Jimmy liked to kill hookers.
Other guys at work talked about hunting or fishing or golf, but Jimmy liked killing hookers. What was the point in having a hobby that you could only do a couple times a year when you managed to get out of the city? They spent their lives pining away for a trip upstate every few months when you could have some fun any weekend you wanted to without having to drive six hours.
You have to travel out of the city to find fish, but you don't have to go anywhere to find hookers. For all that Giuliani was famous for cleaning up the city, there was still plenty of vice if you knew where to look. Thirty-seven thousand police officers is a lot, but they don't have a shot keeping eight million people in line. Besides, isn't it your civic duty to care for your city? Killing hookers is like getting rid of rats — it's something you have to do. It's part of keeping your home clean. Who wants to live in vermin-infested squalor? The police can't keep the city clean on their own. Jimmy was just doing his own small part to help out.
And when he got out of the shop that Friday evening a few days before Halloween, still smelling slightly like grease and gasoline, he decided not to go out for a drink with his co-workers. He owned a now-vacant storefront in Brooklyn that had been a little diner his parents ran. It had been a hole-in-the-wall that served good coffee but bad food; when they died he decided to keep the place instead of selling it. The paint had peeled off the little sign and it looked like any other abandoned shop in a neighborhood with a bad enough economy to make it blend in. In the back of the old restaurant he kept his little play area, and it wasn't in the sort of area where anyone would notice or care if he occasionally brought a woman into the back entrance for a good time.
So, thoughts of romance swirling in his head, Jimmy decided to head for a little dive he knew, not too far from the old diner, a place where he could find women who entertained the local crowd. Thoughts of romance, and thoughts of knives, knives penetrating flesh, cutting tearing ripping and then fucking her, fucking her as her blood dripped out, painting his body in her blood as she lay dying, painting himself like a savage, a heathen of olden times. Fuck! Calm down! Get a hold of yourself! It wasn't time for that yet. He had to find a girl first. The right kind of girl.
A lot of the prostitutes in New York were just kids, teenagers who had run away from home and found themselves having to do things they never wanted to do just to survive. Girls and boys both; one time Jimmy ran across a shemale and he wouldn't have given the guy a second thought except that he was such a little kid. He asked the kid how old he was. He was fourteen. From the midwest. His parents threw him out when they caught him trying on stolen lipstick and his mother's high heels. Jimmy almost felt sorry for the kid; anyway, he didn't go for that kind of thing, so he went and looked for something a little more to his liking. But the girls. The girls — sixteen, seventeen, innocent little girls. He liked them young and fresh-faced — not the tired, fucked-out whores you could find with their separate territories. Jimmy liked the ones who still didn't really know what they were doing, who were horrified at what they were doing but driven to it out of hunger. Oh, God, the desperation. Fuck! Calm down. Wait until you find one.
He walked into the bar he'd been aiming for, sat down, ordered a beer. No one said anything. It wasn't the kind of place where everyone knew your name. It was the kind of place where, by tacit agreement, everyone agreed not to know each other's names. He drank his beer and looked around but there didn't seem to be any women there. Damn it. He nursed it awhile, watching the door to see if anyone showed up, and ordered another when he finished the first. Half an hour ticked by while he was waiting, and dusk had changed to night, but no girls showed up. He decided to leave and look around somewhere else.
He wandered off to his other hunting ground, an abandoned building where teenagers squatted. It was easiest if you could find a girl on her own, out of her element, away from where kids gathered. It was less risky if she didn't have friends around to see you. But sometimes you gotta take a chance. Tonight it seemed that his best bet was finding somewhere with lots of kids around. It was a few blocks away; the evening air was cool as autumn settled in and he gathered his coat around himself. He walked past a couple convenience stores with half-hearted Halloween decorations in their windows. As he approached the building he started scanning the area for kids. A few people were hanging around in the yellow circles under the streetlights, but none of them looked like they were on sale. As he walked up, he saw a boy furtively buying drugs from another in a shadow. He walked around the block to see if any girls were waiting for business on the corners.
As he turned the corner, he saw her standing under a streetlight. She wasn't wearing a jacket, so she could show off her nice tits, but she shivered in the winter cold. It made her nipples erect under her tight blue tube-top. She couldn't have been older than maybe seventeen, with blond hair and the slightly gaunt look of someone who hadn't been eating enough lately. She looked nervous. He walked up to her and smiled.
"Are you — are you looking for a good time?" she asked him, her voice shaking as she delivered the line she'd heard in movies. It sounded ridiculous on her; she was plainly terrified at the thought of what she was doing. She had a soft southern accent. These girls never guessed what was waiting for them when they decided to run away to the big city.
"How old are you, baby?"
"Sixteen."
Looking at her closer, Jimmy bet she was lying. She wasn't sixteen. Fifteen, maybe. His dick got hard as he looked her over. "How long have you been out here, honey?"
She looked down. "A couple months. I'm just trying to get together some money for a bus ticket. I got a friend back in Virginia I can crash with."
His dick throbbed. "How much you want?"
"Twenty bucks." He dug out his wallet and showed her he was good for it. "Let's go. I got a place a few blocks away," he said. They walked; he put his hand around her right tit and felt a jolt of pleasure as he felt her stiffen, like she was forcing herself not to run away.
They walked along, the air growing steadily colder as the night grew later. A woman appeared ahead of them, walking the other direction. He hadn't seen her coming; it was as though she melted out of the evening. She stopped directly in their path. She was black, a grey-haired old woman. She looked like an immigrant, dressed in what looked to be colorful robes. She looked directly into Jimmy's eyes. "Eres un pecador. Eres un hombre malvado, y Dios te castigará," she said, and crossed herself. Jimmy didn't know what that meant; she turned around and walked away, and seemed to melt away into the darkness the same way as she appeared.
"Boy, you meet all sorts of freaks in the city, don't you, hon?" he said, smiling reassuringly at the girl, who seemed to be shaking from more than the cold at this point. He took off his coat and wrapped it around her. "Here, baby. Warm up a little bit."
She smiled shyly at his chivalrous gesture. "Thanks, mister," she said.
They finally got to the alley behind the old diner. She looked even more apprehensive when she saw they weren't going to an apartment or a by-the-hour motel. "Don't worry, baby. I inherited this place. I'm still deciding what I want to do with it. It's just an old restaurant." He unlocked the door and ushered her inside, turning on the single hanging light in the tiny storeroom. "There's more room out front. I have a bed set up there. But I want to show you something first. But before I show you, give me a kiss, sweetie." He liked to make them kiss him. She did it, nervously, like she wasn't sure if she should or not. Probably something else she picked up from movies. His dick was so hard he felt like he was going to burst — not like he was merely going to come, but like the skin of his dick would stretch so tight that he would burst apart at the seams. There was no bigger charge than cutting some girl up, slicing her, holding her down as she screamed and struggled.
He put his arm around her waist and guided her into the kitchen. He slowly opened the door to the walk-in fridge. She licked her lips, clearly unsure what to expect.
Jimmy tightened his hold on her waist. He knew she was going to try to run as soon as she saw what was inside. He was strong, though, stronger than he looked. A mechanic's work builds strong muscles. He liked feeling them struggle. It was no fun if they were knocked out.
As soon as the dim light hit the contents of the fridge, the girl screamed. The walls of the fridge were lined with jars, large institutional-sized jars that Jimmy had found empty in the back room of the diner when he got it. Inside the jars were parts. Jimmy liked to save souvenirs; once he was done with his girls, he cut their bodies apart and stuck them in jars. He kept them together — heads on one shelf, another shelf of livers, shelves of stomachs and hands and tits and everything else. All in jars, preserved by cold and formaldehyde.
"Oh my God. Please, mister! Please! I didn't do anything wrong! Please don't hurt me!" the girl begged as she tried to wrench herself out of his grasp.
"Sorry, sweetheart. I have my hobby. Gotta clean up the city. I like to have a little fun doing it." He twisted her arm behind her back, grabbed the other in his other hand, twisted it up, and turned her around, shoving her over to a counter in the middle of the kitchen. He bent her over the countertop. She tried to pull out of his hands, but he was stronger and she was weakened by hunger and nights shivering on a concrete floor in an abandoned building. He pulled a length of rope out of a drawer with one hand, leaning against her, using his weight to hold her against the counter. She fought and fought, with the determination that came from realizing in a moment that she actually cared about her life, that it mattered, to her if to no one else, whether she lived or died. Finally, tired of struggling with her, Jimmy grabbed her head and slammed it into the metal countertop, hard, and she passed out.
Jimmy whistled as he bound her wrists and ankles to metal posts he'd attached to the large counter in the middle of the kitchen. He stretched her out, spread eagle, and waited for her to wake up so the fun could continue. While he waited he decided to admire his previous conquests. Six different bodies — or rather, the various parts of six different bodies — beautiful, beautiful girls, their skin wrinkled on their dead faces, hair floating at the top of the jars. Internal organs in other jars. Breasts he had laboriously sawed off their former owners, two to a jar. He unzipped his pants and pleasured himself as he looked at them and thought about each girl he'd killed. The first had been a little older, maybe twenty-five. She was a professional; he had met her in a bar and decided on impulse to take her to the restaurant. Brown hair, green eyes, lots of experience. He refined his tastes afterwards. She had died too quickly anyway — he studied medical books afterwards and discovered that the cut he had made in her left arm had severed her brachial artery, which caused her to bleed to death within minutes.
The second was younger — Puerto Rican, a runaway. She had said that she ran away because her father hit her. He chuckled as he imagined how she'd probably decided that she should have stayed home as he sliced her open. The fifth girl he had killed was Jimmy's favorite — a lot like this one. Young, stupid, blonde, very pretty. She had gotten strung out and was selling her body to pay for her habit. She had desperately tried to make deals with him, finally even offering to help him find other girls if only he would let her go. He had spat in her face and plunged the knife into her gut as he fucked her, cutting her open and pulling out her intestines. His technique and his knowledge of human anatomy had gotten good enough that he knew how to make it last, how to cut girls apart without making them bleed to death. His sixth victim had been a Dominican immigrant; she had been wearing something tied to her neck. A piece of bone with little twigs tied to it. Jimmy had asked her what it was; she was a little embarrassed and explained that it was a charm to protect her from evil. He had laughed when he ripped it off her neck.
His thoughts were interrupted, though, by the groans of the girl tied to the counter behind him. "What the hell?" she muttered. He turned, and as she saw his face, she remembered her terror and started screaming again. Jimmy had no fear that anyone would hear — or, really, that anyone in this neighborhood who could hear would care. But he didn't want to hear her shrieking all night long, so he stuffed her mouth with a greasy rag that he kept in a drawer for that purpose, and tied the gag in place with another bit of rope. He climbed up on the counter and straddled her body, and smiled down at her. She stared up at him, his dick still exposed.
"You're not going to get away, sweetie-pie. Like I said, this is my hobby. I know what I'd doing. Here, let's get those clothes off of you." He pulled a knife out of a drawer — plenty of good, sharp knives were one of the side benefits of owning the old diner. He sliced her shirt and black skirt and pulled them off of her, and then did the same with her bra and underwear. He dropped the clothing in a heap on the floor. "That's better," he told her. "We're going to have some fun tonight. Well, I am, anyway."
She had continued screaming as loudly as she could through the gag. "Shut up, baby," he said, and punched her in the stomach. "Let's get down to business."
He unbuttoned his pants and pulled them off, and he started to fuck her. While he did it, he began to cut her, tracing designs in her skin, just deep enough to bleed. In a childish touch he decided to carve his name into her belly. In a few minutes, the pressure building inside him was irresistable, and he came inside her. "No need to worry about protection, sweetie. Don't worry, I won't let you get pregnant." He laughed at his joke. Tears poured from her eyes, and he could hear faint sobs, muffled by the rag in her mouth.
He fucked her two more times over the course of the night, growing more violent with the knife each time. The second time, he cut a deep slash through her right tit, enough to see the fat and glands inside it. She screamed loud enough for it to echo, despite the gag, and it was enough to get him off for the second time. The third time he fucked her, he cut her belly open, precise lines allowing him to peel back her skin and see the layer of muscles underneath, and then to peel those back and see her guts. The sight gave him his third orgasm. He kissed her as she pulled out, her mouth still undamaged. He liked to keep their faces intact. When he finished, he decided it was time to clean up.
It didn't take her long to die. He cut off her right hand with a small axe, severing what he now knew were her radial and ulnar arteries. He dropped it into a jar filled with formaldehyde; she lost consciousness within a minute or two and died soon afterwards. The blood flowed onto the floor and into a drain as he continued his surgery. He dropped each severed bit of her into a separate jar, her head last, and filled them from the barrel of formaldehyde he kept in a corner. He sealed the jars and hosed the blood off the counter and the floor.
Finally, he dressed himself again, after hosing the blood off his own naked body. He stuck the sodden heap of her clothes in a trash bag. It was time to put her with the others and head home for something to eat and a nice long sleep. He checked his watch; it was six in the morning, and the sun would be up soon. He carried each jar to the refrigerator and put in on the shelf with the others — hands, arms, tits, heart, and finally her head, the face still pristine, mouth still shaped into a pained grimace. He placed her head on the shelf, seven jars all in a row. The shelf and the other jars rattled with the weight of the new one.
Except the rattling didn't stop. The shelf was actually shaking; suddenly they all were. Even the floor started shaking. A voice echoed through it — Jimmy was positive it wasn't just his imagination, he actually heard the voice repeating what it had said to him earlier. Dios te castigará. The shaking grew harder — was this an earthquake? Who ever heard of an earthquake in New York? The room shook so violently he took three steps back to lean on the counter, the refrigerator door gaping open. As he watched in shock, a jar fell off, the one with his latest girl's head in it. It crashed on the floor; formaldehyde spilled and her head tumbled out to sit on the floor, right-side-up. Jimmy screamed as the mouth began to open and shut, the whole head nodding as the jaw muscles caused her mouth to flap open, as if she were somehow trying to speak.
The shaking increased. More jars fell. Heads, arms, feet, parts of torsos, organs, all rolling around, somehow rolling together, gathering into a heap at his feet. As the last jars fell and the last pieces of the girls' bodies fell into the heap on the floor, the shaking died away. And then something impossible happened.
All the parts were moving. Shaking, quivering. A hand crawled on its fingertips, found an arm to attach itself to, picked up more parts, started to assemble a body again. A body soaked in formaldehyde, with mismatched pieces, the hand belonging to a black girl, the arm belonging to a white one. It had gathered pieces of torso, parts to another arm, legs, feet, tits. It stood up, still headless, its chest and abdomen still gaping open. It picked up a heart, a stomach, a liver, lungs, stuffed them inside, folding back its opened ribcage, folding the skin shut. Finally, it picked up a head. The head of his newest victim. It placed the head on its shoulders. Somehow, the head stayed on, held steady even though blood was still dripping out of the severed neck and running in streams down the creature's body. Six other creatures, also built from mismatched parts, like the first not attached but somehow holding together, crawled around behind it, still putting themselves together. The first creature spoke — its voice not matching the head, but rather the neck it sat upon. It was the voice of his first victim.
"It has been decided that you are to be punished," it said, smiling warmly. "You take advantage of the desperate and the helpless. That cannot be permitted." While it spoke, each of its newly-completed companions stood up on either side, forming a line of seven damaged, patchwork monstrosities.
"What's going on?" babbled Jimmy. "What are you? How did you do that? You're dead! You're all dead! I killed you! How can you be alive?"
Another one, with the head of the sixth girl he had killed, the Dominican one, spoke. "Remember that woman you saw? She was my grandmother. She raised me after my parents died. I sold myself to help her survive. She practiced Santería. Did you know that? She's the one who gave me that charm I was wearing. She knew what you did. She put a spell on you tonight. She put a spell on all of us. She persuaded the Orishas to give each of us a very special gift — even you. You see, Jimmy, she gave us eternal life. We're going to be here forever."
A third one spoke now. "We've decided we wanted to spend all eternity with you, Jimmy." They gathered around him, grabbed his hands, surrounding him, holding him. He was helpless.
The first one spoke again. She leaned close; he could smell the formaldehyde on her breath. "Why don't I give you what you paid for? Give me a kiss, sweetie."
This heartwarming moment brought to you by It's the Season for Graves Cracking: The 2006 Quest for Fear. |
