by West, Sam
But despite everything, she just couldn’t bring herself to do it.
A low, throaty chuckle tickled the base of her neck, making her shiver and her head swim. “Then I’ll just have to do it for you.”
She screamed when he wrapped a forearm around her neck and she felt the hard press of the gun in her back. He was stronger than he looked; all wiry strength and sinewy muscle. With seemingly no effort, he walked her forwards towards the bed and shoved her down on it, face first.
“Please don’t do this,” she sobbed into the bedspread, her voice muffled by the soft material.
A rush of air hit her back, accompanied by a sawing noise of a knife cutting through material.
Bastard, was all she could think. Bastard, bastard, bastard.
In a matter of seconds, her back was cold and bare. There was a tugging sensation under her breasts, and she yelped when the under-band of her bra pinged sharply against her skin as it snapped.
His hands rubbed her exposed skin in a gross parody of a massage and she shrank away from his touch, repulsed to the core.
Next, there was a tugging sensation at the waistband of her jeans, followed by a rush of air on her bare rump. By the time her jeans and knickers were pulled down her legs, she was sobbing uncontrollably. Never had she felt so exposed, so humiliated and flat-out terrified in her life.
“You’re a lot bigger than your mum. I like it.”
His words chilled her. “What did you to her?”
“I think the question should be, what didn’t I do to her,” he said, all the while continuing with his creepy massage. “In fact, why don’t I show you?”
The pressure lifted off her back, then her hips were ground into the bed with him straddling her arse. Her body bounced slightly with the change in pressure and she kept her upper-arms tightly tucked into her sides, pathetically clutching her ruined clothes to her breasts. Her body twisted slightly to the side in tandem with his as he fidgeted on top of her. She heard his rucksack unzipping – the one that had been firmly attached to his back the entire time – then something with a reasonable amount of heft to it bounced next to her head on the bed.
She kept her eyes squeezed tightly shut, not wanting to see. Whatever it was, she knew it would be bad.
“Open your eyes, Claire. I brought you a present.” He sighed deeply and theatrically. “If you don’t open your fucking eyes I will fucking skin you.”
Her eyes snapped open… And she found herself staring into the bulging eyes of her mother. At first, what she saw didn’t make any sense. She felt her mind lurch, her brain physically jolt in her head with the magnitude of what she was seeing, with the realisation that there was no body attached to her mum’s head.
And then she was screaming and babbling incoherently, outrage and terror pushing her out of her mind.
“Shut up,” he said.
Fingers curled in her hair at the back of her head, pushing her face into the bed to stifle her screams. The bedspread and her own snot was suffocating her, the hot wetness bunging up her lungs and nose, her face burning with the heat of her own misery.
The lack of oxygen pumping round her body and the blanketing effect it had on her brain was almost a blessing; she welcomed the dizzying sensation and the promise of oblivion. As if Paul knew this, he fisted her hair more aggressively and twisted her head round so that she was facing her mother. Despite wanting to pass out, her treacherous lungs gasped for air. She kept her eyes closed, knowing that opening them again would shatter her mind and break her heart.
“I fucked her after I cut off her head. I fucked her neck. Look, you can still see my come.”
She didn’t look. Dimly, she was aware of his weight shifting on top of her, of the bed bouncing beneath them. Her legs were roughly shoved apart, followed by a rush of air on her vagina to be quickly replaced by probing fingers. She winced, trying to wriggle away from him, but his other hand was pressing down on her shoulder-blade, the handle of the gun digging painfully into the bone – a reminder of the consequences of not keeping still.
His fingers were replaced by the unmistakable push of his cock, probing at the entrance to her pussy. She kept her body slack, not even trying to fight off the onslaught.
“Are you a virgin?” he said, his voice laced with a desire that made her stomach roil.
She wasn’t – there had been one boy, which had fizzled out months ago – but the question barely even registered.
“Never mind,” he panted, driving his cock inside her dry vagina.
The act of the rape paled into insignificance compared to the fact her mother’s head was lying on the bed, right next to hers. The dry pain exploded in her lower abdomen bringing with it a bout of horrendous cramps, but still she did not struggle. The physical pain was nothing compared to her mental torment. Throughout the ordeal – which lasted a total of three minutes – she kept her eyes resolutely shut.
Suddenly, the loathsome weight lifted from her back and she became aware of a cooling slickness coating her vagina and smearing her inner thighs. The cramps disappeared, leaving a dull ache in their wake, but somehow, the extreme, physical discomfort was of little consequence to her.
The rustling noise suggested that he was rummaging inside his rucksack again, then some foul, chemical-smelling, damp fabric was pressed over her snot-clogged nose and mouth.
The welcome blackness engulfed her, shutting out everything.
CHAPTER NINE
At the top of the stairs, the main door to the Chamber of Terrors creaked open, and Paul leaped into action, killing the torch on his mobile and getting into position. He stood there in the pitch-black, the axe raised above his head. Paul was a few inches taller than the dummy of the Broadgate Butcher and he hoped that they wouldn’t notice – it would be such a shame to ruin the surprise. He thought of all the goodies he had waiting for his guests in the sports-bag and rucksack which were shoved under the butcher’s table, and smiled.
So far, everything had gone like clockwork. After killing Mary (and fucking her head in front of her husband – that had been so much fun) he had knocked his dad out and driven him here in his own car. After that, he had ‘collected’ Claire from her babysitting gig, driving her here in her father’s car.
Yes, it’s all going as smooth as fuck.
Just as he had hoped, Louise and Fay decided to forgo the overhead lights, instead switching on the Chamber of Terrors in all its blood-caked glory. The recorded screams of the tortured and the hammy, horror music danced pleasingly around him, making his cock instantly hard. God, he had loved this fucking job.
The two women clattered down the individually lit-up steps in their high-heels, the bottles of wine and beer clinking in their carrier-bags.
“Do I look okay? Do you think Ryan will fancy me?” Fay asked.
As it happened, Paul thought, she really didn’t look so bad at all. She wore a short, black dress and didn’t look nearly as fat as she normally did. In fact, she could almost be described as curvy, in the most ‘Kim Kardashian’ kind of way.
Or maybe it was just because he was so happy tonight that he was willing to see the best in people.
“Sweetie, you look gorgeous. If he doesn’t fancy you tonight, then he’s definitely gay.”
Fay giggled, pushing back her shoulder length, dark brown hair. Paul had never seen her with her hair down before – it framed her little round face, shaving millimetres off her cheeks and jawline.
Louise looked better than she normally did, too, Paul decided. There was no escaping her bleached-blonde, trashy look, yet somehow she looked ‘softer’ tonight. She wore an almost-demure, flowery dress to just above the knee, and her hair hung loose to halfway down her back.
Fleetingly, he thought of Claire. Louise was nothing next to her, a second-rate imitation that paled in comparison.
“Are we going to set up here, then?” Fay asked, stopping just a few feet away from where Paul stood, dressed as the Broadgate Butcher.
He had s
hoved the dummy in the stockroom along with all the other unused props and displays, but not before he had removed the blood-splattered apron and white, doctor’s face mask that the Broadgate Butcher supposedly wore doused with Lavender to disguise the stench of death. As luck would have it, the dummy wore non-descript, black clothes which were easy to emulate and the oversized apron and the butcher’s slab in front of him hid most of what he wore, anyway. Paul had even got a haircut to match that of the dummy’s.
With a stiff arm he raised his axe in the air – the fake one swapped out for a real one – and bought it down with a resounding thunk on the dummy’s severed leg.
“Sure,” Louise was saying, “it makes sense to. It’s the biggest bit of floor space down here.”
“Yeah,” Fay said, spinning round and looking right at him. “The Broadgate Butcher gives me the creeps, though.”
“That’s kind of the point. Come and give me a hand, will you?”
Fay stared at him for a second longer and he made sure to keep his eyes suitably glazed over.
Oh, shoot, is the game up already?
His muscles tensed in preparation to leap out at her, but she turned away.
Louise was busy laying out the checkered picnic rug, and emptying the carrier-bags of crisps and drinks. Fay helped, talking as she did so:
“Maybe doing this down here is a bad idea. It gives me the creeps.”
“You’re not wimping out on me now, are you? The boys can act as macho as they want, but inside they’ll be scared and too embarrassed to admit it. And you know what happens to boys when they get scared, don’t you? They get horny. Besides, it brings out their macho instincts. Ryan will want to protect you from the big, bad, Broadgate Butcher.”
“Shut up,” Fay said, but Paul could detect the tremor in her voice. “I mean it, I don’t like that dummy, it’s sick. It’s in really bad taste to glamorise a serial killer like that. I mean, he was a sex-killer, he chopped off women’s arms and legs and then he raped them as the life drained out of them.”
“Will you stop? Jeez, you sure know how to kill the party spirit. This is supposed to be good, clean spooky fun, remember?”
“Yeah, so you keep saying. At least the lights above the guy in the electric chair are out and I don’t have to look at him all night, too.”
Louise turned to look at the ‘Electric Chair’ display on the other side of the walkway, and Paul’s stomach lurched in anticipation.
If she goes over there, then I guess the action is about to start…
“Oh yeah, so he is. Maybe I should go see if I can fix his light.”
“Just leave it,” Fay said. “Please? The Broadgate Butcher is quite enough for me.”
“Okay, okay, you are such a spoilsport. But as it’s such a nice, dark, little corner, I might have to take Mike over there for a closer look. Maybe we’ll do it on electrocuted guy.”
“Oh my God, you wouldn’t. You are so sick.”
Paul listened to their exchange in rapt attention, excitement coursing through him. Louise’s giggles rang in his ears, and he thought about how much fun it was going to be when her laughter turned to shrieks of terror.
He lifted up the axe, but instead of bringing it swinging down into the fake leg, he waved it above his head in a jerking motion, doing his best imitation of a jammed robot.
“Oh look,” Louise laughed, “your boyfriend’s stuck.”
Louise stood up straight and Fay crept closer to her, her eyes wide with terror.
“It looks… wrong,” she finished lamely.
“Fine,” Louise said, “we’ll just turn it off. I remember someone telling me ages ago there are individual switches for each display, you know, if there’s a problem and stuff.”
Yeah, I heard that, too. I think James told me once there was one for him under his butcher table.”
That’s right, come take a closer look.
But neither woman moved.
“I’ll go then, shall I? My God, you really are quite pathetic,” Louise said.
Sighing theatrically, she clip-clopped towards him on her high-heels. His arm was beginning to ache with vibrating the axe above his head like that.
Here, kitty, kitty, kitty. Just a little closer…
Frowning, she approached him, not even looking at his face. She stopped right next to him, and even through the fabric covering his nose and mouth, her cheap, fruity perfume filled his nostrils. He smiled behind the mask, his cock stiffening. He didn’t think he could contain himself much longer.
“I can’t see anything,” she said, bending over to peer under the butcher’s slab. “Could you go and put the overhead lights on, please?”
When she righted herself, he swung the axe at her neck. It went whooshing through the air with a satisfying sense of heft, connecting perfectly with the side of her neck.
He hadn’t expected that chopping off her head would be so easy. Just like in some eighties’ horror movie, her head flew through the air, her long blonde hair streaming out behind it.
The glorious moment seemed to stretch on indefinitely, but in reality it was over in a matter of seconds. Her headless corpse toppled forwards, a great geisha of blood pumping from her neck-stump.
Only then did Fay scream.
Thank God it’s so soundproofed down here, Paul though as he pulled out his gun and pointed it at her.
This action didn’t shut her up, and she ran for the stairs, still screaming.
“Stay where you are, you stupid bitch!” he shouted after her as he yanked the mask off his face and lobbed it, but she paid him no heed. “Jesus, women,” he muttered, firing the gun.
The bullet hit her left shin, the noise of the bullet’s trajectory dulled by the silencer, and she went sprawling to the ground. Her screams gave way to funny howling noises that barely sounded human.
He leaned down and groped under the butcher’s slab for the big sports bag he had dumped there along with his rucksack. Locating it, he pulled it out and grabbed a roll of electrical tape – such useful stuff – and went to her, the bloody axe dangling from his other hand.
He kicked the writhing, sobbing woman onto her back and stared impassively down at her. God, it felt so God to have power over her at last. He’d been waiting so long to tear this bitch apart.
Quickly, he taped up her mouth, effectively severing her pleas before they ever really got going. Then he wound the tape around her wrists so that they were nice and secure in front of her chest. It looked like she was praying and he snorted laughter. When he was done, he grabbed her by her good ankle and dragged her across the floor over to Louise’s headless corpse.
It was hard going – a dainty, ballerina type she was not – and by the time he got there, he was all puffed out. He dropped her foot with a heavy thump and she screamed into the gag, although it sounded more like she was gargling on glass. He sighed heavily, beginning to feel a little sad that he had killed Louise first; she had been by far the biggest bitch of the two, and it was her that he had planned on having a shitload of fun with.
He shrugged his shoulders. Too late now, he would just have to make do.
He went to retrieve Louise’s head which had landed in a plastic bowl of hula hoops. He stuffed a handful of hula hoops into his mouth as he did so, blood and all, his growling stomach reminding him that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast time.
“Right then. Let’s have some fun.” He crouched down next to the sobbing girl and put on a high, falsetto voice, shoving the severed head right up into terrified face. “Do you want to have some fun, Fay? Ooh, I know, why don’t we get down to some girl on girl action before the boys come. I’m sooo horny.”
Paul rocked in his crouching position, shaking with laughter.
Hell, yeah, we must have at least half an hour left alone…
He planted a noisy smacker on Louise’s mouth, which was twisted open in a rictus of a grin, before placing the head in the sports bag under the table.
The waxwork of the young wo
man with the severed leg had to go, and he swept her to the ground. “Sorry love, Fay wants a go. But don’t worry, there’s enough of me to go around.”
Bending his knees and locking his back in position, he wedged his hands under Fay’s armpits.
Fucking hell, she’s such a lump.
His gaze swivelled in the direction of Louise’s headless corpse, a far better idea occurring to him. Abandoning Fay, he went to Louise. She was a little lighter than Fay, helped by the fact that her head was missing and, groaning and grunting with the exertion, he managed to get her up on the table on her back with her legs dangling over the edge.
“There,” he said, wiping away the sweat that dripped into his eyes.
Retrieving a pair of chunky scissors from the holdall, he proceeded to cut off the flowery dress, then through the white, lacy underwear. Her ruined clothes fanned out in a puddle around her body.
“Beautiful,” he murmured, dropping the scissors on the concrete floor with a clatter.
Reaching out for her tits – the very same tits that had got him fired – he gave them a hard squeeze. They were soft; too soft, and appeared to be nestling in her armpits. His fingers were swallowed up by the fleshy mounds and he squeezed harder, wishing that she were alive so he could hear the bitch squeal.
Letting go of her tits, he reached for the axe which was propped up against the table. He was aware of Fay crying into her gag and, clutching the axe, he twisted his head in her direction. Maybe he was mistaken, but it seemed as if she were further away from him.
“Are you slinking away from me, you silly slag? Should I shoot you in the other leg, too?”
Frantically, she shook her head, her red eyes wide with terror and black-rimmed with smudged mascara, making her look like a crazed panda. Patting the waistband of his jeans above his rump to check that the gun was still there, he lifted the axe high above his head, and brought it down with a resounding thunk into Louise’s thigh. The vibration of the axe-head hitting the bone reverberated up his arm, and didn’t follow through to the table. Blood oozed rather than erupted like a fountain, unlike when he had chopped off her head.