Ryan Harding - Genital Grinder

“Are you out of your mind?” he finally asked—which wasn’t quite the same as denial.

Let me get back to you on that one, sir . . . because sometimes I really wonder.

“Cassandra Bittaker back in May,” I said. “Jenny MacColl in June. Aurora Fenech and Mariangela Bouchet in July.”

Owens’ expression gradually changed as I named the young women who mysteriously vanished in the past four months. Initially he had the look of a claustrophobic man on an elevator where the doors don’t seem to want to open, but by the time I got to “Aurora Fenech,” he was positively beaming. Like I was describing his greatest accomplishments.

“You read the papers,” he said. “So do I. I don’t go door to door making wild accusations, though. Maybe you should stick to the funnies.”

“Maybe I should call the police,” I countered. “I think they’d be very interested in your basement. That’s where you keep them, isn’t it?”

The whole time, he kept that smile. Fight or flight was in his eyes, but the smile never faltered. It reminded me of all those pictures where the flash gave people red satanic eyes, but they smiled good-naturedly all the same.

Owens surreptitiously examined the street from right to left. I knew he was looking for potential witnesses to his next disappearing act, having realized that he wouldn’t be having this conversation with me if I’d already called the police. A SWAT team would have smashed through every window and door of the house.

“I wrote about coming here in my journal,” I lied. He didn’t have to know that I hadn’t actually gotten around to naming names or reasons. “I went from house to house on your block, too, asking about my lost dog. ‘A basset hound, long ears, sleeps about twenty hours a day, answers to Gloria.’ If I disappear, someone around here will remember me. It won’t be long before they figure out my last visit was at your house.”

Sounds convincing, doesn’t it? Wish I’d thought of it BEFORE I went through with this, and actually did it.

He looked at me like he was trying to solve an equation, and the wattage of the grin finally diminished.

“Not only that,” I went on, “but you know who I am. And I have copies of your pictures. It was pretty ingenious of you to nab all those girls without being seen, but you need to bone up on common sense.”

He didn’t look pleased with that remark at all. “Just what exactly is it that you want?” he asked, his mouth now barely a line on his face.

“Show them to me,” I said.

July 19 (later)

I’m back. Damn telephone. People calling to ask how my mom and I are doing, as if they really care. We oughtta have the thing disconnected.

Anyway, I GOT TO SEE THEM! It must have been how those astronauts felt at the moon landing. One small step for man, one giant leap for sexual sadism. You go in the house, through the den to the kitchen, and that’s where the door to the basement is. I made Owens go first, because I didn’t want him to a) push me down the stairs, b) lock me up down there with the women, or c) both. Not that “B” wasn’t without its prospects, but I’d only accomplish half of my goals. More on that later.

So we went down there, and of course it’s just like the pictures, for the most part. The basement walls are stone, and Owens has the shackles driven into them. You aren’t breaking away from those unless you come from the planet Krypton. There were also some empty shackles for future acquisitions. And speaking of acquisitions, there, from left to right, were the pretty little schoolgirls and co-eds all in a row. Alphabetical order, too. I thought it was a coincidence, but he consciously lined them up that way. It seems like a pointless risk to me if he has to trade out shackles, but Owens is a bit weird.

The girls are chained with their arms overhead, which makes their breasts rise up. I sound like Gray’s Anatomy , don’t I? Their tits, then! I’d seen tons of pictures, but never in the flesh, never right in front of me. Not even when I was looking into houses, even after three steady years outside Katy Hindley’s. My sister always locked her room and the bathroom, too. It was like this huge conspiracy to make sure I never got to see the good stuff, but I found a way around it, didn’t I?

It was all on display! Four downy clefts, eight TITTIES, and four sets of ass. Hours and hours of fist-pumping action if you just happened to sit next to them during a study hall, but in a place like this where you can blur the line between daydream and reality, the possibilities were downright exhausting.

I HAD thought about being a “law-abiding citizen” and calling the police when I first saw the pictures. If anyone ever reads this, I want to go on record as saying I considered it. But when I weighed the pros and cons, doing the “right thing” seemed like a real cop-out. Think about it. Let’s say I reported the pictures to the proper authorities and they stormed the house, saving the women and arresting Carl Owens. Would I even get so much as a thank-you card from three of those women? It’s doubtful. After all the psychiatric treatment for their “ordeal” and their “post-traumatic stress disorder,” they’d either go on with their lives and purposely leave any reminders of the experience way behind them, or they’d try to cash in on their “tribulations.” The bottom line came down to “Will good ol’ Alex get some ass in return for his heroic benevolence?” and the answer was always “Not bloody likely.” What WHORES! Some gratitude, huh?

So yeah, I may look like the bad guy, but it was worth it for the steamy thirty seconds I spent with Jenny alone. I’d thought about doing this with her for some time. You’ve never seen such a struggle before in your life, either. I bet she didn’t put up half the fight when Owens came to collect his just reward. All that squirming and whimpering, you’d think Helen Keller’s mom set her down on a hot stove. I have to admit, if half those thirty seconds weren’t spent restraining her gyrations so I could even get it in her, it would have been over that much faster. I made sure to get in a couple squeezes of her TITS after I blasted off in her, because I forgot to do it in all the excitement. Nice and firm, fit right in the palm of my hand.

I didn’t even care that Owens was watching (and he looked at me distastefully, if you can believe that . . . what a hypocrite!). I should have been more worried that he’d try something, I guess, but I’d offered to develop film in his house, and having found out how close he came to discovery, he liked the sound of that.

I wonder exactly what he would have said if someone else developed his film and called him on the carpet. I suppose he could have said it was just a make believe thing, and hey, I swear they were all over 18! Nothin’ weird here, good sir. If no one recognized the girls, he might have even skated on that, at least for awhile. The pressure cooker hadn’t exploded just yet with no actual bodies. A lot of people figured the girls just ran away and were shooting up dope and sucking dicks—believe me, I’ve heard the ugliest theories—while the rest whispered that the Slave Killer guy from twenty-five years ago was back. Geisha Hammond does that story about him in connection with the Bartok Butcher, and she just happens to disappear? And now four other girls? You think that’s a coincidence?

For the record, I wish Geisha Hammond was on display between Aurora Fenech and Jenny. Just my luck that she dropped off the face of the earth before Jenny disappeared. Have you seen the lips on that woman? You’d blast the back of her skull out instantaneously if she wrapped those things around your dong.

I’m sure it pained Carl to have to share the girls, but the guy was so spoiled anyway. He inherited the house from his mommy, didn’t have to work for anything. I’m busting my ass for minimum wage, and he’s out joyriding, chloroforming flawless college girls for an orgasmathon. Pretty unfair, if you ask me.