No Family For Cannibals - Episode One

  NO FAMILY FOR CANNIBALS

  412C SEASON ONE - EPISODE ONE

  by

  AARON K SMITH

  Dedicated to family.

  May we never eat them.

  Violent and sexual content. Reader discretion is advised.

  Copyright © 2014 by Aaron K Smith. Smashwords edition published by 412C. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to events or locales is completely coincidental.

  Episode One

  “A kiss is the beginning of cannibalism.” - Georges Bataille

  "We have the whole house to ourselves for once," Debbie Kellerman said. She curled her legs under her butt and arched her back against the couch. "No teenagers to hear me scream."

  Michael clicked a button on the remote and the TV went dark. He tipped his head all the way back to finish the last swallow of wine in the glass. He loosened his tie.

  "I have been waiting—" he paused to kiss his wife's puffy red lips, "to hear that since—" he kissed her again, "I left for work this morning."

  Debbie spanked his hand and lifted it away from the top button of her pants.

  "A girl has to be ready," she said.

  "What? I thought you were ready."

  She jumped up from the couch.

  "Lock the door and set the alarm," she said, running up the stairs, "then come find me."

  He drank the rest of her wine and refilled both glasses, emptying the bottle of its last drop. Holding the glasses in one hand between his fingers, he set the security alarm and locked the front door.

  After the requested tasks were completed—diversion tactics of the feminine wile—he sprinted up the stairs to find her.

  The lights were off in their bedroom, but he knew where she had gone. Water hissed from the showerhead of the master bathroom and the ventilation hummed as it sucked back the ghosts of humidity attempting to roll past the door.

  Still, despite the anecdotal evidence of her whereabouts, he peeked from side to side before entering the bedroom to ensure she would not leap from the darkness to scare him. This instinct was a fear that lingered from man's primitive birth among the wild beasts of the jungle, and from Debbie having frightened Michael more times than he cared to admit.

  The click of a shampoo lid in the distance confirmed his wife waited for him in the shower.

  He transferred one wine glass to his empty hand, took another big gulp of the tangy liquid, and set both glasses on his bedside table. He kicked off his shoes and used his toes to remove his socks. He unbuttoned his shirt, slipping it over his shoulders onto the carpet.

  The sparse clouds of steam that overcame the vent escaped the bathroom and entered the cold bedroom like a thick fog, lit by nothing more than the red beam from a digital clock next to the wine glasses and a tiny green light from the smoke detector on the ceiling.

  Michael untethered his belt, dropped his pants, and kicked them into a dark corner of the room. He slid his underwear down, but quickly pulled them back to his waist.

  "Shit! Forgot to lock the back door." He paused. "But I set the alarm."

  The previously firm section of his boxer shorts went limp as he debated in his mind if the lock could wait.

  Responsibility got the best of him and he surrendered to the greater duty of husbandhood. With one more drink of wine, he turned and made swiftly for the door—stubbing his toe on the dresser in the process.

  He mashed his teeth together hard and did not let out the slightest peep. When he tried once more to exit the room, he smacked the same toe again and a muffled "Son of a bitch!" exited his lips.

  This time, he grabbed the toe with his hand and held it tightly. He wobbled on one foot for a moment and then leaned against the door jam for support.

  There was no time to relax. If he wanted to soap up with Debbie in the shower, which meant they both would do a lot more to each other having freshly cleaned nooks and crannies, then he needed to hurry before the hot water grew cold.

  He dropped his foot—one in front of the other—and limped for a few steps toward the stairs before the pain subsided. His quick recovery was due to a combination of numbness from the wine, and the fact that his stubbed toe was only a minor injury in the first place. More surprise than pain, as they say.

  From the shadows came a hand that wrapped its gloved fingers over Michael’s mouth. The hand pulled him towards the floor against the assailant’s knee. He squirmed and tried to scream, but the hand was too strong and the leather too thick; not a sound escaped.

  The man drew him close—his neck bent awkwardly against the man’s stomach. The intruder ran the tip of a bayonet down Michael’s chest, not for dramatic effect, but rather to feel where the hard cartilage in his sternum ended and the soft flesh of his abdomen began.

  Eyes large, stretched open by fear, Michael grabbed the man’s arm and struggled. His muscles, pulsing with adrenaline, were of little use against his attacker’s keen leverage.

  The knife slid into Michael all the way up to his heart where the tip of the long blade kissed the organ. His legs shook and his arms flailed. His wide eyes shut. His breath no longer pushed against his killer’s merciless hand.

  When the body fell limp, the man let go of the knife and secured a stronger grip of Michael’s head in a chokehold—seizing the wrist of the choking arm with his free hand. He dragged the carcass downstairs and draped it face up over the coffee table like a cloth, the torso centermost. Michael’s legs, arms, and head hung off the edges of the table.

  He took the knife from Michael’s chest, inserted the blade into Michael’s underwear and cut the garment down each leg. With a quick yank, he tugged the boxers free of the body, laid them on the couch and tossed the knife on top.

  With a roll of the shoulders and a crack of the knuckles now that the deed was done, the man walked into the kitchen. His head panned from left to right as he analyzed each cabinet. He opened a drawer next to the stove and removed a heavy dinner fork—guests should always use a knife and fork at the table.

  The faint tapping of the shower water ceased. The ceiling creaked as Debbie walked across the floor.

  "Michael!" Debbie’s voice called from upstairs. "Where are you?"

  Hunting once again, the intruder crept softly up the stairs, staying close to the wall to reduce the pressure on the steps. He peered into the room from the darkness of the hallway. Debbie's wet, naked body shined under the green light from the smoke detector. She sat on the edge of the bed and dried her hair with a towel.

  She called again in an elevated voice, "I'm ready now. Come and get me."

  Deep, red illumination from Michael's clock sparkling through the wineglasses caught Debbie's eye. She stretched across the bed to grab her glass. When she sprang back to sitting position, her shoulder bumped the man—now standing next to the bed with the fork.

  "Oh! Michael," she said. "You scared me."

  The moon sailed across the night sky. Shadows slanted the opposite direction as the sun greeted the horizon with its radiant glow. The mating calls of crickets and frogs faded off to the west. Birds chirped and fluttered from tree to tree.

  The front door opened and the Kellerman's security alarm beeped a rapid warning of an imminent louder tone if not satisfied by the correct passcode. A young woman, seventeen, tapped four buttons on the keypad and the beeping ceased.

  She turned on the light and swung around to the site of Daddy's marbled corpse on the coffee table, picked at like leftover fowl. His eyes were open, but only the whites showed and they had pruned significantly without the salty fluid from his tear ducts to refresh them. His teeth and gums were visible through an absent lip and a portion of missing cheek. From a distance, it looked like a smile worn to greet his daughter.

  A bag and the books balanced in her arms tumbled to the floor; her keys crashed against the hardwood. She screeched an awful shrill, but recovered quickly. She lunged to the phone on the end table next to the couch and called 9-1-1.

  In the moment, she forgot to fear the wild beasts that lurk in the darkness, ready to pounce.

  "What is your emergency?" asked the tired voice of a late-shift operator on the last leg of an all-nighter.

  "My dad, somebody sliced him open and there is a fork stuck in his chest. Please come help him."

  "Is he breathing?"

  "I don't know. I don't know where my mom is. I don't know if she is okay."

  The girl dropped the phone and ran for the stairs.

  Dispatch continued with the checklist despite the static crash of an abandoned receiver. "Are you in danger? Is there anyone in the house with you? Hello? Ma'am?"

  From the kitchen, the intruder watched the young woman run up the stairs. His knife held ready. She was easy prey if he wanted the taste of young flesh. He tilted his head and furrowed his eyebrows together, perhaps impressed by the girl's bold search for her mother despite personal risk. Was she not aware of beasts?

  He sheathed the bayonet in his boot and slipped out the backdoor of the house as quietly as he had entered it. On the patio, with the sound of another shrill from upstairs and a police siren in the background, he stood to savor the moment. He inhaled the brisk morning air. The pleural lining around his lungs expanded with each deep breath—having just slurped down a peeling of that same membrane from Michael's chest.

  The single siren ha
d become two, then three. He wrapped his bloodstained gloves in a bandana and shoved them in his pocket. Not a drop of blood anywhere else on his clothing or skin—any residue coagulated in the corner of his mouth was cleared by a swipe of his tongue.

  Tires screeched to a halt in front of the residence. Blue and red lights flashed. He walked along the bushes in the Kellerman's backyard, found an opening, and vanished in the country landscape of the small Arkansas town.

  * * *

  I am The Observer.

  I part the clouds with my hands and peer down upon the city. At first glance, it smacks of perfect order. Cars work together in sequence and harmony. The human animal is focused on destination and completion—doing its job, serving its function.

  Then I zoom in and observe the details: cars crash, putrid odors, a neighbor’s undiscovered fingerprint in the bedroom of a missing child.

  From a distance, the system appears copacetic. But deep inside, there are hundreds of little components—starvation, disease, foreclosure, leukemia, homicide, depression, natural disaster, molestation, suicide, predators and prey.

  Eventually, a detail finds us all.

  We experience the horror firsthand.

  Perhaps we were targets all along—cancer gene—or maybe we happened into the path of a spontaneous event—trucks are not meant for sidewalks.

  Either way, these ugly details are what make the big picture so desirable from a distance. The farther we zoom out, the more numb we become. Indifference is our social anesthesia.

  The reason we stay focused on life is that there is no need to prepare mentally for rigor mortis. Blood will exit our fragile biological residence and our muscles will harden without practice or rehearsal. Death is easy. The details are difficult.

  I am immune to the anesthesia.

  I feed upon the details.

  I see what others overlook.

  It is my job to observe, not to interpret. Though it is necessary to draw conclusions in order to observe only the relevant clues. I report the details to my team, and they analyze the information. They make sense of the data I collect. Once confirmed, the details are exposed.

  The smell of the Kellerman's blood was still fresh in my nose—Michael's beer-soaked plasma and Debbie's ferrous discharge. I could lick my lips and taste them, but I must record these details and put them away for now. It is time to secure my ability to report.

  I chose The Metro as my platform. Their reach is substantial and their crime reporter is a novice in need of my help. I stood next to the door, my back against the wall so I could not be seen.

  A man stood next to the door with his arms crossed and his back against the wall so that he was invisible to the occupants in the room. He stood casually, as if he were waiting to be called into the meeting. This behavior allowed the stranger to eavesdrop without interrogation from passersby. In many ways, his technique was better than permission; it allowed him to permeate restricted areas without authority knowing he had been there.

  He focused on the words bouncing out of the room into the hallway. Mentally, he grabbed each one and filed it away in his brain to be recalled whenever necessary, even decades later.

  The words stopped.

  A pause in the conversation caused him to peek through the door to observe with his eyes what his ears could no longer ascertain. His vision was useless at first. Bright sunlight entered the conference room through a crystal window that amplified the light and battled aggressively with the darker hallway to which his eyes had grown accustomed. Modern windows may be clearer than the heavily glazed glass of the past, but their double panes and tempered layers block much of what now pierced the stranger's sight.

  The observer blinked a few times. His pupils neared miosis—constricted to tiny dots—to preserve his retina. He shook off a migraine and was then able to see clearly.

  A broad shouldered bald man with yellow, smoke-stained teeth sat at one end of the conference table. He wore a short sleeve white shirt with a broad, blue tie. It was Jack Parsons. Anyone would recognize him from the photograph that occupied the editorial page of the Little Rock Metro Newspaper, the third oldest newspaper in Arkansas. Fifteenth in the nation.

  At the end of the millennium in the winter of 1999, The Metro ran historical pictures of the community. One of the photographs exhibited young Jack Parsons delivering newspapers from his bicycle. Inset was his father with a caption that read: "Proud publisher welcomes son to the News-Letter."

  News-Letter was the original name of The Metro newspaper. After the millennium article and the first edition of the website soon after, the board felt the spelling and title were outdated. Better to incorporate a larger demographic. It became The Metro for Generation X.

  Around the dense wooden conference table—symbolic of the newspaper's age as was the rest of the paneled room with tin-tiled ceiling—sat half a dozen reporters who awaited Jack’s response.

  Jack dragged and pushed the wrinkled skin of his worn face with his fingertips as he rubbed his eyes in a wide circular motion. His narrow glasses hung from a string around his neck and swayed as he moved his hands—the rims tapped against the writing instruments sticking out of his shirt pocket.

  "For Christ's sake, Heather," Jack spoke between rubbings, his voice rasped from cigarettes. "Your cousin down in Hillside is the lead detective on this case." More rubbing. "What is he telling you?"

  "He’s not telling me much at all," Heather said. She reviewed her notes unnecessarily. "Awful vague on the details. He confirmed there was saliva found on the fork, but no DNA match in CODIS. No fingerprints found at the scene. The M.E. strongly believes he ate the missing pieces from the male victim. The Sheriff's Department investigated service companies to see who was in the area that night. Zero leads. I talked to neighbors around the Kellerman's place, they did not see or hear a thing. I tried to talk to the Kellerman's daughter. No go. Apparently she was able to call 911 after finding her father, but turned catatonic when she saw her dead mother."

  Jack said, "Knowing someone ate my father would have been enough for me. Poor girl. The boy too. I mean, just hearing what happened hurts bad even if you don't see it."

  "My cousin told me the girl and her brother are in protective custody until they find out if this was a targeted attack or a random murder."

  "Good idea. Anyone else have any info on this case?" asked Jack. "Have you heard something off the record or even gossip from other journalists? They must be talking about it."

  The reporters shook their heads in the negative or stared off blankly towards the wall, to which Jack grumbled like an old bull. He massaged his eyes again—a squirt from a tear duct squeaked like a squeegee across a windshield.

  "I have information," said the stranger.

  The reporters turned to look at the man in the doorway.

  Jack appeared welcoming to the unfamiliar guest interrupting their meeting—at least it was something new.

  The stranger was thirty-something with unkempt wavy brown hair. A week of stubble was unable to hide the scar etched across his cheek even though the blemish was faded. His cleft chin softened an otherwise rugged face, and his crisp blue eyes were simultaneously piercing and reassuring.

  He wore brown leather boots, tan corduroy pants, a threadbare flannel shirt with sleeves rolled up tight against the muscular ridges of his vascular forearms, and a canvas backpack hung from one of his broad shoulders.

  "Who are you?" asked Jack.

  "James Roach. Call me Roach. I know what was left out of the police report the Sheriff’s Department gave you."

  "What is it they’re not telling us, Mr. Roach?"

  Roach took a step forward to remove himself from a direct path of the low-hanging morning sun.

  "Just Roach," he said. "The police summary is void of specific information as to how Debbie Kellerman died. It only concludes exsanguination. Sort of vague, don't you think? The report is clear Michael Kellerman was immobilized by myocardial rupture, and then he was dissected on the coffee table. The report discloses what the unsub sliced off Michael's body—the head of his penis, a nipple, his lip and cheek segment, an ear lobe—and the report noted which of his internal organs had pieces missing. The tine marks from the fork are mentioned. But nothing about Debbie Kellerman? Her demise was much worse."