Suddenly, Spike's head explodes like a watermelon hitting concrete. What's left collapses to the carpet with a thud.
For a moment, Brad stares at the corpse. The right half of the face is a bloody pulp. The left eye remains in tact. Brad feels gutted, stripped, like an empty shell. There MUST be something more. An idea strikes like a white-hot bolt of lightening. There is . . .
A look of high-purpose falls over Brad's distinguished features. Crouching down, he picks up Spike's body, slings it over his shoulder and hauls it into the spotless gourmet kitchen. There's an unmistakable sound of flesh thudding on wood as he dumps Spike's corpse on the large wooden island, kitchen center.
Brad opens a large drawer. One by one, he selects the tools and sets them out side-by-side in Bristol fashion. A large meat saw, a bone saw, a 25-inch boning knife, a curved skinning knife, and then a gleaming Porsche Cleaver. He holds the cleaver up, gazing at it like a jeweler apprizing a fine gemstone. The workmanship is extraordinary. It measures 16-inches overall with a 12-inch razor sharp extra wide blade. It's used for everything from slicing vegetables to splitting lobsters. Brad smiles to himself. "This'll do nicely," are his soft words.
The garage's florescent light buzzes and flickers on. A gleaming silver Mercedes roadster sits amidst smells of grass, gasoline and old oil. Brad pulls on waist-high fishing waders then dons a yellow rubber apron. From the tool-cupboard, he gathers a Craftsman saber saw and a DeWalt reciprocating saw. He pulls a yellow box of 60-gallon trash bags from a shelf. They're construction strength of course.
Back in the kitchen, Brad sets the two saws next to Spike's corpse. As he slides on elbow-length rubber gloves, he looks at the carcass. Thick gobs of blood drip onto the pinkish marble floor like oil leaking from a junked car engine. Brad is far from a man possessed. Something unidentifiable and far higher goads him forward. He takes off Spike's jacket and throws it into a corner. He leans toward the bloody face. What's left of Spike's mouth is stretched open like a gaping goldfish. One lifeless eye stares upward. Over the coppery smell of freshly pumped blood, Spike smells of garlic and last night's beer.
Brad quirks an eyebrow. "Let's see. Where to start?"
Suddenly Brad's arms ignite like the blue flame of a welder's torch. The DeWalt reciprocating saw roars. The sawing blade cuts through Spike's Adams apple then through the neck vertebrae in seconds. Neck flesh stretches then snaps. Spike's decapitated head tumbles to the floor with a crunching sound. Brad glances down. "Pick it up?" he whispers with no particular emphasis. "No, leave it for last. The brain is the most evil. The rest just goes along for the ride."
Several hefty whacks with the Porsche Cleaver sever the arms at the shoulders. Two more whacks slice through elbows. The hands are hacked off with similar ease. Brad whistles a soft tune as he shakes one of the trash bags open and stuffs the hunks of Spike into the black garbage bag.
In Brad's face, there is not a sign of horror, insanity or mania. Rather, what coats his distinguished features now is a solid expression of purpose -- high-purpose.
The curved skinning knife slices opens the chest. With a grinding buzz, the electric saber saw cuts through rib after bloody rib. With surgical precision, Brad cuts away lungs, intestines, the heart, liver, and other miscellaneous internal organs. He sweeps the sloppy mess into another black bag. A long length of bowel slides off the counter landing on the floor in a gooey heap. Lengthy strokes with the bone saw turn the thick femur bones, knees and lower legs into muscle-covered hunks. Unbuckling the biker-boots, Brad stuffs them in the bag with Spike's guts. There's a grating buzz as the saber saw cuts off the feet at the ankles.
As he shoves Spike's left leg into another garbage bag, it twitches slightly. He glances at Spike's decapitated head and chuckles softly. "Guess the rest of you hasn't quite gotten the message yet."
Brad's eyes swing back to his work. Pelvic bones present a larger problem. He rolls the corpse over. He positions the saber saw's blade between the leg stumps. With a flick of his thumb, the saw roars to life. With slight upward pressure, the blade penetrates denim, then digs into ass-flesh. Bloody bits of gore spatter as the saw blade grinds upward as it saws through flesh and denim. Suddenly, the saw jumps and bucks, chewing at thick pelvic bone. Gritting his teeth, Brad applies more pressure. The saw advances slowly, splitting Spike's ass right up the center.
The saw whirs to a stop. Brad glances at the bloody mass of bone and guts, then at the four bags of body parts, then at the trails of red boot prints marking a zigzagging course around the kitchen floor. His roving eyes pause on the pile of bowels, then flick to Spike's head then to a mislaid foot. All lay in pools of dark red coagulating blood.
Brad frowns. The wader's rubber boots thump as he paces around the grisly mess. "Not good enough," he says aloud. "Not good enough, not good enough." Suddenly he freezes in his tracks. He snaps his fingers. "Yeah, Christmas, 1996."
A moment later, he's back in the garage and climbing up a stepladder. He hefts a heavy box from a shelf. The large letters on the side read:
LEELAND'S ELECTRIC CHUM GRINDER
Turns baitfish into an effective chum slick in seconds!
Brad beams. "The cock must and will be first," he says with a trace of joy. Shouldering the box, he climbs down the ladder and tramps back to the kitchen.
Like a giddy child opening a present, he splits the packing tape with a bloody knife and hefts the gleaming silver machine from its box. It's about two-feet square, with a large circular intake on top and a smaller oval on the side to spit out the remains. He sets the chum grinder's outfall over the kitchen sink and plugs the cord into a wall socket.
He rolls the torso over. His eyes swing to Spike's cock. It's still in tact, erect, jutting out from the red gore-covered pelvis like a long thick stick. Brad laughs and glances down at Spike's severed head. "Guess your dick hasn't got the message either."
The curved skinning knife is the tool of choice. For a split-second, an image springs into Brad's psyche. It's of Spike's throbbing blue-veined cock being shoved into Kandi's welcoming pussy. He hears an echoing man-like groan. Brad cringes. Like in a nightmare, he's unable to move. In slow motion, gobs of Spike's cum spew out spattering Brad right in his face. One violent shake of his head and the image vanishes. Brad returns to the very urgent task with renewed vigor.
Boots squeak as he tramps across the kitchen. He picks up Spike's decapitated head from the floor. One jerk rips the shinny gold earring from Spike's earlobe. He tosses it up and down. Taking off a glove, he meticulously washes the earring and drops it into his pants pocket. Carefully, he positions the head on the granite countertop next to the sink, adjusting and aligning it so the one remaining eye can witness the destruction.
With a single jerk of the curved skinning knife, the cock and testicles are off. He clenches the bloody hunks in his gloved hand. The chum grinder's electric motor whirs.
Brad looks at the single unmoving eye. "Okay fucker. Take this."
Spike's cock spins violently as the chum grinder's intake swallows it whole and spits out red-white slime into the sink. Brad flips on the garbage disposal. Taking a dish sponge, he judiciously pushes the remains down the disposal. Brad smiles triumphantly then turns back to the island to finish the mission.
The chum grinder's motor labors slightly as its spinning blades consume Spike's arm and hand. The neck vertebrae are next. The 12-inch length of jagged bone rotates wildly as the grinder pulverizes it and spews out bloody goo into the sink. Pelvic bones and muscle tissue are hacked apart and follow the vertebrae. Inch by delightful inch, he feeds the long snake-like length of bowel into the machine. Taking a blood-red lung from a bag, he looks at it for a moment then shrugs. "Lung cancer," he mumbles as the bloody organ disappears down the intake hole.
Opening bag after bag, he feeds in muscle-covered femur bones, guts, organs, legs and knees. The disposal groans as he shoves down the sink-full of slop that resembles oxidized sludge. A thwap-thud-thawp-thud from the heavy cleaver cuts the spine into smaller pieces. The chum grinder growls and shakes as it devours each hunk.
"And now," Brad says, "the skull."
Brad positions the Craftsman's long saber saw blade above the bridge of Spike's nose.
"How about we split your personality?" Brad mumbles.
He bears down, hard. The saw vibrates as it bites into hard head bone. More downward pressure saws the skull right in half. Holding the top half over the chum grinder's intake, Brad vigorously shakes it. Gobs of chalk-white brain-matter tumble into the grinder's hungry mechanism. With one hard twist, the jawbone snaps free. The saw quickly reduces the rest of the skull to a mishmash of bits and pieces. Brad's hands scoop up the chunks emptying each handful into the chum grinder. It vibrates, obediently devouring each. The garbage disposal takes care of the rest.
Brad steps back and takes a deep satisfied breath. A rush, a rich and thick sense of building accomplishment pulses through Brad's veins.
He retrieves the mislaid foot and shoves it into the chum grinder, ankle first. He hums a tuneless tune as the spinning toes become a gooey mess flowing across the sink and down the drain. The disposal swallows it up, sentencing the last of Spike to a long rewarding life in the sewer.