DOA III

by Bentley Little

  “And I never wear any panties when I go to these games. And I watch them as they grind his face in the dirt, as they pile on top of him. This isn’t a sex thing, you understand? It’s shame and I watch and I clutch my purse and I quietly get myself off at these games. It’s not a sex thing. It’s shame.”

  And then it really hits me. It occurs to me who she is and what she’s about and why this turns her on. She’s going to tell me, to go into specifics. But I pay for our drinks and I get the hell out of dodge.

  4.

  This one doesn’t make me feel so bad. This one I almost don’t mind going back to.

  The catalogue model sits surrounded by the long, red hair that had been her livelihood. She is smiling beatifically. I hold in my hand the clippers, surprised that I went through this but not surprised when I see that smile, that skin, that body, that gratitude. Most of the time, I give a woman what she wants. That’s what being a man’s about, especially for me. I’ve never done anything they didn’t want. Sometimes even when I didn’t want to. But that smile, the relief. I’m glad she convinced me.

  “I’m free now,” she says, “they’ll never want me again.”

  I hug her close, rub my face against hers. I had thought she was kidding but that serenity runs deep. This is a spirit liberated from bondage. I am proud of this pile of hair at my feet and what it represents to this woman.

  She reaches into her handbag and pulls out a scalpel, then a pen knife.

  “I need you to take off my nose. My ears. I want them to never look at me again.”

  I break into a cold sweat. I feel nauseous. Tears and the red wine from dinner alike are ready to explode from me.

  “I can’t do that.”

  She runs the scalpel across her doll-like skin, across the perfection that earned her paycheck.

  “Any of this is another hole. Has anyone offered you their heart and actually meant it?”

  5.

  A blur of desperation and kisses. A dance whose beats end in bodies pressed against walls, alleys and awnings and overpasses, all the way back home. We are all need. The first date fever. Groping, grabbing, nails almost breaking skin until the threshold’s crossed. The bedroom cannot come soon enough. She hits the bed. It is impossible to undress her fast enough. My teeth find her throat and she cries out. Then suddenly her eyes are wide. Suddenly, she shakes her head. She begins to tear up.

  “Not now. Not now. Not now.”

  She shakes, caught up in some kind of seizure. Her stomach widens and distends. A sound of something struggling to get out. I think back to Kelly and her coffin. This body it seems is not altogether unlike that coffin. Her skin stretches. Splits far, like an internal earthquake. And along, the fault line, a small body digs up, through yellow fat, through pink, through red, through splinters of bone and organs and emerges, slick and wet, a little girl around ten.

  “He started when I was seven,” says the intruder, “but I’m grown now. I’m a big girl. Come here, daddy, come touch me.”

  I flee screaming into the night. There is nobody to talk to about this.

  6.

  There are dreams, there are hungers, there is a somnambulant pulse of twitch that leads me down 82nd. And then I’m wandering past glass dildos and past plastic faces looking up at me in some semblance of seductive from a multitude of videos. And then I pass into the back, into the dark of the arcades and the booths.

  I don’t know what I’m looking for. You won’t find comfort here. You won’t find company here. Pornography is ubiquitous pretty much everywhere, yet I am here, about to walk into the dark of the booths and sit down. There are sounds of pleasure erupting from the TVs, but behind them, there is a sound of pleasure erupting from actual people: a man’s moaning, wet slosh, bouncing bodies.

  I sit down and I peer through the hole. There is one of the guys who came to the place to shoot up. The needle is still in his arm and on him, a lady phantasm is grinding. She is wearing an expressionless porcelain mask. Her hair is opium black, not unlike the shit inside the needle, she might well have seeped out from in the needle, were it not for skin that might be moonlight streaming into the room.

  And as she moves on him, the light starts from him, the light starts to fade from his eyes, his breath starts to get constricted, he starts to gasp. He does not flee, he cannot move and I can do nothing to intervene. A rot starts to overtake him, grey green, leprous, his skin begins to putrefy, then to slough off, his fingers, his arms bony, his face tightening, shriveling into a skull, caught in a perpetual scream that will never happen. He lays dead.

  And god help me, I knock on the wall. She seeps in like mist, ethereal as she is. All curves and lines and sacred geometry, she unzips me and she gets on top. She feels so warm and yet so very cold. It hurts inside her. I hurt inside her. And she speaks.

  “Through me you come to the City of Woe,

  Through me you reach eternal pain

  Through me among the lost you go

  Justice moved the maker who would reign

  Unstoppable from year to year to year

  Wisdom high and love that shall not wane

  Before my coming nothing could appear

  That’s not eternal, eternally I endure

  Leave your hope behind if you’d enter here”

  And I float. And I feel these things that led me to the place, witness the moments, weigh my heart. And I get ready to drift.

  But then there is laughter.

  “So you come here and you think love and death are the same and you think pain and joy are the same and you come here and you’re ready to sleep and you’re so damn weary from all this fun you’ve had that you just want to relax like that mound of meat next door?”

  My mind walks again to coffins, to dead girls, to models who want to be cut and though my head feels heavy, I manage a nod.

  “Yes.”

  She shakes her head, she slides off of me. “Walk it off, asshole.”

  Garrett Cook is an author of Horror, Bizarro and Cosmic Horror fiction. He has appeared in Best Bizarro Fiction of the Decade, Exquisite Corpse, Giallo Fantastique and more. He is the editor-in-chief of the New Bizarro Author series and co-creator of Imperial Youth Review. Most recently, his novella Archelon Ranch was reprinted by Rooster Republic Press.

  RITCHIE by Eric J. Guignard

  ERIC J. GUIGNARD

  I’m bound in a wheelchair now, a quadriplegic. No one survives this much paralyzation to reach old age, and I know my health will just keep deteriorating slowly and miserably until I die.

  All that’s left is to wonder what will get me: Pneumonia? Septicemia? Suffocation?

  Or will it be Ritchie? I can’t say which is worse. My injuries will take me slow, which is lousy to imagine, but Ritchie would... would what? Sure as hell be quicker than this condition, but what he might do to me, I’m terrified to consider. He’s probably picked up a list of ideas over the years to torture me with, maybe even some of them I’ve done on him. There’s just so many possibilities, so many stinkin’ ways of revenge he might pull off, half of which I can’t even imagine.

  See, I never was the brightest bulb anyway, which is maybe why Ritchie and I were always at each other’s throats. We were too much alike, just dumb and angsty and unwilling to back down.

  I knew Ritchie since I was twelve years old. I transferred across Texas to Eagle Crest Junior High that year, and he was in my class, a year older than the other kids ’cause he’d flunked a grade. He seemed to hold his failings against everyone else, especially me for no other reason than I was the new kid and my ‘D minus’ average was the envy of his ‘F plus’ aptitude. Ritchie was fat, and his zits were like little red candies stuck all over a cream pie face. He didn’t look intimidating and he sounded even less so, whiny with a voice that cracked whenever he raised it, which happened pretty much every time he spoke. He wasn’t a bully by your classic standard—no over-muscled build, no pack of leather jacket cronies—but he knew how to make your life a living he
ll. In that regard he was head of the class. Ritchie Turdamczyk was his full name. I called him Ritchie the Turd.

  And Jackson Offerman is my name, so it’s no great leap of junior high wit to bastardize that one.

  “Hey, Jack Off,” Ritchie said, and pushed me hard against the lockers. “What’d you bring me for lunch?”

  “Your mom’s scabies,” I answered and pushed him back.

  “That comeback’s older than the crust in your underwear,” he countered with a harder push, throwing his flab into it.

  “And you’re the one dreaming about what’s inside my underwear!” I punched Ritchie in the jaw, barely fazing him.

  He punched me in the stomach, and my air went out. I gasped, then I hit him harder, this time in the nose. That stung him. His face wrinkled up and he cried out. Then we were rolling on the ground, kid punches thrown that didn’t amount to much but for scrapes and the calling of more names.

  Teachers broke us up, but our fight carried over the next day, and the next after that. People said I had something to prove, being the new kid and all. But I didn’t. I was just defending myself, not wanting to get pushed around by some lardass punk.

  I heard later in life that if you stand up to a bully they’ll leave you alone. Psychologists say the tormentor will either start to respect you or they figure you’re not worth the trouble and go off searching for someone easier to pick on. But it wasn’t like that with Ritchie. The more I stood up for myself, the more it incited him to get at me; the taunts and pranks became crueler, more frequent. It seemed like I was feeding him. Maybe in his case, if I’d just ignored him, he would have left me alone. Although maybe if I’d ignored him, he’d have thought me weak and found even more ways to torment me. Maybe he’d have killed me instead. Maybe it would have saved me from my present lingering torment...

  One time Ritchie got a bunch of pictures of Mr. Bovard, the school janitor, doing normal stuff, sweeping the walkways, emptying trash, eating lunch on his cart. Ritchie stabbed the eyes out in each picture and drew red lines across the necks. He got into my locker somehow and taped all those pictures inside. Then he jammed a toothpick inside the lock so when it came time to go to class I couldn’t get it open.

  Of course, I had to get Mr. Bovard’s help.

  When Mr. Bovard got my locker open and saw all those pictures of himself inside, he nearly ripped my arms from their sockets.

  Ritchie was a bastard, made my life Hell.

  When I was sixteen, my folks got me a car for Christmas. I’m not saying we were rich and they whipped out a credit card to gift wrap a Camaro or something. My old man was tighter than a rusted lug nut, and I normally got socks and tighty-whities for the holidays. But it really meant something to him and my mom that I stayed in school and mostly out of trouble. They were both drop-outs. So they saved for awhile and surprised me with a used ’78 AMC Pacer. Its timing belt squealed louder than a fire alarm, and it was missing its rear windshield.

  On that last point, Dad clapped me on the shoulder and said, “Think of it as an instant convertible.”

  The car wasn’t what you’d call a “chick magnet”, but it made me grown-up. No more walking six miles to school, no more asking Mom for a ride to hang out at the mall.

  But when Ritchie saw my ride, the leaking oil spots lost all their luster.

  “Ho-lee shit,” he said. “Look at Prince Jack Off. How’s the weather up in your mansion on the hills?”

  I flipped him the bird, walking from the parking lot. White exhaust fumes followed me from that rattle bucket, but Ritchie acted like I was a debutante.

  He bowed as I passed. “Spoon-fed prince, coming through.”

  I wanted to punch him. But what had that solved before? For once, I tried the highest road I could manage. “What’s your problem, Ritchie? Just get off my ass, okay? You go your way and I’ll go mine.”

  “Sure, you’ll drive your way out. Must be nice, getting a car from mommy and daddy.”

  “Prick,” I called him.

  “Rich bitch,” he shot back.

  Later that day I found an egg had been thrown at my car, its dried yolk splattered in a wide arc across the door. It was only the first of many to come.

  Over the next year, we weathered our ups-and-downs, the “ups” meaning we weren’t at each other’s throats, the “downs” being the school principal or police getting involved. All this fighting culminated in Ritchie’s death. And it was me who killed him. March 15 was the day, the Ides of March, the day men consider unlucky to die, as if you care about superstition once you’re six feet under.

  I was seventeen when it happened, nearing the end of eleventh grade. Ritchie the Turd must’ve kept the hen business running single-handedly, ’cause not a day went by that I didn’t catch an egg with my car. Sometimes it’d be before school, sometimes at lunch, sometimes when I’d pull out of the parking lot thinking I’d made it yolk-free, an ovoid missile would come firing at my windshield. I’d beaten his ass a dozen times for it, but Ritchie never gave up. He’d even know when I was going to chase him, and he’d lay a trap. One time he hid behind a corner, and I raced after him only to feel the impact of a bag of dog crap shower my back after I passed his point of ambush.

  This particular instance he’d been right in front of me when I was pulling out of the parking lot. Like a rabid dog he sprang from the school’s hedges and smacked the windshield with another one of those goddamned eggs. My fury peaked, and I meant to hit the brakes so that I could get out and knock him unconscious. I really meant it... but I hit the gas pedal instead. I accelerated and spread Ritchie Turdamczyk all over the boulevard.

  I didn’t end up in jail or juvie afterward; the judge ruled it an unfortunate accident, but those knowing of his and mine’s history still blamed me. All the years of suffering with Ritchie were for nothing: The guilt broke me, and I ended up dropping out of school after all.

  A year passed, and life became the pits. I turned eighteen and my folks kicked me out. I still had the Pacer, but no home. I slept on a buddy’s couch some nights and in the car’s seat others. I was miserable and reviled and lonely. Worse even than Ritchie’s taunts was the feeling of being ostracized. The Classmate Killer, I was called. Then comes the following March 15, mid-afternoon, about the time I would have been pulling out of my school’s parking lot had I still been in attendance. Only now I was in the kitchen of a flop house making a gallon of cherry-flavored Kool-Aid.

  A voice I’ll know ’til the end of days spoke. “Hey, Jack Off, I got an egg with yer name on it.”

  Ritchie.

  I turned, fully expecting to see nothin’ out of the ordinary. I was just hearing things after all, maybe a bit too much of the reefer...

  But there he stood, same as he appeared a year ago, fat and covered in bad acne and smashed to hell from being run over. The right side of his face looked like an artist had painted it fresh in acrylics and then ran his thumb all the way across, so his features slid back two or three inches. A couple ribs broke through the rags of his chest and one arm was snapped in a dozen places, so it jiggled and shook as he advanced like a chain of iron links swinging in motion. But when Ritchie smiled, that was the worst; he bared a mouth of broken teeth like how a kid might draw the grin of an evil shark, all jagged angles.

  I screamed. Swear to God, the only time in my life I’ve ever shrieked like a girl in a horror flick was that instant, seeing Ritchie shamble toward me, a ghost or ghoul or zombie or whatever you could call him. Ritchie raised his arms, fingers outstretched as if he was going to gouge out my eyes the way he did Mr. Bovard’s pictures.

  But there on the kitchen counter was a cutlery block and I grabbed the largest blade in reach. Without thinking, I thrust the knife out in front of me, fast into his chest, pulled out, thrust again and again, stabbing and stabbing, all the while still screaming.

  And Ritchie screamed back. I hurt him. Here he was already dead, and me stabbing him was like I was killing him all over. Before his eyes rolled
up, he showed a look of absolute perplexion, like maybe he was surprised that his vengeance had been checked, that he could still feel pain... I don’t know.

  Ritchie fell back, crumpling to the floor, his outstretched fingers now clutching his punctured chest, blood spurting from each knife wound, though how he could bleed after being run over—and already dead for a year—was a bewilderment. His cream pie face paled even more, and tears fell from his eyes, and he gasped out one parting farewell: “Fuck you.”

  Then he was rotting away like watching one of those shows in science class, how they speed up the process of decomposition. His broken-ribbed torso melted into itself, limbs shrunk and withered away. He was drying up, turning to dust or vapor or whatever happens to... to things like that.

  Talk about a defining moment in life. If there was ever something needed to make a man rise above the maelstrom of his shitstorm life, it’s having the kid he killed come back for revenge. I mean, there I’d fallen, sobbing on the floor of a flop house, and no one ever checked on me; no one cares about derelicts. So I decided right then, I’d never put up with crap like that again, never let myself fall to pieces, never again let my life be for nothing.

  So I joined the army. They didn’t care I was a drop-out, a loser with no prospects, The Classmate Killer. Did my basic at Fort Jackson, even went on to get a specialty as a cavalry scout at Fort Knox. One year after I’d been couch surfing in a flop house I was defending oil fields in Saudi Arabia.

  March 15: the day arrived and I didn’t think twice about it. Getting shot at and bombed by battle-trained soldiers can push yesteryear’s recollections far from one’s mind... I was so worried about the foreign enemy, I didn’t think about that personal one.

  But Ritchie came back. Again.

  Over that past year, the seldom times I had thought about the return of his ghost, I decided it’d been in my mind. Madness, really, brought on by depression, dope, hunger. But I was clear-focused now. So clear-focused that when Ritchie appeared while I was on Forward Observation, I sighted and triggered two bullets through his forehead without hesitation.