EXTREME WARNING. This is intended for persons of 18 years of age or above. If you are not 18 then go away.

EXTREME WARNING. This story contains descriptions of violence, snuff, torture, eroto-cannibalism and sexual acts. Do not read if these subjects are likely to offend.

EXTREME WARNING. This is an erotic fantasy, not to be confused with reality.

Please do not reproduce in any form for profit without permission from author.

The Clay Soldier

By Grim, (gw@REMOVEgrimwilliams.co.uk)

They were screaming inside my head, "Kill her," "Hurt her", "Rape her". There were legions of them, swarming in a confused anarchic mass, raising bedlam, making me think their evil thought.

She was only a young thing: seventeen, eighteen maybe, with a tight cotton top and short polyester skirt. I grabbed her round the throat, pulling her into the bushes, throwing her to the ground.

She struggled at first, kicking me in the thigh with her knee, aiming for the groin. She had spirit for sure, I like women like that.

I fell on top of her, releasing the clasp on my blade, pressing the cold steel against her neck.

"Cut the noise," I hissed, grabbing her hair and pulling at her head. "Cut it, or else I cut you!"

Her panic-stricken screams faded into hysterical sobs. Her body shook uncontrollably as she contemplated her fate. "Please," she begged. "Let me go. I won't tell. Honest, I won't. Please don't hurt me!"

But the spirits were already jumping out, circling like vultures anticipating a kill. They swooped down, swaying my thoughts, their hands clawing at her clothes.

They were vermin, scavengers, feeding on fear and foraging for carrion. If only she could see them as I see them. Then she would know. She must be serene. That was her safeguard. If she could control her terror she might stand a chance. Otherwise, I might as well tie the noose around her neck right now and be done with it.

She had a quaint little ring on her finger. I slipped it into my pocket and picked up her purse. Maybe I'd get lucky. She might be carrying money.

"You're going to be raped," I said, opening her purse. There were some coins inside, a few keys, but nothing much else. Damn. "It's going to happen, you know. No question. After that, you'll most likely be killed."

The blade of my knife wandered down her delicate neck, and from there, along the open vee of her blouse. She was convulsing, her small chest pulsating like she was about to heave.

"Oh my God," she sobbed. "Please. Leave me be. Please, I beg you, leave me alone."

It was pitiable really. She might have been my sister, my girlfriend, the girl next door. She was so ordinary, just a regular girl out taking a hike.

"Trust me," I ordered, fighting the buzzing in my ears. The ghosts were impatient tonight. "Pretend that I'm your lover. Imagine this is what you most want to do."

But her mind was frozen. How could she trust me? A stranger? A man she'd never met?

She wasn't even listening. She was simply reacting to the knife as it caressed her skin.

So I told her my name. I told her how I was the butcher's son and how I worked at the shop across the road. I told her that I'd often seen her walking and that I wanted to prove the strength of my feelings. I told her not to worry. I'm good with knives.

"I'm being forced into this, just like you," I said, teasing open the top of her blouse with the flat of my blade. "We're on the same side. I'm not your enemy. Not really. I'm trying to help you."

Suddenly I could see her bra and the shadow of her teats. I could smell the fragrance of her perfume. Such a magical sight! I sliced the buttons from her blouse, one at a time, just so I could see her better.

She gasped; the rhythm of her breathing changing to a rapid flutter.

Her bra was made of thin black lace. Her breasts were squashy and shaking inside their support. Her belly was flat and white.

"Calm down," I ordered, caressing her breasts. "Pretend that this is something you enjoy."

My dick was already dangerously erect. I wanted to rape her, to hurt her. I kept thinking of all the times she'd walked past my shop and not once come in. She was meat, my meat and I was aching to do her. I'd skin her of those clothes and then take her the way I do them all: savagely, brutally, without consideration.

"What's your name?" I asked, wondering what it would take to calm her. It seemed strange that I should know her so intimately except for that one personal fact.

The caress of my knife wandered around her neck, tracing a line from one ear to the other. "Maggie," she sobbed, twisting her head futilely from side to side.

I pondered for a moment, savouring the word, holding the steel tip against her jugular notch. It wasn't a cleaver: my knife. I'd left the big tools back at the shop. Instead I'd brought a boning knife. Not only does it have a comfortable handle but the long narrow blade is infinitely more threatening.

"Well, Maggie," I said, scything away the remnants of her blouse. As I did it I imagined I was jointing a cow, quartering it by splitting down the backbone and then cutting each of the sides in two. "I don't want to hurt you. I simply want to fuck you. Once we get you naked, then we can do what we have to do and you can go home."

What she said then I didn't quite hear. A train came hurtling by, its tungsten lights flashing across her face and chest, lighting her curves and illuminating her terror. She was screaming, I think. Certainly, she was finding this tough.

Maybe I should have bought her flowers, or chocolates, or even a half leg of lamb from the shop. A boning knife doesn't have the same romantic effect.

It had paralyzed her thinking.

"I used to think you were some sort of executive," I told her, slashing the sleeves from her blouse. In my head I was cutting through the joint I knew was beneath, cleaving through bone, stripping her of everything she was. "I'd see you walking to the station in your smart business suits, and I'd think, wow! The cat's whiskers! I'd admire your colour sense and your nylons and your pointed high heels. Your hair was always so prim, your makeup so perfect. And then I discovered you were a secretary. God. What a let down! A secretary! That's no better than me!"

Behind us, the carriages were still tearing past, one after the other, on and on they went. They were close and loud, for we were in that narrow no man's land between track and road, amidst the broken shrubs and stunted trees, the rusting cans and decaying bags of half eaten McDonalds.

On one side of us there was an army of commuters winding their way home in cars and on buses. On the other there were the stupid sardines in their boxes, sitting, standing, glancing out of their windows: tired from work, thinking of home, and just possibly, chancing a glimpse of my beautiful Maggie.

I collected the fragments of her blouse and deposited them in a small, tidy heap.

"Rape her," the spirits cried, becoming louder. They didn't like that I was dawdling. "Kill her. Tear the bitch to pieces."

Maybe they were worried about being disturbed. Maybe that's why they were in such a hurry. They were screaming at me, angry wasps swarming and preparing to sting, thousands of them, crabby and vengeful.

I could feel the pressure they were exerting upon my brain.

"Hurt her!" they bellowed. "Hit her! We want the cunt to quail!"

Now they were stretching her into the shape of an 'x', tugging her arms and legs in opposing directions, preparing her for me to do it.

"Pretend it's a dream," I said hastily, sensing that it was a moment for decision.

"Pretend I'm here to take you against your will. Can you do that?"

I unzipped her boots. They were leather, with three inch heels and a warm polyester interior.

"Pretend we've known each other since kindergarten. We were in the same class, right up through high school. You've always been sweet on me. You even helped me with homework."

Women hanker for this sort of thing. They like being taken by a strong, virile man, as long as it's someone they trust. They crave to be forced to screw dirty and hard, to be made to strip and then suck or take ass.

They get off on being degraded. The ghosts have told me that.

They might not admit it, not out loud. But it's there, the desire, that fantasy. It's in all of them, somewhere inside.

If this girl could accept it, maybe they'd be hope for her yet.

"It's what you most want," I told her, caressing her legs, pushing apart her thighs. "You want to be forced, to be made to submit. Can't you see that? It's simple biology, the female instinct to find a good mate. It's how women decide who'll make them good babies."

Again she said something and again I didn't hear.

But I couldn't blame the train this time. It was the noise in my head. It had become louder: unbearable.

The ghosts were showing me their displeasure. They wanted to be fed.

I tried to resist. I put my hands to my ears and fought to shut them out but what could I do? It was hopeless.

I closed my eyes but still the screaming wouldn't die. It was fuzzy, like the middle of a dream. I was having visions. There was a redhead and she'd been taken to a scaffold. She was wearing an old fashioned dress and there were two men sitting on her back holding her down.

Her head was positioned over a wooden block. On one side of her were two gentlewomen, her supporters – who were weeping softly - and on the other side was an axe man and he was raising an axe.

"Oh my God," Maggie groaned. She was struggling, scuffling, for they were stretching her, using her as rope in a brutal tug-of-war. They had her calves and her forearms and were pulling with super-human strength.

Suddenly, Maggie wasn't even really listening to me. She was screaming and fighting, desperate to free herself from those invisible fetters.

"Pretend that I'm your boyfriend," I implored, somehow repeating myself, pulling off her boots and tossing them away. I had to keep working. The spirits were upping the tempo. They were hungry. "You've got to. You've got to fight the urge to be afraid."

Her feet were small and dainty, with carefully manicured nails protected by layers of gaudy paint. I caressed them sensuously, kissing them with both lips and tongue.

"Please!" she wept. I could hear the cracking of her ligaments. "My arms! You're breaking them! For pity's sake! You're pulling them from their sockets!"

They had her on a medieval rack and were dislocating her joints.

It was horrible. I kept seeing women, always women, suffering, crying, begging for my help.

"Cut her!" they cried. It was the spirits, my demons. They were screwing with my head. I kept getting random thoughts, other people's thoughts.

A young gypsy was in prison. There was a lit brazier at her side and an elderly priest lifting coals with a pair of iron tongs. I could see a brightly coloured dress lying discarded and torn at her feet, strewn haphazardly upon the cold grey stones.

The thoughts were muddled and fused. Hooped earrings hung from her ears, a band of loose cloth swathed her middle and there were large smouldering craters blackening her breasts.

Who was she?

Her frame was tortured and curved, bent to the shape of a long twisted 's'.

"Hurt her," I heard. It was their voices again, insistent, but more urgent this time. "Hit her. You heard us. Make the bitch howl."

I loosened Maggie's belt and tugged it through the hoops of her skirt, winding it about my fist and swinging the tail.

What else could I do?

Her body arched, rising towards me, groaning and broken with pain. An ugly red weal sprung from her front. It was like a diagonal arrow pointing from midriff to shoulder, traversing the swell of her quivering breast.

I'd hit her. I must have done. Who else could have done it?

I did it again, making her scream, making her shout. There was hate in her eyes and profanity in her lungs. She was miserable and in pain. Her beautiful nails were clawing the soil, snapping like twigs upon brown brittle leaves.

"I don't want to hurt you," I moaned, towering above her and reining down blows. She was in such obvious distress, so small, so pretty, and so very, very young. "I'm sorry, Maggie. I don't want to harm you but I've got to do it. I do. I have to."

I stopped hitting her for a moment to catch my breath and to pull down her skirt: such a smart skirt. Well-fitted. A secretary's skirt. I held it by the hem and dragged it over her hips, tugging it down her long nubile legs.

There was a familiar name on the label, expensive. I noted the quality of its stitching and also the fact that it was lined.

She had a tiny thong underneath, the kind women wear these days. It was black, to match her bra, with a red ribbon sewn into the front.

Suddenly, once again a train rushed by, its white strobing lights catching our faces and Maggie's beautiful body.

It was then, with panic, that I realized she was about to die. The ghosts had taken their hold of her and were relentlessly increasing their grip. They were like constrictors with their loops coiled about a prey, inexorably crushing the life from it. It's both beautiful to see and deadly to watch.

There was something about Maggie that they liked.

She was going to die. I felt it. There was nothing I could do, not now. She might have been okay if she'd listened to me at the beginning, but now was too late. The spirits had caught the sniff of her.

"Get up," I drawled, swinging her belt through the air. "I want to see you dance. I need to see you perform."

The spirits stood over us, their bodies bent into the shape of a basilica, allowing us to climb to our feet. We stood in their malignant shadow, under their gaze, imprisoned by the force of their will.

I hit her then on the leg, upon the thigh, making her jump and jive. I did it again, over and over, turning her around and then whacking her ass, beating it until the bitch was back on her knees. She seemed to be praying. Her hair was sweeping the soil and her ass was stuck high in the air.

"Roll over," I ordered, pulling out my cock. She whimpered. It was a deep, guttural noise, coming from somewhere earthy in her stomach. It was almost a sob.

I knew she was ready. She wouldn't risk another beating.

"It's too late, Maggie," I sighed, stepping forward and wagging my swollen dick at her. It was hard, with a purple knob and an enormous thirst for pussy. "They've already smelt you. There's nothing I can do now."

I snicked the straps of her bra with my knife and tugged it from her, enjoying the sight of her young breasts. They weren't big, but they were firm, with tiny elongated nipples that begged to be cut.

When you do it, you cut from the bottom. You cut away from the breastbone and then they fall off quite cleanly.

"Oh God! What's going on?" she implored, staring at me through frightened bloodshot eyes. "What is it? What's going to happen to me?"

Her makeup had run and was bleeding across her cheeks, but otherwise she was coping quite well.

"You're going to die," I said, casually tossing away her bra. She wouldn't be needing that now. In fact, she wouldn't be needing any of her clothes now. Already there were hands mauling her breasts, cold fingers squeezing her nubs.

She screamed but I paid no attention. I didn't even care whether it was my words or the spirits that had spooked her

I was after her thong. "So let's be having you then, my little beauty," I murmured, hooking it between four fingers and tightening my grip. I wanted to tear it, to rip it from her hips, to hear the sound of searing elastic.

"You're a pretty woman," I drawled, caressing her long cascading hair with one hand while gripping her thong in the other. "It's going to be a shame to spoil your looks, but then, no one's last forever." Relentlessly I pulled at the tiny cloth, stretching it, lifting both her and the gusset so that it tautened and dug into her purse.

Her breath shortened and stopped. She was on her feet now. "Please!" she mouthed.

It didn't take long before she was on tiptoe, trying to relieve the pressure of the cloth burrowing into her pussy. "Please! Don't! I beg you!"

I grabbed her hair and pulled her face into mine. I could see the quiver of her nose and the stiffness of her cheeks. She was so close. I could almost taste her aroma. "This is going to hurt bad, real bad," I promised. "You won't die easy."

While she took that in, I yanked upon her knickers, tugging with all my brutal strength. Her eyes whitened and screamed, her lips broadening into an impossible howl.

There was a wrenching noise and the snapping of cloth. Her thong tore and whipped between her legs, the rapid friction burning her clit and scraping her lips.

I kissed her mouth, mashing her tongue onto mine and killing the scream she'd been intending.

I had her. She was crushed against my belly and she was now naked. I could feel the thump of her heart and the tremor of her breast. Her feet were scuffing the dead soil and her arms were flailing limply. She was apoplectic and helpless in her desperate efforts to break free.

There were appreciative gurgles from the spirits around me, salivating at the wonderful sight of her: her high breasts, her firm flesh. She was indeed as nature intended, as all women should be: absolutely, totally under the dominance of a man.

"Kneel," I ordered, swinging her belt through the air.

She whimpered, but then she realized I hadn't hit her, not this time. Her face creased for a moment. I think she even considered defying me, but then she looked again at the belt, and the knife in my other hand, and at once her mind was made up.

She sank to her knees, her back straight and proud, her breasts erect and ready for the punishment I would choose to inflict.

But the time for such games had ended.

I'd have to be quick. The spirits wouldn't wait long.

I forced Maggie's legs open and pushed myself between them, hurrying, knowing that speed was of the essence.

Already I could feel the drilling in my ears. They were climbing my nose, looking for ways to get into my mind.

I could feel them. They were shouting, barging, pushing: doing things that no one should see. They were filling every corner, every selfish moment of consciousness.

A Negro woman was suddenly in front of me, her body arched and in torment. She had plaited extensions to her hair and tits the size of melons. They were lacerated and sweaty and oozing with blood. Someone had fitted her with a brassiere of thorns.

She was being crucified. Iron nails punctured her wrists.

Random thoughts. Incoherent. Third party.

Difficult to concentrate.

The ghosts were starting their work.

I could see red sand, hot, in a desert, scalding to the touch.

The heat was burning her black, velvet skin, and in my hand was a knife, with a twelve inch blade and a handle of carved ivory.

They wanted me to kill her.

Its width was twelve inches. The two points were joined in a smooth curve, giving the knife the appearance of a beautiful quarter circle.

Maggie was beneath me.

But then they handed me a rope. The noose was already fastened and greased.

"Kill her," they said. "Do it now."

I pulled the rope about Maggie's neck and pulled the noose tight.

All the time I kept telling her how pretty she was and how she shouldn't be frightened. I told her so many, many things. How I'd first seen her that first day, for instance, and had followed her home to Great Windermere Street. Her apartment has a window on the second floor, two to the right of the dustbins.

I have to clamber around to get to it, over a wall and through a trellis of roses.

She has the habit of going into the bathroom when the news has ended, at fifteen minutes to eleven. She runs a bath, undresses, and then she climbs into it.

Sometimes I'll glimpse a bare shoulder, a sudden flash of thigh. Or there'll be the sight of something special but I can't decide quite what.

Was that her tit I saw, her butt, or just the hollow of her back?

The next day, I can't get that out of my mind: her tit, her back, the hollow of her back. As I joint a hundred chickens - cutting them in half, then quarters, laying them prettily in a line - I keep thinking of her.

And here I was, fucking her. Maggie. She was beneath me. Fighting.

"It's okay," I whispered, caressing her breasts. "It's me, only me."

Gasping.

Sobbing. Begging for me to loosen the rope.

Up and down I rode her, wondering why she wasn't at home with her mum and dad, why she'd been walking the streets alone.

"I love you," I cried, kissing her cheek. She was so tight, her pussy. It was choking me. I could feel it, its stiffness, the emptiness of her hole. Choking.

Oh God. My teeth were chewing upon her shoulder, and she was giving me as good as was got. I was cumming, and so was she, I think. Her eyes were wild, alive. Bulging. She was hitting, clawing at my chest.

Somewhere beneath her was an old rusting tin. She managed to dislodge it, but not the gorse and brambles.

They were penetrating her skin, little barbs tugging at her flesh.

I wrapped my arms around her and held her close, wondering how the ghosts would finish the job.

It was difficult to concentrate. I wanted to bite, to eat, but all I could think of was ramming her cunt, my cock in her pussy, being suffocated, sinking deeper and deeper into her bottomless void.

Ramming her. Again. And again. And again.

Until finally both of us moved no more.

****

When I woke up they'd gone. I was confused. Maggie was beneath me and she was asleep. I sat up, rubbing my eyes and looking around. The deed was done and somehow I'd missed it.

My cock was limp and my juice had dribbled down Maggie's thighs. She didn't seem to mind, but even so, I wiped her clean with a tissue.

I like to be considerate with a woman: they like you for it after.

Later, when it was dark, I carried Maggie across the road to my shop. She was cowering and naked, shitting herself in fear. It was night, but a yellowish light was shining through the window.

I threw what was left of her clothes into the waste bin, onto the guts and the brains, the blood and the mess.

A girl was lying on the slab, a big breaster. Her father was a preacher and her mother a nurse. I'd cleaned her offal and the rest of the inner workings, but otherwise I'd let her be.

"Her name's Emily," I said helpfully, noticing that Maggie was looking. "I'm sorry. I haven't had a chance to sew her up yet."

Maggie didn't seem really to take that in. She looked, but her eyes were cold, almost hurt that she had to share me with another woman on this, our first night.

"They killed her," I said. "It was them. The ghosts! Not me!"

Emily was still wearing her stockings, also black suspenders. The rest of the things I'd dumped in the waste bin.

"She was clubbing," I observed, brushing back Emily's hair. It lay in a loose pile around her head, in thousands of tiny ringlets. "She drank too much, I think. The spirits, they saw her and they took their chance. She was stumbling along the road pissed out of her mind."

I sighed. Emily seemed quite calm now, her muscles perfectly relaxed.

I'd been asked to take care of her while the spirits worked out what they wanted to do. During that time, Emily had serviced me well.

"The ghosts get this thing about a person," I said, bending down, and rolling Emily onto my shoulder, carrying her to the freezer. "It's like a fixation, and once it's set, you can't remove it. That's how it was with Emily."

Maggie had retreated to the far wall, or maybe she'd fainted. It was difficult to be sure. She was biting her nails without a thought in her head. She was petrified, literally. She couldn't think, move. She couldn't even breathe.

The freezer was about thirty feet square. Six months ago I had it especially extended.

I slipped Emily onto a hook and then pushed her along a rail towards the others. There were rows of them, all hanging on their smart steel meat hooks. Here was a Chinese clay army protecting its emperor, or maybe they were his harem, ready to service him in the afterlife.

And in front of them was my father. He was leading them, bayonet raised, ready for the charge. A six inch meat cleaver was still buried in his neck.

"I tried to reason with them," I explained. "To persuade them, just like I did with you. Emily's a nice girl, I said. She'll have a family: brothers, sisters, a mum and a dad. Just because she's a whore doesn't mean you have to kill her."

I didn't want Emily frozen. I just wanted her cool. So I tied a label around her big toe, to remind me which one she was. Then I walked back and washed down the slab.

"Now," I said pleasantly, rubbing the flat stone with a towel to dry it. "If you'll just lie down here Maggie, we'll get this done, and then we can all go home."

She didn't, of course.

They never do.

She just lay where she was, her cold eyes staring at me accusingly.

But her voice was booming, shouting, welling up within me, mimicking the cries of my father. "Butcher!" she said, swirling manically about my head.

She was piercing and discordant, joining the chorus of her fellow ghosts.

I lifted my hands to my ears, hiding from their terrible din.

"Death is our destiny," came the long mournful refrain. And then again, it was repeated. "Death. Death is our end. So go, you beastly man of weak clay, cut us no favours. Eat us; butcher us; use us as you will. Our flesh might well feed you, but our spirits possess you. We are no more in these frozen figurines of clay. Listen. Learn. We are here, haunting your mind."

The end