9 Days of Madness: Things Unsettled
Edited by Chris Allinotte
Table of Contents
Introduction
Prologue: Behind These Closed Doors, by Amber Taitague
Day 1: Schizo Numericus, by Richard Godwin
Day 2: Tap, by Jodi MacArthur
Day 3: The Finger in the Freezer, by Benjamin Sobieck
Day 4: Love Makes You Real, by Marissa Giambelluca
Day 5: Recording, by R.S. Bohn
Day 6: Bookworm, by S.K. Adams
Day 7: A Stranger Comes to Town, by Christopher Grant
Day 8: Extinguished, by Laurita Miller
Day 9: Forever Behind the Walls, by Erin Cole
Author Bios
9 Days of Madness: Things Unsettled Copyright © March, 2012. All works are copyright the individual contributors. None of these works may be copied or redistributed without the express written permission of the individual author.
All stories are works of fiction. Any similarity to persons, places or events in the past or present is strictly coincidental.
The story “Behind These Closed Doors” was previously published on the blog, Lily Childs Feardom. All rights retained by author.
The story “Extinguished” was previously published in the Elements of Horror Anthology, Elements of Horror Press. All rights retained by author.
Introduction
When I started “Madness in March” last year, it was more or less on a whim. I’d seen other “blogfests”, where the host of a site invited their fellow writers to submit stories. These in turn were featured for a set amount of time, and people would visit, read, and comment. It seemed like a lot of fun, and it brought excellent exposure to both the blogger, and the writers who were featured. That’s a win-win right there, I thought.
What I didn’t know was how one of these things comes to be. So, I put out the call and sort of hashed it out as I went. I decided on a theme of “Madness” as a play on the annual “March Madness” basketball tournament in the US, but it quickly became clear that the theme was perfect in and of itself for this group of stories.
The result was a fantastic eight days worth of chilling stories of psychological horror, nine if you count my own. I’d written one myself as there was a very real possibility that I wasn’t going to get eight authors who were willing to give me their stories, and thereby, their coveted first publication rights. Fortunately, but close to the wire, I didn’t just get enough stories – I got exquisite, superbly crafted tales from authors I knew and respected. Then I put my own up anyway.
Eight Days of Madness was a bigger hit than I could have planned for, so I did it again. There were nine days of stories this year for the same reason there were eight stories last year – it seemed fitting to have an unusual number of days for a collection about shifted perceptions and unsettling situations. The perceptive among you will also note that the eBook for Eight Days of Madness has nine stories.
There’s ten in this one.
Why, that’s madness, you might say. Exactly, say I.
Chris Allinotte
March, 2012
Thanks to all my wonderful contributors for trusting me with your stories. You’re all wonderfully, unsettling mad, and I love you for it.
Prologue: Behind These Closed Doors – Amber Taitague
The March Hare came to visit today and when all my children wanted was Daddy; he was gone for hours.
Where is my medicine?
So innocent, but the noise they make is . . . too loud, too high, too much.
A rage I’ve always hidden burns in a secret corner of my brain, and right now I’m poison.
I need to conserve my words or I’ll end up crucifying them with my sharp tongue.
Slowly I shut down, with thoughts that are so loud.
I hope he'll be home soon; I shouldn't be alone with them.
Day 1: Schizo Numericus – Richard Godwin
Simeon Archer rose in the leprous dawn and wandered the streets seeking relief from a violent erection. He held his trench coat around his sweating midriff and saw in the gray air the shape of the woman who would banish his feverish urges. For days now he’d heard the noise of chains at night, a steady, slow, metronomic, clanging of metal links inhumanly large and coming his way. They edged over some metal wall and he wondered where the noise emanated from. The thought of abattoirs, and mechanical hangings of slaughtered animals staring blindly at night, resided like a bruise in his thinking. It was if some mechanism wanted to trap him and he resisted it with numbers, pursuing complex mathematical algorithms down endless numerical corridors. The only thing, he told himself, that could shake it off was nocturnal sex of the kind that feeds the lycanthrope’s needs. Someone had sent a wraith his way and he would expel it with sudden coitus.
He was a neat man, precise to the point of mania. An accountant by profession, he’d lived happily with his wife Doris for years without an inch of infidelity between them. But ever since she changed her perfume he’d become obsessed by the need for flesh. Women who passed him in the street gave off a heat that stirred him in ways he found unfathomable and inconsistent with his character. He’d studied every definition of psychosis and concluded that he was not suffering from a mental problem but one which needed a practical solution. To him the urge to copulate with strangers was an equation that could only be solved by an act of sudden sexual mania.
He was caught in the spectroscope of Tarski-Banach decompositions and harnessed all flesh to the binary world he inhabited.
Maths had always been his salvation. As a boy he used to study numbers with the fever of the religious and he often thought if people knew their power they would be afraid of them.
They kept things at a distance. His love of them was commensurate with his distaste for mirrors which he refused to have in his house.
He wanted the Tessaract to govern the tidal movements of bodies, fervid in their craving for penetration and the flux of fluids.
‘You can see all you need to on a calculator’, he said to Doris.
Her need for feminine finery was to him a betrayal of reason.
‘We are all a series of numbers’, he said.
At the edge of an alley overrun with broken bottles and crushed beer cans he found her, alone and dozing in a drunken stupor. He leaned forward and lifted her skirt.
***
The next day as he rose from bed and found Doris making toast in the kitchen he felt he’d pulled a muscle. He was unsure how it had happened and he went to work dismissing it as an irrelevance. He sat all morning filling in his planner, adding appointments and cross-referencing as he always did.
And yet something wasn’t right. His body was not his own. It was an algorithm set there by an innumerate impostor. He felt unlike himself, as if another had entered him and mocked his daily proceedings. As he sat eating his sandwich, chewing into the white bread he heard it before he saw the blood. The splattering noise entered his head and he thought of vomit spraying the ground. Looking down he saw his planner coated in blood.
Something landed on the carpet and he saw his paperknife lodged there. He looked around the room to find it empty. He considered some automorphism was at work. As he called the police and reported the attack he saw his face in the window and the fresh cut on his cheek and he remembered how she clawed the first time he did it. A voice in his head told him lies and he sat with his hands over his ears until the police arrived. They took him to a station where they showed him old movies in which a man walked the streets at night, a blurred shadow beneath lamp posts, passing shops. The film was about a vagrant who attacked women.
&nb
sp; ‘I wouldn’t pay to see a film like this’, he told them. ‘There’s no plot, although the actor looks familiar.’
They shook their heads and took him to a hotel. He’d worked for clients like them before. He sat in the car thinking he would put in a hefty bill.
He thought of Bankoff’s conundrum. He found his listing on the Banzhaf index, a fraudulent mirror image of him. They could not steal him from his rational clutch. They could not formulate identity.
The hotel was disappointing, cramped, squalid and unfriendly, the tenants were diseased, a miserable lot who spoke in riddles. He thought he would do the job and leave.
He could apply Galois extensions to find out who these people were who tenanted his singular world. But he realised the gradient of crime was rehearsed in space.
‘The room’s not big enough’, he said to a waiter who was dressed all in white. ‘Bring me my planner.’
But they left him alone and he sat there waiting, hearing the scraping noise of canine teeth on bone.
He decided he would re-plan himself according to an exact mathematical principle.
Day 2: Tap – Jodi MacArthur
Tap,
tap,
tap
My heart beats in tune to the
Tap, tap, tap. I sit on the sheets and keep listening to the
Tap, tap, tap on the window. I imagine the window is wet. Raindrops slide like tears of God. This reminds me my hair is wet and I am cold. I don’t think the taps are raindrops. I think it’s something else, so I reach under my pillow and touch the knife’s handle. It is still there. I put it on my lap, facing the jagged edge away from my stomach. I pull my pink robe to my chin. The robe I had slipped on as I stepped out of the shower and walked into my room and first heard the
Thud, thud, thud downstairs in the kitchen. Mom and Dad aren’t due home until midnight. I always hide the knife under my pillow when mom and dad are gone. What if someone broke in like on Halloween or Scream? I know those are just movies, but I had also watched Crimes In The Dark. Detective Mike, the neighbor across the street, suggests to keep weapons handy when a young woman is by herself. I’ll be fifteen next month – this qualifies me as a young woman. Detective Mike always looks mean, so I’m never sure if I should really listen to him or not. I think the cute cop on Crimes In The Dark has much better things to say. Charge your cell phone, says the cute cop, but my cell is downstairs in the kitchen.
Tap, tap, tap. I imagine a creature in black with a white ghostly mask like in Scream. It has a bloody knife and it is tapping the window. No, no, that is a movie – stupid. What I need to worry about is why I haven’t heard the
Thud, thud, thud downstairs for a while, not for a full- I glance at my Betty Boop clock – twenty minutes. Besides, that sound was more like a
Creak, whisper, creak. I knew the creaking wasn’t the settling house creaks they talked about on Debunk Ghost Stories, because house noises don’t whisper and squeak like wet shoes on linoleum. Someone is in the house. I heard the sounds of wet shoes in the kitchen because they sounded like
Squeak, squeak, squeak not to be confused with the sound mice make. Or the sound wet mice make. Perhaps a wet mouse is making the
Tap, tap, tap on my bedroom window – but I can’t tell. I just don’t know. I can’t take it much longer – this suspense. Crimes In The Dark never talked about the suspense. The sitting in a dark bedroom and waiting for something terrible that will inevitably happen. And perhaps that something terrible will be something I’ll inflict on myself? I’ll go insane (the cute cop from Crimes In The Dark never mentioned this either). I’ll stab my pillow until the feathers fly like angel wings in the darkness. Then, I’ll turn on myself and slice off my ears with this butcher knife. I will, I swear I will, because I can’t stand listening to the
Tap, tap, tap. I keep thinking of that story Sally told me the other day between fourth and fifth period, the story where this girl and guy are making out in his car on the beach. And they hear this
Tap, tap, tap on the roof and it was an escaped villain with a hook or something like that. Then she told me this other story about prom night last week where these two sweethearts ran out of gas on a lonely rode and he leaves her to fetch more gas and she keeps hearing a
Tap, tap, tap on the windshield and it turns out, someone had chopped off his head and hung him on the tree above the car and his blood drained on the windshield. And the sound of the blood dripping on the glass, I knew it didn’t sound like a squeak or a creak, it was a
Tap, tap, tap. I had not seen this on Crimes In The Dark, nor had the cute cop mentioned this. Why wouldn’t they report such a heinous crime? Why wouldn’t they warn the neighborhood! Meanie Detective Mike didn’t say anything either, but he doesn’t talk much, unless he is giving some kind of instruction. Of course, Sally did have a way of stretching the truth. She said that Conner and Jill had done it and Jill’s mother had given her a morning after pill because she might have gotten pregnant, but it turns out all they did was kiss. So stupid. The fact of Sally stretching the truth or that Jill was not pregnant does not take away my fears of the hook or maniac serial killers because I keep hearing the
Tapping, tapping, tapping and I can feel the tears on my face. They fall much faster than raindrops. I don’t know what to do! So I pick up my knife and put it between my hands and I shiver because my hair is still wet and I’m scared and I pray. I pray to God that the robbers or maniac serial killers downstairs have left. I ask that the noise outside my door is just the rain leaking through the ceiling.
Tap, tap, tap. Now there is another noise, slight and jarring. My doorknob is wiggling. I am wiggling under my bed. My pink robe scrunches around my thighs. I hold the knife in front of my face. My heart keeps thudding and I can’t hear the tapping because the door is opening, and I see dark boots. Black boots.They seep into the blue carpet like shadows. Shadow boots are silent. I can’t hear the
Tap, tap, tap on the window anymore and I can’t hear the
Thud, thud, thud of my heart anymore either. I do hear a little voice in the back of my mind, I think it’s Detective Mike, telling me to prepare. Blood courses through my veins. I clench my teeth.
Silent, silent, quiet. I watch the black boots walk towards me. They stop inches from my nose. The boots glisten as if wet, but not with rain, a thicker wetness. I clench my knife. And I know he is bending down…and suddenly, I can hear again. I can hear his heartbeat and mine
Thud,
thud,
thud
There is a unique smell. The smell reminds me of last summer when I went with Dad to Uncle Bob’s farm to see the horses. It was butcher season, and the sun glinted off the bars straddled between the barn and fence posts. Hanging from the bars were chickens, their throats sliced. Blood dripped thick and the humidity multiplied the metallic scent. This is what I smell now. And what I hear is
Tap (the hook man slicing)
tap (serial killer chopping )
tap (the blood dripping from Uncle Bob’s butchered chickens)
And then a head pops down beneath the bed. It is masked in black nylon and all I can see are the whites of his eyes and red thin lips pressed together. I stop. I freeze.
I watch the thin lips turn upward into a smile and I know his hands, his evil hands are coming to get me, to hurt me.
Tap, tap, tap. My mind whispers Detective Mike’s instructions- I slash!
Slash! Stab! Poke! His face disappears. I hear his boots lift and rise from the carpet.
He shrieks, “Damn! Damn, bitch!”
His glistening shadow boots thump into the darkness, down the stairs…away. Tar droplets left behind stain the carpet. And then it is
Silent, silent, quiet. I don’t know if he’ll return, so I hold my knife out like a cross to a vampire. It worked in the movies, but movies aren’t real. I wondered if Crimes In The Dark is even real. It seems so childish now. Detective Mike’s self defense instructions wor
ked! I decide to stay where I am until mom and dad come home. Please, please come home! My heart is still racing and my eyes are glued to the dark spots on the floor left from the masked man. I feel nauseous.
Tap, tap, tap. It occurs to me what the tapping on my window could be. I thought of the prom night with the boyfriend hanging upside down over the car. I thought of Uncle Bob’s chickens swinging limply in the breeze. The blood dribbling out one drop at a time…
Tap, tap, tap My parents had been gone for an awfully long time; they hadn’t called to check in…they always call to check in. I keep trying to push the thought away, but what if on that old, giant oak outside my window… The thought is ridiculous – stupid. Or is it? My phone is downstairs, but so may be the masked man. A faint creak reaffirms this fear. Perhaps I’ll hide here forever, wondering, waiting, listening to the tap, tap tap.
***
Thud, thud, thud Detective Mike is leading me down the stairs. I see dark, globby stains. It is blood. I hear sirens and hollering and voices talking through police radios. My parents are outside my window. I know this. They are hanging upside down with their throats slits or heads lying on the ground. I know this. He didn’t say and I didn’t look, but I just know. The front door
Creak, creak, creaks open and Detective Mike sweeps me out. He keeps asking if I’ve seen someone and I keep saying yes. Shadow boots. I saw shadow boots. He whispers in my ear, “Whatever you do, don’t look back. Theresa, do you hear me? Don’t look back.”
I hear him, but I don’t hear him. I swear I can still hear the
Tap, tap, tap. I have to know that it’s them. I have to see it with my own eyes. Detective Mike guards me with his body, so I couldn’t look if I wanted. He opens the police car door; I twist to get inside.
Tap,
tap,
tap
I look back towards the big oak that sits above my window.
Tap
tap
tap
And that is when I begin to scream…
Day 3: The Finger in the Freezer – Benjamin Sobieck
After the grilled cheese but before the s'mores ice cream, Grandma asks if I want to see the finger.
"What finger?" I say.
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