I Am Death

Eighty-six

Squirm hadn’t slept at all. How could he? Every time he closed his eyes he saw her. Naked. Arms stretched out above her head. Her body dangling from that wooden beam while suspended by the chain shackled to her wrists. He would never forget the way in which she had looked at him.

The terror in her eyes.

The despair in her expression.

The fear that oozed from every pore in her body.

Alison. That was her name. Just like with the previous two women, ‘The Monster’ had made him repeat it until it was engraved on his brain.

‘The Monster’ had dragged Squirm out of his cell, tied him to a chair and made him watch as he slit that poor woman’s abdomen open. A cut so wide Squirm thought the man was about to sever her in half.

Blood cascaded through the cut in large crimson sheets, recoloring her legs before dripping down on to the floor, creating the biggest pool of blood Squirm had ever seen. And the smell that came with it was like nothing he had ever experienced before — sweet and metallic, as if the blood were made out of copper.

But all that blood was nothing compared to what had come next. With a bright smile on his lips, ‘The Monster’ had approached the woman, looked straight into her eyes and slowly shoved his hands deep inside the opening he had made. Seconds later, they came out holding on to her insides.

Squirm had felt bitter bile shoot up from his stomach and travel up his throat, but by now he knew better than to puke in front of ‘The Monster’. Clenching his teeth and squeezing his eyes tight, Squirm managed to swallow it all back down.

But ‘The Monster’ wasn’t done yet. He carefully began pulling and twisting whatever it was that he had ripped from inside her, creating some sort of visceral string and allowing it to drop down into the ever-growing pool of blood on the floor.

It became so long, Squirm could hardly believe it had all come from inside her.

But what had terrified Squirm to the point that he had wet himself was the fact that, through all of that, the woman was still alive. She was still conscious. Despite the devastating pain that she was going through, she also had to watch as ‘The Monster’ exenterated her like an animal, and spread her guts all over the floor like play dough.

‘This, Squirm, takes skill,’ the man had said to him as he plopped another piece of her insides on to the floor. Every time she looked like she was about to pass out, ‘The Monster’ would either slap her face or bring a small flask to her nose so she stayed awake.

Squirm wanted to look away but he’d found it impossible to. It was like he had been hypnotized by the savagery of it all.

Now, back in his cell, Squirm had a new thought and that thought carried with it a sliver of hope. The police might not have been looking for him but they sure as hell would be looking for those women. Unlike his own, their fathers hadn’t paid ‘The Monster’ to get rid of them. Squirm was certain of that. So, if the police were searching for the man who was abducting and killing those women, the police were searching for ‘The Monster’. And if they found him, they would find Squirm.

That thought planted a new seed of hope inside the boy’s heart.