Sex and Murder Magazine

By Douglas Allen Rhodes

You’re drunk again.

Every night it’s the same with you. You go to work, and you say to yourself: I’m not going to drink tonight, I’m just gonna take it easy.

But then the rush hits, table after table of obnoxious, fat housewives who want nothing so badly as to take a little bit of their disappointment out on you. Their steak is overcooked, their husbands don’t find them attractive, their soup is cold, their children didn’t turn out right; they want to speak to your manager.

You take their insults because you’ve convinced yourself that you don’t have a choice, because you’ve told yourself that you need this job. You know that starting at the bottom of a new restaurant’s food chain isn’t worth it. So, you shove it all down inside; you bottle it up and you start to think about just how good that vodka is going to taste when you get home.

Of course, it’s not going to taste good.

You always buy the cheapest crap, never anything like Goose of Ciroc. It’s not that you don’t prefer those, but when one drinks as much you do, the top shelf is just a little too lofty a place to find yourself every night.

It’s 2:00 in the morning. Your wife went to bed right after you got home, like she always does; and you’ve spent the last two hours swilling down rotgut vodka and surfing the internet. You’ve already done the porn and checked in on the forums and newsgroups you frequent. Now you’re just stumbling through page after random page of mediocre bullshit.

It didn’t used to be like this. You used to have so much god damn fun when you drank. You had friends. There was always a party, or a bar, or some reason to be drinking. Now there are just pages and pages of other people’s loneliness shuffling in front of your face as you numb yourself down to a level that will let you sleep.

Lately it’s gotten harder. Your legs hurt when you try to lie down. You toss and turn all night. It bothers your wife something horrible, and she always recounts to you the next morning how much she suffers because of you.

She tells you she loves you just as regularly as she always did, but lately it’s begun to sound more like she’s trying to convince herself.

You don’t really care though.

You’re tired of it all. Tired of life. Not of living, but of life. You’re tired of being the burned out man that the hopeful little boy you were grew up to be.

In front of you, on your self-assembled computer desk, sits a straight razor.

It has a black wood handle, and its blade is just as sharp as its name implies.

You’ve been possessed by a feeling of dread for months now. You regularly run to your living room’s windows to see if anyone is in your driveway. Every ring of your phone makes you jump. There’s something on its way, some impending doom that you can feel in your spine. You know its coming, but you don’t know what form it will take. So, you’ve been buying knives.

You’re carrying them with you too.

You started with a folding razor knife, a box cutter like the ones used in 9-11. It’s always in the little pocket on your jeans’ right hip. You tell anyone who asks that you carry it for work, for those times when you have to open a croutons or peanuts box. It makes sense.

You don’t have as much luck explaining things when you start carrying a switchblade.
This latest one, the straight razor that’s sitting on the desk in front of you, you picked up at a flea market while your wife was buying a ten-pack of bras. It’s beautiful. As soon as you can find a decent sheath for it you’re going to start keeping it in your boot.

For a long moment you sit and stare at the knife. You don’t pick it up; you just admire it, its perfect functionality, the timelessness of its being.

The glass in your hand is three-fourths empty, and you drain it the rest of the way. There’s a wonderful lack of burn in the way the vodka slides down your throat after you’ve had five or six glasses of it. It’s the feeling of drunkenness without joy.

A quick trip to the kitchen and your glass is full again. You think you’re going to go back to the internet, but the razor is waiting for you. It wants to be held. It wants to be used.
You take a long drink of your not yet chilled vodka and set down the glass.

You pick up the razor. It feels good in your hand. You open the knife, and its blade snaps eagerly into place. It almost hums with the excitement of what it can do.

You look around the room for something on which to use it, something upon which to release the razor’s power. The phone book catches your eye.

With long, sweeping strokes you begin to shred the book. The razor never so much as slows as you slash it back and forth through the multi-colored pages. In minutes the book is gone. Hundreds of tiny pieces of its pages litter your floor.

The razor wants more, and you find yourself wondering just how far can this go.
Almost without thinking, you head for the side door of your house and open it. The night air is crisp and cold. Snow blankets your yard, a pristine landscape as yet undisturbed. You set out for your neighbor’s house, leaving your door open.

You’ve never really talked to your neighbor all that much besides the occasional ‘hello’. She’s an old, black woman, and she mostly keeps to herself.

The only light coming from her house is a dim glow from the kitchen. You reach her side door and, without stopping your stride, you ram your shoulder into it with the full weight of your body. It cracks and gives a little, but you have to hit it a second time to force it open.

The door gives way. It bursts open, slamming into the wall behind it and sends you sprawling forward onto the small set of stairs it reveals. You don’t even notice the way your right knee hits the edge of a stair square on, or that your head hits the corner of the doorframe at the top of the stairs. All you can think of is how much better this is than just sitting on your drunken ass waiting for nothing.

From somewhere off in the upstairs you can hear the sounds of the old woman stirring. A smile hits your lips, and you pick yourself up and begin to race through her house looking for the staircase that will lead you to her.

“Hello?” her old voice calls down, “Who’s down there.”

Across her living room you spy the stairs. Light spills down them and you hear your prey stumbling around. In a full sprint, you take the stairs two at a time.

At the top, you can see the old bitch. She’s dressed in a faded flannel nightgown and a flimsy blue robe and slippers. A hairnet covers her head.

“Who…”

She starts to ask something but you’re on her by then. The razor moves on its own, flying up to gash across her left cheek. Blood trails in its arc as it slides through her ancient flesh and out towards the wall.

It makes the most amazing splatter, contrasting bright red against dingy white.
The old woman screams a high pitched banshee shriek and stumbles away from you. Her hand shoots up to cover the wound on her cheek. She loses her balance and falls. You’re on her instantly, laughing.

The razor bites into her again, slashing across her leathery looking forehead. It drags a little this time, sticking just slightly on the bone of her skull.

This is life.

This is living: taking her safety away from her, taking her tired comfort and turning it into nightmare.

The razor slides out of her flesh. You don’t even pause. With a backhand motion you take it across the center of her face. Its three inch blade cleaves her nose off, and the momentum of your strike hurls it across the hallway and through an open door.

The old woman screams and wails. Her arms try to fend you off. She claws at you and tries to shield her ruined face. There’s a ferocious strength to her that you would have thought impossible in someone so frail, but it’s nowhere near enough to stop you—not even enough to slow you down.

You slash the razor back and forth across her flailing arms. It gouges deep, bloody grooves into them. The old woman’s right hand tries to block you and the knife takes off about three fourths of her ring finger and all of her pinky. Dark sprays of arterial blood splurt out from the stumps of her fingers.

She begins kicking and backpedalling, trying to craw away from you. You reward her desperation by slashing the razor across her midsection. It cuts through her ancient nightgown and slits her open from breasts to navel. The cut’s not deep, but its effect on her psyche is devastating.

The old woman begins to shake. She curls into a fetal ball and lets out a series of staccato yelps. Her arms wrap up around her head, and the blood from her right hand stains her matted, gray hair a deep shade of crimson.

You stop for a second and take it all in. Rising up to your full height, you tower over the frantic mess of a woman.

She disgusts you. You can’t even hate her; she’s too pitiful.

You kick her hard in the side and feel ribs snap under your boot’s intrusion.

It’s time to finish this and move on.

With relish, you raise the blade high. The glow of the hallway’s naked light bulb glints off of its crimson stained steel. It truly is a thing of beauty, perfectly made for what it does. You hold the blade up, just a few seconds longer, close your eyes, and breathe deeply.

The razor comes down, cleaving through the skin of her right forearm on its path to her throat. Its blade travels easily through the old woman’s neck and embeds itself in her right arm, notching into the bone.

You can hear her begin to convulse and gurgle, but you don’t wait to watch the old biddy’s death.

This night isn’t over. You’ve much more to do.

You descend the stairs one at a time, allowing an eager anticipation to build in you, and head for the shattered doorway.

The night air has grown crisper, but it’s no longer cold. You burn now. You burn with a furious excitement that is only known to killers.

Around you the world still slumbers—nothing has changed for them. It is only you that has forever transformed.

You walk back across your lawn and past your house. The side door is still open, but it hasn’t woken up your wife yet. You head across your other neighbors’ back yard and up onto the small porch that shelters their side door.

Just like you did before, you ram your shoulder into the door; but this door is solid, and it doesn’t give at all. You try it two more times, making little progress. The door frame has begun to crack; perhaps another hit or two will do the trick.

A man’s voice interrupts you.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing to my house?”

You spin around and jump at him.

He’s pretty good sized, and he’s holding a baseball bat at the ready. Your attack catches him off-guard a little. He still has time to swing the bat, but not enough time or space to get a good arc on it. The middle of it catches you across your cheek.

Your world disappears for an instant. All you can see are white streaks racing away from you.

The hit knocks you just far enough to the side that you miss your target. The ground is rude and unforgiving as it catches you, forcing the wind out of your lungs. You drop the razor.
Your neighbor doesn’t give you a minute to regroup. He brings the bat down, full force, on your back and left side.

“Now, asshole,” he screams, “try to break in my house.”

You reach for the razor. He sees and runs around you to kick it out of reach. You try to get up, but you do little more than get your back arched before he slams that damn bat back into you.

This hit is worse than the last two. Something gives on your side. You lose your breath again and crumble to the ground.

He hits you two more times in rapid succession, across your shoulders. You can feel yourself slipping away, blacking out.

Suddenly, he’s screaming, and the bat lands in front of you in the snow. Against the insistence of your body that you lay still, you rise up and turn to see what’s happening.

Your wife’s on the bastard’s back, screaming and clawing at his eyes. He’s got her by the wrists and is trying to pull her loose. You struggle to your feet, the sharp and angry pain in your side stabbing you. You pull your switchblade out from your back pocket.

The blade slides out the front of the knife with a reassuring scrape and locks into place. It’s triangular, with an open, central bloodlet, and there’s serration at the base of the blade. You put it between a couple of the asshole’s ribs, pull it out, and put it into his throat.

He lets go of your wife’s wrists and she falls to the ground.

His eyes and mouth are wide and confused. Behind him, the side door of the house is open and his wife is running at you, screaming and waving a butcher knife. There are two kids in the doorway, a boy who looks to be about seven and a really young girl.

You put your shoulder down and ram the woman. The impact is enough to slam her away, but she still gets her knife into your back. You don’t really feel the blade; but you know it’s been inside you. Your already weak knees begin to buckle.

Your neighbor’s wife falls back onto the stairs of the porch, hitting her head on the top step. For a second, she’s stunned. It’s the only pause you need. You’re on her instantly, slashing and stabbing with your switchblade. You tear gashes in her face and throat, shredding her.

Behind you, your wife is screaming. You look up at the children and smile through lips that drip with the blood of their mother.

A siren sounds.

Another one joins it.

You steal a look over your shoulder to see police arriving, but it doesn’t really matter. You crawl over the mother’s corpse head for the little boy. His sister runs inside. He doesn’t run though; it looks like he can’t.

You pull yourself up to your full height and take a step towards him.

Something hits you hard in your side and slams you into the wall of the porch. Your wife has her arms wrapped around your waist and is screaming something unintelligible at you.

You bring the fist that holds your switchblade up into her midsection, burying the blade into her, and knocking her back.

The little boy is crying now, but he still hasn’t moved.

“Stop; or I’ll shoot.” someone barks at you.

You tower over the boy and laugh as you raise the knife.

Three hard impacts draw you into a twisted arc. You can feel a burning inside your body, like trails of liquid fire are running through your chest and stomach. Your mind…




































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