Blood Magik- A Cold Day In Hell

by Corwyn Matthew

  “The news…?” he mumbled to himself curiously before moving cautiously toward his phone. He picked up the cell and pressed the button to activate the walkie. “The news?” he repeated into the speaker, hesitant to even ask, as if he’d be inviting a conspiracy theory weed-trip into his currently calm and deep-rooted high.

  -Bleepbleep-

  “The news, man! The fucking news!”

  Al was confused and disorientated by the hasty urgency in his fellow drug associate’s intrusive voice, but remained tranquil, not wanting to let go of his meditative trip.

  “What fucking news?” he asked his sparky, overenthusiastic, hollow shell of a friend.

  -Bleepbleep-

  “Dude!! Some crazy fucking shit’s goin’ down outside your house right now, man! The whole block is bein’ torn to pieces by some kinda rabid, wild animal—!”

  Al arrogantly cut short his friend with a finger on the button while slamming his fist on the table in front of him. “What the fuck are you blathering about, you inarticulate pigeon-fucker?! You’re brainless bumbling is offsetting my delicately balanced chi!!” He took in a deep breath, settling his nerves, exhaling slowly to regain composure. “I was deeply enthralled in the intricacies of my life’s work and thoroughly enjoying the all-consuming silence that surrounds it—!!”

  There’s no way to describe the terrible noise interrupting his lecture that accompanied the ripping of his metal garage door from off its frame…

  The beastly, living-dead monster, Jean-Claude Le’Duprie, tore the face off the front of the room Al stood in, tossing it behind him on top of a parked jalopy at the curb. Al instinctively buckled to the floor from his paranoid nerves kicking into overdrive and wriggled across the grow-room, retreating into its corner, hiding behind double-stacks of buckets filled with fertile soil.

  He could only make out a blur of black poised at the torn opening of his garage, hardly able to stay focused long enough to actually see what it was that broke into his home. Wires on the ceiling near the front of the room morbidly hung from beams, killing the internal lights and spilling sparks from their broken ends over his helplessly flaccid weed plants. J.C.’s enormous silhouette barricaded the newly exposed exit and his girth nearly completely covered the narrow garage’s tattered opening.

  Al bundled up into the corner, still clutching his phone in his fists, and peeked through the space between two buckets to see what smashed through his humble botanical hovel. His fuzzy stoner vision combined with a paranoid, delusional mind-state warped the image in front of him into something revolting. He wasn’t sure what he was seeing, but whatever it was…it was ruthlessly fucking up his high.

  ……

  ………

  …………

  -Bleepbleep-

  “Dude…you still there?”

  FUCK!!

  He hugged the phone into his midsection to muffle the sound then turned down the volume and pinched the button, whispering franticly back at his friend.

  “Shut the fuck up, Daryl!! It’s here!! It’s in my fucking grow-room!!”

  ……

  ………

  …………

  -Bleepbleep-

  “No fuckin’ way, bro! What the hell is it?”

  Al peeked back through the crack between buckets at this massive thing, and tried describing what he saw as best he could, whispering to his friend in that same frantic tone.

  “It’s…it’s…some kind of…giant…buzz-killing…dung-covered…gorilla……in a suit!!”

  ……

  ……….

  -Bleepbleep-

  “A buzzard in a gorilla suit? What the fuck’re you sayin’ to me, man?”

  “No, god damn it!! A fucking gorilla in a suit, you jackoff! Covered in…in…shit!!”

  ……

  ………

  -Bleepbleep-

  “That’s fuckin’ disgusting, man… What’s it want?”

  Al was quiet for a second while pondering the question, reaching for the most positive explanation he could uncover while cowering for what little possibility might remain of his life.

  “M-m-maybe……m-m-maybe he wants to…to b-bu-bu-buy a bag.”

  ……

  ………

  …………

  -Bleepbleep-

  “Don’t give him the last of that good shit, man. I still wanna come over later and pick that up.”

  Al watched helplessly as the buzz-shattering beast stepped further into his garage. J.C. then gave the open air a sharp sniff and examined one of the budding plants perched beside him, head cocked in curiosity.

  During this fretful moment of slow, torturous suspense, Al found a series of conflicting thoughts running through his mind. The first of which being something along the lines of, “No... no... no! Not the Sour Diesel!”, then followed by, “What the fuck am I thinking? ... Yes... YES... take the buds and leave, you disgusting ape!”. But his subsequent actions were what eventually spoke volumes.

  Jean-Claude swiped at the potted plant with the back of his fist sending it crashing into the wall, and Al jumped up from his crouched recoil and shouted, “Nooo! YOU BASTARD!!” as if a friend or loved one had caught the dismissive swing.

  He immediately realized his reflexive outburst might’ve cost him his life, and his vengeful grimace for the honor of his fallen, budding comrade went from mulish to mortified upon establishing definitive eye-contact with that which would be his doom.

  Le’Duprie couldn’t help but laugh at the miserable expression of hopelessness on the face of his petrified prey.

  “Stupid little stoner…” He chuckled and grinned toothlessly in mouth-bleeding anticipation of the moments to come. “Hopefully you make better Food than Foe, no?”

  4

  “What’d she say?” Terry grabbed his keys and wallet from his locker as Jimmy handed him back his cell.

  “She wants us to find Marty and meet her back at her place.” Jimmy was in a sort of stupor – all the commotion was making him queasy. The pain meds he was on made it hard for him to stay focused. He hoped they’d wear off soon so he could start thinking straight again. “She said she had to find someone. She sounded freaked out, man… She said she wanted us to be careful…”

  “Careful of what?” Terry grabbed his phone from Jimmy’s hands and led the way out of the locker room, jacket hanging on by one arm for the ride.

  “I don’t know… I think she might be nuts, dude… Maybe she just flipped under the pressure, you know?”

  Terry shook his head. “I don’t think so. Not the way Marty talks about her. He said she’s the most levelheaded person he knows…”

  “Well, shit, Terry, that’s not sayin’ much, is it? I mean…look at who he knows!” Jimmy was starting to freak himself out a little. “Most of us are loose cannons… I’m a nervous fucking wreck half the time… The Coach is the dictionary definition of not-fucking-normal! …Who the hell is he comparing her to here?!”

  Terry stopped dead in his tracks and Jimmy, following closely behind, ran face-first into the back of him. He turned around to address his nervous friend and look him sternly in the eyes.

  “Dude…”

  “What?” Jimmy was a tad too “amped up” for Terry’s tastes.

  “Dude…” Terry put his arms on Jimmy’s shoulders.

  “What?!” Jimmy didn’t understand how he could be so calm…

  “DUDE!!” He gave his friend a good shake and Jimmy finally slowed down enough to see he was serious. “…Relax.”

  He was frozen for a minute, just staring at his friend who had him tight in his grips, then Terry loosened up his hold and Jimmy let out a deep breath.

  “Okay…” He let his shoulders slacken as he breathed in deep.

  “Okay?”

  “Okay…” He nodded
.

  “Okay?”

  “I said okay, god damn it, Terry, what the fuck?!”

  Terry laughed at his friend’s angst and smacked him on the shoulder. “Okay.” He smiled. “Let’s go find Marty.”

  The boys knew Marty was planning on stopping by the cemetery after the ceremony. They figured he’d have done that by now and then made his way back to Tara’s place. He’d either be at the bar, knee deep in booze, or wrapped up in his lady friend’s sultry sheets, screwing away his sorrows. Either way, the big-man would probably be a handful. They hoped he’d gotten through most of his binging and grieving by now, and would be as docile as a wet bag of hockey socks… But they could also be walking into something much more complicated and potentially dangerous.

  Only time would tell. And by the tone in Alex’s voice, it seemed the time they did have was probably something they shouldn’t take for granted.

  5

  Alex couldn’t get the earlier image of the creature who claimed to be Marty’s younger brother out of her mind. The insane look in his eyes as he merrily chewed on the meat of her esophagus, her severed tongue dangling from his mouth between his bleeding teeth…

  Aiyana, Alex’s mother, had told her where to find her real father… And that he was an older man; a Shaman who lived on a reservation an hour east of the Los Angeles city limit. She said that this man, her father, knew things. That he could help save her brother… That if anyone could save Marty, he would be the one to see. Alex wasn’t sure what was going on, or how much of all of this she even believed, but any threat to her brother’s life deserved her utmost attention, and she’d go to whatever lengths were required to negate it.

  A strange storm and cloud-front formed over the city she fled. The scrawny, white cab driver in his mid-forties was fiddling with the radio as he drove, attempting to get some information from the news about the weather, but every station he turned to was chaotic and jumbled.

  He cursed under his breath a series of curious ramblings, and Alex felt the anxieties in her stomach grow tighter with every channel he passed that didn’t make it through the interference. A sickening hiss laced jumbled sounds that resembled distant screams and backward chants. He continued flipping through the stations, seemingly unaware of the disturbing collage of hellish music they made, all the while mumbling to himself under his breath.

  The sounds behind the static rang with strange words and terrible cries in her mind, spiking her blood with a rush of adrenaline that widened her pupils until her retinas were drowning in black. She clutched the fabric of the seat cushion under her and closed her eyes, but the lack of any visual distractions only made the sounds more vivid and demonic…

  She opened her eyes again to see her cabby still obtusely fiddling with the radio, so she tried to reach beyond her discomfort to speak, but her voice didn’t make it very far over the sounds of anarchy that filled the car.

  “Ex-excuse me…”

  It was as if the voices in the white noise reached out and smothered her, quieting her attempts to communicate – he didn’t take any notice to her addressing him.

  “…Excuse me… Could you please turn that off?”

  She tried again, but this time his fidgeting fingers accidentally turned the volume up. Shrieks and high-pitched whines crawled over groans and snarls, muffling his own mumblings, making it sound as if his words were a deranged and twisted mantra underlining the hidden cries that crept between them…

  She couldn’t bear another second of these sounds forcibly clawing their way into her mind. She was on the verge of ripping out her own hair in hopes the pain would distract her from the noises. She no longer had a hint of poise left to her demeanor so she just let loose and yelled—

  “HEY!!”

  He snapped out of his fixation with the stereo and looked back at her through his mirror, eyes screaming for control, trembling while distraughtly staring his way.

  “Jesus, lady… You okay?”

  She was finally able to breathe when the words he spoke were plain English and not some demonic tongue. The man turned off the stereo and continued to glimpse her way through the mirror, unsure, not knowing what to expect.

  She released the deep breath she held and let her eyes drift from his.

  “No…” she finally answered. “Far from it.”

  He decided on minding his own business and allowing her the peace and quiet she seemed to need…

  Alex’s gaze drifted, peering through the backseat window at the city beside her from the elevated view of the 10 freeway, just crossing over the 405, headed east for God knows what. She was supposed to find her father, but would he really be there? Would he even care to see her or bother to help her even if he could? Or was she just chasing a ghost, or a figment of her imagination?

  A strange orange glow in the distant sky pulled her away from her fretful thoughts, and as she gazed toward it, her heart jumped from where it had settled a few seconds before. A trail of red and blue police lights headed toward the center of the eerie glow while all other traffic rushed away, scattering in every direction. Her first thought, after the initial fear of the worst-case scenario, was that maybe it was just a fire…

  But she knew better.

  It was starting. The thing that frightened even the dead. The end of all life as she knew it and the beginning of what her mother described as Hell on Earth…

  Please let this be a terrible dream, she thought.

  Please tell me this isn’t real…

  Please don’t make me live through this…

  Please…just……let me wake up…

  6

  J.C. cupped handfuls of half-baked brains from the severed neck-hole at the base of the ex-stoner’s skull, shoveling red mush into his dead orifice, hollowing out its center one mouthful at a time; an expression of utter shock and terror still impressed in the eyes and gaping mouth of his victim. Occasionally, some of Al’s brains would squeeze out his own mouth as J.C.’s huge hands retreated from his skull with overflowing grips on moist innards of cerebellum. The rest of the headless carcass rested at his feet with a hole the size of a barbarian’s fist under his ribcage. His heart, it would seem, was the first to be made into a quick meal; the brain, no doubt, shortly followed.

  Jean-Claude’s black eyes burned red, rejuvenated from what little strength of life the dead stoner’s corpse provided, and he unleashed a belch that rattled the gardening tools hanging on the walls. He set Al’s head on the counter, right-side-up, and noticed a large, hand-rolled blunt resting just beside it. He hesitated a moment, thinking, “What would be the point?”, but then shrugged, coming to the more popular conclusion of, “Why the hell not?”.

  He liberated the blunt wrapped in tobacco-leaf from its seclusion, placing the smaller end in his mouth, and then acknowledged the head of the stoner who looked to be shocked that J.C. would have the gall to smoke his dope after savagely intruding on his home.

  “Got a light?”

  The head, of course, didn’t answer… But if it could, he figured the response would’ve been something along the lines of, “I hope you eternally burn in hell, you homicidal, pot-thieving, shit-ape!”

  He chuckled devilishly, reaching down for Al’s body. Lifting him by his belt, he felt for the familiar rectangular bulge in his pocket and ripped it from his thigh; cloth, lighter, and all. He threw the body crashing into the potted plants on the end of the counter then lit the open end of the giant spliff.

  His first puff sucked up a third of the blunt in one pull, and the cloud he blew swirled from his lungs to envelope the entire garage in its haze along with a genuinely deranged bellow of laughter.

  Just five more blocks to go before Jean-Claude would be reunited with his team, and he knew once they were made to join him, the Anaheim Hell Hounds would truly be a diabolical force to be reckoned with.

  He was subtly aw
are that to spark the resurrection process he’d have to bury his teammates in the same blood-drenched earth that brought him back from the grave. It wouldn’t be easy killing them all at once, he knew, and even less of a walk in the park getting the bodies back to the cemetery, but he was not without a plan. He’d catch them all in the locker room after the game, barricade the exits and pick them off one-by-one. He might even go easy on their bodies to make the resurrection process move along more quickly…

  But not with his coach.

  His coach wouldn’t get the honor of joining his team among the undead. He would instead, rip him joint from socket and suck the flabby meat from his brittle bones while he was still alive – a cowardly screaming torso, crying in a pool of blood and piss. It wasn’t that he disliked him so much… He just somehow felt the need to bring enormous pain and agony to the waking world; chaos and misery. And if he had to pick one man to do it to, Coach Rollins seem liked the type of man to get the short end of the stick – the shit-luck of the draw. Life’s an ugly-nagging-bitch, he figured… And then you die terribly at the merciless hands of a French-Canadian zombie. …Sounded like poetry. His coach hated poetry. Fortunately, he’d always been one to appreciate life’s abundance of perverse little ironies.

  These Are the Dead of Our Lives

  Smoke sped past a group of five or six cop cars rushing in the opposite direction toward the cemetery mayhem and threw out an arm, flashing the passing police force a stiff birdie with his dead left hand.

  “Enjoy dying, you fuckin’ morons!” He chuckled sinisterly at the thought of a dozen power-tripping pigs finding out just how powerless they really were in the face of an emerging Hell on Earth. “It’s gonna be a pork salad, back there.” He shook his head while down shifting in his trophy ride. “Sorry I’ll miss it.”

  When he pulled up to the Metropolitan Detention Center, he didn’t stop at the blue paint of the forward handicap parking, or even at the tall curb separating the lot from the public sidewalk. Instead, he hopped the barrier and parked the Camaro at the base of the stairs like he owned the whole goddamned building. He popped the trunk, ripped away the layer of carpeting covering the spare, and reached down for the hefty tire-iron screwed in place next to it. He didn’t bother taking the time to properly remove the tool, nor was he the least bit concerned with the four approaching prison guards exiting the building soon after, their hands cautiously resting atop holstered weapons. The officers took one look at Smoke’s sickly grin peeking from under the hood of his sweatshirt and the solid iron rod he’d ripped from the trunk of the illegally parked vehicle and simultaneously drew their firearms.