by Shock Totem
Nine
The knock comes again, and this time Nikki hurriedly stuffs the last of her belongings into her backpack. “Come on, sweetie, open the door. Aunty Sue won’t be back for at least a couple hours.” She glances around the room a final time. “Don’t you want to play, Angel Eyes?” There’s a framed photo of her mom on the dresser, when she still looked vibrant and healthy. Nikki grabs it quickly and slides it into the backpack. “Uncle Martin isn’t feeling happy tonight. Come on, honey, don’t you want to hear Uncle Martin laugh?” The air is cool upon her face as she crawls out the window into the night. She realizes her cheeks are wet with tears. She hurries away down the sidewalk, beneath the streetlights, toward town.
Eight
Nikki sits in the front seat of her date’s Buick Skylark. Her prom dress feels like a plastic bag against her skin. Her date’s pudgy hand falls on her shoulder. “I think you’re the prettiest girl on the planet.” His face is so serious, so sincere. His cheeks dimple into reservoirs of pure adoration. And she can’t help but laugh. “So now what, you wanna fuck? And here I didn’t think you had the balls to make a move.” Adoration turns to shock, then pain. Which makes her laugh even more. The boy recoils. She reaches for his crotch. “So, c’mon, let’s see what we have here.” He pushes her away. “Stop it. That’s not what I want.” His voice sounds strangled. “Oh, come on, with a line like that? Unless you’re not that way.” Tears glisten at the corners of the boy’s eyes. “Why are you doing this? I love you.” And there it is, a real emotion, an honest truth, pulled from one heart and offered to another, bloody, raw. It throbs, and fills the car. Nikki feels like she’s about to suffocate. She has to make room to breathe. “Seems to me you love ring dings more. Now, be a good boy and take me home and I won’t tell everyone how pathetic you are.” She faces forward, relieved, not expecting him to reach across and open her door and violently shove her out onto the parking lot, where she falls hard on her face and bites her tongue. For a moment he stares at her. Stares as if she’s the most vile thing on the planet, before spinning the tires of his parent’s car and taking off into the night. And she just laughs. Laughs until her sides hurt.
Seven
“Let me see my baby.” Nikki stares at the woman in the hospital bed. That’s not my mother, Nikki keeps telling herself. The woman’s hair is gone. Her skin looks like pissed-on underwear. She smells funny. Nikki can’t move. She can’t breathe. She feels tears welling in her eyes and wants to run. She wants to get high. “Mom?” The woman reaches out. “Yeah, it’s me, baby.” The woman pats the bed. “Come sit.” Nikki sits uncomfortably near to the ghost that’s talking to her. “I have something real important to tell you. I’ve always tried to do what’s best for you. You know that, don’t you? That’s why I’ve made arrangements. After I’m gone, I want you to go live with Aunt Sue and Uncle Martin. They’ll take good care of you.” And Nikki bites her bottom lip. Sinks her teeth into the pink flesh and feels the pain spike through her. “Okay, Mom, whatever you say.”
Six
“Why do you have to go and screw everything up?” Her mother looks at her as if she’s the most vile thing on the planet. “Don’t you see I’m trying to do what’s best for you? That photographer was the best in the business. And you had to go and throw your body at him like a whore!” Nikki doesn’t understand. It’s business, you give a little to get a lot. That’s what her mother had taught her. “You said to be nice to him.” Nikki begins to chew on her lip. Her mother’s face relaxes a bit. “My baby. What man wouldn’t be attracted to you. But you’re still only twelve years old. Besides, he’s a married man.” Her mother laughs. A joke between two women. A bond. For the first time, a bond stretches between them. “Uncle Martin is married.” And the bond suddenly snaps. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Once again she’s the most vile thing on the planet. “Nothing, Mom, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” Nikki gathers her clothes and walks out.
Five
“You’re so pretty. You could be a model.” She hears it so much she could scream. And when she does, a hand arcs out of the cigarette-laced air and slaps her across the mouth. “Apologize to your Uncle Martin!” Her mother grimaces. And Nikki runs into her bedroom, the taste of blood on her tongue.
Four
It’s Uncle Martin’s turn again. If she makes him laugh it will be her turn. She likes it when it’s her turn. Uncle Martin always seems to find a place where she’s ticklish. It makes her skin all icy. He’s wearing those Hawaiian shorts again and he keeps saying, “Keep looking, keep looking.” Until she starts tickling his stomach, only it’s not really his stomach. It’s not soft like his stomach. It seems to move beneath her fingers like a kitten beneath a blanket. “Right there,” he says as he closes his eyes. “That’s getting ticklish. I think I’m gonna laugh.” And her little hand keeps tickling like a tickle bug because she wants to hear Uncle Martin laugh. She loves it when Uncle Martin laughs.
Three
“Smile, sweetie.” The photographer’s flash blinds her momentarily. “Oh, she’s a natural. A real doll. You sure she’s only six.” The man laughs. Nikki yawns. “Hold still!” her mother says. Her mother’s teeth grind, her lipstick twists into a squashed butterfly. “Smile pretty for the man.” Nikki wants to laugh, but she smiles instead.
Two
“What a beautiful little girl! What’s her name?” Tucked behind her mother’s nylon-covered legs, she looks out from behind. The lady with the shopping cart simply stares, smile plastered like a cartoon face. “Nicole, smile for the nice lady.” She feels a pinch on her arm. “Smile, honey.” The pinch grows sharper, nails biting her skin. And she smiles, mouth shaped into a perfect angel bow. And the lady with the shopping cart gasps in awe and delight.
One
Uniforms. White. Nothing but white. Heads, shoulders. Faces. Faces without mouths. “Clear the airway.” A disembodied voice. Fingers poke and prod. Rough penetration. Suction. Dry rush. Gasp. Taste. Swallow. “Time. 2:47. Nicole Elizabeth Branford, welcome to the world.”
Kurt Newton is the author of two short story collections, one novel, and five collections of poetry. His stories have appeared in Weird Tales, Space and Time, Dark Discoveries, and Shroud. He lives in Connecticut.
HOWLING THROUGH THE KEYHOLE
The stories behind the stories.
“The Music Box”
The inspiration for Snowflake in “The Music Box” came from one of my son’s stuffed animals, a purple elephant named Lumpy, who is a Heffalump from Winnie the Pooh. Tigger and Pooh think Heffalumps are monsters, though Lumpy in particular is anything but that. I really like the idea of something every kid loves being very nasty inside and doing evil things out of love for the child who adores him. I loved stuffed animals more than anything when I was a kid, so it was natural that this story should be about them.
Snowflake started off cute and cuddly, but he changed into something rather creepy as I developed his past relationship with the father. His heart being a music box plays into that—for such things are found mostly in infant toys—signifying the father’s unwillingness, even as an adult, to let go of his childhood friend. Snowflake’s arch nemesis, Boo Bear, was an actual teddy bear I had from age 8 to 12, and he was my favorite. But a good portion of my inspiration came from watching Toy Story hundreds of times with my kids, particularly the conflict between the toys for the child’s affection. I just took that conflict in a much darker direction.
–T. L. Morganfield
“‘Til Death Do Us Part”
I originally wrote this as my submission for a zombie flash fiction anthology. The last two lines came to me first, and the rest of the story pretty much wrote itself. Needless to say, the zombie anthology didn’t buy it, but their loss is Shock Totem’s gain.
–Jennifer Pelland
“Murder for Beginners”
I had just moved to Las Vegas, it was December, and I wrote “Murder for Beginners” while kicking in a hot tub. I had so much fun
that it only took me half an hour. Mmm, yes. Some stories are incredibly laborious. They require planning. They are fed on blood, curses, and exquisite pain.
This story wasn’t one of them.
–Mercedes M. Yardley
“First Light”
“First Light” is essentially a folksong (perhaps a variant of “The Unquiet Grave”). The core idea came from a poem called “Old Christmas Morning,” by Roy Addison Helton (1886–1960). It takes place in the fictional Coryell County, where time has curiously stood still, at least in some ways. I wanted it to have the “high lonesome sound” of true Appalachian folk singing; how far I may have succeeded is yours to judge. The included song fragment is from a version of “Young Hunting” (Child #68), sung by the Canadian folk pioneer Bonnie Dobson.
–Les Berkley
“Complexity”
I was struggling to understand the instructions that came with my new cell phone during a break from trying to figure out why my computer kept giving me strange error messages when I realized these things have minds of their own. Hence the story.
–Don D’Ammassa
“Mulligan Stew”
The main ingredient to “Mulligan Stew” was the title, taken from a children’s educational film I watched in elementary school about nutrition and the four food groups. Add a dash of the fear felt when meeting a girlfriend’s family for the first time for flavor. Mix well, bring to a boil, and let simmer for 20 minutes. Dig in.
–Brian Rosenberger
“Below the Surface”
“Below the Surface” started out as a setting idea. I saw this desert landscape with a walled city, and in the very center of the palace structure, a walled garden oasis for an adored queen. Her private refuge, a sanctuary. Plants galore, vines with flowers, tinkling water. Then I decided to explore familial relationships and power struggles. At the heart of the story is the mother-child bond, as that is nearest and dearest to my own heart.
At one point, I tried to tell the story from the son’s POV, but when I switched to the mother’s, the story became darker—which is what it wanted to begin with.
I hope you enjoyed “Below the Surface.”
–Pam Wallace
“Slider”
I wrote “Slider” for a number of reasons. I’m a lifetime fan of baseball. I used to sit in the screened-in back porch of my grandfather’s home and listen to the Cardinals and my Cubs night after night to the backdrop of hoot owls and crickets. I’ve written a number of stories involving baseball, and this time I wanted to include something more. Trish and I were, at one point, heavily into selling on eBay. We became, over time, knowledgeable on a lot of different types of collectibles—odd bits of information dropped into my mind and stuck.
When I saw an auction for a particular old baseball with all the associated provenance, I decided I had to do something with that...and “Slider” was born. It combines my love for baseball with my knowledge of antiques. I threw in a curse, too, because everyone needs a change up now and then.
–David Niall Wilson
“The Dead March”
After my first-round submission at the Odyssey Fantasy Writer’s Workshop in New Hampshire involved slaughtering children as a means of population control (“The Plunge,” published in Zencore!: Scriptus Innominatus), I developed a reputation as a bit of a sick fuck. So when it came time to write a story for the second round, I was feeling the pressure to maintain that reputation. Instead of an all-out gore-fest, however, I finally decided on a quieter tale of a lonely little boy who just wants a few zombies in his life. The result was “The Dead March.”
–Brian Rappatta
“Thirty-Two Scenes from a Dead Hooker’s Mouth
The writing of “Thirty-Two Scenes from a Dead Hooker’s Mouth” began with the final scene of a young prostitute found dead in an alley. After that I began piecing the story together with random moments from this young girl’s life—a young girl blessed with beauty and, tragically, little else. Because the first scene was so vivid, I kept the focus of each scene on the girl’s mouth—her lips, her tongue, her teeth. There’s a lot going on in a person’s mouth. And the number thirty-two, being the number of teeth a person has, seemed a natural fit for the theme of the story.
I’m also a big fan of the movie Memento. Knowing the outcome of events doesn’t necessarily remove the mystery. Getting to the bottom of how it all began can sometimes be more interesting than how it ends. At least, for the reader’s sake, that’s my hope.
–Kurt Newton
ARTIST BIO
Robert Høyem’s artwork and photography has appeared on dozens of professional music packages and book cover designs. His company At the Ends of the Earth Designs is a small design company based in Norway. In existence since 2005, the aim is to be flexible and passionate, mainly focusing on clients that have a passion for the entire package. At the Ends of the Earth Designs is also focused on the merge between illustration, design, and fine art.
For more info, visit www.attheends.com.
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Digital Edition Copyright © 2012 by Shock Totem Publications, LLC.
