Glamorama

A thick, ripping sound. A mist of blood.

Bentley's body jumps.

The arm skids along the floor, the hand still clenching and unclenching itself

And then he starts screaming, deafeningly.

Blood pours out of the stump at his shoulder like water gushing from a hose and it just keeps splashing out, fanning across the terrazzo floor and under the bed.

Bentley's mouth opens in a frozen scream and he starts gasping.

I'm grimacing, shouting out, "No no no no."

It's a special effect, I'm telling myself. It's makeup. Bentley is just a prop, something spasming wildly beneath me, his head whipping furiously from side to side, his eyes snapped open with pain, his voice just gurgling sounds now.

The sharp smell of gunpowder wraps around us.

I'm trying not to faint and I pull the gun up and, crouching down, hold it against the rope attached to his other arm.

"Shoot it," he gasps. "Shoot it."

I push it into the coil of rope and chain and pull the trigger.

Nothing.

Bentley's whining, pulling against his restraints.

I pull the trigger again.

Nothing.

The gun isn't loaded.

In the flashlight's glare the color of Bentley's face is gray verging on white as blood keeps draining out of him, and his mouth keeps opening, making wheezing sounds.

Forcing my hands to steady themselves I start uselessly tearing at the ropes and chain, trying to unknot them, and outside the wind keeps rising up, howling.

Another terrible moment.

Another clicking noise. This one at his left leg.

Silence.

tch tch tch tch

Then the whirring sound.

Bentley understands what is happening and starts shrieking even before the device goes off and I'm urinating in my pants and I whirl away, screaming with him, as the device makes its whoompf sound.

A horrible crunching noise.

The device shreds his leg at the knee and when I turn around I see his leg slide across the floor and watch it knock into a wall with a hard thud, splattering it with blood, and I'm crying out in revulsion.

Bentley starts going in and out of shock.

I close my eyes.

The device on the other leg goes off.

"Shoot me!" he's screaming, eyes bulging, swollen with pain, blood gushing out of him.

Desperately I try to unknot the rope wrapped around the device on his chest, my heartbeat thumping wildly in my ears.

"Shoot me!" he keeps screaming.

The timer makes its characteristic noises.

I uselessly hold the Walther against his head and keep pulling the trigger and it keeps snapping hollowly.

The other arm is blown off and blood splatters across the wall above the bed, splashing over another pentagram. Bentley's tongue is jutting out of his mouth and as he starts going into his death throes he bites it off.

The device on his chest makes a whirring noise.

It opens him up.

His chest isn't there anymore.

Intestines spiral up out of him. A giant splat of blood hits the ceiling and it smells like meat in this room-it's sweet and rank and horrible-and since it's so cold, steam pours out of his wounds, gusts of it rising over the blood and chunks of flesh scattered across the floor and my legs are stiff from crouching so long and I stagger away and outside the wind keeps moaning.

I'm backing into the hallway and there are dripping sounds as flesh slides down walls and bright lines of it are streaked across Bentley's twitching face, his mouth hanging open, and he's lying on a shiny mat of blood and clumps of flesh that covers the entire floor and I'm walking out of the' room, one hand gripping the flashlight, the other hand smearing blood on anything I touch, wherever I have to steady myself.

6

I race to a bathroom, panting, keeping my head down, eyes on the floor even as I'm turning corners, and in the bathroom mirror it looks like someone has painted my face red and the front of my shirt is matted thick with blood and flesh and I'm pulling my clothes off screaming and then I fall into the shower and I'm hitting my chest and pulling my hair, my eyes squeezed shut, tilting forward, falling against a tiled wall, my hands held out in front of me.

I find clothes in Bobby's room and dizzily just pull them on, dressing quickly, keeping my eyes on the bedroom door. Numb and singing softly to myself while crying, I quickly tie the laces on a pair of Sperry deck shoes I slipped on.

As I stagger through the upstairs hallway I run past Bentley's room because I can't bear to see what's in it and I'm sobbing but then I suddenly stop when I realize there's a new odor filling the house, overpowering the aroma of shit that hung in it before.