by Shock Totem
Thompson opened a pillowcase and reached out to pick up the thing. It was cool and a little moist to the touch, like a clammy hand, and he’d barely gotten a good grip underneath it when he realized he was touching a clammy hand. The whole section he’d enclosed in his fingers had shifted into a hand just like his own and was gripping him back. Thompson twisted his wrist, looking at the sides and back of the hand he now held in his own. It was just like his—same freckles and everything. It gave him the creeps, and suddenly he wanted only to shake it loose.
But that wasn’t so easy. The hand hung on tight. Thompson tried shaking it off, but it was like some wet mass of dough clinging to his fingers. He swore under his breath, looking around for something to scrape it off with. Not seeing anything, he shook his hand again and was surprised when flecks of blood spattered his face. Looking closer, Thompson could see blood running along the seams where the thing touched his own flesh—and now he could also see the fingers on the thing’s hand growing thicker and longer as his own sank deeper inside it.
Thompson swore again, and then suddenly the pain hit him, shooting up his forearm to his elbow. He fell to his knees, and tried clubbing the thing against the tabletop, but already his arm felt like a lead weight. There was a buzzing in his brain, and sweat rolled down his temples.
What the hell was happening? It felt like he was being smothered and his hand felt like it was being sucked off his wrist. He couldn’t even see his arm anymore—his field of vision was shrinking and everything was out of focus. Something hit the back of Thompson’s head and he thought it might have been the back of the chair. And then that was it.
• • •
Bates was slow in coming to his senses again. Once he did, it took him even longer to realize he was tied up somewhere and then ages to pick the knots in the electrical cords around his wrists and ankles. All he knew was that he needed to get free before he suffocated to death. But then all at once his arms were full of pumping blood and he was tearing the blanket from off his face and kicking open the closet door and taking in deep gulping breaths.
Bloody and fuddled, Bates crawled out of the closet and dragged himself to his feet. He tried to take a step and almost fell over. He’d forgotten his ankles were still tied. Good thing the room was small, he thought wryly to himself, as he practically fell into the chair closest to him. Bates ran his hand through his hair and felt the bloody place. It was scabbing up okay, but it hurt like crazy. That was his own fault, he guessed. His own fault for showing off to a stranger.
Bates picked up his bag from the tabletop and saw immediately it was empty. Of course it was, and that Custer fool was gone too. He’d never see either of them again, of course. Bates collapsed back in his chair and threw the bag across the table onto the other chair. As he bent down to untie his ankles, he wondered how much the other fellow had figured out about the thing. It wasn’t the kind of thing you could go messing around with. You were liable to get yourself—
Bates sat up, a cold sweat suddenly breaking across his face and arms. It suddenly struck him that there’d only been one chair in the room. Now there were two—and worse yet, he was sitting in one of them. But which one? Bates shut his eyes and took a deep breath.
“Well,” he said. “Only one way to find out.” And suddenly pushing both his arms and legs like four coiled springs, he gave it one good shot to get out of that chair.
M. Bennardo’s short stories appear in Three-Lobed Burning Eye, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Asimov’s Science Fiction, among others. He is also editor of the Machine of Death series of anthologies—the second volume, This Is How You Die, is coming from Grand Central Publishing in July 2013. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio, but people everywhere can find him online at www.mbennardo.com.
HOWLING THROUGH THE KEYHOLE
The stories behind the stories.
“Consumption”
My sister says I feel too much, and she's right. I have an over-abundance of emotion about all sorts of trivial and inconsequential things. When I'm in good sorts, when my mind is healthy and chemically balanced, I can easily override this excess of feeling with logic, like a master Vulcan. But minds are not always healthy, and when my brain chemistry falls out of balance, so does my rationality.
It is the greatest horror in my life to be trapped by my unreasonable mind. To understand, on some level, the complete nonsense of what I am feeling, and still, to be defenseless against it. It is a battle I fight every day of my life, with anti-depressants and therapy and diet and exercise and all sorts of new-fangled, promising cure-alls. It is a battle I struggle with, but also, for now, one I am winning.
This story is about someone who is losing. She is trapped, not by her relationship, or society, or the apparently disintegrating world around her, but by her own emotions, her own mind. She also feels too much. Those feelings chase each other around in her head until she is so deep inside herself she cannot defend herself against the creature inside her.
Even as she is surrounded by signs that this too shall pass, like the abandoned hospital and the ever-evolving forest, she cannot find release from the present. Even as she understands the insignificance of her life in the universe, identifying the two people closest to her only as variables, she cannot ignore the weight of her own existence. Even as she obsesses over Y, the story is not about him. He does not consume her. Instead, her desire cannibalizes.
I present this story, not as a representation of mental illness, but as an expression of it. Something from the depths of my own uncontrollable mind. Catharsis to ensure I, and others like me, will wish for longer forevers.
–Victoria Jakes
“Among the Elephants”
“Among the Elephants” is a short story that plays very close to my heart. I wrote it with both my mother and grandmother in mind. Just as the story’s character remarks, my own mother “really did work with elephants”. Her three ladies, she called them; and she really did introduce me to them by telling me not to be afraid—their respect for her would be the only protection I needed. We fed them Nutter-Butter cookies—which may have been their real only reason for putting up with me.
It’s my grandmother, Emily, who filled my head with stories of Africa and “places that remembered the world before there were people.” The two of them—my two ladies—and the way they’ve moved through their lives were very much in my mind when I wrote this story of deformity and perseverance. I walk in some very impressive footsteps.
–Amberle L. Husbands
“The Four Horsemen of the Parking Lot”
This piece was written in February 2007. I’m happy to report Neveah is now six years old, and her out-of-the-gate stumble has not held her back. She recently received an orange belt in Karate.
–Kurt Newton
“The Gates of Emile Plimpkin: The Gravedigger’s Legacy”
Writers are always asked, “Where do you get your ideas?” This is a standard textbook question, and the asker is usually treated to a standard textbook (wiseacre) remark from the author. A snide reference to an idea shop in Burbank, or, “Who comes up with ideas? I steal ’em.”
The truth is, if you’re a writer, when you aren’t writing you’re at least thinking about writing. Thus we’re constantly on the lookout for unconnected things which might be strung together. When we have disagreements with our significant others, in the backs of our heads we are mentally recording the more colorful jibes and wish for a notepad to take it all down because we might be able to use some of the more choice bits later. While on vacation, we enjoy ourselves, and yet we still take stock of the scenery and try to decide how best to work the exotic local into a story. Whether it’s a snippet of conversation, a news story, or some factoid read on the net, it’s all grist for the mill.
The other thing non-writers wonder is, “Do writers ever run out of ideas?” Maybe some do, but for me t’ain’t so. It seems the more I exercise the ole cerebral muscles, the more easily plotlines form and beg to be committed to paper
or hard-drive. If I’m really on my game writing a piece, the kernels for three more stories may hit me in the process of developing my current one.
And sometimes...sometimes my brain doesn’t quite shut down when I go to bed after a solid block of writing. Once the idea pump has been primed, it often continues dribbling as I sleep, and those salient ideas spill over into my dreams. They’re usually quite disturbing. And I love every one of them.
Now you’re probably already guessing where this is going, and if you guessed “The Gates of Emile Plimpkin” started life as a dream, you’d be right. In the bleak and foggy beginnings of slumber one October night, I saw in my mind’s eye the image of a dwarf, silhouetted in the moonlight and rocking from side to side. It was an inspiring vision, which immediately jarred me awake. Intuitively, I knew things about this dwarf. He was dangerous, not to be trusted, a murderer. I also recall, as I tried to doze off again, thinking, “Gate. This has something to do with a gate.”
Sunday morning I put off whatever other project I was working on and started writing this new crazy thing. The name of the decidedly meek and reluctant hero hit me almost immediately. I don’t know why, but Emile Plimpkin had to be the name. And the villain’s name came unbidden with similar ease. The rest sort of fell into place. Elements crowded in, demanding to be added to this strange new stew: Stumpy Joe’s backstory, his method of murder by poison, Emile’s emerging talent, a pinch of necrophilia for extra kick, Emile’s mysterious walking stick.
Now about that walking stick...originally, I had put the two opposing faces on it for no other reason than I thought that detail would be a cool visual. But then I decided to look up what that two-faced image of Janus represented—you know, because there might be more stuff I could work in. Imagine my shock upon learning Janus is the patron god of...wait for it...“gates and doorways!” Gooseflesh prickled my arms. I had just struck a very rich vein of material here, and purely by accident!
Or was it by accident? I’m sure I must have heard or read this information about Janus at some point before in my life (how could I not have?), and that knowledge had been tucked away in some dusty corner of my brain, waiting until the day its status turned from inane tidbit to useful prompt. Yes, surely my subconscious nudged me in the right direction during my writing process. While I was busy constructing sentences, my subconscious was lending a hand by suggesting dots that might be connected.
To sum up, in many ways the origins of the story mirror the story itself. This is a tale about dream travel, which was inspired by a dream, and my subconscious guided me along in much the same way the old god Janus guides Emile.
Weird, eh? Yeah, I thought so, too.
Hopefully you’ve enjoyed the story, and if you did, give me a shout on Facebook or shoot me an email. Especially if you’d like to see more of Emile. Like his friend, the parson, I suspect his adventures have only just begun. And I’ve been dreaming again...
Secondary note pertinent to storytelling: As of this writing, I’ve learned I’ll be sharing TOC space with the one and only purveyor of dark fantasy and science fiction, Mr. William F. Nolan.
I happened to meet Mr. Nolan at Pulpfest in Columbus, Ohio, a couple of years back, and he gave me, a budding writer, some sage advice I’ve carried in my head ever since.
“You’ve got to make your fiction compelling,” he said. So true. Basically, it boils down to this, your prose can sing, your research may be thorough, and your manuscript free of typos, but if readers don’t give a damn about what happens, it’s all over. Fundamentally, the difference between a good story and a bad story is the tale’s ability to command an audience’s attention. What makes us read on? According to Nolan, if there are questions which must be answered, and if we care about the characters, we’ll want to be with them when they solve that mystery, destroy that mother ship, save the girl. If there is tension, we want to be there to see things through to their resolution. Tell a joke, we’ll wait for the punch line. I’ll add my two cents to this and say there is a psychology within the writer-reader relationship. But it’s more than playing with the reader. That would be one-sided and selfish. What we do is open the engine up full throttle and suggest everyone come along for a little joy ride. Fiction is best when it’s shared, after all.
I’ve thought a great deal about Nolan’s brief but exceptionally poignant observation about storytelling and wanted to share the sentiment with other would-be writers.
Make it compelling.
Three simple words. Words to live by.
–S. Clayton Rhodes
“Smoking, The Old Sergeant Remembers 30 Mins Past Ceasefire”
The poem—or the idea of it, at least—has haunted me for years, ever since I had a difficult discussion in a smoke-filled room about war crimes with a former Major. The Major was one of the residents in the retirement home where I worked for many years. The smoke in the Major’s room was usually so thick, I could hear the TV playing in the background but I couldn’t always see it. It's worth noting that the Major himself was a pilot, not an infantryman. To end on a humorous side note: one thing that always stuck with me about his room was a picture of a WWI plane that he had crash-landed in the snow after a failed landing. The plane was intact for the most part, except for the nose which was crushed, and it stood erect in the snow, with the Major standing beside it with a grin.
–Dominik Parisien
“The Horror That Et My Pap—and Other Swamp Stuff”
I wrote this little sketch after reading my good friend Joe R. Lansdale's last book, Edge of Dark Water. It was so rich with dialect and atmosphere I felt compelled to jot this down. I hope people will like it.
–William F. Nolan
“Shall I Whisper to You of Moonlight, of Sorrow, of Pieces of Us?”
I’m not a plotter and usually have only a vague idea of where a story is going to go when I write the first sentence. When I started “Shall I Whisper to You of Moonlight, of Sorrow, of Pieces of Us?” I thought it was about a stalker, but as the story unfolded, I realized that wasn’t precisely the case.
I told the story as it came to me, flitting back and forth in time, and, once I reached the end, I wasn’t sure if the narrator’s grief created the ghost, or if the ghost was sustaining (and prolonging) the main character’s grief because of its own inability to say goodbye, or if perhaps the ghost was a figment of imagination born of the narrator’s grief. It would’ve been easy to clarify either way, but I opted to leave it as is and let the readers decide for themselves.
–Damien Angelica Grintalis
“The Long Road”
Shortly before I discovered I was pregnant with my first child, I had a dream. In my dream, I was walking a long dirt road with marshland surrounding both sides. Even in the dream, I was confused. The marshland of South Carolina was the land of my grandmother. My land is filled with pine trees and pollen, but whenever I smell that sickening mixture of salt and decay, there are pieces of my soul that settle deep into that smell.
So I was walking this road, and the smell was all around me. Ahead of me, my husband walked, but his movements were jerky, as if each step was a deliberate process, a forced bending of the knee, the foot purposefully pressed in the dust.
I called to him over and over, my throat went hoarse and bloody with the force of it, but he wouldn’t turn around, wouldn’t acknowledge why we were walking on this road. And I was afraid.
There was something moving in the water, and somehow I knew that whatever was in that water had taken my husband away, and I would be left alone on that awful road, forever walking, forever lost in that fetid smell.
It was the aloneness that I feared most. That I would be on this road for the rest of my life, moving toward some unfixed point with no one to guide, to help, to offer love or comfort.
This was a fear that I’d been having in waking life. I’d lost two babies in a year before that dream. Feared that my body was broken, that I would be alone and in pieces despite my husband’s reassurance
s that he was right here with me.
And so the story started in the marsh with Danny boy making the decision to run, to run away from the very land that defined him. But it always came back to that aloneness, to that feeling of not being able to escape, of not being able to get off of that long road.
Two days after finishing the first draft, I found out I was pregnant again. It’s a boy.
–Kristi DeMeester
“Thing In a Bag”
I’m an old-fashioned horror movie fan. I’ll watch any old creature-feature with rapt attention—whether the creature is a stuntman in fish prosthetics, a rear-projected spider blown up a hundred times, or a quivering blob of pink silicon jelly. I go absolutely nuts for stop-motion, and I still think Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen ought never to have gone a day without work.
I’ll watch anything with Vincent Price, or anything directed by Roger Corman. I’ve spent hours on YouTube just watching the trailers to William Castle flicks. And I have annual traditions built around the movies of Val Lewton. (Sorry, Universal fans, but it’s a fact that Boris Karloff did his best work for RKO.) I get legitimate chills from Carnival of Souls and The Fly and The Innocents.
Among my own stories, “Thing In a Bag” was my first creature-feature. I wrote it years ago as a gift for a friend of mine who’s also a horror movie buff—though she goes for the REALLY scary stuff. (Hi, Kate!) The story takes the nervous criminal on the run from Psycho, the digestive ooze from The Blob, the sinister shape-shifting from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and the nasty twist ending from The Twilight Zone. It’s no wonder that when I dug it up again recently, I still loved every word of it.
