Body Counting

  BODY COUNTING

  By David Whitman

  A Macabre Ink Production

  Macabre Ink is an imprint of Crossroad Press

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  Digital Edition Copyright © 2016 David Whitman

  LICENSE NOTES

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Meet the Author

  David Whitman is the author of several books, including HARLAN, DEADFELLAS, and BODY COUNTING. He is also the co-author of SCARY REDNECKS AND OTHER INBRED HORRORS and APPALACHIAN GALAPAGOS: A SCARY REDNECKS COLLECTION with Weston Ochse.

  David’s short fiction has been published in over 100 publications over the last fifteen years, including several honorable mentions in Ellen Datlow’s and Terry Windling’s YEAR’S BEST FANTASY AND HORROR.

  Future projects include the sequel DEADFELLAS 2: ONE STEP BEYOND and other projects, including a new novel and a possible movie adaptation of DEADFELLAS.

  He lives in northeastern Pennsylvania with his son Miles.

  Book List

  Novels and Novellas

  Deadfellas

  Harlan

  Collections

  Body Counting

  Delightful Agony

  Co-Authored with Weston Ochse

  Appalachian Galapagos - A Scary Rednecks Collection

  Scary Rednecks & Other Inbred Horrors

  DISCOVER CROSSROAD PRESS

  Visit us online

  Check out our blog and

  Subscribe to our Newsletter for the latest Crossroad Press News

  Find and follow us on Facebook

  Join our group at Goodreads

  We hope you enjoy this eBook and will seek out other books published by Crossroad Press. We strive to make our eBooks as free of errors as possible, but on occasion some make it into the final product. If you spot any problems, please contact us at publisher@crossroadpress.com and notify us of what you found. We’ll make the necessary corrections and republish the book. We’ll also ensure you get the updated version of the eBook.

  If you’d like to be notified of new Crossroad Press titles when they are published, please send an email to publisher@crossroadpress.com and ask to be added to our mailing list.

  If you have a moment, the author would appreciate you taking the time to leave a review for this book at the retailer’s site where you purchased it.

  Thank you for your assistance and your support of the authors published by Crossroad Press.

  BODY COUNTING

  CONTENTS

  Angel Lust

  Body Counting

  The Eyes of God

  Dust in the Wind

  Killing Brando

  The Hitman Always Rings Twice

  The Mind of Hunter Castle

  The Death of the Piano Man

  The Thursday Night Poker Players

  What Love Was

  From the Ashes

  Broken Souls: A Fairy Tale

  Angel Lust

  “Jesus Christ! What the hell is that thing?” Henry asked nervously, staring down at the winged creature that lay tied on the bedroom floor. He pulled on his long goatee, his mouth in a scowl.

  Gordon grinned, his eyes dancing with a peculiar shimmer. His brown hair was sticking up in crazy angles, as if he hadn’t showered for days. “You got the Jesus part right. It’s an angel.”

  Henry leaned forward and studied the “angel” apprehensively, his body so wired from fear he would probably scream out loud at the first sign of movement. It had jet-black skin, and looked to be about four feet long—white wings lay tightly against her back and were tied with wire. Small, but fully formed, breasts protruded from her chest, each areola a firm and bright crimson against her dark flesh. Her mouth was open slightly, revealing dozens of sharp teeth under her diminutive nose and closed eyes. Her hands were tied rigidly together, as were her legs just at the ankle. Long black hair, parted in the middle, hung over her angular face—barely tickling at her menacing, but oddly erotic, full lips.

  Henry shivered. “That sure isn’t an angel. Looks like a human bat to me. She’s dead anyway.”

  “She’s not dead,” Gordon whispered, moving in closer, a ghostly smile on his face. “She’s faking it. She does that all the time. If you look really close you can see that she’s breathing. Watch.”

  He reached down tentatively, letting his fingers dangle in the air before touching the bridge of the creature’s pointed nose. It reacted explosively—snapping at his finger ravenously as he quickly pulled it away. Henry jumped back, almost falling over at her sudden detonation of energy.

  She shrieked as she struggled to remove her bonds, chanting in a strange language. Her eyes were large, with a red reptilian sliver for a pupil.

  “What the hell is she saying?” Henry asked, staring at the thing with revulsion, his back to the wall.

  “How the hell should I know?” Gordon said, teasing her with his finger held just out of reach, pulling pack as her needle-like teeth snapped the air with a sharp click. “She’s always speaking that language at me.”

  “There is no fucking way that’s an angel, Gordon. That thing is evil.”

  Gordon laughed. “Why do you say she’s evil? Wouldn’t you be pissed if someone tied you up and taunted you? I think she may even be human in some way. She has evolved. For all you know we may look just like this in thousands of years.”

  Henry shivered again and brought his attention down to her slender, bony fingers. One hand curled up like a dead spider—each finger tipped with an alarmingly dagger-like crimson nail. The other hand was resting on her thigh, gently poking at her coal-colored skin. Although her arms were thin, he could see they were tightly muscled, rippling under her midnight flesh as she struggled to break free. “Man, if this thing got out she would fucking tear you apart.”

  “Trust me, I realize that,” Gordon said, smiling at her. “I call her my Dark Angel.”

  “Where the hell did you get her?”

  “Get this. I found her in the road one night. She was just lying there like she was dead—or cast down from heaven. I didn’t know what it was, so I threw it in the back of my truck. I figured I would take her to the newspapers, maybe get a little money. As soon as I got a good look at her teeth and nails, I tied her up just in case. Good thing I did, too, she probably would have ripped me to pieces if I didn’t. She’s only been here for a few days.”

  “What the hell does she eat?” Henry asked, staring down at the creature’s razor-filled mouth. She was studying him with her reptilian eyes, blinking just once in the last few minutes, a pink forked tongue darting from between her teeth with a moist hiss of air.

  “I don’t know,” Gordon said, sighing. “She won’t eat anything I give her. She hasn’t eaten since I found her. I’m beginning to think she doesn’t eat.”

  “You’re nuts. You need to get rid of it, or kill it. I wouldn’t even sleep within ten yards of that thing even if you put a bullet in her head.”

  They moved away from the bedroom and into the living room. Henry was quiet, but Gordon could see he was quite shaken up.

  After a few minutes of silence, Henry spoke. “Do you really think it’s an angel?”

  “Sure I do,” Gordon answered, smiling enigmatically.

  “It looks more demonic to me. That’s one scary bitch.”

  “Well
, Satan was an angel, remember? God cast him out of heaven. Maybe she is demonic.”

  “What the hell you going to do with it? If I were you, I’d tie a cinderblock around her neck and toss her in the river. Or better yet, sell her to a carnival or something. “

  Gordon laughed. “I find her fascinating. Sometimes I sit down in front of her and stare at her for hours.”

  “You’re freaking me out. I have to go work, man. You need to seriously consider what I said, Gordon. That thing is evil.”

  After Henry left, Gordon retreated back into the bedroom. “Hello, my Dark Angel.”

  She studied him silently—her forked tongue darting out from between her moist white teeth. Her eyes pulsed to her own seductive beat.

  In a bizarre way, he found her attractive. He studied her round breasts and felt his heartbeat quicken when she smiled. She opened her mouth and the forked tongue darted out teasingly, licking her sensual lips in almost slow motion.

  It shocked him. He had never seen her act suggestively and he looked away from her gaze for the first time since he had captured her. He began to get aroused and he felt a sharp tingle of fear skitter up his spine. Seeing her act as a sexual being intimidated him on levels he did not understand.

  She began to whisper at him in an alien language. He had never heard anything like it before—guttural and throaty, whispers of double-accented strange words. Although her ankles were tied, she opened her knees slightly and exposed herself to him, her fingers caressing the stomach just above her hairless genitalia.

  Gordon leapt up and fled the room, synapses firing in his brain rapidly, his breath quivering as he gasped. He was terrified by his lust for the angel. Somehow he knew that if he gave in, it would mean his death. He reminded himself that the terror he felt was his protective instinct kicking in.

  That night he slept very little. His mind kept entertaining thoughts of sexual acts with the angel, each dream more vivid than the last.

  In one dream, the angel had him tied to the bed, her silky wings sending hot, lilac-laced air rushing into his face. She reached out slowly, placing her piercing nails into his skin, applying pressure with each beat of his heart. The dragging of her nails across his chest, a beaded line of blood following in their wake, left him breathless and aroused.

  She began to run her tongue over the newly bleeding wounds, an odd feeling of moist leather and wet flesh, stabbing the pronged tip into his wounds as she drank of him gluttonously.

  She wrapped her extensive forked tongue around his penis, letting the muscle squeeze him. A small thrust of pain traveled from between his legs and through his adrenaline-filled veins. Sharp teeth dragged languidly over the shaft, drawing blood into her mouth before taking him all the way in to her throat. She began to bite, pain and pleasure colliding explosively as he gasped.

  Rising her head up and down slowly, she drank of him, selfish slurping noises emitting from her mouth as she moved. Hot blood and saliva dripped down his thighs, tickling his skin as it ran.

  He began to shriek as he came, lost deep within the bloody confines of agony and delight. When he was done, his breath rushing out of him in trembling gasps, she looked up at him and grinned, her eyes lighting up mischievously above his blood and semen-covered penis.

  When he awoke in the morning, he went right into the bedroom that held the creature. She smiled widely, staring at him in the same lustful way that she had done the night before. It was as if she sensed that she had found a weakness in him.

  She ran her tongue around her thick, pink-black lips, an intake of breath firing from her throat. She leaned back slightly and moved her legs apart again. Gordon felt himself becoming erect at the same time his brain told him to flee.

  He remembered reading somewhere about pheromones and the way they could cause animals to be aroused by smell. As far as he knew, it had never been proven to exist for human beings.

  She began to whisper at him in an alien tone that could only be called seductive. He felt both terror and desire simultaneously as he moved toward her.

  He reached out and touched her skin, running his finger down her oily arm. It was the softest flesh he had ever touched. The Dark Angel turned her head languidly, her enormous eyes narrowing, a smile slowly forming as she exposed her bone-white sharp teeth.

  Gordon felt himself shut down the second he looked down into her gaze. It felt like his control had been cut off, forcing him to retreat fearfully into a deeper part of his psyche. He watched, drunkenly, as his hands untied the bonds that held her captive.

  She flapped her wings and turned to look upon him. Although her head was down, she still held her eyes locked onto his. She moved backward until she was against the wall, sliding down slowly as she opened her ebony legs, and ran her nails over her thighs. Her mouth opened slightly as her long, forked tongue thrust in and out from her glistening lips.

  With a great heaviness, Gordon felt the control come slamming back into his body. With that control came a horrifying sense of panic.

  He was now standing before the creature, totally vulnerable to her sharp teeth and claws. Aroused, despite his revulsion, he undid his belt and moved toward her.

  He shivered as he entered the creature, the inside of her flesh surrounding him with an icy grip. Although the sensation was totally bizarre, almost obscene, he still found it stimulating. He plunged forward viciously as she pulled him forward, her claws ripping through his shirt and into his flesh. Her tongue slithered onto his neck as she bit into his skin ever so slightly, drawing blood. Gordon drove himself into her fiercely, enjoying her shrill shrieks, the blood dripping down his back and onto her dark flesh. Her tongue slipped into his mouth, filling it with the taste of fruit.

  It soon felt to Gordon that he had meshed with the creature symbiotically—every nerve of pleasure in his body firing simultaneously. The pain of her knife-like nails mixed with the pleasure perversely, each wave of torture meeting the joy with a poison-laced kiss. With all the force he could generate, he hurled his hips forward—his muscles tensing at once as he moaned. She bit down into his shoulder, her teeth sinking deep into his flesh.

  When Gordon finally opened his eyes, she was gone. He got up drunkenly and stared at the room. His blood was splattered all over the walls and furniture. Clothing lay scattered around the room in crimson-splattered shreds.

  Gordon could see where his body had been on the floor, as the blood had congealed around him like a crime-scene parody. He knew that he must have fallen into unconsciousness. If not for all the carnage, he would have suspected his experience with the dark creature a nightmare. Every time he moved, his skin rocked with spasms of pain. He heard the sound of dripping and looked down dazedly as blood trickled down his hand and to the floor.

  He moved dazedly into the bathroom and stared at the stranger in the mirror. His previously dark brown hair was now a shock of white.

  He moaned as he studied his eyes, dizziness nearly pulling him to the floor. His pupils were gone, eaten up by the dark red reptilian sliver that now resided in his haunting stare. His eyes also seemed to have grown slightly larger. Blood still ran from the deep ring of teeth marks in his neck. A maze of deep, still-oozing gashes glistened on his chest like alien hieroglyphics. He was afraid to look at his back, but he could feel the blood running down his body.

  He forced himself into the shower, letting the ice-cold water wash his wounds. His flesh throbbing, he exited the shower and studied himself now that he did not look like a walking corpse. Although many of the wounds were superficial, some of them were very deep and could use stitches. His back was itching badly, but he couldn’t scratch it without causing himself to bleed more profusely.

  Running his hands through his white hair, he wondered with dread if she may have passed some sort of disease to him. Not knowing how to deal with what had happened, he picked up the phone and called Henry.

  “Jesus, Gordon. I have been trying to get hold of you for three days now,” Henry said as soon as he answered
. “Where the hell have you been?”

  Gordon froze at the knowledge of how long he had slept. “I need you to come over here, Henry.”

  “Is that … angel still there, Gordon?”

  “Just come over, please. We need to talk.”

  When Henry arrived, Gordon had purposefully kept the house dim to hide his transformation. He had lit only one candle in the hallway and sat in the darkness of the living room, enjoying the way the shadows danced eerily on the walls around him.

  “I don’t like it this dark, Gordon,” Henry said, walking slowly into the living room. “Especially since that goddamn monster is lurking about. Is it still here?”

  “She’s gone. I need help.”

  Gordon explained what had happened, leaving out nothing. Henry listened quietly as if he didn’t quite know what to say.

  “What in the hell would make any man want to fuck that thing?” Henry asked, not bothering to hide the disgust in his voice. “Are you seriously sick in the head?”

  “I told you I didn’t have any choice. She must have used some sort of way to control me. Maybe pheromones—I don’t know. Even though parts of me were repulsed, I couldn’t stop myself. Now something is wrong with me, Henry. I’m scared.”

  “Can I turn on the light? I need to see what she did to you.”

  “You’re not going to like what you see. I can see in the dark now.”

  “Well, I can’t help you if I can’t see the damage.”

  Gordon leaned over and turned on the lamp. He had his shirt off, as it was too painful to wear. Henry gasped and stepped back, eyes wide.

  “Holy shit, man! You look fucking dead. Look at your hair! Sweet Jesus, your eyes!”

  Gordon smiled despite the situation. “I told you that you wouldn’t like what you see. You should see the bedroom. Looks like the scene of a murder, my friend.”

  “We need to get you to a hospital, man,” He moved around Gordon’s chair and studied his back. “Some of these wounds need stitches and are going to get infected.”