AFTERTASTE

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AFTERTASTE Page 8

by Scott, Kyle M.


  CHAPTER 11

  Ben, Chris and Joey came down to the river almost every day.

  They had done all summer long, just as they had in previous summers for as long as Ben could recall. The days stretched on into endless magical hours, and down here, amidst the green shelter of the forest and with no adults around to hinder the magic that swelled in their boyish hearts, they felt truly free.

  They’d been playing down by the riverbank for the entire day, Ben having brought along a box of cheese and ham sandwiches his mom was kind enough to rustle up while his two best friends waited for him by the front porch.

  He bit down on one now, savouring the familiar taste as he watched Joey cast his rod out into the river, while Chris smoked up a storm with a cigarette he’d sneakily procured from his old man’s jacket pocket.

  Ben thought smoking was a damn fool idea, he’d seen what it did to his Uncle Jim as the cancer ravaged his body, and he wanted no part of it, though he guessed that Chris was just trying to look tough.

  Joey cursed as he reeled in his rod, empty as it had been all afternoon, “I swear, there’re no goddam fish in this river. I’d have been better setting up my gear at that Waldo’s place.”

  Ben laughed, “I don’t think they sell fish, numb-nuts.”

  “So? I could have caught myself a burger. At least then I’d have something in my belly. I'm starving, dude.”

  “Have one of these.” Ben held the lunch box up and waved it left and right, there were still three full, finely cut sandwiches left.

  Chris laughed from his left, “No offence, dude, but your mom can’t cook worth shit. I’ve tasted her product, remember?”

  “I’d like to taste her product, too,” Joey added with a sly grin.

  “Gross, Joey! That's my mom you’re talking about!” Ben fought to keep the smile from reaching his lips and failed. He laid down the box and reached for the plastic bottle of Kool-Aid he’d brought along to share. The bottle was almost empty, and the day was still hot as hell. Ben bemoaned the fact that they would have to get heading home soon.

  “I'm just fucking with you, man. You’re mom’s cool.”

  “Yeah,” he muttered.

  “Still a babe, though...”

  Chris and Joey burst out laughing, and Ben found himself joining them. “You guys are assholes, you know that?”

  Chris puffed on his stolen cigarette, quite obviously not inhaling it, “That's why you love us, Benny boy.”

  “Like hell it is. I love you because you’ve got an home Xbox One.”

  Chris dropped the still burning cigarette in the tall grass and scrunched it with his boot, “What can I say. I come from good stock. I'm only roughing it with you two assholes to see how the other half lives.”

  Ben and Joey gave each other a look, shaking their heads in unison.

  Chris, still grinning like a damn fool, sat back down beside Sam, and together they watched Joey take apart his fishing rod, piece by piece. It was an old throwaway number his dad had bummed him off with, but it did the job. He undid the hook from the line and placed it in the box along with his other assorted fishhooks.

  His friend sealed the box and laid it in the bag with the rest of his fishing gear – tackle, reels, bait, lures.

  Joey was whistling as he worked, though Ben couldn’t recognise the tune.

  Chris put his arm around his shoulder, “Almost time to go home, Benny boy,” he said, and then, much quieter, he leaned into his ear and whispered, “So, we doing this, or are we just gonna let it be?”

  Ben’s stomach fluttered. At first, the sensation was uncomfortable. He’d felt much the same one time when two older boys had ambushed him on the way home from Chris’ house one winter evening. It had been dark, and the two tall boys had worn hoodies. Their eyes invisible behind the gloom cast by their apparel. They’d pushed him into a wall, and forced him at knifepoint to hand over his pocket-money.

  He had done so without haste, as the small blade that the tallest boy held was flashed before his face.

  It had been the scariest moment in all of his twelve years on the planet, and now, here with his friends, he felt that familiar dizzying grip.

  He watched Joey, with his back turned towards the river as he whistled and worked, and he recognised the sensation for what it truly was.

  Adrenalin.

  Ben wondered if fear and adrenalin could maybe be the same thing.

  There was no denying he was feeling the shifting sands of fear in his belly, but it felt...

  Good.

  “Let’s do it,” he said, softly.

  Together the boys got to their feet and, as one, they came up behind their friend.

  “Hey, Joey?” Chris stood directly behind the other boy.

  “Yep?” Joey raised himself from his squatting position and turned.

  And that’s when Chris head-butted him.

  Ben marvelled at all the blood.

  It flowed like a faucet as Joey’s legs crumpled beneath him, and he hit the grass hard. His right arm had somehow bent under his back as he landed, and Ben could see his shoulder blade poking out at a strange angle, as though trying to break free of his skin. He felt himself grow hard, as Chris loomed over his fallen comrade, his shadow covering the confusion and crying boy in darkness.

  “Benny, hold him down.”

  Re-adjusting his pants so his hard-on wouldn’t show, Ben made for Joey. He squatted over his bloodied friend and knelt with his knees pressed on either side of the now screaming boy’s shoulders, pinning him to the earth.

  “Grab the tin,” Chris said; his voice cold and quivering. Ben was sure that this was sexually arousing for him, too, and felt a little less self-conscious.

  With his left arm, he grabbed the little tin container from Joey’s rucksack, holding it up before his face. He could hear a tiny pitter-patter on the sides of the tin as the contents bustled around frantically in their mindless search for freedom from their tiny tin prison.

  Chris came forward, and with one hand he held Joey’s head in place, with the other hand, he pinched the boy’s nose shut, grunting as he did so, “Fucker’s got some fight in him,” he said, impressed.

  After only a few seconds, the panic stricken boy opened his mouth, desperate for a lungful of air, his blood and snot caked lips forming a large circle as he inhaled deeply.

  That’s when Ben upturned the small tin, and poured the maggots down his throat.

  Joey kicked and thrashed under him, gagging as the army of tiny grubs poured into his waiting mouth, their small bulbous forms writhing and wriggling on the boys tongue, filling his cheeks.

  “Now slam his mouth shut.”

  Ben did as he was asked.

  Joey’s eyes were bulging from his head now; huge full moons wreathed in horror, pleading and imploring for help, for understanding.

  Ben felt no compassion.

  None at all.

  He smiled as the trapped Joey struggled beneath his weight, his muffled moans falling on deaf ears and dead hearts.

  Both he and Chris giggled as finally, Joey relented and began to chew.

  “That’s it, dude. Eat ‘em all up.” Chris was jumping up and down now, a twisted vision of boyhood glee.

  Ben felt his cock throb in his pants, and worried he might actually cream in his underwear.

  It wasn’t the sounds that Joey made that were so exciting, the crunching and gagging was actually pretty revolting, it was the look in his eyes.

  A lost, desperate and hopeless despair, at this vicious betrayal.

  It was beautiful.

  He watched, hypnotised, as the tortured boy swallowed every last juicy maggot.

  He looked at Chris, who was feverishly rubbing his own hard-on, through his denims.

  “Hey Chris,” Ben said, getting the older boy’s attention.

  “Yeah...?”

  “Hand me the box of fishhooks...”

  Not too far across the river, nestled in a small woodland glade, Chet heard the s
creams, but paid them no mind.

  No doubt just kids playing on that swing back there, anyway.

  The thing has been there for years, seems like every generation put a new one up. Either that or those young lads he’d passed earlier had caught themselves a beaut.

  He had other things going on in his semi-frazzled cranium as he sat there under the trees, things that demanded his utmost attention.

  The ‘holy grail’ he held in his rapidly numbing hand, for instance.

  The baggy caught the light, and for a fleeting moment, Chet was sure he saw the face of God in the contours of the plastic.

  And God was smiling.

  He’d only ingested two of the microdots so far, but they were kicking in fast and hard, and he passingly wondered if perhaps he’d consumed too many. This was some strong, strong LSD.

  Not that Chet was new to the experience; he’d been tripping out on high-grade acid since he was sixteen, and had never met a psychedelic compound he didn’t love or couldn’t handle, but this stuff...

  This stuff was the shit.

  Fuck it, he opened the baggy with glowing hands that felt like they belonged to someone else, a deity perhaps, and fumbled for another tiny compressed ball of psychotropic goodness. He caught one between his fingers and ever so slowly drew it from its friends.

  Without another thought, he popped the little fucker back, and smiled a lackadaisical smile.

  His mouth had gone numb, but he was sure he’d jammed the little acid-ball in there good and proper.

  He reached for the bottle of wine that he’d left under the shade of a tree, where he’d hoped it would keep chilled for a little while longer. The bottle felt hot in his hands, rapidly heating in the afternoon warmth despite the shade that the tree cast over it.

  No matter, he popped the cork and took a huge slug of the red, lukewarm alcohol, relishing its tangy flavour as it tickled his tongue and coated his throat.

  “Drink?” he asked Karnis, floating the half empty bottle beneath her nose.

  “Sure, why not.” Karnis took the bottle with a quick swipe and glugged down half its contents in one swig.

  “Fucking hell, Kar, save some for the singer, why dontcha!?”

  “You told me to take a drink!” She looked forlorn, wearing that fake but ever so sexy, girl-done-bad look that always got his motor running fast and hard.

  “I asked you if you wanted a drink, not alcohol poisoning. What the fuck, man!? I need that shit for when the acid kicks in!”

  “I wish you wouldn’t take that shit.”

  “I only took one,” he lied. “And besides, I can handle any trip, anytime, anywhere. You know that shit is truth.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Easy for you to say, when I’m the one gotta babysit your sorry ass till you touch down.”

  Chet laughed, and his laugh turned into a fit of the giggles. His head rolled on his shoulders as he leaned back and allowed himself to fall onto the soft grass. He felt it crawl as a living thing, merging with the long, dirty locks of his mane, becoming one with him. Man and nature, co-joined, symbiotic, as one for all eternity.

  Yep, it’s kicking the fuck in.

  Gathering his senses, he took a deep lungful of forest air, composed himself, “Did you hear that scream?”

  “I never heard jack shit, babe. You’re tripping.”

  “Not yet, baby. Not yet. But the eagle is most definitely taking flight.” He raised his arm from the brilliant green grass. It felt far too heavy. “Gimme a drink of that, honey.”

  Karnis sighed, passing the bottle with a frown on her face.

  “You said you wouldn’t get too fucked up today, Chet. Take it easy.”

  “Don’t be a bummer in the summer, Kar. It’s a beautiful day. Why waste it on awful, awful sobriety?”

  Chet watched in wonder as his own words drifted out before him in a multi-coloured vapour that tapered off into the air on luminous butterfly wings.

  “Annnnd I’m gone. All aboard,” he turned his fractured attention to the canopy above him, heard the voices on the wind calling him to higher shores. The sunlight beaming through the green leaves above cut shards of blinding light that bypassed his visual cortex and flowed into his soul. A million suns, all exploding as one, inside him and around him.

  Chet felt the tethers of his body loosen as he drifted off into the glory of inner space, a place he knew better and loved harder than anything or anyone in the world he was rapidly leaving behind.

  Then he felt a thunk, heard a crack and registered something that felt unholy and utterly wrong in the beautiful, expanding space between his ears.

  Pain.

  His eyes shot open, as he fought to regain his vision in the material world. Above him he saw only glass, and red.

  And then he was choking on wine.

  The taste was overwhelming in his heightened state, worse was the sensation that he was swallowing something along with the warm liquid, something small and bitter on the tongue.

  Terror and confusion suffocated his senses as his vision cleared a little more, and he saw that Karnis was forcing the damn wine down his throat.

  With a smile, she pulled back, allowing the last of the wine to pour over his face and into his eyes. She tossed the bottle aside, Chet watched it break through the stillness of the air, cutting a myriad of colours through the atmosphere until it landed with a crunch that echoed down deep into his soul.

  He sprang up, fast as he could, coughing his guts up, the wine already coagulating and sticking to his face, making his lips feel tacky.

  “Whah-eh-fuh ah you doin’!?” he hollered at Karnis.

  She smiled her winning smile, “I just wanted to know what happens.”

  “What tha fuh!?”

  “When you take them all...” she continued.

  The LSD was kicking in hard now, too hard, and Chet felt panic bubble up in his guts as he realised what his crazy girlfriend had just done.

  She fed me more acid.

  Karnis melted and reformed before his eyes, her skin peeling off and reshaping in an acid-fuelled frenzy of motion and pattern.

  She waved the baggy before Chet’s eyes.

  It was empty.

  She fed me the whole bag!

  He’d already taken way too much, and now he was in for the effects of twenty seven more pills. Twenty seven! He wondered, in horror, if he could ever make it back from such a trip. Surely he’d go crazy.

  “Did you feel it?”

  Chet’s confusion deepened, mixing with his growing horror in a psychedelic slush that painted his insides all the colours of his burgeoning insanity.

  “Feel wuh?” he mumbled, over lips that felt like slugs.

  “When your teeth broke...did you feel it?”

  Chet ran a tongue that felt five sizes too big over his teeth; felt the sharp edges of broken molars.

  “Fuhin bith!”

  “Sorry, baby.”

  Chet could only watch in horror as she reached into her rucksack and brought out something long and silver. He tried to rise, but the powerful drugs coursing through his system had left him as feeble as a new-born child. He tried to lift his arms but found he couldn’t. All he could do was lie there in a drunken, drug-blitzed stupor and watch with terrified eyes as Karnis gripped the black handle of that strange, alien thing with the shiny point.

  “Yeah, those beers you chugged back earlier....I spiked them with valium,” Karnis laughed.

  His eyes rolled upward as he watched the sound take physical form and rise amidst the treetops, where branches with tiny goblin hands reached out to caress it.

  “I really am sorry about the teeth, you know. That wasn’t part of the plan.” She held the shiny object before his face, drawing his demented gaze back to its contours.

  The atoms of Karnis’ face melted and ran down her cheeks, exposing her pale white skull, as she grinned at his understanding.

  It was a knife.

  A big fucking knife.

  One of those John Ram
bo fucking things with a serrated edge, built to do maximum damage.

  “This, though...” she giggled, twisted the hunting knife so it caught the light, “This is definitely part of the plan.”

  Karnis rammed the blade into Chet’s stomach, withdrew and rammed it in again.

  Chet’s breath exploded from behind his shattered teeth, as crushing pain speared his senses, pinning them to the undulating walls of his spinning psyche.

  “You know something, Chet. All the fucking time, you bang on and on and on about how you can handle this trip, and how you can handle that drug, and how you’re just as badass as all can be. You know what, though. You’re full of shit. It occurred to me last night that maybe I’d take you up on your fucking boasts. See just how well you can handle your high...”

  Karnis twisted the knife in his guts.

  White hot agony soared on glittering wings before his eyes, like a hell-sent angel, synaesthesia and agony becoming one.

  “This...” she said, nodding towards the knife that jutted from his guts, awash in flowing blood, “This is just to add a little spice to the whole thing.”

  Chet tried to speak, only managing to gurgle over the spatters of warm blood that ran from his mouth.

  He closed his earthly eyes, tried hard to focus on the trip, to allow himself to leave his body behind, once and for all. He knew what was happening here, he was being murdered by the person he loved the most, and he had no intentions of hanging around for the final act.

  The light of oblivion lay ahead, so close yet so far, a star casting a transcendent echo of itself all the way into his soul.

  Before he could reach it, Karnis slid the hunting knife from his belly, its jagged edges tugging along parts of his ruined insides.

  His eyes shot open, as suffering became the only universal truth.

  Chet knew he was lost.

  “Whuh!?”

  “Why?” she asked. “Why not...?”

  Her eyes burned red as the evening sun, as Karnis ran the cold steel across his throat in one smooth motion, opening up his jugular in a fountain of blood. He felt the skin part and the cold air rush into his exposed gullet.

  Chet drifted into oblivion, far off he could still see the light.

 

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