Genital Grinder (19 page)

Angelique held her silence and only gulped audibly. If she’d known that amputation would only be the beginning of his overtures, the sound of her ass puckering up would have been audible through a bank vault. Sammy would never let someone die in such a passé fashion. For one, he would have mounted her as she lay there gushing blood from stumps at her elbows and knees, wallowing like a sea lion. He’d probably find the passage a bit dry, as sheer terror often had that effect on them, so he’d opt for plan B: the mouth. At this stage they generally thought they didn’t have anything to lose, so biting would be their predictable attempt at a pathetic vengeance. That’s when they found out they
did
have something left to lose, after all. Thirty-two somethings, as a matter of fact (if they’d brushed regularly). When the pliers came out, they’d do something Sammy wouldn’t have believed possible of women if he hadn’t seen it himself—they’d shut their mouths. Of course they’d eventually have to open them when Sammy pinched their nostrils shut, and then he’d prove a notorious adage—sometimes you really have to pull teeth if you want a woman to give you head. It took awhile to complete the excavation, and it wasn’t too pretty to look at with all the gaps in their gums and a few dangling nerves besides, but it didn’t take half the oxygen it would to blow up one of those dolls Von mentioned. He’d be soaked in blood like a newborn baby when he pulled out, but it wasn’t that much different than laying down pipe in a girl during her monthlies. They wouldn’t just bleed to death as Sammy poked and prodded for his standard thirty seconds, because he could tie off their severed arteries. Life assured that much longer, he’d been known to give the girls a hand—their own. One thrust between the legs, the other up the ass. Most would hemorrhage in the process of this internal handshake, but as they say, getting there is half the fun.

Naturally this wasn’t his only option. He could do Angelique like Erica Granger (found 04/09/2002 under a NO DUMPING sign . . . and also throughout an elementary school playground and in a dumpster outside the police station). He’d raided his father’s tackle box and fished out a few of those red and yellow plastic balls that bob in the lake when you get a bite. He’d secured several bait hooks to them with the help of adhesive so potent it would have removed his skin if he’d got any on his hands, and then strung the balls with fishing line.

Sammy didn’t go out on the lake, though. He instead cast his makeshift reel into a prone Erica Granger’s rectum, one ball after the other. He wore thick gloves and managed not to cut himself as he guided the custom-made anal beads deeper within. She was squirming in unadulterated agony long before he prodded the fourth one home, so all that protruded was a few inches of fishing line, which he twirled around his finger like dental floss. She looked like one of those talking dolls with a cord in the back, though in this case each yank was another scream. It took more effort than he expected to jerk them free. He’d make a few inches of progress and then the hooks would catch on something more resistant in her digestive tract. It was like trying to run through sticker bushes dragging a parachute. He was too mesmerized by the tiny tearing sounds and the emerging hooks—dragging yellow and purple strands and clumps—to even notice that Erica had died somewhere between the removal of the second and third ball. It was for this gross insolence that she was humiliated when it came time to dispose of the body. They found one section of her cadaver from waist to thighs with an added bonus—her head secured between her legs with ten-penny nails, tongue staple-gunned to her vulva.

It would almost be worth the loss of his chance at a six figure income to work similar magic on Angelique.

“Sammy?” Von brought him back to reality.

“Eh? Oh, yeah . . . the phone.” Sammy punched in the number Angelique gave him.

A man answered, sounding rather infuriated. “Yes?”

“Is this Edward Rochester?”

“Who’s this?”

“I’m the guy asking the questions. Are you Rochester?”

“I am.”

Sammy raised a thumb. Von and Greg brightened like kids waking up on Christmas morning. Sammy turned his back on them so he wouldn’t be sickened and placed a hand on Angelique’s shoulder to steady himself.

“Okay,” he continued. “I believe you’ve made the acquaintance of a certain Angelique?”

“That would not be incorrect.”

“Great, then we have something in common.”

“What’s this about? Are you trying to blackmail me?”

“No, although five minutes from now you’re probably going to wish that’s all it was.”

“Maybe I will, if you actually manage to get to the point by then.”

“I’ll give you the condensed version. I’ve got Angelique, and I’m offering you the opportunity to buy her back for three million dollars. If you say yes, I’ll give you further instruction. Assuming everything goes smoothly, you’ll get her back good as new. If you say no, I’ll do a job on her that would make the attractions at a freak show puke their guts.”

“I see. And will you throw in my dick at half price if I act now?”

“I didn’t make that call to your wife, although in all fairness to my associates, they thought that the one in their possession came from you. It was an honest mistake that anyone could have made.” Not liking Rochester’s smart-ass method of negotiating, Sammy attempted to get a little rise out of him. “Your wife wasn’t disturbed in the least, by the way.”

“No, she wouldn’t be. It was a different story when she found out I was unharmed.”

It wasn’t the reaction Sammy had hoped for, but he wasn’t exactly surprised. There was more than one way to skin a twat, though, as they said (or at least he did). He made no reply to Rochester and merely held the phone to Angelique’s head. “Talk,” he commanded.

“Eddie, please
help!
They’ve got all these women down here to torture them and they want me . . . they want me to . . . to smoke with …” Here her convincing plea dissolved into incomprehensible histrionics as panicked sobs overtook her. If he’d draped a paper bag over her head, she probably would have gasped a hole through it.

Sammy removed the phone from her ear and brought it to his own “You still think we’re playing a game, Henny Youngman?”

“No,” Rochester said after a moment of silence.

“Well, you were right the first time; it
is
a game. Just not the kind your little
bitch
can afford to lose. Now then, did I get to the point fast enough for you? Welcome to the next level, mother
fucker
.”

“Has she been hurt?” Finally, some actual concern.

“She broke a bone in transit, but she’ll live to suck another day.”

“I want to think about it.”

“She’s not a used car, Ed. She’s a D-cup brunette with an ass that won’t quit—”

But allegedly would
smoke
, under the right circumstances
, he thought.

“—unless we don’t get our three million dollars. No more glory hole loads down the hatch, at least not from you. There’ll be thousands from us before we put her pretty little ass outta biz
,
though, you can bet on that. And probably
millions
more after that.”

A white lie . . .
Sammy
would have thousands and millions more, yes. Von and Greg would be outta luck
and
outta biz, though. His basement, his rules.

“So think about that as you mull it over—” Sammy reached for an adequate insult and remembered something Von said earlier. “
Fag face.
You have twenty minutes.” Sammy ended the call and then turned it off altogether for the time being. It was unlikely anybody would be attempting to triangulate its position so soon, but as Von said, it pays to be careful. It might pay three million dollars.

He turned to relay the news to the dysfunctional duo.

“
Shiiiiiiiit,”
he said, clenching the phone in his hand hard enough to dislodge the back cover and send it clattering to the concrete.

They were gone.

The instant Sammy’s back was turned, Greg and Von crept up the stairs at Von’s behest. They could find out later what came of the phone call, but this might be the only unescorted chance they got tonight at the attic. Once clear of the basement, Von stealthily eased the door shut and then they were through the kitchen and up the stairs like a shot, all but trampling one another on the last flight. Even now they could hear the faint, strange laughter which had tantalized them throughout the evening.

Sammy’s secret.

“If it’s Slut Necro Lambda’s twin sister, I got dibs on that backdoor,” Greg proclaimed.

“Hell with that,” Von said promptly, elbowing his cohort to all fours. He reached the top of the dim corridor first, although he was prevented from going in when Greg clamped his arms around his legs.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were hugging me,” Von said. “I’m tempted to drop-kick your ass down the stairs anyway. Have you lost your mind? We don’t have much time before Sammy realizes we’re gone.”

Greg reluctantly withdrew and hauled himself to his feet. Von tried the door.

“Locked,” he reported glumly. He stared the door down defiantly. “You son of a whore.”

“Cussin’ it ain’t gonna help,” Greg said.

“Eat a dick,” Von replied absently, then remembered. “Another one, I mean.”

Greg shoved him. “Why don’t you grab you another one through a glory hole?”

Von ignored him. “Question is, do we break it down? He may have a good reason to lock it up. This could turn into a huge problem that we don’t need tonight.”

“But what if he’s only locking it cause it’s his best work and he’s too selfish to share it with us?”

“That
would
be pretty low of him,” Von concurred, conveniently forgetting about how they never invited Sammy to take a ride on that body they found on the road awhile back or share in any of the spoils of Geisha Hammond, or how they’d had every intention of not only cheating Sammy out of millions of dollars but possibly
killing
him to have it all to themselves.

“And he could have dead guys stashed all over the house that we don’t know about. What if he stitched ‘em together to create some kind of superman to guard the door if we ever came back?”

“Let’s break it,” Von said immediately. Sammy obviously couldn’t surgically create some kind of superhuman sentinel like Greg was worried about (at least Von didn’t
think
he could), but he
would
do something to make it more difficult for anybody to get in now that he knew someone was determined to see inside. It was now or never. Anything
too
crazy would need a little more than just a door to keep it in place, wouldn’t it? This had to be something too good to share.

They both reared back and kicked above the door knob the way the cops did on TV, managing to do so mostly in synch for the next few attempts. The door finally splintered and swung inward on the fifth try.

Von entered the attic first, feeling for a light switch in the total darkness. There were no windows and no hint of light anywhere. They stumbled in blindly, fully expecting to run into or fall over something. Von flinched when something touched his face, but a moment later he identified it as the chain from an overhead bulb. He yanked it and recoiled when something in the corner of the attic simultaneously shrank back from the light.

“Who are they?” a woman’s voice said.

“Who’s she talking to?” Greg asked, alarmed, looking around.

“She talks to them,” the woman explained.

“
She
is a few bullets shy of a clip,” Von noted.