Sex and Murder Magazine

By Mark Mellon

“15…16…17…18…19…20…21…”

Terry let the bars down slowly. A quarter-ton of iron still hit the frame with a tremendous crash. He lay on the bench, only slightly out of breath, 300 pounds of raw strength.

“Hey, T, you knocked out one extra,” said the Original Gangsta, who’d spotted him.

A hulking Detroit homeboy who’d put his thug skills to work for more lucrative, legitimate rewards in the squared circle, he and Terry occasionally hooked up for tag team matches. Terry sat up and gratefully accepted the towel OG handed him.

“For luck,” he said.

He wiped the sweat that ran down his long, bright-gold hair and short beard. The WOW originally wanted to call him Hercules or Samson or some corny bullshit like that but he’d told them fuck that, it was “T for Trouble Terry” or nothing. He’d won that argument, just like every other one.

“Got you a date tonight?” OG asked in the showers.

“Nah,” Terry said.

“Maybe wanna get us some beer and some pussy? Go to the Sports Hole, they always hot motherfucking action there.”

“Nah,” Terry said. “Think I’ll head to the Village solo. Cruise the bars. You know, stir up a scare.”

“Oh, oh,” OG said. He rolled his eyes in mock fear. “Trouble T on the warpath again. Gonna be some fucked-up punk bitches.”

The two giant men dressed in the locker room, high-fived goodbye and went their separate ways from the Gorilla God Gym.

New York in summer closed in on Terry, an overpowering pall of heat and stench. In heavy boots, jeans, and a short-sleeved flannel shirt that had seen better days, he looked down at the world through shaggy, uncombed hair and marched straight ahead, daring anybody to get in his way. At 6 foot 9, no one could miss him.

Terry played a game as he walked to the Lower East Side; he broke the cardinal rule of New York street behavior and boldly stared at strangers’ faces as they passed, checking to see if anyone looked back, returned his sneer with defiance. No one did. He broke character once when a thirteen-year old with an autograph book and a Sharpie begged him to sign, even condescended to smile and tousle the kid’s hair.

Terry came to rows of streets filled with restaurants and bars. He scanned the plate glass windows, looking for the right one. There had to be a good mix of people, preferably young guys with their dates, and a suitable type too. White rockers and punks were best. They acted tough. That is, until they met the real thing.

He spotted a likely place off by itself. “Club Point Taken” a neon sign blazed from a narrow alley, loud rock’n’roll blared from speakers inside, tattered band handbills pasted on the walls. Terry walked down the alley and peered through the window. The long, narrow space was crammed with thin men in black leather jackets and their similarly attired girlfriends. Overall, decidedly collegiate. Terry felt like a wolf with a new flock of sheep.

He stomped in, adrenaline already pumping, firing up steroidal muscles, narrowing his vision. In his haste, Terry didn’t notice how similar the club goers looked, sallow flesh and universal sunglasses in a pitch-black room. His whispered request for beer at the bar went unheard, a sufficient provocation. He went to where the deejay was playing music and tipped over his stand, a sure-fire attention getter from past experience.

The awkward silence that followed was the only real music to his ears. Attention focused on him. He pictured fear in their eyes, fancied he caught nervous glances toward the door. Massive arms outstretched, Terry beckoned with wiggling fingers to one and all to bring it on.

“Well,” he bellowed. “Who wants a piece of me?”

There was another long pause. Convinced he’d found an entire room full of pussies, Terry was startled when a voice giggled from the back, “Actually, we all would.”

Without further word, he was swarmed. With practiced ease, he threw off one attacker after another. Yet more took their place, a continuous onslaught of men and women from all sides, strangely silent, indifferent to pain or injury, not kicking or punching, but reaching, grabbing for him, like the thousand hands of a monster. Despite his best efforts to shake them off, to elude their constant grasp, his arms were weighed down until they were pinned to his torso. Slowly he slipped to the floor.

Once he was down, more piled on until he was completely immobilized by sheer weight of numbers.

“God damn it, let me up and fight right, you motherfuckers,” he mumbled through clenched jaws.

A few people cleared off so Terry’s head was free, but the rest of him remained in an iron grasp worse than any he’d ever encountered in almost 20 years of hard wrestling. A hand grabbed him by the hair and yanked his head up and forward so he could see. Terry’s right foot stuck out of the huddle on top of him. The bartender was slitting his boot and sock off with a razor sharp knife.

“Hey, what are you crazy bastards do—?” Terry said until his jaws were pushed shut again.

A bespectacled young man with an evil grin approached carrying a very large pair of bolt-cutters. He opened the cutters and slipped Terry’s big toe between the blades. Terry screamed and tried to wriggle free, to shake loose with all his might, but his dozen-plus captors held him just that much more tightly.

Without ceremony, but with an awful snap, bone and flesh were rudely severed.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!”

Bleeding and screaming, they tossed Terry into the street. The party resumed. Terry’s big toe lay on the barroom floor like an earthworm in a pool of its own black blood.





































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