Dark Light Book Three (Dark Light Anthology)

by Larsen, Christian A.

  Sutton felt movement deep within his belly.

  “Its mouth is opening,” Meloni observed.

  “Mouth?” Sutton echoed. A sharp twinge rippled through his entrails and the protrusion shot out of him like a frog’s tongue after a fly. The end of it connected with something meaty, issuing a moist twack! Then, it pulled back hard, and an obscene tearing sound filled the room.

  Sutton twisted around in time to see a good chunk of Meloni’s throat peel away at the protrusion’s behest. The doctor’s eyes widened. Blood poured down his chest. His mouth fell open, and he began to gurgle. The chunk of throat-flesh disappeared into the protrusion’s end, and the whole thing retracted inside Sutton.

  Whimpering, Sutton pulled up his pants and jumped off the table. He took care to keep away from the doctor, who’d fallen to the floor and now lay clutching his ruined throat. Red streamlets leapt from between the man’s fingers, the torn arteries beneath pulsing in time with his racing heart. Powerless to help, Sutton just stood and watched as the pulsing slowed to a weak dribble and the doctor stopped moving.

  “Oh God,” he said, his own heart pounding.

  As he lingered there, futilely wishing Meloni back to life, he became aware that the crimson puddle around the dead man was inching its way towards the door.

  “Shit,” he said, wondering how he’d explain what had happened when someone passed by and saw the blood leaking out. Telling the truth would only make him sound insane, and his spinning mind couldn’t think of a single plausible lie.

  Sutton felt time pressing in on him. Reasoning he’d better get out of there while he still could, he snatched his records from the counter and tucked them under his shirt. He then tiptoed carefully around the doctor’s body and towards the door. It was difficult keeping away from the blood, but he managed and slipped out of the room unnoticed. As he walked down the hall, a nurse coming the other way glanced up from the prescriptions she was reviewing and smiled at him. Sutton flashed her a return smile and the nurse continued on her way.

  Forcing himself not to run, Sutton exited the building at a brisk pace and hastened toward his car. He might not have been the sharpest knife in the block, but he knew it wouldn’t be long before the authorities came looking for him. Being as such, he figured it best to get as far away from Altoona as possible. And the best way to do that, he reckoned, was to requisition a car not registered to him. As it happened, his senile old neighbor, Mr. Danvers, owned a 1970 Plymouth Cuda that rarely left his garage. Sutton had secretly wanted to drive it for years, and it now looked like was going to get his chance.

  And the great thing was the old man would never know it was gone.

  * * *

  The motel room stank of cigarettes and old sweat. Sutton didn’t like it, but guessed at forty-eight dollars a night beggars couldn’t be choosers.

  He pulled the top cover off the bed and reclined against the headboard, pillow wedged behind his back. In the nightstand drawer next to him sat his Remington .38 revolver, the eight hundred dollars he’d cleaned out of his checking account, and his medical records. He retrieved the records and opened them on his lap. On the pillow to his right, his laptop sat booted and ready to Google.

  It was difficult to read what Meloni had scribbled, but after several passes Sutton got the gist of it. The doctor apparently believed he had an abnormally large parasite growing in his bowels, the biggest ever found in a human host. It was a nematode, or roundworm according to Wikipedia—perhaps an overdeveloped form of Ascaris lumbricoides. In true scientific fashion, however, Meloni went on to express a measure of doubt about this assumption, stating it was impossible to know anything without lab confirmation. He also expressed uncertainty about Sutton defecating somewhat normally in spite of the parasite’s presence and wondered if the worm hadn’t somehow made itself a functioning part of Sutton’s colon. If so, Meloni asked, why was the worm expelling waste from an orifice that also had teeth? Some species of worms used the same orifice to eat and defecate, but not the nematode. Was this some sort of new evolutionary mutation?

  The question was the last the doctor had scribbled.

  Sutton closed the laptop and put his records back in the drawer. He gazed up at the cracked ceiling; his thoughts went in a thousand different directions. Was all of this really happening? Did he honestly have a giant, murderous parasite living up his ass—a parasite that had effectively turned him into a fugitive from the law? Moreover, what was he going to do now?

  “Fucking surreal,” he said, rubbing his temples.

  His head hurt. He was stressed beyond belief and felt like shit from all the driving. He needed to rest and recharge the batteries. Perhaps if he felt refreshed in the morning, he’d ponder it all more thoroughly and figure out his next move.

  Thinking that sounded good, he yawned and briefly set his gaze adrift. After a time, it wandered to his suitcase, which sat on the floor by the window. As he peered at the battered old thing, a depressing thought occurred to him—the sum of his existence sat inside that small piece of luggage. It was a sum that included his favorite clothes, his medications, a couple of books and CDs, a little league trophy, some grainy photos of a family he didn’t like, and that was it.

  The treasure trove of a worthwhile man, it clearly was not.

  Tears welled in his eyes, and he wished he would’ve done more with his thirty-one years. Gone to college, obtained a real career, his post office clerk gig surely didn’t count, forged a relationship of any kind with someone. Something, anything to show he’d taken part in this life.

  “No,” he said somberly. “Not Daniel Sutton. Dude’s like the definition of worthless. And he has a killer worm growing in his ass.”

  The sentiment echoed cruelly in his head, and he turned on his side and cried. In time, the crying drained the rest of his energy, and he drifted off to sleep, where the tentacle-like fingers of nightmares readily pulled him down into their dark depths.

  * * *

  Sutton woke abruptly, swathed in sweat.

  He looked around and found himself in a dimly lit alleyway, pants around his ankles, squatting over some woman in a mini skirt and tube top. Her face, from what he could see, was smeared with too much makeup. It was also pale and lifeless.

  He cried out and tried to stand, but something rooted him in place. Panicking, he glanced between his legs and saw the pink protrusion spooled out from him. The end of it was buried in the woman’s neck. As he watched, it rippled in a rhythmic, upward pattern, and he could hear liquid sloshing inside it.

  Realizing it was siphoning her blood; Sutton scanned the nearby vicinity for a weapon. There was a malt liquor bottle within arm’s reach. He grabbed it, smashed it against the ground, and placed the biggest shard against the protrusion. The instant he did pain shot up into his bowels, and the thing broke its hold on the woman. It’s bloodied, bisected mouth then sprang up and locked itself around Sutton’s penis and testicles, its teeth pressing hard.

  “No! No! No!” Sutton squealed, dropping the shard. “I wasn’t really going to do it! I swear!”

  The parasite’s mouth let go of his genitals and lunged up at his face with snapping teeth—a warning gesture—before retracting inside him.

  Struggling to keep from vomiting, Sutton yanked his pants up and scurried towards the closest end of the alley. He paused where it opened unto the street, poked his head out, and had a look around. It appeared he was in the shitty part of some trailer trash town. The street was lined with bars, pawnshops, and liquor stores. He saw a few people milling about, several guys decked out in biker-gang leathers and a couple of women dressed like hookers.

  Wondering what the hell he was going to do, Sutton rifled through his jeans pockets in search of his phone. By some miracle, it was there along with his keys and wallet—a discovery that almost made him believe in God.

  “Small favors,” he said, nervously using his GPS app to determine where he was. Spartansburg, South Carolina, it said. About eight miles from his
motel. The town’s name jogged his memory, and he recalled having stopped there for the night.

  He retreated into the alley and devised a plan to get him back to the motel. Then he checked his clothes to make sure they weren’t doused with blood and stepped out onto the street. Keeping his head down, he scuttled along the sidewalk, heading north.

  * * *

  Sutton sat naked in the shower with the warm water running over his leg muscles, sore from all the walking. Beneath him, he’d packed a towel up tight against his asshole, or whatever it was now, to prevent the thing from coming out. He needed to think and preferred the parasite remain inside him while he did.

  He had to do something; that much was obvious. The worm had killed two people now, and he sensed it would kill more. It wanted blood, he knew. Craved it, subsisted on it, like a vampire. What was worse, after experiencing the worm’s second feeding, he too wanted and craved it. The compulsion wasn’t strong yet, but it was mounting.

  Then, there was the other scary thing. The worm apparently didn’t need him on board to do what it wanted to do. Somehow, it had taken control when he was sleeping and manipulated him like a puppet—for more than five hours. He had no doubt it would do it again too. Probably the next time he fell asleep.

  Yes, he had to do something. And soon.

  Gradually, an idea formed in his brain. He didn’t particularly like the idea because of what it entailed, but he suspected it was the only way out for him.

  He waited until the water became tepid, then got dressed and grabbed all of his belongings. Not bothering to check out of the motel, he hopped in the Cuda and headed to the nearest hardware store to pick up some duct tape and wire mesh.

  * * *

  The Cuda rumbled along I-85 south to the US-28 exchange where it then took US-28 all the way up into the Nantahala National Forest. Sutton enjoyed the ride as best he could and stopped for lunch in Clemson. He took care to gorge on red-rare steak, hoping the bloody meat would keep his digestive system in check long enough for him to do what he had to do.

  Nantahala was as beautiful as any national forest he’d ever visited, which wasn’t many. He was glad he’d chosen it. He wanted to die in a place of beauty.

  After nearly an hour of driving within Nantahala, he found what seemed to be a secluded hiking trail and parked. Leaving his keys in the car, he grabbed his backpack and set off into the woods.

  The trail was long and winding and it drove deep into the wilderness. As luck would have it, he didn’t come across another soul along the way. When he reached a spot that seemed deep enough, he abandoned the trail. Through the thick underbrush, he trudged and pushed onward for what felt like miles. When he could walk no more, he stopped.

  While catching his breath, he stripped off his pants, put the small piece of wire mesh across his backside, and began wrapping his pelvic region in duct tape, winding it around and around, looping it between his legs and back again. Once he had the equivalent of a duct tape diaper, he sat on the ground and reflected over a few things.

  Despite being a worthless sack of shit, Sutton knew himself to be a relatively decent human being. He abhorred violence, and it saddened him to know he’d been a party to two murders. Sure, it had been the parasite’s doing, but he reckoned that scarcely mattered anymore. He and the parasite were one now and his craving for blood had already grown threefold since leaving the motel.

  From this, he meditated on his future. Even without what had happened in the last few days, he never would have had much of one. He’d have continued on languidly, sickly, never contributing anything useful to the world, never making a mark. He wanted to though…quite badly. The way he saw it, ridding the world of this terrible parasite was his only means of achieving that end. It may not have been as romantic as saving people from fires or serving his country, but he supposed it was heroic in own right, and that was enough for him.

  Sutton took the .38 from his backpack and aimed it at his belly. He’d initially considered firing up his ass to be sure to hit the creature, but the movie Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead popped into his head, and he remembered that a slug up the ass was supposedly one of the worst ways to die. A better tactic, he resolved, was to fire several bullets into his lower abdomen, then put one into his brain.

  “Okay,” he said, steeling himself. “Here goes.”

  He cocked the hammer back. When it clicked, the parasite thrashed wildly inside him, seeming to become aware of impending doom. It thrashed so hard; Sutton bucked backward and dropped the gun. He felt the parasite try to project out of his anus, but the wire mesh and duct tape held firm. Then, it tried to gnaw through the barrier, but didn’t seem to have much luck with that either.

  “Fuck you!” Sutton cried out in agony.

  His hand reached for the gun, grabbing it by the barrel. The parasite thrashed anew, twisting around. A harsh current of pain exploded inside Sutton, nearly doing him in. It took all he had not to pass out. Underneath his abdominal wall, the worm burrowed, gnawing through the soft muscle and sinew.

  Sutton shrieked. Birds roosting in nearby trees fluttered away.

  The skin began to bulge just below Sutton’s navel. He shrieked again, and the worm burst through in a spray of blood. As it emerged, it opened its mouth and spat something gooey that narrowly missed Sutton’s face.

  Summoning what remained of his strength; Sutton jammed the revolver’s barrel into the parasite’s mouth and fired three times, killing it. The bullets came out behind him and Sutton fell back, his life force spilling into the dirt.

  A hazy time passed. He coughed, and everything went dark. He tried to move his arm to bring the gun to his head, but his mental commands went unanswered. He supposed it didn’t matter. It wouldn’t be long before he bled out, and he no longer felt any pain.

  Sutton had once heard that no one was an atheist on his or her deathbed. He’d always thought the saying laughable, but now, as death took him in its bony hands, he prayed he was wrong. He prayed for something…more.

  * * *

  The coyote had watched the motionless creature for a long time before deciding to make its approach.

  Cautiously, it drew near the rotting meat and sniffed the bloody wound in the creature’s middle. It started to steal a tasty morsel, a reward for being the scout, then stopped as its nose caught the scent of a more appealing smell near the creature’s head. It walked over and found the gooey pile of expelled nematode eggs. It sniffed them once before consuming the entire pile.

  Licking its lips, it let out a howl, signaling the pack to come feast. Then, it returned to the bloody wound began to eat.

  Miriam

  By Shaun Meeks

  My name is Charles Dunn, and this is my confession as much as it is my final will or an apology for all that I have done. I’m writing this in my former wife’s diary, one that she never had a chance to use, having died three days after I gave it to her for her birthday. It’s been sitting empty on her night table for over three years, as though I was waiting for her to write in it from the grave. She did finally speak to me.

  I hope I can express myself to you in a way that will make you understand why I made these choices…that there was no real malice involved. I am not some lunatic that went on a bizarre killing spree, doing the deeds that have led me to this Hell with no real motive or purpose. I will try to write this in a way that makes sense, but I am no writer. When Miriam was alive, she wished I had been one. She greatly admired Poe, Ambrose Bierce, and Stephen Crane. She dreamt that I, too, would pick up a pen and create a masterpiece. My path was a life of engineering instead—making clocks and tools, trying to invent new things to make life easier for people. Our house is full of clocks and little machines I had made up to make Miriam’s life more simplistic, adjusting her sewing machine and adding gears and pipes to her washing bin so that she did not need to ruin her soft, beautiful hands in hot water, soap, and starch.

  Day after day, I walked past the sewing machine, caressing the c
old metal body of it as I pictured her sitting there, busy making a new house dress or repairing one of her corsets or petticoats. The sound of it! Especially, after I added a foot pedal and hydraulic system that would make it easier to use… It was loud enough to drive most men insane, but for me it is a sound I miss more than I can say. It was a comfort to hear the machine at work, knowing that if I wanted to I could just walk from my workshop to her little sewing room and see her curled over her work, looking as beautiful as the first day I had laid eyes on her.

  The day she died, comfort went away. I left all of her belongings in the house, exactly where they had been as though any day she would return home, apologizing for her delay. For over three years, I held my grief down, denying it the way I had once denied that there were such things as miracles and magic in this world. I have since learned that like magic, grief does exist and when you deny such an emotion, it can grow far larger, bordering on madness.

  What I am about to speak of is not my delirium, easily cured by some elixir or tincture. This is not a story of my imagination gone awry because I sat day after day in a house that had become a shrine to my wife. What I need to speak of is as real as the paper upon which I write.

  Four months ago, my brother, Alexander, asked me to visit him. He lived across town with his wife and son. After reading the message, I felt a sense of urgency for my departure, and I went without haste. It was the first time I had made anything close to a social call since Miriam’s passing. As it happened, there was no real urgency other than a roast beef dinner being made, but it did me a world of good to spend time with the living instead of memories. It made me reflect on what I was doing to myself, letting my work fall to the wayside, allowing the shadow of grief to fall over me so dark and heavy in the last few years. When I left Alexander’s house, I headed home, intent on packing all of Miriam’s belongings away in the attic and trying to recover from the shadow that had fallen over me.