Grueberfest Round 1 - Heartstarter (819 hits)
Category: RomanceRating: 1.92 on 25 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by JoeyG (View user info) at 2008-09-27 17:39:30 EDT
Albert snatched the plum-like lump from the surface of his work bench and cradled it in his palm, turning it this way and that.
After contemplating the object for a few seconds, he tensed his fingers around the mass, and jerked his hand towards his mouth, taking a vicious bite out of the pig's heart that he held, as if it were a red-ripe apple.
Failure....
Albert detested failure, and the word rang in his mind over and over. As his teeth punctured the flesh of the heart, the blood that remained inside burst over his smacking lips, dripped down his cheeks in scarlet flows that slicked his chin with crimson.
He cast aside the remaining pulp from his grasp, and pondered the carcass on the floor; the pig, butchered only minutes before.
When Albert was a child, he had come upon a recently deceased frog in the woodland, and when the animal's hind leg twitched, releasing a remnant electric impulse, he believed that the frog was trying to revive its lifeless form, in defiance of death itself.
Many years on, Albert was still trying to recreate that precious moment.
He managed to remove his gaze from the pig and refocus his concentration. He knew he had to continue his work, and he decided to return his attention to creatures that were more aware; Creatures that once had more will, more fight in their soul.
Albert stood up, cricked his back and headed towards his morgue.
As he walked along the cold corridor, he glanced out of the window and saw a storm raging in the heavens. Veins of light pierced the night sky, each one punctuated with its own unique crackle of thunder.
The night outside was actually calm, but whenever he looked out of his windows, Albert saw what Albert wanted to see. Even on the brightest of days, if Albert wished it were night, then a cloak of ebony would surround the house, and oily fingers of satanic satin would slink their way into the cracks and corners.
At the end of the corridor, Albert descended the narrow stone stairwell that took him to the cellar below his old house on the hill. Flickers from the flames of oil lamps were the only light in the dim stairwell, but once the door at the bottom clicked open upon its well-oiled hinges, fluorescent light flooded through from the room beyond.
Albert's morgue appeared much as any other morgue. Polished chrome surfaces, reflecting the harsh, clinical glow of the strip lights in the ceiling, and a wall of large metal drawers, each one giving no indication of whether or not it had an occupant.
Most morgues have an eerie silence about them, as if somehow the dead were able to vacuum out the surrounding sound, and replace it with echoing stillness.
Albert's morgue was quite different, however. Once the well-oiled door had been opened, he was greeted with a cacophony of drumming and ringing, banging and scraping - for the residents of Albert's metal drawers were alive, and literally kicking around in their steely cages.
As the occupants thrashed around inside their likely tombs, restrained with binds and body bags, the noise resembled an ogre's rattle.
Ignoring the fuss that his subjects were creating, he selected the middle drawer from the bottom row. The drawer slid out silently, Albert having greased the tracks as well as he had done the cellar door. Sensing movement, the occupant of the body bag inside stopped the relentless squirming and froze with shock.
By the time Albert had hoisted the bag from the drawer to the floor, the squirming had recommenced, accompanied by a muffled sound, which Albert knew to be the sound of a young human, screaming against a heavy cloth gag. Taking the bag by the foot end, he pulled it across the polished chrome floor, and through the cellar door.
At the foot of the stairwell, he attached the bag to the harness he had installed some time ago, when hauling bodies up steep, stone steps had become troublesome. He ascended the stairwell, and at the peak he began to crank the wheel that operated the pulley. Albert took great care to do this slowly, for subjects in the past had seemed upset if their heads had cracked sharply against one of the unforgiving stone risers.
Once the bag and its contents had reached the top of the stairs, he commenced dragging it back along the corridor, pausing only momentarily at the window to check on the storm that he imagined to be ravaging the hilltop.
Back inside his work room, he used the last of his effort to lift the bag onto the work bench, before sitting at his stool to regain his breath. After several minutes, he stood at the bench, and unzipped the body bag, and Victoria's eyes filled with the first light they had seen in several days.
The girl's real name was Mary, but this mattered not to Albert. He neither knew her real name, nor cared to know it. He had named this one Victoria, as it fitted better with his filing system.
Seeing her captor for the first time, Victoria's first reaction seemed that of surprise. In the days she had spent slamming around her drawer in the morgue, she had envisioned her tormentor to be an evil incarnation, but the sight of Albert was completely unexpected.
Albert was an old man. Five hundred and eleven, at his last count. His flesh had mummified about his face, and his eyes had been lost to atrophy many years ago. As if in defiance to old age, a wispy floss of greying hair still hung around his time-warped features. But throughout all his years, Albert's heart continued to beat, unlike the hearts that he desired to give re-birth.
Albert needed a new heart to work on, but a heart that was already pumping was of no use to him. First he needed to stop the beating thing, and then came the harder task of re-starting it.
He was averse to blades, and at his age he found clubs and cudgels cumbersome. When it came to the human form, Albert's motto was "a vice will suffice".
Victoria's arms were tied by her side, and as such she posed little fight when Albert placed the jaws of the iron vice in position around her temples. The handle of the machine was 2 foot long, and gave Albert plenty of leverage with which to perform his task.
Realising her fate, Victoria renewed her struggle, but once the jaws had clasped, she was helpless.
A twist of the handle, and the muffled screams rose exponentially. Another twist, and the screams coming through the cloth gag were replaced with a blooming pattern of roses.
Albert twisted the handle once more, and the eye in the left socket of Victoria's metal framed features burst out of its recess, and lay limply against her cheek.
With the final twist came an ugly crack, as her skull caved, and a fissure appeared in the roof of her skull, spilling grey matter down her forehead.
Albert checked the slowing pulse of Victoria, and knew he had to perfect the timing.
With quick efficiency, he picked up his improvised crow bar, which he had shortened, and sharpened. Using the deft skill he had gained over the many years, he thrust the sharpened end in the middle of Victoria's ribcage and prised open her left hand side, exposing the heart he was so eager to extract.
The heart gave one last ripple, like a gentle breeze disturbing the surface of a mill pond, before Albert grasped the thing and pulled it from its previous owner.
Taking it to his work bench, he used his long, yellow finger nails to gently open the aortic valve, into which he placed a capillary with a funnelled top. Reaching under the bench for his jars, he selected several containing liquids of various colour and constituency.
Into the funnel he trickled drips from each of the selected jars before retracting the capillary.
And now, the wait.... the precious moment between achieving his dream.. .or failure once again.
Albert watched for moments that seemed like years, before something flickered deep down inside the organ.
I see it!
Finally a glow began to emit from the girl's heart, and then a shudder. The heart rolled across the work bench, glowing brighter as it did so, a deep red glow, as if a fire were inside.
One thump.
Then another.
Finally the heart was contracting rhythmically on the work bench, as alive as any of the bodies in the metal drawers below.
Success!
Armed with the knowledge he now possessed, Albert turned back to his morgue.
He had work to do.
User Reviews
Submitted by Fungah (user info) at 2008-09-29 12:05:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Fungah (user info) at 2008-09-29 12:05:16 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I lose :(
Submitted by EmissionImpossible (user info) at 2008-09-29 11:51:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Mail me Mr Unreliable
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2008-09-29 11:34:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Nellypaal (user info) at 2008-09-29 05:47:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Nice.
Submitted by billrhine (user info) at 2008-09-28 12:43:30 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2008-09-28 02:28:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2008-09-28 02:00:29 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This was great. And I'm taking a smoke break from my 99th viewing of Casino, so the head in the vise thing was a nice bit of synchronicity.
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2008-09-28 00:42:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Gyro_Gearloose (user info) at 2008-09-27 23:31:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by glitterball (user info) at 2008-09-27 20:04:40 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
jeez, you need to scoop up what you 'split' and eat it up. cannibalism rules!
Submitted by JoeyG (user info) at 2008-09-27 19:18:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by glitterball (user info) at 2008-09-28 00:12:08 BST (#)
Ranking: 2
One sick story. but i did enjoy it
-------------
not half as much as I did.....
bwaahahaahahaha.....shit, I just spilt my.....
Never mind. Let's all just forget what I spilt.
Submitted by glitterball (user info) at 2008-09-27 19:12:08 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
One sick story. but i did enjoy it.
Submitted by scourge (user info) at 2008-09-27 18:58:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Desz (user info) at 2008-09-27 18:22:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by JoeyG (user info) at 2008-09-28 06:11:21 WST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Desz (user info) at 2008-09-27 23:00:29 BST (#)
--------------
Thanks for the rating. Who is your opponent in this round? I really like your piece, it's right on my wavelength. But I'm holding back my reviews 'til all's said and done and everyone has posted.
Call me old fashioned, or a dick, or anything else along those lines. You'll be right whichever option you go for.
Like I said, your post was cool, and I'll rate after the Sunday deadline.
---------------
Banjo is, haven't seen anything from him yet.
and rate as you wish!
---
banjo is a broad. i like her for reasons i don't begin to understand.
i didn't read this yet, i just skimmed the reviews for controversy. as it's the polite thing to do, this gets the +2 didn't read it ranking. if it sucks i'll come back later and break that streak.
i hope i find fault as i sure love breaking a +2 streak.
Submitted by JoeyG (user info) at 2008-09-27 18:43:21 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Do you know, it grueberley good to be back after all this time.
Where's O-tron? I feel I need a conversation over which pumpkins are better - the serial killing kind, or the other ones.
Submitted by experima (user info) at 2008-09-27 18:42:51 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
wrote you back
is it a camera or is it a phone?
Submitted by JoeyG (user info) at 2008-09-27 18:37:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by experima (user info) at 2008-09-27 23:33:44 BST (#)
Ranking: 2
just saw it joeygggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg
i'm trying to figure out a digi camera tooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
-----------------------------
I've all but given up on the digi cam (or "my phone that does fuckin' everything", as my friend calls his new hand-held monstrosity)
Can't even call voicemail at the mo :(
Submitted by experima (user info) at 2008-09-27 18:33:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
just saw it joeygggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg
i'm trying to figure out a digi camera tooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Submitted by JoeyG (user info) at 2008-09-27 18:32:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by experima (user info) at 2008-09-27 23:11:40 BST (#)
Ranking: 2
joeyggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg
---
check ur facebook.........experimaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Submitted by Desz (user info) at 2008-09-27 18:22:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by JoeyG (user info) at 2008-09-28 06:11:21 WST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Desz (user info) at 2008-09-27 23:00:29 BST (#)
--------------
Thanks for the rating. Who is your opponent in this round? I really like your piece, it's right on my wavelength. But I'm holding back my reviews 'til all's said and done and everyone has posted.
Call me old fashioned, or a dick, or anything else along those lines. You'll be right whichever option you go for.
Like I said, your post was cool, and I'll rate after the Sunday deadline.
---------------
Banjo is, haven't seen anything from him yet.
and rate as you wish!
Submitted by experima (user info) at 2008-09-27 18:11:40 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
joeyggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg
Submitted by JoeyG (user info) at 2008-09-27 18:11:21 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Desz (user info) at 2008-09-27 23:00:29 BST (#)
--------------
Thanks for the rating. Who is your opponent in this round? I really like your piece, it's right on my wavelength. But I'm holding back my reviews 'til all's said and done and everyone has posted.
Call me old fashioned, or a dick, or anything else along those lines. You'll be right whichever option you go for.
Like I said, your post was cool, and I'll rate after the Sunday deadline.
Submitted by Desz (user info) at 2008-09-27 18:00:29 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by JoeyG (user info) at 2008-09-27 17:53:32 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Lib (user info) at 2008-09-27 22:50:42 BST (#)
Ranking: 2
Good read, I want to say but ugh.
-----------
"Ugh" is the Greek God of Grueberfest.
I read that somewhere.
It was maybe the back of a public toilet door.....
Submitted by Lib (user info) at 2008-09-27 17:50:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Good read, I want to say but ugh.