“Faster,” Von said simply. The gun cocked again and Travis complied, now screaming. They let him; no gags this time.
Greg made sure to get a close-up when Travis was at last allowed to withdraw. He crumpled on the bed, his mutilated sex organ gleaming like a skinned rabbit and bearing a passing resemblance to same. For a brief instant Greg discerned a tiny shard of glass jutting from one of the lacerations, one of the fragments from the bottle slammed over Travis’s head . . . then implanted within Sarah Pensie by Von. A nicked artery was blasting like an automated Super Soaker. Greg continued to film Sarah, because the intercourse had caused an exodus of some of the glass shards. Now runny tissue from within her digestive tract was slopping from her anus. He wasn’t sure when exactly it happened, but she was no longer screaming behind the gag.
Von held a pillow in front of the gun and placed it over Travis’s face. No point in prolonging his agony; that would just be excessive. He did wait a moment while Greg sauntered over into better position with the camera, then fired. A fan of red streaks and gray matter exploded above Travis’s head and across the carpet, as though he’d just had an idea too amazing to be contained within his skull.
Greg tracked over the debris until he captured Von in the viewfinder, still crouched on the floor beside Travis, smoke curling from the crevice blasted into the pillow. Bloody feathers floated to rest on the linen, the motionless body, the carpet, like snowflakes in a paperweight.
“I guess that’s a wrap,” Von said.
And with that, Genital Grinder had concluded.
V.
The clean-up afterward was rigorous, and they made themselves complete it before they watched the movie; otherwise it might never get done. They’d stored Geisha’s meaty legs in the crisper (and the rest of her in Von’s bed), and even though children were starving in Africa, they incinerated the last of Claire’s remains. Whoever’s turn it was in the bathtub, they kept the camera in there with them just so the other wouldn’t be tempted to try to preview their masterpiece in their absence.
While Greg waited for Von to get cleaned up in the bathroom, he watched the latest installment in his preferred series of backdoor-based pornography, Gaping Anus. Von, in turn, watched a menstruation epic called Ragtime Girls, with the irresistible tag line, “They come with no strings attached!”
And at long last, it was time to watch their magnum opus of film-making, the Citizen Kane of snuff movies. Greg, never shy about pointing out the obvious, was the first to comment as the TV presented no Geisha, no Sarah, no maggot orgasm, but instead a soccer game with girls who could have just as easily been mistaken for boys if not for their long hair: “Sonofabitch, Von . . . we never did hit record, did we?”
July 18, 2001
I’ve never kept a journal before, but there’s too much going on now that I can’t talk about with anyone else. I feel like I have to keep a record. I guess this is also a precaution, too.
I’m Alex. I’ll be a senior at Bernardo High School in a couple weeks. Check the honor roll, I’m there. I’m on the yearbook staff, which is probably where I first got interested in cameras. Someone had to photograph the cheerleaders, and I thought I’d never looked more like “someone” before in my life. I turned out to be a someone with a real eye for low angles.
I also play on the tennis team, which I don’t recommend if you’re hoping to attract the opposite sex. I was lucky if my parents or my sister even came to the damn games, much less Katy Hindley.
I don’t know where to begin exactly, but I guess I’ll start with my job. I develop film at a store I won’t name, because I’d hate to lose your business. Once you hear about the Binders, you probably won’t want to bring your film to me.
I took the job to save up for a car. It only paid minimum wage, and when I first started, I had every intention of leaving when something better came along. I just expected lots of snapshots from birthday parties, weddings, and Disney World, but you wouldn’t believe the pictures people drop off. I guess everyone thinks I wear a blindfold when I develop their film. I’ve seen some unbelievably hot slutcakes bare-assed naked or in bone-stiffening states of undress. We’re talking lingerie, swimsuits, nightgowns, and half of one or the other. They pose for their boyfriends and husbands, who don’t have sense enough to develop film themselves or learn how. I bet some of the pictures were sent to amateur photo contests in skinmags like Gallery and Buxxxom. Some had a good chance of winning, although I’ve had the misfortune to see many who could have soured a rapist’s sex drive faster than a chemical castration.
I saved them in the Binders anyway.
I get some fetish pictures, too. There’s a surprising number of guys who go around secretly taking pictures of women’s feet. It became a game for me to see if I could guess who took what pictures, judging by the individual requirements. “Darrin McDonel,” for instance, had to have open-toed sandals and toenails painted red. “Harold Bennett” was into red high heels and pallid skin. “Jamey Fiala” only photographed women in black high heels with those thin interlaced straps.
“John Futchins” was bolder. He went for those upskirt pictures you can see all over the Internet. I didn’t realize so many women in Bernardo were into thongs (and thongs were into them).
I saved all these pictures in the Binders. It didn’t matter if customers paid for doubles or not, some of their photos were duplicated and added to my Binder. It filled up fast. So did the second, and I’m running out of room on the third. Customers have to write their address on the film envelope, and halfway through the second binder I started keeping track of who submitted each picture. It was an impulse, you know? One of those things that you do without knowing exactly why. You suspect you could figure out why, but you’re almost afraid to admit it to yourself.
Sometimes I visit their homes at night and look in the windows. Just anywhere a woman who posed for some of the pictures might live. I don’t know why. I can see more in the pictures. But I do it anyway. Not often, just sometimes. I’ve never been caught. I wish I knew the addresses for some of Futchin’s upskirt subjects.
It’s not always the women from these photographs I watch. Remember I mentioned Katy Hindley? I’ve known her since sixth grade. I’ve had a hard-on with her name on it for seven years now, which she has only experienced vicariously through her yearbook photos. She knows I exist, but I don’t think she cares. The closest we’ve ever been was a lab group for biology. We dissected earthworms, dogfish sharks, and fetal pigs together, but strangely enough, she went to Homecoming with someone else in spite of our intimate bond. That’s okay, though. If her blinds are agreeable, I have my own private “homecoming” with her on Elvin Avenue three or four times a week during the school year, and more in the summer. This has been going on much longer than the other nighttime visits.
But I was talking about the great pictures I see on the job. They’re the reason I have to go to 1201 Hodson Avenue tomorrow. I’ll explain it then . . . assuming I come back. Like I said, this is not just a record, it’s a precaution.
July 19, 2001