Dexter stopped.
Run for it? They always get you if you run. But, now that he thought about it, they always get you anyway. Especially if you were the bad guy. And Dexter was the bad guy. Maybe not as bad as Riley. But at least Riley knew about love, which probably protected him from bad things.
Yell for Mom? She was probably dead drunk on the couch. If she did step out on the porch, the thing would disappear. He was sure of that, because the thing was his and only his.
And if he yelled, he knew what would happen. Mom would turn on the porch light and see nothing, not even a stray hair, just a scooped-out dirt place behind the forsythia. And she’d say, “What the hell do you mean, waking up half the neighborhood because you heard something under the porch? They ain’t nothing there.”
And she’d probably slap him across the face. She’d wait until they were inside, so the neighbors wouldn’t call Social Services. Maybe she’d use the buckle-end of the belt, if she was drinking liquor tonight instead of beer.
He took an uncertain step backward. Back to the curb, to the streetlights? Then what? You had to go home sometime. The thing gargled, a raspy mewling. It was waiting.
A monster that could disappear could do anything. Even if he ran to the road, the thing could clickety-sloosh out of the sewer grate, or pop out from behind one of the junk cars that skulked in the roadside weeds. The thing could drop from the limbs of that big red maple at the edge of the lawn. You can’t fight blood magic when it builds a monster on Halloween.
He had a third choice. Walk right on up. Keep trying to whistle. Not scared at all. No-sirree. Zip-a-dee-doo-dah.
And that was really the only choice. The thing wasn’t going away. Dexter stepped into the rectangle of light and pursed his lips. He was still trying to whistle as he put his foot on the bottom step. Monsters weren’t real, were they?
The bush shook, shedding a few of its late yellow flowers. The gargle lengthened into a soughing purr. Dexter tried to keep his eyes on the door, the door that was splintered at the bottom where the puppy and cats had scratched to get inside. The door with its dented brass handle, the door with its duct-taped pane of glass, the door that opened onto the love and safety promised by the white light of home. The door became a blur, a shimmering wedge lost in his tears as the thing moved out from the shadows.
He closed his eyes and waited for the bite, the tearing of his blue jeans and shin meat, the rattle of tooth on bone. He stiffened in anticipation of cold claws to belly, hot saliva on rib cage, rough tongue to that soft place just underneath the chin.
Clickety-sloosh.
His heart skipped a beat and restarted. He was still alive. No pain yet. He tried to breathe. The air tasted like rusty meat.
Maybe it had disappeared. But he could hear it, panting through moist nostrils. Just beneath him. Close enough so that he could feel the wind of its mewling against his leg.
Savoring the kill? Just as Dexter had done, all those afternoons and Saturday mornings spent kneeling in the forest, with his pocket knife and his pets and his frightened lonely tears? He knew that fear was the worst part, the part that made your belly all puke-shivery.
He had to show his fear. That was only fair. He owed them that much. And if he looked scared enough, maybe the thing would have mercy, just rip open that big vein in his neck so he could die fast. Then the thing could clickety-sloosh on back into the woods, drag its pieces to the grave and bury its own bones.
Dexter tried to open his eyes but couldn’t. Still the thing mewled and gargled. Waiting was the worst part. You could hold your breath, pray, scream, run. They always get you anyway.
Still he waited.
He blinked. The world was nothing but streaks, a gash of light, a fuzz of gray that was the house, a bigger fuzz of black night. Something nudged against his kneecap. He looked down, his chest hot as a brick oven.
It hadn’t disappeared.
Two eyes met his. One round and dark, without white, hooded by an exotic flap of skin. The other eye was heavy-lidded, yellow and reptilian.
Behind the eyes, lumps of meat sloping into a forehead. Ragged pink where the pieces met, leaking a thin jelly. Part fur, part feather, part scale, part exposed bone. A raw rooster comb dangled behind one misshapen ear.
Beneath the crushed persimmon of a nose were whiskers and wide lips, the lips parted to show teeth of all kinds. Puppy teeth, kitty fangs, fishy nubs of cartilage, orange bits of beak like candy corn.
Hulking out behind the massive dripping head were more slabs of tenderloin, breast and wing, fin and shell. The horrible coalition rippled with maggots and rot and magic.
The lump of head nuzzled against his leg. The juice soaked through his jeans.
Oh God.
He wanted the end to come quickly now, because he had given the thing his fear and that was all he had. He had paid what he owed. But he knew in the dark hutch of his heart that the thing wasn’t finished. He opened his eyes again.
The strange eyes stared up into his. Twin beggars.
You had to let them feed. On fear or whatever else they needed.
Again the thing nuzzled, mewling wetly. Behind the shape, something slithered rhythmically against the leaves.
A rope of gray and black and tan fur. A broken tail.
Wagging.
Wagging.
Waiting and wanting.
Forgiving.
Dexter wept without shame. When the thing nuzzled the third time, he reached down with a trembling hand and stroked between the putrid arching ears.
Riley’s voice came to him, unbidden, as if from some burning bush or darkening cloud: “Gotta tell ‘em that you love ‘em.”
Dexter knelt, trembling. The thing licked under the soft part of his chin. It didn’t matter that the tongue was scaly and flecked with forest dirt. And cold, grave cold, long winter cold.
When you let them love you, you owe them something in return.
He hugged the beast, even as it shuddered toward him, clickety-sloosh with chunks dribbling down. And still the tail whipped the ground, faster now, drumming out its affection.
Suddenly the yard exploded with light.
The back door opened. Mom stood on the porch, one hand on the light switch, the other holding her worn flannel robe closed across her chest. “What the hell’s going on out here?”
Dexter looked up from where he was kneeling at the bottom of the steps. His arms were empty and dry.
“Don’t just stand there with your jaw hanging down. You was supposed to be here an hour ago.” Her voice went up a notch, both louder and higher. “Why, I’ve got a good mind to—”
She stopped herself, looking across the lawn at the houses down the street. Dexter glanced under the porch. He saw nothing in the thick shadows.
Mom continued, lower, with more menace. “I’ve got a good mind to take the belt to you.”
Dexter stood and rubbed the dirt off his pants.
“Now get your ass in here, and don’t make me have to tell you twice.”
Dexter looked around quickly at the perimeter of forest, at the black thickets where the thing would hide until Mom was gone. He went up the steps and through the door, past her hot drunken glare and stale breath. He shuffled straight to his room and closed the door. The beating would come or it wouldn’t. It didn’t matter.
That night, when he heard the scratching at the windowsill and the bump against the glass, he opened the window. The thing crawled inside and onto the bed. It had brought him a gift. Riley’s bloody boot. When you loved something, it owed you in return. Maybe it had carried the other one to Tammy Lynn’s house, where it might have delivered her lost shoe on Halloween, the night of its birth. To thank her for the gift of blood.
The nightmare creature curled at Dexter’s feet, licking at the boot. The thing’s stench filled the room, bits of its rotted flesh staining the blankets. Dexter didn’t sleep that night, listening to the mewling rasp of the creature’s breathing, wondering where the mouth
was, knowing that he’d found a friend for life.
And tomorrow, when he got off the bus, the thing would greet him. It would wait until the bus rolled out of sight, then drag itself from the woods and rub against his leg, begging to be stroked. It would lick his face and wait for his hug.
And together they would run deep between the trees, Dexter at one end of the leash, struggling to keep up while the thing clickety-slooshed about and buried its dripping nose in the dirt, first here, then there. Once in a while into the creek, to wet its dangling gills. Stopping only to gaze lovingly at its master, showing those teeth that had done something bad to Riley and could probably do it again.
Maybe if Dexter fed its hunger for affection, it wouldn’t have a hunger for other things.
Dexter would give it what it needed, he would feed it all he had. Through autumn’s fog and into the December snows, through long spring evenings and into summer’s flies. A master and its pet.
You owe them that much.
That’s just the way love is.
They always get you anyway.
Goat Boy
by Jeremy C. Shipp
My cousin Carl’s an undertaker, and of course he owes me for the kidney, so that’s how I get the corpse blood. After that, I use Monica’s nylon rigger brush to paint phallic symbols on organic nuggets of Newman’s Own cat food. Then, six days later, our cat Frenchy coughs up a chthonic hairball peppered with shrieking maggots. Goat Boy struggles to free himself from the smoldering cat hair.
“You just gonna stand there and watch?” Goat Boy says.
“Sorry,” I say. I reach down to help free him, but he smacks my hand with a hoof.
“Too late,” he says, and breaks free of the hairball. Then he dances a jig, stomping the life out of the screaming maggots.
After a while, he climbs up on my leather reclina-rocker, and sits down next to Frenchy. The cat licks the otherworldly pus off the demon’s left arm.
Goat Boy says, “I hope you know I only help guys with small dicks.”
“I know,” I say. “I’m small.”
“Show me. Then we can get started.”
For a while, I stare at the red crescent on my pinky toe, where I ripped off most of toe nail the night before. Then I unbutton my jeans and present my shame.
“You call that small?” Goat Boy taps his crotch with his hoof and what looks like a large pimple appears between his legs.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Yeah, well.” Goat Boy stares at crotch until the mound disappears. “I guess you’re small enough.”
“Great.” I zip up.
The demon uses the remote control to scratch his back. “After we become one, you gotta think of a happy memory of the two of you together. You gotta think of this memory seven times a day, for seven days.”
“Seven days counting today?”
“Yeah, counting today.”
“Okay.”
“Alright then. Let’s do this.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
I pick up Goat Boy and he’s warm in my hands, like a pet with a fever. “Is this going to hurt you?”
Goat Boy bleats with what seems like laughter. “What the fuck do you think?”
At that point, I put Goat Boy in my mouth. He feels too big to swallow whole, so I chew him a few times. He only shrieks from within my skull for a moment before I crunch his throat.
I swallow, and for the next couple hours my burps taste like black licorice and ant poison.
After Monica kisses me hello, she frowns and suggests I get myself checked for gingivitis.
* * * * *
I feel like Peter Pan, lying in bed with my eyes closed, thinking of a happy thought.
The memory I choose is from four or five years ago.
In the memory, I’m rocking back and forth on a metal bar stool, watching Monica paint a dying horse in a field of wildflowers, or a polar bear stranded on an iceberg. I can’t remember the exact painting. The reason why I’m watching Monica paint is because she asked me to. In this sense, Monica’s nothing like me. She thrives with an audience, and withers without one, even when it comes to painting. Sometimes Monica calls me her muse, but I get the feeling that after a while, she forgets I’m sitting there behind her. She loses herself in her work, and loses me somewhere along the way.
Anyway, here I am, staring at the mole on the back of her neck, and out of the blue, I tell her I’m thinking of giving Carl my kidney. I can’t explain exactly why I say this to her, because giving Carl my kidney is the last thing in the world I want to do.
Monica turns around and says, “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” I say.
Then Monica smiles at me, and she gives me a look that I’ll never forget. She looks at me like I’m more than a husband to her.
She looks at me like I’m her hero.
* * * * *
It takes about a week to fully digest a demon, but by day two, I’m already feeling better about myself. As I please Rosalind with my tongue, I close my eyes and remember the time when I watched Monica paint a picture of our house in flames.
“I’m thinking of giving Carl my kidney,” I said.
Monica turned around, frowning. “Carl. Your cousin Carl.”
“Yes.”
“Do you really want to waste a kidney on a fucking wino? He’ll be dead by liver failure in a few years anyway.”
“He’s family.”
Monica sighed. Then she gave me a look that I’ll never forget. She looked at me like I was less than a husband to her.
She looked at me like I was her enemy.
Goat Boy must be doing his job, because after I leave Rosalind’s apartment and go home to Monica, I hardly feel guilty at all.
* * * * *
Now, Rosalind’s squirming on top of the bed and Monica’s squirming underneath, but for very different reasons. As Rosalind shrieks with pleasure, I imagine Monica screaming in silence, gagging on the black T-shirt she always wore when painting.
I close my eyes, and I remember the time I stood naked in the studio as Monica used her nylon rigger brush to paint my penis on her tiny canvas. With each little stroke, she giggled.
“I’m thinking of giving Carl my kidney,” I said.
Monica turned around, frowning. “Carl. Your cousin Carl.”
“Yes.”
“Why would you give your kidney to a fucking wino instead of your own wife?”
“But…you don’t need my kidney.”
“You have no fucking clue what I need, Matthew.”
“I’m sorry.”
Monica sighed. Then she gave me a look that I’ll never forget. She looked at me like I was less than a husband to her.
She looked at me like I was her prey.
After Monica knocked me to the floor on my stomach, she held me down with her hooves, and used her teeth to rip open my flesh.
“Monica, stop!” I said.
She bleated with laughter.
And as she chewed up my kidney, I screamed like a maggot from hell.
When the memory fades, I cum.
Even after everything Monica’s done to me, I’m still too human to finish her off. But I’m not worried.
After all, this is only day three.
Tested
by Lisa Morton
As Ben fought the wheel of the spinning Lexus, his chest pinned beneath the inflated airbag, his wife screaming from the passenger seat, everything was slowed down and magnified. He could see every tree picked out in the gliding headlights, he was deafened by the shriek of the tires on the rough asphalt, he felt a sharp snap as an axle was sheared beneath him, and one thought kept repeating in his head: Please God don’t let me be crushed please God don’t let there be blood please—
And then the car was still and it was over.
In that first second, as the flow of time returned to its normal speed, Ben looked down at himself. The airbag had already deflated and he was covered with a residu
e of white dust, his neck hurt and he couldn’t seem to stop shaking, but he was whole. He started to call out, “Angie,” then turned his head (a small eruption of pain) to look at his wife.
There was blood on her head from where a pine branch had smashed through the windshield, and her eyes weren’t open.
“Angie! Angela! Honey—!”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t even move.
Ben tried to reach for her and got tangled in his harness. He was struggling to release it when the sound came: An agonized bellow, a moan too deep and savage for any animal he knew.
He froze until the sound finished, then looked around frantically. The car had come to rest in a ditch by the side of the road, just below the shoulder. They were at a slight angle, tilted towards the car’s right side, and he could only see part of the roadway and the relentless rain forest. The sound had come from his left, behind the car. Whatever had made that noise was just a short distance behind them.
His mind raced back to the seconds before the crash: He’d been maneuvering the Lexus along the winding mountain road, driving through a patch of dense growth, the only travelers on this back country two-lane blacktop. And then something had appeared before the headlights, revealed as the road hairpinned. It had been huge — at least seven feet tall — and black, and fixed him with two startled eyes.
The car hit it. Ben had tried to swerve aside, but he’d felt the sickening crunch and the steering wheel had wrenched itself from his grip.
The impact had caused the Lexus to spin at least twice; Ben thought they’d jumped a log on the right and that had sheared one, maybe both, axles in two. The thing that had been hit had probably been thrown, and was now badly injured. It should have been killed.
But another shriek, this one closer, assured Ben it was still very much alive, and filled with the mindless fury of a wounded beast.
Ben’s first instinct was to start the car and get the hell out of there. Without thinking he tried the keys, but turning the ignition produced only a dry clicking sound. The windshield was smashed in front of Angie, but the tempered safety glass had held on the driver’s side, although it had spiderwebbed across Ben’s field of vision. He could see smoke pouring from the front end of the Lexus, even while the headlights were still functioning.
Aberrations Page 9
