Cut Run Slash Burn

By Joseph Allen

Things are bad. Very bad.

When Nick Wilson wakes up to find himself stripped naked, chained to a wall and about to be tortured, the only thing that gets him through his ordeal is the thought that things couldn't get any worse.

Until they do. Much worse.

Now he finds himself racing against the clock, trying to free himself--and the others--before their captors return. And if Nick doesn't get them out in time, they're going to make their screen debut in a snuff film.

It's going to be a hell of a night.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Belleport Publishing
• Release date: Oct 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9781519976185

Book preview

Cut

NICK WASN’T EXTREMELY fond of using the band saw, but sometimes it had to be done. There were times when he used knives—he had quite the collection at his fingertips, from the thinnest filleting knife to cleavers straight out of slasher movies—but once in a while the saw was the only tool for the job. He had nothing else that cut so fast, and he often found himself slipping into a dreamlike state, the vibrating blade nearly hypnotizing him. Of course, it wasn’t as satisfying as taking up the knife. He was proud of how he knew how to hold the flesh just so, letting the blade slip between the bones effortlessly, giving up only a satisfying crunch as he cut through the joint, making one hunk of flesh into two. Still, you could do almost the same thing on the band saw. And on the saw, even if he had hit bone, the bone would have yielded. This way was fast—zip!—and efficient; it was over in less than a second and there was hardly any blood.

The double doors that separated the cutting room from the wrap room trembled slightly, shaking as they always did when somebody entered from the store side. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Mr. Murray’s head appear behind the fogged plastic window, peering in, hoping to catch him goofing off.

The door swung open.

You’re still not done with the chicken?

Nick reached below and flipped the switch to turn off the saw, keeping his eyes fixed on the blade, waiting for it to stop completely before he turned toward his boss.

Almost, he said as he dropped the two pieces—a thigh and a drumstick—into a bin on the table.

Almost, Murray echoed. He stared down at the box at Nick’s feet; the heavy waxed cardboard encased fifty pounds of icy chicken. Well, allowing for what Nick had already cut, forty-eight. Nick caught Murray’s normal sigh, which in his mind always sounded like a parent disappointed in a child. Not that Murray had any kids—the thought of the old fucker having sex would have been a good appetite suppressant—but Nick’s own dad had made the same sound many times.

Well, listen, when you’re done with that I want you to go close up the seafood case, he said. And change the ice; it reeks.

Me? What about Linda? It’s her department, Nick said. And I still have the hamburger to do.

You better get going, then, Mr. Murray said. I gave Linda the night off. The rubber trim at the bottom of the door swept along a little wave of water, ice and chicken fat as the door swung gently shut. It was no use protesting. It wasn’t like he had anybody waiting at home for him, anyway.

By the time Nick finished everything and was walking up to the office to punch out, the lights were already low and the store was quiet. Only a light from the office—above the entrance, with several windows looking out into the store so that both the Murrays could keep an eye on things—reassured Nick that, in fact, he hadn’t been forgotten and locked in again. As he passed through aisle seven—jams and jellies, peanut butter, some new spread that claimed to be over 50 percent ground-up cookies, for God’s sake—his shoes squeaked on the floor, leaving a trail of wet footprints. In six years he had yet to finish a shift in the meat room with dry socks and shoes; if it were only water, that would be one thing, but the job wasn’t so kind to him. Aside from the usual globs of blood and fat that would splash and splatter him in the cutting room, the uniquely scented environment of the fish case was always good for a dousing in the snotlike juice of one dead sea creature or another—not to mention the ice-cold, fishy water that filled the drip trays, unevenly racing from one side of the tray to another as Nick carried them to the sink to pour them out. Finally there was the cutting room to clean, which was accomplished with a high pressure hose to spray down the tables and rinse out the band saw, freeing the disgusting paste of ground-up bone, flesh and fat to fall onto the floor. He used a giant squeegee to finally corral everything toward the drain, flushing away the water and scraping the rest of the goopy junk into the trash. Climbing the stairs to the office, he could feel his socks squishing out liquid with every step. Maybe I should have stuck with those bartending classes, he thought.

As Nick clocked out, he glanced over to the desk shared by Mr. Murray and his son; the younger Murray was there, his feet up on the desk and watching a video on a laptop. Sounded like porn.

Well, I’m finished, Nick called out. Have a good night, Drew.

The younger Murray half-turned in his chair. Nick, we talked about this before. This is a business, he said. So while we’re here, let’s act professionally, okay?

Nick looked down at the office’s dirty carpet. The color of Dijon mustard, it had never looked terrific—even when it was new, back when he and Drew were still in high school—but the years of use hadn’t helped either. The area around the desk was particularly filthy, specked and dotted with evidence of meals completed weeks, months, eons ago. Nick could imagine a series of spills extending back for years: burgers, burritos, you name it, all dropping onto the carpet and leaving a stain to bolster its sad mystique.

Good night, he repeated. Mr. Murray.

Good night, Nick. See you tomorrow. He turned his attention back to the computer screen.

The parking lot was nearly empty, of course, by the time Nick got outside. Nick saw only Drew’s Corvette, parked in an employee slot to the side of the grocery store, and a blue pickup idling near the road as he squished across the lot to the sidewalk. His own car, a Saturn coupe that had neither power windows nor functioning air conditioning, had been giving him problems lately. He couldn’t get it past second gear, which made driving around more trouble than it was worth, so he’d been forced to get some exercise for the last couple of months.

As he approached the pickup with its quietly rumbling engine, he saw that it was missing its license plate and there was a stepladder in the bed that extended up and over the gate, poking out from underneath a heavy tarp. Nick glanced inside the cab as he passed. The driver had a ball cap pulled low over his eyes and was wearing sunglasses in spite of the evening’s lengthening shadows, and as Nick stepped up onto the sidewalk and started home, he heard the driver put the truck into gear. A few seconds later the truck rolled past him and drove off into the night.

The walk home was pleasant; the arrival, not so much. The cool night air and pinks and purples streaking the sky made for a nice walk, but the pounding music of Nick’s downstairs neighbors could be heard before he even saw his apartment building. If tonight was going to follow the usual Saturday pattern, then his neighbors would turn off the music around four the following morning. It mystified him how they could have loud, late parties so often; didn’t they ever have to get up to go to work? Still, there wasn’t much he could do about it. His rent was about as high as he could go; these were the best neighbors he could afford.

He sat the night in headphones, dampening the assault from downstairs, moving from iPod to laptop and back again over the evening. His nightly routine—surfing the same old sites, flipping through the same old books, listening to the same old songs—was like cotton candy, filling up a lot of space but itself full of nothing. His nights were the kind of night that slips away almost unnoticed, like the grains of sand that noiselessly fall in an hourglass, and by the time Nick felt sleepy and wanted to go to bed, he couldn’t have mentioned a single real thing that he’d done since arriving home.

He went to his bedroom and stripped down to his underwear. The music apparently had not grown tired after several hours of service; a bass line still vigorously drilled its way up through the floor of Nick’s bedroom. Nick fished around in the top drawer of his bureau and pulled out a pair of foam earplugs, which had become considerably less soft and squishy after months of use.

Nick went to the window, turned on the small fan sitting on the sill, and looked out. The view should have been nice—the apartment building was surrounded by pines, and from his window you could see the bluffs rising up in the east—but the huge billboard across the road overpowered the lowly natural features. The sign read DONNER BUILDERS: EXQUISITE HOMES FOR EVERY SEASON and although the text never changed, the graphics did: every few months they’d put up a new picture of Jeff Donner according to the time of year. There was one of him wearing a Santa hat, for the winter. Dressed like a Pilgrim, for the fall. As the Easter bunny in the spring. And now, for the summer, they had him in swim trunks and a ducky inner tube. Staring down from the billboard, it was like Donner was daring Nick not to buy a house from him, daring him to look away, to avert his eyes from the glory of his shaved head and waxed chest, everything horribly larger than life and brightly lit. Nick yanked the cord and the blinds rushed down with a clatter.

As he lay in bed, the light from the billboard seeping in between the slats