He opened his eyes just as Darrell’s charred skeletal face moved towards him, blocking the moonlight. Joey was sure that the old man had been dead when they left him smoldering on the sidewalk. When he examined the man’s face—eyes missing, teeth gleaming through where his lips had burned away, bits of burnt tissue clinging to an otherwise bare skull, other bits flaking away and fluttering to the floor as ash—he saw nothing to contradict his original assessment. Darrell was indeed a corpse. He tried to scream, but the old man pinched his windpipe closed before he could utter a peep.
Darrell sparked the flame on the Bic lighter clutched in his blackened fingers and held it up to Joey’s face.
“You have to learn not to play with fire, Joey.”
Joey tried to scream again as the crazy old dead guy aimed the flame up his right nostril. Joey’s flesh began to sizzle. He writhed on the bed in nerve-searing anguish, but Darrell held him firm.
The boy had learned at least one of the lessons. He knew now that there were things in the world that could hurt him, that he was not invincible and that he could not get away with anything he wanted. The other lessons would take longer and be much more painful. But, Darrell had time. The boy had to learn.
Darrell would not let him grow up to be a criminal like his son Jake, on death row for murdering a drug dealer. He would teach the boy better. The old man moved the lighter to Joey’s eyelid and smiled as his eyeball sizzled and popped.
Addict
J. F. Gonzalez
* * *
“Addict” originally appeared in Insidious Reflections #5, January 2006.
‡
J. F. Gonzalez is the author of over a dozen novels of horror and dark suspense including Back From the Dead, Survivor, Primitive, The Beloved, and the upcoming novel They. He is also the co-author of the popular Clickers series of novels (co-written with Mark Williams and Brian Keene respectively). He writes in a variety of media including print, screen, and the corporate world. A native of Los Angeles, California, he relocated temporarily to Pennsylvania, where he now resides and is trying to escape from. Learn more about him at www. jfgonzalez.com.
* * *
It was a place he stopped by occasionally on his way home from work and, like most underground porn flea markets, it moved around periodically. This time it was in a modern three-bedroom tract home in Alhambra. Dennis Hillman stopped by shortly before 2 p.m. after having left work early for the day.
He tried to stifle a yawn as he flipped through home-made magazines containing photos of various sexual acts. Normal garden variety in-andout didn’t do much for him anymore. It hadn’t in a few years. The deeper he got into it, the more hardcore his pornography had to be. It was his unique tastes in pornography that led him to seek out places such as Carl Grossman’s group a year or two back. You couldn’t find bestiality or scat stuff in neighborhood porn shops. Or women being fucked by guys with dicks the size of those little souvenir baseball bats you could pick up at Dodger Stadium.
There were half a dozen other porn junkies browsing through Carl’s wares this afternoon. Dennis ignored them as he silently sifted through the materials. None of it excited him anymore. He felt a slight sense of disgust with himself as he leafed through a rape magazine. Violence didn’t even turn him on anymore.
Carl Grossman lumbered over. “Got something I think you might enjoy.” Carl was a huge fat man; he looked like a crowd of fat people squeezed into a tight suit. His trousers were wearing thin, the tails of his white shirt was coming out from his pants. Even though Carl didn’t work a normal job, he still tried to dress as if he had a regular nine-to
“Come this way,” Carl beckoned. He turned and Dennis followed him down a dim hallway to the rear of the house.
“Just got this in the day before yesterday,” Carl said, weaving his way through boxes piled on the floor. He opened a box and rummaged around inside it before he found what he was looking for. Dennis let his eyes stray around the room as Carl looked for the thing he wanted to show him; this was where Carl kept stuff for the hardcore freaks. His eyes rested briefly on a still from a bestiality film depicting a young woman with thin limbs and heroin sculpted cheekbones on her hands and knees being fucked by a large monkey. “Here it is,” Carl said, handing Dennis the item.
Dennis picked it up. It was a magazine, the cover showing a woman with blonde hair lying on a bed. Her throat was slit, a great cascade of blood spilling down her chest and on the mattress. Her eyes were open and glazed over.
Dennis handed the magazine back. “It’s snuff, and every snuff film I’ve ever seen is fake. Don’t try to pawn this shit on me.”
“It ain’t snuff,” Carl said, handing the magazine back to Dennis. “Take a better look at it.”
Dennis sighed and began flipping through the magazine, growing more disgusted with himself. What he should be doing was working at the office; he had to finish that CPM spreadsheet for a meeting next week. But the pull of desire was strong and he needed an outlet. Admit it, Dennis thought, his hands trembling slightly as he flipped through the pages of the magazine. You’re a hardcore porn junkie. You’re addicted to this shit and you know it.
The photos in the next few pages showed the same woman from different angles. The next few pages showed a young man, about twenty years old, climbing onto the bed with the woman and embracing her. The next few pages had photographs of the young man sticking his cock between the woman’s lips and shoving it into her mouth. That particular set of photos ended with the man vaginally penetrating her.
“What is this, some kind of special effects thing?” Dennis asked, his curiosity only slightly aroused.
Carl shook his head, a sick grin on his face. “Keep looking.”
The next few pages showed different subjects. One was of what appeared to be an old man, his belly puffy and distended, the flesh of his torso the color of dark storm clouds. A woman who looked like a junkie was sucking his flaccid penis. It wasn’t until he got to the old woman—what Dennis thought was an old woman—that he stopped and stared at the picture, his stomach curling in his belly.
He flipped back through the magazine, looking at the photos again. His eyes were wide. “You mean … this shit is real?”
Carl grinned. “As real as they get, Dennis.”
The photo that had stopped Dennis in his tracks was that of an old woman. She must have been Caucasian because her hair was straight and long. Her skin was black and blue and green in places, some of it wet-looking. There were spots of white in various parts of the body. As Dennis flipped through it the photos got perversely worse. There were close-ups of her decayed face, the eyelids sunken in. There were close-ups of her rotting breasts, the flesh falling off her arm bones. It wasn’t until the man entered the picture that Dennis held his breath. Even though he found it hard to go through the rest of the magazine, he did so anyway. His eyes were riveted on the scenes of the faceless man’s cock buried in the rotting woman’s pussy, the close ups of the man’s penis with brown, maggot-ridden, rotted flesh caked to it amidst creamy semen.
Dennis closed the magazine. He couldn’t breathe, he was that excited. “Where did you get this?”
Carl shrugged. “Just got it in a few days ago. A local outfit. You want it?”
“How much?”
“Fifteen hundred.”
Normally Dennis would have paid for it, but he hadn’t come prepared to pay that much money for something. “I’ll have to get back to you on that,” he said, handing the magazine back to Carl. “I’ll call you.”
Carl smiled and put the magazine back where he’d found it. “You do that.”
Dennis exited the house with a sense of shaking excitement that chased him on the drive home. He couldn’t get his mind off that image of the corpse of the old woman being fucked by the faceless stranger.
* * *
“Dennis, are you okay? ”
“Hmmm?” Dennis snapped awake, banishing the daydream that had been floating through his mind. He was
replaying the images of the necrophilia photo in his dreams again, wondering what it felt like to fuck a rotting corpse. Trying to imagine what the sensation must feel like on your dick.
“You’ve been awfully quiet tonight. Everything okay at work?”
“Yeah, everything’s fine.”
Dennis was sitting up in bed watching the evening news. His wife, Carrie, was sitting next to him doing her nails. Their son, Justin, was in his room doing God knew what on the internet and their daughter, Elizabeth, was in her room talking on the phone with her friends. Dennis had hardly paid attention to his children when he got home this afternoon. All he’d been able to think of were the images from that magazine.
Carrie lolled on the bed, her hair up in curlers. Dennis tried not to look at her; she’d grown increasingly flabby in the past five years. Her ass was a mile wide, the cellulite on her thighs quivered like Jell-O. Dennis tried to get his wife to accompany him to the gym, but she showed no interest. “I’ve got an early morning and late afternoon meeting tomorrow,” he said, flipping through the channels, “so I won’t be home till late. That okay with you?”
“Fine with me,” Carrie said, finishing her nails. “What’s on Channel Two?”
And that’s the way things went every night. It was the way things had been for fifteen years. The minute they began to have kids, their sex life took a nosedive. And to compensate, Dennis sought to relieve his outlet through other means. Pornography.
And the more he got into it, the more he needed to satiate his needs. Where before he couldn’t stomach an anal sex scene, within a few short years he began to crave it … where before he flinched at the barest suggestion of S&M, within a few years he was exploring every aspect of that subculture. Where before he’d gagged at the site of a woman sucking a Great Dane’s cock, or some redneck fucking a sheep, now bestiality films held a strange fascination for him. And while he had heard of snuff films over the years, the closest he’d ever come to seeing one was an extreme hardcore loop Carl Grossman sold him. The clip showed a woman being viscously whipped, then burned with a hot piece of metal as she dangled from the ceiling in an abandoned warehouse. The first time Dennis saw the clip it disturbed him. Later viewings turned him on. He currently kept the tape in a safe in his study and only brought it out when he knew he was going to get at least four hours to himself at home, which was rare.
Now the only thing that could get him off was the hardest of the hardcore. Currently he possessed two additional films other than the torture film, which were the only things that could bring him to orgasm, all three he kept in the safe. One was a film showing a woman being fucked by an Orangutan; it was followed by a guy screwing a female German Shepard. The other tape was a rape film showing the very real rapes of a twelve-year-old girl, a forty-year-old toothless crack addict who looked like he was seventy, and an eighteen-year-old man who already looked like he was in his mid-forties courtesy of hard-living. Carrie would never dream that both tapes resided in a locked safe in Dennis’ study.
Before they settled down to sleep Carrie said, “Oh, I forgot to tell you. Bob Lansing called this afternoon.”
“Really?” Dennis felt his stomach clench. “What did he want?”
“To talk to you,” Carrie turned over. “He sounded surprised, like he thought you would be home.”
“Bob gets confused sometimes,” Dennis said, the lie springing to him easy. “He must have forgotten I had that meeting at our West LA office and thought I’d gone home early.”
Carrie didn’t say anything. Dennis waited for a response, and when none came he rolled over on his right side, facing the wall. He waited until he heard the calm breathing of his wife sleeping beside him, and then he closed his eyes and tried to get some sleep himself. But it was a long time in coming.
* * *
He had a meeting on his calendar the next morning but he skipped it, stopping by Carl Grossman’s instead. He’d gone to the bank on the way and had the fifteen hundred dollars for the necrophilia magazine; he simply couldn’t get it out of his mind. He’d woken up in a good mood so why not splurge? Carl shook his head as Dennis asked for the magazine. “Sorry. Shoulda bought it yesterday. I sold it last night right after you left.”
Dennis felt his hopes deflate. “Oh. That’s too bad.” He didn’t know the magazine would sell so quickly.
“But you’re in luck,” Carl said, moving to a corner of the living room that he referred to as his “office”; it was crammed with a small desk and filing cabinet. He rummaged around on the desk for a business card and copied a name, address, and phone number on it. “You might want to talk to the guy that bought it. He’s a big collector. You and he have similar interests. Maybe he can help you find another one.” He handed the card to Dennis, who slipped it into his pocket.
“Thanks,” Dennis said.
Dennis took a look at the card in his car. The name on the card—Harvey Panozzo—was unfamiliar to him. At first he wasn’t going to place the call; after all, he had to get to work and start giving his employers the impression he gave a shit about his job. But he finally succumbed to his desires and punched Harvey’s number in his cell phone.
The phone was picked up on the other end. “Panozzo here.”
Dennis quickly introduced himself and told Harvey how he came by his number. “Carl suggested I call you since we have similar interests.”
“Are you busy later today?”
“Not at all.”
“Why don’t you stop by? We’ll chat then. You have the address?”
“Yes.” Harvey was in Monrovia, just down the freeway from Pasadena where Dennis lived. He jotted down the directions and hung up, his nerves on edge at the thought that he was going to see more of the type of material he was becoming enamoured with.
The next few hours were spent at work. He made phone calls to various business contacts, did some work on the CPM spreadsheet. Bob Lansing poked his head in his cube and asked where he was yesterday. Dennis told him he’d been stuck in traffic, which was why he was late to the CPM meeting in West LA. Bob nodded, then asked him how the meeting this morning was. Dennis made something up and Bob left, seemingly satisfied with his answer.
He spent the remainder of his day cruising the internet, always making sure to keep a spreadsheet open, and to be on alert in case anybody came by. There’d been a few close calls when Dennis had fumbled with the icon at the bottom of his screen for the spreadsheet, thus blocking out whatever porn website he was on. Thank God for quick fingers.
He visited ten porn sites that afternoon including his favorite: the rape page. He also did some searches on Google for necrophilia pages. He couldn’t find any.
He left the office at his normal time and arrived at Harvey’s house ten minutes early. Harvey Panozzo lived in a nice neighborhood with tree-lined streets and ranch homes. He met Dennis at the front door dressed in tan slacks and a white shirt; he looked like he’d just come home from work. He appeared to be around Dennis’s age—early forties—and had thinning black hair and a dark mustache. He also looked like he spent a lot of time out in the sun.
“Nice to meet you,” Harvey said, holding out his hand.
“Thanks for meeting with me,” Dennis said, shaking his hand. “I really appreciate it.”
Harvey invited him inside the house and Dennis followed the man, his nerves twitching. One time he’d met an extreme hardcore fetish enthusiast in the hopes of scoring some bloodsport videos and was tackled from behind by another character who was lying in wait. Looking back on it now, Dennis realized that they were going to rape him, probably torture him to fulfill their own desires, but Dennis was lucky. Working out at the gym every day gave him an advantage a lot of guys his age lacked, and he was able to fight off his attackers ruthlessly. He was careful in meeting like-minded freaks, and now as he followed Harvey Panozzo down the hall toward a rear bedroom, his senses were on heightened alert.
“Carl is a trusted friend and ally,” Harvey said, motioning for D
ennis to have a seat. “I knew you were okay when you mentioned Carl sent you. I don’t trust people that are referred to me by people other than Carl.”
“Neither do I,” Dennis said.
“You said you were going to buy the necro publication Carl had?” Harvey asked.
Dennis nodded. “Yes. He said you bought it last night, that you’re a fellow …”
“Enthusiast?” Harvey smiled. “I suppose I am.” He paused for a moment. “I take it you are interested in similar material?”
Dennis nodded. “Very much so.”
“I think I may be able to help you.”
Dennis felt a burst of excitement. “That would be great.”
“Tell me something,” Harvey said, leaning forward, elbows resting on his knees. “What do you do for a living?”
Dennis hesitated a moment, then plunged on ahead. “I’m a financial analyst.”
Harvey nodded. “I see. The reason I’m asking is that the group has pretty specific membership requirements. They like for fellow members to be professionally employed.”
“Well …”
Harvey smiled. “Don’t worry. I take it that with your job title you have at least a Bachelor’s Degree and that you make at least fifty k a year. Correct?”
Dennis nodded. Actually he made quite a bit more than that but he wasn’t going to tell Harvey.
Harvey rose to his feet. “Come with me. I think I have just what you’re looking for.”
Dennis followed him to the next room, which appeared to be an office. Harvey opened a file cabinet with a key and rifled through it. He extracted a glossy paged magazine wrapped in plastic and handed it to Dennis, who took it in trembling hands. “Is this the kind of material you’re looking for?”
Dennis looked at it. The dead girl with the severed throat glared at him, her eyes lifeless. Dennis nodded. “Yes.”
“If you’d like, I can give you some time alone with it. Perhaps thirty minutes?”
“That would be great.” Dennis tried to keep his excitement at bay.
Necro Files: Two Decades of Extreme Horror Page 30