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Carnage House

– this is your trigger warning

On the Many Uses of Chainsaws

by Katharine Hanifen

ORIGINALLY, CHAINSAWS WEREN'T invented to cut down trees. For more than three hundred years, doctors used them to slice a woman’s pelvis in half to widen the birth canal if there were complications during labor. If that isn’t enough to make you cross your legs and swear off sex forever, I don’t know what is.

I’m reminded of this not-so-fun fact because I’m currently stuck in a sewer pipe with a chainsaw wielding maniac behind me and feeling a lot like one of those chainsaw babies in reverse. A word of advice for all wayward and rebellious teenagers out there: Do not go partying at the abandoned hospital. That should go without saying, but my idiot boyfriend tricked me into coming here. He said we were just going to a movie, instead, we came to this stupid rave where he got stupid drunk and now, I’m covered in his blood and decades old shit and trapped in a stupid sewage pipe Shawshank Redemptioning my way out of this stupid hospital.

Seriously, who the fuck thought it was a good idea to have a party in the place where a gardener went crazy and killed a bunch of people with a chainsaw? You know, the place that he’s rumored to haunt after his death and kill anyone who trespasses? Basic survival skills, people!

I guess I’m one to talk. I’m stuck in a sewer pipe. On the surface, it might have been stupid to try to escape this way, but in my defense, you try thinking clearly when you’re boxed in and covered in your boyfriend’s entrails.

God, the smell is terrible. It’s so bad, it’s making me dizzy. What was that one factoid? In The Shawshank Redemption, Andy couldn’t have survived crawling through the pipe because the bacteria in sewage create hydrogen sulfide? Shit, I have to get moving before I pass out and die where no one will ever find me. But I’m stuck with barely enough room to breathe. Maybe if I let out all the air in my lungs… if I exhale and manage to push myself a few inches forward. Well, that’s progress.

Come on. Exhale. Push. Inhale. Exhale. Push. Inhale. Repeat until you see the light at the end of the tunnel. Up ahead, the pipe is broken, probably burst, and I might be able to escape with a tetanus booster and a staph infection.

The jagged edges of metal dig into me as I pull myself out and flop onto the ground, gasping for breath between laughter and sobs. I’m somewhere deep in the hospital, hopefully far away from the guy with the chainsaw. For a moment, I lie here listening to the distant screams and the revving of gardening equipment. I need to get up, find a weapon, and get out of here, but I can’t make myself move.

On shaky legs, I get to my feet and realize I’m in the maternity ward. Unless I went into the operating room, there wouldn’t be much in the way of weapons. I mean, I don’t even know if weapons work against an undead gardener. But it’s better than nothing. After peeking through the door to see if it’s all clear, I dart through the hall, searching for the OR. When I turn the corner, I hear heavy footsteps and slip into one of the delivery rooms. There is a scalpel on a dust covered table, but that against a chainsaw is laughable. I grab it and wait for him to pass.

The gardener has an awkward, shuffling gait like he had an old injury that never healed right. I cover my mouth to hide my hyperventilating as he stops and loudly sniffs the air.

“You smell like shit,” he says, then revs his chainsaw.

Oh fuck! I run to the bed, pushing it to brace it against the door as the saw breaks through. With the scalpel heavy in my hand, I make perhaps the stupidest decision I’ve ever made in my life. Instead of running away from the chainsaw, I run toward it and stab him through the wrist. With a surprised cry, he lets go, and it drops onto the bed. Before he can get it, I snatch it, revving the chainsaw with schadenfreudian glee.

He peers through the hole he created, his eyes widening in fear.

“Oh fuck,” he says.

“Not so tough without your chainsaw, are you bitch?” I shout, kicking the bed away and opening the door with a giddy laugh. The gardener, still covered in the blood of my boyfriend, friends, and acquaintances, stares in absolute terror. Huh, I guess ghosts can get hurt. “Boo.”

He runs, and I take great pleasure in chasing him, stalking him through the halls like he did to my classmates.

“Oh, Mr. Gardener,” I say in a sing-songy voice, “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

The smell of rot fills my nose, and it isn’t me this time, so I kick down the door where it’s coming from. The gardener backs away.

“Please,” he begs like he showed mercy to anyone else.

“You messed with the wrong bitch,” I said, shoving the moving chainsaw into his guts and pushing down from his stomach to the groin, sawing his pelvis in half. I turned it off and yanked it out. I’m sure many of the women who graced these halls found themselves wishing their lovers extended them the same courtesy and pulled out.

For a moment, he stands there, but then, with a wet slapping sound, his organs fall out through the hole I made in his lower half. He collapses into a pool of his own guts.

The thing about monsters is they always come back. To avoid getting killed with my back turned, I take a little preventative measure. Revving up the chainsaw, I chop off his head and leave it in the sewer pipe where I first managed to escape. Just in case the undead gardener would rise again with or without his head, I leave the chainsaw in a separate room before searching for the others at the party.

Some of the survivors congregated by the entrance. Police lights illuminate the night as paramedics tend to the wounded. I ignore the gasps as I pass and take a seat a little away from everyone, watching as they discover the body. An EMT comes to check me out but doesn’t push me to give my statement. She only asks, “Is he dead?”

“As dead as he can be,” I reply with a shrug, “I chainsawed his dick off.”

She stares at the body bags being dragged out from the hospital. “Good. He deserves his dick chainsawed off.”

We lapse into silence, and I close my eyes, the feeling of his hot blood stinging my cheek and the sound of his chainsaw echoes in my ears.


About the Story:
That chainsaws were originally invented to assist with childbirth is one of those “fun facts” that I use to menace my friends and family. Sometimes, real life is more horrifying than what we put on the page.