The End
FISH AND BISCUITS IN A BARREL
Benny worked at a fish market. He worked at a fish market, and he hated cats. And while his unavoidably pungent occupation may have guaranteed Benny a private seat on the train, it regrettably turned him into a feline rock star on the walk home from the station—he must have cursed and shooed away ten furry fans a night.
The fish job was recent, and what Benny convinced himself to be temporary—an interim position that would provide some stability until he could get back on his feet. If Benny was honest with himself, he would accept the fact that every job he had held in his uneventful 41 years had been an interim position—a collection of mundane rides that spun him in the same fruitless circle while the impressive rollercoaster fueled by initiative stood in the background, its power and prestige far too daunting for the likes of Benny.
Now, with the fish job only a week old on his resume, the past seven nights were producing an unusual after-hours routine that seemed to run like clockwork:
Benny would come home late, reeking of fish, and carrying the market’s latest catch bundled in newsprint under one arm. His only friend, a three-legged yellow Labrador named Moby, would greet him at the door with an enthusiastic wag of his tail and incessant whines for the biscuits Benny kept on the kitchen counter. Benny would head for the biscuits, give Moby only one, and then unwrap the day’s catch and place it in the refrigerator to be cooked later.
And that’s when the meowing, or more appropriately, the wailing would start.
Every night since Benny had gotten the job at the fish market, the same black cat with its glowing yellow eyes would appear on the fence outside his kitchen window. And every night as Benny placed the day’s catch inside his fridge, the same black cat would begin his wail—an incessant, ear-bending yowl that was only abated when Benny would turn to Moby and repeat the same mantra he had composed since day one of this annoying ritual.
“Come on, Moby! Let’s go boy! Go get him!”
Benny would run to his front door—the three-legged Moby doing his hurried best to stay close behind—and yank the door open, allowing Moby to hobble past him into the night with Benny emphatically cheering on his charge. “Get him, boy! Go get that stupid cat!”
The wailing would eventually stop, and, like clockwork, Moby would reappear, limping his way back to the front door a short time later. He would receive a pat on the head, a ‘Good boy,’ and only one biscuit from the kitchen counter.
* * *
Two weeks passed of the same routine.
It was always the same.
A pungent Benny coming home late and miserable; one biscuit for Moby; catch of the day in the fridge; wailing outside the kitchen window; Benny opening the front door for Moby to chase the cat away; Moby returning shortly after to get his one biscuit reward.
* * *
A change in the routine finally occurred one evening when Benny noticed a red welt around the nose of his yellow Lab. He immediately dropped into a catcher’s stance and took hold of Moby’s face with both hands.
“Who did this to you, boy? Was it that stupid cat? Did he scratch you?”
The dog looked back at his owner, black eyes wide and innocent.
“Well that’s it,” Benny said. “We’ll deal with this furry bastard together.”
Benny stomped towards his coat closet, opened it, and withdrew his rifle. He gripped the weapon tight with both hands, pumping it into the air. “We’ll get him, boy. We’ll get that stupid cat once and for all.”
Benny knew what to do next, knew how to set the bait.
He leaned the rifle against the wall, unwrapped the catch of the day, opened his fridge and placed the fish inside. He even opened the kitchen window, and then the refrigerator door again—wafting it back and forth in hopes that the smell from the fish therein would soon float its way out that open window.
“Any minute now, boy,” he said to Moby, his eyes never leaving the window. The view outside gave him nothing but night and the dim outline of an empty fence. “Any minute now…”
The dog whined at Benny’s feet. Benny looked down.
“What? What’s the matter, boy?”
The dog whined harder.
“You want a treat?”
Moby wagged his tail.
Benny took his eyes off the window and went to the kitchen counter. He took one biscuit from the container and gave it to Moby who immediately gulped it down. The dog whined again.
“No, boy—that’s enough.”
Benny picked up the rifle again and waited. It was a good five minutes before the wailing began, but boy was it ever there—as clear and as shrill as a passing siren.
Benny looked hard out his kitchen window, eyes wide with intensity, rifle aimed into the dark. He saw nothing.
“Where is it?” he asked himself, the dog, and finally the cat: “Where are you?”
The wailing was louder now, rising from somewhere below the window.
Benny leaned forward, his ample belly pressing into the kitchen counter’s edge. He looked down onto his lawn. Nothing.
The wailing continued—climbing louder still, certain to break glass if it rose a pitch higher.
“Aw to hell with this,” Benny said. “Come on, boy! We’re going outside!”
Benny tore out his front door with Moby close behind. He turned the corner of his house, paused, and squinted into dark.
“Here kitty, kitty, kitty…”
Silence.
“Come on out, stupid little kitty…”
He waited, rifle pointed at nothing. A minute passed. Two minutes. Five. He was impatient now.
“Moby!” He turned to the dog at his side. “Go get him for me, boy! Flush him out so I can draw a bead on him!”
The dog gave an eager wag of his tail and then limped off out of sight. Benny remained fixed where he was, certain his dog would force the cat in his direction. The second he spotted that black fur and those beady yellow eyes round the house’s corner he would not hesitate. He would fire and shoot it dead.
Benny expected the echo of a hiss to follow. Or maybe the woman-like scream a threatened cat can make. What he didn’t expect was a cry of pain from his own dog.
Benny sprinted blindly towards the noise, the rifle rocking from left to right in his hands. Moby’s cry rose louder. Benny ran faster.
“I’m coming, boy!”
Benny turned the corner of his house and his feet caught something, tangling them up into one another. The rifle that took up both his hands impeded his balance. Benny found himself falling forward, the tip of the gun’s barrel pressing beneath his chin during his descent. There was a thud and an explosion.
* * *
The man who smelled like fish, and only gave out one biscuit at a time lay face down on the lawn—the top of his head now missing and resembling a red fountain.
The black furry obstacle with yellow eyes that had caught his feet was now taking cautious steps forward to sniff and inspect the aftermath. It was soon joined at its side by Moby who sniffed and inspected just the same.
Content, the dog and cat sauntered side by side, around the corner of the house, and towards the open front door that had been left ajar in the one-biscuit-fish-man’s haste.
Upon entry, the black cat with yellow eyes wasted little time hopping up onto the kitchen counter where it knocked the jar of biscuits to the floor, spilling dozens of them before a delighted Moby.
Moby, in kind, made his way to the refrigerator. He nudged the door open (wincing slightly from the red welt that repeated late-night-fridge-opening practice had given his nose) and then took a few hobbled steps back to allow the black cat with the yellow eyes to hop off the counter, approach the open fridge, and seize the catch of the day between his teeth where he proceeded to drag it to the floor, beside the scattered biscuits.
Very content now, the cat and dog sat side by side, eating—Moby with as many biscuits as he wanted, and the black cat with the catch o
f the day that had been taunting him for weeks.
At one point both animals looked up from their meals and glanced at one another. The cat purred. Moby wagged his tail.
Stupid humans. Like fish and biscuits in a barrel.
END
SUGAR DADDY
I
THEN
1
The auditorium is packed. I should be flattered, but I’m not. Not today. Today every fan is going to get the answer—or the result?—to the question I have been avoiding since I published my first bestseller twenty years ago.
Are you ever going to write horror, Mr. Kale?
“Maybe one day.”
That’s what I usually tell them. I’ll tell them I prefer to write about things I believe in; things that are real. Serial killers; psychopaths; terrorists—that’s what scares me. I’ll then crack some lame joke about how I stopped believing in ghosts and goblins when I was ten, and I’ll get a unanimous laugh, obligatory only because of my literary status, of that I’m sure.
It’s not the truth though.
The truth, if they knew it, would scare the shit out of them. Like it does me—even some twenty years later.
So here I am, veins flooded with Lexapro and Abilify, stoned on enough Xanax to drop an elephant, and in front of a podium ready to deliver what everyone wants to hear: a horror story written by someone who writes under the pseudonym of Adam Kale.
I roll up both sleeves and look at the old scars on my wrists—thick lines that wrap all the way around like a child had a go at me with a white Crayola.
I look at Emma’s name tattooed on the inside of my left forearm and touch it.
I rub my always-aching right hand; the one with three pins in it, the one I can’t tighten completely.
And then I rub the shoulders that still insist on popping out just as I think they’re getting better.
“Okay…” I sigh. “Shall we begin?”
2
Emma and I were a half hour late when we joined Kevin and Tony in the booth. There were six empty beer bottles on the table already—the waitress at our dive never daring to remove your glass trophies until elbow room became impossible.
“Where you guys been?” Tony asked.
We were late for no good reason other than being late. I decided a quick apology would end it. “Sorry.”
He frowned, shook his head and dove right in. “Okay, listen to this—”
“Whoa, whoa—can we get a drink first, please?” I was not about to open my ears to someone like Tony before I had a drink in front of me. I looked at Emma. “What do you want, baby?”
“Red Bull and vodka.”
Kevin grimaced. “How do you drink that shit?”
Emma wiped her ink-black hair out of her face with a middle finger, her blue eyes rimmed with what I always felt was too much eyeliner batting playfully at Kevin to underline her gesture.
“Such a classy girl you’ve got,” Kevin said to me.
I grunted and looked around. It was pretty empty for a Thursday night. The big oval bar in the center of the place held a few scattered locals around its perimeter—grumpy old men with mushy red noses mumbling complaints into their whiskey and beer. Was I looking at myself in thirty years? Likely, unless I grew a pair and stepped out of my safe little pond to make some changes.
I am—and please forgive how arrogant this will sound—the smartest of all three I’m hanging out with right now. That even includes my girl Emma who, while sweet as a blueberry, is the type to buy a newspaper, pull out the comics, and toss the remainder in the trash.
I love to read and write. Always have. And I suppose this love provides me with a learned way of thinking that’s different than theirs, if they do much thinking at all. I can remember one time when I told Tony about this book on giant squids I’d just read. Told him what amazing and mysterious creatures they were. He looked at me as though he’d just smelled a wicked fart, and his response was along the lines of: “Who gives a shit about a squid?”
I’d say that one comment there summed Tony up pretty well.
I continued surveying the bar. “Where’s Carol?”
Tony snorted. “Chain-smoking bitch is probably outside again; it takes forever to a get drink from her since the smoking ban.”
I held my tongue. Both Tony and Kevin were heavy smokers. Emma too, and she was constantly promising she was going to quit. That promise began our senior year in high school when we started getting serious. Now, seven years later, she was still promising.
Carol appeared almost on cue a second later. She stunk of smoke.
“Another round?” she asked.
Tony and Kevin nodded.
She looked at Emma, then at me. “How about you guys?”
Carol was close to fifty. She was tall and painfully thin, her scrawny arms wrapped in thick blue veins that raised the skin. Her hair was shoulder-length and unhealthy, straw-like. She’d make a perfect scarecrow. Hell, she could scare sharks. I thought about the old men at the bar being me in thirty years. Would this town inevitably turn Emma into Carol? My penis made an instant threat of eternal impotence if I continued with that line of thinking and I squashed the thought immediately.
“Vodka and Red Bull, and a shot of Jack and a lager,” I said.
Carol left with our orders.
Tony leaned forward. “Okay? Can I start now?”
“You see a drink in front of us yet?” I said.
He sat back hard in the booth, his constant frown etching deeper. He nudged Emma. “Can you get up? I’m gonna go out for a smoke.”
Emma stood and said, “I’ll join you.”
Kevin turned and looked at me. He was short, bald, and stocky. The guy started losing his hair when we were sixteen and by now he had next to nothing left. Fortunately for him, the bald head suited his round stumpy features quite well, and the goatee that he sported—like his idol, Tony—only added to his wannabe tough-guy image.
Unlike Tony, however, whose temper threw his punches for him before his common sense did, Kevin was a jellyfish. He’d even started crying during a confrontation once. He denied it vehemently after the fact, but we all saw it. And we all let it go. Even Tony, who loves busting balls almost as much as busting a nut, never made a fuss over it. If you ask me, I think Tony is just grateful to have someone look up to him other than a cockroach.
“You want me to get up?” I said to Kevin.
“Yeah, you mind?”
I knew it was killing him that Tony was outside having a smoke without him. I stood and let him scooch past me towards the exit.
I sat back down, alone. Carol returned with our drinks.
“Should I clear some of these?” she said, motioning to the empty bottles.
I shrugged. “If you want.” As I mentioned from the start; in a place like this, where your status as a fledgling alcoholic was important for some reason, empty beer bottles were symbols of your prowess. To clear them away before absolutely necessary was taboo.
But I couldn’t give a shit. Yeah, I loved to drink as much as the next guy, but unlike the majority of these clowns, I felt shame when I overindulged. It made me feel weak; for every night I got wasted and acted the fool, I knew I was taking one step closer to becoming a permanent fixture in this shit town. A permanent fixture that would end up craving those self-medicating nights of defilement as a means of quieting the shame and disgust that would inevitably haunt me forever.
I shuddered, gulped my Jack, and then followed it with a sip of lager just as the three of them walked back in.
Emma sat next to me this time, leaving Kevin and Tony on the other side. This didn’t seem to bother them now, but would have appeared far too “gay” had they sat next to one another before we arrived.
“Cheers,” Emma said as she raised her drink. We all clinked glasses and bottles and took a sip.
I leaned back in the booth, savoring the warmth of the Jack in my belly. “Okay, Tony, you may enlighten us now.”
He was
too anxious to return fire at my sarcasm. He just started. “I found a way to make a shit-load of cash.”
I had suspected this was about money, and kept from rolling my eyes. Tony was always playing the get-rich-quick angle. He even spent his meager earnings from his job at the gas station on lottery tickets each and every week.
“How?” Emma asked.
I glanced over at her to see if she was humoring Tony or actually interested. Sadly, I saw the latter.
Kevin spoke next. “Tony’s banging this new Russian chick.”
They stopped there for a moment, and despite two predictable tools like them, I had to confess I had no clue where they were going with this.
“Okay…” I said. “Has she agreed to let us pimp her out or something?”
Emma laughed. Tony did not.
Kevin continued. “She cleans houses.”
“And?” I said.
“She cleans big houses—all the places on Elmwood.”
I sighed. “Are we gonna keep doing the twenty questions thing or are you gonna start making sense?”
Tony leaned in. “We got wasted together the other night. We’re lying in bed just after I tapped that ass, and she starts babbling about her crappy job. I don’t know, maybe she was trying to hint that she would love some American guy to marry her so she didn’t have to work anymore.”
“Did you tell her you pumped gas for a living?”
He ignored me. “So, she starts telling me about what she does, and I’m kind of half-listening and half-dozing. She’s going on and on about these ‘rich bitches’ and how it’s not fair that they’ve got money and she doesn’t”—he then made the hand gesture for talking too much, mouth opening and closing with— “blah-fucking-blah-blah…”
WARPED: A Collection of Short Horror, Thriller, and Suspense Fiction Page 10
