The musk of the air forced him to stop. He entered a barred up building. It looked abandoned for years now. The house was dark, empty, and dusty. From here Francis could tell it wasn’t a place for him. Just another stop before he made it back to the office that’s all. He would help another homeless person and get on with his life. Something was in there though. It looked scared as he came to the window. “I just dry cleaned this, and I’m gonna get this all dusty now. Well just another day at the office.”

“The poor man, well let’s see, I can take him to a homeless shelter. He should like that.” Francis looked down and he pulled out his phone. When he pulled out his phone he saw the picture of him and his dog, surrounded by around fifty people, and a bright yellow sign in the back saying Homeless Helpers 2009. After reminiscing he scrolled to the flashlight and turned it on, illumination the dark.

“Hello, is anybody here? I know you are, I saw you through the window, come out,” he said as he walked deeper into the room. “Oh dear god what is that smell,” he thought to himself. Most people run, but he just wanted to help him. The putrid smell coalesced into his nostrils like flies in the bathroom. He wandered around smelling different directions of the house until he came up to the basement. The smell of the basement shoots nausea into his stomach. “Is anyone down there? Hello?” The man in the suit walked down the steps slowly trying to decipher what is going on in the place. Maybe, the reason it smelled so bad is because he needed extra shelter from intruders,” Francis thought to himself. He hears a shuffling behind him and a push on his back sends him rolling down the stairs.



“WHAT WAS THAT?” he said as he came to. The smell of rotting flesh lingered in the air. He puts his hand on the ground to push himself up and his hands squelch into the squishy ground. He pulled out his phone to look at his hand and to see crimson blood flowing down his arm. “What is this place?” Francis gets up and looks for the stairs, blades of all sorts are set along a table nearby. Looking at the ground a sense of nausea comes over him. He vomits after tripping over a corpse on the ground. It was rotting away, but you could see that half of it was still around. The hair on the head was still there, splayed across the blood soaked ground. I’ve got to get out of this place, where were the stairs? He thought to himself. He looked around to see the stairs not too far behind him. Running to them felt like forever, like a never ending nightmare. A blood curdling scream tore from his mouth. He looks at his foot, caught in a bear trap.

“Snared, caught, trapped,” a deep voice whispered in the darkness, followed by inane muttering and a cackle.

“Help me, I’m caught in this bear trap,” Francis yelled toward the direction of the voice.

More unintelligible muttering went on and from a whole other side he hears the voice whisper, “Snagged, cornered, FOOL!” The laughing went on, and stopped abruptly.

“Help me, I hear you, come on I can take you somewhere with clean air, nice food, pretty lady’s. Just let me go.” Francis said as his heart beat quickened. He turns the flashlight off to open up the phone and call nine one, one. After the last one was inputted into the phone, a pale hand smacks the phone into the ground out of Francis’s reach.

“Trap, eat, kill,” whispered the voice beside Francis. The vapors of his breath nestled on his ear. The vapors pushed its way into Francis’s nostrils. The vapors curled and rested on his tongue. Francis coughed as the rancid smell and taste of his breath. Sending shivers down his spine, he dare speak again.

“No, come on we can still save you. I can take you to where I work and everything come on,” he says as he turns to look at the tormentor’s face. The face was pale, and contorted. Pulled to one side almost, long brown hair rested on his shoulders as he grinned at Francis. “Oh God, it’s okay, we can just go, if you get me out, please.”

“Trap, eat, kill!” The voice barked into Francis’s face, letting spittle drop onto his lips. The owner of the voice lifts up one of his hands to brush them along Francis’s body. His eyes glow as he looks at his catch. Francis’s lips quiver as tears torrent down his dark cheeks. The twisted man’s other hand twitches, and then launches out from behind his back, brandishing a leg of a chair. The leg breaks over Francis’s head and blood floods down his face. Francis drops to the ground.


THE TWISTED MAN walks around the unconscious body to his cutlery on the table. The knives are laid on the table from smallest to biggest, lining up the bottoms perfectly. He looks down onto one of the blades and see’s his reflection. The picture of a beautiful man looks back at him. He had never seen anyone more beautiful then him. Not even his mother. She was the same as this man, ugly. She was one of his best meals. The permanently contorted face, the eyes were too big for his face, the pale sheen to his skin. Nothing, but these cowards came inside of his home. These things were too ugly for him. He licks his hand to clean off the blood before he grabs the biggest knife and looks at it for flaws. None, there were never any. He walks over and grabs the body and pulls it from the trap. The leg was lost in the process, but it’s ok. He could always go back for it, besides one less limb for this thing on the table to use as a weapon against him. The man was laid on a table, and strapped down by leather straps. Soon, he would get what he wanted.

“Ah! Snip, slice, tear,” The twisted man chants at his new play thing. “Trap, eat, kill.” The inane muttering starts again as soon as he see’s his body on the table. He reaches up and turns on the overhead light. As quick as he can, he takes of Francis’s clothes. “Chubby office worker, this will last me days.” When he finishes he takes the big blade and sets it down next to his chair and runs back to the cutlery table. He grabs the small vegetable knife and cuts his first cut into the man’s thigh. He laughs maniacally and his eyes glow in pure delight. He comes back around and takes a chunk out of it. He grabs the chunk with two long and bony fingers and throws it into his mouth. Francis yells in pane as the man says, “Cut, sheer, devour, trap, eat, kill!”

“What are you doing to me?” Francis screams in agony. “Stop it, it hurts, stop!”

“Your flesh is good. I cut into it, I sheer it off, I devour.”

“Stop it, it hurts, I... I... God help me!” Francis screams as he begins to flail. He does nothing but make this next cut jagged. The bindings are too strong for him to break free.

“Flesh is good, screams are bad,” said the twisted man as he looks into the now sweating Francis’s eyes. He pushes his fingers into the new laceration in the stomach and starts to peel back the skin. The only response from Francis was a yell. “Flesh is good, screams are bad. Flesh is GOOD, screams are BAD,” the man keeps saying this, his face contorting in annoyance as Francis only screams louder. “FLESH IS GOOD, SCREAMS ARE BAD!” The twisted man screamed. The twisted man’s eyebrows furrowed and his once pale face now red in his anger. The man said as he could not take Francis’s pleading, “stop it” or “It hurts”. The man leaped on top of Francis and said, “Flesh is good, screams are bad.” His hand dove into Francis’s neck, tearing it off. The throat and vocal chords were ripped clean out of Francis letting the ichor spew all over his bare chest. Francis could feel his liquid life pouring from his neck and flowing back into him through the gaping hole in his stomach.

The twisted man looked at his hand, and took a bite out of the blood covered skin. He dropped the handful after one bite. Looking down at the man he spies the gaping hole. He throws himself onto the table, dipping his head into the viscera.




FRANCIS WATCHED AS THE twisted man’s head was enveloped within his own abdomen. The tearing of his organs and other entrails were violent and agonizing. The gaping hole in his neck showed him that he wouldn’t be alive for much longer, but the minute he was alive for felt like hours. He was watching the man in front of him eating out his organs, taking knife after knife to his body. The twisted man looks up from his meal and stares directly into the dying Francis’s eyes. Blood covered his face and when he smiled the entrails in his mouth dropped out.

“Flesh is good.”