It was cold, bitterly cold even for the old-timers who had seen only a dozen or so severe winters in the past seventy years. The long January nights were tough on the old and tended to cull the pensioners each winter and thereby keep their numbers under control. It was bad for the old folk but good for the state. New blood would buy up the deserted and abandoned properties, bringing a much-needed source of income to the local workforce.
Gradually over the past decade, the isolated region to the south of Ocean Pond in Osceola National Park became popular with not only the local teenagers, who would go on romantic walks with their first loves, but also with budding entrepreneurs looking to make a fast buck. One such property situated by the decent-size lake, Ocean Pond, had been renovated for the specific purpose of renting to vacationers or anyone willing to pay the exorbitant rates that the owners were charging. Built in the early twenties, the house had seen plenty of summers and enough subzero winters to keep any penguin comfortable. Within the better part of a century, the house had seen only three owners, and the third had been just two years ago.
It was here that Ms. X set up the headquarters of her cell. Hidden away in the backwaters of Florida, embedded deep within its national park, was a Brothers Grimm nightmare, with unimaginable acts of violence being wrought on the innocent.
It was the following spring that teenage girls started to disappear from nearby towns. Within the first week of April four girls went missing. In the second week another three vanished, and by week three, thirteen girls between the ages of fourteen and seventeen seemed to simply vanish without anyone seeing anything. Then within a week of their disappearance, the hacked and mangled bodily remains were usually unceremoniously dumped outside their homes.
It was in the second week that the state newspapers and TV stations started to take an interest in this seemingly Hollywood Horror story. They began by sensationalizing the events, and by interviewing the boyfriends and closest friends. They even started to create a shortlist of the likely suspects, usually starting with the distraught parents.
Two solid weeks of madness were endured by this tiny corner of civilization, while the female populace was placed on the endangered species list. TV interviews were literally broadcasting on a 24/7 basis, while the police were pulling in suspects from an ever-growing circle of potential murderers and sex offenders, the sheer number of that last category shocking quiet townsfolk, as the vermin literally crawled out from under the woodwork and were exposed for their divergent ways.
The news teams loved the story. As each week would come to an end, one could almost see reporters holding their breath in anticipation should yet another gaggle of girls disappear or dismembered body parts be discovered outside the home of one of the growing number of panicking parents. They weren’t disappointed either. So it went on, until eventually thirteen girls had gone missing, then turned up, their bodies resembling the contents of a slop bucket at the end of a busy day at the butcher’s. Each one had vanished without any clue or reason, leaving behind a distraught family and a town that had been plunged into a living nightmare.
The unnamed road off Forest Road was a favorite jogging route for Jenny. For the last two years she used it religiously as part of her training for the track and field events held each year. This year she was determined to win at least one of the highly coveted cups and had devoted almost all of her free time to preparing for the event. Each morning she would run to Ocean Pond and back, no matter the weather. Sun, rain, sleet, or snow, she would be out there pushing her body to new limits. After school Jenny would once again don her running shoes, T-shirt, and shorts and again make the arduous journey to the lake and back.
It was Friday, and it had been a long week. Her legs felt like lead as she labored during the uphill jog to the lake. Even her willpower was pushed to the edge on this fine spring morning. Fridays were always the most difficult, which made her even more determined to get to Ocean Pond without stopping. As she rounded the final bend and caught sight of the massive inland lake, sweat rolled down her back in rivers, while the salty water from her brow stung her eyes. Jenny came to rest by the lakeshore and, catching her breath, she bent over, breathing out heavily, then brought herself to full height, then bent backwards, drawing in the cool forest air.
Looking out over the lake toward the east, she took in the almost-magical view of the early-morning sun rising over the treetops. It was this sight that was partly the reason for her early-morning runs to the lake. The lake’s surface was so still, it looked more like an immense mirror than an expanse of water. The rising sun and every detail of the forest on the far side of the lake were mirrored perfectly in its reflection.
Jenny knelt down at the water’s edge. The shock of the frigid water caused her to gasp a little as she splashed her face with cupped hands. Then, bending forward, she sank her face into the almost-freezing waters and reveled in the cooling bliss that numbed her overheated skin. Pushing a little deeper, she sank her head until it was fully submerged while blowing the air from her lungs. For that moment she was truly alive and in heaven, if such a thing were actually possible.
Pulling her head from the cooling water, she felt a sudden knock from behind, and the last thing she saw was a blinding light as she passed from consciousness to a place without time, space, and pain.
The thumping in her skull was a sign that she was alive, but its intensity was such that Jenny started to wish that she was still unconscious. There was movement and voices, both of which she could not quite make out. The language was somehow wrong and seemed almost alien as she tried to recognize the accent through the incessant hammering coming from within her brain. She saw the movement again, but this time she managed to make out the source of the motion and tried to speak. A sense of dread hit her like a train as she realized she could not speak and could not move. The gag was firmly in place and kept her from spitting out what tasted like a soiled handkerchief. As Jenny struggled, she realized that all the feeling from both her arms was missing. As for her legs, once again there was no sense or feeling of any type coming from either. In fact, the only feelings she had came from her torso and head and nothing more. It was as if she no longer possessed arms or legs.
Jenny’s eyes flew open in panic as she focused on her left arm, and then she turned her head to her right side and stared in disbelief at her right arm. Both were lifeless and colorless appendages that really belonged to a cadaver. Taking in the unbelievable sight, she wanted desperately to wake from this dream. Tears welled up in her eyes as the desperation of her situation sank in. She knew beyond any doubt that she was going to die in this room, and she gave way to her tears and accepted her inevitable doom.
Jenny’s head was knocked to the side as a well-built hooded man slapped her roughly about the head, trying to wake her. When finally he was done, he walked out of her range of vision and then returned with a chain saw. Jenny lost control as he started up the machine. Tears and urine flowed in torrents as the hooded maniac revved the small petrol-driven machine, then brought it down. As the rotating blades made contact with her right foot, Jenny tried to scream, but her efforts were barely audible through the noise of the chain saw. Jenny’s right foot, having been severed at the ankle, dropped to the floor without so much as a single drop of blood being spilt.
The next cut was through her knee, and her calf fell to the floor. Jenny could not see what the man was doing. She saw the chain saw raise and lower. Each time it did so, all she felt was her body shake. She calmed slightly as she realized there was no pain and further reasoned that this must be some prank, a prank that had gone way too far. With her fear Withd by anger, she intended giving this chain saw guy a good piece of her mind when he got a little closer.
The man with the chain saw never stopped, and having finished with her legs now repositioned himself to start on her left arm, specifically her fingers. It was then that Jenny noticed that at the tops of her arms were thick bands of rubber digging deep into her flesh, and she finall
y realized in horror what was happening to her. Put simply, each of her limbs had been isolated from their supply of blood. Without the supply, the arm drained and was literally dead. She would feel no pain no matter the operation performed on any of her limbs, which was about to be confirmed as the man brought down the whirring blades on her hand.
She wanted to die and tried to turn her head away as the man now started on her left arm. A set of hands grabbed Jenny’s head from behind, anchoring her field of view so that the dismemberment process would not, could not, be missed by the owner.
The fingers on her left hand were the first she saw to go. As the saw bit down into the knuckles, the fingers shook, then wobbled, then caught on the saw’s teeth, before they flew off toward the far end of the room and hit the wall. The next to go was her hand. The machine chewed through skin, bone, and gristle with as little effort as going through ice cream. The saw, having chewed through her joints, now chewed on the wooden table, instantly filling the air with wood chippings. Jenny screamed the loudest silent scream anyone could have produced as her mind reeled from the horror of the situation. This could not be happening to her. She wanted with all her heart for this to be a dream and wake from it. But no amount of dreaming, wishing, or wanting would save her from her destiny. It was the sheer lack of blood that had kept her mind from snapping until the very end, and when it finally snapped, her mind sank to a place cushioned and protected from pain forever.
From the outside she became a limbless body, alive, foaming at the mouth, and with eyes that would be dead forever. Hers would be the first body to be found, and from here on it only got worse.
Outside in the late-afternoon sun, the naked form of Jenny was hung by ropes between two trees. Armless and legless, she hung there as the two men prepared the camcorder for the final recording and also readied the cords that were attached to the rubber bands which stopped her blood from evacuating her body.
The cameraman behind the lens nodded to the hooded man, whereupon he pulled hard on the cords and released the four bands from Jenny’s upper arms and legs. The cord and bands hit the grass together as the first signs of crimson life spurted from Jenny’s shredded stumps. Within a few moments her stumps turned from a deathly gray to ruby red as her heart pumped blood down the torn blood vessels. From all four of her stumps, blood rained down from her carcass, spilling on to the emerald grass far below her. Hot blood pooled quickly below her and gradually soaked into the soil, leaving behind a dark shadow that would for years to come leave the grass a little greener than the surrounding area. Steam rose from the hot fluid, and Jenny faded from this world.
Having been released from an unimaginable terror, she returned to sanity at the instant of death, allowing her mind to freely experience passing into oblivion. The setting sun burnt into her retinas as the final spark of life left her destroyed body. Wherever she went now, she took with her a glorious sight.
For her there was no pain; she simply lost her sanity and her life. The high-definition video of the complete process of her body being ripped apart by chain saw was released onto YouTube. It was then accessed by millions before it was finally removed a full twenty-four hours later. Young and curious minds would be forever damaged and haunted by the thirty-minute video. Their innocence had been raped from their pure and inquisitive minds.
Jenny’s neatly laid-out corpse was discovered on the front lawn of her home the following morning, naked, with each of her body parts arranged carefully, creating a twisted, macabre puzzle of sorts. The boy delivering newspapers that morning stood gripping a newspaper between two hands while his gaze was fixed to the assortment of body pieces in front of him. His screaming woke the entire neighborhood and did not cease even when a little later he had been sedated and taken to hospital.
Already twelve girls had gone missing, four of which from the sleepy town of Middleburg. The mainstream television channels, network TV, newspaper reporters—and the list goes on—were all present. The highest concentration of station satellite trucks were parked nose to tail outside Wilkinson Junior High School, where reporters would ejaculate from the trucks when any student or teacher breached the school boundary. The school day would start as any other, with the bright-yellow buses heading for the elementary school only a hundred yards or so away. The hustle of mothers dropping off their young was more efficient than the WWII belly-laden bombers releasing their loads over Germany in 1944.
It was quickly approaching the final week in April, and already the body count had risen to twelve. The missing would usually turn up the following day, having been butchered in some sick and twisted way. The school buses were virtually empty, which explained why there were so many drop-offs by mothers and fathers on their way to work. With so many reporters and TV trucks lining the roads around the small town of Middleburg, one could be forgiven for comparing them to a coronary disease that had somehow been scaled up a thousand times.
The townsfolk tried to ignore the press, but it became impossible to do so, as on an almost-daily basis the number of abducted girls increased, resulting in a daily media frenzy.
Parents flooded the school grounds in the late afternoon, arriving early to ensure that their children did not come to harm when the afternoon bell rang. And so it came to pass that one family, one mother in particular, would be left standing in the middle of Co Road, screaming her daughter’s name long after the bell had rang and all the other children and families had departed.
“Leeesaaa! . . . Leeesaaaa!” the mother called.
Cars slowed and passed the distraught woman without hitting horns or complaining. Their drivers’ hearts broke for her, but they did not want to stick around too long, in case some awful fate would befall them as well.
The sheriff was already en route to the school but was too late to prevent the media from swooping in and surrounding the grieving woman. Her daughter was missing, probably gone forever, and they hounded her in true paparazzi style, shoving microphones, recorders, and camera lenses into her face with not even an ounce of sympathy or empathy for the woman whose universe was collapsing around her. It became all too much. She collapsed to the ground, slamming her head down on the road’s hard surface. She bled freely as she lay there unconscious and was still the focus of more than thirty cameras.
A little earlier . . .
Finally! Lisa thought to herself as the school bell rang.
Packing up her notepad, pens, and homework, she made for the classroom exit and had left the room before Mrs. Cohan, her English teacher, had a chance to object. Seconds later Lisa dumped her books in her locker and then shortly after was outside the school, keeping her head down to avoid being recognized by any of her mother’s friends. It had been almost six hours since her last cigarette, and she was feeling the nicotine withdrawal badly. She detested the addiction but loved the sensations the chemicals brought as they hit her brain, she especially liked the soon-to-occur high that she would experience with the first deep inhalations.
Fumbling in her jacket pockets for the cigarette pack and matches, she quickly skirted around the back of the TV trucks, thereby avoiding the crowding parents as they waited for their kids to leave the building. Lisa checked her six and thanked God out loud for the sanctuary that the trucks offered as she lit up, inhaling on the cigarette deeply. She loved the tangy taste of phosphor that was unique to lighting up using matches.
The buzz from the first nicotine hit caused her to lose balance and stagger a little, forcing her to lean on a white paneled TV truck. Lisa smiled as she blew out the gray-blue smoke. She flicked the match away and honestly thought that life could not get any better. And for her, she was absolutely right.
As she took in another deep lungful of smoke, the cigarette tip burnt a bright red and expanded its tiny destruction of tobacco and paper by almost half an inch. She checked her watch, figuring that she had about ten more minutes before her mother was due to collect her. Perfect! she thought. Just enough time for a second cigarette if she lit up a fr
esh one now.
She dropped the half-consumed stick to the ground and twisted her foot on it, putting an end to its short life, and lit a second. Even though there was only a minor buzz this time, she still relished every molecule of the poisonous gases entering her lungs and, seconds later, the wash of fuzzy over her mind.
Without warning, the world shifted to the side as she felt the paneled door behind her slide to the side, causing her to fall backwards into the truck’s interior. Several powerful hands grabbed her from behind and yanked her into the dark van before she could even gasp. The powerful hands were connected to immensely strong arms that almost crushed her in their viselike hold. Another hand was placed over her mouth and nose with what she thought was a slightly damp tissue. “Ew!” she tried to say as the pungent odor swamped her senses. The last thought she took from this world to the living nightmare waiting for her was simply, Yuk, that’s sweet!
The pain in her chest and stomach woke her from her chemical sleep. A headache the likes of which she had never experienced before now pounded away behind her eyes as she tried to open them. Blinding light from a hundred-watt bulb flooded her vision as she eventually managed to raise her lids, adding to the discomfort of the headache. The bulb hung dead center above her head, naked in what appeared to be a windowless room—perhaps a basement or cellar, she thought. Lisa tried to move but found to her horror that she was tied down to a table with plastic tie-wraps at her wrists and ankles. They were the kind of ties the police now used instead of handcuffs, but were really intended for the DIY enthusiast or electrician.
It was at that exact moment several things were noticed by Lisa, launching her into a world of fear, pain and panic. She was cold because she was naked.
Death Row Apocalypse Page 11