Kicking the sated bones under the moldering bed, she wondered, in the meantime, if Tony"s wife liked blondes. Opening the door to step with antic.i.p.ation into daylight, she resolved to find out.

Blind in the House of the Headsman.

Mehitobel Wilson.

"Blind in the House of the Headsman" first appeared in Brainbox 2: Son of Brainbox, edited by Steve Eller, 2001.

Mehitobel Wilson has been publishing horror fiction since 1998. She is a Bram Stoker Award nominee, and many of her stories have been granted Honorable Mentions in the Year"s Best Fantasy and Horror series. Recent stories appear in Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues, Zombies: Encounters with the Hungry Dead, Sins of the Sirens, d.a.m.ned: An Anthology of the Lost, and Dead But Dreaming: New Excursions in the Lovecraftian Universe, and selected stories have been collected in Dangerous Red. If you can"t p.r.o.nounce her name, call her "Bel."

May was inside the wall, and her eyes were open. Better on her back than on her knees; the shards of paneling would cut her throat, and her bruised knees couldn"t take her own weight anymore, much less his.

Maybe, baby, Maybe, she heard, his name for her.

Maybe, baby. She blinked and stared at the clean studs, still fragrant, packed with nubby gray insulation that puffed lint into her eyes with each Maybe thrust. The back of the paneling was satiny and printed with blue letters, the closest ones clear, the rest shadowed. The few she could read ran through her head, AST, and she tongued her palate, chanting the letters silently.

Maybe. Maybe he had punched through her face instead, and her brain"s best guess at peace was this s.p.a.ce inside the wall. Maybe she was vibrating on the verge of death, the stabbing at her nape the last sparks of her spinal conduit. When death came, she would no longer remember him looming redfaced over her as she crabbed back onto the pillows, pressing her head against the wall, pulling his fist back and slamming it beside her face, catching one of her curls and tearing it from her skull as he punched through the paneling. Maybe, baby, maybe he hadn"t gnawed her jawbone, steered her bloodied skull into the hole with a sustained bruise of a kiss, bitten her trachea and pressed her chin back with his hardboned face, shoved her head through, let the hole"s edges score her forehead, her neck.

Maybe, baby, gusted the breath that powered his bloodstreaked c.o.c.k, and she knew she was only in the wall.

May felt the cool gla.s.s of his ashtray settle on her sternum and knew this would take a long time. Her headless body lay before him. He would smoke an extra few cigarettes, she knew, and savor this. Her body was outside the wall. It was his.

AST AST AST ticked against the backs of her teeth, matching the rhythm. She felt the soft and dusty press, withdraw, press of insulation on her crown.

Her head was her own.

He owned the rest. In surgery, a wall of blue fabric had blocked her view of her own opened flesh. Sacs of saline were tucked beneath her pectoral muscles. He had used her v.a.g.i.n.a so thoroughly that it was as stretched as that of a mother thrice over. d.i.l.d.os, fists, implements inspired by those he"d seen used in black-market j.a.panese films. He paid for her c.u.n.t to be tightened. Skin cultured in sheets from the cells of discarded foreskins, skin meant to reconstruct the features of burn victims, was trimmed into a new hymen and sewn to bridge her bruised soft walls. Nipped and tucked to be ripped and f.u.c.ked. Again. All that lay on the far side of the sheet, and May, conscious, examined the warp and weft of the fabric, memorized the blue, called it cornflower, and felt none of the things they were doing to his body.

Two years later, he had undone all the work he"d bought between her legs, and had cultivated new tastes. Soon she would be on the table again, the saline sacs would be dragged from the muscles that had scarred around them, the natural tissue of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s would be scooped free and dropped into a Biohazard vat, and crescents of skin would be cut away, leaving her with the flat and aching chest of an adolescent. He"d tighten her again, of course, and he"d pay for electrolysis, leaving her mons bald as a child"s.

For now, nothing beyond the wood was hers. May read the cornflower letters branded on the pressboard. She didn"t feel it when he pulled his c.o.c.k from her, didn"t hear the foil tear or the latex snap, didn"t hear the tink of his cla.s.s ring against the bottle of Tabasco sauce, didn"t feel the nuclear conflagration when his c.o.c.k seared into her again. She ticked AST, still, against her teeth.

She let him have the body and the head knew nothing of it. May, behind the wall, thought of guillotines, of revolt and freedom. She tasted fibergla.s.s on her smile.

Then she felt hands on her jaw, hands wet with blood and pepper sauce and viscid s.e.m.e.n, and they fell to her throat and slipped firm behind her neck, fanned fingers open to cradle her skull and draw her forth from the wall. She made a small sound, disappointed, as she came forth into the world again.

Maybe, my beautiful little thing, she heard. She clenched her eyelids and felt sharp crusts of insulation clotted between them. The pillow was soft against the highest k.n.o.bs of her spine when he lay her down. She knew she would bleed on the sham and that he would be angry later.

But for now, May was a good lay, a beautiful little thing. She felt him stroke her hair and tried not to wince as red pepper burned the cuts bristling with splinters across her forehead. She felt pressure from beneath her shoulders; he was pulling the bedspread up, cradling her. He wrapped the flannel around her and lifted her into his arms, held her head against his shoulder. Her eyes were closed, still. She swayed in his grip and he shifted her to one arm as he used the other to run the shower. She felt the air around her grow heavy with humidity.

He let her down and purred at her, helped her step blindly over the side of the porcelain tub and into the running shower. When the water hit her flesh she flinched before realizing that it was good, not the scalding rain into which he often cast her. He gently thumbed the insulation from her eyes. He was so very kind sometimes, like now, with the good water. He loved her so.

She opened her eyes and saw herself as he did.

May, outside the wall, saw nothing at all.

An Experiment in Human Nature.

Monica J. O"Rourke.

"An Experiment in Human Nature" first appeared in The Rare Anthology, edited by Brian Knight, 2001, Disc-Us Books.

Monica J. O"Rourke has published more than seventy-five short stories in magazines such as Postscripts, Nasty Piece of Work, Fangoria, Flesh & Blood, Nemonymous, and Brutarian, and anthologies such as The Mammoth Book of the Kama Sutra, The Best of Horrorfind, Strangewood Tales, and Darkness Rising. She is the author of Poisoning Eros I and II, written with Wrath James White, Suffer the Flesh, and the collection Experiments in Human Nature. She lives in upstate New York. Visit her at www.facebook.com/MonicaJORourke.

This story was inspired by Clive Barker"s "Dread," though you would be hard-pressed to actually find any similarities. It also began my foray into writing hardcore (or splatterpunk) fiction and led to my collaboration with Wrath James White, Poisoning Eros parts I and II.

Ernest brushed the hair from his forehead with his fingertips and leaned against the wall, clumsily setting his gla.s.s upon the mantle.

Young men playing dress-up, sporting Ralph Lauren, knockoff rich man wannabees enjoying Ernest"s parents" good food and good smokes and good single malt, crashing in the Tudor-esque McMansion that felt somehow misplaced among the Hampton elite. Animal heads suspended from the walls gazed at them with dead eyes. A billiards table sat unused in the corner.

"Okay," Ernest said. "I promised you something interesting, right? Now we see if you two have the jewels to go through with it." Caleb uncrossed his spider legs and leaned forward. He set his cigar (the smoke was choking him anyway) in the oversized freestanding ashtray and rose to his full height. Stretching his arms overhead, his fingertips fell inches short of the eight-foot ceiling.

"This should be good," he said, cracking a smile.

Ernest smirked. "It wasn"t easy, but I think it"s worth it. Or will be, in the end. It"s brilliant."

Ian, almost invisible in the corner of the room, said, "What"d you do?" His blue eyes were intense as he squinted at the two other boys. Curly auburn hair and a baby face, he was the youngest of the trio at nineteen, but only by two years.

Ernest closed the double doors. "Keep it down. Some of the staff may still be wandering around. They might hear us."

"Staff?" Caleb scoffed, knowing the huge staff was composed of a cook and a housekeeper. "So what"s your big secret?"

Ernest cleared his throat and narrowed his eyes. "We swore that no matter what, we"d stick by each other, right?" He strummed his fingers on the edge of the table.

"Yeah, so? What"s got you so freaked?" Caleb said, though he nodded. "What"s your point?"

Ernest blinked, his long lashes almost dusting the tops of his high cheeks. "I"m not freaked," he snapped, and then composed himself. "A study in human nature. An experiment in perseverance."

"Blah, blah, blah ..." Caleb snapped. "Get to the point."

Ernest ignored him. "You think you have the stomach for such an experiment? One that will be messy? One that, I guarantee, will end ... badly?"

Caleb said, "Badly? What"s that mean?"

"We"ll be running some experiments. Okay? Just some tests. I got us a guinea pig."

"What kind of experiments?" Ian said, almost whispered.

Caleb c.o.c.ked his head. "Guinea pig, huh? Why do I get the feeling it"s not warm and furry."

Ernest smirked. "Oh, it"s warm and furry all right ..." He sat on the arm of the sofa. "Remember in Professor Klein"s cla.s.s when we studied about the strength of the human mind, and the ability of the body to persevere at any cost? What I remember most were the slides of the concentration camp survivors from the Holocaust, and the j.a.panese POWs. Remember?"

He paused briefly, looking from Caleb to Ian. "I"ve thought about that. A lot. Wondering ... you know, what someone might do ..."

"Might do if what?" Ian murmured. The air in the room felt heavy, as if coated in cotton. He pursed his lips, the color of his cheeks now matching his hair.

Ernest ignored him. "Thing is, there"s no turning back now."

Caleb shook his head and said, "Get to the point. What did you do?"

Ernest stared at Caleb as if deciding how to proceed, whether or not to let Caleb in on the secret. "It"s already begun. I need to know what to expect from you guys. Because let me tell you, if I go down, we all go down. One for all, and all that stupid Musketeers bulls.h.i.t, okay?"

He sat back in the chair and rubbed his palm across his mouth. "Here"s the thing. I think I can safely say I understand your character. I trust you guys. I think the three of us are of like minds."

There was no argument so far; the three were of like minds when it came to politics and religion. But Ian wasn"t entirely sure he shared the same belief system as Ernest, or shared his ethics. He was willing to listen, however.

"I found a ... a test subject. I"d like to see how much it will take to ... to, um. For him to break."

"Break?" Ian asked. "What"s that supposed to mean?"

Caleb snickered. "Are you saying what I think you"re saying?"

Ernest shrugged and began to laugh.

"Oh, G.o.d," Ian said through fingers splayed across his mouth. He leaned forward in his chair, and his face brightened as he finally realized what Ernest was talking about. "You"re talking about what? Breaking some guy"s will? Right? Am I right? Holy s.h.i.t, Ernest! Who"d you pick?"

"Nolan Pierson."

"Who?" Caleb asked, but Ian knew the guy. Nolan was in their psych cla.s.s, and was in Latin and chemistry with Ian and Ernest. Nolan was rather forgettable, with butchered black hair and oversized Buddy Holly gla.s.ses. The scholarship kid. His father was a janitor in the Harper Building on the west side of the campus. Every school has at least one Nolan-the kid whose Sears suit was never quite up to par, whose Pay-less shoes always fell apart a few months into the semester. The kid who wanted to fit in but just couldn"t afford to, his clothes and his efforts always being second rate.

Nolan was a throwaway human being.

And suddenly, the three seemed to realize almost simultaneously that they were of like minds. And like ethics.

"Him?" Caleb said. "I know who you mean. He won"t last-the guy"s a loser. He"s on scholarship, for G.o.d"s sake." He whispered the last part, as if naming a dreaded disease, as though naming his social status might inflict it on him.

"I think you"re wrong," Ernest said. "And there begins our experiment. Who better than some poor schmuck who"s had to struggle all his life to get what he wants? A guy who tries to fit in but never manages to. If he didn"t have some strength of character, I think he"d"ve blown his brains out by now, n"est-ce pas? This guy has what we"re looking for."

"You"re awfully empathetic," Caleb remarked, his eyes at half mast. He snorted. "Like you really give a s.h.i.t what this janitor"s kid"s been through."

Ernest opened his mouth but Ian cut him off. "What are you going to do to him?"

"Me? Not me-we. What are we going to do to him."

"Sure. Right. Then what?"

"Some tests." Ernest turned toward Caleb. "And to answer your question, d.i.c.khead-"

"I didn"t ask any f.u.c.king question. All I said was you"re full of s.h.i.t. You talk about him being poor and struggling and all that but you don"t care."

"Like you do?"

Caleb shrugged. "Never said I did. In fact, I don"t. But you. You"re full of s.h.i.t."

Ernest smiled. "Oh yeah? I already have him in the house. Doesn"t matter whether I feel sorry for him. All I wanna do is some experiments. Like I said, this has already begun. I invited him over and slipped some s.h.i.t into his drink."

"Well, I guess it"s started then," Caleb said. "I"m with you. I"m in."

"Just like that?" Ernest said.

"I trust you, man," Caleb said. "We"re like brothers. And I think this sounds f.u.c.king exciting."

They stared at Ian. He chewed his bottom lip. "I"m in. You know I"m in."

Ernest slapped his hands together. "We have the house to ourselves. My folks gave everyone the night off since they"re going into the city for the weekend. So there"s no one left to, um, hear anything. Besides, Nolan"s tucked away in a safe place. Soundproof."

"They gave everyone the night off, did they?" Caleb scoffed.

"f.u.c.k you, a.s.sbag," Ernest said. "Not everyone has staff who wipes their d.i.c.k for them." He led them across the room and reached behind the bookcase. "You see those old movies with the creepy old goth mansions that have these hidden pa.s.sageways and s.h.i.t?" He pushed a panel concealed behind a copy of The 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade. A door disguised to look like part of the paneling creaked open. A light, musky air a.s.saulted their nostrils.

"Oh gimme a f.u.c.kin" break," Caleb said.

"Shut up." Ernest ushered them inside and closed the door. They each held a flashlight, and Ernest led them down a hallway where the only sounds were their footfalls and the steady plinking of a leaky pipe.

They pa.s.sed through several doors. At the last door, Ernest reached up and punched in a series of numbers on a keypad, locking it behind them. "Can never be too careful. We don"t need company."