Yes, it looked like a home movie.

  And yet…

  The makeup…

  The makeup on the actress looked very, very convincing.

  It didn’t sit right with the bargain basement nature of the production.

  Not at all.

  It all looked far too…real.

  Don’t be so lame! You’re acting like a little pussy, Iain. He told himself. It’s cheap because it’s a dirty movie. It’s not fucking Indiana Jones. It’s been made by people with no money and no skill, just like Mike had said these films were.

  But hadn’t Mike also talked about the stories in the movies, and how much fun they were? He’d said they were cheesy as hell. That was the term he used…’cheesy’.

  Mike had said they made ‘Dallas’ look like fine art.

  He’d said that was one of the best things about them.

  Until the ‘chicks got naked and got down to the fucking’, as he’d put it.

  This tape was nothing like that at all.

  It was about as far from fun as Iain could ever imagine any movie being. In fact, it was downright disturbing, watching that girl getting slapped while tied up.

  But, she was a girl…

  There was that.

  And despite the bruising and the one shut eye, she was clearly a babe. The little he’d seen of her body told him that she had a huge set of breasts on her, and her lips were full and swollen, and not by faux violence.

  They were, to quote his best friend, ‘dick-sucking lips’.

  Iain found that he couldn’t argue with that assessment.

  So this is it…

  You can crap out right now because of some realistic special effects and take the tape back upstairs, put it back in the box and forget all about this stuff…

  Or you can act like a man and not like a little girl, watch the rest of the tape, and get to see a woman fully naked for the first time.

  Not only that, you’ll get to see her getting ‘fucked’.

  In his mind’s eye, he saw Mike’s grinning face. Mocking him. Laughing at his weakness.

  ‘You had a chance to watch the fucking thing. You found it, you lucky prick, and you shit yourself! Jesus, you really are a wimp, Iain. Go back to your catalogues, and jerk off your bald little dick to the chicks in bras and panties’.

  Yeah…that was exactly how it would go down. Mike was a good friend, but he was also a massive asshole, and nothing gave a massive asshole more pleasure than dealing out shit.

  “Fuck it,” he said aloud to the empty room. The silence seemed to answer back, a living thing, encroaching on his nerves till his head throbbed and his mouth ran dry.

  Iain pressed play again.

  She is reeling from the vicious slap dealt to her by the unseen cameraman. Her functioning eye shuts tight, as though she believes she can block out the violence and the terror by simply recoiling into the darkness behind her eyelid. A single line of tears trickles down her cheek like a sleepy little river, falling onto thin, grimy mattress like silent rain.

  Her lips tremble, creasing into near ugliness in her despair.

  From the right of the screen, the man’s hand reappears. He is holding something in his grip.

  The flash of the sterile overhead light that reflects from the instrument betrays its nature.

  It is a scalpel.

  The girl’s eyes remain closed, though she visible flinches as though something is being said to her…shouted at her. She closes her eye tighter, forming little wrinkles on her otherwise youthful flesh.

  The man’s left hand enters the frame, moves forward slowly towards her firmly shut eye. With his fingers he pries open the upper eyelid. Beneath it, the woman’s eye flutters like a crazed bird, seeing nothing and everything all at once. Her pupil retracts under the harsh light as, with his other hand, the man positions the scalpel just above the quivering eyelid.

  The movement is quick. A sharp trajectory from left to right. She is thrashing wildly now, wailing as his left hand comes away with the small, perfectly dissected sliver of flesh.

  Blood pools over her exposed orb, turning her whole world red, as the man’s hand moves closer to the table where the camera is seated.

  He drops the girl’s upper eyelid onto the table before the camera lens. The view remains unobscured by the tiny piece of discarded flesh that rests there like a small slug, dying under a summer sun.

  The right side of the girl’s head is now almost completely awash in crimson. She looks like she’s wearing half a mask, one side bruised black and blue, the other side a deep, dark red veil.

  As the hand holding the scalpel comes back into view, her thrashing increases tenfold. Her silent screams reverberate from the grainy screen with a sickening need to be heard.

  From the man’s new angle, all is visible. He grabs the flailing girl’s lower eyelid between his fingers, pinching it hard to avoid it sliding from his grasp amidst all the blood, and he places the scalpel’s blade to the flesh, immediately puncturing it. The girl is crying tears of deepest red as the man slices the eyelid off and lays it on her cheek. It remains there, held in place by the thick layer of blood, coating her once beautiful face.

  Her eyeball, now fully exposed and red as a terrible dawn, glares out from her skull like that of a ghoul’s. Her brow furrows as she screams, but with no eyelids to close her orb to the horror, she resembles something inhuman. All emotional connectivity robbed of her.

  Yet still she screams.

  The girl’s quivering, exposed eye bulges further from the socket as the man’s rough hands make for her screaming mouth.

  Much more roughly than before, he pries open her lips with his huge fist, reaches in, and pulls her tongue from her mouth. It stretches painfully, looking as though it might tear free from its proper place right there in his grip.

  Then he goes at it with the blood-sluiced scalpel.

  It takes time, but with much sawing back and forth, and one final pull to tear it free, the girl’s tongue parts from her lower jaw. Blood bubbles up from the fleshy stump left behind, that wriggles without direction or cause, in the crimson cave of her mouth.

  The rough hand squeezes the seeping, torn appendage in its grip, making the flesh bulge outwards like a balloon.

  Tiring of his toy, he tosses it aside. It lands somewhere off-screen, as the girl vomits black, oozing blood from her lips and down her chin.

  She is moving less now. What remains of her face, untouched by blood, is turning a sickly shade of grey.

  A stillness settles over the scene, enhanced by the deathly silence. The insidious hissing of the film seems to permeate the scene, breathing, pulsating.

  The scalpel comes down fast, passing through the outer film of her eyeball and skewering the orb like an oversized oyster in its shell. It does not burst, but instead it seems to deflate slowly around the razor sharp blade, oozing thick, clear liquid from within its jellied walls as the blade pushes deeper.

  With a flick of the man’s wrist, the eyeball is plucked from its socket. A shrunken, punctured ball, soaked in viscera.

  It remains rooted to her skull only by the socket.

  The man grabs her eye in his iron grip, and pulls,

  By the forth pull, the socket gives way and snaps. Its remnants fall back into the red pit where her eye had been, as the man draws his prize to the area where, off camera, his face is.

  He squeezes, just as he did with the girl’s severed tongue.

  This time, the desired effect is achieved. The remains of the inner eyeball squirt from between his fingers like jelly. The hand opens, dropping the burst and mangled orb to the floor.

  The girl is unmoving now. Her chest rises and falls much more slowly, as shock takes hold.

  She remains alive.

  The man drops the scalpel to the small table, somewhere out of shot.

  He reaches between his legs, unzips and releases himself.

  His penis is massive, swollen and hard. It seems to throb involuntarily as he positions himself over the girl’s face.

  He grips his blood-thick member by the base of the shaft and guides himself forward.

  His penis slides easily into the ocular socket.

  The girl’s head judders as he inserts himself.

  He pushes it in as deep as it will go and…

  A sound outside. So familiar.

  Oh, shit…no!

  Iain’s heart hammered in his chest like a beast seeking release as he wiped the tears from his eyes and climbed to his feet on unsure legs.

  He peered out the window.

  When he saw the family car pulling into the driveway, with his smiling parents happily waving through the window at him, he almost screamed.

  3

  Iain tried to wave back, but found he couldn’t.

  Fear rooted him to the spot like an age old tree unbending under weather.

  He tried to smile at his parents through the window, managing only a grimace that felt as dead and flat on his face as he felt in his heart.

  The tape! Get the tape!

  If Dad finds out I’ve seen it…!

  His paralysis was broken by the knowledge, the horror, that in less than a minute, his parents would walk through that door, find him stood there like a stone golem before the television set and realise he’d been watching something on the VHS player. They’d ask him with smiling, loving faces, what he’d been watching…

  They’d sense his guilt. It had to be emanating from him in waves.

  They’d see his shame and they’d want to know…they’d want to know what he’d been watching.

  They’d check the player…

  And find the tape.

  He lowered himself from the window, moving as though in a languorous dream, his every motion slowed down by an unseen thickness that seemed to permeate the very air.

  He heard the car doors swing open, then crash shut.

  He got back down on his knees, his vision spinning like whirling dervish.

  He could hear his mum laughing; hear the hard soles of her shoes on the tarmac as they approached the door.

  He reached for the VHS player, almost afraid to touch it. It had taken on the dimensions of an alien thing. A dangerous, malodorous trap, set to tear apart his family, his innocence and his world.

  He heard his mum squeal in delight, no doubt as his dad tickled her playfully in that ever-flirtatious manner of his.

  Iain pressed ‘eject’.

  The tape deck slowly opened; a widening maw ready to bite. Iain felt the endless agony of time bending its will toward disaster.

  The front door handle turned.

  They’re coming in!

  They’ll see.

  Dad will see!

  There was a muffled, ‘shit’ from his father, as he realised the front door was locked. Iain had been sure to lock it before he’d inserted the infernal tape.

  The tape itself was now sliding free of the player. It seemed to grin at him – a ravenous beast fixing to devour all he cherished.

  He grabbed it, half expecting it to incinerate the flesh from his skin.

  Outside, he heard the rustling of keys.

  Iain got to his feet, holding the tape tight in his hands. Desperately, he pulled open his jeans, and slid the tape down in the front of his crotch. He felt the warm plastic against his skin and shuddered.

  The front door handle turned again. This time, it opened.

  Iain pulled his shirt over the upper half of the tape, concealing it as best he could.

  He’d no sooner hid the VHS than his father walked through the door, grinning like an oversized, goofy kid. He held Iain’s mother’s hand. She followed behind, closing the front door with a carefree flick of her wrist.

  “Hi, son!” they both said in unison.

  “Hi Mum…hi, Dad.”

  “What a night,” his dad said. “It’s a shame you never came along. Your cousin, Mark, was there.”

  Mum tutted. “You know he doesn’t get along with his cousin.”

  Dad winked. “What is it you call him, son?”

  Iain cleared his throat. “D-Damien,” he stuttered.

  His dad was grinning. “Damien, that’s it! After the little boy in the movie.”

  “Yeah,” Iain managed.

  “I can see why you’d call him that,” Dad said, winking.

  Mum prodded him playfully in the side. “Tom! That’s not funny! He’s just a little boy. And he’s your nephew.”

  “So what?! I call them like I see them, Lisa. He’s a creepy kid. Spoiled, too. The little monster wants for nothing. Did you see that toy car they’d bought him?! It was better than mine, and almost the same size!”

  “Tom!” she admonished.

  “It’s true, babe, and you know it. If that kid isn’t the Anti-Christ, I don’t know who is. Just saying…”

  “How about Margaret Thatcher?”

  “She’s Satan himself. The dark lord. Only uglier and with a bigger…”

  “Tom!”

  “Sorry.”

  “Not in front of Iain.”

  “Hell. Iain doesn’t mind a bit. That right, son?” His Dad reached forward and ruffled Iain’s hair, just as he had a thousand times before.

  This time, Iain had to fight not to recoil.

  Instead, he held steady, tried to smile, and felt that same grimace lay heavy on his face once more.

  He could taste the bitterness of sweat on his parched lips.

  He wondered, horrified, if he looked as ill as he felt. Would they see something was wrong?

  His parents were so wrapped up in their evening and in their japes, they didn’t seem to notice.

  Perhaps I look fine, he thought.

  They can’t tell.

  They can’t.

  As he stood there, watching them laugh and jest, his mind rushed back to the tape.

  The things he’d seen.

  That poor girl, her face twisted in a silent, unending scream.

  The blood.

  The cutting.

  And the man…

  Leaning over her face and pushing his massive…

  “Iain?” Mum asked. All the verve had left her voice.

  “You okay, son?” Dad asked, mirroring her concern.

  Mum leaned forward, gently pushing aside Iain’s soft brown fringe as he fought to control his horror.

  “Are you crying, baby?” she asked. “Whatever is wrong?”

  Dad moved closer.

  In his head, he saw the girl.

  Sliced and ripped up.

  Tortured.

  And as his beloved Dad leaned before him and gazed with love into his tear-filled eyes, he saw, with perfect clarity in the cinema of his mind…

  His father watching the tape.

  Grunting.

  Holding himself tight, stroking furiously; his tongue protruding from his lips as he worked himself, all alone in the living room, when Mum and he were sleeping.

  He saw his father’s eyes light up with lust, reflecting the cold television glare in even colder eyes, as he watched the girl suffer.

  It was too much.

  Without warning, Iain lurched forward and tossed up his half-digested dinner onto the wine-red carpet, right in front of the man that, until barely an hour ago, he’d trusted beyond anyone or anything else in the world.

  4

  Darkness had settled over the town.

  The streetlights outside his bedroom window, shone their sickly orange glow into his room, bathing it in a muted, muddy gloom.

  Outside, the occasional car cruised past, cutting through the silence of the evening like a knife.

  Iain sat in the darkness, and stared at the ceiling.

  It looked so far away. Like a solar system, eight miles out of reach and a million miles out of imagining. He fancied he saw stars up there amidst the dark contours of the ceiling, distant suns shining their light from afar.

  The fancy only held his attention momentarily, before the ceiling of his room once more became the projection screen for horrors unthinkable.

  Unforgettable.

  He closed his eyes, trying to blot out the visions of the mangled girl, and as his mind battled to eradicate the images he’d witnessed, so too did his heart try to convince him that the tape had been fake.

  Iain knew better,

  It had been real.

  He’d sat on the carpet in the living room of his own home, and watched a girl be tortured and murdered.

  And the tape had been in his father’s possession.

  Iain rubbed his eyes in the darkness, wiping away the bitter tears.

  He’d been lucky not to get caught.

  Very lucky.

  He’d managed to return the tape without being noticed.

  Strangely, throwing up his guts had been the best thing that could have happened, given the circumstances.

  He’d made his apologies and ran, hell for leather, for the upstairs bathroom, still heaving as he stumbled out of the living room and into the hallway.

  Both his parents had been speechless. They’d called after him, and his dad had even made to follow him, but Iain brushed him off with a wave of his hand.

  “I’ll be alright. Just feel really sick. Bug going round school.”

  It had been that easy.

  Iain had climbed the staircase, pushed open the bathroom door and loosed a torrent of noodles and rice into the porcelain bowl with a prolonged moan. Then, he’d made his way to the bedroom, the tape still tucked safely into his jeans.

  From downstairs, his mum called up. “Are you sure you’re okay, baby?”

  “I’m fine, mum. Really. I just need to lie down for a bit. Stupid bug, that’s all.”

  He could hear the concern in her voice. “Shall I bring you up something to eat, son?”

  “No…no. I just want to rest.”

  “Okay. Dad and I will be up in five minutes to say goodnight. We’ll bring a bucket, too, just in case you need it through the night.”

  “Thanks, Mum.”

 

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