Genital Grinder

by Ryan Harding

  “I’ve got to eat something else,” he announced.

  “Still hungry?” Sammy chuckled. “We could have Von turn out his pockets.”

  Greg opened the refrigerator, staring at the shelves like a man beholding an oasis in the desert. He reached in with both hands and removed a large Tupperware bowl, then started yanking open drawers, looking for a spoon or fork.

  “Just help yourself,” Sammy said, irritated.

  Von took the script from Sammy and crumpled it up. “Hell with it. I’ll make something up.”

  “Couldn’t be any worse. Follow the subject with the predicate and it’ll already be a vast improvement.”

  Greg peeled back the Tupperware lid and sank his spoon into a nearly gelatinous concoction of crimson slop and glistening lumps. He filled his mouth with it, grinning idiotically. “Fine eatin’ here, Sammy. What is this, some kind of cobbler?”

  “I believe the medical term is ‘spontaneous abortion,’” Sammy replied.

  Greg’s grin froze on his face. He looked down at the bowl again, first seeing his rather awe-struck reflection caught by the light above him, and then the true texture of those lumps he’d first taken to be cobbler crust. The truth seemed obvious now. He prodded it with his spoon and discovered a runny film at the surface of the glop, like pond scum.

  The amniotic sac . . . or what passed for it in its premature expulsion.

  “There may be a few morsels of the placenta left,” Sammy said, matter-of-factly. He could have been talking about the reds in a bowl of M&M’s.

  Von had paused with the phone in his hand the instant Sammy said “spontaneous abortion.” He finally dared to speak. “You mean some whore had a miscarriage and squeezed all that slop out of her joytrail? And you tossed it in a bowl and froze it?”

  Sammy nodded. “That’s about the size of it.”

  Von processed this for a few seconds. “Well, hellfire, Greg, why’re you just standing there staring like that freak in Sleepaway Camp? Get me a spoon, too!”

  Greg, hand held over his mouth, surrendered the bowl and spoon to Von without a word. He looked rather green around the gills.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Von asked, staring at the bowl. “I ain’t using this spoon after you. You just had a dick in your mouth, son! I don’t want no part of that.”

  “I rinsed my mouth out,” Greg protested slowly, as though afraid more than words would escape through his lips if he spoke too fast.

  Sammy intervened. “Are you two gonna debate dental hygiene all night, or are you gonna get this Rochester bitch on the horn?”

  “Right now I’m a bit more interested in how you got ahold of this here tasty little dessert,” Von said. He dipped a thumb into the mess on the outer edge—where Greg’s spoon probably hadn’t explored—and slid it in his mouth. He sucked at it thoughtfully, one eyebrow arched, then moaned approvingly. Some of it remained smeared around his lips like clown make-up.

  “How I wound up with a puddle of abortion in my refrigerator? It’s kind of a boring story, really.” Sammy shrugged, but agreed to enlighten. He could have been talking about vacation slides from a trip he hadn’t really enjoyed. “I zapped this primo slut with my stun gun when she left the library, then brought her here. Slapped some meat down on her in so many different ways, I could have made my own cookbook. After a few weeks, her belly started expanding. I figured she was just bloated, but after awhile I realized there was a little Sammy on the way.”

  Von frowned. “How do you know she wasn’t already pregnant?”

  Sammy paused. “You know, I didn’t even really consider that. She may have been carrying some stranger’s child, at that. Well, I sure am glad that worthless skank is dead now. Got what she deserved.”

  “She’s dead?”

  “They don’t make ‘em much deader. I was pounding away at her ass like a jackhammer, and then I hear this tearing sound, right? So I pull back and look down, and there’s this . . . Remember how the Play-Doh Factory had that thing where you cranked and all the stuff came out in four or five different clumps? It was like that, it just started oozing out of her and dropping on my lap. Kind of lukewarm. And I was thinking this was all a bit tragic cuz it was my kid—or at least I thought so at the time—o I tried to do the gentlemanly thing and hurry up and finish my nut, right? But she wasn’t making it easy on me. All that thrashing around and resisting—hell, it’s probably what cost her the little bastard in the first place. It was messed up, though, ‘cause it was like every time I sent the battering ram home, more of that shit would squeeze out. To make a long story short, I went off, she went out, and the rest went in a Tupperware bowl to be served to—” He paused here, as though stopping himself from saying more than he intended. “For a special occasion.”

  Von caught the subterfuge. “Let’s talk more about the noises in the attic.”

  “Yeah!” Greg echoed. “You got cops up there, waiting for us to make our ransom demand?”

  “Yes, Greg, that’s precisely it. With a basement practically wallpapered in women I’ve raped, tortured, and killed over the past seven years, the police couldn’t wait to use me to put you two crime lords out of commission. I’m getting a key to the city after your trial.”

  “Hey, wait, let’s calm down a second, guys,” Von said. “Can’t you see this whole dick caper thing is tearing us apart? This should be one of the happiest nights of our lives.”

  “Von’s right,” Greg said. “This is getting out of hand. I didn’t really believe you had cops up there, Sammy. Sorry.”

  Von hoped he hadn’t truly believed it, but he had his doubts. There was something more important than that, though. “And now that we’ve established that no one is trying to short-change no one else, what can you tell us about the attic, Sammy?” he asked.

  “I can tell you you’ll never see the inside of it if you don’t make that phone call. Wait a second, though.” He left the kitchen and returned a moment later with a cell phone. “Last one I grabbed had this on her, probably so she could call someone in the event of an emergency. Looks like she wasted her money, wouldn’t you say?”

  “It still works?”

  Sammy handed it to Von, who saw the display was indeed lit up. “Hey, speaking of the recently abducted, we’ve got a present for you in the trunk, Sammy. Assuming she hasn’t suffocated.”

  “Same thing happens to her either way,” Sammy assured him. “She can wait.”

  Von punched in the Rochesters’ number. “You boys ready to become millionaires?”

  Greg looked more like he was ready to puke, but gave a thumbs up anyway.

  Celia Rochester answered on the second ring. “Hello?”

  “Good evening, Mrs. Rochester. Have you heard from your husband recently?”

  “Do you know what time it is? If you’re trying to sell me something, it’s against the law to call this la—”

  “Ma’am, I’m not trying to take your mon …” Von stopped short. “I mean, I haven’t broke the law …” He stopped short again. “Look, this probably isn’t what you think it is.”

  “Whatever it is, the answer is still the same. He’s not here. He’s away on business.”

  Von laughed. “Is that what he told you? I regret to inform you he was actually seen in the company of cheap women this evening at a local establishment called the Electra Complex.”

  Her voice turned hard. “Was he indeed?”

  “Yes, ma’am, and—”

  “That son of a bitch! That depraved, immoral, perverted little son of a bitch! He promised me never again!”

  Her voice was now loud enough that Greg and Sammy could hear her clearly. Von held the receiver away from his head.

  “Well, ma’am, I—”

  “If he was here right now, you know what I’d do?”

  “No, but—”

  “I’d take a meat cleaver and chop him off. I’d dice his little cock into shish-kebab, that bastard—”

  “In that case, I have some good news
for you, ma’am. You see, we already took care of that for you.”

  “You diced it into shish-kebab?”

  “Well, not exactly. It’s still in one piece—” Here Von crossed his fingers. “—and if your husband wants it back, he’s gonna have to pay us.”

  “Oh, he’s not getting it back,” she replied firmly. “He can spend the rest of his life pissing through a plastic tube for all I care.”

  The three men shared a look of absolute horror—not at the prospect of Edward Rochester pissing through a plastic tube for the rest of his life, but the increasing likelihood that there wasn’t going to be any ransom payment.

  “Wait, listen, the women really weren’t that cheap, and he wasn’t even buying lap dances, I swear!”

  “Nice try, but I’m not going to be stupid about trusting my husband anymore.”

  “Okay, but what about compensation?”

  “I’m not reporting you to the police. That’s my final offer.”

  “We want our jillion dollars, you bitch!”

  She hung up on him with an efficient little click.

  “Well, Von, you ready to go buy that yacht now? Hell, let’s go jet-setting,” Sammy suggested, for once not enjoying his own sarcasm.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” Von shouted.

  “Wasn’t it? All you had to do was say, ‘Look, I cut off your husband’s tool, and it’ll cost you three million dollars to get it back so they can reattach it.’ The way you did it, you may as well have said, ‘Hey, your husband just raped a bunch of preschoolers after firebombing six hundred sixty-six churches and performing analingus on your mother’s rotting cadaver, and by the way, how much will you pay to get back this penis I ripped from him?’ If someone said they’d kidnapped your girlfriend while she was out slobbing knobs for a five-spot on Seymour and Laymon, would you pay up?”

  Von, who’d never actually had a girlfriend—not a willing one, at least—said nothing. He slammed the phone on the counter and curled his arm around the Tupperware bowl, almost protectively. He looked at the spoon, remembered its origin, and raised the bowl to his lips. He supped from it like it was the last of the milk in a cereal bowl.

  “So you mean to say we ain’t gettin’ one red cent for what we’ve done tonight?” Greg asked.

  “That’s what I mean,” Sammy clarified.

  “You mean I had to put that guy’s . . . that guy’s thing in my mouth, and swallow it for nothin’?” Greg couldn’t have looked more outraged if Movie Heaven stopped renting out Gaping Anus.

  “Yep,” Sammy agreed. “The eternal plight of women everywhere.”

  “Well, that’s just low down as anything.” He sulked, miserable at the idea that they probably would be shopping for yachts right now if Von had just read his script.

  They were silent momentarily, stunned at this cruel turn of events, at a loss for words . . . the overconfident team who had boasted all along about their “inevitable” championship victory crusade, only to fall to the upstart underdogs. It wouldn’t have seemed possible for their night to turn out worse than Rochester’s, but here they were anyway. Every one of the involved parties, emasculated in one way or another.

  As if on cue, they all heard a sudden outburst of laughter overhead which could only be construed as demonic. It did not seem to be predominantly masculine or feminine.

  “Okay, I think we’ve had enough of your secrets,” Von said. He about-faced and left the kitchen for the stairs, carrying the Tupperware bowl with him.

  “It’s safer if you don’t go up,” Sammy warned.

  They ignored him. He tailed them with a sense of finality, not attempting to stop them. It was when they were passing the door to the Divided Man that a voice froze them. “Look down here, boys. I want to see your faces before I paint the walls with your brains.”

  “Who’s this B-movie actor?” Von asked Sammy as they all obeyed the directive. “Another one of your ‘art’ exhibits?”

  They found themselves seeing all of Horace for the first time, not just the fresh stump of his manhood jetting haphazardly like a lawn sprinkler. He stood at the foot of the stairs, deathly pale, with the front of his jeans almost entirely soaked in blood. He held a .38 on them. “From my glove compartment,” he explained. “I never drive without it. Guess I should have brought it inside the Electra Complex.”

  “I’ve never seen him before,” Sammy replied to Von.

  “Well, we don’t recognize him either,” Greg said.

  “Of course you don’t,” Horace sympathized. “We weren’t properly introduced before you ran off with my still-bleeding dick, now were we?”

  “He ain’t Edward Rochester,” Greg said.

  “Hell no he ain’t,” Von agreed. “The pale little son of a bitch is lying.”

  “Look at the front of my pants!” Horace shouted incredulously.

  “Homosexual and pale,” Von revised.

  Sammy sighed. “Allow me to translate for you two jack-offs—you didn’t castrate Rochester in the bar. Okay? You got this guy by mistake. Still with me? Now he’s going to kill us all. The perfect end to the perfect night.”

  “Wrong guy? Bullshit.” Von pointed at Horace. “Prove it.”

  Horace kept the gun on them while he undid the button of his jeans with his free hand and pulled his pants down. “You see now?” he asked triumphantly, then cried out when his underwear jostled the remnants. He had revealed something that looked more like a charred crater left by a meteorite than the external male reproductive system. His movements since the cauterization had teased open some of the heat blisters which had formed at the very base of his shaft (what little remained). Yellow pus was oozing over the rim of the blackened wound, the entrails of which were as indistinguishable as the remains of spontaneous combustion victims. The pus adhered to them like candle wax.

  “Well then,” Von said. “We stand corrected. But before you blow our brains out—” He heaved the contents of the Tupperware bowl in Horace’s direction. The contents splattered across Horace’s face, blinding him and—when he inadvertently swallowed some of them—ickening him. He covered his face with both hands, trying to clear his eyes.

  The trio scrambled into the Divided Man’s room and threw the door shut. Sammy had barely locked it and stepped back when the gun began firing on the other side, blowing out huge holes.

  Von looked around frantically. “There’s nothing here!” he said, referring to the lack of an arsenal. Greg gave the tube sock wide berth as he searched, also unsuccessful.

  The gunshots destroyed the lock and Horace kicked the door open almost effortlessly and rushed in. Sammy collided with him immediately, slapping the gun loose. Sammy drove him over to the far wall where they both tripped over the Divided Man and collapsed beside the body. Nearest to them, Greg snatched Horace up by his hair and the belt of his pants and dragged him a few feet over. Greg set Horace face down in the chest cavity of Sammy’s homage to Gray’s Anatomy. Horace’s face mashed the entrails flat and ripped some of the coils open. He inhaled the digestive juice remnants involuntarily, gagging as they burned his nostrils. They tasted even worse, he discovered a moment later, and he vomited explosively. At such proximity the bile washed along the inner walls like a gully, then rolled back under his face. He was dangerously close to drowning in his own vomitus when Greg let him go.

  Horace jerked his head up, gasping and trying to wipe his face off with the front of his shirt. He closed one of his nostrils and exhaled through the other. A burning stream of gastric juice trickled out, like the fleeting last seconds of urination. He turned in time to see that Von had picked up his .38 from the floor and aimed it from a crouched position which left the gun poised at point-blank range in front of his already decimated crotch. Powder burns fanned across his thighs as the deafening blast of the gun evolved to a painful ringing sound in his ears.

  Von attempted to punctuate by firing in Horace’s screaming open mouth, but the gun was empty.

  Horace wasn’t finished. He�
��d already lost the main part of his anatomy, and the power sources were extraneous now anyway. He watched with an almost detached fascination as his testicles dropped out of either side of his pant legs. Von intentionally stepped on one, bursting it like an egg yolk as Horace shouldered past him and out the door in a seizure-like fashion.

  Von and Greg helped Sammy up and followed the high-pitched screams. They caught up with him in the kitchen, just in time to see him snatch up the mallet Sammy had used to flatten Mary Jane Turner’s anus. They cornered him, Sammy around the left side of the kitchen island and Von and Greg to the right.

  Sammy ripped out a silverware drawer and removed a carving knife that wouldn’t have shamed Michael Myers. His eyes never left Horace, who was backed up against the kitchen sink, head jerking left and right to plot a plan of attack.

  Greg reached out to slap grab Horace’s wrist. Horace yanked it away and swung the mallet on reflex. It struck a glancing blow across the crown of Greg’s head with a hollow thwock! He stumbled backward and crashed into the corner of the room. He didn’t move.

  Von wisely backed away, scanning for a readily accessible weapon and finding nothing. He dropped to his knees as Horace swung for his head.

  Aware that Sammy was right behind him, Horace pivoted and blindly lashed with the mallet. Sammy was just out of range, but the next mallet swing struck the knife and sent it clattering to the floor.

  That was when Von reached up under Horace and grabbed a handful of his mangled crotch. Horace thought he felt something loosen and spurt, but he couldn’t imagine what was possibly left to do so. Horace’s vocal cords went taut as piano wire as he screamed, abruptly dropping the mallet.

  Sammy seized it and swung it at Horace’s head, putting his body into it. The mallet cracked loudly, with force brute enough to jar Horace’s right eye from its socket. A dollop of blood sputtered over his cheekbone. The eyeball had not been freed; it was still connected by a straining optic nerve, and for the first time in his life Horace could see his face without a mirror. Von’s hand was still wringing his crotch, and Horace kicked blindly behind him. He connected with something, and the hand was withdrawn.