Necro Files: Two Decades of Extreme Horror

Her head was her own.

He owned the rest. In surgery, a wall of blue fabric had blocked her view of her own opened flesh. Sacs of saline were tucked beneath her pectoral muscles. He had used her vagina so thoroughly that it was as stretched as that of a mother thrice over. Dildos, fists, implements inspired by those he’d seen used in black-market Japanese films. He paid for her cunt to be tightened. Skin cultured in sheets from the cells of discarded foreskins, skin meant to reconstruct the features of burn victims, was trimmed into a new hymen and sewn to bridge her bruised soft walls. Nipped and tucked to be ripped and fucked. Again. All that lay on the far side of the sheet, and May, conscious, examined the warp and weft of the fabric, memorized the blue, called it cornflower, and felt none of the things they were doing to his body.

Two years later, he had undone all the work he’d bought between her legs, and had cultivated new tastes. Soon she would be on the table again, the saline sacs would be dragged from the muscles that had scarred around them, the natural tissue of her breasts would be scooped free and dropped into a Biohazard vat, and crescents of skin would be cut away, leaving her with the flat and aching chest of an adolescent. He’d tighten her again, of course, and he’d pay for electrolysis, leaving her mons bald as a child’s.

For now, nothing beyond the wood was hers. May read the cornflower letters branded on the pressboard. She didn’t feel it when he pulled his cock from her, didn’t hear the foil tear or the latex snap, didn’t hear the tink of his class ring against the bottle of Tabasco sauce, didn’t feel the nuclear conflagration when his cock seared into her again. She ticked AST, still, against her teeth.

She let him have the body and the head knew nothing of it. May, behind the wall, thought of guillotines, of revolt and freedom. She tasted fiberglass on her smile.

Then she felt hands on her jaw, hands wet with blood and pepper sauce and viscid semen, and they fell to her throat and slipped firm behind her neck, fanned fingers open to cradle her skull and draw her forth from the wall. She made a small sound, disappointed, as she came forth into the world again.

Maybe, my beautiful little thing, she heard. She clenched her eyelids and felt sharp crusts of insulation clotted between them. The pillow was soft against the highest knobs of her spine when he lay her down. She knew she would bleed on the sham and that he would be angry later.

But for now, May was a good lay, a beautiful little thing. She felt him stroke her hair and tried not to wince as red pepper burned the cuts bristling with splinters across her forehead. She felt pressure from beneath her shoulders; he was pulling the bedspread up, cradling her. He wrapped the flannel around her and lifted her into his arms, held her head against his shoulder. Her eyes were closed, still. She swayed in his grip and he shifted her to one arm as he used the other to run the shower. She felt the air around her grow heavy with humidity.

He let her down and purred at her, helped her step blindly over the side of the porcelain tub and into the running shower. When the water hit her flesh she flinched before realizing that it was good, not the scalding rain into which he often cast her. He gently thumbed the insulation from her eyes. He was so very kind sometimes, like now, with the good water. He loved her so.

She opened her eyes and saw herself as he did.

May, outside the wall, saw nothing at all.

An Experiment in Human Nature MONICA J. O’ROURKE

“An Experiment in Human Nature” first appeared in The Rare Anthology, edited by Brian Knight, 2001, Disc-Us Books.

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Monica J. O’Rourke has published more than seventy-five short stories in magazines such as Postscripts, Nasty Piece of Work, Fangoria, Flesh & Blood, Nemonymous, and Brutarian, and anthologies such as The Mammoth Book of the Kama Sutra, The Best of Horrorfind, Strangewood Tales, and Darkness Rising. She is the author of Poisoning Eros I and II, written with Wrath James White, Suffer the Flesh, and the collection Experiments in Human Nature. She lives in upstate New York. Visit her at www.facebook.com/MonicaJORourke.

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This story was inspired by Clive Barker’s “Dread,” though you would be hard-pressed to actually find any similarities. It also began my foray into writing hardcore (or splatterpunk) fiction and led to my collaboration with Wrath James White, Poisoning Eros parts I and II.

Ernest brushed the hair from his forehead with his fingertips and leaned against the wall, clumsily setting his glass upon the mantle.

Young men playing dress-up, sporting Ralph Lauren, knockoff rich man wannabees enjoying Ernest’s parents’ good food and good smokes and good single malt, crashing in the Tudor-esque McMansion that felt somehow misplaced among the Hampton elite. Animal heads suspended from the walls gazed at them with dead eyes. A billiards table sat unused in the corner.

“Okay,” Ernest said. “I promised you something interesting, right? Now we see if you two have the jewels to go through with it.” Caleb uncrossed his spider legs and leaned forward. He set his cigar (the smoke was choking him anyway) in the oversized freestanding ashtray and rose to his full height. Stretching his arms overhead, his fingertips fell inches short of the eight-foot ceiling.

“This should be good,” he said, cracking a smile.

Ernest smirked. “It wasn’t easy, but I think it’s worth it. Or will be, in the end. It’s brilliant.”

Ian, almost invisible in the corner of the room, said, “What’d you do?” His blue eyes were intense as he squinted at the two other boys. Curly auburn hair and a baby face, he was the youngest of the trio at nineteen, but only by two years.

Ernest closed the double doors. “Keep it down. Some of the staff may still be wandering around. They might hear us.”

“Staff?” Caleb scoffed, knowing the huge staff was composed of a cook and a housekeeper. “So what’s your big secret?”

Ernest cleared his throat and narrowed his eyes. “We swore that no matter what, we’d stick by each other, right?” He strummed his fingers on the edge of the table.

“Yeah, so? What’s got you so freaked?” Caleb said, though he nodded. “What’s your point?”

Ernest blinked, his long lashes almost dusting the tops of his high cheeks. “I’m not freaked,” he snapped, and then composed himself. “A study in human nature. An experiment in perseverance.”

“Blah, blah, blah …” Caleb snapped. “Get to the point.”

Ernest ignored him. “You think you have the stomach for such an experiment? One that will be messy? One that, I guarantee, will end … badly?”

Caleb said, “Badly? What’s that mean?”

“We’ll be running some experiments. Okay? Just some tests. I got us a guinea pig.”

“What kind of experiments?” Ian said, almost whispered.

Caleb cocked his head. “Guinea pig, huh? Why do I get the feeling it’s not warm and furry.”

Ernest smirked. “Oh, it’s warm and furry all right …” He sat on the arm of the sofa. “Remember in Professor Klein’s class when we studied about the strength of the human mind, and the ability of the body to persevere at any cost? What I remember most were the slides of the concentration camp survivors from the Holocaust, and the Japanese POWs. Remember?”

He paused briefly, looking from Caleb to Ian. “I’ve thought about that. A lot. Wondering … you know, what someone might do …”

“Might do if what?” Ian murmured. The air in the room felt heavy, as if coated in cotton. He pursed his lips,