Fresh Flesh Read online

  Fresh Flesh

  Title Page

  About FRESH FLESH

  CHAPTER 1

  PART 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  PART 2

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  PART 3

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  PART 4

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  FRESH FLESH

  by

  Todd Russell

  Smashwords Edition

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Todd Russell at Smashwords

  FRESH FLESH

  Copyright 2011 by Todd Russell

  Cover art illustration by Aeron Alfrey

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

  All rights reserved. Scream if you hate reading these notices. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead or undead, business establishments, cemeteries, freakishly unknown islands, events or locales is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2011 Todd Russell

  Also available in paperback

  ISBN: 1463749392

  ISBN-13: 978-1463749392

  About FRESH FLESH

  The ocean surrounds the secret.

  Last night a wicked storm swept a beautiful sacrifice onto the shore.

  Shipwrecked Jessica Stanton is about to be discovered, cherished, and trained to survive on a remote island by a man who is not what he seems.

  There is a place on earth where unrestrained evil flourishes.

  Welcome home, Jessica.

  Other books by Todd Russell

  Mental Shrillness

  http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/49957

  Connect with Todd Russell Online

  Official Website

  http://toddrwrite.com/

  Smashwords Author Page

  http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/toddrussell

  Goodreads Author Page

  http://goodreads.com/toddrussell

  Facebook

  http://facebook.com/booksbytoddrussell

  Twitter

  http://twitter.com/Todd_Russell

  FOR

  NANA AND PAPA

  "Faith."

  CHAPTER 1

  Two burly guards with poker faces strapped him in the chair while a minister quoted psalms from an immaculate white Bible. Richard Templin was nineteen years old and sentenced to die on this day October 17, 1982.

  The shackles tightened, tightened, snapped! on his wrists. The metal shackles were cold, perhaps colder than any one thing on earth. And, he nervously reminded himself, a wonderful conductor of electricity.

  He had been calm, only one nail chewed, until they brought him into the room and put him in the chair. Then he started sweating all over. Started fighting back tears.

  Started realizing. . .

  Oh God I'm gonna die I'm gonna die they're gonna kill me oh God shit God they're gonna light me up like a fucking Christmas tree oh God. . .

  SNAP! The shackles hugged his bare ankles. They were even colder than the wrist shackles, turning his sweat to ice.

  His conscience mocked him: Don't sweat Rich ol' boy! Hold on! You sweat and you'll fry a helluva lot quicker! 'Cuz you learned it in school, boy: water's one of the BEST conductors!

  They brought the heavy black leather strap across his chest, tighter, tighter, tight—SNAP! He was buckled in, ready for the roller coaster ride straight down.

  Well, almost ready. The men had to tape his eyes, the last task, so they wouldn't pop out and scare the fifty or so "witnesses." Ha, glad somebody gets to watch the show, munch the popcorn, and make out when the lights go down.

  The sound of the tape being ripped behind his head sent the hairs on the back of his neck erect. It sounded like what he imagined flesh to do when you tore it to pieces.

  Oh God, footsteps! They're walking away! Getting ready to turn on the juice and give me the ultimate spark! Oh God its sooo dark! Please, please God turn on the lights make it end, make it end, make it—

  Footsteps fading. . .fading. . .

  Soooo dark.

  . . .Fading. . .STOP. The heels clicked to an abrupt halt. He could almost see the expressionless guard next to the switch, ready, awaiting the cue. Standing next to him, a tired rich doctor with stethoscope like close friend dangling around his neck. Let's get this over with, he's probably thinking, I have squash for two in an hour.

  The guard assured the doctor with a wink of an eye. Only take a minute, Doc—and a couple thousand volts! Ah-ha-ha-HA! Waiting.

  Waiting.

  Waiting.

  Hours, days, years? It seemed he balanced at the crest of the nightmare a long time before something happened.

  His body was wet as someone who had just stepped out of the shower, his teeth chattered and bones quivered.

  This was not at all what he'd envisioned. He'd expected it to be quick, merciful and painless. Something like a trip through a fast food drive-thru.

  The ripping sound came again. Fast, powerful, driving down on his skull like a jackhammer. His head rocked, his eyes closed to even deeper darkness.

  Several seconds passed. He hoped this fathomless black was not life after death. That there was a magical place where angels flocked and devils mocked. That death was not drowning, over and over, in a sea of black.

  More seconds passed before he realized. . .

  Oh God my God they didn't do it they didn't flip the switch they didn't they didn't

  He wondered for a moment about that Ambrose Bierce story, the one where the guy who's about to be hanged manages to escape, races toward his sweetheart's arms, only to find that when he reaches her warm embrace he's actually dreamed it all and is back at the gallows, hanging dead as beef on a meat hook.

  When Richard opened his eyes, there was a face. No tape, no black, a face. The ripping sound had been the tape. They were unshackling him.

  The face was unfamiliar. An egg-shaped face with a short clipped beard. The face held the only expression he'd seen all morning.

  Not friendly.

  "Wh—what's happening?"

  The man looked as if he were about to smile, but decided against it. "We have something better for you."

  Something BETTER, he thought, that has to mean something worse. Because better in prison was a) you're getting put on shit duty or b) you've been selected to get slipped up the back door. However, Richard was beyond those fears now, he only feared the electric chair. Besides, what could be worse than frying until your balls fell off?

  They led a shocked, confused Richard Templin out of the execution room, the room that even his worst nightmares couldn't top. And with loving, open arms something unspeakable took his hand. . .

  PART 1

  FRESH

  CHAPTER 2

  Something fresh, the strange-looking, salt-a
nd-pepper bearded man in tattered clothes thought, fighting his way through the damp, dripping ravine to meet the morning tide. Last night, while the forces of Mother Nature descended upon the helpless island like blood-thirsty vampires, and ear-piercing screams echoed in the night, he dreamt of something fresh. Something fresh, he was certain, awaited him on the naked beach.

  He made it to the clearing, his feet bleeding through rotted tennis shoes, his heart pumping. He turned and fixed on the setting behind him, sweat cascading down his bony cheeks, believing that there was someone or something there. But there was nothing. Nothing but his own trembling shadow in the creeping sun.

  At last he turned, prepared to see what he'd only seen last night as a blur, a smoky haze, a shape entirely formless. Something fresh, he thought, not knowing if he was trembling in fear or anticipation.

  At first he only saw the tide's usual disappointments: tree limbs blown into the water from the other side of the island, seaweed wrenched from the ocean floor, pebbles and tiny and larger rocks of innumerable configurations. And then he saw something else.

  Something new and different.

  Lying face-down in the sand, among a score of torn, soggy driftwood, was the body of a woman.

  Something fresh.

  He tore across the beach with sand irritating the exposed flesh in his rotted tennis shoes trying to slow his progress. Nothing could stop him.

  He reached the woman and flung the driftwood aside. He picked her up in his arms, turned her, cleared the sand away from her face and felt for a pulse.

  He felt her heart beating.

  The strange man looked up at the scorching sun and smiled for the first time in ages. It didn't occur to him that the last time he'd smiled he had a full set of shimmering pearly whites, where now he had a mouth full of black rot and decay. Nevertheless, he smiled, and soon began to weep.

  Five minutes later he carried the woman away as carefully as a five-foot, six-inch fragile mirror.

  At the same time he vanished into the trees, something else washed ashore.

  A severed hairy arm with a smashed, paper-thin hand, complete with five twisted digits.

  * * *

  The pictures in her mind never completely blacked out. She saw bits and pieces of her past strike out from a cold dark tunnel. Memories with long skeletal-like fingers which grabbed and tried to wash her spinning body down the tunnel. But they let go. Somehow, as the black became an obvious destiny, the skeletal fingers let go.

  And she kept floating and spinning.

  Through the crest of violent, hungry waves, and bullet-hard raindrops fired from justice above. She floated.

  Until, at last, she landed—or dreamed she had.

  A place where dawn rose calmly and the lights were brighter than a million connected floodlights. And the heinous skeletal fingers, that had once held her, slithered away like individual serpents, down the frigid tunnel. Her eyes never opened, she never once regained consciousness, yet she knew it was over.

  Or just beginning.

  Then there was gray. An image to let her know she was still on the boundary between reality, fantasy, life and death. The storm was not over.

  A different set of fingers grasped her, warm fingers from a bright place. She imagined hearing the soft melodic strum of a twelve-string guitar playing somewhere deep in the blinding white.

  A day passed.

  Another.

  On the third day the gray metamorphosed into shape, definition and color.

  The third day her eyes opened and she took a first glimpse of her unfortunate surroundings.

  "You. . .made. . .it," a nervous voice said. "I thought. . .thought I was going to lose you."

  She dreamed the voice she heard was a doctor's, but her eyes—open with toothpicks holding the lids—saw differently. The man hovering over her was no doctor. He was as scraggly as a common bum, a vagabond, a total loser who survived on rat-like behavior. He had the unpleasant odor of dead fish, a salty, dank scent. He had a beard (if that's what it was) which looked as if it had never been shaven. His eyes were as worn and bloodshot as the town drunk's. His skin color wasn't even normal. It was gross, pale and thin. It bordered on translucent. She saw herself waking from a deep sleep to a dying, disgusting, useless bum.

  "I. . .I can't believe you made it." He held out hands which were as worn as his eyes.

  "Who?" she forced through sun blistered lips, her voice box not allowing anymore. She tried to turn away from the man's anxious gaze, but her neck wouldn't cooperate.

  "Please," he whispered, bringing something to her mouth. "Please drink. You need fluids. You almost. . .didn't make it."

  She drank without objection. She doubted that she had the strength to object. A warm, milky substance slid down her parched throat. Coconut? She compared the taste to her memory banks. Yes, coconut milk.

  The man pulled the coconut away from her lips. "Are you hungry? You must be starved."

  "I," she began, the jaws, this time, not cooperating. He gave her another drink and she drained the coconut dry.

  The man took the coconut away again. He broke off a piece of it and offered it to her. "Hungry?" He repeated, as if she didn't understand English.

  She shook her head.

  "Okay." He put the coconut on the ground beside her. "But I must know how you feel? Please, if you feel feverish or sick or cold—I must know. How do you feel?"

  Her first sentence came, along with a loud discordant cough. "You. . .are a"—COUGH! —"doctor?"

  "No," the man replied, lowering his head. "No, wish I was. You wouldn't have scared me like you did if I was."

  "How?" She coughed again, rubbing her throat raw.

  "For now, let me ask the questions. I don't think you should talk too much right away. You had a terribly high temperature, it might have been pneumonia. That's why I need to know how you feel?"

  "Alive," she answered, for the moment not so gratified by that fact.

  "Do you feel nauseated?"

  "No." COUGH!

  "Hot? Cold?"

  "Shitty," she replied.

  He grinned. "Humor, that's a good sign."

  A moment passed where she could no longer keep her eyelids open. She pressed on, needing to learn more about her surroundings.

  "Who. . .are. . .you?"

  "I thought I was the one asking the questions?" He took a piece of coconut and started munching on it.

  "If you aren't a doc"—COUGH! —"tor, who are you?"

  "A friend," he touched her chin, a loving gesture which made her cringe, "that found you three days ago."

  She looked around, trying to remember what happened to her, what had brought her to this unfamiliar place. Everything was unclear at the moment. She had a sense that it would come back to her in time. Right now she cared more about where she was than how she'd arrived there.

  "Where am I?"

  He looked around, gesturing to a blurry, fish-reeking cave. "My home, of course."

  "A. . .cave?"

  "On an island, yes."

  "Island? What"—COUGH!—"island?"

  Strangely, he avoided the question. "You aren't going to get well unless you bundle up and get some sleep. We'll talk again when you wake up."

  She started to protest, but he put a fish-stinking finger to her lips. "And I'll leave this coconut for you when you can stomach it. You do want to get well, don't you?"

  He removed his finger when she nodded.

  "Now, sleep." He smiled, showing ebony rotting teeth, and stroked her ash blond hair. "And pleasant dreams."

  She closed her eyes and shuddered. She told herself it wasn't the man who frightened her. It was his grotesque debilitating body.

  She drifted and slept once again.

  CHAPTER 3

  It is believed that if you dream of paradise; endless celebration, hot days basking in pleasant rays with warm sand tickling your toes, a world without deception and pain, this is a dream reflection of pent-up unhappiness, a longing to
break loose from an unsettling environment. She awoke sharply, sitting up wide-eyed, erect as a chair. Her dream of perfect paradise, she realized, was a terrifying mask of the cold dirt bed she'd been sleeping on.

  The bearded bum-looking man was sitting on a large rock five feet away. He had a pocket knife and was whittling a tree branch. A bright sun shone through the cave entrance behind him. He was watching her, staring.

  "I'd like to know who you are and where I am?"

  "Well, well," replied the man. "I see we're feeling better this morning."

  "Stop ignoring me."

  The man pointed the knife at his chest. "I'm ignoring you?" He started whittling again, never once looking at his project.

  "Yes."

  "I certainly didn't mean to do so." He whittled off the spear-like edge he was putting on the tree branch and cursed the mistake. As if nothing had happened he looked up at her and continued, "I'm just concerned, that's all."

  "Why? You don't know who I am. You don't even know where I came from."

  "I saved you from death," he said and she felt her rising anger bottom out. Surely this bum meant her no harm, but why did something about him seem amiss?

  "Yes, and I'll probably never be able to thank you enough for that. But tell me, please, who are you?"

  "You have been here for four days and haven't eaten a thing. You must be absolutely famished. I'll make us both something to eat and be happy to answer your questions. But beware, I have a few questions of my own."

  "Like?"

  "Your name? That might be a good start."

  "Jessica Stanton."

  "Hi Jessica, my name is Dick. Now, we are no longer strangers."

  Bullshit, she thought, forcing her thirteen stubborn facial muscles to smile.

  Dick was right about one thing, she was famished. The meal he 'made' was something she would have expected to eat as a castaway on Gilligan's Island: coconuts, juicy red round berries which tasted tart but good, and (yuck) smoked fish. She suffered through primitively roasted fish over a crackling, smelly fire inside the cave. Suffered, because she didn't like eating with her hands. It wasn't that she abhorred getting her hands dirty, no, she'd simply grown accustomed to eating food in a distinguished, elegant manner. There was nothing distinguished or elegant about pieces of fish dangling like peeled skin from her fingers.