Torso Blood Massacre

By: Jordan Seifert

For: Writers Craft and Mrs. Morgan

I woke up feeling raw, cold. My body was limped over against a wall, my head slumped against my chest. I felt like, like, my chest was empty. It felt like my heart was no longer beating. I couldn’t feel myself. I couldn’t see where I was. I still had on my jeans from before, tight against my legs, completely devoid of energy. My green spaghetti strap top was tattered and unstitched, and fell down, revealing my white under shirt, which looked bloody. I had a minor panic attack. That was expensive.

The room was dimly lit and silent. I had never heard nothing before in my life. There was always the sound of wind, cars, trains, a television… but even the thump of my heart beat was invisible to my ear. I splayed out and broke the silence, lurching across the rug. I didn’t, for some reason, feel like I was in immediate danger. I was too tired. The room was fully carpeted in green, with a matching wall colour. As my eyes came to focus, finally delving from a soft fuzz to a sharper picture, I saw a little girl, asleep, shackled to the other side of the room.

“Oh my God.” My throat was in pain, and talking felt like a razor shoving its way up my throat.

I tried to get up, my body tired, and I fell forward, couldn’t go any further. I was shackled to the wall too. I was so cold I had failed to notice the shackles around my wrist, chained up and drilled into the wall. There was a door to the right of the girl, who was just now waking. She fell over onto her side and conked her head, sucked in her breath and bit her tongue. She started to cry.

The door creaked open, and a familiar face waltzed into the room. My brain, working slowly, took a moment to piece it together. It was my half-friend, Lindsay, and she looked wild-eyed as she buzzed around, carrying a dummy. I tried to speak, but couldn’t. She dumped the messed up doll in front of me, limbless save a face that smiled upwards. Lindsay didn’t say a word as she lowered down and caressed the face of the child.

“She’s beautiful, you know.” Lindsay smiled. I blinked, squeezed my eyes and furrowed my brow. “I want you to make a choice now.” I pressed my lips together and finally said something.
“What choice, Lindsay? Why am I… in this place?”
“What? My spare room? Because I want you to be. Now take that dummy and stab it. Stab it three times.”
“… Why?” My mind was finally starting to work like it usually does.
“Because those three places will be where I stab this child. And if you’re really good at this, the girl will live.” I looked across the room at Lindsay and the child. The girl had her eyes wide open. I could see them blood shot from here. Every vein and vessel traversing under her lid becoming thicker, redder. Her blood tried to escape her body, as if it didn’t want to suffer the same fate as the body it used as an endless highway.

I shook my head.
“And what if I don’t?”
“Then I kill you. The girl will go free, but you’ll be dead. If you do this well, you can both live.”

I stared down at the dummy.
“Alright, give me a knife.” She tossed a small blade across the room, but before I could begin, Lindsay began on a rant.
“You selfish BITCH. You’re going to go through with this? Your hook nosed ugly face has had the GALL to make fun of me for years with no sense of remorse. You call me your friend, but you talk about me behind my back. You call me ugly, you shallow whore. You’re no better looking than I am.”
“Yeah, I really am. I’m way better looking than you, sorry.”
“SHUT UP. Just give it up. Why not kill yourself and let the girl live? What are you really losing? You have no future, you have poor grades, you don’t do anything but shop and blab on the phone to that faggot, Chad.”
“I’m breaking up with him.” She just stuttered and fell onto the ground.
“You really are sadistic, aren’t you?”
“AND WHAT DOES THAT MAKE YOU, LINDSAY? LOOK AT THIS. YOU’RE MAKING ME STAB A LITTLE GIRL TO DEATH.”

The kid stared up at me. Her body seemed malnourished, her arms skinny, her bones jutting out.
“Please don’t kill me,” she whimpered. Coughed. She could barely talk through her tongue injury. “Please don’t kill me… Please don’t kill me… Please don’t kill me…” Cough, sputter, cough.

The room seemed to darken. Tunnel vision. I could feel my body start to sweat and the room got cold. I wasn’t functioning properly.
“What did you drug me with? How did you get me here?”
“Bottled water. Do you have any idea how easy it is to drug somebody who moves around and brings a drink with them everywhere?” I began to question my taste in liquid. It had gotten me into a fine mess. I tried to stand up for some reason, grab the small knife to stab Lindsay, but the chains held me back. The wall didn’t give way as I had hoped, but stood strong against my weak strength. My exercise is for the weak policy was seeming regrettable.

“Kill the little girl.” Both Lindsay and the little girl were still crying. They wouldn’t shut up. I kicked the dummy across the room and Lindsay pushed it right back.
“Stab it. Just do it. Avoid her major organs, save her life.”
“Don’t kill me,” the little girl moaned, like a broken record. Her lower lip pushed out with her mouth stuck in a horrible frown, her eyebrows curved up in fear and sadness.
“I sucked at science,” I whined. Lindsay couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe I could sit here and be so brave. I didn’t know why, either. I had always felt… empty. My life served no purpose except to collect. Collect boyfriends, shock factor to use against my parents, clothing, friends. I had heard a word to describe it once. I guess it was sociopath. Why should I care about this little girl? She isn’t me. I am the most important person who ever lived. Me. I felt nothing. I felt no regret. I stabbed the doll three times as quickly as possible. Stab. Stab. Stab.

I realized the finality of my actions. Lindsay pulled out a much bigger, sharper knife.

“NOW YOU REAP WHAT YOU SOW. WATCH THIS. WATCH ME.”
“You’re disgruntled, Lindsay. You won’t do this. You’re not a killer.” She took the doll and studied it.

She carefully drove the knife in, slowly, with purpose. The little girl choked, coughed, cried, wheezed, moaned and bled. The knife fell in not at a stabbing pace, but almost as if it was digging through her slowly. The knife emerged and a fountain of blood poured from the wound, and Lindsay repeated this twice more. The girl did not survive.

“Did you SEE that? She’s DEAD. You didn’t even TRY.”
“Why should I? WHY should I try? There’s no damn reason for me to try. Why would I believe you’d kill her? Now look at what the hell you’ve done. You’re a killer, Lindsay. I misjudged you. You’ve got guts. Your life is over.
Now let me go. You need to let me go, Lindsay.”
“I figured you would have an epiphany. I did. I realized I could make you care and get rid of you. Get rid of your selfish personality and then DESTROY you. How could you choose yourself over a small child?”
“She was barely younger than me. Seven, eight years. Who cares?
“SELFISH PRUDENT BITCH.”

I calmed myself and prepared to speak.
“Lindsay, there is no epiphany to be had for me. I am tied to a wall. I have fought for myself. I don’t care about that child. She was not me. She was not anybody to me. She was not my sister, not my friend. I have a life to live, and now she doesn’t. Big deal. I get to go, right? Unchain me.”
“Why did you believe that, Lindsay? Are you stupid? Did you never put it through your head that I was lying?”
“Yes, I did. But you proved to me you weren’t when you killed the child. Now you have to let me go. Let me, the self important bitch, go. I may not care, but at least I’m not a murder. I’m an indifferent bystander.”
“No, you chose where to stab that girl. You’re as responsible as I am.”
“Am I really, Lindsay? Did I have a choice?”

She broke down crying again. Fell to the ground. The carpeted floor was disgusting. The room smelled of blood. My nose filled up with the sensation of death and my eyes rewound what I had seen a dozen times in a single second.
“Lindsay, this was a torso blood massacre. What was the point of it? Why didn’t you make ME stab the girl? What did the doll ever signify?”
“HOW CAN YOU NOT BE AFRAID?”
“Answer me, Lindsay. Why didn’t you make me kill her?”

She looked up at me. Still crying. “I am weak. That kid was weak. For years I’ve listened to you prey on me, the person weaker than you. I thought I could make you realize… Realize what it’s like to see the weak preyed upon. If you stabbed her, that would be you doing your thing. But if I stab her, you see what you’ve been doing for years. But you still don’t see it. You’re not even afraid of death. Tied to that wall, you still think you’re stronger than me. And maybe you are. You don’t even care. You don’t even CARE. YOU DON’T EVEN CARE. YOU DON’T EVEN CARE. YOU DON’T EVEN CARE.”
“SHUT UP. I DON’T CARE, WE’VE COVERED THIS. YOUR PLAN HAS FAILED, NOW WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?”

Lindsay then detailed to me exactly what she planned on doing. She paced around the room waving her hands, stepping in and out of the blood and past the lifeless body of a child she or I had no personal connection to. I sat on the floor and although I felt no real fear, my body coursed, my heart beat under my breast as if something was inside of it, trying to come out. Perhaps the fear. But it was trapped.

“If I can’t show you what it’s like to be preyed upon in that way, then I will prey upon you. You’re all tied up. I have the upper hand. I can kill you, wash you away, nobody will know. I will win.
“You’re gonna be a serial killer, Lindsay. Is that really okay?”
“Yeah, I guess it’s going to have to be.” I felt the digging of the knife. I felt it all. But I never felt remorse, or fear, or sadness. But Lindsay did. And so, in the end, I still won.