The Final Cut Read online

  Copyright 2016 Crystal Lake Publishing

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  ISBN: 978-1-945172-61-8

  Cover Design:

  Ben Baldwin—http://www.benbaldwin.co.uk

  Interior and ebook Layout:

  Lori Michelle—www.theauthorsalley.com

  Proofread by:

  Lex Jones

  Kristin Martin

  Sue Jackson

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  OTHER TITLES BY JASPER BARK THROUGH CRYSTAL LAKE PUBLISHING

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  Tales from The Lake Vol.2

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  Or check out other Crystal Lake Publishing books for your Dark Fiction, Horror, Suspense, and Thriller needs, and join our newsletter while you’re there.

  TO ROBERT BLOCH, RAMSEY CAMPBELL, LISA TUTTLE, ROBERT AICKMAN. CLIVE BARKER AND STEPHEN KING FOR SHOWING ME WHAT HORROR COULD BE AT A SEMINAL AGE.

  I AM FOREVER IN YOUR DEBT.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “So, let me see if I’ve got this right,” Ashkan paused for effect. Like a lot of gangsters, he fancied himself a bit of an actor. The Iranian Al Pacino was how he styled himself. Right now his well practised glare was boring a hole in Sam’s forehead.

  “You muppets borrowed fifty grand of my money, my fucking money, to shoot a feature film. Ten days you said, ten days to shoot it. Two months to edit it, then blam, stick it out on the net as video on demand and we’ll recoup the cost in a matter of weeks. Am I lying?”

  “No,” said Sam, appalled at how high and frightened his voice sounded. “Look if you just give us a bit of time we can . . . ”

  Ashkan brought the back of his hand across Sam’s face. The blow sent Sam sprawling and the only reason he didn’t fall out of the chair was because he was held there with duct tape. The side of his face stung and it took a second for his vision to come back into focus.

  “When it’s your cue to fucking speak I’ll tell you, alright?” said Ashkan. Sam nodded and his head throbbed. Ashkan drew himself up to his full height. At six five he was pretty imposing. He adjusted his leather jacket and smoothed down his Ben Sherman shirt like he was about to go on stage. Then he looked from Sam to Jimmy, who was duct taped to the chair next to him.

  “See, what really disappoints me is, I like you guys. I like what you do. You’re good at it. So I put in a little sweetener. I let you off the interest for six whole months. That should’ve been enough time to clear the whole debt. Now, some people might think I was going soft. But I saw it as an investment in my acting career. You guys were writing me a big part in the movie, so it was the least I could do. So yesterday, I rock up at the set with my crew, looking to show off me mad acting skills and what do I find, Farshad?”

  “These two cunts, with their dicks in their hands and fuck all else,” said Farshad, a short guy with a thick beard and huge shoulders. He was standing behind Sam and Jimmy.

  “That’s right,” said Ashkan. “And trust me guys, as far as dicks go, they weren’t that impressive. I was expecting lights, cameras, the whole fucking shebang. Instead I got mugged off. No equipment, no script, no fucking actors, just you two cunts in an empty fucking warehouse. That’s all I got to show for my fifty grand. Am I lying?”

  Sam and Jimmy shook their heads.

  “You know what else I found out? Last week you two pissants tried to buy fifty grand’s worth of coke from one of my rivals. One of my fucking rivals! Only someone pulled a gun as it was going down and you were left with fuck all to show for yourselves. What were you gonna do with all that coke? Sell it to your friends in the film biz?”

  Sam and Jimmy looked at each other, then nodded hesitantly.

  “So you never had any intention of making a film then?”

  Sam didn’t know what to do.

  “You can talk now,” said Ashkan.

  “No, we’re still going to make the film,” said Sam. “I swear we’re going to make it, but we had overheads. I maxed out all my cards funding our last feature and costs were spiralling. We were going to take the profits from the coke and plough it all back into the film, I swear to you we were.”

  “Whose idea was this?”

  “It . . . it was mine,” Jimmy croaked, after a long pause. He was sweating heavily, it ran in trickles from his chestnut curls and pooled in his beard. He blinked nervously.

  “Jimmy thought we could use some of his underworld contacts and bring the deal off quickly,” said Sam.

  “Oh yeah,” said Ashkan with a derisive snort. “Big man is Jimmy, really well connected. See, what I don’t understand is, I just found you got some huge fucking trust fund waiting for you. So what the fuck you getting mixed up with all this shit for?”

  Sam hung his head. “It’s my parents,” he said in a small voice.

  “What?”

  “It’s my fucking parents. They won’t let me access the fund until I get a proper job, in the City or something, raping third world countries.”

  “You have to admit they’ve got a point. I mean you wouldn’t be in this mess if you had a proper job and I wouldn’t be about to do this.”

  Ashkan clicked his fingers. Faisal, one of the thugs who’d grabbed Sam and Jimmy and driven them to the Bethnal Green lock up, sidled up to Ashkan. He was tall and rangy, with a thick black moustache and a scar down his left cheek. He handed Ashkan a syringe. It was the big, thick kind you find in hospitals, not the sort you get at a needle exchange. It was full of clear liquid.

  Ashkan grabbed hold of Jimmy’s hair and bent his head to one side. A blue vein throbbed on Jimmy’s neck, Ashkan plunged the syringe into it.

  “Jesus, Ashkan,” Jimmy screamed, “What the fuck, what the fuck?”

  “Just giving you a little taste innit,” said Ashkan, pushing the plunger. “Thought you boys liked this sorta shit.”

  “The fuck is it?” Jimmy looked like he was going to have a fit. The muscles in his legs spasmed and his eyes twitched.

  “This shit? This is better than meth, better than any of that crap you get on the street. This is from my private collection. Save it for special occasions, like this one.” Ashkan clicked his fingers and one of his flunkies handed him another syringe.

  “Please,” said Sam, as Ashkan approached. “Not the neck, please.”

  “It’s better in the jugular vein, innit. Goes straight to the brain see. Gives you twice the fucking hit—Blam!”

  Sam
felt a sharp prick as the needle hit his vein and the drug shot into his blood. His heart hammered like he was going into cardiac arrest and an ice cold wave washed over him. All the hairs on his body stood on end. The mother of all rushes charged through him. Ashkan hadn’t lied, this stuff was powerful. Sam’s head began to shake and his jaw worked involuntarily. He was blinking about a hundred times a minute.

  Faisal put a laptop down on a card table in front of them. “Have I got your attention? Good. Wouldn’t want you to miss a minute of this.” Ashkan opened the laptop. “You boys like film shows don’t you? Well I’ve got one mother of a film for you.” He clicked an icon on the screen and a piece of footage came up. “See this? This is what happens when you fuck with me. When you take my money and mug me off in front of my crew.” Ashkan patted Sam and Jimmy on the shoulders. “Enjoy the show boys.”

  The footage showed a dimly lit stone room that could have been a cellar or a prison cell. The camera, held by an amateur, swung unsteadily about the space. It picked out three figures, two men and a woman, strapped to operating tables which were covered in thick plastic sheeting.

  One of the men was screaming and sobbing, snot streamed down his top lip as he writhed and fought his straps. The other man, from his expression, was bargaining for his life. He looked Mediterranean, but was shouting in a language that sounded Arabic.

  The woman couldn’t have been a bigger contrast. She lay very still, her body completely relaxed and her face serene. She seemed completely at peace with what was going to be done to her.

  She was very striking, with strawberry blonde hair and high cheekbones. Her curves suggested a sensuous nature, but her eyes seemed to look heavenward, giving her a saintly, almost beatific look.

  “This the tape you got from Mr Isimud?” said Farshad.

  “Yeah man,” replied Ashkan. “This is some seriously fucked up shit, seriously fucked up.”

  “Sweet, wanted to see this for ages.”

  “Some of the things they do man, they’re like artists, trust me, artists—not killers.” Ashkan smacked Sam and Jimmy on the back of the head. He reached over their shoulders and pointed at the screen. “Pay attention boys, this is my money back guarantee. I guarantee this will happen to you if I don’t get my money back.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The camera pushed in to a close shot of the Mediterranean guy’s face. He was still babbling desperately as two dark figures moved in on either side. The figures were blurry shadows, underlit and out of focus. Sam wasn’t sure how they’d achieved the effect because the Mediterranean guy’s face was crystal clear, so were the scalpels the figures held.

  The blurry figures moved in unison, as though choreographed. They stretched a tight strap across the guy’s forehead to keep his head still. Only his eyes rolled wildly as he pleaded for his life. Then the figures each took hold of an eyelid and pried them apart.

  With their other hands the figures brought the scalpels down into the corners of the guy’s eyes. Using tiny, deft movements they severed the muscle tissue holding his eyeballs in place. The guy stopped imploring the figures and shrieked with pain and fear.

  Thin streams of blood spurted from the guy’s eye sockets. The figures put down their scalpels and each produced a set of forceps. They took hold of his eyeballs with the forceps and lifted them out of their sockets, pulling them as far as their optic nerves would stretch. Next they turned the eyeballs so the pupils were pointed at the guy’s mouth. Working together, as though their free hands belonged to the same body, the figures applied dental clamps to the guy’s mouth and forced his jaws apart, holding his eyeballs over his mouth the whole while.

  With the clamps in place, the figures picked up their scalpels again and took to slicing off the guy’s top and bottom lips. Blood sprayed the cornea of one eyeball and Sam realised that, as the optic nerves were still attached, the guy could still see out of his severed eyes. He was being forced to watch an extreme close up of his own mutilation.

  When the lips were removed, the hand of one figure produced a tiny chisel and held it over the guy’s front tooth. It was the sort of delicate tool a sculptor would use to apply the finishing touches to a marble bust. The other figure’s hand brought a mallet into shot.

  The camera pushed in to a close up of the guy’s open mouth and throat. The mallet struck the chisel on his front tooth, with such swift force, that the tooth was not only knocked out of its gum, it embedded itself in the lining of the guy’s throat.

  The guy choked and yelled in agony, his throat going into spasms. The figures continued to knock his teeth out, angling the chisel with such precision, and striking it with such power, that each of the teeth was driven into a different part of the guy’s throat. When they were done the whole of his gullet was raw and torn and lined with teeth.

  “Jesus this is fucking hardcore,” said Farshad. “Is this for real?”

  “Dunno,” said Ashkan. “Ain’t seen this bit before.”

  “Thought you said you’d watched it all the way through? Twice now.”

  “I have, I just ain’t seen this bit before. Must be some glitch or something.”

  The camera pulled back from the ruined face of the Mediterranean guy. The figures left him and moved on to the woman. Two more figures joined them at her side. Sam started to cry and tried not to watch as they went to work on her. Jimmy started to hyperventilate next to him.

  What they were doing to the woman was a hundred times worse than the damage they’d inflicted on the Mediterranean guy. She didn’t scream or fight them, and that made watching even worse. She just opened her mouth and let out a silent cry of anguish so profound it transcended the desecration of her flesh.

  “Aww man, that ain’t right!” said someone behind them, his voice loud with disgust. “That ain’t right.”

  Every time Sam or Jimmy tried to close their eyes or turn away Ashkan punched them both in the back of the head. “Ashkan, please man,” said Sam. “You don’t need to show us anymore. You’ve made your point; you’ll get your money. Honestly, even if I have to sell everything, you’ll get your money. Just don’t make me watch any more. Please don’t make me watch anymore.”

  The drug in Sam’s system made him even more susceptible to the footage. He could feel everything they were doing to the woman. Ashkan ignored his pleas; he was mesmerised and appalled by what was happening on the laptop.

  There were groans and cries of disgust from the other men in the room. “Turn it off man,” said one. “Turn it off, we’ve seen enough.” Another man started wailing and broke into a sob.

  “Can’t turn it off,” said Ashkan. “They’ve got to watch this to the end. They have to learn.”

  But the men in the room had all had enough. Jimmy heard two of them turn to leave the lock up. “Alright,” said Ashkan. “We’ll leave them to watch the end of it and we’ll go for a smoke.”

  Ashkan and his men were standing behind Sam and Jimmy. It was more intimidating that way. It also made it hard for Sam to work out what was happening. He glanced away from the screen to look at Jimmy. Jimmy had his eyes tightly shut. He’d had enough, but Ashkan was too distracted to notice.

  Sam closed his eyes, too. He didn’t want to watch any more footage; it was becoming unbearable. The drugs had left his nerve endings raw.

  Someone’s footsteps approached them. Sam winced automatically, expecting a blow, but the footsteps went straight past him. He heard tapping on the laptop keyboard. Were they trying to switch it off?

  “Fuck,” a voice said in front of him. Sam didn’t recognise it. “Fuck NO! FUCK!”

  The sound of something very sharp going into flesh followed. Then a sudden release of breath, as if the air had been knocked out of someone. Cries of alarm and disbelief rang out behind Sam, then broke off, becoming throttled chokes and coughs.

  Sam pulled his chin into his chest and hunched his shoulders. Trying to make himself as small as he could while still taped to a chair. He could feel tears welling up beh
ind eyelids that were screwed shut.

  The whole lock-up was filled with the wet ripping of torn flesh and the crackling snap of fractured bones. It was like someone had recorded a slaughterhouse and then played it at triple speed. Only the sounds weren’t coming from the tinny laptop speaker, they were all around him.

  Sam couldn’t look, couldn’t open his eyes. He just froze. Every sound made him shake more. What were Ashkan and the others doing to Jimmy? Why didn’t he scream? How could the noise be so deafening?

  Sam was next, he knew that. He gritted his teeth but it didn’t hold back the sobs that were breaking from his chest. The front of his jeans became warm and wet as his bladder emptied.

  One single thought went round and round in his mind.

  Please let it be quick.

  Please let it be quick.

  Please let it be quick.

  CHAPTER THREE

  A hot jet of liquid hit Sam in the back of the head. He gasped and started to hyperventilate.

  “No, please . . . don’t,” he said in a high pitched voice. He hated the way he sounded, but he still begged. “Please, please don’t. Oh God don’t.”

  Nothing happened.

  He ground his teeth and waited for the first blow.

  It didn’t come.

  This was worse than torture.

  “Just do it, okay. Just fucking do it!”

  “Sam?” it was Jimmy’s voice.

  Sam opened his eyes and stole a glance at Jimmy. The back of Jimmy’s head was dripping with viscera.

  The lock up was dead quiet. Something was wrong. There were thick gobs of blood and torn flesh on Sam’s shoulders. He could feel it dripping from his man bun down the back of his neck.

  “Jimmy,” Sam said. “Are you okay?”

  “I think so, how about you?”

  “I dunno, are you sure you’re okay? The back of your head is covered in blood.”

  “Yeah, but I’m pretty sure none of its mine. You?”

  “They never touched me. I kept waiting for them to do something, but they never did.”