Party Girl
Dustin LaValley

NOTE: The following story appears in LaValley's fiction collection Lowlife Underdogs (Raw Dog Screaming Press 2008). It is the basis for a film of the same name directed by Jayson Densman.

The putrid stench of decaying flesh scratches her nostrils. It burns her throat as she inhales deeply. Then a convulsion of stomach tremors grows violent. Boiling bile rises up through her tender throat to pour down her chest, warm acidic liquid dripping from her breast. Her eyes open to burn in the dim light. Coughing up the final specks of stomach matter, she scans the scene with squinty eyes.

Bodies. Carcasses bled and beaten scattered atop one another. Limbs broken, bent unnaturally, or missing. Skin peeled. Eyes gashed, noses removed, and teeth shattered. Walls painted, red and brown with brain and bowel. Fingers and toes, ears, and dicks piled in damp corners.

A blood coated carpet of human male remains.

She stands with some trouble, slipping in unbalance, and reaches for the chain dangling from a bare light bulb. She yanks the chain, her purple latex gloves sliding from the metallic string, and in complete darkness, falls to fleshy carpeting . . . Exhausted.

They were everywhere it seemed: teaching at our elementary schools, preaching in our churches, patrolling the city streets in marked cars, and chatting on the Internet. Sitting in the gutters with signs and paper coffee cups filled with change. They were writing stories, tucking their children into bed, and signing record deals. There was no escaping these monsters; there was no safe haven from their tainted, inhumane perversities: they were on the television, in the newspaper, and on the radio. There was nothing to do, but define them and create a deformation of subculture to assign them.

That is, until the she came along: the Party Girl. Some say she is an angel sent from the heavens to avenge those who have been victimized. Others say she is a demon who steals the souls of the damned, growing more powerful after each killing orgy. Then, there are those of us who believe she is just a girl. A really, really pissed off girl.

The newspapers began calling her Party Girl after the "Killing rooms" we're found, assuming an X chromosome was the slaughterer due to the fact that every victim was male. These are small, basement rooms in abandoned buildings in the industrial district. Every crime scene is a mirror image of the last, a glimpse of the next. Male corpses maliciously mutilated, piles upon piles of convicted rapists and pedophiles almost unrecognizable in their individual states of decomposition. Fifteen, sometimes twenty filth-pigs rotting together in their own blood and semen. Usually, these rooms are found by homeless seeking shelter, or teenagers looking for a place to drink and fuck.

There are four things all "Killing rooms" have in common: first being the big red X on the door of the room, second being the empty beer kegs, third the scattered plastic cups and, finally, there are never any weapons left behind. I'm sure if an autopsy report were released or leaked into the press, major traces of some sort of tranquilizing or neuroleptic drug would be found within the dead. How else could a single female grotesquely disfigure and kill dozens of men? They must either be in a state of unconsciousness for her to slice and dice them, or already dead before their rearrangements.

How she finds them, or how they find her, remains a mystery: to the police, the press, and the citizens.

Now, I hear on the news and read in the papers that the Party Girl has expanded her boundaries. Nearby cities and towns currently have "Killing rooms" of their own, all with the same interior and exterior leftovers. Either Party Girl is keeping herself extra busy or she is making a lot of friends.

This all began in Albany, NY. Spreading to nearby cities such as Buffalo, New York, and Newark. Even small towns aren’t being spared the bloodshed: West Glens Falls, Kingsbury and Hudson Falls among others have joined the Party Girl phenomenon.

All I can do is prey that Party Girl remains on the East Coast. For if she travels west ... I'm surely a dead man.

In the darkness, Party Girl grasps her bag of tools and crawls through the mangled mess of slick carcasses and broken bones. On her knees, she turns the knob, shoving the door open with her upper body. She falls sideways to the floor of the basement hallway, inhaling the dank air as if it were her last. She remains still for a brief moment, inhaling, and exhaling deeply. Then, Party Girl stands and shuts the door. Her fingers roll into her palm, and with the side of her fist she paints a bloody X on the door. She stares at the X for a brief moment, and then, as she begins to walk away, she laughs so loud it could wake the dead.

Dustin LaValley is an author, screenwriter and martial artist. His credits include the books Lowlife Underdogs, A Child's Guide to Death, and The Bleeding. His screen credits include Terror Overload, Pajama Party Massacre and Rise of the Ghosts. Outside of writing, Dustin is a Sensei of Shito Ryu karate and ju jutsu. More information on the author can be found at myspace.com/dustinlavalley.