**Warning**
This is a short story from The Splatter Club, meaning it will be graphic.
Consume at your own risk.
A new job, a new start...
As a magazine journalist, I had cast myself as virtually unemployable. Nobody reads magazines now adays. I’d spent half my life carving out a niche in an industry that didn’t exist anymore. One by one, my options dwindled, until there was only one left. A writing instructor teaching college students in Guangzhou, southern China. I’d done a stint in Hunan Province, so it wasn’t too much of a leap. Those that can’t do teach, right?
With my qualifications and experience, landing the job was the easy part. Then I had to endure a solid five months of tedious paperwork courtesy of the Chinese government before I could be granted a work permit. I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice to say, I almost gave up on the idea several times. However, come the beginning of March, all my papers were in order and I was ready to make the trip.
It was fucking brutal. By this point, after nearly a year on the scrapheap, I was almost flat broke and had to settle for a budget-priced three-legged journey taking in London, Paris, and Wuhan before finally reaching my destination, Guangzhou. Predictably, the first of my scheduled flights was delayed by four hours which had a knock-on effect meaning the trip in its entirety took almost thirty-two hours. That’s a long time to be inside metal tubes in the sky and hanging around airport departure lounges. By the time I arrived, I was a complete wreck.
I was met at Guangzhou Baiyun airport by a guy named Ken from the college’s Foreign Language Department. He was someone I’d emailed and video-called several times during the long, drawn-out recruitment process. Ken wasn’t his real name, of course. Knowing that foreigners probably wouldn’t be able to pronounce their real names, Chinese people often assume ‘English’ names to make communication marginally easier.
Ken was a tall, whip-thin, man with glasses and greasy, slicked-back hair. He spoke in halting, heavily-accented English, and when he smiled, he sneered. Call it paranoia, call it intuition, but I’ve learned that there are some people in this world who you bond with immediately, and there are some you don’t. He fell into the latter category. I just got bad vibes. There was something dark and unsettling lurking beneath his calm, cheerful demeanor.
Exhausted, I settled in the back seat of Ken’s car hoping to grab some sleep. He wasn’t having that. He had a million questions. He asked me about my family, where I was from, my work history, my past relationships, and all the time sneering at me in the rear view mirror, which he had re-positioned so he could see me as he drove. I fended off as many questions as I could, and even closed my eyes at one point to try to feign sleep. And then Ken said something that got my attention.
“By the way, no relationships with students. Not allowed.”
“Of course,” I replied, with a little too much venom. The thought had never even crossed my mind. “Why would you even say that?” I glared at him via the rear-view mirror.
For a moment he glared back, his eyes cold and emotionless. Something imperceptible seemed to pass between us. Then, his lower face broke into one of his trademark sneers. “Nothing. No reason. It’s just...”
“Just what?”
“Something happened before.”
“Something like what?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Ken replied, finality in his tone suggesting the conversation was over. And it was, as we both settled into an awkward silence for the rest of the journey.
When we arrived at the college campus, I was horrified to learn that Ken’s apartment was just down the hall from mine. Wonderful. My teaching schedule was lax, only sixteen hours a week, and I planned on devoting the bulk of my downtime to working on the novel I’d always wanted to write but never had the opportunity. The last thing I wanted was some creepy dude constantly knocking on my door wanting to be ‘friends.’
The campus was in Zeng Cheng district, about an hour’s drive away from downtown Guangzhou. It was quite remote, but that suited me fine and the place itself was beautiful; full of weeping willows, ornate sculptures and Koi carp ponds straddled by decorative bridges. It had a few streets of shops and restaurants so there was no real need to ever leave, except to go exploring. A mountain range lay to the south, and to the north a river ran alongside the campus, now brown and bloated with the seasonal rains.
I settled into the teaching well. I formed decent rapport with my students, and it felt good to be doing something constructive. Let’s face it, being in a classroom and having twenty-plus impressionable freshmen hanging on my every word was the closest I would ever come to being a rock star. As the tail-end of winter morphed into spring, more rains came. There was a constant barrage of thunderstorms and torrential downpours, all of which made for a somewhat dark, oppressive and threatening atmosphere. The air was humid, and most of my possessions constantly wet.
I began to feel the itch. A yearning for human companionship. My neighbor Ken would periodically invite me out for dinner. I went once, but the experience only confirmed my initial thoughts. He was weird as fuck. Not least because he seemed fixated with my love life, which was an on-going train wreck, and wanted to know things like how to satisfy a Western woman and what they liked in bed. His conversation topics sounded all kinds of alarm bells and I quickly moved to distance myself from him as best I could. The next few times he invited me for dinner I told him I was busy, and he eventually got the message and stopped asking.
There were a few other foreign teachers on the campus; an Australian guy in his sixties who had been there for several years, a recently-divorced Canadian woman, and the obligatory young, brash American guy who spent most of his time in the gym. None of us had much in common, so we didn’t socialize often. Besides, I had a longing for companionship of the opposite sex.
I discovered an app called Tantan. It’s kind of an Asian Tinder. In the first two days I ‘matched’ with five people. Three of them were catfish who either wanted me to download another app to my phone so we could ‘get to know each other more,’ or just asked me to send them money directly. They called it a ‘loyalty’ fee, meaning that if I was serious about them, I wouldn’t mind parting with a few dollars to prove it. Fucked if I was falling for that. I was foreign, not stupid.
Number four was a homosexual guy posing as a girl in order to solicit intimate photos of straight guys. I had him twigged the moment he asked me to send him a photo of my junk after just a few minutes of talking. There are exceptions, but the vast majority of Chinese women are never so forward.
Number Five was the only ‘real’ female I encountered. She went by the name Siki, and was into some pretty obscure and extreme Scandinavian metal. It wasn’t my thing, but I am all about exploring new territories and that often extends to musical genres. She was twenty-one years old, a junior student. Only after a few days did it occur to me to ask her which college she studied at. Perhaps it shouldn’t have been, but it was a shock to discover that she was a student at the same college where I worked.
Shit.
Ken’s words immediately echoed in my mind.
No relationships with students.
But... this wasn’t a relationship, was it? It was just a bit of fun. We were just talking. And though she studied at the same place, she wasn’t technically my student. It was a gray area, but my conscience was clear.
I couldn’t deny I found Siki insanely attractive. There was just something about her, some dark, intense desirability that I had never felt to that degree before. Maybe it was the danger, the idea of breaking taboos. Predictably, our talks soon turned sexual. It transpired that her kinks were just as extreme as her musical tastes. She was into some bizarre stuff: bondage, rape, and incest scenarios, water sports, and she displayed some very obvious masochistic tendencies. She liked to be hurt. ‘It makes me feel something,’ she said.
Her ultimate thrill was stranger sex. She loved going to see guys she met on the internet, fucking them, and then moving on to the next guy. An endless procession of different partners, all equally as meaningful or meaningless. All the same, yet different. It was obviously a dangerous game she was playing. Especially given the kind of violent, no-holds-barred sex she was into. She told me she once had sex with four men in a single day, and let one of them fuck her with a carrot.
I’d been around. But most of this was on a whole new level for me. I guess I’d always had a dark side. Most of us do. But I never fully explored it before. I can’t deny I found it both exhilarating and intoxicating.
Her social media profile was full of videos by bands with names like Cannibal Corpse, Anal Cunt, I’m in a Coffin, and Bizarre Ejaculation, along with disturbing crime scene photos of murders and suicides. I’m no psychologist, but the whole thing reeked of damage. Some psychological trauma that had befallen her at some point and she was still trying to work through. My suspicions were confirmed when she told me how much medication she was taking to treat her depression, manic tendencies, and bi-polar disorder. Some of the meds had side-effects, for which she took more meds, and the sheer amount of chemical compounds she was ingesting on a daily basis had led to acute gastroenteritis and other stomach issues, for which she was prescribed yet more medication. It was a vicious circle.
We talked about ‘her problem,’ a lot. She was nihilistic in the extreme, and made no secret of the fact that she thought her life was meaningless and she wanted to die. She just didn’t want to be here. ‘Don’t you see?’ she would say. ‘People, creatures, we’re all trapped here together, and there is only one way out.’
It was sad. Beyond sad. It was heartbreaking. Siki was on a path to self-destruction, and that path was lonely, dark, and populated largely by demons of her own making. She told me she dreamed of ghosts every night. Faceless ghosts who pulled and tugged at her, trying to make her do their bidding.
Nobody should have to live like that.
I decided that if it was stranger sex she craved, I would give her that. And then, I would try to shine a light into her dark heart. Maybe take her out for meals, go shopping, the cinema. Whatever it took to make her smile and realize that life didn’t have to be so gloomy and miserable. There is beauty all around, perhaps all she needed was someone to show her. Whatever tragedy had befallen her in the past, we could face it and work through it together, with the ultimate aim being to wean her off the meds and live something approaching a normal life. No matter how much they fight it, most people yearn for acceptance and a degree of normality. Perhaps her sexual habits were just her way of seeking attention or validation. I didn’t like her lifestyle one bit, but I understood it.
I was still tossing around the idea of potentially meeting her when one typically humid, rainy Friday afternoon, she sent me a message.
I want to come over and suck your dick right now.
Jesus.
At that moment, everything changed. Something instinctive told me to run. Nothing good could come of this. I thought about Ken’s warning, the contract I’d signed, the possible consequences of getting involved with a student.
And then I thought, ‘fuck it.’ It was just a job. If I got myself fired, I could just find another one, and I was probably going to hell, anyway.
An hour later, Siki arrived at my apartment. She was a lot smaller and more petite than I’d expected. She was wearing a grey skirt and matching short-sleeved blouse with white knee-high socks, the ensemble giving her the appearance of a svelte Asian schoolgirl, the kind usually abundant in Japanese horror movies. The look was completed by a set of silver braces covering her teeth and a pair of tight pigtails.
The moment she walked through the door, I flung her against the wall, kissed her, and lifted up her skirt to expose her panties. Her legs were slim and pale, the only thing spoiling the schoolgirl image being the vertical scarring across the inside of her left forearm where she had been self-harming and the network of tattoos almost covering her lower body. Black and red roses and entwined vines snaked their way down her thighs, abdomen and lower back, and she had the words GOD EXISTS HERE in English on her belly with an arrow pointing to her shaven vagina.
“What does that mean?” I asked as I relieved her of her underwear.
“It means fuck your God,” she said, in a husky, lust-filled voice totally at odds with the way she looked.
So that was what I did. Right there against the wall. However, after just a few minutes she pushed me off and sank to her knees in front of me, her black, oval eyes gazing up at me imploringly. “Remember why I came here?”
Before I could answer she took the length of my dick in her mouth, forcing herself down on it until she gagged. I almost came instantly but gritted my teeth and forced myself to hold off as she pulled back my foreskin and flicked her warm tongue against my swollen member. Dizzy with desire and longing, I dragged her into the bedroom and threw her face down on the bed.
“I want you in my ass,” she purred, spreading her legs invitingly.
I was more than happy to oblige, and groaned loudly as my penis, still wet with her saliva, slid effortlessly into her anus. With each thrust I penetrated her deeper and deeper while she moaned and mewled softly. Occasionally, I spanked one of her reddened ass cheeks.
“Harder,” she panted.
“The spanking or the fucking?”
“Both.”
I gradually increased the pace, and the force of my intermittent slaps, which only made her moan louder.
Then, as I was nearing climax, she turned to me and said, “Do you have a bottle?”
I stopped and frowned. “A bottle? What kind of bottle?”
“I don’t know. Something big. A beer bottle?”
“I do, there are a few in my trash can.”
“Do you have a bottle of Harbin?”
“I don’t think so. I’ve been drinking Tsingtao. Why?”
“I want you to fuck me with a bottle. Harbin bottles have a longer neck. Feels so good.”
Wow. This was new. I didn’t mind experimenting and branching out. Hard anal, a little slapping, dirty talk. No problem. But this was a whole new ball game. “Siki, I’m not going to fuck you with a bottle, Harbin or anything else.”
“But, Daddy, I want it,” she coaxed. “I want it in me so bad.”
Despite being balls deep in her ass, I suddenly felt my dick soften a little as a million dark thoughts clouded my mind. What was with the ‘Daddy’ stuff? And why did she want me to fuck her with a beer bottle? Was I not enough for her? Wasn’t I doing the job?
“Siki... I wouldn’t be totally comfortable doing that...”
From her bent-over position, she twisted her neck to look over her shoulder at me. It was a look was filled with myriad of emotions. There was disappointment, hurt, and most of all, anger. The look spurred something in me, something primal. It was almost as if she were laying down a challenge, and I pounded her as hard and fast as I could, gripping her buttocks for purchase, until I shot my load inside her while she writhed on the bed and pushed back on me.
When I finished, I carefully withdrew. A single drop of blood mixed with my semen ran out of her ass hole and down toward the pleated curves of her vagina. Had I damaged her? A sudden wave of guilt washed over me. “You’re bleeding,” I said.
“Good,” she replied.
Suddenly, and belatedly, concerned about catching an STD, I went to the shower to pee and wash myself off. It probably wasn’t true, but I remembered reading somewhere that if you do that after having unprotected sex it reduces the risk of infection. Then I wiped and went back into the bedroom fully expecting Siki to still be on the bed.
She was gone.
Confused and thinking she may have gone to get herself a drink of water or something, I hurriedly checked the rest of the apartment.
It was empty.
No trace of the girl I just had intercourse with. It was like she’d never even been there. I sought out my cellphone and quickly sent her a message.
Where did u go? R U OK?
I waited, cellphone in hand.
There was no reply.
I sent her another message later that night, which also went unanswered. Situations like this pose a dilemma for Western guys when they meet Chinese girls. At this point, most Western guys would just decide that the girl didn’t like them and give up, because if she did she would answer the damn messages, right?
But in China, girls value persistence much more. If a man gives up after one or two unanswered messages it suggests that he didn’t really like her much anyway, because if he did he wouldn’t give up so easily. It was one of those cultural nuances that nobody bothers to tell you about, but you learn the hard way, usually after months of letting potential partners slip through your fingers.
I checked Siki’s social media periodically for updates. There were none, but that wasn’t surprising since she hadn’t posted anything since a few weeks before we’d met. Some people post things continuously, every facet of their humdrum existence. Other people don’t. I sent her one last message a few days later, and when that elicited no response, I decided to back off and give her some space. Maybe she was embarrassed, which would explain why she had left my apartment, and seemingly my life, so suddenly. If she wanted to talk, she knew where she could find me. But if she didn’t want to talk, I wasn’t going to make a fool of myself trying to make her. Life moved on, and gradually she faded into the back of my mind.
A few weeks later, I was doing a class project about news stories. Each group of students had to research and present a recent item, for which they would receive a grade. The first group covered a story about global warming. Yawn. While the next group prepared the large TV screen, I shuffled through my papers in preparation of another ten-minute presentation about some mundane topic I neither knew nor cared about. When I looked up at the large screen at the front of the class, Siki was looking back at me.
For a moment, something in my mind froze.
What the fuck was going on?
My first thought was that someone had found out about my transgression and I had made the local news. I could almost envisage the headline: FOREIGN TEACHER FUCKS LOCAL STUDENT IN ASS.
Then, I sat back, open-mouthed, as the second group of students told me about their chosen news story. Twenty-one-year-old He Ze Feng, also known as Siki, had been a junior student at the college. ‘Had been’ being the operative phrase, because she had been murdered and dumped in the river adjacent to the college several weeks before I arrived. Even that part wasn’t strictly true. She had been dismembered, and the authorities never found all of her. Just her head, trunk, and one arm. The official cause of death had been massive internal hemorrhaging. Neither the news outlet nor the students doing the presentation needed to elaborate on that aspect of the story.
' want you to fuck me with a bottle. Harbin bottles have a longer neck. Feels so good.
Worst of all, Siki’s killer hadn’t been brought to justice. He was still out there, somewhere.
As I watched and listened, the world around me swam in and out of focus. I suddenly needed some air and stood on wobbly legs to leave the room under the pretense of going to the washroom. Thankfully, mercifully, just as I stood the buzzer sounded to signify the end of class. I thanked the students doing the presentation and excused the rest of the class, then sat back in my chair to collect my thoughts.
What the absolute fuck.
It was almost as if I was the unwitting star of one of those awful low-budget horror flicks. Did I have sexual relations with a dead girl? Some kind of ghost? She had felt so real.
The only other possible explanation was that someone was masquerading as Siki. But why would they do that? And besides, the picture was the same, so unless she had an identical twin, it ruled out the possibility of an imposter. I heard myself let out a soft whimper and hot tears began to form in my eyes. I wasn’t sure if they were tears of shock, grief, or confusion.
Eventually, I pulled myself together enough to gather my belongings and walk back to my apartment across the campus. Throughout the ten-minute walk, all I could think about was Siki. Everything felt so surreal, almost dream-like. I passed some people I knew. Colleagues, students. I fixed a plastic smile to my face and waved in all the right places. Or at least, I think I did. I just needed to get home and try to process everything.
My plan was going so well until I stepped into the elevator and right into Ken.
“Good afternoon, Tom,” he said through one of his trademark sneers.
“Afternoon, Ken,” I replied, trying desperately to hide the sinking feeling in my stomach.
“Everything goes well?”
“Very well, thank you.”
“Actually, I’m glad I bump into you now. So lucky for me. I did some translating work for a friend, would you mind checking it?”
“Sure,” I replied, “You can email it to me, and I will be happy to take a look on the weekend.”
“Oh,” Ken replied. “What a pity. I need it done fast. How you say, I have a dead string. I would like your help tonight, if possible.”
“Deadline,” I corrected, shuddering slightly as the word ‘dead’ passed my lips. I was used to Chinese coercion tactics, especially in work situations. They have a way of making you think you have a choice, that you are doing things of your own free will, when really you don’t. I had to remind myself that however creepy Ken might be, he was still my boss. Suppressing a sigh, I said, “No problem, let me just go home and relax a while and I will come over later.”
“It really is quite urgent. And as you will be passing my apartment on the way to yours...”
“Fine, Ken. I will come now.”
The lift doors opened out onto our floor, and Ken quickly ushered me along the corridor to his apartment. Outside, he fumbled in his pocket for his keys, unlocked the door, and flung it open. “Come in, come in.”
The apartment was almost an exact replica of mine, though that wasn’t surprising. A simple lay out with doors to the bedroom and bathroom opening off a large open-plan combined living room and kitchenette with a balcony facing the street below. One corner of the room was dominated by a large wooden table over which were scattered a mass of papers and computer print-outs. Ken began leafing through them, on the hunt for something. Then he gave me a sideways glance and said, “So how you love life?”
Oh God, not now.
“It’s okay, thanks,” I replied dismissively.
“Want some beer?”
I didn’t want beer, I just wanted to go home. But I was trying hard to act as if nothing was wrong, and under normal circumstances I would rarely refuse a cold one at the end of a long working day. “Sure.”
Ken pressed something hard and cold in my hand, then went back to his task at the table. I looked down at what he had given me, and instantly felt as if I’d been punched in the gut.
“What’s this?” I stammered.
“Harbin!” Ken said without looking up. “Try it. It’s my favorite. I always have it. See the shape of the bottle? Special shape. Has longer neck.”
My mind was cast back to the day we had first met when he picked me up at the airport.
No relationships with students. Not allowed. Something happened before.
“Ken?” I said, a little tentatively as my mind still struggled to piece all the fragments together.
“Yes?”
“What’s the ‘something’ that happened with a student before I came here?”
“What means?”
“At the airport. You told me not to have relations with the students because something happened before.”
Ken’s trademark sneer fell from his face, and for a fraction of a second his eyes widened as his guard slipped.
That was when I knew.
And somehow, Ken knew that I knew.
He took a halting step away from the table and looked around the room furtively.
“Why did you do it?” I said, rising to my full height. “You fucking murderer.”
“I... I... It was an accident. She wanted the bottle. Next thing I know it was filling with blood. Blood everywhere.”
Suddenly a white-hot ball of fury exploded inside me. For a moment, I stepped outside myself, and watched as another me swung the bottle of Harbin I’d been holding. It arced through the air, until it connected with the side of Ken’s head and shattered, a mixture of froth, beer, and blood spraying the room.
Now I held the bloody base of the bottle, all jagged sharp shards of green-tinted glass looking almost like teeth. I swung it again in a downward motion, the makeshift weapon slicing through the air with a soft whoosh before hooking his skin and opening Ken up from his temple to the side of his mouth. One side of his face immediately sagged, pulling his eye down with it, and there was a flash of white bone as two pieces of skin flapped independently. The man let out a squeal and slumped to the floor, his hands covering his face in a vain attempt to either stem the flow of blood seeping through his fingers or repair the damage.
Its purpose fulfilled, I dropped the remains of the beer bottle, balled my hand into a fist and, gripping his throat and squeezing with my other hand, delivered a savage succession of rapid blows. His nose and cheekbones crunched and splintered, and one of his eyes, the one on the ruined side of his face, bulged monstrously while the pupil of the other rolled back to show opaque white. He was probably glad to lapse into unconsciousness.
There was another bottle of Harbin in Ken’s fridge. I drank every drop. Then I made a phone call to the dean of the college, who I knew had serviceable English. I told her everything. My encounter with Siki, the student’s presentation, Ken’s confession, and my current predicament. She mostly listened, and the fact that she didn’t even sound surprised spoke volumes. She must have had her own suspicions, and now that the police had a suspect, I was confident they would find the evidence needed to convict. Murder usually carries the death penalty in China. After I hung up, I searched for flights back to England. There was one leaving in four hours, and there was one seat left.
I didn’t bother packing. I just went to my apartment, grabbed my passport and other documents, then got a cab to the airport. I fully expected to be apprehended by the Chinese authorities at some point. I was involved in a murder investigation and had just beaten the living shit out of the perpetrator. There would surely be questions to answer.
But it didn’t happen. I sailed through check-in.
Then, as I was boarding the plane, I felt the phone in my pocket vibrate. With a growing sense of dread, I pulled it out and opened the text message. It was just four words long:
Thank you.
Love, Siki.
C.M. Saunders is a freelance journalist and editor from south Wales. His work has appeared in almost 100 magazines, ezines and anthologies worldwide, and he has held staff positions at several leading UK magazines ranging from Staff Writer to Associate Editor. Find all his extreme stories here and learn more at his website: https://cmsaunders.wordpress.com/
"Siki's Story" is brought to you in part by Rayne Havok! She is all about the bloody and gruesome, sprinkled with gratuitious sex. Peek inside the mind of a twisted woman who holds nothing back. But be warned, she has a passion for the extreme with taboo tendencies."
