Nasty

That shit was inebriant, thought Ryan Crosby.

Ryan loved watching videos, loved collecting them. His reminiscences liked cradling those from an especial past. Perhaps, he supposed, the last place on earth it should have gotten off since beginning. Ryan Crosby enjoyed the thinking ‘ as much more as he could keep apart from the whole better for him’. And it had its own dealing of truth at the end. Internet was a porthole made of disgraceful stuffs which could be uncovered, brought in the most terrible away out to the light the worst things. Easy-easy. Also none lie in pondering it as a precise source for knowledge from the first, he sometimes crooned in thought, but in resume there was a phrase, or a wonderful-like-hell thing to call as psalm he used to settle: ‘at the end of gold always there must be the muddy crust’ and it explained plenty well what everything meant. He could be pretty contradictory of claiming the worst thing on earth in existence today was something called internet. Curious, it mused in clean rags, and a great hypocrisy by his part, even above the moral one – of course if he owned one after all – to be acquiring in logic. But Ryan also knew in counterpoint he would be unable to live without some of those junkies like YouTube and the old quirks of quick search in Googling for knowing whatever sort of storm hit the ass of Devil. Besides there were his Instagram, snapchat and Facebook – though he was one of his last fellas who used Facebook yet. Oh, and of course, overall, there were the videos, where that part of his life begins. Not provided from the decent and nice and familiar YouTube but from other spring hole. From other inner darkness just the money could pay for. At least not physical cash nowadays.

He tapped play on the large screen of his white iMac. The excitement previously feeble in his guts arose feverish now. He waited ( as usual ) for it to sneak up to its peak, then go down to his groins like a staunch fluid. He blew up through an oscillating heart. He didn’t want that. God knows that. When the tape initiated, garbled, with a trembling camera, whose hands worked to fit still, he sighed with shaking breath. He waited another sec for the image suit all together. He wiped under his nose, then across his craved brow; beads of sweat lolled aside his eyes. He checked the runtime of video. Uplift renewed in him again. Thanks God. Really thank you very much, or Danke like the Germans would say. Currently it was being a great to learn German in spare times. It helped. A lot. But thanks God, thanks for that. 26m37 of video. What more could he want? Nowadays you got to enjoy the few things. Yeah. Enjoy the few things. Breath it and that’s okay. However, he couldn’t help sometimes it felt disgusting. In other days, ebbing other occasions, the feeling looked rotten worms crawling under his skin. Otherwise in others, on the other hand, it felt numb and all acceptable like any other ordinary shit you do along the goddam day. Lately he’d started getting into Bitcoin currency business, specifically to those ends, or deeds. Anonymity. In his early age Ryan got used to taking in all about gore and mutilation, murders, all about those sort of videos. Insane and gloomy, he admitted, and what a majoritarian-dedicated-holding-of-good-traditions would have pondered and agreed himself. But this pushing, yeah it was the word most swung closer to what he usually described his impulse of watching those things, had its own wish. Non-normally? Definitely not. Curiosity isn’t an illness, nor craziness, let alone illegal, and by the way what in life could be easy-entirely normal treating the life as a whole? Mostly after his only son of only three had been missing.

Probably dead now, according to his own conforming wife. Nora always had been great and generous with all their troubles, mainly regarding about how to solve them, while his work, general financial costs, carried on all the rest. Their pillar but above all a good wife. A good mother. A great woman. Say that aloud belonged not much from his being, but he let her know it.

Ryan shook, swallowed hard. A hint of guilt touched his heart with slender fingers. Acrid fingers. He turned his eyes away from the screen. Hesitated, then turned to face the large iMac again. A woman was wandering around the room. He could only see her back in the video. She walked to the far end of room, the same unveiled out wine color walls, spotting a king-size bed without sheets but keeping two white piles upon. A fur brown rug stretched on the floor in front of bed like something sort of taken off an abandoned barn or something like that. Ryan couldn’t see windows, nor a door, but of course there must be one in some place just sticking out of view. The moment the woman ( or girl?) ambled across the forgotten section of room, Ryan realized, she appeared to have parked before a dark-brown furniture, neither tall, nor large. He fixed drawers and a plain part which her hands groped upon for something, maybe. The angle of bedroom opened scant space, but enough to see the bed and a narrow lacuna in either parts of room that flanked the bed. Sodium light bulbs bathed down on the naked and lively mattress.

He wasn’t weirdo on watching that. Goddam there’s nothing wrong with that. He didn’t think so at least. A couple of these times it was almost the same of being dragged back to his boring adolescence and short after it. He remembered while holding his first computer – a square tractor of thousand pieces tied together – there had been many sites which provided that lure kind of entertainment with praise and a bit more. He didn’t know where and when it started exactly. By high school maybe, he had no sure and would be lying if gave a situated rightness of that part. There was no cellphone at the time

( thanks for that)

but Peter Doyle, an old and forgotten friend, had showed him ( yep, the fella had a computer at the time unlike the pack who didn’t have, like him between those poor watchers ) some short tapes like that, fierce and visceral. It was as though a door had been opened as of that day. Broadened with inevitable strength. Something he’d ever suspected lived in him. Dwelt within him and himself to enjoy. One thing was: he just wanted more… need more . The air of having such control under other thousand lives was priceless. Unfortunately just along his final-teenager age he got his first computer and thus started this grim journey through those sites. There seemed always to be too much to show, to know, to discover in high level that the first month with his new black cardboard box computer he spent encased in home, cancelling baseball matches, and movie theaters, mainly outings with his friends ( once also girls were only a ghost search with belief suspension ) to stay home consuming more and more of these stuffs. Snuff Videos , they called it. The pronunciation sounded a bit vulgar, fart in his ears yet it became easy to get used to. His mother didn’t ever suspect since held up half of day on the factory, and ever would. Then Nora appeared in his life to bind a new trek. With this, much of that hobby had slithered beneath the carpet for a couple of years. “What and how did you usually have fun before knowin me, I mean, how many girlfriends you had?” She asked him, eyes beaming with amusement, and he’d say, “Trust me you wouldn’t want to know.” No regret, after all. What keeps away from you so long, and he was not referring to girls at all, gets better when the time pass. And it was inevitably the same case by the time his wife lost ( not necessarily for her fault, as he always allowed to point and assure her when she was willing to hear ) by a darn abortion their first son. What would not be the first since two others would come and go like the wind with three and five months in her womb. He couldn’t understand each pix of human’s mind, but there was not much secret about how his wife’s state of mind might’ve been facing everything. The brightness, and accurate sense to managing all things on their daily life fainted, dulling away much of her, or what she used to be. He gave her the best thing he bore with himself. Which was his heart and patience to support her. With son or not son she was the best part of his life ever and… so meant to be also his best part of himself. Nothing would change; that he assured her.

But the spark had already been gripped at the other edge after those losses… too later to abandon it again, Ryan agreed to himself.

The image got grainy. Briefly, before focusing. The girl on the video carried a hunched back, her dark shaggy hair reeled below her nape. Her moves started flat, then took keen motions. There were snaps, and Ryan realized he could even smell the stale odor from the room ( or his mind made to summon up ). The imaginary scents, tastes, sounds conjured up in his mouth and nose and eyes and ears stood as the best part of that game, amusement, what also left the experience to linger more than its duration and beyond it. Jubilation flared in his guts. Pushed deeper down. He gasped. He got to see a way to stop this.., fuck. The girl edged the bed, came around it to the right side of camera. “Alright girl. Show what you have.” He leaned back on his chair. It slanted back, complaining under his modest weight. He looked around. Peered beyond his couple of shelves and office’s greyish-color walls. Alone? Yep, he kept alone. As often. But even if Nora had been at home she knew his unbreakable rule of never invading his office while he was working, it had along the years inflated worst argues between them before depicted toward an understanding. Earlier she’d said she would go to the supermarket. She hadn’t come back yet. He glanced at the left side of his hand, where a sweating can landed empty. His throat was dry, realized. He thought of fetching down another can, but pressing the stop button itched completely out of occasion at the moment, and he didn’t want to screw up that sticking stream unleashed and wondered he wasn’t supposed to leave that screen no matter what. Abandon it to take that beer Ahah. It wasn’t worth. None beer. He tossed the empty can into the basket beside his large mahogany desk. The light of room dimmed a little as the spring afternoon hunkered down.

In the playing video the girl fumbled for something out of sight, her skinny bare arms and body stood visible. Anxiety grew inside his chest. The pack of videos he had bought from the server AnserDavid0406# told in the description of video it would show a diversion in family ever never seen and no more description unless from whom would pay for it. It took less than ten seconds to convince him since he had already gotten such patterns and tapes reminded him the same thematic. Theme. So it was the unseen target he was looking for.

His muscles relaxed. It felt well, comfortable for him.

God it’s been the fifth movie in one week, ole crap!

He didn’t recover ever getting at this point of acquiring as much contents like that since…

just by the time…

at the time Bryan vanished. His beautiful three years old son could have the talent of stealing any heart, given his natural gift of diverting them springing over his limited grammar and the way he was in charge to mimic everything what he saw on tv. When Nora got pregnant by her fourth time she went mad with him and herself and refused to have the baby, no discussion or doubt. Try again sounded purely out of sense, reckless and for heaven’s sake for their own good. Mental health, she meant through forlorn appeal. He worked hard on it, finally getting to convince her to keep the pregnancy using his old sharp persuasion. It worked at all, and they decided together having the baby. The scare of losing it appeased in nothing under the supervision of the last month, and by her part as far as she could embrace for it would remain. And when the doctor appointed the date birth and even as lay on the table she denied, bawling, accusing him beforehand; it was not going to work and the baby would birth dead, she tore it several times. Ryan stood present in the room that fluttered with a dozen of doctors around the table racing as so much like against the time. They mustered each corner like worker ants, it seemed, suffocating up. The only difference was they were uniformed ants. The weakness solving down Ryan’s legs had gotten his insides upside down as watching that movie he found he was regretting to participate. Nonetheless Bryan, a fur blond boy weighing five pound and half, came up. It turned out to being normal labor. And although everything came all right she still refused to believe he had lived as well as offering a single gaze at him. She snuggled him away. “I don’t wanna take a dead baby in my arms!! I don’t! you know that, Ryan! You knew that.”she repeated in fever. She turned her head away, avoiding any touch.

“Darling, he is here! Look at him, your son, our son is here. He’s fine, and remind me a little Patrick Swayze.” He tittered, taking the little package in his arms almost waiting it could be broken with the slightest wrong movement. Snuffs videos had died that day. Or he tried to believe on that ( struggled to ). “ Hey look at this small thing.”

“I don’t, I don’t want” She shook.

The doctors said it was normal, considering their long-tougher turbulent past under those losses. It took, however, much more than expected, and she seemed always unable to get used to the baby. Always striven away, nothing else than that. Just after a little more than a month of harsh persistence, work and discussion and shrieks she started feeding from her own breast Bryan. So everything began going okay. She after all took over the role of a real mother. Or at least showed she had that running through her. Nora became what their longer plains had imagined to reach at someday. He had made his part, also, and so she did, too. Well, she must , mustn’t she? So everything felt okay, and he could not hope more bliss in his life than that, what even got to scare him out sometimes during long silent nights inasmuch as those grew tired along his thoughts. And he was right, sorely, at the end. Last month Nora and Bryan ( precisely two weeks after his third birthday ) went to another current walk after lunch, and by the end of afternoon she burst inside home hysteric, whimpering, and behind policemen followed after her. Ryan felt the world freezing around him then spinning frenetic along his blood, first of all for seeing, realizing his son was not with her as Ryan saw he walking like a small-tall man out of home as in any ordinary day – he watched them from the second floor windows. In recent times, for blessing, he’d gotten to start driving his job straight from home, after longer six years battling to get that. Now regarding her alone as arriving home and the whole cirque accompanying and making everything to sound like unreal, or false like it simply like that was only part of an unexpected indoor spectacle, he couldn’t quit the despair.

“ He’s missed, Ryan, he’s missed… I-I don’t know-I-He was right there . Standing while-“

“Can’t understand you. Tell me whata fuck’s goin on, Nora. Where’s Bryan?”

“Sir, Crosby-“ the policemen tried to say, yet he didn’t exist.

“I wanna know where’s my fucking son?!”

“Ryan… you aren’t listening to me. I-We’ve spent the afternoon on the park, I bought him a ice cream and-and-“she cried-“he stayed right there, right there licking the ice cream while I went pay and… and then he was gone. He missed!”

“Sir. Crosby his wife told she saw a black sedan near the park minutes before his son’s disa-

He took a deep breath, it felt hard to swallow. The lump seemed to be in there yet, raw. His stomach bubbled, churned. Now he was grateful he had ignored the impulse of fetching another beer.

On the screen the girl pulled out before the camera a stick that seemed to have appeared direct from her ass. It was a length stick, those plucked off straight from the trees. Next a knife came up in close-up. Long and sharp. Then a hammer, simple and small like any typical tool, the only exception enhanced it apart from ordinary was it would be used to other goals. Grim ones. A smile played on his lips. His breathing thickened. Ryan leaned forward so that his damp arms propped on the cream color desk. He adjusted his eyes on the screen. What troubled him was he had not yet seen the other apex of video. Suddenly he found wishing like hell to see it, or whom would be that tip. ( Victims). The minutes stretched by and bitterly he considered he didn’t want it to go leaking away that fast. If he could he’d make it never stop, ‘cause it ever should end at all, that’s the true, like many oterr things.

how that magic could be made up, how could? He just wanna own a little, just a little bit, of that sorta of power with himself

He wished that.

Like bring his missing son back again?

Nora had been the first one to admit he was dead ( mostly for the cops incompetence and participation since their entrance in the case ). Even Ryan protesting that sure drilled to set in its crib after the second week after Bryan’s vanishing. Ryan couldn’t help the guilt it made him in.

Kidnapping?

What more?

Kidnapped

What more?!

A small kid like that… beautiful; what more – whoever this motherfucker is – must’a done to him? Say to me.

Nothi-

What more?

Shut up.

Tell!

No, no, no, no. I won’t BASTARD!!

A giggle squawked in the screen dragging his attention up. It was short, creepy, and mischievous. He locked the eyes to the screen. Waited. The girl knelt with apparent difficulty. She groped for something under the bed, her other hand clutched on the mattress above to hang balance. Her missing arm shuffled under the bed for a while. Ryan narrowed his eyes to try to make out what the hell that woman was trying to pull out. Yes, he realized, it was a woman. That seemed clearer now. Not a girl as he thought.

The arm halted at last, as if it had found what it was searching for. Then she let to drag it out, bringing not just her arm but what she grasped hold of now.

Small.

Flabby.

Almost motionless.

But there happened to be two hands to lift it from the ground.

His eyes widened. He came a bit more onward to see better that thing, which was…

A kid.

A girl?

It was not what he had been expecting for. Not the deal definitely. Or what he had purchased at least. A sarcastic landscape resembling a family or something alike. Yep. Ok, credible annihilation happening in real time and children seeing like common watchers he could tell a lot. Not that, though, or what was about to happen. Even though it wouldn’t have been the first time evidently. It’d already happened; bought a pack which brought an infinite sort of videos of several genres and between those would have landed onto his lap snuff tapes with children.

A weird, bad taste to go through. Furthermore an unpalatable shit ( although it was what more came to be rented and watched in the older days of-Faces-of- Death attached to any other adult body being fumbled over an autopsy’s iron table ). Nothing new indeed. But, to be honest, pelted out his usual feedback. But also, he could not simply throw it inside the bin, then delete, that’s over, simple like that. Neither zip it along his wonderful collection inside his heavy folder in his iMac. He paid for it, ain’t it? He wasn’t crazy to tear money. The woman in the screen lifted the kid under her arms and lay it on the bed carefully, features vaguely apparent. Only grainy stray layout to what should be a face. The kid remained still. But it wasn’t dead. Ryan saw – or could swear – it had tilted, even slightly, his head to the side. Mumbled something. Perhaps. Or it emerged from the woman’s?Distance could trick him, it mattered in nothing, but letting his mind allege just impression was dire. The camera didn’t hold a so good definition either after all. Never mind.

Excitement sprouted akin the sweat on his forehead, his hands and feet inside moccasin’s could sense the same rooting. His heart leapt fast. Watching that Ryan wondered how deep, far ( without pun ) the human being could go with Deep Web’s help. Or even without this today; only a mere excuse the evil let to clutch and retain out in the light for future declarations. Could it be. In due cases, someday while chatting at Tom Lisley, a friend of his work, Tom after some beers and thrown cackles confessed him he used to buy his marijuana by a Deep Web site; it was safer my pretty boy , he confessed. In order of using only the fucking Bitcoins – the coins of dammed future – that was a great deal to aid his anonymity. With that secret to keep in Ryan gathered courage, took a breath, summoning more fervor, the enough, and spelled out his friend from accountability his secret hugged inside his trunk until now, too, about the snuff videos. Not obsession, because he wasn’t. He revealed his friend his hobby. The Hobby with a hint of curiosity. Nothing more or less. Nor could because he was none nuts. Hell, he killed nobody! They did. Not him. There was nothing wrong in watching those crappies. There was nothing to feel ashamed for, that’s right.“Serious, buddy?” Tom chuckled, disbelief, sparked eyes.

“Sure. A day’s fish for me, but maybe for others it may sound a bit awkward and unacceptable.” The alcohol seemed to prickle in his pharynx. Then it was burning all around his head and face as though it were exhaling free from his pores. Still, he held the same tone.

“Nora knows it?”

“Nah. Nor suspect. I hope it keeps also here between us.”

“Sure, pal. I know how it feels; Gwen didn’t know either about my deliveries. I smoke weed hidden from her nose.”

“Oh, yeah! Kyle’s empty building.”

“Op yep.” Laughing Tom nodded.

“You know what? Sometimes the feeling of doin it hidden is the best part man… They can’t understand like us what it means.” he cackled glad.

The woman bolted her back upright. She looked tired, but she drove over to the kid

…boy

on the king-size bed. Her hand touched the boy’s face, who lay staring up, and for the first time Ryan realized, no surprise, the kidwas not just still. He was afraid of moving.

Surely fearing the woman, his kidnapper, would hurt him more

He leaned on the desk, focusing into the screen. The distance didn’t help to see more etches. He cursed it. The pounding of his heart seemed to make part of his throat right now. The woman crawled over the boy so she stayed stuck hovering above him. Her arms spiked down as her pierce gaze, closing any opening of run. If he tried of course, what Ryan doubted he’d have tried.

Was there a whining? He’s hearing that?

Instead there was other thing: ( this thing) of the way her arm staked crooked into the bed. The sweating running down his tempers began going cold. The woman’s hair dangled covering more than half of her oval-shape face; a black straight mass.

“Please, mummy-pleaseei I-I won’te-“the kid ( the boy)

Boy

wailed. His fur blond hair brushed to the side.

A whimper escaped out Ryan’s mouth. He came closer the glittered screen. The woman turned to face the standing camera on the tripod for the first time since the video had begun, and detained that way as if the image had frozen. It longed enough to provide a right and straight angle so there was no way or chance to beam a misunderstanding. Ryan’s heart halted while all his body, sitting on his chair, drew in a barbell of ice which clawed his bulk inch per inch, just growing... Oh Jesus, my Jesus Christ…

It was Nora. She smiled towards camera. What’s happening here? Then turned back down to the boy, who lay weeping a low meow.

Bryan… Oh God Bryan-

His eyes fitted at the same time as the woman sprung out of bed to rush over to the bedside table. She fingered something slowly, barely letting the camera ( purposeful, he wondered ) to pick up the whole of scene. Trembling hands, he tried to advance the video, but paused in halfway tap as his wife rose up before the camera, like it was a continuation of scene to feed up at all the suspense, a scissor. Large and silvery one. The grin frozen dead on her lips.

Ryan stood up with a twist, it wasn’t his wife, couldn’t be, dropping the chair behind, it toppled over the floor with a sick thud. He backed away from the iMac. No, no. It cannot be happening, it can’t be! No.

Nora... I’m not understandin. Why-what is that for CHRIST’S SAKE!?

She dallied over to the camera so the lens, like going in an improved mode, approached considerably to where his son lay. Then his wife motioned back to bed, climbed up beside their son

Bryan, baby

, glared the last time back to the nearer camera now.

It isn’t her it isn’t cannot be it’s-

Nor his son

Then she slashed down the scissor while screams burst, deafening out from audio outputs. The boy’s voice cleared out. Spat. Bloody.

No, no, no, please!

“STOP!”he cried back against the iMac’s screen.

It’s him God it is Bryan. It’s his voice. It’s my son oh God

Ryan turned

STOPPP!..

his face away.

Nora kept chopping down as long as the screams pitched higher. Bryan, arms reached out, bouncing sideways, shrilled in harsh pain and despair.

The song scoured inside him. Devouring his nerves and brains up. “Stop, Nora! Whata hell you think you’re doing for christ’s sake!!? What are you-Why are you DOING THIS!?” he bellowed to the screen, whose seemed to roll the video in almost slow motion now. Each scene, each vicious and tore scream, cries, and pleads. Ryan could swear he had heard a laugh among those garbled things.

The most terrible thing about that was the conscious feeling of standing unable to swerve his eyes away, take them off that dingy square. He couldn’t help struggling the impulse. He lunged to the screen, slanted on his knees so his face got glued to it. His legs weakened, but he didn’t allow them to buckle. When Nora raised the scissor glow-red blood dripped fresh from it and out of bed, which at the instant pooled reddish under the three years old boy. Ryan bit his fist until it oozed blood, his eyes slamming the heavy tears back, and as soon as he turned to open them Nora was staring at the camera ( as though she could be seeing him watching her ), grinning. A smeared and unrecognized mask. “WHORE FUCKIN WHORE! I’GONNA KILL YOU NORA I-“

She caught up in open sight the long-sharp knife.

“No, no…no, please don’t do this.”

It was the time for the knife to work down now. Bryan didn’t seem to grapple anymore. Loosen moves. Even his wails had ceased, it appeared. Ryan ambled away from the iMac, grasping his nape. He got… got to-

He bent and threw up, the window about him showing a mute backdrop. All the beer and lunch Nora-

She’d made meal with slight brightness today, his mind groped on, using her same grading easiness she used-

He threw up more. The iMac behind bubbled chainsaw song, the butchery-classic cutting meat sounds. Titters. Bones rubbing… cracking…

He’s not moving not movin God

He lurched back to it just wishing, wanting it to finish, just that. To finish. That’s over. He’s dead now, wasn’t him? Let it go so. What more do you want?! Ryan didn’t dare checking the video runtime. Minutes rolled by, but he knew there was much more to stream. He wouldn’t check for Jesus. He just wanted it could finish… his knees had surrendered at last while watching his wife working down on their son like it was simply meat. No more life.

He hoped it over. Yet it wouldn’t end now.

After the long knife, the stick would come, then the hammer whacking down on the little skull, then knife again to fixing something she might have left unfinished… who knows?

The duration of video, alike many others he used to watch, was what his goddammit life had lately gotten used to owning… to hanging on with. Yet not now. Not more. The Screen went dark. Soundless. Wordless. Along it the whole rest sluiced away.

Car’s tires lowered until engine faded off outside. Ryan came over to the windows, slow trot. The car was pulling by the gravel path.

…blood everywhere

Looking down there he could see the figure steeping out of car. She held in her arms two crammed bags of supermarket. From up, Ryan blazed a Budweiser pack, peanut butter, pea cans, salami and toilet paper ( it was really lacking ), he pointed mentally with vague sure. He stepped back from the windows. It’d made almost a half hour the video recording had ended, and nearly twenty minutes ago he had gone downstairs into oblivion strides to pick up a knife inside the cupboard drawers of their kitchen. It in hand now he approached the door, which was ajar.

Downstairs: Open door. Keys hung, rattling in the bunch, perhaps along his dark gray coat on the hook, aimed as the center for several complains about its odor. Bags crumpled song. Footsteps toward the opposite side of corridor below his feet. Bags’ noise again. Paper tearing apart, cans and plastic rolling over the table. He turned to the iMac, headed out to it, pressed play over again. This time he let not to see even the opening of video. He let it play there aloud.

“Darling?” He called out.

“What?” good, she heard.

“Can you come here?”

“I’m busy now.”

“It’s quickly. Just come up here a sec.” his hands didn’t tremble anymore. He was gazing down at them.

“Hold on.” Her voice sounded what her hands could be doing.

Then footfalls along up the stairs. The muffled thud of her slight steps beating in his chest. He stood beside the ajar door. The steps cut distance, came closer, broke finally before his office’s door. “Can I come in?”

“Yeah.” He heard him muttering. Like many other things it sounded distant, too.

So she did as told.

She emerged. As she strolled inside his office he slowed the door shut behind him. Stood before her. She kept talking-walking up to stopping short three feet from his mahogany desk and open iMac playing the video, her backs to him. She seemed to stare at it transfixed as if held by her own sudden soundless voice and sharp movements across the room. The scorch in his belly lurched up and he seemed to have been feeling it prickling on each millimeter of his face, it hit his eyes.

“Yeah, uh.” He said at last, husky. And as though had noticed his presence in the room only now she flinched, turning to gaze at him. Her husband. She took notice of what rooted in his right hand, white knuckles squeezing the wooden handle. The knife – he knew she was glaring down at it in his fist. Her mask was a pale and flabby one.

“Ryan?” a threat note in her voice, “What’s happening here? What’l that means?”

“Tell me you, Nora.” he croaked.

“Where did you get that from?” she looked over her shoulder to indicate precisely what and where she want to mean. She stood rigid. Fearful gleaming eyes.

“You’re supposed to know better than I, I wonder, once you… yioouu did that.”

“Wait Ryan I can expla-“ she tried to come toward him, but Ryan at once rescued a step aback. Nora paused, realizing it. “So… this knife… whata this for? For me? So you gonna kill me now, using it on me?”

For a moment the words had fled from his sore throat, and his mind looked a blank sheet. Otherwise his sight went bleak, portraying few of her known slim shape. Then the words were there, pouring out all of a sudden, “I just… want to know why, why this Nora? Jesus why?”

“You know nothing, Ryan.”

“You are right I don’t know. I just want to ask you one question. Why… why did you do that to our son? Why? I just want to know this.” He sighed, the air prisms seemed to have condensed. “Just tell me… the true.” At the end his voice faltered.

For what seemed endless he stood watching at her. The silence adorning both of them, a micro sphere the static moment and both of them belonged at. Like a worm, very different from the worm dwelt within him since his adolescence, Ryan felt the tears suppressing up in him as glaring her wife’s semblance taking on a sort of other… like other composition. The pallor on her countenance remained yet much of the familiarity, love, warmth… life, humanity touched readable on her had vanished, and he found himself wishing, blasting, to know where was his wife? Who was that woman in front of him? Expressionless. The flimsy in her eyes dulled, assuming what those wanted to mean since beginning and what Ryan Crosby saw in that movie

Blood everywhere

Mutilated…

OHHHHOHH GOOOD…

Reflected no remorse, only death… cold hatred.

“I just did-“ Nora said. And it was at the same time Ryan jabbed the knife into the left side of her neck. Her body held up tightened as if nailed to the boards as the blade crossed spongy flesh coming out at the other edge of her neck. Blood leaked, firstly squeezed, flowing down by her collarbone. The expressionless eyes ever abandoned his. They were glassy. Bleak. Clenching his teeth, Ryan pulled it out, growling, blood gushing off along his hand and wooden handle. She didn’t move, nor even an inch away. The blood progressing out slowly. A bloat of blood itself bubbled out of her mouth within some smothered vowel, so it got allowed to pouring down over her chest, wool striped-shirt belly and so her khaki legs. Her eyes wedged up as though wires had clutched them, dragged them up showing the whiteness. She fell at last. Hit the floor puddled of blood, sprawled open under the thick, tacky lake. Her black-haired soaking darker behind at each second passed. Ryan stooped over her, stabbed her neck again. It chopped the side of the first cut still flooding. It went deeper this time, the razor diving easily.

He took it off, lifted it up.

Stabbed again. Then again. Sobbing.

Mutilated

No limbs… God

Again.

Again.

Blood spilling out of bed

Chest – center, breasts… sternum.

Ribs.

Kidneys…

…No head

Neck again.

Nevertheless, all these parts came in and out when she lay not alive any longer.

Blood covered his hands, beneath him, and all around the floor of his office still in profusion. He grappled on his knees, got up, standing before his wife’s body. She was dead. He had killed her, hadn’t he? He had, really had.

How could..?

I did.

He retreated up until found the door on his back, struck it and slid down, everything melting around him as the sick pain, dwindling…pulsing and so on, like a pounding. Still facing the body, sprinkles of blood let to dim over his chin, cheeks and above his eyebrow. He started to cry, gasping, sobbing. With the knife still clutched firm in his hand he shifted it over to his left wrist, turned it so that he could fix the red, soggy palm. He brought down the knife, starting to carving a cut at the zone below his palm.

Suddenly he stopped. He gazed down at the two centimeter incision, leaking dozy blood. It felt like numb. He looked up at the body again. Ryan wiped a hand across his mouth, leaving a sash of blood smudging between his lips and cheek. He dropped at all the knife. It rattled as finding the drenched ground under his moccasins. The tears had gone, his eyes wandered aimlessly until frozen at somewhere in the bottom of room, which was darkening in reason of the lights of afternoon were sweltering on the far horizon. Everything at certain point became blurry, cold. And as he gave for himself his eyes had adjusted to the darkness of corner, and for more impossible it could appear he could swear there was something, tall, standing there, muffled by the dark ( vague details ). His eyes caught slight movement, an occult dislodgment within the same space of time in what he wondered about the trick his eyes were playing on him. Anyway it, that thing, kept there, in the bottom as though waiting and apparently had not slipped a single step away from the shadows since his first impression. And unlikely it would, fuck; it wasn’t there. And above all that improbability circumstance

Nothing made sense already, nothing at all any longer made. By the way there may be some strangeness on seein someone holding by the corner?

Ryan felt like sleepy.

Then his body summoned a sudden shake, which tugged his eyes to waving around with hurry. They chased then snatched what his mind unconsciously was seeking for. The cellphone upon the desk. His head wheezed, his eyes jotted stingy, as he crept over the body up to the cellphone then back again to bolt his back to rest against the door again. He mumbled as touching with a skidding foot his wife’s oiled leg and tattered body right along the way. He glanced up at the dark corner again, expecting to see that standing shape like a demon or monster ready to jump and reveal itself to bring this time him along his wife since their son had already met the hell. And know what? He didn’t care. He deserved it.

You killed your fuckin wife, you killed…

However, there was nothing in the bottom of room. Unfortunately. Ever was, maybe. It was so empty like the silent world outside.

Nothing sounded real. His bloody fingers skipped over the screen of his smartphone but he got to dial 911.

While waiting, absent of anything, a sound… vicious blasts of pain and pleads and death fulfilled the room. Just then Ryan realized the video still kept playing.

THE END

Bio: "I have other work published in Aphelion Webzine (for March 2023 stories); a short story called “Scratching the Corners.”
I am a graduate of West Virginia University where I earned my B.A in English. Today I work as a High School teacher. I live with my fiancée Jade and our three dogs in Idaho."

E-mail: Michael Fernandes

Comment on this story in the Aphelion Forum

Return to Aphelion's Index page.