Ty (10:44pm ): Fuck this man
Ty (10:44pm ): Jesus christ another one just hit, right inthe room next to me
Ty (10:44pm ): Fuck dude
Ty (10:45pm): I hear somthing outside
Ty (10:45pm): Some one is definitely here who the fuck is that?
Me (10:46pm): Can you tell who it is?
What could I say to him? All of a sudden my comedy movie didn’t seem so funny. I felt helpless. Sitting there munching on candy, reading his messages.
Me (10:46pm): Can you see anyone?
Ty (10:46pm): Dude its fucking pitch black outside
Ty (10:46pm): All I have is the porchlight
Ty (10:47pm): Why would anyone be coming around now?
I sat there imagining what it would be like going through his situation. All alone. Scared.
Me (10:47pm): No cars or anything?
Ty (10:47pm): Shit dude shit!
Me (10:48pm): ???
Ty (10:48pm): The porch light just went out
Ty (10:48pm): It sounded like something hit it really fast, like shattered
All alone. Scared. Dark.
Me (10:50pm): Can you hear or see anyone
Ty (10:51pm): Im running back to the bedroom. There’s too many windows here for them to see in
Me (10:51pm): Fuck man can you call the cops or something!
Ty (10:52pm): Idk dude this is creepy as fuck
I’m tearing through the candy now. Handful after handful, unconsciously.
Ty (10:54pm): I cant man, fuck what can I do
Me (10:54pm): Weapon or something?
Ty (10:57pm): No Im just hiding now, back in the bedroom trying to listen
Ty (10:59pm): Omfg i think I just heard the kitchen door. it always creaks dude, i swear I just heard the creak
Ty (10:59pm): Fuck
I sat motionless, staring at the glowing screen.
Ty (11:01pm): Im sure now, it is the door someone is in
Me (11:01pm): In? In the house!? WHAT!
Ty (11:02pm): I’m going to try to hide. If i stay quiet they might not see me. Maybe they think the house is empty
Me (11:03pm): Isn’t your car out front?
Ty (11:03pm): Fuck theyre coming closer shut up man
Then I pictured him lying under the bed trying to keep as quiet as possible. He could probably hear their footsteps in the house, if not see their feet coming toward him. I waited a moment. No text. I waited another moment. Still nothing. I sent a message. I had to.
Me (11:09pm): Are you ok man? Should I send help?
And all of a sudden a jolt of utter terror and remorse overwhelmed my senses. The realization dawned on me. What had I done! Him crammed beneath the bed, his phone probably close by if not already clutched in his shaking hand. I remembered back. Hours earlier… what loud noise had startled me -- my phone on the table. His first incoming message. Vibrations.
The Job
Vincent V. Cava
“So what shall we cut off next? An ear? Your big toe? Maybe I’ll just slice out your tongue so I don’t have to listen to your whiny sniveling any more?”
I test my restraints again as the maniac scampers across the room with a sense of depraved exuberance to pick out yet another tool from his surgical kit, but there’s no way I can break free. He hums to himself as he lightly runs his fingers along each torture device, gently caressing their sharpened blades and steel handles, taking his time to make his selection.
“Ah the scalpel! Oh, we can have some fun with this!”
He wraps his hand around my throat – it feels like he’s crushing my trachea. Every muscle in my body tenses as he sticks the instrument into my eye. The pain is incredible. He laughs out loud, relishing in my agony like some kind of super villain as he twists and turns the pointed object, scrambling the inside of my eye socket.
After what feels like minutes he pulls the thing from my face and a mangled cluster of what used to be an eyeball dangles down my cheek. He laughs again, “I hope you enjoyed that, friend because we’re going to be at it all night!”
All night, I think to myself. He better. It is what I paid him for after all.
The Horror Of Knowing
S.R. Tooms
I, like many people, have held onto the same pack of friends since my early school years. The band of beauties we like to say. Who knows why, but for whatever reason it seems a large portion of people cease making new close relationships once reaching adulthood. Sure you have your acquaintances and such, but these come and go without much thought.
And so, like many, the core of my social life had remained unchanged for years and years – all the way back to middle school in fact; right there on that first day when ol’ Jimmy hit Ms. Potter in the back of the head with the grimiest spitball known to man. The best of friends ever since. This being the case, you can imagine my shock and trepidation following the occurrence which took place last week.
It began as an ordinary day with an ordinary feel. The hours seemed to pass by devoid of any and all meaning. An unremarkable day, destined to be lost in the sea of other unremarkable days. But… when the sun had set and the creeping shadows of night had long since crawled their sinister way over the town, and there I found myself home alone, staying up late, sitting on the couch flipping through boring infomercials on TV. And it was here that the strange thing of which I spoke of transpired.
As I stared innocently and boringly at the screen, a man wearing a dark blue suit popped into view. My finger was already pressing down on the up button… And for some reason I decided to pause for a moment – to see what the man had to say. It’s a shame I did… Because now I can never forget what the man in dark blue spoke of, speaking directly to me. As he paced behind the commonplace desk, uttering and vocalizing his grave message without so much as a single unsteady or unsure motion – one that is even now still unspeakable to me. The very thought continues haunting my every waking moment. Such foreboding sentences, with so piercing a message. I recall sitting, spellbound, with eyes of fear and heart of terror, unable to avert my gaze – as if under some sinister trance. And so I watched and I listened. I gripped the edge of the couch cushions, digging into the material, bracing my entire body against the chair as if somehow attempting to shield myself from the words emanating forth from the screen. Yet the words continued pouring out like a fusillade of bullets. Each syllable became another shot to my chest; every wave of his hand felt like a heated shell penetrating my gut, punctuating and driving home the terrifying point. I was being pummeled, beaten, tormented… endlessly it went on! Until the final moments of his speech trailed off, just as the screen went black and another commercial of no significance came into view, taking its place, as if nothing had ever happened. Although I instantly pulled the plug, before retreating back to the safety of my bed, left reeling with fright -- pondering and sweating.
A week has passed since the fateful night. I’ve had not a wink of sleep nor second of relief. The words spoken by the man in the dark blue suit have echoed in my ears without so much as a moment’s peace. A broken record, a repeating loop, a constant reminder of his earth shattering revelation. One which I now desperately wish never to have learned of at all. Mother was right -- late night television is dangerous. If only I had listened… but alas, what good is pitying poor decisions after they’ve come about. No, it won’t do any good. And so I am left with this burdensome weight of dread upon my shoulders. The quick sand at my feet, the tar pit pulling me deeper and deeper with no sign of escape or remedy…
To say my presence has been scarce would be committing an egregious understatement. I very much doubt even a ray of sunlight has touched my skin in some time now. The fear is real… My friends haven’t seen me for an entire week. They message continuously asking of my whereabouts. Hunting and tracking me down under the guise of friendship and concern. I simply ignore these calls and texts; it’s better than the alternative. Far better! I know what they want… They won’t have it! And it had ta
ken a number of days before I began to feel even slightly comfortable enough to progress. Up until that point I’d only envisioned their faces using memory alone. Yet, how reliable can my recollection be in this shaken state of affairs? The man in the blue suit has tainted my mind, rendering it not only untrustworthy but downright dangerous. He has turned me on myself… However, hiding and secluding away can last for only so long. To test his theories requires venturing out into the unknown.
Several bottles of liquid courage later and after an intense session of mental deliberation, I have, following much hesitation and nervousness, brought myself to look at their pictures on my phone, inspecting each person I associate with. The first step in this deadly process – determining how accurate the man in the blue suit really was. Perhaps a mere joke or some twisted ruse?
I stare on with critical eyes, examining their features and bodies with the sharpest of scrutinies. Trace every line of their physiques; inspect each pore of their visages. Peer deeply, leave nothing to chance. This is what I must do. How had I been so foolish as to never check before? Why couldn’t I see it?! And, quite unsettlingly yet true, so far the dark blue suit man’s message seems to be holding strong -- for each picture I see of my friends undoubtedly confirms another warning he gave. Jimmy’s face… his nose, the way it sets a little too far to the right, and the way Todd’s jaw is slightly off kilter. Then there’s that one guy I don’t know too well, but he seems to hang out with the gang often enough (one of those acquaintance friend of a friends people). His forehead is rather high, isn’t it! And the shoulders slope in such an alarming manner… Yes, I see it now! These observations fill my mind with unparalleled panic. I would love nothing more than to delete these files from my phone -- to remove them entirely from my life! Right along with those people! Yet the desire to inspect overwhelms my better judgment, and there I am, left to probe and explore in a fit of fright.
There’s the face of Tina (the one girl we routinely socialize with). I never would have noticed before… but those words! Those abominable words of his! Over and over I hear them. And now when I look upon Tina’s face, I see nothing but the truth uttered by the mysterious television man, spraying out all over her lips and smile. One lingering question plagues my brain – if it has already happened to them, will it now happen to me? If I’ve somehow not succumbed to it by now? Is it too late? And knowing this is the reason why I’ve been avoiding every mirror as if I were hiding from a pesky relative. It is what prevents me from glancing, let alone looking long and hard at myself in any reflective surface for that matter! I cannot bear to take sight of my figure, not after what I’ve discovered… I do not wish to see the truth that is all around me… A crushing blow I would never recover from. And yet, I must. There will come a day when I am forced to confront the truth. When I am condemned to see what I fear most.
That day is today. The time is now. I cannot tolerate another sleepless night, shaking beneath the covers like a frightened child. I’ll make my way into the bathroom, and at first leave the light off until I build the courage to face myself in the large mirror that hangs above the sink. I’ll think back to these vile pictures of the grotesque people I refer to as best friends. I’ll recall their monstrous bodies and unsightly features. The discolored teeth and bad skin. The mangled, wispy hair and the sun-scorched balding tops. The rolls of fat and abhorrent stretch marks… I’ll hope and pray all the while that what the dark blue suit man spoke of is not true (despite perhaps knowing it all along). I’ll cover my face with both hands, only peeling back one finger at a time -- as the shock of seeing the truth all at once might leave me dead on the spot. And all the while I will replay the words he intoned with a somber tenor; even now I hear them in my head “It is true that people of a similar physical attractiveness congregate toward each other, often becoming the best of friends.”
The Paranormal Investigators
Vincent V. Cava
Ms. White opened her door to greet the two goofy looking gentlemen standing on the old woman’s stoop. Both men sported matching blue jumpsuits and heavy black boots that reminded her of the garb worn by the trash collectors that came through her neighborhood every Wednesday morning. In their hands they held elaborate looking devices adorned with several shiny buttons, levers, and switches. A rainbow of multicolored cords and cables hung from the bulky overstuffed sacks each of them had been lugging around on their backs. Parked behind them on the street right in front of her home was a large unsightly van, the same color as their jumpsuits. In jumbo white lettering across the vehicle’s side panel it read:
DAN AND BIG AL: THE PARANORMAL INVESTIGATORS
‘GHOSTS DON’T STAND A CHANCE!’
Their faces were pure business. Both men bore intense, serious, expressions; seemingly oblivious to the ridiculous scene they had created at the old woman’s front door. Ms. White stuck her hand out to greet the men.
"Hel-"
"Mam, say no more." The taller man, whom she had assumed to be Big Al, brushed by her on his way into her home. “This place is rife with paranormal activity. I can feel it! It’s a good thing you called lady.”
Ms. White’s eyes widened with intrigue, “Oh my, you can tell that just by me opening the door?”
“Lady,” He said, “ I’ve been investigating the paranormal for 12 years. After a while ghosts, ghouls, and apparitions become something you can just…sense. Why, I wouldn’t be surprised if you had a whole family of ghosts in this dump, but just to be sure my associate and I brought our spectrometers with us today.”
The short rotund man was kneeling in the doorway and fumbling around in his backpack. His bulging gut hung down over his waist as he bent over to fetch a fancy gadget with dozens of knobs and blinking lights out of his bag. The sight of his fat bulbous belly as it jiggled to and fro caused Ms. White to reconsider her initial assumption that the “Big” in Big Al was a reference to height. His name did appear second on the van and the taller one seemed to have more of an alpha personality – the kind of guy who would insist that he received top billing on the marquee.
“Now Mam,” the taller one started to speak again after helping himself to a couple of the freshly baked oatmeal cookies she had cooling on the counter.
“Having a ghost in your house ain’t like having mice or roaches. It can be down right dangerous! Once we can properly discern just what kind of ghostly entity that we’re dealing with here, I’d advise you to let us handle the situation as soon as possible. We are professionals after all.”
The other man entered Ms. White’s house, waving the clunky electronic device through the air while it beeped furiously in his hands.
“What you got there, Lenny?” The taller man asked while haphazardly punching buttons into a gismo of his own.
“Oh yeah Dan. You were right. All kinds of stuff going on in this house – ”
“Wait,” now it was Ms. White’s turn to interject. The grey haired spinster extended a bony finger in the direction of the taller man. “If he’s Dan, then who’s Big Al?”
“Uh, Big Al is my brother-in-law,” Dan muttered almost incoherently under his breath. “We were originally partners, but my sister’s kind of pissed at him on account of some racy text messages she found on his phone, so you know...”
Ms. White folded her arms and gave the man an approving smile, “Well I guess I can’t blame you for taking your sisters side. It was very noble of you to put family over your profession.”
“Yeah,” said the fat one, whose name she now knew was Lenny, “that and Dan’s been ducking him ever since he lost a grand to the guy playing poker last week.”
Dan gave Lenny a disparaging look, “Anyways mam, their ain’t no easy way to tell you this, but you’ve got ghosts. Now I don’t want you to be alarmed, but this is one of the worst cases I’ve ever seen.”
“Oh good heavens,” the old lady cried out, “is that what those gadgets told you?”
The two men came together in the center of the room, standing side
by side as they had when Ms. White first opened the door to greet them. Dan, the taller of the two nitwits, was moving into his sales pitch.
“Mam, we use the very best apparition detection devices on the market! If there was a ghost anywhere near your house, I guarantee you these doohickeys could sniff em’ out. And it looks like you’ve got an infestation on your hands because my equipment is going haywire.”
“Well, what do you think we should do?”
“I recommend our platinum package. If you purchase it we’ll perform a sacrifice to appease the unruly spirits that have settled here in your home.” Dan leaned in a bit closer to Ms. White as if he was telling her a secret meant only for her ears. “Don’t worry, of course we don’t really kill anyone. Those stupid ghosts can’t tell the difference between a real woman and Lenny’s sex doll.”
Lenny added on, “She feels just like the real thing. At least that’s what the box she came in said.”
“It doesn’t end there,” the tall numskull continued his spiel. “The platinum package also includes an exorcism. You don’t even have to go looking for a priest. I provide the guy... But wait, there’s more! If you decide to sign up today, I’ll even throw in this official Paranormal Investigators t-shirt. Show her Lenny.”
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