“Stranger With Candy”

By RD Rivero

August 1, 2000

His feet splattered the mud of the deep, soggy pools that littered the undergrowth. Sometimes the brackish water would spray into the air to land upon the crumbling barks of trees, sometimes it would hit him in the face and he would stop to wipe it clean with his arm.

On his back he carried an overburdened sack, bulging with hints and outlines of the package that lay hidden, unseen within.

Alluro’s work, his self-imposed chore, was nearly complete, he just had to find the right spot. He stopped for a moment to rest, weary from his last, nocturnal encounter with Chilla. He set the bag on the ground and then sat himself on it. Above, he could see through the branches of the trees that the sky was not as dark as it had been only minutes before when he left the sanctuary of the underground ruins.

“To live for you,” he said facing the ever-brightening heavens. “To die --” his eyes roamed over the earth, the dungy earth. Rotted, decayed -- perverted.

Surrounded by a receding, gray mist, he saw animals, slump around in the stench of the humus, wallow in the infested mud, bloodied, beaten, skins raw and peeling. One of the smaller rodents lay across a rock and flopped onto its side, ants and worms crawled out of its nose and between its teeth -- its last gasp inaudible.

In sadistic pleasure he laughed -- then he was struck by a loud, booming sound. His ears perched, he arose to see the Thunder Tank approach from a distant, murky path. Alluro went back to his work -- and quickly. He did not want to be discovered, not before he was done, not before his plan was complete.

[Part One]

From a hollow trunk, burst apart by the violence of that night’s torrents, birds and small animals scurried into the distance, into the shadowy murkiness of the undergrowth. Trees circled with luscious vines and flowered foliage hung low toward the wet earth, soaked in a heavy dew that trickled loudly around fallen, moss-covered logs.

The last great storm of summer passed early that morning. The sun ascended above the peaks of the tall, eastern mountains and flooded the valley with crisp, yellow sunlight. Thick, black clouds dissipated into gray mist, convoluted by sputters of lightning.

The Thunder Kittens and Panthro practiced in an open, quiet clearing. The crass was soft and ankle-high in most parts -- unicorns often grazed there and travelers were known to stop for moments of peaceful, tranquil bliss there. The Amazonian women frequented the area during their mating season, they believed their ancestors once held a strong fortress, a castle long ago consumed by the earth, in or around those grounds.

The youngsters had been given knumbchucks: a red one for WileyKat, a blue one for WileyKit. The boy fluttered his weapon in the air in a mocking display for his sister’s amusement. “Ah!” he winced -- one of the carved ends hit his face above the right eyebrow. In shock he let the instrument fall.

A rustling came from the trees but none turned to see.

“Ha, ha, serves you right --”

“Will you two pay attention?” the panther called from behind -- he appeared from the air, from nothing. He then walked up front several feet before them.

WileyKat reached down to pick up the weapon. He stood close to his sister, too close for comfort. “WileyKit, move away from your brother or else you two’ll be hitting each other.”

Satisfied that there was enough room to maneuver between them, Panthro began: “Now,” he said, “I want you to feel the knumbchucks in your hands -- feel them, know them.”

WileyKat tried hard to follow the instructions. WileyKit tried her best to hold back the impending laughter. “Snap out of it,” she scolded herself.

“Weigh them --”

“Ha, ha ha,” she giggled and quickly covered her mouth with her hands. Her weapon dangled, hanging limp between her fingers. “WileyKat, stop that!” she said to divert attention away from her.

“Me? And what did I do?” He looked at her and laughed and dropped his weapon again. She let out another giggle but that time it was forces, noticeably forced.

“Can’t you two pay attention?” Panthro asked annoyed.

Eyes stared at them from the bushes -- a devious smile, too, but both went unnoticed.

The twins practiced for several minutes getting to know their weapons. WileyKat gained a little control over his clumsiness. WileyKit wheelded hers like a pro.

“The lighter one you’ll hold on to, the heavier one you’ll twirl in the air.”

Panthro had them spinning their knumbchucks.

A cold wind. Trees around the scene swayed and bent in the bone-chilling current. It was undeniable that the summer season had come to an end. Soon they would need to find a more temperate location to drill their marksmanship. Thankfully, after Skytomb's untimely demise -- after the engines exploded near a pool of evaporating methane -- and all the Lunatics had perished, much of Third Earth was safe to enjoy again.

The chain on WileyKat’s weapon snapped and the heavy end was sent flying into trees.

“Watch out!” he cried.

“It landed near those bushes,” Panthro said.

“I’ll go get it,” the boy answered.

He broke away from the triangle to the patch of forest that jetted into the field. He disappeared in the shadows within the green vegetation. WileyKit had kept her eyes on him until -- she looked up in surprise. Panthro had put a warm hand on her shoulder.

“Ah!” her brother screamed and she looked away from the older, studlier Thundercat. “Ah!” came a second shriek, then a third, then a fourth followed.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“WileyKat’s spotted something.”

He ran into the forest, she was hot on his trail.

At the end the two found WileyKat on the ground on his knees throwing up a noxious, yellow-red, runny substance, one streaming mouthful at a time. Little bits of white meat floated in the slick mess, in the puddle that had formed on the ground between his legs. Weakly, he pointed to a nearby bush.

WileyKit stood still in shock, neither approaching, neither backing off. Only Panthro dared to approach. The whole world was silent but for the sounds of their collective hear beats that resonated through the trees.

The broken part of the knumbchuck had slammed down through a thorny, prickly bush, its leaves were unnaturally brown, crisp, barren even for that pre-autumn weather. Intertwined within the hedge were two naked bodies, bloated and transfigured. The hands and feet were tied together over the backs. The ropes had, in time, rotted through the green-gray flesh of the skin while bulbous fungi grew from open scars. The stomachs had been cut open in an ‘x’-shaped incision. Entrails had flopped out onto the ground, petrified. Parts of bones and organs had been removed -- flies, beetles and crawling maggots had taken their place, an army of ants scorched into the crisp, sunburned blood vessels.

The heads were covered in black, leather bags.

He did not want to, he would have turned and ran away but -- he was driven irresistibly onwards to do it. One bag was tied tightly in place by a thin rope that came away cleanly to his sharp claws. The bag nearly shot out like a projectile, so concentrated were the waste gasses that had accumulated inside. A green haze evolved from the sorry sight. He gagged but he did not stop. He grabbed the top of the bag and in his fist he pulled off the cover to reveal --

“Ah!” he screamed, he darted back, he fell to the ground and crawled on his hands to the youngsters who looked on wide-eyed.

The body he had disturbed turned and slunked forward involuntarily. The head had been skinned clean. The jaw had been removed, the tongue drooped lifeless. An eye fell from its bare, open socket but did not fall to the earth -- it was still connected, attached to the head by thin, shriveled nerves and blood vessels, worms and maggots slithered through the gore.

“Get back, get back to the Thunder Tank,” he said, he screamed like a young girl, shrill-tongued, “get back at once!”

[Part Two]

The cluttered basement of Cat’s Lair was cast in perpetual shadow and yet the vast room was not completely dark. A clear bulb -- whose single, coiled filament glowed softly -- swung freely from a long chain over a skeletal, metal table. A red blanket was swept across the top and dangled down the sides. The cloth-cover hid well what textured contours and deep wrinkles tried hard to give away.

“I haven’t finished the autopsy,” Tygra said, he was the first to appear from the murky oblivion. Cheetara, Liono and Panthro came out into the open after him. The four stood around the table in a tight circle. “Yet I’ve discovered plenty of useful information.” He leaned forward but stopped -- he looked at the others from left to right. “I’m going to pull the sheath back now.”

Panthro grunted, Liono stepped back a little. Cheetara was nervous, visibly nervous. She kept one hand firmly under her chin, the other was kept in swift, constant jerky motion.

Tygra reached out and grabbed the farthest corner of the blanket from him and in one turn, by the wave of the arm, he exposed what was beneath -- the two, grotesquely disfigured bodies he and Panthro had brought from the clearing that noon. Cheetara looked away but not in disgust, she had been forewarned about what to expect. No, something else, something else that -- she caught sight of a withered leaf that had been flung in the air. Her eyes followed it while it swam violently in a current until it came to rest soundlessly on the floor.

“These two are, in fact, Unicorn Keepers. Their physiology, or what’s left of it, indicates that.”

“So badly decomposed,” Liono said, he gagged for a moment then regained composure.

“Would you like an open window?” Tygra asked.

“No, no, don’t be bothered. Go on.”

“OK. They have been dead for some time already. One, two weeks,” here he pointed to the inner edge of scar under the ribs, “I can tell by how deep the maggots have eaten through the skin.”

The tiger removed a small pile of dirt and rubble that he had failed to clean earlier. He had been very careful, he had else been perfect. The rest of the Thundercats stood in disembodied silence, watching him while he performed that most menial duty.

“The male is intact for the most part. His face and jaw have been removed, not hacked nor butchered. Notice that the bones were not traumatized or chipped and that the muscles, ligaments and connective tissues are uninjured. A very sharp razor or cutting instrument was used to remove the flesh with the least injury possible.”

“Why?” Panthro asked, “Why be so meticulous?”

“He was careful, the killer, he wanted the parts he removed to come out as cleanly as they could. Now,” he said, refocusing on the conclusions of his incomplete report, “the cause of death was this catastrophic incision across the midsection. It was not instant.”

He stopped and reached under the table. He pulled out curved, metal basin -- the kind used to catch vomit. A blue, wafer-like cloth was draped over it. He set it next to the body and removed the napkin. Inside was a stomach, shrived and dry. Tygra had attempted to cut a small slit along the side but the organ snapped in half. The solidified contents slipped out in a single, brown gooey mass.

“Vegetables, no meat, but, oddly, I found traces of candy.”

“Candy?” Liono asked stunned.

“Flecks of red and white. Candy fruit, maybe, but I think it was harder, denser. Notice the upper, front teeth. Bits of it are stuck to the enamel.”

He waved them over to the female.

“Now her face was butchered -- with a serrated knife. The skin around the trauma is raw and burnt by the decay process and not by the sun -- remember that their heads were covered in leather bags. The flesh has been shredded in a random, chaotic manner. They eyes have been popped, the nose has been sliced in half, the cheeks torn into stringy threads. Samples of skin were removed from her thigh and her entire left buttock was amputated clear to the bone.”

“And the cause of death?” Liono looked at him.

“Blood loss, massive blood loss, even though she, too, had that deep incision made to her abdomen. It was postmortem, just like the shredding of her face was postmortem.”

“She ate the candy, too?” Cheetara asked. She was about to say more but the tiger answered her quickly.

“Yes, I also found traces of that candy in her stomach.”

“What, what lunatic did this?” Panthro was incensed, angered more by his earlier reaction than by he who cruelly killed two innocents.

“The only physical clue we have are several strands of long, white hair.” Again from under the table he pulled out a glass tube, topped with a cork. The fibers in question were within. “It doesn’t correspond to either of the victims.”

A collective pause followed.

“I can only tell you how it was done. The killer removed those parts that he wanted and left the rest alone. In that I do see the hint of purpose, but --”

“But?”

“I’m not a betting man.”

“Could they have known their killer?”

“No,” Cheetara said, “no, he was a stranger. He lured them, trapped them.” She walked around the corpses. “Darkness. I see --”

“What is it? What is it Cheetara, what do you see?” Liono held her in his arms.

“We know the killer.” She glared into his face. “I’ve sensed this, evil, before only never like this. Perverted, distorted, unnatural.”

“Calm down, relax.”

“Evil, the evil of something natural that went wrong, horribly wrong.”

“We should go back and comb the area,” Tygra said to Liono.

Liono held Cheetara’s arm and looked at the others. “We should learn more about what’s happened. The Unicorn Keepers are out friends. We’ll go now.”

[Part Three]

It was late in the afternoon but it was not yet four. Still the skies were beginning to darken. In the ensuing weeks the sun was doomed to set earlier and earlier everyday, in a stone-gray, depressing aura. The air, that had at least been lukewarm since morning, was now chilled in a biting, stinging cold.

The trees rustled and yellow, brown leaves fell to the ground.

The area where WileyKat had first discovered the bodies was scoured by Liono. He saw the severed weapon exactly where it had come to rest but he left it alone while swarms of hungry insects crawled over its engraved surface.

Tygra and Cheetara worked the upper, northern boundaries. The underbrush was thicker there and he was amazed, stunned even beyond the power of words by the amount of telltale evidence he found there. Cheetara, on the other hand, roamed around though in search for something, aware of something that the others not only had but continued to overlook.

Panthro was left to search through the remained of the clearing -- the south and western sections where the grass was tall up to his knees, unkept and ungrazed. It was his idea to keep the Thunder Kittens back at the lair with Snarf. The kids had seen too much already for one day.

Liono had better luck collecting bodies but Tygra found many himself. Almost always the corpses were slain in pairs, one male, one female. The killer preferred to dump his victims in the northern parts of the grassy clearing.

The sun was a brilliant red-orange and falling, fading quickly into the night.

After an hour finding nothing, an enraged Panthro left the hazy, bug-swamped grass and rejoined the others. Tygra had erected a large, blue tent, the canvass flapped noisily in the breeze. Within he had arranged a makeshift morgue.

Twelve male bodies lined one side, eleven females were piled on the other. Not all were Unicorn Keepers, in fact, there was a surprising even mixture of Wollo, Berbil and Amazonian. The men were intact, except for the skin -- each had a different part of the skin removed. The women suffered a similar fate, except that along with skin, organs and bones were removed.

“I ordered them in terms of how long they’ve been dead. Of course it’s not entirely scientific. I don’t have the equipment on hand to make an accurate determination. These victims were killed maybe as long as half a year ago.” Tygra pointed to four bodies, so dark and so crisp that they resembled pieces of over-burnt coal.

“Our killer is collector,” Panthro said. He got the point quickly.

“The pattern is, clear. He, because I believe it’s one man, hunts pairs. There should be another female, there, out there that we haven’t stumbled upon yet.”

He looked at Cheetara.

“I detect a presence, I’ve felt it since, since I saw the bodies in Cat’s Lair. The man is still here -- look, this body is fresh. He was probably killed today, yesterday.”

“Not quite,” she was interrupted, “there was no blood in the area where I found him,” Liono said.

“There was no blood, Liono, no blood anywhere.”

“He is around here, somewhere,” Panthro said sternly.

“These are people who are known to travel through this area. I believe he traps them here, kills them elsewhere, then returns to plant the telltale evidence behind. Cleaned and dressed with those black, leather bags and free of evidence. I think there’s still a female body left undiscovered out there. He’s taken one of every organ from the women except for the sex organs,” Tygra said.

“Sex organs?” Cheetara wondered.

“From one of the males he skinned the external genitalia.”

“You say he cleans the bodies of evidence. What evidence do we have of the killer’s identity?”

“Not much except for the hairs, long, white-gray hairs. No DNA evidence’s left behind, he doesn’t rape the women or sodomize the men. In all the victims I’ve found that candy -- well, almost all of them, one of the women didn’t have stomach.”

“Stranger with candy,” Panthro said. He turned away to face the opening of the tent. He did not need to know more.

“I’m convinced there’s another female body, we must find her, Liono,” Tygra concluded.

“Should we go and search again? I’m sure there’s plenty of sunlight left,” Cheetara said composed at last. “It wouldn’t be right to leave her out there like that, alone.”

“It’s almost six, I think we have an hour or two before sundown. We can go on,” Liono concluded although not as eager as before.

Cheetara even more than Panthro wanted to run out of that hut of death. Her stomach turned at the sight of those decaying corpses and she tried hard to keep the revulsion to herself. She could not help but think that at one time those corpses had been living, breathing, that they once had been standing, moving around like her, like her friends. Thoughts, feelings, emotions, desires -- and fear, terror. The screaming, it rang through her ears, it echoes in her brain and it came from them, from the bodies, from the horribly mutilated bodies. Faces shredded. Violated.

She wanted to scream if only to silence the crying of the damned -- but once again she held back.

The smell of death was upon her, it clung to her heavy fog. On her hands, on her face, embedded in her fur. She scratched her skin and rubbed herself raw but she could not escape the totality of its presence.

Over the open, flat land of the clearing she looked up into the ever purpling sky -- she saw vultures circling overhead, their calling muffled by the distance. She looked into out across through the wilderness and wondered what horrors and unsettled terrors were hidden in plain sight.

“Most of the bodies were in the northeast and I have a feeling that place has been combed through entirely,” Tygra said.

“Then we’ll look in the west, northwest.” Liono pointed the others toward where he wanted them to search.

At first Cheetara stumbled around the area she had been directed to go but then she began to wander. Not consciously, no, her mind was lost and unfocused. She reeled at the thought of an unknown killer, a serial murderer, lurking through the wilderness. Had she stumbled upon him before? Did she know him?

When she returned to her senses she found herself at the end of a trail she had trekked through only hours before -- before the grizzly discoveries in that tent. Starting where she had left off she decided to trust her instincts and so she continued.

The trees thickened, the skies darkened. She looked back -- the landscape was unfamiliar. She was lost but, undaunted, she did not let that stop her. Rocks, large boulders and small pebbled, stones rough and dirty littered the ground.

She stooped and picked one up to look under it. A red worm squirmed into the loose earth and disappeared forever. A long-legged, stick insect crawled onto her hand and she screamed and flung the bug away into the air. It landed on the ground, broken in half. The back legs twiddled violently into the air, the front legs, still attached to the head, walked about in circles, in an awkward gait.

Her heard settled and she dropped the rock with a dull thud -- she looked at her hand, her fingers were covered in blood. Panicked, she turned around quickly and crashed into a tree -- five, long, deep scratches were carved into the bark, a fingernail was embedded in the wood and covered in fresh sap.

The cries of the victim were there, too, she could hear the horror of the eternal wail in her mind.

Cheetara stepped back. The ground was covered in leaves, far too many leaves than normal. Few crumbled under her feet since most of them were green with fragments of thin stems and branches still attached. The foliage had been ripped apart recently and by someone experienced in tearing life asunder.

She did not realize the trick until it was too late. She stepped on ground that was not solid -- a net. She lost her balance, she could not stop the fall and she screamed while she plummeted through the darkness of the tunnel.

[Part Four]

When she awoke she found herself in a cold, dark chamber. She was on a floor, flat on her face -- her body ached. She had been injured in the fall, her shoulder dislocated, her leg broken. She tried to stand but the best she could do was sit up in an odd, acutely angled position. That was when she noticed that her wrists and ankles were bound by heavy, iron chains.

Cheetara mumbled to herself. The whispers were inaudible even though the sounds echoed crisply in the stone vault interior. She looked left to right slowly, letting her eyes adjust to the dim environment. Light -- a fire from wooden torches that adorned the nearer walls. The sound of the flames flickering was omnipotent.

A strong, musky odor was intermingled with the smell of death, decay -- horrified, she wondered in fear if she was not back in Tygra’s blue tent morgue.

“Hello?” She managed to utter through the biting pain, the tremors of cold fear.

No answer followed except for a hiss that then filled the air.

“Hello? Who’s there? Who’s --”

The hiss returned -- it was a signal to shut up she realized.

A misshapen, metal bowl was flung across the shadows, over the floor, toward her folded legs. It came to rest some feet from her. She crawled closer to it -- the plate was silver tinted green and yellow-brown -- she gagged -- it was tarnished beyond repair.

Cheetara began to cry when she saw what was in the plate.

“Eat it,” a disembodied voice spoke. “Eat it!”

Familiar.

A male voice began to laugh -- softly.

Familiar.

She turned white, pale, cold. A brittle, glossy, candy cane -- red and white -- lay on its side in the bowl.

“My friends will --”

“It doesn’t matter if you eat it!” the voice shouted. The hidden figure stomped on the ground and the chains that were attached to her body retracted into the wall behind her. She was dragged screaming in pain until she came to rest, upright against the wall completely restrained.

The torches blew out, one at a time, while the stranger advanced to her until only one firelight remained -- the one that hung right under the ceiling, framed in the center of a wooden, spoked circular frame.

The advancing, approaching figure, cast in silhouette, stood before her familiar in the deepest sense and at all levels. Coldness came from him, from behind him, his long, stringy hair waved in the darkness.

“Eat it!” he yelled, he jammed the candy cane he had taken from the bowl into her mouth until she choked then took it out and smashed it across her face. Sticky fragments and shards of its substance flew into the air, into her eyes.

“Yes! Yes! Mwahahaha, hahaha, hahahahaha! I’ve got you now, my pretty. My other self is complete!” Softly, so softly, so very softly: “You want to eat it, you know you want to eat it.” He pressed broken, pointed end of the stick over her quivering lips. “It feels to good on your lips, don’t be afraid, it’s different but don’t be afraid. Give in to the fear -- your friends won’t be able to save you, you know that, you know better.”

He nudged the sharp end in between her lips to her teeth to try to pry her mouth open. She resisted but the pain in her body was too great, too much to bear.

“There, there, let me put it in your mouth, make it feel good, yes, just like that.”

She smacked the sticky shaft with her wet lips -- the taste was sweet, far sweeter than it should have been. She felt an odd, tingly sensation spread throughout her body. Her pain ceased, her heart settled, her breath was slow and paced.

“Oh, you know just what to do, ha, haha, hahahahaha, ha,” he spoke excitedly and without restrain. His motions were quick and violent. “Oh, my pretty, you KNOW what to do,” he whispered into her ear while he maneuvered the candy in her mouth, twirled around her tongue.

Calm once more he stopped, he stepped back from her.

He let the candy bar fall to the floor, he pulled out a weapon -- the shiny glitter of the blade revealed a stinted fragment of his face.

[Part Five]

“The screams came from around here, Liono.” Panthro shouted into the cold, night air. His breath evolved a slight mist. “Liono?” He held a bright, quartz lantern in his shaking hand, he brought it up to his face while he looked around in the darkness of the woodlands. Two other blue lights, small and flickering, came through from within the trees. Liono and Tygra were coming to him, he could see them. “Be careful, the ground’s full of traps.”

Another scream -- a howl echoed up from the hole the panther had discovered.

The Thundercats were by his side. The world was quiet once more, eerily quiet. Deep violet clouds parted to reveal a full moon that glowed in electric vibrancy.

“She must have fallen into that hole,” Tygra said. He went down on his knees and called into the absolute blackness of the tunnel: “We’ll be right there, Cheetara, hold on! We’ll be right with you!”

Liono restrained him: “We don’t know what’s down there, Tygra. We must find another way in or we might be caught in a trap too.”

“Yes, yes,” he backed off and stood up, “I’m sorry.” He looked down upon himself. “You’re right.” He regained his composure. “The Amazonians believe that there was once a castle in this area. Cheetara could have stumbled into an underground ruin, a bunker.”

“Could there be more than one way in?”

“Tough luck trying to find it in the dark,” Panthro injected.

A slight, laughter -- the three Thundercats stared at each other in confusion.

“That’s --”

“Sh!”

Tearing and ripping came from the hole along with a dull and muffled wail.

“Cheetara!” Panthro shouted, he stuck his head into the darkness of the opening.

“Wait, wait!” Liono tried to hold him back too. “We don’t know what it could be --”

“I see a light -- there’s a light down there,” he waved to the others.

“All right,” Liono was desperate to regain control over them, “all right. We’ll go down carefully.”

The tunnel had been dug into the earth by hand, built along a steep angle to the ground.

The three Thundercats crawled in very close together. Tygra was in the lead, he kept his slow pace by carefully holding on to the crumbling soil of the wall. Dirt and vermin crawled across his fingers but he did not have the time to worry about it. The weather had eroded much of the passage and at the verge of an impending drop Tygra stopped cold.

“What’s the matter? Tygra?” Liono asked, he was at the end up against Panthro.

“Nothing, it’s just gotten a little dangerous here.” He nudged forward, “Ah!” He slipped and landed face down in a deeper part of the tunnel. He angled up his head and saw that the other two were still above, waiting. He looked down. The firelight was bright, brighter than he had expected. A warmth circulated through the tunnel. “There’s a drop. Be careful of there.”

He slunked forward out of the way so that Panthro and Liono could make the drop.

“Are you OK?” Panthro asked him.

“A little worse for wear but I’m fine,” Tygra answered.

After another fifty feet the three found themselves in an underground chamber. It was a stone hall with flaming lanterns built into the walls between barricaded wooden doors. Panthro forced one of them from its bronze holder. Liono and Tygra walked behind him while he treaded through the passage until it ended in vast chamber.

“It’s a dungeon,” Tygra said, he reached down and collected an old, battered whip from mounds of dust-encrusted spider webs. “A chamber of horrors.”

“What other surprises await us.”

From one of the many barred cells came murmurs, from another cell, whose door was open, came faint traces of motion, scarcely perceptible in the shadows.

“It’s Cheetara!” Tygra saw her through the iron bars of the door.

Panthro handed the torch over to Liono then charged. The door along with the stonework of the frame crashed onto the ground. Inside the cell the three ran toward the wall where they found her at last, held in place by the chains attached to her body.

“She’s free,” Panthro said, he broke apart the restraints.

Liono took her into his arms then placed her on the floor.

“What’s this?” the tiger asked. He found a shattered section of a long, sticky bar. He brought it close to the torch that he was then holding. It was a candy cane, wet and covered red -- he showed it to the others.

“Look! Look!” Liono shouted, he pointed between Cheetara’s legs where her uniform had been torn and ripped, the fabric soaked in blood. Her entire pelvic region was hollow

A deep gash in the form of an ‘x’ had been carved into her stomach up to the chest.

“It’s, it’s --” The men were stunned silent by the sound coming from her mouth. Cheetara turned her head softly, her eyes opening, closing , her mouth quivering. Liono pushed her hair back from her face, splinters and flecks of the candy were stuck to strands of her mane. “Ahh, ahh, el, ahel --” a last gasp of air followed, it would have been a word, a name but she had lost the energy to go on.

She stiffened and her body grew cold rapidly.

“She’s dead, Liono, she’s dead.”

Liono started to sob, the rest looked on in shock at what had befallen --

“Yes! Yes!” A loud, booming voice came from the distance, from the nearby cell of the open door.

Without a verbal cue the three arose and crawled their way forward out of Cheetara’s crypt and into the mysterious chamber that remained in shadow, even in the soft light of the torch Tygra held in his hand. Still, they could see the clear suggestion of violent, rhythmic motion.

“Yes!” A tall figure got up suddenly and stood before a table upon which he had ridden. He stumbled away toward an eerie, straw-covered corner out of sight.

The table, there was someone on the table, flat and motionless. The body -- it was horrid, it was unthinkable. The head Amazonian, the neck from a Wollo, the flesh of the arms, of the legs, the breasts -- everything -- had been put together from pieces of others, from the victims uncovered in the clearing. And the newest and the last, the bloodiest and the freshest, the ultimate, crowning achievement -- that part -- came from none other than the fallen Thundercat.

The skins were preserved in a sharp, foul smelling liquid, but there was no life, no life.

Liono turned his head and threw up, even Panthro was taken aback.

Only Tygra managed to keep his head, only for a little while. He ran his hands over the rough, jigsaw seams of stitches of the skin. The demonic work had been hacked, put together in utter and complete randomness. Under the slight pressure of his hand the makeshift quilt-work came undone. The patches of flesh and skin came apart to reveal Chilla’s body beneath.

“It’s Chilla only from the chest up, along the abdomen is that same ‘x’ shaped scar. It’s deeper, it cut her in half.” He looked at the others, then back at the table -- that he then noticed was constructed from an amalgam of bones. “No, it wasn't a cut, it was an explosion that tore her apart and her missing body parts were reconstructed from dissected equivalents, from the sacrificed females.”

The mouth was open, a thick, mucus-like substance smeared the lips, flecks of red and white candy stained the teeth. The crescent-moon tattoo on her brow had been destroyed by the great heat of fire. In its place were the words, scribbled into the flesh: “CHILLA! TO LIVE FOR YOU! TO DIE FOR YOU!”

“What are you doing? Get away from her!” a voice shouted from the corner.

The killer stood before them.

“Who are you? What are you?”

The Thundercats turned to see. The figure, still in shadow, raised an arm in whose hand he held a heavy club. Panthro yelled and threw his weapon at it. The crystal-topped club fell to the ground, it shattered on the cobblestones.

Panthro and Liono rushed him and tackled him to the ground in a fit of rage and violence not incapable of Thundercats. His skin was loose -- too loose. Under the light of Tygra’s torch they saw that the figure was cloaked in a costume, a disguise put together from the leathery, preserved skin of the male corpses. But unlike Chilla on the table, less attention was given to the male ‘outfit’ -- the seams were sown with thick hemp string. There was no zipper, there were no buttons, rather the costume was kept in place by knots tied from shredded, finger-like flesh.

“Wait, Liono, I think he’s dead. I think you broke his neck,” Tygra said.

The man was unresponsive, his head tilted back at an unnatural angle.

Panthro stood in shock and terror -- he stepped back from the scene on the floor afraid of what he had done -- afraid of what his young Lord had become.

“I’ll break him in half!”

The pieces of the male outfit were torn asunder in Liono’s hands. He ripped the covering from off the face and head. “Murderer!” the lion yelled at the top of his lungs. “Murderer!” He threw the fleshy mask and scalp to the side having revealed the stranger’s identity -- “Alluro?!”

“He must have gone mad, Liono,” Tygra said, “after her death.”

Liono did not answer.

“Liono?” Panthro asked in a glassy, child’s voice. He was half in, half out of the shadows by the open, iron door.

Liono looked at the tiger, then at the panther, his lips curled, fangs sharp and wet. He began to laugh -- softly.

---

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