Individually Wrapped Horrors

by Eric Joel Kleinschmidt, Sr.

  Dr. Chase had left his office the day before, after all the fireworks had gone off and he was sure Harold was a safe distance away, and had gone home. He did paperwork for the next seven hours to try to calm his nerves and take his mind off of his problems. Around 10 o’clock that night, he went upstairs to his room. He grabbed a pair of sweats and a tee shirt and some underwear and headed for the bathroom. He walked in the bathroom and put the clothes on the toilet lid. He looked in the mirror and saw he looked like shit. He was still fucked up over that little scene at work. He would have to deal with work in the morning. For now, he felt like a shave. He opened the medicine chest and grabbed out his gear and began to set it up. He had the shaving cream all over his face when he began to make the first pass with the razor. He did not see the dark silhouette behind the curtain of his clawfoot tub.

  He placed the razor on the sink and turned on the hot water. After his face was thoroughly rinsed off, he grabbed a towel and dried it off. He hung the towel on the hook and absently pulled the shower curtain open. That was when he came face to face with the decomposing corpse in his clawfoot tub. He felt his heart begin to jackhammer in his chest and he stumbled backward against the closed bathroom door. The corpse stood its ground, but beckoned him with a bony rotted finger. His eyes grew pale and vacant as—from a great distance—he felt himself walking over to the side of the tub. It’s deflated sunken eyes stared grotesquely into his.

  “We have a great deal of work for you to do. You and your friends alike. Takers. Inflictors of pain and sorrow. Sadists, liars and cheats. Money hungry men, always out for more, for someone else’s more. Your hell awaits all of you very soon now. Go, and remember me not. I will come for you.” He stood still and silent, unmoving in the slightest, as that bony beckoning finger now reached out to its length, still just inside the perimeter of the clawfoot tub, and touched lightly on his forehead. He fell like a sack of grain to the hard floor. He would wake the next morning with what felt like a motherfucker of a hangover, but no other recollection of the night’s events.

  ****

  “And that’s it,” Dr. Tobias Chase concluded. “After Harold left my office that day, I remember going home and putting in long hours on the paper I was doing, then nothing. Always nothing, came Harold’s voice echoing back to him. I must’ve put on one hell of a bender after that because I woke up with a bitch kitty of hangover. And that is my top client for this year.” He looked down and saw his hands had developed a very real tremble. He covered one hand with the other and rubbed them together like he was cold. The others had all grown still and quiet. He looked around the room, mentally surveying the group. “What?” he asked them.

  “I think you win the prize, Toby. Jesus fuck, man.” Dr. Taylor said. They were all getting up to stretch when the head staff member came in, followed by the entire rest of the staff. The twelve men looked at the staff members questioningly.

  “What is it, Nigel?” Dr. Dunn asked. That was when the twelve men saw their eyes. They were all completely blank, milky, clouded over. The staff members all waited just behind Nigel.

  “Sirs,” Nigel began, “we must be going. The time has come.” The twelve men looked around at each other and began to snicker.

  “Go?” asked Dr. York. “Go where, you silly buggers? There’s a blizzard raging outside in case you hadn’t noticed.” Everyone was on their feet now with this new uncertainty. Something not right was now afoot and every one of them felt it in their bones.

  “Go, sirs. We must go. We have to touch Chris. Chris Michaels. We’ve got to see him, got to touch him.” He said dreamily. As the other men gathered in a tight cluster, Nigel brushed past them on his way toward the door. One by one by one, all of the eyes of the twelve friends began to grow milky. They forgot all about their protests and the raging blizzard outside and their now spilling drinks as the crystal glasses fell unwanted to the floor and shattered. They all began to turn toward the door. Ten feet or so from the front door, the whole group of them stopped as there came a booming sound, as of thunder, pounding at the door. It shook in its frame, which was no small trick since the door was solid oak and four inches thick at least. The booming continued as the group of the friends and the staff all stood motionless, eyes vacant. One final ringing boom and the door burst inward in a spray of wood shards, metal and glass. The figure beyond the door, just outside the resort, was the rotting, decayed corpse of a woman. She stood, untroubled by the whipping winds or the blowing powder. Unphased by the freezing temperatures. The group of the staff members began again to chant:

  “We have to see Chris Michaels, we have to touch him,” as they slowly shambled out the front door into the icy grips of exposure. None were ever seen or heard from again. The corpse woman had simply moved aside and let them stroll out the front door to their waiting deaths. She then moved again in front of the twelve friends. The remains of her eyes lit up in their sockets as she used some power within her to free the twelve friends from the spell of the meteorite. They all came to and looked around at each other.

  “What the fuck is that?” Dr. Woods cried out. Dr. Chase looked and saw Imogen’s corpse. He had full and total recall of that night’s events.

  “NO!” he screamed wildly. “NO! NO! NO! NO!” He screamed again and again. The others had joined in screaming until capillaries in their throats began to burst and they were tasting their own blood as they swallowed small amounts.

  “You are the twelve. I have work for you. You have all been damned to forever help wayward souls with no help for yourselves. No rescue from the voids I must send you. You have been judged, so shall it be until time itself crumbles into so much dust in the desert of reality.” Her macabre eyes flashed once more, a brilliant jade color that blinded the men instantly and set all of their skin and hair on fire. They writhed in agony, rolling around on the floor in futile attempts to put themselves out. The corpse woman watched all of this as their flesh and muscle burned away to reveal the bone that lie beneath. The screams went out as vocal cords and lungs erupted into charred embers and finally into so much ash in a winter wind. The group of friends, now hideously burned to a skeleton clan and black from the lick of flame, lie scattered about the floor like so much detritus. She walked among them, a corpse goddess among her army of the dead, and bid them rise. They all did so without question or protest. They were hers now, hers to command, her puppets. You will go where needed, transcend all of time and space and even reality if I command. You will go now, your first job will be to find the twin boys, Victor and Vincent and help their lost souls find their way back. Go now.” Her voice was booming and demanding. The skeleton clan all stood together. One final flash came from her eyes and their grotesquely burned figures were cloaked in living black robes. The twelve figures pulled their hoods up to hide the sight of themselves and turned to leave. They walked four steps, then vanished by a soft curtain of blue flame that appeared from out of nowhere. They were gone. The staff were gone. Only Imogen remained. She looked up at the sky through the driving snow. It began to dissipate and slow and finally to come to a stop altogether. The clouds melted away with supernatural speed and the full beauty of the naked sky loomed down on her. She saw the full moon and ten billion stars lighting a pathway in her mind to the events as they were to begin unfolding.

  “Let it begin,” she said simply. Then she, too, stepped behind the curtain of blue flame and was gone.

  ****

  That same night, in a science lab in Baltimore, Maryland, something was going dreadfully wrong.

  ****

  12

  “Such a Mess We’ve Made”

  (Part One: The Dead Moon)

  The cold, eternal nothingness of space stretched on for well beyond any being’s true understanding. Devoid of sound or light in most places, a wasteland beyond the realms of reality and the realms of monsters. No sound, even now, as the long, gleaming hull of a ship came into view. There, starlight reflecting weakly off of its smooth surface of unknown metals an
d equally unknown origin. A vast and titanic structure that was gliding silently along. A dim glow to either side as the forward engines kept it on a steady course at a steady pace. It cuts tranquilly through the darkness, purpose unknown to all save those who inhabit the massive ship. The long rectangular shape is offset only by a small tower that is lined with a row of viewing windows, lit from the inside. From this great distance, we can see the full length of the alien vessel as well as the tiny silhouetted figures that stroll back and forth in their busy activities within the illuminated windows.

  A man-shaped silhouette from within the vessel paused momentarily at one of the viewing windows to observe the tan and golden rings of Saturn. Two small moons locked in the rings were visible as the sleeping giant absently turned. Spinning itself back to sleep, the planet grew shadowed then dark as the vessel droned silently past.

  Passing through a small cluster of asteroids proved to be nothing of concern for such a mighty craft as this one. The cosmic space debris bounced harmlessly and soundlessly off of the sides, deflected as easily as a gnat and headed out into the darkness of a new realized trajectory. The silent voyage continued onward. The great blanket of twinkling stars stretched out and away in all directions. The figures at the observation windows became clearer and appeared to be holding some type of digital clipboards. The long, slender fingers were concealed with a thin glove of a satin-type of material. The slender fingers tapped and drew symbols of writing on the screens of their digital clipboards, making notes of all that could be observed on this particular voyage. They were humanoid in shape, but only just. They were all clad in grey and blue suits, designed both for protection and altered slightly in design for rank and identification, and they bustled around the fully carpeted room in the control tower. The control tower, just there at the head of the ship, stood high and—from a distance—slightly resembled a sight at the end of a gun barrel. The rest of the grey hull of the ship was that smooth, opaque metal that was beset with no windows or viewing ports of any kind. The engines and defense departments took up a great majority of that allotted space. Although, to be fair, there wasn’t much of a need for the defense department, other than the occasional comet or meteorite to deflect or destroy. No other crafts were ever discovered, no other forms of life had ever been detected out here in the void. They traveled on, lightyears from home, with only one destination, one mission…answers. Their only known contact in the entirety of the universe had gone dark and their objective was to find out why.

  They had long kept open communications between their world and the dark world, albeit the communication was one sided, as they listened and observed and occasionally sent messages that were often misinterpreted, but were never knowingly responded to. They had helped this dark world come a long way and the world had never even known it. Too busy with its own devastations and desperate clawings toward advancement, it was a world and a race of children, too eager to run to learn first how to crawl. They had watched and monitored with undying patience, for this truly was the only other race or specie of intelligent life they could detect in all of existence, but this race hurt itself and any other life form it encountered and was therefore deemed too unpredictable to open a line of direct dialog with. Superstitious beliefs in primitive gods and such gave the specie and undying war-lust that set them back hundreds of years every millennium or so. This specie invented war and illness as a way to ensure more profit for some and long, painful deaths for others. They often did things of that nature to one another, and thusly to all, but there was also a peace and tranquility to a large portion of them, a beauty. When observed from a distance, much of their way of life was brilliant and breath-taking. A great portion of their music inducted new and soaring feelings into their limited range of emotions. The beauty of the dark world itself was beyond their understanding. It was so much nicer to observe than their own planet, so many more colors occurring naturally that their vision took some lifetimes to adjust to. Initially, their poorer eyesight had not been equipped to handle such a radiant array of colors.

  It had been some time now since any communications, one-way or any other for that matter, had occurred with this world. It was as if the whole world had gone dark, hence the nickname. They assumed it to be something blocking or otherwise obscuring the transmissions sent off into space and beyond by the dark world. Whatever was the cause, their race had begun to feel alone in the universe again, and consequently decided unanimously to send out this risky voyage to find a cause. Rarely had they journeyed this far from home. Many of the crew knew it to be their final voyage, that they would not live long enough to again see the beauties of their own world or the families they had come to love. There were a great number of unknown factors, as they themselves had only begun to traverse the great void of the universe a few centuries prior to this voyage, and in all that time, this was only to be their sixth and longest voyage to date. They were advanced when in comparison with the dark world, but still felt like children stumbling around in the dark alone themselves. Tensions were high, but expectations were great. They were all seeing much of the universe that no one else on their home world had ever or would ever see. They sent back continuous transmissions to their home world, recording everything and advancing their own scientific studies exponentially, a great portion of which was awe-inspiring and beyond belief. Generations to come would write poems and songs and make all kinds of entertaining light dramas about the findings of this voyage, the voyage itself and of course the valiant crew that put their own lives aside to undertake this mission of peace and possibly of rescue. The vessel smoothly and silently sailed on.

  Two sleeps had come and gone and they were now passing the great red eye, as some on the dark world called it, or—“the great god Mars.” The reddish-orange eye gazed longingly at the vessel sailing slowly by, then turned and likewise went back to sleep. They observed in great awe at the magnificent beauty of the swirling color and the landscape as seen from this distant. Video footage was shot by the onboard computer system and everything they saw and much they couldn’t see from the tower was recorded and transmitted home. Mars was well-known on their home planet and was held in the very highest regard from mythical to scientific aspects. All walks of life had heard the stories told and the songs sung and the dreams dreamt. Mars began to fall behind them and, with a pang of regret at having not the time to stop and enhance their view of the great red plains, they continued forward. The dark world lay just another sleep ahead at current speed. A great spectrum of dreams came to the entire crew of fifty men and women aboard the vessel that sleep. Everything from a beast with a great red eye following them in a menacing fashion to a loving and forgiving god with that same great red eye, watching over them as they slept.

  That sleep had been interrupted abruptly by the computer systems flashing out warning as large chunks of space debris began crashing into the forward sides of the hull. They were entering an asteroid belt where there had never been one before. No damage came to the ship with the shields well in place, but the anomaly of the newly formed belt gave a new distinct feeling of unease to the entire crew. Unspoken, yet felt by each and all, they slowed their speed to maneuver the debris. It was shortly after this new discovery that the computer’s guidance system became slightly confused, for lack of better terminology. There was supposed to be a large moon directly ahead on their current course, but it was gone. Well, mostly gone. The new asteroid belt! They slowed as they approached the moon’s known orbital location and all crew members approached the observation windows with dread as they beheld the sight of the dark world’s moon, now in sheared off sections and resembling the “exploded view” style of diagram. They brought the vessel to a slow, then full stop. The sections of the moon, looking a bit like dried sections of citrus fruit torn from the whole, hung suspended in darkness. Illuminated by the craft’s forward lights, they beheld a terrible sight. Large and twisted sheets of burnt metal hung suspended there in the wreckage of that moon. On the captain’s
command, they proceeded forward at a greatly reduced speed.

  They stood watching from the windows, arms behind their backs in a thoughtful pose. They watched the cluster of moon fragments and scorched metal bounce soundlessly off of the hull and move aside for their passing. A frozen human arm exhibiting the same blackened scorch marks slowly came toward the window, then was quietly deflected to the side. A silence tinged with deep-felt dread filled the control room. They all held their breath with the briefest of gasps. None of them had anticipated this foreboding sign. All solemn faces turned to the captain. He looked on through the wreckage of the remains of human bodies now bouncing freely off of the front of the hull. He looked for answers down at his feet momentarily, then back to the window.

  “Steady on. Slowly, respectfully. We must clear this debris field.” The smooth human-like skin on his face had drawn up into worry lines. For all his calm, he was visibly shaken also. This macabre turn of events was foreseen by no one. The line of thinking was that something was corrupting communications transmissions, not that the cease of transmissions could be due to anything like this. They silently pressed on.

  Once clear of the body and debris field, they could now view the darkness of the planet that lay ahead of them. One of the other officers in the control tower made a whimpering sound and pointed out a window to the starboard side. Two human satellites drew closer to each other and closer still and collided. There was a brief pop of explosion and fire, then any fire drew back up inside of itself in an implosive manner and all was again dark and silent. They all looked on toward the still planet they were approaching. Something was very dreadfully wrong here. There was no light, no feeling of life. No sense of a thriving civilization.