The Devil Next Door

He went down on one knee, arms outstretched, fingers splayed in the pool of blood. He looked like a runner waiting for the start of a race. He was grinning. He knew she was frightened, probably could smell the fear on her as she could smell the filth on him. And the really awful part was that he was enjoying it. She could see that. He was actually enjoying her discomfort, getting off on it, copping a sadistic thrill.

He laughed beneath his breath with a hoarse, grating sound.

Macy was getting angry.

That this inbred, barbaric piece of shit would enjoy her suffering was just too much. Yes, she wanted to run as fast and far away from him as she could. But part of her wanted to stand and fight. To smash his head open with something, wipe that mocking, vicious grin off his face.

He inched forward; she recoiled.

He pulled back, laughing.

A game. That’s all this was. She did not doubt that it would end in something terrible for her, but for now it was just a game. Macy’s wrists were still tied behind her back, but the knots were sloppy and loose. If she only had a few seconds unobserved, she knew she could squirm free.

He was creeping closer, smelling like he’d been eating dead things and garbage.

Macy waited. She would not flinch.

He reached out to grab her ankle and she moved quickly, instinctively. She lashed out with her right foot and cracked him in the face with her heel. He let out a barking sound and fell away.

Macy moved.

She’d spent the past three years in gymnastics and it paid off now. She rolled onto her back and brought her roped wrists down to her ass, wriggling, squirming until she got them around the mounds of her buttocks. Straining every muscle and ligament, she got her wrists to the back of her knees and slipped her legs out.

The man was staring at her. Not quite recovered from the kick in the face, but very much ready to pay Macy back in kind.

Do it now or just forget it.

Macy leaped to her feet and as that caveman sonofabitch tried to grab her ankle, she jumped away and kicked him in the ribs. He grunted and fell. Then she ran, knowing the chances of escape were futile. A boy stood in her way and she knocked him aside, knocked aside another woman and darted around a man with an axe in his hands. And then something hit her from behind, bowling her over to the stone floor and scraping the skin from her knees. It was him. The filth-covered man. He held onto her and she kicked him, hit him, felt her raw knees bounce off his chin. She was almost free Then a fist collided with the back of her head.

She saw stars and was thrown into the grip of her adversary once again. This time it was not games. He smashed her in the face, clouted her upside the head. Punched her in the belly and grabbed her hair and kneed her in the ribs. She went down and he reached for her.

Those scabby, filth-covered hands groped her.

Macy came up fighting and even she didn’t know where the strength came from. He was huge, savage, bristling with muscle and fat. He easily outweighed her by a hundred pounds. She clawed his face, gouged his eyes, tried to get her knee into his groin and he hit her again, this time her lower lips split open and a tooth came loose. She went down, spitting it out along with a tangle of blood and saliva.

Breathless, dazed, she waited for retribution.

A ring of savages closed them in, waiting for it, too. Like hyenas surrounding the fresh kill of a lion, they were excited, yammering and snarling and squealing. They wanted a taste, but they wouldn’t touch Macy, not until the apex predator had had his fun first and the apex predator in this case was a tall, heavy man covered in mud, blood, and animal fat that had dried, cracked open in jagged crevices, making him look hideously mummified, something feral and embalmed come to life here in the gutted bowls of a desecrated church.

Macy looked up at him in the flickering light of the fire, a thing of shadows and primal appetites. He was breathing very hard, grinding his teeth, flexing his muscles so that the crust covering him continued to crack and flake away. His eyes were shiny, wild.

She hated him. She lived only to see him suffer. If a knife were placed in her hand, she would have slit his throat.

Standing there, he seemed to know it, and it excited him.

Staring down at Macy, he gripped his penis. He squeezed it. He was already hard. With a bloody hand, grunting like a pig, he masturbated with firm, sure strokes. He looked into her eyes the entire time, his gaze black, bestial, and deranged. He made sure she watched. He let out a cry and came, his semen striking Macy’s cheek in a hot gush than ran down her face.

A day ago, a week ago, she would have screamed.

She would have gotten sick.