Genital Grinder Read online

  Genital Grinder

  Ryan Harding

  "...Psychosis. Misogyny. Misanthropy. Nihilism. Sadism. Necrophily. Erotopathy. Profanation. Alienation. Blasphemy. And every manner of irreverence, aberrant impulse, and outright satanism conceivable and inconceivable...."

  "€œEnjoy the tour, friends. Enjoy the gang-bang. You may need psych drugs afterwards, you may need an air-sick bag and a steam shower, but I feel confident that you will be provocatively moved by this book".€ - Edward Lee, from his introduction

  All stories copyright © 2011 Ryan Harding

  Cover art copyright © 2011 Suzzan Blac

  www.SUZZANB.com

  All rights reserved.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thank you to all who wanted this collection, in particular Jeff Burk of Deadite and Brian Keene for putting him in contact with me. And to Edward Lee for the killer foreword and just for being a cool guy to me over the years, in addition to consistently raising the disgust quotient of his fiction. The morbid among us find this a true inspiration.

  A very special thank you to Bob Strauss, Bill Hughes, and Darrin McDonel (and his dad) for playing archaeologist for me and excavating stories and fragments lost to me for years.

  My gratitude to my past editors and publishers—Matt Schwartz (Horrornet), Dave Barnett (Necro Publications), Kelly Laymon and Jeremy Lassen (Freak Press), Eddie McMullen, Jr./Feo Amante, Bill Hughes again (Dread: Tales of the Uncanny and Grotesque), Sandra Fritz (Altered Perceptions), Mikhail and The Meat Socket, Cemetery Dance and all involved with In Laymon’s Terms.

  To my collaborators over the years—Brent Zirnheld, James Futch, James Newman, Geoff Cooper (duuuuuuuude) and the other co-contributors to Darker Dawning 1 and 2: Regina Mitchell, BK, Mike Oliveri, Mikey Huyck, John Urbancik, and the inimitable GAK.

  The YKOF partners in chyme of today and yore—Sam Bizzle/Kill Moe Dee, The Masked Jackal, and Z2K.

  And to Harry Bennett, Cherry Brady, Mike Bracken, Bill Connolly, Jay Clarke/Michael Slade, Laura Elvin, Jamey Fiala, Brad Hodson (quim), Ann Laymon, R. Murphy, John Pelan, Will Rahmer, and Travis Reynolds.

  In memory of J.G. Ballard, Richard Laymon, and Rex Miller.

  Enjoy the Gang Rape by Edward Lee

  Bottom Feeder

  Damaged Goods

  Sharing Needles

  Genital Grinder: A Snuff Act in 5 Acts

  Development

  Emissary

  Genital Grinder II: Dis-Membered

  First Indications

  Aftermath

  Quite a number of years ago—at least 15, but my aging gray matter can’t be sure—I was contacted by a fan named Ryan Harding. I’ve always tried to respond to all fan contacts (every now and then, however, you get an obvious clunker, like the ex-con who wrote to tell me The Bighead’s most violent scenes provided him with superb masturbation fodder; or the woman who wanted to know if I’d like to see pictures of her cutting herself—these, yes, are such clunkers. It is advisable for an author never to reply to these red flags) and I was impressed as well as flattered by Mr. Harding’s generous words regarding my work; additionally, he bestowed such words in a manner and air which disclosed a formidable command of the language and a most arresting and cogent creative bent. Moreover, Mr. Harding was a positive acquaintance of several friends of mine; hence, it seemed unlikely that he might be hiding “clunkerdom” beneath a clever camouflage and would later stalk me or, say, start murdering people in ways which duplicated the superfluity of murders in my books. So I chose to pursue correspondence with this young, intelligent, and spirited Mr. Harding. He had aspirations of becoming a writer himself, and flattered me further via the declaration that I was an influence of some significance to him. Then, one day, he asked me if I’d care to read some of his song lyrics—he was into Metal as was I, so I said “sure.” The prospect seemed enticing: I was very curious what this bright, new-generation individual might demonstrate in the way of creative verse; indeed, it struck me as an attractive occasion to observe the tenor of such an enthusiast’s muse, and, doubly, I wondered just what might be the products of that muse?

  Well. Here is an inventory of those products.

  Psychosis. Misogyny. Misanthropy. Nihilism. Sadism. Necrophily. Erotopathy. Profanation. Alienation. Blasphemy. And every manner of irreverence, aberrant impulse, and outright satanism conceivable and inconceivable.

  I’ve long since lost these lyrics (or perhaps I deleted them for fear that their negativity might plunge me into a abysm of clinical depression!), but I recall—and suspect I always will—the final line: “We fucked her good, my knife and I.”

  Wow, I thought, this guy’s really fucked up in the head, and then I felt suddenly leery when I appended my conjecture, Wow, this guy’s even more fucked up in the head than ME.

  Gore-house smut, enmity personified, and scatology in grand style proved the common denominators hovering amid Harding’s aesthetic elan, and certainly we’ve seen a whole lot of such stuff infiltrating the sub-genre known (among other appellations) as Extreme Horror. Ninety percent of the work is probably worthy of the critical lambasting it receives. Grossness for the sake of grossness. Amateur scribes merely heaping revolting images and disorganized, just-popped-into-my-head scenes of unlikely violence upon the page without any regard to integration, character, story-line. “The bitch screamed as the maggot-ridden zombie rammed its rotten cock into her gaping, reeking pussy and came spurts of pus!” That kind of shit, and personally I’m sick to death of it, as have many readers been for a long time. One time I recall a critic referring to “Extreme Horror” as something akin to a little boys’ circle-jerk club wherein the purpose of each participant is to try to gross the next guy out. I actually quite agree with that (though accurately or inaccurately I disagree that I am a member of that self-same club!) because it appears that what Extreme Horror at large lacks most of all is a discipline of craft. It’s just gross-out sex and gross-out violence that the misguided author thinks will gross the reader out. But it doesn’t gross the reader out. It bores the reader. To tears. And it not only sullies the popular impression of the genre as a whole, but makes the more serious authors out there look just as inept, just as juvenile, and just as I-don’t-give-a-shit.

  Which brings us back to Monsieur Harding.

  He’s not part of the “club,” folks. He gives a shit-and-a-half about not only the speculative and/or societal points of extreme fiction but also the very craft of it. Over time I read much of Harding’s works-in-progress, mostly stories but also some novel partials, and in them not only did I find those previously stated thematic denominators (gore-house smut, enmity personified, and scatology in grand style) but also a nearly “Strunk-and-White” obsession with prose-mechanics, stylistic feature-through-discipline, charactorial integration, and plot dynamics. It quickly occurred to me that Ryan Harding had (and, furthermore, has) the tenacity, know-how, and wherewithal to become a very potent practitioner in the field of Extreme Horror. Here’s a writer who regards the venue as something rife with value, relevance, and, indeed, meaning. It’s a gore-house world, folks. Just read the paper. This globe is aswarm with enmity personified. (Did you see Daniel Pearl’s beheading?) Scatology in grand style is as real as the mouse button which clicks interested pervertos and other reprobate scum to websites offering bestiality, sex with the severely handicapped, vid-clips of crack-addicted women eating feces ice-cream cones or consuming fish bowls of semen, spit-fights, nose-blow bukkake, animal torture, galleries of deformed children, vomit-swap buffets, etc., ad infinitum.

  Ah! The real world!

  It’s that same world, too, that Harding’s fiction seeks to delineate in a manner unique unto itself. Some of the stories in this book make notorious writers like, say, P
eter Sotos and celebrated madmen as, say, Jeffery Dahmer look like “the veriest tyros,” (to steal a cool simile from Lovecraft). There are times as well when they make, say, Edward Lee, look like, say, a baby in a high chair and making ga-ga noises. Likewise, some of the imagery herein is more disturbing, despair-summoning, and stomach-upheaving than any I’ve read anywhere.

  Allow me to make an abstraction—granted, a goofy one probably—or perhaps a “figurative representation” is a better way to put it. As a reader of Harding’s work, I’d like you to imagine that your psyche is a vagina.

  That’s right. A vagina.

  What Harding’s work provides for you is a raucous, down and dirty, butt-stinky gang-bang with a multitude of demented and very horny participants. You are humped and humped and humped by Harding’s fiction; you are prodded, poked, skewered, and penetrated time and time again; you are stuffed like a turkey, pounded like sod, and plungered like a gas station toilet. (Man, oh, man! You sure got more than you bargained for in this gang-bang, huh? Ho!) Your suitors, I’ll add, don’t like you at all; in fact, they hate you, they hate you for no reason at all. They don’t give two diddlies about you, nor two shits. You’re not a person, you’re not an individual consciousness. What you are to this miscreant crew is nothing more than a hot hole for their penises to have a party in. And there are many such penises, and some come back for a double-dip. Ah, but it’s not typical sperm that you’re being filled like a cannoli with. See, each ejaculation comes possessed of an exclusive constituent, and those constituents are as follows:

  Psychosis. Misogyny. Misanthropy. Nihilism. Sadism. Necrophily. Erotopathy. Profanation. Alienation. Blasphemy. And every manner of irreverence, aberrant impulse, and outright satanism conceivable and inconceivable.

  Yes.

  Now the gang-bang is over. Your suitors are gone, leaving you sore, stupefied, and full of evil sperm. When you get home, you douche at once, intent to flush it all out, but the more you douche, the more you seem to push all that devilish slop deeper. Will you ever get it all out? But at least the nightmare is over, right?

  Wrong. Five weeks later you find out you’re pregnant.

  That’s what Harding’s work will do to you. It will turn you into a tramp. It will transfigure you into an object for use—a receptacle for all the animus, loathe, and maleficence the human mind has generated, a drain-can for the filth of all the abominations of the earth, and then? It will knock you up.

  These are my introspective impressions of Harding’s fiction. He means business. He’s not simply trying to gross us out—he’s trying to make us see. (And I suppose any of us who happen to see ourselves . . . well, then, such persons are in a heap of trouble!)

  So enjoy the tour, friends. Enjoy the gang-bang. You may need psych drugs afterwards, you may need an air-sick bag and a steam shower, but I feel confident that you will be provocatively moved by this book.

  No . . . mother never said there’d be days like this.

  On the surface it’s not a bad set-up. I’m in bed with a blonde who has exemplary tits, D-cups if they were a day. I’ve always liked women with very long hair and hers is perfect, bright vines which have grown almost to the middle of her back. The face too is pleasant, replete with sparkling diamond eyes.

  So far, so good, but here’s where this tryst starts to fall short of the glory of Penthouse Forum—like the Godzilla movie posters said, size does matter. From two blocks away you could look at her and immediately know she shops at the Big and Tall stores (she’s 5’2; you do the math). I’d almost finished with her by imagining I was actually with Sherilyn Fenn (and Sheryl Lee), but then she wanted to get on top. I was charitable (simply translated: drunk) and agreed, and was soon thinking less about Sherilyn and Sheryl, and more about asthma attacks.

  I consented to the aforementioned atrocities, and accept full responsibility, but the crowning touch was beyond my control—a factor substantially worse than merely being here.

  This blonde with a satisfying bra size but a slow metabolism is dead, and she’s still on top of me. I think it happened at 3:36 a.m., the time on her digital clock which I saw when I craned my head to the right. This is the extent of my mobility, that and being able to move my right arm. The left is pinned by . . . damn, I don’t remember her name. Did she even tell me? I probably wasn’t listening. Clubs and bars are loud. Great places to meet new people, but introductions are about as far as it goes. What they’re drinking and might they be out on the town for—or at least susceptible to—the ol’ “F-close,” that’s all that matters (I’ve read The Game . . . I know what’s up).

  Whoever she is, she has my legs and torso welded to the mattress. I can’t turn my head to the left because her elbow finished between my ear and shoulder.

  On a scale of one to ten this hits the upper echelons of embarrassment, a nine at least. To achieve a perfect ten, let me add my pathetic confession—I’m still hard. No one has to know about this, so I’m telling myself the frantic gyration beneath her is merely a desperate attempt to squirm away.

  Only that and nothing more.

  Sherilyn and Sheryl . . . Laura (or Madeline) and Audrey . . . the stoplight . . . Sherilyn dancing to Badalamenti’s score . . . a secret scene never shown, Laura and Audrey experimenting . . .

  Mission accomplished. Coherent thought is once more possible.

  The first thing to remember is not to kick myself in the ass too much for going home with . . . whatever her name is (was). I hit the bars too late, so all the eye candy had been taken—wept off their feet or clandestinely slipped that magnificent invention the date rape drug (the only true barometer of human progress, if you ask me . . . the rubber a close runner-up with the morning-after pill a not-so-distant cousin). All that was left when I saddled up to the bar were the bottom feeders, and knowing that anyone I went home with come sun-up would be as good for me as a flesh-eating virus, I started doing shots in a hurry. Ego abuse and a hangover are a bad combination, but at the time I thought it was better to go home with an undesirable than go home alone. When the nausea kicked in and driving home would probably mean killing an innocent family in a station wagon coming home late from Disney Land, I started doling out the pick-up lines. It took two before I struck gold—such as it was—with my big date. My face was stinging on both sides by that point because one proposition thought my line was too crude for just one slap. She had been wearing a shirt which said BUILT TO LAST, and I had inquired if that was a bedroom invitation for “alllllll night looooooong” in the same sentence where I introduced myself. Should’ve at least bought her a drink first, I suppose, but no big loss . . . figuratively speaking, anyway.

  I’m not as desperate as I probably sound, so let me explain where I’m coming from. When I was fifteen I went sledding at the “End of the World,” a hill beyond the woods bordering our neighborhood where the path going up to it seemed to lead to oblivion, or at least a very long plunge. Everybody seems to have an “End of the World” near them. You would have been disappointed by what it actually was, but it was the best we had. Anyway, a neighbor’s dog kept leaping on my shoulders, apparently mistaking me for a willing mate. It didn’t matter that I no more resembled a dog than an emu, not to my persistent canine suitor. Reality would be ignored for gratification. I’m not trying to say I’m a dog (though I guess I am), only that it’s natural enough to overlook the big picture when it suits you and ignore reality—there isn’t a long plunge after all—for gratification.

  As for what killed my “date” for the night, I’d say cardiac arrest or an aneurysm. It wasn’t me, I was just lying there waiting for the end, hoping sooner than later. I don’t see why she’d get that excited since a girl her size has likely been with a multitude of guys. The American ideal of beauty is technically some bone-rack little bitch with borderline anorexia, but let’s not forget men are opportunists. Many of the bigger girls have quite a self-esteem deficit, and they’re grateful for any attention. If sex is the only way to prolong the flattery, the
y’ll go the distance. They’ll go all the way.

  I suppose I can rest easy knowing the risk of her getting pregnant vanished. That’s always the big worry, an “End of the World” that similarly wouldn’t be the end—see above about the “morning after pill”—but a lot worse than a dog trying to brick on your parka.

  Right now my breathing is so shallow you’d think I’d been trapped in an elevator for hours. My . . . struggle . . . was more exertion than I can afford. It would almost be better to die than summon help, which if I’m to live seems to be my fate. It’s too dark in here to see just how much I have to circumvent, but I feel like Johnny Depp in A Nightmare on Elm Street when he melted through the mattress. I estimate three hundred pounds, at least. I recall setting a 350 pound maximum limit, and congratulated myself on finding someone well below that. She had a very small car, though, which quickly smote my satisfaction.

  Either the dead weight is really just that impactful or I was wrong about her body mass index. Seems like I should be able to at least slide out from under her if not bench press her. I think there’s a dip in the mattress where the springs have collapsed. It might have happened when she started riding me, come to think of it.

  I couldn’t tell you where she drove me in her ironically small car, not even if I’d been sober during the trip. Assuming there’s a phone I can strain for, I won’t even be able to tell the operator where to send the police. I guess they could trace the call, though maybe they only do that when they suspect a prank. Someone in dire need might well be ignored.