Fat Off Sex and Violence (15 page)

            Kronos giggled, swallowed a black cloud.

            Gary turned his attention back to his mother when he heard the hollow thunk, and found her swinging the bat down onto the girl’s head. Blood rushed out from the jagged crack and soaked into the neighbor girl’s blond hair. She moaned, looked like she was doing a pushup as she tried to lift herself. Her teeth were bared and she looked right at Gary as the bat came crashing down again, denting her skull—then she was still.

            “Mom…Sheila stop!”

            Sheila turned on him. Strands of blond hair stuck to the fat end of the bat and floated like spider webs caught in a breeze.

            “Kronos, please stop this,” Gary said. “I’ll take you to Chester. We’ll make him suffer together.”

            The feedling chewed and swallowed. His head had fattened to basketball size since his feast in the neighbor’s apartment. His cheeks swelled and his chins had multiplied. Rolls of fat hung from his arms and his belly bulged.

            “I see you gave my sister what she wanted,” Kronos said. “How was she, Gary? The neighbor girl?”

            The girl’s body twitched just slightly as the pool around her head widened, soaked into the beige carpet. Sheila swung the bat again, completely collapsing the head.

            “Please, just leave my mother alone. I’m giving you what you want.”

            “No, this is too much fun. She’s coming with us.”

            Sheila’s hair hung down over her face, thick with blood. She bounced the bat in the palm of her hand and chuckled.

            “And then what?” Gary said. “After I give you Chester, what happens next?”

            “We’ll turn your town into a hurricane of sex and violence. A sea of fucking and killing.” The chubby feedling stepped closer. “And when we get our fill, we’ll keep moving, keep feeding until the world is covered in blood and cum. We’ll feed forever.”

            Gary could only stare at the feedling. He looked at Sheila who was now fingering the gore on the aluminum bat.

            “Will you let me go? Me and my mother?”

            Kronos cocked his head, licked his black lips. “You would let us turn your world into chaos without putting up a fight?” He laughed. “How times have changed.”

            “What do you mean?” Gary reached down and grabbed the comforter his mother had been using—streaked with her blood—and concealed his nakedness with it.

            “You think that’s the first time I’ve given that little speech, Gary? No. But it’s usually answered with promises of my defeat, with threats to stop me and my sister.” His eyes shone right into Gary’s face. “I love a good challenge. But you…you do nothing to save your kind. I can feel your weakness, your selfishness inside of me. I’m ashamed to share your blood, Gary.
Master
.” He cackled and his body jiggled.

            As much as Gary hated to hear it out loud, Kronos was right. Gary didn’t care about anyone except for himself and Sheila. The rest of them could suffer until the end of time for all he cared.     

           
I don’t give a fuck about these people…right?

           
“I don’t care what you do. Just let us go.”

            Kronos’s stomach rumbled. “Take me to Chester, I’m starving.”

            Gary took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and pictured Chester’s face. The only reason he had even come back to the complex was to have his feedlings teach Chester a lesson. To show that son of a bitch that he couldn’t push Gary around anymore. He didn’t have intentions of killing him, or for anyone to die, but if that’s what Kronos wants…

            Gary tried to justify it in his mind. Was he really okay with being responsible for the deaths of millions? Every man, woman, and child’s suffering? How long would it take for the feedlings’ influence to reach the rest of the world? He could imagine Kronos and Mary Jane, giant fat slobs rolling around among the remaining people, forcing them to beat and fuck each other for eternity.

            He thought about what would be left. No more internet, no more comic books, no more video games. There would be nobody to send
Kronos
the Destroyer
to once he finally finished it, though he had already decided he would need to change the hero’s name. It would just be him and Sheila…existing. Avoiding the feedlings and the hell they would bring.

           
No…I can’t let them do this. Kronos is right, I should put up a fight. I’m the only one that can stop them.

            But Chester? That motherfucker deserves it.

            Gary walked past Kronos to his bedroom where he threw some clothes on. The t-shirt and jeans he found on the floor were soaked with his odor, the fabric stiff as if starched—Gary knew it was his own hardened filth. But he didn’t have time to think about that now. He went back for his sword, squeezed the handle with both hands.

            He snorted, swallowed. “Okay. Let’s go get you fed.”

***

The fist rocked Clay’s face again and the back of his head smacked the hard ground under him. His glasses had shattered and lay in pieces beside him, turning the world into a series of blurred shapes and colors. The man had him pinned under his knees, and no matter how many times Clay hit him, the man wouldn’t budge. Just kept raining down hammer blows. Clay’s mouth and nose filled with blood and he choked on it.

            He was in the street now, just outside of the complex. People all around him fought with inexhaustible persistence. Oncoming vehicles were blocked by flailing bodies, but as they hit their brakes, the drivers would launch themselves from the cars and join in on the bloodshed.

            Clay heard a high pitched screech, and in the same moment, caught another fist to the middle of his face. His head swung back and he saw the blurred shape of an oncoming car, tires trying to stick to the road as it skidded to a halt.

            He watched the approaching hunk of metal as it promised to bring him death, and he laughed as it came, welcomed it, looked forward to the intense pain it would bring when his insides were squeezed out of him, when he was ground into the concrete.

            But it passed right over him without touching him, smashed into the man that had him pinned. The bumper collided with the man’s face, caved it in, and rolled him backward. Clay stared up at the undercarriage, hot oil dripping down onto his face and mixing with the open wounds there, tiptapping stings of agony.

            The car rocked, then the sound of high heels clicking on the asphalt. The sound moved to the front of the car until reaching what Clay assumed was the squirming body of the man.

            Clay crawled out from under the car and his hand landed on a square piece of glass. He squinted one eye, held the glass over the other like a monocle. The woman’s blurry body became clear, and Clay saw that she stood over the crumbled man, held what looked like a tiny silver pistol in her hand, had it aimed at the man’s face. She pulled the trigger over and over until there were only clicks.

             Blood pitter-pattered onto the street from Clay’s face, and as he ran his tongue over his ruined lips, he could tell he had lost most of his front teeth. His swollen gums throbbed, but it didn’t stop him from approaching the woman.

            “Clay!”

            He stopped, turned toward the shouting voice. Whoever it was needed to bleed, that much he knew for sure. A fat man ran toward him carrying a chubby girl in one hand and a sword in the other. The girl swung limply at his side—she looked dead, which Clay found disappointing. Killing her would have been glorious.

            “Holy shit, man. What the fuck happened to you?” the fat man said.

            A naked woman covered in blood spatter, toting a baseball bat followed behind the fat man, along with a small boy, just as chunky as the girl. As they grew closer, Clay wanted more and more for them to die, wanted to see what their insides felt like oozing through his fingers.

            So he ran at them. “I’ll fucking kill you!”

            As he approached at full sprint, holding the glass to his eye, the last thing he saw was the woman cocking her baseball bat behind her head.

            Then all the lights went out.

***

“No, stop. He’s just a kid,” Gary said as he ran in front of Sheila and grabbed the bat before she bashed Clay’s skull in. He dropped Mary Jane’s sleeping body and his weapon to the street beside Kronos. Mary Jane was already moaning and shifting around.

           
It’s like the more they eat, the less sleep they need. And they get hungrier every time they wake up.

           
Kronos looked around at all the violence he was causing. His smile split his head in half, his teeth like spear tips in the moonlight.

            “A buffet of butchery,” he said. “So much to choose from.” He sniffed the air, widened his eyes. “Isn’t this beautiful, Gary?” And then the feedling became a vacuum for the endless violence around them. Everywhere Kronos’s eyes pointed revealed the thick brutality swirling there like a storm. And he feasted.

           
That’s right. Eat up. Eat until you burst.

            Gary still struggled with Sheila as she fought him for the bat. Clay lay on the street motionless.

            Gary couldn’t believe the hell that had erupted around the apartment complex. After scooping up Mary Jane from the neighbor’s apartment, under Kronos’s orders, they ran past acts of violence that couldn’t have been worse in any video game, in any graphic novel Gary had ever seen. Bodies lay everywhere, every one of them mauled, torn apart. They didn’t pass a single person that wasn’t involved in either mutilating themselves or someone else.

            And all the while Kronos giggled, relishing in the pandemonium.

            The fattening feedling sucked in a dark cloud of violence from a charred body lying down the street, flames still dancing on its surface. A teenage boy and girl stomped down on it, their feet and calves equally burned—a red gas can dangled from the girl’s hand. As Gary watched, the couple turned on each other. The boy grabbed the girl by the head and slammed it forward into the ground. He tore her skirt away, then his own khakis. As he entered her, the girl turned her head, caught the boy’s pinky finger in her mouth and flayed the flesh away bit by bit with every thrust. She kept her teeth clamped on the gushing finger even as the man slammed his knuckles of his other hand to the back of her head.

           
Mary Jane.

           
Gary faced his feedlings. Mary Jane stood by her brother, the orange of her eyes like the headlights of an 18-wheeler. They held hands, grinned hard, spun in a circle and gorged. The growling and screaming and grunting now mixed with moans and wet slapping sounds.   

            An obese elderly woman slammed into Gary and knocked him to the ground. She had her dress hiked up and her panties to her knees and she slammed her weight down on top of him, clawed at his zipper.

            “No…get off me!” Gary could barely breathe under the woman, and a smell like rotten salmon wafted up from her nether regions.

            Then a baseball bat nearly took her head off. Blood and saliva rained down on Gary, and he tried to get out from under her, but she still had him pinned. She lifted herself back up, face a mess of blood, lip, and teeth, and went straight back to his zipper, ignoring Sheila who clocked her in the middle of the face again. This time the woman rolled backward, off of Gary.

            He rolled out of the way as the bat swung down, barely missing his head. A chunk of cement chipped from the road and the bat dinged like a church bell. The fat woman was on her hands and knees and crawled toward Gary, but collapsed onto her stomach as the bat caught the back of her head. Then again and again and again.

            Gary took the opportunity to get to his feet. He checked on the feedlings and they continued their smorgasbord of sex and violence. Their girth continued to grow and they fattened right before his eyes. An orgy of masochism swept the street like a tidal wave. The light from the feedling’s eyes coated the scene with vivid color.

            Gary had only been on his feet for a moment before rapid footsteps approached him from his left. Without seeing his attacker, Gary ducked, lost his footing, and found himself back on the ground. What looked like a piece of a yellow car bumper swished over his head, the tip of it stained red. Something hard dug into his back.

            “You die…I kill…you die…I kill,” the dark brown man said as he stood over Gary and rubbed his crotch. He raised the bumper over his head.

            Gary did a situp, reached behind him—he could have shouted when his fingers tickled the hilt of his sword. He grabbed it just in time to block the oncoming car bumper with it. The blade bit into the yellow plastic, and when the man raised it again, Gary thrust forward, burying the blade into the guy’s stomach.

            The man looked down at the penetration, dropped the bumper behind him. He giggled, said something in a language Gary didn’t understand. His hands wrapped around the blade, slicing his palms open, and he stepped forward, pushing the blade deeper.

            “Get the hell away from me.” Gary tried to shuffle backward as the man kept coming forward.

            “You fuck me,” the man said, then reached down and unzipped his pants. He pulled his dick out and stroked it, used the blood from the lacerations on his hand as lubrication. And he kept taking steps forward, the blade kept pushing deeper.

            Gary tried to pull his sword free, but didn’t have the leverage. Blood gushed down on him, soaked his shirt and splashed onto his face. The man’s eyelids fluttered, his tongue lolled from his dark lips. Then he grunted and strands of pearly threads whipped Gary in the chest and chin. He tried turning his head, but couldn’t escape them. And the man sunk down to the hilt of the sword, his arms hanging at his sides and his face drooping from his skull.