The crushed-ice feeling in Lisa's stomach churned. She could tell from Animal's tone of voice, from the look in his eyes, that the story was true.
"1 wouldn't do it," he said, walking back to her casually. in a way, I suppose you could say I was afraid to cross that line. But then I did some thinking. I did love Susan, in a way most people don't seem to understand that word. And I realized that turning her down had hurt her in a way most people would never imagine. Knowing I had turned her down, rejected her, hurt me. Yes, I didn't want to lose her, but I realized the only reason why I didn't want to lose her was because she brought me so much joy, so much pleasure when I ravaged and mutilated her. I'd have no outlet for this again-at least that was my thought. But then I realized that perhaps introducing me to the scene was her way of showing me that there were others out there like us. She had opened up a whole new world for me. Yes, there were more like her. And if I liked what I did to her for her final pleasure, there were more outlets for me to… indulge in, shall we say." He grinned. "After all… that snuff film I saw had to have come from somewhere, right? I made a call to Alex Pressman first and casually asked him where he had gotten it. He wouldn't tell me, and I don't blame him. When I asked if there was any way for me to appear in his next production, his voice changed. He became excited. He told me he could always use people like me.
"That decided it for me. I knew of a place in Orange County, a mental facility that had been abandoned for years. I did some discreet investigating and got a very detailed map of the hospital. I also did some more checking, found out when security was more apt to be absent, which was most of the time. Then I called Alex back and offered him a job. When I told him what it was, he agreed immediately, especially when I named my price. We settled on a date, and I gathered together some tools, then called Susan and told her to meet me at such and such a time, at such and such a place for her birthday present. I think she could tell by the tone of my voice what I had in store, and she showed up like I knew she would." Animal smiled, the memory of the incident replaying in his features. "When she saw me in that large run-down room in a dilapidated wing of what had once been a mental hospital, she smiled. I was wearing a pair of black leather chaps, my ass exposed to the wind. I wore a black leather vest over my shirtless body, a black leather bondage hood over my head. There was an old mattress placed in the center of the room, laid out on top of a large roll of plastic tarp. I had set up a table with knives. Alex was waiting with his camera and lights. And when she saw us standing there, she smiled. And she thanked me."
Lisa looked up at Animal. "You killed her."
"Yes" Animal looked triumphant; proud. "I still have that tape. Her final, most pleasurable orgasm ever. I paid Alex ten thousand dollars for his work and his secrecy. I take the tape out every once in a while and watch Susan and me play out our scene. And the more her screams of pain echo in my ears, the more I realize that she was responsible for my breakthrough. Without her I would have lived in torment. Now? I live for nothing else but fulfilling my desires. I still have my job, though not with the same company. Its mostly to maintain a front for sheep like you, society at large. Susan's life had been similar. After we disposed of her body, I went to her apartment and found her letter of resignation on her computer and knew that she had prepared it in the hopes that her fantasy would someday come true. I printed it, dated it, forged her signature on it, and mailed it to corporate headquarters. Then I took care of her things. To everybody at the office, she had just suddenly quit for no reason and moved to the Midwest. To her parents, she moved and left no forwarding address. In a way, wiping out her existence was great preparation for what we're going to do with you' He grinned.
Lisa forced herself not to look scared, wondering if Susan's parents still missed her. Or did they even care?
"As for me," Animal said, shrugging his shoulders and walking toward the doorway that led to the rest of the cabin. "I became hooked. Alex saw that I had the kind of potential that he and his clients needed. Finding somebody like me in our circle is always hard; the majority of people in the S&M scene are what you would think of as good, decent people. Everybody consents to what they do. But the extreme hardcore scene? It's run by ruthless people who don't give a shit about anything except money and getting their dicks sucked every now and then. They don't know the meaning of the word consensual. Finding people like me to appear in extreme hardcore films and snuff films, thats even tougher. Nobody wants to get caught, for one thing. That's why it's so dosed, so insular. I assured Alex that as long as we kept things within the circle, we were safe. Six months later, they received another job. Somebody in Virginia commissioned a film, something basic. Alex tapped into his contact, whom you've already met in the form of Tim, and he gave us a sixteen-year-old runaway. She was perfect; a heroin addict from a broken home. Nobody would miss her. The woman that commissioned the film paid a nice fee for it."
"Woman?" Lisa felt her stomach sink.
"Oh yes," Animal said casually. "It's not just men that get off on watching the suffering of other human beings, although they do outnumber the women. Females get off on it, too. Ever been to a boxing match? The audience for boxing is primarily made up of men. Most of the women in attendance are there because their boyfriends or husbands are into it, but there is a sizable portion who are into it as much as their male counterparts. They get off on the violence and bloodlust in the same way. Of course, the analogy between a so-called civilized and legal sport and the snuff underground is extreme, but in a way the same rules apply.
"Anyway, where was I? Oh yes! The first snuff film I did after Susan. Tim brought us a worthless piece of shit that had run away from her foster home. She was a prostitute, a junkie. Tim's good at finding talent from the ranks of losers like that. He has contacts all over the country that give him insights on the background of some of these people. That first one was a local girl… or I should say, she had run away from home somewhere in the Midwest and come out to sunny California, Hollywood to be exact. She got hooked up with the wrong crowd, started doing drugs, started walking the streets, and the rest is history. Tim had hired her for some bondage sessions with one of his private clients to get her initiated; he does that to let them think that when they come on my set they're going to be in just some regular porn film. If they're already junkies, he lets them get high on the set so they don't resist when we tie them up, and they're al most always junkie fuckups. He brought her to the location I had done Susan in, and I let loose on her as she came off her binge. I raped that bitch until she was bleeding out of orifices you wouldn't even think of. I kept her alive for a full hour before she finally expired." He laughed. "It's only gotten better since then. Now, thanks to Alex and Tim and our contacts among the more financially secure in the circle, people who live all over the world, I'm in big demand. I make good money doing this. And I get immense sexual satisfaction from doing what I do. I also get something else." He stepped forward, his grin wide, evil. "1 get a strange sense of… power."
Thirteen
When Animal was finished Lisa was too stunned to say anything. She could feel Animal's stare, like that of a hungry beast, and she immediately met his gaze and asked the first question that popped into her mind. "How many snuff films have you been in since then?"