The Body Farm

by Aaron C. Thorpe

Introduction: Stretch

Tonight was a slow one for Bountiful Brenda. Very few cars drove down Brenda’s street and those that did, did not pull up at the street corner’s curb where she stood, waiting. She had been out here for almost two hours, waiting. Waiting for either a strapping, young stud looking for a good time or a lonely and horny old fart to pull up. Hell, tonight Brenda would have happily taken even the old fart, the way this particular night was slow. Ahhh, Sh_t, looks like it’s about to rain too, she thought with a grimace. And for the first time in forty-five minutes, a car turned the corner up the block and made its way down towards Brenda’s curb.

Primping herself up and juggling her large breasts, Brenda prayed for the car to slow down to a complete stop and its passenger window to wind down . . .

“Fuckin’ asshole,” she muttered, as the car continued its way onto the next block. “I’m out here struttin’ my stuff and the least these fellas can do is . . .” But Brenda was interrupted by a sudden and violent blow to the back of her head, immediately blacking out and limply falling into the arms of a stranger behind her . . .

“Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey . . .” a calm, male voice crooned from the darkness. Stirring from her unconsciousness, Brenda groggily muttered, “Huh . . . ?” She slowly opened her eyes and for a fleeting second thought that either she did not open her eyes or she was blind. A veil of darkness greeted her eyes, as if she still had them shut. But something lightly brushing the top of her head and the veil of darkness slowly being lifted, giving sight to a dimly lit room proved that something had been placed over Brenda’s head and face and had just been taken off. And as her eyes adjusted, Brenda let out an eardrum-panging scream that shattered the still, cold air and bounced off of the walls of the room.

“Good evening, Ms. Parr . . . or should I call you ‘Bountiful Brenda’?” the short, bald man standing below Brenda said with a smirk; yes, standing below Brenda, for she was suspended in the air, rusty chains wrapped around her wrists and ankles. The entwined ends of the chains at her wrists seemed to endlessly travel on into the rafters of the room’s ceiling and the chains at her ankles were being fed through a set of gears set in a wide crevice on the room’s stone floor, although the gears were at a standstill . . . for now. The grimy room itself had a sweet yet pungent smell and was poorly lit with cheap, fluorescent lamps, one situated in each of the four corners of the room. A lamp also sat at the man’s feet and cast eerie shadows on his body, especially his round, flushed face. The shadows seemed to fill every dent and crack as he gave a face-splintering smile, giving way to oddly white and well-shaped teeth.

“What the fuck do you want, sicko?! I don’t do bondage!” Brenda cried, uselessly attempting to shake herself free.

“Bondage?” the man amusingly asked, then throwing back his head and giving a cold, high-pitched laugh that raised hairs and goose bumps on Brenda’s skin and sent shivers down her spine.

“Please, just let me go! I’ll, I’ll do whatever you want, just let me go for God’s sake!” she whimpered, warm tears rolling out of her eyes then down her smooth cheeks and down the slight curve of her face, then down to her chin where they waited, quivering, ready to drop at any moment. And when they finally did, after a few seconds, the man below watched with intent, right up until their final end upon the room’s cold floor.

“So delicate, so beautiful,” he murmured, still staring at the minute puddles the fallen tears created while absentmindedly reaching for something out of Brenda’s sight. Fighting against the chains, Brenda screamed, “What are you doing?! What do you want?!” But the man did not answer and his arm fell as he pulled something out of sight down with a sharp, metallic clang.

The slow, rhythmic grinding of gears could be heard as the chains around Brenda’s ankles were slowly being fed through the floor’s crevice although the chains at her wrists hardly trembled . . .

Parted shrieks of pure pain drowned out the slow, rhythmic grinding of gears, the steady drip-drip of blood, the snapping and splintering of bone and the sick, dull popping of joints, the stretching, tearing and ripping of muscle and flesh and finally, the soft murmurs: “So delicate, so beautiful . . .”

Hallucinating Drillmen

“Dude, we are soooo fucked up right now,” Charlie said with a guffaw, thick white smoke escaping his lips and lazily floating up to the toolshed’s rotting ceiling.

“Naaah, you’re the one fucked up,” Max replied, rubbing his nose with the back of his hand after taking a snort of powder-white PCP through his right nostril.

“Hahaha, fuck you,” Charlie said, uneasily rocking back and forth on the small, wooden stool he sat on, his eyes lolling around in their sockets, taking in his surroundings: an untidy, small, dark, cold and damp toolshed. Various hand tools and electric tools hung on the rotting walls by hooks. Ordinary items that one would normally find in a toolshed littered the cold floor. Tools, again, a coiled garden hose and other gardening equipment, different types, lengths and thicknesses of rope, various fasteners (bolts, nails, nuts, screws, et cetera), a rusted metal pail or two, a few old and rusted automobile parts, stacks of crates and boxes and typical rubbish. Few items that one would not normally find in a toolshed also littered the floor; empty beer bottles, used cigarettes and cigarette ashes, used joints of marijuana and even a small puddle of putrid-yellow, sour vomit peppered with colored chunks and bits of half-digested food. The toolshed reeked of this spoiled stench, the sweet scent of burning marijuana, cigarette smoke and even urine.

“When the fuck are you gonna fix this shithole up, Max?” Charlie asked, awkwardly rising up from his stool. “I mean, look at the fuckin’ place, man . . . you’ve still got them Shit parts from the Caddy . . .”

“Hey, that Caddy was a beautiful car!” Max angrily replied, his speech slurred and his shaking finger pointed at Charlie. A trickle of crimson blood slowly leaked out of his right nostril and onto his upper lip. Feeling the trickle, Max raised his hand to his nose and lip and then attempted to wipe the blood away but he was only successful in smearing it.

“Looks like you OD’d there,” Charlie managed to say in-between unusually high-pitched laughs. Laughing so hard and clearly intoxicated by alcohol and marijuana, Charlie lost his balance and nearly fell but steadied himself on the weak wall behind him. His sudden weight sent a tremble along the wall, unhitching tools from their hooks, one of which was a cordless drill. The tools fell to the floor with a ruckus and Charlie gave out a hysterical chortle.

“Oh, c’mon, what the fuck, Charlie? Pick all that Shit up!” Max shouted, the sudden commotion upsetting his nerves, causing him to jump up from his seat and face Charlie. But as Max’s eyes fell upon his best friend, his drugged, blank gaze turned into one of complete and utter terror.

“Your, your, your face, Charlie!” Max shrieked, fearfully backing up but slipping on a beer bottle and falling on his backside.

“Whatchu talkin’ ‘bout, Max?” Charlie asked with another drunken guffaw after retrieving the cordless drill and other tools from the floor. “Got somethin’ of my face, you said?” he stupidly asked, dropping his left handful of screwdrivers and pliers but holding onto the cordless drill in his right hand. He felt his face with his left hand and announced, “Nah, nothin’s on me.” Then barely able to focus back on Max, Charlie asked, “Max, you alright?”

“Don’t, come, near, me!” Max shrieked, tears streaming down his sweaty and grimy face.

“Dude, you’re, like, totally smashed!” Charlie said with a dumb, wide grin on his face. He took a step towards Max and as he expected, Max let out another blood-curling scream. He took another step forward and again, Max screamed. Charlie took a step back this time and a look of relief crossed Max’s face and a sigh escaped his lips. But Charlie took a step forward and the relief on Max’s face disappeared and the evident fear returned.

Bored after a few minutes of “torturing” Max, Charlie was suddenly struck with a brilliant idea. Looking down at the cordless drill in his hand and looking back up at his “victim”, Charlie’s face broke into a mischievous smirk.

“Get the fuck off me! No, don’t . . .! Please, for fucking fuck’s sake, don’t!”

But the male voice’s crying plead was barely audible over a sudden high-pitched whine.

“Chest! They’re goin’ down to his chest!” another male voice hysterically screeched, followed by rustling and then the rapid ripping of fabric.

“Jesus Christ, don’t, please! I . . . !” But the voice’s words were interrupted by its own abrupt squeal of agonizing pain. And the continued high-pitched whining. And the wet, sloppy noise as if throwing slices of raw meat into a blender and flipping on the switch. Followed by, soon after, the hard, thick, dense, electronic hum as if drilling through a rather thick plank of wood. Or a human breastbone.

These sounds of the dark carried on for almost two hours, with no intermission. Save for the squealing. But, that eventually stopped after an hour or so. The only other human voice that could be heard were the grunts of hard effort and approval, as a sculptor might do after touching up and finally finishing a piece, standing back and admiring his work in all its glory, realizing that it is a true beauty; a masterpiece.

Then, when the high-pitched whining finally stopped, all other accompanying sounds ceased as well. At last, his work was done. A rustle and one last grunt could be heard, as if one was getting to his feet. He had gotten rid of all those nasty bugs. They were all exterminated. So what if he had made a little mess? He would clean it up later, no big deal. All that mattered at the moment was that Charlie was safe from the swarm of bees, ants and cockroaches that had surrounded him. Max had saved him. Max was certainly proud of himself.

But triumphantly smiling into a dingy mirror hung on the wall across from him, Max saw something wrong. No, not the blood on his face and neck and formerly white T-shirt. No, not the bits of bone shrapnel caught in his crimson-splattered hair either. Or the nub from one of Charlie’s nipples, of course. Oh, and you possibly cannot ignore the fleshy pieces of Charlie’s heart either. No, something else was wrong. In the mirror’s reflection, Max saw a fat, brown cockroach on his forehead, right above the space between his eyebrows.

Good thing the cordless drill’s rechargeable batteries still had some juice left.

A Day at the Zoo

“Oooh, is this the Zoo, Mother?” asked an excited youngling.

“Yes, Child, yes it is.”

The Mother and Child among many other Visitors, young and old, entered the facility. A rusty, nearly fallen sign above the entrance barely read the word ‘Zoo’ in decorative yet badly eroded text. As the cold, biting wind howled with fury, the sign swung back and forth on its remaining supports, horribly creaking as if it was going to finally drop off after many, many years. But today, like every day before, it pitifully hung on while being flung about in the wind.

There was no admission fee to be paid upon entering the Zoo, for money in these days had no meaningful purpose. Visitors could just enter the Zoo at anytime of day or night and visit whichever exhibits that caught their attention and curiosity the most. Unfortunately, all of the animals in all of the exhibits were the same species but the Visitors didn’t mind this; to them, each animal was as different from the next as an apple is to an orange. They went from exhibit to exhibit, goggling at the confined creatures from the outside world.

“Oh my . . .” an Elder murmured, leaning in close to one particular display. “What small eyes they have . . . and set in such small heads!” The caged animal turned its head towards the Elder, desperation clearly etched on its soiled mug. An on looking Child read the creature’s features perfectly and broke off a piece of a confection she had been eating. She held out the candy in the direction of the exhibit as if to offer it to the animal. Crazed at the sight of the sweet, it leapt forward, face pressed against the thick glass of the display and its mitts clawing at the barrier.

“No, no, little one,” rasped the Elder. “Look. Look at what it says here. ‘Please do not feed the animals.’ See, little one? That means no sweeties for the . . . the thing.” Putting a hand on the Child’s shoulder the Elder steered her away from the exhibit. In its enclosure, the animal fell back on its hind legs and wept, its starved body shaking uncontrollably with each heavy sob.

At another exhibit a curious crowd was gathered, murmuring among one another.

“What are they doing?”

“I don’t know . . . are they----?”

“----mating?”

Moans of painful pleasure erupted from the enclosure as the interested audience looked on.

Yet at another exhibit an even larger crowd watched with excitement as a group of the animals seemingly went mad. They tackled, punched, kicked and bit each other to the crowd’s delight. One creature had its eyes dug out while being restrained by two more. Another was beaten to death and had its appendages and extremities ripped off, these parts being gnawed on by its attackers. One more was eviscerated alive by a rather savage horde. It flopped about to get back on its feet but it was too weak and slipped on its own remaining, uneaten entrails. It wriggled closer to the crowd as if pleading for aid. Once at the barrier that separated sanity from insanity, it opened its mouth in a hair-raising howl. But its cry did not last long as another smashed a large boulder on its head, killing it. At this brutal act, the crowd gasped and jumped back from the exhibit.

An entranced adolescent turned to his parent as the shuffling of the departing crowd roused him. “I . . . I could have sworn I heard the word ‘help’ in that one’s cry,” he said, pointing at the carcass.

“Don’t be foolish, son!” the Father scoffed. “These . . . beasts cannot speak! They don’t possess enough brain power to verbally communicate!”

The Son thought about his father’s words for a moment before asking, “How do you know that, Father?”

“How do I know? Why, I know because it says just that right here! Read for yourself!”

“‘The animals you see before you are endangered, meaning they are at risk of ceasing to exist. Dissections and autopsies reveal that the species have relatively small brains, capable of only processing life-sustaining actions. But, as more research continues more mysteries are uncovered about the only living, yet rapidly dying, animal species on this planet: the Homo sapiens or human beings.’”