The Bone Cutters
by Renee S. DeCamillis
Genre: Psychological Horror, Supernatural Thriller
Horror, Psychological Thriller, Supernatural, a novella from the 2019 New Bizarro Author Series from Eraserhead Press:
Dory wakes up in the padded room of a psychiatric hospital with no recollection of how she wound up there. She soon finds out she's been Blue-Papered--involuntarily committed. She gets sent to the wrong counseling group and discovers a whole new world of psychiatric patients she'd never known existed. At first she just thinks they're cutters, all marked by similar scars, but then she finds out that those scars are from carving into their bodies where they chisel and scrape their bones. They harvest bone dust, and this dust is highly coveted and sought after, as well as highly addictive. When they realize she's never been"dusted", Dory becomes their target. After all, dust from a "freshie" is much more valuable than theirs. Frightened for her life, she desperately tries to prove to the psych. hospital staff that she's not delusional about these particular patients wanting to slice her open and scrape her bones. The staff doesn't believe her. They all think she's crazy. Dory ends up on the run, fighting for her life, trying to avoid getting "dusted" by The Bone Cutters.
Like Girl, Interrupted and "The Yellow Wallpaper", The Bone Cutters is one woman's dark and surreal experience with a madness that is not necessarily her own.
**Only .99cents on Amazon May 11th – 25th!!**
ONE
A sudden knock on the doorframe of my room startles me. The black
marker in my hand streaks across my sketch pad.
I’m not allowed to have a pencil—I might use it as a weapon.
Before I turn toward the door, my hand moves up to my head and
starts scratching.
“Come on. It’s time for group. You’re late. Let’s go.” A redheaded
nurse, toe tapping rhythmically on the linoleum, calls into my
closet-with-a-bed. The pastel colored butterfly print scrubs she’s wearing,
along with that thick shimmering hair, scream Mary Poppins. If she starts
singing, I’m going to vomit.
Mind foggy, I hesitate before I say, “I haven’t been assigned a
counseling group yet.” My fingers scratch harder. I can feel the fuzz of hair
growing back on my bald spot. I don’t want to go to any group.
“Oh,
no worries, dear. I know exactly whose hands to put you in.” I’m not sure how to read the
smile she gives me. Then she looks at the clipboard in her hand. She happily
huffs, if that’s even possible, and rolls her eyes. But that creepy smile
remains. “You haven’t had your meds. Why haven’t you had your meds?” Not
waiting for my answer, she says, “No worries. I’ll fix that. Let’s go, dear.”
She wills me out into the hall with a wave of her hand, almost like a
puppeteer. I can feel the pull.
Dear?
And that smile—I think she took my meds.
After
a quick stop at the nurse’s station, a plop of meds and water into my mouth,
the redheaded nurse—Nurse Hatchet is what the tag on her lanyard reads—ushers
me through the first door we come to that has a group of patients gathered
inside. The door clicks shut behind me. I reach under my tongue, pocket my
meds. My hand involuntarily starts scratching my head, again.
I’m
about to turn and flee, until every face in the circle of people whips toward
me. My eyes immediately look away. I look down at the black and white checkered
floor. I shove my shaky hands into the pockets of my jeans. With my
sneakered-foot, I push an empty plastic chair toward the group of patients.
I
enter the circle.
I
have no idea if I’m in the right group. It’s only my second day here. Feeling
all eyes on me, I can’t force myself to look up, to look anyone in the face.
Silence.
Shuffling.
A
cough.
A
man starts talking.
A
weight lifts off from me.
The
attention is now on someone else.
After
a couple minutes of what I assume is someone’s psycho-babble, it feels safe to
look up from the floor. His words—I can’t hear any of them. The vice that
repeatedly squeezes on my head and chest has always caused a malfunction with
my hearing, ever since I was a child. With the arrival of my teen years, it
never got any better—which is how I’ve ended up where I am.
Institutionalized.
A
new voice sounds out. I turn toward the sound.
A
skeletal-thin man speaks with passion of an insatiable hunger. His voice sounds
strained, scraping and clawing its way out of his mouth, stumbling past his dry
cracked lips. His eyes scream pain, empty and hollow, drained of what may have
been behind those doors before.
With
every syllable he utters, I can’t stop staring at his neck. With every bob of
his Adam’s apple, I’m fascinated, mesmerized. With every bob of his Adam’s
apple it slithers around the base of his neck.
The
scar.
The
size of a mutant slug—fat and glistening—with a thickness five times my thumb’s
width.
How
did it get there?
What
is it from?
Does
it hurt? Itch? Throb?
Does
he ever, sometimes, forget that it’s there?
These
questions shoot through my mind in rapid succession—as I stare.
I
can’t make sense of the scarred man’s words. My questions are too loud. Too
many. And I can’t stop staring.
I
need to hear his words.
I
force myself to listen. Now I can’t not listen. I can’t un-hear the insanity,
the desperation. His story is permanently etched into my brain.
“I
reopen it when I need to re-up.” The man speaks with a gravelly voice. The slug
writhes and slithers with every word. “I scrape a good amount with each
incision. The more I chisel and collect, the less often I need to slice open
the wound again. I stitch it. Let it scab over. Let the scab loosen and fall
away before my supply runs out.”
Supply?
Supply
of what?
From
the opposite side of the circle a woman picks up where the scarred man’s words
fade away. The sound of her voice jars my attention away from the slug. Her
words drag and drone and trip across the open hollow of the circle, landing in
my disbelieving-ears. “Then it starts all over again. The self-surgery. The
extraction.”
The
woman is scarred, too. Not her neck. Her upper arm. It snakes along the outside
of her bicep. It starts at her elbow and slithers up onto her shoulder. Thicker
than the man’s slug. And a lot longer. Snake-girl. “It hurts like Hell, but
it’s free. Music to a user’s ears—free high.”
Free
high?
The
term stuns me to stone, heavy and unmoving. I don’t want to hear anymore.
My
eyes start scanning the circle of people. Every one of them is scarred. All in
a different location on their bodies.
Cutters.
How
did I not notice this defining detail when I first entered into this circle?
“Users”—junkies.
The
wrong group for me.
But
I can’t speak up. I can barely breathe. I want to slip away, unnoticed, but I
can’t even move. My nerves have tied me to the hard plastic chair.
A
few moments pass. Maybe many moments. I don’t know. Someone is talking. My ears
don’t hear anything but my frantic garbled thoughts of how I can flee
undetected. I can’t even decipher what’s sounding in my head. There might be a
good idea in the chaos of my mind, but I can’t lasso one out.
A
strand of hair falls in my face. It starts tickling my nose. I force my hand to
tuck my hair behind my ear. My hands are wet, sweaty. I slowly rest my hand on
my knee. Now my knee is bouncing. I can’t stop the involuntary motions.
Shaking.
Bouncing.
Shaking.
Bouncing.
Sweat.
Sweat. Sweat.
“Never
let them see you sweat.”
Too
late.
The
sweat is causing wisps of my hair to stick to my forehead. Then I notice the
blood— under my fingernails. I curl my fingers under. Does anyone notice? If
not the blood, all of them must see my bald spot by now.
The
counselor hasn’t said a word. I don’t even know which one is the
counselor.
Every
one of them is scarred.
A
counselor with first-hand experience, I guess. They say that’s the best kind,
most respected by patients, especially addicts.
Who
are they anyway?
A
voice. Someone is talking. Louder now. Is it a different person? Or the same? I
don’t know. At this point nothing is making sense.
A
garbled voice echoes in my head. By the sounds of it, the voice is traveling
through a tunnel before it reaches my ears. Is it a man or a woman? I don’t
know. I can’t even make out any of the words. It’s as though all the words are
jumbled together, overlapping, tossed together like a salad. I can’t look to
see who’s talking. They’ll see the confusion plastered on my face. They’ll know
I don’t belong. They’ll think I’m judging them.
Never
judge. I don’t know where they’ve traveled. Their shoes don’t fit me.
I
can’t focus on the voice anymore. It’s too maddening. I stare, instead, at the
scars.
The
slug.
The
snake.
I
can’t take it anymore. If I can’t make myself leave, I need to know . . .
I
don’t want to know, but questions fly, like hurricane winds, out of my mouth
before I can rein them back. The loud person is still talking when I blurt out,
“You get high by carving into your own body? All of you?” I scan
the circle, addressing the group. My eyes can’t focus on any one face. Instead,
my eyes dart back and forth and round and round from person to person. They all
nod in unison. As soon as people turn toward me, I feel the flames reddening my
cheeks. I don’t see their eyes on me. I feel them. “How? I don’t understand,”
my voice croaks, barely letting the words slip out. It feels like a snake is
wrapped around my throat, constricting.
Sweat
drips faster. My bloody fingers start scratching the peach fuzz again. Why
can’t I leave it alone, let the hair grow back, look normal again?
The
thought makes me scratch harder.
My
eyes accidentally fall on a husky tattooed man in camouflage shorts. His
drug-serpent slithers along his shin. Very fitting with his Medusa tattoo. The
artist worked it into her snake-hair, almost undetectable as a scar—
until
I’d realized this is a group of cutters. Not your typical cutters. They cut to
get high. Somehow. Some way. A high follows every cut.
I
don’t get it.
The
Medusa Man reluctantly, almost painfully, speaks up. It’s as though my eyes
pushed him to talk. The veins in his neck are bulging out, a network of rivers.
Every word that emerges from him looks, and sounds, like a weightlifting
challenge to haul up from his vocal chords out into the audible world. The
result—the voice of a pre-pubescent boy coming from a man. “It’s in the bones.
Everyone’s bones. His.” He nods toward Slug Man. “Hers.” He nods toward Snake
Girl. “Even yours.” He looks, unblinking, straight into my stinging eyes.
The
shock must be painted on my face.
His
eyes widen and he nods. “Yes, even your bones.”
I
shake my head, rub my eyes. The sweat stings.
Slug
Man—he acts as the spokesman for the group. “You look confused. Let me explain—
Once we slice ourselves open and get down to the bone, we chisel and scrape
bone dust into little baggies, onto tinfoil—whatever the choice. It’s like
heroin, but all natural. We can cook it and inject it. We can smoke it. Snort
it. Best of all—it’s free.”
“Best
of all?” I cringe. My stomach turns. My skin itches, like spiders are crawling
all over me. Scratching my head, my hair slicks back as though it hasn’t been
washed in days. Blood, warm and slick, starts dripping down my forehead.
My
knee is bouncing faster. It won’t stop.
No
judgment. No judgment. No judgment.
Now
it’s time for my burning question—“How the Hell did all of you find out about
this . . . this drug-like substance in our bones?”
Slug
Man speaks through his gap-toothed grin. “From my work at the crematorium.”
Each
cutter, each addict, starts stating how they made their discovery. All eyes are
on me as they speak. I can’t force myself to look directly at any of them. I
can’t understand what any one of them is saying. They’re all speaking at once.
They’re all staring at me. And they’re all getting closer.
My
eyes dart around the circle, around the room. The groups’ voices are getting
louder as they’re all getting closer to me. Metal chair legs squeak and scrape
across linoleum. I scan the room for the door. I’m disoriented. Displaced. I
can’t remember which side of the room I came in through.
Scanning.
Scanning.
There
it is. The door. It’s behind me.
Just
as I’m able to peel my sweat-drenched back off from the chair and unglue my ass
from the unforgiving hard plastic seat, I notice, as I start to stand, that I’m
now surrounded. I’m in the middle.
In
the center of the circle of addicts. The cutters. All eyes on me.
I
take a deep breath. My return-breath trips and stumbles up my throat and gets
lodged there.
What
do I do?
What
can I say?
All
eyes on me. Big, bulging, hungry eyes. Craving eyes.
Staring.
Judging.
Wanting.
Staring.
Judging.
Wanting.
My
skin crawls.
My
hand scratches.
More
blood drips.
The
more I bleed the wider the users’ eyes grow.
I
can’t breathe.
I
can’t breathe.
I
can’t fucking breathe!
The
door. I see it. I stare at it. It’s close at first. But the longer I stare, the
farther and farther away it moves.
Feet
frozen to the floor like a tongue on an icy flagpole, I’m unable to move.
The
room starts spinning.
My
head is going to burst.
Where’s
my breath? I can’t find my breath!
I
have to move. I need to leave. How can I get the fuck out?
I
see the door. It’s so far away. I don’t think I can make it. I don’t know if I
can even make myself move. Then I feel a breath. A breath not my own. It’s
blowing hot against my neck.
I
turn. A hand reaches for me. I flinch, but not fast enough. A long, rough
finger slides across my forehead then quickly pulls away.
Snake-girl.
She licks her finger. “Mmm . . . Fresh. I bet I can get to your bones fast, you
skinny little ball of nerves. Won’t hurt me one bit.” She leans toward me and
sniffs my sopping hair, what’s left of it.
That’s
it. I can’t fucking take it anymore!
Somehow,
some way, I find the strength to move.
1.) What are your top 10 favorite books/authors?
I always
find it tough to pick favorites in literature, as well as in music and film. My
tastes vary. What I think of as my favorites can often change with my mood or
with the day that I’m making the list. And I often find that if I make a list
like this, a week or so will go by and then I realize I somehow forgot some of
my favorites.
I have a
very hard time keeping this to only 10; these are in no particular order, and
there are more than ten listed and more that I could add.
Authors: Edgar Allen Poe, Ray Bradbury,
Shirley Jackson, Stephen King, Kurt Vonnegut, Chuck Palahniuk, Elizabeth Hand,
Kelly Link, Joe Hill, Mary SanGiovanni, Denis Johnson, Paul Tremblay, Victor
LaValle, Clive Barker, Damien Angelica Walters…
Books: Slaughterhouse Five and Welcome to the Monkey House, by Kurt Vonnegut; Fahrenheit 451 and The
Illustrated Man and Something Wicked
This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury;
Jesus’ Son, by Denis Johnson, Controlled Burn, by Scott Wolven; Stranger
Things Happen, by Kelly Link; Behind the Door, by Mary SanGiovanni; Wylding Hall, by Elizabeth Hand; The
Ballad of Black Tom and The Devil In
Silver, by Victor LaValle; Head Full
of Ghosts and Disappearance at
Devil’s Rock, by Paul Tremblay; 1984,
by George Orwell; We Sold Our Souls, by
Grady Hendrix; Books of Blood, by
Clive Barker
Side note: As I’m writing this answer, I
notice that my favorite authors are often men, (Same as in music—many of my
favorites are men.) and when I think about the stories I write there is a big
male component to them. Even though the protagonist in The Bone Cutters is a female, there is a strong male cast of
characters, and the main antagonist is female. And many of my other stories
have male protagonists, or have many supporting roles that are males. I have a
hard time not psychoanalyzing everything, and when I look deeper into why this
might be, I realize that many of my friends throughout my life have been
boys/men. Yes, my few closest friends are often females, but my “gang” is often
men. I’ve always been that chick who easily hangs with the guys and has more to
talk about with dudes than with the majority of the chicks in the room—as long as
the conversation isn’t about sports. I don’t watch/follow sports. I often have
a dark and harsh sense of humor and am often snarky and sarcastic, which seems
generally more fitting with men than women. I like to razz people and give
people shit when I joke around, and many women are often put off by that and
get offended, even though that is never my intention. (I’m speaking in
generalities here and purely from my own personal experience.) When I was
growing up, a lot of girls were often mean and nasty and competitive and
hateful, which pushed me over to the boys’ side. As a child I was a balance of
Tom-boy and Hello-Kitty-girl, never a girly-girl, so I think my brain is just
wired to understand and get along with boys/men a little better than I generally
can with girls/women. That’s not to say that I don’t get along well with women.
They just need to be the type of women who understand me. Nor does that say
that I don’t have women authors/musicians whose work I love and admire. I just
often lean more toward the male side of things. Now that I’m meeting and
getting to know some female horror authors, I’m learning that these are often
the type of women who understand me and we can get along well, like I can get
along with the dudes. It seems I’ve finally found my group of girls/women I can
get along with and connect with—women horror writers. Women on the dark side of
life are where it’s at! Now I just need to find more women horror authors whose
stories I can connect with. That is a goal of mine.
2.) Do you prefer to write in
silence or with noise? Why?
I prefer to write in relative silence. I
can’t have music playing while I write. I’m a musician and a singer, and if
music is playing it will make me want to sing and listen intently to the music,
which is not conducive to focusing on my writing and getting that work done. I
do like to have the windows open on nice days to hear the sounds of nature
while I write. I live in the woods of a small town, and my neighborhood is very
quiet. I do also sometimes like the thrum of white noise from a fan or a space
heater. Ever since I was a very young child I’ve had to sleep with a fan on;
the white noise relaxes me, and that carries over to my writing time.
3.) Do you write one book at a time or
do you have several going at a time?
Right now I do have more than one project
in the works, but I find it hard to split my focus. Even though multiple
projects are in the works for me, I typically spend chunks of time focused on
one at a time. If I bounce back and forth too much I find that the work will
lack depth, or it will end up with summarized passages peppered throughout that
still need to be fully fleshed out. Also, it takes me too long to finish a
project if I have too many going at one time and if I bounce back and forth too
much. One of my pet peeves is not finishing something I start. It drives me
batty knowing that I have many unfinished projects. That’s something that many
aspiring writers struggle with: lots of great ideas that get started but never
get finished. I don’t want to be that sort of writer. I need to get shit done.
I need to feel productive and have something to show for all the blood, sweat,
and tears I put into my work.
4.) Pen or type writer or computer?
Pen and
computer: Typically when new ideas hit me I have to use a pen and notebook to
write an outline, a rough draft of a scene, or a character sketch, or dialogue
I’m trying to get just right. I sometimes will handwrite many scenes or many
chapters in a notebook. See, the thing is, I don’t just write at my writing
desk in my office where my computer is; I’m constantly thinking about what I’m
working on and how to make it better or how to move forward with the story or
coming up with new story ideas or character ideas, and I need to be able to get
those ideas down right away before I forget them. A lot of ideas come to me at
night when I’m trying to fall asleep, or when I’m in the shower, or when I’m
driving—those sorts of mundane routine activities—and I don’t have any gadgets
in those places. I prefer fewer gadgets in general anyway, and I especially
have no computer type gadgets in the bedroom. There’s something about computers
and cell phones and those types of computerized electronics that create
anxiety, and I have a hard time sleeping if those devices are close to me. I’m
also a firm believer that there’s something about the act of handwriting that
has a more direct line with our brain, a more direct means to tap into our
creativity, so I will always handwrite a lot of my first draft work.
5.) Advice you would give new
authors?
1.) Finish your damn
work! Don’t look at editing and revision as “work”. It’s fun! It’s where
you really get to know your characters inside and out, and it’s where you
really get down to the nitty-gritty of the story that has unfolded—the real
story, not the one you try to force, but the one that has to happen naturally.
2.)
Seek reviews before your book
comes out.
Promote your book like crazy before its publication day. Seek interviews and
podcasts and blurbs and whatnot before your book comes out. Have a consistent
and approachable online presence. I didn’t do enough of that before my book was
published. I was dealing with some major health issues at the time, which
hampered my ability to do that work for myself, and I also didn’t realize back
then how important it is to do so much of that type of work before publication
day. Now that my book has been out in the world for a little over seven months,
I am struggling to get reviews; it seems like in the publishing world seven
months ago is old news. Barely anyone even responds to my inquiries, and asking
people I know who have read my book and tell me awesome things about it seems
to fall on deaf ears for some reason. Honestly, I can’t even get my former
writing mentors to post a sentence or two review, or throw me a blurb. It’s
quite disheartening, but I love writing and I just push on through the
letdowns, as I always have in all areas of my life. Keep that chin up! Keep on
keepin’ on.
3.)
Keep submitting your work! Don’t get discouraged by rejections. They’re not personal. They’re
very subjective. Take rejections as a push to make your stories better, as well
as a push to keep sending your work out to publishers to see whose interest you
will spark. Also, look at rejections as a sign that you’re doing what needs to
be done to get your work out into the world.
6.) If you could tell your
younger writing self anything, what would it be?
This can all go as advice to all aspiring writers:
Don’t be scared. Don’t hold back. Speak the truth. You can’t
please everyone, so don’t try. Write down every idea before you forget them.
Make sure to put your ideas to work to create something you’re proud of. Read
as much as possible and read many different authors—not just the work of the
few authors you already know you love. You’ll miss out on a lot of great
authors if you only stick to what you know is “safe” or what is a sure bet that
you’ll love it.
7.) What made you want to become
an author and do you feel it was the right decision?
The simple answer is—Edgar Allen Poe’s work made me want to
write stories. (Also, refer back to
the question about how I became an author for more on this.) To delve a little deeper: When I was younger I realized that I can express myself better with the written word
than I can with speaking. I am the person who struggles to articulate my
thoughts when I talk with people, and I often get self-conscious when speaking
to others. Sometimes every thought I have just flies out of my mouth before I
realize how it will sound to others. Also, I will often explain things in
various ways because I feel like my point is not coming across the right way
and people don’t understand where I’m coming from. I often find that when I’m
talking to people there comes a point when all of a sudden a wave of
self-consciousness washes over me—I get this sort of out of body experience and
hear nothing but my voice and see nothing but all eyes on me and I often stop
short because I all of a sudden find myself stuck, like I’m not being
understood or like maybe I’ve been going on and on and am losing people’s
interest/attention, or like maybe people just really don’t give a fuck about
what I have to say. When that happens, I often walk away from that experience
realizing that, wait—I wasn’t fully understood because I didn’t tell it all; I
got too self-conscious and clammed up. (I have a history of performance anxiety
and social anxiety when it comes to my voice, which is why I dabbled in
acting—as a means to work through that anxiety. I’m better with it all now, but
it’s still a constant battle.) Writing helps me work through what’s going on in
my head, and it allows me to go back over what I have to say in order to find
ways to more clearly and concisely articulate my thoughts and meanings. Also, I
just love words! I love to put words together that flow and bounce and make
people feel an array of emotions. I love rhyming and rhythms and stories, and I
just love to create. Stories fuel me, and writing helps me expend my creative
energy and my creative needs. To sum it all up—writing makes me feel good. And
yes, it’s the right decision for me.
Book Trailer
A reading of Chapter 1:
Renee S. DeCamillis is a dark fiction writer, an Editorial Intern with Crystal Lake Publishing, a member of the Horror Writers Association, a lyricist and poet, a life-long musician--hard rock/blues rhythm guitarist and singer, & a tree-hugging hippie with a sharp metal edge.
Renee earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the Stonecoast Graduate Program, she has her BA in psychology, and she attended Berklee College of Music as a music business major with guitar as her principal instrument. Music has been a huge part of Renee's life ever since she was a young child. She has been in a number of bands where she took on various roles, including hand percussionist. Renee is also a former model, school rock band teacher, creative writing teacher, private guitar instructor, A&R rep for an indie record label, therapeutic mentor, psychological technician, and pre-school teacher. (Yes, she loves to wear many hats; she is known to have worn thirteen hats all at once--literally.) She is also a former gravedigger; she can get rid of a body fast without leaving a trace, and she is not afraid of getting her hands dirty. Renee lives in the woods of Maine with her husband, their son, and a house full of ghosts.
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