Mister Hands

*Mr. Hands*

It started shortly after Nicole and her husband Malcolm moved to the city of Spring Hill, Tennessee, in early-2005.

It’d been a mountain of stress off of the both of them to move down south, away from the clattering machinery and oceans of people and their noises, away from the rust belt and the megalithic concrete and steel towers of the Windy City. Things slowed down, they had more time to do all of the things they’d ever wanted with each other, to each other. Everything became copacetic. The winter was mild, with a few snow showers. It warmed up and their jobs became busier and more demanding. But, overall, things were fine.

But, in the last few weeks, Nicky noticed something change in Mal.

He used to be at least somewhat talkative at dinner, she noticed.

But now, he rarely looked up from his plate. If at all.

He wouldn’t touch her as much, let alone in the bedroom.

And he was spending more and more time home locked in the garage.

“Honey, I made dinner,” she yelled through the door.

No response, as usual.

One morning, she awoke to find him not even in the bed at all. She groggily rubbed the sleep from her eyes and rolled over to find his side of the bed empty. Nicky groaned and trudged into the bathroom to perform her morning ritual. As she approached, she noticed she heard Mal whispering something indiscernible. The door was cracked.

“Mal?”

Nicky noticed he was making strange noises... but oddly familiar.

“M-Mal?”

The sounds, groans, and whispering immediately stopped.

“Yes, Honey?”

“I need to use the bathroom.”

She really hoped he wasn’t doing what she thought he was.

“Yep. Almost done.”

She heard the shifting of clothing items and a belt, followed by a flush. When Malcolm opened the door, Nicky was taken aback to see him holding a laptop.

“Uh. What were you doing in there?”

“Oh,” he said, holding the laptop. “Catching up on some paperwork. Boss’s slave-driving us this quarter,” Mal added with a nod. He went to get ready for work while Nicky made a pot of coffee – keeping one eye on where he was taking the computer.

Mal gave her a peck on the side of her neck as he was heading out the door, but she stopped him before he could make it all the way out.

"Yeah?"

"Love you," she said, kissing him on the mouth.

He didn't reply, save a quick toothy smile.

She went over to the window and peered through the space between the plastic blinds. He sat in his car for a few minutes, likely checking his phone as usual, and then - when the engine started, and the car started shifting - Nicky darted to the closet beneath the stairs.

When she started up the device, she found - to her dismay - the hard-drive had been wiped bare.

No files were on the computer itself.

There wasn't even a browser downloaded...

Over the next several hours, Nicky did a room-by-room sweep of the house.

She was sick of it. Tired of it.

She wanted things to go back to the way they used to be, the way they were SUPPOSED to be.

NORMALITY.

Nicky wouldn't stop until she found the jump drive, he had all of the material on. She knew that most of what he was doing would be explained by finding out WHAT in the HELL he was LOOKING AT.

She heard a car door, and her heart sank into her gut.

Nicole slammed the drawer shut and bounded out of the room and into the shower, immediately turning it on as she heard the front door open. This way, it would look like she was showering as opposed to her far more involving prior activities.

Nicky started to relax as the small space began to fill with steam, clearing her sinuses and filling her lungs. This moment was quickly gone as Nicole suddenly realized she heard what amounted to multiple conversing male voices.

She turned the shower off.

"Yeah, that went really well," she heard her husband say. "We should do that again, Sam. Really."

"There's usually not so many, and it's not so jarring once you get used to it."

Nicky slipped into a bra, shirt and some jeans before hurrying downstairs.

Malcolm stopped mid-sentence as she rounded the corner.

"Hi," he said, his look of surprise unsettling.

"Hi, who's this?"

"This is my friend from work, Sam."

The larger, bearded man with a plaid shirt waved casually.

"Sam, this is Nicole. My wife."

"Hi, Nicole Somerset."

"Sam Hans," he said.

She was taken aback.

"Hands?"

"No, Hans."

"Oh, like the first name? Hans?"

He nodded. "Yeah, just went out for a few beers after work. Didn't get too sauced, though."

"Hmm," she frowned. "You don't look like the office building type."

"I'm maintenance, I don't get the cushy work like this guy," he said, jamming his thumb in Mal's direction.

"Yeah, so I come down when its slow and keep him company, only one there who does." Malcolm shrugged.

She nodded and sighed. "Well, we should have him over for dinner someday."

They talked briefly about work for another several minutes, before Sam showed himself out.

"Well, no more talk about work, I'm home now."

"Right?" As she said that, Nicky noticed that his keys weren't the only thing he fished out of his coat pocket.

The jump drives.

As soon as the keys, drive, and some cigarette butts left his pocket he departed for the bathroom as he slid off his jacket and threw it in the hall closet. As he was doing this, Nicky pocketed the drive and hid it in a place off the property where only she would find it.

The next morning, after Mal headed off to work after his morning routine, Nicky left out herself and headed into town in the focus parked in the garage. She bought a cheap, used laptop - something just barely functional enough to boot up and look at files - and headed straight back home, backed the car into the garage, and headed out to the hills behind her house.

Buried under a cluster of rocks in a plastic bag inside of a tin box was the flash drive. She plugged it into the laptop she'd bought fully charged, and what she found made her immediately begin retching.

Some of the most disgusting files, images and videos filled the screen. It involved flesh, teeth, blood, excrement, ecstasy, agony, aggression, violence, torture... possibly even death. Who in their right mind could have some of this as an interest... let alone a FETISH... baffled Nicole.

But perhaps what disturbed her most of all, was the realization that her husband didn't work in an office building.

He wasn't even going to work at all.

And she knew this, because of one of the people in the videos was her husband.

She found out they were making the movies and photos at an old, abandoned bunker a fair distance away from most of civilization - a smart move. When her husband got home, one of the first things he asked was, "honey, have you seen that flash drive?"

Nicky pretended she had no idea what he was talking about.

"What flash drive?"

"A little green flash drive, it's... it's a flash drive, honey."

She shrugged.

"I literally have no idea on earth what you're talking about."

Nicky was expressionless as she shrugged her shoulders, staring him dead in the eyes.

He scrunched up his face and frowned harshly, shaking his head quickly.

"What on earth is wrong with you?"

She said nothing, staring at him, blankly. Nicole then extended her outstretched hand.

"Keys."

"What?"

"KEYS, YOU- YOU KNOW, IT'S CAR KEYS, KEYS FOR THE CAR!" she shouted, waving her hands around.

She regained her composure and jammed her hand out again.

He sighed and dropped the keys in her hand.

Now Malcolm was returning Nicky's stare as she darted out the front door and threw herself into the driver seat of the sedan, slamming the door behind her. Malcolm wasn't sure as she drove off while he stood there in the threshold of the entrance and looked on if he was dumbfounded that she was behaving like this, or if he was dumbfounded that she had found out...

It was just as she'd expected - three deserted and filthy rooms and no trace that anyone had ever been there. She didn't know what she was expecting to find. Maybe she just wanted to see for herself if it were the place, she'd seen on that jump drive. Maybe she just wanted to delay the inevitable confrontation she was destined to have with the one person she thought was going to always be there for her in life.

Nicole flew home in a crushing dread that quickly transformed into blind rage.

It went from, "why me," to "why you," pretty damn fast, actually.

She was so angry she didn't even have time to sort through the bullet-train of thought over-encumbered with everything she'd always wanted to say to that man to pick out something coherent enough to be understood. Nicky tried a breathing exercise as she was getting close to home, but it didn't seem to help.

When she finally did arrive home, things got worse from there.

A red pick-up truck, at least two decades old by the looks of it, sat in shadow like a hibernating grizzly bear in her driveway. Her mouth went dry, and her thoughts disbursed as suddenly as they had assailed her while she struggled with whether or not to continue into the driveway - as Nicole had a feeling, she wanted to enable this person to leave as quickly as possible. She decided to park beside the vehicle, just out of the way, and she cautiously closed the car door.

She went in through the kitchen door, noticing an additional unsettling fact - almost no lights were on.

Nicole almost called out, but caught herself, deciding instead to leave the light off and make use of a small flashlight to avoid being caught off guard. She wanted to hit herself for getting into this situation in the first place - forced to skulk around like an intruder in her own home. Nicky was going to make Malcolm pay for this.

All of it.

Nicky almost jumped out of her skin when she heard a sudden high-pitched whining sound. It resembled a wounded animal, or possibly even a person. She didn't want to think about it, but she had to find out.

The unholy sound continued and became louder and more audible. Nicky determined that it must have been coming from a room upstairs. She followed the godless noises to their origin, and by about halfway up the staircase she realized it was the sound of a moaning man. By the time she got to the landing, she could hear indiscernible words being uttered in delirium, accompanied by a gut-wrenching hacking sound.

She froze as she approached the hallway… the rapid acceleration of the clarity offered by the sound being carried directly to here down the elongated space... from the room at the end of the hall... it was too much.

"AAAAAAHHHHH!!!!! MORE! MOOOOOORE!!!"

She started to weep as she realized the sounds were of a metal object - likely a large butcher knife - carving through meat. Hacking at it. Lacerating it.

Then it stopped.

Nicky stopped, too - almost halfway down the corridor.

A second went by.

Then two.

And that is when the silence was interrupted by something even more horrifying.

She heard the taught pulling of a thick wire and rotors, followed by silence. Then she heard a second yanking.

And a third.

The fourth was followed by one of the loudest chainsaws she'd ever heard searing through her eardrums and skull, which was in turn followed by what sounded like a meat thunderstorm.

"AAAAAAHHHHHHHH FUUUUUU-!"

It sounded like it was hailing... *inside the house.*

Then, the screaming stopped.

The meat-hailing stopped.

Nicole stopped, right in front of the slightly ajar door.

She could see through the crack the man on the television screen - her husband - stepping away from the camera. And as she pushed the door open, she felt the doorknob slick with fresh blood. She pushed the door the rest of the way open, and when she saw what was in the room with the TV and the camera...

Nicole can't even remember what he looked like, as it has become a repressed memory of hers; what remained of Sam Hans.

But she remembered that smile.