A large security door stood at the end of the hall. room service staff only, read a plaque. Kyle unlocked it, and showed Taylor in. “The first pantry,” Kyle indicated.
Pantry? Taylor wondered. “I thought we were going to the supply room.”
“We are. Right in here.”
Taylor viewed the long kitchen, amid vague cooking smells. Pretty complete set-up, he appraised. Sure as hell more complete than the kitchen at T.G.I.F. Everything looked brand new. Along the back wall behind the prep line stood three heavily padlocked pantry doors, the first of which Kyle unlocked. They’re awfully security conscious around here, Taylor concluded.
“Mr. Feldspar’s right in here,” Kyle said.
It never occurred to Taylor (not the most deductive of men) to wonder why the general manager of The Inn would be behind a padlocked door. He was too worried about making his pitch. He straightened his tie and lapels, then his hair, then checked to make sure his phony Rolex was still ticking. Yeah, it would be great to sell this Feldspar guy a bookkeeping contract. The company needed more business, and Taylor sure could use a contract himself since he worked on commission. At least at T.G.I.F. he’d gotten a salary.
Then:
What the hell is this? he thought when he entered the pantry.
The pantry was smaller than a trailer bedroom. And it was—
Empty, Taylor realized.
Nothing on the shelves because there were no shelves. No foodstocks, no supplies—
“What gives?’’ Taylor began to turn. “This is no pantry—”
And before he could finish turning, Kyle had the garrote around his neck nice and tight. Taylor tried to yell but no sound came out. His fingers tried to dig in under the garrote. His heart beat to explode…
Kyle was chuckling from behind, tightening the cord. The buttons on Taylor’s suit jacket flew off as he struggled. Next, he was powered to the floor, his Florsheim’s thunking the walls. The cord around his throat tightening in increments; Taylor felt his face swell up. He was a strong man, more than a match for this psycho Kyle, yet every expenditure of his energy proved a waste. Not much more than shock and pure, primitive terror coursed through his brain. Beyond that, however distantly, he somehow sensed that he was…descending.
Kyle’s knee pressed against Taylor’s neck; the garrote continued to tighten. And next:
A gush of air. A block of bright light.
Feet thumping, his eyes fit to launch from his skull, Taylor was dragged out by the throat. “Right this way,
Mr. Taylor,” Kyle mocked, his face huge in Taylor’s warped vision. “Mr. Feldspar seems to be detained for the moment, but I’m sure that we can take care of you.”
“Oh, we’ll take care of him, all right,” another voice issued. It was clearly a woman’s voice, rough and densely sultry. Two more hands were on him now. His brain starved of blood, Taylor could think now only in snatches and obscure chunks of terror. As he felt himself being lifted up onto some sort of table, his consciousness began to dim out…
“Aw, shit!” complained the woman’s voice. “He’s dead already. Why’d you kill him so fast? We could’ve had some fun first.”
Kyle’s hands came away. The garrote lost its tension. “Well, what difference does it make if he’s dead?”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” The woman laughed. “We can still have a little fun at that.”
Blood swam back into Taylor’s brain—
They think I’m dead, he thought.
Unseen hands next were pulling off his slacks.
“Oooo! Red undies!” exclaimed the woman. “How sexy. I just hate plain old white shorts on a man.”
Don’t move! Taylor thought beyond the madness of what was being done to him. Play dead! Let them think you’re dead!
Not an easy task, considering what happened next. His fancy red undershorts were skimmed off, and, very quickly—
“Holy shit!” Taylor yelled, lurching on the table.
“How do you like that? He’s not dead after all—”
A bottle cracked Taylor in the head, then shattered. His brain bounced within his skull.
“Yeah, that ought to calm him down a little.”
Only then did Mr. Terrence Taylor pass out for real. But just before that final spark of his consciousness faded away, he did indeed realize what exactly what was being done to him: He was being very enthusiastically sodomized.
««—»»
Eventually it all came back. No details, just the barren facts. The fuckers tried to kill me… His vision, and consciousness, returned to him in little drips. Pain roared in his skull.
Where am I now? he struggled to wonder.
He lay flat on his back, elevated. A table, he thought. It felt cold beneath him. His eyes roved behind slitted lids, against cold white light, but his vision remained too blurred to make out any features of the place; beyond just a few feet, objects turned to blobs.
Then he heard…whistling.
Very slowly, Taylor turned his head to the right. Just a yard off a figure stood with his back to him. It’s that Kyle psycho, Taylor realized. The fucker that tried to strangle me, the fucker that—
Well, Taylor didn’t finish that thought. He squinted on. Kyle was whistling as he tended to some unseen task at what appeared to be a long stainless-steel table.
Like the prep tables he’d seen earlier, and the ones he remembered when he’d worked at T.G.I.F. A kitchen. A restaurant kitchen. Was that where he was?
Taylor strained his eyes. The effort steepened the throbbing pain in his head, but soon his vision began to clear.
He craned his neck off the table, staring. Then his thoughts ground to a halt…
Kyle was fileting strips of meat off a long bone, and placing each strip in a pan. Yes, it was meat, all right—
Human meat.
For what Taylor made out next, as his vision continued to focus, were the two bare human legs lain out across the table before Kyle.
What in God’s name…is this place?
This was a reasonable question, but by now the answer scarcely mattered, at least not to Mr. Terrence Taylor. Because in the next moment he became aware of an even more atrocious fact:
He managed to rise up on his elbows.
He looked down.
Oh my God no holy Jesus—
It wasn’t enough that the legs on Kyle’s cutting table were human. When Taylor looked down—
—holy Jesus holy Jesus to God…
—he realized, upon the sight of his own short-stumped hips, that the legs Kyle was so calmly fileting were his own.
“Well would you look at this!” Kyle had turned, noticing Taylor over his shoulder. “You’re still alive? I’m impressed, Mr. Taylor. Not many guys could go through what you been through and still be kicking.” Kyle smiled, picking something up. “But I think we can fix that real quick.”
Taylor shuddered as if encased in ice. He tried to get up but, of course, that prospect wasn’t very good since his fucking legs were no longer connected to his body.
Kyle, still whistling, inserted the long, thin Sheffield fileting knife directly into Terrence Taylor’s right eye. When the tip of the blade met the back of the eye socket, Kyle smacked the butt with his palm, driving the blade deep into the brain.