Addicted to the Dead

by Shane McKenzie

  Band-Aids and disinfectant are no good to a dead person.

  Underneath a musty gray blanket, he found a roll of duct tape. He jogged back to his sister who had given up filling herself back up with her spillings and was staring at the officer’s body.

  “Why doesn’t he wake up, Paco?”

  “He was a meat eater,” Paco said as he fingered the corner of the tape. “Remember the commercials? If you eat dead meat, you don’t wake up when you die.” As he pulled the tape open, he thought about the putrefied remains on his parents’ kitchen counter, the boiling head…the black fluid staining Mama and Papa’s mouths. The meat was the cause of their death, and they still woke up afterward.

  It wasn’t in their system yet, that’s why. And it was the spoiled meat that killed them. Maybe bad meat doesn’t work.

  “Are you going to eat him…like he was eating me?”

  “What?” Paco made her lift her arms as he stretched the tape out and wrapped it around her torso, slowly, holding in her cold viscera with his free hand.

  “I don’t care if you do. Then you don’t have to be like me.”

  “It wouldn’t work anyway, he’s not… Look, I’m not eating this crazy asshole, okay? I don’t ever want to eat any meat. Not ever.” The duct tape felt pretty tight and secure, but he wrapped it around again and again to make sure it held. “You’re not hurting? You don’t feel any pain?”

  She shook her head, pulled on the only other shirt brought with her: a purple one with a golden butterfly on the front. She sat on the ground, tore at the dried yellow grass around her. “What are we gonna do with him?”

  “I…I don’t know.” A wave of dread swept over him when he remembered all those cop shows he’d seen on TV. How they always had cameras on the dashboard. He ran to the patrol car and searched for it, though he didn’t really know what he was looking for. He didn’t see anything that looked like a camera, and he could only hope the officer had switched it off along with the lights so he wouldn’t be seen on camera eating a small dead girl.

  Paco snatched the blanket from the trunk, threw it over his shoulder.

  “He’s still smiling,” Sophia said. She was on her hands and knees, leaning over so her face was only inches from the officer’s.

  “I think he was addicted,” Paco said as he eased Sophia away. “Like that man we saw at the grocery store, remember? The one who got arrested. I saw some on TV too, at Mrs. Addington’s. The addicts are all real skinny-looking, just like him,” Paco said and pointed at Officer Southard. Paco leaned over, shoved his arms under the officer’s armpits, and dragged him backward toward the cluster of trees.

  “That’s why he was eating me…because I’m dead meat?”

  Paco glanced at her ruined leg. After the rifle blast, he’d completely forgotten about it. Sophia had her eyes glued to it as well, an almost pouting look on her face.

  Sweat drenched his skin as he struggled to pull the body. Even though Officer Southard was thin, the son of a bitch was heavy. Dead leaves crunched under Paco’s shoes and twin furrows were dug into the dirt as the officer’s heels dragged across it. Once there were enough trees that Paco couldn’t see the road anymore, he dropped the body, draped the blanket over it.

  Guess that’ll have to do.

  When he got back to the truck, panting and wiping sweat from his brow, Sophia sat with her back resting on the front passenger tire, Myron in her arms. She fiddled with the ragged wound on her leg.

  “Hey,” Paco said. He sat beside her and pulled her close. “You’re not just dead meat, Sophia. You’re special, don’t you see that? That’s why we’re here, that’s why we’re heading to the city.”

  She didn’t respond, just kept prodding at the exposed meat and bone. She buried her finger down to the knuckle, poking a hole in the remaining flesh.

  “Hey, don’t do that.”

  “I can’t feel it. I…I want to feel it…I want to.”

  “I know, I know. But you are special, Sophia. Mrs. Addington gave us all that money because she knew that. Once we find her brother the doctor, he’ll see it too. He’ll help you, get you better.” He kissed the top of her head. “Dead people can’t talk, they can’t do the things you can do. I don’t know…maybe you’re not all the way dead.”

  She beamed up at him. “You think so?”

  “Maybe,” he said as he checked over his shoulder. The traffic remained steady, but the drivers were oblivious of Paco and Sophia. Paco pulled out Mrs. Addington’s directions, and as far as he could tell, they were close to the outskirts of the city. Officer Southard had even mentioned the city, said that it wasn’t safe—either way Paco was ready to get there. “Let’s get going, okay?”

  She kissed his cheek and he winced at the touch of her frosty lips. “Yeah, okay.”

  He lifted her into the cab, ignored the coagulated blood coating the floorboard, and buckled her in. The officer’s pistol dug into his leg, so he tossed it into the glove box and shouldered the passenger door shut. As he rounded the truck, he gave the patrol car one last look.

  It’s not safe in the city for two kids like you.

  What nightmares are waiting for us in the city? Paco thought.

  Shaking the thoughts from his skull, he climbed into the truck, turned the key three times, but he found himself unable to sing along with Johnny Cash as they continued toward their destination.

  - Chapter 10 -

  The director sat in his chair, licking the tips of his fingers after polishing off a handful of meat that was twisting and thrashing in his grasp. He massaged his groin as he stared into the monitor in front of him, the images splashing pale luminosity onto his clammy face.

  The young girl, Sky, hung from a harness, its straps sparkling with rhinestones. She clawed at them, shrieked and sobbed as she begged the queue of men for help. All pleads fell on deaf ears. The men, all Fleet’s Ughs and Grunts from what Calico could tell, stood in line, staring at the girl through the eyeholes of their masks.

  Calico stayed by the door at the back of the room, clenching and unclenching his fists. He didn’t want to look, but his eyes refused to move from the scene. The girl’s pupils darted around the room and eventually landed on him, then widened with recognition. It was then he could finally avert his eyes, opening his shaking fingers and staring into his palms.

  “Why do you need me tonight?” Calico had asked Fleet only an hour before. “You got your boys there to make sure everything goes smooth. It’s been a hell of a long fucking day, and I want to be with my daughter.”

  Fleet had been sitting in front of a flat-screen monitor on the leather couch in his office, rubbing his chin with one hand, the other holding a sweating glass filled with brown liquid. He took a sip, hissed. “My boys are there for fucking. Not security.”

  Calico pulled out his knife, was about to slice at his flesh to ease the sickness building within him, but his shaking hand wouldn’t lower the blade. There wasn’t a wound deep enough to calm him now. He looked back up at the girl who hung her head and sobbed, still blindly fighting her restraints.

  “Don’t worry. The rules haven’t changed,” Fleet had said. “My boys still aren’t allowed to eat meat. I just need my best guy there to make sure there aren’t any hiccups. Got big money coming in for this specific Corpse Snuff, and I need this shoot to run smooth, you got me?”

  The film crew—who, unlike Fleet’s men, worked for meat—stood around with the cameras, lights, and microphones pointed and ready.

  The director groaned as he rubbed himself and fingered the image of the girl on his monitor, leaving a greasy fingerprint across her terrified face. “Yes…yes it’s time.” The director, a short man with a sharp and boney frame, cupped his hands over his mouth. “Positions everyone!”

  Sky swayed as she thrashed and fought against the straps. Calico’s pulse quickened and he wanted to run to her, rip that harness off her, and slice open any motherfucker that tried to stop him.

  “Help me!” She wasn’
t looking at him, wasn’t looking at anyone in particular when she said it, but the shrillness of her voice sent shards of glass through Calico’s veins.

  The first man in line, wearing a cobalt-blue lucha libre mask, stepped forward.

  “Action!”

  Calico winced, squeezed his eyes shut, and thought about his daughter. Nothing mattered but her. He felt bad for this girl, wanted to do something for her, but it was out of his hands. She may be young, he told himself. But she made her own decisions. She put herself in that harness. Calico couldn’t stop his eyes from rolling back up and landing on the scene as it began to play out.

  Lucha Libre leaned in and sniffed the girl’s neck, his erection prodding her in the stomach as he did so. Then he cocked his fist back and punched her in the middle of the face. She swung backward in her harness, the tips of her toes scraping across the floor as she swung to and fro. Her eyes blinked rapidly as blood rushed from her nostrils, stained her teeth red when she opened her mouth to choke and scream.

  Lucha Libre propped her legs over his shoulders as he penetrated her, used the swinging harness to push her away, then bring her back in, again and again. With each thrust, his fist found her face.

  The men waiting for their turn shifted from foot to foot as they watched the brutal act. Three meathead girls, the studio’s in-house fluffers, walked on their knees as they went down the line taking in mouthfuls of cock, making sure not a single dick went flaccid.

  Lucha Libre grunted with climax, pulled out, and walked to the back of the line, and the girl groaned and sobbed. She slowly kicked her legs, as if jogging on an invisible treadmill, her trembling hands roaming over her beaten body and head. Her face was raw hamburger meat. Her boney, milky torso was awash with blood that ran from her eyes, nose, and mouth in a constant trickle.

  Ski-mask stepped forward, his erection still glistening with the fluffer’s saliva. The man’s stomach was like a beer keg, his arms and legs bulging with plates of hard muscle. Calico thought he recognized him as the big Samoan. When Ski-mask’s thick-knuckled fist slammed into the girl’s face, she slumped forward and hung limp, bloody air bubbles forming and popping at her nose and the corners of her mouth. Another devastating blow rocked her backward, and when she came forward, she was being fucked again.

  Calico realized he’d been holding his breath, and he gasped for air as he continued to watch, squeezing the hilt of his knife until his palm stung. The director giggled from his chair, and Calico yearned to stick the fucker in the back of the neck. But again, he focused on Beauty, saw her smiling face in his head. Always such a smiler when she was alive, always laughing.

  Ski-mask finished, gave one last knuckle sandwich before joining Lucha Libre at the back of the line.

  “Fucking brilliant!” The director chortled and bounced in his seat.

  The girl already looked like fresh roadkill, and the men in line rubbed their hands together in anticipation for their turn.

  A tall man in a pink bunny rabbit mask stepped forward, his cock long and hard enough to hit a homerun with. He lightly slapped the girl a few times, whispered something to her that Calico couldn’t make out, then swung an elbow and hit her right between the eyes. A loud crack erupted from her skull, her body spasmed for a few moments, and then she just hung there, swaying as if caught in a breeze.

  The men in line clapped. Nudged each other and chuckled.

  Calico ground his teeth, couldn’t hold back the urge to cut himself any longer, and slid the blade over his palm, slicing a red X into the callused flesh.

  Sky was clean by the time Calico had gotten to her in Detox, and he didn’t know if the small amount of meat he’d given her would keep her from waking—he hoped so. The nightmare could be over for her and she could slip into the afterlife, if there was one.

  Bunny Rabbit went straight to work on her, gripping her by the bloody throat as he fucked her with savage rhythm. A rattling growl crackled from his throat as he rocked the girl’s body.

  “Very nice. Splendid!” the director shouted with a squeaky voice.

  The girl’s face was so butchered, so swollen, that she could barely open her eyes when she woke. A wet gurgle slid from her mouth as she watched Bunny Rabbit work on her. Her toes curled and she walked in place, slipping on the pooled blood beneath her.

  Goddamnit.

  The room buzzed with need. As always, the film crew became agitated with the fresh meat moaning on the set. Arid tongues ran over chapped lips, hands became unsteady, knees began to shake.

  Calico tapped the director’s shoulder with the tip of his blade. “When is this over? Where…where are we taking this meat?”

  The director only laughed with his eyes glued to the monitor, his hands glued to his groin.

  “Hey, asshole,” Calico said as he swung the little man to face him. “You hear me talking to you?”

  “Special orders,” he said. “This one doesn’t get eaten on set, doesn’t get processed for selling. She…she…he-he-he, she gets shipped to the customer along with the movie. All the life drained out of her and replaced with hot cum.”

  Jesus Christ.

  Bunny Rabbit was extracting himself from the dead girl when Calico glanced back up. The girl clicked her teeth as the next man stepped forward wearing a clown mask, the tip of his dick as red as the nose on his face.

  Daddy will be with you soon, baby girl. I’m sorry.

  The girl grumbled as two other men joined Clown Face and surrounded her. Clown Face in the front, Monkey Face in the back. As they got to work, Ghost Face pulled out a straight razor.

  “Yes, do it now! Now!” the director said as he frantically wrestled with his belt.

  Calico clenched his bloody fist, dug his fingertips into the deep cuts as Ghost Face sliced open a new hole in the dead girl’s side, a gaping gash right in the love handle.

  “Uungha…” Sky’s limbs twirled and twitched.

  And then Ghost Face entered the new orifice, slid all the way in until his cock was stirring her entrails.

  Sky moaned, arms and legs churning slowly, as the three masked men used her as a pin cushion.

  - Chapter 11 -

  When he first saw the buildings rising from the horizon in the distance like glass and metal beanstalks, the sun had already called it a day. The truck’s left headlight, the only one that worked, speared its cycloptic beam through the darkness and illuminated the oncoming concrete. Paco had never seen buildings so tall before in person, and as the truck rolled through the increasingly narrow streets, he gazed up at them in awe.

  “They’re huge, Paco. I can’t even see the top,” Sophia said with her face and palms pressed against the glass of the passenger window.

  Paco yawned, rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and when he looked forward again, he had to slam on the brakes. Sophia’s seatbelt went tight and caught her as she was jolted forward, but her neck angled itself to the right at an ugly slant.

  A man and woman stood in the sallow glow of the headlight as they stared stupidly into the windshield. Their eyes looked like shiny pebbles pressed into the sockets of their skulls, deep lines running along their lips, cheeks, and foreheads.

  They look a lot like the man from the grocery store, like Officer Southard, only worse. Much worse.

  In that moment, the officer’s bloody, lifeless body came screaming back into Paco’s mind. The feeling of his finger pulling the trigger and blowing a hole clean through the man and into his sister made his hands shake and his breaths come in rapid gasps.

  I didn’t have a choice…he was eating my sister…he was going to kill us both.

  The man in front of the truck said something into the woman’s ear, shoved her in the back toward Paco’s window. Paco wanted to leave, keep driving until they found a hotel. He was exhausted and had been struggling to keep his eyes open for the last hour, but as the woman stepped toward him, lifted her shirt, and pressed her pale breasts against the glass, his eyes had no problem cooperating. Blue veins spiderwebb
ed the pasty flesh, the nipples like pink, bumpy half-dollars. Yet Paco could only stare at them as the woman mashed them against his window.

  “What’s she doing?” Sophia’s voice knocked Paco back into focus.

  “I, I don’t know.”

  The man still stood in front of the truck, staring in at them as he scratched at the scabrous flesh of his neck and chest. Then his hand slowed and stopped as his eyes widened, the pupils bouncing from Sophia to Paco repeatedly. The woman, her tits still pressed flat up against the glass, had the same flabbergasted look on her face as she glared into Paco’s eyes.

  Paco didn’t know what to do. These people were clearly addicts, and by the way they were staring into the car, Paco thought they must have figured out that Sophia was dead. He thought about showing the newly acquired pistol, scare them away, but he didn’t want that kind of attention. So he rolled the window down, the woman’s nipples stretching downward as the window slid across them. “We r-really need to get going,” he said, unable to keep his eyes from traveling to the naked breasts before him. “Can you p-please move now?”

  “Where you from?” the woman said, finally pulling her shirt to conceal herself.

  “We need a doctor,” Sophia said.

  Paco shot her a wide-eyed look, then turned his attention back to the woman, who was now accompanied by the man. Both of their jaws hung slack as they peered into the truck. More movement all around them. Shambling along the street and sidewalks were more people, all of them looking to be on death’s doorstep. Barely a shred of fat on any of them, all with that empty, soulless look in their eyes. A few of them spied the couple standing at the truck and began making their way toward it to see what the commotion was all about.

  “Who are you…k-kids?” the man said.

  Paco didn’t respond as he smashed his foot against the gas pedal and took off, nearly running right over an approaching stick figure with a long white beard. Heads turned as the truck zoomed by, and every face was one of shock.