Well Being
by
Claire Walker

He flinched as the gun went off, but then smiled a satisfying grin. Allan opened the heavy fridge door, pulled out a can of lager, and emptied the cold liquid into his dry raspy throat. He gasped at the shock of the cold, his hairy gut expanding as the alcohol filled his belly, the hairs protruding through the gaps of his dirty string vest. He leant on the open fridge door and reached for a second can, as he rushed to finish the first, the sticky brown liquid dribbling down his unshaven chin.

As the brew hit his brain cells, he experienced the familiar adrenalin rush he’d felt when he took the latest girl into the well at the bottom of his overgrown garden. His body jerked in arousal, as he thought of the girl’s body; now limp and lifeless, the skin loose around her bones. Three weeks she’d been down there with no food, her cries bouncing off the damp stones, as she had watched him pleasure himself with the other victims, their decomposing bodies rotting one by one.

‘ Oh this one had been a fighter.'

He would enjoy this one, not like the last girl, who had lasted only six days before she’d pulled the trigger and ended her own life.

The rats could always smell the girls' fear. When he had taken this latest girl down, they had screamed in delight at her entrance, then fed their hungry bellies with the flesh that hung from her ankles as he’d scraped them by knocking her clumsily on the well steps.

- - -

 

Helen stumbled back to the chair, wiping the vomit from her mouth, as the rats scuttled under her feet. She felt the metal nail file in her hand, found in the jacket of one of the bodies, one of his favourites, she guessed, as he spent considerably more time on top of her rotting body. Searching through the bodies had been worse than she'd imagined, she felt like one of those filthy sewer rats that ran around her feet. The bile rose to her throat as she gulped, but there was no oxygen, no air, and she vomited again. The tightness in her head swelled, she felt a darkness calling her, but she hadn’t come this far to fail now. She placed her hand back into the loosened wrench on the wall, and looked up at the gun bolted to her left.

How disturbed is this man? Helen looked around at the detail of this sick freak’s plan. He would belt his victims to a chair, with their right arm tied to a shackle, the left arm free, so that all the victim had to do was raise their body until their head was in line with a bolted gun above, pulling the trigger with their free hand. Helen had spent hours staring at the mechanism and workings of the bolted gun and the shackle around her right hand, as she’d tried to block out the piercing cries of joy from this animal just a few yards in front of her.

Helen reasoned that the gun was fixed firmly to the wall; there was no moving that, but he’d been less careless in checking the bolts on the handcuff, and the belt around the seat was loose when he'd placed her in their some time ago. Was that days, weeks or months ago? Time had lost all meaning to Helen.

Helen needed no imagination; she could see in front of her how many girls had writhed in the heavy metal of the shackle on her right hand. Her hands were covered with their blood. Those girls could now save her life, as their combined frantic struggling had released those bolts.

- - -

 

Allan smelt the vomit as he lowered himself slowly down the steps. The anticipation was pumping blood at a rapid pace through his veins. He waded through the blood filled rancid water, as he made his way over to the body.

As he reached the body slumped in the chair; he breathed in deeply, taking in the smell of her death, which combined with his body odour and cheap beer. He bent his head under hers, and reached for his groin. He closed his eyes as he thought about this new girl's body. The girl lifted her arm, and slammed the nail file into his neck repeatedly.

Allan's body buckled in shock, his arousal heightened by the realisation of the pain jarring through him. His reactions were too slow, he looked around at the scene of death around him, the intensity of the pain slowly draining away the pleasure, as everything began to swirl around him and he blacked out.

 

© 2006 - Claire Walker

 

 

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