The Bone Cutters by Renee S. DeCamillis Book Tour and Giveaway :)
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!!**
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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.
With
a crash and a clatter, I bolt.
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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