“What is it, honey-bean?”
“Let me help you. Let them possess me.”
In an instant her father's eyes darkened and his smile became lascivious. She saw nothing in his eyes to indicate he was still aware, still fighting. The demons had come on too strong.
“There is nothing we'd like better,” the demon responded, his voice a dozen voices drawn tightly together like stitches in a wound. His body became suddenly rigid, as if his blood had turned to metal. And then he flew backward, his head smashing against the tile floor.
“No, you can't have her!” He kicked away from her, his body quaking, his eyes rolling back to full whites.
“Daddy!” She ran to his side and scooped his head into her lap. His mouth was foaming and he radiated heat. Fearing he was having a seizure, she searched her surroundings for something to stick between his teeth.
His eyes fluttered and then steadied when they found hers. “Leave!” he grunted. “Get away from me! Run. Maggie, run!”
“Demons!” she called out, stepping away from her dad. “I order you from my father's body. And I welcome you into mine! Leave him. I welcome you with open arms! Enter me, I implore you. Possess me, I invite you. Now!”
Green lightning tore through the kitchen. The air smelled of autumn's burnt leaves and sulfur. She could no longer see her dad's eyes; they now glowed so brightly, like twin emerald suns, that she could no longer look into them.
Black smoke seeped from her dad's mouth, churned the air between them, then shot out toward her, until it funneled into her mouth. And then… and then the demons entered her, willfully, completely, with her full permission.
Maggie collapsed in a heap. Her eyes flashed green and everything she saw was filtered through their eyes. She lay limply, fighting her darkening vision.
“Maggie. Maggie, what did you do? Please, don't take her. Don't take my girl!”
Maggie's body began to twitch, and then a heat exploded across her skin until she felt swaddled in liquid flame. It sank down through her pores and into her blood and organs, an insurmountable fever she could never fight off. A fever that would scorch her until nothing was left but a sooty outline.
She spastically fumbled her hand along her side. It fell away from her body, not listening to her commands. She concentrated on nothing more than her hand and her grasping fingers. Finally, she reached the lip of her pocket and climbed her fingers inside like a mountaineer summiting a lofty peak. Once inside, she took hold of Cheddar's baggie.
Her dad wept by her side, unaware of what she was attempting. But the demons knew. And they fought her as she brought the baggie of dope to her lips. They were too late. She ripped the baggie apart with her teeth, and within seconds she tasted the bitter contents, and then soon her mouth became numb with it, and then so did her limbs, her faculties.
“Maggie, don't… What, what did you do?” He shook her violently. Slapped her hard across both cheeks. She hardly noticed. She felt her thick tongue loll between her teeth. She tasted blood, smelled burnt leaves and sulfur. Her eyes were heavy, her vision numb, dull and fleeting.
Maggie's heart sped out of control, her brain filled with a heat that would never dissipate. Maggie was haunted. Maggie was damned and dying.
* * *
Maggie's heart started to succumb to the internal heat, became arrhythmic and weaker. Ever weaker. And as she could feel her life fading, as she felt her dad compress her chest as he fought to keep her alive, she couldn't help smiling.
The gaps between the beats of her heart widened, weakened further still. She no longer blinked. Her dad no longer struggled to keep her alive. Instead, he brushed the hair back from her forehead, planted a kiss there. Then he wiped away the vomit clinging to her lips.
Maggie continued to smile. Couldn't help it. She had saved her dad. Had taken away his demons. Most of all, she'd heard the answer to the question she most wanted answered. It felt good knowing that she wouldn't have to run any more.
She could feel the demons inside her tapping at the recesses of her mind, seeking escape. Her smile widened.
Someone knocked on the splintered kitchen doorway. A man popped his head inside the room.
“Is it done?” the man asked. He stepped closer. Maggie could see that it was Cheddar. He stooped low over her body, craned his neck lower still. He blinked his watery bloodshot eyes. Such beautiful blue irises hidden among the sorrow. He looked scared. But also relieved.
“Yes,” her dad said. But it wasn't him. Not exactly. “It's over. Tell you the truth, the hardest part was fighting off Des. He's still inside here kicking and screaming. I know it's hard for humans to see a child put down, but it had to be done. She was too dangerous for my kind.”
“But it's over right? I can have my daughter back?”
“But of course. I never back out on a deal.”
The demon shook hands with Cheddar, and between their joined hands a puff of whirling black smoke arose. The cloud grew, spiraling into something large. Something human-shaped. The decayed stench of the kitchen was overwhelmed by the smell of burnt leaves and sulfur.
About the Author
A native of the Chicago suburbs, Glen Krisch hopes to add to his list of ghosts he's witnessed (two), as well as develop his rather pedestrian telekinetic and precognitive skills. His novels include Amazon Bestseller WHERE DARKNESS DWELLS, THE NIGHTMARE WITHIN, NOTHING LASTING, ARKADIUM RISING, and LITTLE WHISPERS. Before becoming a full-time writer, he worked a lot of unfulfilling jobs that only reinforced his ambition to chase his dreams. Besides writing and reading, he enjoys spending time with his wife, his three boys, simple living, and ultra-running. Sign up for his newsletter by clicking here to receivethe latest news about upcoming projects (and receive freebies along the way).
EVERYWHERE YOU’VE BLED
and
EVERYWHERE YOU WILL
by
Max Booth III
1.
Jeremy watched the blood flow out of him, helpless and terrified.
It wasn’t the first time he’d ever bled—at twenty-six, it seemed like he’d been bleeding his entire life—but this was the first time he’d bled from this specific area. He didn’t even think he could bleed there. Yet evidence of the contrary presented itself before him. Presented itself aplenty.
Bare ass on the sticky, hot sofa, absorbing all of his sweat and fear. Knees spread as wide as the jeans around his ankles allowed. He reached down, hand trembling, and gently grabbed his shaft, working his fingers up and influencing another drop of blood to trickle from his urethra.
Oh fuck, oh fuck.
Against the better judgment of a colony’s worth of protestors screaming within the claustrophobic confines of his skull, Jeremy touched the tip of his cock, probing the leftover crimson discharge like a child testing a swimming pool’s temperature one toe at a time.
A load of blood.
An ejaculation of cancer.
Jesus Christ, what was this?
A wave of sickness cycled through his stomach, washed up his throat in a similar method a snake might regurgitate a mouse gone turncoat. Innards acidic. Teeth caught in a perpetual ache. His tongue felt numb and impossibly heavy. If he vomited, he feared he’d never stop.
What if the vomit was also blood?
Jeremy wiped his hand on his thigh and retrieved the half-empty can of warm Coke from the end table and finished it off in one desperate swallow. Trying to wash away the awful copper taste in his mouth that inspired mental images of pennies raining from a dark cloud. But the taste wasn’t limited to his mouth. It was the smell that hit him the hardest. That goddamn smell. Like rotten vegetables. Spoiled milk. A corpse’s inevitable decay.
The source of the smell leaked down his dying erection, making itself cozy in his pubic hair.
Jeremy touched it again. Another spurt of blood emerged.
A kid poking roadkill with a stick. Hypnotized.
The toilet flushed in the bathroom and Eliza stepped out. She wore
one of his flannels and nothing else. Jeremy watched her near, eyes wide, not knowing what to say, not knowing what to do.
She cocked her head, concerned. “What’s wrong, honey?”
And all he could do was look down at the blood, then back up at her. Then she saw it, too, rushed over and sat beside him, examining the murder scene.
“What the hell? Why are you bleeding?”
“I—I don’t know. I just—I don’t know.”
“Does it hurt?”
“No. Not really. No.”
She started to inspect it closer, but winced. The thing looked so pathetic—limp, shriveled, bloody. A hole to crawl into and expire within sounded heavenly right then.
“Did you bite me, maybe?” He closed his eyes, curious how far humiliation could stretch.
“What? Uh. No? I don’t think so.” A look of betrayal flashed briefly in her expression.
“I don’t think so either.” They shared a moment, staring at the absurdity of his cock. Then: “I’m gonna be sick.”
Jeremy pulled his pants up and rushed to the bathroom. He collapsed over the toilet and gagged. Nothing came out. A minute of painful dry-heaving later, he surrendered and sat atop the commode, once again pushing his pants to his ankles. The bathroom’s strong bulb presented his cock in a clearer light. It was swollen and bruised. When he worked his hand up his shaft, another trickle of blood emerged. Not a lot, just a drop or two, like he’d taken a piss and didn’t shake well enough. All rationality pleaded for him to stop touching it. Compulsion, however, proved to be the more convincing ally.
He kept squeezing until blood eventually ceased to appear.
Could she have bitten him? It was possible. He hadn’t felt her teeth—not like that, at least—but she’d been working her mouth so fast, maybe she’d nipped him. Crushed something on the inside. How would he know? Caught up in the heat of the moment, mind lost in a sex-fog, time progressed in transcendental leaps. She could have bitten him.
Or maybe he was just dying of some fucked-up cancer.
Or, more likely, the hepatitis was catching up to him. The silent assassin at last. Calling his number. Time to go, kid. Time to truly understand the impact of consequences.
Hell. Who knew. Wasn’t like he was some doctor. Wasn’t like he was anything.
He wiped himself with a sheet of toilet paper then stood and tried to piss. A stream of clean, bloodless urine shot out and splattered against the bowl.
Gone.
Gone, but still, it didn’t change the fact that he had, indeed, bled from his cock. And not in any random place, either. He’d bled inside of Eliza. Eliza, who hadn’t rushed to the sink to spit up his seed. Eliza, who’d swallowed it all without even looking, swallowed every drop like she was dying of thirst and he possessed the only cure.
Oh fuck, oh fuck.
Three years ago, when the doctor passed on the bad news, Jeremy had asked him if he’d still be able to have sex. The doctor had assured him it’d be fine. Hep C wasn’t transferred through semen. Only blood.
The doctor failed to acknowledge the possibility of fucking ejaculating blood.
How does something like this happen?
Eliza and Jeremy had been dating six months now. The more time that passed, the harder it became to tell her about the hepatitis. Most of the time, he forgot he was even infected. Symptoms rarely showed.
The prospect of her running out on him as soon as she discovered the news terrified him to the core.
Well, you’re gonna have to tell her now, you stupid piece of shit. Look at what you’ve done. You’ve bled in her mouth for Christ’s sake. Look.
Jeremy looked down at his deflated cock. Red and sticky and toxic.
Fuck.
2.
He told her he wasn’t feeling well, which wasn’t a lie. He’d never felt more sick in his life. When she kissed him goodbye, he was convinced he could taste his blood in her mouth. Driving home, he kept licking his cheeks, trying to rid the phantom plasma. His arms shook, overcome by fear, threatening to swerve the car off the road. A sick paranoia entertained the certainty that passing traffic knew exactly what he’d done, and they were all deeply ashamed of his existence.
You fucking coward, they said. You fucking pussy.
Sweat drenched Jeremy’s clothes as he pushed down on the accelerator. Solitude beckoned. Too many eyes out here among strangers. Too many foreign thoughts tangled in the waves.
Then time skipped a beat, transferring him instantaneously from the car to his studio apartment. He dived on his mattress and curled up, knees against his chest, arms around his shins. The sweat refused to relent. Every inch of him begged to be scratched. Not just scratched but clawed, over and over again, until flesh ripped from bone. He couldn’t decide if his teeth hurt more with his mouth closed or opened. The cravings for heroin hadn’t been this strong in a long fucking time. Holy shit. Someone had stuffed his ears with M-80s and lit the fuse with a grin. A marching band conducted an orgy of distortion inside his head and there was nothing he could do to shut them up.
The park was only a couple blocks from his apartment. It’d be so easy. So simple. Just put one foot in front of the other until he bumped into somebody with something to offer. He had the money. Rent was already paid. The car was paid. Netflix was paid. He could really do this. It’d be okay. Just once, to numb the anxiety, to give him the courage he needed to tell Eliza what he’d poisoned into her system.
Before he could find the energy to stand up, he fell asleep. When he woke up, the craving had temporarily numbed, so instead he made a ham sandwich and watched Bob’s Burgers. The cartoon failed to drill into his attention span. Concern for the future of his swollen, bruised dick littered the highways of his conscience. Had the bleeding been a one-time freak occurrence? If damage remained, surely blood would have returned by now. Unless the problem only affected him during ejaculation.
One way to test it.
The idea seemed absurd, but he blanked on any other options. If somehow he hadn’t infected Eliza already, he couldn’t risk it happening again. He needed to know.
He closed his eyes and attempted to conjure Eliza. Thought about the first time they’d been intimate together. He’d met her at a pet store while looking for a fish to gift a coworker who’d recently lost hers. He was hoping to use the fish to his advantage and ask her out on a date. They’d been flirting with each other off and on for almost a year now. This huge motherfucker of a spider caught his eye as he headed toward the aquatic section, so he stopped and watched it crawl around its terrarium awhile. Eventually his trance was interrupted by a girl asking him, “You like spiders?” He gasped and flinched. Eliza stood next to him, hands on her hips. He’d never seen someone so attractive. Words failed him. She smiled and leaned in and repeated the question. All he could do was nod. “Yeah,” she said, “me too. Spiders are my favorite. So many people are terrified of them. Maybe that’s why I love them so much.”
They ran into each other later that day at a drugstore. They laughed over the coincidence and decided fate wanted them to go out for dinner. Two weeks later, she invited him to road-trip to a weird music festival up in Austin. One of those weekend-long concerts where everybody’s naked or on the verge and completely wasted. The music wasn’t really his taste. Dark electronic shit. Experimental industrial noises blaring over barely comprehensible chants. A couple passing stoners called it witch-house rock. Appropriate. Eliza seemed to dig it, and that was all he cared about. Later that night, drunk and sprawled out on a blanket in the middle of a field of strangers as the music refused to end, they made love. The warmth between her legs provided sanctuary from the cold. In that moment, the hepatitis wasn’t even a thought. It was just him and her and everything else in the universe ceased importance. And sure, the likelihood of passing on the virus through semen was slim to none, but the obligation to warn her remained. But it was too late. The deed was done.
The next week, after the concert, when they fucked for a s
econd time, he had no excuse save for cowardice. Every time afterward, it became so much easier to pretend he wasn’t diseased, to pretend he was normal.
And now she had swallowed a load of his blood. All because he was too chicken shit to be honest with his girlfriend. Goddamn he was pathetic. His whole life was pathetic. Yet, somehow, he found himself still obsessing over the way her mouth had worked him over, how wet her lips had been, how warm and strong and in control. How she’d feasted upon him like he was her dinner. Ravenous. He would have given her anything in that moment and the way her eyes looked up at him told him she knew it. His life. His soul. Everything. It was all hers.
In the bathroom, standing over the toilet, Jeremy came—hard. An ejaculation not only immense in power, but also in pain. He’d never passed a kidney stone before, but he imagined the sensation to be similar.
His load shot into the toilet bowl and splashed in the water, instantly turning the liquid a bright red. A thin stream of blood dripped from the head of his cock. Unable to control a series of tremors running through his body, he surrendered to the toilet seat and buried his head in his palms, blood dripping between his thighs.
For the next hour, Jeremy did nothing but cry and bleed.
3.
He considered calling in sick the next morning, but figured it would be suicide. Sitting around in his apartment all day freaking out about his cursed dick would guarantee a relapse. He’d flee, screaming, to the park. Grab anybody within reach and plead—beg—for a fix. Just throw away all the work he’d put into staying clean. Stab a needle into his veins and blissfully forget his worries. So he bit his lip, got dressed and drove across town to Walmart a half hour before he was scheduled.
He paced in front of the time clock, chewing on his tongue and scraping dirty fingernails through his hair. The midnight crew from last night’s shift eventually swarmed down the hallway toward him. Eyes black and exhausted like they were withdrawing just as badly as Jeremy. He backed up and let them punch out, then snuck up to the machine and swiped his own employee ID. Still a few minutes early, but fuck it.
Garden of Fiends Page 18
