Slayer (DECENCY WARNING)

The isolated barn was filling. A rancid air of tension grew. The atmosphere was evil polluted, and breathing.

This was Slayer's day, the day for which his existence was created. He’d been primed and trained all his life, he was ready.

Slayer and his opponent, Lucien, were chained to opposite metal support beams of the barn. They were held on short chains so that they could see each other but had no way of reaching their adversary. They were psyched to the pitch of demented frenzy.

Lucien and Slayer were British bred American Pit-bull terriers. Dogs, illegally riven from their mother's bellies in subterranean cellars. They were bred for the barbaric sport of dog fighting.

Dick Lowther had spent ten years breeding and inter breeding to come up with the perfect killing machine. Slayer was it; He was mean and hungry with hatred. He had a bellyful of temper and a burning need for the taste of fresh, warm blood.

He was a big dog even by pit-bull standards, twenty-nine inches from floor to shoulder. The result of thirty-four cross matches of savage canine blood-lining. Dick had veered from pure Pit-bull. Slayer's lineage had twenty-six pit-bull ancestors, eighteen of them American imports. In every fifth line he’d thrown in a little different blood to make the ultimate devil dog. A Doberman had been used for courage and that stubborn streak that any owner knows. A Rhodesian Ridgeback for strength, a Collie for intelligence and a Newfoundland for pure brawn. Slayer was the ultimate dog, the best of the best. Now, at two years old and with only a couple of private warm up fights to show him what was expected of him, this was his day.

It was hyped as the biggest and best dogfight ever and huge amounts of money had changed hands, hundreds of thousands of pounds, staked on the best dogs in the country—if not the world, as Dick always boasted. Men came countrywide to see the vicious fight. It was wagered that, of the evenly matched dogs, neither one would come out alive.

The barn floor was scattered with a thick layer of sawdust. Buckets of disinfectant on standby to make sure that, when the carnage was over, every trace of blood and gore was removed, leaving no trace of the atrocities that had occurred. The barn had been chosen with great care. It was remote and protected from sight by hills. It lay in a deep valley in the Cumbrian Lake District.

Thousands of pounds had been spent on soundproofing, just in case curious walkers heard the commotion and wandered too close. The advertising for the event had been prolific, going round the underground circuit of interested men who could be trusted to keep their mouths shut. No woman had ever been present at a fight.

The dogs were impatient, straining at their huge metal chains. They'd been brought up in a cruel and vicious environment. Neither had known one iota of love or kindness in their short lives. Beaten to the edge of endurance since the day their eyes opened to greet their hostile world. They’d been attacked daily with sticks to make them tough. Beaten daily by the brutal kicks of their masters whom they feared above all else—who they hated—who they loved—who they would die for. Dick beat his dog to within an inch of its life but it would spend the last reserves of its strength protecting its master. He’d long ago concurred that dogs were dumb fuckers with no sense.

Dick was trembling as he moved towards his dog. Today was going to make him a very rich man; already, six litters of pups were ready for sale sired by Slayer. The prize for the event was twenty thousand pounds. Slayer couldn't lose. Although Lucien was a great adversary, slayer just had that small edge of ice-cold hatred in his soul that Lucien lacked.

Dick had to be careful when he released his dog into the ring. Slayer surged with blood-lust. He was beyond sanity and would rip through anything that barred his way. Dick gave a shudder of excitement, pride, and even fear as he looked into the crazed eyes of Slayer. He was a dog possessed. His eyes were deep red; the pigment coloured crimson by the bursting Blood vessels behind his retinas. Slayer shook his mammoth head, impatient to be free of the chains that kept him from the object of his rage. Huge globs of frothy spittle flew from his jowls and covered everything near him. He was growling and spitting his lips peeled back in a snarl brutal enough to strike fear into the hardest man, and the hearts of the men in that barn knew no mercy.

The crowd was frenzied, chanting for their favourite, screaming for blood.

The dogs were released. They flew at each other and met in a lunge of floor shuddering intensity. Slayer screamed. Anybody, who says that dogs can’t scream, has never been to an illegal dogfight. It’s the scream of a banshee, of insanity, of revenge. It’s the scream of a tortured beast that needs to inflict all the hurt and pain that has been inflicted on it. It’s the scream of unimaginable torment.

They both lunged for the other’s throat while attempting to safeguard their own. Slayer’s jaws closed on Lucien's right ear and neck. He locked them and shook his head with every ounce of his strength.

Lucien bit into Slayer's right flank, breaking through sinew and tendon. He shook, making a deeper and wider lesion for his fangs to sink into. Both dogs let out howls of pain, terror and pure, white-hot rage. The first sprays of blood spattered from the ring. Lucien had hit a Gusher, an artery that bled dark and red. It spurted feet into the air, driving both dogs into a greater frenzy. The crowd roared as the blood cascaded down over them. To be blooded was a sign of great luck, particularly if it was not your dog that had bled on you.

Slayer ripped at the ravaged remains of Lucien’s ear. The last tear of the tender flesh brought a screech of intensified pain from Lucien and a roar of triumph from Slayer and the blood-hungry crowd. Rising with his trophy, Slayer shook his head, and the damaged, limp pouch of silky flesh flew into the crowd, a macabre souvenir for a sick individual to paw over.

Seizing his opportunity, he sank his head into the opening made by the loss of the ear He had the advantage, looming over his opponent, though Lucien was far from submissive. The dog was driven beyond recognition of pain, into further madness. Massive damage was being done to Slayer’s tattered upper leg while Slayer literally ate and drank from the wound in Lucien's neck. He Crunched through bone and cartilage. His white coat stained with the brilliant red, oxygenated venous bleed from Lucien. The blood pumped from the wound in time to the rapid beats of Lucien's heart. Slayer was moving towards the carotid artery.

If severed, the main artery in Lucien's neck would bleed fast, signifying an end to the mutilation of a dog and the fight. Instinct, deeply bred and primal, told Lucien that the end was coming. He had to find some reserve of strength to protect his throat; Slayer had hit a gusher, though not the carotid. It drove him insane; he was tearing savagely into the widening cavity of the other dog’s wound.

The floor was slimy with gore. It was covered with blood, muscle, sinew, urine and spittle. As Lucien felt his life slipping away from him he was saved by a sheer fluke. Slayer went in for the kill and lost his footing in the spillage on the floor. His hind legs slid from under him. A split second's lapse, but it was all that Lucien needed. With life draining away, he only had seconds to save himself. With every fibre of his molecular makeup screaming out in torture, he used his sheer bulk and strength to flip himself and slayer over.

The crowed roared.

The positions were reversed. Lucien had the upper hand. The mouths of the tormented dogs opened savagely and met in a violent clash of teeth.

Slayer was guarding his throat. His life depended on it, but he’d lost tremendous amounts of blood from the wound in his groin and the ripping of his femoral artery. Both dogs were weakening but Lucien had the force of gravity to help bring his jaws down on to the soft, tender flesh of Slayers throat. He growled savagely as he sank his teeth into the fibrous steak, sending fur flying and opening the neck up until he cut through the Carotid artery with one savage bite.

Lucien had no time to revel in his victory. The onslaught had taken everything he had to give. His master would be pleased. He fell, unconscious, onto the writhing body of Slayer.

Lucien's master, bellowed with triumph and pleasure. He pulled the still form of his dog away by the scruff of its neck and dropped it onto the sawdust floor of the barn. Like Dick, he had plenty of puppies ready.

‘Well done, son, he murmured, as he raised his rifle and emptied both barrels into the recumbent form of his dying dog. He felt no pity, no remorse; the dog had done what it had been bred to do.

Dick, furious in defeat, went to Slayer. The mutilated dog's mouth was open and his gums were pallid, a sure sign of clinical shock. He was still alive, but clung onto the last thread of life until his master could get to him. He needed his master to know that he’d done his best.

Dick knelt down and put his hand towards the dog moving him roughly this way and that, to assess the damage. Slayer mustered his last reserves of energy to feebly lick his masters hand. He needed just one small touch of kindness from the hand that had beaten him so badly. One touch before he died a stroke to show that his master knew that he’d died to please him.

Dick stood.

‘You useless bastard.’ he yelled as he brought his foot brutally down on the dogs throat. He stamped the last breath out of the broken beast lying in the red sawdust.

The clean up was already underway. The dogs were loaded into black plastic bags. Brain, offal and other bodily matter were being scraped off the walls. The bloodthirsty ghouls measured the height that the spurts reached as they splattered the barn wall.

A young lad, probably dragged along to his first dogfight by his farmer father, leaned against a far wall vomiting as a small crowd of farmers ridiculed his sensitivity.

It was over.

Until the next time.

Dick was planning his comeback with, 'Son of Slayer,' the best dog ever bred.