Tim Curran - Cannibal Corpse, M/C

Slaughter began to shake and shiver as the hot sweat of fevers broke open on his face. That word. That symbol. That word-symbol. It meant something and he knew it. It meant the most awful things and Dirty Mary was trying to tell him but he couldn’t hear and she kept shaking her head as she rubbed her breasts.

I died. Then I went down the rabbit hole and into the darkness and I saw him there. He asked about you, John. Oh, the evil that men do. You’re one of his favorites because you have absolutely no respect for human life. You like to kill.

No, I don’t.

But you do.

Only when I have to.

She began speaking in what seemed dozens of voices at the same time, all of them berating him and shouting at him and telling him things he needed to know, but were incomprehensible.

Really, John. You have to concentrate. I went down the rabbit hole and I met the Mad Hatter and he said tweedle-dee, tweedle-dee, why is a raven like a writing desk and right now he’s with that Little Injun and he’s telling him riddles.

Shut up.

I won’t. Not until you remember.

Then Slaughter did. In his memory that was so real it shut out everything else he saw a couple of the boys from the 158 Crew: Sean Cady and Butch Vituro. They were both long dead now but that didn’t seem to matter and why should it?

Allentown. Yes, Allentown, PA. The 158ers were going after a witness in a drug trial involving Ringo Searles, then-president of the Pittsburgh chapter of the Disciples. The rat’s name was Boyle, a drug dealer who had fingered Ringo’s complicity in a tri-state heroin trafficking operation.

In under a minute Sean popped the lock on the back door with a little L-wrench and a shot of graphite. They found themselves in a kitchen that stank of fried foods and garbage. It was dark, but Slaughter could see light in the next room, hear the TV blaring out the canned laughter of a sitcom. He moved noiselessly in there, saw Boyle in an easy chair, his back to him. Cady moved forward, cool as a body in a freezer, his eye on the top of Boyle’s pink head. He got right up behind him and brought the butt of his Glock right down on the crown of Boyle’s skull. It made a meaty thud and Boyle fell forward, sliding from the chair.

Cady turned him over with his boot. Boyle was out cold.

Satisfied, Cady went to the window. There was a shade drawn. He pulled it up and down twice. Then he went back to Boyle. A lolling human slug, Boyle spilled out of the bathrobe in too many places. Fat bulged out of the robe like an inner tube from a tire.

Butch came in with the tools.

“Okay?” he said.

Cady nodded. “Just fine.” He turned to Slaughter. “Now you see how we joint ‘em.”

Butch set down the leather sack of tools. Next to it, Slaughter set out a stack of black, heavy-duty plastic garbage bags.

“Never take off your gloves,” Cady said, his eyes narrow in his square-jawed face…except it wasn’t Sean Cady now. It was Black Hat who was the Mad Hatter who was Chaney the Skeleton Man. The clownwhite face, horribly pitted and scarred as if by acid, the eyes like pink mince. He wore a high top hat and on it was a placard with the following:

“Dat’s rule one,” he said, imitating the voice of a tough hood. “When ya do a guy, ya always cover yer tracks. Ya take yer gloves off fa one minute, rub yer eye, scratch yer balls, whatever, dere’s dat much more chance yer gonna touch something. Ya leave a print behind, fuggetaboudit. Dey’ll get ya. Dey always do.” He looked at Slaughter, winked. “Dost thou comprehend this, biker boy?”

Butch nodded. “That’s right, Johnny. This here’s messy work, but if you do it right, nobody ever has to know.”

He gave each of them a blue plastic disposable apron, the sort meat cutters wore. The Mad Hatter took out his Glock again, threaded a silencer on the end. He left the room, turned on some more lights. “In here. Come along with me,” he called out. “Tweedledum and Tweedledee.”

“Sure,” Butch said.

Slaughter took the bags, the tool bundle.

Butch took Boyle by the legs and dragged him effortlessly down the hall into the bathroom, hefted him into the tub. The Mad Hatter stripped the shower curtain free, tested the strength of the rod, nodded with satisfaction that it was steel and it was screwed firmly into the wall.

“We’ll make a fine and secret work here,” said he.

Slaughter and Butch slid a plastic bag over Boyle’s head. He moaned and stirred slightly. The Mad Hatter went over to him, stuck the muzzle of the Glock up to the bulge of his head and pulled the trigger—pop, pop, pop—as he whistled Gounod’s “Funeral March on the Death of a Marionette” which was impossible to hear, Slaughter knew, without conjuring up images of Alfred Hitchcock. Boyle trembled and went still. The bag was essential, Butch pointed out, in that it helped to contain the bone chips and brain matter that otherwise would’ve sprayed around the room.

Butch took Boyle by the legs, hoisted him up, lifted him up so the top of his bagged head just brushed the bottom of the tub. The Mad Hatter, whistling merrily, tied his ankles together with rope, then roped him to the shower curtain rod. The rod bent down, but held. Already blood was running from the bag around Boyle’s head. The Mad Hatter pulled it free, set it aside.

When Slaughter stared at him he said in a singsong voice:

“There was a lady all skin and bone,

Sure such a lady was never known:

It happened upon a certain day,

This lady went to church to pray…”

The Mad Hatter took out a carving knife. He slit Boyle’s throat and the blood really started to run. “This will drain our pig a lot faster,” he said. “About five, ten minutes and we can commence work on him.”

Butch and the Mad Hatter lit cigarettes, chatted about the weather, all the rain they’d been getting.

Slaughter felt a greasy, heaving sludge crawl up his throat. Felt his mouth go hot, wet, and sweet. He pushed past the Hatter and Butch, vomiting into the toilet with great shaking spasms until there was nothing left and he was just coughing and gagging and spitting.

Butch patted him on the shoulder. “It’s always tough the first time,” he said. “You’ll be okay. Now your cherry is popped. Ain’t that right, Sean?”

The Mad Hatter laughed and then sang:

“On looking up, on looking down,

She saw a dead man on the ground;

And from his nose unto his chin,

The worms crawled out, the worms crawled in.”

Butch and the Hatter tossed their cigarettes into the toilet, flushed them, along with what Slaughter had deposited in there.

What came next was even worse.

Butch, who was now Dirty Mary with jiggling bared breasts, untied the tool bundle and rolled it out flat. In little pockets there were meat cleavers, butcher knives, steak knives, medical instruments, hammers, hacksaws, bone snips. He/she told Slaughter to strip off Boyle’s bathrobe.

It wasn’t hard with him hung up like that, but to do so he had to come in close proximity with the corpse. He pulled one arm out, then another. The robe dropped. He reached down to retrieve it, needing badly to be sick again, and one of Boyle’s tangling arms brushed his face. The feel of the flesh was cool and moist. It was almost too much. He pulled out the bathrobe and bagged it.