by Tobias Wade
Alphabet Soup
for the
Tormented Soul
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, businesses, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental.
Alphabet Soup for the Tormented Soul
Copyright © 2018 Tobias Wade.
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Foreword
A is for Addiction
B is for Barnacle
C is for Clairvoyance
D is for Daniel
E is for Echo
F is for Formaldehyde
G is for Gang
H is for Hegemonic
I is for Ideation
J is for Jackass
K is for Kinky
L is for Lunacy
M is for Mirror
N is for Necrosis.
O is for Olivia
P is for Prey
Q is for Quota
R is for Romance
S is for Sable
T is for Time Travel
U is for Undelivered
V is for Venom
W is for West Bale Path
X is for Xenophobia
Y is for Your Match
& is for Ampersand
Z is for Zodiac
Publisher’s Note:
Foreword
We are a group of authors following the example of “The ABC’s of Death.” That movie had twenty-six different directors, and was not original in its own right. Sue Grafton had been working on her very successful alphabet series of novels since the 1980’s, and she was not the first to tackle such a concept.
I decided, with a reckless lack of forethought, to organize a two-month project based on the comment of a Reddit user ctsmith76’s. The end product is what you have before you, but it’s not there because of me. My idea was to keep the entire project online, and it would have stayed there if not for Haunted House Publishing’s commitment to put it into printed form.
ctsmith76 gave their blessing to go forward with the project, but none of us wrote the beginning or end of the narrative which took a unique life of its own.
Twenty-six people who never met face-to-face each got their turn to determine what the project should be about, and the illustrator Taylor Tate decided what it should look like (delightfully horrific). Special thanks to Tim Galos for his editing, as well as users kbsb0830 and SkyhawkIllusions who didn’t write any of the chapters but still stuck with us and helped until the end.
Every author was free to express themselves however they chose to pay tribute to horror. No one was censored due to the content of their ideas, and the project wasn’t whole until the last person had been heard. That accomplishment alone makes me proud of our book.
No one person, really, can say “this is MY book.” But there’s a hell of a lot who can say “this is OUR book.”
-P. F. McGrail
A is for Addiction
David Maloney
The day I met Annie was the day fate threw me under the bus.
I saw her standing in the freezing rain, outside of a head shop in the Midwestern US. She looked as if she’d once been pretty, but the skin of her face had hollowed and shrunken around the bones into the unmistakable mask of a habitual drug-user. I stood under the overhang of the shop and held my hand out, letting a few drops of the icy rain splatter across my palm.
“If you just stay outside in the rain, you're gonna get pneumonia,” I said.
The movement of her lips was barely perceptible in the neon red glow of the shop's lights. “That's the plan.”
“There are quicker ways to kill yourself,” I said.
“I don't want to kill myself,” she replied. “I just want to go to the hospital.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Pain meds.”
“You get pain meds for pneumonia?”
“Codeine cough syrup if I'm coughing blood,” she said. “Maybe better if I'm lucky enough to deflate a lung.”
I handed her a cigarette.
“That should help you get pneumonia,” I said.
She moved under the shop's overhang with me and pulled out a lighter from her soaked jacket.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Nobody gives anything away for free. Especially not to girls and especially not to girls like me. If you want me to suck your dick for oxy you're barking up the wrong tree. I'd rather just get pneumonia.”
“I don't have any oxy,” I said flatly.
“Well we've got that in common, at least.”
She took a long drag and eyed me up and down.
“What's your poison?” she asked.
I pulled out the little purple baggie containing the 'synthetic weed' I'd purchased from the shop.
“Are you retarded?” she scoffed. “That shit is toxic.”
“More toxic than pneumonia?”
She clicked her tongue.
“You want some better shit?” she asked.
I shrugged. “I'm up for it,” I replied.
“Good,” She said. “You're buying, and I get twenty percent for introducing you.”
I shrugged again.
“You can drive,” she said. “I don't have a car.”
After we got what turned out to be heroin, Annie insisted on following me back to my place to make sure I didn't, in her words, “nod out and die like a bitch.” She also invited a friend, Darren, to come along with one of his ‘girlfriends’. Before I knew it, I was part of a smoke circle.
After a month of shooting up together, they became the closest thing I’d ever had to real friends. Alone we were just some loser drug-addicts, but together we were the only people who truly understood what a cruel place the world was. We were fully disillusioned; it was us against the sheep.
But any group is only as stable as its foundation, and we were on one hell of an unstable foundation.
The first clue that something wrong was happening was when we all started waking up with cuts and bruises. Every night, Darren, Annie, and I would black out, and the next morning we’d be beat to shit.
After a week we looked like a museum exhibit on the life cycle of bruises. First there's purple, then a sickly yellow, and finally they fade away into nothing, but not before three or four more had cropped up in their place.
Of course, a little thing like that couldn’t stop us using. A couple of times I tried to cut back, but nobody else seemed to care, so I just let it slide. We looked worse and worse, day by day. Gram by gram.
Then Darren’s 'girlfriends' started disappearing. Every night four of us would pass out and three would wake up. I told myself they were just prostitutes bailing out on three wasters that they couldn't squeeze any more money out of. I'm not sure I ever really believed it though.
I soon found out the truth was even worse.
It was one of those shitty Saturday mornings that aren't good for anything except getting high. I rolled up to the head shop to find my regular brand of synthetic weed had gone, in its place something called ‘Rainbow Road’. The cashier assured me that it was just as good, but later that night I’d realize it was much weaker—weak enough for me to keep my wits about me that night.
I was slumped down in the smoke circle with my eyes barely open
when Annie slithered up to me.
“Ok, he’s out,” she said to someone behind her. She pulled a pill bottle out and rattled a single white pill into her palm with one hand, before slipping it between my lips. She tilted my head up and slid her hand over my mouth, gripping my throat with the other hand and massaging it. I felt a powerful urge to swallow, but I managed to slip the pill under my tongue before I did.
“It’s down,” Annie said. “Is the bitch out?”
“Yep,” Darren answered. “Let’s get her naked.”
Darren and Annie began stripping the clothes from the unconscious woman like dogs stripping meat from a bone.
When they had finished, Darren reached into his pants and began to fondle himself.
“Damn,” he said, “this one looks too good to waste. Think she’s got AIDS?”
Annie clicked her tongue.
“You never learn, do you?” she said. “You really want your DNA all over that bitch?”
“Naw, I guess not,” he said. “We’re gonna clean her anyway, though, what’s the harm?”
“Just keep it in your pants,” Annie replied. “You’ll have plenty of money to buy yourself a whore later.”
“Yeah, but whores fight back,” said Darren.
“Whatever,” Annie said. “Just help me pep him back up.”
Darren withdrew his crack pipe from one of the deep pockets in his tattered jeans. He loaded it up and held the lighter underneath, taking in a deep draw. But he didn’t inhale—instead he blew it directly in my face. I tried not to cough as the acrid smoke filled my nose and throat. It didn't smell like just crack in the pipe though—it smelled like Darren had mixed it in with PCP.
“Hit him again,” Annie said.
Darren hit my face with the smoke again, and I couldn’t help but inhale some. My face began to experience a familiar floating sensation as Darren hit me three more times.
“Good, now get him up,” Annie said.
Darren seized me by the armpits and yanked me to my feet. I thought about running for a flash of a second, but a mixture of morbid curiosity and fear kept me rooted to the spot.
“I still don’t get how this works,” Darren said.
“I told you,” Annie said. “It’s scopo...something. The zombie drug. They use it on people in Africa all the time.”
“Whatever,” Darren replied. “I wasn’t really asking.”
He walked over and reached inside his bag, pulling out a brand new MacBook computer. He opened it up and fidgeted around for a moment before stepping away to reveal a shining green light above the monitor, which was pointed at the naked girl on the floor whose name I’d forgotten. The camera was on.
“You’re out of frame,” he said to Annie. “We’re live on the site now.”
Annie slid up to me again, standing on her tiptoes and whispering in my ear.
“You see that girl, Danny?” she said. “That’s a bad, bad, girl. You remember what we do to bad, bad, girls, right? We beat them, Danny. We beat them until there’s nothing left. Beat the bitch, Danny. Beat her to death.”
My heart was yammering wildly in my ears. My mind was screaming at my feet to run, but they wouldn't cooperate.
My hesitation was noted. Soon Annie was hissing in my ear again, flicking spit with every word.
“What the fuck are you doing, Danny?” she said. “That girl’s a BAD GIRL. You need to KILL HER, Danny!”
I still couldn’t move.
Darren crossed over to the two of us, striding in a great arc to make sure he stayed out of camera frame.
“What the fuck’s wrong with him?” he whispered in Annie’s ear.
“Maybe he needs another dose,” Annie said, rummaging in her pockets for the bottle. As she did so, I became aware of something. The pill I had been hiding under my tongue had crumbled into powder, and while I had been concerned with what was going on with Annie and Darren, it was being absorbed into my bloodstream.
Any pill-head will tell you that sublingual administration is much faster than oral. I began to feel my consciousness slipping away, dissolving into nothingness. I slipped the remains of the pill into my cheek, but it was too late. I was dimly aware of a blind rage as I started towards the naked woman...
I awoke the next morning to find that we had once again awoken as three. I never mentioned anything about it to Annie and Darren. Instead, I mixed rat poison in with their heroin and left after they nodded out.
As for the girls, I never said anything about it to the police. I took the laptop and deleted the videos, all twenty-six of them, before throwing it into a nearby lake. I’ve since cleaned up and become an English teacher. But sometimes I still wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, wondering if there’s still copies of those videos floating around on the internet somewhere.
I hope I never find out.
B is for Barnacle
Mr. Michael Squid
Gray clouds swirled overhead when I opened the shop door, spilling fast over the sky like lint on a treadmill. The storm was supposed to miss us, but the debris twisting in dust devils whispered otherwise, leaving the ocean air cold and salty. I usually enjoy the forces of nature, but the chill sought out the clothing gaps to the bare skin through my shirt holes and sock ends, so I stomped out the pre-roll I’d been puffing with the heel of my Timbs to retreat indoors. I was popping a few Tic-Tacs when my phone vibrated and I saw the severe storm warning alert accompanied by that annoying tone. Seemed the seaside storm wasn’t going to miss us after all; it was on target to hit all of us in York, Maine, dead center and soon.
I stand out like a sore thumb in the oceanside town with my Brooklyngear; Champion hoodie over a vintage Polo tee and all, but I’m not here to blend in. I’m attending the University of New England, studying marine biology (thanks to a generous partial scholarship), and I can afford rent here, not to mention the under 40-minute commute to school. My evening job as a sandwich jockey pays the rent and gives me time to study during the lulls we experience in the off season.
I check my text messages, hoping to hear back about getting coffee with a classmate. No response. It seemed Diane was not interested in being more than my lab partner, no news to me. No word from Ron about getting a beer after work either, so I returned back inside from the smoke break to man the sandwich station. This consisted of reading about cyanobacterial blooms while waiting for any locals in town during off season who direly needed a turkey and cheese during a freak storm. It was nearing 10 PM, and I expected we’d close early due to the storm warning on the radio. I was about to head to the register to ask the owner Janice about leaving early when a jingle of the door signaled a customer. A man entered in a dramatic stagger, his left foot dragging in a labored trudging as though he’d limped through hell straight into our modest, seaside convenience store.
Janice greeted him, but his head just hung low, nearly out of view under a sun-bleached Sou’wester hat and faded blue raincoat. Stripped by the elements of color, his PVC storm gear was flecked with crusted clumps of gray; they were barnacles. A soggy white beard spilled out from under the tipped cap, wet tendrils emerging from skin nearly as white and wrinkled by what seemed like decades of wear. A bang jolted me alert as a massive gale smacked the door fully open, slapping the wooden frame of the newsstand.
A barrage of rain drummed hard and wet from the sky, and a shocking gust of wind forced our eyes to squint just as the man collapsed. First onto his knees, then onto his stomach on the floor. Janice rushed to his side calling “Sir? Sir, are you alright?”, but he was not responsive. I held my phone up and Janice nodded. I tried 911, then the hospital directly, but the storm must have killed a cell tower because there was no service.
The saltwater tempest beat unmercifully upon us as Janice and I carried the older man, whom we presumed to be a fisherman, into my Explorer after confirming a pulse. The hospital was just over ten minutes away, but the toppling branches and thunderous white bullets of r
ain made driving with zero visibility at night an undoubtedly terrible idea. Even the streetlights of Long Beach Ave were off due to toppled power lines from the intense wind. We decided not to risk it. The cold rain drenched us through to the bone, my entire body was numb and stinging by the time we hauled that far-too-heavy stranger back inside the store. We barricaded the door as best we could from the freak weather and flipped the man on his back. The sight of his face made me yell in shock.
He had a brutal, vertical scar straight down the center of his face, and there were small Thoracica barnacles (the common type often found on rocks and boats) on the edges of his hairline . There were dozens of them: a few on the sides of his crooked nose, and some on the corners of his sunken eyes. I stared in absolute shock; barnacles are arthropods like crabs, they attach their backs onto a host with their legs facing outward before building a cement wall of armor (which looks like a shell), a process that takes days or even weeks to form.
The process is extremely painful in the very rare instance they land on a human host. I was amazed that this man had let this happen; perhaps he’d been in a seaside coma? Every answer opened a string of additional, unanswerable questions. I was horrified and extremely confused, but knew he needed serious help, so I focused my attention on that. I ran to fetch the electric heater and some tarps from the stockroom to help warm the poor man. When I returned from the stockroom, Janice was performing CPR, and that’s when I discovered the horrific reason the barnacles had been able to grow undisturbed.
Janice breathed into his mouth with a puzzled look on her face as we both heard a loud cracking sound. I slowly approached, seeing the dark red line form on the man’s face, dividing the eyes and nostrils as the crack extended. The man’s face split open, and what looked like a fan comprised of giant centipedes spewed out from the gory slit and wrapped around Janice’s head, pulling her in. My jaw dropped in horror, but instincts drove my sprinting feet to the knives I kept at the sandwich counter. I charged back to the snaking tendrils, realizing they were actually cirri, the legs of barnacles, at an impossibly mammoth scale. A larva had somehow entered this sailor’s nasal passage or mouth and grown far larger than what I knew to be possible, a new species perhaps. I had no interest in discovering it at the moment, and my butcher’s knife sawed at those powerful, shelled snakes that were pulling her face into the cavity of the sailor’s rotted head.
