AFTERTASTE

by Scott, Kyle M.

  They’re going to figure us out before we find him, and then they’re going to...

  Behind her...a scream.

  Tim.

  Slim spun on her heels, just in time to see him pushed to his knees.

  At first, she saw only his eyes; the desolation and hopelessness that radiated there like black fog.

  Then she saw the hand that gripped him by the hair, twisting his long locks between its fingers.

  No...they weren’t fingers.

  They were more like...talons.

  Slim followed the huge hand, up from the black talons to the pale, dead-looking flesh of its gnarled fingers, and upwards, beyond wiry, white arms to a sunken chest, and then...

  There he was.

  He.

  It.

  There was no mistaking it. This was the master.

  The orchestrator of all this death.

  Tim’s demon.

  The man, if it could be called a man, stood well over six feet in height, and she wondered how she had missed it until now. The dark pits of its eyes seemed bottomless, and its grin was that of a wild beast’s.

  Tim struggled in its grip, but was helpless against such a foe. He looked like a child throwing a tantrum, useless to resist the will of this dark, deadly parent.

  The bottom fell out of Slim’s world, her courage shattering and her will failing, as the creature’s black lips spread wide in a deadly grin.

  Its teeth were straight razors, designed to rend flesh from bone. Chunks of meat clung to the spaces between them.

  Slim silently prayed, knowing in her heart that there was no one listening.

  Rising to its full height, the creature spoke, and fetid flames seemed to pour from its throat and scorch the air in the wake of its words.

  “Welcome to the party, Slim. We’re all so glad you could make it,” it snarled.

  As though discarding an unwanted toy, the tall, dark being tossed Tim aside. He slid across the blood-slick floor, slamming into the foot of the counter with a loud crash as various grisly titbits dropped onto his lap from above. Instantly, three of the restaurant’s employees hopped the counter and grabbed him by the arms. Slim looked into his eyes once more as they pulled him to his feet, and saw something more horrible than despair.

  His eyes said he was sorry.

  Sorry for bringing her into this.

  For leading her here to...certain death.

  Panicking, she turned towards Meg.

  Her best friend was stood by her side, defiant even in the face of this evil creature. She reached for her hand, gripping it in hers as, together, they faced the towering shadow that was the puppeteer of all this chaos.

  It laughed at their pitiful resistance, and Slim felt her bowels loosen at the sound. It was the symphony of the damned. A million agonised voices pleaded for a redemption that would never come.

  “You girls really thought you could outsmart me?” it mocked, smoke billowing from its maw as it licked its blackening lips. “It’s almost charming. Alas, I’m no fool.”

  The dark being leaned forward, until its crooked nose was pressed against Slim’s. On its breath, she smelt rotting corpses. Meat left out too long in the sun, a feast for maggots.

  “I’ve been waiting for you, Slim. You and your merry band of friends. It humour’s me, you see, to face a number of your kind so courageous. It is not a trait for which your species is known. Selfishness...yes. Egotism...yes. Idiocy...absolutely.

  “Your species is lower than the flies that feast on shit, yet no matter how many times I play with your kind, there are always a few who believe they can stop...”

  The tall man waved his arms around him, expressing great pride in the slaughter. “This...” It hissed.

  Slim took a step back, holding Meg’s hand in her own, though she knew there was no escape.

  The element of surprise had been lost.

  The knife tucked into her boot may as well have been a million miles away, cast beneath an ocean. She would be dead and eviscerated by this hideous beast long before she could reach the blade, never mind make the killing strike.

  As together the two girls watched, the tall man clasped his enormous, spider-like fingers together. Her mind reeled as the talons seemed to extend before her eyes, stretching out from his poisonous flesh till they grew impossibly long.

  It clasped its hands in a mockery of humility as its jet black, soulless eyes scoured her spirit.

  “I’ve been around a long time, girls...a long time. I’ve played with countless of your kind. Your souls are my nourishment, my playthings, and yet you truly thought you could come here and stop me?

  “I’m older than the dying stars, more powerful than the whisper of mortality. I’ve torn angels from their perches and fed them to the dogs of the pit, and you.....

  “You think you can turn the fates in your favour...? Fascinating.

  “No matter....you’re here now, and here you’ll stay, and there is always a silver lining...you two have arrived just as the party is really heating up.”

  Such was the creature’s dreadful magnetism, that Slim was barely aware of the ever-escalating bloodbath surrounding her. All her attention was on the dark being, even as her thoughts were on her friends, Tim and Meg, and on finding some way out of this.

  In her heart, though, she knew it was hopeless, yet she clung to her failing courage like one drowning in a stinking sea.

  If she could somehow find a way to get close to this thing...

  She recalled what Tim had said...the creature’s ego was its weakness.

  “No point trying to conjure hope, little girl...no point searching for the holy. There are no angels in the skies. No spirits on the wind. No God in the heavens and no life after rot.”

  As she watched, the tall man’s teeth seemed to reshape themselves, slicing through its gums and shredding its pale cheeks as they sharpened and grew. Within mere moments, its lips tore apart under the pressure, carving a red smile on its deathly visage. The needle-like teeth grew and sprouted from its maw at every angle, until it resembled a twisted, broken meat-grinder.

  In the endless black of its eyes, a fire arose...a terrible sunrise casting cold light over the abyss. The fire seemed to engulf her. Not physically, but on a deeper, incorporeal level.

  Slim wondered, madly, if a soul could catch aflame, and decided it probably could.

  As she marvelled in shocked horror at the beast’s transformation, the sound of the dying seemed to fade ever further away.

  She wanted to look at Meg. Share a moment, however fleeting. See something other than all this cruelty and evil.

  She wanted to turn towards Tim, held behind her by those servants to this...thing. Wanted to let him know that she was glad he’d tried. That she understood why he was driven to destroy such a foul thing.

  Yet under the gaze of the demon, she was little more than one hypnotised.

  Spellbound by its power.

  “Not too talkative, I see. Oh, well. Not to worry.”

  Slim had no idea how it could even form words anymore. Each syllable seemed to shred its face into yet more bloody ribbons as its fangs clicked and clacked.

  “I have all sorts of games planned for you, Slim, my dear. We’ll have fun, you and I, before you die. But this one, here...”

  With the speed of a striking snake, the creature thrust a long, powerful arm outwards.

  It grabbed Meg by the throat.

  No!

  Hands latched onto Slim’s arms from behind, pulling her back as the demon drew Meg to its bosom.

  She found her voice.

  “Please! Don’t!”

  “As I was about to say, this one has outworn her welcome.”

  Slim had only a second to meet Meg’s darting, terrified eyes, and plead forgiveness, before it clasped her head in its huge claws.

  “I love you,” Meg whimpered.

  And then it twisted.

  Slim wailed her anguish as her heart cracked and snapped in two.
<
br />   Meg’s screams morphed into high-pitched, inhuman howls, as the demon twisted her head on her shoulders like it was opening a tightly sealed bottle.

  Slim heard the snapping of bone, felt the warm blood splash onto her face as the skin of Meg’s neck tore and her beautiful eyes dimmed to darkness. The demon kept twisting, until, with a deafening crack and a torrent of gore, her head was turned all the way around on her shoulders. It pulled once, and Meg’s head ripped from her body. Her corpse fell to the floor in a dead heap, as the demon held her head high in its enormous grasp and, with a shark’s grin painted on its vile face, it crushed her skull into mush in its fist.

  The hands holding Slim in place fell away, and she dropped to the gore-stained floor, defeated.

  “Now, where were we?” it rasped, tossing Meg’s crushed, ruined head over its shoulder and into the mass of fucking and killing townsfolk.

  “Ah, yes. I was saying that I had some games awaiting you, Slim. Would you like to know what they are?”

  “Just kill me, you fuck!” Slim howled, no longer held by terror, as outrage and grief enveloped her senses.

  “Soon, little girl...soon. First though...your surprise. Look behind you.”

  Lost to the madness, Slim turned her head towards the people who had held her only moments ago.

  And there, smiling down on her, stood two men.

  Horrified, she met their faces.

  John was giggling madly.

  In his hand he held a meat cleaver.

  And beside him stood her father...naked and sporting a huge erection, already sleek with shit and blood.

  Slim’s world collapsed.

  Tim let them hold him.

  Bided his time; waiting for the right moment.

  The staff were only kids. No more than teenagers. Given the right opportunity, he could overpower the little fuckers.

  One wrong move, though, and all would be lost.

  He searched the floor with his eyes, and found there was no lack of weapons. The dead and dying among the crowd had discarded many of their tools. Without even trying, he spotted knives, screwdrivers, a baseball bat wreathed in barbed wire, a machete.

  He had seen who was stood behind Slim even before the demon slaughtered Meg. He recognised that little cowardly fuck, John, immediately, and wanted nothing more than to tear the fucker to shreds with his bare hands.

  The other man he did not recognise, yet he knew who it was all the same, even before Slim turned and the look in her eyes confirmed it.

  It was her father.

  They’d known they may come across him here...that he may not already be dead, and Slim may yet have to face him, and put him down.

  She knew he was no longer her father, but Tim had worried that she would freeze in the moment.

  What he hadn’t counted on was this...having her father, naked and brimming with sick lust, eager to...

  Tim couldn’t fathom the horror, and knew that for Slim, it would be all too much.

  It was a trap.

  The demon had known all along they were coming.

  And how had it known?

  John.

  The boy had come here of his own volition. Not tainted by the demon’s seed, not corrupted by the evil that it had fed to the unwitting town.

  No, the little motherfucker had come here as a human being.

  Although ‘human being’ seemed far too kind a term for what this boy was.

  From the moment they’d walked through the doors, they’d been marked. The demon had waited patiently for them, keen for new prey.

  In Slim, a new toy to torment.

  What better toy to torment than the untainted?

  Tim felt a fucking fool.

  He’d underestimated the demon’s cruelty. Despite all he had learned over his lifetime, he had allowed himself, and two innocent girls, to stumble right into the waiting spider’s web.

  Now one was dead; torn apart like a fucking rag doll.

  And the other, Slim, a girl he’d come to see in this never-ending night, as his friend, was surely about to experience something much, much worse than death.

  He watched in horror as Slim was forced to the floor, pinned down by that bastard, John. The demon loomed over her, its skin, he noticed, was fluctuating, as though its vile transformation had not yet complete. The surface of its flesh seemed to undulate, as beneath it, what looked like worms or larvae of various sizes, seemed to swim the canals of its veins.

  In his mind, he heard the words of the girl that Slim had put down - the waitress. She had mentioned that the worms would feed on the towns souls, had she not?

  That was it, then?

  The creature’s sickening method of corruption.

  It had fed these people rotten meat, not corrupted by time and decay, but by some form of parasitical host. The worms must be part of him...of it. They would enter the body undetectable.

  And then they would grow.

  The meat was filled with tiny shards of the creature’s essence, that when consumed, would bore through the flesh, into the spirit and devour all.

  Tim thought of all the small towns out there...all the innocent communities, much like this one had been, that whooped and hollered at the railroading of large corporations as they swept unbidden across the states. He thought of all the hungry mouths out there, eager to taste the best, most mouth-watering fast foods they could get their hands on.

  All the families.

  All the children.

  This devil would spread out. It would continue its work, polluting the heart of the country, feeding the greedy.

  It had to be stopped.

  Now, though, as he watched Slim writhing desperately beneath the grip of two people she had believed she could trust, his hopes floundered completely.

  She’s not going to be able to do it.

  Now her father was pulling at her jeans, as John squeezed her small breasts with one hand and stroked his penis with the other.

  She has the dagger, but soon they’ll find it. Her father’s going to feel it tucked down there and...

  All would be lost.

  This atrocity was too much for her.

  It’s over.

  I’ve failed.

  Slim’s skin seemed to shrivel at their touch, her vision blurred, by tears or by burgeoning total mental shock, she had no way of knowing.

  Yet she could still see them. Still see their lascivious eyes roam her body, staining her with their wickedness, as they loomed over her.

  John; a boy she’d known for years, trusted, cared for deeply, held her down on the killing floor. In his strong grip, he pinned her arms above her head as she lay on the floor. Looking up, she could see his boyish grin, now malformed, twisted with sickening intent. Drool spilled from his stretched lips and pattered on her upturned, terrified face.

  She knew there was no point pleading.

  He was gone.

  By his side stood a woman, yet another familiar face...her Auntie Lyn. The woman jumped up and down, giddy with excitement, her naked breasts jiggling, blood sluicing from them in all directions as she whooped and hollered. “Fuck her! Fuck her! Fuck her!” she screamed in her delirium.

  But her friend and her Auntie were not the source of Slim’s mind-shredding terror.

  What loomed before her was much, much worse.

  Her father, moving now between her legs, his strong, once kind hands struggling to undo the belt buckle of her denims.

  Hands that had protected her for so long, and had held her through the best and worst of all that life had thrown at her.

  Hands that had held her close as she wept for mother, all those endless nights in the dark as night terrors swept her off on their dark tide, out to black seas.

  Now those soft hands were rough, void of care, trembling with a fury and a sick, bubbling, unspeakable lust. Her eyes met his as her belt came loose, and he pulled down her zipper; in them she saw all the horror that awaited her.

  “Please, Dad....no...” she w
himpered.

  “Now, now...shut up and take what’s coming to you, Sandra. It’s time you took the place of your mother...”

  Behind her father, dark as the darkest night, stood the tall man. His features were melting, his skin shifting, made malleable by the vile life contained within his hellish shell.

  His jagged, bloody maw opened wide, as black flies buzzed between the crooked razor spears of his fangs; their black, bloated bodies a dervish of corruption. Worms, thick and bulbous, broke through the skin of his face, tiny teeth gnashing, and slithered across the hell-scape of his form.

  “Welcome to forever, child,” the being hissed.

  Her denims were almost off now, pulled down to her knees, as her father fought for his prize. Slim screamed as the tall man’s laughter echoed in the darkest chasm of her fracturing, withering mind. A million mocking voices threatened to pull her sanity free from its tethers as her father’s desperate hands reached between her legs, too driven by his black lust to remove her clothes completely.

  Please, kill me.

  Please.

  I want to die.

  Let me die.

  She felt her panties ripped off...saw the look in his eyes, as he reached for her most sacred place.

  Let me die.

  Slim was all but surrendered to the monstrosity, when a scream cut through her dimming world.

  And a torrent of warm liquid spilled down her throat.

  Tim saw his chance.

  His captors were enraptured by the atrocity before them, as Slim succumbed to the terrible weight of the nightmare he had unwittingly led her into.

  Their grips loosened as reverie claimed them.

  Tim twisted his body, swung low, and loosed their grips.

  He dropped to the floor, clutching at the blood soaked machete that lay buried in the thigh of a fallen girl, and yanked it free, ignoring the arterial geyser that followed it and soaked into his eyes.

  A red world, for a red end.

  He turned on his now stumbling, confused captors, and seized his moment.

  The machete sank into the neck of the first, cutting though skin and muscle like a hot knife through butter. The kid...a boy of no more than sixteen, went down silently, his already blueing hands grasping at the red river running from his neck.

  The other boy took the machete to the gut. With a grunt, Tim forced the blade all the way inside his belly, up to the hilt, and with all his strength, he twisted the blade, carving the boy’s internal organs to ribbons. This kid tried to scream, but managed only a final, wheezing breath, as the machete receded, bringing with it a loop of pink intestine.