**Warning**
This is a short story from The Splatter Club, meaning it will be graphic.
Consume at your own risk.
Forty-two seconds.
Forty-two seconds until Jeff buckled, emoted, and collapsed. Julie looked deep into his eyes, smiled wide, and laughed.
“You fucking freak!” she howled. “You were barely even inside me!”
Jeff felt himself shrink back. The wet blanket of shame wrapped tight around him and squeezed out all of his self-esteem. Even though he was thirty-eight years old, it was his first time. He’d never even been naked with a woman. How could Julie be so insensitive? How could she laugh? But she did. She laughed and laughed and laughed.
Jeff rolled off the bed with Julie’s laughter following him all the way to the kitchen, all the way to the utility drawer where the rusted Jjinsusu knives were stored. Then, Jeff followed the laughs down the hall, back to the bedroom. He followed them into the dark and across the sheets to a place where Jeff turned those soft giggles into harrowing screams. Julie was never going to laugh again, not at him or anyone else ever again. Jeff made sure of it. He made sure of it one-hundred and sixty-seven times.
When he was spent, when there was no more screaming or crying from Julie or from himself, and the tears on his cheeks had all dried up, Jeff looked at Julie in the pale light. Moonbeams reflecting off a shiny object on her wrist caught his attention. It was the unisex Swatch watch Jeff had given her for their three-month anniversary, on the night he’d told Julie he wanted to give himself to her, wholly and completely. Jeff remembered buying the watch in the arts district from a street vendor he’d never seen before. She was selling what she termed “Pop Culture Artifacts”. Something about the watch had immediately drawn Jeff to it. Something mysterious that he didn't really understood. A quiet part of him had even felt resentful for giving it to Julie, but he’d told himself to let it go, and the feeling had eventually subsided. Now, seeing it there in the dim moonlight, he felt the watch beckoning to him.
Jeff took the watch off Julie’s dead wrist and placed it on his own. Specks of wet red dotted the glass face. Jeff read the time. It was just after eleven. From the front of the house, the sound of the garage door opening rang out. Julie’s roommate was home. Oh shit…
Jeff sat still on the blood-soaked sheets and waited. The housemate’s footsteps lighted down the hallway, growing closer until she stood in the doorway, a dark silhouette back-lit by the faint hall light. She tipped her head to peek around Jeff, who sat on a corner of the bed, partially blocking the view of Julie’s mutilated corpse.
“Hey, Marla,” Jeff said, his voice calm and even. “I just killed Julie.”
Marla saw the knife standing straight up, protruding out of Julie’s left breast, and her eyes grew wide with fear.
“I know she was your best friend and everything, but she laughed at me and hurt me really, really bad. I did my best and she laughed and called me a terrible name.” Jeff glanced back at the corpse in the pool of blood on the bed. “But maybe I did overreact.”
Marla’s chest rose and fell. Her hands shook, then rage ignited behind her tear-stained eyes. She stomped across the room, threw her hands around Jeff’s neck, and squeezed tight. He sputtered and coughed. The woman’s face turned red with rage and effort. She muttered under her breath until her words grew, mutated, took shape, and became a horrid shriek bursting with agony and hate. She leaned in close and screamed in Jeff’s face while she dug her fingers deeper into his neck…
Then, she kissed him. With force that threatened to break skin, Marla pressed her lips onto Jeff’s mouth and drove her tongue deep inside.
Marla strangled and kissed Jeff until his eyeballs bulged and his face took on a dark hue. Just as she felt him stop struggling against her, she pulled away and shoved him back. Jeff fell into the crimson pool that had collected on the bed, gasping for air. Marla leaped onto him. A mixture of confusion, fear, and arousal swept through Jeff and he felt himself stiffen. The tide of passion rose when he felt Marla’s hands on his raging hard cock. Then her clothes were coming off in a flurry. Shirt, shoes, socks, pants, and panties flew across the room.
Cupping her hands, Marla reached into the pool of blood on the bed. She poured the blood into her mouth until the blood flowed down her chin and cheeks and onto her massive, heaving breasts. She scooped up more blood and fed it to Jeff. He drank and tasted destiny. A strange new power pulsed through him, originating from a warm spot on his wrist—the Swatch.
Marla splashed blood onto Jeff’s dick and slathered her pussy with the crimson sacrament. She climbed onto Jeff and drew him up into her holy place. She thrust down, pounding her hips, riding him hard and fast. Jeff’s breath slipped away as he tried to keep up. With her left hand, Marla reached down and grabbed Jeff’s wrist. Intently, she wound her fingers tight around the Swatch watch. With her right hand, she pulled the rusty old Jjinsusu knife out of her murdered best friend’s breast.
Marla cried out in a language that Jeff had never heard, screaming louder and more fervently with every word. She gazed into Jeff’s wide eyes. Spittle flew from her mouth as she screeched the unknown words. With grief soaked passion, she reared back and plunged the knife into her neck.
Marla’s grip tightened. The Swatch glowed bright orange, emanating a fierce heat, searing Jeff’s skin, and fusing it to his flesh. A tortured wail leapt from Jeff’s gaping mouth. Marla’s body twitched. She bore down and rode Jeff’s cock still faster. The Swatch burned and glowed. Jeff screamed louder. Crimson gore spewed from Marla onto Jeff’s arms, face, and chest. She pulled out the knife and plunged it back into her neck, matching the movement of her hips with those of the blade. Jeff felt the surge building inside him; he was going to come. His climax rose to unbearable heights. He roared and erupted inside his former lover’s friend.
Sweet rapture overtook Marla. Orgasm engulfed her as she worked the knife and Jeff’s cock in tandem, in and out and in and out. She stabbed and bled and fucked and came.
Marla’s head jerked back. Blood shot up to the ceiling while the final ecstasy ripped through her senses. Seconds later, she convulsed and fell onto Jeff’s chest. He stroked Marla’s hair. His hard dick flinched inside her. He lay still in the blood and, for the first time in his life, he felt like a real man.
*
Jeff stood at the foot of the bed, staring at the butchered bodies of Julie and Marla. The moonlight streamed in through the windows and washed over their quiet, still limbs. They look so perfect, Jeff thought. He felt his attraction for them grow. He felt his dick grow too. His right hand found its way onto his blood covered shaft and began moving up and down in a rhythm of mindless compulsion.
Feeling pure lust for the two dead women, Jeff hammered his rod and a warm light from the Swatch lit up the room. As he stared at their breasts, at the blood that covered their pale skin, he felt his moment approaching.
“Not yet,” Jeff said, stroking harder. Sensations of the most brilliant light coursed through him. Every nerve was shot through with pleasure. Jeff’s legs trembled beneath the weight of ecstasy. “Yes, now!”
On command, a colossal load exploded out of Jeff. He waved his pink flesh hose back and forth, spewing over the dead bodies before him. His eyes rolled back. He felt his bare feet leave the ground as he levitated in front of the bed. The last lone drop of jizz flew and landed on Julie’s forehead. Jeff felt the heat from the glowing Swatch on his left wrist. He looked down into the white hot light.
“Burn them as an offering unto me.”
Oh fuck, the Swatch was talking!
Without further instruction, Jeff turned the Swatch’s light on the disfigured remains of his first lover and her best friend. The blinding light ignited the strings of seminal fluid. A brilliant blaze blossomed in front of Jeff. The bed became a funeral pyre. When the flames drew close to him and their warmth begged his skin to be engulfed and swallowed whole, Jeff left the bedroom-turned-incinerator. Wearing only the Swatch on his wrist, Jeff walked out of the house and disappeared into the night.
*
Tuesday night was slow at the Lush Wash Arcade-bar and Laundromat, but Jeff still managed to find a lonely woman to play his favorite old-school game, Video Killer, with. Near the end of the twelfth round, Jeff sensed her admiring his Swatch.
“Do you like it?” he asked.
“Yes, I do,” the woman replied, her eyes fixed on the watch, drool seeping from the corners of her mouth.
“Do you want to be close to it?” Jeff said.
“Yes,” she said. “Are your whites almost finished drying?”
Jeff turned away from the arcade game and gazed into the woman’s eyes. “Forget the whites…let’s go.”
“I know a place,” she said. “I’ll take you there if you’ll let me touch it.”
“Of course,” he replied. “And when you touch it, you’ll believe.”
The lonely woman graced her fingertips across Jeff’s cheek. Her eyes sparkled. “I already believe.”
*
Shards of broken glass dug into the woman’s knees as Jeff pounded her from behind. The smell of rancid meat and dirty diapers rose from the dumpster that hid them from public view. A lone streetlight poured its beams down from high above the entwined bodies, encircling them in a small orb of light.
“Do you like it here?” The woman asked through strained breaths and sighs.
Jeff stared down at her curves and watched himself going in and out of her. He felt something wonderful bloom within him that he couldn’t quite find words for, so he mumbled, “It’s incredible.”
“The ambience is very special. It’s where I lost my virginity to my step-uncle when I was eleven.” The woman moaned. “Harder!”
Jeff pushed in deeper and harder. The woman’s knees bore down on the concrete. The shards of glass wormed further into her flesh.
“Yes!” She cried. “Yes! I love it, I love it, I love it!”
The Swatch glowed bright. Jeff felt its heat spread through his arm and into his body until he was covered in its fever.
“You’re so hot, baby,” the woman said. “You’re so hot and so hard! Do it faster…do it harder…do it! Do it! There, there…Yes…Yes…Yes!”
A wave of orgasm swept the woman away. Jeff smiled and thrust with even more power. His watch glowed hotter. He was ready to come. The Swatch agreed: it was time.
Jeff let go. Orgasm wracked his frail body. He shuddered, pulled out, and sprayed his seed all over the woman’s back. He grabbed a broken bottle off the filthy concrete and shoved the gleaming shards into the woman’s soft and vulnerable nakedness. Screams of agony erupted from the lonely lady, but no one in the laundromat arcade bar could hear her over the rumblings of the washers and dryers and the beeps of the video games and the crash of pool balls on the stained felt table.
Beams of hot light shot out of the Swatch. Jeff turned the beams onto the wavy patterns of cum that were laced across the woman’s back. As soon as the light touched Jeff’s jizz, the thick liquid burst into flames. Jeff backed up and laughed and stroked his cock. He felt another orgasm rising. The woman started crawling toward the dumpster, burning and wailing. Still on his knees, Jeff scooted closer. He stroked with fury until he erupted and shot cum onto the woman’s face and hair.
The fire spread and engulfed her head. Her hair blazed like cotton candy soaked in napalm. She screamed and fell onto her side. Jeff shoved a pile of dirty hamburger wrappers into her mouth. He stood and pulled up his pants. The fierce light receded into the watch.
“Very good,” said the Swatch. “You are my son with whom I am well pleased.”
Jeff smiled. He actually felt like a real person.
*
On Wednesday night Jeff decided it was time for a visit to Persuader’s, Mable Town’s most infamous dive bar. After two hours and sixteen martinis, Jeff left out the back door with a woman, the kind of woman you could always find at Persuader’s, the kind with no self-esteem and no reason for having any. She said she knew a place. And in that place Jeff became the lord of her waking world. She’d never felt such sensations, such passion, such heat. And she told him so. And she told him so again, and again, and again. Deep emotions stirred within Jeff. Tears of joy filled his eyes. He turned her around and rode her from behind so she wouldn’t see him cry. Even though she secretly knew Jeff was crying, she didn’t say anything because she didn’t want to make him self-conscious.
After he dried his tears, she turned around. They gazed deep into each other’s eyes, past their eyes and into their hearts and souls. She saw the tear stains. As Jeff drove his rock-hard cock into her, she moaned and called out to the empty night sky. For the first time in her life, she felt like a real person. For the first time in her life, she felt real love. Jeff stared into her less-than-average face and suddenly she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Her eyes went wide and a huge smile broke across her face. Her brow crumpled.
“I’m gonna come again,” she said. Jeff felt her legs tighten around him. “Oh God…Oh God…Oh yeah, oh yeah!”
Jeff wanted to come with her. He let go. And he felt nothing.
Her nails were in his back. Her hips were rocking back and forth hard against the damp earth beneath them. The forest trees loomed above. Her screams of ecstasy bounced and echoed through the woods. Fear seized Jeff. Why can’t I come? His mind screamed. What’s wrong…What’s wrong?
“Oh God, don’t stop, don’t stop!” the woman yelled.
Jeff slammed into her with furious purpose. Tears of a different kind swam into his eyes and fell down his cheeks. He buried his face in the woman’s shoulder. When her amorous cries had dwindled and her legs relaxed and her hips ceased rocking, Jeff slowed, gave one final thrust, and stopped. They lay on the ground beneath the forest trees gasping for air. The woman ran her fingers through Jeff’s hair. She kissed him on the ear.
“You are amazing.” Her voice was delicate and sincere. Jeff felt his heart melt.
“Really?”
“Oh, yes…yes, yes, yes!” she said with a huge, happy grin. She kissed him soft on the lips. “I haven’t had sex this good since…well…I’ve never had sex this good!”
The woman’s smile warmed Jeff. They giggled. Their giggles turned to hearty laughs and the Swatch on Jeff’s wrist began to glow red. Jeff felt his arm start to burn. He looked at the Swatch as pain spread through his arm.
“Ow, shit!” He rolled off the woman and sat up on his knees.
“What is it?”
“It’s my Swatch,” Jeff said. “I think it’s mad at me. It’s burning my skin.”
“Well take it off.”.
Jeff struggled with the watch band. “Um…to be honest, I can’t take it off, it’s permanently attached.”
“Oh,” the woman said. “Well…that’s somethin’…”
The Swatch glowed hotter. Jeff could smell the hairs on his arm beginning to singe.
“I require a sacrifice, for I am a jealous Swatch!” The device bellowed, its voice echoing through the woods.
Brilliant beams of red light shot out of the Swatch, piercing the dark shroud of night that surrounded them.
Jeff’s still-hard cock twitched. He felt the threat of orgasm stirring within.
“No! No! I won’t do it!” Jeff screamed at the Swatch.
The woman’s brow furrowed. “Do what? What does the Swatch want you to do?”
Jeff felt his dick bob up and down. The Swatch made him remember the sexiest thoughts he had ever thought. He looked at the woman’s bare, shapely breasts. His breath shortened. He felt the surge toward climax building inside.
“No, no, no!” Sweat swam down his face. “I don’t want to come, I don’t want to come!”
“You know you want it!” The Swatch roared.
The need for release was shattering Jeff’s weary senses. His hands shook. His flesh burned. His cock ached. He knew that two strokes would be all it would take to hose the woman down with his love lava. Jeff looked into the woman’s confused face.
“The Swatch knows that I fell in love with you and it’s really jealous and pissed off.”
The woman blushed and sat up on her knees, facing Jeff. “You don’t even know my name.”
“What’s your name?” Jeff asked as he winced through the searing pain gripping his body.
“It’s Lori. What’s yours?”
“I’m Jeff,” he replied.
“I’m so glad to know your name, Jeff,” Lori said. “It’s nice to know the name of the man I’m in love with.”
“You feel it too!”
“Yes! I do! I love you, Jeff!”
“I love you, Lori! I love you!”
The Swatch glowed hotter, searing Jeff’s flesh, filling the forest air with the fumes of burning flesh. “Silence, infidels! I am the Swatch, and you shall love none but me!”
“Stop telling me what to do!” Jeff said to the Swatch.
The wristwatch burned with anger, melting Jeff’s skin, pouring the most extreme, hard-core sexy images into Jeff’s mind, filling his body with lust. Jeff’s right hand started to move toward his sore, throbbing cock.
“I can’t fight it anymore.” He looked to Lori with tears pouring from his eyes. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”
“No, Jeff, you don’t have to do this! You can beat it!” Lori cried. “Just hold on!”
Jeff felt Lori’s love rush through him and he knew that she was right.
“Hurry, grab my fanny pack,” he said. “If I move, I’ll explode, and if any of my jizz gets on you, you’ll be burned alive.”
“Okay, hold still then.” Lori rummaged through their pile of clothes and found Jeff’s fanny pack. She grabbed it and looked it over. “That’s one sexy fanny pack!”
“Thanks! I’m glad you like it! Okay, now, hand me the meat cleaver that’s in there, please.”
Lori pulled out the meat cleaver and handed it to Jeff, her eyes filled with suspicion.
“I was planning on killing you and sacrificing you to the Swatch before I fell in love with you. I’m really sorry.” It felt good to tell the truth. He was really starting to feel more and more like an actual human being.
“Whew, I’m glad that plan fell through!”
They both burst out laughing. Jeff laughed so hard that his sides hurt. They laughed until the pain left and all either of them felt was pure love and joy. That made it easier when Jeff swung the meat cleaver into the crook of his left arm. The immaculate steel plunged through his flesh. Blood bubbled up and swam down Jeff’s elbow. He shrieked in anguish as he yanked the blade out of his arm—streams of crimson flying out behind its glistening silver—and slammed the holy razor back down again and again. There was a crunch as the blade tore through bone. There was a tear as ligaments were shredded. Jeff howled into the night and dealt the final blow. The last sinew split in half and Jeff’s forearm fell to the ground. Blood gushed from the wound. Lori looked on in astonishment.
Jeff dropped the cleaver. He leaned over his severed limb and started stroking his aching cock. A flood of relief came over him.
“Oh shit, Lori, I’m gonna come!”
“Yeah! Do it, baby!” Lori hollered. She felt so hot and wet from watching Jeff cut off his forearm. Lust overwhelmed her. She leaned back and started pleasing herself with both hands. She felt her own impending orgasm. “I’m gonna come with you!”
Lori and Jeff called out to each other. Blood spurted out of his hacked arm. Waves of heat and pleasure crashed over them both.
Jeff’s body convulsed. Hot jizz flooded out of his cock nozzle. A deluge of lady cum gushed out of Lori. She aimed her hips up. Her cum collided with Jeff’s in the air and the two fluids combined and formed a super cum made of total goodness and love that could defeat any evil.
Great gobs of the wonder cum splashed down on the Swatch’s burning red face. The fiery red beams of light ignited the cum. Jeff and Lori hosed down Jeff’s forearm and the spark burst into a blaze.
“Noooooooo!” The Swatch screamed as the flames consumed it. “You cannot defeat me! I am eternal!”
Lori jumped up and went to Jeff’s side. After wrapping her shirt around his bloody stump, she pulled him to his feet and put his other, still-intact arm around her neck to hold him steady.
“Come on, let’s get you to the hospital,” she said.
Jeff looked at Lori and knew that he had never loved anyone this much in his whole life, and that it was for real.
“Okay, let’s go,” he said, smiling through the pain.
Together they limped through the forest, the Swatch calling after them all the while. When Jeff and Lori got back to Persuader’s, the bartender looked at Jeff’s arm and said he’d seen worse. He gave them a ride to the hospital after outfitting them with official Persuader’s swag attire so they wouldn’t have to ride around town in the nude.
Jeff and Lori were each thankful that they had finally found another person they could love with their whole heart and not feel weird or fake about it at all, not even one little bit. And they knew that they were real people after all.
Two weeks later
Dusty was really stewed that he had community service again. He was even more upset that it was forest clean-up, again.
He was kicking pinecones and cursing when he heard a voice echoing from under the leaves, calling his name.
“Duss-teee…Duss-teee…I can make all your dreams come true,” the deep, sonorous voice said.
Dusty crouched and brushed away the leaves. There it was, on the forest floor, resting in a pile of gray and white ash: a Swatch.
“Wow, a talkin’ Swatch watch!” Dusty exclaimed. “I thought they quit makin’ these.”
Dusty held the Swatch up in the afternoon sunlight and studied its burn marks and ash stains. “Looks like somebody tried to burn you up, fella.”
He put the Swatch to his ear and listened for its incessant tick. There was no sound. Dusty looked at the Swatch’s face. The second hand moved in a lazy, hypnotic circle. A white light glowed from deep inside the watch. Dusty felt a corresponding heat in his chest. He wanted the watch. He wound the watchband around his wrist and fastened it tight, yelping as the Swatch melded into his skin. The pain was only momentary though, and soon Dusty felt a rush of elation. He wanted to fuck something, and fuck it good.
“I’m the king of fuck! Yay-Yuh!” Dusty screamed while pumping his fists and doing pelvic thrusts.
The Swatch laughed to itself. It was glad to have lucked upon such a wanting idiot.
“Yay-Yuh!” Dusty shouted again. He bent low and picked up some discarded shoes and clothes and tossed them into his orange trash bag.
His beady eyes scanned the forest for more trash. He turned to the right and saw Loretta from girl’s detention leering at him from deep within the trees. She raised her shirt and shook her breasts at him. He felt himself get hard. “Oh yeah, this is gone be awesome!”
Loretta peeled off her shirt and beckoned him with a long, red-tipped finger. Dusty dropped his garbage bag and hurried toward her. The bulge in his pants grew larger with every step. A hint of light emanated from the surface of the Swatch.
“I’ll give you everything you want, Dusty,” the Swatch said. “Just remember, I require a sacrifice.”
“Whatever…” Dusty mumbled, vanishing into the gloom of the forest and the deep of the trees.
Russell Holbrook is an author, multi-instrumentalist, and visual artist with a passion for music and storytelling. Having struggled with addiction for the majority of his early adult life, Russell managed to break free from the grip of drugs and alcohol and has now been sober for over eight years. He was/is the guitarist and co-founder of the former Tooth and Nail Records artists Joe Christmas, and he writes the column “The Logbook of Terror” for the horroraddicts.net podcast and blog. When not writing or practicing music or working his day job in a computer refurbishing warehouse, Russell enjoys spending time with his wife and animals in his lovely home of Mableton, Georgia
"Curse of the Death Swatch" is brought to you in part by David M. Simon! Learn more about this author and artist on his website and Redbubble
