Genital Grinder

by Ryan Harding

  His father was silent for almost a minute, and then said, “Thursday?”

  JOURNAL ENTRY: JULY 17 - JULY 22

  (PAGES TORN OUT)

  Jana was still there when he got home Thursday night. Most of her, anyway. For a moment, he thought he’d accidentally wandered into a slaughterhouse. He’d seen its like before, but never in such a refined setting as his own house. The kitchen looked like one of those avant garde paintings where the artist slings paint in all directions across the canvas, except this was apparently the work of a starving artist with only deep red on the palette. The bitter reek of sticky blood and lingering death clogged up his nostrils, heavy and sickening.

  “You left out a few important points of your plan,” his father said from the living room doorway. Dr. Vincent was right—evidently the Slave Killer brought a change of clothes with him to avoid leaving a crime scene splattered with blood. He was clean in spite of the carnage all around.

  He had a gun.

  “Like the part where you tell the police your wife was supposed to meet me the night she disappeared,” his father continued. “I’m guessing you were going to leave her car somewhere near my house. It sure wouldn’t look good for me when the police showed up, especially when you suddenly noticed an eerie similarity between my handwriting and the Slave Killer’s. Those were your exact words in your journal, weren’t they? ‘Eerie similarity?’ Then it would be your word against mine, and they’d probably believe you. They wouldn’t know that the Slave Killer has nothing to do with the new killings. They have a profile of you, too, you know. They think you take out your rage for one woman against others because you’re too damned chickenshit to kill the source. That’s why you had to get me to do Jana; to ‘share needles.’” He mimicked the sarcastic quotation marks with his free hand.

  “You also thought there was a good chance I’d take the fall for this business you’ve been getting up to with all these girls. You thought you could stop cold with Jana out of the way, and get away with all the ones you’ve done. You knew she’d been cheating on you for a lot longer than a week. That’s when it started for you. This all made for fascinating reading, though for the sake of dramatic license, I had to take any page that mentioned me in your plan. It’s funny. All this time, and I didn’t know my old issues of Shocking Crimes were the fuel for all your little wet dreams.”

  He stood rooted to the spot. Like his father earlier this week, he denied nothing. Dad saw the journal. It was all in there. “Where’s Jana?” he finally asked, noting that while the kitchen was awash with blood so thick in some places he could see his own reflection, he saw no body.

  “She’s in the bedroom. And the bathroom. And the linen closet. She’s on some of the stairs, too, I think. She’s the one who found your journal, by the way. She was fretting over what to do about it when I showed up. I didn’t need your spare key. I’m her father-in-law; of course she was going to let me in. She didn’t even get to the best part about how her husband hoped to drop her in the stack with the rest of the needles. I did, though. I’m bad about that—I have to flip to the end of a mystery to find out who did it.”

  “I was at the Electra Complex,” he replied calmly. “I nearly got into a fight with some guy because I almost knocked his beer over. He told me to watch what the fuck I was doing and called me a ‘dicksucker.’ A bunch of people saw this. They say he has a habit of getting in people’s faces over nothing. They’ll remember me. What happens when the time of her death doesn’t fit in with when I could have killed her? Think about it.”

  It was his father’s turn to laugh. “They’ve got a written confession for eight murders in your journal, and you think they’re going to let a little discrepancy like that bother them? I even used your knife on her. Found it right where it was supposed to be. Your Precious.”

  “Look, Dad,” he said, almost smiling, “I swear . . . it’ll never happen again.”

  “No,” his father said. “It won’t.” Channel Two News—Special Report on the Bartok Butcher

  “How did he sound when he called you that night?” Geisha Hammond asked.

  “He was hysterical. He didn’t say anything about what he’d done to Jana, but he said there was blood everywhere. He asked me to come over right away.”

  “And what happened when you arrived? What did you see?”

  “He opened the door, and he was just covered in blood. Like he’d been wallowing in it. That’s what I remember thinking when I saw him . . . He looks like he’s been wallowing in blood. And that’s when he started raving about all the other murders he’d done. I could see . . . I could see . . . Jana . . . I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay, sir. You take just as long as you need.”

  “Thank you. Uh, okay, so I walked inside and I saw what he was talking about . . . blood everywhere. He destroyed that poor, sweet girl who never harmed a soul. I took my gun because of what he said about all the blood. I was scared . . . wouldn’t take any chances. I told him, I said, ‘Son, we have to go to the police.’ But he wouldn’t hear it. He was like a mad dog, and when that happens . . . you gotta put them down.”

  The old man being interviewed wiped his eyes and repeated, “You gotta put them down.”

  “And does it bother you that people consider you a hero for what you did? At the cost of the life of your own son . . . your only son?”

  “Of course it bothers me . . . they couldn’t ever know the burden. And they shouldn’t. No one should. It’s like they say—the most tragic thing in the world is for a parent to outlive a child.”

  I.

  “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”

  “I won’t tell you that, but I’ll you the worst thing I’m gonna do . . . the most depraved thing.”

  “Does it have anything to do with this little movie we’re going to make?”

  Von only laughed. “I lied; I’m not going to tell you that either.”

  Greg smiled in return, and cast a backward glance to verify the cargo was still quite immobile. “All systems go,” he reported.

  They were eastbound on Gardner Drive, destination Von’s house. They’d already run the risk of a hazardous houseguest in the form of Claire Perkins, the hit-and-run victim they’d kindly transported some time ago from Sherman Avenue (and Bowling Boulevard) to Von’s for the express purpose of necrophiliac debauchery. Claire was currently cooling off in a crisper, at least what was left of her. After three days and nights of experimentation, they’d exhausted every nook and cranny. Von came up with an ingenious idea to dispose of the body, but it was slow-going. The entire feast would probably last nine days between the two of them.

  Breakfast, lunch, and dinner—all Claire. If they’d known it was going to turn into this big a headache, they’d have just wined, dined, and married the bitch. He could scarcely believe at this point that he had been so thankful to find her before, but like anything new, all it took was a little over-exposure to remember that life had been just fine before her arrival. Nothing like blowing a few loads in a putrefying backdoor to rend the veil real quick-like.

  No point holding it off any longer . . . it was about time for the cunt a la mode to add a little spice to the whole drudgery of the cannibalistic enterprise. He was actually looking forward to being back home for that.

  But that wasn’t the only reason, of course; there was the movie.

  Hog-tied, gagged, and tarp-wrapped in the bed of his truck now was the infamous Sarah Pensie, better known to porn connoisseurs as “Lolita Ream,” friend to the varsity football, basketball, and tennis teams back at Bartok North High School, not to mention the shop class and even—God save us—the chess club. Greg and Von hadn’t participated in a damn thing, so they’d missed out. When they heard she’d gone on to a lucrative career in pornography, they’d really felt like Bill Buckner in game six of the ‘86 World Series. Down but not out, they decided to write to her. Against his better judgment, Von left the province of contact to Greg, a decision he’d dearly regre
tted when he saw what Greg evidently thought a “romantic overture.” The gist of his letter, minus a broad interpretation of acceptable grammar:

  Dear Sarah, we went to school together, but I never got to bone you in your sweet ass. I hate that you have missed out on this jizz rocket I’m strapping. All those guys in your movies look like they’d rather be smoking on a rope than giving you the hard yard, so do yourself a favor and get your ass back to Bartok for a real man. You won’t regret it, baby. If you’ve ever wanted to be so pumped full of sauce that your eyes popped out of your head with your twat right behind ‘em, I’m the man to see. I sent you some high dollar earrings last year, so I figure fair is fair.

  Your pal, Greg.

  P.S. Please hurry as the doctors tell me I may die of the sickle cell in a few weeks.

  The bitch did not respond, however, necessitating this little road trip. Apparently too much time blowing Louisville slugger-sized hard-ons in hot tubs and doling out rim jobs aplenty had her thinking she was too good for all the “little people” these days. Well, maybe it was time for her to reconnect with her roots.

  They’d staked out the P.O. box for her fan mail—and “gifts” that secret admirers could send her from her fan letter wish list, as if she wasn’t raking in cash hand over quim with her videos selling for about 40 bones per. They watched the post office for three very uneventful and boring days and nights, passing the binoculars back and forth from a strip mall across the street. Even all the tight-shorted eye candy strutting it up the sidewalks grew a bit tiresome after they reluctantly made a pact not to get up to any “funny stuff” with any of them. They had to stay pure for Sarah and not endanger the mission. This rare display of restraint had given them plenty of time to brainstorm what they could do with her when they finally grabbed her. It was a blessing in disguise, because they’d come up with some solid gold indeed.

  They’d actually almost missed her. She was totally slumming it in a jogging suit and sunglasses, but Greg recognized the swing of her ass (and the way she bleached that balloon knot, Greg could probably have picked it out of a police line-up) as she swayed through a door held open by an old man who not-so-surreptitiously scoped her backside as she floated past. She came out with a mail crate, probably filled with several envelopes, large mailers and boxes with some of the lingerie or high heels or other wish list items that some pathetic dick-jack believed would earn him some sexual payback puss (scraping together their nickels and dimes to order her a set of lah-di-dah earrings and only receiving some thank-you form letter with no instructions on when they should expect to meet her so she could spread her thighs and properly show her gratitude—they’d knifed the whole envelope open to verify there was nothing else in it—they knew only too well that it left a man with a hole in his wallet and a burning in his ass).

  They tailed her to a supermarket and finally to her home, the kind of upper middle class pad owned by someone who ought to be able to buy their own damned earrings. They chloroformed her right there in her driveway as she popped the trunk for her grocery bags. They didn’t think anyone saw it go down, but didn’t linger long to find out. Von gunned it out of the neighborhood and backtracked to the interstate. Greg actually made a decent navigator. It was simple enough to find a vacant rest area (the kind of rip-off place where there weren’t really any facilities and you had to piss between your open car doors if you didn’t want anyone to glom your wang) and get her properly secured.

  The sultry little slut was going to fuel quite the orgasmageddon, with her silicone-enhanced breasts defying the mere C-cup that stingy Mother Nature provided, forcing the game into double D overtime.

  “Should’ve written back, slutcake,” Greg yelled, though she probably couldn’t hear him.

  Truthfully it wouldn’t have mattered if she did. She’d still be here now. She would soon have company, too, because Von and Greg had been quite busy when they weren’t deducting on Claire Perkins.

  What sparked the whole endeavor was a news report on the trial of Earl Newman, the alleged serial killer affectionately known as Mr. Drill Bit. He’d abducted eleven women and over the course of three days would subject each to repeated rapes and other assimilated degradations, and filmed the festivities on a camcorder. At the conclusion of three days, he attempted to lobotomize them with his namesake, to no avail. He gave up after four tries and settled for reducing their teeth to peppermint shards and spearing their eyeballs like fish until the sockets burst. This, Earl claimed, was the only way he could achieve orgasm (forgetting the videotapes showed an entirely different story). The strange thing was that he only filmed the rapes, never the killings. Snuff films, reported anchor newswoman Geisha Hammond, therefore remained an urban legend; an unverified crime.

  Above the heads of Von and Greg, light bulbs appeared. Naturally, the first to be abducted for the creation of the world’s first sanctioned snuff film was Geisha Hammond herself. A stun-gun did the trick, and duct tape did the rest.

  Trussed in the basement, not far from Claire Perkins’ makeshift tomb, struggled Bill Glasscock, who up to this point thought his name was by far the worst card Fate had ever dealt him. He’d been at the park with his video camera under the pretense of filming a soccer game, though he was far more intrigued that the players of said game were 10-year-old girls. And if there was grass on the field, you could play ball.

  He was rendered unconscious by a blow from a tire iron when he was returning to his car, too invigorated by the choice footage he had collected and the night of ball sack-draining soccer which awaited him back at his apartment. Von and Greg had taken precautions by getting him from Brackard’s Point instead of Bartok; plus, they’d also needed a video camera.

  For purely aesthetic reasons they took Travis Wicklund, who was handcuffed, gagged, and locked up in a coat closet. He sometimes told women on the Internet that he was an architect and other times an environmentalist. They got him walking home from his real place of work, the Burger King on Seymour Street.

  Sarah, Geisha, Bill, and Travis. This was the cast of unknowns (well, minus “Lolita Ream” and maybe Geisha) who would involuntarily participate in the making of Genital Grinder, the first legitimate snuff film ever made.

  II.

  They chose a bathtub scene to open, because there wasn’t a movie worth a damn that didn’t have one. Geisha Hammond was more than happy to strip and get in the tub when Von brandished a machete. She was decidedly less comfortable in front of the camera than they expected for someone who made a living in front of it. Von decided it had something to do with the lack of a teleprompter, although the assurances that they would slit her throat if she didn’t comply probably contributed at least marginally. She’d have to do without. Fortune had been smiling on them when it delivered Bill Glassock’s Hi-8; they weren’t going to conveniently catch a gentleman lugging a teleprompter away from a sporting event involving prepubescent girls. Geisha Hammond was wet dream material, so the bathtub assignment was a given. She always wore tight blouses with a little glimmer of cleavage, which made you feel pleasantly warm inside as you listened to an item about somebody blasted pointblank with a shotgun during a “drug deal gone bad” or a newborn tossed off a rooftop like a clay pigeon. Blond hair so light it was almost silver. Long skirts, but usually with a healthy slit up the side allowing a peak of bronze legs in the occasional fleeting long shot. And such lips . . . bee-stung and primed for pleasure. As she detailed the latest local atrocities—a single mother mutilated beyond recognition by the Bartok Butcher, a hobo pushed in front of a train, a cabin full of corpses by an old dirt track, a 12-year-old overdosing on heroin in an elementary school bathroom—all you could think was, If she put those thick lips on my quim-splitter, I’d blast my payload right out the back of that blond head in about 2.2 seconds.

  Seeing her in all her nude glory now, he wondered why the hell he’d sat on his old beat-up recliner nursing a cold beer and a hard-on for the past few years when he could have just gone out and snatched her. Al
l that wasted time. If his stomach wasn’t lurching most disagreeably right now, he would have clamped his fingers around one of those solid ass cheeks (no tan lines . . . none) and expected a crack of lightning to explode through the ceiling and consecrate his hand forever as a sanctified object, holier than anything in the world of man.

  The bush was only a little tuft of grass, allowing easy exposure of the other lips which could undoubtedly summon a skull-shattering payload in 2.2 seconds as well. It was all Von could do to stay back and not get in the way. He had to remember, they were here to create art.

  “Just sit there and soap your titties,” he instructed. “Improvise.”

  “Are you going to hurt me?” she asked. Her eyes couldn’t seem to escape the hypnotic hold of the machete tapping against his leg.

  “We can negotiate your contract later.” He paused, his own eyes similarly locked on her legs, or more specifically between them, not exactly sure what he was seeing. Two yellow-greenish trails were rising to the surface of the water, like liquid worms. Others soon followed, creating a cloud, and a definite froth was congealing above her thighs.

  Greg peered from around the viewfinder of the camera at this “breaking story” in Geisha Hammond’s box. “Is that . . . cum?”

  “You idiot,” Von snapped. “You know women don’t have orgasms.” His stomach tensed again, although perhaps it had more to do with the Claire sandwich he’d wolfed down earlier.

  “I have trichomoniasis,” Geisha confessed, at first abashed and all miserable, but then her face brightened, suddenly hopeful. “I’ve only been on the antibiotic a couple days . . . and I missed the last dose because of you. Say, I’m not right for your movie at all—”