Genital Grinder

by Ryan Harding

  Greg had no reply for that as he barreled through the parking lot to approximately where they had had been before. “Shit, hang on,” he said as Von reached for the door handle. “There’s no light back here.” He put it back in reverse and flipped on the high beams. The car hitched slightly before it came to a stop.

  Greg sprang out of the Nova, searching the lot frantically. Von moved more slowly, as though weighed down by a heavy heart. He immediately walked in front of the car, into the glare of the headlights, and quietly said, “Here.”

  Greg followed Von’s gaze and gasped in horror.

  “That’s our jillion dollars,” Von said, pointing. “You just made road kill out of our meal ticket, sumbitch.”

  Greg dropped to his knees in horror and disbelief. His dramatic collapse afforded him a closer look, which he held as though the organ would regenerate back to its original—and surely pricier—form. The member was curiously white now, all its blood shot through the vessels and glans by the weight of the car; white except for the distinctive treads of Michelin tires. What had been inserted through the suck-hole just minutes ago now resembled something you’d fling on a plate with a spatula and douse with maple syrup.

  “We gotta get outta here,” Von announced. “We can’t let him know we got nothing to bargain with. We’ll have to take it with us.”

  “Him” was Edward Rochester, the latest addition to the men’s soprano choir. He blew a thousand bucks a night at the Complex, and seemed to arrive in a different luxury car each time. On Saturdays at 9:45, he always visited the Vacuum. Even a destitute man would find five million dollars an agreeable price for his lovewand, so Von and Greg figured Edward would be only too happy to ante up—and right quick at that. Every second counted.

  Greg gave Von a doubtful look, but made talons of his fingers and tried to slip them between the flattened organ and the asphalt. Von worked the other side. It was like trying to peel the label off a packaging envelope—getting a sizable piece to come up with no problem and then losing it as it tore from its body. The member was the same way, a smidgen of flesh peeling off like masking tape, then dissolving into a cluster of various strands like bubble-gum stuck to the bottom of a shoe.

  They kept an eye out for approaching cars or patrons making an early exit, but their luck held (the setback of the squashed sexual apparatus notwithstanding).

  Von forced the silly putty-like chunks into his pockets, thinking this was one time he’d be sure to use the laundromat.

  Edward Rochester was in a great deal of pain. He’d pay to have the bastard tortured. The seediness of the Complex appealed to him in ways the higher class “gentlemen’s’ clubs” could not, but he could have done without getting his ass kicked by an uncultured patron. He’d made the apparently ghastly error of knocking somebody’s bottle of beer off their table when trying to negotiate his way from near the stage to the door to the Vacuum. Before he even had a chance to offer to pay for a new one, the bearded patron said, “Watch where the fuck you’re going, dicksucker!” and pushed him into the wall. Edward rebounded from it, lungs whooshing from his lungs, and stepped into a right hook. A few kicks found him as he tasted the floor, and he began to worry that the strobe light effect he was seeing wasn’t part of the stage show this time. It actually was, fortunately, but he and Russell Crowe were separated by interchangeable bald men in black shirts emblazoned with white letters reading SECURITY and dragged out of the club. Hence, he’d missed his 9:45 “appointment” with Angelique . . .

  In greater pain was Horace Cromwell, who’d given plasma just to treat himself to a good beejay. And now he was convulsing on the filthy floor of the Vacuum, forty-five dollars and one penis poorer.

  No one could hear his screams over the music; not that he wanted anyone to find out what had become of his girth. What he did want was revenge. He’d have it before the night was over . . . if he didn’t bleed to death.

  The Bic lighter cost him all of a dollar, but it was reliable. It flamed on, first try. He didn’t want to look at the stump, at the mangled roots of what had given him so much pleasure and disappointed so many girls since high school. It was like looking at a tangle of circuitry spooling from an open wall socket. He could feel his pulse in the mess of severed blood vessels, a renewal of pain with each pounding beat. Blood matted his thighs like he’d just given birth, and he probably didn’t have much more he could waste.

  He was telling his hand No! even as it brought the lighter closer. The searing heat was close enough to scald the blood and torn skin, discomforting and nearly agonizing. Horace gritted his teeth and brought the flame home.

  If he’d been in pain before, he was in Hell now. An electric current of agony erupted in his groin, his original pain with a whole battalion of reinforcements. He felt every orifice knot up as if to contain the sparks shooting through his nerves. The world became a vision of fire and only a chaotic scream with no beginning or end as the soundtrack. He pierced the veil only in brief flashes of reality, as if he could only bare glimpses without losing his mind. When he could finally align his vision with the grim reality, he saw the ultimate parody of male human reproduction—a blackened, smoking gorge of a stump. He fancied that he still heard the sizzling of the veins as they cauterized and stemmed the flow of blood, a morbid sound and odor he knew he could expect to be waiting for him in dreams, waking him up in the dead of night.

  He vomited convulsively into his lap, whether from the tidal wave of pain or the reek of his own smoldered crotch he could not say. Some of the bile caught in his stub, and mildly bubbled from the heat. He thought he might have passed out at some point, but wasn’t sure.

  He crawled to the door and unlocked it. Someone was waiting outside.

  An animated customer greeted him, eyes wide with admiration. “Dude! That must have been the best nut ever, you screamed like a yodeler caught in a thresh machine!”

  Horace staggered past, trying to button his pants. He could still hear his genitals crackling. The new arrival gave an astonished gasp behind him at the sight of all the blood in the Vacuum.

  Horace followed the trail of his blood to a back exit, just in time to see them leave in the Nova. Hunched over and groaning miserably, he ambled toward his car.

  “What’s he gonna do, ask to talk to it?” Von asked, maybe trying to convince himself more than Greg. “Make sure it’s still alive? He’ll leap at any chance to get it. We’ll take his money and shoot him in the back. It won’t be the worst thing that ever happened to him, now, will it?”

  “Good plan, king,” Greg complimented.

  “I just hope Sammy doesn’t act crazy tonight. That boy ain’t all there.”

  Greg nodded uneasily, even as he drove them to Sammy’s house. Neither of them ever knew what to expect from Sammy, and they’d already had one bad surprise this evening as it was. It seemed a bad omen of the shape of things to come . . . and the night hadn’t even really begun.

  Part II: Slut Necro Lambda and The Divided Man

  Sammy feverishly worked his inches, member in one hand and his mother’s soiled undergarments in the other. He ejaculated into a tube sock with faded yellow stripes and an increasingly cardboard-like texture. He supposed he could have used Mom’s underwear, but that was just sort of sick, the way he figured. It was a show of respect. He shuddered in the aftermath, smothering his nose and mouth with the panties, inhaling the musky dampness. It was almost enough to stiffen him again—three more today would make a baker’s dozen—but he would have company soon. There were other tasks to perform.

  He gingerly removed the tube sock. As he feared, the friction had caused his sores to run. It was probably to be expected after so many transmissions today; you pay to play. Off-white streams of pus ran in rivulets down his shaft, erupting from the tiny mouth-like lesions. The accompanying agony (including a gasp-inducing, white fire painful sensation while urinating) and random discharges concerned him. At times, it was downright unbearable.

  Probably something
he ate, he figured. Lotta bacteria out there. It would pass. It sure was taking its sweet time, though. He didn’t want to contemplate the day when it would be more trouble than it was worth to jack down. A man should have a fake tooth hollowed out with a cyanide tablet in such an event—break in case of emergency.

  Behind him, the Divided Man stood sentinel. From the attic, a thumping sound. And from below, feeble screams from the basement.

  Sammy chuckled as he pulled up his pants, wincing a bit the complaint of his sores. He addressed the Divided Man. “If they thought before was bad, they’re gonna love what happens next.”

  The paring knife appeared slight, but for all the caterwauling it provoked as it carved out Mary Jane Turner’s anus, it may as well have been a jackhammer. The girl was too weak to lift her head a scant five minutes ago, but now she was flailing from the meat hook like a speared fish. The other sluts were about as vocal as they witnessed the excision—till capable of being shocked after months of imprisonment and experiments that made Josef Mengele look like Dr. Spock.

  Surgery to Sammy was art, and the more involuntary the better. He was damned good at it. On the rare occasions that perverted fantasies of his mother (often they were technically memories) failed to shove a beat-off session past the finish line, he’d remember the screams of Linda Gordon (missing 01/27/2000) as she awoke to find a Labrador retriever’s head (missing 07/17/2000) sewn to her shoulder, its tongue dangling to her nipple. On the heels of that, she discovered the dog’s tail had been power-stapled between her buttocks. Sammy had been unable to do anything with poor Spot’s doghood, so he placed it on a saucer and told Linda, “Bon appétit!” She was understandably reluctant, but her hunger weakened her resolve three days later. By then, the bubblegum-pink “cocktail,” as he liked to think of it, was collecting a rather devoted congregation of flies. She scarfed it down like a real trouper . . . and was then served another, this from a poodle (missing 07/23/2000). She failed to learn her lesson and waited again, vowing she would not succumb this time, would not afford him any more of her dignity. Whitney Houston would have been proud. She lasted four days, and then pitifully brushed away the flies and dropped it in her mouth like a popcorn shrimp. Linda wasn’t so successful at chowing down for Old Glory this time, though, and her quease gland was wrung like a chicken neck. Shriveled giblets of flyblown dog dick and chyme were rerouted up her gullet in a powerful deluge that doubled her over with sobs, regurgitant flecks stuck in the fur of the Labrador’s head (Sammy didn’t care very much for poodles either, admittedly).

  Yes, thinking about her ordeal could fill a tube sock faster than you could recite your social security number.

  Linda was a remarkable accomplishment and would have been a primo addition to anyone’s resume, but the piece de resistance was undoubtedly Sheryl Gray, with contribution from her fellow sorority sisters. Slut Necro Lambda, he called it. The endeavor had been a real challenge. The removal of five vaginas took two days, a painstaking process of careful cutting and hacking. He’d botched a sixth attempt, which would have been a complete waste had Von and Greg not volunteered to take her off his hands. A prone Sheryl was then the recipient of the world’s first multi-vaginal transplant. Rather crude exploratory surgery techniques freed enough room for the canals, in effect becoming makeshift passages to her digestive system in most instances. Removal of bone segments allowed for more slightly varied installations of these surrogate fuckholes. Sheryl did not survive this radical procedure, regrettably . . . but that was merely the final ingredient to the thrill.

  This unparalleled success earned him the esteemed title of Doctor Butcher from Von and Greg. Sammy let them have a turn with Slut Necro Lambda, under the stipulation that they both had to use the same orifice. Why not? He had plenty to spare. And he still had plenty afterward—the crazy bastards had used the backdoor. It defeated the whole purpose of the operation, but that was Von and Greg for you.

  Back to the business at hand, Sammy couldn’t help but notice Mary Jane Turner’s anus looked like the underside of a mushroom. He was puzzling over whether or not this was erotic, and why the incising sounded like nothing more exotic than the dicing of a tomato. This was for culinary purposes, of course, but you’d expect a more significant soundtrack to accompany the theft of someone’s asshole. The flesh could be so banal, even with artistry like Sammy’s to spice it up.

  The incision came full circle and the perimeter dropped out. Sammy peeled it off the floor, though not before fully appreciating the anatomical delights he’d uncovered. A more educated person could probably shoot out five syllable terminologies for everything, but to Sammy, it was just glistening and rather stringy rectal meat dripping like a melting icicle.

  It reminded him of a pornographic movie called Gaping Anus, naturally enough. The exposed muscle tissue would be slick and very inviting, like a mitten stuffed with Vaseline. Maybe he could even perform without bursting any more sores. This was all extremely enticing, but it wasn’t like she was going anywhere anyway. Besides, he had the attic to think of now.

  He left the cellar and his little mascots—a stripper, a prostitute, two college girls (with only one anus between them now) and a nurs — all worthless whores, in other words—and climbed the stairs back up to the kitchen. He set the souvenir from Mary Jane on the chopping block, employing his thumb to slide it from fingers—it stuck like mucus. He plucked up his mallet and brought it down, effectively squashing the wrinkled flesh. From a Tupperware bowl, he produced the remaining cuts of Sue Harper’s buttocks (additional remains recovered 05/11/2002, 05/25/2002 and 06/02/2002), and cranked them through an old fashioned meat-grinder onto a paper plate. A spatula freed the compacted meat from the chopping block, which Sammy scraped on the paper plate. He threw it into the microwave and set it on high, whistling all the while.

  The thumping in the attic grew more persistent in anticipation of feeding time. He heard Greg’s Nova in the driveway as the microwave beeped its conclusion. He rushed upstairs to make the delivery. He hadn’t bothered to wash his hands since handling Mom’s underwear (and himself), he realized. Sammy laughed at his carelessness. He unlocked the attic door, chucked the meat inside, and relocked the door from the outside. He heard scraping sounds as the occupant crawled to the newly arrived meal. It would taste like arse, but that was pretty much the point.

  Sammy was scrambling back downstairs when Von and Greg walked in. Both parties had their own reasons to distract the other. Sammy came up with the first diversion. “You’re late,” he accused, short of breath.

  Von was grateful for the opportunity to stall. “Why you breathing so hard? You just get done jackin’ down?”

  “I was upstairs.”

  “Upstairs jackin’ down?” Von pounced.

  Sammy ignored him. “What’s the matter with you two? You look like Gillian Anderson died and had her remains cremated before you got a crack at her in the morgue.”

  Von sighed heavily, feigning a sudden interest in the orange carpet of the den. It was an ugly concoction that looked to have been stitched together from skinned Muppets.

  “You two morons didn’t get it, did you? The guy practically gave you his dick on a silver platter and you didn’t take it. Unbelievable.”

  “That ain’t what happened, fag face,” Von shouted back. “We did the whole thing the way we talked about, no problem. It was easier than snatching a Latch-Key Kid.”

  Sammy didn’t speak for a moment, puzzled. “Okay . . . was Gillian Anderson cremated?”

  “Nuh-uh.” Von sighed again. “Look, we got in, got the package, and got the hell out. It was going great.” Von gave his cohort a disgusted look. “Until Mario Andretti over here peeled out on the prize.”

  “I said I was sorry!” Greg protested, even though he’d done no such thing.

  “Sorry doesn’t take the pieces of Rochester’s dick out of our pockets and make it whole again!”

  Sammy didn’t bother to hold in his laughter. “You got a rocket in your po
cket, Von?”

  “Come on, this ain’t something to joke about. Rochester finds out Greg ruined it, he’ll use that ransom money to have us killed.”

  “So don’t tell him. He’s not going to report you to the Better Business Bureau.”

  “But what if he insists on seeing it first?”

  “Knowing every second counts, that would take balls.”

  “He’s still got those,” Greg pointed out.

  “What about you, Sammy?” Von asked hopefully. “You got an extra one stashed around here someplace?”

  “Oh yeah, sure, just check the candy bowl on the refrigerator. Of course I don’t. I don’t kill guys. What do you think I am, a gay?”

  “No, but—” Von paused. “Wait a minute now. Me and Greg’s killed us a few dudes before. You trying to say that makes us rope smokers?”

  “Not necessarily—”

  “Because Greg’s the one who did all the killing, so he’s the damn queer.”

  “Hey, you’re the one who had you a handful of Rochester’s pork sword,” Greg pointed out.

  “Shut the hell up, Greg.”

  “Yeah, Sammy, he was asking Von to use his teeth and everything!”

  “Shut the hell up, Greg!”

  “Both of you calm down,” Sammy interjected. “And it’s actually good that you remember these details. You’ll be able to prove beyond a doubt that you’re the ones who did it.”

  “Oh right, I’m sure there’ll be all sorts of cranks lining up to take the credit for it.”

  “Would you just hand someone three million dollars because they claimed to have your most prized possession? If it was me, I’m not sure I’d take the word of a dick thief at face value . . . especially one who’s a closet homo.”

  “Hey, I thought we were getting—” Greg began.

  Von cut him off with remarkable subtlety. “Shut the hell up, Greg!”