Murder! He Wrote

Murder! He Wrote

by
Bobby Derie

The knife cut the last strip of flesh holding the bloody nipple onto her breast, and popped the morsel into her mouth. Strong hand gripped head and jaw, forcing her to chew, to taste herself.

“Who is myself? I am not my degree, or what I do. I am not the protagonist of every story I find myself in, nor the villain. I am the storyteller.”

The blade plunged a vulgar slit in his belly. One hand forced him to tumescence with strong, smooth strokes, while the other grabbed the back of his neck. Slowly he was being folded together, his penis drawn toward the wound.

“The storyteller collects, revises, edits, excises, studies, creates, reviews, and remakes!”

They put the rabbits in stocks, and pinned their eyes open. The stocks were necessary, to keep them from clawing them out of their sockets. The girl looked much like a rabbit now, head clamped down between the boards, a little blood trickling where the staples dug into her eyelids. Her eyes were wide and inviting. She surveyed the bottles before her, and selected the oven cleaner.

“Some people have a hard time being creative…I just need an excuse. I think in stories. I have to tell them. It’s who I am.”

He was forced to strip. The gun barrel was steady, the voice commanding. He shrank into himself against the cold, or so he said. The bed stank of sex. The voice with the gun tossed him the handcuffs, told him to cuff his feet first, legs apart.

“I think in narratives. My life is a collection of tales. Some I craft for others, some I make for myself. There is no single journey in my life, no sole tale or role. I go through a hundred masks and a thousand labels, and remain myself.”

The pyroclastic jelly burned through her chest in moments, a shocking white burst that flared that glowed evilly for a moment, illuminating the dark shadow of bone through flesh lit from within, leaving a neat hole edged in ragged black. She choked and sputtered, still alive for the moment, and began to drown and gag as the passages to her lungs were seared shut.

“My work in life is to do this. To create, as easy as breathing. Tell the tale, be the tale. There is no change, there is only becoming more like myself.”

He read the accounts in the papers into a microphone, captured the television newspeople on tivo. Samples to arrange and play back, tweak and refine, arrange and alter with filters and effects. They were the echoes and beats of his symphony of pain and terror, but the screams and whispers and groans he had recorded from his victims were the orchestra.

“To be the storyteller is to see all sides, be all roles, respect all parts, but you don’t have to like them, except when you do.”

She almost had her, in Baltimore. The crime scenes were growing more elaborate, but more desperate. Crude surgeries, victims left to linger longer each time. Where was the patience she had shown with the little girl in St. Louis? How much of her muse was adrenaline-junkie sickness?

“Some days my brain feels like the dam before the flood. Sometimes I need to write, to speak, to compose just to release the fevered contents of my brain. Y’know what? I’m cool with that.”

He caught the detective on the stakeout, pissing against a wall after forty-eight hours in a car. The blade touched more than two day’s worth of stubble on the detective’s throat, he hand encompassed and whelmed the detective’s own grip on his dick, a razor blade held between them and forefinger. He hugged the detective from behind, drew him in close, and bit into his ear until the blood flowed. Like a virgin, the detective was so distracted he almost missed the kiss of the razor and the sudden warmth of blood mingling with piss.

“My work starts here. This blank page, pregnant with possibilities. Sometimes I draw, others I wrote. The result matters less than the act. Because once it is created, it may be improved. Refined, purified, maybe never perfects. There is no end to the work. Only a resting of the pen.”

She stripped her first. Tied her down. Rolled out the tools to make a show of it. This part she liked to play by ear, how to start. So many toys to choose from, so much that could be done. She ran a hand across the buttocks, scratched along the quivering thigh, sipped a fragrant drop of sweat as it rolled along her ribs. Her plaything recoiled at her touch, flexed and pressed against the bonds, breasts jutting out proudly. She smiled, then selected the hammer.

“Murder! He wrote, foul and sublime, to air out the dark corners of human psyche and provide a release for those who would never allow themselves to create murder in their own lives.”

The latest note was a three inch square of human flesh. It was more crude than clever; they had found the fire where he had heated the brand – a brace of typewriter keys, scavenged and bound together with wire. He knew they were getting close.

“What if I were to die? Absent the teller, would they seek the story again?”

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The Petty Mage

The Petty Mage
by
Bobby Derie

When the spells were muttered and chanted and done, the incense burned down to sticky brown lumps that no longer warded off the spirits of plague, the potions sipped and spat out again, the magician sat at the young soldier’s bed, and held her hand.

When the moon hid itself behind the clouds at night, the imps of disease took notice of a scent in the supernal wind and flew off, and the spirits bright and dark which had loomed over the sickbed turned and fled before a power greater than their own, the magician did not smile, but with steady voice and clear eyes looked at the newcomer and said with utter formality: “Hello, grandmother.”

A figure like the shadow of a queen in mourning gave a wordless nod.

“I have no bargains for you, nor charms to ward you off.” the magician said, caressing one of the soldier’s pale cheeks. “For I am poor in the ways of magic, though I paid dearly for what I know, and there is little enough left of me to buy or to sell.”

As she spoke the shadow took on definition, the darkness deepening in some places and lightening in others. The magician saw that this was no queen in funeral veil or shawl, though she held herself with all the silent dignity of the inevitable and the bereaved.

“I have heard that some know to charge you to fulfill your duties, to take her past the dangers that lie beyond this life, but I am not wise enough to give such an order, nor the authority to do so, nor would I ask of you any favors.” The magician laid her hand then on the soldier’s spear, which lay by her side. “Nor the favors of any who might have power or authority over you.”

Now the shadow spoke, and her voice was that of a woman speaking in the dark of night, clothed in shadows, as a grandam might speak to a child she rocked to sleep in the wee blue hours as the stars fell to the coming dawn.

“Granddaughter.” she spoke, and seemed to consider another word, but instead bent down over the magician instead and kissed her on the left eye. Then the shade reached out her hand, and the soldier opened her eyes and grasped it. With her one good eye, the magician watched the pale shadows descend into the waiting darkness. Stupid tears dripped down the right side of her face, as she looked at the cooling corpse on the bed.

There were funeral chants and small incantations to be said, to guide the shade and to guard it, herbs and spices to stave off the grave worm for some borrowed time, and a stone to be engraved with an image and a name, lest either be forgotten. These at least were in her power, and would do until the next time Grandmother came.

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Three Milk Maids Meet at Midnight

Three Milk Maids Meet at Midnight
by
Bobby Derie

The grass of the cemetery was untouched by hoof or paw, though sometimes a few of the longer-necked bessies would stretch over the fence and nibble on the sweet shoots above the grave of Seighilde. The Ladies of the Bucket did not think old Seighilde would mind, for in life she had been a milk maid like themselves, and to milk they all might one day return.

Anisel spread the blanket among the tombstones, Gemme unpacked the cups and plates, and Berticea opened the first bottle of ouzo. Each sat on her own stool, which with their buckets were the symbols and tools of their trade. The first drink was in silence, milky liquor in chipped china cups as the moon rose above the trees, in respect for the departed. As the spirit burned their lips and throat, the mood settled on them, and with somber diction and sober chuckles the milk maids began telling their stories.

Berticea growled her story through a ruined throat, her one good eye gleaming. The fields of the dairy where she worked are struck through with sinkholes and hidden canyons amongst the turf, sudden precipices that plunge to darksome depths, and the old maids say that it is one of the entrances to hell. Perhaps then the devil’s hands are not so sharp of eye, and strange black-haired billies with iron teeth and flashing eyes may escape to wander amid the nannies, who give birth to darkling kids.

“They bite clean thro’ flesh and bone, when they a-chance, and bleed the ma’s teats summat awful. We thought he’d weaned off, but as I got her teats to flow the damn kid sniffed it and came at me. Well, there was nothing for it. I brained the bastard with the milking-stool, but the beast rose up agin. He tried to circle about me, but wary was I to his tricks and caught him again with the stool, right acrost the teeth. You can still see the marks.” Berticea sipped her ouzo, gazing into the depths. “Lost the bucket, tho’. Kid kicked it in the ruckus. Came right out of my pay-packet.”

The ladies nodded, but offered no greater condolence or sympathy as Berticea drained her cup. Such was the facts of life as a Lady of the Bucket. Anisel fetched out the biscuits as Gemme refilled the cups.

Anisel had been with the Horse People for a season, and had many stories to tell of the herds, their strange ways and customs. She showed off the hairy jack she wore on a strap about her shoulder, the bulging skin fat with koumiss, and explained how she had won it.

“In the thrice-ninth yurt of the thrice-ninth pasture, there was held a great contest for all the daughters, for in the language of the Horse People, the word for daughter is the same for milk maid, to see who was the most skilled. I did not think to win acclaim, for I was new among them, but I took my place in the rolls. There were many strange contests, and many women faltered. We began milking horses and asses, then cows and goats, yaks and oxen, cows and dogs, and finally stranger beasts were brought before us—bats and allocamelus, horses with six legs, nursing fauns whose teats are like those of human women, and many women left the competition because they were afraid, or failed to bring forth the strange milk. I acquitted myself well, but the final trial was a dissertation on koumiss before the senior Ladies of the Stool in that yurt—and I had not yet learned all the lore of their magic milk, and so lost the full competition. They have invited me back next year to try again, and gave me this handsome bag as a prize for my efforts.”

So Anisel passed the bag around, and all three took a draw at the lip of the bag. Neither Berticea nor Gemme would display any distaste, but it was clear by the long draw she took that Anisel had developed a taste for the stuff, and a stronger stomach for it than either of them.

Now it was Gemme’s turn for a tale, and the cattle on the adjoining field lowed and the wind picked up, and the moon hid its face behind a cloud. She had drank the most of any of them there that night, reaching for the bottle of ouzo to refill her broken cup, but the two noticed her hands did not waver at all as she poured it again.

“Farmer Hansel married a trull, pretty to look at and stubborn to get her way, but weak with constitution and unwilling to do her proper work. She was a harsh mistress and found fault with all the girls did, and so would charge them penalties or refuse them pay for any error she found or imagined. Many left rather than put up with her abuse, and the remaining became overworked, so that the cows in the field went unmilked for days, and raised their voices in the night in hunger and pain. Now queen bessy of this great herd was Antachuka, who had calved a hundred twins and gave forth naught but cream. So poor was Hansel’s care that this treasure died for neglect, wandering out of its place to some lonely corner where illness or injury took it, and he had not but himself and his wife to blame—but she died on a full udder.”

At this the other Ladies of the Stool paled a little, though Gemme could see it not in the darkness, and the cattle seemed to low longer and louder.

“So it was the day after the day after she died, the cattle were sore a-frightened and hag-ridden, wet with sweat. There was not that Hansel could do, but fearing bewitchment he drove them to a far pasture. So it was with some surprise the next night the farmer’s wife herd the lowing in the field…and it seemed to her that the cow came right up to the side of the house, and the next morning she found the imprint of a wet nose on the window-glass, but never could discern what it meant. For two weeks this went on, and the farmer’s wife thought herself going mad, alone in the farmhouse with this strange lowing at night where there should be no lowing at all. And a great stink developed, as of the rankest cheese or spoilt milk, and of rotting meat. It was strongest near the window where the farmer’s wife found the nose-print every morning, but again she could not guess what these things meant. At last she saw it early one morning by the window, the ripened corpse of Antachuka, nose pressed up against the glass. So she called me.”

Gemme found the ouzo bottle empty, and wrested the cork from the next with a smooth and practiced pull.

“Not at first, of course, but none of the other girls had the stomach to take it, or perhaps they disliked the farmer’s wife too much and wished for the haunting to continue ‘til Antachuka forced herself on the farmer’s wife, and made her suck the milk out. I was not inclined, but I had Antachuka in my hands before and did not wish the poor thing such a painful fate. So the next morning I met her there outside the window, on my milking stool, and there was a bucket ready for her. I spoke to her like it was the old days when she had just calved and the milk was heavy on her, and the corpse moved as it had done. Now though as I reached for her teats I saw how badly she had been used, for the milk had gone rancid and worse with her death, and I knew this was no living organ I pulled in my hands but a dead sack of flesh filled with clotted, half-rotten milk poisoned with all the foulness leaking from her dead body. So at first it would not come, and then it was if the flesh sweated and wept between my fingers, and then the first spurt—it was brown and pink.

“The smell was a solid thing, worse than any puss-riddled udder or pail of butterfat left out for a fortnight, for there was in it all the foulness of shite and oozing putrescence of the great dead cow, and tiny rips formed in the flesh through which leaked out heady gasses that caused me to gag and choke, yet never did I stop, even when the teats came apart in my hand and the udder collapsed into the bucket, followed shortly by all the innards and pent-up juices not yet voided by the undead thing. The thing that had been Antachuka gave up a sigh that might have been the echo of a grateful moo, or perhaps merely the final breath escaping from collapsing lungs, for the whole of the bovine collapsed around me, and it was only by grace I moved away in time.”

Anisel sipped her ouzo.

“What of the farmer’s wife?” she asked of Gemme.

“She tried to hold my fee, and gave the cunt a kick that sent her to the floor so hard as not to rise again soon.” said Gemme.

Berticea filled the cups.

“And what of farmer Hansel?” she asked of Gemme.

“He returned with the cattle, and paid me in full with thanks and without complaint.” said Gemme.

“But what of your bucket and stool? Were they not ruined?” asked Anisel of Gemme.

“No,” said Gemme “For I was not so foolish to use my own. I bent the wife over a log and bound her arms and legs to use as a stool, and used their chamber-pot as the bucket. It was because of this rough treatment the farmer’s wife wished not to pay my fee.”

To this the Three Ladies of the Bucket drank their last drink in private, in honor of those others that would come later, and the moon came out once more to show the sleeping darkness of the herd on the neighboring field. Then they packed up their things and took up their stools, for it was nearly the hour before dawn, and time again for them to ply their trade.

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Armgaunt

Armgaunt
by
Bobby Derie

Rikkae followed the strains of the Molly Malones down from Creechit Square, where the yellow-and-black sulphasphalt gave way to cobbles that the council was always five years off from replacing, pausing to stare at the spectral steeds of a Phaeton coach-and-four. The horses were almost gone, stripped to the bone and grafted with translucent, untiring ghostflesh and crude electric plugs in what was left of their fear and pain-maddened brains for control. She watched the ceramic hoofs scratch the road in staccato counterpoint, brushing past her fast as any petrol car.

The club was an abandoned papermill, where clouds of black toner rained down on a ghostlight orgy of glowsticks, reflective haintpaint, and the fat, rounded blacklight tubes that cast a violet-blue glow on the press of bodies. Down by the stage the dried ink clouds were thick and clogging, kicked up by the half-naked boys and girls in the mosh. Any cut suffered in the rush for the stage was sure to be an instant and ugly tattoo, which most of the ghostpunk mob wore with a sort of pride. The black clouds got everywhere and everyone, black tears running from eyes that had never known mascara, ugly black mucous dripping out at the end of the night and through the next day as a reminder of where and when you were. Some of the dainties covered their faces with handkerchiefs and gasmasks from the last war, but they were the worst sort of poseurs and like to meet trouble as the night wore on.

On stage the Rabbit-Killer growled into the mic, blonde hair streaked with grey grit and haloed by bright white floods from the rafters. Coffin Joe scratched and set the rhythm by breakbeat, discs skipping under his fingers on vintage equipment looted from some ancient, unknown television station, switching between the three spinning discs before him with skill and grace. Electric Bess carried the melody on a guitar that was half weapon, reinforced with plated metal to beat back the crowds; she could almost play the instrument as well as she wailed on the fans.

Rikkae caught sight of D’iz at the back, a dark splotch against the citylight that poured from the open door, unmistakable with his shaved head and the pale clear scalp that showed the network of blood vessels over his living brains. She moved through the crowd, thrust knees and elbows in quiet battle for the back of the club, cursed and spat black-tinged phlegm at the poseurs, voyeurs, and hangers-on hugging the wall and the edge of the crowd, too timid to step up and dance. Rikkae won the back door flushed and with a stinging scrape on her knee, forearms tense and feeling heavy already, but she wiped the sharpened brass rivets on her knuckles off on her jeans and pushed open the bar of the safety door.

The back-alley was thick with graft-whores, sex-workers of both genders and everything in between, more than half of them with plague drops burned into their cheeks. The tiny black crosses marked the terminally infected with STDs, beyond any art of medicine or posh physik to cure. Rikkae brushed passed sagging teats bloated beyond human proportion, the ghostlight leaking through the thin stretched skin where the implants strained the limits of human flesh, and aging panders lifted skirts to flash puffy translucent grey vulvas and tumescent pricks leaking with fluids brighter than moonlight. The deeper she went in the alley, the cruder became the catcall-offers and surgeries. No longer was there smooth transition between human and undying flesh, but ragged Frankenstein sutures tying yellowing and unhealthy mortal flesh to ghoulish, flaking graveyard cast-offs. Here the words grew thin, and bare-fleshed skeletons ground against each other in mock sexual congress while dapper vampires in tophats and tails yanked and grabbed at themselves.

There is an end to even human depravity, and Rikkae rounded the corner to find D’iz against the wall, holding the head of a blood-haired chica with creeping black veins beneath freckled skin bright and burned by too many hours under blacklight and ghostlight. D’iz opened his eyes in time to see Rikkae, pushed the thing away from his crotch and fumbled for his pants. Rikkae’s hand fished out the packing razor from her pocket, flicked it open. She spared only a glance at the she-thing kneeling on the ground—beneath khol-smeared brown eyes and a pert nose lay a lamprey-mouthed sucker with a rough, cylindrical tongue, pale fluid dripping from where her chin should be. A dozen needle tracks marked her left arm. Rikkae got in her face and screamed, ignored the piss-stench of her breath; the toilet-whore scuttled on all fours backwards around the corner, out of sight.

Rikkae turned her attention back to D’iz, raised the razor so it would catch the light. Maybe D’iz would have wet himself, if his bladder wasn’t already empty.

Inside, the Molly Malones finished their set, Electric Bess sending a spray of blood and teeth into the crowd as an artful swing of her axe caught a stage-mobber right in the jaw. No one heard D’iz scream over the roar of the crowd, or wondered when the chandlers picked his corpse up the next day, or gave much notice when the ghouls caught the flickering remnants of his spirit with their flat electric wands, to be flensed of any usable ectoplasmic tissue before being rendered in their arcane furnaces. The pale blue dust of D’iz would float out among the exhaust over Creechit Square, and maybe land on a couple kids talking about music as if it was freedom and love as if it was all the currency in the world.

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