RAZORBLADE CANDIES

  Book Two

  VHS

  KYLE M. SCOTT

  Text Copyright2016©Kyle M. Scott

  All rights reserved.

  First authorized digital edition.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the permission of the author. All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  This book was written using UK standard dictionary. Some spellings may differ from US variations.

  For Charlie Watson

  Teacher, inspiration and friend.

  1

  It has to be here somewhere.

  It just has to be.

  Iain ignored the pain in his knees as he slowly lifted the boxes aside. They were stacked high, and in his sweat-drenched anticipation of the find, he positioned each box with a level of determination and care that far outweighed the importance of the objects therein.

  So far, all the unassuming white cardboard boxes had contained nothing more than an assortment of fishing magazines, dusty paperback thrillers adorned with lurid artwork, old t-shirts and photographs – faded and worn – from a time before he was born.

  There was very little time before his mum and dad arrived back home, and he made a mental note to explore the fading snapshots of his parent’s early life at his leisure, when the time was afforded to him.

  But this was not that time.

  His parents had only gone to the local supermarket, and while his mum had an almost supernatural ability to elongate the time required to do a simple grocery run into something close to a soul-destroying, epic ode to overkill, his heart beat like a hammer nonetheless.

  They could walk back in the door at any minute.

  And he would be in deep, deep shit.

  He glanced at the box in his hand. It was heavier than the rest. The lid was long lost, and inside, at least a few hundred photographs nestled, facing all directions. Among the images facing upwards, familiar faces – much younger than those same faces now – looked up at him with almost accusatory stares.

  There was his mother, looking beautiful with long, flowing blonde hair and a smile that could make the birds sing new songs in the trees.

  And his grandma, dead four years now, her small frame betraying the enormity of her personality as she grinned her impish grin for the camera on some unknown beach. The wind caught her hair, masking half her features, but it made Iain’s heart hurt just to see her again.

  He missed her every day.

  He gulped hard, seeing her smiling face, and in the pit of his stomach, he felt a little sickly.

  What if she was watching over him from heaven, right now?

  What if she could see him, and knew what he was doing, deep in the dark recess of his father’s closet?

  Would she be mad?

  Would she be disgusted?

  Iain felt the first stab of shame coarse through him, as an unwelcome heat flushed his face and made his palms sweat.

  He quickly placed the old box of memories beside the others, keen to be free of her eyes.

  This is stupid.

  A photo can’t accuse.

  But a spirit could…

  If Gran is really up there in heaven, and there’s really a god by whose side she now resides, is she judging me?

  She’d been a good woman. Strong but stern.

  A moral woman.

  Yeah, he thought. She’d probably think I’m a dirty pervert.

  But he wasn’t though, was he?

  He couldn’t be.

  After all, if his dad was doing it, and all the boys at school were doing it, how wrong could it be?

  He kept telling himself that, pushing aside from his mind the unsettling image of an admonishing, spectral grandma as he pushed aside the lidless boxes of memorabilia and delved deeper into the closet’s furthest corners.

  Mike had been excited as he shared his story.

  The schoolyard was alive with life, teeming with kids of all ages – younger boys kicking a ball around, a small group of girls giggling over something by the entrance to the school building, a couple of older kids, maybe fifteen or so, covertly passing what looked like a small, hand-rolled cigarette between themselves. Like any day, the schoolyard was a bustling, mini-metropolis of preteen and pubescent life. A thousand petty cares and woes, a thousand joys.

  For Iain, though, he may as well have been stood on a desolate moon, light years from the idle chit-chat and light-hearted play.

  His heart beat hard in his chest as Mike described the movie.

  “It was fucking amazing, man. You wouldn’t believe it. I thought I was gonna have a fucking heart attack the second I read the title on the tape! UK Students XXX! The fucking jackpot! You should’ve seen this girls in this thing. They were total whores. Took it all ways! My dick was hard as a rock!”

  Iain felt a little embarrassed by the subject matter. He had no problem with the language, being a twelve year old boy from the west end of Bellshill, the words ‘fuck’ and ‘dick’ were hardly new to him.

  No, it was the subject that caused him to blush. It was one that, until recently, had been wholly alien to him.

  Girls.

  And sex.

  His family, for all their modernity, were perhaps a little behind when it came to sexuality. In Iain’s house, it remained a taboo, even in the year 1986. Any time there was a sex scene in a movie he watched with his folks, it would promptly be fast forwarded. Scenes of bloodshed and mayhem were fine.

  But sex…

  That was a no-no.

  His parents were strange in that way, and Iain had often thought that the discomfort they felt was less to do with keeping him innocent as it was to do with their sheepishness on the matter.

  Whatever…the effect was that sex was inherently taboo in his small world, and as much as he was frustrated by his reaction, it caused him discomfort to talk about it, even with his friends.

  Mike, however, always talked about it. It was his go-to subject for any given moment of the day, and had been for a month or so, since he’d ‘discovered what his cock was for’.

  Iain hadn’t been far behind in discovering the same thing.

  And it had changed his world, entirely.

  Sex.

  Such a small word for something with so much dark and grasping allure.

  It was all he could think about.

  Sex.

  It haunted his thoughts from the second he woke up - his erection beating him to greet the morning - till he hit the sack at night and tentatively explored himself in the stillness of his bedroom.

  Sex.

  He found that he could no longer talk to the girls at school without stuttering, or worse…finding himself growing hard. His face would redden in time with his excitement, and more often than not, the girls would give him a look.

  That look.

  The one that said, ‘you’re a loser’.

  It wasn’t fair. The other boys had seemed to embrace their sexual awakening as though it was just another day in the life, but for Iain…

  Those damned taboos.

  Mike was describing the porno is graphic detail, relishing every second of recall. He spoke in tones so hushed it would be impossible for anyone to overhear, but still Iain was convinced people could. In his mind, his own mum could hear it all the way from home, and that was half a mile away.

  Mike pressed on, undeterred by the obvious sheen of sweat and discomfort that was now stinging Iain’s eyes. His friend was lost in the memory; delirious with glee as he described the strange things the men and women would do in the video tape.

  It sounded vaguely disgusting, yet…

  There was no denying it.

  He was aroused.

  Mike finally paused to take a breath. His grin spread from ear to ear as he patted Iain on the shoulder.

  “You should see it, man. Fucking cool!”

  Iain smiled his sheepish smile. Despite how uncomfortable and icky the acts in the movie sounded, he did want to see it.

  Really, really badly.

  “I wish,” he said. “My dad would never…”

  Mike cut him off, “Hold it, dickhead. Don’t hit me with, ‘my dad would never watch that’ or any of that shit. There’s not a dad alive he doesn’t have a stash of dirty movies hid away somewhere, you tit. You just have to find them.”

  “Seriously. You know my dad, he’d never have any of that around the house.”

  “Don’t fucking kid yourself, Iain. He’s got them.”

  “There’s no chance of…”

  “He’s got them.”

  So here he was, four hours later, halfway buried in the shadows of his dad’s closet, searching with trembling hands and furrowed brow for that holiest of holy grails, with terror as his companion.

  If he was caught…

  The shame would be too much to handle. He’d never be able to look his parents in the eyes again.

  You’re being a dipshit. They’ve only been gone twenty minutes. They’ll be gone at least an hour. They’ll argue, do the shopping, and then mum will want to go for a tea in the supermarket’s café. Just keep looking…

  Iain kept looking.

  Five minutes later, he’d made his way through the mountain of boxes and plastic bags, all the way to the rear of the walk-in closet. There was no light in here, save for the waning daylight that found its way in from his parent’s bedroom window, but even in the gloom, he could see that it had all been for nothing.

  There was nothing back here but a pile of old clothes, fishing boots, a few miscellaneous tools and…

  Two boxes.

  Both with lids.

  Both buried, almost completely covered by clothing.

  This was it!

  It had to be.

  Licking his lips with anticipation, Iain reached in for the closest box. He lifted the clothing from its top carefully, and slid the box from underneath.

  It was heavy.

  Something rattled inside as he drew it across the closet floor towards him. It sounded like plastic.

  This is it!

  On hands and knees, he studied the lid of the box.

  The cello-tape that remained there was worn down. The flaps came apart easily in his trembling hands.

  Iain’s stomach fluttered as a thousand wings took flight inside his gut.

  He’d really found it.

  Everything Mike had said was true.

  Iain had a momentary, fleeting vision of his neighbourhood – row after row of houses. Families living in quietude with one another. Dogs playing in the yards and cats lazing by windows. Yet, in each of these happy homes, there were secrets.

  In each of these homes, there was a box.

  Mike had been right. He almost always was.

  It felt to Iain like he’d suddenly crossed some unseen border in his life, massive yet undetectable out-with his own fevered mind. He understood with perfect surety that this was the moment that all boys experienced. The moment that led down the inexorable path to manhood.

  His excitement was tempered only by his fear.

  And a quiet sadness. A near subconscious realisation that the things he’d held dear – his bike, his Star Wars action figures, his board games, his Nintendo Entertainment System – all those things would fade into meaninglessness. The magic they’d held for him for all of his young life would soon be usurped by a new, darker magic.

  The sleek, shining curvature of his BMX would hold no sway over his heart from this day onwards, only the delicate and tantalising curvature of the female form.

  Iain swallowed hard and opened the worn down flaps, pulling one to either side.

  With beads of sweat blurring his vision and stinging his eyes, he leaned forward and peered into the dark depths of the box.

  And smiled.

  2

  Two hours to go.

  Two short hours till his mum and dad walked back through the front door and his world slid back to normalcy.

  Iain felt a strange guilt as he pushed the first tape into the VHS player. He understood that what he was doing was natural curiosity; a boy’s path walked by many if not all kids on the cusp of sexual awakening. Yet still he felt a gnawing sense of shame, deep down in the pit of his stomach.

  This was the first time he’d ever have done anything behind his parent’s back. His friends were always keen to point out what they saw as his biggest flaw – an unswerving honesty and respect for the adults in his life – and they would have laughed at him then, as he sat holding tape upon the slot of the VHS player.

  He was scared to push it all the way in.

  Watching his first horror movie had held a similar spell over his conscience, knowing that what he was doing was in some small way a near-forbidden act, but that had been nothing compared to this. His father was a huge fan of scary movies, and he’d damn near willed Iain to follow suite. Still, it had felt dirty somehow.

  Unclean.

  Dark.

  This, though, was much worse.

  He felt sick, and for a fleeting moment, he studied the tape as it sat, half in and half out of the family VHS player’s tape deck, warring with himself as to whether or not he would really go ahead and push it all the way in.

  The tape itself was nothing special to look at. He’d expected, like the video tapes they’d hired as a family from the local Clanvid Video Store, that it would be marked by a sticker proclaiming the title of the piece and perhaps a huge ‘XXX’ but like all the tapes in the box upstairs, this one was merely marked with a roughly cello-taped piece of paper.

  Handmade, no doubt by his father.

  All it said on the paper was: Number 3.

  Swallowing back his shame like a bitter pill, he pushed the tape into the player. The top-ejector swallowed the tape like a hungry mouth, and with a whirr and a click, Iain was one step closer to finally seeing what so many of the boys at school had been raving, bragging and cheering about.

  All he had to do was press ‘play’.

  He looked up at the window from his position on the floor beside the player. The sky was darkening a little now, as the dwindling sun fled from his corner of the world and cast the night in shadow. He briefly considered closing the curtains, shutting out the world and its inhabitants.

  That’s silly, he thought. No one can see inside. Even if they could, I’m not doing anything wrong,

  Am I?

  A tiny voice in the back of his mind answered.

  No.

  Iain reached forward, laid a shaking finger on the ‘play’ button, and pressed it.

  The screen is black. There are a few flickers mostly due to the quality of the tape itself. It has been well watched, well loved.

  A brief moment of static saturates the screen, before the first image appears.

  It is the image of a woman.

  She is lain down on a bed of some kind. The mattress is filthy, painted with dark stains unidentifiable due to age and to the gritty, amateur film stock.

  There is no movement besides the rapid rising and falling of the woman’s chest.

  The camera moves forward, slowly, unsteadily. It appears to be hand-held. Perhaps one of the smaller, more portable cameras that have become all the rage. It closes in on the woman’s face. She is wreathed in sweat, trembling. There appear to be bruises on her right cheek. One eye appears swollen shut. She’s been beaten.

  The camera hovers above her like a vulture surfing on the wave of its hunger, before being lowered to a small table that rests beside the filthy bed. As the angle changes, it becomes clear that the woman is strapped to the bed by her wrists. One is clearly visible above her head. She appears to be tied by wires of some kind. The wire must be sharp, as small rivulets of blood seep from her exposed wrist where the instrument of her confinement severs the skin.

  She remains unmoving, seemingly frozen in time as, from the right side of the screen, a man’s hand appears, rough and callused. The hand lowers slowly to her face, resting on her right cheek. It strokes her soft skin gently, and with much car. Her right eye, her good eye, looks upwards toward the cameraman’s unseen face. It widens in what can only be described as abject fear. A tear wells up from her eyelid and slowly makes its way down her cheek. The hand rested there extends a finger, and touches the tear as it falls, halting its progress. The hand recedes from view, as the woman, now appearing to understand her surroundings as full consciousness takes hold, opens her mouth and screams.

  There is no sound. Only the subtle hiss of the tape as the increasingly disquieting scene plays out. Her one good eye brims over with terror as she perceives something off-screen that pummels her mind with shock.

  Her head, still for so long, begins to thrash from side to side in a silent, frenzied dance. She can only be seen from the neck up, but it’s clear that she is fighting, writhing in desperation for release.

  Quick as a striking snake, the hand returns into frame, open palmed, and strikes her across the face, hard and vicious.

  Iain pressed stop with a hand that felt entirely alien to him. He slumped back on his knees before the television screen, blinking the sweat from his eyes.

  What was he watching?

  This didn’t look like fun at all.

  This looked…horrifying.

  Was it one of those ‘fetish’ tapes Mike had said his own dad loved to watch? Iain knew there were many different styles of pornography out there, and that not all were to the tastes of everyone, but even armed with that knowledge, this seemed excessive. The quality of the tape was terrible. It was clearly filmed with little care for quality, and it looked utterly amateurish, much like a home video like the one’s he’d been forced to sit through over at Mike’s house when his proud dad had declared they all must watch the family’s holiday videos.

 

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