“What’s up, spaz? I haven’t seen you for years and look at you, you’re still the loser you were in high school.” I said nothing and tried to get around him and get back to my steaks. He moved in front of me again.
“Seriously?” I said. He smiled.
“Come on, ya spaz, let’s go outside and rehash old times.” His smile faded and, in a moment, I realized why. I was grinning hungrily at him and those pointed teeth were front and present. I also heard what sounded like a dog growling low and realized that too was coming from me. He stood aside and I quickly walked up to the counter. I had no further run in’s with Mr. High School.
I got home and went directly into the kitchen. I threw a skillet on the stove, turned the heat up to high and ripped open the steak package. I was panting and sweating at this point. I took the raw steak in hand and held it over the skillet, debating. I looked at the heated skillet and then at the steak and then back at the skillet. Without any more thought, I leaned in and took a great bloody bite from the steak. It was mana from heaven. Pure elation. Like nothing I had ever experienced before. Bite after coppery bite, I licked blood from my lips and chewed like an animal, ripping flesh and devouring every last bite of both steaks. Finally, with appetite slaked, I collapsed into bed. Sleep came like never before.
Waking up from a vivid dream of eating raw steaks, I quickly remembered it was no dream. The faint blood streaks mixed with my drool on the pillow told me so. Just a weird passing fancy I told myself, cleaning up the mess in the kitchen. Thankfully I had remembered to turn off the stove in my frenzy. I grabbed the milk jug and drank straight from it. It ran down my chin and splashed on the floor. What was happening here? It wasn’t until later that night that I truly became concerned. I had finished my Stephen King movie and was on to an old Freddy movie when that same vicious hunger cramped my stomach. I made another futile attempt at the contents of the fridge, but again to no avail. I went outside intending on going for more steaks, the appetite was leading me at this point, but ended up walking right passed my car. I walked in the dark night into what only came back to me later through random flashes in a dream. I fed.
The next morning, I woke up to the phone ringing. It was work. Was I coming in? No, I didn’t think so. Too sick from this new treatment I was on. They were not happy and told me that the boss would be calling later to further discuss the matter. I didn’t care. At the moment, my eyes were wide open and the small pile of bloody animal fur in the corner of my room had my complete and undivided attention. I stumbled out of bed toward it and saw what I could only assume to be the muzzle of a small dog sticking out accusatorily in my direction. The tongue lolled out. The eyes were dead. I ran to my cell and called Roy Reynolds. It then occurred to me…not a Dr. Roy, just Roy. Good ol’ Roy. What’d you get me into here, Roy? The phone rang and rang. I tried five times in all. Nothing. I threw on some clothes and ran out to my car. Time for a visit.
When I got to the dentist office, I ran in the front door and straight over to Roy’s office door. The door was closed and locked and the office was quiet and dark. I looked through the window and saw no furniture in it. I went over to the woman behind the receptionist desk.
“Excuse me,” I blurted out. “Excuse me, please.” She looked up concerned and answered:
“Yes sir, can I help you?” She saw something that unnerved her in my face; the sweat, the fear, something.
“I need to speak to Roy Reynolds. Will he be back soon?” The bewilderment on her face told me all I needed to know about good ol’ Roy. She puzzled and said:
“Who?”
“Roy Reynolds. He’s in that office right there.” I pointed. Her gaze followed my finger tip. She smiled nervously.
“That office is the office of Dr. Felix Monroe. He was transferred back to Germany a few days ago.” My heart stopped for a bit.
“Germany?” I was panting harder and leaning on her desk for support.
“Dusseldorf, I believe. He was only here for a brief stay. Some sort of consultancy exchange student type of thing. He won’t be coming back. Is there anything Dr. Bob can help you with?”
I looked horrified at her. “Dr. Bob?” I wanted to vomit. “Who is Dr. Bob?” She smiled.
“The dentist that performed your extractions. The other German fellow.” I stood upright and her smile vanished. I scowled at her and left. My head was spinning and I was in a daze, not to mention, the hunger was beginning to resurface. Walking back to my car, I had a gruesome realization. I was beginning to watch pedestrians and my hunger was growing. My mouth was salivating. My need was escalating. I hurriedly got in my car and peeled out. I drove for what seemed like hours, dodging calls from my boss and finally turning my cell phone off. What was I gonna do? I had no one to turn to now that Roy or Felix, or whoever he was, was gone. I needed a drink. It was just past sunset now and I pulled into a seedy little dive a bit outside of town. Its neighbor was a cornfield. I parked and went inside. I sat in a dark booth and ordered a beer. My hands had begun to tremor at the thought of a meal. Steaks? Small animals??? Oh, this had to end. Two big guys nearby were shooting a loud and boisterous game of pool and a cute little blonde was leaning on a table nearby. She looked over toward me and smiled and so I smiled back, just in time for gorilla number one to look up and see the smile. He abandoned the game and walked over to my table. Trouble.
“That’s my girl. You over here making eyes at my girl?” he growled. I looked down at my beer and shook my head firmly, not saying a word. He moved in closer. “Well, here’s what I think, I think maybe you just need to cool down a bit, sport.” And with that, he grabbed my beer and dumped it over my head.
I jumped up and out of the booth and went to hitting and being hit repeatedly when a big burly man at the bar shouted, “Hey, take it outside, guys!” The two gorillas dragged me out by the arms and I went, putting on a struggle for form’s sake but willingly enough to my own trepidation. We exited the bar and they dragged me around the side corner of the building and began taking turns wailing on me some more. At one point, noticing that no one was around, the hunger overtook me and I began biting. Clinging onto an arm and taking a big meaty chunk. They’d roll around on the ground screaming as I swallowed and dove back in for another go. Their fight was going out of them with their incessant blood loss. I finally went for gorilla number two’s throat and bite down hard. The splash of warm salty life’s blood down my throat and over my taste buds was electrifying. I came to life in an instant! He was dead and I chewed a large swath torn from his neck as I approached gorilla number one, Mr. that’s-my-girl himself. He was bloody in a number of places from all the bite wounds and I felt that I still had room for a few pounds of flesh in my stomach.
He rolled over and faced me, crying, “No, man, come on mister. Get on outta here. Leave me be now. You ain’t natural. Get on outta here. No!” was his last word on this earth as I bit violently at his throat. He gurgled and his body spasmed and finally stilled. I stood up, bloody and bedeviled, looking around. No one heard, no one saw. I made my way toward my car when a shadowy figure stepped out from behind a row of corn. He beckoned me.
“Jackie boy, what have you been up to?” Roy questioned with a smile. I ran cautiously over to him. The fear and anger and confusion welling up inside of me.
“What have you done to me?” I bellowed. His smile faltered for a moment, then returned.
“Jackie boy, I have come with more answers than you have questions. Care to go for a little drive?” I was weary, but accepted. “I’ll drive your car, you can um, clean yourself up while we talk. Deal?” I scowled.
“Another deal, Roy? Or should I just call you Felix?” His smile was a bit faded now but he went on:
“In the car, dear Jackie boy, and all shall be revealed to you. Oh, and I guess you might as well call me Carson. Carson Jones. Come on, I’ll explain everything, I swear, but we need to get away from here before the girlfriend comes looking for her stud.” We left.
The city
at night lit up by neon flashed by outside the windows as we sped to some unknown destination. Him at the wheel, me doing the best I could to clean up. “Many years ago,” he began, “a curse fell upon me. Passed to me not from the hands of a gypsy, but from some regular joe like myself. The curse was a transformation of sorts. I didn’t want it, didn’t ask for it. But that’s life, I guess. I didn’t wrong this other guy or hurt him in any way. That’s not how this particular curse works. You bear this particular curse until you find someone who you can pass it on to. The curse is a hunger, as you know, but it is a hunger that rewards in different ways. For you, you wanted your teeth back, so it gave you them, but it also must feed. For me, I had a brain tumor. Inoperable. Conservative estimate, three months to live. The thing about this curse that makes it so bad isn’t the feeding part. It’s that once you have reached the point where you can’t live with the feeding anymore, you desire giving it away to be normal again. The catch is, you can give it away if the other person agrees to it—more or less—but in the giving away of the curse, you give away the gift. You give it away and the new teeth will begin to rot within the week. They will crack and snap and fall out and you will return back to your dentures. Keep the curse, keep the gift. Those teeth will be with you until you die of old age. I know. In the many years that I have possessed this gift of curse, I have researched its back trail. The guy who gave it to me had skin cancer. He’s dead now. The cancer—once in severe remission—came back full force after giving me the gift and killed him inside of two months. The guy who gave it to him was a heroin addict. The addiction had gone away completely with the gift, but after…they found him overdosed a week later. The woman before him had been told she could never have children. Her womb was a desolation, a wasteland from God knows what. The gift, the curse, she bore two beautiful, healthy children. Twins. At their fifth birthday, she decided enough time had passed. She gave the curse to another and within three days, both children had been taken by one illness or another. Both in their graves now, as is she from the depression. You see what I’m getting at here? My brain tumor is back. I have not been to a doctor yet but I know what he will find. I can almost feel it growing.” He got very quiet and somber. “I gave it to you knowing full well it would kill me to do so. The feedings, I just couldn’t do it anymore. If it had just been the raw meat or the animals, OK. But I found a small pair of bloody shoes with…chunks still inside.” He wretched. “That was the final straw. I couldn’t kill good innocent people any longer just so I could live. You came along and the situation was perfect, sorry about that by the way.” I nodded, he continued. “If you ever want to give it away, the situation has to be just right for you too. But you will go back to the way you were before. Be sure before you do. Once done, can’t be undone.” He pulled the car over next to an old and busted pick-up truck. He put it in park. I pitied him and felt I understood the way things were a bit more, what led him to do what he did to me. I realized I hadn’t spoken a word this whole time.
“What if I don’t give it up? How does this go? Where does it end?” he smiled a half smile and said:
“You can try to reckon yourself with the hunger, but in the end, the hunger will always be there. No way around that. It won’t kill you if you ever give it up, but it might if you keep it. Beyond that, I have no other information to give you. I give you again my most sincere apology and truly hope you understand. And that I wish you the best in whichever you way you go with this thing. It makes you stronger and healthier, I know that much. Your teeth could probably bite through certain types of metal and be fine. If you are careful, you’ll never be hunted. If not, you’ll be caught and examined and torn apart on doctors’ tables to find out what you are. Whatever you decide, be careful. It was a pleasure to meet you…and now, I’ve got to put a few miles on before tomorrow.” He shook my hand, his cold and limp. The strength was already leaving his body. I saw shadows of death around the corners of his eyes. He had become gaunt since I last saw him a few days prior. He got out and I slid over. He walked toward his truck but then turned back one more time.
“If I could make a small suggestion…If you do decide to keep this curse and if you do feed…well, it just seems like you did the world a favor tonight taking out those two thugs back there. Might be a lot of good you could do in that arena. Just a thought.” He waved a final time, then drove out of my life for good. I kept a close eye on obits from both local and in general typing in all of his given names. Four weeks later, a Carson Aaron Jones died of a brain tumor in El Paso, Texas. He was 37. He was survived by no one. I closed my laptop and went to bed.
****
Six months later…two middle school aged boys were walking home from the park at around dusk through a ghetto neighborhood. They were caramel skinned and laughing at the jokes they were telling each other and randomly breaking into verses from popular rap songs they loved. A branch cracked in the brush beside them and they both looked closer to see what was there when a couple of big guys, dressed in black hoodies and wearing gold chains with pistol grips sticking up from in the front of their pants, approached them.
“Where you little g’s going? Don’t you know school’s out, sucka?” The thugs both laughed and slapped palms. The second thug said:
“Yo, we got a little proposition for you, homies. An opportunity for advancement in your community, you dig?” They produced a small assortment of little baggies full of different colored pills and powders and weed. “We need new sales associates in your hood and you be it.” He tapped a fore finger lightly on his pistol grip. “We as a rule don’t take no for an answer.” The two youths looked nervously at each other. They had both supported each other their whole lives and encouraged each other in never falling in with this life. They looked back up at the thugs just in time to see one get tackled to the ground be a human-beast. He came in fast and went for the throat. The second gang banger pulled out his 9-millimeter and got off two shots before the man-beast bit off his hand. He fell to the ground spouting blood and obscenities.
The man-beast looked over at the two frightened boys and said, “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m new in town. Gonna do my best to make the streets safe again. Spread the word. This city is protected.” He went back to the task at hand and ripped out the second thugs’ throat. After it was done, the man-beast disappeared into the trees in the gloom and the two boys hurried home, safe and sound, but never to see the man-beast again. Though the stories of it and all it was doing to clean the streets at night were bloody and heroic and widely known. The man-beast was a hero and local legend. He slept very well at night for many years to come.
****
4
“We’re All Just Trying
to Gross Each Other Out”
So, for our next tale of terror, our next platter of splatter, we find in the early hours of a Saturday morning the foulest creature of them all ~ the male teen. He is under the sheets in bed still fast asleep in his skivvies—stained with skid marks and a dull, damp urine patch to match—curled up in what can only be described as the fetal position. Gaseous trumpet blasts are echoing up from the depths below as he rolls over to his other side. A numb hand slides stealthily into the back side of those once proud—and once white—cotton underwear. A faint scratching noise comes from the area as, under the sheets, the rhythmic movement of a good old-fashioned American ass-scratching takes place. Another long ripping fart—this one really putting the fumes up into the already stale-smelling bedroom air—and a crusty, bloodshot pair of hazel eyes slowly cracks open with disdain, taking in the first piercing rays of morning sun. Sean Roth rubs his tingling, foul-smelling fingers in his eyes as the foulest of foul morning breath escapes in a great and gaping yawn. Breath redolent of the pack and a half of smokes he is up to per day and also of the booze he and his friends snuck at the party last night at Stubbs’ house. Stubbs was his friend from way back, like all the way back. All the way back to—when?—fourth grade, he thought. All the way back to when they had
experimented on each other by showing first, then sharing second their newfound enjoyment in rubbing and tugging on what was between their legs. They had never shared this secret with anyone else but on and off it continued throughout the years. Learning new things and sharing the revelations with their closest bud. Ol’ Stubbs’ parents had quite the liquor cabinet in their rumpus room and he and Stubbs and a few other friends had helped themselves to a bit out of each bottle, so as not to drain any one bottle to the point of notice. A great many flavors of booze got mixed last night, but hey, not like it was a first-time thing. Stubbs’ parents were such hardcore alkies that they drained the booze repetitively and replaced the booze constantly. They’d probably never even notice a bottle or two gone. Still, precautions had to be met to ensure future drinking binges. Now, this evil, hateful, sadistic morning…he was paying the drinker’s toll. Headache, body shivers, queasy stomach, dry cotton mouth. Ugh! Tasted like a cat shit right in his mouth! Blech. He poked a finger down into his asshole once more and dug for a few seconds…well, minutes. Once that was done, he threw off the sheets and swung his legs out of bed. Time to go drain the lizard. He wobbled up to his feet and stumble-staggered off to the bathroom. With a practiced move, he used one hand to pull down the elastic band of his drawers and pull out his dick. The other hand was propped firmly on the wall just above and behind the toilet for support. He leaned in and the tap started flowing. What a gusher, he thought to himself as his urine fire-hosed the rim, the bowl and the floor. Some of it sprinkled onto three of his toes. He lifted that foot up and wiped it casually on the back of his other leg. Holding the head of his dick as he pissed, some of the urine even got onto his fingertips. It was about the time he was finishing up that he started sucking absent-mindedly at his teeth. Something caught up in there from last night, a morsel of pizza probably. He used one of the urine-tipped fingers to dig it on out of there, looked bleary-eyed at the slimy bitelet, then put it back into his mouth. Swallowing and re-holstering his gun, he forgot to flush. He was a little more awake now and made his way over to the mirror. He stood for a moment looking at his borderline anorexic body. Not too bad, he thought vainly. What chick wouldn’t wanna look up and see this guy on top of her, giving her “a bit of the old in/out” (to quote A Clockwork Orange, his favorite movie). He turned his head slightly to the left and that’s when something unusual caught his eye. It was a pimple on that side of his nose. Unusual? For a teen? For a male teen? One who didn’t care what type of shit he put in his body? No, not unusual. Just new. He leaned in further for that all-important closer look. Man, it was hideous. How had he not felt this fucker first thing? It was big and bulbous, a red mass with a clearly white and ready-to-burst tip. Man, oh man, this was gonna be epic. If there was one thing he and his friends enjoyed it was grossing each other out. He ran and grabbed his cell phone. This was an important historical moment in time. It must be documented to the fullest. He set the phone up on record and aimed it right at his face, leaning against the backsplash of the sink. He got into position and put his two first-finger tips on opposing sides and took a deep breath. “This one’s for you, Stubbs,” he said as he squeezed mercilessly at the blemish. He saw veins stand out on his neck as he really put some gusto into the squeeze. His face was clenched and went a bright shade of pink, then on to red. He put a bit more oomph into it and it was Pompeii all over again. The pus that splooged out hit the mirror, the faucet, the cell phone screen. Some even hit the wall just to the side of the mirror. Goddamn, he was glad he recorded that. A Pulitzer Prize for that little baby. He grabbed a wad of toilet paper and wiped at the sore. He wiped four times in all, looking at what his body had produced each time, studying it, holding it closer for the phone to record. He used a fingertip and poked at the spent pimple. Here was some news. It didn’t feel…done. It felt as if that was just the foreplay and they were going another eight rounds or so in all. He rubbed his palms together like a batter getting ready to hit a home run and leaned back into the task. He reapplied the fingertips on opposing sides and began to squeeze brutally. Oh my god, this thing felt like it was filling up while he was squeezing it. Harder, harder and even harder still, he squeezed. A small droplet of blood appeared at the opening but so far, that was all. He relaxed a moment, inhaled, exhaled, then put everything he had into blasting this fucker out in to space. A small white bulge appeared through the droplet of blood and held fast in the opening. He strained harder. He strained so hard, he actually sharted in the process. Can’t think about that now, he thought ironically. Harder…harder…annnnnnnd…the eruption finally came, but with a little something extra he had not bargained for. A stream…a fucking parade of maggots came out with a ghastly plop into the sink and on the already smudged and smeared mirror. Their tiny little legs were frantic to gain some kind of footing in the confusion of what just happened. His face turned into a mask of terror. They were still sliding and plopping out of the pimple which felt again like it was getting fuller instead of the other way around. After a few seconds that felt like a lifetime, they stopped. The sink had a good twenty or thirty of the little bastards crawling and stumbling around in there. Streaked with blood and pus, they seemed to curl up and die a little time later. He looked back into the mirror, swallowing a lump that did not want to stay down, and saw the ass-end of one more tiny little guy hanging limply out of the pimple hole. Hole? Fucking crater is more like it. Jesus! He tweezed it out with his ragged finger nails—feeling the feel of the tiny body sliding out like a small turd—and threw it into the sink with a grunt of disgust. He washed the whole mess down the sink and cleaned off the mirror to the best of his teenage ability. He stood leaning on the sink and gasping for breath, trying to keep his stomach quiet. He usually threw up when drinking, but never the morning after. This, however, was not his typical morning after. He was panting, but it began to taper off some. He was getting his sad-sack shit together finally. He put his hand under the tap and ran some cold water. He splashed his face, then drew a handful up to his mouth to rinse out the taste of bile. His eye caught a tiny little wiggle and he glanced over to see one rogue maggot on the edge of the faucet. He vomited. A lot. Then he fainted. For a guy who liked to play gross-out with his friends, he was not off to a great start this morning.
Individually Wrapped Horrors Page 9
