Fat Off Sex and Violence (12 page)

            “Stay here,” he said. “Out of the way.”

            Gary hadn’t wanted the guy to be there at all, but he couldn’t get rid of him. It was less trouble to bring him along than to try and convince him to go home.

            “You see any trouble out here, run up and warn me,” Gary said, then held up a finger. “But only in an emergency.”

            “Don’t worry. I’ll have your back.” He pulled his glasses off and used the bottom of his t-shirt to clean them.

            Gary nodded, stared at the stairs for a moment before taking them. He looked back and waved the feedlings over.

            Mary Jane and Kronos whispered to each other, something Gary had started to notice more and more.

            From down the hall came a repetitive knocking sound, mixed with matching grunts. Kronos had his red lights aimed toward the noise, and Gary watched as a small black cloud floated by and into Kronos’s mouth. He chewed messily, patted his belly.

            “What the hell was that?” As they stepped closer, Gary saw a man slamming his forehead over and over into his apartment door, his smile stained red from the blood running down his face.

            “Just a snack before we get started,” Kronos said. “I’ve got an appetite, Master.”

            “Hey, me too,” Mary Jane said.

            A man walking a German Shepard below them stopped in mid stride, pulled his pants off and let the dog’s tongue go to work on him. The dog lapped at it, wagged its tail. A yellow blob floated up as Mary Jane inhaled and it disappeared into her mouth.

            “You guys, cut it out. Save your appetite,” Gary said. “I want you both to make Chester suffer, want him to wish he’d never met my mother.”

            But yellow and black clouds were floating from all around, from places Gary couldn’t see. He knew Mary Jane and Kronos’s influential bubble had expanded, causing anyone in their vicinity to fuck and fight, but he didn’t have time to worry about it. He grabbed hold of Mary Jane’s wrist, yanked her down the hall before she could eat all the sex food in the air.

            Gary flinched when a man’s scream exploded, and he turned back to find Kronos still standing, looking down onto the ground floor. He chewed on a mouthful of black violence.

            “Kronos, get over here.”

            The feedling inhaled another mouthful, followed by more screams and a wet, slurping sound.

            Gary stomped toward him, grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around. The feedling’s eyes blinded Gary for a moment, but he saw what Kronos had been feeding on.

            The man lay on his back now, the German Shepard with its jaws clamped on the dangling flesh it had been previously licking. The dog yanked, tore a chunk away.

            The man screamed and splashed in the spreading pool of blood around him.

           
Jesus Christ.

           
Gary forced Kronos down the hall to stand by his sister. He stopped for a moment, took a long look at the two of them. Mary Jane whispered something into Kronos’s ear and he chuckled.

           
What am I doing?

           
“Look, you can’t just start killing people. That man didn’t do anything.”

            Kronos laughed.

            “What about the people in church? What about all the women?” Mary Jane laughed, then whispered into Kronos’s ear again.

            “Stop whispering, damnit!” Gary said as he cut the empty air with his sword. He brought his voice down to a harsh whisper. “That was different…that was—”

            “We’re hungry, we need to be fed,” Mary Jane said.

            “My appetite is much bigger than my sister’s, Master,” Kronos said. “And you know what I eat. You’ve benefited from my tastes already.”

            Gary shifted from foot to foot, looked left and right. Screams burst into the air from the distance, some painful, some pleasurable. He wiped the sweat from his forehead.

            “I know. I—”

            “Then take us to Chester so I can calm these hunger pangs,” Kronos said. “Master.”

            The sarcasm in Kronos’s voice was loud and clear, and Gary found himself nervous to even look at the feedling.

           
I’m the master. He has to listen to what I say.

           
Gary peeled back the doormat, swiped the apartment key from the ground. He had to concentrate to keep his hand from shaking, leaned the sword against the wall as he slid the key into the lock. The feedlings whispered behind him, but he pretended he didn’t hear it.

            He opened the door and gasped at what he saw.

***

Clay hid behind one of the wooden pillars as he watched the dog devour its owner. He didn’t want to move, didn’t want the dog to notice him, though he had an urge to walk over there and help it make its owner stop moving.

            To Clay’s right, a man and woman lay naked on the concrete floor near the entrance of the complex. The woman rocked on top of him as they exchanged punches. Her face looked swollen and bloody and a red mist blew from her lips as she panted. The man’s chest and stomach were covered in blood and he thrust his hips upward as the woman jammed a finger between his lips and hooked his cheek until the corner of his mouth split.

            Clay licked his lips, hugged the pillar. He couldn’t take his eyes off the couple. He knew this probably counted as an emergency and that he should run up and tell Gary what was going on.

            But he couldn’t stop watching. Something about the blood, the sound of knuckles on wet meat, made his groin tingle more. He stayed glued to his spot. His erection pressed up against the wooden pillar, and he grabbed hold of it as he watched the bloody couple. He almost joined them, though he didn’t know which he wanted more: to fuck or to fight. The woman’s breasts were big, her nipples dark, and Clay wanted nothing more than to suck on them, swim in them, but part of him craved to see what color her insides were.

            The dog owner had ceased his yelling, but the wet tearing sound persisted. Clay didn’t look, didn’t even move, though he had a yearning to stomp the dog’s skull in. He just watched the woman. She caught another fist in the middle of the face—her head rocked back and she shot an arc of blood into the air, but her hips never slowed.

            Clay squeezed his erection until it hurt, leaned his forehead against the pillar.

            The woman screamed and shivered, pulled the man out of her, jumped to her feet, and jammed the heel of her shoe into his throat. His body jerked as a white geyser sprayed from his cock and his legs kicked. The woman slammed her foot down again, slid her hands over her blood-slick body, then sat back down on the man’s dick.

            Then there was a crack, like breaking wood. Feet dangled just above Clay’s head, nearly scraping his scalp with the long nails that protruded from the ends of the wiggling toes.

            Clay looked up and finally let the pillar go, backed away.

            An elderly man hung from the banister by a belt wrapped around his neck. His face was the color of freshly cut steak, his eyes an even deeper red. Veins bulged from his head and neck. The man wore nothing but a yellowed wife beater and the belt constricting his throat, and he tugged on his purple cock as his legs beat the air.

            Clay smiled, jumped up and grabbed the feet. He dangled and pushed all his weight down until the man’s hand fell away from his erection and hung there.

***

As the apartment door swung open and crashed against the wall, Gary’s hand went to his mouth as the sting of vomit filled it. The light from the feedlings’ eyes lit the interior of the apartment. Yellow and black sludge floated past Gary and into their mouths.

            Sheila sat with her back resting on the wall, sitting in a puddle of blood. She wore no clothing except a pair of purple socks that were stained red at the bottom. Her dreamy eyes found Gary, and she smiled, then drove the screwdriver clutched in her hands into herself, between her legs. A choked, quivering mutter escaped her throat.

            Gary turned on the feedlings who happily chomped away.

            “What the fuck are you doing?” He grabbed Mary Jane by the neck and lifted her into the air. Orange light bore into his sockets, singed his optical nerves. Her tongue slid from between her lips and wrapped around a floating portion of sex, pulled it into her mouth and slurped. “Let her go…stop this now!”

            She shook her head.

            “I’m your master!” He tossed her aside, went back to grab his sword. He faced the feedlings with the blade shaking out in front of him. “Stop this now!”

            They only laughed and kept eating.

            Gary’s hands ached from squeezing the hilt of the sword so tight. His mouth filled with the taste of snot as tears streamed down his face. Anger filled him like boiling gasoline.

            Sheila looked up at him, that stupid grin contorting her face. Her shoulder worked fast as she fucked herself with the screwdriver.

            And then Gary swung the sword. He put enough force behind the swing to decapitate both feedlings. It was like slow motion as the blade sliced through Mary Jane’s neck, but there was no resistance, as if she were a mirage. The flesh of her neck detached from her torso, but as the blade passed through, the flesh mended itself. Gary almost fell over from the ferocity of his swing.

            The feedlings laughed and continued their meal, turning their backs to Gary.

            He dropped his weapon, ran around and stood between Sheila and them. “You can’t do this…y-you have to st—”

            His leg screamed with pain and he fell backward. The back of his head cracked against the floor and black spots swarmed his vision. Then it was Sheila’s face hovering above his. She held a butcher knife in her teeth, the blade slicing the corners of her mouth into a wider grin. Gary reached down and wiped his hand over the pain in his leg, and it came back covered in blood. Then Kronos’s face popped up from over Sheila’s left shoulder. He chewed a mouthful of violence as he stared down at Gary.

            “There’s something you don’t understand about us, Gary,” Kronos said. “We don’t have any fucking masters.”

            Mary Jane giggled, popped her head up over Sheila’s right shoulder.          

            Sheila reached down, grabbed the back of Gary’s head, then pulled him toward her breast. The leathery nipple poked past his lips and Gary gagged as he pushed her away.

            “Please stop this…I fed you. I did what you said.”

            “We only needed you to help get our strength up, Gary. People always fall for that master stuff, every time,” Mary Jane said. “But you had your good moments. The church was a blast, wasn’t it?”

            The feedlings’ eyes shone down on him. “But why can I see your true form if I’m not your master? Why doesn’t your influence affect me?”

            Sheila pulled the knife from between her teeth, pressed the tip of the blade on Gary’s cheek. The flesh popped as the metal broke the surface and a trickle of blood oozed out.

            “I told you, we’re part of you,” Mary Jane said.       

“You released us, Gary. With your seed and blood. And for that we thank you,” Kronos said. “Now it’s time for us to have some fun.”

            They both laughed.

            “So…what now?” Tears rolled down Gary’s face and salty snot stretched between his lips. Sheila pressed the blade harder. “Nghh…
what the fuck do you want from me now!
”

            “We want what you want,” Mary Jane said. “I want to taste that pretty neighbor girl of yours.”

            “I want to stuff myself with Chester’s suffering,” Kronos said.

            “B-but why? Why help me still?”

            “Help you?” they said together, guffawed. They climbed off Sheila’s shoulders and she crawled away, sat back in her blood puddle and jabbed the knife into herself this time.

            Gary winced, held his hands up. “Okay, okay. Whatever you want, just leave her alone!”

            “I told you, Gary. We only want what you want. What you crave.”

            Gary knew Sheila wouldn’t stop, knew his only option was to get the feedlings away from her, far enough that their influence couldn’t affect her anymore.

            “Well if Chester’s not here, then he’s got to be at Rudy’s,” Gary said. “It’s a bar…I can take you there.”

            “No,” Mary Jane said. “We’re going next door first.”

—11—

Clay dropped from the hanging man’s legs, pushed his glasses back up his nose. The bloody woman still humped the man’s corpse, but now Clay was tired of looking at her. He searched around, found a fist-sized rock that the complex had lined around some plants, stomped toward her, and bashed the side of her head with it. The woman rolled off the man, her hips still moving, humping the air. She looked up at Clay and gurgled and he raised the rock over his head and smashed it down as hard as he could. There was a loud crack and her face sort of sunk in. She stopped making noise after that.

            Clay reached down and cupped her ample breast, squeezed it. His hand came away bloody, and he reached into his pants with it.

            A growl. Coming from behind him.

            Clay turned, rock in hand, and was face to face with the German Shepard. The dog lowered its head, fur matted with gore, and bared its teeth. It took slow steps toward him.

            There was a quick spark of rationality in his mind that told him to run, to escape while he still had all of his parts. But that thought fizzled out too quickly for it to register. So, Clay bared his teeth right back at the dog and charged.

            The dog’s walk became a run and they approached each other at full speed.