The Pervert [a short slasher]

Sarah-Beth loves you

Content warning: IT’S A SLASHER

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Sarah-Beth got crushes. She liked boys so much she wanted to crush them. It’d started with baby animals on the farm and progressed, this lethal puppy love.

She was hideous and massive—she had been the latter all her life, but that brought enough mistreatment to bring on the former. Her Neanderthal face was a product of first-cousin inbreeding—still the accepted way among some Deep South families.

Nowadays, her hair was gray, always pulled back. If a strand hit her face, she ripped it out. Her eyes, colorless and attentive. Mouth shut, because her teeth caught stares. She smelled like scouring powder and fake flowers. She’d rubbed herself raw that morning, in a Love’s truck stop shower.

Sarah-Beth trudged to the boy mansion dressed like a cleaning lady in her starchy, navy scrub dress, keeping her chin tucked, eyes up. The boy mansion had letters on top, a pointy E and an X. Her metal bucket of supplies scraped out high cries as it swung; her hands sweated under bright yellow rubber gloves. Heart beating hard and steady in her bosom, she clomped along the sidewalk to the grand, columned estate’s porch. There, on a rocking chair, a boy sat alone.

He stared at her behind his sunglasses for a while. She returned his gaze, unblinking at the twin reflections of her hulking figure in his shades and trying to slouch, fabric holding her flesh paper rigid.

“Hey,” he spoke into his red Solo cup. It amplified the word. He shifted with reptilian leisure.

“Hay is for horses.”

“Hey… lady. You got the wrong house.”

The boy was thick-necked and square-jawed. Sarah-Beth liked his buzzed, dark hair very much. Out here, in his tucked collared shirt and shades, he looked like a sleepy police officer. She wanted to bathe in him.

“This is the right house,” she said. Perspiration tickled behind her ears.

The boy made a hog sound. “For real?”

“This is right.”

The boy was on his cellphone now, thick thumb tapping. He’d set his cup on the arm of his rocking chair, and the condensation held it in place.

The double doors swung open. A redheaded boy raised his eyebrows at Sarah-Beth, raised them all the way into his wave of hair that glowed in the late afternoon sun.

Police boy—who must’ve texted for backup—stood, finished his drink, bent to the redhead and whispered loud, “I think she’s a retard.”

Redhead flushed and shoved police boy inside. “Can I help you?”

“I’m here.” She jiggled the cleaning bucket.

He hesitated before speaking slowly, “You don’t clean here, ma’am.”

“I do.” Sarah-Beth was a poor liar, but found if she spoke simply, folks filled in the blanks.

“We get our pledges to clean. It’s—there’s gross stuff.” He laughed a little. His hair was a bonfire. Sarah-Beth wanted to pet it. Fire that don’t burn. Feathersoft on her fingertips.

“Have a good night.” He moved to shut the doors, but Sarah-Beth smacked her palm on a panel. The redhead looked over his shoulder.

“You see, I came all this way.”

Redhead glanced at the face that surreally towered over him, then to her bucket. No, he couldn’t be bothered to resist her insistence, they never can. “If you say so.”

Sarah-Beth tried to stop her smile. Her teeth were mangled and yellowed. She hummed as she stepped inside and sensed boy spores unsettle in the stale air.

Her dense muscles twitched with corded memories, saliva wet her throat, anticipation pooled in her privates. Dragonflies in her stomach still, at age forty. Their thin legs glued to the mucus on her lining, disappearing when the acid and enzymes bubbled and dissolved their pretty jewel bodies. But they always returned, wings purring at apocalypse.

The house was quiet. Unforgivingly creaky. If she tensed, she found her footsteps fell lighter. She could lift herself and float. “Where’s everybody?” she asked the nice redhead. She couldn’t help but crush on him.

“Spring break,” redhead said, kicking a stray beer can across the floor. “We had our big Spring Fling Thursday.”

Sarah-Beth knew all that. But she appreciated nice boys that spoke well and responded to her questions. It made her wonder more about how high that voice could go, how deep, and how loud.

“No one’s really cleaned yet ‘cause everybody’s outta town. Did someone call you? Jefferson?”

She repeated the name and nodded.

“Yeah, our chapter president. Don’t know why he’d do that.” He was taking her down the shadowed hall. Sarah-Beth squeezed her arms in so she wouldn’t knock over the many framed photos—class pictures of hundreds and hundreds of boys.

All lights were off but a lamp in the living room. When they passed by, Sarah-Beth saw a stocky boy sleeping on the sagging couch. Chemistry book on his chest, ballcap over his face, thin t-shirt pulled up, exposing his abdomen. She paused there, and the hardwoods whined. The soles of her navy Keds stuck.

“Basement’s the worst of it.” Redhead flicked the light on. He waited to guide her downstairs. Gentleman-like. While they descended, her eyes bore into his tan, freckled neck, long with expressive tendons. The boy, he was heaven bound.

A sugary stench rose with the ghosts of sweaty bodies. She inhaled it through her mouth. A party’s quick decay, crushed cup and can corpses all over. Clumps of grass and vape cartridges. A lone, overturned lawn chair. Soaked into the concrete floor, a dark stain Sarah-Beth recognized as the stuff boys are made of. Either that or cranberry juice.

Banners covered the walls, each with a different illustration. There was a football stadium, a waterslide with a bikini girl on it, a leprechaun with a pot of gold, a bouquet of golf clubs, all hand painted. Each impressive, even the muddied, grass-stained ones. She was drawn to a depiction of a puppy basket. Lots of letters above it: SIGMA CHI’S HUMANE SOCIETY FUNDRAISER PICNIC. She booped the baby hound’s black nose. There was a brushstroke of white to make it look just licked.

“I, uh, did that one.”

Sarah-Beth exhaled audibly. She knew it, this boy was special. She turned and put a hand on the back of his head where the cool fire waved, another on his shoulder, and squeezed his skull into her armpit. He made a muffled sound against the flesh of her side, kept making them until her dress was damp with kisses. “Peas, peas,” he buzzed.

When he started kicking and sticking his knuckles into her, she pulled out a drain stick that was spiraled in her pocket. Slowly, she bent their bodies down together until she was on top of the boy on the floor. She mashed his face into the sticky concrete, bearing down all her weight. His nose crunched and he was starting to get loud—the banners could only absorb so much. She wrapped the drain stick around his refined neck and tugged. The blue, plastic ridges tore his smooth skin as she pulled all the breath from him, making him dance. Making herself hum.

The song ended and she turned him over. Unrecognizable, but silent. Hers. She touched his scraped red and unblinking eye, then his bloodied and blue parted lips. She tasted him. His mouth was warm and yeasty. With a glass scraper, she sliced a tuft from the redhead and put it in her penny purse. She’d take more of him if she could, but there were so many boys, and her luggage only had so much space.

Her mind flitted to the stocky boy on the stained sofa. Was he napping? With his tummy free, and the dark curls around his belly button? She hoped she hadn’t disturbed him. She tore off a piece of paper towel, spritzed all-purpose cleaner on it, and wiped her gloved hands and the bottom half of her face. Artificial lemon singed her nostrils.

With a twinkle of inspiration, she removed the plastic broomstick from her metal bucket and snapped it in half. It gave her two jagged spears to sodomize with. Maybe it would be sinful if she weren’t sending them singing into the arms of Jesus. She floated up the stairs, an insatiable angel.

At the top step she paused. Laughter rang out in rich echoes. “If anyone roofied her, it was Rhett. How else would he fuck her like that?”

Sarah-Beth bit her lip at the nasty curse. Its bad sound had made her wince, and the floor cleared its throat. The boys shut up.

“Andy Dandy? What took you so long?”

Andy Dandy, sweet as candy. “He’s in the basement,” she said. She wouldn’t say she had a piece of his copper scalp in her purse unless they asked.

A boy murmured something she couldn’t understand. She heard a deep chuckle, a satisfied sigh.

Police boy appeared in the hallway, sunglasses still on, sipping from a fresh can of beer. Left foam on his upper lip. “Need another broom?”

Sarah-Beth forgot she was holding the broom’s severed halves. Her fingers tightened around them with a squeak.

“Might be one in the kitchen closet.”

A stray, gray hair hit her forehead, so she ripped it out. “Show me.”

She loved kitchens. She wondered if this one had an “island” she could split him open on.

Police boy smirked and wiped his mouth. He gestured lazily behind himself, then returned to the living room. He wasn’t like Andy Dandy. She followed, not planning to spare the rod.

The short boy on the couch was awake now, chemistry book stuffed between the cushions. His chin was stubbly, the delicate skin around his eyes rubbed pink. Both he and the police boy stared.

Suddenly, wetly, the short boy snorted.

“Kitchen’s that way,” police boy pointed. He fell back onto the couch beside short boy and crossed his longer legs, causing his khakis to bunch and reveal the tan lines on his thighs.

She wanted to crucify him with knives.

Police boy groaned, glanced at short boy, and lifted his shades to rest on the top of his dark scalp. He sparkled baby blue under his pinched brow. “Look, lady—why are you here?”

“Jefferson,” she said. It’d worked last time.

“Fuck Jefferson. Sorry. It’s like, almost 8. Can you come back at a normal time?” Slurp.

Sarah-Beth shook her head to get the bad words out, “fuck” and “sorry” but mostly his nasty tone. Maybe he was sweet sober, but he was an inconsiderate drunk, and short boy seemed to go along with police boy, seemed to keep cool in his shadow. More of her strands fell free, and she pulled at them with her fisted hand, still clamped around the broken broomstick.

The short boy snickered. “What the fuck.”

Broom spear in each hand, she rammed and jammed, jammed the pointed plastic into their bellies. They croaked like frogs, faces instantly pliant, no longer twisted and hard like rude hogs. Eyes shiny now, wide and pretty.

She’d knocked ‘em off their high horse, that was for sure.

Police boy had spilled his beer all over his lap. He grabbed her fist against his stomach and tried to pull the rod out, bleating. Sarah-Beth helped it free to cram diagonally into his throat. The plastic spike tore through his Adam’s apple, and hot, boozy blood burst onto her full smile. Short boy squealed, capturing her attention.

With two hands on the rod in his belly, she lifted short boy over her head. He slid down on the broomstick and wheezed as it sunk deeper into his guts, stocky limbs flailing. Blood and something thicker dribbled onto her face. She’d have to use a lot of hydrogen peroxide to fade the stains from her shirt collar.

Once thoroughly impaled, Sarah-Beth dropped him, her back and shoulders shaky from the effort, heart fluttering in her heaving chest.

With a click and a swoosh of pitch-black heat, the front doors opened. Short boy wheezed again. She stomped on his mouth.

The doors slammed shut, and the house shivered. “Where y’all at?”

Sarah-Beth curled her toes into the skin under short boy’s nose. Police boy’s blood was soaking the couch and flowing into floorboard crevices.

A new boy stepped into the threshold. He had a dirty golden mullet that bounced as he stumbled back into the wall, tripping on untied Newbalance laces. His face drained lily-white.

Sarah-Beth ripped the rod from short boy’s guts and approached. Mullet boy socked her in the jaw when she got close—made her vibrate, but she pinned him like a bug with the bloodied broomstick against his shoulders. He squirmed and clawed at her, saying all types of mean things. She clutched his testicles and wrung them, grip almost tight enough to rupture. Mullet boy gaped, his veins popped, he couldn’t make a sound as his face blotched purple. He fainted forward, right into her arms. His hair like poopy chick feathers.

She dragged him to the kitchen. There was a half-eaten bag of popcorn on the counter, sparking water cans everywhere, a rotten pizza box that didn’t fit in the trash. An enormous vodka bottle sat in front of the streaked dishwasher. No kitchen island. Sarah-Beth frowned and lifted mullet-boy onto a chair by the table like she would a toddler. She shifted her tender jaw left and right while she rifled through the drawers. The chef’s knife she found was too wide and dull. The paring knife was suitable, but the bread knife’s serrated edge reminded her of the farmer’s weed cutter, and how she used to play with it, pressing it into her skin so it left zig-zags she could trace, blood she could smear over the hills of her thighs.

Mullet boy moaned. Quickly, she wrenched him by his “party in the back” and caressed his neck with the zigged blade. He hissed shakily, eyes white slits, pale lashes quivering straw as tears trailed to his temple. Sarah-Beth flicked the knife to point at his crotch. “D-don’t! I’ll do whatever you—” With three rubber fingers, she kept his mouth pried open and jabbed the blade into his tongue before he shut his mouth. He groaned a scream around her hand. When he hitched, she forced the blade through the thick muscle and out the corner of his lips. His head drooped, severed tongue slapping the table leg and flopping over a stray corn kernel.

His mourning was cut by a gag. Red spurted and overflowed past his chin. Sarah-Beth slammed his forehead into the wooden edge once, and he piped down to whimpers. Nice boy. One day, he’d eat from her hand. She smiled again, even though it hurt. She ground her teeth into the ache.

It was dark now. On the tree-laden street behind this grand old house, she’d parked her Dodge Spirit. She would carry the boy and keep him under her pillow. She’d hold him while he disintegrated, keep his bones.

They were right and good and full of vigorous things, these boy mansions.

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