That’s the only way to describe it.
As the torchlight flooded through the tunnel, I gasped.
“God Almighty!”
I won’t one to blaspheme, but no other exclamation seemed quite right.
This … thing squirmed on the ground. It was about the size of a large dog, hairless, skinless, without any distinguishable face. It was a mass of twitching muscle and bone, flopping about of its own accord. It had been shot a couple of times, and from the bullet holes pumped blood. But it kept on moving, wriggling, like it was trying to unfold itself like the petals of a flower.
It smelled like rotten eggs and bacon grease.
“What is it? I asked.
Sinclair didn’t answer. He just looked at it for a moment, then moved along.
It was worse up ahead. Much worse.
We entered a sprawling chamber. The torchlight licked at the rough-hewn walls, the columns of stone. Scattered around the room were some of the “gifts” the folks from Newcomb’s Wild West Extravaganza had given Friedricks and his men.
Among the debris were dozens of empty green bottles.
“This’ll cure them what ails ya,” Ezra had said.
Three cannibals were sprawled on the floor. I knew they were dead right away. They were too pale, too still. Blood covered their mouths. Their bellies were swollen and distended.
“It’ll drive the foul spirits from your body like your granny chasing cats from the kitchen!”
In the deep crevices and pockets of dark the torch couldn’t touch, something flapped and flopped, a gristled, meaty kind of noise. I thought of stepping closer, taking a look, but I was too scared to force my legs to work. The hair stood on end on the backs of my arms. My nostrils burned at the overwhelming smell of Old Ezra’s medicine.
My first thought was that the cannibals had drunk down Ezra’s tonic, and it had driven the hungry spirits from their bodies. Only the spirits, they hadn’t died. I found no comfort in the notion, though, as it meant the vile things lurking outside my field of vision were demons made flesh.
One of the dead men had something sticking out of his mouth.
I stepped closer, shoving the torch towards the cannibal’s face.
Fingers–human fingers–jutted out from between his lips, and the way his throat was swollen up and bruised, I knew those fingers were attached to an arm pushing its way up from the man’s gullet.
The fingers twitched.
The flopping, flapping creatures in the darkness moved closer. I heard them slithering on the stone, heard their nails scraping the rock. Their shapes became more distinct. Some were formless masses like the thing we’d seen in the tunnel. Others were vaguely human in size and shape. Their blood-soaked flesh glistened.
I knew they weren’t demons at all.
“You’ve done come too late.”
The voice came from the other side of the chamber, and even though it was no more than a whisper, it shocked me like cannon fire. Boone Friedricks stepped into our light. If his men had been large, Boone himself was massive–big the way things from Biblical times were big. He was hunched over, though, and every couple of seconds he hacked up a mouthful of blood. Despite the cold, he wore no shirt. His stomach was swollen and something boney moved inside his gut.
Sinclair’s twin pistols snapped towards him like a compass needle pointing north.
“If you’ve come to kill me,” Friedricks said, “you’re too late.”
“Killing you is fairly high on my list.” Sinclair stepped towards the man. “But I didn’t track you down for just that purpose.”
“You still after this?” Friedricks dug in his pants pocket, pulled an ugly necklace out. It was no more than a hideous clay totem on a strip of old leather. “You’ve come a long way for this old thing.”
“I know someone who’ll pay good money for that,” Sinclair said. “And I knew one of you no-accounts must’ve taken it after what you did to that shaman.”
The shapes in the darkness inched closer. They were closing in around us, slowly. I could hear them breathing, a rattling noise from their throats … or what passed for throats.
“I don’t have no use for this.” Friedricks looked at the necklace. “Supposed to be good luck, but looks like that’s a bunch of bunk.”
He eyed his dead companions. His tongue snaked out, slithered across his razor-like teeth. He turned his gaze towards the numerous bottles, glinting in the torchlight.
“Those people from the camp… they poisoned us… passed that bilge on to us…”
Sinclair kept one gun trained on Friedricks. He dropped the other into the holster. He reached out towards the cannibal.
“Just give me the necklace,” he said, “and we’ll leave you be.”
“What?” I asked.
“Look at him, boy. Look around you. He’s as good as dead.”
The misshapen figures moved closer. Some of them had faces-slavering, hideous faces, but faces just the same. I recognized some of them. People from camp. People who’d been tied to the sacrificial pole. Emily… Samuel… Darcy…
Jessie.
I shuddered, and a sob escaped my throat.
“They came back up,” Friedrick said. “We ate them, by God, and we drank that tonic-water down, and it brought them back to life… It brought what was left of them back to life inside us…”
He groaned and clutched his stomach. The thing inside him pushed against the walls of his belly, stretching the skin tight, trying to force its way out.
And I knew what… who… was growing in his stomach.
Old Ezra.
“The necklace,” Sinclair urged.
“Take it.” Friedricks tossed the totem at Sinclair, and the gunslinger snatched it out of the air. “Take it and go.”
Tucking the necklace in his vest pocket, Sinclair turned away from the cannibal. He eyes the squirming, shambling figures cautiously, then looked towards me.
“He’s finished,” he said. “Let’s go while we still can.”
I watched the hideous, twisted faces of my friends… my family… all around me. I hadn’t done a thing to save them. I hadn’t done a thing to avenge them.
I may not have been quick on the draw like Sinclair. There might not have been any magic in Colt McGregor’s pistol.
But I put a hole right between Boone Friedricks’ eyes.
And he died without any trouble at all.
* * *
I waited.
Sinclair didn’t.
He left without much of a goodbye, not that I expected one.
The fleshy, bloody things gathered around me. At first, I thought they might kill me. There was a kind of malice in their eyes. They might have ripped me to shreds, too, if not for me killing Friedricks the way I did. Maybe they saw that as an act of atonement.
The thing in Friedricks’ belly continued to squirm and kick. Eventually I used a knife to slice the cannibal open. A fleshy mass spilled out, and over the next few hours, it uncurled and grew into something resembling my friend Ezra. At first it wobbled on its legs like a newborn colt, and it mewled with a voice that was as much beast as it was infant. Soon enough, it found its footing and it settled into a solemn, grim silence.
And then they started to shamble out into the night.
Maybe they were the hunger spirits made flesh… Maybe they were the people from camp brought back from the dead. More than likely, they were a little of both, conjured up by the potion and all mixed up to the point I couldn’t tell where the evil spirit ended and the living dead began.
I knew where they were heading, of course, with their hearts full of anger and malice. They were slow, especially in the cold, and I could’ve outdistanced them without problem. I could have slipped past them and raced back to camp and warned those folks sitting around the Christmas tree hoping for a miracle to save them.
But I didn’t.
Ezra and Jessie and all the rest, they walked again, and that was miracle enough on a cold night like tonight.
I followed the creatures to the foot of the hills, watched them march in the direction of camp. Their bloody footprints trailed off into what may as well have been forever.
I walked the other way.
Charles Bukowski
UP THROUGH THE NIGHT
the way I can tell it is the Christmas
season is that the classical
music on the radio gets
bad.
I mean with an exception or two
we are left in a musical vacuum.
music
like any other creative endeavor
must have its own personal
meaning,
must find its own way.
it can't be programmed by general
agreement
or somebody's mother-in-law's
concept of
what is appropriate
for the season.
things with their own power
and with a life of their own
go their own way
make their own statements
bring light by their own
magic.
it's what makes death
bearable and life worth
discarding.
Patrick Kill
THIS WONDERFUL LIFE
I HATE CHRISTMAS.
And that’s where my story starts—on Christmas Day—the worst fucking day of the year—and it just happens to be my birthday as well.
So let’s cut the eggnog stories and Christmas songs, let’s skip past the mockery of people uniting for this one day of the year and fuck family gatherings and Santa and Christmas trees and God Damn mistletoe and Jesus, too.
Let me tell you what Christmas is really about. And let’s start at the beginning…
1974
Christmas Day, 1:15 a.m. let’s imagine…
Everything’s quiet. Only warmth and the beating of tranquil life.
Darkness soothes to a slight tremble, a rush of fluid. My world contracts into a peephole of light. And through this peephole I see a masked face and twinkling lights. A cold draught rushes in and I fight to retreat into the warm liquids of my tranquil existence.
The beating is gone as I am slowly squeezed out into a cold pair of hands. Bright light shines in flickering red and green bulbs. Everything moves fast: faces, instruments, more lights, noise…
Then some thing with a red and white cap looks down on me and smiles.
And this starts my miserable life, squeezed out into this cold, heartless, cruel world, somehow cursed by this strange day called Christmas.
1978 (4-years old)
I hated Christmas already. My parents used it as a way to cheat me out of presents. “Here’s your birthday / Christmas present, Patrick!” Mom and Dad were really into the season, but this year Christmas was almost cancelled as a winter storm blew into Northern Indiana, blasting the roads with a foot of snow and ice. Dad had somehow managed to get to the grocery store since we were out of food. Hours passed and, obviously, Dad was stuck in a snowdrift somewhere.
“Christ, where is he?” Mom muttered, pacing in front of the living room window. The Christmas tree flickered brightly, giving me a headache. My stomach growled, hunger pains suddenly bubbling to life.
Snow continued to fall as I glared out the window and saw shiny chrome buried off to the side of the house.
“There’s Daddy’s truck, Mommy,” I said.
She squinted, clearing the frost off the glass. “’Bout time!”
She slipped on her snow boots and wrapped her scarf around her face and went out to meet him.
He never showed.
Meanwhile, I heard a crash at the back of the house and witnessed a flash of red tumbling off the roof, wrapping around the chain link fence.
“Daddy?”
I opened the back door and shielded the heavy snowflakes from my vision. He was dressed in an oversized Santa’s suit; his neck broke in three places and deader than the firewood stacked out back.
I rushed inside and met Mom.
“Dad fell,” I commented. “He looks dead.”
As Mom rushed outside, I wondered where Butler was. Dad had strangely taken off with our family dog to get groceries that were now either spilled and buried in the foot of snow or blowing across the lawn.
Mom knelt, crying.
“Where’s Butler,” I yelled out the back door.
That’s when she screamed, and cried harder.
Two steps out on the deck, I saw why.
Butler was dangling from the TV antenna with a pair of plastic antlers strapped to his head. His leash had become tangled there as Dad had fallen.
And that wasn’t the worst part.
The storm continued for days. And our supply of firewood ran scarce. There was no food, only grief. Especially when we had no choice but to eat Dad just to survive.
But Mom did a great job in mixing the meals up. From cold meat sandwiches to pseudo-meatballs to Hamburger helper and Sloppy Joes (his name was really Frank), we managed to keep ourselves fed until the storm blew over.
1983 (9-years old)
Mom finally remarried. His name was George and it was our first Christmas together.
George showed up late from work that Christmas Eve, drunk as hell. He staggered into the living room, pulled out a cigar and started puffing away while he stared at the Christmas tree.
Mom ushered me off to bed, pissed as hell at George. I heard Mom’s bedroom door slam shortly after she tucked me in.
I fell asleep that night and dreamt of all the gifts I was going to get once George sobered up and we could finally open them. I was really excited this particular Christmas since I saw the package Mom had wrapped poorly, noticing that it was the box of baseball cards I had been asking for all year.
I awoke at 3 a.m. to the smoke alarm. Mom came rushing into my room, took me in her arms and jumped out the window.
They found George later. Stuck to the recliner, still sitting beside the torched Christmas tree.
1985 (11-years old)
Mom quickly bounced back two years to the day. Early in the morning I rose to pee and heard Mom giggling in the living room. I peeked around the corner and saw Santa standing next to the tree.
I couldn’t believe my eyes—there really was a Santa afterall and Mom actually knew him. It wasn’t all just filthy lies after all!
Mom was swaying like a little schoolgirl under the mistletoe. And Santa gave her a peck on the cheek.
Mom quickly locked lips with Santa and grabbed his crotch.
“You’ve been very, very naughty this year, haven’t you, Mary?” Santa asked.
“You wanna see naughty, huh?” Mom said, letting her hair down.
She unzipped his red pants and slid them around his ankles. She rolled up his shirt and jerked down his boxers. Santa’s cock grew hard instantly and Mom took it in her mouth and started bobbing wildly.
Eeeewwwww, I thought. I knew at that moment I was scarred for life. Anyone who has ever walked in on his or her parents having sex knows what I’m talking about. But this was much worse. Santa yelled “Oh God, Oh yes” while taking Mom by the back of her head and shoving her deeper. “Suck it, you dirty whore,” he told her. And she just smiled up at him with cum running down her chin. Then she deep-throated him and he pulled out and jizzed all over her face.
I gagged after Mom started licking it off her cheek and fingers.
I retired to bed just after Mom had lost all her clothes and Santa started fucking her up the ass.
I’ve never, to this very day, looked at mistletoe the same way. It always seems to remind me of “camel-toe” an
d I instantly warp back to that awful sight.
And it turned out that Santa was really a department store Santa named Louie who turned out to be stepfather #2.
1991 (17-years old)
I skipped the festivities this year and treated myself to a birthday present since I now had a job and car. First I booked a motel room, and then I got me a nice-looking hooker. We made mudslides out of eggnog and fucked all night. By mid-morning, she left me alone.
Well, almost alone. Besides a bad case of crabs.
Still drunk and itching like crazy, I laughed so loud the whole motel probably heard me.
After shaving my pubes, I stumbled out into the hall naked and sung at the top of my lungs, “Joy to the World, my crabs are dead.”
Shortly after, I was arrested and spent the new year in the county lockup.
1993 (19-years old)
I really hated Christmas by now. Especially when I spent the day in my apartment, watching the joyous season unfold around my neighborhood.
People greeted each other openly on the street and exchanged presents. I had never even seen these people during the rest of the year. It was like they came out only once a year to socialize, pretending to be humane to one another.
But what even made me sicker was that every house on the block was fully decorated with annoying little strings of lights and manger scenes unfolding in their front lawns.
Christ! I just couldn’t take the idiocy!
And then there were the Johnson’s dogs across the street. These people had all kinds of dogs in a pen out back. From Golden Retrievers to little, mangy Chihuahuas, the old couple treated them like their fucking kids and the damn animals barked all day long and howled all night.
I wanted them dead.
Especially after noticing that the Johnson’s had dressed each dog up with red and green sweaters and bells on their collars.
8:00 p.m. and the lights went out like usual at the Johnson household.
Gift-Wrapped & Toe-Tagged: A Melee of Misc. Holiday Anthology Page 128
