Stalked

by Louise Krieg

  "Well, I can tell you that we're not dumb," John said with a slight smile.

  "You are if you hear my story and still come. I'm possessed by a murderer and people still take up my offer." Mr. Slasher said.

  "Well, we figured that you just had that story to scare off people."

  "No." The man said bluntly.

  John couldn't tell if the man was joking or if he really did think that he was a murderer but the group was there now and it didn't seem as though he had any intention of murdering anyone. Truth be told, the man had kinda reminded him of his grandfather when John was still a small child. He remembered that his grandfather always had a serious composure even when he had told a joke and it was difficult to tell when he was happy. This man had a similar look and feel. He wondered if it was due to what they needed to do in order to survive the wilderness that caused the seriousness and the lack of emotional empathy. He was pretty bad at empathy himself, but at least people knew when he was happy or sad.

  "Hey, guys. I got about two pounds of it." Juice yelled as he came back into the clearing.

  He was carrying what looked like a heavy satchel of brush and the smell of it was extreme, like that of curdling milk. Pot had a distinct smell to it and if you had smoked pot before, the smell would be delicious. If you hadn't, the smell would make you want to gag. The man seemed to know this as he looked at each one of them and saw Jonk convulsing slightly.

  "So, you brought a newbie up here?" Mr. Slasher asked.

  The three of them looked at the man and then looked at Jonk. Jonk bashfully smiled and bent her head down in slight shame.

  "What? I've never smoked before. You guys just never noticed that I passed the joint without smoking it." Jonk said.

  "What's wrong little lady? All of those commercials telling you weed was bad?" Mr. Slasher questioned mockingly.

  "I don't care for it," Jonk said, slightly angered by the man.

  "Juice, take out a bud and roll it." The man said, looking directly at Jonk.

  "We don't have any snacks. We left them back at the car." Juice pointed out.

  "You think I'd be smoking weed every day and not have munchies? I've got a few fridges inside." Mr. Slasher pointed out, "Now, roll it up."

  "I don't think she wants any," John said.

  Mr. Slasher came over to John and looked down at him, "She smokes or no one gets any."

  "You can't do that."

  "Oh, I believe that I can. Are we going to have a problem?" Mr. Slasher asked as a smile broke out across his face.

  "No, it's okay guys. I'll smoke some." Jonk said nervously.

  Mr. Slasher walked over to Jonk, who trembled underneath his shadow. Then, in a weird moment, he was no longer menacing when he bent down.

  "You seem like the nerd of the group, so it's time to learn some interesting facts about the so-called bad pot. The only reason why it was made illegal is because the lumber company wanted to monopolize on the building trade. You see, weed is useful for all kinds of things and one of them was a building material that was better than wood. The Native Americans have used weed as a medicinal chill pill longer than we've known about it. This supposed devil drug has never killed anyone and I heard on the telly that it even helps people with cancer. It's not like the other drugs in the drug trade, which can make you peel off your skin or accidentally kill someone with a car. It's a drug of peace. Why do you think so many hippies used to smoke it?" Mr. Slasher said, smiling at her.

  "Oh, well, I suppose it can't be that bad then. I always see them try it, but my family is very strict about drugs and what they can do to you." Jonk said.

  "I know. Since parents have had kids, we've always had the overbearing parents. It takes other kids and parents to break them out of that habit." Mr. Slasher said as he rubbed her head.

  "So, where did you want to smoke this thing?" Juice asked.

  "Let's go inside." Mr. Slasher said.

  The group followed Mr. Slasher inside, which seemed somehow much bigger than what they saw on the outside. John wondered if this was from all the years that he had people come out here and buy stuff from him or if he was already rich when he moved out here. There was quite a big living room with a stairway in the middle of the house leading up to the second floor. The living room had a fireplace with a large projector cover hanging just above it that looked twice as big as the current televisions sold at the store. It also seemed like there was a refrigerator in every single corner of the house on the first floor and each of them was massive in size.

  "Wow, this place is huge." Juice said, looking up at what looked like the wooden version of a church ceiling.

  "How does a place like this exist?" Janice asked.

  "I started working on it about ten years ago when I came out here. I didn't like the idea that my log cabin made me feel like I was living back in the past, so I began expanding on it. Slowly I've made this place bigger." Mr. Slasher said.

  John was beginning to like the man that they had come to see and he wasn't anything like what he previously thought the man to be. He had a rough welcome, but the man was generally nice to be around and having a massive indulgent-inducing house didn't hurt his personality either. The group sat down on the couch and Juice brought the joint to his lips.

  "No, no. Let the newbie get the first burn." Mr. Slasher said.

  "What?" Juice questioned but quickly complied with the man's steely gaze, "Alright, here Jonk."

  Jonk grabbed the joint and looked at it, followed by looking at everyone else. She put it up to her lips and lit the joint, taking in a deep drag while the rest of them snickered. Jonk coughed and hacked as hard as she could as soon as the smoke hit the back of her throat.

  "You never want to deep drag on the first go. You want to ease into it. Otherwise you'll get high too quickly and cough all the way there." Mr. Slasher said, as he grabbed the joint from her, "Anyway, how did you get the name of Jonk? That sounds like a rather weird nickname."

  "Well, these guys gave it to me. John and Janice are the only ones without nicknames, and Juice came with his own nickname when he met John. It was when another arrogant nerd came up to me to argue about something. I don't remember what it was, I just know that it could not have been that important for me to have remembered it. Anyway, after I won the argument, John said that I was a nerd killer because I had completely destroyed him. At the time, he was obsessed with giving me a nickname because I was a tutor of his... still am actually. So, he started calling me the Judge of the Nerd Kings. When I told him to stop and that the nickname was way too long, he said Why not Jonk?, and I decided to let him have it."

  "Wow, that's a weak story." Mr. Slasher said, passing the joint over to John.

  "Well, you asked. So, you got the story." Jonk said.

  "Well, if you live long enough I would suggest that you come up with something better."

  "How did you get possessed?" Juice suddenly asked.

  "What? Oh, well, my mother stabbed me." Mr. Slasher said, lifting up his shirt to show them his scar, "She stabbed me right here and as I was dying, I became possessed by Mr. Slasher."

  "Wow, your mother stabbed you?" Janice asked, "What did you do?"

  "What did I do?" Mr. Slasher asked, "You think I got stabbed because I was bad?"

  "Well, I didn't mean to offend you but it sounds like you did something," Janice said.

  "I'm going to kill you first." Mr. Slasher mumbled.

  "What?" Janice asked, leaning in to hear him better.

  "I said, sometimes you don't need to actually do anything to get stabbed. Sometimes people just don't want you to exist. Anyway, enough of this dark talk, I'm souring the mood. Let's talk about something else." Mr. Slasher said, quickly diverting the conversation.

  The group continued to talk as the sun began to go down and night came about. Janice was the first one to nod off, then Jonk and John were next. The last one to fall asleep was Juice, who drifted off into a sound dream of food. Mr. Slasher got up from his seat and he
aded over to the kitchen, grabbing a knife. Then he came back over to the group, snickering as he heard the lot of them snoring. Quickly stabbing Janice in the trachea, he watched her eyes open in a panic as he held her down with a single hand. She gurgled as the blood quickly left her body and within moments she was peacefully asleep this time, but a much longer lasting sleep.

  Mr. Slasher grabbed her hair and dragged her across the floor to the basement. He knew the kids would be out for quite a while, but he wanted to make sure to clean up the mess he made immediately so that he could be meticulous in his work. It didn't matter if the police looked for blood, this was, after all, listed as a hunting cabin but it would delay the amount of time the kids had to escape because they would only notice she was gone, not dead.

  Mr. Slasher put her up on the table and went back upstairs with a mop bucket with some oxidized soap. Cleaning materials with oxidization took care of blood not only visibly but also, on an experiment he read the previous year, it made it harder for forensic investigators to find the traces. He looked at the others, seeing that they were all still sound asleep. He knew that kids were smart enough to travel in packs so it would have been weird for one of the friends to have gone off on their own. This meant he should go ahead and kill another one.

  Mr. Slasher put his stuff against the couch and walked over to his hunting cabinet. He began to search through the drawers until he found his exotic animal hunting kit. Opening it, he pulled out one of the tranquilizers from the pack only to turn around and inject it inside of Juice. Juice woke up for a moment from the sudden pain of the needle and was confused, making a noise, but quickly fell back asleep. He put the dart back into the kit and closed the drawer. Then he took the time to clean up the bloody mess that he had made.

  In the basement, Mr. Slasher put Juice on the table and closed the hidden steel door. The walls had been made sound proof so that no one could hear what went on inside. He strapped Juice down to the table, making sure the restraints were tight on his arms and head. He was still asleep and looked as peaceful as an angsting teenager could have been. This ended when Mr. Slasher drove an inch thick nail through Juice's arm and into the table. Juice immediately awoke, screaming in agony and trying hard to grab his arm but quickly finding that he was in restraints. Mr. Slasher walked over to the other side of the table and slammed another nail into the other arm. Juice screamed even louder this time. Juice would quickly bleed out from the wounds but he attempted to struggle as hard as he could to get free, getting blood everywhere. He attempted to talk to Mr. Slasher but the man didn't pay attention as he grabbed the buzzsaw that was attached to the ceiling. Juice screamed more and more, but that quickly came to a stop as Mr. Slasher pushed the saw through his throat and severed his head.

  Mr. Slasher walked over to the table that had Janice on it and picked up the bone saw off of the side table. He began to cut the body into parts at the joints, ensuring that each limb that he cut off went into a zip lock bag, sucking out the air to delay decomposition. Placing most of the limbs inside of the refrigerator, he left out an arm, which he took his filet knife and began to slowly strip the meat off of the bone. After making sure all the meat had been stripped off, he put the bones inside of the vat of acid to let them dissolve. He washed off the meat, putting it inside of another zip lock bag. He would spend the rest of the night stripping the meat from the remainder of the body.

  John awoke to the smell of meat cooking on the stove. Mr. Slasher was standing over the stove.

  "That smells delicious." John said as he looked around, "Hey, where's Janice and Juice?"

  "Oh, they said that they were going to go get food from the car." Mr. Slasher stated.

  It was oddly cold inside of the house even though it was the middle of the summer. John got up and went to the window, looking outside to see that the sun was bright. For a moment, the sky flickered and John was taken aback. He looked closely, realizing that the window was looking into what seemed like a television screen. Then he began to hear the rain pelting the outside of the house.

  "Do you have televisions projecting weather in the windows?" John asked.

  "Yeah. I don't really like having to see the outside weather when it's raining really bad. Hey, if you wanna wake up your friend there I made some breakfast." Mr. Slasher said, turning to pour the meat onto a plate.

  John looked over at Jonk, who was peacefully sleeping in a chair.

  "Jonk!" John said loudly.

  Jonk moaned and then turned over. John went over to her, shaking her on the shoulder.

  "Jonk, wake up." John continued.

  "What? Oh, hey John." Jonk said, stretching out her arms, "Where's Janice and Juice?"

  "They went to the car." John said.

  "Oh." Jonk said, her eyes filled with slight confusion.

  "Mr. Slasher cooked us up something to eat." John said.

  The three of them collected around the table, sitting down to enjoy the meal in front of them. John bit into the meat and was surprised at how good it tasted, with the fats mixing well with the meat. He had tasted something similar when he went overseas to one of the Japanese islands to train with his teacher.

  "What type of meat is this Mr. Slasher?" John asked.

  "It's imported. I got it in last night." Mr. Slasher said with a smile as he drank his cup of coffee.

  The group ate in silence as the morning slowly passed them by. It was calmingly silent in the house, which was a much-appreciated joy John rarely had the opportunity to have. Jonk suddenly looked up from her plate at Mr. Slasher.

  "So, what type of murderer was Mr. Slasher?" Jonk asked.

  "Hmm?" Mr. Slasher questioned, looking at her with an eyebrow raised.

  "I've been meaning to ask you ever since I heard it. You say that you are possessed by a man that was named Mr. Slasher and I was curious to know what type of murderer he was." Jonk asked, oddly excited in her question.

  "Mr. Slasher was a cannibal, but he was known for slicing up his victims before he ate them. It took the police nearly five decades before they caught him and tried to charge him for his crimes. While he was in prison, some of the prison mates started to disappear around him and, when the police went to investigate, they found that he had hidden bones inside of the wall, but the meat was nowhere to be found. Even though they kept adding on years to his sentence, they eventually had to kill him in order to stop him from cannibalizing anyone else. It took three different cases of prison cannibalism in order for them to order an immediate death penalty. Within that time, he had killed and eaten at least twenty prison mates, and two guards." Mr. Slasher said with a smile, "Even though they killed him, they eventually had to shut down the prison he was in. Even though he was dead, prison mates claimed they were possessed by him and continued his lineage of cannibalism. By the time they closed down the prison and the cannibalism stopped, nearly half of all the prisoners had been eaten and the staff was reduced to a third of what it had been previously. We're actually eating breakfast over the land where the prison was."

  John felt a slight chill run down his spine as he looked at Mr. Slasher and then slowly down at his plate. Up until that point, he had not really thought much about where their friends had gone, nor the size of the house, nor the crop of drugs, nor the amount of freezers that a strange man had stacked up. He had not thought about just how much of a trap the house really was and the story seemed to have activated some type of latent awareness in him.

  "I think I'm going to go check on Janice and Juice, maybe help them carry the food up the path," John said, slowly getting up from the table and cleaning off his plate in the sink.

  "Well, let me walk you out then." Mr. Slasher said, smiling as he got up from the table, leaving his unfinished plate on the table, "I need to go chop some wood anyway."

  Mr. Slasher grabbed the ax off of the wall and followed John to the door. John went to go open the door but quickly found that it had been locked. He reached down to unlock the door but had a sudden pain in his he
ad.

  "Oh my gosh! John, no!" Jonk yelled, screaming in horror.

  John felt dizzy for a moment and then quickly fell to the floor. Mr. Slasher pulled the ax out of his skull and dropped it to the side. Jonk tried to run to the back door but found that she couldn't open the door. Mr. Slasher carried John's dead body over to the basement door and opened the dumbwaiter. He shoved the body in the clean container he had already placed in there, lowering the dumbwaiter down into the basement. He picked up the mop bucket from the corner and began mopping up the blood. Meanwhile, Jonk was trying to smash through all of the windows but was quickly finding that each window had been covered with bullet proof walls of glass. She desperately ran up to the second level, hoping to find a place where she could get out of the building.

  The doors were all blocked from the outside world by something on the other side and nothing would open. She went to the nearest place that had weapons inside of it, grabbing a gun and quickly loading it. Silence fell around her as Mr. Slasher had decided to let her be alone while he cleaned up the mess he had made. Jonk began to calm down from her frenzied panic. Just as she did, she noticed that the ceiling was cement, and not wooden, in the room that she was in. Remembering the story he had told them, she looked around at her surroundings. The bed was of a steel frame with a single mattress on it. There was a sink in the room along with a toilet. Mr. Slasher had not built on to a cabin, he had made a prison look like it was a log cabin.

  The door opened and Jonk blasted all the bullets she had loaded into the weapon into the space the door opened up to. Mr. Slasher walked into the room as the gun made clicking noises. Jonk threw the gun at him but it didn't affect him. She got up to try and fight him, but the fist she threw at him was quickly caught. He twisted it and, like a twig, her wrist snapped. Just as she was about to scream, Mr. Slasher drove a long knife through her eyeball. Her body writhed for a moment as it quickly died and Mr. Slasher dragged her by the arm, out of the bedroom, and down into the basement.