Genital Grinder

Part 1: Genital Finder

The Electra Complex was a beacon for the lost souls who had nothing better to do on a Saturday night than have the same tits from last weekend thrust in their faces.

Some souls were more lost than others, which is where Von and Greg came in. They were no strangers to the nudie bar circuit. In a couple dives they were known well enough to elicit a greeting like Norm’s from Cheers. The Electra Complex, however, was not one of them.

“I’m sure glad we ain’t actually paying ten to get in,” Greg said.

Von concurred. “I’m all for full nudity, but it ain’t nothing I couldn’t see from my own mother. And hell, it don’t cost me near as much.”

Greg seemed distressed by this. “You get some kind of discount being blood-related or something? I’m out an Abe Lincoln and a couple Washingtons every time.”

Von laughed. “You’re getting your ass burned, son. I was in it for nine months and it didn’t cost me a dime. The milk was free after that, too. For awhile.”

Greg was not Von’s “son.” It was merely a colloquialism they had cultivated over the years.

“Hell, though,” Von continued, “it won’t put you on welfare to spend ten to look at some titties now and again. Safer, too. Ma’s retirement home is getting suspicious.”

To sit here and complain about paying ten bucks to see naked women when they were going to be millionaires before the night was over was absurd. Every slut had a price, and they’d be able to afford it. They wouldn’t have to slum anymore. There’d be no daring sieges on the dumpster behind the gynecological clinic, sifting for used sanitary napkins and sniffing the fingers of discarded rubber gloves. Finding out the clinic didn’t properly dispose of hazardous waste was among the five luckiest things to ever to happen to them. Scoring above that landmark occasion was the miraculous rumor of a doctor’s visit by a certain red-headed TV star who often investigated crimes with paranormal circumstances. Von and Greg kept every single pair of gloves and each blood-soaked tampon they found that night. They pored over them at least bi-weekly, wondering if this or that had come from within the gilded snatch. They’d wrung every last drop of juice form the tampons into a beer mug and traded swigs. The rumor had never been confirmed, but on still nights where a sudden breeze ruffled the tree branches and the tall grass of an open field, Von always believed that yes, it had really been her quim.

The side door of the Electra Complex sprang open. Angelique emerged at 9:35 for a smoke, par for the course when she was on backroom suck detail. She wore what counted as her costume—a white, easily removable shift. She kept a bare foot wedged in the door so it wouldn’t shut; the door locked automatically.

“Showtime,” Von announced. He and Greg stepped out of Greg’s Nova. Through the crack in the door, they could faintly hear an old Celtic Frost song: “Return to the Eve.”

Angelique had the bored detachment perfected by all veteran strippers, and she looked even less pleased to have visitors. It didn’t detract too much from her beauty, though. Gentleman might prefer blonds, but there weren’t many gentleman in a place like this, and her black hair was duly worshipped.

“We were hoping you could settle a bet between us,” Von began.

The smile faltered on Greg’s face. “We were?”

Von shot him an irritated look and prepared to continue his ploy. He surreptitiously craned his head around, searching for any stragglers in the parking lot. It was early in the evening, and the major activity wouldn’t start for another couple hours. It wasn’t a good idea to go to a strip show when the doors opened; by midnight you’d see your whole paycheck fluttering in some Jezebel’s g-string.

Angelique waited, taking another drag on her cigarette.

“We wanted to know if you could smoke that cigarette with . . . well, what a learned man would call your ‘netherlips.’” Von glanced at his friend. “Ain’t that right, Greg?”

Greg was practically drooling. “Right as rain, son!”

Angelique stared at them with a mixture of doubt and incredulity. “You want me to smoke with my box? For how much?”

“How much?” Von echoed. “Why, on the house, darling. In the interest of science.”

“F.O.C.?” No doubt in her face now, just incredulity. “That’s sick.”

“Why, are you a dyke or something?”

Greg looked confused all over again. “What’s . . . fawk?”

Angelique sighed. “You boys haven’t even paid the cover, have you? Look, this is a business, not a charity. You want something extra, use the ATM inside. Then talk to me. Assuming you aren’t cops.”

Von’s foot shot out and kicked the door, shattering the knob of bone above her heel. She crumpled, cigarette falling from her lips, crying out. It was doubtful anyone would hear her scream over Celtic Frost, but Von hurried, dragging her inside by her hair. Greg followed close behind, dropping a boot in her sternum. The vestiges of her last cigarette drag exploded as smoke from her mouth, followed instantly by a stream of vomit. The torrent was clogged with a murky, mucusy substance instantly recognizable as semen. Von pushed her head at the doorframe and slammed the door on it for good measure. She was definitely unconscious now. As far as the rest of the evening’s activities were concerned she was not imperative, but this did not stop Von from stashing her in the Nova’s trunk while Greg held the door. Old habits die hard.

Their destination in the Complex was fortuitously close, known as The Vacuum. It was actually two rooms, with holes in the dividing wall. The guys would not know who was behind the wall, but they’d slip forty bucks through for a blow job from whomever.

Greg gestured to an unassuming door, painted a sickly shade of green. “This is it.”

Von nodded. “That’s where the magic happens. Ready to meet the Wizard?”

Greg opened the door. They were tensed and ready to lay waste to anyone who might be within, but the room was empty. Angelique had been alone as calculated. There were bouncers at the club, but not as much of a call for them in a locked room. They guarded the door to get in here from inside the club, though, and it wouldn’t be wise to lollygag . . . The Vacuum existed for an entirely different form of gagging.

“Man, did you see how much ball sauce she puked?” Greg marveled.

“Enough to repopulate the Holocaust,” Von concurred. “I didn’t think they really swallowed, even for the extra fiver. I don’t about you, but I was relieved to find out there’s actually a girl back here and not some candy-ass.”

Von cracked his knuckles, pacing. He didn’t want to be here a minute longer than he had to, but this part wasn’t up to them, unfortunately.

They were not in a room so much as a storage closet. The distinguishing characteristic was of course the deadbolt-sized holes in the wall, in a descending arc—a convenience for the abnormally tall and short knob-job seekers. A sixty-watt bulb burned weakly overhead. A well-thumbed issue of Shocking Crimes had been left on a folding chair in front of the holes, presumably by Angelique. Von reached for it, catching a bold yellow headline which proclaimed ON THE TRAIL OF ATLANTA’S BUTT SEX KILLER! He’d heard about those goings-on, which imparted a profound moral to all aware of the murders—tay the hell out of Atlanta. A journalist named Thorndike McHatchet had the low-down on this sickening affair, as well as an amusing article entitled RAPIST CROSSED THE LINE TO MURDER, AND THEN WENT BACK TO RAPING AGAIN . . . WITH THE SAME VICTIM!

That’s when he heard the door open on the other side of the wall. He looked up at Greg, startled, although he’d been expecting it. “Give me the knife,” he whispered.

He glanced at the issue of Shocking Crime a little forlornly, and then stuffed the magazine into the front of his pants as a souvenir, his hands shaking.

The music within the club stopped long enough for them to both hear a fly unzip, and then two rolled up twenties were pushed through one of the holes. After a moment of indecision, the consumer slid another five dollars through. Greg pocketed the money.

Von held his hand out for the knife, waving his fingers. Greg put something in it; it was a Swiss army knife. Von’s eyes flew open like window blinds. He got close to Greg’s ear and whispered as loudly as he dared, “Are you out of your mind? We’re not lost in the woods on a camping trip, you retard!”

“It’s all I’ve got,” Greg shot back.

The customer cleared his throat impatiently. Von looked down, and sure enough, the guy had eased his meat through one of the holes.

He gave Greg another disgusted look, and flicked out the Swiss army blade. He noted the faint beginnings of rust along its edge as he tentatively reached for the man’s engorged member, like a timid schoolgirl picking up a dead frog for dissection in a biology lab. It jumped in his hand when he finally seized it, and the guy moaned.

Von’s skin crawled, but the sleaze element was what had allowed for this whole caper in the first place after an amusing anecdote shared by a friend of theirs who got blown away just a few weeks ago, minding his own business at a stop light on the street corner of 37th and Garren as he walked home from the Electra Complex. The whole thing had been his idea, but he obviously didn’t have any use for it now after a shotgun blast to the face courtesy of some whack job Greg claimed to know from Movie Heaven. The fact that he had only been kidding when he said it was no deterrent to Von and Greg, who practically had dollar signs in their eyes.

“Use your teeth,” the man behind the wall gasped. “Please. I’ll pay extra—”

The request came as no surprise, but it still made him feel queasy, like those magazines where fellas wanted a high heel crammed in their dickhole.

In a passable falsetto, Von asked him to lean into the wall. The customer obeyed. Von had the knife poised over the base of the shaft like a guillotine. The touch of blade on skin earned a groan that almost made Von physically ill. The tendons in his forearm tightened as he gripped tightly and began sawing with the army knife.

“Oh, baby . . . that’s so sweet it’s almost painf—” And then the guy dispensed with the “almost” diagnosis and began bleating like a slaughtered lamb. The rust made the cutting a grueling process, and Von had to keep the organ in an ironclad grip while his other hand burrowed through the shaft. He did an admirable job of working from the initial wound, like a lumberjack burying his axe in the same groove swing after swing. The blood was deep red, gushing from the stump-in-progress like a surrogate orgasm. The guy struggled as his screams became almost feminine shrieks, which however heart-felt and desperate could not exceed the volume of “Too Fast for Love” on the club speakers. His knees had given out, but the member in Von’s hand could only elongate as the customer pushed off from the wall, trying to squirm free. Once the rusted blade had slit and hacked through enough of the shaft, the frantic gyration provided the final ingredient to the castration. The last inch and a quarter came free in a moist surge of ripping meat and veins.

Von stumbled backward, dropping genitalia and implement alike. A renewed spray of crimson jetted through the suck-hole and then through two more of the descending holes as the newly minted eunuch pitched over to his right and hit the deck, a faint thud barely audible on the other side of the wall and undoubtedly lost to the nearest bouncer beyond the door.

“Come on!’ Greg seized the severed sex organ and bolted.

Von slipped in the haphazard puddles of blood, but his sudden paranoia that Greg was trying to make off with the penis gave him the proper coordination to stand erect. He grabbed the knife with a blood-soaked hand and tore off after Greg. He was quick enough to catch the side door before it slammed shut behind his companion, and he emerged into a stifling wall of humidity.

Greg was tearing through his pockets in a mad search for his keys. The contraband was slumped on the roof, losing rigidity as blood tapered out and slid down the driver’s side window.

“I can’t find them!” he shouted in panic.

Von felt something uncomfortable digging at his thigh, and remembered he’d last used the keys to open the trunk for Angelique. He dug them out and tossed them over the roof to Greg, who dropped them in his haste. Four attempts later, the key slid in. Greg bounced across the seat to unlock Von’s side. Von was shutting his door as Greg turned the ignition, and Greg didn’t even pause to slam his own door until he was peeling out.

“Slow down!” Von snapped. “People act crazy trying to get in to a titty bar, not out!”

Greg eased up all of five miles per hour, gunning for the exit. He came dangerously close to sideswiping a Civic before hooking a right. The horn of the other car faded, though the driver raised a middle finger for good measure. Greg remained oblivious to the whole sequence, painfully unaware how close he’d come to blowing the whole deal. “We did it!” he whooped. “The most daring tool theft ever!”

“We’ll need to clean that blood off the windows soon as we get to some back roads,” Von said, praying the Civic didn’t chase after them. He glanced backward until he was sure there would be no road rage retaliation, his head almost lighter than air. The millwork of his veins and arteries decided to do their thing again. He exhaled and resumed his train of thought. “We’d never be able to explain to some pig why holy mother of God, what did you do with it, Greg?” He jumped around in his seat as though stung on the ass, looking behind him, beneath him, below him. “It’s not here! We lost it!”

Greg plowed the brake pedal with both feet, the tires screeching and the body swerving uncertainly. He pulled an illegal U-turn into the thankfully empty oncoming road and punched the accelerator, hanging a left back onto Seymour Street and past a Burger King. The Electra Complex grew bigger, like a mouth about to swallow them.

“It’s by the back door!” Greg reasoned. “We didn’t bring it in after I set it on the roof, and it must’ve fell off.”

“We didn’t bring it in?” Von echoed. “You mean you didn’t bring it in!”

Greg had no reply for that as he barreled through the parking lot to approximately where they had had been before. “Shit, hang on,” he said as Von reached for the door handle. “There’s no light back here.” He put it back in reverse and flipped on the high beams. The car hitched slightly before it came to a stop.

Greg sprang out of the Nova, searching the lot frantically. Von moved more slowly, as though weighed down by a heavy heart. He immediately walked in front of the car, into the glare of the headlights, and quietly said, “Here.”

Greg followed Von’s gaze and gasped in horror.

“That’s our jillion dollars,” Von said, pointing. “You just made road kill out of our meal ticket, sumbitch.”

Greg dropped to his knees in horror and disbelief. His dramatic collapse afforded him a closer look, which he held as though the organ would regenerate back to its original—and surely pricier—form. The member was curiously white now, all its blood shot through the vessels and glans by the weight of the car; white except for the distinctive treads of Michelin tires. What had been inserted through the suck-hole just minutes ago now resembled something you’d fling on a plate with a spatula and douse with maple syrup.

“We gotta get outta here,” Von announced. “We can’t let him know we got nothing to bargain with. We’ll have to take it with us.”

“Him” was Edward Rochester, the latest addition to the men’s soprano choir. He blew a thousand bucks a night at the Complex, and seemed to arrive in a different luxury car each time. On Saturdays at 9:45, he always visited the Vacuum. Even a destitute man would find five million dollars an agreeable price for his lovewand, so Von and Greg figured Edward would be only too happy to ante up—and right quick at that. Every second counted.

Greg gave Von a doubtful look, but made talons of his fingers and tried to slip them between the flattened organ and the asphalt. Von worked the other side. It was like trying to peel the label off a packaging envelope—getting a sizable piece to come up with no problem and then losing it as it tore from its body. The member was the same way, a smidgen of flesh peeling off like masking tape, then dissolving into a cluster of various strands like bubble-gum stuck to the bottom of a shoe.

They kept an eye out for approaching cars or patrons making an early exit, but their luck held (the setback of the squashed sexual apparatus notwithstanding).

Von forced the silly putty-like chunks into his pockets, thinking this was one time he’d be sure to use the laundromat.

Edward Rochester was in a great deal of pain. He’d pay to have the bastard tortured. The seediness of the Complex appealed to him in ways the higher class “gentlemen’s’ clubs” could not, but he could have done without getting his ass kicked by an uncultured patron. He’d made the apparently ghastly error of knocking somebody’s bottle of beer off their table when trying to negotiate his way from near the stage to the door to the Vacuum. Before he even had a chance to offer to pay for a new one, the bearded patron said, “Watch where the fuck you’re going, dicksucker!” and pushed him into the wall. Edward rebounded from it, lungs whooshing from his lungs, and stepped into a right hook. A few kicks found him as he tasted the floor, and he began to worry that the strobe light effect he was seeing wasn’t part of the stage show this time. It actually was, fortunately, but he and Russell Crowe were separated by interchangeable bald men in black shirts emblazoned with white letters reading SECURITY and dragged out of the club. Hence, he’d missed his 9:45 “appointment” with Angelique . . .

In greater pain was Horace Cromwell, who’d given plasma just to treat himself to a good beejay. And now he was convulsing on the filthy floor of the Vacuum, forty-five dollars and one penis poorer.

No one could hear his screams over the music; not that he wanted anyone to find out what had become of his girth. What he did want was revenge. He’d have it before the night was over . . . if he didn’t bleed to death.

The Bic lighter cost him all of a dollar, but it was reliable. It flamed on, first try. He didn’t want to look at the stump, at the mangled roots of what had given him so much pleasure and disappointed so many girls since high school. It was like looking at a tangle of circuitry spooling from an open wall socket. He could feel his pulse in the mess of severed blood vessels, a renewal of pain with each pounding beat. Blood matted his thighs like he’d just given birth, and he probably didn’t have much more he could waste.

He was telling his hand No! even as it brought the lighter closer. The searing heat was close enough to scald the blood and torn skin, discomforting and nearly agonizing. Horace gritted his teeth and brought the flame home.

If he’d been in pain before, he was in Hell now. An electric current of agony erupted in his groin, his original pain with a whole battalion of reinforcements. He felt every orifice knot up as if to contain the sparks shooting through his nerves. The world became a vision of fire and only a chaotic scream with no beginning or end as the soundtrack. He pierced the veil only in brief flashes of reality, as if he could only bare glimpses without losing his mind. When he could finally align his vision with the grim reality, he saw the ultimate parody of male human reproduction—a blackened, smoking gorge of a stump. He fancied that he still heard the sizzling of the veins as they cauterized and stemmed the flow of blood, a morbid sound and odor he knew he could expect to be waiting for him in dreams, waking him up in the dead of night.

He vomited convulsively into his lap, whether from the tidal wave of pain or the reek of his own smoldered crotch he could not say. Some of the bile caught in his stub, and mildly bubbled from the heat. He thought he might have passed out at some point, but wasn’t sure.

He crawled to the door and unlocked it. Someone was waiting outside.

An animated customer greeted him, eyes wide with admiration. “Dude! That must have been the best nut ever, you screamed like a yodeler caught in a thresh machine!”

Horace staggered past, trying to button his pants. He could still hear his genitals crackling. The new arrival gave an astonished gasp behind him at the sight of all the blood in the Vacuum.

Horace followed the trail of his blood to a back exit, just in time to see them leave in the Nova. Hunched over and groaning miserably, he ambled toward his car.

“What’s he gonna do, ask to talk to it?” Von asked, maybe trying to convince himself more than Greg. “Make sure it’s still alive? He’ll leap at any chance to get it. We’ll take his money and shoot him in the back. It won’t be the worst thing that ever happened to him, now, will it?”

“Good plan, king,” Greg complimented.

“I just hope Sammy doesn’t act crazy tonight. That boy ain’t all there.”

Greg nodded uneasily, even as he drove them to Sammy’s house. Neither of them ever knew what to expect from Sammy, and they’d already had one bad surprise this evening as it was. It seemed a bad omen of the shape of things to come . . . and the night hadn’t even really begun.

Part II: Slut Necro Lambda and The Divided Man

Sammy feverishly worked his inches, member in one hand and his mother’s soiled undergarments in the other. He ejaculated into a tube sock with faded yellow stripes and an increasingly cardboard-like texture. He supposed he could have used Mom’s underwear, but that was just sort of sick, the way he figured. It was a show of respect. He shuddered in the aftermath, smothering his nose and mouth with the panties, inhaling the musky dampness. It was almost enough to stiffen him again—three more today would make a baker’s dozen—but he would have company soon. There were other tasks to perform.

He gingerly removed the tube sock. As he feared, the friction had caused his sores to run. It was probably to be expected after so many transmissions today; you pay to play. Off-white streams of pus ran in rivulets down his shaft, erupting from the tiny mouth-like lesions. The accompanying agony (including a gasp-inducing, white fire painful sensation while urinating) and random discharges concerned him. At times, it was downright unbearable.

Probably something he ate, he figured. Lotta bacteria out there. It would pass. It sure was taking its sweet time, though. He didn’t want to contemplate the day when it would be more trouble than it was worth to jack down. A man should have a fake tooth hollowed out with a cyanide tablet in such an event—break in case of emergency.

Behind him, the Divided Man stood sentinel. From the attic, a thumping sound. And from below, feeble screams from the basement.

Sammy chuckled as he pulled up his pants, wincing a bit the complaint of his sores. He addressed the Divided Man. “If they thought before was bad, they’re gonna love what happens next.”

The paring knife appeared slight, but for all the caterwauling it provoked as it carved out Mary Jane Turner’s anus, it may as well have been a jackhammer. The girl was too weak to lift her head a scant five minutes ago, but now she was flailing from the meat hook like a speared fish. The other sluts were about as vocal as they witnessed the excision—till capable of being shocked after months of imprisonment and experiments that made Josef Mengele look like Dr. Spock.

Surgery to Sammy was art, and the more involuntary the better. He was damned good at it. On the rare occasions that perverted fantasies of his mother (often they were technically memories) failed to shove a beat-off session past the finish line, he’d remember the screams of Linda Gordon (missing 01/27/2000) as she awoke to find a Labrador retriever’s head (missing 07/17/2000) sewn to her shoulder, its tongue dangling to her nipple. On the heels of that, she discovered the dog’s tail had been power-stapled between her buttocks. Sammy had been unable to do anything with poor Spot’s doghood, so he placed it on a saucer and told Linda, “Bon appétit!” She was understandably reluctant, but her hunger weakened her resolve three days later. By then, the bubblegum-pink “cocktail,” as he liked to think of it, was collecting a rather devoted congregation of flies. She scarfed it down like a real trouper . . . and was then served another, this from a poodle (missing 07/23/2000). She failed to learn her lesson and waited again, vowing she would not succumb this time, would not afford him any more of her dignity. Whitney Houston would have been proud. She lasted four days, and then pitifully brushed away the flies and dropped it in her mouth like a popcorn shrimp. Linda wasn’t so successful at chowing down for Old Glory this time, though, and her quease gland was wrung like a chicken neck. Shriveled giblets of flyblown dog dick and chyme were rerouted up her gullet in a powerful deluge that doubled her over with sobs, regurgitant flecks stuck in the fur of the Labrador’s head (Sammy didn’t care very much for poodles either, admittedly).

Yes, thinking about her ordeal could fill a tube sock faster than you could recite your social security number.

Linda was a remarkable accomplishment and would have been a primo addition to anyone’s resume, but the piece de resistance was undoubtedly Sheryl Gray, with contribution from her fellow sorority sisters. Slut Necro Lambda, he called it. The endeavor had been a real challenge. The removal of five vaginas took two days, a painstaking process of careful cutting and hacking. He’d botched a sixth attempt, which would have been a complete waste had Von and Greg not volunteered to take her off his hands. A prone Sheryl was then the recipient of the world’s first multi-vaginal transplant. Rather crude exploratory surgery techniques freed enough room for the canals, in effect becoming makeshift passages to her digestive system in most instances. Removal of bone segments allowed for more slightly varied installations of these surrogate fuckholes. Sheryl did not survive this radical procedure, regrettably . . . but that was merely the final ingredient to the thrill.

This unparalleled success earned him the esteemed title of Doctor Butcher from Von and Greg. Sammy let them have a turn with Slut Necro Lambda, under the stipulation that they both had to use the same orifice. Why not? He had plenty to spare. And he still had plenty afterward—the crazy bastards had used the backdoor. It defeated the whole purpose of the operation, but that was Von and Greg for you.

Back to the business at hand, Sammy couldn’t help but notice Mary Jane Turner’s anus looked like the underside of a mushroom. He was puzzling over whether or not this was erotic, and why the incising sounded like nothing more exotic than the dicing of a tomato. This was for culinary purposes, of course, but you’d expect a more significant soundtrack to accompany the theft of someone’s asshole. The flesh could be so banal, even with artistry like Sammy’s to spice it up.

The incision came full circle and the perimeter dropped out. Sammy peeled it off the floor, though not before fully appreciating the anatomical delights he’d uncovered. A more educated person could probably shoot out five syllable terminologies for everything, but to Sammy, it was just glistening and rather stringy rectal meat dripping like a melting icicle.

It reminded him of a pornographic movie called Gaping Anus, naturally enough. The exposed muscle tissue would be slick and very inviting, like a mitten stuffed with Vaseline. Maybe he could even perform without bursting any more sores. This was all extremely enticing, but it wasn’t like she was going anywhere anyway. Besides, he had the attic to think of now.

He left the cellar and his little mascots—a stripper, a prostitute, two college girls (with only one anus between them now) and a nurs — all worthless whores, in other words—and climbed the stairs back up to the kitchen. He set the souvenir from Mary Jane on the chopping block, employing his thumb to slide it from fingers—it stuck like mucus. He plucked up his mallet and brought it down, effectively squashing the wrinkled flesh. From a Tupperware bowl, he produced the remaining cuts of Sue Harper’s buttocks (additional remains recovered 05/11/2002, 05/25/2002 and 06/02/2002), and cranked them through an old fashioned meat-grinder onto a paper plate. A spatula freed the compacted meat from the chopping block, which Sammy scraped on the paper plate. He threw it into the microwave and set it on high, whistling all the while.

The thumping in the attic grew more persistent in anticipation of feeding time. He heard Greg’s Nova in the driveway as the microwave beeped its conclusion. He rushed upstairs to make the delivery. He hadn’t bothered to wash his hands since handling Mom’s underwear (and himself), he realized. Sammy laughed at his carelessness. He unlocked the attic door, chucked the meat inside, and relocked the door from the outside. He heard scraping sounds as the occupant crawled to the newly arrived meal. It would taste like arse, but that was pretty much the point.

Sammy was scrambling back downstairs when Von and Greg walked in. Both parties had their own reasons to distract the other. Sammy came up with the first diversion. “You’re late,” he accused, short of breath.

Von was grateful for the opportunity to stall. “Why you breathing so hard? You just get done jackin’ down?”

“I was upstairs.”

“Upstairs jackin’ down?” Von pounced.

Sammy ignored him. “What’s the matter with you two? You look like Gillian Anderson died and had her remains cremated before you got a crack at her in the morgue.”

Von sighed heavily, feigning a sudden interest in the orange carpet of the den. It was an ugly concoction that looked to have been stitched together from skinned Muppets.

“You two morons didn’t get it, did you? The guy practically gave you his dick on a silver platter and you didn’t take it. Unbelievable.”

“That ain’t what happened, fag face,” Von shouted back. “We did the whole thing the way we talked about, no problem. It was easier than snatching a Latch-Key Kid.”

Sammy didn’t speak for a moment, puzzled. “Okay . . . was Gillian Anderson cremated?”

“Nuh-uh.” Von sighed again. “Look, we got in, got the package, and got the hell out. It was going great.” Von gave his cohort a disgusted look. “Until Mario Andretti over here peeled out on the prize.”

“I said I was sorry!” Greg protested, even though he’d done no such thing.

“Sorry doesn’t take the pieces of Rochester’s dick out of our pockets and make it whole again!”

Sammy didn’t bother to hold in his laughter. “You got a rocket in your pocket, Von?”

“Come on, this ain’t something to joke about. Rochester finds out Greg ruined it, he’ll use that ransom money to have us killed.”

“So don’t tell him. He’s not going to report you to the Better Business Bureau.”

“But what if he insists on seeing it first?”

“Knowing every second counts, that would take balls.”

“He’s still got those,” Greg pointed out.

“What about you, Sammy?” Von asked hopefully. “You got an extra one stashed around here someplace?”

“Oh yeah, sure, just check the candy bowl on the refrigerator. Of course I don’t. I don’t kill guys. What do you think I am, a gay?”

“No, but—” Von paused. “Wait a minute now. Me and Greg’s killed us a few dudes before. You trying to say that makes us rope smokers?”

“Not necessarily—”

“Because Greg’s the one who did all the killing, so he’s the damn queer.”

“Hey, you’re the one who had you a handful of Rochester’s pork sword,” Greg pointed out.

“Shut the hell up, Greg.”

“Yeah, Sammy, he was asking Von to use his teeth and everything!”

“Shut the hell up, Greg!”

“Both of you calm down,” Sammy interjected. “And it’s actually good that you remember these details. You’ll be able to prove beyond a doubt that you’re the ones who did it.”

“Oh right, I’m sure there’ll be all sorts of cranks lining up to take the credit for it.”

“Would you just hand someone three million dollars because they claimed to have your most prized possession? If it was me, I’m not sure I’d take the word of a dick thief at face value . . . especially one who’s a closet homo.”

“Hey, I thought we were getting—” Greg began.

Von cut him off with remarkable subtlety. “Shut the hell up, Greg!”

Sammy might have noticed, but a succession of thumping noises overhead mercifully distracted him and grabbed his attention. “I’ll be right back,” he offered and stormed up the staircase.

When he was out of earshot, Von grabbed a handful of Greg’s shirt. “Do you need a written invitation before you’ll use your brain?”

“What?”

“What were you just about to say? That you thought we were getting five million dollars, not three?”

“Well, aren’t we?”

“Yeah. And how much money do you think Sammy’ll want if he finds out?”

“He don’t deserve any of it . . . you and me are the ones doing all the work!”

“Exactly. But a man with Rochester’s money can pay to create a lot of problems for us. Like . . . hell, I don’t know, ninjas and shit.”

Greg gave this possibility a moment of reverent silence.

“So we might need his help after all. And we need his house to arrange the ransom. We don’t want to be seen anywhere near our homes, just in case.”

“But what could Sammy do against ninjas?”

Von considered this and shrugged. “This is Doctor Butcher we’re talking about, Greg. Those invisible bastards could be pissing throwing stars for the rest of their lives, which probably wouldn’t be very long if they try to get between us and that money.”

Greg looked up the stairwell, listening for Sammy. When he didn’t hear any sign that he was returning, he said, “I’ve got a better idea.”

Von was skeptical, to say the least.

“What if we kill Sammy?” Greg whispered, so quietly Von almost didn’t hear him.

“Say . . . that ain’t half-bad,” Von considered. “We get Sammy, we can cut him off and have a replacement dick. Rochester won’t be able to tell the difference.”

“Hey, that didn’t even occur to me,” Greg admitted.

“Then we can have his house at no charge, and we don’t have to share any of the money with him.”

“I didn’t think of that either! That’s even better!”

“Then why the hell did you suggest it in the first place? You must like killing other guys and dominating ‘em. Sammy’s right, you probably are gay.”

“The hell you say! I was thinking with Sammy out of the picture, we’d have Slut Necro Lambda and all those whores downstairs all to ourselves! That’s just as good as five million dollars, you ask me!”

“Slut Necro Lambda,” Von repeated with earnest reverence. “Man, I could certainly use some more of that backdoor action, no doubt about it.”

Greg grinned. “Now who sounds like the damn queer?”

At that moment, they heard more noises overhead and what had to be Sammy’s voice, the words inaudible but apparently forceful.

“Did he move all those twats up to the attic?” Von asked.

“I doubt it. I think I can hear ‘em crying in the basement.”

“Hmm. Maybe we should go find out, don’t you think? He shouldn’t be keeping any secrets from us. We’re supposed to be partners.”

Greg nodded. “You got that right, son. We can’t abide by no traitor. I’ll tell him that when we slash his throat for him.”

Von gestured to follow and began to quietly ascend the stairs.

Horace followed the Nova to a secluded two story home on an unmarked and unpaved road off Connelly Trail. The woods were thicker here, and it looked like the kind of place where toothless bumpkins would command you to squeal like a pig before bending you over and breaking you off. At this point, he was quite confident that the worst that could possibly happen to him had happened to him, and any subsequent cuts, bruises, and ass-poundings would be trivial at best.

When you had to crack the window of your Rabbit because the mephitic fetor of your crispified cock stump was nauseating you virtually to the point of unconsciousness, you didn’t have much further to fall. It triggered a very old memory from his childhood, an evening when his mother had melted a plastic ladle in the dishwasher, creating an overpowering olfactory assault so abominable that he’d had to seek refuse in the basement to keep from puking.

He stopped a hundred yards from the house, his headlights extinguished. He’d go the rest of the way on foot and hopefully get the drop on them. He had to wait for his eyes to adjust, although it still didn’t afford much definition to his environment. Out here was the kind of true darkness of night unknown to the city, away from all the street lights and neon, with even the stars blotted out by the heavy canopy of the trees overhead. The orange glow from the windows ahead was his only guiding light.

Was this even their house? Was his manhood being utilized in some form of ritual satanic abuse? Were they perhaps religious fanatics exacting the vengeance of their god on the “impure” heathens who sought the earthly pleasures of the flesh?

If so, it might be time their little sect learned the doctrine of an eye for an eye . . . and a life for a cock.

They found the Divided Man midway through the ascent. Greg saw him first and stopped cold. His hand seemed to have a mind of its own as it reached out and tugged at Von’s sleeve, never turning his head from the sight. Von was more eager to get upstairs and find out exactly what was so secretive that Sammy couldn’t tell them about it, and almost pulled a “Jump back, boy, you’re botherin’ me,” on him. Greg, however, was insistent, and Von finally peered back around the corner of the room they’d just passed on the way to the attic stairs.

“The hell?” Von asked. In that moment he wouldn’t haven’t been able to say why they had been so determined to get to the attic, or what the hell an attic was in the first place. Greg was still stretching his sleeve to get him to look, but he didn’t notice (neither, for that matter, did Greg).

It was the parents’ bedroom. Von always assumed Sammy’s mom and dad were both dead, especially considering the extent of their son’s homicidal forays into surgical possibilities. The evidence on display didn’t disprove his theory, but initially it appeared like a locked room aficionado’s wet dream. Cast randomly on the carpet were a lady’s undergarments (pock-marked with dried droplets of menstrual blood) and a tube sock with no equal. Beyond those, statuesque against the far wall was the upright body of a man. A network of wires had been run through an eyelet from the ceiling to keep the body in a standing position. The wire work had turned him into a puppet of flesh, bone, and organs. His torso had been cleanly divided from throat to stomach, the corner flaps of the skin held aside by surgical clamps. This strategic sculpting allowed for a view of the man’s entrails, which remained stationary against the demand of gravity due to its slightly slumped position, unmolested by any incisions or perforations. Their arrangement seemed as aesthetically-conscious as the objects in a still-life drawing, a measured integration of reds and yellows.

His sex organs had not been surgically inspected.

“You know what this means,” Von whispered.

Greg nodded. “Sure do! Sammy’s a homo, son!”

Von barely refrained from slapping him. “It means we have a placement for Rochester. We won’t have to cut Sammy out after all.”

Greg considered this a moment, then nodded again. His attention fell on the sock and he stooped to pick it up, apparently already distracted from the wonder of the Divided Man. “You ready for Sock Puppet Theater?” he asked mischievously. Before Von could tell him to put a sock in it, Greg forced his hand into the sock, already bending his wrist to form an elongated mouth with his hand.

He frowned instantly. “Yuck . . . it’s all wet inside.”

“Three guesses why, and the first two don’t count, slick.” Von gestured to the soiled panties discarded on the floor.

Greg looked at him blankly.

“Why the hell else do you think a man would leave a sock lying around on the bedroom floor, you ijit?” Von asked rhetorically. Then, because he understood the futility of asking Greg to make a mental leap of any kind, he answered anyway. “Sammy was filling it up with his rocket sauce, son!”

“Shit!” Greg palmed his forearm and yanked the sock away like someone trying to haul a tablecloth away without upsetting everything on top of it. The sock dropped to the carpet inside out, and Greg jumped back from it like it was a rattlesnake. He wadded up a bedspread and dried his arm off, never taking his eye away from the sock, as though terrified that it would jump up and try to pull itself back up his arm.

Von chuckled, but as quietly as he could, still listening for the sound of Sammy’s returning footsteps. They hadn’t heard anything from the attic for a few moments. He dug the Swiss army knife from his pocket and recoiled at the feel of the moist clumps of Rochester’s original tool. “I got the last one, boss man. This is all you.”

Greg accepted the knife a bit uncertainly.

“Get crackin’, man,” Von said. “He’ll be back any minute now. I’ll keep a look-out.”

Greg extracted the knife blade and walked over to the strung-up cadaver. This close up, he noticed the eyes were open. The lids had been removed. That was a trademark Sammy maneuver, just in case Greg had any shred of hope left that Sammy had nothing to do with this objet d’art displayed in the bedroom. He and Von had been up here before, but the door had always been closed. They’d never paid it any mind. Greg started trying to remember if there were any other doors that had always been closed to them in the past.

Just the attic.

He knelt before the Divided Man, thinking it was pretty sick of Sammy to have some naked dude with his guts on display. That girl with the dog head and tail, that would have been far more appropriate.

“Hurry!” Von commanded from the doorway. “He could come down any second now!”

Greg winced as though the tube sock misadventure was happening all over again. He reached for the man’s groin and grasped. The effect was instantaneous—the slop of immobile entrails squirmed free, a minor avalanche of the digestive tract right over Greg’s hands and into his lap. He sprang back, dropping the coils which had slickly gathered over his thighs onto the shag carpet with a surprisingly heavy slapping sound.

Their eyes both shot up to the ceiling as though it would dematerialize to reveal Sammy. When it did not, Von jabbed a finger in Greg’s direction. “Get your ass back over there and find it!”

Greg gave him a helpless look, like a little kid whose trail of bread crumbs had been eaten up by the ravens.

“Now!” Von snapped, somehow managing a scream at whisper level. He wasn’t sure Sammy would go ballistic over this, but since Sammy kept the Divided Man a secret, there might be some sentimental value attached to him. He’d undoubtedly notice the “alterations,” but maybe not before they were a few million dollars richer. And if he blew the whole episode out of proportion, they still had the option of killing him. They just better make sure that they got it right, because they would probably only get one shot at it. And obviously the guy wasn’t above surgical liberties with the male figure after all.

Greg had to step into the pile of entrails to get close enough. They squelched under his shoes. His left foot nearly slid out from under him as he tested the terrain like someone on a frozen pond. A length of intestine burst under his inquisitive weight. He reached into the obscuring mess still attached to the abdominal cavity. Everything felt like wet snakes. He had to extend his fingers and specifically pull aside various coils like vertical blinds, trying to uncover the crotch again. Finally irritated, he grabbed a fistful and yanked them like the starting cord to a lawnmower. They tore and spattered him with digestive juice. He tossed them over his shoulder and grabbed another handful. One of the cords holding the cadaver upright snapped. The Divided Man started to tilt, unbalanced, so Greg held him up with one hand as he withdrew more yellowish ropes from the other. He found what he was looking for, and then had to lean up against the body to keep it situated as he carved. It went easily, having expired soft. Greg closed his hand on it and stepped out of the gut pile. The body collapsed, its arms draping over Greg as though hugging him.

“Mission accomplished,” Greg reported, pushing the cadaver away from him. It struck the ground, face up.

Von shook his head. “You know what you look like?”

Greg gave himself a quick once-over. “No, what?”

“You look like a guy who just stepped in a heap of guts, tore some more out for good measure, and then sliced off a dead man’s wang with a Swiss army knife.”

“So you think Sammy’ll notice?”

“Only if he doesn’t fall down the stairs, break his neck, and die before he sees you again.”

As if on cue, the attic door slammed shut overheard and footsteps on the steps announced Sammy’s inexorable return. He did not fall down the stairs, break his neck, and die. He walked past the room, stopped, backtracked, did a visible double-take, and began to take inventory of the extensive damage.

The first thing he said was, “Why is that tube sock inside out?”

“Uh . . . it was like that when we got here,” Greg offered, the picture of innocence if that picture had a cracked frame. And no picture.

“Yeah,” Von agreed, painfully aware that they didn’t actually formulate any plans on how to take Sammy out. They had acted under the assumption that they would acquire the genitalia and then simply become the vessels for divine inspiration. They had a Swiss army knife between them and no powers of telepathy to coordinate exactly what to do with it.

Sammy had moved on from the tube sock to the mess of gore beyond it.

“The body was already like that, too,” Von said. “When we got here, I mean.”

“Uh huh,” Sammy said without tone. “Funny how that worked out, seeing as how it was perfectly fine when I walked past a few minutes ago . . . the body perfectly upright, the entrails neatly in place . . . the tube sock correctly oriented.”

Von remained silent, waiting for his associate to volunteer a predictably pathetic excuse. Greg did the same. An awkward silence stretched its legs.

“What’s that you got in your hand, Greg?” Sammy finally asked.

Greg hadn’t looked this surprised since his sister caught him masturbating in the shower (but slightly less so than when she’d hopped in and taken over the shucking responsibilities for him). He struggled for a good answer. What he found was, “Just . . . just some . . . gum. Like you . . . chew?”

Sammy smiled. “So chew then, Greg old buddy. Don’t let me stop you.”

“Yeah, Greg,” Von agreed. “Chew.”

If he’d been lost in the forest before, he was going into the oven now.

“Greg, you have the rare distinction of running over one man’s junk and disemboweling a cadaver while trying to procure a changeling penis, all within about 30 minutes,” Sammy said. “And you ruined a work of art in the process. So if you don’t start chewing in the next ten seconds, I’m going to tear you a brand new asshole, ‘son.’ And I will use all my surgical know-how to make sure that you live long enough to use it, too.”

Greg chewed. It may not have even been the most unpleasant experience in his life from the layman’s perspective (lest we forget other extracurricular activities with corpses, though female, whose every orifice he had lunched on, and ravenously at that), but it was altogether more humbling.

“Oh, hell,” he said between mouthfuls. “It’s . . . it’s really chewy, guys . . . Christ on a unicycle, it’s so damn chewy …”

It was not hyperbole. His jaws worked mechanically, piston-like, to conclude this humiliation fast enough to break the sound barrier, but the morsels resisted. They bred in his mouth, tough as gristle with the texture of the fat on a steak. He could almost visualize each part as he chomped . . . the shaft, the head, the urethra, the veins, the erectile tissue. His own size seemed to wilt between his legs with each bite.

He cried as he ate.

“Fantastic,” Sammy complimented. “You took it like man, Greg. I didn’t think you had it in you . . . although I guess you do now, don’t you? So now that I trust you two dopes have been exorcised of your little substitution fantasy, you can get your asses on the horn and start making demands to Mrs. Rochester. Unless vibrator companies have jumped into the telemarketing biz, you’ll be the most welcome call of the night.”

Greg’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. He gagged miserably, but held it down.

“Hurry up and swig some Listerine, dickbreath,” Sammy said. “The time is later than you think.”

Part III: Embryonic Necropsy and Devourment

“Make sure you dumbasses hit star-six-seven when you call,” Sammy admonished.

Von stood at the kitchen counter with the portable phone in his hand, reading over the “script” in front of him. Greg had prepared it, which in retrospect probably wasn’t the best idea. Somehow it had seemed more important for Von to watch the latest installment of a porn series called Gaping Anus the other night rather than iron out the script with him. It was the 24th volume, but he had to hand it to them—they were finding ways to keep it fresh. You never knew which gal would start out with a nickel-sized rectal circumference that wound up more like the ball from a shot put three hours and forty-seven minutes later. It seemed like 4 hours well spent. All Greg had to do was incorporate the points he had outlined. He now understood that the word Greg should have stood out to him more in that scenario.

“Haven’t you ever heard of punctuation?” Von finally asked, disgusted.

“Let me see that,” Sammy said and snatched it away. “I don’t know why you wasted your time coming up with this thing. You’re trying to ransom her husband’s junk, not sell her a magazine subscription.” His brow crinkled as he read it for a few seconds, frown deepening. “He’s right, Greg. It’s not exactly Hemingway. This ain’t even Flowers for Algernon. If you tried to read this to Mrs. Rochester word for word, she’d tell the police they oughtta narrow their search to guys with Down’s syndrome.”

“Or a retard,” Von said.

Greg made no reply. He stood by the refrigerator, wincing at the sour taste in his mouth. Vomiting would be worse than the actual eating, though; all those masticated chunks of penile debris resurrected. The thought was horrifying, and the prospect felt more and more likely with each slosh of his disturbed stomach juices. He had to eliminate the taste.

“I’ve got to eat something else,” he announced.

“Still hungry?” Sammy chuckled. “We could have Von turn out his pockets.”

Greg opened the refrigerator, staring at the shelves like a man beholding an oasis in the desert. He reached in with both hands and removed a large Tupperware bowl, then started yanking open drawers, looking for a spoon or fork.

“Just help yourself,” Sammy said, irritated.

Von took the script from Sammy and crumpled it up. “Hell with it. I’ll make something up.”

“Couldn’t be any worse. Follow the subject with the predicate and it’ll already be a vast improvement.”

Greg peeled back the Tupperware lid and sank his spoon into a nearly gelatinous concoction of crimson slop and glistening lumps. He filled his mouth with it, grinning idiotically. “Fine eatin’ here, Sammy. What is this, some kind of cobbler?”

“I believe the medical term is ‘spontaneous abortion,’” Sammy replied.

Greg’s grin froze on his face. He looked down at the bowl again, first seeing his rather awe-struck reflection caught by the light above him, and then the true texture of those lumps he’d first taken to be cobbler crust. The truth seemed obvious now. He prodded it with his spoon and discovered a runny film at the surface of the glop, like pond scum.

The amniotic sac . . . or what passed for it in its premature expulsion.

“There may be a few morsels of the placenta left,” Sammy said, matter-of-factly. He could have been talking about the reds in a bowl of M&M’s.

Von had paused with the phone in his hand the instant Sammy said “spontaneous abortion.” He finally dared to speak. “You mean some whore had a miscarriage and squeezed all that slop out of her joytrail? And you tossed it in a bowl and froze it?”

Sammy nodded. “That’s about the size of it.”

Von processed this for a few seconds. “Well, hellfire, Greg, why’re you just standing there staring like that freak in Sleepaway Camp? Get me a spoon, too!”

Greg, hand held over his mouth, surrendered the bowl and spoon to Von without a word. He looked rather green around the gills.

“You’re kidding, right?” Von asked, staring at the bowl. “I ain’t using this spoon after you. You just had a dick in your mouth, son! I don’t want no part of that.”

“I rinsed my mouth out,” Greg protested slowly, as though afraid more than words would escape through his lips if he spoke too fast.

Sammy intervened. “Are you two gonna debate dental hygiene all night, or are you gonna get this Rochester bitch on the horn?”

“Right now I’m a bit more interested in how you got ahold of this here tasty little dessert,” Von said. He dipped a thumb into the mess on the outer edge—where Greg’s spoon probably hadn’t explored—and slid it in his mouth. He sucked at it thoughtfully, one eyebrow arched, then moaned approvingly. Some of it remained smeared around his lips like clown make-up.

“How I wound up with a puddle of abortion in my refrigerator? It’s kind of a boring story, really.” Sammy shrugged, but agreed to enlighten. He could have been talking about vacation slides from a trip he hadn’t really enjoyed. “I zapped this primo slut with my stun gun when she left the library, then brought her here. Slapped some meat down on her in so many different ways, I could have made my own cookbook. After a few weeks, her belly started expanding. I figured she was just bloated, but after awhile I realized there was a little Sammy on the way.”

Von frowned. “How do you know she wasn’t already pregnant?”

Sammy paused. “You know, I didn’t even really consider that. She may have been carrying some stranger’s child, at that. Well, I sure am glad that worthless skank is dead now. Got what she deserved.”

“She’s dead?”

“They don’t make ‘em much deader. I was pounding away at her ass like a jackhammer, and then I hear this tearing sound, right? So I pull back and look down, and there’s this . . . Remember how the Play-Doh Factory had that thing where you cranked and all the stuff came out in four or five different clumps? It was like that, it just started oozing out of her and dropping on my lap. Kind of lukewarm. And I was thinking this was all a bit tragic cuz it was my kid—or at least I thought so at the time—o I tried to do the gentlemanly thing and hurry up and finish my nut, right? But she wasn’t making it easy on me. All that thrashing around and resisting—hell, it’s probably what cost her the little bastard in the first place. It was messed up, though, ‘cause it was like every time I sent the battering ram home, more of that shit would squeeze out. To make a long story short, I went off, she went out, and the rest went in a Tupperware bowl to be served to—” He paused here, as though stopping himself from saying more than he intended. “For a special occasion.”

Von caught the subterfuge. “Let’s talk more about the noises in the attic.”

“Yeah!” Greg echoed. “You got cops up there, waiting for us to make our ransom demand?”

“Yes, Greg, that’s precisely it. With a basement practically wallpapered in women I’ve raped, tortured, and killed over the past seven years, the police couldn’t wait to use me to put you two crime lords out of commission. I’m getting a key to the city after your trial.”

“Hey, wait, let’s calm down a second, guys,” Von said. “Can’t you see this whole dick caper thing is tearing us apart? This should be one of the happiest nights of our lives.”

“Von’s right,” Greg said. “This is getting out of hand. I didn’t really believe you had cops up there, Sammy. Sorry.”

Von hoped he hadn’t truly believed it, but he had his doubts. There was something more important than that, though. “And now that we’ve established that no one is trying to short-change no one else, what can you tell us about the attic, Sammy?” he asked.

“I can tell you you’ll never see the inside of it if you don’t make that phone call. Wait a second, though.” He left the kitchen and returned a moment later with a cell phone. “Last one I grabbed had this on her, probably so she could call someone in the event of an emergency. Looks like she wasted her money, wouldn’t you say?”

“It still works?”

Sammy handed it to Von, who saw the display was indeed lit up. “Hey, speaking of the recently abducted, we’ve got a present for you in the trunk, Sammy. Assuming she hasn’t suffocated.”

“Same thing happens to her either way,” Sammy assured him. “She can wait.”

Von punched in the Rochesters’ number. “You boys ready to become millionaires?”

Greg looked more like he was ready to puke, but gave a thumbs up anyway.

Celia Rochester answered on the second ring. “Hello?”

“Good evening, Mrs. Rochester. Have you heard from your husband recently?”

“Do you know what time it is? If you’re trying to sell me something, it’s against the law to call this la—”

“Ma’am, I’m not trying to take your mon …” Von stopped short. “I mean, I haven’t broke the law …” He stopped short again. “Look, this probably isn’t what you think it is.”

“Whatever it is, the answer is still the same. He’s not here. He’s away on business.”

Von laughed. “Is that what he told you? I regret to inform you he was actually seen in the company of cheap women this evening at a local establishment called the Electra Complex.”

Her voice turned hard. “Was he indeed?”

“Yes, ma’am, and—”

“That son of a bitch! That depraved, immoral, perverted little son of a bitch! He promised me never again!”

Her voice was now loud enough that Greg and Sammy could hear her clearly. Von held the receiver away from his head.

“Well, ma’am, I—”

“If he was here right now, you know what I’d do?”

“No, but—”

“I’d take a meat cleaver and chop him off. I’d dice his little cock into shish-kebab, that bastard—”

“In that case, I have some good news for you, ma’am. You see, we already took care of that for you.”

“You diced it into shish-kebab?”

“Well, not exactly. It’s still in one piece—” Here Von crossed his fingers. “—and if your husband wants it back, he’s gonna have to pay us.”

“Oh, he’s not getting it back,” she replied firmly. “He can spend the rest of his life pissing through a plastic tube for all I care.”

The three men shared a look of absolute horror—not at the prospect of Edward Rochester pissing through a plastic tube for the rest of his life, but the increasing likelihood that there wasn’t going to be any ransom payment.

“Wait, listen, the women really weren’t that cheap, and he wasn’t even buying lap dances, I swear!”

“Nice try, but I’m not going to be stupid about trusting my husband anymore.”

“Okay, but what about compensation?”

“I’m not reporting you to the police. That’s my final offer.”

“We want our jillion dollars, you bitch!”

She hung up on him with an efficient little click.

“Well, Von, you ready to go buy that yacht now? Hell, let’s go jet-setting,” Sammy suggested, for once not enjoying his own sarcasm.

“It wasn’t my fault,” Von shouted.

“Wasn’t it? All you had to do was say, ‘Look, I cut off your husband’s tool, and it’ll cost you three million dollars to get it back so they can reattach it.’ The way you did it, you may as well have said, ‘Hey, your husband just raped a bunch of preschoolers after firebombing six hundred sixty-six churches and performing analingus on your mother’s rotting cadaver, and by the way, how much will you pay to get back this penis I ripped from him?’ If someone said they’d kidnapped your girlfriend while she was out slobbing knobs for a five-spot on Seymour and Laymon, would you pay up?”

Von, who’d never actually had a girlfriend—not a willing one, at least—said nothing. He slammed the phone on the counter and curled his arm around the Tupperware bowl, almost protectively. He looked at the spoon, remembered its origin, and raised the bowl to his lips. He supped from it like it was the last of the milk in a cereal bowl.

“So you mean to say we ain’t gettin’ one red cent for what we’ve done tonight?” Greg asked.

“That’s what I mean,” Sammy clarified.

“You mean I had to put that guy’s . . . that guy’s thing in my mouth, and swallow it for nothin’?” Greg couldn’t have looked more outraged if Movie Heaven stopped renting out Gaping Anus.

“Yep,” Sammy agreed. “The eternal plight of women everywhere.”

“Well, that’s just low down as anything.” He sulked, miserable at the idea that they probably would be shopping for yachts right now if Von had just read his script.

They were silent momentarily, stunned at this cruel turn of events, at a loss for words . . . the overconfident team who had boasted all along about their “inevitable” championship victory crusade, only to fall to the upstart underdogs. It wouldn’t have seemed possible for their night to turn out worse than Rochester’s, but here they were anyway. Every one of the involved parties, emasculated in one way or another.

As if on cue, they all heard a sudden outburst of laughter overhead which could only be construed as demonic. It did not seem to be predominantly masculine or feminine.

“Okay, I think we’ve had enough of your secrets,” Von said. He about-faced and left the kitchen for the stairs, carrying the Tupperware bowl with him.

“It’s safer if you don’t go up,” Sammy warned.

They ignored him. He tailed them with a sense of finality, not attempting to stop them. It was when they were passing the door to the Divided Man that a voice froze them. “Look down here, boys. I want to see your faces before I paint the walls with your brains.”

“Who’s this B-movie actor?” Von asked Sammy as they all obeyed the directive. “Another one of your ‘art’ exhibits?”

They found themselves seeing all of Horace for the first time, not just the fresh stump of his manhood jetting haphazardly like a lawn sprinkler. He stood at the foot of the stairs, deathly pale, with the front of his jeans almost entirely soaked in blood. He held a .38 on them. “From my glove compartment,” he explained. “I never drive without it. Guess I should have brought it inside the Electra Complex.”

“I’ve never seen him before,” Sammy replied to Von.

“Well, we don’t recognize him either,” Greg said.

“Of course you don’t,” Horace sympathized. “We weren’t properly introduced before you ran off with my still-bleeding dick, now were we?”

“He ain’t Edward Rochester,” Greg said.

“Hell no he ain’t,” Von agreed. “The pale little son of a bitch is lying.”

“Look at the front of my pants!” Horace shouted incredulously.

“Homosexual and pale,” Von revised.

Sammy sighed. “Allow me to translate for you two jack-offs—you didn’t castrate Rochester in the bar. Okay? You got this guy by mistake. Still with me? Now he’s going to kill us all. The perfect end to the perfect night.”

“Wrong guy? Bullshit.” Von pointed at Horace. “Prove it.”

Horace kept the gun on them while he undid the button of his jeans with his free hand and pulled his pants down. “You see now?” he asked triumphantly, then cried out when his underwear jostled the remnants. He had revealed something that looked more like a charred crater left by a meteorite than the external male reproductive system. His movements since the cauterization had teased open some of the heat blisters which had formed at the very base of his shaft (what little remained). Yellow pus was oozing over the rim of the blackened wound, the entrails of which were as indistinguishable as the remains of spontaneous combustion victims. The pus adhered to them like candle wax.

“Well then,” Von said. “We stand corrected. But before you blow our brains out—” He heaved the contents of the Tupperware bowl in Horace’s direction. The contents splattered across Horace’s face, blinding him and—when he inadvertently swallowed some of them—ickening him. He covered his face with both hands, trying to clear his eyes.

The trio scrambled into the Divided Man’s room and threw the door shut. Sammy had barely locked it and stepped back when the gun began firing on the other side, blowing out huge holes.

Von looked around frantically. “There’s nothing here!” he said, referring to the lack of an arsenal. Greg gave the tube sock wide berth as he searched, also unsuccessful.

The gunshots destroyed the lock and Horace kicked the door open almost effortlessly and rushed in. Sammy collided with him immediately, slapping the gun loose. Sammy drove him over to the far wall where they both tripped over the Divided Man and collapsed beside the body. Nearest to them, Greg snatched Horace up by his hair and the belt of his pants and dragged him a few feet over. Greg set Horace face down in the chest cavity of Sammy’s homage to Gray’s Anatomy. Horace’s face mashed the entrails flat and ripped some of the coils open. He inhaled the digestive juice remnants involuntarily, gagging as they burned his nostrils. They tasted even worse, he discovered a moment later, and he vomited explosively. At such proximity the bile washed along the inner walls like a gully, then rolled back under his face. He was dangerously close to drowning in his own vomitus when Greg let him go.

Horace jerked his head up, gasping and trying to wipe his face off with the front of his shirt. He closed one of his nostrils and exhaled through the other. A burning stream of gastric juice trickled out, like the fleeting last seconds of urination. He turned in time to see that Von had picked up his .38 from the floor and aimed it from a crouched position which left the gun poised at point-blank range in front of his already decimated crotch. Powder burns fanned across his thighs as the deafening blast of the gun evolved to a painful ringing sound in his ears.

Von attempted to punctuate by firing in Horace’s screaming open mouth, but the gun was empty.

Horace wasn’t finished. He’d already lost the main part of his anatomy, and the power sources were extraneous now anyway. He watched with an almost detached fascination as his testicles dropped out of either side of his pant legs. Von intentionally stepped on one, bursting it like an egg yolk as Horace shouldered past him and out the door in a seizure-like fashion.

Von and Greg helped Sammy up and followed the high-pitched screams. They caught up with him in the kitchen, just in time to see him snatch up the mallet Sammy had used to flatten Mary Jane Turner’s anus. They cornered him, Sammy around the left side of the kitchen island and Von and Greg to the right.

Sammy ripped out a silverware drawer and removed a carving knife that wouldn’t have shamed Michael Myers. His eyes never left Horace, who was backed up against the kitchen sink, head jerking left and right to plot a plan of attack.

Greg reached out to slap grab Horace’s wrist. Horace yanked it away and swung the mallet on reflex. It struck a glancing blow across the crown of Greg’s head with a hollow thwock! He stumbled backward and crashed into the corner of the room. He didn’t move.

Von wisely backed away, scanning for a readily accessible weapon and finding nothing. He dropped to his knees as Horace swung for his head.

Aware that Sammy was right behind him, Horace pivoted and blindly lashed with the mallet. Sammy was just out of range, but the next mallet swing struck the knife and sent it clattering to the floor.

That was when Von reached up under Horace and grabbed a handful of his mangled crotch. Horace thought he felt something loosen and spurt, but he couldn’t imagine what was possibly left to do so. Horace’s vocal cords went taut as piano wire as he screamed, abruptly dropping the mallet.

Sammy seized it and swung it at Horace’s head, putting his body into it. The mallet cracked loudly, with force brute enough to jar Horace’s right eye from its socket. A dollop of blood sputtered over his cheekbone. The eyeball had not been freed; it was still connected by a straining optic nerve, and for the first time in his life Horace could see his face without a mirror. Von’s hand was still wringing his crotch, and Horace kicked blindly behind him. He connected with something, and the hand was withdrawn.

Horace launched himself at Sammy, the momentum catching Sammy off-guard and putting him on his back with Horace atop. The mallet went down underneath his legs, just out of reach. Horace’s eyeball dangled just above Sammy’s face like a spider at the end of its web. His fingers were like talons, gouging at Sammy, seeking his eyes. The best Sammy could do was latch on to the wrists. He couldn’t find the leverage to throw Horace off of him.

Finally, out of desperation, Sammy raised his head off the floor and opened his mouth. The hovering eyeball disappeared, and Sammy’s teeth sprang shut like a trap. The optic nerve snapped and sprayed in his mouth. Horace immediately fell back from him, shrieking. Blood spurted between his fingers.

Sammy’s head struck the kitchen floor and his teeth slammed shut again, this time on the actual eyeball. It burst like a salad tomato, filling up his mouth with ocular fluid. He got to one knee and spat the fragments in Horace’s face.

“I’m not even the one who de-boned you,” Sammy said.

Von was just picking up the Michael Myers knife when Sammy and Horace separated. He swung the knife overhead with both hands, plunging it into Horace’s stomach as he fell on him. He sliced a six inch groove before the knife got stuck in the ribs. Horace screamed and jabbed a thumb in Von’s eye. Von clapped a hand to his face, stumbling backward, crying out. Horace got to his unsteady feet, trying to withdraw the knife. He succeeded, but with the blade came the beginning ropes of his innards.

Horace kicked the mallet aside as Sammy got a hand on it, so Sammy snatched at the escaping coil at Horace’s stomach. He narrowly missed a strike of the knife which Horace probably would have made had he been in possession of both his eyes. He couldn’t adjust to the new depth perception. Sammy pulled the sticky ropes to the meat grinder and guided them through the slot, yanking another couple feet of intestine through the incision in the process. He started cranking the meat grinder like a tire jack. Skewered grayish clumps began piling up on the linoleum. Horace grabbed at the escaping coils in panic, trying to keep them inside, but they rolled through his fingers and fed themselves to the waiting teeth of the grinder. They were like the loose strings on a sweater which don’t snap but continue to unravel the more you try to pull them and tear them off.

As a last resort, Horace cut his own entrails with the knife, which fortunately did not hurt. The internal hemorrhaging, on the other hand, was less merciful. Blood erupted from his nose and mouth. He stared with a kind of mute horror at the humiliation of his flesh.

Von tackled him from behind, slamming him into the kitchen skin. The unraveled length of intestine slapped wetly against the sink basin, curling through the lip of a black rubber cavity at the bottom. The knife bounced out of the sink and slid away on the counter until it struck the refrigerator.

“I’ve got him!” he called over his shoulder to Sammy. “Hit the switch!”

Horace bucked against him, but Von held on. Sharp elbows to his ribs and kicks to his shins started to loosen his grip, but then Sammy reached past and flipped the switch on an outlet beside the sink. The garbage disposal roared to life, the noise overpowering. Von worked Horace’s hands behind his back, keeping him pushed up against the sink and away from the knife.

“Put it in!” Von tried to shout over the garbage disposal.

Sammy nodded with a little smile of amusement, as if to say, Oh, this should be pretty neat. He nudged the severed length of bowel into the dark maw of the disposal drain until it poked through the hole in the rubber. It caught in the gears and pulled taut, now in a tug-of-war that Horace didn’t look very likely to win. A spray of blood erupted from the drain in fine needlepoint spatters, like a reverse showerhead, painting Horace’s face. Von used him as a shield to block the thrust of the backwash.

Horace made a final effort to free himself, still determined to take his tormentors with him if nothing else. He seized a handful of his entrails near the sink and wrenched at them. The rope of intestines tore apart. He tried to throw his weight in the direction of the knife, looking in that direction just in time to see the mallet whistling through the air. It cracked him above his remaining eye. Von let him drop to the floor, convulsing.

Sammy stood over him like a worker at the abattoir. He swung again. Six times. Twelve times. By twenty-four times, the blows ceased to register as anything solid and sounded more like large rocks striking the water of a creek bed. By thirty-three, Horace’s own mother would have thought he was the Elephant Man. There were no further convulsions, only the persistent roar of the garbage disposal. Sammy finally flipped it off.

He and Von stood in contemplative silence.

Horace died bereft of dick, balls, right eyeball, right hand, and eighty percent of his internal organs.

“Hey, you forgot to paint the walls with our brains,” Von informed the cadaver.

Greg groaned behind them, hauling himself back up to his feet by groping a shelf of the pantry. The throbbing pain was at least distracting him from the uprising of consumed genital remnants that seemed to have clogged his gullet.

“We better go get your slut out of the trunk just in case,” Sammy said, as much to distract them from their original objective as to prevent further any surprises.

Minutes later they all stood in the moonlight behind the Nova. They could now hear Angelique pounding on the underside. Von popped the trunk and stood back.

A sweaty, gasping Angelique slid away from them as far as the trunk allowed, wrapped in fetal position.

“Look guys, I’m sorry for what I said earlier,” she hyperventilated. “Just please don’t hurt me. I’ll do anything you want! I’ll . . . I’ll smoke with my box. I can do it with my asshole, too! Let me show you! F.O.C.!”

“Your butthole, eh?” Von said. “Sounds like it’s our lucky night after all.”

“Wait a minute,” Greg said. “What kind of cigarettes? Cuz if it’s just menthols, you can forget it.”

Sammy addressed her as if the other two weren’t even there. “You realize that doing ‘anything’ we want could also easily lead to you being ‘hurt,’ don’t you?”

Von appraised him uneasily, practically seeing the perverse surgical configurations scrolling through Sammy’s mind.

She raised a hand to them, as if to both ward them off and block out the sight of them altogether. “Please! My boyfriend’s name is Edward Rochester, and he has a lot of money. He’ll pay you for me . . . name your price! I have his number, just please don’t hurt me!”

This brought them all up short. They exchanged looks and slowly began nodding.

Finally, Von spoke. “I say again, gentlemen: Are we ready to become millionaires?”

Part IV: Trading Pieces

Angelique didn’t look particularly happy to be in Sammy’s workshop, which may have had something to do with the duct tape holding her fast to the chair. It didn’t help that Sammy was hovering over her, absently slapping his palm with a machete and grinning like the cat that ate the canary. He had also licked the length of the machete a few times, never taking his eyes from her. They took no chances with her, even wrapping her ankles fast to the chair legs. As a token medical measure for the cracked bone, they patched it with two strips in an X pattern (thus making it a target area if she somehow got free and tried to book . . . a kick in that place would put her right back to the ground in a hurry.)

She’d come up with what she felt were extremely convincing arguments for prolonging her life, but none of them actually got past the strip of tape over her lips. She may as well have been trying to recite the Gettysburg Address while deep throating Johnny Wadd.

Greg stood by the column of women dangling like slabs of beef from the overhead hooks. He ran his hands along each one like a housewife sizing up produce in a grocery store and gave their backsides a few hearty slaps.

“How’d you girls like to come home with a real man?” he asked.

He received a few whimpers by way of response, and a redhead (natural, he noted with no small satisfaction) pointlessly tried to explain that if Greg didn’t call the police, Sammy was going to murder them all.

“Oh, well, that changes everything,” Greg replied and laughed.

The protesting began anew.

Von winced. “What’s the point of stealing ‘em off the streets and raping ‘em if you’re just gonna let ‘em nag like free women, Sammy? And why do you got her gagged when she should be calling Rochester and telling him to grab his checkbook?”

Sammy finally looked away from Angelique. “Don’t tell me you bought her story.”

“What do you mean?” Greg asked, then added, “Hey, Sammy, this girl ain’t got no butthole.”

“I mean think about it. Rochester’s her boyfriend? Then why does he go to the Electra Complex and pay her forty bucks to hum him?”

Von frowned. “That’s a good point. Hell, I wouldn’t waste any of my money if I already had the prize. Wait a minute . . . did you say that girl didn’t have a butthole?” He walked over to Greg, who was crouched beneath Mary Jane Turner’s derriere. They both appraised the stringy crevice left over from Sammy’s impromptu surgery like art aficionados in a museum.

“Impressive,” Greg surmised.

“I’ve seen half dollars that were less rounded,” Von said.

Sammy beamed proudly.

“Hey, speaking of, how’s that girl supposed to smoke with her asshole if we got her strapped down to that chair?” Greg asked.

Sammy sighed. “Will you give that up? It’s not going to happen. Ever.”

Greg sulked. “Well, that’s just great.”

“Cheer up. I’ll find you a napkin before you go . . . make her do lipstick blots on it with her butt for you. Does that sound good to you?”

Greg grinned. “Best deal I had since Christmas.”

“Hey, I want one too,” Von said.

“Lipstick blots for all,” Sammy affirmed.

“Hell, we don’t have even a cigarette anyway,” Greg pointed out.

“Anyway, it’s not like you won’t have your pick of butthole smokers when you get that cash,” Von said.

“Oh, come on, Von!” Sammy shook his head. “Did you forget what we were just talking about? You know, you boys have a one track mind when it comes to ass . . . anyone’s. I’m starting to worry about you. And she’d say anything to save hers right about now, don’t you think? You got a better chance of Santy Clause giving you that money. Let’s hear what other tall tales she’s got bouncing around in her dicksucker, though . . . we’ll liven up the night.”

Sammy ripped the tape off Angelique’s lips.

“You don’t understand Rochester,” she gasped. “He’s really sick in the head. He gets off on paying me in the Vacuum. That’s his kink, man! If he wasn’t paying for it in a place like that, he wouldn’t even care! He enjoys feeling like a pervert, like pure scum!”

“Well, I’m here to tell you the appeal of that wears off after about twenty-eight years,” Von informed her. “There really ain’t a whole hell of a lot of dignity left for me in pocket pussies and Rhonda Ream-Job dolls.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Sammy interjected, casting a wary eye toward Von, “but I definitely would have bought stock in motion lotion if I’d known I was going to wrack up so many solo frequent flyer miles.”

“Damn, Sammy . . . why the hell are you jackin’ down so much when you’ve got all these hot twats on tap down here?” Greg asked. “I don’t get that at all.”

“Unless ‘hot twats on tap’ is the answer why,” Von speculated.

Sammy shrugged. “Sometimes if you want something done right, you’ve gotta do it yourself, especially when you can’t pay to have it done. Which brings us back to the subject at hand.”

“Let’s give her a chance to prove herself,” Von suggested. “It won’t hurt anything if she’s lying . . . except her, of course. Look at it this way, Angelique—you’ll be saving lives. Most importantly your own. Do you think if we could afford to get laid that we’d be settling for deadhead fellatio?”

Angelique recoiled. “You’re getting it from . . . dead heads? I only charge forty bucks at the Vacuum!”

Sammy shrugged again. “A machete only costs fourteen bucks. Comes with a sheath, too.”

“You know how to get in touch with Rochester?” Von asked her.

“I have his cell phone number.”

“Okay, so you’ll call him and outline our terms. And don’t try to tell him anything besides that.”

“Yeah,” Sammy added sarcastically, “definitely don’t use your pre-arranged code phrase for ‘I’m being held ransom in a basement with a bunch of naked women, including one with five extra vaginas and another with no asshole.’” Sammy gave Von a disgusted look.

“It pays to be careful,” Von said defensively. “Why take the risk?”

“Why indeed? I’ll make the call myself.” He turned to Angelique. “If it’s a wrong number, I’m going to work on you with a circular saw and iodized salt. This is your last chance to pull out.” As if the same thing wouldn’t happen to her regardless.

Angelique held her silence and only gulped audibly. If she’d known that amputation would only be the beginning of his overtures, the sound of her ass puckering up would have been audible through a bank vault. Sammy would never let someone die in such a passé fashion. For one, he would have mounted her as she lay there gushing blood from stumps at her elbows and knees, wallowing like a sea lion. He’d probably find the passage a bit dry, as sheer terror often had that effect on them, so he’d opt for plan B: the mouth. At this stage they generally thought they didn’t have anything to lose, so biting would be their predictable attempt at a pathetic vengeance. That’s when they found out they did have something left to lose, after all. Thirty-two somethings, as a matter of fact (if they’d brushed regularly). When the pliers came out, they’d do something Sammy wouldn’t have believed possible of women if he hadn’t seen it himself—they’d shut their mouths. Of course they’d eventually have to open them when Sammy pinched their nostrils shut, and then he’d prove a notorious adage—sometimes you really have to pull teeth if you want a woman to give you head. It took awhile to complete the excavation, and it wasn’t too pretty to look at with all the gaps in their gums and a few dangling nerves besides, but it didn’t take half the oxygen it would to blow up one of those dolls Von mentioned. He’d be soaked in blood like a newborn baby when he pulled out, but it wasn’t that much different than laying down pipe in a girl during her monthlies. They wouldn’t just bleed to death as Sammy poked and prodded for his standard thirty seconds, because he could tie off their severed arteries. Life assured that much longer, he’d been known to give the girls a hand—their own. One thrust between the legs, the other up the ass. Most would hemorrhage in the process of this internal handshake, but as they say, getting there is half the fun.

Naturally this wasn’t his only option. He could do Angelique like Erica Granger (found 04/09/2002 under a NO DUMPING sign . . . and also throughout an elementary school playground and in a dumpster outside the police station). He’d raided his father’s tackle box and fished out a few of those red and yellow plastic balls that bob in the lake when you get a bite. He’d secured several bait hooks to them with the help of adhesive so potent it would have removed his skin if he’d got any on his hands, and then strung the balls with fishing line.

Sammy didn’t go out on the lake, though. He instead cast his makeshift reel into a prone Erica Granger’s rectum, one ball after the other. He wore thick gloves and managed not to cut himself as he guided the custom-made anal beads deeper within. She was squirming in unadulterated agony long before he prodded the fourth one home, so all that protruded was a few inches of fishing line, which he twirled around his finger like dental floss. She looked like one of those talking dolls with a cord in the back, though in this case each yank was another scream. It took more effort than he expected to jerk them free. He’d make a few inches of progress and then the hooks would catch on something more resistant in her digestive tract. It was like trying to run through sticker bushes dragging a parachute. He was too mesmerized by the tiny tearing sounds and the emerging hooks—dragging yellow and purple strands and clumps—to even notice that Erica had died somewhere between the removal of the second and third ball. It was for this gross insolence that she was humiliated when it came time to dispose of the body. They found one section of her cadaver from waist to thighs with an added bonus—her head secured between her legs with ten-penny nails, tongue staple-gunned to her vulva.

It would almost be worth the loss of his chance at a six figure income to work similar magic on Angelique.

“Sammy?” Von brought him back to reality.

“Eh? Oh, yeah . . . the phone.” Sammy punched in the number Angelique gave him.

A man answered, sounding rather infuriated. “Yes?”

“Is this Edward Rochester?”

“Who’s this?”

“I’m the guy asking the questions. Are you Rochester?”

“I am.”

Sammy raised a thumb. Von and Greg brightened like kids waking up on Christmas morning. Sammy turned his back on them so he wouldn’t be sickened and placed a hand on Angelique’s shoulder to steady himself.

“Okay,” he continued. “I believe you’ve made the acquaintance of a certain Angelique?”

“That would not be incorrect.”

“Great, then we have something in common.”

“What’s this about? Are you trying to blackmail me?”

“No, although five minutes from now you’re probably going to wish that’s all it was.”

“Maybe I will, if you actually manage to get to the point by then.”

“I’ll give you the condensed version. I’ve got Angelique, and I’m offering you the opportunity to buy her back for three million dollars. If you say yes, I’ll give you further instruction. Assuming everything goes smoothly, you’ll get her back good as new. If you say no, I’ll do a job on her that would make the attractions at a freak show puke their guts.”

“I see. And will you throw in my dick at half price if I act now?”

“I didn’t make that call to your wife, although in all fairness to my associates, they thought that the one in their possession came from you. It was an honest mistake that anyone could have made.” Not liking Rochester’s smart-ass method of negotiating, Sammy attempted to get a little rise out of him. “Your wife wasn’t disturbed in the least, by the way.”

“No, she wouldn’t be. It was a different story when she found out I was unharmed.”

It wasn’t the reaction Sammy had hoped for, but he wasn’t exactly surprised. There was more than one way to skin a twat, though, as they said (or at least he did). He made no reply to Rochester and merely held the phone to Angelique’s head. “Talk,” he commanded.

“Eddie, please help! They’ve got all these women down here to torture them and they want me . . . they want me to . . . to smoke with …” Here her convincing plea dissolved into incomprehensible histrionics as panicked sobs overtook her. If he’d draped a paper bag over her head, she probably would have gasped a hole through it.

Sammy removed the phone from her ear and brought it to his own “You still think we’re playing a game, Henny Youngman?”

“No,” Rochester said after a moment of silence.

“Well, you were right the first time; it is a game. Just not the kind your little bitch can afford to lose. Now then, did I get to the point fast enough for you? Welcome to the next level, motherfucker.”

“Has she been hurt?” Finally, some actual concern.

“She broke a bone in transit, but she’ll live to suck another day.”

“I want to think about it.”

“She’s not a used car, Ed. She’s a D-cup brunette with an ass that won’t quit—”

But allegedly would smoke, under the right circumstances, he thought.

“—unless we don’t get our three million dollars. No more glory hole loads down the hatch, at least not from you. There’ll be thousands from us before we put her pretty little ass outta biz, though, you can bet on that. And probably millions more after that.”

A white lie . . . Sammy would have thousands and millions more, yes. Von and Greg would be outta luck and outta biz, though. His basement, his rules.

“So think about that as you mull it over—” Sammy reached for an adequate insult and remembered something Von said earlier. “Fag face. You have twenty minutes.” Sammy ended the call and then turned it off altogether for the time being. It was unlikely anybody would be attempting to triangulate its position so soon, but as Von said, it pays to be careful. It might pay three million dollars.

He turned to relay the news to the dysfunctional duo.

“Shiiiiiiiit,” he said, clenching the phone in his hand hard enough to dislodge the back cover and send it clattering to the concrete.

They were gone.

The instant Sammy’s back was turned, Greg and Von crept up the stairs at Von’s behest. They could find out later what came of the phone call, but this might be the only unescorted chance they got tonight at the attic. Once clear of the basement, Von stealthily eased the door shut and then they were through the kitchen and up the stairs like a shot, all but trampling one another on the last flight. Even now they could hear the faint, strange laughter which had tantalized them throughout the evening.

Sammy’s secret.

“If it’s Slut Necro Lambda’s twin sister, I got dibs on that backdoor,” Greg proclaimed.

“Hell with that,” Von said promptly, elbowing his cohort to all fours. He reached the top of the dim corridor first, although he was prevented from going in when Greg clamped his arms around his legs.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were hugging me,” Von said. “I’m tempted to drop-kick your ass down the stairs anyway. Have you lost your mind? We don’t have much time before Sammy realizes we’re gone.”

Greg reluctantly withdrew and hauled himself to his feet. Von tried the door.

“Locked,” he reported glumly. He stared the door down defiantly. “You son of a whore.”

“Cussin’ it ain’t gonna help,” Greg said.

“Eat a dick,” Von replied absently, then remembered. “Another one, I mean.”

Greg shoved him. “Why don’t you grab you another one through a glory hole?”

Von ignored him. “Question is, do we break it down? He may have a good reason to lock it up. This could turn into a huge problem that we don’t need tonight.”

“But what if he’s only locking it cause it’s his best work and he’s too selfish to share it with us?”

“That would be pretty low of him,” Von concurred, conveniently forgetting about how they never invited Sammy to take a ride on that body they found on the road awhile back or share in any of the spoils of Geisha Hammond, or how they’d had every intention of not only cheating Sammy out of millions of dollars but possibly killing him to have it all to themselves.

“And he could have dead guys stashed all over the house that we don’t know about. What if he stitched ‘em together to create some kind of superman to guard the door if we ever came back?”

“Let’s break it,” Von said immediately. Sammy obviously couldn’t surgically create some kind of superhuman sentinel like Greg was worried about (at least Von didn’t think he could), but he would do something to make it more difficult for anybody to get in now that he knew someone was determined to see inside. It was now or never. Anything too crazy would need a little more than just a door to keep it in place, wouldn’t it? This had to be something too good to share.

They both reared back and kicked above the door knob the way the cops did on TV, managing to do so mostly in synch for the next few attempts. The door finally splintered and swung inward on the fifth try.

Von entered the attic first, feeling for a light switch in the total darkness. There were no windows and no hint of light anywhere. They stumbled in blindly, fully expecting to run into or fall over something. Von flinched when something touched his face, but a moment later he identified it as the chain from an overhead bulb. He yanked it and recoiled when something in the corner of the attic simultaneously shrank back from the light.

“Who are they?” a woman’s voice said.

“Who’s she talking to?” Greg asked, alarmed, looking around.

“She talks to them,” the woman explained.

“She is a few bullets shy of a clip,” Von noted.

She emerged from the darkened corner for a better look at them, squinting into the light like someone emerging from a mine shaft. She propelled herself with her arms, dragging her legs behind her like they were as useless as a mermaid’s fins on dry land.

“What happened to her legs?” Greg asked, as if Von had read her medical file.

“Looks like she was in a fire.”

Von was no doctor, however, so it was no surprise that he confused burn marks with tertiary syphilis. Perhaps there was a vague resemblance. There did appear to be several patches along her hips and thighs where a couple layers of flesh had been scorched away, and in some instances they looked to have decomposed to stages of adipocere. They resembled fatty deposits of custard which had crusted in mounds to her skin. Von suddenly found himself thinking of a cheese pizza he’d heated in an oven for way too long.

Her hair was stringy and wild, obviously unwashed for days; maybe months. She dragged a sizable belly along the floor with her, like a dachshund. Her sagging breasts had what Von liked to call Oscar Meyer nipples, so large he just wanted to lop them off with a cleaver and toss them between two slices of bread. Where there weren’t nipples, there were enough blue lines to chart the rivers in a map of Alaska.

“They aren’t supposed to be here,” she announced. “She’s not supposed to see them. She’s not for their eyes. She’s—”

“She’s about to get raped, son!” Greg supplied for her.

“Amen to that,” Von agreed. “I don’t care if she didn’t have better sense than to park her ass on a wood-stove . . . I’m gonna blast my load so far up that joyhole they’ll have to wring out her kidneys to get a sperm sample.”

“She’ll bite him,” she warned.

“Then she’ll have to be beaten unconscious first. You do the honors, Greg.”

Greg nodded, mistakenly thinking that Von would give him first crack at her box if he corralled her. It wouldn’t have mattered either way. She pounced on Greg without warning, and were Von not carrying one dandy of a hard-on in his jeans, he would have laughed. He was far more interested in tenderizing some bone dry beaver than seeing Greg embarrass himself yet again, though, so he was mostly just aggravated.

“Von, get her off me! She’s using her teeth! Please, Von, she might have AIDS! C’mon, let’s just bang her and get the hell out of here!”

“Keep her occupied!” Von then unleashed the beast and set its course for Gash City. He certainly didn’t prefer to feel the deformities on her posterior, but he didn’t have all night to question the aesthetics. Sammy wouldn’t stay occupied forever, and truthfully Von couldn’t care less if Greg got his turn at bat. It was too bad for him, though, because he was definitely missing out. The passage to pleasure wasn’t without some moisture, although not immediately. It was more like there were mild obstructions as Von thrust for maximum depth, but his friction managed to puncture them and drain whatever juices they contained. It was easier going soon enough . . . if he tried not to think about all those runny scab-like things he was sliding against. He couldn’t decide if the squishing sounds were from his entry or those burn wounds peeling away and oozing. As the woman thrashed violently to free herself from either Greg or Von, he decided he didn’t much care. Either way, she was going to have some extra grease on the skillet in about 2.2 seconds.

He exploded enough to fill a two-pint milk carton just seconds before Sammy’s determined footsteps reached the attic stairs. He reluctantly pulled out and hurriedly reassembled his pants, though it was hard not to be distracted by her legs—the algae-like manifestations were positively seeping now, the semen-like emissions spreading down to her heels.

Von was pulling up his zipper when Sammy burst in, none too happy.

“What are you doing with my mother?” he asked.

“Tell the man, Greg,” Von said, craftily implying an accusation.

“Sammy, just get her off me, please!”

“They meant to rape her!” Sammy’s mother proclaimed. “He already did!”

“I’d have thought you’d learn your lesson by now,” Sammy said to Greg.

“Me? But I—”

“Short of cutting off my own or Von’s—” Von flinched. “—I can’t rustle up another dick for you to chew on. Except yours, maybe.”

“But I—”

“But no, I wouldn’t do that. I understand the temptation all too well.” Sammy fondly cupped his mother’s breast. She smiled at him, and lasciviously licked her lips. “It’s been my burden to live with her this way four years now. Her excesses resulted in the premature germs of insanity . . . her vices sprang up fast and rank. I could never put her away, though, not when we’re so close.”

He slowly pulled her off Greg and gently set her down beside him. “I told you not to come up to the attic, though, for this very reason.”

“She bit me,” Greg complained, looking rather faint. He attempted to get up.

Sammy firmly planted a foot on his chest. “Look what you’ve done to her legs.”

“But I—”

“I’m a big believer in putting things back the way you found them, so I’m going to nicely ask that you lick her clean. Then all will be forgiven.”

“Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time,” Von admonished. “Lock and load.”

Greg looked at the slick, crusty terrain with mortal terror. Somehow the thought of eating the aborted remnants from the refrigerator seemed preferable to this. He felt like pointing out that he wasn’t completely responsible for the damage, but one look at Sammy’s face revealed there would be no bargaining. Greg winced painfully, extended his tongue, and maneuvered his face over the mother’s heels. He closed his eyes and descended until his tongue met the skin. His taste buds seemed to wither on contact like time lapse photography, but he forced himself further up, bathing her like a cat. The flavor was hideous, damn near unspeakable. He thought of a carton of orange juice, where the final swallows are enriched by a multitude of dregs, only this taste was not of citrus but spoiled honey mustard . . . which it looked like, too.

“She could get use to this,” the mother said.

The actual fluids were nothing compared to the boils and pustules from which they emitted. Their flaky, encrusted textures—like nipples still smoking after a few jolts from a Die Hard battery—were almost Greg’s swan song. He wanted to die then, to never see another day. He was crying again for the second time that night as he finished.

Sammy searched the mostly bare floor a moment before he found a drinking cup his mother had used for months. He removed the straw from it and handed it to Von.

“While I call Rochester, you get on all fours and retrieve that load you shot in my mother before I got up here.”

Von’s jaw hit the floor. He accepted the straw dumbly.

“Lock and load,” Greg mocked. He promptly gagged and puked into a silhouetted corner of the attic.

Sammy made the phone call as Von guided the straw into a place that just moments ago he’d been rather fond. He uncertainly put his lips at the end and tried to summon the courage.

“You made up your mind?” Sammy asked when Edward Rochester picked up.

“Yes . . . I’ve decided to pass. Do whatever the hell you want with her. I’ve got four more like her at the Electra Complex alone.”

Von sucked and was mortified to vividly see the ejaculate ooze back to him, like some kind of horror movie in reverse. A vein stood out in his forehead from the effort. It was one of those ridiculous straws with all the spirals, something he could remember vividly from childhood and hadn’t thought of in ages. His progress was slow and hard-fought. It felt like he was drinking a milkshake through a coffee straw.

Sammy was silent a moment. “I strongly recommend you reconsider.”

Greg, who had stopped crying, looked on the verge of a reprisal when he understood Rochester wasn’t going to pay up. Von was too absorbed by his own misery to notice. The first sips of his recon mission had arrived, and he instantly spat them onto the floorboards. When he discovered the salty discharge wasn’t purely white, he very much wanted to die just like his cohort.

“There’s nothing for me to reconsider,” Rochester said to Sammy, “but I have a proposition that might interest you.”

Celia Rochester awoke from uneasy dreams to discover she was no longer herself. Nor was she in her own bed. She was in a basement, flat on her back beneath bright fluorescent lights. She could not remember how she got here, but that seemed somewhat less important than how she wound up with two new breasts sewn beneath the ones she was born with, or why maggots were busily writhing in and around an anus which had certainly not been in her belly when she was last conscious.

“They fight off infection,” Sammy explained.

Von stood to the side cradling a disembodied head. “Poor Angelique,” he said. “She knew so well . . . fellatio.” He unzipped his pants. Noticing Celia’s baffled look, he said, “Hey, I might be a millionaire, but if I can save forty bucks, why not? Way I see it, your husband’s the sick one.” The back of Angelique’s head was soon gliding to and fro.

Celia tried to scream, but generated no sound at all.

“Edward told us to remove your vocal cords, though I don’t think he expected you to survive the procedure. He of little faith.” Sammy shrugged. “Ever seen emphysema put a hole in someone’s throat? I took the liberty of giving you one . . . except I transplanted a certain stripper’s vagina to spice it up. You might say we have a grand new opening.”

Greg appeared beside her and began pawing her breasts. All four of them. Two for the discriminating breast connoisseur who could not abide by any artificial embellishment—these were Celia’s own—and two more paid for by the generous “philanthropists” of glory hole transactions in the Vacuum, silicone deposits which Angelique obviously had no use for anymore.

This was the life.

Rochester stowed the payment away in the trunk of Celia’s car with the option for Sammy, Greg, and Von to grab her anywhere they wanted (coincidentally they got her at an underground parking garage on her way to a divorce lawyer’s office). It made it that much easier to ensure that they got back to Sammy’s “laboratory” without any fear of being followed to home base, something that might have otherwise been problematic if Rochester had any emotional involvement to the “package.”

Three million dollars was a very good start, and it is most surely a victory when you can get paid for doing what you love.

And they were thinking about doing it to the eight other Saturday night dancers from the Electra Complex, four of whom were adamant that a certain Edward Rochester would pay dearly for their safety.

It might not result in any financial advantage, but a sister for Slut Necro Lambda was surely a worthy endeavor regardless. Getting there would be half the fun and a lot more besides.

It was worth a try.