Nick Cutter - Little Heaven

He had sat down beside her kids, who were clearly the sort who would spend the rest of their bitter, useless lives in that tar pit town. Carlene’s eyes went wide with that old fear at the sight of him.

You’re a shell of your former self , he’d said to her, then got up and sauntered off.

It hadn’t even felt that good. Not like how he’d wanted. Life had already ripped the spine out of every dream she’d ever had. How much could the truth really hurt?

“Virgil,” he moaned now as his feet propelled him helplessly toward the fence, hoping his partner might hear. But it was the dead of night and Virgil was probably asleep, the pudding brain. Cyril felt a little sorry for Virgil. Dumb as a box of hammers, that one. He’d be lost without Cyril. Then he had to ask himself: Where am I going?

At the fence now. It ran fifteen feet up to the razor wire. Cy hooked his hands into the chain link. The sensation of his fingers clawing through that rough industrial metal washed a dry taste of horror through his mouth, as if he’d taken a big gulp of shitty wine.

Come on now, baby. We’re gonna have such fun…

He started to climb. The terror shot through him sharply, a bone-deep electricity radiating from every nerve center. He tried to jerk himself backward, hurl himself to the ground. He didn’t care if he broke a leg, or both legs plus an arm. Anything was better than being dragged toward that voice like a man chained to a winch.

He saw something in the trees. Carlene Herlihy. The pride of Carbine, Alabama. Naked as a jaybird. Jesus please us. He’d never seen a woman so goddamn lovely. Creamy-dreamy red bikini. Breasts not all droopy and sucked out, but firm and high. A nice tanglebush. Boy howdy, Cy would walk twenty miles of busted glass to lay one kiss between those legs.

Except her eyes. Yes indeedy, there was something a bit queer about those.

He was up the fence now. He’d scaled it like a blackie up a coconut tree, hadn’t he? Climbed it faster than that fairy English nigger ever could. Cyril paused, his body trembling, then started to crawl through the razor wire. Oh fuck. Stop. STOP! The wire was studded with long sharp blades just like the ones his father used to shave with. They effortlessly slit Cy’s clothes. Blood leapt out in greedy bursts.

He kept his eyes on Carlene. That traffic-stopping body. Those inhuman eyes. What would she do to him with that body—more important, what would she do with those eyes ?

A razor raked his throat. Blood pissed out his neck, a shiny redness spritzing against the night. Fuck it all to hell. He didn’t even feel it. Carlene’s hands were moving between her legs, fingers feathering that space between. Her breasts were so big—way bigger than he ever remembered, though he was an ass man by trade—so big they threw round shadows down her rib cage.

There came the sound of a wet, shredding, rubbery fart—Cyril almost yelped laughter. Sweet Jesus, someone just ripped their britches! A real denim-burster. Except he knew that wasn’t it. In a far-off, unreal, daydreamy sense, he understood that some other part of his anatomy was responsible for that noise. It was the sound of something opening up, and something else slipping out. In some distant chamber of his mind—which sat beside a second chamber where something small and helpless gibbered in mindless fear—he realized that he also had a thudding erection.

A stiffie , as they were called. A peg-pounder. A cunt-corker. A bon—

He saw someone else now. Standing behind Carlene. A bigger shape. Tall. Pale. Kind of pear-shaped.

Playing some kind of musical instrument. A flute, was it?

Cyril was halfway through the razor wire. It was slicing him to ribbons. Who cared? It was good. He would go to Carlene and she would fix him. With her lips and tongue and tits and her perfect pink pussy. Her love . More than anything, that’s what Cy needed. The love of a good woman. That’s why he’d gone wayward. Followed the bad path. But he’d change all that. Him and Carlene together.

Cy jerked his leg. There was a long cold sizzle down his calf, and then that leg was free. He climbed down the other side of the fence. He felt heavy all over: the soddenness of his clothes, sopping with blood, plus a bricklike heaviness of mind. But it would be over soon. It would be fucking beautiful.

He staggered toward Carlene. The lights of Little Heaven reduced until there was no light at all. When he spun, laughing a little, he couldn’t see the chapel or bunkhouses. Just that vast darkness peering back at him.

Who gave a flying fuck, anyway? He had Carlene. Jesus, he’d treated her bad, hadn’t he? He’d been young. An animal. Could you fault him? Any creature is only the sum of its instincts and interests, right? But Cy could change. She could declaw him. He’d be okay to stand for that now. He’d be a kitten for her. He’d curl right up in her lap.

Dimly, so dimly now, Cyril understood that he was dead. Or he would be soon, in a way he had never imagined. The human mind lacks a capacity to embrace such oddities of fate. He was a mess, woozy as blood leaked out of him from a dozen fleshy rips. He smiled, the dopey grin of a child. But a small, helpless voice, locked in the deepest cells of his brain, continued to scream without ceasing.

And Carlene was right fucking there . Just… bam! Ripe as a plucked peach. The years peeled away and they were both young again. Wouldn’t that be just the best? To live forever as you once were, back when you could run half a mile at a dead sprint, drink a six-pack, and then fuck like a rabbit? Yeah, that was the ticket!

She opened her arms. The flute’s music rose to a weird pitch that made his ears itch.

“Carlene…”

Baby…

Carlene’s face started to change. To bubble and run and worse things—

Oh, so so much worse.

Which was when Cyril Neeps began to scream for real, and for a long, long time. But of course, not one soul in Little Heaven heard a thing.

ELI’S BACK.

Nate awoke lathered in sweat, clutching his belly as if he’d been stabbed. These two words echoed within his mind.

Nate got up. The bunkhouse floor was icy on his bare feet. He went to the window. The moon was a ghost behind a smear of thin night clouds. A security lamp burned weakly; yesterday Nate had overheard that gasoline was running low, so the generators were running at half power.

Wind licked through paper-thin slits around the window frame. Nate shivered. He clenched his jaw. Stop it. Don’t be a baby. He glanced at his father, who slept with a pinched look on his face.

Distantly, Nate heard the notes of a flute. Thin, high notes that held no melody—more the random, inharmonious notes the wind might make as it blew through a dry reed. Yet there was something compelling about the sound. Frighteningly so.

Nate moved toward the bunkhouse door. He was barely aware he was doing it. His arms were overtaken by the numbness he’d felt when a dentist stuck a needle in his gums before filling a cavity. His hand was wrapped around the doorknob—he looked at his fingers clasping it and thought, Huh, isn’t that weird?

It took an enormous effort, summoned from a part of his brain he had never accessed, to activate his other hand and hook his fingers to the window frame. Grindingly, teeth set, he dragged himself back to the window. His fingers pulled away from the doorknob, which felt as warm as a penny clutched in a hot fist.

“Daddy…,” he whispered in a hoarse rasp. His father did not stir.

Nate stared out at the compound. Just shadows, shifting and swirling…