The Devil Next Door

55

Somehow, Doris’ mind cleared and she felt the agony that threaded through her body. Her heart leaped, then leaped again. Her mind swam in and out of the darkness, trying to focus, trying to maintain. She had lost so much blood by that point and suffered so much trauma that she hovered on the edge of shock. She heard more gunfire, heard screams, heard running feet.

And when her eyes did focus, Louis was gone.

They must have gotten him.

The air stank of blood, smoke, and voided bowels. She saw two men standing there with a woman between them. All were naked, all painted-up and covered in something viscous and shining like grease. Their eyes blazed with a flat animal hunger. Light reflected off the filed points of their teeth. They looked like Mesolithic hunters.

Realizing she was indeed alive, they crept forward, soundlessly.

Oh God in heaven, no more, no more, just let me die…

But she did not die. Blinking away the dreams that pushed into her skull, her body felt like it was on fire. Every inch of her flesh was laid bare, it seemed, everything inside ripped and gouged. She tried to swallow the blood that filled her mouth, but her damaged tongue was like a flap of rubber. She was in so much pain that she was literally beyond pain… notched up a level into a place of floating emptiness where she could feel her pain, yet did not seem attached to it. Such is the magic chemical bath of endorphins.

A grunting, a snarling, a fetid animal stink…

When Doris again opened her eyes, the three savages were crouching down by her. The woman had a knife, a damn big knife, and, grinning, she jabbed it into Doris’ belly just below the navel, putting her weight on it until it cut deep and sure. As they stared down, the beast-woman sawed the knife clear up to Doris’ sternum.

They looked pleased.

With filthy fingers, they pulled the cleaved flesh apart.

Doris could see what they did, feel the pressure and pulling, yet not the pain. It was divorced from her. They pulled the wound wide, tearing at yellow fat and pink strands of connective tissue. She could see the glistening bulge of her stomach, the coiled ropes of her entrails. She was aware of only the pressure and the pulling as the grunting, drooling creatures yanked things out of her, rooting around in her abdomen, searching, digging, probing.

They found something.

They bristled with excitement, chattering their teeth, making low moaning sounds that were nearly orgasmic. All three had their hands in her now, ripping, jerking at something, cutting at it with the knife, finally working it free as they cried out with a strident communal baying. Doris saw it. Saw that great fleshy mass they yanked from inside her… a heavy, pinkish-brown slab of blood-dripping meat that could only be her liver.

They held it up like a prize.

Growling and grunting, they brought it to their mouths and bit into it.

This was the very last thing that Doris saw before the darkness took her…