Dead Calm
balcony.
Entering through the doors leading to the balcony, the first thing
Richard noticed was an unpleasant smell. It was a slightly rank
odor, which reminded him of the time he came across a raccoon that
had crawled into a tin shed behind his house and died. No one
discovered it until months later and it gave off the smell of old,
musty death. The second thing he noticed was a strange sound that
came and went. It was a high-pitched keening noise that seemed to
dig for the center of his brain.
    “What the hell is that?” He asked the Brit.
    “You'll see in a minute, Gov,” he answered and
pointed with his elbow toward the edge of the balcony where two
crewmembers were readying a rope.
    After depositing the woman with the two men, Richard
followed his guide who ushered him to the rail and motioned for him
to look. Leaning over cautiously, he found himself looking down at
rows of plush seats with aisles cutting between them stretching
away to the stage. At first noticing nothing unusual, he thought to
himself, so what, it's a fucking theater.
    A hissing noise made him look straight down. Jumping
back slightly at what he saw, Ricky exclaimed, “Holy shit, what in
the fuck is that?”
    In just a brief glimpse, he had seen over two hundred
former members of the passengers and crew clustered beneath the
balcony in different stages of dress and undress with different
types of grotesque, oozing wounds. Shaking off his initial shock,
Richard leaned over the rail again for another look. Fascinated, he
let his eyes scan the group below as he took in the different,
gruesome aspects of the horror show.
    One man's head flopped sideways, his neck muscles
ripped away. A woman in shorts and a halter-top raised fingerless
hands as if in supplication. A teenage boy dragged himself across
the carpet by his hands, the muscles in his legs shredded to the
point where they wouldn't support his body weight. He passed an
older lady missing an ear and part of her scalp, revealing the gray
white bone of her skull. A beautiful woman gawked up at Ricky. She
was wearing nothing but bikini underwear bottoms as she stood with
one ponderous breast half ripped away to hang limply from her
chest. A college-aged man, who didn't appear to have a mark on him
but who had the same bluish-gray skin stretched across his face
matching the others, made a hissing noise when he noticed the two
men above him. It went on and on. Feral, hungry eyes stared up at
Richard as the whining noise he heard earlier started up and rose
to a crescendo. The sound was coming from the things below.
    Looking closer at the woman with only one breast and
then at the others, something that Richard had first thought was a
trick of the light became apparent. A thick, black pussy substance
had replaced the blood that should be leaking and spraying from
their wounds.
    Turning to his guide to Hell, he asked, “What's that
stuff oozing out of their bodies?”
    “Don't know, Gov, an infection of some sorts I'd
guess,” he answered with a shrug.
    Another well-endowed woman with her chest exposed
through a torn Miami Dolphins jersey caught Richard's attention. He
watched her for a few minutes before turning away with a look of
disgust on his face. He wanted it to appear like he was repulsed by
the sight, but what he really wanted to do was hide the erection
pressing against the crotch of his pants. He hadn't been this
excited in years.
    Richard's gaze settled on the two men who had taken
custody of the woman he'd helped bring to the balcony, and he tried
to take his mind off his growing lust by watching them. One held
the woman's arms up while the other looped a rope around her chest
and drew it tight. When he was finished, they picked her up and
lowered her over the railing down to the floor below. When she hit
bottom, the man on the right gave the line a stiff jerk to release
the slipknot he'd made and reeled the rope in.
    Seeing Richard watching him, he called out, “I think
that one's

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