by Unknown
“You staying out of trouble this summer?” I wondered how much food coloring and corn syrup had been used to get such a deep shade of red.
My nephew grinned. “Last night I became a vampire.”
“Oh really?”
“Yeah, Mom’s one, too. She came in and bit me.”
“Well that wasn’t cool,” I said, licking a trickle that ran down the wooden stick to my finger. No taste, but I can still feel texture. The liquid seemed awfully thick. I wondered how long they’d been in the freezer. Can popsicles go bad?
“Naw, it is. Now we can run around at night and hang out.”
“Oh, well. That’s okay, then,” I laughed. “You know, I always suspected something like that from your mom.”
I looked down at my nephew, licking his popsicle. He looked up at me and we smiled. For a second, it seemed his teeth were awfully long. And sharp.
“I think you’re fibbing me,” I said, finally. “It’s daytime, and you’re outside.”
He giggled, his mouth smeared with thick, red stickiness. “Yeah, I am. We’re really werewolves.”
Charles Nathan Capasso was born in Boston, Massachusetts and raised in Akron, Ohio. He graduated from Denison University, where he majored in English with a concentration in Creative Writing. He currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia.
NUMBER THIRTY-SIX
ALBA ARANGO
CLICK
January 16, 2011.
There she is, number thirty-six. Dark brown hair, dark brown eyes, caramel colored skin—she’s perfect. Although, I must admit, I did initially question whether she was the right one. But then I thought, well . . . Nevada DID belong to Mexico once upon a time, so I was right to pick a Mexican girl. And a showgirl . . . come on! You don’t get more Nevada than that.
Hold on a sec . . . okay, there we go. She turned on the bedroom light. Another ten minutes and she’ll hop in the shower . . . and then number thirty-six will take her place in history!
*sigh* Ten minutes to kill. I guess I could start doing my research on number thirty-seven. Let’s see . . . thirty seven, thirty-seven . . . ah, here it is! State number thirty-seven: Nebraska. Hmm . . . farmer’s daughter maybe? Shouldn’t be hard to find. After that, there’s only thirteen left. Man, time goes so fast. It seems like only yesterday that I spotted number one—Miss-High-and-Mighty Delaware. I wonder if the police ever found her fingers? No matter—it’s not like they’d fit back on her hand anyway.
Whoops! Looks like number thirty-six has just picked her clothes out for tomorrow. Now that presents an interesting dilemma: do I leave her in the buff or put her in the clothes she has so carefully chosen for tomorrow? I suppose I could do both . . . leave part of her one way and part of her the other. I wonder if Ted Bundy ever wrestled with such decisions?
Well . . . it’s almost two-thirty. She should be ready for her shower soon. What crazy schedules these showgirls keep. Honestly! They should be paid extra just for working these God-forsaken hours. I wonder what fool came up with the idea of having an eleven o’clock topless show? Had to be some sad, pathetic, got-nothing-else-to-do-on-a-Monday-night, pitiful excuse for a man.
Oh! Shower just came on. The clock reads two twenty-nine—time for me to get to work.
Signing off for now.
CLICK
Alba Arango is a secondary school teacher of twenty years. She recently received her AA in creative writing and enjoys the telling of a good story. She’s had several short stories published in various anthologies, but Number Thirty-Six is her first work of horror.
NOT VERY LONG LEFT
T. E. SAMAD
Duggy doesn’t have much time left in this hell hole. He’s not completely alone in this dump, though; he has Frank for company.
“Are you scared, Duggy?” Frank asks.
“Nah, not one bit,” says Duggy with not much emotion on his face.
“You’re about to die. I would be terrified if I was you.”
“But you’re not me, so you have nothing to worry about. Is asking you to stop tapping that pen on that pathetic excuse for a desk too much to ask, seeing as how I’m about to die?”
“Oh, sorry.”
“Thanks. Can I ask you something?”
“Sure, go ahead.”
“How long have you been doing this?”
“My job?”
“What else?”
“Oh, I would say about fifteen years. Why are you asking?”
“Well, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to make conversation before whatever is going to happen to me.”
“That’s understandable. What else do you wanna to know?”
“How many?”
“How many people have been here?”
“No. I mean how many people have you killed?”
“Are you sure you really wanna know? I don’t think it’s gonna make you feel any better.”
“Just say it, man.”
“I don’t think I can give an exact number.” Frank pauses, his lips moving silently. “I’m sure it’s more than two hundred, give or take a couple.”
“Jeez, man. You’re the neighborhood psycho, aren’t you?”
“It’s just a job.”
Duggy looks at his hands held loose and dangling between his legs. “I can’t believe I’m in here. It’s not like I committed a crime.”
“Oh, in her books, cheating is a crime!”
“I’m just a flesh-and-blood guy. I know I’m not the only dude in the world that cheated on his girl.”
“But you didn’t just cheat on any girl. You cheated on a mob boss’s daughter. Didn’t it occur to you while you were nailing that blonde that what you were doing might have consequences?”
Duggy is about to answer, but is interrupted by Frank’s phone, which beeps softly, deafeningly in the silence. Frank picks the phone up and reads the text message.
“Okay, Duggy, it’s time.”
“Can you make it quick, at least?”
“My orders are to slowly strangle you to death. Sorry.”
Duggy’s cell door is opened, just long enough for Franky to do what he has to do.
T. E. Samad is a poet and short story writer based in England. He began placing more emphasis on his literary pursuits a few years ago. Since doing so, he has had many of his poems published as well as a few stories.
FEED
SUZIE SAVAGE
The last thing I remember was blood on the floor. A lake of crimson. The baby couldn’t have survived. I don’t remember the ambulance ride, or the surgery.
I wake. Someone has laid it on my chest. For such a tiny thing it’s heavier than mercury. I can’t breathe.
“Get him off me. Get him off me now.”
My throat’s scratchy from the general anesthetic.
Colin leans into view. “Hello, Sleeping Beauty. Time to meet your son.”
He holds the baby so I can see what I’ve produced. I wait for the surge of familiarity I felt with my daughter, the feeling that you always knew this wonderful, ancient person.
I feel nothing.
The baby opens his myopic eyes. It’s not the heavy-lidded curiosity of the newborn, but rather the survey of a digesting snake.
“He’s gorgeous, Julie,” Colin says. “So calm . . . not a peep out of him since your caesarean. I think he’s hungry, though.”
“He’s not hungry,” I say. “He’s already fed.”
“Sweetheart, he needs milk.”
A midwife pulls the curtain that surrounds my cubicle open with a wrenching motion.
“Morning, Mum. Morning, Dad.” Her voice is tra-la-la efficient. “You’re a pickle, Mum. It was bit of a worry there for a while, but all’s well now. Baby’s doing splendidly.”
She helps me to sit, then takes off my bedclothes and pulls up my nightdress.
My belly feels as though every muscle has been ripped apart. Instead of the full pregnancy bulge, there’s a flaccid sac. My skin sags to one side, discarded.
“Woun
d is looking excellent. Have we tried yet to feed Baby?”
With an air of ownership, she manhandles my swollen breast. “Don’t be concerned, Mum, but your little chap has been born with teeth. Natal teeth.”
She takes hold of the baby and draws down his lower lip. Two sharp translucent spikes emerge from his gum pads.
“I know,” I say. “He kept biting me. Inside. He’s the reason I bled.”
My husband and the midwife give each other a quick glance.
“Now Mum, that’s nonsense. He wasn’t biting you. You were probably just feeling him kick. Let’s get Baby some dinner. Breast is best.”
I want to resist, but he’s already clamped on, the spiteful teeth scraping my nipple, cheeks drawing rhythmically inwards.
“Dear little Baby. Both of you only have one job now. To feed. We’ll leave you two in peace.”
“Don’t go,” I say. Colin just strokes the baby’s head, then mine, and disappears behind the curtain.
The baby looks at me with narrowed eyes. He bites down. My tender flesh tears. Sinews—glowing white under the hospital lights—are dragged away from my bones by the tiny daggers in his mouth. Veins coil around his tense tongue.
I want to scream, but can’t. Instinct tells me this is why I’m here.
To let him feed—
Suzie Savage knows there's an axe murderer in every basement, the desiccated bones of an insane maiden aunt in every attic, and if you look into a mirror at midnight you will see your own death. Having this knowledge makes the long winter evenings pretty nerve-wracking.
SPRINGING FORWARD
STEVEN JENKINS
The bitter March morning seemed unreal.
The onset of Daylight Savings Time haunted Phil Cambridge. A dream-like state left him feeling weightless, almost invisible. The mystical sense that an hour truly had been lost only increased his sense of detachment. It left him feeling that something far beyond his control had changed along with the clock.
Phil looked down and watched the surreal swing of his polished shoes, wondering why they did not disperse the new layer of downy snow over which he passed.
The Colorado town of Marshall didn’t wake up early on Sunday. The burg’s narrow streets were normally vacant, save for the handful of devoted, making their way past dogs barking behind white picket fences.
No dogs barked as he passed.
Phil continued his trek to Marshall’s Community Church. When there, he would pray for redemption from the transgressions that had consumed his life, leaving him a slave to the bottle.
Unwelcome thoughts tormented him. Phil had left Hart’s bar at closing, but he had no recollection of anything after two a.m–the moment that the clock sprung forward and left a sixty-minute black hole in the space-time continuum. He pulled out the knurled wheel of the Timex encircling his wrist and rotated the minute hand clockwise to compensate for the change.
An instantaneous vision stabbed his brain, demanding Phil to halt and close his blue eyes. He stood there, wavering in the bitter air, watching the inexplicable picture playing behind his eyelids. The granular, sepia depiction appeared like a video from a convenience store’s surveillance camera stationed far above the earth . . .
An obscure man staggered out of Hart’s Bar onto the sidewalk bordering Main Street, across from the church. He tried to determine if it was safe to cross over the slick asphalt road. No headlights shone, only the sound of a vehicle’s spinning tires sounding in the distance.
Halfway into the southbound lane, the ghostly image of a racing Dodge Ram pick-up suddenly appeared ten feet before him. Recoiling, he tried to avoid the violent encounter with the speeding mass of cold steel.
The impact was brutal. The man ended glued to the truck’s shattered windshield, mortally crushed . . .
Phil peeled his eyes open, trying to convince himself that this experience was only a subconscious delusion. He continued along Third Avenue and turned the corner.
A yellow police tape blocked Main Street in front of the church. A small congregation gathered at the doors of Hart’s Bar, joined by a handful of the tavern’s patrons. With heads bowed low, some placed flowers on the sidewalk.
Phil rushed toward the scene as fast as his phantom legs would carry him. He stopped behind the reverend. “What happened here?” he asked.
There was no direct response, only the near murmur of the holy man in front of him, “Dear Lord, please embrace Phil Cambridge and welcome his tortured soul into the kingdom of Your blessed Heaven.”
Steven William Jenkins lives in Denver, Colorado with his wife, Katy and three dogs. He builds split-cane fly rods for a living, while writing tales of horror and suspense when time allows. He has penned two novels, Windigo and The Horribilis Path. Windigo is currently available at Amazon.com.
PROTOTYPE
NIALL MCMAHON
The sky is a bloodbath. Red as hell. The sun sits on the horizon haemorrhaging fire, igniting the clouds. Jesus, it looks like heaven is wounded–emptying its arteries into the jet stream.
I feel night’s shadow at my back, and for once I don’t care. Let it come. Let me die beneath this slaughterhouse sunset. This is all my fault.
***
I’ve seen seven people die over the past few nights.
Perhaps it’s their blood in the clouds . . .
Shit.
I keep having thoughts like that–insane, illogical crap that seems to make sense. Is this what losing your mind feels like? A redefining of the implausible, of your personal laws of physics? Shut up and run. Just fucking run.
Because it’s coming. It’s coming back and this time there’s only me.
***
Carter died first. It cut his head off. I saw his face after it had parted company with his body. He was still alive in those moments–I could see the confusion in his eyes. Carter who told us this mission would be safe. Carter who guaranteed our survival. Almost as stupid as me.
Then Becka. She was on guard that third night. I heard her rifle–then two blasts from her handgun. Then she screamed. Good Christ, what a sound. It cut her open from her groin to her collarbone. That was the first time I glimpsed it–a jagged, violent shape that re-entered the night like a blade.
Then Mitchell and Hughes. Hard-nuts the pair of them–Gulf vets. By the state of them they tried to fight back. It wasn’t easy to tell which pieces were Hughes, and which were Mitchell. Except for Mitchell’s head–it was sliced straight down the middle like an apple, the two halves side by side and served up with shattered teeth. I laughed when I saw them–between vomiting.
Karl virtually killed himself. “I ain’t running from that fuckin’ thing any more,” he declared. “Fuckin’ genetic freak can kiss my arse.” As we ran I heard nothing. He died silently, probably too pissed to scream.
Just before Ian died he said, “Can’t believe no bastard is pulling the plug. It works. The thing works. Didn’t Carter have a fail-safe? Does it have to do us all before it passes the test?”
“New weapon, probably malfunctioning,” I lied.
“But it’ll kill everyone. Everywhere.”
An hour later, it killed him.
Then just me and Fox. She was a tough cookie–could probably have taken any of us.
She gestured across the sea to the mainland. “If it learns to swim . . . ”
I think she injured it. As it tore her up I heard it shrieking.
***
Now just me.
Me beneath the massacre sky.
***
“It’s your secret,” the tech boys had told me. “Any problems, this shuts the prototype down.”
A small, black remote with a single red button–a like a cliché from a Bond movie. “Just one press.”
Have you ever lost a remote control?
I have.
Niall McMahon is a 40-year-old teacher and writer. He has had short stories published in several different markets and has several still-born novels. He doesn’t intend his stories
to be horrific but, inevitably, that's the direction they take all on their own.
BLOOD OF GLEUVINN
NICHOLAS CONLEY
To a vampire, the emotions of anger and blood-lust are intrinsically linked. None knew this better than the vampire Gleuvinn. Wrapped in bandages that hid his horrific disfigurement, Gleuvinn perched on a bench in Grand Central Station, observing the milling herds; an outcast from their number. In the past, it hadn’t bothered him; humans were food; witless cattle whose judgments meant no more to him than those of cows or swine. Now he’d decided to no longer live as a slave to his addiction. Things had become . . . complicated. The craving was overwhelming. The humans walking by had no idea what he had sacrificed for them; likely wouldn’t have cared if they did. If he were to remove his bandages, revealing the black veins covering his face; his pink eyes and sharp teeth, they’d only be disgusted, horrified. They wouldn’t spare a single thought for his suffering.
He respected humans for their morals and their capacity for love; hated them for their apathy.
A young boy and his father sat on a nearby bench. A large sketchbook lay open in the boy’s lap. Much as Gleuvinn hated to admit it, seeing fathers and sons together unsettled him. He’d been a father once, long ago. His son had died young, deformed from birth.
“Hey Dad, have you got a pen?”
The son tugged on his father’s sleeve. The father ignored his offspring’s pleas, intent on his newspaper. The disregard this human showed toward his offspring infuriated Gleuvinn, kindling a fire in the pit of his stomach.
“Can I have a pen? Please?”
The boy pleaded.
Blood. Gleuvinn needed blood. His veins throbbed, the black, oily saliva in his mouth thick and copious.
He could tear the man’s neck open, feed upon the one who so callously wasted the gift of Fatherhood. He didn’t deserve his blessings, or Gleuvinn’s mercy . . .
