Let Me Die a Woman

by Alan Kelly

  Her father blamed her for the way she dressed, for who she was, and Bunny was never a ‘man’. She felt sick whenever anybody described her this way. She had already begun burying that part of herself a few months before her mother died. In a way her death let him go and she could finally kiss the wolf goodbye. On that day she cried for Adam Wolf and all the other girls forced to live as boys in the world.

  25

  Into the Womb of a Dead Woman

  Jones had come to realise that there was real beauty out there – and not just in art, or music, or film, or the accomplishment of making Blood Rag the hottest horror magazine on the shelves. There was another sort of beauty. A way to transcend even the most exquisite things life had to offer and make them seem like dusty dull miasmas in comparison. He clung to this knowledge, this understanding engendered in him, because he had seen glimpses of it in the eyes of people driven deranged with fear, who he had been beaten to within an inch of their lives, pleading at his feet. He knew he was a sick son of a bitch and he didn’t care. He’d watched his little sister shrivel and die, a disease dragging her away bit by bit into a terrible vacuum. Rationally, the man didn’t believe in Hell, but he’d been there in nightmares, he could revisit it in those final moments of his sister’s short life.

  He heard it in the last frenzied screams of grown men before he kicked their teeth in or saw the reflection of a crowbar mirrored in their eyes before he let it fall hard on their skulls. For Jones such acts were not barbaric but transcendent.

  *

  The courier, a ratty man called Beaker, left the body outside the Doll House. His sister rotting; his dear Grim Little Myra, who he’d watched die in a pool of shit and puke and hopeless filth. He would finally have her back. He put on his finest suit for his finest hour at Mount Kippure. Mick Jones was going to put a bulb into the womb of a dead woman; his sister.

  26

  Bunny Flask is Missing

  Bunny found herself moving, broken and alone on a dirt road and didn’t know how she’d come here. She held something in her bloodied hand and knew she shouldn’t let it go. All around her the myriad forms of night stalked and taunted her. The sky was slashed with pink and blue and mad birds were spinning like frightened tadpoles under frozen pond water above her, their cries cutting piercing her fatigue like a dish of ice water. She was bleeding and charges of pain ran through her arms and legs. It reminds her of when she was a boy.

  Hands Tied to her feet while the red eye of a camera watches from the roof. The drapes on the window are heavy and nailed to the bare white wall. Two men the boy has met before have made him sit in a bathtub, tight rope cutting and turning both his hands blue. He is revelling in his own shit and piss. Other men are in the hallway, just outside the bathroom.

  Bunny stumbled and her knees met the dirt, her free hand gripping soggy leaves, breathing a feeling like big hard hands slamming against her ribcage.

  As a boy he is sitting alone in a room. Again the curtains are drawn and his only distraction is the intermittent ting of a smoke alarm from somewhere beyond the room. The bastard was there that day. He came into the room with the single bed, past the alarm clock and the Lydia Lunch posters.

  The alarm screamed and he was shouting about his tools, His mother was shouting at the bastard. She had put the bastard’s tools away safe. This didn’t stop him twisting Adam’s arm up behind his back until the bone made a weird noise.

  ‘Whingey little queer,’ the bastard shouted, slamming his face into the wall; the side of his face where his jaw had been broken.

  ‘Good for nathin,’ the bastard coughed and sputtered, ‘bastard faggoty little lady.’

  The bastard licked at his face and she laughed like a coy schoolgirl right behind him. The bastard pulled down his underpants, slowly pulled him back by the hair and slammed his face into the wall again. He winced more from the pressure of the wall than the pain. When the bastard pulled at him, he started to cry and she squealed, ‘lil boy is havin’ a laugh.’

  The next day, the heat in that room became unbearable. The bastard had cracked his cheekbone again. When the bastard’s hands roamed over the parts of his face that didn’t protest in agonising pain, he thought it was a bit funny that his face was the shape of a pear.

  They’d taken all his clothes. His tongue played with a tooth that was loose in the back of his head. The bastard had screamed at him, telling him he wasn’t a girl while she had examined something in her hair, pinching it between her thumb and finger, her eyes crooked with concentration. So he stayed there with his pear shaped face and thought, I am a girl, always have been.

  Bunny screamed ‘no more’ until the memory ran off like a wild dog. When she finally did stop, she thought her own screams were echoing back at her, until she realised that the sounds were coming from somewhere else.

  27

  Grim Myra

  Jones hated it. Hated that thing he’d created in the Doll House. It couldn’t be his sister; he believed she’d be like the others. Yes, he knew none had been dead when they were impregnated but each of them had been severely wounded. All of those had regenerated and became perfect replicas of the original. Although Myra was badly decomposed when he inserted the bulb, he didn’t think this would be the outcome.

  It glanced at him through the glass; it wasn’t Myra or anything approximating her. This was a vicious sack of malevolence, as if insanity itself worked as a cancer eating away every nuance of personality, mental and physical. All that was left was a withered, battered string of meat with dusty sheets of skin barely coating a bitter, steel hard cage within. And, to Jones’s utter horror, it continued to grow. It wouldn’t stop growing. This wasn’t what she would have wanted, he thought. This wasn’t what he wanted at all.

  Watching it glide around inside the Doll House he was overwhelmed by a succession of sensations. What could he do? Letting it out would be suicidal, it would rip him limb from limb. Could he burn the Doll House down he wondered? Bring his Victorian pile down on top of it all? No, that he couldn’t do. He would leave it until dawn, just for a few more hours, just for a few more hours. Just for a few more hours…

  28

  A Lesson in Nihilism

  Alice ran through the woods desperately wanting to get out of the dark and back on the streets. She could hear the strangled squawking of crows above her head, their beady black eyes searching for sustenance. The woods were the only thing she feared in this world; the woods and the magpies. She held the transmitter under her arm and kept moving, occasionally hitting the root of a tree and stumbling. She stopped when she heard a voice shouting ‘no more’ and, when she looked to her right, she saw there was a dirt path. A few yards down she could make out the silhouette of a young woman.

  It was Bunny. She was alive and she was clinging onto something; she still had the Unicorn key. This time Alice would have to take it by any means necessary. She’d kill her if she needed to. There were other noises in the woods too though. She could hear screams further up the track; screams which sounded like an animal getting tortured. The noise gave Alice Fiend butterflies in her stomach.

  She followed Bunny as the girl made her way towards the wounded. Let her be a nightingale if it made her happy. Alice quietly went in pursuit of the Unicorn key and Bunny Flask. She had to open the port to release The Sisters and release the Psyche soon.

  Bunny staggered onwards, towards the screaming. It felt like she was clawing through the dark to reach whoever it was in trouble and she got the impression someone was watching her. Drops of water fell on her from the trees overhead and muck splashed all over her legs. She was sopping wet and freezing and desperately wanted a warm shower and a bed and a way out of this nightmare. What had she been thinking? Aliens, world domination, wakening the Substrate? She’d only wanted to burn Blood Rag down and now she had been catapulted into a substandard rehash of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

  It felt like she’d been walking for fifty years when she came to an overturned jeep. The
cries she’d heard were coming from the man who was trapped under the wreckage. A part of her didn’t want this. Why should she help this complete stranger? She firmly believed that other people should keep their pain to themselves. But an instinctual part of her was drawn to him. She had a similar feeling once when she heard a bird cry in agony and couldn’t reach it. Her mind said one thing but her soul said another.

  Bunny walked over to the jeep. The man was pinned down. Even if her mobile phone hadn’t been smashed in the wreckage, phoning for help would be useless. She kneeled down beside him. He was a long-faced man with protruding eyes and a nose that had obviously been broken once or twice in the past. He looked up at her. She wondered if she could try and drag him out but, even though most of his lower body was covered, she knew he was a good two feet taller than her. Even if she did it would be like having a man-sized sack of spanners leaning on her shoulder.

  ‘You’ll be OK,’ she said, and hated herself for sounding like an extra on ER.

  She was just about to try for profound when Alice’s boot slammed hard into the side of her head, knocking her face first into a pool of shitty, gore filled water.

  Flecks of rain bit at the back of Bunny’s neck as she pulled her head out of the water, pushing stinking, sewage smelling hair off her face. She felt like she was in the trenches, covered in blood and shit.

  Alice snatched the Unicorn key out of her hand. Bunny watched her carefully. Alice had a large shard of glass in her other hand and was just about to use it when she was distracted by the croaking coming from the accident victim’s jagged maw. Bunny searched the ground for something to defend herself with but was finding it more and more difficult with the lack of light and the rain washing the ground away.

  Fiend strolled across and stood over the man. She carefully placed the transmitter and the Unicorn at her feet while bending down. Gripping the man’s head on either side, she looked over at Bunny and smiled before twisting his head first one way and then the other. There was a sound of bones straining like chalk on a blackboard followed by a wet snap before Alice yanked the man’s head from his body.

  ‘Siser…his….sis...’ the head mumbled, thick black blood running down over its chin; a tail of a spine dangling loosely beneath it.

  Bunny retched, the taste of shitty water still in her mouth. Fiend kissed the severed head before hurling it into the darkness of the forest and turning her attentions back on Bunny. Bunny didn’t want to die in this place; an empty wood full of ghosts. The kind of ghosts who never offer a reveal, but sneak up on you quietly, the sorts you at first believe are harmless.

  Alice fiend was one of these monsters. She was no melancholy scrap of shadow but she was a creature that hid in dark corners, or under floorboards. Now here she was, creeping forward with a shard of glass in her hand, with every intention of cutting Bunny’s throat. But then Bunny spotted the dark look in her eyes and the smirk on her lips and realised Alice wasn’t going to use the glass on her throat. Bunny crawled backwards, the rain battering her face. With preternatural speed Fiend grabbed her ankle and pulled her back towards her.

  ‘Alice, please, don’t,’ shrieked Bunny, kicking out and missing by a mile.

  A vicious swipe of Alice’s hand with the shard sliced through Bunny’s cheek.

  ‘Now Bunny, you’re going to have a lesson in nihilism,’ laughed Fiend.

  29

  Accentuating Their Dimensions with a Sawn Off Shotgun

  Sunglasses Steve wouldn’t have got past security to get into Blood Rag so he waited across the street straddling his Yamaha 96 with a sawn-off slung on his back and enough ammo to do her in his back pocket. He’d accentuate their dimensions all right, with his sawn-off shotgun. The first woman he spotted entering Blood Rag was a skinny pale little thing with jet black hair and a grungey dress-sense.

  Not long after a mini trudged up the street at a slow pace and parked opposite. A blonde with big tits and a chainsaw galloped across the street when she heard a small explosion. She shook the glass doors and, unable to get inside, put the chainsaw down and went back to her car, returning moments later with a tyre iron and shattered the glass.

  He waited and heard the chainsaw starting inside. He knew there was no security. He was about to treat the building like a lady and use the front entrance when the blonde came out like a whirlwind. Steve pushed his bike back into the shadows and watched her. She made a few phone calls, hung up and waited for the others who came out fifteen minutes later. It was the skinny and, he thought, pretty brunette from earlier with the one at the very top of his cunt list; Jessica Spark.

  They talked amongst themselves for a while and he quickly started loading the shotgun with shells. He was about to take aim when he heard the mini speed away. They were away and safe from harm, for now at least. He started up the Yamaha and roared down the street, under an amber night sky.

  Sunglasses tailed them, keeping as much distance as he could without making them aware of his presence. The rain and the fury of the wind didn’t help and staying behind them was far more difficult them he could ever have imagined. Twice he lost, but quickly regained, control of his bike.

  Somewhere near the turn off to Mount Kippure the mini disappeared and he came to the conclusion that it had gone off the main road. His suspicions were confirmed when he quickly turned into the dirt road leading to Mount Kippure. Even with the wind howling there was no mistaking the sound of brakes screeching, smashing glass and a furious crashing noise. He tried kick-starting his bike with no success. He removed the Gemini, hiding it inside his leather jacket. He walked steadily on, carrying the gun on his back all ready to smoke.

  30

  Men, Women and Chainsaws

  Kiffany had crawled from the wreckage before Bunny had come round. Other than some surface wounds she was tickety boo. She hadn’t wanted Bunny to go to Blood Rag and she had had every intention of protecting her girl from both Jones and Alice if she needed to but then, Bunny had been so easily seduced by Alice’s preposterous lies that Kiffany felt no sympathy for her.

  It was this alone that informed her decision to call Jones when she was outside the Blood Rag building and agree to a settlement in exchange for the blackmail material she had accumulated over the years. He’d told her to come to the house and they could come to some agreement. She didn’t bargain on Bunny and Alice coming too. She was almost grateful for that car crash now. Bunny had dug her own grave, now she could lie in it. Kiffany was sick and tired of always putting on a face of exaggerated concern for the girl. She did like her but God could she grate.

  Kiffany made her way up to the old four story house, which was a chapel Jones had converted in the early nineties at the bottom of Mount Kippure. Dim light burned in the window. She held on to her chainsaw and went down the steps leading into the old mortuary chapel.

  When Jones had first taken her here she thought the building was a crypt or perhaps a folly, or even just a purely decorative structure. She opened the door into a small chapel, which still had an altar and pews. The place was used as a crematorium and it always gave Kiffany the heebies. Candles had been lit sometime during the night; most of them burned down to the wick. She checked her pocket and found a packet of Pantibar matches. She lit one and thought of her brother Keith. She missed home sometimes.

  From somewhere overhead Kiffany could hear the faintest wailing, like listening to the world from under water. She exited the chapel and, one by one, took each step up and into the house, chainsaw prepped. A girl always needed something to fall back on after all, didn’t she?

  31

  Psyche

  Bunny had enough of her own damage to deal with without Alice adding another injury to the miserable play list of her life. She kicked, bit and thrashed but the woman couldn’t be deterred. Alice’s knee came down hard on Bunny’s chest pinning her to the ground.

  ‘Get off me you ugly bitch. I ought to punch your cunt in YOU RED WHORE!’ shouted Bunny, grabbing Alice by the hair and ripping
a clump from her scalp.

  Alice swung round to face Bunny, teeth bared, and cracked her in the side of the head.

  ‘Be patient boy. I’m getting there,’ laughed Alice.

  This incensed Bunny and she sank her teeth into Alice’s ankle, biting hard and separating skin from bone. The fiend screamed and plunged the shard of glass into Bunny’s thigh. Alice then reached up and ripped off Bunny’s knickers and pulled her flaccid penis as far as she could possibly stretch it. Without looking at Bunny Alice remarked, as if she was about to sink a kitchen knife into a soufflé, ‘Hmm. You’re going to die a woman.’

  Bunny couldn’t manage another scream so she just stared at Alice. There was nothing more she could do, she was on her back, it was hopeless. She was about to be gutted like a spring lamb by a creature masquerading as the editor of a horror magazine. She steeled herself against the first cut when a voice came out of the rain behind her, and the voice had only one word to say, ‘Jessica.’

  Alice looked like a dog had just shit on her grave. She dropped the shard of glass, her lips slightly parted, and stood up slowly. Bunny hauled herself up off the ground, her body bent double with pain. A young man with a sleeveless leather jacket, sunglasses, floppy black hair which hung heavy with grease either side of his face, thick lips and a dirty tan stood a few feet away pointing a shotgun directly at them.

  Bunny covered her cock with her bruised hands. Her face burned with shame. She thought that pointing a shotgun at Alice showed arrogance in his own ability. She also thought that he was something of a poseur but she’d still like to see him with his ass in the air. Ms Fiend stood watching, waiting for him to speak.