What should I have for dinner?
The wind is loud today.
I lounge on a neutral-toned couch and absentmindedly watch the storm through a glass door at the rear of my one-room apartment. The overcast sky colors my room with an array of desaturated shades. I twirl a strand of long, dark hair around my index finger, frowning at the collection of split ends. I’m in desperate need of a trim. A girl needs to keep up her appearance, or so they say. I return my attention to the outdoors.
Tree branches bend at unnatural angles, and I can’t help but imagine the flailing twigs as human body parts—dismembered arms dancing in the wind, a human neck pulled taut by an unseen force, one moment away from tearing…
Knock. Knock. Knock.
I turn my head idly, eyes unfocused. The front door is located behind me. I sigh. That’s one downside to living on the first floor, I’m always the initial stop for door-to-door advertisers. For a moment, I consider pretending I’m not home. However, as the wind gives a mighty roar, I decide to humor the poor fellow. Working in a storm shows dedication. I respect that.
I walk to the front of my apartment in about three seconds and open the door, not bothering to paint a fake smile on my face. To my dismay, my lack of formalities goes unnoticed. No one is there. I crane my neck out the entryway, looking left, then right. Nothing. I shrug and close the door. Perhaps, I imagined it.
I turn around, contemplating what I should make for dinner, when I notice it—a towering figure standing outside, just beyond the glass door. It is clothed in black from head to toe, resembling a physical manifestation of a shadow. Its arms point downwards, and the spaces between its arms, legs, and fingers are all splayed in 45 degree angles. It is completely motionless, which is impressive considering the aggressive winds. I cock my head in curiosity.
“Interesting,” I note aloud.
I remain still for a moment and then sprint towards the dark figure. I smile wickedly, trying to gauge its reaction. It remains frozen.
“Interesting,” I repeat.
Up close, I can now see that the figure is not alive. It’s a mannequin with sandbags securing its feet. As if on cue, I hear my front door open. Oops, I forgot to lock it.
I turn around nonchalantly, just in time to see a serious-eyed man charging towards me. He has a knife at my throat in seconds.
“You’re dead, bit—,” he chokes on his last word. The syllables dribble from his mouth like the blood now pouring from his chest. His eyes grow round as he notices the knife protruding from his body, my hand securely on the hilt. I always keep a concealed weapon up my sleeve.
“Nice try, honey,” I purr in a sugar-coated tone, effortlessly disarming him, “I’ll give you some points for creativity though. Loved the theatrics! The mannequin was a nice touch.”
Disbelief and terror highlight his gaping features until I twist the knife deeper. Then, death finally collects the light in his eyes. I push the heavy body to the floor in mild annoyance. Another perfectly good sweater marred by bloodstains. I meticulously clean my knife’s blade and roll up my left sleeve. Grinning, I carve a diagonal dash across four healed tick marks on my upper arm.
“Guess that makes…” I pause, counting the groupings of five, “Twenty. I wonder who’s going to show up next.”
They have been trying to kill me for years now. I don’t mind though. It’s fun, like a game.
I sigh and collapse on the couch once more, observing the tortured trees shuddering behind the ever-watching mannequin. I guess I’ll have to move again.
I shift my attention to my hands and analyze the deep red hue, warmth, iron-tinged aroma, and stickiness of the man’s blood. My eyes widen in realization, and I gasp, straightening my back.
“That’s it. I’ll have spaghetti for dinner!”
Not my horror movie...
I woke up, it was still dark outside. I just went back to sleep. I woke up again, still dark. I slept. I woke up, still dark. Hmm, what time is it? I thought. I pulled out my phone to check, 2:00pm! What the..? My train of thought was interrupted by a curling scream outside, I looked out the window and saw a woman no older than 40. Her face held blood and something wasn't right about her eyes. They were black.What the actual fu-. I immediately go downstairs and lock my front door, and all the windows, and start staring at the people surrounding the screaming lady. I turn away from the window for only a second then I hear a stampede outside. Everyone is running back inside away from the lady who is still standing hurling her arms to the sky. The world turns to reddish black, under the unidentified lights in the sky. The TV flashes to the new station and It sounds urgent, the lady is practically yelling at the camera. And i get distracted by the new reporter to notice the monsters falling from the lights in the sky.
“Everyone must stay inside!” someone screams. The power cuts off. The adrenaline hits me and I'm shaking. The world is deep red now and I look outside to see a black fleshy tube sucking the life out of people. The old lady out front is now lifeless on the ground all pale and skinny. I look around with horror on my face and see more and more dead people on the streets. I witness monsters and demon looking creatures crawling on all-fours and taking the souls of the dead. They break into unlocked houses, they kill them one by one, house by house. I dash downstairs and barrake the front door with my couch and arm chairs. The door slams as they try to get in, their hand prints, covered in blood, stained my windows. All of the sudden i see glass shards flying. And the monsters inside my house. I run into a closet and hide. I turn the lock, and curl into a ball and then i hear the monsters in my house move around and search for me. Their killing call sounds like a loud purr and a low deep growl. They're hunting me.
They are hard of hearing and i make sounds with them having no reaction. I saw their ruthless killing if they could actually hear properly i’d be dead. Their is a car outside. I can hear it, and so can the monsters. I hear them all rush out the shattered window. I slowly open the closet door, making sure they are all out of my house. The people are trying to escape but even the people on a plane cant. Smoke covers the buildings with a plane in the middle. I want to believe that there are other people that are alive, that my family is alive, but the phone is still ringing. No answer. I peek outside and wish for a single person to be alive. I wish. I wish. I wish. Nothing. I grab all of my food and go into my basement. Taking all of the scrape wood to close the door and windows. I silently wait. I wait. I wait. I wait. I wait. I hear screams. Again and again and again. My power is still off so I check my phone. The new is off and i check the international channels. One in Asia, Europe, and Australia. There all under attack just like LA. Monsters have officially taken over. Were doomed.
My house is being searched again by the monsters, their stomps getting closer to me. It seems their sense of smell is better then their hearing because they find me in an instant. And all too soon their taking my body into the air and sucking the life out of me like all the others, I see my body on the ground frail and lifeless. How could i be so foolish to think I’d be the one to live in this horror movie?
Pins and Screws and Eyes of Needles — Oh, My!
Under general anesthesia, the urologist pressed Peter Harper's testicles along his inguinal canals until they reached the final bottlenecks of swollen inguinal rings.
“It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven,” he said under his breath. Peter Harper was indeed very rich.
“What?” asked the anesthesiologist.
“Eye of the needle,” he repeated, pressing gloved thumbs on each bulge. He forced Harper's gonads, squeezing them forward until wringing them through, bruised, into their familiar resting places.
“Those are surely gonna be sore for a while,” the urologist said, transferring care to the orthopedic surgeon who prepared plaster of Paris to immobilize Harper's pelvic ring. He hoped the six separate fractures and disarticulated femur head would heal with the help of a dozen titanium pins and screws.
No one had informed them just how Harper had sustained these injuries, by now requiring six units of blood. Car accident vs being impaled by falling onto something were the leading guesses.
After the orthopedic surgeon shaped the plaster girdle, strategically windowed for bodily functions, ice packs were placed to reduce the swelling of his genitals protruding through the cutaway holes.
The urologist implanted the suprapubic catheter to rest his bladder until his penile urethra could pass anything more viscous than gas. Using the other access hole, the colon and rectal surgeon, having finished the colostomy, next identified the traumatic rectal-bladder fistula via proctoscope, sealing it with an endoscopic procto-ring.
After the suctioning saliva and other comatose secretions had been done, the nurse in the recovery room had time to wonder. Car accident?
Peter Harper attempted to speak.
“What?” his nurse asked. “You’re out of surgery and doing fine.” Harper spoke again. Once again she couldn’t understand. “Try again, Mr. Harper. Cough.” He coughed and groaned from the pain.
“Who was that woman?” he finally rasped.
“What woman?” the nurse asked. “Cough again.” He coughed again. He groaned again.
“That woman,” he repeated. “I have to find out who she is.” He coughed yet again. “She was fucking fantastic.”
"Easy there, lover-boy. You might unscrew your screws."
"That's really funny, he sputtered, then drifted off.
Happy Endings
Quisque was a storyteller always in search of a happy ending. He was a talented and educated raconteur, but everything he wrote he limited to exactly 125 words. He was a neurotic.
Like most writers.
Since everything he wrote was only 125 words, and since he was always in search of a happy ending, four of those words, at the minimum, had to include that happy ending, as such,
"...lived happily ever after."
Thus, even such a terse conclusion left only 121 words, max, to tell a tale with a beginning, middle, and end. Including a happy ending.
And if the ending were to be more complex than merely the "...lived happily ever after," that meant even fewer words that could be used to arrive there.
On this particular day, he wrote this opening, eating up, at the outset, four words:
Once upon a time...
[This reduced his opus to 117 words which, as it turned out, was divisible by 3. Thus, he could perfectly balance the beginning, middle, and end with 39 words each.]
THE BEGINNING
...there was a man whose biography was told in allotments of 39 words. His childhood, thus, he truncated as, Got birthed, learned to walk and talk, went to school, made mistakes, sometimes learned lessons. Sometimes, however, he did not. [39 words]
THE MIDDLE
Found a girl, made her happy, then got her pregnant, married her, made her unhappy, became a father, kept making her unhappy. Found another girl—a secret girl—a masseuse who made happy endings, but made her unhappy, too. [39 words]
THE ENDING
His wife learned and conspired with his masseuse lover to prepare a special massage table. Prone, his face sealed one hole in the table, his genitalia another. Two can wield cutlery faster than one. They became lovers and so… [39 words]
… lived happily ever after.
And so, Quisque was successful. Another perfect 125-word story, replete with a beginning, a middle, and a happy ending, and a moral, too, at that!
He was pleased, for it was the closest thing he would ever get to a happy ending again, without a face or genitalia.
Meagre Easter
After Easter brunch, Liliana was clearing the table, eager for her annoying relatives to leave. Meanwhile, her partner Denis was taking out the trash when he tripped and fell. Suddenly, a werewolf bit him. “It’s just a human. I was revived to hunt a dangerous vampire that lives around here.” Denis returned home, believing he had simply fallen. Gazing at the full moon, Denis' inner wolf emerged, hurling the relatives' car off the cliff. Liliana tackled him and summoned her vampiric fangs, bringing his humanity back. Oblivious, Denis awoke on the ground. "What were we doing here?" Liliana just smiled.
Attention To Tea
Nobody tells you how to go about, 'seeing through it all.' Nobody around me seems to see it the same way I, and maybe we, see it. Nobody could help if they wanted to.
"Can you be more specific?" She looks at me with that look.
I don't know how to respond. Maybe we.
"I'm sorry, I didn't realize I was speaking. I meant to be thinking to myself."
"On every point, honey. I'm just trying to understand." She still has that look, and the bridge between us splinters from more constant communication of not understanding.
"I'm just - I'm lost on where exactly you're lost,"
I can tell by the look on her face, it's spread to me. The bug, that bleeding, smearing bug of unintentional ignorance.
"I went voluntarily to the doctor because I knew I needed help, and I brought my relevant medical history. That was not considered because I - I don't know. They kept implying it was because of my disorganized speech, but my medicine manages my disorganized speech. Do you see why that would be scary to me?"
Please, please, please, please, please, don't misunderstand.
"I... I understand your feelings are valid, I just still don't understand why you choose to be so negative and mistrusting. Why would the doctors be out to get you?" She puts the question to me so gently, and yet it hurts so bad. Oh, honey. You strike me with the sharp end of the blade.
I'll try again.
"I'm not saying anybody is out to get me, I don't think I'm relevant socially enough for that. That's - that's not what I mean, that - no, I mean, I just am floored they didn't know how to, or couldn't, support me at the mental hospital. That's where anybody goes to get extreme help and support, right?"
"Well, yes," she sighs. Straightening up how she always does to show she needs me to consider what she says next, my honey strikes me yet again with the sharp end of her verbal blade. "I'm going to ask you a question because I'm still just so lost, and I think you're lost, too. Doctors have gone to years and years of medical school, doctors are always trying to improve and nobody wants to be liable, especially on hot button issues." Meeting my gaze straight, she delivers the final blow.
"Have you considered if they're right? I'm not saying they are..." And off we go to the beginning.
I physically feel my ears ring before I hear it. Imagine, the love of your life. Or, who you thought was. To titter between two equally abysmally stigmatized labels, within my own forcibly labeled body, daily, debating if you are a person beneath the words and the more you use, the less people understand.
Stress can induce disordered speech, too. So can mood disorders. So can settings, or substances.
I remember where I've felt this feeling before. Very few times has it ever broken through to my heart - this time, it was guided as if an expert sharpshooter had lined up the shot.
True fear.
"Fear can produce disordered speech," I say with tears in my eyes. I don't know when my eyes noticed my petition papers had been slightly mussed with, but they did. I know that is the heart of the issue. "Please," I may not be able to read a room, but I can read text from a distance. Years of bad vision without glasses refined this talent of mine.
Report if Suspected Danger to Self or Symptoms Resurface
"I just - I don't get you right now. It's like how people treat gay people. You know how that manifests, right? So... think like that. Why didn't I just get my regular medicine...? Why was that ignored?" I'm pleading. I can't deny I didn't ask to be monitored like this.
"I'm so sorry, honey," She's crying. I know I've lost. Oh, I don't want to go - don't - how many strikes against me? Is this the third time, or fourth? She wouldn't strike me with a proverbial blade like this on purpose, right? "But the papers ended up in the back seat of the car, right? So, did you really bring them in? Hallucinations on everyday tasks and activities are common, did you read up on it for yourself?"
"Yes - listen, if I imagined it, how come someone else can verify they saw me drop the papers off?"
"But can they verify they were the right papers?" She knows that's a point I can't ignore.
Why can't I be supported... outside of the hospital? Why does everybody want me sent back once I start to feel real...? Who plans to pay for this? How can I work to pay off my own bills, if I'm held against my will in yet another place that's going to stick me with both needles and worse, more bills?
"I don't have the means to help you as much as you need, I'm sorry, honey, I try, and try, and try - I just... I don't understand you, or what you want,"
How? When? Did I say that out loud?
How does she not get it?
The Great Badalamenti!
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” — Arthur C. Clarke
________________
"And now for my final trick," the Great Badalamenti, boasted, "I'll make someone in the audience disappear."
The applause was anemic. He was the fifth magician of the night, so the crowd were visibly tired, yawning and fidgeting.
"A volunteer, anyone?" He looked around his audience. "How 'bout you, sir? Yes, you, with the Rolex. And that beautiful wife. Right, wife?"
A well-dressed middle-aged man nodded--about his wife--and then pointed to himself.
"Yes, you! Come on up."
A smattering of applause began. The man kissed his stunning wife at their table and rose, albeit tentatively. His wife seemed irked by the show of affection, of which the Great Badalamenti took notice and great interest.
Once the man had joined him onstage, the audience applause grew.
"And you are?"
"Roderick," the man answered.
More applause.
The Great Badalamenti then removed from his mouth what must have been over a hundred colored handkerchiefs tied together in one long string. When he shook out the heap of cloth, it billowed into a multicolored, large single sheet.
More applause.
The Great Badalamenti threw the sheet over Roderick.
"Roderick?" the Great Badlamenti asked.
"Yes?" he answered from under the sheet.
"Have we ever met before?" he asked.
"No," answered Roderick, although his beautiful wife knew better.
"OK, when I count to three, I want you to fixate on Hell."
"Hell?"
"Yes, Hell." Then to the audience, "It makes for dramatic notoriety." The audience laughed. Back to Roderick, "Got it? Hell?"
"Yes," Roderick answered, "Hell, firmly in my mind."
"Great. Now when I tap your head, that's where you're going. Don't worry, you'll just be visiting." The audience laughed.
The Great Badalamenti tapped Roderick on the head. The sheet collapsed to the ground--quite empty.
The audience gasped, then applauded wildly. The magician took a bow, the lights went out, the music queued, and when the lights returned, the stage was empty.
It was a great show, but it wasn't a great trick; because it wasn't a trick.
The Great Badalamenti had a new girlfriend and wore his new Rolex.
________________
“Any sufficiently advanced evil is indistinguishable from magic.” — the Author
Monsoon
Oftentimes the gutter would throw up its contents, in a great tidal wave, by the front door of the house, forcing the already-damp earth to swallow more than it could hold – too much, always too much.
At the edge of the woods behind the farmhouse, young trees lost their anchor points to the mud. So they fell, in a dull, wet noise, barely noticeable through the drumming song of raindrops.
Still rain was a good thing. During monsoons, while the whole family holed up together upstairs at the first sign of a flood, the amount of noise a dozen people could make acted like a shield. Whatever happened there, under the rain, had nothing to do with them.
Everything, from ruined fields to unearthed carcasses, was the doing of the old pagan gods who once ruled those lands. Mortally offended ever since the peasants had turned their backs on their traditions, those eternal beings rose from the earth, bringing corpses and secrets with them, cursing the traitors. Rumour had it that whoever set foot outside while it rained would be devoured whole by the gods themselves.
Gerbille had been living with that story burrowed at the back of her mind for years now. Her fear should have dwindled with time, but it had only shed its skin along with the girl. As a child she feared mud-monsters crawling from under her bed, yellowed teeth at her throat. Now she feared she'd see nothing at all, would only feel the pain when it happened. After all it was pitch dark in the attic where the whole family slept, and sometimes, at night, the rain stopped falling.
Those rare moments of utter silence were the soil from which the legitimacy of her childhood terrors sprouted. She was fifteen, old enough to work the fields, sell her wool at the marketplace without supervision. Fifteen and yet there she was, lying on her straw mattress, letting the black ink of night pool over her wide-open eyes.
That same darkness blanketed the entire house, separating it from the outside world perfectly. Behind the windowless walls there was no howling wind, no creaking roof. The sound of rain had accompanied her for so long by that point, that it took Gerbille a moment before she noticed its absence.
Behind that lack was something else. First she believed someone was walking of dead leaves, but the crunch was too loud for a few leaves. Then the sound changed: now she could have sworn someone was eating soup downstairs.
"Anyone else hearing this?"
To her left, the rustling of beddings put a lid on the soup slurping noise.
"Who's eating at such an hour?" Whispered Souris as she got out of bed.
"Don't go!" Gerbille tried to grab onto her cousin's sleeve, but she couldn't see a thing and her hand only found air. "I have a bad feeling about this."
"I'll be careful going down the stairs. Stay here."
Souris's footfalls grew fainter, and before long the creaking of the stairs reached Gerbille's ears. The slurping noise went on, uninterrupted. Punctuated with Souris's slow descent and a new sound, sharp cracking, it seemed to be taking form the more Gerbille listened to it. She imagined its long hands, nails curved like talons that could easily pierce her shoulders. The sound would have teeth too, the same yellowed teeth she had so feared when she was younger.
If she stayed put, lying there with her blanket her only shield, the noise would come for her. It would push itself all the way up the stairs using its spindly arms. Then it would open the door, slowly, and Gerbille would know the exact second the nameless horror crawled inside the room. Its gurgling, its loud inhales, its ancient bones ground nearly to dust – all of this would draw closer, slowly, inexorably. At last, fear itself at the foot of her bed, Gerbille would understand what it had been slurping with such enthusiasm – but it would be too late: she would lose her eyes, lose her tongue; that vile beast, that carrion of forgotten god, would bring Gerbille's frail figners to its mouth, one by one. Its lukewarm tongue would wrap all the way around, until the very last knuckle, and its acidic saliva would turn flesh into soup. Gluttonous, the sound would suck until nothing was left but her bones, clean and smooth. Then it would break those too, snap them between its molars, holding her firmly by the arm. She wouldn't be able to cry out, to move; thus held by the undistilled purity of the hells, the only thing a peasant girl could do was pray.
Downstairs, something fell heavily. Gerbille sat up with a start, drenched in sweat. There was no way she could stay put.
"Souris?" Nothing. "'Ris? Who was eating?"
No one answered. She got up on trembling legs, staggered to the door like a young fawn. From the landing she could see a faint light coming from the kitchen, waiting, inviting. Gerbille answered its call.
A small candle flame danced without a care in the world, sitting on the large dining table, reflected by the puddles darkening the floor. Souris laid on the floor, eyes and mouth wide open. A towel was tied around her arm, probably to slow down the flow of blood rushing out of it and into a bucket. Her hand rested on top of a slice of bread on the table, next to a knife smeared with butter.
Gerbille didn't have her mouth fully open yet when a hand wrapped around the lower half of her face. A tall, ice-cold body pressed against her back, then an arm wound around her waist, keeping her still.
"Be good," her father whispered in her ear. His breath made her stomach turn. "Go back to bed, before the rain calls for me again."
He freed her slowly, ready to silence her again should he need to. But terror locked her jaw shut, then walked with her feet. Twice she stumbled, but her father didn't make a move. Near the stairs, the round door leading down to the cellar was cranked open. The stone steps had disappeared under the water. Gerbille stared at it, that lightless unknown, for a second. Just long enough, really, to hear it again, that familiar, damnable sound, the tapping fingers soon to turn into a deafening beating drum.
"It's raining."
Slowly, she turned around. Behind her, her father had tensed. His eyes were dead, the colour of milk. The shadows on his hands toyed with his raised veins, the length of his nails. In the cellar, something laughed, the sound of an emptying well. Gerbille closed her eyes, and jumped.
Meeting the Meat
He didn't understand. The meat was rancid again. This was the third cow of the day, the third that released an overpowering stench when opened. On the first, he thought it had some unknown infection and continued butchering until the smell forced him to stop. The second cow stinking of rotting flesh concerned him and now the third...
He paused at the fleshy slapping sound behind him. Initially, he saw only the dangling intestines as the first cow rose. As it lumbered toward him, he realized daylight was visible through the hole in its head left by the rifle bullet.