The Seventh Circle

Kyrie meets the Casanova Slasher

Marcus' phone gave a trill and vibrated against the wooden desk. A languid pair of eyes darted to the offending noise and a hand raised the device for scrutiny.

Kyrie: U there?

The serene eyes narrowed and the hand squeezed the phone. The impulse was initially to smash the damned thing against the cold floor and somehow in doing, destroy the tormentor on the other end. It buzzed again.

Kyrie: Miss U

Calm returned. How childish to behave so, to smash a lifeless facsimile while the pulsing, living, breathing, whore remained waiting to bleed. She must die, screaming, begging and pouring out her wretched life onto the street. Her blood was better spent to decorate the pavestones than warm her skin.

Marcus: Im here

Marcus: Meet me?

Kyrie: Where?

Marcus: Bridge 2am G will be aslep. well go from ther

Kyrie: Kk

There were things to do, preparations to make. Everything had to be perfect.

Marcus: Cant wait 2CU. have a bigsurprise ;)

Kyrie: I <3 U

The hand gripping the little black phone shook in rage as it tried to crush Kyrie under its strength. It relaxed, and put the phone in a pocket.

Just more childish anger. Save it!

Marcus had gone to bed dizzy depleted and alone. The events of the day left him on edge and too preoccupied to deal with such menial things as laundry and food. When Gina came home and saw all his promises broken, she became indignant. She assaulted Marcus with the unmistakable passive aggression of slammed cabinets and the clatter of silverware thrown into the sink. Marcus' refusal to be blamed or bothered led a quibble to argument, argument to battle, and battle to oaths of hatred and declarations of war. Pursed lips and muttered curses became inflamed howlings, bared teeth and claws to tear flesh and spirit alike. In the end, Marcus, feeling as shattered as the dishes and picture frames on the floor, trudged upstairs and left Gina to her sobbing, alone in the wreckage of their life. As he flopped into the sheets, his chest and shoulder gnawed at him and his cheek stung where Gina's nails had made purchase in a heated moment. It burned under his fingers as he checked it for blood. For all the pain, it wouldn't give even have the satisfaction of a drop to show for it. Thoughts spun too rapidly for Marcus to grab hold of any of them and spent beyond mental exhaustion, he fell to an uneasy sleep. More than once, he jolted awake, for dreams of falling.

"It all comes back to this!" She had emphasized 'this' as she tore her tight skirt up and over her curves. She bent over the kitchen counter and spat in utter contempt without looking at him, "Just fucking take it, Marcus. Take it and leave me the fuck alone."

Marcus had never before recoiled at the sight of a woman's vulva or balked at an offer of sex, but as he looked at that snarled lady-maw with its bristles protruding like fangs, the thought of taking it so scornfully thrust at him was nauseous. Part of Gina's inner labia was split as if a piercing had once been ripped out. Along the thicker fleshy folds, there were lines of scars where hair would no longer grow.

"Baby, what the hell's happened to you?" Marcus, suddenly contrite, blundered out. So rarely had Gina allowed him to see it in full light, he often forgot about her scars.

She didn't answer but shuddered and sank to her elbows. Her hands covered her face, and she groaned in dreadful effort to hold back, but a great sob burst forth in spite of her. It cut Marcus' to the core of his being to hear her cry.

"Scar tissue," was all she had ever told him. So many years ago, she sat between his legs, her wet skin pressed against his waning erection, his rippled arms wrapped around her chest and their faces touching as they swayed together in sexual afterglow. "I can't have children because I have scar tissue in my uterus," she'd told him. A quiver ran through her body that warned Marcus away from the subject. He had never asked about it again until now.

Marcus wrapped his hands around Gina's waist and straightened her skirt.

"Please talk to me, Gina."

Even his last unspoken promise was broken now. His intrusion into the sanctity of Gina's scars earned him the mark on his face and he staggered away from her abashed wordless. Nothing he could say to her, no matter how beautifully shaped, no matter how gently and lovingly whispered to her soul could help now.

Marcus opened the door and looked into perpetual dusk. A sunless haze of sky stared back instead of their bedroom. Wind driven grit stung his face as he stared into the door. He'd seen this place so often before it was immediately familiar, yet there was no actual memory of it. It was a forsaken land, almost beautiful in its desolation, compelling in its forlorn nudity.

Marcus stepped into the devastation. His socked feet sank into dark sand and dust. The wind picked up and blasted him with its abrasive assault. He was not welcome here. Marcus had to shield his eyes against the attack as he pressed forward into this forbidden territory. The oppressive air of this place reeked with the fetid stench of rotten meat and burning flesh as if the ragged chunks of a broken heart had been immolated in some arcane ritual. Fearful as he was to press forward, he was there, his feet sinking into the silt of broken promises and the dust of shattered dreams. The wind broke down to a sigh and Marcus lowered his arm. He had seen this place so many times but could never remember it. What was it? Why was it here?

"Please talk to me, Gina," he sighed back into the wind. As if in answer, a tremor rumbled beneath his feet.

"Tell me what happened to you." There was only silence now. Even the wind died out. There was a writhing mass of tawny-brown some yards ahead and distracted momentarily from his lament, Marcus approached with a tentative step.

He arrived where the movement must have originated, but the source wasn't obvious until a whimper, soft and pathetic, brought his eyes to his feet. The mass was the same color as the silt and was all but lost in the slur of the waste. A dog lay on her side with six smaller masses huddled from her chest to her belly. Only the mother made any movement. Something was wrong. She looked up at him. Her tongue lolled and her chest undulated with each panting breath. She whimpered as she bent to lick her pups. Marcus crouched, his knees spread wide, and picked up one of the dark balls of fur. The bitch made a low whine and watched him handle the pup. Far from the warm wriggling heft of a healthy dog, it was stone cold and insubstantial, stiff. It was dead. They were all dead.

"They're gone, girl," he said to her, meeting her eyes. He dropped the lifeless pelt and staggered to his feet, startled by the sight of her face. Her left eye was bloated and milky like a ripe pus sac. The left side of her face had rotted away to skull and hanging bits of flesh. Marcus retreated and turned around. The door was gone as if it had never existed. The bleak landscape stretched on in all directions.

Marcus plodded on in a random direction, leaving the mother behind. Was it five minutes, one hundred yards, or an hour and many miles? Time and distance blurred together, each step becoming less significant until the landscape began to fill with more substantial vegetation. There were at first only dried up dead shrubs, but gradually a hint of green specked the ground. A length he came to a tree, full and thick with verdant foliage. Along the ground, under it there were shriveled volunteers, sticks of wizened wood, the life they attempted to start drawn back out by the stretching roots of the great tree.

Marcus held out a hand to touch the deep grooves of bark. Nailed to the tree was a thick bare wire formed into a hook on the dangling end. A runnel of dried blood ran along the trunk of the tree to the ground and the hook still held a lump of torn flesh. What was this? What did it mean?

Marcus fingertips met the metal and all the world crashed down. The tree bulged and bucked and the ground convulsed with violence that pitched Marcus off his feet. A histrionic shriek rent his ears as if the bloody wire had been thrust in to tear out his brain. Louder and higher it screamed until Marcus clamped his hands over his ears, but it was no use. He gasped and panted as a red stream leaked through his fingers.

"Daddy please!" the shrill voice screamed, though there was no obvious source. Invisible yet irresistible force pinned Marcus' arms over his head and spread his legs wide. He thrashed against it but was impuissant as if he were a child resisting a good beating with his father's belt.

Marcus raised his head, the only part of him left free, to find that he had ceased to be. He was no longer a man. The shrill voice was his own. The buds of breasts swelled under his button down blouse which parted half-way down to reveal a the bulging protrusion of a pregnant belly. What must have been a foot pressed against the inside. Sharp searing pain in his groin sent him struggling anew.

"Little whore!" The voice of a woman grunted, "Now rip out the rest."

Marcus howled in protest and struggled as for all of their souls. He screamed until his voice gave out, and he could fight no more but the hook continued its work. The life inside him had grown still and by degrees grew smaller as the pain gave way to numbness. The light swirled into darkness and all became a dark and dizzy cacophony of raised voices, the beeping as of a heart monitor and the wail of sirens.

The third time Marcus woke, Gina's silhouette in the doorframe startled him with a sensation of boiling water pitched into his gut. The faint echoes of screaming still rang in his ears.

He couldn't see her face as she stood there, one hand resting on the knob as if unsure whether to advance or retreat. As Marcus stirred, she pulled the door as to close it and then changed her mind. She burst into the room and flung herself onto Marcus who had only a second to choose to dodge or catch his wife in open arms. His arms made the choice for him.

Gina assailed him with an unexpected outpouring of apology and regret. She covered his face with her affection and lingered over the wound on his cheek.

"I'm so sorry, baby," she wept, and covered the scratch with her lips as if to kiss it away. Marcus stared hard at his wife's face, her vulnerable supplicating reddened eyes, her streaked cheeks, her agony. She looked at him as if she were dying in his arms. His chest shuddered as he pulled her in to embrace, to comfort to hold all of her as close and tight as she could bear. Sensation like a hot shower against his cold back traveled through him, as he resolved that he still loved her. No matter what he'd done, no matter what she did, he loved her. Even if she killed him, the last word on his bloodstained lips would be her name.

"Gina..." He could manage no more for fear of sobbing aloud. She stroked his head to support him in the struggle for control. Tears, long averted, betrayed Marcus and rained onto Gina's neck.

"I love you so much," he whispered. This was his doing, his fault. He would fix it all. Broken glass or broken hearts and broken bodies, nothing was beyond helping was it? As long as they still lived and breathed, there was a chance.

Gina's face turned to look at Marcus and her lips grazed his. As the force of magnets brought too close, their lips fell together. The waves in Marcus' back changed direction and his sorrow and lament burned away in sudden passion. He twisted his body to bring Gina to his other side and under him. Gina's slight frame was a triviality to his strength. He stirred noticeably under his loose boxers. Could physical love be a sticky sweet salve to succor the wounds and blistering sores they'd inflicted on each other or just a seeping bandage to hide a festering abscess?

"No," Gina said, her palms out against Marcus' advancing chest. His momentum arrested, Marcus' very heart seemed to stop in the tension. Unsure where to go, he was dejected, but hardly surprised. They had made love maybe four times in twice as many months. They were too young to be a sexless couple. At least she'd come to bed. At least he could hold her in his arms and take in the scent of her hair until they slept. As he began to deflate and settle down beside her, Gina followed, pushed him down on the mattress and straddled his pelvis.

She crossed her hands and clutched at the pink satin she was wearing. It shed without effort over her head to reveal her stark form underneath. Gina's breasts were an accent to a magnificent masterpiece of feminine curves and angles, where no form had developed to excess but incorporated beautifully as part of her whole. Her nipples were small and such a very light pink they were almost colorless. They shrank into knots as Marcus' warm hands advanced up her cool torso. His reawakened desire pushed against her sex, enraged, but pinned helpless by her weight as she began to rock her hips into him, so gently teasing.

She bent low to take Marcus' own nipple into her mouth and vex it with teeth and tongue. She raised her ass in the air and released his cock from its cotton prison and it peeked through the slot in his underwear. Gina's small chilly hand seized it and stroked downwards while she maneuvered her slit to accept his love. She eased the tip back and forth almost to excess over her hood and between the lips, until she finally let her weight push onto it. They both gasped in the rapture of this natural and obvious coupling so long delayed, overlooked or obtusely refused. Gina did the work of pushing herself onto Marcus while his powerful forearms pressed her close.

Marcus could not forbear thrusting with rapid strokes as Gina rose and crawled over him. His hands roamed up and down the curve of her waist and settled on cupping her breasts, now exaggerated by gravity. He had just begun to suckle as she sat upright. He staked her as deep as anatomy would allow, and she rocked to fuck herself to the utmost inch of Marcus' length.

As her legs began to tremble, she bent over almost backwards and wrapped a hand around the base of his sack, which she pulled out and twisted as if milking. Her fingernail raked against the seam of his perineum toward the puckered mouth of his anus. This odd and unexpected sensation excited Marcus past the hope of recovery until his viscid milk poured forth into Gina who cried out in the throes of her own climax.

~~~~

Kyrie could scarcely contain her felicity as she put her phone into the pocket of her grey State Tech hoodie. The screen had said it was time to head out. She held her bottom lip with her teeth, but it spread out anyway, and she giggled to herself as she passed over her doorstep.

The Whalen Creek Bridge was a secluded and disused, rusted and rotten landmark forgotten by time. The road now bent around Whalen Creek to cross elsewhere and concrete slabs blocked any cars from attempting to cross. The location was now a place for rowdy teenagers to decorate with their cans of spray paint, or for paranormalists to explore and spread their legends.

One such story of popular interest involved a young woman whose face had been devoured by ravening feral dogs. To this day, she still haunted the bridge, her bloody faceless and horrible visage, frightening away all who dared to trespass. It was nonsense. The only grain of truth was the so-called "river-dogs" who roamed under the bridge, and whose howling lent credibility to the ridiculous story. There were real horrors aplenty in the world. Living breathing all too human monsters waited in the dark to snatch up the lost.

A bright yellow arrow alerted drivers to the sharp curve, or in Kyrie's case marked the location of their meeting place. Marcus' SUV was already there, pulled off the road, but the lights blazed into Kyrie's face as she approached. She killed the engine and her own headlights in assumption Marcus would show her the same courtesy. He did not.

Kyrie ventured out with her hood covering her head from the steady mist and an arm held up to shield her eyes. She was a far sight from her resplendence when they'd first met, in her conservative, baggy jacket and un-made face. Only a leftover smear of shadow remained under her eyes. She could make out a patch of red between the lights as she stepped nearer. What must have been Marcus' feet in heavy boots, crossed underneath him as he leaned on his bumper. One foot rested on its toe to give the appearance of a figure four.

"Marcus?" Kyrie said, but no answer returned. The foot returned to the ground, and he took a step toward her. The patch of red revealed itself as a bouquet of roses, but Marcus' face remained hidden. Marcus was dressed in black, head to toe. The wide brim of a hat concealed his face as he stared at the ground. He held out the flowers. Kyrie gushed in appreciation.

"Baby, I love them!"

A dark lithe limb jutted toward her and a glint of steel reflected in the light. Cold as of ice thrust into her abdomen pierced Kyrie. The cold was fleeting and replaced by sharp pain and spreading warm as of hot fluid poured onto her chilled skin. Her hand reaching for the flowers faltered and the other covered the flowing hole in her belly. She looked down in horror at red taking over grey when the glint and thrusting hand returned to cut her again.

"Marcus!" she spluttered, "Please! God, baby, NO!"

The roses scattered on the gravel of the shoulder as the assault continued. The black insensate inhuman fist found its mark over and again without pause or compunction until Kyrie was too weak to stand. Her supplications for mercy only enraged him further. The dark figure followed her to the ground and stared down at her stricken face. Tears streamed from her eyes and blood from her lips.

"Stop, please. Don't do this. Why?" Kyrie whispered. The back of a leather-clad finger stroked her cheek as her vision began to fade.

"You deserve this! Every inch of it." Kyrie could just make out the steely red and blurry glint of bloodied steel in her face. "You made me do this. I didn't want it! Everything is your fault. It's all your fault. Now die you fucking whore!"

At the sound of her attacker's voice and with all her remaining strength, Kyrie screamed in despairing rage. A fine mist of red droplets sprayed from her mouth and flecked her face until the blade thrust into her throat, silencing her forever. The last stirring before her senses left her was a pulling and tugging at her jeans, as the fiend began about the task of removing her clothes to finish this act of unspeakable atrocity.

~~~~

Marcus' bleary eyes blinked away sleep to find the bed cold vacant next to him. Gina had left him during the night. He could expect nothing better. He was a fool to believe wanton lust could hope to heal the very wounds it had caused. He stroked the pillow where her warm beaming face should be staring back at him until a nightmarish shriek echoed through the house. Gina's voice screamed as in terror from the floor below. As if the bed were on fire, Marcus scrambled off and bolted down the hall.

"He's HERE! Help me. Hurry!" she cried for assistance as he rounded onto the staircase. His dry bare feet slipped on the matted carpet and he thudded on his butt halfway down the stairs. He drew breath through gnashed teeth as he limped as down the remaining steps.

"Gina!" he called out her name. She answered with another shriek.

Marcus burst into the living room to find his beloved, nude on the couch, a black handled folding blade buried into her steadily gushing abdomen just under and left of the oval folds of her navel. Cold air poured through the wide open door as Gina's panicked form writhed on the sofa. She pulled on the knife , but despaired of removing it for the pain. Blood ran in streams down her legs into her cleft and down to her toes to drip onto the carpet.