Masters of Horror

by Lee Pletzers

  Stacey writhed, her screams piercing in her ears. Black sludge squeezed from her veins, all the drugs, the darkness of her soul and body, flooding into the system she was plugged into.

  Then suddenly they were gone and she was free.

  Stacey fell away from the wall and collapsed on the floor.

  Around her the wall of flesh had disappeared. The walls were only walls again.

  She dragged herself back to the bed and pulled herself up onto it, her face wet with tears. She curled up onto her side, shaking violently.

  Suddenly the bed sagged beneath her. Her shoulder started to sink into it, and then her hip. She tried to sit up, but the mattress had turned to sludge and, as though she was stuck in a badly filled water bed, she couldn’t get any traction.

  The bottom dropped out of it and she was falling…

  Stacy woke with a jolt. Damp cardboard squashed beneath her and her skin was numb with cold. She was lying back in the alley again.

  She felt different. The itchy feeling of addiction had left her, her skin no longer crawled with it, her brain didn’t thrum. She was more lucid than she has been in a long time, and she was seeing clearly.

  Could that place have taken the drugs out of her system?

  Stacey shivered. Was the room even real?

  She checked her wrists for the marks from the veins, but they could have been any one of the numerous scabs and scars on the inside of her arms.

  It had been real.

  She had been there; she knew it as certainly as she was lying in the alley right now.

  Suddenly going into detox wasn’t the most terrifying thing she could think of—there were much worse things out there in the world—and she knew she would never do anything that would cause her to go back to that horrifying place. She would never again put something inside her body that could make it happen.

  However bad things got, however desperate she felt, she would always have the memory of the things that she had seen and experienced that night. It would always serve as a reminder.

  Never would she risk going back to that tortured room.

  She knew, without a doubt, that she would stay clean.

  Liked Marissa’s story? Check out her latest title:

  The Dark Road

  When a group of backpackers are thrown together on a bus from Bangkok to Siem Reap, Cambodia, they have no idea of the journey ahead of them.

  Shortly after crossing the Cambodian border, one of the group disappears off the side of the road, and they quickly discover they have more than the threat of land mines to worry about. They are plunged into a terrifying world of ancient temples, curses and long-dead kings. One by one, they start to lose both their minds and their lives as what was supposed to be an adventure turns into a fight for survival.

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  Back to TOC

  After reading a score of stories that made my soul freeze and my eyes bleed—in a good way, naturally—I grooved on the wry black humor supplied by Lori R. Lopez.

  “Get Help!” Addicts are ordered, over and over again…only to find the supposed givers of help “about as helpful as talking to a potted plant” as an acquaintance of mine said. But perhaps that’s getting off light…

  Backlash

  By Lori R. Lopez

  A cloak of fog and pallor surrounded the patient as he stepped inside a doctor’s office. There was no reception desk, no waiting area. Just a vacant spot before a second closed door, a modest pedestal offering a glass water pitcher and stacked paper cups the sole decor. The man nervously unbuttoned his dark overcoat and removed a gray wool scarf, which he crammed into a coat pocket. The unbalanced bulge made him self-conscious so he extracted the muffler and looped it around his neck. He fidgeted by the entrance, face still in shadow, then ventured a step forward into the light.

  The guy was average in height and gangly, morose features and slouched posture well-suited for his brooding attitude. Nothing about him seemed quite normal, yet he managed to appear unremarkable. Possessing a wan innocuous manner, he was scarcely more animated than a corpse. If he weren’t standing, he might almost be presumed dead.

  The inner portal swung open sharply to the fellow’s surprise. He uttered a shriek, his body jolting, and fell back a stride. Again his visage was obscured, but he was definitely alive.

  “Sorry to startle you. I’m Doctor Winnow. Mister Chiaroscuro is it? Please come in.”

  “My first name’s Arthur. And it’s Chiaroscoro with an O,” he amended. “A lot of folks make that mistake.” The man shuffled through the doorway.

  “Have a seat, Arthur.” The doctor led him to a sitting area—two padded chairs arranged in opposite directions for an intimate conversation. “I was going home when you called. It’s lucky you caught me. You said on the phone it was an emergency. That if I didn’t help you tonight, you would do something regrettable because you couldn’t control yourself. Might I ask the nature of your compulsion?” Settling on the chair next to a small table bearing a lamp and a recording device, the psychiatrist softly pressed a crimson button.

  Arthur hovered timidly beside the empty seat and stared at the floor. “It’s rather personal,” he hedged, visibly squirming. “I’ve never discussed this with anyone.”

  “Well, you can discuss it with me, Arthur. It won’t leave the room.”

  The patient tensely appraised the counselor. She was a short woman. Tufted ash-blonde hair. Oversized circular lenses that gave her an owlish aspect. Somewhat pretty. Probably someone’s wife, he mulled. “Are you?” he abruptly questioned, as if expecting her to read his thoughts. She’s a shrink not a psychic! he reminded himself and cleared his throat. “A wife?”

  “You seem agitated,” she skillfully redirected. The session, after all, was about him. “Is there something you need to tell me? You can say anything here. I won’t judge you.” She leaned toward him with a smile, elbows on her thighs, hands clasped.

  “Promise?” The word was spoken as if it held tremendous import.

  “I do,” she nodded. “I promise.”

  “And this is confidential?”

  “Absolutely.”

  The man slid the scarf off his neck, twisted it between his fists. “I’ve done terrible things, Doctor,” he admitted.

  “Mildred. Doctor is much too stuffy.” His confessor waited for him to continue, her torso upright, braced for the unknown.

  He posed awkwardly, waiting for her to react.

  The doctor gently enticed, “What things have you done, Arthur?”

  “I can’t tell you,” he whispered, shoulders hunched miserably.

  “Why not?” she prodded.

  A harsh gasp: “You’ll despise me!”

  “I promised, Arthur. No judging, remember?”

  “Yes. You promised.”

  He straightened, rigid, a marionette jerked by a crabby puppeteer. An irascible Geppetto, fists flailed like lumps of iron; hollow pledges broken as one would snap a twig.

  Arthur’s stick figure paced, hands wringing the scarf.

  “Whenever you’re ready.” The doctor smiled. “I’d like to hear what you’ve done. And what you didn’t wish to do.”

  He stopped at a window and peeked past the curtain. “I think I was followed,” he announced. “I think they’re watching me.” His flesh tingled under the weight of scrutiny. His spine ached from the burden of guilt that rode his back, clinging like a demonic jockey.

  “Who, Arthur? Is it the police? Did they follow you?” A trace of concern crept into the doctor’s calm voice.

  He ambulated, the scarf flung across his neck. “You’ll say I’m crazy.”

  “I only listen, I don’t condemn,” replied Mildred.

  Arthur’s orbs swept the room. Her office was simply furnished. A desk and chair occupied a corner. On the desktop were a writing folder and pen, and a realistic model of a shiny bald Phrenology head marked with regions and terms. A bookcase loaded with bulky
tomes covered half of a wall. The remaining walls were bare except for a clock and an oil painting, ornately framed, of several gourds—scattered on a colorful leafy ground at the base of a tree, near a stump in which was imbedded an axe. A typical autumn scene.

  “I hate Autumn,” he declared. “It’s depressing. Full of withering and decay and spirits.”

  He believed in ghosts, the wandering souls of those who could not repose in peace. Believed they ogled him at times. Transparent still-life portraits. Bleached remnants.

  The edges of the office crowded inward, suffocating. Perspiration dampened his skin.

  Another door was firmly shut. He wondered what lay behind it. An exit, perhaps.

  “Let’s focus on why you’re here,” the doctor bade, summoning his attention to the matter at hand. The reason he had sought her assistance.

  He struggled to form the words, his throat tight.

  “It obviously bothers you a great deal,” she discerned from his expression.

  “Yes.”

  “And you’d like to stop.”

  “Desperately.”

  “What is it, Arthur?”

  “A habit.”

  “What kind of habit?”

  “The worst kind.”

  “And by that you mean . . .?”

  “They keep piling up!” he shouted.

  The doctor gulped. Her eyelids fluttered. Her lips twitched. No sound emerged.

  Arthur stalked to the window, yanked the drapes aside. “Leave me alone!” he bellowed.

  Mildred joined him and frowned at a hazy impenetrable gloom through the sheen of their reflections. “Who are you addressing?”

  “The cats, the strays, they’re angry. I painted them pink,” he stated in a rush.

  “Cats?” Confused, Mildred shook her head. “You paint cats pink?”

  “You said you wouldn’t judge.”

  “I apologize. I didn’t intend to. Is that what this is about? Painting some cats?”

  “No, that’s not why I’m here!” he protested.

  “Then why, Arthur? I’m attempting to understand.”

  “You can’t. It’s hopeless.”

  “There’s always hope.”

  “Maybe in your blissful little world. In mine, there’s always dejection.” His face crumpled like tissue wadded in a cruel fist.

  “It doesn’t need to be that way. You can find something that makes you happy.”

  “Impossible. I’ve tried. All I end up feeling is alone.”

  “Things can change. You mustn’t give up on hope.” They were talking close to the window. Mildred buried her hands in the pockets of her thin unfastened sweater and idly rattled a bottle of pills.

  “If that’s the best you can do . . .” Arthur shrugged, abjectly threw his hands in the air. His gray eyes glittered with tears.

  “What’s troubling you deep inside? Let it out,” urged Doctor Winnow.

  “What isn’t?” Arthur disdained.

  “So you have multiple problems.”

  “I buy brown loafers,” the patient spat.

  Mildred glanced at his shoes. They were brown. “That doesn’t sound so bad.” Other than not going with his black coat and trousers, the gray scarf, she silently observed.

  “I’ve had to move twice. I run out of space,” he explained.

  “It’s a compulsion,” she acknowledged.

  “Yes, but that’s not why I’m here.” Arthur sighed. “I collect more things.”

  “Such as?”

  “Disgusting cigarette butts.”

  “Then you have a nicotine addiction?”

  “No, I don’t smoke!” Arthur objected. “I just gather the butts.”

  “I see.”

  “Comic books.”

  “You read them?” She adjusted her specs.

  “I have ten thousand, nine hundred, and twenty-nine!”

  “That’s very precise.”

  “I count them on Saturdays,” he intoned. “Sundays my fixation involves bubblewrap.”

  “You collect that too?”

  “I pop it. Once I start, it’s difficult to quit unless I burst them all.”

  “That’s the first ordinary thing you’ve said,” the doctor cracked. “What do you do for a living, Arthur? Do you have a job?”

  “No.”

  “Does anyone support you?”

  He vehemently denied this.

  “How do you survive?”

  “I’m a klepto.”

  “You shoplift?”

  “I snatch purses from old ladies.”

  “You have a purse fetish?”

  “It isn’t a fetish. Don’t make it sordid. I collect them,” he pouted.

  “As a hobby?”

  Arthur bobbed affirmation. “Pebbles,” he bluntly asserted.

  “Collecting stones isn’t unusual. Hobbies can be rewarding.”

  “Not nice stones. Plain ugly gravel,” he insisted. “And pencil shavings. I grind them myself. I don’t even use the pencils. It’s wasteful. I’m single-handedly destroying the forests!” he complained.

  “That is a problem,” she agreed.

  “Are you humoring me?”

  “No. But these things aren’t terrible, Arthur.”

  “I eat too many marshmallows! It’s all I eat.”

  She smirked. “That is bad. For your health. But it isn’t terrible.”

  Arthur’s mood plunged. “I won’t be patronized!!!” he yelped. Fists clenched in fury, marching frantically, the man glanced at the head on the desk. Its eyes seemed to be watching him. Accusing.

  “I’m afraid, Mister Chiaroscuro, your time is up.” The psychiatrist adopted a formal tone.

  “It’s Chiaroscoro!” he railed.

  “I distinctly heard Chiaroscuro on the phone,” Doctor Winnow refuted.

  “I think I know my own name!” Arthur heatedly contended.

  “Well, do you or don’t you?” Mildred scorned.

  Arthur halted, shifting to a baffled disposition. “I haven’t told you why I’m here yet,” he said with a peevish flare of indignation.

  “It doesn’t matter. You’re clearly beyond help,” the doctor dismissed.

  Arthur gawped at her forlornly.

  “I’m going to share a secret.” Mildred walked to the mystery door and grasped the knob. “I have a collection too.” She wrenched the door wide.

  Human heads tumbled forth, preserved with lacquer, rolling in every direction. Various faces wore masks of pain. A number were frozen in terror.

  Jaw flapping, Arthur uttered an astonished “No!”

  “It’s actually a compulsion,” Doctor Winnow chortled.

  Bleating, a palm clamping his mouth, Arthur pointed to the head mounted on the desk. It wasn’t a statue!

  The psychiatrist savored his epiphany . . . then grew impatient. He should have fainted, or been reduced to a shuddering wreck if she had gauged him correctly. Sometimes she commanded a victim to swallow sedatives and call her in the morning. They succumbed to a drugged stupor and were easily overpowered. This one, she estimated, could be subdued by shocking him. But he wasn’t cooperating.

  She had a similar case last week. A green-clad woman who thought she was turning into a frog. She wouldn’t take the pills. She didn’t have the brains to be alarmed. She kept hopping around. Mildred had to pursue her until they were exhausted. She then tried to strangle the woman into submission. The loon thrashed so violently, she knocked Mildred against her desk. The doctor hit her head. Briefly unconscious, she woke to behold that her prey had departed. Mildred unsteadily tracked the nut to a park. The silly nitwit was half-jumping, half-loping through the grass. They wrestled and clawed, grappling for dominance. Bums spectated, whistling and wagering. Mildred finally tugged off a shoe and was about to hammer the woman’s cranium but hesitated, reluctant to damage the specimen. It was a sensible shoe, she decided. And clobbered the frog-lady till her hair was black and blue.

  She’d better not have any grief tonig
ht! She was getting a migraine.

  “There were ancient cultures that displayed the heads of their bravest and strongest enemies as trophies,” she expounded, sidling to her desk where a knife was stashed as a precaution. “I prize the warped minds of my most disturbed patients. It’s the supreme conquest. The ultimate addiction! We all have our needs, Mister Chiaroscuro, and I need your beautiful addled head. It isn’t doing you much good.” She scraped out a drawer to wield a brass letter opener.