Not Your Average Monster: A Bestiary of Horrors

by Pete Kahle

  On the far left side of the theater, he sat down next to his girlfriend. Something hard and very thin lanced into his thigh and he stumbled up, careful not to spill his Coke. “Ow. Man!”

  “What?”

  He thought she'd jabbed him, payback for his earlier sermon on the top ten most boring aspects of chick flicks, but his wound really hurt. Her idea of fun was to pinch his nostrils shut when he overslept or to deflate bowling scores. And her puzzled grin became a frown when she saw his expression.

  “Look,” he said. The tiny steel shaft was almost the same color as the maroon upholstery, but specks of bright metal showed through a dry sticky coating of red-black.

  His stomach lurched as he realized the crust was blood, some instinctual need to purge himself. He would remember that feeling later on restless nights, in muted hospital rooms, during slow dead hopeless hours. There were other moments that he could resurrect in his mind, heartbeats in which his body reacted before he could think. Most came playing roller hockey: saves, scores, falls that should have resulted in broken bones but because of a last second lunge or judo-like roll had cost him only bruises. Others were more alien, random; a sense of knowing a strange woman that went beyond physical attraction; shadows of fear; an aggressive predatory urge when bumped on a crowded sidewalk. Instinct, primal emotion, seemed in many ways quicker and more powerful than the intellect.

  “Man. Oh, man.” He rubbed at his flank exactly as the kid in the front row had done. The dim lights went out. Previews started as he investigated his seat. In the dark blue flickering glow of an ocean storm, he found a note taped to the underside.

  It was only three letters long. HIV.

  In the brown gloom of a courtroom scene, he shouted at the crowd. Three people hollered back at him to shut up. He tried again, panicking, but his girlfriend tugged on his sleeve. She didn't care about them.

  He went straight to the emergency room. Two hours passed before the insurance papers were complete and a doctor was available. The desk nurse suggested that he leave and visit his primary care physician the next day. Sweating, certain that he could feel it scratching in his veins, he pleaded that money didn't matter, he wanted to see someone now, right now, please.

  His girlfriend sat as close as the hard plastic chairs would allow, holding his hand, while a parade of strangers kept them waiting -- a guy his own age whose shattered forearm seemed to have an extra wrist; two children with dog bites -- none of whom honestly seemed in more danger than himself.

  “It was a prank,” his girlfriend said. They stared at the tile floor. Later she whispered, “They can kill it with drugs on the first day, I think.”

  He lifted his head to kiss her in a sudden delirium of fear and need. She leaned back, avoiding him. Later he'd understand her reaction as an important lesson -- that he was ultimately alone in this no matter how many times his parents and friends promised to be there for him. The thick dirty flood of hate passed quickly, but for a moment he trembled with energy. He almost stood up and shouted. He almost hit her. Then he slumped back in his seat, already defeated, already dead, pushing her hand away and crossing both arms across his chest.

  Her eyes were horrified. “I'm sorry,” she said.

  “You can't get it kissing somebody.

  “I'm sorry.”

  When the ER doctor told him that HIV infections cannot be detected for six months, disbelief clogged his head. For most of a week he managed to hope, numbly, that nothing had happened. Then police technicians announced that the needles did indeed carry a virulent strain. Every professional he visited put the odds at ninety-plus percent that he was blood positive, because his puncture wound was rough and deep.

  He'd become a different man with what felt like someone else's future. It lay in wait for him ghoulishly.

  Great strides had been made in minimizing and controlling the effects of the disease, but there was no cure and might never be. In fact, most researchers had given up on overcoming the virus. The current focus was on creating a vaccine to prevent infection in the first place. Protease inhibitors could drop HIV to below detectable levels, and with care and some luck he might live most of his normal life-span -- yet how normal would it be?

  Each day he lived out sixty years in his mind, breathing in claustrophobic phantom mobs of might-have-beens and cruel visions of himself as a bed-ridden husk. The effort was exhausting, lethal, and he tried to shut down his mind. There were more danger zones than safe areas now. He needed to be smaller.

  He kept busy. Another new lesson was that action of any sort was better than waiting, worrying.

  “Stay positive,” a therapist told him, not understanding the irony of her word choice. “You've got a long time ahead of you, son,” a specialist promised.

  There were no fingerprints on the needles or the notes. Interviews with theater employees and the small number of movie-goers who'd come forward generated not one lead.

  If there had been any point, any profit, it could have been the perfect crime, but it was only perfect madness.

  A ninth victim discovered more needles in the coin return slots of three payphones down the block, but again there were no clues or witnesses. Short of receiving a confession, the police might never be able to explain who had done it or why.

  He'd become a statistic. For what? He dwelled on lunacy, though greater minds than his had offered only more questions or cures that helped few at best. Monsters in all their many forms were a perverse cancer that would have been abolished by now if evil was not inherently part of the human being. Shooting sprees, arson, child molestation -- the insanity had become so constant that most people tried to ignore it.

  Others sought out chaos and pain, some to feast, some to heal. In the days after the theater incident, he was harassed by both types. And half a year later, when tests proved that eight of them were blood positive, the circus started again.

  He'd become a celebrity in the national media, especially the tabloids. There were plenty of other crazies and their deeds to celebrate (Golf Club Killer Bludgeons Neighbors; Sabotage Kills 4 In Subway), but he and the other infected victims were walking dead and this insidious aspect played well -- as did the fact that their only mistake had been to sit down. Everyone sits down. On buses, in restaurants, at ball games. Everyone.

  His notoriety wasn't anything that a man could properly capitalize on, of course. Women would never clamor for space in his bed, employers wouldn't compete for him. His buddies started picking up the tabs for beer and food, but very soon he was seeing less and less of them. Some of this distancing was his own fault, partly because he ran to see every specialist his insurance would cover, mostly because he couldn't stand rehashing what had happened or getting maudlin about the good ol' days.

  Much of the gradual separation was their doing, however, and he quickly learned who was a friend and who had been a mere acquaintance. Losing his girlfriend was the hardest.

  Her pity hurt. Her revulsion hurt. Memories hurt. Hope and regret and wishes hurt. She was experiencing her own myriad of anguishes, but he didn't care. He couldn't afford to.

  He'd stopped answering his phone during the blitz of calls from media, friends and family (and from oblivious telemarketers who made him smile bitterly). The plaintive voice on the machine no longer sounded familiar. He erased all her messages.

  A lawyer approached him with the news that six of the other victims were filing a liability suit against the theater, a national chain which was at least sure to settle out of court. "I'm in," he said. What had happened could hardly be considered the theater's fault, but protracted phone calls and paperwork and meetings with representatives of his insurance company had him frightened. Money meant more doctors, more treatments.

  He visited the lawyer's office twice briefly but continued to avoid the other victims, despite his therapist's suggestions to join group sessions. He didn't want to know those people. In a sense, he wished he no longer knew himself.

  He hoped work would be an esc
ape. All he wanted was to be ignored. Instead, he was avoided, a different thing altogether, which he deeply resented. His first life had been full of casual contact -- handshakes, the brush of fingers when exchanging files -- but now he walked in a ghost world, isolated and damned, unclean. Once he even caught a woman emptying out the coffee pot in the break room after he'd poured himself a cup.

  "You need an outlet for your anger," the therapist told him. "Paint. Play music. Let it out."

  He blasted ten thousand spaceships on his PlayStation and smashed baseballs at the batting cages until his hands and wrists throbbed. He went skating but ached deep in his soul when confronted with rollergirls whose firm-bodied health had always been the stuff of fantasy.

  There were dating services that linked HIV-positive singles, even heterosexual drug-free singles. He'd never have oral sex again or experience intercourse without the sensation-killing barrier of prophylactics (mixing viral strains at random would only hasten his decay), but the possibility of intimacy did exist, no matter how sad and unappealing. Nonsmoker, professional, likes movies...

  The note left in his cubicle read: Faggots rot in hell!

  He should have laughed at this ignorant cowering bluster. His therapist would have been proud. Yet it was a full minute before he stopped shaking and unballed his fist from around the crumpled paper. He showed it to his boss, establishing a record, then did his best to provoke his suspects, visiting their cubicles often, volunteering exaggerated reports of his treatments and future symptoms. With luck, they'd strike again. Another lawsuit meant more money. And he enjoyed his plotting with fierce joy. It was wonderful to be the aggressor again.

  The skinny old woman in the free clinic that only charged fifty bucks had trouble finding his antecubital vein. The inside of his elbow might as well have been a dartboard.

  “Here,” he said, with all the patience he could muster.

  Flying out to California had not been a great idea -- mom made him chicken soup thirteen times in two and half weeks, and dad no longer seemed capable of looking him in the eye -- but he couldn't afford a real vacation. The liability suit had yet to be resolved, and he'd missed too much work during the past year.

  There was solace in resignation. Even a bad game of golf with his dad was better than rotting alone. Iced tea tasted as good as ever. Fresh-cut grass still smelled amazing. But the yuppie foursome that had played ahead of them ripped his heart. The breeze had been full of the men's advice and cheerfully crude propositions, the women's laughter. He should have been one of them. Let go, let God, was his mother's mantra, and he tried to believe it. He practiced meditation now, energy-channeling, and color therapy. These were acts of desperation rather than faith, unfortunately.

  Anger flared in him like a migraine when the old bitch missed his vein for the third time. Familiar, powerful anger.

  He'd hoped to get through the summer without subjecting himself to more blood work, but his doctor wanted to try a new anti-viral and needed a fresh count. His insurance, which had begun clamping down, declared this an elective process, so instead of visiting real professionals he'd come here, exposing himself to a lobby full of sicknesses borne by others who couldn't afford better care.

  Even worse was the humiliation of revealing his secret to new people. The dark-eyed receptionist had been polite but he knew what she was thinking. He wished she wasn't so pretty. He wished no one was that pretty.

  The skinny old bitch forgot to apply pressure after she withdrew the hypo. He grabbed a cotton ball from her supplies and jammed it down on the puncture himself, so that he wouldn't bruise. He almost said something caustic, but in his new life he'd encountered plenty of workers who were ill-trained, indifferent, condescending, too busy.

  It did not surprise him that trust was a mistake.

  “There's no need for alarm,” said the man on the phone. “We just want you to come down for retesting, just to be safe.”

  Rather than disposing of disposable needles, the silly bitch had washed them with hot water and soap, thinking she was doing good, being thrifty. Her training had consisted of two four-hour classes and she would have continued to mix and match blood-borne diseases in unsuspecting people except that a more experienced co-worker happened to observe her at the sink.

  Of the more than five hundred people this woman treated, only eleven were infected. Various officials declared victory.

  Six of those eleven had passed through the clinic immediately after him. Ironically, all were healthy twenty-or-thirty-somethings, for the most part sexually active, in their prime. Exactly like he had been, not so long ago. All six had chosen to be tested merely for peace of mind after seeing too many community service commercials.

  Now they had his strain of HIV as well as the Hepatitis B that he'd picked up from another man.

  He remembered a few faces and articles of clothing from the waiting room, a strident voice, nothing more. What had happened wasn't his fault -- it had never been his fault -- but he felt a connection that had never existed between himself and the other victims of the movie theater incident. Perhaps he was weaker now, after months of constant isolation and loss.

  He tried to seek them out but confidentiality rules made this difficult, as did a circle-the-wagons mentality on the part of the clinic, which was already under threat of several lawsuits. Neither of the two women he managed to track down wanted anything to do with him. One was hysterical. Both seethed with blame. He understood, yet it might have helped to create a special tribe. People to die with.

  Hepatitis would ravage his compromised immune system.

  When he woke the next morning, the sun was strong and promising and two fat scrub jays screeched energetically in the flowering shrubs. He watched them without expression.

  He'd finally achieved the narrow thoughtlessness that had eluded him for so long. He understood why now, knew what dark instinct had driven the nameless monster who'd killed him, as random and insane as it must seem to the healthy, the secure, the happy.

  He had been infected in that theater in more than one sense.

  After breakfast, he stabbed himself with a dozen needles and went out to booby-trap some park benches.

  Jeff Carlson is the international bestselling author of PLAGUE YEAR and THE FROZEN SKY. To date, his work has been translated into sixteen languages worldwide. His new novel is FROZEN SKY 2: BETRAYED.

  Readers can find free fiction, videos, contests, and more on his web site at jverse. om

  REBORN

  by The Behrg

  “I used to believe in God, then I believed in the Devil. Now I laugh at both and only believe in Evil.”

  - Diary of Darius Maggiolini, Archbishop, spoken on his deathbed

  In 1974, the Catholic Church sent out a declaration to every bishop, presbyter, and deacon who resided within a sanctioned diocese. This formal document, which you will find (though partially torn) at the end of my tale, has since been repudiated, as have all official communications regarding the Sancto Saepes Motu Proprio. Ask any secretariat of the Church about the rumored incursion and you will receive only shaking heads or grudged denials. You will however find that the mandates held within this clandestine document are stringently, if quietly, upheld to this day.

  The following is taken directly from the declaration:

  From this day… forward… no infant child abandoned on or before [a Church-affiliated domicile] shall be admitted within said domicile by a member of the clergy. This sanctioned decree is to be upheld without exception.

  My tale, and those unfortunate souls who experienced similar trespasses, will provide more than enough evidence as to why.

  It was an April evening in 1971, a day that had been muddled with a constant downpour. It is important to note that this was a time when I still believed in a Higher Power. At twenty-three I was young to have been chosen as chaplain of the Sacred Heart Basilica of the Immaculate Conception. So young, in fact, that I still believed I was doing God’s work.

  E
venings in Bridgeport, Connecticut were quite dull, and with the hellacious storm our evening services amounted to a dress rehearsal, only vacant pews and the occasional scurrying mouse in attendance – the rain always drove them inside. Sister Bedford, a motherly nun in every sense of the word, had taken to mopping the nave, humming an amalgamation of hymns that no choir would recognize. She was deaf in one ear and tone deaf in the other, but her jovial cheeks and maternal charm warmed the soul (not to mention her chocolate chip cookies which were absolutely divine!). I hurriedly gathered the hymnals pew by pew, ready to call it an early night.

  There was a chill in the high-ceilinged halls and Father Maggiolini, an old-world coot and the attending Bishop, had gone off to check the pilot of the furnace which was always blowing out. If I recall correctly I believe that rainy season we had a leak in the basement. The water pooling against the outer walls of the church seeped through the porous stones rotted with age. It made for an eerie walk through those long corridors below ground, as if the very walls were weeping.

  As we mindlessly went about our evening duties thinking only of the warm wool comforters awaiting our shivering bodies – or at least such were my thoughts – a shocking boom resounded from the outer cloister doors. Sister Bedford dropped her mop, her hands going to her ample, yet covered, bosom. The teetering, towering pile of hymnals which I had collected were sent scattered across the hard marbled floor, pages bristling and book bindings breaking. Who would be out at this hour in such conditions? And why a single knock and nothing more?

  My heart seemed to answer the resounding thud with a steady knocking of its own. Please remember, I was but twenty-three, at an age where imagination could still conjure demons from shadows and redemption from a statue of a man on a cross.