Necro Files: Two Decades of Extreme Horror

She began screaming again. Twisting her nipple and stretching her breast taut, he sawed down to the white of her ribcage and tore her entire mammary gland free of her chest. He worked her over with the knife for the better part of an hour. Her terrible anguished screams grew deafening in the tiny apartment. She began to convulse in agony as Darrell cut a long incision around her face and began peeling it off of her skull. When he finally left the room, he took the woman’s breasts, face and vagina with him, leaving her hollowed out remains writhing and shrieking in an ever-widening pool of blood. He never touched the little girl. There had been no need.

“If you don’t get your life in order, go back to school and stay off these streets, you will see me again.”

She got the message.

By the time the old man left the apartment, it was well past midnight. The streets were bustling with activity and he was exhausted and feeling decidedly anti-social. He just wanted to go home. Today had been more exciting than most and he was drained. There were so many children to save and he was just one man. He had miles to walk to his home on the other end of town. He scrambled along quickly, imagining snuggling beneath his covers with a good book and a cup of warm tea. He tried to stick to the shadows as much as possible as he made his way toward home. He knew that the cops would be looking for him and he was not exactly inconspicuous.

He barely noticed when the car full of kids pulled up alongside him. Until they jumped out and attacked him.

“That’s him!” a tiny hoarse voice cried out from the car. It was Joey, the smoker.

One of the larger boys lunged out of the car and swung a baseball bat at Darrell’s head. It connected with a loud crack that sent the old man sprawling onto the floor.

“That was my fucking brother you almost killed, you fucking freak!”

It happened so fast that he didn’t have time to go for his gun. The kids held him down and searched his pockets, removing both his knife and his revolver before they began kicking and punching him.

Boots, sneakers, a baseball bat and what may have been a pipe crashed down on his head and face, cracked his ribs, crushed his hands and shattered his kneecaps. They were beating him to death. Darrell was barely conscious when he felt the splash of liquid being poured all over him, followed by the pungent odor of gasoline. Then, he was burning. He could even hear the children’s laughter over his own screams.

They never learned.

* * *

Joey and his big brother Mike snuck back into the house through the basement window and tip-toed all the way upstairs to their bedrooms on the second floor, careful not to wake their parents. They still smelled like smoke and gasoline. They both lay in their beds and tried to shut out the image of that old bum’s face sizzling and running off his skull like frying lard as the flames consumed him. Joey had just managed to quiet the screams in his head when he heard the window slide open and that same burnt pork smell that had lingered in the air after their impromptu cremation came wafting into the room, roaring up his nostrils.

He opened his eyes just as Darrell’s charred skeletal face moved towards him, blocking the moonlight. Joey was sure that the old man had been dead when they left him smoldering on the sidewalk. When he examined the man’s face—eyes missing, teeth gleaming through where his lips had burned away, bits of burnt tissue clinging to an otherwise bare skull, other bits flaking away and fluttering to the floor as ash—he saw nothing to contradict his original assessment. Darrell was indeed a corpse. He tried to scream, but the old man pinched his windpipe closed before he could utter a peep.

Darrell sparked the flame on the Bic lighter clutched in his blackened fingers and held it up to Joey’s face.

“You have to learn not to play with fire, Joey.”

Joey tried to scream again as the crazy old dead guy aimed the flame up his right nostril. Joey’s flesh began to sizzle. He writhed on the bed in nerve-searing anguish, but Darrell held him firm.

The boy had learned at least one of the lessons. He knew now that there were things in the world that could hurt him, that he was not invincible and that he could not get away with anything he wanted. The other lessons would take longer and be much more painful. But, Darrell had time. The boy had to learn.

Darrell would not let him grow up to be a criminal like his son Jake, on death row for murdering a drug dealer. He would teach the boy better. The old man moved the lighter to Joey’s eyelid and smiled as his eyeball sizzled and popped.

Addict

J. F. Gonzalez

“Addict” originally appeared in Insidious Reflections #5, January 2006.

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