I wrote this awhile back, before Halloween. As the anxiety and anticipation for my favorite holiday weighed down on me, I found an inspirational bout of insomnia and decided to crank out several short stories, all having to do with the supernatural and the strange. They were all meant to be cheap thrill/chill gags but I remember particularly liking this one, I still do. It is one of my favorite pieces I've ever wrote and I do not mind reading it over and over again. Not to sound self-praising or egotistical, I hope not--I just really liked the whole process of writing this, from the original spark idea to the final product as it stands now. Most of my other projects, I start out really liking then through the process of putting it out, I grow very impatient and disconnected to it.
Enough rambling on my part. I present this short story. It may look like a daunting read but it is only a little over 3k words so I have faith you will all be able to get through it. And, of course comments/complaints/criticism is both welcome and implored! There will be typographical mistakes, of course so try not to be bothered by them too much.
Lovers and Hunters
Sitting in my car, I watch as they entered the bedroom.
My stomach dropped. He was with her. He was supposed to be alone. He was supposed to be alone in the house, right now. Alone just where I left him when I told him my mom had called me back to California on an emergency.
Thinking back on it now, he hadn’t even tried to convince me to stay. He had expressed the briefest moment of show, or displeasure that I’d not be home for the next 3 weeks.
I left this morning, as his fiancée. Tonight I sit in my car, his murderer.
Not that… I’d killed him. Not yet anyway. As they moved together through the bedroom (my bedroom), he bumped into the standing lamp and their shadows arched up wildly. I could hear her nasally laugh through the open window. He laughed along with her as he righted the lamp. She crossed the room, unbuttoning her shirt as she walked. Dropping it to the floor, he turned around, removing his shirt as well.
My breakfast from hours ago threatened to rise up in my throat. A tightness gripped my chest as my field of vision began to blur. I couldn’t handle this. I wanted to scream, cry, run away and never look back. He had always acted so loyal. While we were dating, he’d always tell me to promise him.
“Promise me.” he’d say. “Promise me that I am the last thought in your mind before you fall asleep and the first feeling in your heart when you wake.”
The memory broke me. I wept. In my car, A/C blasting to keep the windows from fogging, I wept and shook. I tried to grip the steering wheel as I cried, my hands floundering in my watery sight. My hands caught the under side of the dashboard and I felt the dull pain permeate through my body. Anger began to flood my system, like black ooze I envisioned it filling me. I was still sobbing uncontrollably, but inside I was in a rage. Hatred chocked me off. My hands gnarled into fists, then flexed into claws. My chest heaved the deep sobs out.
Without thinking, my right hand grabbed the cold barrel of the .9mm. The cold metal shocked my warm hands and I almost seemed to wake up. I’d never fired a real gun before. My dad had taken me hunting a couple times as a kid, but I had only ever been allowed to shoot an air powered rifle. I remember the first time, my dad instructing me proper gun etiquette. Simple things like never pointing it at my face, even when I was sure it was empty or always checking the clip to make sure you were not empty and even to keep count of the amount of shots that I fired so I’d always know exactly how many were left.
Flipping the clip open, I popped it out of the gun body and examined the ammunition. I popped out each bullet, the copper tips and silver bodies shinning in the dim light of the street lamp. I counted out loud between sobs.
“One.” I imagined lifting the gun.
“Two.” Leveling it with his head.
“Three.” Seeing the blood spray her pretty little face.
“Four.” Then, turning the gun on her.
“Five.” Hearing the loud pop as it ends her.
“Six.” Turning out of the room.
“Seven.” Leaving the bloody mess to someone else.
“Eight.” Making the 911 call.
“Nine.” The story I’d tell.
“Ten.”
“Ten.”
What would happen next? Would I go to jail? Undoubtedly. I couldn’t cry self-defence. I am going to sneak into my own house, up to my own bedroom to find my fiancée fucking some stranger in my bed, then blowing both their brains out. Maybe I could plea insanity? I imagined the investigators finding the bus ticket purchase on my credit card bills. I imagined him standing up satisfactorily, shouting:
“I knew it! It was pre-meditated. She found out her man was banging a neighbor so she lost it! She bought the tickets to convince Casanova that she’d be gone, then she borrowed his gun without him knowing it, snuck back in the house while they were doing the dirty and lit both their asses up. Murder 1. She is gone forever, boys.”
I guess insanity wouldn’t work either.
Struggling with the last few bullets, stuffing them back into the magazine blindly, I heard one voice rise above all the others. It was the internal voice, the one that was angry. It continued to talk me through the process.
You can say that you wanted to surprise him. That you lied to show up in the house with nothing but a trench coat on, then when you walked in on them, he rushed you. You grabbed the gun out of the top drawer, fired once and somehow managed to kill both him and his whore.
Trying to imagine the possibility of hitting too people in the head with the same bullet to be astronomical, the inner voice began again.
What about the show you watched? Last week. The cop said that most people, due to adrenaline empty the gun without realizing it. That could work. Say he rushed you and you fired at him, then when the cops tell you that you emptied the gun into both of them, you can act surprised. Or maybe get a lawyer to slap some Emotional Distress on your case.
The inner voice went silent as I crossed the lawn, making my way to the back door. I suddenly became aware of being in movement. Just a moment ago, I was sitting in my car crying and now I was silently and bare footedly crossing the wet lawn and following the wall as I traced my way to the back door. The spongy ground make wet, smooshing sounds with each footfall. I couldn’t help but think of all the night crawlers mowing around under me. Ever since the first time my grandmother had taken me out in her back yard after a big storm with a flashlight, I can’t think of wet ground at night without thinking of night crawlers. Seeing their dark pink bodies for a moment in the flashlight’s beam, before they are sucked back into the Earth by unseen sections of their bodies. It had always amazed me that the creatures, these legless, armless and apparently eyeless creatures could sense the light on their bodies then race back into the Earth to hid in it’s cool darkness.
Now of course, I thought of the night crawlers eating. Their fat little bodies poking in and out of his body. Her body too. Maybe, I could bury them together. Apparently he wanted to be with her forever, if he couldn’t stand being with me. I had thought we’d be together.
Feeling the pain edging slowly back around me, the inner voice started up again as I grabbed the hollow rock out of the garden. The third rock on the left from the cactus.
You could do that, easily. Maybe you can catch them while they are still in bed together. You can sneak in, blow them a couple new orifices, then wrap them up in the sheets and drag them back to the car. Then you can take them to the park, back in the area where you guys went, that one afternoon. Remember? No body came poking around there and you were loud that time. That’d be the perfect place for him and her.
The park rangers hadn’t even picked up the blanket we’d left behind, I recalled as I slid the key into the lock. We’d had a nice little picnic there, all afternoon long, then just as the sun went down, he went down on me. We had left later that night upon waking up nearly frozen to death and covered in bug bites, some in strange and awkward places, and had rushed home. I had left behind the blanket, the basket and half my clothes along w/ his shoes and tie. The next day I returned to see it all right there still, waiting for me.
I wonder if he took her there too, on night he was at work “late” and you were home. I bet he takes all of them there. So it was never your place to begin with. It was his place.
“And it will be his place, once I get up there.” I whispered as I heard the lock click open. I grabbed the handle and pushed the door slowly into the house. Instantly, I was hit by the smell of alcohol and Chinese food. As quietly as I could manage, I slipped inside the house, my muddy feet sliding around on the tile floor, leaving a trail of warped footprints behind my progress. Evidence to later clean up. I clicked the door closed behind me and locked the door again. Should one of them run, I wanted to be able to catch them before they made it outside. Not that our neighbors would notice. Our closest neighbor was a ranch house and their property was filled with horses and sheep. Also the fact that their house was over 10 acres away helped. They’d probably never even hear the gunshots.
Following the edge of the counters, I made my way around the dark kitchen and into the dinning room. On the table, two of my hand-made taper candles were lit. The warm flickering light and subtle smell of the infused Rosemary and Lavender oils I had used while making them on infuriated me more.
That asshole had the nerve to use your hand-made candles over Chinese food for this slut?!
I ghosted along the only full wall into the living room. As soon as my left hand hit the sewing table, I knew exactly where I was. I took four quick steps to the front door and put the chain in its place. I flipped the deadbolt lock in place and moved over to the staircase. From above, I could still hear laughing, but slowly it was becoming moaning.
I took the first step, making sure it was my right foot. There was a pattern to these stairs that I’d learn in the first couple weeks of living here. Starting on the left foot, I hit nearly every creaky part of each and every step. If I started on the right foot and kept my feet near the edges of the steps, instead of the middle, I could make it up the stairs with out a single step’s protest. I didn’t even bother to hold onto the banisters as I moved up the stairs. Instead, I relied on my feverish oversensitivity in my heightened state of awareness.
Step, step, step… avoiding the basket set on the fifth, sixth and seventh steps, I moved up each step, counting the steps in my head. There was fifteen in all. When my foot hit the floor of the second level, I felt everything become brighter. It felt like I could almost see in the dark. There was a slim shaft of light coming from the bedroom. It filled the middle of the hallway and as I crossed the hall, my white legs reflected the light, blindingly.
The laughing from the room was coming to me so much clearer now. I couldn’t help but find the sound infuriating. Continuing my ghostly path along the hallway walls, I followed the short landing and approached the door. I could hear his low moans and her high pitched giggles. I could also hear the rhythmic wet sounds of flesh on flesh. The sound seemed to sync to my muffled heartbeat. Or was it the other way around? Either way, I stood in the hallway, my bare feet covered in drying mud, the edges of my trench coat rubbing the back of my calves, a gun in my right hand and my left hand rubbing my numb face. I couldn’t seem to feel anything yet I felt everything so much crisper. My breathing was quiet and shallow, moving in and out of my body quickly. My eyes were no longer straining to see but allowing everything to make its way into them. My face was cold and my hands were sweating. I continued to rub my face as the sounds from the room grew louder. I wiped the tears from under my tears, smelling the chemical twang of my mascara staining my cheeks.
Her laughter was maddening.
I pushed the door open, stepping into the room as I did so.
I instantly placed my back against the wall and brought my left hand up to act as support for my right hand in holding in the gun. Aiming carefully, I prepared to pull the trigger and empty the clip.
Everything up to that moment had been mixed speeds, the world speeding up and slowing down but now everything was at normal speed, but my mind. My mind whirled at breakneck speed trying to put together what I saw.
I saw the woman, sitting upon his chest. She had her back to me, she was riding him as her back arched and her head rocked back and forth. But along with those motions, so too did strange formations all around her. From out of the flesh down her back, all along her spine, small flesh colored tentacles broke free and wriggled around her frame. The ones higher on her back, nearest her neck were small and seemed to vibrate with speed. Lower down the back the tentacles grew bigger as well as longer. These ones moved about like arms, swaying up and down, back and forth. They were the same color as her skin, but the farther away from their points of origin, the darker they grew, strange patchwork of stripes beginning and continuing until the tips. The tips of the tentacles were black, totally and completely. The had strange black talons on the ends of the bigger ones.
Forgetting to breathe, damn near forgetting everything else, I tried to move along the wall to get a better look at her face. She was blocking my view. Gathering the courage or perhaps just letting it carry me, I moved around to the left side of the bed and I could see her pretty face. She was younger. She appeared to be very young, maybe 16 or so. Her hair was cropped around her face, a light blonde color with small rhinestone heart barrettes in it. Her eyes were closed, but it was her mouth that captured my total attention. Her lips were parted widely, smeared red lipstick all over them, but in place of her tongue were two thin tentacles. The were much thinner than the ones on her back, even the ones around her neck, and these ones were of a different color. They were a bright pink. Following the path of the two tentacles, I found them to be dug into Randy’s mouth.
His wide eyes looked up in horror at me as the tentacles disappeared down his throat. He moaned, much quieter now and I could see, two of the tentacles from her back and wrapped around her hips, up over his chest and were around his neck.
I screamed.
I couldn’t seem to stop it. I looked back to her face and her eyes were open, staring right at me as I began to back away from the scene. A single tentacle removed itself from her hold on Randy’s throat and flashed out at me, making contact with my chest and sending me backwards against the wall. The gun went off once, the bullet flying off toward the roof. The impact pressed all the air within me out in a loud but short burst.
My feet gave way underneath me and I fell backwards, the hard landing on my back knocking the remaining wind out of me. I felt something grab a hold of my leg. A thick, muscular rope-like feel as it closed around my ankle, cutting off circulation to my foot. I sprawled my arms out, looking for something to grab on to. I felt the gun in my hand hit something and I remembered that I was armed. I craned my arm backward and began firing.
A series of shots went off. The hold on my leg loosened and I heard a strange scream. I scrambled away, trying to remember how many shots I’d taken. Six. It was six. Or seven. No it was seven. Reaching the wall, I planted my back and brought the gun in front of me. She was standing up now. She was completely naked and the tentacles all seemed the pull back, ready for an attack. I pulled the trigger two more times and found it was empty. She was stilling moving.
The shot in the roof. That made ten. I remembered that Randy had another clip in his drawer. I pushed the eject clip button with my thumb as I got up, running for the drawer. Hitting the dresser, I grasped the knobs but at the same time someone grabbed the back of my head, a handful of hair coming out as they dragged me back to the ground. I didn’t let go of the dresser and the entire thing fell over on me.
Sucking in all the air I could force into my lungs, I screamed as the weight fell on me. I grabbed at the drawer, yanking one of the knobs right off. I threw it off into a corner as something came around my neck, thick fingers.
Not fingers.
My inner voice corrected me. I felt my head being lifted up as her young face filled my vision. I gasped for air as my left hand grasped around the inside of the drawer for the magazine. Finally, my fingers brushed cold metal. I grabbed the clip and as my head began to pound from pressure, brought the magazine into the gun. She lowered her head to mine. I began to choke from the pressure of the tentacles and before my eyes could capture the movement, the two thin tentacles shot out of her mouth and made their way into mine. The warm, slimy things, moved around my mouth and began to move toward the back of my throat. They sent hot waves of pain through my throat, pinches of scratchy pain triggered tears to flow from my eyes. My gut instinct was to scream again but as the tentacles move further down my throat, strange talon-claws shredding my insides... The scream was impossible to manifest.
The feel was such as being widened. I the two tentacles were spreading within my esophagus, stretching it painfully apart as they moved around in the warm darkness. The image of the night crawlers sprang to mind, their pink bodies moving around blindly in the Earth. A strange haze began to fall on my thoughts, losing the edges of my vision I relied on my hands to work without my conscious effort, fumbling around above my head.
I mutedly felt the click of the magazine into the gun, brought it to my temple, moved up a foot or so until I saw it level with her temple and fired.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
Seven.
Eight.
Nine.
And by time I counted Ten, she had slumped over. I grasped at the tentacles in my throat, pulling them up I felt the small talons clawing the inside of my throat. I sat up, perching on my knees as I worked. Once I was sure they were out, a torrent of blood and chunks of ripped muscle mass falling to the ground under me as I struggled to breathe. I wrapped my fingers under the tentacles around my throat, which had loosened almost entirely.
I didn’t even bother to look back on the scene. I ran downstairs. I found my own muddy footprints waiting to greet me. I moved off to the right, swallowing a big gulp of blood and trying to breathe. I entered the garage and found the old 5 gallon gas can. I retraced my steps again,splashing the fuel up the stairs, around the living and through the dinning room. I splashed it all over his car in the garage and then with the last little bit, I trailed it to the back door, one of my home-made taper candles in hand.
Unlocking the door, I tossed the candle into the open back door, shutting it as the flame roared to life and the wall of heat hit me.
I even made sure to lock the door before hurrying off to the sprinkler system. I set the sprinklers to seat going off in five minutes and continue until five a.m. I put the spare key back in the hollow rock, third rock on the left from the cactus
Back in my car, I watched the house begin to burn. The yellow glow started small in the kitchen, then moved into the dinning room as the curtains went up. By time the car exploded in the garage, most of the house was already engulfed. The sprinkler system roared to life though they would not put out the fire they might keep it localized.
Blood spilling over my chin and soreness covering my body, I started my car and began the long drive to California. My mom was still waiting for me.
And there it is. Maybe not all that "scary" but creepy and perhaps unsettling or unexpected? Either way, I hope everyone, especially you, enjoyed it.
Wed Dec 29, 2010 3:51 am
