Party At Sheckler's

by Alan Spencer

  "Opening day for Rent-A-Death on 42nd Street, this one theatre, I recall, even the hookers and drunks stopped what they were doing to actually watch the movie. The crowd loved it. I never had so much fun at a movie showing.

  "Now, all horror movies are PG-13. There isn't good work for a special effects guy like me anymore. A real shame. Anyway, I got to find that girl, what's her name? She's my biggest fan, and she's ready to show me her appreciation. I'll find another room to plug her leak. Wink wink."

  Skip exited the room. Trudy rolled her eyes. "What a pig. Just as bad as the rest of them. They use their position to get laid. I'm glad you're not like that, Dominic."

  She kissed him sweetly on the lips.

  "Now let's go look at more gory stuff."

  Creepy synthesizer music made bwoooong sounds every ten to thirteen seconds. The bass shook the walls and sent a throb through the floorboards. This was the soundtrack to cleanliness...and death.

  The new room Dominic and Trudy had entered was a giant bathroom. They watched a woman shower behind a glass pane. She was buxom with her pert breasts, hard nipples, wild '80's thatch of pubic hair, tight aerobic body, and long platinum blonde hair that would've been frizzy if it weren't for it being wet. She posed, soaped up every curve, bent over, put one leg up, soaped that leg, turned one hundred and sixty degrees, washed her face while sticking out her tits, and made random orgasm faces. This actress was making the situation as masturbation worthy for the viewer as possible.

  The room was a mock up bathroom from the film Shower Slaughter. A haunted shower had killed two dozen people and the killings weren't slowing down. A seasoned, and alcoholic, detective is determined to get to the bottom of the crimes. Is the shower really haunted, or is it the work of something else altogether? The question is answered in Sheckler's ode to cleanliness.

  Dominic and Trudy stood there as the woman/actress/porn model washed herself real good with a giant sponge next. The actress kept re-soaping, rinsing, and soaping, with the zest of a young man whacking off to a magazine.

  "I feel odd standing here watching," Trudy said. "I feel kind of like a pervert."

  "But it's true to the film."

  "You're full of crap. You just want to see bouncing fun bags."

  "Yeah, sure. Guilty. And it's true to the film. The lead actress in Shower Slaughter has a seven minute and thirty-five second scene where she's soaping up, dropping that soap, rinsing, soaping again, and playing her assets up to the camera. It's hilarious."

  "Hilarious. That's the word."

  "You see that over there?"

  He noticed a door next to the fake sink. It had a small glass pane. He was about to look inside when a hand drew the small curtain behind it shut.

  "What was that about?" Trudy asked. "They sure didn't want you looking into that room."

  "Probably reinforcements. That poor woman will prune up soon."

  "Even your tits prune up if you take too long. I can't watch this woman clean herself anymore. I feel like I'm watching a puberty video in school. The hair down there ones."

  "Another room?"

  "You bet. You lead the way."

  Five hundred dollars. Picture it in your hands. Imagine it going into your bank account. Five crisp hundies. The type that stick together and you have to crinkle them so you don't accidentally spend the wrong amount of money. It's in your paws. Your mitts are overflowing with the green. All you have to do is make it five more minutes, and you can trade out with Mindy, or Cindy, or Barbie, or whichever bimbo.

  Those people are right.

  My tits are going to prune up if I stay under this shower any longer.

  Wait a second. I've been in here almost a good twenty minutes. That's way longer than I was contracted.

  This is bullshit. I'm going to shove this sponge up somebody's ass if one of those bitches don't come out and give me a break.

  I won't have to take a shower again for a week, the rate I'm going.

  Wannabe actress, one-time Elle magazine model, and ten time porn actress, Candy Sweet wasn't going to take another minute of this abuse.

  Ten minutes. I shower. I tag out. I dry off. Have a martini. Thirty minutes later I tag back in. I don't understand this twenty minute bullshit. My cooch is so clean it's shiny like a diamond for fuck's sake.

  Candy realized the room was empty. This was her chance to get some answers. She stomped out, grabbed a towel, covered up her goods, and tried to open the door next to the sink.

  The door was locked.

  She pounded it twice. "Hey, you guys! Someone needs to switch me. What's the deal? You get soap in your ears?"

  Candy kept pounding the door. Still, nobody responded.

  "Look, this isn't funny!"

  The door shot open. What she saw laying on the floor made her scream. The six other woman were strewn on the ground. Their heads were bubbling red.

  Candy's throat was squeezed. She was forced back into the shower. A man in a shower cap, swim trunks, and leggings covering his face was spewing evil words.

  "Bitch. You cunt. You're so dirty. You'll never ever be clean! You women are all the same!"

  The oddest feature of her assailant, beyond the shower cap and leggings, were the giant rubber gloves.

  "I'll wash you good!"

  She was under the shower again. The man dumped a container of shampoo over her head. She immediately heard the popping sound of hot bacon grease. Her hair was singed off. The flesh bubbled, puckered, and evaporated in seconds. Everything was coming down her face in muddy red streams. The acid from the shampoo had eaten her face down to the skull.

  "Now you're nice and clean, you dirty, dirty thing, you."

  Candy's body lay on the shower floor.

  Her head was a bright white skeleton.

  The killer locked up after himself and went about the night's duties.

  The third room Dominic and Trudy visited upstairs was instantly recognizable. The wall was covered in hooks and mounts. Those mounts held various bras stuffed with fake severed breasts. A wax figure of Jack the Ripper was positioned in the center of the room, thinking over the selection. A speaker in Jack's throat would say a line from the movie every few moments.

  "Oh, much too small for my purposes. They're the size of bug bites."

  "These have gone ripe. And they're full of worms. Damn. What a waste of good mounds."

  "Much, much too big. I'll have back problems if I wear these mega melons."

  "If she was a mother, she could feed a dozen babies with those jugs."

  "Mmmmmyeeaaaah. Just ri-ght."

  "This is fantastic," Trudy said. "The mansion's like an amusement park of horror movies."

  Dominic laughed. "I'm still stuck on the boobs hanging from the wall. I wonder what they're made of? They look so real."

  "Shooting this film was a nightmare."

  Both of them turned to be greeted by a familiar face. Trudy had met Reece Minton earlier. The financer of Sheckler's early films. He was smoking a fat cigar. He dug into his suit pocket for another cigar to offer them. They both declined.

  Dominic couldn't help but ask, "How was it a nightmare to film?"

  "For one, the actor playing Jack the Ripper was replaced three times. If you look close enough, Jack's make-up gets heavier and heavier to hide the fact. Jack also goes from rotund to skinny at the film's climax. And everybody on the set kept stealing the breasts and bras. I can imagine someone out there has a pair sitting on their mantel next to an urn of their grandma's ashes. Our effects guy would have to whip up a new set of ta tas on the fly. That's why the breasts look super real in some scenes, and as genuine as balls of Kleenex dipped in blood in others.

  "I never got my money back on that film. None of the actors got paid. I think Sheckler was the only one who got any money, and that was after making a deal with a Japanese distributor.

  "Ask me why I kept funding the films, and I can only shrug my shoulders. Maybe it was because I had the money. They were tax write-offs. I lov
ed the movies. And I always got laid. Something about these amateur actors getting their time in front of the camera really gets them going."

  Trudy made a sour face. Dominic knew the conversation went from highly interesting to this guy's a jerk off in seven seconds.

  Reece sensed this from Trudy.

  "Hey, I know what you're thinking, Gory Girl. You can exploit sex to sell your DVD's, but I can't do my own form of exploitation. Back then, those times were wild. We drank, we banged, we made movies. If a girl can take advantage of her body, why can't a man harness that female skin for his own advancement? It's a double standard. The industry reeks of reverse sexism."

  Trudy's mean eyes could tear a hole through space and time and reveal a new dimension. He was about to say something when Reece picked up on her tension yet again. The man realized what he said didn't make sense even to him.

  "Sorry. I've had a few too many cocktails tonight. I apologize. Liquor loosens me up a little too much.

  "Come on, let me show you another room. I hear the other ones only get wilder. How about it? Let an old man apologize for his idiocy?"

  Dominic squeezed her hand. "How about it? Let him apologize. He's got some good stories to tell. I'd love to hear more. It's why we're here."

  Trudy's snarl lifted. She caught onto what he was saying. "Yeah. Fine."

  "Great. I'll show you to the next room. Putrid Peter isn't the only guy who can play horror host in this town. And he can actually take a joke." He smiled at Trudy. "Just joking, honey."

  Dominic whispered to Trudy, "He's a dick. End of story."

  The three exited Jack's room. When they stepped foot in front of the overhang overlooking the first floor party area, something dropped from the ceiling.

  Dominic shoved Trudy aside, and Reece spit out his cigar over the ledge in shock.

  "Oh my God!" Trudy said. "It's Sheckler."

  Sheckler's body was hanging from the ceiling by a noose. The man's face was stuck in a gnarled death position. He was the deathly shade of strangulation.

  The cult director was very much dead.

  Putrid should've been knocked over by the series of secrets Sheckler revealed tonight, but he was too busy giving Minx the meat. How could he hold back his inhibitions? This cat was drooling all over him. She called him her "childhood hero" and kept throwing out the facts she thought men "grew more and more handsome with age" and how "she found older men sexually attractive." Talk was cheap, but she delivered on those words. Minx pulled him into one of the upstairs rooms, locking the door behind her, and stripped off her clothes.

  He never did a standing sixty-nine before. Minx was an acrobat, getting on her hands and throwing up her legs. His mouth was full before he could say anything to the proposition. When she was upright again, she shoved him towards the desk in the corner. She kept whispering in that sexy, needy, hungry lilt, "Anything you want. Anything you want, daddy. Do anything to me."

  Their sex was a living porno: licking mouths, biting flesh, sweaty pounding flesh, and an orgasm so wild Putrid couldn't help but yawp in victory, "Oh ye-aaah!"

  "You're just like a bear taking a cold swim," Minx said, out of breath. "My big studly bear. This was way beyond what I expected."

  Good. Because my back is killing me, and I have to pee like a horse thanks to my prostate.

  He wasn't about to tell her what just happened was a physical miracle. Minx had a way about her. She was still kissing and licking him in a way he could've gone for another dip in her lake if he didn't finally notice the details of the room.

  Class of 666.

  It's just like the movie.

  He remembered the plot of Class of 666. A small opening into hell occurs when a custodian digs a hole in the back of a high school to plant a tree. Hellish orange gases pop out and infect the custodian and a seasoned teacher, Mrs. Prudence. Both slowly turn the high school kids into demons, goblins, and Satan worshippers.

  Mrs. Prudence, as a standing wax figure, stood in her baggy school dress clutching a ruler sharpened into a point. She stabbed the eyes of insubordinate children with it during the film. The woman's once white hair was now tinted green. Her eyes were a burning red. Those fingers were talon tipped and neon green.

  On the desk they screwed on were severed fingers, tongues, and an apple covered in fake rotten maggots. In the corner was a demon child sharpening his finger in a manual pencil sharpener. The walls were chalkboards with 666 drawn in bloody finger font. In between 666's were phrases like: "Eat your parents," "Knock up your girlfriends," "Condoms are for losers," "Alcohol is the most important meal of the day," and "Clean your meat grinder daily for optimum taste."

  There were six desks in the room. Each had demon children with bulgy eyes, snarling mouths, and humped backs sitting. Some of the kids were gnawing on human limbs and guts. One of the kids wore intestines around his neck as jewelry.

  Nothing kills a hard on faster than this gory shit.

  Minx was loving the details. She touched the monsters, feeling their texture. "You think Sheckler would let us keep any of this after tonight?"

  "He's in a giving mood. Why not? The crazy guy is cutting people checks, giving away his movie collection, and spending gobs and gobs of cash on this party. I would say your chances are pretty good. And with that pretty face..."

  "You don't have to sugar coat it. Guys want to fuck me. I'm a commodity because of my body. I don't care. I enjoy sex. It's my right to enjoy it. It doesn't make me a slut or a whore. Guys get to play with their joy sticks and society accepts that. Why not the other way around? If that makes me scandalous, then so be it.

  "I've had this giant burden lifted off of my shoulders with Stan gone. I feel free. Absolutely carefree. I can go to bed tonight, close my eyes, and just sleep without thinking about a billion horrible things anymore. Anyway, I've always wanted to know what it was like to make it with an older man."

  "Gee, thanks."

  "I don't mean it like that. We can do it again when you feel up to it."

  "Most definitely."

  He searched the room. He saw a door in the corner and prayed it wasn't a closet. This must've been a master bedroom, because behind the door was a toilet and shower. He excused himself and took a piss. It was one of those post-sex pisses that made his teeth ache, it felt so good to release it. That was until he saw the pair of gleaming scissors open and close. They were about to snip off the tip of his dick.

  "The root of all evil! I'll flush it down in the sewer where it belongs!"

  "Oh my god!"

  A snarling woman with bright red hair hanging down her face charged at him with scissors going wild in both hands.

  Schick! Schick! Schick!

  "The word of God is not enough. We must sever humanity from its evil. Your cock is going down the drain!"

  "No it's not, you crazy bitch!"

  He backed up from the crazy woman and searched the area for a weapon. Everything happened so fast, he forgot this was a party, and that this room was supposed to scare him. Even when he recalled this information, the woman's face, she seethed with psycho energies. The way she wielded the scissors, she really wanted to snip off his manhood.

  Putrid decided to reach for the toilet lid and use it as a shield when the floor suddenly opened up beneath his feet.

  He hit the floor hard, unleashing a pained cry. The ground was inverted, turning into a slide. He plunged downwards. He was unable to stop his fast forward momentum. Darkness surrounded him. The hole in the ceiling closed back up with a loud slam. The scissor woman was gone. Where the slide ended, everything turned blood red.

  "Get him down from there!"

  Dominic was the first to race over to Sheckler's hanging body. Once he got there, he had no idea what to do. How could he get him down from the noose? The rope was connected to something installed into the ceiling. He couldn't reach it.

  "Does anybody know where a ladder is? Maybe lift me up. I can loosen the noose. Come on. Somebody help me. Please. I don't know w
hat to do."

  The party had come to a halt. Those downstairs were finally noticing Sheckler dangling from the thick rope. Everybody around the body were too nervous or in shock to act. Dominic had to do something. The director could still be alive.

  He's dangling above our heads.

  I can't get up there.

  Damn it.

  I can't let this happen.

  Hey.

  Wait a second.

  Something's not right here.

  Sheckler's body hung strangely. One side seemed lopsided. And the man's feet, one foot jutted out longer than the other.

  He pulled off Sheckler's shoe. He revealed a floppy rubber foot.

  This was a body cast.

  Sheckler wasn't dead.

  He fell to the ground without realizing it. He struck down hard. Everybody around him helped him up to his feet. He felt faint. He clutched at his heart, feeling it race.

  "Steady your breathing," Trudy was telling him. "Breathe. You have to breathe."

  Reece called out to someone. "Get him a stiff drink. This guy just got his ass spooked."

  "Shut up, asshole."

  "Whoa, sorry! Only trying to help, Gory Girl."

  Half the crowd on the stairs were worried about Dominic, while the others were laughing over the Sheckler dummy. Dominic could hear people pulling it down.

  Hank Baggs, Fracula himself, was dancing with the fake body, and saying, "Go ahead. Take some pictures. I won't charge this time! Hah hah!"

  Bart Brown had the noose and was pretending to hang himself.

  Skip Whitley was studying the dummy to understand the special effects. "It was a surprise that trick worked. Now that you look at it, it looks like a dummy in a Macy's store window. I could've done that. Easy. This is an amateur's work."

  Dominic was still trying to breathe. Trudy was really worried. She drew him in close. "Catch your breath. Calm down. It's going to be okay."