Necro Files: Two Decades of Extreme Horror

Addict J. F. GONZALEZ

It was a place he stopped by occasionally on his way home from work and, like most underground porn flea markets, it moved around periodically. This time it was in a modern three-bedroom tract home in Alhambra. Dennis Hillman stopped by shortly before 2 p.m. after having left work early for the day.

He tried to stifle a yawn as he flipped through home-made magazines containing photos of various sexual acts. Normal garden variety in-andout didn’t do much for him anymore. It hadn’t in a few years. The deeper he got into it, the more hardcore his pornography had to be. It was his unique tastes in pornography that led him to seek out places such as Carl Grossman’s group a year or two back. You couldn’t find bestiality or scat stuff in neighborhood porn shops. Or women being fucked by guys with dicks the size of those little souvenir baseball bats you could pick up at Dodger Stadium.

There were half a dozen other porn junkies browsing through Carl’s wares this afternoon. Dennis ignored them as he silently sifted through the materials. None of it excited him anymore. He felt a slight sense of disgust with himself as he leafed through a rape magazine. Violence didn’t even turn him on anymore.

Carl Grossman lumbered over. “Got something I think you might enjoy.” Carl was a huge fat man; he looked like a crowd of fat people squeezed into a tight suit. His trousers were wearing thin, the tails of his white shirt was coming out from his pants. Even though Carl didn’t work a normal job, he still tried to dress as if he had a regular nine-to

“Come this way,” Carl beckoned. He turned and Dennis followed him down a dim hallway to the rear of the house.

“Just got this in the day before yesterday,” Carl said, weaving his way through boxes piled on the floor. He opened a box and rummaged around inside it before he found what he was looking for. Dennis let his eyes stray around the room as Carl looked for the thing he wanted to show him; this was where Carl kept stuff for the hardcore freaks. His eyes rested briefly on a still from a bestiality film depicting a young woman with thin limbs and heroin sculpted cheekbones on her hands and knees being fucked by a large monkey. “Here it is,” Carl said, handing Dennis the item.

Dennis picked it up. It was a magazine, the cover showing a woman with blonde hair lying on a bed. Her throat was slit, a great cascade of blood spilling down her chest and on the mattress. Her eyes were open and glazed over.

Dennis handed the magazine back. “It’s snuff, and every snuff film I’ve ever seen is fake. Don’t try to pawn this shit on me.”

“It ain’t snuff,” Carl said, handing the magazine back to Dennis. “Take a better look at it.”

Dennis sighed and began flipping through the magazine, growing more disgusted with himself. What he should be doing was working at the office; he had to finish that CPM spreadsheet for a meeting next week. But the pull of desire was strong and he needed an outlet. Admit it, Dennis thought, his hands trembling slightly as he flipped through the pages of the magazine. You’re a hardcore porn junkie. You’re addicted to this shit and you know it.

The photos in the next few pages showed the same woman from different angles. The next few pages showed a young man, about twenty years old, climbing onto the bed with the woman and embracing her. The next few pages had photographs of the young man sticking his cock between the woman’s lips and shoving it into her mouth. That particular set of photos ended with the man vaginally penetrating her.

“What is this, some kind of special effects thing?” Dennis asked, his curiosity only slightly aroused.

Carl shook his head, a sick grin on his face. “Keep looking.”

The next few pages showed different subjects. One was of what appeared to be an old man, his belly puffy and distended, the flesh of his torso the color of dark storm clouds. A woman who looked like a junkie was sucking his flaccid penis. It wasn’t until he got to the old woman — what Dennis thought was an old woman — that he stopped and stared at the picture, his stomach curling in his belly.

He flipped back through the magazine, looking at the photos again. His eyes were wide. “You mean … this shit is real?”

Carl grinned. “As real as they get, Dennis.”

The photo that had stopped Dennis in his tracks was that of an old woman. She must have been Caucasian because her hair was straight and long. Her skin was black and blue and green in places, some of it wet-looking. There were spots of white in various parts of the body. As Dennis flipped through it the photos got perversely worse. There were close-ups of her decayed face, the eyelids sunken in. There were close-ups of her rotting breasts, the flesh falling off her arm bones. It wasn’t until the man entered the picture that Dennis held his breath. Even though he found it hard to go through the rest of the magazine, he did so anyway. His eyes were riveted on the scenes of the faceless man’s cock buried in the rotting woman’s pussy, the close ups of the man’s penis with brown, maggot-ridden, rotted flesh caked to it amidst creamy semen.

Dennis closed the magazine. He couldn’t breathe, he was that excited. “Where did you get this?”

Carl shrugged. “Just got it in a few days ago. A local outfit. You want it?”

“How much?”

“Fifteen hundred.”

Normally Dennis would have paid for it, but he hadn’t come prepared to pay that much money for something. “I’ll have to get back to you on that,” he said, handing the magazine back to Carl. “I’ll call you.”

Carl smiled and put the magazine back where he’d found it. “You do that.”

Dennis exited the house with a sense of shaking excitement that chased him on the drive home. He couldn’t get his mind off that image of the corpse of the old woman being fucked by the faceless stranger.

“Dennis, are you okay? ”

“Hmmm?” Dennis snapped awake, banishing the daydream that had been floating through his mind. He was replaying the images of the necrophilia photo in his dreams again, wondering what it felt like to fuck a rotting corpse. Trying to imagine what the sensation must feel like on your dick.

“You’ve been awfully quiet tonight. Everything okay at work?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine.”

Dennis was sitting up in bed watching the evening news. His wife, Carrie, was sitting next to him doing her nails. Their son, Justin, was in his room doing God knew what on the internet and their daughter, Elizabeth, was in her room talking on the phone with her friends. Dennis had hardly paid attention to his children when he got home this afternoon. All he’d been able to think of were the images from that magazine.

Carrie lolled on the bed, her hair up in curlers. Dennis tried not to look at her; she’d grown increasingly flabby in the past five years. Her ass was a mile wide, the cellulite on her thighs quivered like Jell-O. Dennis tried to get his wife to accompany him to the gym, but she showed no interest. “I’ve got an early morning and late afternoon meeting tomorrow,” he said, flipping through the channels, “so I won’t be home till late. That okay with you?”

“Fine with me,” Carrie said, finishing her nails. “What’s on Channel Two?”

And that’s the way things went every night. It was the way things had been for fifteen years. The minute they began to have kids, their sex life took a nosedive. And to compensate, Dennis sought to relieve his outlet through other means. Pornography.

And the more he got into it, the more he needed to satiate his needs. Where before he couldn’t stomach an anal sex scene, within a few short years he began to crave it … where before he flinched at the barest suggestion of S&M, within a few years he was exploring every aspect of that subculture. Where before he’d gagged at the site of a woman sucking a Great Dane’s cock, or some redneck fucking a sheep, now bestiality films held a strange fascination for him. And while he had heard of snuff films over the years, the closest he’d ever come to seeing one was an extreme hardcore loop Carl Grossman sold him. The clip showed a woman being viscously whipped, then burned with a hot piece of metal as she dangled from the ceiling in an abandoned warehouse. The first time Dennis saw the clip it disturbed him. Later viewings turned him on. He currently kept the tape in a safe in his study and only brought it out when he knew he was going to get at least four hours to himself at home, which was rare.

Now the only thing that could get him off was the hardest of the hardcore. Currently he possessed two additional films other than the torture film, which were the only things that could bring him to orgasm, all three he kept in the safe. One was a film showing a woman being fucked by an Orangutan; it was followed by a guy screwing a female German Shepard. The other tape was a rape film showing the very real rapes of a twelve-year-old girl, a forty-year-old toothless crack addict who looked like he was seventy, and an eighteen-year-old man who already looked like he was in his mid-forties courtesy of hard-living. Carrie would never dream that both tapes resided in a locked safe in Dennis’ study.

Before they settled down to sleep Carrie said, “Oh, I forgot to tell you. Bob Lansing called this afternoon.”

“Really?” Dennis felt his stomach clench. “What did he want?”

“To talk to you,” Carrie turned over. “He sounded surprised, like he thought you would be home.”

“Bob gets confused sometimes,” Dennis said, the lie springing to him easy. “He must have forgotten I had that meeting at our West LA office and thought I’d gone home early.”

Carrie didn’t say anything. Dennis waited for a response, and when none came he rolled over on his right side, facing the wall. He waited until he heard the calm breathing of his wife sleeping beside him, and then he closed his eyes and tried to get some sleep himself. But it was a long time in coming.

He had a meeting on his calendar the next morning but he skipped it, stopping by Carl Grossman’s instead. He’d gone to the bank on the way and had the fifteen hundred dollars for the necrophilia magazine; he simply couldn’t get it out of his mind. He’d woken up in a good mood so why not splurge? Carl shook his head as Dennis asked for the magazine. “Sorry. Shoulda bought it yesterday. I sold it last night right after you left.”

Dennis felt his hopes deflate. “Oh. That’s too bad.” He didn’t know the magazine would sell so quickly.

“But you’re in luck,” Carl said, moving to a corner of the living room that he referred to as his “office”; it was crammed with a small desk and filing cabinet. He rummaged around on the desk for a business card and copied a name, address, and phone number on it. “You might want to talk to the guy that bought it. He’s a big collector. You and he have similar interests. Maybe he can help you find another one.” He handed the card to Dennis, who slipped it into his pocket.

“Thanks,” Dennis said.

Dennis took a look at the card in his car. The name on the card — Harvey Panozzo — was unfamiliar to him. At first he wasn’t going to place the call; after all, he had to get to work and start giving his employers the impression he gave a shit about his job. But he finally succumbed to his desires and punched Harvey’s number in his cell phone.

The phone was picked up on the other end. “Panozzo here.”

Dennis quickly introduced himself and told Harvey how he came by his number. “Carl suggested I call you since we have similar interests.”

“Are you busy later today?”

“Not at all.”

“Why don’t you stop by? We’ll chat then. You have the address?”

“Yes.” Harvey was in Monrovia, just down the freeway from Pasadena where Dennis lived. He jotted down the directions and hung up, his nerves on edge at the thought that he was going to see more of the type of material he was becoming enamoured with.

The next few hours were spent at work. He made phone calls to various business contacts, did some work on the CPM spreadsheet. Bob Lansing poked his head in his cube and asked where he was yesterday. Dennis told him he’d been stuck in traffic, which was why he was late to the CPM meeting in West LA. Bob nodded, then asked him how the meeting this morning was. Dennis made something up and Bob left, seemingly satisfied with his answer.

He spent the remainder of his day cruising the internet, always making sure to keep a spreadsheet open, and to be on alert in case anybody came by. There’d been a few close calls when Dennis had fumbled with the icon at the bottom of his screen for the spreadsheet, thus blocking out whatever porn website he was on. Thank God for quick fingers.

He visited ten porn sites that afternoon including his favorite: the rape page. He also did some searches on Google for necrophilia pages. He couldn’t find any.

He left the office at his normal time and arrived at Harvey’s house ten minutes early. Harvey Panozzo lived in a nice neighborhood with tree-lined streets and ranch homes. He met Dennis at the front door dressed in tan slacks and a white shirt; he looked like he’d just come home from work. He appeared to be around Dennis’s age — early forties — and had thinning black hair and a dark mustache. He also looked like he spent a lot of time out in the sun.

“Nice to meet you,” Harvey said, holding out his hand.

“Thanks for meeting with me,” Dennis said, shaking his hand. “I really appreciate it.”

Harvey invited him inside the house and Dennis followed the man, his nerves twitching. One time he’d met an extreme hardcore fetish enthusiast in the hopes of scoring some bloodsport videos and was tackled from behind by another character who was lying in wait. Looking back on it now, Dennis realized that they were going to rape him, probably torture him to fulfill their own desires, but Dennis was lucky. Working out at the gym every day gave him an advantage a lot of guys his age lacked, and he was able to fight off his attackers ruthlessly. He was careful in meeting like-minded freaks, and now as he followed Harvey Panozzo down the hall toward a rear bedroom, his senses were on heightened alert.

“Carl is a trusted friend and ally,” Harvey said, motioning for Dennis to have a seat. “I knew you were okay when you mentioned Carl sent you. I don’t trust people that are referred to me by people other than Carl.”

“Neither do I,” Dennis said.

“You said you were going to buy the necro publication Carl had?” Harvey asked.

Dennis nodded. “Yes. He said you bought it last night, that you’re a fellow …”

“Enthusiast?” Harvey smiled. “I suppose I am.” He paused for a moment. “I take it you are interested in similar material?”

Dennis nodded. “Very much so.”

“I think I may be able to help you.”

Dennis felt a burst of excitement. “That would be great.”

“Tell me something,” Harvey said, leaning forward, elbows resting on his knees. “What do you do for a living?”

Dennis hesitated a moment, then plunged on ahead. “I’m a financial analyst.”

Harvey nodded. “I see. The reason I’m asking is that the group has pretty specific membership requirements. They like for fellow members to be professionally employed.”

“Well …”

Harvey smiled. “Don’t worry. I take it that with your job title you have at least a Bachelor’s Degree and that you make at least fifty k a year. Correct?”

Dennis nodded. Actually he made quite a bit more than that but he wasn’t going to tell Harvey.

Harvey rose to his feet. “Come with me. I think I have just what you’re looking for.”

Dennis followed him to the next room, which appeared to be an office. Harvey opened a file cabinet with a key and rifled through it. He extracted a glossy paged magazine wrapped in plastic and handed it to Dennis, who took it in trembling hands. “Is this the kind of material you’re looking for?”

Dennis looked at it. The dead girl with the severed throat glared at him, her eyes lifeless. Dennis nodded. “Yes.”

“If you’d like, I can give you some time alone with it. Perhaps thirty minutes?”

“That would be great.” Dennis tried to keep his excitement at bay.

“After that, all I have to ask of you are three things,” Harvey said. “The first: make sure you stay employed. We have our reasons for insisting on this policy, the main reason being that when you begin to acquire a taste for the type of material we’re into, it can get rather expensive. We’d rather have you indulge with money you are making honestly. We have no desire to have the police come poking around should you resort to a life of crime in order for you to pay for your habit. Agreed?”

Dennis nodded. “Yes.”

“Good. Number two, your being employed is actually a benefit. It automatically separates you from a lot of the other hardcore freaks out there. We have no desire to associate with drug addicts, ex-porn stars, the homeless, or other degenerates. What we do is in the privacy of our own homes. We don’t hurt anybody. We are simply working professionals with similar interests. Agreed?”

Dennis nodded. “And the third?”

“That when you are finally admitted to our group you bring us some materials. An offering, if you will.” Harvey smiled. “It doesn’t matter what it is … a loop of some junkie getting fucked by a Doberman … a torture flick … some chicken hawk stuff for the pedophiles in our group. But you’ll score big points if you can procure some necro flicks or some snuff. And not the fake crap, either. We’re seasoned veterans and we can spot fake a mile away.”

Dennis nodded. “Yeah, I think I can do that.” What the hell are you thinking? Where the hell are you going to find more of this kind of stuff?

Harvey clapped him on the shoulder. “I’m sure you will. Now why don’t I leave you alone for awhile?”

And he did just that. Harvey left Dennis alone in the office, pointing out a box of Kleenex and a bottle of lotion on the desk. He closed the door behind him, leaving Dennis alone.

Dennis sighed, opened the magazine to the spread of the decayed old woman, and felt his dick grow hard at the sight of the anonymous penis penetrating the rotting flesh of her stomach, and then he began to jack off.

When Bob Lansing called Dennis into his office the following day he was exiting another meeting regarding the CPM project. Dennis thought Bob wanted to pick his brain some more about the project, but as he closed the door to Bob’s office he saw his superior’s features were grave. “Sit down, Dennis,” Bob said.

Dennis sat down, his stomach growing leaden. He’d been feeling uneasy since exiting Harvey Panozzo’s house yesterday. He’d driven home wondering if anybody saw him leave the house. Ever since bringing himself to orgasm yesterday courtesy of the necrophilia publication, he felt like he was under scrutiny now, as if everybody around him suddenly knew he was different from them. It was a feeling that had chased him throughout the day.

“What’s up?” Dennis asked Bob as he settled into his seat.

Bob pushed a set of papers across the desk at Dennis wordlessly. He refused to meet Dennis’ eyes. Dennis picked up the paper and scanned the document. At first he thought it was computer code, but then he recognized it as website URLs. His eyes widened in surprise as he recognized the URLs as websites he visited at work. “I don’t understand,” he said, trying to sound casual but doing a terrible job of it.

“Those are the websites you’ve been visiting during your work day,” Bob Lansing said, jabbing a finger at the document. He looked at Dennis unsympathetically. “I got an IT tech to download some software on your PC yesterday when you were out and run a check. Human Resources gave me a call the day before that to inform me an anonymous call was placed to their Sexual Harassment hotline informing them you were viewing sexually explicit material at work, so we had to investigate. And this is what we came up with.”

The news was hitting Dennis like a sledgehammer. Despite the fact the evidence was staring him right in the face, he still tried to talk his way out of it. “There must be some kind of mistake,” he stammered. “I don’t—”

Bob Lansing leaned forward. “Can the bullshit, Dennis! Between you and me, it would be one thing if you were visiting the Playboy Website and looking at a little T & A. Human Resources would still want me to fire you, but I’d fight for you because I like you, and I like your work. But the crap you’ve been looking at on our computers, on our time?” He emphasized this by jabbing his finger down on the paper, his tone of voice becoming hoarse with anger. “Frankly I don’t have much respect for guys like you that get off on watching women being degraded like that.” His left hand dipped down to his desk drawer and emerged with a document and a green envelope. He slid them across the desk to Dennis. “Consider yourself fired. You’re getting off easy; if the material you’d been viewing in your cubical involved children, so help me God I would have waited until after work and then I would have kicked the living shit out of you and damn the consequences.”

Dennis was shocked; he didn’t know how to respond. Bob Lansing glared back at him with anger and disgust. “Now get the fuck out of my office. You disgust me.”

Dennis rose to his feet slowly, feeling the burning of Bob’s gaze on his back as he exited his office. A tall African-American man from building security was already at his cube, waiting to escort him out of the building. The security guard stood at sentry duty as Dennis gathered the few personal items he had in his cubical and then he left the department, not even aware of the furtive whispers of his co-workers as the gossip mill started.

Dennis was at home when Harvey Panozzo called. He picked it up in the extension in his study upstairs. “Hello?”

“Dennis! Harvey here. Are you ready?”

“I’m afraid I won’t be able to join just yet,” Dennis said, lowering his voice. He was still reeling from the events at work today and was pouring through his business rolodex, coming up with a list of contacts. He had enough money to float on for a while, but he would have to get another position fairly soon. “Some things have come up and—”

“Oh, but you don’t have to worry about joining, Dennis.” Harvey’s voice was soothing. “Consider yourself a charter member.”

“Well … thanks, but—”

“The reason I’m calling, actually, is to see if you’ve held up your end of the bargain.”

Dennis’ mind drew a blank.

“Don’t you remember? You were supposed to contribute something to the circle? A film? Photos perhaps?”

Dennis couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “I just met you yesterday. You expect me to come up with something in twenty-four hours?”

“Why not? Surely you have something in your own collection that would suffice.”

Dennis felt his nerves tremble. “Well, yeah … I guess I do.”

“Great! How about you swing by on your way home from the office tomorrow and drop it off?”

Dennis told him that was fine and hung up. He spent the next thirty minutes staring out the window. He was so involved in his thoughts that he barely noticed when Carrie arrived home with the kids.

Dennis left early the next morning dressed in his normal work attire just like any other day. He didn’t go to the office, however. Instead, he headed straight for the nearest coffee shop.

He bought a copy of the Los Angeles Times and sat in a corner booth, sipping coffee and circling the job listings. He also had a good breakfast: pancakes, scrambled eggs, sausage, hash browns, orange juice. He left the coffee shop at ten-thirty, taking the paper with him, and leaving the waitress a satisfying tip.

His house was silent and empty when he got home. Just as he thought it would be.

He headed straight to his study where the safe was. He got the safe opened and took out the rape video. This should satisfy them, he thought as he closed the safe. They probably want something really hardcore and this is the hardest I have.

He spent the rest of the day at the library making phone calls from his cellular phone, making connections, trying to set up some meetings. He was able to get a few interviews set up, and by the time he set out for Harvey Panozzo’s place that afternoon he was already starting to feel better.

When he pulled up to Harvey Panozzo’s home he saw the garage door was open. The silver Mercedes he’d seen in the driveway yesterday was absent. A group of kids were messing around on skateboards on the driveway. Dennis walked up the driveway, briefcase in hand. One of the kids, a twelve-year-old boy with curly black hair, looked up as Dennis approached. “If you’re looking for my dad, he isn’t home yet.”

“Oh.” Dennis frowned. “When will your dad be home?”

The boy shrugged. “Probably after six. He said he had a meeting.”

“Okay. Thanks.” Dennis walked back to the car, his feeling of apprehension growing again.

It turned to dread when he pulled into his neighborhood and saw

the police car parked in front of his house.

The officers were at his front door talking to Carrie when Dennis approached his home. Carrie saw him and he could tell by the look on her face that she was worried and confused. “They’re here to see you, Dennis.”

Dennis tried to act casual. “What can I do for you, officers?”

The officers stepped off the porch and approached Dennis. They were around his age, both of them slim, nice-looking men, a blonde guy and an African-American cop. “We got a call that you’re dealing in illegal pornography,” the African-American cop said.

Dennis almost exploded. He looked at his wife briefly and motioned for the cops to huddle close to him so he wouldn’t have to talk so loud. “Look, I don’t know who called you about that, but it’s bullshit, okay? If this has to do with work, and I’m sure it does, some asshole planted some shit on my computer and got me fired for it!”

The African-American cop cleared his throat. “Um, excuse me, sir, but we realize the allegations against you probably are trumped up, but still …”

Dennis looked at the officers with numbing horror. “You mean …”

“Do you mind if we look around a little bit?”

Dennis was just about to say no when an alarm went off in his head. To say no now would only spell trouble down the road. They’d get a search warrant and he might not be able to get the tapes out of his safe. If he let them poke around they might not even see the safe, much less ask to see what was inside. Ditto on his briefcase. He sighed. “Go ahead.”

As the two officers poked around his living room, he herded Carrie into the kitchen. Carrie’s eyes were wide and scared-looking. “Dennis, what’s going on?”

He told her. Not about his recent Internet activities, nor his deviant pornography addiction, but about his being fired from his job. He told her Bob Lansing had been out to get him for a long time now, and that he was fairly sure Bob had gotten that information planted on his computer. Carrie swallowed the story, hook, line, and sinker. “And now he’s trying to get you arrested? Why, that’s outrageous!”

“I know,” Dennis said, his voice low and trembling. It just occurred to him that whoever had complained about him at work was now anonymously calling the police. Whoever it was, they wanted to get him bad. “And that’s why we’re going to fight this thing tooth and nail.”

The police didn’t search for very long. After poking around the living room, the den, and his study and bedroom for a few minutes, they emerged looking sheepish. “Sorry to have troubled you, Mr. and Mrs. Hillman.”

“No problem,” Dennis said, seeing them out the door.

By the time he stowed his briefcase away and began to undress, Carrie was getting steamed about the whole incident. “I can’t believe somebody would stoop so low just to have you fired. That’s outrageous! I bet it was that Bob Lansing; he’s been envious of you ever since you got that position. I wouldn’t put it past him to come up with something like this. In fact—”

Dennis grinned as he changed into casual clothes. As long as he had Carrie believing him, he was home free.

The following day he left the house dressed in usual business attire. With Carrie knowing he was now unemployed, it would be easier to keep odd hours. Giving her the illusion he was job hunting was his chief source of cover. She left at her usual time this morning, carting the kids to school on her way to her job as an executive secretary, while Dennis dressed and made phone calls to prospective employers. When they were gone, he went to his study and extracted the rape tape and placed it in his briefcase. Then he left the house.

Harvey Ponozzo had left a message on his cell phone last night and instructed him on where they were to meet today to make the drop-off for the tape. Dennis returned the call late last night, telling Harvey he would be there, and now as he made the drive to Colorado Boulevard, looking for Phan Liquor store, he hoped to have all this swept under the rug as soon as possible. Get Harvey the tape, then he could resume his life. He was positive he could get a new job soon and when he did, he wasn’t going to look at a porn magazine or website ever again. In fact, he was going to expand his job search and consider positions out of state. The further away he could get away from Los Angeles, the better.

He made the drop-off quickly. Harvey was waiting for him in his silver Mercedes and Dennis handed him a brown paper bag containing the tape. “I’ll call you later this afternoon,” Harvey said, starting his car. He pulled out of the parking slot and Dennis went back to his car, feeling as if a heavy burden had been suddenly lifted from him.

The rest of the day would have gone smoothly except for one thing.

Harvey Panozzo never called him.

Dennis began to worry about it that evening as he feigned normalcy in the den. Carrie was watching the evening news. The kids were … well, who knew where the kids were this time of the evening. Dennis made a half-hearted attempt at getting his resume updated and actually visited a pornography addicts support group on the Internet. He’d been thinking about his actions all afternoon, and how they’d affected his job and his life. He was finally coming to terms that he had a problem and he had to face it, deal with it, correct it. He still didn’t want Carrie or the kids to know about it, and he hoped that keeping it away from them while secretly trying to conquer his problem would do the trick. He still had to stay away from the stuff. He hoped Harvey Panozzo didn’t call him back.

“How’d the job search go today?” Carrie asked from her spot on the sofa.

“Good,” Dennis lied, rustling the paper. “I updated my resume, made a few phone calls. I’m hoping to get at least one interview by next week.”

“Think you’ll have something by then?” Carrie looked concerned. “Our house taxes are going to be due pretty soon. With Wendy’s college tuition coming up in Fall, it’s going to be kinda tough.”

“We’ll be fine,” Dennis said. Shit, he thought. He’d completely forgotten about the goddamn taxes. Without a job to cover him, Wendy’s college tuition was in jeopardy. The money he had in the bank was already earmarked for it. The house taxes would eat all that up.

“Are you sure?” Carrie was looking at him with concern.

Dennis smiled. “We’ll be fine, honey. I promise.”

He told himself that over and over all night until he was convinced things would be fine. And they would be. He was sure of it.

Harvey called him the following morning.

“How’d you like to make some money?” Harvey asked.

Dennis was sitting at his desk in front of his computer. He had just updated his resume and printed ten copies on nice bond paper. The Los Angeles Times Employment section was spread out in front of him and he’d circled five job descriptions that appeared to match his skills and educational background. “Doing what?” he asked. He was immediately suspicious.

“Don’t worry, it’s legit.”

“I think I can find a new job on my own,” Dennis said. “Thanks for the offer of help, though.”

“I want to help,” Harvey continued. “Like I told you a few days ago, we prefer our members be professionally employed. That includes being able to network with us, allow us to help each other.”

“I don’t think I’m interested,” Dennis said. “In fact, I’ve changed my mind about the group. I no longer want to be a member.”

“You have three more tapes in your house,” Harvey said. “The police didn’t find them yesterday, but they will if they make another visit. While possession of bestiality films are only punishable by a small fine, possession of a necrophilia film will probably carry a murder charge.”

“What are you talking about?” Dennis felt his stomach drop. My God, did Harvey call the police and have them search my house? Did he get me fired from my job? If so, how?

“The film,” Harvey continued. “The one showing that guy screwing corpses. They’re murder victims, Dennis. Unsolved murders, I might add. The man in the videos is a hardcore junkie like you who’s a necrophile. Surely you don’t want your wife — your children—to know that you’re a—”

“I don’t have any such film in my safe,” Dennis stammered.

“You do now, and it’s not in your safe. It is in your study, though. When you were gone yesterday, one of our operatives broke into your home and planted it.”

Dennis felt all the spit dry up in his mouth.

“Go ahead and call the police and tell them about us if you want to,” Harvey purred. “They won’t be able to prove the group exists. The tape will have your fingerprints on it. We can arrange it so that the evidence of murder points to you. And with your … unique tastes in pornography, you could be in jail for a long time, Mr. Hillman.”

“What do you want?” Dennis felt his entire body go slack with shock. He felt totally helpless.

“All we want is your cooperation,” Harvey continued. “Your membership in the group. You’re one of us now. We’re here to help you. Stray from us, we have to risk exposure. We can’t afford that. Surely you understand our concerns for security, don’t you Mr. Hillman?”

“Y … yes,” Dennis stammered.

“I’m calling you from my cell phone. I’m parked right outside your house. I expect to see you walk out your front door in fifteen seconds. If I don’t see you, I call the police and alert them to the location of the tape.”

“Wh … why …”

“When you exit your home, you will walk to my car and enter the front passenger side,” Harvey continued. “I will take you to the job I’ve mentioned. Do you understand?”

Dennis didn’t know what to say. His eyes darted around his study, trying to find something out of place, some clue that would tell him where the tape was planted.

“Dennis?”

“Yes?”

“Do we have an understanding?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Fifteen seconds, Mr. Hillman. From the time I hang up. I’m hanging up now. I expect to see you shortly.” The line went dead.

Dennis was up and out the study in a flash. He grabbed his wallet and keys and left the house, locking it behind him, and headed down the front walkway and saw Harvey’s silver Mercedes parked at the curb across the street. He walked around the front of the vehicle, feeling the dread build inside, entered the car and sat down in the front passenger seat. Harvey started the vehicle and pulled away from the curb. “Good,” Harvey said as he drove out of the neighborhood. “I’m glad you came out.”

“Why are you doing this?” Dennis asked.

“I want to help you,” Harvey said as he piloted the Mercedes out of the neighborhood. He headed toward the 210 Freeway. “Relax. You’ll be well taken care of.”

Dennis found it hard to relax. He kept thinking, what did I get myself into? as Harvey took the 210 into the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains. Harvey’s demeanor was casual and laid back. He was dressed in casual business attire — tan slacks and a white polo shirt. The interior of the Mercedes was spotless. For the first time, Dennis wondered what Harvey did for a living.

“What do you do for a living?” Dennis asked, trying to sound casual.

“I’m in the insurance industry,” Harvey said. He kept the car at the speed limit. “I’m just a corporate drone like yourself. That’s all.”

“What’s this job you told me about?”

“You’ll see.”

Forty minutes later Harvey pulled the car up to a ranch-style house nestled in a small valley deep within the San Gabriel mountains. He turned off the engine and got out of the car. “Come, follow me,” he said.

Dennis followed, still wondering what this was about. He’d managed to get Harvey to admit that the work in question was for a fellow member who needed a database built of various hardcore pornography media. “We’re building a lending library,” Harvey had said. “It’s still in the early stages, but neither of us have the time to build something sophisticated. That’s why you’re here.”

“And you’ll pay me?” Dennis asked. Despite how things were shaping up, he still felt a trifle nervous as he followed Harvey to the front walkway.

“Of course,” Harvey said. He unlocked the door. “Perhaps we can get you to make some money at this as well. How would you like that?”

“I don’t know,” Dennis said.

“If you had an opportunity to make twenty-five grand screwing a dead chick, you wouldn’t do it?”

“I just like to watch,” Dennis said. “I don’t want to actually do these things.”

“Ah! You’re merely the customer, right?”

Dennis shrugged. “I guess.”

“Wonderful!” Harvey grinned. “Come this way, Mr. Hillman.”

Harvey led Dennis through a large foyer to the rear of the house. Dennis could hear the sound of a television and he saw the flickering light of the screen spilling in the shadowed room. Whatever was playing it was either a horror movie of some kind or—

Dennis stopped at the threshold of the room as the image on the large screen TV rolled on. What appeared to be the elderly woman from the necrophilia film was being brutally beaten by two masked men. Her cries of pain were real, genuine. Dennis could tell that the minute he laid eyes on the film. He turned to look at Harvey and as he did so, his eyes rested on two figures lying on the floor like large, bloated lumps. Dennis took a step forward and recoiled, his stomach roiling as he saw that the figures were two adult dead males. They were naked, their bodies livid and white. Dennis noticed one had a small hole in the center of his forehead. His eyes were half-open, the lids like droopy shutters. Dennis took an involuntary step backward. “Hey, look, I don’t think this is—”

“You don’t think this is what, Mr. Hillman?” Harvey stood at the threshold to the large den, smiling. The old woman on the large screen TV screamed in pain as something horrible happened to her.

Dennis turned to Harvey, his heart racing. “Those guys …” He couldn’t finish what he was going to say.

“Are dead. Yes, I know that Mr. Hillman. I thought that’s what you liked.”

“I’m not gay,” Dennis said quickly. He wanted to get the hell out of here, but something kept him rooted to the spot.

“Of course not,” Harvey said. “Andy Wilkes, one of the dead men you see there, was very much into young men, though. Take a look at the other one. Surely you’ll recognize him.”

A spike of fear dripped down Dennis’s spine as he took another look at the bodies. One of the bodies was that of a fat middle-aged man with thinning gray hair. He looked familiar … vaguely familiar. He looked like the type of guy who’d be …

Dennis put a hand to his mouth to hold back the scream. “Oh my God! That’s Carl Grossman!” His knees threatened to buckle and Dennis leaned against the wall.

“Yes, that’s Mr. Grossman. He was the supplier. Nice that we have all three of you here, don’t you think? Customer, supplier, and the manufacturer.”

Dennis looked at Harvey. He was shaking so badly. “Wh-wha-what are you talking about?”

Over the agonizing screams of the old woman on the screen, Harvey continued. “Almost twenty years ago my mother and son were kidnapped. My son was only eight years old. They were never found. I looked everywhere; the police, the FBI, they looked everywhere. I used every available resource I could. I became so obsessed with their disappearance that my wife left me. There was no sign my mother took my son and changed their identities. There were signs that they were taken against their will, though. A witness reported that on the last day they were seen, two men were observed talking to my mother and son at Alondra Park in Gardena. My mother was a very accommodating, very helpful woman. This same witness saw my mother and son walking with the two men out to the parking lot. Perhaps they told her they needed some kind of help. We’ll probably never know. Needless to say, they disappeared from that park. My mother’s car was found still parked there without a trace of them. Later, much later, about thirteen years ago while chasing down a lead, I came across this tape.” He motioned toward the TV screen. One of the masked men was cutting the old woman’s throat while another one forced a small boy, who appeared to be eight or nine years old, his face red and wet from crying, to watch.

“Don’t ask me where I got it,” Harvey continued. He reached into his slacks pocket and pulled out a gun. He pointed it at Dennis as he continued. “To make a long story short, I did more research and found out my son later died. He’d been held as a sex slave for a group of perverts and eventually ran away. He was so scarred, so traumatized, that he became insane. He was tracked down by this ring of pedophiles and perverts and again abused horribly for profit.” Harvey picked up Dennis’s rape tape from the top of the large screen TV. “Your tape, Mr. Hillman. You have the only copy. My son’s suffering was made for your pleasure. You paid to watch my son suffer!”

“No!” Dennis said. “I swear, I didn’t!”

Harvey’s face was twisted with rage and grief. “I’ve waited a long time for this … to get back at the people responsible for this … this filth! It took me years to track down Carl Grossman, but I did. I got him, and I got the bastard who killed my son, and now I’ve got the sonofabitch who paid for it.” He pointed the gun at Dennis.

“Please …” Dennis stammered. “Y-Y-you don’t want to … to … d-d-do this!”

“Sure I do,” Harvey said, his grief suddenly as gone as fast as it came, his face erupting into a sick smile and then he pulled the trigger.

The.38 caliber slug tore into Dennis’s head, ejecting brain and bone into the wall behind him. The force of the shot propelled Dennis back and he slumped against the wall, eyes opened and glazed. Harvey watched as Dennis’s dead body rolled over and beat a convulsive tattoo on the carpeted floor before finally stopping.

Harvey knelt down and felt for Dennis’s pulse. Except for the dwindling sound of the dying woman’s screams coming from the snuff film on the TV, the house was silent.

Harvey grinned. He felt good. Wonderful. He never thought it would have felt so great, so fulfilling, so powerful! He stood up and replaced the revolver in his front pants pocket. He turned the VCR off with the remote control and rewound the tape and began making preparations for the owner of the house to arrive. According to his research, they were due back home in about three hours. Harvey had already set up all the video cameras at strategic places in the house, and he would turn all of them on with one flick of the remote when it was showtime. Then, he would wait for them to walk in and welcome them home, all four of them: mother, father, two adorable kids. Then they’d have some fun. He was looking forward to it now that he’d gotten warmed up. And getting warmed up was important. He’d gone through this stage with Carl, Alan, and Dennis to make sure he had the stomach for it. It was one thing to watch this shit everyday for the past twenty years; it was quite another to actually cross the line and do it.

Marveling at how well his fabricated story about his mother and son had gone over with Dennis Hillman, Harvey Panozzo made sure all the weapons were ready. Then he sat down in the darkened living room and waited.