Just like a spider:
Trap, kill, eat…
Trap, kill, eat…
“All the time you thought you were watching me, but I was watching you Shelby. Or The Music Maestro as you like to call yourself. I also know about all the other women you have killed, plus my parents: Mr. AC cannot keep a secret. Time to die Shelby, time I killed you, you son-of-a-bitch and add you to my conquests.”
She stood before the wardrobe: bathed in blood and hunched over slightly, playing the knife back and forth between her open hands. He tore the earpiece away and steadied himself, trying to calm his heartbeats. Shelby threw the door back, and stepped out into the room – his small knife in hand, the blade standing erect and ready.
“That’s it,” she said. “Come to mammy, you big bastard.”
He lurched forward then she followed suit, and they met in the middle of the room with a clash of steel…
* * * *
“Ooo, that was a good story!” Crystal said.
“Yeah, too fucking right! The illustrations were pretty fucking shithot, too.”
“Messy,” she whispered, as Harry spoke.
“What?” he said, sharply.
“I just said,” Crystal started, taking her eyes off the road to look at Harry, briefly, then back again. “Messy.”
“Ha-ha,” he grunted out, whilst munching down on the end of his cigar. “He kicked the fucking moggy into the fire – I love the way we can see the thing burn up like a candle!”
“That was pretty…Harry!” she shouted.
“What?! Can’t a guy scratch his nuts in peace, for fuck sake woman!”
“God, you’re unbelievable on times, you know that?” she said, smiling.
“Maybe you’re jealous, because you ain’t got the same equipment to scratch? Or maybe you’d prefer to be doing it for me, hmm? I’d like that.” Crystal didn’t say anything, just remained silent, looking forward. “Not going to answer me?” he said, rubbing at his groin with one hand, whilst his other hand slid up Crystal’s thigh. She slapped it away.
“Please, Harry. Not while I’m driving.”
“Whore,” he said, turning back to the book.
“Don’t be like that. You can see I’m driving…”
“It ain’t stopped you in the past.”
“Yeah, well, maybe I’m not in the mood. It’s not all about you, you know?” she said, looking over at Harry, who was still rubbing his crotch. “Leave it alone, or it’ll fall off,” Crystal said, smiling.
He turned to her, his teeth gritted down tight on his cigar, his eyes narrowed. “I’m going to fuck the living shit out of you when we get to Porthcawl. Make you bleed like a virgin. Fuck you so hard, you’ll think a freight train has passed through you!”
She shook her head, and giggled. “Oh, Harry. You say the sweetest things. You sure know how to make a girl feel special.”
“Glad you fucking know it.”
Another car whizzed by them, as the sun grew stronger in the morning sky. With the small town of Llwynypia well behind them, they now drove through Pentre, on route to Treherbert and the mountain road that would lead them to Hirwaun and Castell Hirwaun – a hospital for the criminally insane.
“You going to read me another story, Harry?” Harry didn’t answer, so Crystal looked over at him. He just sat there, the book open in front of him. “Harry, what’s the matter? Are you ignoring me because I won’t let you touch me?”
“Give me fucking chance, will you? I’m looking through the book a minute. Okay with you?”
“I…”
“Shut it, or you’ll get one of these,” Harry said, shaking his fist in the air at Crystal.
She shrank away from his threat, already fearing a harsh time off him once they were settled in Porthcawl for not letting him have his dirty way with her – he could be so rough. Never tender. The thought shot a pulse of pleasure through her pussy, making her g-spot tingle.
Her hands tightened on the wheel.
Her face flushed.
“What the fuck’s going on with you over there, hmm?”
“Nothing – just waiting for another story.” God, if he was to touch me now, she thought, she’d be willing to be taken by him right here in the van, parked on the side of the road.
“Okay. The next one hasn’t got any pictures in it to look at, it’s just a story, so I’ll read it to you. It’s called, “The Quiet Room.”
THE QUIET ROOM
They’re coming. I can hear the soft squeaks of their shoes on the freshly mopped floor; very faintly mind you. It was Phil’s shift on the mop today. I like Phil because he speaks to me through the door, though I have to press my ear tight to the padded entrance to hear him well. And they have that trolley with them, being pushed at a hearty pace by Miss Tudor no doubt; and it would be holding all the usual implements for my morning visit: drugs, a wash cloth and bowl full of lukewarm water, a safety razor and a small snack.
A key rattles in the door, and is then edged open, a male nurse that has to duck down a little is sent in first, along with another to sedate me, just in case I should make a grab for the plastic spoon on the tray, and try to go for their throats or eyes, or heaven forbid my own wrists. They know what I like to try and do to myself when I’m not inside the quiet room. Hell, they have even taken the laces from my shoes.
“Morning Mr Stevenson,” coos Miss Tudor, as ever. “Are you going to be a good boy, and let Dexter and Roger clean you today?” Same rigmarole every morning.
Roger sticks the needle full of happy juice deep within my arm, making me buck and coy away in misery; the serum feels thick as it flows through my veins.
“Come now Mr Stevenson, you wouldn’t want Roger here to hurt you due to your negligence would you?” I’m sure my slight whimper makes her happy. Happy for all the trouble I have caused her over the years. Why does she still insist on calling me Mr Stevenson? And not by my first name – whatever it is; I did know at one time, a time before that day. They say I have amnesia.
Whatever it is that Roger shoots me full of always has a stealthy effect and the mist comes down for a good thirty minutes. Just long enough for them to manhandle me.
I’m barely awake as I’m placed into a chair somewhere outside of my cell – I never know where it is they take me to clean and shave me. I can hear Roger and the new ape, Dexter, talking about me.
“You need to watch this one, brother. Butchered his entire family in a wood not far from here on a sunny summer’s day. Just like that. I heard he cut his kid sister up with a chainsaw, a fucking chainsaw!” He smiles as he tells the other man this. Roger always likes to tell the new ones about me. Fucking liar. I’ve tried to defend myself in the past, but it always fell on deaf ears. Just like that police officer in the interview room.
“But there was nobody found out in those woods apart from you, see, crwt bach, how do you explain that? Your family didn’t just decide to kill themselves, now did they?” Smart arse I could hear myself shout back at him. After that, I decided to keep quiet. Silent. I have not uttered a single word since. I guess that did nothing to prove my innocence either.
By the time I come back round, I’m being fed the stone cold soup they have on the trolley, washed down with drugs and water. Then left until they see fit to give me more pills, morphine or meth.
Whilst all the commotion has been going on, He’s been standing behind Tudor and the other two, mocking me with his warped grin. After the feeding of the soup and drugs he slowly starts to vanish, and will be but a dream when twilight arrives.
Miss Tudor has left in the air a hint of coconut that takes me into a warm fuzzy limbo, between sleep and awake – and I can see my sister and I picking flowers for our mother when we were kids, in a field behind our house: it being mum’s birthday the following day and us wanting to get her some freshly picked bluebells, her favourite. The smell is intense, and my head is filled with sounds, birds singing in the trees, farmers out collecting hay in nearby fields, drones o
ut of their hives, and a voice I once knew.
“Mummy says you have to hold my hand.” Jeez, I hope none of the guys from school see me.
“Pleeease, hold my hand.” The sight of her crimson cheeks melts me inside, and I cannot resist. Who gives a shit if anyone sees me?
“Fank, yooou.”
As we walk through knee-high grass, we stop here and there to pick flowers which are then placed into a wicker basket belonging to our mum. My sister’s sun coloured hair that’s blowing wild in the summer breeze finds its way into my mouth, and for some reason my mind fills with the thought of drinking coconut milk.
She normally likes to place her hair in pigtails, and when it’s down I like to brush it through for hours. My fingers get into a right fix if I try to plait it for her, and it always invokes her ‘piggy laugh’, as she likes to call it. We’re very close.
“Shall we just get bluebells for mummy, or can we pick her some others too, like those pretty yellow ones?” Her head gesturing toward a patch of daffs growing wild under a big oak. Its branches stretching out its leaves, depriving the flowers of a full on sunbathing session.
“Okay, if you think she’d like them too.” I know full well mum will, because even though bluebells are her favourite she has a weakness for all types of flowers.
“I just love the way in which they air the house out with their floral aromas,” she’d say.
The field doesn’t just contain wild flowers, but also cows. They belong to our father (I think) and he’ll be taking them to market before long in Carmarthenshire. That’s the closest one to our home in…err…in…in… the name of my town has escaped me, much like my sister’s name…God, I wish I could remember it.
But hers – along with my mum and dad’s – is just a faded memory. And as I try to focus on remembering their names the pleasant dream of my sister and I holding hands in a sun-drenched field turns from gold to black, as it’s twisted into that day long ago, and I’m back there once again…
* * * *
He burst from the trees with a sickle in one hand, and a hay-hook in the other. The farming implement is plunged deep into my mother’s neck and pulled back sharply – ripping open a main artery, which pops. Bone cracks – blood is sent spraying into the air, sprinkling leaves directly above her – the sound so vivid in my mind – now. My father doesn’t stand much of a chance either, as the sickle comes swinging up (cutting off three of his fingers) toward the chin, and punches its way through his saggy flesh. My dad’s mouth crunches, and a bloody shower erupts out of his mouth, spraying the sandwiches and fairy cakes my mum has made for my sister’s birthday picnic; small flecks find their way onto the blankets we’ve put down.
The idea of being dragged to a sissy picnic had sounded so shitty to me two days ago, but now I’m somewhat glad to be here, to try and at least protect my sister. I grab her, jolting her from the hysterical state she’s slipping into and we turn to run. But not before seeing him ditch his utility belt from around his waist, that had been holding his weaponry, then turn back into the trees, bend, and come back up with a chainsaw. The thing shakes to life in a smoke-filled roar and I can just about see my dad in the haze, collapsing to the floor, trying frenziedly to dislodge the sickle from his throat with one hand, as his other tries to stem the blood. The buzzing cuts off his dense gargles.
Now we’re running through the woods, but no matter how fast we run, we cannot seem to outpace him. His chugging weapon grows closer from behind, and I feel his hot breath, biting at my bare shoulders; I wonder if my sister feels it too?
As we near the verge of the woodland, my sister is dragged to the ground – I halt, naturally, and turn just in time to see her whole bloody crescendo: he whips his saw across her young, delicate throat, and I catch a hot spray of blood across my face, making me flinch; some of the crimson liquid finds its way in between my lips. It has a salty taste to it.
His face is pulled back in sinister folds of skin; his lips exposing yellow soiled teeth that resemble weathered tombstones; his fat, naked body coated in sweat – fusing his chest hair together in clumpy knots. As my sister lies dying in a spasmodic dance that only the departing can perform, I can do nothing for her as I stand frozen to the spot, tears streaming from my eyes. But I have to do something, because when he is finished nuzzling at her open throat it’ll be my turn, and I’m not about to die in vain like my sister and my parents before her. So I take to a thick, fallen branch to my side and hoik it from the leaf scattered ground.
This brings his burning glare my way, and as he gets to his feet, a shot of semen explodes from the tip of his penis, and mixes with blood and leaves. He bucks slightly, recomposes himself, then stalks toward me with his chainsaw in revving tow; strings of saliva mixed with blood and flesh cling from his drooping, lower lip. His penis still stands on end and gleams with satisfaction. I hold the branch out in front of me, and he slashes the timber in half with his cutting implement. I get a face full of smoke and chippings, and the smell of singed wood stuffs my nostrils. My back finds a tree, and he closes in for the kill – but his chainsaw sputters to stillness and his face loses its tightness. No more petrol. He looks down at the weapon in shock, or maybe it’s panic. Then throws it to one side, and runs off, back into the thick trees where he’d first sprung from – giving me a throat slitting sign with his finger as he does so.
My bladder releases. A hot gush of fluid finds its way down my leg, soaking my jeans. My knees buckle, and I slide down the tree. I’m a quivering wreck, but I manage to get back to my feet, pick up the saw and have a mindset to go after him, cut him down. But I fall, and land by my sister’s side. I see her take one final breath. By the time the police show up. I’m found clutching my sister close to my body. My ability to communicate is almost gone. I’m just a gibbering wreck as they take me away.
* * * *
I’m awake, just like every other morning for the past twenty, thirty or forty years, I’m bathed in sweat and half hysterical with fear; my throat aching and begging to be freed from the screaming. Nobody can hear my wails of terror from inside the quiet room, or, if they do, they just don’t care anymore.
I think I hear the sound of the trolley coming, but then vaguely remember that had happened yesterday. Where has my sister gone? We had just been picking flowers.
The date of that day in the woods is lost in my head forever, along with lots of other information. Now, all that remains in the dark of my brain are his sadistic ways – the slaughter of my family members – and, for some strange reason that escapes me, one chunk of a song, sung by a rock star that’s long forgotten in my past, in a time that was fuelled with booze, weed and rock music – innocent days of youth –
They have a place
Where I have been kept
Where I won’t hurt myself
Can’t get the wrists to bleed
Don’t know why, but
Suicide tempts me
The room
Is sterile in white
A tomb
With just a stained naked light
The nightmare and the lyrics – which are confused – seem to be more vivid the closer I get to the grave; it’s not just the “night terrors” as they like to call them anymore. But daydreams have started to set in. I see him standing over me sometimes waiting to slice me in two with his chainsaw, and do God knows what to my withered twitching corpse. He’s here again in the quiet room, sitting in the corner with his saw by his side. I hope Tudor comes with my morphine and meth before long, to make him go away again. But I don’t think she will come soon enough, because now he is rising from his spot in the dusky padded room, pulling at the cord on his petrol-powered machine, whilst lumbering my way. I pull my knees up to my chin along with my single solitary blanket which I’ve been allowed to keep, and think the lyrics over in my brain to try and drown out the roaring of his chainsaw –
They have a place
Where I have been kept…
* * * *
&nbs
p; As Harry finished the story, he noted the van was slowing down. He lowered the book so that he could see over the top of it, and saw Crystal pulling into a petrol station.
“Aw, I feel sorry for Mr. Stevenson,” Crystal said.
“It’s just a fucking story, woman.”
“I know, but still. I really felt for the character, seeing his family killed like that.”
“I liked it when the killer jizzed over the fucking pussy’s sister.”
“Is that all you ever think about?”
“Yeah. Now get out and fill this moving skip up with diesel.”
“But why was he a pussy?”
“He could have tried to help his sister, instead of just standing there wetting his drawers!”
Crystal rolled her eyes, carefully, so that Harry didn’t catch her doing it. As she brought the van to a complete stop, she looked at the petrol station they had pulled into.
The place had seen better days: it stood alone at the start of the Rhigos mountain road in Treherbert. The battered, rust-eaten Esso sign which hung on an equally decayed poll, squawked gently in the morning breeze. The petrol pumps looked as though they had been there since the place opened back when Noah was a boy. The shaky, weather-beaten wooden doors to the MOT test bay centre were closed, and spider-web cracks could be seen in the glass. Some of the slates were missing from off the roof, too.
The office wasn’t in a much better state of play: the metal bars over the windows were cracked and chipped. Someone had also spray-painted a giant cock onto the door, with semen spurting from the tip.
“Very creative,” Crystal said.
“Who built this fucking shithole? Jack, after he got through with his house!” Harry asked, then proclaimed.
Crystal tittered.
Just then, the tattered door to the office flew open, and a young, slight woman stepped out; she was no older than seventeen or eighteen. Her short, blonde hair was just visible under her peaked hat, which was back to front on her head. She wore oil-stained overalls, which had Esso stitched into the fabric just above her left breast. Above her right breast was a pocket, with a rag of some sort jutting out of it. She held a spanner in her right hand. A smudge of grease was visible on her nose, with a line of dirt smeared across her brow. She was smiling, all big and bright.
White Walls and Straitjackets Page 2