Angels in Black and White (Horror Short Stories)

by Saunders, Craig

  What better place to escape the madness that heralded the end of the world? Just step off the edge, onto a private yacht, sail away across rare still Scottish seas to the bare outcrop of rock that was the sum of the Harding Estate.

  Frank had seen the post. Harding Estate. That was the first line of the address.

  Hubris.

  Frank was good with words. Frank got the words, Samuel got the women. Weird freak women who liked to dress up like zombies and vampires and werewolves and did some weird freak shit in bed with Samuel.

  Samuel Harding, bestselling author. Three books made into films, four optioned. A hit television series. He’d written the scripts himself.

  Who was winning here, though, right now? The eater, or the eaten? Who’d give out first?

  It was the kind of thing Samuel would’ve written about. Frank could see the tag line – EAT OR BE EATEN!

  That was funny.

  “Funny bunny fuck me honey...FUCK fucker!”

  Samuel took a chunk out of Frank’s calf right through his jeans. He wasn’t ready to give up his legs.

  Fuck it. Who cared? He could feel the change coming over him. The whole world had turned to zombies. They’d lasted longer than most. Maybe Frank was the last man in the world still sane, but he was long infected now. Sanity wouldn’t last long.

  Game on, he reckoned, and took a fair hit of coke, then a bit more, and more still, because Samuel was really getting into the spirit on things with his calf.

  Who’d last longest?

  Did it even matter?

  This all seemed like a good idea when Samuel had changed. All of a sudden it didn’t seem so smart anymore.

  Half the world had turned fast and gorged. Before the news had stopped altogether, the zombies had already begun to turn on each other.

  If dad had still been alive he could’ve said Pop Will Eat Itself.

  But that sucked, too.

  Fuck. He didn’t know if it was the coke or being eaten, but he couldn’t come up with anything clever at all.

  The human race, out there in the wide world, was feasting on itself. Like Ouroboros, I’m yum yum yummy in my tum tum tummy. But the macrocosm outside didn’t matter even a tiny bit anymore, because Samuel was now down to the bone (Tibia, Fibula, Frank’s mind dragged up), making satisfied lapping noises on the blood.

  Frank poured coke right into his leg, but it didn’t really touch the bleeding. That shit was venal. Not arterial, because Frank was a writer, and he knew shit like that. It wasn’t spurting, not yet.

  Samuel, lapping, chomping.

  Frank, pain fading, hunger growing.

  It wouldn’t be long now. The hunger would take everything. The thoughts would stop. There would be nothing but to feed.

  One would eat the other.

  Before the news ended, there was something else, too.

  Left with no one else to eat, the zombies started in on themselves.

  Whoever’s head start that counted as, and Frank really couldn’t tell anymore, he wanted to win. Just once. Cocky fucking Samuel. All out winner. Every book, a winner. Every chick, a dinner. Every dick, a...fuck...flimmer...glinner...

  The coke, that’s all it was. And the pain.

  Changing. Thoughts floating away. Gnawing in his guts that had nothing to do with anger and jealously or zombie Samuel.

  It was the end of the world. Hand, half his leg – his foot flapping loose beneath a flesh-bare shin – gone.

  Was he really going to let his brother win one last time?

  Always in his shadow. Always losing to him. Had it ever done him any good, hiding behind the sun?

  No. It did him no good at all. End of the world, he should’ve shot himself, jumped into the sea, tossed off on Jordan’s corpse or something.

  Jesus, Frank. You’re such a cockerel cocker spaniel coq au vin cock.

  No more.

  He tapped Samuel on the shoulder. Samuel looked up, kind of quizzical, but in a dumb way like a cow taking an exam.

  Frank pulled his brother up so they were face to face. Frank had to lean it, too, because the chains that held Samuel back weren’t quite long enough for kissing.

  Once, long ago, a Sammy. A little boy Frank’d idolized while they’d played at being cowboys or spacemen or Norsemen. He thought about that somewhere way down deep while he pulled Sammy to him with one fingerless and slick and tingling hand and the other strong and determined. Samuel snapped his blood stained face toward him. But Frank held tight, squeezing. Snarling, too, but he didn’t realise just how close their expressions were. Not anymore.

  “I hate you,” he told his idiot brilliant brother. Kissed him on the cheek and then took a passionate bite out of his face.

  Didn’t taste so bad. He forced himself to chew though he wanted to gag.

  Blood pour downed his Sammy’s face but no pain registered. Frank found that somehow far more upsetting than the shitty taste of his brother’s face.

  Frank’s hands slipped in the blood.

  He had time to swear just once more before Samuel’s hungry mouth dipped in and tore out Frank’s throat. Blood sprayed across his vision, and he couldn’t tell if it was in his eyes or on Samuel’s face anymore. Arterial, he thought, kind of mentally nodding to himself.

  Frank bled out his bitter life while he chewed on a strip of cheek that really didn’t taste like chicken at all. It tasted a hell of a lot like humble pie.

  The End

  Harry 'The Hammer' Turnbull's having a shitty day. Aren't we all? It's raining as I cobble together this most eclectic of collections. I've run out of coffee. My cigarette is floundering. But at least I'm not Harry...

  The Eternal Circle²

  1. Descent

  Harry ‘the hammer’ Turnbull screamed for the last time. He wasn’t dead – he wouldn’t die, not here. Not truly, like he’d always imagined it would be – an end.

  He just realised the futility of screaming, or crying, or pleading.

  It had never worked in life. He knew enough about torture to know the rules. Take your licks, but never give anything up. It didn’t do you any good in the long run.

  Oh, they’d sung, they’d sing any tune just to get you to stop. But he never did. Not until the cold light of life left their eyes. He’d seen it a time or two.

  Sometimes, when they died, they smiled. Often, with their teeth smashed to shards and lips mashed against their jagged edges, it was difficult to tell a smile from a grimace, but practise makes perfect, as Callum Bride had often said.

  His old mentor had known the score. He should have known better than to try to get out. Harry had taken no joy in setting things straight for the old boy. He could see it in his eyes. It felt like patricide, although Harry didn’t know the word in life.

  Manacled above the pit, Harry found he was a quick study. He was learning more, but for some reason he didn’t think the point was schooling.

  It had been a long time. He didn’t know how long. Time seemed different over the pit. His torturer was a master. Harry almost looked forward to his visits, in the way a smash in the mouth with a hammer was a nice break from having your toes crushed.

  He would show Harry a world of pain, pain the living would never know. Demonic tortures practised since Satan was first cast out of heaven. It wasn’t Satan himself that tortured Harry, just some underling. Accomplished enough, though.

  Harry bit his charred lips against the agony. It seemed like days since the last visit. Instead of flesh rending implements tearing at his body, and sometimes his insides, there was just the constant nagging of the fire burning below his back.

  His own fat made the fire sputter periodically as he was slowly roasted. His flesh was charred, hanging in strips where his torturer had flayed his skin. Flames licked at the ragged ends hanging down, sensation alive in every inch of his back, Harry’s agony unending.

  Naked, his balls hung down between his legs, basting slowly over the pit. It was a minor torment. He didn’t care anymore about im
pressing the ladies. Thoughts of being unmanned didn’t bother him. There was none of life’s little foibles about roasting nuts. It didn’t matter. All that counted was the days that passed, until the next session with the blade, the unnatural healing, and the next…on into eternity.

  His eyelids had been cut off months ago. Blood only crusted where his torturer wanted it too. His eyes remained clear, so he could stare into the ceiling of his resting place, a plain cell.

  The pain from his limbs nagged on occasion, but he didn’t let it bother him. He had been broken long ago.

  If he had been the torturer, he realised, he would have had mirrors put in above him, so he could witness each indignity. But he had to hand it to hell – they were pretty inventive as it was. He wasn’t about to give them pointers. Let them figure it out for themselves, while they took a flying fuck.

  “Bleed,” said a disembodied voice, and Harry’s sides ruptured, slashes appearing the instant the voice spoke. Harry bit his tongue, drawing more blood.

  “Fuck you!” he spat, specks of phlegm and blood spraying the hellish room.

  The voice ignored him.

  “Break,” the voice called. The manacles bit into his wrists and ankles, drawing more blood, as they pulled him in four directions. He heard and felt his wrists snapping, then his ankles. His shoulders came tearing from their sockets and he couldn’t hold himself back. He cried out, swearing and cursing, ranting against his invisible torturer. It was somehow worse than he had ever been. At least he had the courage to show his face to those he tormented. This was so much more impersonal. Like he didn’t warrant a visit from the big guy.

  Almost instantly, the pressure tearing his limbs apart relented, and his shoulders snapped back into place.

  The air around him shimmered, until there was a ghostly fog on the burning air, then it darkened, coalescing, into a hideous form. It was as if it had heard his thoughts.

  Its face was long and inhuman, its skin a scaled red hue, and it stood directly over the pit. Flames caressed its body, dancing around it obscenely.

  Each hand ended in talons, nails blackened. A forked tongue slithered between thin lips, tasting the air. The tongue was purple – the things eyes were yellow slits. It was born to live in fire (if anything could ever be said to live in hell – existed, perhaps, would be more accurate).

  Harry stared unblinking at the creature, his mind racing.

  A thousand thoughts were discarded in an instant. A certain clarity was upon him, and he had long ago learned to think through his pain, putting it to one side of his mind. Sometimes it tore through his barriers, with rending teeth that rent his flesh, but for now he was healed, and ready to be broken anew. This was, perhaps, his only chance.

  His demon had a face.

  “Fuckface? Is that you?” he said, and managed to smile.

  “Hole,” said the demon, by way of reply, and a gaping hole appeared in Harry’s largely healed abdomen.

  Pain tore through him but now he had a focus for his fury. In life, he had been an uncomplicated man, doing his work without emotion, just occasional pride. Now he was in touch with his anger. It fuelled him here, where there was no other sustenance.

  He laughed and spat in the demon’s slit-eye.

  The demon smiled in return, and a hooked implement appeared in its lizard-like hand.

  “Nice to see you get your hands dirty, you stupid fu…”

  And then the hook was rooting through the hole, pulling intestine out and dangling them over the fire.

  Harry, in the most intense agony he had ever experienced – and he had been in hell for a very long time – for what seemed like an eternity, had a startling epiphany.

  The pain did not matter. He was already dead. It was pointless. He could not be hurt. The pain, while it had peaks and troughs, was just an endless sea. He was awash with its tide, floating above, sometimes dipping below, but it was a sea, washing him…cleaning him…he stared up at the ceiling and smiled…it was the sky, and the wetness he felt was the sea and he was floating.

  He drifted, and in the distance he could hear a saurian scream from behind him, but that was all it was, just a distant memory, a far shore.

  *

  2. Ascension

  A man sat with legs crossed looking down at Harry’s dreaming face. He was bathed in light, a sheen of salt water coating his glossy skin. The man’s head was unadorned, his nakedness unabashed.

  For some reason Harry felt shy under this man’s scrutiny. He sat up from where he floated on an endless sea and sat cross-legged as the man did. He noticed (he couldn’t help himself, he had to look) that there was nothing to speak of between the man’s legs, and yet he had a masculine face.

  The face that was now smiling at him seemed almost perfect. His hair shone golden although there was no sun to light it. His eyes were blue to match the pristine ocean upon which they floated. His skin was unblemished and free of a hint of time.

  Harry was a quick student.

  “You’d be one of them angels, then?”

  The man smiled benignly. “Comparatively, you could say so. It is an assumption that will pass for now.”

  Harry let that go. He might be a quick study, but he knew when to question and when to hit.

  “So what’s the deal then? Do we sit here and float forever?”

  The man shook his head. “Forever doesn’t exist here. This is the sea of tranquillity. It is here that choices are made, and as with all choice it happens in an instant. This is not forever, although it may seem so.”

  Harry thought on that for a moment. It was easy to be swayed after so long under his tormentor’s ministrations. He could sit her, gently rocking on each swell, under the gaze of a sunless sky and an angel who denied he was such.

  It was infinitely preferable.

  “What’s my choice then?”

  “To move on. You have suffered the torment of the damned. You have atoned. There is nothing more in this life or the next. My god – your God – shall we say, for argument’s sake – is all for atonement.”

  Harry thought for a while longer. Words he had not had access to in life drifted across his vastly expanded mind.

  “So it’s with His sanction that the other place exists?”

  The golden man nodded his head sadly. “It is with his permission that all exists – even this place.”

  “Not very Christian, is it?”

  “That is just a human constraint, religion. God doesn’t think in terms of religion. He is more absolute than even that.”

  “Puts himself above it all, so to speak?”

  “Yes,” said the angel, after some thought. “That would be an appropriate way of putting it.”

  Harry nodded.

  “Where do you want to go from here? You have atoned. You may move on. Do you wish it?”

  A swell pushed Harry up to a breeze. “Eternity up there, too?”

  “Yes. But infinitely more pleasurable.”

  “Then why aren’t you up there?”

  The angel just smiled.

  “We all need a holiday from time to time, I guess.” Harry watched the angel very carefully. His guide said nothing. He just waited. Time seemed different here, but Harry thought it would wait forever, despite what it said about time.

  He thought about his life. He had atoned, apparently. He knew what he thought of that. He wouldn’t be who he was if he let a slight pass.

  Harry was always a man who had known his own mind.

  “I’ll need my tools back.”

  “You wish vengeance?”

  “Yep. Else, what’s the point?”

  The shining man nodded, no expression on his face, and motioned to Harry’s right arm.

  In place of a hand, a glowing hammer of golden fire erupted.

  Harry smiled. “This place may not be eternal, but I am. Fuck eternity. I always was one to live for the now.”

  He nodded once to the man, took an experimental swipe with his hammer of light.

&
nbsp; He didn’t bother with goodbyes. He’d never been big on them.

  He’d figured out this place. It was no better than any other. In the end, he was all there was.

  He dove.

  *

  3. Descent

  From across eternity, the one that hangs below the now, a tortured scream came, sibilant, as though the wind escaped past a forked tongue.

  Harry smiled, and set to work.

  It was, he thought, just a matter of belonging. He knew where he felt at home. With his tools, he set to work. Before long, the limb would heal. He would look forward to it, and wait as long as it took to start again.

  If eternity taught a man one thing, it was the value of patience.

  The End

  I went through a little phase of eating people. It was just a phase, you know? Like some people piss in the parsley pot for a while, or go fishing.

  Anywhere, here's another story. Enough about that. Someone might get eaten...they might not.

  Last In, First Out

  Hunter Davis smiled at the young girl on reception on the way to his new job and a new life. Straight out of university with a first class honours in history, and the only job he could get in the current market was, well, it was shit.

  Eight hours a day trying to find work for himself while he learned the ropes of the business world. He didn’t know a thing about business and he didn’t care, either. He knew his way around a computer, but that was about it.

  Still, a job was a job. He had student fees to pay back, and rent owing.

  The receptionist returned his smile, but hers seemed odd, somehow, like someone inside her dragged her lips back. She showed teeth, but her smile didn’t touch her eyes.

  Hunter figured she didn’t like the look of him. There really wasn’t anything he could do about that. He wasn’t all that sure he liked the look of her. She seemed a little weird.

  ‘I’m starting work today,’ said Hunter. ‘Hunter Davis?’