Chapter One
Joey tasted nickel and copper. Blood. His mouth was filled with his own blood lying thick on his tongue. He tried to spit it out but the duct tape strapped across his face made it impossible. He had no choice but to swallow it, gagging as a wad of blood and phlegm slid down his throat in a warm lump. Joey tried hard to keep from crying. He''d been crying for hours and it had done him no good. The fat kid seemed to enjoy his tears.
Why me? Why is he doing this?
It was a pointless question with no answer that would have made a bit of difference. He was suffering and he would continue to suffer and there was nothing he could do about it.
At first he had been confident that his parents would rescue him and punish the fat kid. He was sure that as soon as they realized he hadn''t made it home from school they''d be kicking down every door on the block looking for him. But that had been many hours ago and no one had come for him. Now he was afraid that no one would ever find him; that he would die down there in the dank basement.
The rusted fiberglass-on-steel tub in which Joey lay was rapidly filling with blood. Joey splashed about in a river of red, slipping farther down into the tub. He''d heard that you could drown in three inches of bathwater and wondered how many inches of blood were already in the tub. He knew he was bleeding to death. His flesh had been split open like overripe fruit and was leaking in a steady sluggish drip down into the large bathtub.
Joey didn''t know how many times he''d been stabbed and cut. Slashes crosshatched his thighs and buttocks, many of them going clean through to the bone, yawning wide like toothless smiles filled with bleeding pink gums. He could see the red muscle fibers and stringy sallow fat boiling up out of one particularly deep wound in his upper thigh. Luckily his genitals had been spared the fat kid''s attentions. His anus, unfortunately, had not. He''d cut him there too and then he''d done worse. Joey tried his best not to think about that pain.
Several times now the fat kid had come, dipped a glass into the tub, filled it with Joey''s blood, and brought the glass to his blubbery lips to drink. His squinty little eyes would flutter in absolute ecstasy as he gulped down the red liquid, making sickening smacking noises. Even through the pain Joey found amusement in knowing that he had pissed himself in the same tub from which the fat kid was drinking.
Time stalled as Joey slipped into and out of consciousness. The basement was a perpetual night, an endless nightmare from which he could not awaken. The windows along the tops of the basement walls were spray-painted black. Faint glimmers of light leaked between the cracks in the frames and cast eerie shadows on the damp walls. The only genuine illumination came from the fluorescent light at the bottom of the basement steps and that was only turned on when the fat kid came down to play. Joey was beginning to fear that light. In the dark he was alone. Safe. Whenever the light came on the pain started all over again.
Joey''s throat was raw and hoarse from the agonized shrieks that had torn their way up from his belly and out into the moist, stagnant basement air. Even after the fat kid covered Joey''s mouth with duct tape he had continued to scream at every thrust and slash of the knife, scalpel, sharp steel pins, and needles. Not to call for help, but to drown out the pain with noise.
Joey lost track of how many times the fat kid came down to torture him or drink from his wounds. The image of the teenager''s chubby cheeks splashed with Joey''s blood, his eyes glazed and sparkling with hunger and lust, made chills dance along Joey''s skin. He wondered if the kid was a vampire. Vampires were supposed to be thin and beautiful and this kid was all lumpy and misshapen with pimples exploding all over his acne-scarred face, but he had drank an enormous amount of blood. Only a vampire could have drank that much blood without getting sick. But if that kid was immortal then he was fucked because that meant he''d have to look like that forever.
Maybe he just thinks he''s a vampire? Joey wondered. Or maybe he is a vampire but just a different kind than the ones in the movies. An uglier kind.
The basement door creaked open again and sunlight spilled down the stairs, illuminating the cobwebs and rat droppings and chasing away the cockroaches that had come to lap at the blood splattered around the outside of the tub. A few tepid rays of sunshine struck metal and cast their gleam farther into the room. Joey''s eyes followed the sun rays back to their reflection in the stainless surgical steel and he shuddered.
Several cruel-looking implements were laid out on a metal table a few feet from where Joey lay bleeding. Razor-sharp scalpels, knives, and needles, arranged the way surgeons did on TV-in order of practical use. They were all stained with Joey''s blood.
The basement door closed again and the lone fluorescent light at the top of the basement steps flashed on. The bulb was broken and flickered continuously, casting eerie shadows around the room. Joey cringed as the fat kid came back down the stairs, backlit by the strobe-lighting fluorescent bulb. He was just one great malformed shadow.
The fat kid was naked. His pale flesh was stained with Joey''s blood, including his short, fireplug-shaped cock, erect and straining beneath the weight of his low-hanging gut. Joey began to whimper as the kid''s gore-streaked smile came swooping down at him and he felt those clammy hands and blubbery lips, that slimy wormlike tongue, and blunt little teeth worry at him, probing and digging into his wounds, ripping them wider. He began to scream against the duct tape sealed tight to his lips as he was turned facedown in the tub and he felt the pain lance through him again in rhythmic thrusts, drawing more blood.
Joseph Miles woke up with his heart thundering in his chest, his lungs sucking in air and forcing it back out in rapid bursts. His old scars screamed as if they''d just been made. His eyes slid back and forth, sweeping the room, looking for the fat kid. He reached out and stroked the large powerful forms of Hades and Beelzebub, his guardians, nestled beside him in the bed, one on each side. The rock-hard muscles coiled beneath their fur reassured him. They would''ve torn that fat kid to pieces. Anyway, he was locked up now. He''d never hurt Joey again. Still, Joey was grateful for his two guardians.
He squinted against the harsh invasive glare of the morning sun lancing through the cracks in his vertical blinds and tried to will the clouds to shield him from it. Hades and Beelzebub did not appear to mind the sunlight nearly as much as he did. Joey found that surprising. Weren''t monsters supposed to fear the light? That''s what the books all said. But the fat kid had snatched him off his bike in broad daylight and Hades and Beelzebub loved the sun. They lay snoring steadily in the warm morning light.
Their heavy rumbling breaths vibrated through the mattress like a revving engine. Joey could still smell the meaty steel-and-copper scent of flesh and blood in each exhalation. He cringed, remembering their last meal.
Joey stared at the two massive beasts, admiring their fearsome jaws with the savage, lethal-looking canines. Their mouths could easily have crushed the largest bones in his body. Their necks were as thick as his waist and their legs and shoulders were broad and muscular. The combined weight of the two monsters was nearly three hundred pounds, three times his own weight, and with them lying on the blanket he was trapped beneath it, unable to move.
Beelzebub was the first to notice that the young boy had awakened. He leapt up and ran to the head of the bed where he began happily licking Joey''s face. Hades woke up next and soon Joey was being covered in saliva as the two huge beasts showered him with affection. Joey hugged them, running his hands over the smooth black fur coating their muscular bodies, and began to cry. He knew that if anyone found out what they''d done they would destroy the two beasts and he''d be alone again. Defenseless.
It had been over a year since Joey had been attacked and nearly killed. That''s when his parents had brought home the two monsters to protect him. For the last six months Joey and his friend Mike had been teaching the two predators how to kill from a book they''d ordered from Soldier of Fortune magazine on building prey drive and a Schutzhund video on bite work. Using a dummy they''d made of old clothes, they''d taught the two dogs to leap up and rip out a man''s throat on command, how to dive for a man''s legs and crush his ankles or rip off his quadriceps or hamstring muscles with their massive jaws to bring him down, how to rip open a man''s belly and tear out his intestines. They were learning quickly. Joey had been dying for a demonstration of their abilities.
Right up until Hades and Beelzebub split little Mikey like a wishbone, Joey had been confident that he could call the dogs off before they went too far. The fountain of arterial red that splashed his face moments after giving the attack command had proven him wrong.
He had been standing next to Mikey in the park. They both had their shirts off and Joey kept catching Mikey staring at the scars on his chest and stomach from where he had been attacked. He knew that Mikey was about to ask him about them, that he would have to remember that horrible night spent in Damon Trent''s basement tasting his own blood. The last thing Joey wanted was to remember. He whistled and pointed at his friend. The two rottweilers turned in unison, baring their fangs. Hades was the first to attack.
Mikey had his arm wrapped in a bite sleeve made from a stolen leather jacket and two thick pillows, but Hades ignored it. Mikey''s eyes widened in fear as the massive beast charged. He held out the bite sleeve and she dodged it as if it were a gun, just like she''d been trained to do. She went straight for his throat.
Joey couldn''t help but be impressed as he watched that thickly-muscled instrument of destruction launch herself into the air like a missile, leaping nearly three feet off the ground, her fangs bared. Her jaws clamped onto Mikey''s throat and she brought him down to the park floor in a cloud of dust. She began thrashing and jerking her head from side to side, snapping Mikey''s neck and tearing his esophagus to shreds. Blood erupted from the boy''s throat and soaked the animal''s snout. Blood from Mikey''s punctured carotid artery and lacerated jugular sprayed all over the ground and doused young Joseph in a shower of red. He licked his friend''s blood from his lips and a shiver vibrated down to the root of him, giving him an instant erection.
Beelzebub was just seconds behind his sister. He dove into Mikey''s stomach and began ripping and tearing at his abdominal muscles, burrowing his way to the boy''s organs.
Joey''s legs trembled. His jaw fell open and his eyes widened in shock. He reached out his hand toward the dog but hesitated. Something about the sight of the blood, the torn flesh with the white bone and pink-and-purple organs gleaming through, the sound of muscle and tendons being ripped by those merciless fangs, transfixed him. It was so horrible ... so beautiful.
The boy stood frozen, staring as Hades attempted to tear Mikey''s head from his shoulders. Joey tried to shut out the rattling whistle coming from Mikey''s mangled throat as the boy continued trying to suck air into his lungs even as Beelzebub tore into him. Joey clapped his hands and yelled for the dogs to stop.
"Down! Down, Hades! Down, Beelzebub!"
When Hades unclamped her jaws from Mikey''s throat the boy''s head was twisted at an acute angle. There was little doubt that his neck had been shattered. His pupils were fixed and dilated and his chest had ceased its rise and fall.
Joey looked down at his murdered friend and began to cry. He hadn''t meant to kill him. His sorrow rained down on him like a summer storm. He was relieved by the immediacy and intensity of it. Joey knew a lot about serial killers. He''d read about them, had almost been killed by one, and had an irrational fear of becoming one, becoming like the perverted freak that had kidnapped him and carved him up in his basement. But he was relatively sure that serial killers did not feel remorse for their victims. As long as he could cry he was sure that he was normal, even if his tears were more for the two massive rottweilers than for his dead playmate. He knew they would be put to sleep once the police found Mikey''s body and figured out what had happened.
Two days later the dogs were destroyed, but not before Joey had taken them back to the park to watch them feed on Mikey''s remains.
When they arrived at the spot where the attack had taken place the boy''s savaged corpse was still lying in a heap on the park floor just where Joey had left it. Only now it was seeping fluids other than blood and myriad insects had begun making a meal of him. Joey found himself becoming aroused as he watched the two dogs bite off and devour huge chunks of the boy''s flesh. He masturbated to his first climax as Hades devoured Mikey''s genitals, adding his own virgin seed to the blood-soaked earth.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Succulent Preyby Wrath James White Copyright © 2008 by Wrath James White. Excerpted by permission.
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