wooden dining chair, an orphan from a once grander set that presumably had perished with time. It was here that Cassie tied up the woman with long, black hair. Naked and bruised she was forced to watch as Cassie lay on the mattress in front of him.
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It was on this mattress that Cassie would spread her legs out, unashamedly revealing a moistened pussy, sandwiched between two pale thighs. She would stroke her fingers against her vagina, caressing her clitoris whilst pushing two fingers deeper inside, burying them up to the knuckle and groaning with pleasure. Often she would rub her hands over him, feeling his physique, purring and cursing at him in equal measure.
Sometimes she would indulge in pleasures of a more sadistic nature, jabbing Henry with the point of a knife or punching him in the face.
It was their last encounter that had left him with a swollen left eye; bruised and half closed.
‘What the hell have you done?!’ he heard Cassie screech somewhere in the upper levels of the house. ‘You stupid girl. What have you done?’
The sound of someone sobbing punctuated the silences between her screams.
‘Why have you done this?’ Cassie continued the shocked, barrage of abuse. ‘I thought you were dead, you stupid girl! I knew I shouldn’t have let you out. You’re going back to the wardrobe, for all the good it will do!’
He had heard her bring so many others back, heard their feet scrape across the floor above him as she dragged them into the house, unconscious.
At times he would listen to the gentle murmurs of conversation between them at the kitchen table once the boy had rested and woken from his sleep. No doubt this was some kind of foreplay to her sick, diseased brain.
Finally he’d hear the inevitable screams as her behaviour changed and the tortured creatures, bloodied and beaten, begged for their lives.
He had tried to warn them by calling out, hoping his cries could be heard through the floorboards. But Cassie had quickly grown wise to this and tied a dirty rag round his mouth. It was tied so tight Henry struggled to swallow and had to endure a faint taste of oil when his tongue accidentally brushed against the gag.
But despite the repeated abuse he was still here.
Why had he survived for so long?
What was so special about him?
It was a question he asked himself every day, but could find no reasonable explanation. Every time he heard the behemoth plod of his vile tormentor coming down the stairs to the basement he expected it to be the last, but every time he was left to live. Just.
The crying from above grew louder as the basement door was unlocked and swung open. Cassie marched down the stairs, her face contorted through an anger even deeper than he’d previously been witness to.
‘People snooping around,’ she cursed, pacing up and down in front of him, ‘Fi is going crazy. Do you know what she just did?’
Cassie did not even care for an answer, knowing that Henry was incapable of responding as he breathed in fumes from the oily gag.
She moved closer and knelt in front of him, caressing his inner thigh with her chunky digits. Looking up into his eyes she placed a hand round the shaft of his limp cock and smiled with a lick of her lips.
‘Fi’s in my bad books,’ she cooed, ‘but not you. Not my Henry.’
Cassie gently gripped his penis and pulled it back and forth in a simple rhythm, allowing her palm to slide over the contours of his warm member. She watched the foreskin roll along his shaft, covering, then exposing his helmet. Covering, then exposing.
His cock felt warm in her hand, but did not swell or grow to fill her grip.
‘What’s the matter?’ Cassie asked.
She lowered her head and slid her tongue suggestively against the bottom of his shaft. Henry looked to the ceiling and pleaded to get aroused, he threw his mind headlong into the midst of his deepest sexual fantasies.
He imagined her tongue to be that of Miss Cook, his English teacher from school, with her reading glasses halfway down her nose. He imagined her taking him for detention, and pinning him to her desk once the rest of the class had finished the lesson and left. It was Miss Cook’s tongue that slid down his cock and over his balls. It was Miss Cook in her red sweater, blue pencil skirt and beautiful, long legs that was desperate for him to fill her.
A large bang sounded from somewhere else in the house startling Henry and breaking his concentration.
He opened his eyes to find his dick was still limp, still flaccid and unwilling; Henry was too weak, too malnourished, for his body to respond.
He felt the warm breath of Cassie against his genitals as she sighed in frustration.
Cassie studied his private parts for a moment, opened her mouth wide and sank her large, white teeth into the wrinkled skin of his scrotal sack.
Pain shot up his body and Henry screamed into his gag as her bite pierced the skin. Blood dribbled down her chin from split veins as she pulled back with her mouth full of ball bag, tearing a huge gash across its front.
Henry’s thighs convulsed in agony and drool ran, uncontrollably down his chin.
Cassie reached her fingers in through the tear and took hold of both testicles, pulling them from the protection of his body and exposing them for the first time to the outside world.
She dangled them over her lips before placing them both in her mouth, juggling them round and rolling them over her tongue like a pair of grizzly cherries. She groaned with pleasure as she savoured the taste of the two fleshy orbs.
Henry’s torture continued as she clenched her teeth, biting down on the spermatic chord and pulling the gristly connections from his body. It was no easy task to sever them, and so Cassie sawed her jaw backwards and forwards against the fibres and tissue until she tore the testicles free in an eruption of blood and sperm.
She howled with laughter as the depraved cocktail ran down her chin. Still sliding the severed testes around her mouth she removed Henry’s gag, freeing his screams and delighting the sadistic captor.
Henry had his eyes shut tight, refusing to look at the horror before him.
Cassie tilted his head back and, pushing her big thumbs into his cheeks, forced his jaw open. She leant over the wretched boy and, like a mother bird feeding her young, she spat his testicles into his own mouth. One by one his bloody balls dropped into his open mouth like a pair of fatty dates. His stomach instantly contorted, reacting to the foul experience, but Cassie grabbed his chin and forced his mouth shut.
‘I’ve bet you’ve always wanted to lick your own balls,’ she sneered as she stood back and walked away, leaving Henry crying in pain with his mouth full.
‘I’m going out, don’t wait up for me,’ Cassie said as she stood at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Looking at the amount of blood you’re losing I expect you’ll be gone by the time I get back.’
She blew him a kiss full of gore, her chin still caked in Henry’s fluids, before plodding upstairs and locking the door behind her.
As the door slammed shut Henry spat the testicles to the floor. The squelchy thud of each one hitting the ground caused him to vomit a small stream of bile between the desperately painful dry heaves.
Cassie was right. As he heard the front door slam and the locks turn, his thoughts began to dissolve into a fuzz of emptiness. The sound of a car starting up drifted down to meet him and echoed into his eternity.
Stuart’s throat was lined with blood, so as he woke with a start he found himself instinctively coughing to clear his airways. The air in the room hung heavy with decay and as he breathed a deep lungful it felt as if the oxygen had part solidified. He coughed and spluttered as he inhaled the thick atmosphere.
The curtains let only a speckled dusting of light into the room. Although the illumination was sparse, Stuart could tell from the golden brown of its colour that evening was beginning to draw in.
As his consciousness and awareness returned, so did the pain. He gritted his teeth against the agonizing waves of sensation that throbbed along his side and down his back. His wounds were deep, and as he came to he remembered watching the blade slice into him. Stuart recalled how far the knife had plunged as the mad butcher woman thrust its shiny blade erratically into his flesh. The base of his neck and the arch of his back were like a gory
cross-stitch, slices had been wildly carved into his body creating a sickening pattern that was only partially hidden by his ripped and blood stained shirt.
Cassie had cackled worse than any hyena as she’d mutilated his helpless and bound body, but he was the one laughing now.
He’d been lucky.
Left for dead and discarded as a piece of meat, Stuart had eventually regained consciousness, and with it some adrenalin fuelled strength.
He was surrounded by blood, torn rags of clothes and slices of hacked up flesh. Some of the pink chunks would reveal their identity by the clues of a knuckle here, a fingernail there, a flash of teeth or the hard disc of a knee. He tried to crawl through the crimson gore that littered the floor, but as his hands reached out to grip the wooden surface he found his fingers wrapping in entrails and sliding over chunks of carved fat.
Bringing his knee to his chest he leant on his foot in an attempt to push himself up. His thigh pulsed in pain as a large cut across its top opened up with the flexing of the muscle. Stuart wobbled and dropped to the floor. He sucked in air, hard through his teeth, trying to stifle the cry as he fell.
As if in sympathy a muffled scream echoed round the house and bludgeoned its way through the wall to his ears. The scream was high pitched, like a girl’s. Another scream sounded, just as shrill, followed by the faint air of crying. Wanting to help but unable to move Stuart rested and listened. He was lucky to still be alive. He needed to be sure where that crazy Cassie was before he could attempt any kind of rescue or escape.
The screams erupted a few more times as Stuart tried to regain his strength. Some louder, some deeper than others, but eventually they faded to sobbing, and eventually the sobbing faded from earshot, leaving the house in silence.