Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories (2 page)

by unfinished poetry and 157 sleeps filled with nightmares

and the blankets made of your memory. The cigarette smoke

from the circles under my eyes

caused me to bleed soot, to cry ash for so long

that my eyes crawled out of their sockets and rolled down the drain,

drowning in the sludge I coughed up from my lungs,

tangled in the hair that no longer brushed against my cheeks.

With them, went my lips, tired from too many months of promised love,

of forgotten kisses; they crawled off my face

like the worms I hoped would soon eat your body,

like the maggots that bred inside your mouth, that fucked

on the top of your tongue. My lips were poisoned by too many days

of neglect, and I washed them down the sink with the blood

that stained the flesh that covered my skull. It peeled off like soft clay

eager to fall from an unwanted body

where the cold would be forced to embrace it.

I spat at the looking glass that told me I was diseased,

that I was tainted, that I was foul, and I felt for the washcloth

I kept on the rack above the toilet I puked in three times a day. I turned

the faucet to cold, forced it to run ice, and I splashed a baptism

against my bare-bone face while I used the rag to shine my skull. I brushed cobwebs out of the hollows of my sockets, wove blood roses in their place, and in

the spots where I used to blush, I rubbed Gerbera daisies—

I bought them myself—until their burgundy color stained what used

to be my cheeks. And in that bathroom with three lightbulbs burned out,

and a tiled floor sticky with last night’s sweat, I tilted my head back and screamed

because death wasn’t something I felt, that I carried with me

in the rot in my chest, in the scratch at the back of my throat. It was something

that I wore. I ran my hands over the slick sheen of bone. I laughed at my blindness

because I could finally see. You took everything I had left, but there in that skeletal smile,

I’ve never been more beautiful, even after all the horrible things that I’d done.

PICKING SPLINTERS FROM A SEX SLAVE

Brian Kirk

The box he kept her in was five-and-a-half feet long. I got a glimpse of it as they hauled it from the house, three large policemen lifting on each side as though carrying a heavy coffin to a hearse. Wanting, I suppose, to be a part of history. To take a proverbial brick from the Berlin Wall. They all broke into sheepish grins as the cameras began to flash. Like best men walking down the aisle at a poon hound’s wedding. As if they’d done something noble or heroic, rather than finally follow up on the third tip dropped by a neighbor, who they’d locked up several times for petty crimes.

Five-and-a-half feet long. She was four-foot-nine when he took her. Would have been five-seven now if not for the stooped neck. If not for the stunted growth. But I guess her unattained height is the least of my concern. Or maybe it’s all summarized in that stolen inch.

Here’s how I found out they’d found her. I’m driving home from a gig—I live in Jersey now, I lived in Connecticut then. I’m listening to 96.1
The Thump
on the FM dial—which was Meagan’s favorite station. Back then. The one she made me listen to while driving her to-and-from school. It played six minutes of pop songs sandwiched between sixteen minutes of ads for Clearasil and maxi pads. You’d think I would have stopped listening to the station after she was gone, but I couldn’t. In the six years she was missing, the station changed format eight times. Went from pop to oldies to NPR back to pop to sports talk to classic rock back to pop to contemporary rock, which I think just means bland music. It’s terrible, but, then again, I’m not really listening.

They interrupted a Bryan Adams song with one of those screeching AMBER alert sounds. Then, from the ethereal airwaves sent from some turnstile station, I hear:

We have breaking news to report to you right now.

Oh my goodness we do.

Yes, my goodness. Meagan Towser, a young girl from the tri-state area who was reported missing six years ago, has just been located.

Amazing, just amazing.

Amazing is right. According to sources on the scene she has been held captive all this time in a house mere miles from the home she was allegedly abducted from.

I imagine the radio waves streaming through the air like some toxic breeze. Birds falling dead from the sky in droves. The voices get huskier, grave and earnest.

Reports indicate she may have been held captive in a box.

Oh, God, that’s terrible.

Terrible.

Oh, God.

God, that’s terrible. Just terrible.

Terrible, God.

I live alone in a tiny condo now, I lived in a ranch home with a family back then. The one Meagan was taken from by a not-too-distant neighbor. It was me, my wife, Debbie, and a dog named Nugget, but Nugget ran away. Nugget smelled like Doritos chips and attic dust, but I loved the little fella. Debbie ran away too. She had smelled more like spring air fabric softener.

Sometimes I wonder if Debbie took Nugget like that not-too-distant neighbor took our little girl. Come to think of it, we crated our dog during the daytime as well. And did so out of love.

Let’s get back to the box. Four rough-hewn sheets of plywood bought from Home Depot and cut by one of the store’s employees. The planks still had the lumberyard’s orange logo painted on each side. Soft wood that splintered easily, evidenced by the back of Meagan’s shoulders, arms, and legs. Skin pocked like strawberry seeds from all the untreated splinters.

Say it took her four years to grow to her full height, a span from age thirteen to seventeen. That leaves two years spent with her head thrust up against the top and her feet crunched down below. Her neck cranked forward, knees bent, crammed against the splintered underside of the lid. Pitch dark—he kept her stuffed under his raised bed like a collection of porno mags. Stuffy, dusty. He didn’t drill air holes, so she breathed whatever air seeped in through the thin slits on each side. You can hear your breath in a box like that. The hollow sound of every exhale. You can also hear your heart.

I’ll skip the sordid details. To be honest, I don’t know them anyway. Our conversations, if you can call them that, never involve what went on inside that house. Think I don’t want to know? Please. I’m the worst person for this to happen to. A failed comedian filled with morbid curiosity. My twisted mind keeps churning out jokes.

I hate moving, but it’s easy with my daughter. She comes packed in her own box.

I hear they’re making robotic sex dolls that you can keep in a box. Whatever happened to the good old days when you could just kidnap my daughter?

What’s that old equation: Comedy = Tragedy + Time?

I guess you can create a formula like that for everything. Look at the very fabric of reality and you’ll see: Love x You’re Fucked = Life.

The karmic irony, if you believe in such things, is that her abductor now lives in a cage, whereas Meagan can roam free. Given, it’s not a narrow box cut an inch too short so that his neck stays bent. And he doesn’t get raped several times a day. At least, not that I’m aware of. The food’s pretty bad, though, from what I understand.

So I hear about her being found through the radio, immediately make the drive back to our old town. Get there in time to see the wannabe pallbearers ushering the box out of the pervert’s home. Their shit-eating grins chronicled in camera flash. The whole scene looks like a party that’s just winding down. The man who provided the tip is standing amidst a sea of congratulators who all appear drunk or high on crack.

Meagan’s in the back of an ambulance, a wool blanket that looks just as rough-hewn as the plywood box is wrapped around her torso. If I saw this young lady on the street, I’d pass her by without a second glance. I could buy a Starbucks from her and not think a thing. There’s nothing left of my little girl in this nineteen-year-old’s gaunt and ruddy face. Those bruised and vacant eyes.

It takes some convincing, but they let me through to see her. All I can feel is a nervous tingling in my testicles. The feeling you get when the roller coaster drops and you promised to keep your hands in the air but you can’t. A kind of soundless vertigo. A kind of Zen state. A wash-out of emotion as it collects itself in the seismic undertow and becomes a tsunamic wave. She looks up, sees me. No, sees through me. Looking into her eyes, I doubt she sees anything at all. The wave hits, pulls me under. I drown.

Here’s the first night together at home. Not the old home where she was stolen during the daytime like Nugget might have been. The new one that Debbie’s never been to, so instead of smelling like spring air fabric softener it smells like moldy parmesan cheese. It’s only got one bedroom; I had mentally said goodbye to Meagan years ago. The walls are painted in whatever off-white color they came in. I forgot to buy groceries so the fridge is bare.

“Honey,” I say. I used to call her Fish-Face. I used to call her Mug-Head. “We can talk. We can just sit. Maybe we can watch a show? You want something to eat? Maybe I can order something? I don’t want to be too pushy.” I don’t want to leave her alone.

She just stands there. She’s still got that scratchy wool blanket wrapped around her and she keeps cinching it tight. Underneath, she’s wearing a tank top undershirt and boxer briefs. She shrugs, stands there some more.

For how small the room is, there seems to be a chasm forming between us. I’ve never been comfortable around other people. I’m fine on stage, but face-to-face? No. My therapist would call what’s happening here exposure therapy. It’s when you’re forced to do the thing that makes you most uncomfortable so that you can try and get over it. This, I learn, is that thing.

I walk slowly, cautiously, as though approaching a feral cat instead of the daughter whose diapers I once changed. We’re next to each other now. Her vacant eyes, I see, are staring at a copy of
Cracked
magazine that is laying by the couch on the floor. Should I do it fast or slow? I don’t know, and hardly remember what I decided. Next thing I know my arm is around her, ungainly and stiff, unsure if I feel resistance or acceptance or total indifference. I try to pull her toward me but it’s like tugging on the trunk of a tree.

My daughter died in that box. I have to bring her back.

I almost forget I’m supposed to feature for an act at the Improv that night. I wonder if a little comedy could do her some good, but quickly decide it would not. Honestly, I’m frightened of slipping up and telling one of my more inappropriate jokes. Which basically means my whole act.

“Why don’t you lie down,” I say. “In a warm, comfortable bed for a change.”

She nods and I lead her to my room. Her room, now. The only room.

Keeping the blanket wrapped around her, cinching it ever more tightly, she lies down atop the bedspread. Her neck is bent, head thrust forward, so I place another pillow underneath it so that it doesn’t just hang in the air. Gaunt and pale with those deep-set eyes staring straight up overhead, Meagan has become a mummy. I watch as her body curls into its accustomed pose. Boxed in atop a king size bed.

I turn on the TV and flip through channels. It’s primetime on a Thursday night and guns blaze from every station. I may as well make her watch
Taken
1, 2, and 3. Then I remember how I kept her books. The ones we used to read to her as a little girl. Maybe that could help soothe her, anchor her in some way to her former self.

“Stay here,” I say. “I’ll be right back.”

The books are in a box in a storage room by the garage. I rip it open and look.

Goldilocks, Hansel & Gretel, Rapunzel, Snow White

Christ
, I think with mounting dread. Every story involves some little girl who leaves home and almost gets killed.

Okay, keep it simple
.
Basic pleasures here: a warm bath, clean clothes, comfort food, a soft bed. She’s still my daughter, I’m still her dad. I can do this.

The bathroom is off the bedroom, so I have to pass by her first. I open the door and almost cry out. She’s gone. How is that possible? Was she taken again? I run to the bathroom, it’s empty.

“Meagan!” I shout so loud it hurts my ears.

Then I hear a muffled voice. Coming from down by the floor. I look and see that the bed skirt is ruffled. I dip to my knees and peek under the bed, and there she is. Her head thrust forward so that her forehead is pressed into the underside of the box spring. That wool blanket pulled so tight I’m surprised she can breathe.

Tired of your daughter forgetting to make her bed? Easy fix. Just have her kidnapped by a man who keeps her in a box and she’ll never sleep in it again.

Thank God I didn’t perform at that night’s show.

Of all people it was the police who saved me, because they sure hadn’t saved her. She had written instructions on the underside of the box lid. Had scratched instructions, I mean. With her fingernails. The police used carbon paper to lift all the inscriptions and emailed scanned copies to me. Meagan had scratched into the wood the things she wanted to do when she got free.