Sebastian watched Jinx finish dragging the park-style bench over to the center of the ballroom. The jester looked back toward him as if awaiting further direction.
“Keep going, over a little more. Almost, just a little bit further, yep. Right there, perfect!” he replied in ecstatic fashion.
Taylor and Perry stood a few yards away looking at the disturbed groom as he got ready to bring the evening to a close. He used some of the blood still leaking out of his head to slick back his hair.
Perry was waiting patiently, trusting that the deeds he’d performed to appease Sebastian were enough to help him escape with his life. After all, he seemed quite hellbent on ensuring that there was someone left behind to immortalize him.
Taylor was the polar opposite of the aged janitor standing beside her. She was rattled to the core and felt death was just around the corner. She knew Sebastian had saved the best for last. Whatever he had in store for her would most likely be tenfold worse than anything she’d seen to that point. She still had a chance, but time was quickly running out.
Sebastian turned and stepped over toward the cake table where Perry and Taylor nervously waited. “Honey, would you please go and take a seat on the bench? Jinx is going to take our wedding photo now. I just need to have a brief word with the old man here first.”
She remained silent, mind racing nonstop, but as usual, she obeyed his commands. Once she’d left them, Sebastian turned back to him. Then he looked down at the gross tabletop. He toyed playfully with the handle of the tenderizing mallet that was still stuck in the brainstem of Cindy’s head.
“Listen… um… sorry, actually amid all the craziness, I don’t think I ever caught your name—”
“Perry!” he interjected. “Perry Jackson, mister, Sebastian. And, sir, I promise you, I’m gonna make sure everyone knows every goddamn event that happened here today. I’ll make sure they remember you, I won’t let ‘em forget,” the old man promised.
“You know, out of everyone, I liked you the best, Perry. That was a hell of a ride, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, sir…”
“But the thing is, Perry, I never planned to make it out of here. I was always gonna go down with the ship. But that whole ‘maybe you’ll walk away routine’ was just… it was just me dangling a carrot,” he said, picking up the mallet along with some of the squished brain matter.
Perry’s hope crashed to rock bottom—he got a feeling deep in his stomach that was different than anything he’d felt in his life. It was the hand of death massaging him.
“I’m sorry, old-timer, but I’ve already got Jinx to tell the story for me,” he explained, suddenly driving the sharp part of the tool into his grayed hairline.
The severity of the swipe let a resounding thud echo through the ballroom and landed so deep that it ripped away a crooked patch of his skin.
The old custodian’s eyes rolled up into his head as he dropped to the floor like a sack of garbage. Sebastian then extracted the handgun from his suit pocket and aimed it square at his chest and pulled the trigger like it was just another day at the office. The speedy bullet blew through his blood-saturated maintenance uniform and caused his body to jolt.
“If only I could stick around a little longer, your grave would have been one that I would’ve enjoyed dancing on.” Sebastian collected the blood and snot from the back of his throat and spat the wad on Perry’s face before he headed for his bride.
Sebastian spun around and caught a glimpse of Taylor sitting precisely where he’d told her to. She looked incredibly concerned, which was why an evil smirk was tightly spread over his lips.
“Alright, my love. I hope your special day was everything that you dreamed of. It will certainly be unforgettable, I don’t think there’s any disputing that…”
He slid into the seat beside her, “But before we say goodbye, we need to take our photos. JINX! How do we look?”
The jester stuck a gloved thumb up in their direction and nodded the scary mask slowly.
Sebastian’s grin had morphed into a grimace as he applied pressure to the bullet hole in his side. His hair was sweaty and wet with blood. The shards of glass from the explosion had left him torn up to a point where he projected an almost zombie-like look. The only constant since his initial speech was the manic expression that dominated him.
Taylor wasn’t in much better shape. Her hands were still punctured and bleeding from the rose bouquet that Sebastian had pushed into her skin. Not to mention the lengthy deep lacerations on her shoulder from when he’d carved into her with the knife blade.
She glanced down defeatedly at her destroyed dress, trying to block out the throbbing pain of her seared tongue. The scratchy overcooked flesh felt rough against her gums. She couldn’t have been less prepared to take a photograph.
Jinx had located an old Polaroid camera from the many evil gifts. It seemed like they could pull almost anything from there. The jester set his dead gaze upon the two of them and readied the camera.
“Say cheese!” Sebastian yelled, revealing his red-stained teeth for the photo.
The flash went off, and out of the corner of his eye, he could see that Taylor hadn’t smiled for the picture. “I said say fucking cheese, goddamn you! Now, take it again, Jinx!”
Taylor forced a leer of pure agony just in time as he snapped the second picture. The Polaroid spat out of the front of the camera and dropped down onto the blood-littered floor below.
Sebastian stood up from the bench and looked down at his bride, “Follow me, dear.”
“Sebastian?” his name sounded funny now when she pronounced it with her muscle subtracted tongue.
“Yes, love?”
“May I ask one favor of you?”
He nodded his head more out of morbid curiosity than anything.
“Before whatever comes next… would you allow me one more picture?”
“But, darling, we’ve already taken two and I think you did a splendid job on the second snap. Wouldn’t you say?” he asked, looking to Jinx for confirmation.
The jester nodded gravely.
“You know I’ll do whatever you want, darling, but if I could just have one more moment with my family. One last picture of us all together, it would mean the world to me,” she pleaded politely.
Her husband pondered the ask. After a moment, his wickedly joyous expression grew a little further. He clasped both of his palms together and squeezed. “I think that’s a fabulous idea. That is one fucking picture that I’ve got to see,” he laughed, coughing up another collection of blood-conquered saliva.
“But, baby, I’m not feeling so hot. Would you mind helping Jinx drag them over here?”
“Of course, you’re the one doing me the favor…” she replied.
Taylor got up as Jinx immediately began to walk toward the stack of her deceased family members piled by the stage. The jester was walking with a purpose, there was no way that she would be able to get there before him.
Jinx approached the mushed mask of gore that was formally Taylor’s mother’s face, the decapitated corpse of her brother, and the bullet-riddled body of her father. It appeared the creep was deciding who to take first before finally wrapping his finger around the wrists of Taylor’s mother.
She exhaled a sigh of relief, and as Jinx began to drag her mother away, Taylor quickly latched onto her father. He was pretty heavy but she was highly motivated. The blood helped him glide across the floor but also made the footing more treacherous.
Don’t fall over… Keep it up… Just get him to the fucking bench. Only a few more feet away, she rambled on to herself, curling her toenails into the wet floor for any extra grip she could manage.
Jinx had already left her mother propped up on the left side of the lengthy seating and was returning back for her brother. As Taylor lifted her father up, she could see his deflated lung partially peeking out of the gaping void in his backside. She continued to muscle his body onto the other side, being careful to leave a space beside him.
She plopped down on the bench beside his garbled carcass and her wrecked mother. Just as she was settling in, Jinx was returning with Christopher… well, part of him. Jinx tossed his decapitated head down on the floor in front of the three of them. The jester must have been tired of lugging around corpses so, apparently, that would have to suffice.
Sebastian was getting weaker by the moment, hoisting up the camera had even become more of a challenge than initially anticipated.
Jinx rejoined Sebastian and the two stood just far enough away to get all of Taylor and the members of her dead family in frame for their final picture together. Sebastian grinned as he watched more tears trace over the previous columns of moist make-up that ran down her beautiful face.
Sebastian tried to steady the camera in his shaking hands. “Don’t ever say I didn’t do anything for you. This married life, it ain’t too bad is it?”
Taylor eyeballed Jinx who stood highly relaxed, hands at each side of the uniform, waiting for Sebastian to snap the photo. It was now or never.
As the camera flashed, her bloody hand snaked into her father’s inside pocket and she extracted the revolver flawlessly. By the time Jinx saw the chrome glimmer of the gun’s exterior and got the AK-47 in hand, a slug had already left the chamber and crushed into the sternum of the sinister bastard.
As the jester levitated backward, Taylor pulled the hammer back and sent a second wad of streaking lead just a couple of inches to the side of the first. The impactful violence sent Jinx crashing hard onto the dancefloor. Then, without hesitation, Taylor turned the hand cannon to her husband.
Sebastian was taken aback and let the camera slip out of his hands as it shot out the disturbing picture. It dropped in what felt like slow motion to the wet ground and broke into two pieces.
“Baby, please, we can work this out!” he pleaded.
“I don’t think so,” she replied.
“Yes, yes, we can! Just tell me what you want, what is it that you want?!”
“I want a divorce.”
Those times when Dad had taken her out to fire a few shots at bottles on a fence came in handy. When she pulled the trigger, for the first time all night, her hands were steady. In a way, it almost felt like Anthony himself was exacting revenge as the shot left the barrel and made a savage entry into the maniac groom’s throat.
Sebastian fell to the ground, twitching and the choking noises bursting out of the juicy wound where his Adam’s apple used to be housed only intensified. He clasped both of his hands around his neck in an effort to hold what was left of it together.
“You sick fuck! You ruined my wedding day!” she screamed, unloading what remained of the bullets into his dying body.
She continued to pull the trigger mindlessly, well after the cylinder had been spent. The faint clicking noise resounded over and over like a broken record. Maybe it was fitting because now and forever she would be a broken person. The mental damages having taken their toll, a trippy feeling took hold of her. Taylor felt like she was anywhere but reality.
She looked around at the ballroom trying to take in the sum of collective horrors that surrounded her. The body parts, the demolished humans, the bodily fluid, the destructive weaponry, and the incredibly disturbing nature of the event that was supposed to usher her into social stardom.
Her face turned red and she dropped the empty gun. As it fell beside her stained feet, she started to cry again. Not because she had found a way to survive. Not because her poor family and friends were slaughtered with a hellish methodology. None of that seemed to matter to her.
She looked at the enormous pile of dead bodies in the corner near the hole in the Biltmore’s exterior. Then down at the river of blood on the floorboards.
“Ughhhhhhh! My fucking phone is melted!” she screamed, recalling that her deranged husband had dissolved all the communication devices.
Until that moment, part of her had realized that although her wedding was ruined, there still might be a way to capitalize on it. She could have captured some exclusive footage of the aftermath of the massacre and made a killing off of it. Or maybe even posted it on her page.
“Goddamn it! Probably couldn’t have put it on Instagram anyway, they’d just fucking censor it!” she moaned.
Suddenly, the bathroom door burst open, startling Taylor. She ducked down for cover near the bench behind her mutilated family. Then, she realized who it was.
“Taylor, I’m coming, baby!” Lucas yelled.
“Lucas?!”
“Yes, baby, it’s me, that fucking psychopath didn’t hurt you, did he?! Are you alright, baby doll?”
“He hurt me real bad,” she managed to say in the clutches of sadness.
Lucas rushed up to Taylor and wrapped his arms around her bloody body, nestling her close. He moved in and kissed her on the lips. He wanted to show her that her deformities didn’t bother him in the slightest. No matter how many slice wounds of stab puncture riddled her, he still had a thing for the girl. But he didn’t expect what he felt next.
The slimy kiss tasted of blood and crisp flesh. The crudely soldered tip of her tongue was rougher than a sidewalk. He pulled away from her and a bloody string of saliva stretched, still connecting their mouths momentarily. He then used the arm of his suit to wipe the red dribble from his lips. He had been wondering why her annunciation sounded a little strange…
“Well, looks like he can’t lift a finger now…” Lucas said happily.
“No thanks to you!” Taylor snarked.
“What did you expect I do? That I should just stroll on out here and get massacred like the rest of these fools? I was waiting for the right moment.”
“If you waited any longer, I wouldn’t have had another moment!”
“Nonsense, I knew you would find a way to outsmart them. That’s what attracted me to you in the first place… your incredible intelligence,” he lied but his true motive was just a sentence away.
“This is so fucking dumb! How could this happen to me? What did I do to deserve this?!” Taylor whined, stomping her heels.
“You didn’t do anything, baby. It wasn’t you, the best thing you can do is just forget about this fucking abortion of a wedding. Put it in the rearview, okay? You know why?”
“Why?”
“Because I’m gonna give you a wedding that is tits above anything that’s ever been done before.”
A twinkle of happiness appeared in her reddened pupils. Much had been carved into and off of her body, but her mind was where the most pain was. The uncertainty was already creeping up. The screeching thoughts of insecurity began to worm their way inside her brain.
She no longer had a lock on being the prettiest girl in the room anymore. Kissing would clearly never be the same again with her toasted tongue. The plastic surgeons could probably do a lot, but something told her that tongue tips weren’t in their toolbox.
When Lucas made his move, it was smooth as silk and well placed. He was more than familiar with how to capture a female’s interest when she was feeling vulnerable. Just like every single time before, it worked like a charm.
“Oh, Lucas, I love you,” Taylor cooed, wrapping her arms back around him again.
“I love you too, babe. And on the plus side, since Sebastian’s fuckin’ dead now, we get all the money!”
“Wait, what do you mean we?”
Just as the question of greed finished leaving her lips, the familiar sound of machine gun fire erupted. Both Taylor and Lucas winced in fear, but even as the shooting continued, none of the dozens of bullets seemed to find their bodies.
When they finally had the courage to look toward the direction of the gunfire, they saw Jinx in the sit-up position aiming the AK-47 high above both of their heads. Before they had enough time to look up, the massive, gaudy chandelier had come crashing down on top of them.
The weight of the angled lighting landed square on Taylor’s head and folded her over sideways. The impact altered her outline in a manner that the skeletal system simply couldn’t accommodate. Along with the shattering of glass came the splintering of bones.
Taylor’s crumpled frame laid disproportionately mangled. One arm twisted in the wrong direction like a broken Barbie and the other snapped clean in half. Her mashed face looked like a mop that had absorbed an inordinate amount of blood.
The compound fracture piercing through her skin was a Faces of Death special. She would no longer have to worry about the societal stigma around the distortions that her body had suffered from any longer. It was a short-lived conundrum.
Her lights went out instantly and she was robbed of the stardom that she had always dreamed about only to be shuffled into an infamy that she never could’ve imagined.
When the shooting started, Lucas, always the coward, had taken a step back. That step was just enough to allow him survival. He wasn’t crushed by the falling fixture but, instead, sent reeling.
As he bumped into a destroyed table, Jinx took aim at him again, keying in on the head. He let a burst of shots ring out that tore through his brain matter and sent fat lumps of his sneaky intellect spraying out behind him.
As Jinx heard Lucas hit the floor, the machine gun finally dropped. There was no one left to kill. The mysterious and murderous jester suddenly had no direction. The gloved hands pinched the bulky mask at each end and separated it from the creepy costume.
Dorian’s expression was set to hurt. The pain seemed quite severe, but it wasn’t of a physical nature. The sturdy Teflon vest beneath his outfit had seen to that. It was for the man that was just as wicked as he was. The man who paralleled his own perversion. It was for the man that he loved.
He quickly rushed over to Sebastian and fell to the ground in a dramatic fashion. However, it was too late, his infatuation had already expired. That didn’t seem to matter to Dorian, though.
The disturbed wedding planner put his thin lips against Sebastian’s, and as the reservoir of nasty red remained slowly drizzling from his mouth and throat, Dorian laid a porno-worthy kiss on him.
He cried for his client as he slurped away and grabbed at the corners of his collar passionately. He had become so much more than just another job. During their preparation, he’d fallen head over heels for the sexy businessman. He didn’t mind that he was a little fat, he made up for it below the belt. Besides, his thoughts and ambitions were far more important stimuli for him to enjoy.
Once he finished his brief and romantic farewell, Dorian walked over to Lucas’s fresh corpse. He removed his jester outfit and the bulletproof vest in its entirety. Next, he stripped Lucas down and slid the clothing that comprised the costume he was previously wearing onto the dead businessman’s body. It didn’t fit perfectly, but it would do the trick.
“It’s time to smear someone’s reputation,” he snickered, still letting a few tears leave his eyelids.
Dorian finished strapping on the flak-jacket and adjusting the rest of the attire he’d worn while he slaughtered everyone. He raced across the room and retrieved the empty AT4 rocket launcher and put it into Lucas’s still warm hands. And just like that, Lucas was the culprit behind the massacre.
“Can’t believe it, he even worked with him, it’s a perfect conspiracy,” Dorian thought aloud.
Just as Dorian had about made his way to the exit, suddenly, he stopped. He turned back around like a lightbulb had suddenly gone off inside his head. The wedding planner ran back over to the bloody pool where Sebastian’s corpse laid and looked down.
The picture of the beat-down bride and groom was a classic. They had been through a war, they had been through hell. Their horrific disfigurements shined as proudly as their perverted smiles. It was the second one, after Sebastian yelled at Taylor and forced her to grin.
“It’s a masterpiece,” Dorian whispered, bending over to pick it up. Once he had the messy photo between his fingertips, he headed for the exit and never looked back.
Dorian walked deep enough into the forest to finally locate his car. He preferred to be safe than sorry, so with caution in mind, he had left it in a remote area of the woods that was about half a mile away from the Biltmore.
Although the area was dead as far as traffic was concerned, and the hotel wasn’t in use outside of the wedding they’d planned, there could have certainly been a straggler or two who dropped by. That was just a risk he’d come to accept.
He plopped down into the SUV, exhausted as always. Then he pulled out a black square book that sat under the passenger seat and laid it on top of the cushion. When the cover peeled back and he flipped through the pages, a spread that contained a handful of other nightmares was put on display.
Each picture was unique but also the same. The morbid collection displayed numerous brides and grooms who were all beaten to a gory pulp and torn apart. They were all in the same sickening spirit as the bloodstained photo that he was readying himself to insert and act as his newest addition.
As each of their haunting smiles stared back at him, he couldn’t help but be aroused. Every time they looked his way, he recalled the fond memories of the wedding day massacres that he’d performed for each of his clients.
Sebastian would always be the cutest one of them all, though, because he thought he was making history. Little did he know, for Dorian, the grand form of slaughter was becoming old hat.
