B-Movie War by Alan Spencer Page A

for it. She guided her hand deep into the first bucket. “Wait…wait. It’s soft. It’s cold. It’s squishy. It’s got a rough texture. It’s grapes, isn’t it?”
    The woman gave a maniacal smile. “Sorry! You guessed wrong.”
    Sarah screamed when she took back her hand and noticed it was covered in blood.
    Then a knife was driven into her back. She screamed out in terror as the construction worker shouted, “And a wrong guess costs you fifty stabs in the back!”
    Mr. Ratchet supervised tonight’s show outside the theatre. Screams were ringing out as people realized what was really happening to them. Those who ran from the parking lot, fleeing in terror, the theatre workers chased them with their flashlights. The flashlights cast a molten hot beam and sliced anyone in half who dared to leave the spectacle.
    Across from him, Mr. Ratchet watched Baron Black, dressed in a black cape and black suit, help six people into separate coffins. He dumped gasoline over the coffins and lit them up with one of his flaming torches. Baron Black then said to the scrambling crowd, “Did I forget to say for one hundred bucks that I’d ALSO have to set FIRE to the coffins?”
    The tall standing glass box nearby had an eager woman ready for the money tank to start spitting cash at her when up from the grates at her feet came rat monkeys. The rabid beasts removed her flesh in minutes.
    A longer line stood on a red carpet when the carpet starting rolling itself back up. Hundreds were squished and squashed as the carpet disappeared back inside the theatre’s main doors like a tongue drawing back into a mouth.
    What mattered most were the two pillars of steel that looked like a metal detector at the airport that stood at the main entrance. The sign above the post said “The Gut Checker”. Those who walked through it became zombiefied. Their eyes were cataract blue. Their smiles pasted on nice and big. Mr. Ratchet followed the crowds that went through the “The Gut Checker” and into the main theatre to grab refreshments and enjoy the upcoming show alongside the zombiefied audience.
    The people who walked through “The Gut Checker” were now enjoying the concession stands. Hotdogs made of Chad, Wilma, Steve, Jerry, Parker, Olive, Annie, and hundreds more were cooking on the spinning wheel plump and juicy. Patrons slathered chopped liver and kidneys for relish, blood mixed with bile and bodily humors for ketchup, and brains for sauerkraut. A family of four were enjoying carbonated offal soft drinks and eyeball popcorn, what was crunchy, steaming hot and coated in human fat for butter. The crowds were eating voraciously before they even stepped into the theatres.
    Things were going as planned, Mr. Ratchet thought, as he eyed the tall glass thermometer full of bright red blood. It was lightly simmering. The Sado-Meter was growing closer to boiling point. When midnight struck it would shatter.
    Hell on earth would begin.
    Death to all those living.
    Posters hung about the walls taped crooked and covering every inch of negative space: Caveman Terror , Octo-Squid , Gasm , The Pickler vs. The Embalmer , Syringe , Cannibalistic Flies , Acid Rain Melts Finland , Rabid Vermin , Probe Goons from Mars , Lethal Injection Mama , Hell Bus and Sever School .
    Mr. Ratchet walked beyond the lobby to Jules Baxter’s office. He turned the doorknob and entered. Scattered about the floor were snippets of film and empty reel canisters. This is where it all had begun. Their return. The beginning of the end. On top of Jules’s desk were rubber tubs stocked with blood. Above the desk hung two headless victims being drained of every drop. An Orion projector played a film on the wall.
    A valley girl was asking her professor in his office, “But Professor Hatchet, how do you sever the carotid artery? I just need an example, then surely I’ll pass this Friday’s test.