Kayla's Massacre: Part 2

Rachel Daemus ran straight from the locker room to the tunnel slides at the far end of the water park, still soaking wet from her shower. Her green bikini was barely tied, but she could fix it later. For now, she grabbed a yellow tube from beside the pool where the tunnel emptied out. On the way up, Diamond Johnson and Molly Chase caught up with her.

"You were really looking forward to this, weren't you?" Molly said.

"Last field trip we'll ever get," said Rachel. "I wanna make it worth it."

Molly was 14, pale and blond, with a round, cheery face and blue eyes. She wore a high-cut blue one-piece that revealed most of her back, but covered a busty chest. Diamond, contrarily, was a bit chubby, tanned and dark-haired, and wore a white and black striped bikini just a few sizes too small for her.

As they ascended the long flight of steps up to the tunnel, Olivia Kensington joined them, a brown-haired girl a year older than the rest of them. "Hey," she said. "Diamond, are you pregnant?"

Rachel felt the tube grow a bit heavier when Diamond dropped her end.

"No," she said in the most obvious lie Rachel had ever heard.

"Was it Tommy or Simon?" Rachel asked.

"I'm not pregnant," Diamond said, a little more convincing this time. "I'm just fat."

"Your face is too thin to be fat," said Molly. "You really are pregnant, aren't you?"

Silence. Eventually, Diamond admitted it.

"It was Simon," she said. "He was going away to college in a week, so I let him cum inside every day till he left."

"He's going across the country, dude," said Rachel. "You know he's not gonna help you pay for anything, don't you?"

"He'll help," said Diamond. "You don't know him."

"Dude who knocked up my sister went to the UK three years ago," said Molly. "She never heard from him since."

They arrived at the top of the slide. There was no employee on duty, but the water was running, inviting them down into the darkness. Rachel eyed each of her companions

and plopped the four-person tube down in the water. Ideally, one of them would be a hot guy. Going on a two-minute slide down a dark tunnel was the perfect time to break the ice in a sexual relationship, and it was also one of her greatest fantasies. She'd have to come back here next summer. She'd hopefully have a boyfriend by then. A steady one, anyway.

The girls took their places in the tube and stacked their feet in the middle. Rachel pushed her hair out of her eyes and squinted to make out the first curve.

"So Rachel," said Olivia, "why's your hair blond today?"

Rachel pushed them off and they disappeared into the tunnel. Now she spoke to a disembodied voice.

"I was bored with blue. Plus, I change it every month."

"Dude, I think your preference in hair color is tied to your period."

"I just like variation."

"That's probably why you've never gone steady."

"You think?"

"Yeah. You gotta be patient.

Rachel opened her mouth, intrigued. Maybe it really was her serial boredom that caused all her relationship troubles. Maybe not. There was only one way to find out.

They sped up as the slide grew steeper, nearing the bottom. Rachel braced herself for the impact when they hit the water.

Something sharp snapped against her breasts and forehead. She opened her mouth to yelp, only to find that made the pain worse. Straight ahead of her, she stared in horror as Olivia's eyes widened, a streak of red appeared across her shoulders, and then everything from her clavicles up lifted off the rest of her body. Rachel felt her own body coming apart. It hurt, but it felt stranger than anything. She felt her field of view widening until her eyes worked as two separate cameras, seeing two different images. And then she felt nothing.

***

The cameras caught it all. The moment the first girl—Diamond—hit the wire, they started snapping pictures in addition to the video they were already recording. They recorded the shock on the girls' faces as the piano-pattern wire cut them. Rachel's body fell into three piece as a wire caught her breasts and one hit her straight in the center of the face. They carried through easily, and the blond girl's corpse began its gory glide down the rest of the tunnel.

Molly had been leaned back when she hit the wire. It caught her under the chin and tore through her head diagonally, essentially cutting her face off. She didn't hit a vertical wire, so that cut was the only one on her. Her face fell down into her lap.

Olivia hit next. She too only caught one wire, and it hooked into her just above her breasts and sliced her in two, leaving her bloody head and shoulders hanging on the wire like a grotesque, upside-down portrait. Unfortunately for her, she survived the longest of her friends with no way to scream.

Diamond hit last. She had maybe five milliseconds to react to her friends' sudden deaths. She failed to do so, as any human would. She'd been sitting up straight, taller than the rest. The wire easily swiped through her lower ribs. A vertical wire seared through the side of her face, but stopped after passing through her brain and half her throat. Even as Olivia's top part fell from the wire, Diamond's stayed, dead, dripping her upper innards into the running water. Her neck was cut in half, and it hung her head by a few muscles and her windpipe. She stared lifelessly into her breasts, still inches from her eyes.

Moments after the pictures were all snapped and as the bodies settled to float in the pool, a timer activated and flung a heavy blue tarp down from the top of the tunnel's exit. It covered the pool and the gory mess within, even as the cameras continued taking pictures and video. Four teenage girls' bodies floated there, all of them in pieces. Diamond's top half was still missing. Only her navel and down had made it to the pool. It floated there, leaking blood and intestines into the reddening water. On close observation, anyone watching the videos afterward would see that she had indeed been pregnant. The thing in her belly leaked out along with everything else. It wasn't a living thing yet, and now never would be. It and its mother would be passed around the deep web for generous sums.

Two halves of Rachel's head and shoulders touched the side of the pool. Most of her brain had already fallen out, as had some of the fat in her breasts. Olivia's eyes died as the camera watched them after a couple horrified blinks. Molly, probably the fastest dead, was also probably the most intact. Morgue workers could stitch her face back on for an open-casket funeral, but for now, it floated several feet from her body, which still lay in the tube, bloody brain staring up at the tarp and cameras.

***

Not too far away, Kayla heard the tarp unfold as the trap she'd intended for last activated before any of the rest. She smiled to herself and imagined the mess now floating in the pool. She could go and take a peek, but reminded herself she had to budget her time. She picked out a random girl—a black-haired, pale, blue-eyed girl with a soft face in a beautiful white bikini with a long sarong. Her name was May, and she was only 13. Kayla discreetly followed her. She appeared to be a loner, strangely enough. That made things easy.

Kayla fingered the knife against her wrist as the girl got further and further from prying eyes. Where was she going? She turned a few corners and looked up at the slides and playscapes and down at the pools, but didn't commit to anything. She was far away from anyone else, though, so Kayla made her move. She set up her camera.

"Hey," she said. May looked over her shoulder and kept walking.

"Hi."

Kayla jogged to catch up with her. May walked faster, then slower, then stopped and turned to Kayla.

"You work here, right?"

Kayla nodded.

"Has anything weird been going on recently?"

"No."

"No slides need repairs?"

"As far as I know, no."

"No storm coming in?"

"Forecast says it's clear all this week."

May let out a long breath. Kayla raised an eyebrow. "Why? Was something supposed to happen?"

"Hopefully not. I had a really bad feeling on the ride here. I even told my sister to stay home because of it. So nothing's gonna happen?"

Kayla hoped a bad premonition was the extent of this girl's seemingly psychic abilities. "Anything can happen," she said. "It's just a matter of likelihood. For example, by wandering off alone, you increase your odds of dying by the Slaughterer."

May looked around. "But you're here."

"Yeah," Kayla agreed. She stepped in close to May and put a hand on her shoulder. "But don't assume you're safe with me."

"Why not?"

Kayla pulled the knife through May's back. The tip came out between her breasts and cut her bikini string. May looked down at the blade, then back up at Kayla. She looked surprised more than anything.

"Take a guess," said Kayla. She ruffled May's pretty hair, yanked her knife out, and stabbed it into the back of her neck. She went rigid, then limp in Kayla's arms. Kayla held up her body with an arm around her waist. Her head lived on. Her mouth moved, forming words, and her eyes blinked.

"Speak up," said Kayla. "I can't hear you."

She kept stabbing May's back in a continuous motion. She didn't have the strength to bring the blade all the way through like she had the first time, but the twitches in May's body and the feeling of her blood pouring all over Kayla's arms and hands made it worth it. She tried to read the dying girl's lips. She recognized a few words, and when May repeated them, Kayla read every word.

"My Father in heaven, I'll see you soon. I'm coming home. I'm coming home."

Kayla stopped everything. May crumpled to the ground and lay still, eyes and mouth still open. Blood from the puddle she lay in stained her skin and hair and sarong. Kayla looked down at her and felt something she hadn't felt for a long time: fear.

It stood to reason. May had spoken, albeit non-verbally, her last words. They scared Kayla. Why? People prayed as they died all the time. It made no sense, but fear apparently didn't need sense. Kayla didn’t really care about religion, and she certainly wasn’t afraid of any gods or devils.

She shook her head. It didn't clear up, but she got back to business anyway. She grabbed May's hair and pulled her bloody corpse to a trash can. She lifted and dumped the dead girl into the empty bag. She had to stomp on the corpse, snapping a few bones, to make it fit. Then she pulled it up and tied it shut, leaving it in the can. She took a water gun from a nearby playscape and hosed down the blood—there was more of it than Kayla thought at first. It washed into a few drains not too far away, and after a few minutes, the area looked absolutely murder-free. Kayla set her phone aside, then hosed herself down. She took her phone back and headed back to the main area, where more girls had inevitably already died.

That strange fear pricked at the back of her mind. She tried to ignore it.

***

Casey Shaw was lying on her bed with classical music blaring through her headphones. She never listened to classical, but she felt like today should be an

exception. There were stumps where her legs used to be and one arm was wrapped tightly in a cast. The other was free with a restrictive brace on it. She had to ask her parents for help whenever she wanted anything—so far, that had been music and three books. It had been like this for a day. The thought of having her parents help her take a shit repulsed her so much that she hadn't eaten or drank anything for an entire day. Maybe she could die of thirst. It might be torture, but it couldn't be much worse than a lifetime of lying in bed.

"My life is shit," she said to the air. She couldn't even hear herself over her music. She reached out with her only mobile hand as far as the brace would let her and opened her hand toward the ceiling. "Hey, God?" she said. "Buddha? Allah? Supreme Being? Flying Spaghetti Monster?" She paused, then said, "Will one of you please kill me?"

Why? Because you're afraid to do it yourself? Suck it up and cut your own throat, you pussy.

Casey thought this herself, but she imagined that's what one of the gods would have said.

Her door opened. Casey looked up, expecting one of her parents. Kitty Grant stood there instead. She had a heavy-looking bag hanging off her shoulder. One look at Casey and she said:

"I thought I told you to be happy."

"Hey, how about I cut your legs off and break your arms and tell you to be happy."

"Don't be so angry. Here, I brought you something."

Kitty shrugged the bag off her shoulder and set it on Casey's bed. She unzipped it and pulled something out.

"Close your eyes," she said. "When you open them, you'll be happy."

Casey closed her eyes. Why had she lashed out at Kitty, who had not only saved her life, but had also come to visit her in her own home? She could be soaking up all the glory she could ever want right now.

"Whoops," said Kitty. Casey heard a clang, but didn't open her eyes. "There we go . . . one second here . . . gotta fit this on that thing there. . . ."

Casey felt something plastic-ish encase her left leg stump. She poked her headphones off with her shoulder and gave Kitty her full attention.

"What are you doing down there?"

"Keep your eyes shut."

"I am. What are you doing?"

"No spoilers. All right, open your eyes."

Casey opened her eyes. There were things attached to her legs now. She'd call them prosthetic legs, but they looked more like misshaped crowbars.

"Stand up," said Kitty. She pulled Casey up to the side of her bed by her shoulders. Casey leaned forward and stood on her new legs. Immediately, she felt her balance fail. Kitty caught her before she fell forward.

"It'll take a bit to get used to," Kitty said. "Take your time."

Casey tried again, leaning on Kitty for support. She took a wobbly step. It felt so strange to walk without any feeling below her thighs, but it wasn't impossible. She took another step. Then another, more confident this time. Kitty slowly let go of her, and she found herself standing in the middle of her room, stepping around in slow circles. It was such a small thing to be excited over, but she was actually walking. She looked at Kitty.

"Kitty, I don't even know what to say. This is amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you a million times."

Suddenly, Casey felt even worse for what she'd said at first. If Kitty lost her legs and broke her arms, she'd probably keep on smiling. And here she was, only happy after she could walk again. It dawned on her that Kitty was a year younger than her, but at least twenty years more mature.

"Do you think I could run in these?" Casey said.

"Yes," Kitty said simply. "They're designed for running in the first place."

"Would you be creeped out if I told you I loved you?"

"Nope," said Kitty. "I assume you mean platonically?"

Casey bounced on her new feet. She smiled at Kitty. "I have no idea what that means."