by Bark, Jasper
There was something about her voice, it was Suzy’s voice but the nuances were different, so were her mannerisms.
“Wait . . . Melissa?” said Jimmy.
“Oh, so you do remember me. I was beginning to feel a little neglected.” She patted the cushion next to her, in a coquettish manner. “Why don’t you come and sit next to me.”
Jimmy sat on the cushion. She put her hand on his lap and leaned suggestively close. Jimmy could smell the bitter tea on her breath, the oils of her hair and the sweat of her armpits. He pulled away without thinking. She pulled a face.
“Oh, I see,” she said. “You don’t fancy me when I’m wearing Suzy, and I thought you’d see beyond the flesh, to the real me.” She sniffed her armpit. “I don’t blame you I suppose, she could do with a bath and a make-over.”
“Melissa . . . how are you . . . what are you . . . ”
“Doing here? I wanted to see you. This was the quickest and easiest way to get to you. Poor old Suzy’s wide open to this sort of thing.”
“She says you’re trapped inside the footage.”
“I am . . . sort of . . . but not in the way she thinks.” Her mood changed quite suddenly. She seemed worried and furtive. She reached out for Jimmy and grabbed his arm. “You’re still going to come for me aren’t you? You won’t let me down?”
She turned away from him, her hand to her mouth. “I know I’ve no right to ask this of you, but you’re the only hope I have.”
The words cut right through Jimmy. “Of course I’m going to come for you,” he said. “Do you want me to get the footage to Suzy?”
“No,” she said, with sudden alarm. “For Christ’s sake don’t do that, anything but that. I can’t have her interfering with this. You promised to be my Dumuzi, remember?”
“Of course?”
“Well that’s what I need from you, come to Hell for me.”
“Hell?” Jimmy sounded alarmed.
Melissa made Suzy pout. “You promised. I need you. You said you’d come back for me.”
Jimmy put his hands to his temples. He was having a hard time with the emotional guilt. “Okay, but what do I have to do?”
“You need to find Mr Isimud.”
“And how do I do that?”
“Take the footage to the Tailor of the True Cloth.”
“Who?”
“Ask around, he’s hard to find but it’s not beyond you. Take the footage to him, everything else will become clear.”
“I’m really not following you, you’re not making a lot of sense . . . ”
“Quick, you have to go now, Suzy’s fighting me and I can’t hold her down much longer. She’s stronger than she looks. Go now, right now, before she comes back.”
She slumped to the ground and began to stir and thrash as though she were waking from a bad dream. Jimmy stood and let himself out the front door.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The footage ended and the screen went blank. Sam got carefully up from the sofa, so as not to hurt his cock. It was so chafed and raw it hurt to even look at, let alone touch.
He couldn’t decide whether to re-watch the footage, or grab a beer and some left over pizza. He hadn’t had anything to eat or drink in over eight hours. He looked around the room at the chipped paint on the floorboards, the mouldering furniture and the curtain-less windows. There wasn’t any pizza left. The discarded box was empty and so were the beer cans scattered at his feet.
His stomach rumbled in complaint. He was hungry, but he’d run out of provisions. He could order another pizza but that would mean going downstairs to the pub; the delivery guy wasn’t allowed up to the room. Going downstairs meant he’d have to interact with the people in the bar. It also meant putting pants on, and he wasn’t sure his poor cock could take that.
Maybe it was best if he just stayed in his room and watched the footage one more time. He’d rented the room, above the pub in Chalk Farm, so he wouldn’t be disturbed. So he would be left alone and it would be just him and the footage. He needed a place where he could watch it as many times as he needed.
Sam had lost count of the times he’d seen it now. It was just about all he’d been doing since that night when Melissa . . . when she . . . Sam couldn’t continue the thought. The memory of what happened was too raw for him to process, but it wouldn’t leave him alone. It haunted him relentlessly, crowding out every other thought from his mind. The only thing that kept the memories at bay was watching the footage.
The minute the footage stopped, the events of that night came flooding back. He still didn’t understand what had happened. He kept wanting to believe it was an hallucination caused by post-traumatic stress. That the events in the lock up had hit him harder than he realised, and he was seeing things.
No matter how hard he tried to believe this, he knew it wasn’t true. He had no idea how Melissa had done the things she’d done, or why she’d wanted to do them to him. Sam felt, on some instinctive level, that he was being punished for what he’d planned to do with the footage. No-one deserved to be punished like that though, no matter what they’d done.
She just hadn’t stopped. No matter how many times he’d said: “no.” He wasn’t sure when he stopped saying it aloud, but he kept on saying it in his head, right up until the end.
Wounds had kept opening up in her flesh. Every time something happened to the woman in the footage, Melissa’s body would spontaneously develop the same injury. Then she’d find some way to force Sam to penetrate it. Her blood coating his swollen member, layers of fat and muscle parting to welcome him inside. She gripped him with her sinews, tissues and stomach wall, refusing to let him soften till she was done with him.
Sam had fought the urge to come, dragging himself back from the brink of orgasm, hardly able to believe he could get aroused by what Melissa was doing to him. It was as if his body was betraying him, giving Melissa its tacit approval by getting so turned on. Just when he thought he’d mastered himself she would do something else to him and there would be another surge towards climax.
Sam ended up hating his physical self, not just for being so turned on, but for turning on him. When the sight of Melissa’s torn and ragged flesh got too much for him, Sam closed his eyes. This didn’t stop Melissa. Every noise the woman in the footage made, Melissa made simultaneously, as though they were a chorus of backing singers, wailing in pain.
Finally she fell off him and hit the ground with a sickening crunch. Sam could tell by the sounds of the footage that the blurred figures had moved on to the third man. He didn’t open his eyes to see what sort of state Melissa was in.
Sam just listened as the flayed and ruptured remains of Melissa crawled towards the door. He didn’t want to see what sort of shape she’d become, and that made it worse, never knowing quite what state his violator had been in at the end. His mind tortured him far more with the images it conjured from the wet, ruined sounds of her sliding across the floor.
The footage finally stopped and he waited a few minutes before opening his eyes. The studio was silent. There was a trail of smeared blood from the chair to the door. Even in the waning light he could see it was already fading.
Sam had pulled up his jeans and grabbed his coat. He shut the laptop and picked it up. For a moment he considered dashing it to the floor and destroying it, destroying every copy of the footage, but something stopped him. He wasn’t sure what.
He followed Melissa’s trail of blood as he left the studio, walked along the corridor and then down the stairs. It became less and less evident with every flight of steps and by the time he reached the door it had disappeared. Sam knew that by morning there would be no trace of it anywhere in the building.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
When he’d gotten back to his apartment, even though it was late, the first thing Sam did was get straight in the shower.
In a repeat of the night he got back from the lock up, Sam stood beneath the scalding hot water and tried to wash away the memories of the previous hours.
He was no more successful this time than he had been the last. No amount of soap or water could wash away the spectre of Melissa’s touch. He could still feel her ragged skin pressing against his, her breath on his cheek and her blood spilling out over his loins. Every time he closed his eyes he saw her face and the gaping hole in her throat.
His skin was red and smarting when he left the shower. The images in his mind were just as vivid. They weren’t the only thing he couldn’t escape. His whole body was filled with an invisible pressure, an insatiable need for release. He’d fought off his desire to come with Melissa and now it dogged him mercilessly.
Sam was reminded of a Sunday afternoon he’d spent, many years ago, with Amanda, his first serious girlfriend. She went to the sister school of his boarding school. They’d met at one of the crummy balls their schools set up and had actually hit it off.
Amanda was a day girl, so her parents lived in the area. Sam was allowed a free weekend every third week. Instead of hanging out with the other deadbeats, whose parents couldn’t be bothered collecting them, Sam would visit Amanda’s house.
He was allowed to stay in the annexe, where her Gran used to live before her coronary. He and Amanda had to be extremely careful sneaking into each other’s rooms because Amanda’s parents were like hawks, but otherwise Sam was always made to feel very welcome.
On this particular afternoon, Sam was lying on the patchwork quilt Amanda’s great grandmother made, with his trousers round his ankles, while Amanda gave him head. She was getting pretty good at it, too. Amanda had only had one other lover and Sam was a virgin before they met, so they pretty much learned everything together.
Amanda had just looked up, while he was still in her mouth, and caught Sam’s eye. She made a little ‘uh-huh’ noise to signal that it was okay to come in her mouth for the first time. Sam, who had been on the verge of letting go, hardly had time to get excited about this when they heard Amanda’s mother coming down the short corridor that connected the annexe to the main house. Amanda leapt up while Sam yanked his trousers back on, getting his boxers all twisted. Amanda’s mum had popped her head round the door to tell them that lunch was on the table.
Sam only noticed his fly was still down when he sat down at the table. Unfortunately, he probably wasn’t the only one who noticed, because Amanda’s dad called him away to watch the rugby on Sky Sport the minute the meal was over, and Amanda’s mum had Amanda come and help with the dishes. In fact her parents made sure they didn’t spend a moment alone together until it was time for Amanda’s dad to drop Sam back at school.
When Sam arrived, his housemaster called him in to his study and told him he’d be sharing his room with a Norwegian pupil, who’d just this minute arrived. He would have to share with Sam until space could be found to house the poor chap. Sam fell asleep that night to the sound of the Norwegian droning on about his cross country skiing trophies.
Sam’s dick had remained hard the entire time and the only thing he could think about was Amanda looking up at him and going “uh-huh.” Everything else that happened from that point on was just background noise. That one image and his desperate need for release drowned everything else out. The torment it caused was unbearable. Sam had never wanted to come so badly in his life and he hadn’t been able to.
That entire experience was nothing compared to what he felt when Melissa was finished with him. Every nerve ending in his flesh, every molecule of his body, was screaming with the need to ejaculate. The compulsion was like a rabid dog that had its fangs in his soul. He was haunted by the ghost of the orgasm he hadn’t had.
Sam spent nearly two hours trying to fight the urge, but it was a losing battle. His mind was under siege from the mental images and his body was wracked by the need for release. He had to do something to alleviate the pressure, to bring some release from the mental anguish.
He glanced at the laptop on the coffee table, and he knew the only thing that would quiet the torment he was in. He opened the laptop, pulled out his cock and clicked on the footage. He used gentle strokes to keep himself hard throughout the first death, saving himself for Melissa’s appearance. It was definitely Melissa in the footage. The whole experience had made him sure of that.
When she appeared on the screen Sam throbbed so hard he had to let go of himself for fear of shooting straight away. He wanted to draw this out, to savour every moment. He was so backed up he was going to need a huge build up to get it all out of his system.
The first orgasm, when it came, just at the point where Melissa expired, was so intense Sam strained his jaw from screaming. When he was done, the scream became a sob. A deep well of self-hatred rose up within him. He watched the final scenes of the footage with a dull-eyed gaze of despair.
When it finished, Sam took hold of his cock, clicked back to the beginning and started the footage all over again. That first orgasm, big as it was, hadn’t cleared away everything, hadn’t even begun to scratch the surface in fact. If anything, it only increased the pressure building within him, as though he was trying to release something that was too large for his body to contain.
The second orgasm did nothing to alleviate this, it only stoked the insistent urge. The need was so deep within Sam that he feared some poisonous desire had infected his soul and this was the only way to lance it.
Sam played the footage and brought himself off time and again until he collapsed from exhaustion and slept fitfully. When he woke, some hours later, he started all over again, but no amount of self-abuse could rid him of the phantom orgasm that refused to come. It had its claws sunk deep in the core of his being and the more he tried to discharge it, the more it clung on and tortured him.
At the end of the second day, Sam realised he wasn’t going to be able to dodge his mobile, his e-mail or the doorbell forever. Sooner or later someone was going to get in and get hold of him. He wasn’t about to let that happen.
He found a room on a local letting agency site, gathered up a few clothes, a couple of bags of provisions, and grabbed the laptop with the footage on it. Before he left, Sam made a point of destroying every back up copy of the footage. He was like a jealous lover, guarding the fidelity of his partner, ensuring no one could have her but him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Sam had been in the room above the pub ever since. Though he’d watched the footage more times than he could remember, he’d never seen the exact same sequence twice. The footage changed every time he watched it. That’s why he’d never been able to edit it.
To begin with the changes were quite subtle, but in time everything was different from the first time he saw it. At first Sam noticed how the blurry, shadow figures altered the way they tortured the three victims. They seemed to get crueller, more extreme and increasingly creative in the ways they flayed and dismembered them.
After this, the victims began to change, the two men he’d originally seen with Melissa were replaced with others, including the men who’d been in the lock up with Ashkan. The only constant throughout the whole of Sam’s viewing was the presence of Melissa. That and the almost transcendent way she bore the torture of the blurred figures.
In time Sam began to suspect that the footage itself had a basic consciousness, one that was devious and malign. He knew it was aware of him watching, that’s why it kept changing things. It was testing him, probing him, trying to discover the limits of what he could endure as an observer so it could push him beyond it.
That’s why it had killed Ashkan and his crew, torn their bodies apart and taken them into itself, where they could be tortured endlessly every time the footage was played. Ashkan and his men had weakened. They had given in to the horror of what the footage was showing them and they failed the test. They weren’t desensitised enough to the violence and atrocities.
Sam knew the only thing keeping him alive was the phantom orgasm that still plagued his being. That held him rapt, in front of the laptop, watching repeatedly, working his raw cock ragged until he was practically blowing air w
hen he came.
No matter how inured he was to what he was viewing, no matter how many layers of mental and emotional protection he put up against the horror of it, Sam had always known it was only a matter of time before the footage went too far, found the one thing he couldn’t stomach and claimed him. That had now become his main reason for watching.
Some small part of his psyche, some tiny part of his consciousness screaming away at the back of his mind, was demanding an end to what Sam was doing, to what he had become. And there was only one way to end it. The imminent fear of total destruction, of being claimed by the one thing he feared most, was the aphrodisiac Sam needed. It was the fuel he craved to ignite that last monster of an orgasm, the one that had claimed his soul and now needed to be exorcised from his being.
Sam reached into the tub of Nivea Creme on the arm of the sofa and grabbed a fistful, coating his palm liberally. In spite of the cream, the cracked and peeling skin of his cock stung viciously as he took hold of it. He started up the footage.
Sam noted the most recent changes with a dispassionate curiosity. It was a way of distancing himself from the footage, so it wouldn’t get to him. Sometimes the changes were so minor you couldn’t spot them, other times they were so profound Sam did a double take.
Whatever the changes, Sam never failed to get hard by the time Melissa came on the screen. The mixture of longing and violation she stirred in him always swelled him, no matter how sore he was.
The figures went through the same rituals of torture and dismemberment as they had the previous few times. If there were any deviations they were so minor Sam missed them. Until the camera pushed in for a close up he hadn’t seen before.
It focused on Melissa’s face looking directly out at him. From her expression and the way her eyes met his, he could tell she knew he was watching. The camera pushed in closer and Melissa mouthed two words. The shot wasn’t fully in focus, so Sam didn’t catch what she said. He narrowed his eyes in concentration and she mouthed it again. Two words: