Title:  Gutless  (Prologue / 17 parts)
Author:  Magdeleine
Keywords:  Casefile, UST, Angst
Content/Rating:  NC-17, but not quite how you think.
Summary:  Deaths in a small town, Uber-UST, and a parrot.
Spoilers:  Nary a one.
Disclaimer:  Not mine, but it beats the hell out of Fight Club.
Archive:  Xemplary, Gossamer, Spookies OK; everyone else please ask.
Feedback:  Please do.  playwrtrx@yahoo.com
URL: http://shannono.net/theden
Notes:  Author's notes at the end.


"The scientific approach to life is not really appropriate to states of 
visceral anguish."  
	--Anthony Burgess
 
GUTLESS

Prologue

Cooper Street
Tehtonka, Kansas
Wednesday, 9:36 PM

"... refused to comment on the mysterious death of Lola Gruber.  
Sources close to Sheriff Volney, however, have indicated that although 
the local woman was found Tuesday morning, it is very likely that she 
had been dead since sometime Monday night ..."

*THUNK!!*

Aimee opened her eyes.

At first her head ached too much to focus, and all she was aware of was 
the scratchy couch cushion under her cheek that smelled like an allergy 
sufferer's worst nightmare.  One hand was cold; she let it scrabble 
around until wiry carpet fibers under her fingertips told her that she'd 
fallen asleep with one arm hanging off the couch.  The other arm was 
faint and numb, folded hard under her torso like paper in an envelope.

She'd had the flu for three days, and at the moment it felt like she'd been 
asleep for all of it.  She shifted onto her side and the skin over her 
breasts and stomach went hot, fizzing and boiling as the blood came 
back to the surface.  Fever spiked down her arms as she moved, forking 
at her hands like lightning.

"-- sources also revealed that there was no sign of forced entry at 
Gruber's home, although they admit that there is some question of 
whether or not the front door was locked --"

The jangling silver light in front of her resolved itself into the television 
screen.  Sideways, from her perspective, but otherwise recognizable as 
the KSNW news.  Channel three.  Normally she wouldn't be caught 
dead watching KSNW, but at the moment it didn't seem so bad.

God, she really must be sick.

"-- whether this bizarre death could have been the result of natural 
causes," the news anchor announced with a solemn face.  Stephanie 
something.  Big-haired bimbo.  "We caught up with Sheriff Volney at 
the county courthouse today." 

The shot of Stephanie cut away to grainy footage of a big man with a 
gray mustache, angry and on the move.  His mouth moved silently for a 
moment before the sound kicked in.  "-- telling you that this was not -- I 
wouldn't call it an evisceration, no.  Who told you that?"

*THUNK!*

Aimee finally remembered what woke her up in the first place, and 
twisted around to face the ceiling.  "GREG!" she croaked.  Her throat 
was dry, her mouth stiff with ropy saliva; she had to work hard just to 
form her brother's name.  "HEY!  GREG!  CUT IT OUT!"

Silence from upstairs.  She listened suspiciously, the skin of her temples 
feeling thin and papery over her pounding veins.  Nothing.  She let her 
head fall back against the couch cushion, thinking of her lease and the 
hefty deposit she had on this place.  He'd better not be moving 
furniture.  Last time he'd knocked a four-inch hole in his wall and had 
seen nothing wrong with just hanging a poster over it and calling the 
problem solved.  If he pulled something like that again, she'd kick his 
ass out -- if she didn't kill him first.

The television flickered and the sound cut out for a moment.  After a 
moment, just as it always did, it snapped back to normal.  "-- victim was 
found in her home near Tehtonka late Tuesday morning by her sister-
in-law.  KSNW's John Eskridge spoke with Joanne Gruber earlier 
today."

The close-up of the reporter cut away to a shot of a tear-streaked 
woman with lanky hair, standing in too-bright sunlight in front of some 
dingy siding.  "It was awful," the woman said in a strained voice.  She 
sniffled once and dabbed her eyes on her sleeve in a businesslike 
manner, as if ignoring the implications of tears would keep them from 
overwhelming her again.  "I knocked for such a long time, you know, 
and I thought Lola was just downstairs doing laundry so I walked on in, 
but when I finally found her she was upstairs on her bed and she was ... 
she was ..."  The woman teared up again, half-turning from the camera 
as she bit her lip and fought for control.  The camera stayed on her, 
merciless in its blank curiosity, until she shook her head and waved it 
away.

Back to the news anchor, who gave the camera a look of solemn 
concern that came a moment too late for authenticity; someone in the 
control room must be giving the cues late.  "If you have any 
information on the death of Lola Gruber, please call the Cooper County 
Sheriff's Office."  A number appeared at the bottom of the screen.

That was quite enough about the murder for one day.  Aimee fumbled 
at the coffee table for the remote control, knocking over a bottle of 
medicine.  The lid was off.  Crap.  Red liquid oozed over the surface of 
the table, filling the room with the cloying stink of cherry-flavored 
alcohol.  Clots of the stuff hung off the lip of the bottle.

She made a face and pried the remote out of the mess.  The flu had left 
her so weak that she had to use both hands.  Gooey strands dangled 
from the damn thing as she took aim at the television and fired off a 
channel change.

"-- creating a line of thunderstorms moving in our direction," said the 
Channel Ten weatherman.  "The good news for us is that the front is 
moving very slowly, so it won't be here until Sunday or so.  The bad 
news is, this batch of thunderstorms is a doozy.  Get out and enjoy that 
warm weather while you can, folks --"

The remote was starting to shake dramatically in Aimee's hands.  She 
braced her elbow against the edge of the couch and changed the 
channel again.

"-- half off the retail price.  This is a limited time offer --"

She started to drift off again, the sticky remote coming to rest against 
the collar of her flannel pajamas.  It would stain, of course.  She didn't 
care.

"Ohhhhhhh ..." a male voice groaned.

Her eyes snapped open and she stared at the television.  What the hell 
was she watching?

A tanned, muscular man on her television flashed a toothy smile.  
"Order the Oxyciser NOW and get a FREE instructional video!" 

An infomercial.  What the --

"Mmmmmm ..."

It wasn't coming from the television.  Her gaze drifted back to the 
ceiling.  

A gravely, throat-rending moan came from her brother's room.

Great.  She was down here dying of the flu, so of course Greg went 
upstairs to whack off.  Of course.  Aimee rolled her eyes and turned the 
volume up.  

"This amazing machine would ordinarily cost you more than one 
hundred and fifty dollars, but if you order TODAY, you can have the 
award-winning Oxyciser in your home for only eighty-nine ninety-five!"  

A longer groan from upstairs, this one with a sort of a yipping noise at 
the end.  The infomercial did nothing to cover it up.  God, why hadn't 
she rented a house with carpet?  Or better yet, one that was 
soundproofed?

She extended her entire arm to point the remote this time, as though 
somehow that would make it work better and faster.  

On the television screen, the camera swung dizzily down to focus on a 
row of spandex-clad women lying on their backs, their thighs and 
buttocks propped up on rapidly oscillating plastic stirrups, their feet 
skittering around on the floor.  The jiggling was minimal on two of the 
women, but the other three were bobbling like statuesque gelatin molds.

"Ugh," Aimee blurted, starting to feel seasick.

"OHHHHHHHHHH," Greg enthused from upstairs, louder than ever.

This time Aimee pointed the remote at the television with such violence 
that it struck the edge of the coffee table.  The battery panel popped 
open on impact and the batteries tumbled out, rolling out of reach.

Upstairs, Greg's moans continued to spiral toward ecstasy.  On the 
television, the women continued to jiggle, hips grinding away at thin 
air.  To add insult to injury, the screen flickered and the sound cut out 
again.

"Fuck."  Aimee flung the disemboweled remote at the television.  

That was when Greg screamed.

Aimee lurched to her feet and started scrambling toward the stairs 
before she really thought about it.  This wasn't normal.  She'd heard a 
lot of Greg's self-induced love life back when he'd hit puberty, and a 
couple of times since then, and this wasn't normal.  This sounded bad.  
This sounded like he'd hurt himself.  

She tried not to focus on what Greg could have done to himself that 
would have made him scream like that.  Instead, she concentrated on 
climbing the stairs without killing herself.

The first of the broad wooden stairs made a sound like a shot as she 
stepped on it, and even though it *always* did that and she should 
have expected it, she shrieked.  Her vision wavered -- when she looked 
wildly down at the step, her feet seemed to be small and very far away, 
as though she were looking through the wrong end of a pair of 
binoculars.  

Her legs were shaking too hard to support her; she collapsed to her 
knees and hauled herself up one stair after another on all fours, the 
world tilting back and forth like something out of a funhouse.  The 
yellow light bulbs dangling from the ceiling seemed to strobe past her.  
An awful silence seeped down from her brother's room in cold waves, 
her own noises insignificant compared to that icy quiet.  She could 
distantly hear the wheezy gasps of her own breathing and the gritty 
noise of the dirty wood under her hands, and God, wouldn't it be 
hysterically funny when she got upstairs and it turned out that she'd 
panicked just because her brother had been masturbating to a 
particularly good picture of Brad Pitt?

They'd have a good laugh over this later.  They would.  And then she 
was going to get a really, really thick layer of carpet for his room to 
make sure this never happened again.

Concentrate on that.  Concentrate on later.

The last stair came as a shock.  She collapsed on the sudden horizon of 
the hallway, her hands fluttering against the floor like pinned 
butterflies.  "Greg?" she called weakly, her voice cracking on her 
brother's name.  No answer.  "Greg?  Are you okay?"

The cold silence soaked into her joints and filled her ears with a 
seashell roar.  She struggled down the hallway on bruised and aching 
knees, her hand trailing along the cold wall for balance, the flannel of 
her pajama bottoms whispering secrets along the hardwood floor.  She 
froze at the door for an eternity, staring up at the monolithic stretch of 
wood.

She stretched a shaking hand into the unknown.

She knocked.  

"... Greg?"

There was no answer.  

Downstairs, the television screamed to life.  "ORDER NOW!  LOSE 
WEIGHT THE NATURAL WAY WITH OXYCIZER!  RECOMMENDED 
BY DOCTORS!"

Aimee tried to pretend that she was respecting Greg's privacy, that the 
reason she couldn't bring herself to open that door was simple fear of 
interrupting some kind of ... private moment.

The frozen knot in the pit of her stomach testified to her lie.

"YOUR FRIENDS WILL BE AMAZED!"

She pushed the door open with numb hands.

Dim yellow light from the hallway flooded into her brother's darkened 
room.  Aimee's world tilted again and she leaned hard against the wall, 
panting, her knuckles white where they clutched the door frame.

Her mouth was dry.  She breathed in a mouthful of silence and her 
brother's name whispered out of her like ice flakes.

She licked her lips uselessly.  "Greg?"  She couldn't see him.  Her fist 
clopped woodenly against the door even as she realized there was no 
reason to knock.  "Greg, are you --"

"JUST FIFTEEN MINUTES A DAY, THREE TIMES A WEEK!"

There was an odd smell in the air.  She noticed it on a level just above 
subliminal.  The smell of that hideous silence, perhaps.

"Greg?"

She shuffled into her brother's room on her knees like a child, recoiling 
from the silence, from the images of what could be.  Her eyes were wide 
open, the staring, straining eyes of a woman searching the dark for a 
recent nightmare.

She found it.

Her legs gave out and she folded up like a broken doll, her butt hitting 
her heels and grinding the tops of her ankles against the hard floor, her 
hand still clamped on the doorknob.

Greg was draped across his bed like a rag doll.  His shirt was off, and 
she could see a searing red mark, like a sunburn ... red all over his chest 
and stomach, red where his thin frame seemed caved in, hideously 
slumped, hideously *wrong*.

Aimee hitched in a breath and tried not to scream. 

"... Greg ...?"

He didn't move.

"... Greg??"

"YOUR LIFE WILL NEVER BE THE SAME!"

The smell was much stronger in here.  A sloppy odor, like unwashed 
socks going to seed in a men's locker room... and, subtly, playing along 
underneath it, something familiar.  Like bacon.  A homey odor at odds 
with the cold fear that was tearing at her stomach with razor claws.

Greg wasn't breathing.  She could see it from here; he wasn't breathing.  
Her world dimmed and stumbled but her brother's body remained at the 
epicenter of the quake.

He was dead.  He was dead he was dead he was dead he was d --

"CALL TODAY!"

That smell wasn't bacon.  Aimee suddenly realized what it was.

Sour acid rushed up her throat -- she turned to one side barely in time 
and threw up violently.  The thin vomit pattered irregularly onto the 
bare floor, puddling and trickling down into the cracks between the 
boards.  It hung off her lips in long glistening strands.  Some stunned, 
distant part of her mind noticed the bright pink color and she thought 
of blood and bubblegum ice cream before remembering the cherry-
flavored medicine.  The smell hit her, and she heaved again, fruitlessly, 
because even the stench of her own vomit wasn't enough to cover up 
the sweet smoky smell caressing the back of her throat.

The smell of her brother's roasted flesh.

<X><X><X><X>

End of Prologue / 17 sections

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