Captured Souls (24 page)

As I mused, hoping to discover a hole in the problem that I hadn’t quite seen yet, Specimen 1 flung his bandaged arm across me, hugging me to him in a spoon. His body flush against mine, he was hard in his dreams. I wiggled back against him, angling myself so that his still-perfect cock entered me. I nearly cried with relief, with desire, as we moved together in a sleepy morning rhythm. His cock sliding in and out of me was a blessing I never thought I’d experience in the flesh again. I let myself enjoy his thrusts, enjoying the sideways lovemaking. My fingers played with myself as he rocked me, and I indulged myself wholeheartedly with a climax, and then two.

When he came, the sounds that came from him were unearthly. A howl like a dying animal. He trembled and held me to him; then he sobbed. I didn’t once look at him, wanting to remember the vibrant young writer I’d met at the university.

At last, I released myself from his hold. I crawled from the bed, now a soupy mess from his infections, loosened bandages and our sweat.

In the shower, I cried and part of me wished he would be gone when I returned back to the bedroom. After all, there were no more locks, no more chastity belts, no more bracelet.

But he was there, sitting up, his bandaged hands holding his bandaged head.

“Help me,” he whispered.

Specimen 1

He was real. He was alive. My shock and joy at seeing him made flesh once more was a combination of awe and fear.

He was not doing well. His body was falling apart. And his handsome face wasn’t handsome at all. Blue-green, bloated, swollen, flesh actually ripped and torn in spots like old clothes.

“How did you…get like this?” I asked him.

“I don’t know. I remember some woman doing things to me in the lab. Cutting, poking, prodding. She took me somewhere else. But then she just never came back. I was able to escape and found my way back here. You have to help me, Doctor, help me get back together.” His words were slurred as he spit out a couple of teeth.

I examined Specimen 1. His wounds from where she had placed implants were infected; his chest was swollen, puffy with rigor mortis. His hands were green as they died.

I had to help my Specimen 1, but I wasn’t certain it was possible.

“Don’t worry, we’ll have you back together in no time,” I promised him.

But I didn’t know how I was going to do that.

I went into my laboratory and stared at the replicas of his body, but I knew false body parts wouldn’t fix what was happening to him. He was already dead and Specimen 5 hadn’t reanimated him properly. Even getting a different body wouldn’t help since the implants were gone and I couldn’t put his essence into a new one.

Journal

He’s back at work on the computer and seems delighted to be writing again. He was still bandaged from the waist up, yet there were no bandages from his elbows down. His head was unbandaged too. It was too hard for him to type all tightly bound up.

I stood in his doorway and watched his puffy fingers click away at the keyboard. He looked over at me and grinned, his beautiful smile ruined by the gaps where several teeth had fallen out. He was nearly bald from clumps of hair having fallen out. Yellow-green pus oozed through the bandages.

“Mind over matter. My fingers must work.” Then he typed some more, words appearing on the computer screen as beautiful and lyrical as ever.

“Miriam,” he said, “I had the perfect life with you. I want to keep living it.” He reached for a cigarette and tried to light it, his fingers clumsy, his black lips barely able to purse around it. He held the cigarette in his mouth as he typed a bit more. The smell of his rotting flesh offends my nostrils, but I keep pumping air freshener into his room. I continue to watch him, watch his words float up onto the screen.

Specimen 1 turned around to stand up but his hands remained on the keyboard. We both stared in horror at the hands continuing to type while he stood up. His arms didn’t bleed but a massive rush of green pus spilled out. The smell was revolting and I nearly threw up.

“How?” I gasped as the hands continued to type.

Specimen 1 reached towards me, his face in anguish.

“Help me,” he said. “You have to fix me.”

“I can’t,” I told him.

I hurried away from him. His pleading followed me out of the room, but I shut and locked the door. In the monitors, I saw him raging, trying to drink from a scotch bottle with his stumps and eventually sinking to the floor in tears.

Tears ran down my own face. It was distressing to see that once beautiful body now destroyed. The brain still worked, his affection was still there for me, yet mind could not possibly win over that mess of matter.

I pored over books and notes all night, but there were no more secrets to pull from, no more connections and chemicals to cobble together my specimen.

I fell into a dark and restless sleep in the lab, my face mashed into my glasses as I snored on my journal.

Specimen 1

In the morning, he was dead. Really dead. His sunken bandaged body lay on the floor, flies already feasting within the spots where his flesh had split. Maggots crawled from his eyes and ears, and the stench was beyond human endurance. His hands lay on the keyboard, covered in flies.

The next phase was never to happen.

The perfection of my experiment was destroyed.

Journal

Experiment 698 was a failure. So close, so many times, and perhaps the final phase would have worked if Specimen 5 hadn’t kidnapped me. The forced nature of affection wasn’t terribly satisfying and the stress of monitoring so many specimens took a real toll on my nerves.

I’ve decided to settle into a life of complacency for a while, just let life happen to me.

There is always a new experiment to conduct.

There’s a guest author coming to the university next month. He looks quite handsome and his books are very well written.

I think I’ll make time in my schedule to attend his lecture.

About the Author

Sèphera Girón was born in New Orleans and currently resides in Toronto. After she graduated from York University with a Bachelor of Arts Degree, she had two sons, and began her writing career. Over twenty books later, she's still loving every minute of the business. When Sèphera isn't writing, she's editing for other authors. She is also a professional tarot counsellor and paranormal investigator. Sèphera wrote the cabaret play "The Get Happy Hour with Judy" which will premier in 2014 in Montreal, Toronto, and Chicago.

www.sepheragiron.com

tarotpaths.blogspot.ca

sephwriter666.blogspot.ca

Watch free monthly horoscopes cast by Sèphera at:
www.youtube.com/sephera

Look for these titles by Sèphera Girón

Coming Soon:

Flesh Failure

Blood! Bullets! Killer babes!

Go Kill Crazy!

© 2014 Bryan Smith

“It’s a man’s world,” according to the old saying. But a girl gang with no inhibitions when it comes to sex and violence would disagree. Dez, Echo and Lana are former strippers with lethal curves and bad intentions. Together they embark on a wild cross-country orgy of crime, leaving rivers of blood and piles of bullet-riddled bodies in their wake. Knowing they are destined to die young—and probably violently—the girls get their kicks while they can, never suspecting they are on a collision course with notorious cult guru John Wayne de Rais and his fanatical followers. Buckle your seatbelts and hang on tight, because things are about to get crazy for the sexiest thrill killers the world has ever seen.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Go Kill Crazy!:

Quincy was strapped to a chair in the musty living room of a very decrepit house in a poor area of town. From where he sat, he could see a sagging blue sofa that was missing a cushion. Directly across from the sofa was a boxy Magnavox television with a cracked screen. He saw bookshelves that had once been lined with books and knickknacks. The books and knickknacks had been swept to the floor, perhaps by some junkie in search of a hidden cache of money. Gauzy curtains on the windows blocked a view of a tiny yard surrounded by a chain-link fence. He had glimpsed the shabby exterior of the house prior to being coaxed inside by the girls. How stupid he had been not to realize something was up at that point. Supposedly they were staying in a nice hotel in town, yet here they were entering this hole in what he knew was a drug-infested, high crime neighborhood. But he had been too in awe of them. Too drunk. And, yes, too dumb.

Fun gave way to horror almost immediately. A savage beating got things underway. He was a big guy, but there were three of them. And they were younger and far more fit. They punched him and slapped him, bouncing him around the room like a pinball. Then Dez landed a kick to his balls that sent him mewling to the floor. She wore white platform go-go boots. He felt like he had taken a cannonball to the nuts. A sturdy old chair was dragged into the room from some other part of the house. They used two entire rolls of duct tape to secure him to it. And then the real torture got underway. It had gone on until roughly half an hour ago. He had been cut on and beaten so mercilessly that he only hoped for a swift end to it all. He knew they planned to kill him. He didn’t understand it, but he had come to accept it. He just wanted his pain to end.

But they had abruptly ceased torturing him and gone off to another room to confer about something. Then, without a word to him, they left the house. He heard their car start up and drive away.

They were coming back. There was no doubt of that. He could give the police extremely vivid descriptions of all three girls. No way would they chance that.

The extended time alone was a different kind of torture. All he could do was think and be perfectly aware of the hopelessness of his situation. He still couldn’t fully grasp why this was happening. He had made a lame joke about the one girl’s name. He hadn’t meant it as an insult. It wasn’t fair he was suffering for something so insignificant. They were psychopaths. There was no other explanation. They were bad.
Evil
. He had known men like them. Grifters and hardcore criminals from the Dirty Halo’s old days. Vicious bastards who’d cut a guy’s throat over pennies. But you didn’t expect that kind of thing from women. Especially not pretty women.

Stupid
, he thought.
I’m so stupid.

He saw a dim glow of headlights through the gauzy curtains as a car pulled up to the curb out front.
Their
car. It was a black Impala from the 70’s. A big car with a powerful engine that made a lot of noise. Its throaty rumble resonated in the street outside a few more moments before it ceased. Shortly thereafter he heard a buzz of feminine voices and heels clacking on the sidewalk. Quincy’s heart pounded as the voices drew closer. Then a key rattled in the lock and the door came open.

All three girls entered bearing paper sacks. Dez shifted the sack she was carrying from one arm to another and he heard a clink of glass. Liquor store purchases. For them, this was a party. They weren’t just doing this out of a sense of payback for a perceived slight.

They were doing it because they
enjoyed
it.

Echo pointed at his stained crotch and said something demeaning. Then they were all laughing like escaped lunatics. Which, come to think of it, maybe they were.

Lana kicked the door shut and followed the other girls into the living room. Dez removed several clear bottles from a sack and set them on the floor. Vodka and grain alcohol. All very high-octane stuff. Quincy had to wonder why so much of it.

Echo emptied another sack of what turned out to be hardware store purchases. A hammer. Nails. A Black & Decker power saw. And an acetylene torch.

Quincy’s chest hitched and he struggled to swallow. A bleak, black hopelessness engulfed him. He was in hell. This house was hell. And these three deceptively beautiful girls were Satan’s emissaries on earth.

Lana removed six-packs of cold beer from another sack and nodded at him. “Look. It’s crying again.”

All three looked at him then.

And giggled like schoolgirls.

Captured Souls

Sèphera Girón

Can science create the perfect lover?
 
Or only a living hell?

Dr. Miriam Frederick is a brilliant professor at a large university. But her latest experiments are decidedly unsanctioned and far more chilling than anyone could imagine. She is determined to answer questions that have plagued mankind for millennia. What is love? What is lust?

Her first specimen is an author with a gift for language. Specimen Two is an athlete with amazing endurance. Specimen Three provides physical beauty. But once she has trapped her subjects, her twisted attempt to create the perfect lover will have unexpected—and nightmarish—results, not just for her captives, but for her as well.