267 lines
14 KiB
Plaintext
267 lines
14 KiB
Plaintext
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OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO oOOOO OOOO. OOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
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OOOO .OOOO OOOO OOOOOOOOo OOOO OOOO"
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OOOO oOOOO OOOO OOOO "OOOO. OOOO OOOOo .OOOO'
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OOOO .OOOO" OOOO OOOO OOOOoOOOO "OOOO. oOOOO
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OOOO .OOOO"""OOOOOOOO OOOO OOOOOO "OOOOOOO'
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OOOO oOOOO ""OOOO OOOO "OOOO OOOOOO
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| There Ain't No Justice |
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| #85 |
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|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
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Live and Let Die
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- by Arifel -
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`Fantasy is the ultimate reality, to which we all
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retreat at some stage.'
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- Black Rose, from the
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Hallway Whiteboard
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`I can already tell that it's going to be a
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characteristically useless, senseless death,
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but then I'm used to the horror. It seems
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distilled, even now it fails to upset or bother me.'
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- Brett Easton Ellis, from
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`American Psycho'
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We, personally, are usually quite content to live and let live; if
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a total stranger came up to us on the street and tried to pick a
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fight, we'd more than likely try to ignore or avoid him, cross the
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street. But this had been going on for almost four years, now! He
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wanted us to stop seeing his ex-girlfriend; we did so, and yet he
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still subjected us to harassment, phone calls late at night,
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following us, calling bulleting boards that we called and filing
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copies of messages we'd written (we knew he did this, because some of
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them later appeared in affidavits). He was obviously some kind of
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monomaniac.
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Even though we'd never met him in the flesh, we knew him, possibly
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better than he would have liked. Something else he wouldn't have
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liked is just how linear, how predictable he appeared to us. Knowing
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him this way, we decided rather than go out and find him, we'd lay a
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trap for him, have him come to us. It wasn't hard; we simply parked
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the car a few streets away, went back to the flat, turned all the
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lights off and waited. He came by our flat regularly, and if he saw
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that no-one was home, he would try to break in and steal any
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documents he saw lying around. We knew that he'd broken in once
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before and had stolen the phone-number file from our terminal
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program, along with the passwords to the local systems we called. It
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might take a few days, but he would pay us a visit. He couldn't help
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himself.
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We were sitting in a corner of the bedroom, out of view of the
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window, the blinds raised slightly to expose twenty centimetres of
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evening sky. We'd been sitting here for three days, listening, not
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answering the phone, not sleeping, visiting the toilet to eliminate
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liquids every thirty hours or so. No lights were on, no sign that
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anyone had been home for some time, and we were beginning to wonder
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if he was going to disappoint us just as a faint scratching sound
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came from the window-ledge. It stopped, and came back louder a few
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seconds later, followed by a pinging sound as he filed through the
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hinge. The window half-fell in, and seconds later a tall, thin
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figure eased in silently, pointing a pencil-torch beam around the
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room. The light passed right over us, huddled inside what we called
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our Someone Else's Problem field; he didn't see a thing. He stalked
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out of the room, the light darting about, and silently, we rose from
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where we crouched and followed him, a six-inch length of broom-handle
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in one hand. It was connected to a similar piece of wood in our
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other hand by a low E acoustic guitar string, a metal-wound piece of
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nylon about a millimetre thick.
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We followed him into the kitchen, one step behind him; he bent down
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to pick up a sheet of paper, and when he straightened, we slipped a
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loop of guitar string over his head, down around his neck and pulled
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back hard, our knee in his back. He threw himself backwards
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violently, pushing us up against the kitchen door; thrashed about,
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trying to kick us in the shins, but bent over backwards over our knee
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as he was, he couldn't quite reach. His hands tugged at the wire as
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it bit into his throat, no sound coming from him, his head moving
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from side to side; he slipped down to his knees, and our knee was
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pushing between his shoulderblades when he slumped down. He had been
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without oxygen for little more than a minute; we waited, the broom-
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handles pulled back behind his ears and sure enough, almost two
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minutes later, he gave another violent shove, as if realising that we
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wouldn't fall for his playing possum. We waited for another six
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minutes and decided it was safe to release the wire only after his
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bladder released. He dropped to the kitchen floor with a hollow
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thump.
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Feeling his neck, we detected a very faint pulse, so we turned him
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over and wrapped the guitar-string tightly around his wrists, binding
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his hands together. We lifted him off the floor by his hands, his
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arms bending back at the shoulders with sufficient pain to revive him
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slightly, a weak, wet cough signalling the restarting of his
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interrupted respiratory cycle. We lifted and dropped a him few
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centimetres, making him squawk with pain. Before he recovered
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sufficiently to start kicking again, we tied his shoelaces together
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then dragged him into the bathroom and dropped him, face up, in the
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tub, sprawled awkwardly on his bound hands. We lit a candle that
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stood on the sink and regarded him as he slowly worked his way back
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to full consciousness.
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`You can scream as much as you like. No-one is going to hear you.'
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we remarked, the unemotional rasp in our voice making us think of
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Hannibal Lector and Patrick Bateman, of John Wayne Gacy and Ed Gein;
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then we remembered that we didn't do this for fun. It was more like
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debugging a program. We weren't restraining this person because we
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got off on that sort of thing; we were correcting a social error. He
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gulped, cleared his throat, licked his dry lips then croaked,
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`You won't get away with this.' We inclined our head slightly, and
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replied,
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`Possibly. But by the time we're finished with you, it won't make
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any difference.' We reached up, found the razor that was sitting
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next to the candle, swung it open, lifted his head up by his long
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hair and, no anger, no memory of the way he'd made a mess of our
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life, no recollection of the emotional anguish he'd caused, we
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reached down with the intention of carving a deep V in the front of
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his throat. Something stopped our hand bare millimetres from his
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slowly pulsing jugular. We felt that strange body-within-our-own
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feeling that we ordinarily associated with out of body experiences;
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one of the others wanted control. After a brief moment's reflection,
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we allowed it; surprisingly, it was one of the quiet, normally
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reticent female segments. She put the razor back, her hand shaking
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with repressed rage, and went to the bedroom. She came back with an
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armful of devices from our `toy-box', but she stopped short, as
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another of the collective requested control and gained it. This one
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was more direct; not bothering with the cattle-prod, it found an old
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electric shaver cable, sliced it open with the razor and exposed the
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wires. We watched idly as our hands plugged the cable in, turned it
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on and brushed it against his neck. The reaction was extreme; he
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bucked and screamed, almost throwing his bound body out of the tub.
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We felt the muscles in our face arrange themselves in a tight, rigid
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smile, and our hand jabbed the wires at him again and again, playing
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him like a fish, briefly experimenting with sending jolts of
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electricity through the wet patch in the crotch of his pants, which
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lent a shrill kind of desperation to his screams. Our hands turned
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the power off and tugged at the ends of the wires, pulling the
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plastic-coated strands apart until there was about a metre of give
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between the ends. The power was switched back on and we spend an
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entertaining ten minutes running current between his crotch and his
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mouth, touching the wires to his shaking body in rhythms, jerking him
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into the air and allowing him to almost relax before hitting him
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again. Towards the end, he was held there, back arched like a
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bridge, the current bending him over backwards in tight spasms. He
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grunted as we released him, and this sound triggered something deep
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inside us; another portion surged to the fore and took control,
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laying down the wires and fetching a tape recorder. We examined the
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cassette, labelled `Throbbing Gristle: Mission of Dead Souls', wadded
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some tissue paper and stuffed it into the no-recording tab. We
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propped the machine up on the sink, picked up the wires and a soft,
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feminine voice spoke from our mouth:
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`Scream for me.' The wires went up his nose and he howled like a
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demon. A few minutes of this was enough; when he'd run out of breath
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to scream, we stopped the tape. We could sample those sounds, later;
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maybe even include them in a MOD file.
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Enough playing. Resuming control, we retrieved the razor and with
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one motion, opened up his throat. He bucked like someone undergoing
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electroshock therapy, his blood - black in the half-light - spraying
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over his shirt. We let his drop back into the bath; he choked,
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gurgled and made bubbles for almost two minutes. We believed that he
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was till alive when we turned the light on and began slicing his
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clothes off in long strips. The bloodstained clothing went into a
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grabage bag; his watch, wallet and pouch of house-breaking tools went
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into the sink. We'd throw them down a drain in the city, later.
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Using the straight razor, we hacked slices from his neck until we
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reached the vertebra. As the muscles and tendons were severed, his
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head flopped from one side to the other, fluids oozing from various
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tubes until we could lift his head free of his body, surprisingly
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light. We set this aside for later, ignoring random thoughts from
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the peanut gallery in the background - `aren't you going to squick
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him?' `hey, remember that scene in "American Psycho", where Bateman
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stuck his erection up the wind-pipe of the victim's severed head?'
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`don't eat his brains - you could catch some terrible disease'...
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`Quiet, please.' We murmured, carefully slashing strips of flesh
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from his naked body, separating his arms and legs from his torso,
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slicing open his stomach and trying to ignore the smell of his
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intestines, the result of a vegetarian diet. Working through the
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night, we divided him up into dozens of small pieces, the rank fluids
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draining into the plug-hole. We fetched a pile of newspapers and
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began wrapping the pieces, placing them in garbage bags, half-filling
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each one. The morning sunlight was shining through the window as we
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washed the last of the blood down the drain and lifted the head up to
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the mirror, smiling as we held up the camera and took a photograph.
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Seconds later, the camera spat out the photo; we wrapped the head in
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newspaper and placed it in a separate bag, well padded with
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scrunched-up paper to disguise the shape.
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We examined the photo; us and the head, us smiling amiably, he
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staring in two different directions, his tongue protruding slightly.
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We thought for a second, then unwrapped the head, forced the jaws
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open and hacked out the tongue. We wrapped it in cling-wrap, placed
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it in a padded postage pouch with the photo, addressed it to a
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certain post-office box. She'd know who it was from, and she
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wouldn't tell anyone.
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We spent the morning driving from one municipal tip to another,
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dumping two garbage bags at each. The remains would vanish with the
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rest of the rubbish. It was mid-afternoon before we'd finished, and
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we could find a public phone box. We consulted a list of phone-
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numbers; her number wasn't listed, but could be extracted from the
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fifth digit of seven of the numbers on the list. The voice that
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answered was faint and hesitant. We put on a cheery air;
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`Good afternoon. You can rest easy, now.'
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`What do you mean?'
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`We killed him.'
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`Who?' We laughed.
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`You know who. You don't have to worry about him tapping your phone
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any more, or about him finding you. He's incapable of harming
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anyone... being chopped up and stuck in garbage bags will do that for
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a person. Probably'll give him a new perspective on things. Heh.'
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`You're kidding. You wouldn't dare.' We allowed that early-morning
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Cenobite rasp back into our voice.
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`How much would you care to bet on that?'
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And there was silence.
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. . .
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ú ùþ ú
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ÛÛÛÛÛÜÜÜÜþÜÜÜÜ ú ù ú
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±±±±ÛÛÛßÛ²ÝÛÝÛÛÝþ Üú
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±±±±²²²²²ÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÜþúÝ ù
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±±²²²²ÛÛßßÛßÝÛÛÛÛÛÝÜúþ
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²²²²²Ûß þúßÞþßþþÜùþ
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²²²²Ûß ú ù
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²²²ÛÝ
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²²²ÛÜ Phoenix Modernz Systems: 908/830-TANJ
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±²²²ÛÝ The Syndicate: 908/506-6892
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±±²²²ÛÜÜÜ VapourWare BBS: 61/3-429-8510
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±±±²²²²²²ÛÜ Yellow Submarine: 404/552-5336
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ÛÛ±±±±±±²²²Û Urban Discipline / VaS World HQ : 313/464-1470
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ÛÛ±±±±±±²²²Û RipCo ][: 312/528-5020
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±±±²²²²²²ÛÜ
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±±²²²ÛÜÜÜ
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±²²²ÛÝ
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²²²ÛÝ ÕÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ͸
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²²²²Ûß ú ù ³ TANJ Mailing Address ³
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²²²²²Ûß þúßÞþßþþÜùþ ³ PO Box 174 ³
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±±²²²²ÛÛßßÛßÝÛÛÛÛÛÝÜúþ ³ Seaside Hts, NJ ³
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±±±±²²²²²ÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÜþúÝ ù ³ 08751 ³
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±±±±ÛÛÛßÛ²ÝÛÝÛÛÝþ Üú ÔÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ;
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