For the first time ever, I did a reading, and was not nervous! I was asked by my brilliant friend Gregory Crosby to read at his Halloween event this past Saturday. Aside from the delicious Montepulciano that I sipped, I read a horror fragment from my last NaNoWriMo novel. After some heavy editing, I was comfortable to read the piece. I bumped butts with a red devil at the bar–I was dressed as myself as I am today! I thought it would be fun for to share my horror with you. Hope you like it! This story was told from various perspectives so in this excerpt, there are two points of view.
Happy Halloween!
Renata, New York
“Come in Gus, come on in!” She cried manically, and pulled the door open.
Renata was ecstatic, she was beside herself.
This was her masterpiece—Lauren was her masterpiece.
Like anything else, murder was something that got better the more that you did it. She had had such a beautiful sharp knife, and it was amazing to her the things that she could do with it and how easy skin could be to transform.
“Come on in Gus, step right up and enjoy the show!” she cajoled.
She urged him as if she was in a circus, and was the ringmaster, while she clutched the pearls that she had taken from Lauren that were splattered with blood. They were gorgeous, and she often wanted to touch then, but she never had.
At least not while Lauren was alive…
Gus followed Renata, and she felt the heat of his body behind her and it aroused her more than murdering Lauren had.
Murdering Lauren was the hot! She wad beyond aroused while she was murdering her and her blood was let. She could not stop herself from licking it, and tasting it like the fine wine that it was in the sacrament of murder…
Gus, New York
Renata was covered in blood. He did not know how she could have seemed so sane when she was covered in blood. The closer they got, the sicker he felt, and more unhinged he became.
Lauren.
What was left of Lauren.
He did not even have a chance to feel sick before he was sick. He thought he would choke on his vomit. He got on his knees in it beside Lauren, and felt Renata smooth his hair as she knelt beside him.
Lauren.
Lauren looked like she had been shredded. Her face was pulpy and beyond recognition, except her knew her intimately so he saw her.
She reminded him of a Francis Bacon painting of a butcher, with carcasses in the foreground. Lauren was nothing more than a slaughtered animal. She was literally a pile of meat, the woman that he had loved more than any woman.
Renata continued to smooth his hair, and reassure him while he threw up.
“Now, we can be together,” she purred, as if this was all normal. “I have given you such a gift! I told you that I would make it all better and I have!”
He barely understood what she continued to say, but she went out triumphantly, before she wrapped her arms about him, and kissed his temple.
What had he heard? He had heard that Renata had methodically murdered three women he had loved so she could be with him.
He turned on her, and pushed her onto the pile that was Lauren’s body. Renata was dazed, and rolled onto her side.
“You want to murder me Gus? I am not going to help you make art. You have to know for yourself how to make art.“ She picked up a slab of Lauren’s corpse, before she lie on her back on top of her, luxuriating in the slaughtered flesh. “I can be your masterpiece like Lauren was mine…”
She raised her arms up over her head, and he curled over her prone body on the floor her pretending to be a victim when she was anything but.
Gus did not know what to feel when he heard sirens, sirens and shouts.
“Don’t move!”
And he did not move, he could not move…
francis bacon(s) via wikipedia
