Him
The Catman.
And he strolled right in, the door swinging behind him as he took in the place. And I him. Cause believe you me, there was nothing quite like him. Jet black whiskers sprouted from either side of his nose and curled tight at the tips. A teal fedora perched atop his brushy head. And a yellow mustard suit beneath an oil-black slicker. And as he made his way through a maze of tables and chairs I just couldn't tear my eyes away. I couldn't. For though there weren’t exactly paws stickin' out of the ends of his slick black cuffs there were glints. Hints of. Something sharp.
Claws.
Ready to pounce. To attack. And play. And as he reached the stage, he stepped up and turned, his slicker swaying, and he drew it out. Some kind of instrument from his left hand pocket. Something matted and spotted and was it moving too? And as I jerked my head about, my eyes squinting, I was pretty sure of it, that whatever it was, it was quivering in his hairy paw-hands. But maybe it was just the air; the heavy whirls of smoke and hot chatter. And the excitement too. I mean I could almost feel it dripping in the air. I could almost taste it. That smell. It was getting stronger. Muggy. Musty. Almost primal. And was I sweating too? After all, maybe this guy, this Catman—he was some type of hot ticket or something. What did I know? I mean, I just own this hole in the wall. It’s not like I have the time (or the care) to keep up with every new act in town. Implanted horns and hoofs, smoke machines and scream machines, make up, costumes, hair extensions and body tattoos, split tongues and giraffe necks. Hell the acts get crazier all the time. And then, suddenly, within seconds, the smoke darkened. And began to swirl. To almost dance. And if I hadn't been able to see much of anything before, it was even worse now.
And then, in the near blackness, onstage, there was a sudden kind of haze, bright and blue, and the crowd hushed. And the place was so dead quiet then that it gave me the creeps. It really did. It was like being alone in some long forgotten graveyard. Or a deserted morgue. And the Catman then, his shoulders, they twitched and jutted back and his hairy hand-paws, they skittered out, and he brought the instrument-thing up to his coal black lips. And his eyes shut. And then opened. And then they began to shimmer. They stared. Out over the crowd: great ovals of brilliance, of flecks, in shades of yellow-green-red. One brilliance bleeding into the next and the next. And just when I thought I was floating into those eyes, into another world, my heart slammed into my throat, as the Catman, his torso threw back and the instrument it wailed, it howled, it screeched. And I nearly fell out of my chair. My blood turning ice-cold. For it wasn't just the volume that tore up my soul and the joint—it was the tone. It was ugly and tortured. It was death.
And in my shock I turned to search for others, their eyes. To see if they had felt it—what I had heard. And through the clouds of swirling smoke I saw it. I swear I did. My patrons' heads, their features, they were changing, their noses into snouts. Transforming. Some drawing thin and pointed, others thicker and stout. And I swallowed hard as the music grew even darker. Almost savage. My heart thumping in my ears. My fingers gripping the edge of the table. My knuckles turning bone white. And as my gaze turned back to the Catman, my jaw nearly dropped. For his body was beginning to thrash; his arms and the instrument shaking, shaking—back and forth, madly, insanely, side to side. His whispers vibrating like a manic guitar. A thick black tail emerging from beneath his slicker. And then the music grew thick enough to drip, to bleed. As blood-red as the Catman's eyes. And what had began to seep from them.
Or no.
For it was not the Catman's eyes, it was the instrument-thing. And as I thrust upwards in my seat and then onto the table, splayed out like some kind of maniac, I could just make it out. The quivering hairy thing grasped between his paw-hands. And not only grasped, but his claws, they were sunk into it. An arm.
It was some type of arm. Or limb. That was becoming more hideous with every rip. And he was blowing into the fingers. Or what looked like fingers. The end of the arm spraying as the Catman, his lips wet and sloppy now, they blew into one wet, matted finger and then the next and the next. And with each blaring blow, the Catman threw back and that arm was thrust towards the ceiling and then a spray of wetness. And the crowd erupted—and into what I'll never know. For as screeches and howls and hisses shrieked into the smoky red-blackness, I was locked into his eyes. Eyes that raged. That were on fire. With cycles of agony. And misery. Triumph. Defeat. Wisps of sweet, sweet smoke from long-dead fires, the earth drenched a sticky red, claws, fangs and snouts, intestines and throats... And then my gaze, my trance, it broke, as the Catman's eyes went suddenly black. His body still.
And so, just like that, it was over.
And gone.
The music, the patrons, the frenzy. And there I was, splayed across my table and drenched, not only in a wretched sweat, but an eerie silence. Well, almost, for there was one last noise. The front door, it creaked slightly, and I nearly fell off the table as my body jerked and I craned my neck and caught just a hint of it. A tail, the very tip, jet black, and then it was gone, gone... And as the smoke thinned and the new day's light began to crack the blinds, I stared at the walls. At the fading shadows. The emerging light. The slaughterhouse. Of color and tufts. Of skin, blood and fur. Stuck to the ceiling and floors, the chairs and booths. Orange yellow tabby and panther of black. The Russian blue and spotted serval, the bobcat, the lynx, cougars and tigers, the saber-tooth. And I swear I could still hear it then, could almost smell it, the angst and the anger, of the Catman blues...
Vacation
by J. Tanner
Right this second
Randy is sitting on the floor of the station wagon eating ants. But that is normal.
A bit of chocolate, probably dropped yesterday on the way back from the local grocery store, melted in the morning sun and the ants found it. Amazing that they can make their way up into a car like little predators on a blood trail.
Randy squishes one on his thumb, presses it in the chocolate and licks his thumb clean. "Look, Tracy, chocolate covered ants!" he says.
I don't respond. I don't even turn my head. Because I can't. My head is fastened in place with duct tape. The position of the rear-view mirror allows me to see my face. The tape across my mouth has somehow been made flesh colored. They have drawn a smile on it. A blond wig hides the tape wrapped tightly over my forehead and around something sturdy that gnaws at the back of my skull.
Dad drives and hums along with an old Whitney Houston song on the radio. He can't even hum the high notes.
I want to scratch my knee. I can't. My hands are taped, too. I don't think the tape binding my hands is disguised since it isn't visible to passing cars, but I don't know that for sure.
Mom reads a Sue Grafton novel and occasionally gasps or laughs then shares the details of the story with Dad who nods.
I have to go to the bathroom. It feels like they learned from last year's mess and gave me some kind of diapers this time. I'm too old for diapers—fourteen. I'm afraid I won't be able to hold it much longer though.
We are going on vacation again and I think I might be going crazy.
- - -
Two summers ago
Tracy watched as her father loaded the roof rack of the Country Sedan. The fake wood side panels were faded and peeling but the station wagon ran well enough for the one time a year it was taken out of the garage. He refused to even look at the Lexus or Beamer when it was time to go on vacation.
"How much longer, Daddy?"
He tugged on the bags to make sure they were secure. "Not much. Go eat your breakfast."
"Will you at least tell me where we're going?"
"No, sweetie. It's a surprise. But I guarantee it will be the best vacation ever."
"Are you sure about this, Don?" her mother said.
"For the thousandth time, Margie," he said, "yes. No more of the same-old, same-old. This will be a vacation to remember."
Tracy went inside. She and Randy ate their Rice Krispies.
>
Randy picked up his bowl and sucked the remaining milk out. Then he whispered, "Disneyland for sure," and smiled.
- - -
Randy was wrong.
They sat in a cold cement room on hard chairs. One wall was tinted glass that Tracy suspected couldn't be seen through from the opposite side—a two-way mirror.
The warden said, "I can't believe you brought your kids, Don. I thought it was weird to begin with, but, Jesus, bringing your kids?"
"How many kids you have Jerry?"
"You know I don't have any."
"So what makes you such a fucking expert on child-rearing? You got your money. You got the funding. So shut the hell up and let my family enjoy its vacation. Way things are going, we'll never have this chance again."
Tracy yawned. It was at least two hours past her bedtime but on these chairs it felt like a dozen. They were worse than school chairs. Her rear felt numb.
"This is boring," Randy said. "With a capital B and two exclamation points."
"Hush, Randy," their mother said. "It's almost time."
As if on cue, a thick door in the other room opened and several guards walked a prisoner in. He wore cuffs, and leg irons that made him take shorter than normal steps. The guards strapped him in the chair. They taped patches over his eyes. A doctor began the process of fastening the electrodes.
"Cool," Randy said. "How many people did he kill, Dad?"
"Quiet Randy. Just watch."
And watch they did.
- - -
Right this second
I'm thinking about that man dying two summers ago and about Randy saying "What a shocking experience" twenty times a day for weeks. Dad was right; that was the first vacation I would never forget.
Randy asks, "Are we almost there yet?"
"Patience son." Dad looks over his shoulder and smiles. "This will be the best vacation ever. Better than Greenland."
- - -
Last summer
Cold, whipped by icy winds, seeped through the thick, down coat, chilling Tracy to the bone. The mostly European crew of the Snow Queen raced about on the deck, tossing thick ropes capped with hooks over the sides of the ship. They shouted back and forth amongst themselves in a language Tracy could not understand.
"This is it," her father said, his breath a foggy glitter in the cold. Dragon breath. "Everybody ready?"
Tracy's mother and brother nodded excitedly. Tracy cast her eyes down at the wooden deck, a deck stained dark from the splashing blood of past catches. She heard the first frantic hoots of the seals.
A crewman with a thick scraggly beard handed each of them a worn, leather, socklike thing, filled with sand at one end and tied off. Without words, he demonstrated how to use it like a club.
Tracy dropped the thing. Her hands shook. She felt a tear freeze to her cheek.
Her father gave her an exasperated look but said nothing. He trod off and the rest of her family followed, walking like robots in the bulky ice boots. She watched them disappear one by one over the starboard rail, down a ladder.
The crewman with the thick beard remained at her side. He said something in his native tongue, knelt, and extended his hand, palm open. Resting on his bloody glove lay a crudely-wrapped piece of candy. He motioned gently for Tracy to take it. She did and put it in her pocket. The crewman patted her on the head and walked away.
She avoided the edge of the ship, not wanting to see. But she heard. Heard the barking cries of the seals and Randy whooping like a white man playing an Indian on an old television western. She remembered that most—Randy whooping among the howls of the dying animals—and thinking at the time that things could not get any worse.
- - -
Right this second
Dad says, "Yes. Now we're there, Randy."
The late afternoon sun warms my cheek to a prickling numbness. Dad is following a red pickup. On a bumpy dirt road, we cross a golden field, the tall grass swaying in the wind. Dad tails the truck into a lonely stand of elms.
The truck stops near a weathered shed with a corrugated tin roof.
Randy opens the door and jumps out before Dad can even bring the car to a complete stop.
Mom comes around, hugs me and wipes the tears from my eyes. "See, that wasn't so bad?" she says. She begins the process of untying me.
The man from the red pickup says to Dad, "You got to bury him afterward. And I mean deep. Shovels are in the shed."
Dad and the man speak more quietly for a while and I think some money exchanges hands.
Mom finishes unwrapping me and carefully strips the tape from over my mouth. "Be good, or I'll have to put your smile back on," she says. She strokes my hair, matted and sweaty from being under a wig for so long.
I nod. When I step from the car, my knees buckle because my legs are asleep. I flop like a scarecrow. Mom helps me to my feet.
The man in the pickup drives off, and I get my first glimpse of a different man. This man is chained to a tree. He is skinny and has big ears, so big that Randy is calling him Dumbo. He lies in his waste, reminding me of my own embarrassing state.
I look at this sad man and see myself.
Dad picks up four big knives from a shelf near the shed. He hands one to Randy who clutches it in two hands like a lightsaber. He hands one to Mom, who hides her enthusiasm behind a wall of makeup but I can see a glint in her eyes. He drops one at my feet, clearly disappointed, without even looking at me.
The man seems too tired, too sick, to be scared.
My family starts to move toward him, leaving me behind.
"Wait," I say softly. They stop, expecting me to protest and probably wondering if I need to be restrained again but I pick up the knife.
Mom smiles. Dad says, "That's Daddy's little girl."
For the first time in three years I feel like one of the family again. It's a good feeling. Being crazy isn't all that different, but it scares me.
Still, I know what I have to do.
I will start with Dad. If I surprise him with a solid stab to the throat, Mom and Randy should be too shocked to retaliate before I get to them.
Off With His Head
by Mark Budman
One morning, as Greg Simpson awoke from his dream, he discovered that his head lay on the night table next to his bed and that his neck was disconnected from it. The head had to be his: it sported his own sparse but waxed mustache that he had been cultivating since the age of 18, his bright black eyes, his thick lips, his dark hair with a bald spot the size of a quarter on the very top; it was the size of a penny just a year earlier.
Greg checked his neck. It was smooth, warm and dry where his head and neck connected. How can I see? he thought. How can I move? Why aren’t I dead? He was surprised by the clarity and aloofness of his thoughts. His wife Jessica kept accusing him of being emotionally cold, of having "no aliveness," as she put it. Was she right?
She was so prissy, his wife. She fancied herself the queen of the household. Maybe because her father, the circus magician, and her mother, the voodoo priestess, treated her like a princess and he, Greg, didn’t? He wouldn’t be at all surprised if this metamorphosis was somehow her fault. After all, he read about a woman who many years ago cut off her husband’s penis while he slept, though in Greg’s case he felt no pain.
Greg got up and picked up his head. It was at room temperature. Somehow, the head was breathing. It was Jessica’s doing for sure. Didn’t she say a few times that divorces are too stressful?
Greg tried to re-attach the head. It didn’t stick. It threatened to roll down with every slightest movement. Finally, he found the perfect balance and was able to take his hands off. At this moment, Jessica entered the bedroom, a half-eaten apple in her hand.
Greg’s head apparently set on a very unnatural angle because Jessica screamed and threw the apple at him. It struck Greg’s nose. The impact was enough to ruin the balance. The head fell and rolled down the carpet.
Greg tried to tell Jessica that she was a sn
eaky witch, that he was gonna kill her for this, but his (or should it be the head’s?) lips didn’t move. Jessica took off, still screaming. Greg sat on the bed, his head on his lap. He was lost. He had to go to work; it was getting late. But he couldn’t walk into the office like that. Would it upset his boss? Greg’s thoughts squirmed like a bunch of worms.
Finally, after a long while, hunger set in. He thought about his no-fat milk and his sugarless, salt-free MushedWheatTM cereal and tried in vain to lick his lips. He put his head in the crook of his arm and descended the stairs.
Five goggled men in ballistic helmets and flak jackets stood there, training their guns at him. Jessica stood behind them holding a frying pan above her head as if she was ready to strike should the men’s weapons misfire.
"Put that thing down," one of the men yelled. "And raise your hands above your head."
Greg wanted to say that he hadn’t done anything wrong, and that he actually lived here, and may I see your warrant, officers, and that his hands were already above his head, and get me a doctor, please, but nothing came out from his cold lips.
One Buck Horror: Volume Three Page 3
