Slashers and Splatterpunks

by David Byron

  ―For a friend,‖ she adds. They reach her car, an older-model sedan, free of bumper stickers or other unnecessary decorations. She tells him she has to get up early in the morning, so she‘ll say good night here. He‘s disappointed, until she hands him a piece of paper with her phone number written on it.

  ―Call me,‖ she says, ―and next time I promise it won‘t be so early.‖

  He briefly considers asking her for a ride, then decides to maintain that illusion for a while longer. He tells her he‘ll call. He means it, too.

  She pulls out, leaving him to find his own way back to the bus stop, his feelings a clash of optimism and anxiety. She expected more, he‘s sure of it. He should have offered to buy her dinner. He should have tried to get her to talk more. About herself. About his work. He should have tried to kiss her goodnight.

  But he hoped she just thought he was mysterious, maybe wary of his own passions. After all, he was the author who Darkrealm magazine had once called ―the splatterest and punkest of the splatterpunks.‖ He‘d have to make sure she saw that quote.

  Suddenly the neighborhood didn‘t scare him anymore.

  ### Geek loved the buzz he got off the hunt. In many ways, he preferred the hunt to the actual kill. The final spurt was good, oh yeah, but it didn"t last as long as this. He didn"t think anything in the world could feel as good as

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  watching the girl from across a street, following her, knowing that she was already his.

  In fact, he felt like God.

  ### He calls her the next day, in the early evening. He asks what‘ll be a good night for her, and is pleased when she says tonight – but this time he has to choose what they‘ll do, and it needs to be good.

  He has an idea as soon as he hangs up. His friend is home now, upstairs, and Lee asks to borrow his car. His friend smiles and hands him the keys when Lee tells him he has a date.

  He logs onto the web, and heads for the local newspaper site, where he soon finds the article he wants. He makes a few notes, straightens up, and heads for her place.

  She lives in a small duplex in an ordinary, slightly lowermiddle-class area. Not nearly as bad as where they ate last night, a fact he‘s thankful for, especially since the car is not his.

  She‘s waiting outside, and as she climbs in she asks where they‘re going.

  ―No, no, that‘d spoil it.‖

  She smiles, apparently satisfied with this answer.

  He drives to a large shopping mall across town. It‘s late for the stores by now, so the parking lot is largely empty.

  ―A mall?‖ she asks dubiously.

  ―Not the mall. We‘ll start in the parking lot, though.‖

  He drives to the edge of the lot. A few feet away is a small road encircling the mall; beyond that is undeveloped woodland, dark and thick. He parks, grabs a flashlight, and gets out; Claudia follows.

  He allows a dramatic pause.

  ―So?‖ she says.

  ―Remember that story from about three weeks back? The girl‘s body they found in those woods?‖

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  Claudia nods.

  Lee goes on: ―They found her car right about here. They figure she was forced into the woods, where her assailant raped and then killed her. He really tore her up.‖

  Claudia looks around. ―How do you know this is where the car was?‖

  ―I have a friend on the force.‖

  Of course he doesn‘t; but he figures she‘ll buy into it. Most people seem to think every writer these days has ―a friend on the force‖.

  He shines the flashlight towards the woods. ―Want to see where it happened?‖

  ―What do you think?‖ she says, grinning.

  He leads them across the small frontage road and finds what looks like a small, seldom-used trail in the brush. They follow it silently until it opens into a small clearing, surrounded by two fallen and half-rotted logs. It‘s fall, and the ground is thick with mulchy leaves, damp and springy underfoot. He circles the light around the open space.

  ―This is where it happened. Where he brought her, raped her and killed her. Right here.‖

  Claudia follows the light beam forward, examining the area intently, as though hoping to find a missed clue, a drop of blood. When she turns to him, her eyes glitter, caught in the ray of light.

  ―Did you do it?‖

  Lee‘s jaw drops for a second. It didn‘t occur to him that she might get that idea. ―So, what, you think that just because of what I write... ?‖

  ―Why else would you bring me here?‖

  ―Ahh,‖ he stumbles for a beat, then, ―I guess we‘re thinking alike, because I thought if you liked my books you might like something like this.‖

  It works; she laughs and nods.

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  ―Okay, so you didn‘t do it.‖ She almost sounds disappointed, then looks at the brush again. ―So how do you think it happened?‖

  He considers for a moment, then steps backwards, the way they‘ve just come. He mimics pushing someone before him. ―They figure he had a gun or knife. He made her walk ahead of him, until they came about here. Then he –‖

  ―No,‖ she cuts him off. ―No more tell – it‘s time for show. I mean, you don‘t have to actually kill me.‖

  Lee utters one nervous bark before he catches himself. ―You want me to... ah... hurt you.‖

  ―C‘mon, that doesn‘t sound like the Lee Denny who wrote Slit Thing.”

  ―Oh, you‘ve read that one, too?‖

  ―I‘ve read all of them.‖

  Lee begins to think she‘s lying.

  She could be trying to trap him. Hell, she could even be with the police. Christ, he thinks to himself, am I suspect?

  She picks up a long, moldering branch, so rotted it can barely support its own weight. ―Do you think she struggled? I do.‖

  She suddenly swings the branch.

  Lee reacts by reflex, turning, drawing back, and the branch impacts on his left shoulder. It disintegrates instantly into a pulpy mess, but the pain is still enough to make both his fear and anger flare.

  ―Maybe she left her mark on him –‖

  She raises her hand, with its long plum-colored and filed nails. The hand comes down, and this time Lee does more than flinch – he catches the hand, stopping her, pushing her back roughly. She stumbles on the mulch underfoot, but doesn‘t fall.

  ―What would have happened if she‘d screamed, do you think?‖

  She inhales deeply, opens her mouth – and Lee panics. He scrabbles at her, clumsily, and they both go down, tangled in the

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  thorns and mulch. Lee is as dazed as she is; it takes him a moment to realize that he‘s on top of her, and that she‘s laughing at him. ―Gee, Lee,‖ she begins sarcastically, ―do you think the real rapist was a stumbling idiot, too?‖

  ―Fuck – ‖ Lee tries to push away from her.

  ―You can‘t leave now, Lee. I haven‘t even screamed yet.‖

  This time he clamps his hand over her mouth first. She twists her head, and bites him, leaving three red crescents in his fingers. He cries out in pain and shock, then reacts without thinking, striking out. The slap leaves her breathless and dazed.

  When she can talk again, she looks at him and tells him, ―I‘m still not afraid of you yet.‖

  Lee understands the game now, and he begins to claw at her. He tears the buttons on her blouse, and nearly apologizes.

  She stays silent, but goads him on in other ways. Once she bites his ear, hard and painful; once her hand comes up and tears at his hair.

  The sex is awkward but quick. When it‘s over, Claudia picks herself up and silently walks back to his borrowed car. He drives her home; she goes back into her duplex without ever looking at him.

  When Lee gets home, he‘s surprised to see he‘s got her blood on his shirt. Not a great deal of blood, just a splotch the size of a quarter – but her blood, non
etheless. From when he hit her. When he raped her.

  Lee struggles to think the situation through, to understand if this was entrapment or manipulation. But those questions bother him less than the dull, sick sense of disgust which has engulfed him. Disgust, so strong it‘s a physical sensation knotting in his stomach, disgust at both her and himself.

  Anxiety, dread, disgust, whenever he thinks about it. And it‘s all he can think about.

  ###

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  The slit thing had been fun to kill.

  Jed had knocked it half out with one punch, then taken it into the woods, down by the river. There he"d torn its clothes off, feeling his long cock harden with each rip. The slit thing had regained consciousness while he was thrusting into it. The look on its face had been priceless; Jed had laughed when he"d seen it. Then he"d had to knock out three teeth when it screamed.

  He thought he"d probably near killed it by blowing his wad, but just to be sure, after he"d finished he"d smashed its brains out with a big river rock. That'd made his cock harder than granite, so he'd fucked the new hole he'd made. Then he"d gone home to a big meal of home-cooked ham and eggs. He"d eaten an entire carton of eggs, washed down with a six-pack of long necks.

  He laid back on his single cot, and stared at the wood ceiling, feeling warm and sated and pleased with himself. Yessiree, he thought, the world seems mighty fine tonight.

  ### Lee doesn‘t leave the basement for the next two days. He doesn‘t write, he doesn‘t drink or listen to music, the television‘s on but he doesn‘t watch it. The sound is turned down so low that it becomes a light babble, a string of noise to keep the silence from completely deafening him.

  Instead, he tries to decide what to do. At first he thinks about calling her, but as one night passes, and he‘s two days past that night, and there are no police at his door, he realizes she‘s not out to see him land in jail. Plus he‘s terrified to call her. What if she tells him she‘s been badly hurt, maybe even wants him to pay for her medical bills? What if she tells him she has AIDS? Worst of all, what if she tells him she‘s had better?

  At some point he realizes it‘s now Saturday morning, and he‘s scheduled for a signing at a local science fiction bookstore today. In a few hours he‘s supposed to smile and chat up fans and sign copies of Wire Mistress and play the part of hip envelopepusher. Instead he‘s so unnerved at the idea that she might show that he almost calls and cancels.

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  At a half-hour before the scheduled time he decides to go; maybe it‘ll be good for him to get out, to see other people, to see readers who will remind him of his passion and vocation.

  He shaves, drags a comb through his hair (and winces when he passes over a small spot where a few strands have been yanked out), throws on a leather jacket and walks out the door. He‘s fifteen minutes late to the store, but they expect that from authors, especially the ones with reputations to maintain.

  He scans the line of thirty or so, queasy with anticipation, but she‘s not there. Relieved, he takes his place at the folding table behind stacks of his books, and gets out his favorite signing pen, the one with a little skull face sculpted onto the top.

  The third or fourth in line passes Lee a rolled copy of Stumpfuckers and asks the dreaded question: ―Where do you get your ideas?‖

  For the first time, Lee almost tells the truth: That he‘s really not very good at characters or plots, but as long as he pushes the gore and perversion nobody will notice. Instead, he falls back on the rote answer he uses for interviews, about how he‘s just reflecting mankind‘s every-increasing capacity for horror. The fan looks impressed and clutches his signed paperback as if it were a holy relic.

  Normally Lee loves signings; in fact, the sense of appreciation, even of adulation, is probably the reason he writes. He knows these people think of him as an iconoclast, an artist, a pathfinder through the fields of feel-good meta-fiction.

  But today he notices, for the first time, things about them that annoy him. For one thing they‘re all young, much younger than him, several even sporting unresolved acne conditions. For another thing, they‘re all dressed like him, a uniform of black leather and denim. But worst is the way their eyes gleam when they talk about his books. Their voices drop, becoming slightly huskier; some of them sweat or shake. They‘d probably like to think the look is feral, but now it just looks somehow needy, like a penniless junkie.

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  At some point he knows he hates them.

  Lee signs the books dutifully, but leaves the instant the allotted time is complete. He knows the store personnel will think him rude, or snobbish, but he doesn‘t care. He has to escape from these fans, these outsized children who devour impossible paperbound bloodshed in order to call themselves rebels.

  He has to escape – but has nowhere to go.

  ### Our interview with Lee Denny was scheduled to last for just one hour during the recent Splatter2009 convention, but actually took three hours because the ever-generous Mr. Denny continued to sign books for fans during our poolside chat. Denny has only been writing professionally for seven years, but during that time has produced an amazing ten novels and three-dozen short stories. Fans have bags of books, and invariably mention their favorite Lee Denny-penned scene of death or mutilation (I hear the murder-by-corkscrew scene from Blood Kin mentioned several times). Lee"s relationship with his fans seems a natural place, then, to begin our conversation.

  Q: You seem to have a real connection with your readers. A: I"m giving them something they don"t get anywhere else: A release for their rage. Rage is something our society creates, but refuses to acknowledge; if we experience it, we think we must be freaks, there"s something wrong with us. Twenty years ago punk music provided an outlet; now it"s extremist fiction.

  Q: Then do you think of yourself as a horror writer? Or as a writer of “extremist” fiction?

  A: I don"t think of myself as anything but a writer. I write what I feel. I"m lucky that a lot of other people feel the same way; I"m also lucky that they can"t write!

  Q: Aren"t there a lot of imitations of your style appearing online now?

  A: So I"ve heard, but I haven"t read any of it.

  Q: You haven"t? Don"t you read other horror books?

  A: I"m usually too busy writing!

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  Q: Okay, let"s try a tough one: How would you react if one of your books was found in the possessions of a mass murderer?

  A: Oh puh-LEASE! We"re not going to get into this old question again, are we? Okay, if we are, I"ll just say this: If somebody did something really good after reading one of my books, I wouldn"t get any credit, so why should I get blame if somebody does something bad? It"s ridiculous.

  Q: So you wouldn"t be just a little flattered?

  A: Hey, if it sells a few more books... seriously, if I said I was flattered, then that would mean I"m agreeing that my books somehow inspired this nut to kill.

  Q: Would you ever consider killing someone in real life?

  A: Well, there was this one editor... (evil laughter, then) I have considered it – but haven"t we all?

  ###

  He calls her the next day. He‘s surprised when she answers on the second ring, even more so when she tells him she wondered what happened to him.

  If she wondered, he asks, then why didn‘t she call him?

  ―Because,‖ she replies, ―I didn‘t have your number.‖

  The wave of simultaneous relief and disbelief and frustration that passes through Lee ends with him dropping to his couch, his knees too weak to support his weight any longer.‖So you‘re... you know, okay?‖

  ―Christ, Denny, if you‘d been any gentler I would‘ve been dressed in diapers. You know, you‘re not very much like your books.‖

  He pushes his fingers into his lank hair, pulling. ―They‘re fiction, Claudia.‖

  ―Oh, now they‘re just fiction? What happened to the guy who
told an interviewer he‘d considered killing someone?‖

  ―You‘ve read that, too.‖

  ―Yes.‖

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  ―I don‘t understand. Why would you want me to be like Jed, or the Geek, or –‖

  She cuts him off. ―I don‘t want you to be like them, Lee. For one thing, you‘re too smart, and you‘re not big enough. And I don‘t think you‘re from some backwoods place like the Ozarks.‖

  ―I was born in Chicago.‖

  ―Right. I figured.‖

  A long pause, followed by his question: ―So what is it you want from me?‖

  ―Maybe I‘m just trying to figure you out.‖

  Fair enough, thinks Lee. I‘m not exactly Joe Normal.

  ―Let‘s go out again.‖

  Some part of Lee‘s mind screams NO, she can‘t be trusted, she‘ll get too close, she‘s maybe even dangerous. But the thought also excites the reptile brain, and before he can stop it he hears himself answering, ―Fine.‖

  She tells him she‘s busy for the next two nights, but Thursday should work. This time she‘ll pick him up, about 8 p.m. He tells her to pick him up in front the coffee shop, and she laughs at his caution, but agrees.

  He hangs up, nervous but excited. He thinks about the conversation, and reassures himself about the upcoming date: This time I"ll control it.

  Then he puts up his feet and jacks off.

  ### Marty"s collection is growing – he"s got eight of them now, all neatly laid out and trussed up in the second story bedrooms. „Course two of „em are about done for, so he figures he"s really closer to six, but that"s not so bad, either.