Inflictions Read online

  The scene faded and was replaced by a second in which a woman knelt on a floor clutching the body of a dead child. As she sobbed, drowned in anguish, a man emerged from the shadows. He grabbed the woman by the hair, yanked her head back, and drew a large blade across her throat.

  The third reflection sent Patrick to his knees with a tormented cry. A man entered a room through a multiple-paned, pocket doorway. An attractive woman with shining auburn hair was helping a cheerful blonde girl dress her doll. They turned and smiled at him, and the child, as the man expected, ran joyfully to him for a hug. Her smile faded as he held her, her sparkling eyes moistened.

  “It hurts, Daddy!” she cried out.

  He gently carried the small body and rested the child on the longue. The mother’s smile slowly changed to worry, then distress as she neared the small body. The man grabbed her in a tight embrace, and her expression changed again, to one of pained surprise. He jammed the blade deep, near her spine.

  Patrick’s stomach lurched and he fought an intense urge to vomit. He screamed his sorrow.

  In each vision, the woman and child changed, but two things remained constant—him and the room in which the murders took place. The same den in which he and the dark man now stood. The same den in which his wife and child lay dead. Patrick wanted to lie down and sleep—perhaps even die. To make it all go away.

  “It never goes away,” the dark man said.

  He removed his hand from Patrick’s eyes, the power of the revelation and the release from the mental grip so intense Patrick nearly collapsed.

  “You’re a liar. I’ve never murdered anyone before,” Patrick moaned weakly.

  The dark man pinned Patrick’s frightened eyes with a stare and smiled.

  “But you have,” the man assured him. “This has happened before, and it will again … and then again.” he promised with a laugh, his voice oozing with ill humor. “I was the first.”

  “What are you talking about?” Patrick hissed, his fear diminishing as his irritation at the arrogant man increased.

  “I so hoped my progeny would have been intelligent,” the dark man responded with exaggerated animation. “But alas …”

  The man extended a hand, which Patrick ignored.

  Nonplussed, he went on, “I’m pleased to meet you, grandson. Have you ever spoken to a dead man before?”

  “You’re fucked.”

  “No. I’m Joseph Dewire, and if I may be so direct,” he said, and nodded toward the bodies of Anna and Melissa. “It appears that you are the one who is, as you so eloquently put it, fucked.”

  “You made me do this to my family!” Patrick accused. His anger flared and tears burned his eyes as he looked upon the bodies of his family.

  Joseph Dewire looked at the bodies, then at the knife that Patrick still held, and raised an eyebrow. “I’m not convinced,” Joseph Dewire said. He sneered at his grandson, as if he were regarding a pile of dung. “Patrick, take responsibility for what is yours. I merely suggested it to you. Your putrid soul did the rest.”

  He walked to the fireplace, a grand and elaborate example of black granite with a dark mahogany mantle. He rubbed a hand lovingly along the top and turned to his grandson.

  “Patrick, do you believe in hell?” Joseph asked. He did not wait for an answer. “Have you ever wondered where all this wealth came from?”

  Patrick looked around the room, at the glass-paned doors, the bronze chandelier. “I inherited it from my father,” he said.

  “Ah, yes, from your father. A father that you never met … who in turn inherited it from his father—me—whom he never met.” He shot Patrick a complacent glance. “Until the end, that is.”

  “Why are you doing this? Why me?”

  “Why you? The correct question is who.” He returned to his grandson’s side and again stared into his eyes. “Who are you, Patrick?” he asked.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Look in that mirror,” instructed Joseph Dewire, pointing to a magnificent floor-to-ceiling glass, framed in black oak.

  “No.”

  “Why be difficult?” reasoned Joseph. “At this point, what do you have to lose, Patrick? Your life?” Joseph laughed. “It’s over there, lying on the floor with your salvation.”

  Defeated, Patrick moved to the mirror.

  “Look.”

  Patrick raised his eyes to see himself. His sharp-featured face with haunted, hollowed eyes stared back at him from the gloom of the den. In the background, he saw Joseph Dewire walking toward him. Once the two men stood side by side, dread and realization numbed Patrick like a punch to the head.

  “Welcome to eternal damnation,” said Joseph Dewire. He gave a wry smile and winked.

  Patrick looked in horror at his grandfather’s face—at his face. They were the same, except that one was etched by years of insanity; disguised by a skin of madness.

  “Hello, me!” Joseph Dewire’s reflection said. It waved curtly to Patrick, and then laughed madly.

  “How?” asked Patrick, backing away from the mirror. He wanted to run away from the lunacy, yet he knew that no matter where he hid, his betrayal of his family would find him.

  “We found what we were searching for, didn’t we?”

  “What you’re talking about, you sick bastard?” Patrick said.

  “Bastard? An interesting choice of words,” Joseph said. He leaned his arm on Patrick’s shoulder and shook his head. “We had everything money could buy, but we had to have the one thing it couldn’t buy.”

  “I’m not following you,” snapped Patrick, irritated by the conundrum in Joseph’s words.

  “Oh, but you are! You are following me in more ways than you realize.” Joseph stared at Patrick, as if in deep contemplation. “Maybe I’ll call you son, or maybe I’ll call you me? I suppose not, I was never one to talk to myself. They say it’s a sign of insanity, are you aware of that?”

  Patrick did not answer.

  Joseph laughed explosively. “Ah, but I am getting off track. I believe most men want to live forever, don’t you grandson? We are not the first man to be destroyed by the search for immortality, but we may be the only one to find the secret of everlasting life. After all, that’s all we really wanted in the beginning, isn’t it?”

  Joseph removed his arm from Patrick’s shoulder. He started walking toward the child lying on the longue, and then stopped.

  “Before you answer, think about it. It will come to you,” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Better yet,” he said, and returned to Patrick’s side.

  Despite Patrick’s weak protests, he returned his hand to his grandson’s brow and pushed. His hand plunged to his wrist, and Patrick’s mind exploded into more visions of darkness and damnation.

  Again he saw the naked man kneeling over his wife and child. This time Patrick recognized Joseph, his face not yet transformed by lunacy. Figures surrounded them. They were hooded in black with their faces obscured, yet glowing like specters in the subdued light of the candles that each one of them held.

  The fall of the knife was answered by a shriek of agony. The blade rose and fell again, and mother’s and daughter’s blood ran and mingled between them. Wisps of smoke rose from the pooled liquid, twirling seductively, meshing and becoming whole. A diffused blackness like charcoal formed, emitting a stench of sulfur so corrupt and hideous it raised the gorge and made breathing nearly impossible. From the sanguine smoke, a form emerged—something came forth, impossibly huge, robed and hooded, yet it stood as a man does. Its eyes glowed yellow, not of gold, but of malignant infection and depravity, pouring abomination upon those present. Many of the hooded figures fell to the floor, whether unconscious with fear or in death, it was unclear.

  Turning its enormous girth toward the naked man, it raised its arm. In the voice of the damned, it said, “Come.”

  The naked man rose, trembling visibly, but willingly moved forward.

  “Come,” it repeated to two of the hooded figures. They obeyed,
and stood on either side of the naked man, each taking an arm. Realizing their intent before his captors even did, the man struggled to free himself.

  The robed giant again raised its arm toward the man, its sleeve falling back to expose a hand covered in patches of black scales and fur. Powerful fingers with long, blackened nails like scalpels clicked inches from the struggling man’s face. With surgical precision and speed, it brushed one nail across the man’s chest, leaving a gaping laceration from his left shoulder to his right nipple. The stunned man gawked at his splayed flesh, and then shrieked in agony and disbelief.

  The demon inserted a finger between two ribs and quickly pushed, then retracted. The bones yielded and others snapped like sticks as the naked man convulsed, his limbs jerking violently in the final throes of death. He collapsed between the two disciples, and as his body hit the floor, the woman’s swollen stomach quivered from inside.

  With its bloodied hand, the demon carved a line across the woman’s underbelly, slicing through flesh and muscle, spilling still warm innards, ejected by the internal pressure of the pregnant belly. At the demon’s silent direction, one of the hooded figures withdrew the knife from the woman’s breast while another sifted through the woman’s entrails and lifted a gore-coated bundle from the viscera. With a quick swipe of the blade, the womb was cut open, releasing an amniotic flood and exposing the child within.

  Inconceivably, the child cried out in protest.

  Joseph removed his hand from Patrick, who dropped to the floor, retching brutally.

  “Ol’ Scratch pulled a fast one on us, didn’t he?” said Joseph with a chuckle. “He gave what he promised to us, but there’s a price. There’s always a price, but we humans are too foolish to learn this. We think it will be different for us, and perhaps it is, but it is never in our favor.”

  He stepped over to the longue and sat near Melissa’s body. Patrick wanted to object—to drive him away from his daughter—but how could he, after what he had already done to her?

  “The lives of our wife and child didn’t seem like that much, did it?” asked Joseph. “After all, we would be immortal. We’d have plenty of time to remarry and populate our world with scores of children, right? That was our sin.” He rubbed Melissa’s head with mock affection, looked quickly to Patrick, and then he rose.

  “Have you ever read the Bible, grandson?” he asked. “Or should it be, did we read the bible in this lifetime?”

  He moved to Anne’s corpse and stood over her. Patrick remained kneeling, staring at the floor and not answering.

  “I thought not. But I’m sure that you’ve heard that the wages of sin is eternal damnation.” Joseph met Patrick’s terrified eyes again. “Well, here we are! How do you like it?”

  “We have to stop it, there has to be a way,” said Patrick.

  “Impossible, we own it. Is bought and paid for. It’s our baby now, so to speak,” Joseph said, rubbing the toe of his shoe over Anne’s belly.

  “Stop that!” Patrick barked.

  Joseph ignored him. He leaned over and patted Anne’s distended stomach.

  “See this?” he asked. He looked up at Patrick and smiled widely. “That little bump is us. Full circle, you see? They always save the baby.” He patted the belly again, as if it were a commendable dog. “Unless we are born again, we cannot enter into the Kingdom of Hell. That’s not exactly how John said it, but in our case … it fits.”

  Joseph rose and walked toward Patrick.

  “You’ve laid the path without even realizing it. Have you recently updated your will, Patrick?”

  Patrick nodded and climbed unsteadily to his feet.

  “Let’s see, I imagine you left everything, your inherited fortune, your home, to Anne. Upon her death, it goes to Melissa and the unborn child, am I correct?”

  Patrick nodded. He leaned back against the wall and rubbed his face with his hands, while noticing the barely perceptible whine of sirens in the distance

  “Who gets custody upon the death of both parents?” asked Joseph.

  “Anne’s mother. Melissa’s grandmother and godmother,” Patrick dismally said.

  “And there you go! It’s always the same! We are a perpetual machine.”

  “We can kill the baby.” Desperation crackled in Patrick’s voice. “We can make sure it’s dead.”

  “You have the knife,” said Joseph. He stepped back and presented Anne’s corpse to him with exaggerated formality like a butler at a doorway.

  Patrick looked at Anne’s slightly opened eyes and turned away, knowing it would be impossible to drive the blade into her again. He felt a panic rebuilding within him as the sound of the sirens intensified.

  “It’s inevitable,” smiled Joseph. “It’s hopeless. It’s eternal.”

  “What if we stop it where it started?” Patrick snarled. He lunged at Joseph and drove the knife under Joseph’s collarbone, up to the hilt. Patrick held the insane man in an embrace, not allowing him to move. He saw the alarm in Joseph’s eyes, but the shock slowly faded into an inhuman grin, and Joseph erupted into manic laughter.

  A commotion rose from outside, footsteps rumbled across the porch and search lights flashed across the windows from outside. Patrick looked from window, to door, and to window again, frantically seeking a means of escape.

  “We have company,” Joseph said whimsically through his laughter, exposing an evil rictus of a smile and the true depths of his insanity. “Your ignorance awes me.”

  Joseph returned Patrick’s tight embraced. A nefarious force generated between them, drawing them together, merging them. Patrick tried fighting the leering man, feeling as if every nerve ending had been ignited as his flesh, muscles, and organs wove together, and the two bodies became one.

  Glass exploded from a window to his left, fragmenting into a glittering shower.

  “Hold it! Police!” someone shouted from outside. A revolver pointed at him through the broken window.

  Patrick darted toward the door, but it slammed open in a spray of splintering wood as two more officers rushed in in a crouch, arms extended with guns pointed.

  Patrick darted to his right, across the great room and past the grand mirror. He suddenly stopped.

  Behind his frenzied reflection, three children and three women stood, staring at him, sadness and accusation in their eyes. Their mouths moved with unclear words, sounding like a litany. One of the women walked toward him. She was naked, holding together the lips of a gaping wound on her abdomen. Their words became clearer as she came closer, “Forever … forever … forever.”

  “I SAID DON’T MOVE!” a voice bellowed from behind him.

  He looked at the reflection of three police officers aiming pistols at him, and the fading remnants of his six victims. Tears streamed down his face as he turned to the wary officers.

  “This has to end,” Patrick said, raising the knife like a ceremonial dagger, and then diving at Anne’s pregnant form.

  The bullet entered just behind Patrick’s right ear.

  The police were rushing to the bodies of Anna and Melissa before Patrick’s body hit the ground.

  “Oh, Jesus!” cried an officer. “He stabbed the girl, too!”

  “My god, the woman’s pregnant!” said another.

  With the last beat of his heart, Patrick saw the unborn baby twitch visibly beneath Anne’s blouse.

  Succumb

  Open your eyes.

  Yes. That’s right, baby.

  Oh, I startled you … even though I’m using my sexy voice. Sorry. Do you like it, though? Even Marilyn Monroe couldn’t purr like this.

  Let you go? Why? What would that accomplish? Besides, honey, you don’t want me to let you go.

  Don’t fight. Save your energy. I don’t want you to waste it. I’m going to want every bit of it.

  Here, let me turn the light on. Yeah, that’s better. The soft lighting is nice, you little Romeo, you. Very romantic.

  Hmmm. I’m not what you expected, am I? I can see you’re conf
used, but I can feel something under me that says you’re not exactly put off, either. I am quite the looker, aren’t I?

  Who am I?

  You don’t know? Odd, you’ve mentioned me often enough.

  No? Well, maybe it’d be better if you asked what I am. Ooohh, furrowed brow. Okay, here’s a little hint; in Latin my name means “To Lie Under,” and that’s exactly what you’re doing now.

  To lie under.

  Another thing I am is … I am exactly what you would want for your ultimate fantasy.

  No reason to be shy, just admit it. I know what you look at on the internet; I’ve seen what you like. You store the images in hidden folders, blondes, brunettes, redheads, so many pictures … Thousands. Dominatrix, gay, eighteen and older …

  … under eighteen.

  Oh, don’t worry about me! I’m not the Judge.

  But I do know what turns you on. Long hair turns you on; long red hair really turns you on. The redder the better, isn’t that what you write, Mister i-1-2-do-U at livemail dot net? And hey, you’re in luck! I have both, long and red!

  How’s this? Is this red enough for you? No dye jobs here. This fire is all me.

  Come on, feel it.

  Yeah, I know, I’m kneeling on your arms. That’s what happens when you’re saddled and straddled. Here, feel it on your face, then. Do you like how it feels? Oh, I think you do. I just felt Mr. Happy jump up and nudge my ass.

  Here, feel my …

  … you’re looking at my tits.

  It’s all right. Take your time and enjoy the view. I’ll tell you what, this black leather is so confining, let me unzip, that way you can feel them, too.

  Oh yeah, your hands. Well, you really don’t need them right now. Let’s just reposition them down here a bit. Look at that, perfect for holding my ass.

  Now tell me, aren’t these the breasts you like best? D-cup. Dee for delectable? No silicone, no saline, just soft, perky pleasure. Feel it on your face? Hmmm. You like it playful, don’t you?