up.”
There was a long silence. She wasn’t smiling now. “I can’t,” she said, gesturing to the discharge like it was a sea otter covered in oil, and her without her best brush. “Don’t you see?”
“Eat it,” Von said.
“What?”
“Scoop it up in your hands and slurp it down. C’mon. Time’s wasting. We’ve still got two other scenes to shoot today.”
“Let’s just drain the tub,” she reasoned. “It won’t happen again after that.”
“Lady, what kind of shooting budget to you think we have? This camera isn’t even ours.”
“But—”
Von raised the machete overhead without warning and swung it down into the tub. Geisha Hammond jerked back out of harm’s way as the blade struck somewhere between her knees, splashing whatever over the sides of the tub and across Von’s jeans.
He pointed the tip of the machete at her face. “I guess all actors need to know their motivation. Well, yours is to live five more minutes by doing everything I tell you to do. So when I tell you to eat that nasty looking shit in the bathtub, you better eat that nasty looking
She bent forward so quickly with her hands cupped that Von had to grab her wrists until Greg confirmed that he had all the action framed through the viewfinder. Geisha made a bridge with her palms which managed to encompass the majority of the discolored concoction. Some of it slipped through the cracks in her hands and fingers, but there was enough consistency to the primary concern that it simply caught there in the cradle formed by her hands. She raised them to her face, her eyes knotted shut, and opened her mouth to receive. She gagged immediately, even as Von urged her to lick the mucus-like trails that hadn’t gone down with the remnant bath water. A conglomeration of bile and the yellowish dregs she had just forced herself to swallow spewed across the surface of the water. The sight of it just as quickly prompted another round of a rancid torrent from her lips, which Von at least momentarily did not associate with 2.2-second load-blowing action of skull-decimating potential. The gastric debris was determined to congeal and remain afloat, like ocean foam surrounding an island.
Geisha sat horrified, sucking air, knowing better than to try to get up. Enclosed in a festering pool of freshly regurgitated giblets, she resembled the main course in a cannibal stew.
“Holy Antichrist,” Greg said. “If the camera adds thirty pounds, you just lost twenty-five of them.”
Von sighed. “Looks like you already jerked us off. I guess we don’t have a choice now. I’m really not looking forward to the water bill this month.” He pushed down the lever to open the drain. They made Geisha stand under the showerhead for a few minutes until the vomit rinsed off of her and out of the tub altogether. They refilled the tub and finally got the primo footage they wanted of Geisha, and then it was time to bring lover boy on stage as shooting moved to the bedroom.
III.
Lover boy in this case was Bill Glasscock, who wasn’t sure what horrified him more—the prospect of being executed by his captors, or having to slide his beef baton into the bitch from
He decided Geisha was the lesser of two evils when Von put a .357 to his temple, although as it turned out, he probably should have just taken the bullet.
Von was setting the camera up on its tripod when Greg called for him to examine the now-naked Bill. Von didn’t have to ask what had spooked Greg, it was immediately obvious—Bill Glasscock had pierced genitalia.
Geisha, nude and shivering on the bed, now showed more than professional interest.
“Hundreds of thousands of people in this world and we keep picking up the freaks,” Greg said unhappily.
“Stop being such a child,” Von said absently.
Bill, mishearing him, perked up a little. “Really? Where?”
Von nonchalantly pinched the ring with his thumb and index finger and yanked it out abruptly, as though trying to spare himself prolonged pain while removing a Band-Aid.
Bill dropped to the floor instantly, bright red blood pooling in his hands and through his fingers. He cried out once, ear-splittingly loud, before Von chopped him in the throat. He curled into fetal position on the floor.
“What a pussy,” Greg chided. “He’s not in any shape to mount that snatch now.”
“You can have the honors,” Von offered. The whole business with the bathtub had left a bad taste in his mouth which he didn’t think he could immediately put aside, even for the good of their movie. He couldn’t stop seeing the facts from the
Greg looked over at Geisha, who started shivering again. “Won’t I catch her … mononucleosis?”
Von considered sharing the likelihood of transmission with his oldest pal and co-director, but then he thought of that toilet brush he’d never gotten back from Greg. Hell with it. He did offer a little sage advice as a compromise, though: “When barbarians are at the gate, your best friend is the back door.”
Greg frowned, then had an epiphany. He gave a thumbs-up. “Lock and load, Von.”
They used the bed sheets to secure Geisha to the bed face-down, and roped Bill to a chair. There was going to be a prelude to Geisha’s big scene, and unfortunately for Bill it would be at his expense. They positioned the camera for a static shot to promote authenticity. “Who will survive, and what will be left of them?” Von asked, cackling. He and Greg were crouched in front of Bill, who renewed his pleas for mercy—apologizing for having a piercing, for stealing Brach’s candy from the grocery store when he was a kid, for seducing his sister’s best friend, for seducing his sister, and for being born in general.
“You sure you’ve got us all in the picture?” Von asked, looking back at the camera uncertainly. He didn’t want them to miss a frame of this.
“No doubt about it, son.”
“Then hand me the screwdriver, Greg,” Von said.
Greg plucked one from an array of tools on the carpet and handed it to him.
“No . . . the one with the flat-head.” Von accepted it, squeamishly took hold of Bill’s whole member, and plunged the driver into Bill’s urethra. At this point they decided it’d be wise to tape his mouth shut. Another jab to his Adam’s apple silenced him long enough. His wrists were bleeding from the struggle to tear himself from the chair. There wasn’t much blood from the screwdriver insert, so Von asked for the ball peen hammer, which Greg graciously provided him. The testicles reacted more accordingly as the hammer dropped, one strike to each more than enough to mash them to the chair and subsequently burst them in a flash of skim milk white and deep red, a concoction that might have greatly interested the Cadbury egg candy makers. A healthy portion of it streaked up Von’s arm, causing Greg to get the giggles.
“Not a word,” Von snapped. “Remember who’s holding the hammer.”
Greg somehow stifled himself. “And for the coup de la creme . . .”
Von announced. “Greg . . . cheese grater.”
Scraping his knuckles on one several times had given Von this idea. Disappointed by the lack of cruor from the screwdriver, this seemed like a good supplement. Greg held the grip of the screwdriver to properly elongate Bill’s organ, which had actually engorged from the insertion, futile as that now was. Von applied the grater to Bill’s skin and began the scrubbing, like someone with OCD having to sponge dry a white Cadillac. He half-expected Bill’s screams to burst through the tape. He watched, fascinated, as he both saw and felt the skin and erectile tissue tear away. Perhaps most mesmerizing of all was the sound, wet and somehow reluctant. The head took the most effort, as the rim of course jutted beyond the shaft. Von had to really put his elbows into it. Blood and skewered fragments of dick were siphoning through the holes and collecting at the bottom of the grater. A spreading pool of it dripped off the chair, spattering the plastic they’d laid out underneath the chair.
“Shit!” Greg cried out. “Watch it! You cut my fingers!”
Von tapped Bill a few times on the crown of his head with the ball peen until the steady
