Ritualistic Human Sacrifice

  Ritualistic Human Sacrifice copyright © 2015 by C.V. Hunt. All rights reserved.

  Published by Grindhouse Press

  PO BOX 521

  Dayton, Ohio 45401

  Grindhouse Press logo, cover design, and all related artwork copyright © 2015 by Brandon Duncan. All rights reserved.

  Ritualistic Human Sacrifice

  Grindhouse Press # 030

  ISBN-10: 1941918115

  ISBN-13: 978-1-941918-11-1

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including mechanical, electric, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher or author.

  Other Titles by C.V. Hunt

  The Endlessly trilogy

  Endlessly (Book 1)

  Legacy (Book 2)

  Phantom (Book 3)

  How To Kill Yourself

  Zombieville

  Thanks For Ruining My Life

  Other People’s Shit

  Baby Hater

  Hell’s Waiting Room

  Misery and Death and Everything Depressing

  “Love is one of the most intense feelings felt by man; another is hate.”

  −Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Bible

  “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.”

  −William Shakespeare, The Tempest

  This novel was influenced by the writing of Bret Easton Ellis and Bentley Little.

  Thank you

  To Teresa Pollack, for reading this filth before anyone else. I thought about spelling your name wrong on purpose.

  For Andy

  I think our minds are twisted in the same direction.

  Part 1

  The Preparation

  1

  This wasn’t going to be easy. I’d played with the idea for the last year. And I’d been looking at apartments in the city close to my job for the last two months. Each night I would wait until Eve was asleep before spending hours scouring photos of potential apartments online. It was easy to use my job as an excuse to stay in the study and screw around on the computer. I told Eve I was working on a blueprint for a top client. But in actuality I was researching a new place to live . . . without her.

  I masturbated to free internet porn whenever I wasn’t searching one of the local realtor’s sites for a new place. It felt like I was stalling and trying to find excuses not to move. But I wanted a place that wouldn’t make me more depressed than I already was. This meant digging through photos of shitty apartments or driving by to check out their locations.

  Besides, nightly masturbation was my preferred method of orgasm and I used it regularly to clear my head. Jerking off was cleaner than sex, drier, and the aftermath was completely disposable. I could shoot my load into a tissue and wash my hands. That was it. It was over and I could get back to more important things. There wasn’t time wasted on showering afterward and the result was the same.

  When I stopped to think about what went wrong between Eve and me the only conclusion I came to was our sex life had grown stale and boring. Comfortability and familiarity were relationship killers. Once you were comfortable with another person sex became repetitious and predictable and boring. You let your guard slip and you were stuck doing missionary for the next thirty years or until one of you fell over dead. Sex became something you did to pass the time or get rid of a headache or to break up the monotony of the day but it was as exciting as taking out the trash. At thirty-eight years old I might have been old but I wasn’t dead. And I thought since Eve recently turned thirty her sex drive might pick up. It had. But Eve’s idea of sex was mechanical and forced. There wasn’t any excitement in the act anymore. There wasn’t any foreplay. It was cold and over. Which didn’t bother me much but there were the minutes wasted washing off the shame of complacency and her juices and the copious amount of lube she used now. The whole act of sex felt like a sticky chore and a bother and slightly disgusting. I was sure I could stir more emotion and enthusiasm out of a prostitute. Whenever I jerked off to an artificial and surgically enhanced girl on the internet I debated whether or not it would be worth the money and trouble and potential jail time to hire one. But I knew I would never do it because I would be too paranoid about catching a disease even if I did use a condom.

  Eve sat across from me and ate her dinner in silence. She pinched a piece of fried chicken between her thumb and forefinger and raked her fork across the meat until some dislodged. She stabbed the meat and lifted it to her mouth, still holding the greasy chicken with her fingers. I could feel myself grimace. I couldn’t understand why she didn’t eat the damn thing with both of her hands like a barbarian.

  Aside from her inability to eat like a lady she was attractive. Her blond hair was shorter than when I first met her eight years ago. We’d met when she was a fresh college graduate. She was cute and quirky then. She used to wear her hair in a messy ponytail and sported jeans and T-shirts for every occasion. There was something about her messiness when she was younger that was attractive and carefree. But once she started her job as an elementary teacher the cute college girl gear went into thrift store donation boxes. She cut and styled her hair into something more manageable or, as she put it, a style she didn’t have to spend too much time on. And pant suits became her uniform. Eve was by no means hideous with the school teacher makeover but the free-spirited part of her was tossed out with her jeans and hair ties. She became pensive and serious. So when she threw those things out my level of excitement in her dropped. She wasn’t the girl I’d met and originally fallen in love with. Everything about her became clinical and sterile. And my attitude about the sloppiness changed too. I grew to want things cleaner. Including her.

  Eve chewed slowly and watched me. A glimmer of concern washed across her face. She started to open her mouth to say something but thought better about talking with her mouth full. I thanked her silently to myself. I hated repeating myself and sounding like a broken record whenever I pointed out general courtesies . . . like talking with your mouth full.

  She said, “Is the food all right?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s very good.”

  “You’ve hardly touched it.”

  I looked down at my plate and pushed the potatoes around with my fork. It dawned on me the potatoes were a recipe she rarely used anymore. She only made them on special occasions.

  “Sorry,” I said. “It’s a nice dinner. Thank you for making it. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

  “Me too.” She smiled hesitantly.

  I took a tentative bite of the potatoes. Ever since I started searching for an apartment my stomach hadn’t felt well. It wasn’t when I began looking for apartments my stomach went to shit though. It was when I realized why I was looking for apartments. My stomach went sour when I knew without a doubt the only way to keep my sanity was to leave Eve.

  Eve complained about how small my apartment was the day she moved in. She’d had too much stuff and tried to cram it in next to mine. Eventually she sold all of my furniture because she thought hers was more stylish. Her furniture looked like it previously belonged to an old woman or was picked up from a bedbug riddled thrift store. My skin still crawled whenever I sat on the sofa. And once she hung all the knickknacks and shelves on the walls I felt I was living in my grandmother’s house minus the abundant amount of cigarette smoke and the mothball smell. Eve thought my modern furnishings were cold and sad and lacked character. She said architects weren’t interior decorators and I let her do whatever she wanted to keep her h
appy even though I hated it.

  I thought, I should’ve put all of my furniture in storage instead of letting Eve sell everything. I was going to have to buy all new stuff. At least I would get to choose everything I liked. I could go back to my modern and minimal existence. And everything would be new and clean and sterile. I wouldn’t have to worry about a flea infestation or think about how someone else might have sat on my sofa with their bare ass. My mind reeled at the thought of everything else that could have happened on it.

  I chewed a bite of potatoes and stared at my plate.

  “Nick?” she said.

  “Hm.” I looked up at her.

  She wrung her napkin. She gripped the material so hard her knuckles were white. I could see a sheen of grease from the chicken on her index finger. Why wouldn’t she use the fork to hold the chicken and a knife to cut it? Did she like the way it felt when her teeth nicked the bone? Did she like the feel of the warm tendons pinched between her fingers?

  She said, “Did you hear me?”

  I swallowed my food and stabbed another piece of potato. I stared at her and tried to come up with a better excuse than I had a lot on my mind.

  In a gush she repeated what I hadn’t heard while I was lost in thought. “I’m pregnant.”

  My heart came to a screeching halt. Numbness spread throughout my entire body and I felt ungrounded. I dropped my fork. It bounced off the table and clattered across the floor. The potato speared on the tines soared toward the ceiling, arched, and landed on the table between the two of us.

  My heart slammed back into gear and hammered against my ribs. I blinked and wondered if my ticker was up for this kind of trauma.

  Eve ignored the contaminated fork and food. Her eyes bounced back and forth, searching mine for an answer to a question she hadn’t asked.

  A million questions and scenarios raced through my head at once. I wasn’t sure how to respond. I wasn’t even sure if I was here in the kitchen with her anymore. My body was going to float away at any moment because this had to be a dream. The connecting strings of gravity felt severed. I prayed I’d had a heart attack from her announcement and was dead and my spirit still sat in my chair staring at Eve and I was feeling the phantom sensations of living. But I knew I couldn’t be that lucky. This wasn’t a dream. I wasn’t dead. And the latter would’ve been preferable.

  When Eve and I met I told her I didn’t want to be a father. I was the only child of a couple who didn’t want children. Some people would call my situation an unplanned pregnancy. I knew I was an accident. I’m sure if my parents would have had the money or the knowledge of where to go they would’ve aborted me the moment my mother knew she was pregnant.

  To say my parents were shitty parents was an understatement. They didn’t nurture or support me in any form because they never wanted me. I knew if I had children I would end up being a shitty parent too. I didn’t want to be the asshole to an undeserving victim of circumstance. Eve agreed she didn’t want children either when we’d first met. We flirted with the subject briefly after we’d gotten married and she’d said she was content with dealing with a classroom full of kids through the week and enjoying the quiet weekends to herself. And I didn’t argue with her because she already knew my thoughts about having children.

  I ran all these things over and over in my head. How could this have happened to us? I was almost forty. I couldn’t start a family now. Eve was thirty. Weren’t there supposed to be more complications for older women? Wasn’t there a higher risk of birth defects? Was she going to give birth to a Down syndrome kid? Wasn’t that what happened to women who had children later in life?

  Eve’s words slapped me back into reality. “Nick . . . say something.”

  I blurted out the two worst sentences a man in my position could. “Oh no,” and, “We can get it taken care of.”

  Eve’s expression shifted to appalled in a blink of an eye. “Taken care of?”

  “Well . . . you know . . .”

  She smacked her fork down on the table. The loud clack of the metal against wood sounded like a gunshot in our tiny apartment. I flinched.

  She leaned forward and furrowed her brow. “Why would you think I want an abortion?”

  My ears tingled. I wasn’t sure if it was from shock or embarrassment. “Because we’ve always said we didn’t want children.”

  “You’ve always said you didn’t want children.”

  “Excuse me? You said you dealt with screaming brats every day and you didn’t want one at home.”

  “I never called them brats.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. I closed my eyes and pinched my brow. I wished there was something I could do to scramble and reset my thoughts. I wanted to blur the chaos inside my head like the small pieces of plastic inside a snow globe so maybe they would slowly settle into a serene scene again and I could focus. I opened my eyes. Eve leaned back in her chair, folded her arms, and gave me a venomous look. I ran the tips of my fingers along my eyebrow and tried to dispel the tension headache building there. A thought struck me. I dropped my hands to the table. Her hard demeanor wavered and I caught an edge of nervousness.

  I said, “Please don’t tell me you got pregnant on purpose.”

  Her expression shifted. She lifted an eyebrow and appeared arrogant when she responded. “I did.”

  I took a deep breath and tried to sound calm. “Why would you do that?”

  “Because you would’ve said no if I’d asked.”

  “You’re fuckin’ right I would’ve.”

  She uncrossed her arms and smiled. “People only say they don’t want children. But what they really mean is they don’t want children at that time.” She waited for a few seconds before continuing, “I’m not getting any younger. I didn’t have time to debate with you for another eight years.”

  “There wouldn’t have been a debate. The answer was always no. The answer is no.”

  Eve sighed and picked up her fork. “It’s too late now. What’s done is done.”

  I wanted to scream at her. I wanted to rip out my receding shoulder length hair. I wanted to verbally attack her and tell her I was seconds away from leaving her before she dropped this atomic bomb. I wanted her to regret sabotaging me and force her to get up from the table and walk out the door. I wanted to tell her to have fun raising the little shit by herself. I wanted to go to a bar and get drunk and pick up a young hot girl and take her to a hotel and fuck the shit out of her to release my aggressions so I could come home and tell Eve I’d had an affair so she would kick me out. I wanted to fuck her life over the way she’d fucked mine over. I wanted her to be as angry and frustrated with me as much as I was with her. I wanted to see her cry.

  I ground my teeth as she ate. She chose to ignore me and my impeccable ability to restrain myself from exploding by paying close attention to the food on her plate. My left eye twitched. My ears rang. I prayed for a stroke.

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I said, “You think this city and its school systems are a great place to raise a kid?”

  She swallowed her food and tilted her head to the side. “Is that some sort of backhanded insult directed at my teaching ability?”

  It was. But I wasn’t going to say that. “No. I’m stating the obvious. This city is overrun with violent crimes and the schools don’t rank highly for the state. I thought it might’ve been something you mulled over before deciding to have a child. Most people would take the next eighteen years into consideration.”

  She sighed and got up from the table. She sauntered toward me and forced herself between me and the table and sat on my lap. I was a statue. I refused to touch her. She wrapped her arms around me and spoke close to my face. Her breath smelled of chicken grease. I wasn’t sure if it was the revulsion of her breath or the situation making me want to push her off my lap. I wanted to push her so hard she fell to the floor.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she said. “These things have a way of working themselves out. If everyo
ne thought about every miniscule detail of how their children’s lives may or may not work out no one would have children.”

  I thought, Only rational and smart people wouldn’t have children. Morons would still keep reproducing and hope the world would be filled with pixie dust and fairy godmothers to fix everything.

  I refused to meet her gaze and stared at her empty chair across the table. I held my breath when she spoke so I didn’t have to breathe in hers. My tolerance for stupidity had drastically decreased over time and this may have been the stupidest situation I’d ever been in.

  She said, “You’re only mad because you don’t think you can do this. But I know you can. I know you better than anyone else.”

  I thought, If you know me so well why didn’t you know I was seconds from leaving you? And you make me miserable.

  “Every new dad has the jitters,” she said. “Believe me, I’ve read a lot of stories about it. Your nurturing instinct will kick in once the baby’s here and you’ll be glad we did this.”

  We? I thought. There was definitely no we in this situation. Why would you ever think I would eventually be ecstatic when a squirming hunk of flesh that oozes snot, tears, vomit, piss, and shit arrived in my house and assaulted my senses every second of every day?

  “It’ll be like getting a surprise gift you never knew you wanted.”

  I clenched my jaw. I wanted to say all of the things I was thinking. But I knew if I opened my mouth to speak I would leak every venomous thought I’d ever had of her. I would say evil things. I would say hurtful things. I would say things a million years and a billion apologies would never erase.