Ryan Harding - Genital Grinder

Greg nodded. “You got that right, son. We can’t abide by no traitor. I’ll tell him that when we slash his throat for him.”

Von gestured to follow and began to quietly ascend the stairs.

Horace followed the Nova to a secluded two story home on an unmarked and unpaved road off Connelly Trail. The woods were thicker here, and it looked like the kind of place where toothless bumpkins would command you to squeal like a pig before bending you over and breaking you off. At this point, he was quite confident that the worst that could possibly happen to him had happened to him, and any subsequent cuts, bruises, and ass-poundings would be trivial at best.

When you had to crack the window of your Rabbit because the mephitic fetor of your crispified cock stump was nauseating you virtually to the point of unconsciousness, you didn’t have much further to fall. It triggered a very old memory from his childhood, an evening when his mother had melted a plastic ladle in the dishwasher, creating an overpowering olfactory assault so abominable that he’d had to seek refuse in the basement to keep from puking.

He stopped a hundred yards from the house, his headlights extinguished. He’d go the rest of the way on foot and hopefully get the drop on them. He had to wait for his eyes to adjust, although it still didn’t afford much definition to his environment. Out here was the kind of true darkness of night unknown to the city, away from all the street lights and neon, with even the stars blotted out by the heavy canopy of the trees overhead. The orange glow from the windows ahead was his only guiding light.

Was this even their house? Was his manhood being utilized in some form of ritual satanic abuse? Were they perhaps religious fanatics exacting the vengeance of their god on the “impure” heathens who sought the earthly pleasures of the flesh?

If so, it might be time their little sect learned the doctrine of an eye for an eye . . . and a life for a cock.

They found the Divided Man midway through the ascent. Greg saw him first and stopped cold. His hand seemed to have a mind of its own as it reached out and tugged at Von’s sleeve, never turning his head from the sight. Von was more eager to get upstairs and find out exactly what was so secretive that Sammy couldn’t tell them about it, and almost pulled a “Jump back, boy, you’re botherin’ me,” on him. Greg, however, was insistent, and Von finally peered back around the corner of the room they’d just passed on the way to the attic stairs.

“The hell?” Von asked. In that moment he wouldn’t haven’t been able to say why they had been so determined to get to the attic, or what the hell an attic was in the first place. Greg was still stretching his sleeve to get him to look, but he didn’t notice (neither, for that matter, did Greg).

It was the parents’ bedroom. Von always assumed Sammy’s mom and dad were both dead, especially considering the extent of their son’s homicidal forays into surgical possibilities. The evidence on display didn’t disprove his theory, but initially it appeared like a locked room aficionado’s wet dream. Cast randomly on the carpet were a lady’s undergarments (pock-marked with dried droplets of menstrual blood) and a tube sock with no equal. Beyond those, statuesque against the far wall was the upright body of a man. A network of wires had been run through an eyelet from the ceiling to keep the body in a standing position. The wire work had turned him into a puppet of flesh, bone, and organs. His torso had been cleanly divided from throat to stomach, the corner flaps of the skin held aside by surgical clamps. This strategic sculpting allowed for a view of the man’s entrails, which remained stationary against the demand of gravity due to its slightly slumped position, unmolested by any incisions or perforations. Their arrangement seemed as aesthetically-conscious as the objects in a still-life drawing, a measured integration of reds and yellows.

His sex organs had not been surgically inspected.

“You know what this means,” Von whispered.

Greg nodded. “Sure do! Sammy’s a homo, son!”

Von barely refrained from slapping him. “It means we have a placement for Rochester. We won’t have to cut Sammy out after all.”

Greg considered this a moment, then nodded again. His attention fell on the sock and he stooped to pick it up, apparently already distracted from the wonder of the Divided Man. “You ready for Sock Puppet Theater?” he asked mischievously. Before Von could tell him to put a sock in it, Greg forced his hand into the sock, already bending his wrist to form an elongated mouth with his hand.

He frowned instantly. “Yuck . . . it’s all wet inside.”

“Three guesses why, and the first two don’t count, slick.” Von gestured to the soiled panties discarded on the floor.

Greg looked at him blankly.

“Why the hell else do you think a man would leave a sock lying around on the bedroom floor, you ijit?” Von asked rhetorically. Then, because he understood the futility of asking Greg to make a mental leap of any kind, he answered anyway. “Sammy was filling it up with his rocket sauce, son!”

“ Shit! ” Greg palmed his forearm and yanked the sock away like someone trying to haul a tablecloth away without upsetting everything on top of it. The sock dropped to the carpet inside out, and Greg jumped back from it like it was a rattlesnake. He wadded up a bedspread and dried his arm off, never taking his eye away from the sock, as though terrified that it would jump up and try to pull itself back up his arm.

Von chuckled, but as quietly as he could, still listening for the sound of Sammy’s returning footsteps. They hadn’t heard anything from the attic for a few moments. He dug the Swiss army knife from his pocket and recoiled at the feel of the moist clumps of Rochester’s original tool. “I got the last one, boss man. This is all you.”

Greg accepted the knife a bit uncertainly.

“Get crackin’, man,” Von said. “He’ll be back any minute now. I’ll keep a look-out.”

Greg extracted the knife blade and walked over to the strung-up cadaver. This close up, he noticed the eyes were open. The lids had been removed. That was a trademark Sammy maneuver, just in case Greg had any shred of hope left that Sammy had nothing to do with this objet d’art displayed in the bedroom. He and Von had been up here before, but the door had always been closed. They’d never paid it any mind. Greg started trying to remember if there were any other doors that had always been closed to them in the past.

Just the attic.

He knelt before the Divided Man, thinking it was pretty sick of Sammy to have some naked dude with his guts on display. That girl with the dog head and tail, that would have been far more appropriate.

“Hurry!” Von commanded from the doorway. “He could come down any second now!”

Greg winced as though the tube sock misadventure was happening all over again. He reached for the man’s groin and grasped. The effect was instantaneous—the slop of immobile entrails squirmed free, a minor avalanche of the digestive tract right over Greg’s hands and into his lap. He sprang back, dropping the coils which had slickly gathered over his thighs onto the shag carpet with a surprisingly heavy slapping sound.

Their eyes both shot up to the ceiling as though it would dematerialize to reveal Sammy. When it did not, Von jabbed a finger in Greg’s direction. “Get your ass back over there and find it!”

Greg gave him a helpless look, like a little kid whose trail of bread crumbs had been eaten up by the ravens.

“Now!” Von snapped, somehow managing a scream at whisper level. He wasn’t sure Sammy would go ballistic over this, but since Sammy kept the Divided Man a secret, there might be some sentimental value attached to him. He’d undoubtedly notice the “alterations,” but maybe not before they were a few million dollars richer. And if he blew the whole episode out of proportion, they still had the option of killing him. They just better make sure that they got it right, because they would probably only get one shot at it. And obviously the guy wasn’t above surgical liberties with the male figure after all.