Easter Eggs and Bunny Boilers: A Horror Anthology

by Matt Shaw

  But they didn’t.

  “Doors unlocked,” Len said, his tone smug and contemptuous. “In we go. Remember, me first, then you all get a go.”

  “Uh, I don’t really want to, Len. It’s not my thing.” That was Dave speaking, the tallest and widest of the group, voice like the dull rumble of thunder.

  “Look, Dave, we discussed this,” Len said calmly. “It’s not about sex, is it? It’s about teaching the kid a lesson so he’ll tell everyone else not to fuck with us. Remember that, or we’ll have every twat fancy his chances.”

  “But, still, it’s a bit--”

  “Stop being such a pussy. It’s not like you haven’t done this before.”

  “But that was with a woman.”

  “Same difference. Now get yourself nice and hard and join in the party, or do we have to talk about it further when we get to mine?”

  “No, Len, you’re right. I’ll join in.”

  HELP ME!

  The voice was so loud that Jo jumped, grunting as he did so. The strange silence that followed told him all he needed to know. He opened one eye and peered up.

  They were all there, standing in his door, staring at him. Len a foot shorter than the others and not one of them could be considered small. A look of incredulity set upon their faces. Len’s lips twisted into a sneer.

  “’Ello. Jo, we’ve been looking for you.”

  Jo sprang to his feet, leapt across the garden, launched over the wall and into the street in an instant, certainly before anyone had chance to react. Near superhuman in its execution, at any other time he’d surely have won an award, even a television appearance.

  But go where, he’d never outrun them, they were too big, too strong.

  Len’s car loomed large and he sprawled against the bonnet. Len hadn’t locked it. He’d have heard. The car was open. Sensing rather than seeing movement behind him, Jo threw open the door, dived inside and slammed it shut, just as Len smashed against it.

  “Get out of my car,” Len said between clenched teeth. Then in a sugary tone. “You’ve still got chance to pay the money back, princess.”

  Part of him wanted to, just accept what was coming, let it happen and they’d walk away. Sure, he’d bleed for a while. It’d hurt when he took a shit, but that’d be all.

  No, he’d rather die. Jo stared at the dashboard, searching for the master control for the locks. He pressed the button and kept his finger on it. All four doors locked as Len thought to try the handle. Len fumbled in his pocket for the remote. The lock shifted beneath Jo’s finger, but he didn’t budge and the car remained secured.

  “Get your ass out of my car.” Len lowered his head against the glass, unbuttoned his jacket and slid it to one side. A gun sat holstered at his hip. “Don’t make me use this.”

  “Fuck off, it’s fake.”

  “Wanker.” Len hurried around to the boot of the car. Jo craned his head around, but he already knew what Len was up to, moments later the boot was sprung and Len’s grinning face appeared as he started to clamber through.

  The other men gathered around and he felt like crying, not that it would do any good. Nothing was going to help anymore. His ass had a date with three large cocks and there wasn’t a thing that--

  Help me.

  Ahead of him, Rudiment Hill dipped through an alleyway towards the crossroads and construction site. He spied the edge of a fire truck and an ambulance in the distance. A police car had parked in front of the wooden barriers, lights flashing, doors open. No time for that. Council’s problem, not his.

  Len was in the boot, twisting through the small space towards him, grumbling obscenities.

  Rudiment hill….

  Jo slid into the driver’s seat and released the handbrake. A moment of nothing, then the car began to roll. Slowly at first before gathering speed. George and Dave were at the back of the car, they slapped their hands against the metal, dragging it to a stop. Dave ran around the front and placed his considerable bulk against it.

  “Sorry, Jo, I really am,” Dave said, “but we can’t let you piss off with our boss’s car.”

  Help.

  “Help me first,” he muttered.

  The air changed, it grew oily, thick and distorted. The hairs on his arms stood on end and sparks flashed along the dashboard.

  The radio switched on, a blast of senseless static, and Dave abruptly hurtled from the car, yanked from it as if grasped by an unseen giant. He took to the air, a flying monkey, screaming as he went. The scream stopped as he connected with the roof of the nearest house and Dave fell into the garden, twitching.

  George let go of the vehicle and stumbled away and Len stopped his advance. “Wha…what happened?”

  “I didn’t do it,” Jo said. How? What? “I…I…”

  The car picked up speed, started to roll down the hill. George watched it go, hands in the air as if surrendering. Dave continued to twitch in the garden but there was less force to the spasms and blood pumped freely over the garden path.

  Jo started to laugh. It went on too long and he wondered if he’d ever stop. The wheel barely moved, but he shoved his weight against it and navigated the BMW through the alleyway. The car bounced the curb on the other side, then they were through, speeding down the hill. Glimpses of the outside world, people lying in the street - what were they doing? - the helicopter overhead, far too low, the road wet and the wheels slid, skewing the car sharply to the right, then left. He straightened the wheel, past a man puking in his garden, a child draped over a garden gate. He was going to do it. Going to escape. Him and the voice in his head.

  Len’s hands encircled his neck. “Stop. The. Fucking. Car. Something ‘aint right.”

  Terrible pressure as fingers closed around his windpipe. Unrelenting and so intense that for a second he forgot he was driving a car, forgot he was on a hill and forget he was Jo. He was just the pain. Until the car bounced off the curb, struck a police car and Len was thrown to one side. Blessed air rushed back into Jo’s sore throat, although it burned as if on fire.

  They were picking up speed, coming at the crossroads at least thirty, maybe forty.

  Len went to grab him again, but the angle was off and he was stretched out inside the car. Jo pushed him to one side, then grasped his claw hammer, smashed it onto Len’s outstretched fingers, snapping them like dry wood, skin split and bloodied.

  Len twisted away, howling, and Jo shifted in his chair.

  “That’s what you get, motherfucker” he screamed, “that’s what you get, you fuck.”

  Cursing, Len made another grab for him. Jo swung the hammer, but Len merely caught his wrist and yanked. Fire tore through the ligament and Jo dropped the weapon, his taunts dying on his lips.

  A fist followed, great, wide, filling his vision, and he was punched into the seat, head smashing against the steering wheel.

  Len appeared, his mouth churned and blood dribbled from between his lips. He cradled one arm as if it were a child soothed to sleep.

  But before he had chance to act, Len’s gaze shifted behind Jo, eyes widening in surprise, and in his dazed state Jo understood they had reached the crossroads.

  An impact of metal against metal (possibly the fire engine), a glancing blow, something bright and red flashing past, then a hard knock to the front. The windscreen shattered. Jo slammed back into his seat, then into the roof. A crazy flow of nonsensical images followed. The roof, the sky, the roof, the door, Len, pain, fear, the roof, ending with a sensation akin to flying, then head butting the steering wheel and taking a face of airbag.

  Merciful oblivion followed.

  *

  The world slid into focus from a thumbnail image in the corner of his eye. Jo was upside down, in the car that was upside down, looking through the wrecked metal and broken glass to a steep embankment and torn wooden barriers. The construction site. The BMW must have gone clean through and ended here. A drop of forty maybe fifty feet. He coughed and spat blood. Lucky to be alive.

  Jo tried t
o move, but his leg refused to play along. White shards of bone jutted from his jeans. His groin and back were sticky and wet. He raised one hand and it dripped red with blood. He gave a soft moan as panic blossomed bright and deep in his chest.

  Still alive. Focus. Where was Len?

  On the slope, must have bounced free in the fall. Shit, he wasn’t dead. He looked a sorry state, face all torn by glass, a shred of flesh hanging from where his top lip should be. No, wait, that was his top lip.

  Len grunted, then sat bolt upright.

  Panic from his injuries upgraded to blind desperation and dragging his leg behind him, Jo slid out onto the worksite, each movement agony, needles of fire racing through his thigh. He slithered onto dust-coated stone, gasping, sucking down air, tears of frustration obscuring his sight.

  Len staggered to his feet. He wandered around in half-circles, leaning heavily to one side.

  Jo dragged himself away from the wreckage. Going up was out of the question. Each motion and lump in the ground sent unrelenting agony spearing through his body. He closed his eyes, which was worse, then touched something soft.

  A police officer lay before him. Head gone. Crushed as if in the grip of a powerful vice. Jo recoiled, unable to process the information.

  None of them were worthy.

  “Jesus.” He put his hands to his ears. What was happening to him?

  Further on, another copper lay discarded against a digger, at least what was left, little more than a pile of mince and bone inside a shredded uniform.

  “What the fu--”

  A sharp crack in the air and he was struck in the back. Jo flopped over. Blood swelled onto his shirt. Liquid gathered in his throat and dribbled out the corners of his mouth. Had he been shot?

  Len headed towards him. Only now he waved a small snub-nosed gun in his hands. He fired again. The dirt next to Jo’s head sprayed and his ear burned bright and hot.

  Jo began to crawl, sliding his body further into the worksite, past the dead coppers, towards a pit. Len, if he even noticed the dead paid them no heed.

  More dead: construction workers, bodies distorted into sacks of red grain. They lay scattered about in a semi-circle, as if they had simply exploded or imploded where they stood. None had had the time to turn and run or seek to escape.

  And Jo was beginning to understand why. Enlightenment hovered on the edges of his consciousness: the voice, the woman in the mirror, even the giant from his dream, it was all connected, all leading to something. Had he been chosen?

  Movement in the corpses. Those closer to the centre convulsed and shuddered. He thought of zombies, like in the movies, and wondered if the dead were about to sit up, clamouring for human brains. Instead, the corpses’ chests exploded. Massive gouts of blood, bone and organs sprayed fifteen feet into the air. Emerging from this orgy of destruction and viscera were two figures, blinking in the daylight, soaked from head to foot, strange grins twisting across their newly-born features.

  Another gunshot struck his leg and Jo’s kneecap vanished in a puff of red and white.

  All thought vanished in a sea of unrelenting agony. He slithered the rest of the way into the pit, past blasted chunks of rock and debris, more comatose than awake, past the strange creatures as they took their first uncertain steps into the world, until his head knocked against something hard.

  A vast leathery object filled the bottom of the pit, oval like an egg, far taller than a man, easily the size of a house. It had cracked near the top, the leather thinning to transparency, chunks of it had broken free–pushed out from within – and whatever secrets it once hid had long clambered free.

  His attention returned to his mangled leg and the pain coupled with nausea threatened to remove him from the world a second time. A sleep he’d not wake from -- that was certain.

  Len stumbled into view, not looking much better, still holding the gun, waving it around like a drunk with an empty pint glass aiming for the bar.

  Help me.

  “I’m here,” he gurgled, voice barely above a whisper, more in his head than any sound that escaped his lips. “What more do you want?”

  Rebirth.

  Sure. Why not? His world was ending anyway. And wasn’t that the point, wasn’t that what this voice was offering, a new chance, a new life. It had all gone to hell in a handbag. And what a shit life it had been, anyway, seeing out his final moments talking to voices in his head, face pressed against a giant egg. He’d hate to see the bird that laid…that laid…

  Something unfurled its tail and stretched its wings.

  Sense its power, its sexuality, driving through his mind with darts of white light.

  Purifying. Beautiful. A woman reborn.

  He cried. His heart stopped beating.

  Jo died.

  *

  A furious jolt of images followed the darkness. Instead of merciful oblivion, the thing that had once been Jo glimpsed ancient tribes, all furs and face paint. They gathered in woodland clearings, working the flesh from naked men, hoisting glistening genitalia into the air like prized delicacies, drinking blood from goblets, dancing in the meadows, worshiping, fucking, killing.

  Worshipping what?

  Ishtar.

  Roman centurions, armour glinting in a noonday sun, swords red with gore, creased sun-kissed faces. No emotion. None at all. A battle, a massacre, the burning of the forest, the spinning of the world. The steady advance of civilisation.

  Ishtar.

  And an endless sleep, returned to the stars, cradled in the arms of a terrible heat.

  Ishtar.

  Easter.

  Ishtar fell upon him or perhaps more accurately into him, wings and tail folding tight. His mouth forced open and the goddess sank deep inside, penetrating Jo to his core, becoming him, ramming through his mind, exploding its seed so it consumed him utterly, filling Jo with its dark magnificence. When he screamed it wasn’t really his voice but rather the voice of something else entirely. New life.

  Len shot him again. This time square in the chest. It didn’t hurt. How could it? Jo was dead. Rather, it awakened the creature he had become, Ishtar, the creature he had transformed into in one swift jolt.

  While she waited for her host to find her, Ishtar had killed the construction workers, the police, even the ambulance crews because they didn’t need to be reborn. That was obvious. Content in their lives, they slipped into the void of death, useless to her. But others, millions, in fact, were to be remade, and this was important, like Jo, they would cast aside the shackles of their previous existence and be reworked into what they really were, what they should have always been, deep inside when she peeled away flesh, muscle and bone and drew the soul into her light.

  And what was this new form that rose from the mangled flesh of the dead? A prophet? A voice? Alive? Dead? Somewhere in-between?

  All those things. None of them. She laughed, the sound tinkled and the air danced and swirled about her.

  But first, Len.

  With a hand that was more claw, the woman that once was Jo reached out and removed Len’s gun along with most of his arm.

  The screams that followed were high-pitched and went on for some time. But that was okay. There would be plenty of screams from now on.

  Len sunk to his knees. His face had turned ashen white; he barely looked like Len, anymore. He stared at Ishtar with something approaching awe, repulsion and finally acceptance. Acceptance that his world was coming to an end, that he was ready to be reborn. A small part of her, the part that had been Joe, bucked at the thought. She allowed it to rush to the surface.

  “Fuck ‘im,” it said.

  She was inclined to agree.

  The world was going to change. The old order torn down. Who needed it anyway? Jo hadn’t. And nor did she.

  She stretched. Not Ishtar.

  She’d make sure of it.

  THE END

  Bio

  Neil John Buchanan lives in the South West of England with three kids, three cats and a s
ympathetic wife. On weekends he describes dead folk and is all the happier for it. Neil has a zombie contingency plan for every home he has ever lived in and urges you do the same. When not scribbling out stories of madness, gore and plain unpleasantness he resides as dark overlord for Stormblade Productions, an audio and print small press specialising in the macabre and the short story form.

  Educating Horace

  By Matt Hickman

  She awoke with a start, as a wave of panic and nausea crashed into her. Everything around her was enclosed in pitch black and she couldn’t see a thing. Her face was constricted by some type of thick cotton-like material, she could feel the sensation of the fabric rising and falling in her mouth as she continued with her laboured breathing. The pain hit her rapidly and unbearably, all over her body - like dozens of sharp blades puncturing and penetrating her skin, all at the same time.

  The sour, coppery taste of blood caught in her throat, coating her tongue and the roof of her mouth. As she ran the tip of her tongue against her ruined gums, and the remainder of her teeth she began to sob and moan uncontrollably. The majority of them had been yanked out, leaving nothing but gaping, throbbing holes. The wounds still leaked fresh blood, and the odd broken stumps of teeth and exposed nerves sent pain shooting through her skull. The contained heat of the makeshift hood over her head made her brow wet with perspiration as she continued to panic and hyperventilate. Rivulets of sweat began to run down her burning cheeks and neck.

  She made an attempt to move, but her hands and feet were bound together tightly by some kind of sharp plastic or metal straps. The restraints dug into her wrists and ankles, restricting the flow of blood, and left her fingers and toes with a numb, tingling sensation. They were tight enough to rub and break the surface of her skin, threatening to lacerate and draw blood.

  She lay in a warm room, the stuffy air intensified by her obstructed airways. The hood that constricted her head and view made it difficult to breathe. Despite her discomfort, she lay on a soft surface; perhaps a bed or mattress.