Cellar Meat
She burned through the desert with a head full of cocaine and meth. Her knuckles were white on the steering wheel as the tach redlined and the needle trembled on E. The desert blurred by in a heat wave haze-a null-color tunnel flowing with the grey asphalt. She was the smell of the hot road and engine, the sound of her grinding teeth and the thrum of the motor. Sweat stung her wide eyes behind black shades. She was running.
Out of the mesas and sand and nothing, a gas station screamed towards her. The black Mustang geared down with the growl of a demon. She jammed the brakes and skidded into the gravel lot in front of the station. Dirt and stones spewed as she wrestled the car to the pumps. With fumbling fingers, she switched off the ignition.
She no longer knew how long she had been on the road. She had to piss...eat something...get water.
Her knees popped and the muscles in her legs screamed when she got out. Her head still vibrated from the drugs and the road.
Was this place even open? There were no cars in the lot, just a pile of rusting hulks heaped behind the stone-and-wood cabin of the station. She cracked her neck and lifted a nozzle, flicked a switch on the pump. It dinged.
She wedged the nozzle in the car's tank and peeled off her leather jacket. The wind blew through her black tank top but didn't do much to cool her down. She stretched and ran her fingers through short brown hair gone jagged from sweat and grease. Someone was watching her from the darkened window of the station. She could feel eyes burning into her back. She spun. A stooped old man in filthy overalls and an orange hunting cap waved at her from the entrance.
"Finally," Alice thought. She finished filling the tank and walked through the lengthening afternoon. In her head, everything was desert colors-old west sepia tone dust. She half expected a posse to ride out as the wind speckled her skin with sand. She opened the metal-and-glass door with the tinkling bell. The old man shuffled behind the counter as Alice looked around.
The place might have been new in the seventies. The desert had worn it out, though. The old man had coated the windows with a light-dimming film. Only a few overhead fluorescents still worked, casting a pale aura on the old timer behind the counter.
An ancient radio by the cash register buzzed about a couple from California found dismembered by the side of the road. The old man switched it off quickly.
"Don't nobody need to hear that," he smiled.
Alice lowered her glasses. There was nothing on the shelves or in the cold cases. The old man laughed softly and Alice noticed his odd, scarred lips.
"Food," Alice rasped.
"Hell. You're lucky I still got fuel," he chuckled.
Alice stepped to the counter as the room started to sway around her. She rubbed her face. Heat, drugs, dehydration-she felt like she might pass out.
She leaned against the counter, reached into her jeans pocket, and dropped a wad of bills on the dusty glass. A cold sweat broke out on her flesh. She felt ill.
The old man's whistle caught her attention. She followed his gaze to the crumpled hundred-dollar bills.
"Keep it," she slurred. "Just get me some water. You've got to have something to eat around here."
"Call me Jasper, Miss," he smiled as he snatched the cash and tamped it into a pocket on his overalls. His toothless gums glared pink. "You best have a seat and let me find somethin' for ya."
He ushered her around the counter and propped her on his stool. He patted her shoulder and disappeared through a doorway behind her.
Alice leaned her head on the counter top. She heard running water tumbling into a cup, the sound of a refrigerator opening and closing, plates knocking. As slow-burning stars lit up behind her eyes, she thought that Jasper must live here.
Was that a scream...muffled...far off?
Jasper set a glass next to her head. She sat up and fumbled it towards her mouth.
"Thanks," she managed before something thudded hard against the back of her head. She reeled and started to fall backwards as her consciousness dwindled to tunnel vision. Jasper caught her with his free arm. The other held a dead-blow mallet mockingly before her eyes. As the glass slipped from her numb fingers and shattered on the floor, she saw the homemade dentures he had slipped in. A mouth full of broken, rusty razorblade fragments set in epoxy grinned down at her.
"Fade to black, " she thought.
A chainsaw, that's what it was. Its roar filled the entire small world of darkness she had wakened to. Loud and grating, the saw rang in her ears and vibrated in her teeth.
Doubly odd, she was naked in an extremely confined space. Curled into a fetal position and laying on her side, she could barely move her head and hands. She was in a box of some kind. And there again, just below the growl of the saw, she heard the screaming again. It was closer this time. Not much further away than the saw itself.
Now the sharp tang of the saw's exhaust began to creep into the box. That, and the smell of death and blood, wood smoke and cooked meat.
The saw idled, drew away. There was a rap next to her head.
"Little Missy," Jasper said from just outside. The blades in his mouth distorted his words. Stark terror flooding through her body triggered a memory from her childhood: Kermit the Frog wearing dentures.
"Now where the fuck did that come from?" she wondered.
"This here's a little game I like to play sometimes. Made this box just for you," Jasper continued. "Now, where do I start cuttin'?" He tapped the box with the saw.
"The legs?" The saw roared.
"The middle?" Again.
"The head?" His laughter degenerated into a phlegmy cough. "Ain't you got nothin' to say?"
Alice gritted her teeth and clutched at the smooth sides of the box. "Go fuck yourself!"
"You got a filthy mouth, Little Miss!" Jasper cackled. "Good! Let's hear what else comes out of it!"
The other voice shrieked. It was a high-pitched man's scream. "No! Jesus! Don't do that!"
"You shut up!" Jasper called back.
She heard the saw bite into the lid of the box above her lower legs. Sawdust began to pelt her flesh as the breeze created by the whirling chain played through.
Alice tried to pull her legs up tighter, but her knees collided with the wall of the box. The saw sputtered and ground to a halt.
"Fudge!" Jasper yelled. He wrenched the chainsaw's bar out of the wood. In the sudden silence, Alice heard the other man sobbing.
"Shut up, ya ball baby!" Jasper slapped the man. He whimpered. Jasper huffed as Alice heard stairs creaking. "Helluva time to run out of gas." A door closed, higher up, and all was quiet.
"Hey!" Alice called out. The man sniffed. "Get me the hell out of here!"
"I can't," he moaned. "I can't move. He...oh, Jesus!"
"Damn it," she muttered. She looked towards her feet and saw a line of light-the gash that the saw had cut along that end of the box.
She pushed at the gap with her feet and felt the wood bow. The saw had weakened it, at least. She pushed hard, with both legs, contorting her body painfully. The wood began to crack as splinters pierced the soft flesh of her feet.
Grunting and cursing, rivulets of blood running down from her soles, Alice forced her legs straight. A section of the box top broke away. She heard the man gasp.
"Hurry, lady," he whispered. "Before he comes back."
Alice pushed off from inside the box and wriggled her legs and ass out. She realized, too late, that the box had been perched on top of a table of some kind. Off balance, the whole mess toppled to the side.
Alice crashed to a dirt floor and gasped as the impact winded her. She ignored the suffocating feeling and extracted herself the rest of the way.
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the glaring overhead shop lights. She crouched, stunned, as she took in the vision of Hell.
Dismembered corpses, bound by rough cords, hung from the iron rafters by giant S-hooks. It was hard to add up the halves and sides, the limbs and torsos. There was no telling how many people Jasper had strung up down there.
The cellar was a rectangle, with a fireplace in the far wall. Chunks of meat, sectioned legs and arms, roasted on multiple spits. On the long wall to her right, Alice saw bloody, rusting garden tools and butchering utensils. On the opposite wall, rickety stairs lead up to a ragged, worn door. The man mewled behind her.
Alice turned slowly. He was young, somewhere in his twenties, with short brown hair. It was impossible to tell what his physique had been. In fact, Alice couldn't tell just what was wrong with him or the wooden chair he sat on. Then, she saw the nails.
His flesh had been pulled taught and nailed to the chair. Bones showed beneath the stretched skin where his arms, legs, ass, and chest had been pinned to the piece of furniture.
"Please," the man whispered. "Help me!"
"I don't have time for this shit," Alice mumbled.
As if on cue, the door at the top of the stairs rattled. Alice ducked under the open staircase. She could see the chair man between the rungs of the steps. She held her finger to her lips and he nodded. Jasper's shuffling tread sounded from above.
"Well, Little Missy! Let's hear your potty talk, now!"
His feet appeared on the step before Alice. The crazy old fuck was wearing slippers, she noted. Her hands darted out and caught his ankles as he moved to take another step.
"Jaysus!" he yelped, and tumbled the rest of the way down. The chainsaw clattered from his grasp.
"Yes!" the chair man yelled. "Die, you bastard!"
Alice grabbed the saw and stood over Jasper. The old man moaned in pain, not quite conscious. His bladed dentures had further slashed his lips.
"Kill him!" the man in the chair screamed. "Kill him!"
Alice looked up at him. "What's your name?"
"William," he said, wide eyed.
"Do me a favor, William. Shut the fuck up."
She found her clothes where Jasper had tossed them in a ragged pile in the corner of the room. She brought his radio down and plugged it into an outlet, set it on the workbench under the wall of Jasper's tools.
"What are you doing?" William asked. He looked at the table, upright again, where Alice had wrestled Jasper into place. Lengths of cord Alice had cut from the hanging bodies tied the old man down.
"Shh." Alice turned the radio on.
"Why won't you help me?" William's voice rose. "Why aren't we getting the hell out of here?"
"Cause' she's on the run, Billy," Jasper said conspiratorially.
"Awake finally?" Alice asked, turning around. Country music twanged from the little speakers of the radio.
"I knew you was on the run when I first saw ya," Jasper grinned. "Knew nobody would miss ya. Just like Billy, here."
Alice smirked, then held up a finger for silence. Another news flash came across the radio.
"An update on that couple," the announcer droned. "It's believed the assailant stole their vehicle, a black early-model Mustang with California plates. Investigators currently have few leads so if you happen to see such a vehicle, authorities can be reached at the following number...."
Jasper laughed quietly on the table. "Not bad."
"That's you?" William gasped. Alice ignored him. She was hungry again.
She walked over to the fireplace and inspected the flesh on the skewers.
"My cellar meat," Jasper mused. "Ain't none better."
"Oh my God," William sobbed.
Alice pulled a forearm out of the fireplace. She tore a chunk from the bone and chewed. "You're right," she mumbled to Jasper.
William closed his eyes. "You're a monster."
"You gonna' cut us up?" Jasper's eyes lit with glee. "Eat us? I would," he giggled.
Alice picked up the saw and shrugged. "Looks like I have time to kill."
Outside, the desert sun set. The lonely wind blew dust and the faint sound of screams.
