D.O.A. Extreme Horror Anthology (3 page)

0312: Sutures finished -- damaged left optic tissue removed -- second unit of blood administered via transfusion

0315: 19 random passages from J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion read aloud by Russian female volunteer

0316: One (1) liter bleach administered to subject’s face

0322: BP 140/106 -- temp 99.0 -- RCPS 10 -- 204 BPM

0323: 3 oz 89 octane rating gasoline administered to subject’s groin

0324: Fire applied to subject’s groin

0326: Fire extinguished -- caramel chocolate bar administered

0331: Bandsaw administered to subject’s leg -- Nine (9) members of Las Vegas All Castrati Barbershop Choir sing Star Wars Original Score a-cappella -- subject falls unconscious and wakes several times during amputation

0338: Sledgehammer applied

0339: Sledgehammer applied -- second and fifth bricks lose integrity -- subject’s ribs lose integrity

0340: Sledgehammer applied -- remaining bricks/ribs lose integrity

0341: Sledgehammer applied

0342: Sledgehammer applied

0343: Subject is dead -- resuscitation attempts fail -- intravenous feeds stopped -- prayer in Hungarian administered by family friend -- remaining cobbler distributed to family -- all volunteers dismissed

0411: Sledgehammer applied

0412: Study ends

Demons Lie

Atris Ray III

The sedation is starting to wear off and the demon slowly wakes. Its extremities move first, flesh rattles on the stainless steel coroner’s table. Its feet and hands tug against the tight leather straps but the attempts are useless. The restraints have been blessed by a priest and the creature is not going anywhere. Not while I’m here.

The basement’s single florescent light flickers and hums above me as I assay my tools. Surgical steel blades, hooks, and separators laid out in glistening rows on the table. Each one sterilized in holy water, they are the perfect implements to open the demon’s chest and remove its withered heart. I’ve been in this fight for years. I know the game. They feign pain from the bindings, but only holy objects can hurt them. 

Demons lie.

I look at the creature for the first time in hours. Demons are full of illusions, and this one has conjured up an extraordinary replica of a teenage girl. 

She lies naked on the icy table before me.  Auburn hair cascades down over lily white, smooth shoulders and pulls my eyes down toward perfect breasts. Despite my better judgment, I feel my vision drawn past a tight stomach and diamond stud belly button ring to the fine patch of pubic hair between pale thighs. The illusion is beautiful. I want to see more, feel more of her warmth. I wish to be inside her beauty, and I feel my groin respond almost on its own.

Willing myself to turn away from the creature’s lies, I shake my head and pull myself back to reality. I can smell the demon’s overpowering sweat in this tiny room. Its filth is so strong that it’s practically tangible. I run my hand along the tools, and the pristine feel of surgical metal under my fingertips reminds me of my task.

It wants me to think it’s a girl, a woman ripe and ready for me, but I know the truth. I see the signs. The mole under her left nostril. The way she looks at me. The way she writes and drinks her mocha lattes with her left hand. I have smelled her from across the hallway of our apartment building, moisture, warmth, and raw sex trailing behind her in a hot cloud. She tried to draw me in with a smile and a seductive walk, but promiscuity is a sin. I know the truth. 

It deceives. It lies.

The demon is fully awake now. It thrashes about on the table in wild, spasmodic movements, threatening to upset my table of sterile tools.  Spitting and growling, the creature is biting the gag like a rabid dog. I would have expected no less from such a foul fiend.

When I pick up the number fifteen scalpel, its eyes grow wide. For the first time, I see irises of deep brown and dilated black pupils. It sees me and knows me. I can read its gurgling pleas. It is trying to call my name.

Demons lie. Demons placate. Demons reach out toward the weakness of men. 

A wise man once said that the eyes are the windows to the soul, so I take those first. My scalpel skates across the eyeball for a second before plunging into the meat. It takes nothing more than a tug, a moist popping sound, and a toss to remove the demon’s eye.  It screams behind the gag and sends a stream of bloody spittle flying across the table. 

When I cut out the second eye, it arches its back and pulls so hard against the restraints that, for a moment, I think it’s going to break free. In the throes of agony, the beast manages to work free of the gag.

“Noooo!” It screams. “Please stop. Why are you doing this? Please, Mr. Br—”

I quickly block out its demonic voice before it can call my name and try to replace the gag. Yes, demons lie, but I see through the glamour and illusions. I haven’t been wrong yet. As it stands, I see right down to the soulless heart of the beast, and I’ve got to rip it out before the demon spreads more of its deceit.

It’s a challenge, but I finally get the gag back into its mouth and make sure to tighten it properly this time. Another large dose of the horse tranquilizer calms down the beast. One of the downsides of taking human form I suppose.

I pick up the bone saw and feel its satisfying weight in my hand. Filling the room with an insectile buzz, it whirs and vibrates to life as I finger the switch. The demon is passing out now, but it will wake when I start to cut. They always do.

Caterpillar

Craig Saunders

Jack pulled the cord tight around Mr. Davis’ neck. Veins bulged in Jack’s forehead. He could barely hear the screams coming from around the office. The prim women, the tight assed men strutting; each and every one of them was screaming for him to stop, but he was the one holding the gun. Jack could hear the blip-blip-blip of the dial tone from the receiver dangling against Mr. Davis’ heaving chest. Must have dialed nine for an outside line, he thought, and laughed. The laughing just made them scream more.

Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke.

Davis dropped to the ground and Jack kicked the dead man in the temple. Then he turned the gun on the rest of them. Fuckers, the whole lot. Meeting in car parks, prim bitches giving head to their spiky haired colleagues…he would show them. How’s this for a cock? Put your lips around this. Watch me blow.

“Jack! Jesus Christ, Jack, would you pay attention?” His boss was red in the face. Jack blinked. For a moment there he had wigged out. He shook his head clear and tried to concentrate on Mr. Davis’ droning, soul-destroying voice.

“Sorry, Mr. Davis. You were saying?”

“If you’d listen to me instead of daydreaming, you’d get your work done on time and I wouldn’t have to ride you all day.”

Davis prodded a thick ream of papers on the table. “I want those figures punched by lunch. Get a move on, ok? There’s a pal.”

Pal. Jack’s gall rose. He swallowed and smiled. “Of course, Mr. Davis. I’ll have them done by lunch.”

“Good man, less of that daydreaming, eh? You know I try to be a pal here. Makes the day go quicker, eh?”

“Yes, Mr. Davis.”

His boss thumped him on the back, knocking Jack forward. The back of his chair gave out and he flipped, whacking his knee on the table. Jack swore under his breath and rubbed it. He looked around. Sarah and Emma from the secretarial pool were laughing at him from behind their hands.

His face reddened.

Jack pulled his cock out and Sarah bent over the photocopier. Her ass stuck in the air, her skirt bunched around her waist. She was wearing the stockings he liked today, just for him. His trousers fell down around his ankles. Her eyelids fluttered.

“Fuck me, Jack, fuck me where I like it.”

He stepped closer, pushed the tip of his cock against her wet slit. That was all the lube she was worth. He put it against her tight ass.

As he was about to ram it home, he felt a hand reach between his legs, cupping his balls. He turned his head to look down and saw Emma smiling up at him.

The phone rang. Jack turned his red face away and crossed his legs. His trousers were suddenly uncomfortably tight. The girls carried on laughing. Sarah said something to Emma, and they giggled as they walked away, looking back over their shoulders at him.

He picked up the phone.

“Jack, it’s Johnson. What’s happening with the Pickman accounts? I was expecting them in my inbox at six yesterday, and all I got was zilch. Accounting, that’s what you do, right?”

Was everyone in this place a snarky asshole or a prim bitch?

“Sorry, Mr. Johnson. Mr. Davis pulled me off that. I’ll get it to you as soon as I can.”

“ASAP, Jack, and I mean today. It can’t wait all fucking week.”

“Yes, Mr. Johnson.”

He hung up the phone before Johnson could say another word. Fucking bastard.

Jack pulled up the spread sheet and began entering the figures. £169,076.09.

£45.94 – photocopier paper. £3,705.90 – travel expenses. Fuck, he could travel round the world on that.

He tapped at the keyboard. His wrist ached. It had been aching like a bitch for a week now. Jack shook his hand free. He took some time out to stare at the ruby walls of his tiny cubicle. His troll doll, sitting on top of the monitor, looked back at him expectantly. ‘
When are you going to waste these fucks
?’ it seemed to say. Perhaps that was just Jack’s imagination.

He checked his wristwatch. Ten minutes had passed. Page one, done. He flicked through the sheaf of papers. Sixty to go.

Jack cracked his back, looked around. All he could see was the top of twenty other people’s heads. He didn’t even know who half of them were. They seemed to come and go, day in, day out, there was a different man, a different woman. They all had exciting jobs, working with computers. Is that what people get told these days? Pick a great career—use a computer.

He rubbed his sore knee and swore quietly to his troll. He hadn’t had any career advice. If he’d have had his way, Jack would have joined the army young and learned interesting ways to kill people. Then he would have come to work here. It would have stood him in good stead.

Can you work an Excel spreadsheet?

No, but I can strip an SA-80 in twenty-two seconds, and put it together again in another thirty-three. Plus, I can break your wrist with one hand.

He drifted and tapped.

He looked up. Thirty minutes.

Time for a coffee break. Jack stood, his back creaking and aching like a set of balls on a month long hiatus from fisticuffs.

He strode to the coffee machine, took a plastic cup and poured himself another dose of humble juice. He added two sugars. Jack’s waist could look after itself, pretty much. He’d never be fat. Instead he was gawky. That was what it was called. Gawky.

He did push-ups every night. Jack had a chest these days. He hadn’t had one at school. Stupid fuck kids who thought they were cool giving him wedgies, pinching and punching. Made his life a living hell. But what did that matter now? Jack was a man now. He had a job.

One day, he’d show them.

Chris Kitchener came up behind Jack and startled him. He slopped some coffee on the cuff of his shirt.

“Steady there, mate. Sorry I made you jump.”

“Didn’t make me jump, I just slipped,” Jack mumbled. Fuckers. Everyone here called you mate, or pal, or chum. Everybody pretended to be your friend, when all they really wanted to do was suck you dry, turn you into a useless husk of a man so their bitches could come along after and fill you with their piss and bile.

He took the coffee pot and smashed the glass into Chris’ face. The coffee burned his face and he screamed. Chris’ left eye popped as a shard of glass entered the juicy orb, his skin melted in the heat.

Jack stood over Chris’ writhing form and put his finger in the eye juice, watching with delight at the horror on Chris’ face as he took that juice and put it on his tongue.

It tasted like jelly babies.

Chris touched his shoulder. “You alright, man?”

“Yep,” Jack forced a smile. “Fine. See you.”

It was all he could manage. He walked away, coffee cup in hand, the coffee burning his hand as he walked. Plastic cups. Just one more torture.

Jack walked in a daze back to his cubicle with his ironic chair, the chair that hated him. He twiddled with the handle underneath and got the back to stick in the upright position. He scooted it forward so he was at his desk and took a sip of his scalding coffee. Jack’s lips burned and for a moment he savored the pain. That woke him up more than the coffee itself.

He set it aside and worked on figures. An endless stream of figures, dancing before him like sinners at the Gates of Hell. He wondered which figure represented the Area Manager’s tryst with his secretary. Which figure represented the sneak trip to McDonald’s for breakfast, or who was waxing his travel expenses with a trip to the shops to buy his wife some lingerie? Let’s spice things up a little, Mavis, you go on top tonight, in this bra and panties set from Victoria’s Secret. Don’t tell anyone, but it’s bought and paid for by the share holders. How’dya feel now, huh? Do you want it up the ass?

He chuckled to himself, then took another scalding sip of his coffee to wash away the imaginary image of Mavis, folds of fat seeping free of her 44DD bra.

Ouch.

Figures. Figures. Jack began tapping. By twelve, he had reached page thirty. He took out a banana sandwich his mom had made him. Jack ate while he worked. He pushed numbers around, and it felt good to bully something. It set him free for a time. He dreamed, but only on the surface of things. He didn’t let it go too deep. He had work to do.