Genital Grinder

by Ryan Harding

  “No,” Von consoled. “Not in your mouth. That’s the good news, in a manner of speaking.”

  Inevitably he had to be tied to a chair, too, once they told him the game plan. The truth was that Von and Greg had already had a few turns with Sarah on tape, so “forcible sexual congress” with her was pretty old hat by this point. They had Sarah really stretching—and spreading—her acting legs. Who hadn’t seen her ready and willing for all comers a thousand times before? The more spontaneous—and unlikely—the situation, the more eagerly she wanted it. Sarah Pensie having sex and not liking it, well, that was like an actor totally vanishing into a role. This was the magnitude of Sean Penn as Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High—method acting on a whole new level. They wanted Travis to have a go at her now for the sake of aesthetics, but not at the cost of the boredom of their audience. How could they possibly alter the predictable course of events? Guy finds weeping woman gagged and tied in spare bedroom. Guy unscrupulously rejects Samaritan impulses and uses her for quick gratification. Guy shoots load on the closest fetishistic body part to his stud missile—those alabaster buns or those silicone mountains. Wow, the wheel like you’ve never seen it before, no doubt about it.

  . . . Unless there was some way to throw the audience a curve on the formula.

  Greg, after a few objections, finally consented to feeding the tube into Travis’s urethra. Travis tried to make it a challenge, so Von smashed a beer bottle over his head and sent him to Wonderland again. He collected the shards for other uses as Greg enacted phase two. He plucked a single maggot from the bucket, and examined it before guiding it into the other side of the tube. It squirmed blindly, but aside from the movement it looked like something he’d have dug out of his nose in kindergarten. When it had advanced substantially in the tube he put his lips on it and exhaled.

  Von looked up from his activities with Sarah and chuckled. “I always figured you’d give a world class blow.”

  Greg shot him the finger. “Hey, do you want to do this?”

  “I wouldn’t dream of ruining your time to shine.”

  Greg collected another maggot and repeated the process. It was amazing what you could do on a shoestring budget if you just used your imagination and left some meat out to spoil . . . say, when you couldn’t quite fit the entirety of your hit and run conquest into the crisper.

  When Travis at last awoke with the dull throbbing in his head somehow magnified, he was relieved to discover the tube had been removed. Something didn’t feel right in his scrotal sac per se, but Lolita was waiting for him to deliver the goods, tied down supine to the bed and gagged, so it would just have to be a problem for another day. He had a suspicion that blowing up her box with enough spunk to fill a tube of toothpaste would probably do the trick anyway. He gingerly maneuvered his way to the bed, wondering why Lolita had to make this harder than it already was by fighting him. He wasn’t the enemy. Did she not realize how many burgers he’d flipped just to save up the jack to buy her videos? These might not be the conditions he would have imagined such an encounter as this taking place, but he’d begun to feel entitled to it. Other than a shaved sack and half again as many inches, the boys in those movies didn’t have anything he didn’t, and probably hadn’t paid forty dollars for a volume of Gaping Anus, to boot. There seemed to be a pool of blood spreading underneath her, but he paid it no mind. She looked a little pale compared to the movies, but maybe it was a trick of the lighting. He gave up looking at her face and closed his eyes, latching both of his hands onto her tits as though to keep from floating off into outer space. The euphoria was so intense that a UFO could have landed on top of the house and it wouldn’t have registered with him.

  Greg found a good angle with the camera.

  “Remember,” Von warned Travis. “Pull out when it’s time.”

  And less than a minute later it was time, because all the girlfriends Travis boasted about on the Internet had something in common—none of them actually existed. Quoth he: “I can’t hold it any longer!”

  He pulled out and aimed for Lolita’s chest like the dudes in pornos always did. The first couple cubic centimeters were normal, if somewhat hesitant; after that, they were anything but. It was like a squeeze bottle with only a smattering of butter remaining which expels, tapers, jets, halts, and finally sprays haphazardly everywhere but where you intended. It was remarkably similar in texture to potato salad. The maggots mostly dribbled off the end of his equipment, but the first couple actually shot an impressive distance as though propelled down a water slide and launched up the mounds of Lolita’s breasts, writhing. Travis looked down in mute horror. The load had concluded, but one last maggot depended from his urethra, still squirming in the swollen orifice.

  Travis yelped, and made pincers of his finger and thumb. He slid it out, groaning sickly. He pinched it too hard, cutting it in half, and flicked the pieces away. He turned away from the abominable sight and retched.

  “Tell me you got that!” Von pleaded.

  Greg gave the thumbs-up. “We got the whole thing . . . the money shot and him puking at the end like a total pussy!”

  Von clapped him on the back. “Travis, you’ve been a real sport, my man, so we’re going to let you do her again. And no maggots this time, either.”

  “The only catch is that you have to use her ass,” Greg added.

  “No way, man,” Travis began. “I’m not—”

  Von cocked the .357, and Travis reached for Sarah’s hips to turn her over real quick-like.

  “No,” Von said. “Don’t turn her over. Just hoist her up some.”

  Travis did, and closed his eyes. He could see where the blood was issuing from the plundered orifice, but he’d just ejaculated a clump of corpse-eaters, so no reason to get squeamish now. It took him a moment to re-harden, but you might say he was an old hand at masturbation marathons, and he was erect enough to go again.

  He felt the gun at the base of his skull. “Keep going,” Von said.

  Travis didn’t understand at first why Von would even bother telling him that—may as well tell him, Keep breathing there, bucko—until he felt searing pain across an inch of his dick.

  . . . then another . . . and another . . . Each thrust opened another wound, what seemed like a thousand cuts concentrated in a horribly limited space. He could feel rivulets of blood coursing down his shaft, then dripping off his scrotum and down his thighs, spattering in dime-sized droplets on his feet. It was doubtful he would have noticed a UFO landing on the house at this moment, either.

  “Faster,” Von said simply. The gun cocked again and Travis complied, now screaming. They let him; no gags this time.

  Greg made sure to get a close-up when Travis was at last allowed to withdraw. He crumpled on the bed, his mutilated sex organ gleaming like a skinned rabbit and bearing a passing resemblance to same. For a brief instant Greg discerned a tiny shard of glass jutting from one of the lacerations, one of the fragments from the bottle slammed over Travis’s head . . . then implanted within Sarah Pensie by Von. A nicked artery was blasting like an automated Super Soaker. Greg continued to film Sarah, because the intercourse had caused an exodus of some of the glass shards. Now runny tissue from within her digestive tract was slopping from her anus. He wasn’t sure when exactly it happened, but she was no longer screaming behind the gag.

  Von held a pillow in front of the gun and placed it over Travis’s face. No point in prolonging his agony; that would just be excessive. He did wait a moment while Greg sauntered over into better position with the camera, then fired. A fan of red streaks and gray matter exploded above Travis’s head and across the carpet, as though he’d just had an idea too amazing to be contained within his skull.

  Greg tracked over the debris until he captured Von in the viewfinder, still crouched on the floor beside Travis, smoke curling from the crevice blasted into the pillow. Bloody feathers floated to rest on the linen, the motionless body, the carpet, like snowflakes in a paperweight.

  “I
guess that’s a wrap,” Von said.

  And with that, Genital Grinder had concluded.

  V.

  The clean-up afterward was rigorous, and they made themselves complete it before they watched the movie; otherwise it might never get done. They’d stored Geisha’s meaty legs in the crisper (and the rest of her in Von’s bed), and even though children were starving in Africa, they incinerated the last of Claire’s remains. Whoever’s turn it was in the bathtub, they kept the camera in there with them just so the other wouldn’t be tempted to try to preview their masterpiece in their absence.

  While Greg waited for Von to get cleaned up in the bathroom, he watched the latest installment in his preferred series of backdoor-based pornography, Gaping Anus. Von, in turn, watched a menstruation epic called Ragtime Girls, with the irresistible tag line, “They come with no strings attached!”

  And at long last, it was time to watch their magnum opus of film-making, the Citizen Kane of snuff movies. Greg, never shy about pointing out the obvious, was the first to comment as the TV presented no Geisha, no Sarah, no maggot orgasm, but instead a soccer game with girls who could have just as easily been mistaken for boys if not for their long hair: “Sonofabitch, Von . . . we never did hit record, did we?”

  July 18, 2001

  I’ve never kept a journal before, but there’s too much going on now that I can’t talk about with anyone else. I feel like I have to keep a record. I guess this is also a precaution, too.

  I’m Alex. I’ll be a senior at Bernardo High School in a couple weeks. Check the honor roll, I’m there. I’m on the yearbook staff, which is probably where I first got interested in cameras. Someone had to photograph the cheerleaders, and I thought I’d never looked more like “someone” before in my life. I turned out to be a someone with a real eye for low angles.

  I also play on the tennis team, which I don’t recommend if you’re hoping to attract the opposite sex. I was lucky if my parents or my sister even came to the damn games, much less Katy Hindley.

  I don’t know where to begin exactly, but I guess I’ll start with my job. I develop film at a store I won’t name, because I’d hate to lose your business. Once you hear about the Binders, you probably won’t want to bring your film to me.

  I took the job to save up for a car. It only paid minimum wage, and when I first started, I had every intention of leaving when something better came along. I just expected lots of snapshots from birthday parties, weddings, and Disney World, but you wouldn’t believe the pictures people drop off. I guess everyone thinks I wear a blindfold when I develop their film. I’ve seen some unbelievably hot slutcakes bare-assed naked or in bone-stiffening states of undress. We’re talking lingerie, swimsuits, nightgowns, and half of one or the other. They pose for their boyfriends and husbands, who don’t have sense enough to develop film themselves or learn how. I bet some of the pictures were sent to amateur photo contests in skinmags like Gallery and Buxxxom. Some had a good chance of winning, although I’ve had the misfortune to see many who could have soured a rapist’s sex drive faster than a chemical castration.

  I saved them in the Binders anyway.

  I get some fetish pictures, too. There’s a surprising number of guys who go around secretly taking pictures of women’s feet. It became a game for me to see if I could guess who took what pictures, judging by the individual requirements. “Darrin McDonel,” for instance, had to have open-toed sandals and toenails painted red. “Harold Bennett” was into red high heels and pallid skin. “Jamey Fiala” only photographed women in black high heels with those thin interlaced straps.

  “John Futchins” was bolder. He went for those upskirt pictures you can see all over the Internet. I didn’t realize so many women in Bernardo were into thongs (and thongs were into them).

  I saved all these pictures in the Binders. It didn’t matter if customers paid for doubles or not, some of their photos were duplicated and added to my Binder. It filled up fast. So did the second, and I’m running out of room on the third. Customers have to write their address on the film envelope, and halfway through the second binder I started keeping track of who submitted each picture. It was an impulse, you know? One of those things that you do without knowing exactly why. You suspect you could figure out why, but you’re almost afraid to admit it to yourself.

  Sometimes I visit their homes at night and look in the windows. Just anywhere a woman who posed for some of the pictures might live. I don’t know why. I can see more in the pictures. But I do it anyway. Not often, just sometimes. I’ve never been caught. I wish I knew the addresses for some of Futchin’s upskirt subjects.

  It’s not always the women from these photographs I watch. Remember I mentioned Katy Hindley? I’ve known her since sixth grade. I’ve had a hard-on with her name on it for seven years now, which she has only experienced vicariously through her yearbook photos. She knows I exist, but I don’t think she cares. The closest we’ve ever been was a lab group for biology. We dissected earthworms, dogfish sharks, and fetal pigs together, but strangely enough, she went to Homecoming with someone else in spite of our intimate bond. That’s okay, though. If her blinds are agreeable, I have my own private “homecoming” with her on Elvin Avenue three or four times a week during the school year, and more in the summer. This has been going on much longer than the other nighttime visits.

  But I was talking about the great pictures I see on the job. They’re the reason I have to go to 1201 Hodson Avenue tomorrow. I’ll explain it then . . . assuming I come back. Like I said, this is not just a record, it’s a precaution.

  July 19, 2001

  Okay, remember how that killer in Silence of the Lambs was based on some crazy motherfuckers from real life? One was Ed Gein, who killed at least three women in Plainfield, Wisconsin. His hobbies included cannibalism, necrophilia, and fashioning furniture, bowls, masturbatory aids, and clothing accessories from dead women. Waste not, want not, right? Ed could have taught home economics and interior decorating.

  The other inspiration was Gary Heidnik, who kept some prostitutes hostage in his cellar. They were played against each other as he systematically tortured and killed them. Just goes to show you can never tell what’s going on in the homes around you.

  Unless, of course, you develop their film.

  The house on Hodson certainly didn’t look like the kind of place you’d find a lot of missing women chained up in the cellar, assuming there is a design intended to suggest this. It’s a two-story the color of earth clay with blue shutters, entirely visible from the street except for a few maple trees in the way.

  The mailman stops here six days a week, never realizing. The resident probably didn’t have subscriptions to magazines like Unwilling Sex Slaves, Torture Made Easy for the Suburban Serial Killer, or Middle Class Murder, though.

  I rang the doorbell. I’d thought about what to say all week, and this was the big moment at last. I heard footsteps and there was a long pause where I had time to think, Shit, he’s not going to answer and I have no idea what to do next. But the door opened, and I got my first look at him. (After we develop the film, it’s packaged and placed on an in-store rack where the customer can pick it up. I rarely see them unless they have questions or they need one-hour photo service.)

  “Mr. Owens?”

  He squinted in the light—a scrawny, skeletal man whose smile may have seemed pleasant to anyone who didn’t know his secret life. I bet it was the last thing seen by several women the police didn’t know about, and I doubted they’d describe it as “charming.”

  “Yes?” he asked. The picture of innocence. I could sense the gears turning in his head; he’d seen me before, even if I hadn’t seen him. If it was at work, I generally pay little attention to the male customers anyway, especially when the females are parading around in shorts and halter-tops.

  I had this elaborate story about a lost basset hound named Gloria, but I found myself saying, “You’re the one who took Cassandra Bittaker.”

  If the police
dropped that line on him, I don’t think he would have reacted, but this was coming from some kid he vaguely remembered seeing before. He couldn’t quite conceal his discomfort.

  “Are you out of your mind?” he finally asked—which wasn’t quite the same as denial.

  Let me get back to you on that one, sir . . . because sometimes I really wonder.

  “Cassandra Bittaker back in May,” I said. “Jenny MacColl in June. Aurora Fenech and Mariangela Bouchet in July.”

  Owens’ expression gradually changed as I named the young women who mysteriously vanished in the past four months. Initially he had the look of a claustrophobic man on an elevator where the doors don’t seem to want to open, but by the time I got to “Aurora Fenech,” he was positively beaming. Like I was describing his greatest accomplishments.

  “You read the papers,” he said. “So do I. I don’t go door to door making wild accusations, though. Maybe you should stick to the funnies.”

  “Maybe I should call the police,” I countered. “I think they’d be very interested in your basement. That’s where you keep them, isn’t it?”

  The whole time, he kept that smile. Fight or flight was in his eyes, but the smile never faltered. It reminded me of all those pictures where the flash gave people red satanic eyes, but they smiled good-naturedly all the same.

  Owens surreptitiously examined the street from right to left. I knew he was looking for potential witnesses to his next disappearing act, having realized that he wouldn’t be having this conversation with me if I’d already called the police. A SWAT team would have smashed through every window and door of the house.

  “I wrote about coming here in my journal,” I lied. He didn’t have to know that I hadn’t actually gotten around to naming names or reasons. “I went from house to house on your block, too, asking about my lost dog. ‘A basset hound, long ears, sleeps about twenty hours a day, answers to Gloria.’ If I disappear, someone around here will remember me. It won’t be long before they figure out my last visit was at your house.”