‘TIL DEATH DO US PART

A Horror Story

Photo by Negar Nikkhah on Unsplash

*Warning: Contains graphic scenes.

Hugo sat watching the late-night reruns. His eyes were glazed, and the stark light from the television made his flesh look anaemic as he slumped in the lounge chair. He looked at the clock on the wall and rubbed his tired eyes. 2.30 am. Hugo yawned and looked at his wife, who was propped up with cushions in the centre of the couch. Her eyes were rolled in the back of her head, and an audible snore came from her inflamed nostrils perched above the duct tape covering her mouth.

He looked back at the 20/20 program with renewed interest as a story came on about a local surgeon who had successfully separated conjoined twins. The gory footage of the operation showed the surgeon meticulously separating the cranial flesh, bone and then the blood vessels and other viscera surrounding the two exposed brains. Mary-Beth moaned as Hugo turned the volume up. He glanced back over at her and noticed the blood had now coagulated at the end of her bloody limbs where he had crudely cauterised the wounds.

The story continued as the journalist interviewed the surgeon in his opulent downtown office after the operation. Hugo was sure he had seen the surgeon before somewhere. He realised the medical insurance company he’d worked for over the last two decades probably had the doctor in its client files. Hell, he’d probably even sold the surgeon some expensive public liability insurance at some point.

That must be it, Hugo concluded and looked back at Mary-Beth. He’d dressed her in an old bathrobe to keep her warm, but had to cut the sleeves off to stop the blood soaking into the material where her arms once joined her shoulders. He envied the skill of the surgeon, but was pleased with his own efforts, having removed her limbs without killing her.

Before the operation, he spent a lot of time in the basement practising his surgical skills on stray neighbourhood felines. He had been awake four nights straight and was finally ready for sleep now that the operation had succeeded, and he knew that Mary-Beth would not leave him now.

He stood and stretched his tired body, making his way to the bathroom to piss and brush his teeth. He looked in the mirror and saw a stranger staring back at him. Short but messy black hair. White, pasty complexion. Dark rings circled his bloodshot eyes. He looked gaunt and far from the tanned, healthy, young executive he’d been a month ago.

Hugo dressed for bed and went back to the lounge to kiss Mary-Beth good night. He didn’t notice the petrified look of fear in her eyes, or the shivering of her body as it entered the final stages of shock. He kissed her gently on her clammy brow and whispered, “Love you, Mary-Beth, my beautiful wife. I love you forever.”

He turned and made his way down the hall to the bedroom, failing to notice that his once beautiful wife had toppled sideways, landing head-first on the plush rug in front of the couch.

He lay in bed wishing for sleep. He thought about Mary-Beth and felt a surge of deep anger and resentment at the way she’d deceived him. He’d found out that she was planning to leave him through a mutual friend who worked at the office. A night out with the guys from work had led to a drunken conversation with Cameron, the IT manager, who told Hugo in no uncertain terms that Mary-Beth was “fucking one of the other reps from the competing Medical Insurance group across town.”

Hugo dismissed it as a rumour. After all, they’d only been married six months, and that kind of thing only happened to other people after years of marriage. Of course, he had been wrong. Unable to contain his suspicion any longer, he’d checked her phone while she was out and found the revelatory text messages from STEVE.

Hugo confronted Mary-Beth. She bluntly told him that she wanted to move out of their new house and that she was going to seek an annulment, failing that, a divorce. He hadn’t handled the news well. He followed her around the house, maniacally reciting their wedding vows as she hurriedly packed her bags. She ignored him as he continued to plead with her, asking her, “Why? What did I do wrong?”

The final straw came when she dragged her suitcase down the steps to the front door, turned, and told him that she had never loved him. That she had been banging STEVE since their engagement party, and that STEVE was twice the man Hugo would ever be.

Hugo decided then that she would never leave him. Mary-Beth was his wife, and he would be damned if he was going to let her get away from him so easily. He would sort STEVE out later.

Sleep finally came. He dreamed of Mary-Beth. Flashes of her beautiful smile. Slow motion visions of her curvaceous body, twisting seductively. And then, torrents of blood flooded his thoughts. He saw Mary-Beth bound to the workbench in the basement. The fluorescent light illuminated her, naked and bound to the bench. He could see the rise and fall of her breasts slow because of the strong sedative he’d given her. Hugo started sweating profusely in his sleep as the dream replayed what happened in the basement.

He felt numb as he depressed the trigger on the Black ‘n’ Decker electric handsaw. He held the vibrating saw with one hand and took a giant swig of the expensive cognac he held in the other. He put the bottle down slowly as if trying to delay what would come next. Then, as if in a dream, a very bad dream, he began to remove Mary-Beth’s thin limbs one by one. Dark blood gushed from the fresh wounds, covering Hugo and the workshop in a spraying rain of warm fluid and flesh.

He recalled the tension in Mary-Beth’s body as the angry saw bit into her soft flesh. He watched her smooth skin turn from mocha to chalk as her body slipped into shock.

When he put the saw down, a wave of nausea hit him, and he threw up violently on the floor. He wiped his chin and picked up the hot iron resting on the shelf next to the workbench. He willed himself not to throw up again as he pushed the iron hard on the bloodied stump of her shoulder, where her arm had been.

Hugo threw up again as Mary-Beth’s flesh sizzled and popped as the crude, but effective method, cauterised her horrible wounds. One by one, he completed the process. With a final application of antiseptic cream and bandages, Hugo finished the task and woke from his nightmare.

He sat up in bed, trembling, trying to convince himself the whole thing had been an elaborate nightmare. But he knew it wasn’t. He got out of bed and made his way into the lounge. Mary-Beth lay face down on the shagpile rug. He quickly, but gently, picked her up and took her back to the bedroom. Lying her carefully on her side of the bed, Hugo climbed in behind her and fell into a deep sleep. This time, he dreamed a different dream than before.

Days passed, and Hugo knew he had to do something. Mary-Beth was no longer drinking the pureed food that he’d been feeding her through a tube. She felt cold, and he began to panic.

“I won’t lose you again, my love,” he whispered, as he lay by her side on the bed and stroked her delicate features. “I won’t ever lose you again.”

An idea began to germinate in his mind as he paced the basement that night. The basement was as clean as the day they moved in. He’d spent the better part of a week cleaning it from top to bottom. A ten-litre pail of disinfectant and another of bleach were used to mop down every surface. He had carefully wrapped Mary-Beth’s limbs in newspaper before binding them with masking tape. The next day, he spent the morning sweeping fallen leaves into a pile in the middle of the backyard.

As soon as night fell, he poured an accelerant on the leaves and stoked the pile with various pieces of timber and flammable rubbish he had found around the house. He placed the wrapped limbs carefully in the centre of the pyre and struck a match. The flames rose high into the air, and he was sure he could hear Mary-Beth’s screams as the fire crackled and burned ferociously.

Hugo headed back inside and took Mary-Beth down from her perch in front of the window overlooking the back lawn. She smelled bad. He cleaned her up in the bathtub, careful not to let her slip under the murky water. He towelled her dry and slipped the wedding ring on a gold chain over her bowed head. He’d made sure to salvage it from her hand before he got rid of her useless limbs in the fire.

He sprayed her with some deodorant, failing to suppress his disgust as he noticed she was still leaking from her wounds. Her skin now had the colour and sheen of an avocado. He wrapped her in a clean towel, knowing exactly what he had to do now.

Hugo put her back in bed and went downstairs to the garage. He backed the shiny black BMW out of the garage and headed downtown. It had been easy enough to find out the surgeon’s work address online and all the contact details he needed to track him down. He spent the following week driving back and forth, spending hours monitoring the surgeon’s movements outside the plush downtown office where he worked while not in surgery.

Philip Binder, Senior MD, was on the homestretch of a successful career in Paediatric neurosurgery and was looking forward to a very comfortable retirement. The last successful operation he’d performed on the Chinese conjoined twins had been the crowning glory of a forty-year run as the principal Neurosurgeon at the Portvale Municipal Hospital. He had won various accolades and awards for his pioneering work in the field and was considered by many to be the best.

Hugo had done his research, spending days in the library reading the various publications written by and concerning the surgeon. Hundreds of medical news archives provided background on the man via Google and other online sources. The most important part of Hugo’s research was the 20/20 story that he’d recorded, when it replayed a few days after the initial broadcast.

He’d sit there at night trying to battle his insomnia by watching the feature story repeatedly. Hugo knew exactly what he needed to do so nobody would ever take Mary-Beth away from him again, and the good doctor would be the one to help him achieve his goal.

Hugo tried not to notice the faintly rancid aroma of decay as he wrapped Mary-Beth in a blanket and placed her in the BMW’s boot. He swallowed and took a breath of the afternoon air as he opened the garage doors and let sunlight flood in. He tried not to think too much about the damp dark stain on his shirtsleeve, where he had cradled Mary-Beth before wrapping her. He gingerly brushed some grey, residual flesh from his arm.

He went to the rear of the garage and took down the Mossberg shotgun from the gun rack mounted above the workbench. It had been a wedding gift from Mary-Beth’s father, along with big plans to go hunting in the fall. Hugo had never used it before and lamented the fact that he would never be going hunting with his father-in-law now. He packed the two boxes of shells that came with the gift into an overnight bag and wrapped another blanket around the Shotgun, before placing them both in the boot next to Mary-Beth.

“I love you, my darling,” Hugo said as he gently closed the boot.

Hugo sat in the car with the window down as the end of the day approached. The heat from the sun made the car’s interior rank with the smell of purification, but Hugo remained focussed on the mission ahead. He watched the surgeon’s staff leave the small but exclusive office on the town belt, only a short walk away from the Municipal Hospital. As the last staff member left, Hugo backed the car up to the side exit of the office block and turned off the engine.

He cradled Mary-Beth in one arm and, with the other, levelled the shotgun at the doorway as Binder opened the door to leave work. The look of shock on the surgeon’s face propelled Hugo forward, bundling the older man back into his office and locking the door behind him. Hugo placed Mary-Beth upright in a chair in the Surgeon’s waiting room, and the blanket fell away, taking with it most of the decomposed flesh from her face.

“I want you to meet Mary-Beth, doc,” said Hugo with a too-large smile.

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Hugo lay naked on the floor of the office and motioned with the shotgun for the surgeon to approach with his surgical tool kit. Mary-Beth lay beside Hugo, naked also. Binder Snr’s hands trembled as he removed various instruments: scalpel, sutures, forceps, and needles, laying them on a cloth next to Mary-Beth’s decomposing corpse.

Hugo smiled up from the floor where he lay.

“You know what to do, Doctor. Local anaesthetic first, right?”

The surgeon shook his head, still reeling from what was happening in his office. He considered running, but after looking in Hugo’s eyes, thought better of it. He knew the man was completely insane, and if he did not do exactly what he instructed, he would be very dead.

His fingers shook with fear as the muzzle of the shotgun jabbed his midsection. He quickly administered the anaesthetic with a syringe into various junctures along Hugo’s right side, from the ribs down to the hip.

“Where you goin’, doc?” slurred Hugo, as the doctor began to turn away.

“I need to get some antiseptic wipes,” said the surgeon. He made his way to his desk and removed some sterile wipes from a glass wall cabinet behind his leather chair.

He looked over his shoulder briefly and saw Hugo grinning at him from the office floor. He held the shotgun unsteadily, at arm’s length, pointing directly at the surgeon’s head. The surgeon pressed the small record button on the remote control sitting on the edge of his desk. He knew the office security camera would whirr into life and capture what was happening. He suspected that he might not get to see the footage or enjoy his coming retirement.

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The Senior Investigating Officer leaned over and puked into the wastepaper bin next to his desk. The other officers looked away in disgust as the security camera footage replayed the grim surgery.

“I just kept doing what he told me to do,” explained the surgeon, choking back tears.

The monitor buzzed with the low-res footage as the bizarre scene showed the surgeon, hunched over the bodies of Hugo and Mary-Beth. The sound was barely audible apart from an occasional scream from Hugo, as the Surgeon cut and clamped, sutured and stitched.

The officers watched as the surgeon rose quickly from the floor, scrabbling out of camera range to reveal the torso of Mary-Beth joined just above Hugo’s hip with a blackened wound laced with tight stitches.

Hugo’s head rolled back and forth, and a blood-curdling scream burst from the computer monitor, flashes of white exploded from the barrel of the shotgun as he fired wildly around the small office, writhing on the floor.

The officers continued to watch the footage in silence, as Hugo appeared to lose consciousness. Nothing stirred onscreen, and then the sweat-soaked back of the surgeon appeared and bent down over Hugo and Mary-Beth’s bodies.

“I’m administering adrenaline and more painkillers at this point,” explained Binder, wiping sweat from his forehead with a bloodied handkerchief.

The footage kept playing, the surgeon clearly recoiling from the now conscious Hugo, who had the shotgun levelled at the surgeon’s bald head.

“I should’ve taken that damn rifle off him when I had the chance,” sobbed the surgeon.

One of the officers patted him on the shoulder and reassured him that he ‘did all he could’ve done.’ The doctor looked far from reassured as the camera footage continued to play.

Hugo tried to get to his feet and fell sideways with the dead weight of Mary-Beth’s attached torso. His face morphed with obvious pain, and a high-pitched scream burst from the monitor speakers. He dropped the shotgun on the floor, a flash erupting from the muzzle as it discharged involuntarily. The surgeon quickly darted out of camera range once again.

“This time I ran. I ran out of there as fast as I could and called you guys straight away.”

“You did the right thing, sir,” said the grim-faced Senior Investigating Officer.

The younger officers watched open-mouthed as the monitor now showed Hugo holding himself up on the edge of the surgeon’s desk, his arm wrapped around Mary-Beth’s naked torso, blood leaking profusely down his thigh from the now gaping wound, which had split open.

Hugo seemed to be talking to her, kissing the decomposed face, wiping the rancid flesh from its lips. He was visibly paler as he started to slip in the dark pool of blood at his feet. He let go of Mary-Beth to steady himself, and the wound visibly split, her limp body tearing partly away in a spray of blood as the stitches burst where they joined the bodies.

As Hugo tried to regain his footing, Mary-Beth’s body seemed to twitch, and then the limbless corpse reared up. Hugo’s face twisted with terror as he tried to recoil from the swinging corpse attached to his thin frame.

Mary-Beth appeared to launch herself at Hugo, the skeletal face visibly animated with rage. The black, rotting hole of a mouth stretched wide, teeth snapping at his neck.

Hugo collapsed on the floor in the middle of the pool of blood, the thrashing corpse on top of him, both covered in slick gore.

Two of the other young officers choked back vomit as they continued to stare numbly at the screen. An arm flailed underneath the heaving mass of flesh and blood, then a thin, shiny sliver of steel appeared from under the desk, clasped in Hugo’s clenched fist.

The surgeon’s scalpel slashed at the back of his wife’s corpse, hacking and cutting at the mutilated wound that half-joined the two together. As the bodies separated with each slicing cut, Hugo shoved the dismembered corpse away from his own eviscerated body. The screen started to flicker as the recording ended.

“What the fuck just happened?” asked the Senior Officer, a shocked look on his face.

The surgeon sat in the chair, sweaty bald head in his bloody hands. Some of the officers excused themselves and left the room, while the remaining few shuffled uncomfortably and looked at each other for answers. The coroner, who had been watching proceedings impassively from the doorway, took two steps forward.

“Two deaths. One by homicide, one by misadventure. The female’s time of death is at least one month before the male’s. Male neck wounds are unexplained, but bite marks clearly correspond with the female dental records and the footage you’ve just seen.”

“How the hell am I gonna write this one up?” asked the Senior Officer, shaking his head. He picked up the coroner’s report and placed it back on his desk on top of a stack of forms, case files and reference books. He placed his hand on top of it as if he was about to swear on the bible.

The coroner leaned across the desk, picking up one of the rubber stamps heaped in a basket next to the ‘in-and-out’ trays overflowing with paper. He rolled the stamp in the red ink pad next to the phone and pressed it hard onto the report folder.

‘CASE CLOSED,’ declared the imprint, now emblazoned diagonally across the cardboard cover.

The Officer picked up the folder and waved the coroner, surgeon, and the remaining officers out of the room. He opened the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet next to his desk and filed the report at the back of the other files marked ‘Case Closed.’

Slowly shaking his head, he repeated, “Case closed.” He took a half-empty bottle of scotch whisky from another drawer, unscrewed the cap, and drank half of its contents in a single mouthful, not giving a fuck if anyone saw him do it.

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