She stirred awake, and so many sets of painted eyes were on her.
She was in the fucking basement. How did she get in the fucking basement? Her pussy pulsed, begging, and she scrambled to her feet, and there was a sound of something tearing, a great groaning, and that wet cunt smell overtook her. She stumbled back, heart pounding, thighs shaking. She had to run, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the mural.
The figures had turned away from each other. They were looking at Suzanne, smiling, all those teeth, all that red. Static blared from everywhere, from nowhere, from inside Suzanne’s head. Her clit was wet and huge and throbbing. The wall warped, turned liquid, and there were so many eyes, looking at her, wanting her, there were hands all over her body, touching her, prodding her, needing her. Something huge was ripping through the floor and she was ready to bend over and take it, every inch of it, she was filled with red hot pulsing need and she was coming, she was coming, oh god, she was coming.
She was on the floor, ass in the air, thighs trembling. She couldn’t catch her breath. The moon had gone dark, and in the shadows, the painting moved.
Her stomach churned, she felt like she was going to throw up. She lowered her head to her hands, closed her eyes, tried to remember how to breathe.
That was fucked up. She was fucked up. There was something wrong with her. She was an emotional fucking wreck and she was half asleep and she let this stupid fucking house get the better of her. It was just the work of some pervert. It was nothing. She wouldn’t look at it.
Suzanne’s legs shook. She looked out the window, to the trees. That mound outside. The mural. The dreams.
She had to know for sure.
She pulled on sneakers, but didn’t bother to change. The landlord had left a shovel in the porch, and she grabbed it before she stepped outside. Wind tickled through her nightgown. The moon was bright enough to lead her.
She shouldn’t be doing this, she knew that, but there was an insistent nagging in her brain that wouldn’t let her stop until she felt the dirt beneath her fingernails.
The trees were still, the stone structure loomed between them. The dirt next to it was loose and light. Grass had never dared to grow back in.
She dug.
She was grateful for the breeze that broke her sweat as she shoveled. She was grateful for the trees that kept her out of sight of the neighbors.
She caught the scent of herself in the air, musty, un-showered, insane. Her back ached. There was nothing out here. She was cracking up. It was time to go back inside.
But her shovel struck something, and she crouched down to push dirt aside, revealing a sliver of something hard and yellowed. She clawed deeper, snagging a nail, and was rewarded with the gentle curve of clavicle. The wind raised gooseflesh on her arms, tickled her thighs.
She had to call the police.
Blood pounded through her ears. She needed to see the whole thing. She shouldn’t. She should be terrified. She should be upset. She should be running back to the house right now. She kept digging, gently, unearthing it bit by bit.
Muck had picked the flesh from the bones, leaving the skeleton filthy but whole. The top of the skull was shattered and splintered where it had been caved in by the hammer. She cradled it, feeling strangely tender toward this man she had never known. He had been discarded too. Fucked and left for dead, and wasn’t that kind of the same as her? Fucked and used and thrown aside.
The eyes of the skull were dark and beautiful. She slid her hand down, caressing his cheek. The bone was rough and dirty beneath her fingers. Hard. It was so intimate to touch this part of a stranger, the deepest insides, the last piece that remained. Her nipples were so erect it was painful.
The man had been beautiful once. She knew it. Even in death you could see that. These beautiful bones laid out before her, strong and whole but for that wicked head wound. Shining beetles crawled through his ribcage. She slid her hand down his arm, took his chalky hand in her own. The bones creaked as she led the hand to her cheek, turned her face to kiss the cold death of his palm.
There was a pulsing in her groin.
Something wasn’t right.
She dropped the hand, disgusted with herself, but it fell so gently, caressing her, brushing against her nipple on its way down, making her sigh.
She had never been with anyone but Eric before. Had never even thought of it, really.
She crouched in front of the bones. She was lost. Her hand slid down the bumps of his vertebrae and across the cage of his ribs, where his heart had once pounded in fear.
She took his hand again, licked the tips of the fingers. They tasted like dirt. She slid the hand down, across her breast. Bumpy phalanges tore her thin nightie apart. The bones were cold and rough, their caress pinching, teasing, as they slid down her bare belly.
She sat astride the pelvic bone, grinding down, gasping as the curve of hip jutted into her wet panties. She slid back and forth, took fingers deep into her mouth, stared into empty eyes. Blood pulsed in her ears, along with the pulse of something else, deeper, but she was so fucking horny, she couldn’t concentrate, she could only buck and writhe and gasp.
It wasn’t enough.
Hard fingertips scraped her breast, rough and jagged, releasing bright trails of blood. The pressure it released felt good. She leaned forward, pressed her forehead against the cool, rough skull. Her tongue glided across his teeth. They tasted dirty. She felt dirty.
She slid her hands over herself, smearing blood and dirt across pale skin. She yanked her panties off. Her pussy was hot and wet, throbbing, and she straddled the hipbone again. This time it rubbed against sweet bare flesh. Bits of dirt flaked, sandy against her clit. It still wasn’t enough. Her head swam. She could barely breathe. This wasn’t her, but she needed more. She needed to be closer. She needed it inside her.
She pulled the bones from the mud, dragged them atop the huge stone altar. She could move freely now. The femur pulled away from the hip bone with a snap and she stroked it, let fibula and phalanges dangle into her lap. The head of the bone bulged obscenely. She sucked it into her mouth, greedy, swirling her tongue around. She groaned. It was so hard.
She slid it between her legs.
It was too big, and she bucked her hips in frustration. She wanted it, she wanted all of it. Everything in her body was screaming with want and need and desire and she thrust her hips down, hard, and her pussy ripped and it felt so fucking good.
Blood soaked her hands as she thrust the bone in, again and again, forcing her cunt to accept it. Tender skin tore, warm wetness flooded her thighs. Her hand was covered in hot wet blood and she rubbed her clit and fucked herself harder and harder until her eyes rolled back in her head and everything shivered and quaked.
She came painfully. In those seconds of black stillness, she saw something, she saw him, his body exquisitely sculpted, beautiful, his face a blur of black sketchiness, the mask thrown aside, his cock massive and throbbing and perfect, ready to rip everything apart with its strength, ready to fuck great fissures into the earth, tear it apart from the inside out.
And then she was sitting amid trees in her backyard, astride a skeleton, bleeding and cold and stuck, her insides screaming with pain. She tore the bone from her pussy. Hunks of flesh and hair came with it and gore soaked the stone.
Blood splattered the kitchen tile. She was woozy. She needed to call 9-1-1, but, god, she just couldn’t help herself.
“Hello?” Eric’s voice was sleepy. Was the bed next to him empty, or occupied?
“It’s me. Can... Can you come? I hurt myself.” Her legs trembled.
“Suzy? What’s wrong?”
“I can’t talk about it. I just need you to come. Please?” Her forehead was soaked in sweat. Everything she touched was smeared in blood. She needed a doctor. She needed stitches. She needed mental help. First, she needed Eric.
“I’m so glad you called. It’s time to come home. “
“No, Eric, I just need you to come her
e. Please.” She choked off a sob. “Something weird is happening. I’m at a place on Baker’s Lane. The last house on the left. Just come here, please.”
She turned the phone off so he wouldn’t call back. She didn’t want to talk. She just wanted him to come.
Suzanne was dressed and soaking through a pad when the car pulled up. Even in this bizarre situation, she felt nervous. What could she even say to him after all this time? How could she explain this?
She opened the door and he smiled, blue eyes shining. How had she never noticed they were dead inside? He took her into his arms and the smell of his cologne teased her nose. She should have showered. She must smell awful.
“Suzy, what the hell is going on here? You look like shit.” His eyes softened, “I’m happy to see you, but you don’t look well. God, I’m so happy to see you. Look at you. You need me. You haven’t been taking care of yourself.”
“I’ve been doing fine.” She pulled away from him. It hurt to walk. “This is all going to sound insane. I need to show you something in the basement.”
“I’d rather talk at home. I’d like to get you in the bath first. Jesus, what have you been doing out here?”
“Please, I think it would be better to show you first.”
He shrugged, “Have it your way, but let’s make it quick. This place is disgusting.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” She gestured toward the kitchen, led him to the basement door.
“Can we just get to what’s going on here? Are you limping?” His brows furrowed with concern, a robot imitating human emotion.
“Really soon, yes, we’ll talk. I just want you to see this so you can understand. Please?”
He followed her down the stairs, into the darkness. “What is that smell?”
“Just…” She gestured a limp arm at the wall. At the painting. “Look. Just look. I’ll explain.”
But she didn’t. She couldn’t tear herself away. All that wetness. The blood and the sex and the guts and the cum. Eric frowned. “Did... did you paint this? What the fuck is this?”
“It was here when I got here. Does it look right to you?”
“I’m not gonna sit here all night looking at some old porno painting. What is going on with you? Have you been drinking?” He reached for her, but she swatted his hand away.
“It’s not what you think... just... look at it a little longer. It’s the only way for you to understand what’s going on here.”
“And then you’ll come home?”
“Just look.”
“What am I looking for?” He turned back to the wall. She reached down. The hammer was heavy. Need was growing in her chest, in her gut. She would know when the moment was right.
Red spurted from the wall and Eric turned to Suzanne, confusion in his eyes, and Suzanne swung and the sound the hammer made when it connected with his skull was music.
Flesh split from skull, bone crunched beneath hammer. Eric swayed, grimaced, his mouth an O of surprise. She wasn’t strong enough. She had to hit him again. He fell from the couch, his eyes squinting beneath the waterfall of blood. The dent in his head was the size of a baseball. “K… Karen...” he muttered.
“Who the fuck is Karen?” She swung again, hit the opposite side. His eyeball turned to liquid, squelched against the floor. Something rasped deep in his throat and he collapsed.
He didn’t even look human anymore. He looked like art. Thick fluid pumped from his shattered face. His remaining eye flickered. She thought he was still breathing. She swung again and a spray of brain matter misted her face. She licked her lips, tasted salt. She swung again and again and chips of bone and meat sprayed new blood on the walls as his skull finally shattered.
She yanked off her sweater and her jeans. There was no time for teasing. She wanted him now.
The knife was dull. She hadn’t had much time to prepare. It was a lot of work to open him up. Grunting with effort, she slid through his flesh. Fat and muscle slipped away from her hands, and she opened him wide, like a present. He smelled like meat, like blood, like sex. She could hear laughing, somewhere far away. Was it her own? Her face hurt from smiling. She slipped her hands into the opening. He was so warm and wet inside. Rib bones scraped against her hands, sending a chill through her body.
His heart came out with a wet squelch.
It was hers, finally.
Blood spurted over her teeth. It was thick and bitter, but it tasted delicious. Juices leaked onto her face, her breasts, made her wet and warm and slippery. She slid her hands over her breasts and, god, she had never been so fucking horny in all her life.
It had been wrong to fuck the skeleton. She knew that now. She belonged to Eric. She would make it up to him. And all the eyes in the painting could watch.
She cracked his rib bones with a snap, shoved their jagged ends into her own smooth skin. She wanted everything of him to enter her, everywhere. Her flesh was unwilling but yielded. She stabbed broken bones into her stomach and a beautiful arc of bone jutted out beneath her sternum, like a crown.
She wasn’t patient enough to slice through tendon and meat to get to the bone. She needed it all now. She tried to carve his arm off, but the thick muscle and bone was too much for her knife. She groaned in frustration. She would have it anyway. He still wore their wedding ring, but her pussy was ripped too far open to feel it when she shoved his fist inside.
“God, that feels good.” She moaned and leaned forward to kiss him. She slipped her tongue inside what was left of his mouth, tasted blood, swallowed shattered teeth.
There was so much of him; bones and muscles and tendon and meat. She wanted it all.
The knife was sharp enough for her own soft skin. The ruin of his head gaped at her as she slid a blade between her tits. Exquisite pain jolted through her body. She slid a finger inside the cut, teasing, coy, and carved a muscular ribbon from his thigh. It curled around her fingers, and she slipped it inside the wound, greedy fingers shoving, until his flesh was hers.
She could stuff every bit of him inside herself if she just made enough holes.
She cut and screamed and fucked and came. Painted figures screamed in ecstasy. The floor turned red beneath her, and blood dribbled into the hungry mouth that tore the basement in two.
Betty Rocksteady is your everyday Canadian weirdo with a leaning towards the macabre and grotesque. Besides writing violent and sexual and just plain weird fiction, she does black and white horror illustration. Her debut novella, Arachnophile, was part of Eraserhead Press’ 2015 New Bizarro Authors Series. If you’ve been dying to read about a man who falls in love with a giant spider, this is probably the book for you. Her short fiction has been published in Eternal Frankenstein, Lost Signals, and Turn to Ash. In 2017, her second novella will be released by Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing. Find out more at www.bettyrocksteady.com or connect on twitter @bettyrocksteady.
SUBJECT #270374 by C.M. Saunders
C.M. SAUNDERS
Day: -1
They call it ‘Day Minus One’ because the actual testing doesn’t start until tomorrow. That’ll be an eleven-day trial, but today is all administration stuff. I was admitted to the research facility a little before midday on February 11th, 2016. I gave the required blood and urine samples—they test for recreational drugs—and had my height, weight and vital signs recorded. I signed consent forms, was given a wristband with my name, age, photo, and strings of numbers on that I don’t understand (Trial: G5HY787, Code: 49864000948, Group: 327, Subject: #270374) and told to wear it at all times. I am no longer a man, I am a “subject.”
After the formalities, I was shown around. There is a common room with newspapers and a pool table, which doubles as a dining room, two TV rooms, one with bookshelves and the other with an Xbox, and three other wards. Then I was shown to my bed. The place looks like your average hospital ward, eight beds, all full of people like me. Male, 21-45 years old. Mostly white. There’s a token black guy and a couple of the others speak in foreign a
ccents. Polish, Romanian, something. Lots of people in white coats mill around looking busy. Most of the staff are Asian. Not Indian or Pakistani like you would expect. But Vietnamese, Chinese, Thai. I guess they work for lower salaries. My bed is against the far wall, under a big window with tinted glass and security bars. Apart from the plastic sheets, it isn’t really that bad. Comfortable. The guy in the bed next to me, Dwayne from Manchester, farts a lot.
There are strict rules here. No smoking or drug use—beyond what they give us—no sugar or caffeine, controlled diet. Lights out at eleven. The curtains around the beds have to be drawn closed, which I don’t mind one bit. At least you get some privacy and don’t feel like you are being watched all the time. Even if you are.
Dinner was avocado with beans and a fruit cup.
Day: 1
And so it begins. Me and the other new arrivals, four in total (the other four on the ward are already a few days in), are awoken at 7 am and taken to what they called the “sleep study room” to be hooked up to an ECG machine which reads our brainwaves. Fucking electrodes took forty-five minutes to put on. Then I had to endure three twenty-minute tests with wires and suction cups glued to my head and face. The first test consisted of sitting in a darkened room, alone with my thoughts. That was easy. The hardest part was staying awake. For the second test, I had to wear a set of headphones and count some high-pitched beeps. If I am more than two off we have to do the test again. I count thirty-nine. I am exactly right on the first try. Problem is I felt nauseous afterwards and it gave me a headache.
The third test was the truly weird one. A doctor came in with a file. At least, he looked like a doctor because he was wearing different color coveralls to distinguish himself from the other workers and wore a stethoscope hung around his neck. Inside the file were pictures. Computer print-offs and some polaroids. Awful, terrible pictures. Body parts. Pools of blood. Car crashes, industrial accidents, a few shots that looked like they were taken in the aftermath of an explosion in a war zone. It was all pretty harrowing stuff and wasn’t what I would expect in testing a new anti-depressant drug. Or any kind of drug trial, come to that. I’ll admit I was a bit disturbed by it all. My stomach did a mini-flip at one image in particular. Even after all that’s happened since, I can still see it when I close my eyes. It was a close-up of a man’s naked torso, the face blacked out. He had been flayed. At least, that’s how it looked. Strips of mottled skin hung from his body, exposing tiny slivers of something white and glistening buried beneath the meat. His ribs.
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