Genital Grinder

by Ryan Harding

  It was swift, senseless . . . a moment allegedly grabbed by a bored passenger tracking with a video camera at a traffic light. A graphic art born of nothing, never to be forgotten once seen. Gabriel certainly hadn’t, and yet that same hapless gent now stood on the corner of 37th and Garren, unaware that his head had once been liquefied into a Sistine Chapel of Rorschach artistry. That wasn’t the kind of thing you could fix with a tube of superglue and infinite patience; there wasn’t supposed to be any sequel for you on Taste of Death.

  The company who released the videos—Chosen Few Pictures—had clearly swindled him. He’d never suspected otherwise, even though some of the other mondo films were faked. He’d blindly trusted this series because it appeared to deliver what it promised in bloody red letters on every box: COMPLETELY AUTHENTIC! ONE HUNDRED PERCENT REAL! ARE YOU SURE YOU CAN TAKE IT?? (Funny, but he’d swear he’d rented pornos with an almost identical tag line.)

  Not so. The shotgun decapitation only looked genuine. Unless the man was a ghost. A phantom condemned to walk the earth for failing to avoid what had to be a rather obvious murder.

  Gabriel blinked, and looked for the man again. He was gone, now obstructed by the buildings on Garren.

  Whatever the explanation, Gabriel felt disturbed. He’d seen each Taste of Death at least three times. The new one, the ninth installment, was due out next week. He’d been looking forward to another ninety minute foray into the final, intimate misfortunes of strangers. But it was for naught. That age-old certainty of death wasn’t even for sure anymore.

  He drove home to his parents’ house, still wondering.

  II.

  The next day, he picked up each of the Taste of Death boxes and searched them.

  They all listed Chosen Few Pictures as their distributor, but none of them gave an address for the company. As far as he knew, this was the only line of videos they had ever released. They had nothing else available for order when he searched the computer at work.

  It had begun to dawn on him how strange it was that he had seen one of the “actors” from Taste of Death. He hadn’t recognized the scenery in the movies, so it didn’t seem possible they had been filmed in his hometown of Bartok. Of all the places in the world, it was quite a coincidence that he’d seen the actor here.

  He started to question if it was a coincidence after all. The chances of the guy having a twin brother seemed even more remote. Even in the scantily-clad company of Carrie and Renee he had difficulty thinking of anything other than what he’d seen the night before. His thoughts hadn’t been this concentrated since he’d first brought home a Taste of Death movie, on a whim. The ways the people lost their lives, the strangeness that someone happened to be there with a camera, and just knowing there were even more of these shockumentaries out there . . . it obsessed him. Would his own death end up on a

  movie? Years of being alive, having friends, making an impact—however slight—would it all be eclipsed by a bizarre equation resulting in Gabriel Reynolds dying on Taste of Death 10, 11, 12, or whatever? Would he stop being Gabriel Reynolds and become “that dude who got snuffed on candid camera?”

  The shockumentaries were a paradox. Even when you were certain that what you were seeing was genuine, it was still a concept that could not quite be grasped. How could these people you were seeing for the first time already be dead? Their deaths seemed real, but they didn’t.

  He ran a search on the Internet for Chosen Few Pictures. Thankfully it wasn’t one of those names that would return hundreds of thousands of results. He found what he wanted right away—an official homepage for the company that had only recently gone online. It didn’t tell him much, aside from their past releases ($39.99 per . . . thank God he could cherry pick the damn things when overstock wound up in the “previously viewed” sale bin) and the announcement that the new Taste of Death would be out August 6th (it had been pushed back, though, according to the Movie Heaven release schedule, and wouldn’t be out until August 20th). It did, however, give him the contact address.

  Chosen Few Pictures was run out of a post office box in Bartok.

  III.

  Not all of the clips could have been made in Bartok, though; Gabriel would have heard about it. For instance, Taste of Death 3 featured a burning skyscraper where several people chose to plunge to a messy death rather than burn alive. There were no skyscrapers in Bartok; the clip had to come from elsewhere. It was probably true of most.

  The common way to accumulate all this footage was to take out an ad in Variety or some other movie trade magazine and request news stations, police departments, departments of transportation, and the like submit videos with violent footage to the address.

  Did this mean a few deaths were faked in Bartok for supplemental footage? The series was good about not borrowing from other shockumentaries. Maybe the only way to reach ninety minutes without resorting to recycling footage was to create new scenes. It made sense, and it was hardly the first time a video was guilty of false advertising.

  Gabriel thought it was somehow unnatural that Chosen Few Pictures was run in his city, but of course it had to be somewhere. It could have just as easily been some other skyscraper-less city with a horny video store clerk who thought it almost conspiratorially bizarre that a mondo video company would have its home base there. He became less apprehensive about the coincidences, but was more curious than ever to see how the next installment turned out.

  IV.

  On August 20th, he got his chance. Taste of Death 9: Grave Matters came out with no further delays. He took it home that night. Its plastic box seemed to radiate energy, something that promised his eagerness would be rewarded. He watched it slide around on the passenger seat as he drove, as if it would accidentally slip and reveal its true self.

  The cover had been decorated with an autopsy table and a stainless steel tray featuring the tools of dissection. The back of the box warned of the violent content within, promising the death clips of a man who should have paid more attention to a DON’T FEED THE BEARS sign, movie stunts gone horribly awry, results of drunk driving on the Autobahn, alligator farm mishaps, PCP addicts in shoot-outs with the police, the final escape attempt of famed magician Isaac the Invincible, riots, tightrope walkers who laughed at safety nets, and assorted other punishments for hubris and just being in the wrong place at the right time. It promised to be the best shockumentary yet, a veritable extravaganza of morbid atrocities.

  It sounded like just what the doctor ordered after an unproductive five hours of half-hearted banter that left no impressions on Carrie and Renee, or at least not any good ones.

  He nuked himself a TV dinner, took it to his room, and parked in front of the screen. He was especially on the lookout for any possible Bartokians and local settings. As it turned out, they were more obvious than he would have believed.

  “This young woman should have just called Triple-A,” the narrator opined, with the assurance of one who knows he has just gotten off a sterling quip. The scene was purportedly captured by a nearby security camera. The female in question was leaning underneath her car hood in an otherwise empty parking lot, hands constantly fidgeting to signal she had no idea what she was doing. The scene occurred at night and was somewhat obscured by shadows. Another figure, probably male, appeared beside the woman, his face a silhouette. He seized the car hood and repeatedly brought it down across her back and head, instantly bringing her to her knees. The killer stepped back to admire his handiwork, his face still cloaked by the night. Without the overdone shadow work, Gabriel would still have been able to assess the authenticity—or lack thereof—in this scene. Though her tormentor had remained hidden by the unrealistic lighting scheme, the victim herself had not.

  It was Carrie, whom he’d been admiring at Movie Heaven a mere two hours ago.

  V.

  “I didn’t know you wanted to be an actress,” Gabriel said to her the next day.

  “I didn’t know I did either,” Carrie replied smartly, rolling her eyes fo
r Renee’s benefit. Renee giggled in that shrill fashion that always made her a distant 2nd to Carrie in his private list of Hottest Movie Heaven Trim. When his attempts at mirth with them inevitably failed, her refusal to laugh became a silver lining unto itself.

  He smiled bitterly at Carrie’s predictably evasive response. Weren’t they a class act? Hiding things from him, sharing their meaningful looks, whispering to each other off in the corner (which always resulted in Renee’s ear splitting histrionics, like Carrie was Eddie Murphy or something, and of course Gabriel knew they were talking about him), playing their little games. How long had they been perpetuating the charade? All along?

  “But I’ve seen your work,” he announced when Renee’s laughter blissfully ceased.

  “What’s he talking about?” Carrie asked Renee.

  “I don’t know . . . but I bet it’s sexual harassment, whatever it is.”

  “On Taste of Death 9,” Gabriel explained, with a calmness that really surprised him. He felt anything but, especially with Carrie talking about him like he wasn’t there. He was already tossing around the idea of taking one of Movie Heaven’s rental VCR’s home so he could get a copy of Carrie’s death, just for ha-ha’s.

  “Taste of Death 9?” She couldn’t have looked more disgusted if a leper had tried to solicit her for oral sex.

  “Yeah,” Gabriel grinned. “You know, the one after eight, but before ten?”

  Renee didn’t laugh at that, he noticed.

  “How can you watch that trash?” Carrie asked, her face all knotted up into almost a natural Renee Zellweger look. “That’s really sick, Gabe.”

  “At least I didn’t star in it.” He turned to check out a customer, a beady-eyed man who had selected an interesting variety of videos: Dumb & Dumber, The Ten Commandments, and Gaping Anus.

  Gabriel felt compelled to comment on the last choice. “That one’s four hours long.”

  The customer’s lips split apart to reveal teeth stained by nicotine and coffee as he smiled. “Yeah . . . I know. ”

  By the time Gabriel had collected the man’s money and warned him about his snowballing late fees (he had a feeling that the customer, Greg Bracken, probably wouldn’t be getting these back on time either . . . four hours was quite a commitment), Carrie and Renee had deployed themselves to other parts of Movie Heaven, probably just trying to put some distance between him. He saw them huddled up over in comedy, inconspicuously standing in front of ‘80’s sex comedies like The Last American Virgin and The Joy of Sex.

  No hee-hawing this time, though. Worried. That was good. They had every reason to be.

  VI.

  At the stoplight at 37th and Garren, he had to crack the window—he felt like he was suffocating.

  The shotgun fatality was back, and so were eight other people he had seen meet some very colorful ends on the latest Taste of Death. There was the blonde woman with the ponytail who got her throat torn out by a rabid dog (“Man’s best friend, but not such a success with the ladies”). The guy with the crewcut who’d gone through his windshield after hitting a telephone poll (“He should have dialed 1-800-COLLECT”). Two of the promised PCP addicts who’d gone out in a blaze when surrounded by police, one screaming that he was Jesus Christ (“Somehow I don’t think he’ll get up in three days”) and the other pleading for someone to “Get them off me!” And still others.

  He punched the accelerator and drove through the red light, narrowly missing one of the angel dust addicts on the crosswalk and a car making a wild left onto Garren, not letting up on the gas until he was home.

  He didn’t get out of his car immediately. He sat there, his hand shaking, sweating bullets which had nothing to do with the August heat.

  What in the hell was going on? He could accept that the shotgun man didn’t really die; pack a prosthetic head with blood-filled condoms and blast it, the effect would be very similar to the real deal. But what about the others? The woman with the ponytail, for instance. The camera never left her as the dog burrowed into her throat. There had been no chance to cut away for a special effect. He’d watched the life vanish from her eyes, and he’d seen the torn remnants of her throat and shards of neck bone when someone finally got a lariat around the dog and hauled it away (someone unceremoniously shot it in the head, again with no cutaway).

  She’d died, he had no doubts about it. Same with the PCP addicts, because wherever they’d had their last rush, it hadn’t been anywhere in Bartok. If he lived anywhere else but here, he could rationalize this all as extremely realistic special effects.

  Was he losing his mind? It would be the natural conclusion if he told anyone what he’d seen, and more importantly what he thought about it. His parents would have him committed to the Sunshine Elkins Institute over in Hasbrouck. There had been a guy from his high school who wound up at Elkins. A chronic masturbator. It may not have been such a problem, but any place became a good place for him to jack. The bus stop, the cafeteria, the bleachers at a pep rally, driver’s ed (once as a backseat passenger when it wasn’t turn), and the straw that broke the camel’s back, career day. A lot of parents and important visitors on hand that day . . . and he was on hand, too, right there during a presentation from a cop with a K-9 German shepherd who looked very puzzled by the whole display. An apoplectic PTA mom demanded the cop drag him off to the electric chair on the spot. The jokes about him had lasted until graduation, wondering what kind of business he could get up to with a whole graduation gown to hide the ol’ slapstick. It didn’t seem very funny to Gabriel now, though. He’d go insane if they locked him up . . . if he wasn’t already.

  He thought of Carrie and smashed his hand against the dashboard. She knew what was going on . . . she was in on this. It was some kind of game. Why else would she have such a flippant attitude when he confronted her?

  He didn’t get out of the car for quite some time.

  VII.

  Two things of interest happened the next day. Someone rented Taste of Death 6: To the Gory End. He wanted to open up to the guy about what he’d been seeing around town, but the girls had been right there, sharing a disapproving look when they noticed the title of the video. Why don’t you dumb twats go lez out in the tanning room? he wanted to say, but the idea caught his fancy and he found himself embellishing the concept in his mind periodically for the next three hours. He never entirely forgot about the customer, though, and when he showed up later in the afternoon, Gabriel felt a rush of excitement.

  He knows . . . he’s seeing all the victims around town now, too. He has to see the ninth one now, with Carrie’s big scene.

  Renee was on her lunch break and Carrie was back in the bathroom. He couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity. But it was nothing like that.

  The customer struggled to find the adequate words. “Uh, yeah, I rented this, like … earlier today?”

  “I remember,” Gabriel said. The lack of urgency (and articulation) immediately diminished his expectations. It couldn’t possibly be what he had hoped. The guy would have practically walked through plate glass and barely noticed it if he’d really seen.

  “Right, okay . . . uh, yeah, the tape is, like, blank and stuff.”

  “Blank?” Gabriel echoed.

  “Yeah . . . and stuff? It’s all, like, static.”

  And stuff. Yeah, I know.

  He’d been switching them out for the weeks leading up to the release of part 9. They had all played just fine. Some had more tracking issues than others, but they all worked.

  “Sorry about that . . . we’ll see if we can fix it. Or do you want to exchange it for something else?”

  The guy looked over his shoulder, and Gabriel briefly wondered if he thought he was being watched. Maybe this was all a charade to deflect suspicion.

  Satisfied by what he saw, the customer turned around and quietly asked, “Is, uh, Gaping Anus back in stock?”

  Gabriel sighed. “The new one, the 24th? No. Not yet.”

  “Twenty-three, then?” he asked h
opefully.

  Descending order of availability finally made it all right with volume number nineteen, if a bit begrudgingly (the 4-hour “butt banging bonanzas” didn’t start until volume twenty, so “2-1/2 hours of butt stuffing madness” would have to suffice . . . and as obsessed as the customer seemed with the concept of “stuff,” he couldn’t have been too awfully disappointed). He also put himself on the reserve list for a Lolita Ream movie after confirming Gabriel’s work schedule.

  Much later, the idea of the blanked video cassette seemed ominous to Gabriel. Yeah, maybe the guy wanted Gaping Anus all along and just didn’t want to bring it to the counter with Carrie and Renee standing around, although why not get something a little less off-putting if you’re worried what some hot girls might think of your choice? Gabriel obviously wasn’t going to test the movie out here at work, though. He took it home, unsurprised in the least to discover it played just fine, arguably with even less tracking interference than the volumes before and after it.

  The other significant thing was that he went back to the Chosen Few Pictures webpage, and found a significant change.

  Taste of Death 9 had been pushed back to August 27th. This update was made today, the 21st.

  “But it already came out,” Gabriel said, dumbfounded.

  VIII.

  It being Thursday, Gabriel, Renee, and Carrie were at Movie Heaven until 9:30 as the closing shift. Renee’s mother picked her up just as the trio exited (she had not-so-politely declined a ride with him in the beginning, and he’d never offered again).