Sex and Murder Magazine

By John Currant

She was crying, gossamer strands of drool trailing from her lips to her chin, dripping into her lap. Her pleas faded into baby-like gurgles between her wracking sobs, as he forced the ball gag into her mouth. Her arms, already lacerated and scabbed and dirty from his earlier visits, were tied tightly to the dry, rough arms of the rickety old chair. Some splinters dug into the backs of her thighs, but she didn’t notice. Too busy pleading.

There he stood, an older man, with big expressive eyes magnified by his already comically large glasses, and a balding pattern that made him look like a cartoon friar. He was the kind of old man someone—herself included—would picture running a cozy bed-and-breakfast, or volunteering at a polling place or crosswalk. Kindly but indistinct. Even if her vision wasn’t blurred over with tears, she would probably have a hard time picking him out of a line-up, and she had been down in that musty room for days.

It stunk of mildew, and her back and arms ached. She had not left the chair, save for the few times he allowed her to urinate or defecate in a chemical toilet in the corner. She remembered he had turned his back, and almost laughed at the absurdity of this show of courtesy. The first time he was putting her back in the chair was when she thrashed and kicked. He responded with a small frown and the shattering of the toes of her right foot with a ball peen hammer. He now no longer needed to tie her legs to the chair.

In another corner was a mattress, illuminated by stray shafts of moonlight. Judging from the stains on it, someone had used it. Recently. The window above it was small, and probably double-paned, to keep the sound in. The last time she went to the toilet, she noticed a small scratch that marred the otherwise perfect surface of the glass. Someone here before had hit it with something, to no effect.

Now, he merely stood over her, watching with the detachment of a bored student. He had in one hand a fancy, digital camera. The small silver thing resembled a large insect in his heavily veined hands, its single eye scrutinizing her, revealing nothing.

He stepped behind her, and she whimpered. One of his clammy hands awkwardly patted her neck, in a strange show of affection. “Shh. Shh. I want you to see something,” he said, his Ss whistling through his gray teeth. He spoke strangely. He wanted her to see something, like a teacher.

His arm slowly snaked over her shoulder, holding the camera. It shook slightly in his liver-spotted, palsied hands. They were deceptively strong, as she had learned the night he dragged her from her car, in the parking lot at school. Her breathing quickened, but he patted her again, and turned the camera on. He flicked the switch to a symbol of a square around a triangle. A tiny, excited sound escaped his throat as the camera chimed a cheap, digital tune.

“My nephew got me this. For…my…birthday,” he whispered in her ear. His voice droned, slowed by his relative nonchalance and inattention to her.

A face appeared on the tiny black screen on the camera’s back panel. A young woman with a smattering of freckles under her milky blue eyes, the whites of which were stained pink from the tears that they leaked. The young woman wore the very same ball gag that she had in her mouth that moment. She recognized the smiley face drawn on its surface with permanent marker. The ink was much darker in the photo than it was when she first saw it. The woman in the photo’s strawberry blonde hair was a mess, some strands pasted to her forehead with sweat. Half-dried tears under her eyes reflected the flashes of his camera, creating eerie pockets of light on either side of her narrow nose. “I’d flayed her leg—I think it was the left one—completely open. There’s an aesthetic value to pain that can be found in the face. Expressions. I just try to capture it. In photographs.” He chuckled bashfully in her ear, and she whimpered again.

His finger rested upon one of the arrow keys, and the woman in the photo came to life in brief moments, slowly thrashing around, like a grotesque bit of animation. New cuts appearing on her face. Her eyes opening and closing and occasionally caught in between. Like winking at the camera. Then she became a black woman, about the same age, whose forehead slowly opened like a flower, each triangular flap of skin kept back with a brass tack driven into her skull. Her eyes dimmed from the hopelessly animated light of excruciating pain to eventual blood-veiled emptiness. Then there came a young man with strange piercings and dyed hair. His face was sliced down the middle, the skin slowly peeling back from either side. The initial photo was a mere dark line that ran down the entirety of his face, but shortly, the muscles of his face became a glistening, open book. At one point, one of the flaps of skin had fallen slack, bloodstained and awkwardly folded upon the muscles and bone it no longer covered. His eyes rolled up into the sockets and gazed nowhere in particular. Lifeless.

She struggled to hold back the bile that rose in her throat. He chuckled again. “Whoops. That one got a bit slippery.” His laughter grew throaty and cheerful. The photos continued to roll on. More faces. More fleshy aberrations. She grew dizzy. He stopped on another photo.

Unlike the close-ups on his various victims, it was a photo of the old man. He was shirtless, and looking down at the camera. He held his wrists up, hands open, palms inward, like a doctor before surgery. His chest was pale, and bore a small gray diamond of hair between his sagging pectoral muscles. His ribs looked fragile, like a bird’s. His long, thin hands were covered in blood, which slowly dripped down his wrist in long, beaded trails, just like the wax on candles. The smile on his face was neither blissful nor insane. There was no detectable evil in his eyes. It was the smile of a father, standing over a child at a little league game. Pleased and proud.

She felt faint. He shut the camera off, and moved in front of her. She flinched, seeing him again after looking at that picture. He frowned down at her as she cowered. “It’s a hobby. I’m not an artist. I’m not! I wouldn’t say that. Ugh. It’s pretentious to call yourself something like that. Don’t shake your head at me! Don’t!”

He tossed the camera onto the mattress. From his pocket, he produced an X-Acto knife, the kind she had seen and used in art courses. Long, slender, silver, and impossibly sharp. Just as impossibly hard to clean. Its handle glinted in the dark, but the blade remained obscured. She knew what was on the blade that didn’t catch light and began to thrash again. “Of course you don’t understand. Ugh! Of course not! Impatient. Ignorant. Ugh! Ugh!” He shook his head and spat on the floor, as though he were trying to get rid of something foul that had trapped itself in his mouth.

He reached down and grabbed a fistful of her hair, yanking her head back and exposing her throat. He nicked her across the bridge of her nose and then made a quick, tiny incision on her chin—an artificial cleft. He was breathing hard, and bent over her, staring into her eyes.

“I like a look of agony. Because I know it’s true. Who said that?” He asked, his voice terse and toneless.

She merely stared up at him, eyes wide. His breath smelled of milk.

“Well? Who?”

She slowly shook her head.

“It was Emily Dickinson. Emily! Dickinson!” he shouted, jabbing her twice with the knife, once in each shoulder, in time with the dead poetess’s first and last names. He dropped the knife and began snapping photos, each flash blinding her momentarily. Between the tears and the lights, she couldn’t see where he was, which further terrified her. She could only hear the patter and swish of his bare feet on the cement floor.

“There’s beauty in it. Your pain. The angles and lines of your face. It’s—it’s. Agh. Ooh.” She heard his footsteps slow, and his breath grow ragged. He uttered something incoherent, and she heard him collapse. Slowly, the throbs of blue and white left her eyes, and she saw that he lay on the floor, just short of the staircase. He wasn’t moving.

Her mind was a blank. Was it a joke? Some kind of trick? His face was completely emotionless. He didn’t seem to be breathing. His eyes, somewhat glazed over, stared up at the ceiling, as though he were daydreaming. She remained motionless, terrified that he would snap to life, like some hideous zombie.

An hour might have passed before she began to think that maybe it wasn’t a test. A heart attack? A stroke? She didn’t care. Wincing, she rose to her feet. A sharp pain like a current of electricity shot through her right foot, starting from the ball and working up to the back of her thigh. Her arms were still held fast by the rope, and the blood began to rush to her legs, increasing her pain and aggravating her dizziness. She stumbled backwards, tripping over the mattress, wincing and waiting for the wall to collide with her head. Instead, she heard a splintering sound, and felt the chair come apart as she slid down onto the mattress.

Luckily, none of the wood fragments injured her too badly, leaving only superficial cuts and scratches that she could feel on her legs and back. But, the pain in her foot rose to a crescendo, threatening unconsciousness. She fought the blackness that edged into the corners of her vision and bit down hard on the ball gag. Eventually, it passed. Her captor remained inert on the floor. She slowly sat up and shook off the rope and splintered remnants of the chair and hobbled past him towards the stairs. If the door at the top were locked, she would come back and search his pockets for a key. As she passed him, he slowly groaned. He wasn’t dead.

Her stomach churned and she pressed against the closest wall, fists out like a boxer’s, ready to punch and kick and bite and claw for her life. She’d broken the chair and wasn’t about to be tied to a new one. She’d die first, and even then, she wouldn’t go down without leaving a few marks on him.

He remained on the floor. She edged closer,removing the ball gag and tossing it away. Bubbles of spit formed in one corner of his slack mouth and slowly trickled down the side of his face. His chest rose only so slightly, and she could only tell this after crouching next to him for nearly a minute. She picked up the knife and straddled his chest.

“Motherfucker,” she said.

He murmured incoherently, his voice barely audible.

She repeated herself, her voice growing in pitch and volume. He turned his head slightly to the left, and she wanted to laugh at his immobility, his general inability to defend himself. She wanted to laugh at the fact that that tiny gesture was all that he could muster. But she noticed there was no fear in his eyes. He was looking to the camera. She reached for it and held it over him. He tried to nod and smile, but again, he could barely move his head, and one side of his face seemed completely frozen.

He tried again to speak.

She knew what he wanted. And she laughed. Long and loud. In his face.

Then, the knife fell, again and again. Into his face and chest. Slicing his top lip open. Awkwardly but deeply into the roof of his mouth. She took special care to try and flay his eyelids, but botched the job and instead settled for opening his eyes. She nearly vomited when the aqueous humor slowly seeped out, but she kept going.

He barely made a sound and quickly expired.

Finally, she raised the camera and, laughing, took his picture, cursing him all the while. Fulfilling the bastard’s last wish. The flash illuminated the room and her heart quickened for a moment, as though the explosion of light would awaken her from this victorious dream and she would find herself in the chair again. She shut her eyes tightly, but didn’t feel herself go anywhere other than where she already was.

Slowly, she opened her eyes. They fell upon the small screen on the camera’s back panel. Something in her lightened. She smiled, gazing down at her handiwork, then back at the camera, and spoke the words that her captor could not: “It’s beautiful.”