Bone: A Dark Billionaire Romance (With bonus book Exhibit!) (2 page)

There is nothing of interest. Circulars, bills and invitations, all of which I stack into a pile and carry back over to Dana's desk. I open the mail and she goes through it, that's the agreement we have.

I dig the dagger back into the cork block I keep it in, and go back to the snake tank. It takes me a little while to find him, but when I do, I am delighted to see the back end of the rabbit still protruding from his dislocated jaws, blood on the leaves around him.

"Are you sure you don't want to take a look at this, Dana?" I say with childlike enthusiasm. "It's just coming up to the best bit."

Dana ignores me, but it doesn't matter. As I watch the snake tear the sinewy flesh from the rabbit's skull, my mind wanders to Bone. I know it won't be too long before I see him again.

H
e's got her by the hair, dragging her across the kitchen floor, her eyes puffy and her legs kicking out behind her, trying to get purchase. Every so often, her dress falls apart where it's been torn, and I can see her bloody body beyond, covered in scars and bruises. There is a trail of blood and destruction that leads towards the kitchen chair he sits her down in, satanic messages scrawled across the walls behind, and boarded up windows where light has no chance of ever pushing through. We are on our own here, with shadows and death as our only company.

He binds her arms and legs with garden twine, ties her long hair to one of the upper slats of the chair so her neck is exposed, and then pulls off all of the rest of her shredded clothes, including her panties. With his victim prepared, he goes to the kitchen drawer and comes back with a huge carving knife. She is delirious, but not unconscious. When she sees what he has planned for her, out of the corner of a swollen eye, she screams with as much effort as she can muster. The chair rattles violently as she summons all of her remaining strength in an attempt to escape. She tries to tilt it sideways but she can't quite manage it. The sound of the metal chair leg against the tiled floor makes my skin fizz with excitement.

Blood spurts towards me, as I watch him dig the tip of the blade so forcefully into her chest, he pushes through her breast bone and almost completely out of the other side. From there, he drags it down between her tits, and opens her up like a fish's mouth. I want to cheer, but I know I'll probably get into trouble if I do so. Instead, I remain quiet and silently enjoy it as much as possible.

Into the wound, which runs from just below the girl’s throat, through the space between her tits, and just a few inches above her belly button, I watch him push forceps, ready to butterfly her ribs apart. It's not the most original thing to do, but it's still pretty disgusting, especially because she's not quite dead yet.

Some people have already left, and others are hiding their eyes now, either burying their faces into their boyfriend's chests or simply covering them with their hands. I turn quickly to look at Jasper, and although he's still watching, his face is screwed up into a wince.

The girl's screams are muffled now, like the sound of a puppy weeping into a cushion. In real life she'd already be dead. Sometimes that pisses me off about these films, but I know there is a line where reality meets fantasy, and often the most accurate isn't the most commercially rewarding. I guess you can't have it both ways, unless you're a master like Patrick Hunter or William Fassbender. Those guys kept their victims alive for days, torturing them to the point of death only to bring them back round again. I guess you need to know what you are doing in order to achieve that, because both of those guys had an academic history of anatomy or medicine. This guy, which is usually the case with these torture porn films, has a history of violence and sexual abuse. They are not always the best drawn characters.

With the forceps in place, he begins to pull them slowly apart. I hear a bone cracking crunch, and then a kind of skin tearing pop, and all of a sudden her chest has sprung open like the swing doors to a pub cellar, and her internal organs are all on display. With his cabinet open, her torturer takes his knife and stabs it through her liver. When her eyes flash open again, I know this has gone from the realms of possibility to the realms of absolute implausibility.

I lean over to Jasper. "That would never happen", I say.

Jasper is my best friend. He's not quite as knowledgeable as I am about serial killers and horrible acts of bloody, inexplicable murder, but he is passionate, and he does come along to every sick thing I drag him to, even if he spends half the time wincing, pretending he likes it.

"I know, right?" Jasper whispers. "Surely he'd cook the meat first."

We watch as the torturer, in this film a character called Tomlin Sharp, begins to eat his victim out, but not in the conventional way. He gobbles up her liver, swallows down her pancreas, feasts on her spleen and works his way through her kidneys. When he's finally full, the poor girl is left with nothing but a pair of shriveled lungs, and a barely beating heart. The rest of her chest cavity is completely empty. No stomach, no lower intestines, no appendix or gall bladder.

Tomlin puts his knife and fork down, wipes his mouth with the corners of a tea towel, and makes his way behind the chair. The girl is still begging for mercy, as though there is some slim chance he'll let her go, and when he does, she'll make a full recovery. With his foot on the back of the chair, he tips her over. Out of the cavity he has just created, hang lungs that look like a pair of under inflated footballs.

There are slats in the chair that expose the girl, and just before the scene fades to black, we see Tomlin lower his pants, his huge cock springing into action, ready to slide inside her.

There is an audible groan in the audience, before the credits roll.

I’m about to launch into a diatribe, but I just can’t be bothered. My expectations were low enough to not feel all that disappointed. I jab Jasper in the ribs to let him know it’s time to go and we follow the herd back out into daylight.

***

J
asper covers his burger in ketchup from a clear sachet that looks just like a blood transfusion bag. I won't point that out to him because I know it'll put him off his food.

"So what did you think?" I ask him.

Jasper shrugs. "Ok, I guess. It wasn't very realistic was it?"

I sigh. "They never are anymore", I say. "I think they are finally running out of good ideas."

"Maybe they just need more inspiration."

"We need another good serial killer for that", I say. "We haven't had a really good one for ages. No one like Hunter."

"Hunter wouldn't have eaten them though, would he?"

"No, not Hunter. Felix Lopez might have done, he liked to skin his victims, boil what he took off so it was tough like leather and walk around with it on under his clothes. Gray Guthrey used to like chopping people's cocks off and feeding them to the guests at his hotel without them knowing about it. Not many people go for the eating internal organs and then having sex with their corpses, especially not at home, alone, where nobody can see you."

"She wasn't dead at that point", Jasper points out, his mouth half full of burger.

"Actually, you're right, it's not quite necrophilia, but it’s pretty close. Necrophilia is badass though. There is nothing like fucking the dead, especially if you dig them up first. That's original. I'd like to see much more of that."

I give Jasper a wide smile, wondering if he can pick up on my sarcasm.

"You're sick, you know that?"

"You've known me a long time, Jasper, you already know that about me. Our relationship is based mostly on the fact that we both get fascinated by the macabre."

"No wonder we don't have partners."

"Partners are overrated", I say, and I wonder if he can see through my lie. I had half wondered about whether Jasper and I could get together, but he's not my type and I've known him for so long he's practically my brother anyway.

"You know, I guess it just puts people off. You're hot, there's no doubt about that, but you're sick. You know, it's not the most appealing quality. I think it freaks people out."

"I'm not looking for a partner anyway", I say.

"That's bullshit", Jasper says. "You've been looking for a partner for as long as I've known you."

"You just don't want to have to come to the cinema with me and watch sick films."

"Have you ever wondered why you like it? You know, the crazy sick shit that you're into. All that snuff and torture porn stuff you get kicks out of showing me."

"Everyone's got hobbies", I say with a big smile on my face, twirling the straw in my milkshake.

We eat in silence for a while. Soggy chips and low grade beef burgers. I'm not a victim of sexual abuse. I'm not from a broken home. I've never killed anyone before, or watched anyone get killed, not in real life anyway. I guess I am just a little bit sick. I can't help if it turns me on, both physically and mentally. I guess I just like what I'm not meant to see, I guess I just like the taboo.

"What would you do if you met one in real life?" Jasper suddenly asks me, his eyes going wide. It's the kind of conversation I absolutely love.

"I'd pick their brains", I say. "If they didn't kill me first."

"With a knife and a fork?" Jasper asks, his eyebrow raised.

It's such a bad joke I have to pick up a french fry and throw it at him. Jasper ducks deftly, and it lands on the table behind him.

"Anyway, if they did kill me, I suppose that's the way I'd like to go out. It'd be much more interesting than getting run over, or having a heart attack, or something else conventional and boring. Imagine that, being fucked to death by a serial killer, you'd go down in history."

"You'd be dead. For most victims it's not a very dignified exit. I can't think of many that have gone in a nice way."

"Frank Cope used to kill his victims with massive doses of pharmaceutical drugs", I say. "That must have been quite an enjoyable ride."

"You'd still be dead", Jasper points out. "Wouldn't it be much better to be the serial killer rather than the victim? Nobody remembers the victims."

"I do."

"Yeah well you're weird, nobody else does. Not even the police."

"If I was the serial killer, I'd have to do the killing then. I'm not sure either of us are cut out for that."

"If it was a case of kill or be killed", Jasper says, "I know which I would choose.”

He slurps away at his choca-mocha smoothie, no sense of irony at all on his face. I knew there was a reason we were friends, it's because deep down, he's just as strange as I am. There is no way Jasper could be a killer though, he’s far too much of a softie.

"Will you come tomorrow?" I ask.

Jasper looks at me suspiciously. "You know I'm behind with my studies. My parents are going to stop my allowance if I don't make it through this year."

"Please, Jasper, I need the numbers. I'm on the edge of making this work, and with more people it'll look more professional. Besides which, you're like a good luck charm to me. I don't feel nervous with you there."

"I'm not sure."

"You can help me when I get stuck, prompt me with names of victims or bloody anecdotes I may have forgotten."

Jasper frowns, his eyebrows forming a long furry line in the middle of his forehead.

"Ok, you can hold my umbrella then for when it rains."

"You don't need me", Jasper says, taking a break from his drink.

"I'll buy you lunch afterwards. Please, Jasper. I need this to start working for me."

Jasper raises his eyebrows and sighs. "Alright then, but don't rope me into talking, you know how nervous I get with public speaking."

"Yes", I say, clapping my hands together excitedly. "Thank you, thank you. We'll start at ten, handing out the flyers."

"The flyers?!" Jasper complains.

I nod, slurping away at my drink to avoid talking to him.

"It better be a good lunch", Jasper says, already resigned to it.

I
have a group of four people. It was eight, but half of them dropped out, sickened by the long explanation I gave on how Langley liked to leave different parts of his victims in different mailboxes around the city. If they couldn't stomach the facts, why did they turn up for a serial killer tour in the first place?

Jasper holds my umbrella and looks at me nervously. I can tell he can't wait for this to be over. Of those that have stayed with me, one looks like he is taking notes for a potential sequence of equally gruesome murders at some point in the future, I have a pair of Japanese tourists that don't seem to be able to speak English but have been taking photos and nodding enthusiastically since we started, and a guy that looks like he's got lost on the way to a Calvin Klein model shoot in the city.

He's dressed sharply, has the bluest eyes I've ever seen, and tousled hair that falls around his shoulders so perfectly I have to keep looking at him to check that he's actually real. Honestly, he's so hot, I can hardly concentrate on what I'm saying. He keeps smiling at me encouragingly too, prompting me sometimes when I'm stuck for a word. I have no idea what he is doing here. The only thing I can think is that perhaps he's from out of town and he's got time to kill between photo shoots, or that he's lost his mind and is just as crazy as the people I'm diligently describing.

We've arrived at the end of the tour. As I stand at the entrance to the house where Peter Yalzut cut the throats of sixteen Lebanese children, the Japanese couple insist on taking a series of selfies with me and Jasper, who I think they see as either my glamorous assistant or my put-upon boss. While they try and drag the hottie and the crazy into the frame too, both of whom resist graciously, they smile radiantly and babble to each other enthusiastically in their native language.

I tell them Peter Yalzut is one of the only serial killers in modern history to only kill children. I tell them that he was a religious fanatic and a well known member of the community. I tell them that when he was finally caught and the house was excavated, they found the remains of twenty six other children buried in shallow graves in the basement of the property, children that had come into the country unofficially, and had never registered their details with any agency. As far as the country was concerned, they were ghosts and because of the number that were found, were constantly referred to in Yalzut's trial as the alphabet boys and girls.