SNM Horror Magazine

 THEME:

Classic Wordsmith Prose in the Tradition Poe & Lovecraft.

Night of Stolen Dreams -- Liz Strange / SOTM!

Born in a Dead World -- Daniel Fabiani /3rd Place

Behold, The Retch -- Danny Rider

The Deep Blue Doom -- Robert Nicholas

SEE ISSUE BELOW

Night of Stolen Dreams

Liz Strange

I saw the advertisement on a bulletin board outside of the office of one of my professors. I had just come from a discussion with him about the progress of research for my master’s paper on seventeenth century French literature -- a topic I had long since begun to dread, when I realized I hadn’t checked the notices in a while. Though my time was precious, I still needed to pick up odd jobs when I could to help cover the cost of school expenses and rent on the house that I shared with another undergrad and her baby. 

There didn’t seem to be anything that suited me until I read a postcard in the mail written in elegant penmanship, advertising for a babysitter. A new family had recently moved to town and was looking for an intermittent babysitter for their six-year-old daughter. I wrote down the number, hoping that nobody else had been given the position yet.

I called as soon as I got home and was just about the hang up (after letting it ring numerous times) when a breathless female voice came on the line.  “Hello?”

“Yes. I was calling about the babysitting position. I saw the card on the bulletin board at the college.”

“Oh, yes.” A beautiful, low voice. Hesitation. “How wonderful.  Could I ask your name?”

“Susan Wright. I’m a literature major.”

“Well, Susan, you’ve called at just the right time. My husband has an event to attend tonight and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to accompany him because we hadn’t found anyone to watch Magda yet. This must be fate. Can you come tonight?”

I couldn’t believe my luck. “Sure. What time do you need me?”

“We’re supposed to leave by seven thirty. If you could come by a half-hour earlier, that would give us some time to talk and I could show you around the house. I need to make sure that you and Magda will get along because she can be, well, a handful sometimes.”

“Sure, that sounds great.  And I’m sure that your daughter and I will get along just fine.”

I followed the directions to a house on the far side of town in a more upscale area than that to which I was accustomed. It was the type of neighborhood where you paid not only for the size and style of your home, but for the privacy. It was a beautiful house, a gothic revival I think they called it, with an enormous front veranda. Dusk was just settling when I pulled up in my old wreck of a car and for an instant I felt a chill of unease wash over me. 

It was so still and quiet, it was unsettling. I shook it off as I stepped from the car, silently chastising myself for being silly. I pulled my old backpack, which was stuffed with books, from the backseat. I hoped after the child went to bed that I would be able to get some reading done. I walked up the front steps and just as I was about to knock, the front door creaked open.

Again, I felt the uneasiness lingering in me and I had to force myself to smile to cover my discomfort. But the smile faltered as I came face to face with the voice on the phone. There was no doubt she was an incredibly attractive woman, but there was something strange and terribly cold about her beauty. She was quite tall and thin, with gorgeous auburn hair that fell in waves down her back. Her skin was a creamy, flawless ivory; her hands long and delicate. Yet there was something about her that unsettled me, a darkness that lurked in the depths of her sea-green eyes.

She extended her hand to me and without thinking I found my own in her cool, dry embrace. Her grip possessed more strength than I was prepared for. Then she smiled and the sight of her perfectly white teeth dazzled me. It was like I was mesmerized by the sight of her, yet also completely repulsed, and there was no separation of the two feelings. Then all the reservations vanished. “Susan, I presume.  I’m Imogene Hartwick. Please come in.”

“Thank you,” I murmured, the sound of my own voice strange and distant, and I found myself moving into the foyer.

The house was lovely on the inside, accented with beautiful rugs and dark wood furniture, antiques and expensive pieces of art. As we moved from room to room, there was a wonderfully enveloping scent of lavender. I couldn’t decide if it was coming from the house itself or its mistress. And like its owner, the house had an immense beauty and attractiveness to it, but underneath, a strange coldness.  We finally settled in the front parlor, where there was a fire crackling, and I asked about the child I was there to look after.

“She’s upstairs with her father. They’ll be down in just a few minutes. I thought it best that we have some time to talk and get to know one another.” Her eyes pierced me with their sharp directness. Her voice was so soft, yet serious. I was filled with a sudden, inexplicable nervousness. She began to fiddle with the diamond necklace that lay across her pale throat as she spoke to me. “You see, we've had difficulty with sitters before because of Magda’s behavior. She’s a – special child.” The word special took on an ominous tone, which intrigued and worried me.

“What do you mean by ‘special’? Does she have some kind of health or mental problem?”

“No, it's nothing like that. That, in many ways, would be more favorable to what we go through with our daughter.” Again, that cold, beautiful smile. “It’s more of a behavioral problem. She’s what some people might call a “disturbed” child. And please don’t take that the wrong way, it sounds more terrible than it really is. Generally, she is a normal, happy child like any other, but sometime she has episodes.  She has suffered a trauma that she will not be able to recover from.”

She regarded me with great concern, obviously trying to gauge my reaction, but at the time I wasn’t really sure how I felt. I was apprehensive, there was no doubt about that, but not willing to make a decision until I had at least met the girl. “Well, why don’t we see how it goes tonight and if we’re all happy with the results, we’ll go from there,” I said.

She smiled thinly and nodded. “I’ll just go and get her then.”

While she went to get the girl, I went across the room to look at the family photographs that were displayed on the shimmering surface of a baby grand piano. The child had the same unusual beauty as her mother, but her eyes were dark, like the man in the photos, whom I assumed was her father. He appeared  to be much older than Mrs. Hartwick -- which was not an entirely unusual situation. He had thick, silver hair and a domineering presence. I noticed, as I looked from picture to picture, that the man never smiled. There was something about the look in his eyes that disturbed me and I quickly replaced the frame I was holding and returned to my seat.

Mrs. Hartwick returned, ushering in a sullen-looking little girl with her. The child was pale and thin with a wholly unhealthy appearance to her. She regarded me suspiciously; heavy dark circles under her eyes. Though I smiled to reassure her, she quickly turned away.

Her mother gave a nervous snicker, looking uneasy and though every fiber in my being told me that something was not right, I remained where I was. I came over to the girl and knelt down in front of her.  “Hello Magda. My name’s Susan.”

“Say hello, darling,” her mother prompted her when the child remained silent.

“Hello.” Her voice was barely a whisper.

“Like I told you, she’s had a hard time. She’s still not…well -- and she certainly will never be the same.”

“Can I go back to bed, mother?” She looked to her mother who nodded then left the room.

“She’s a bit upset that we’re going out, but I don’t think that there will be a problem. I have left the name and number of the hotel where we’ll be. And my cell number, just in case.” She paused and looked up in response to the sound of a closing door. “We’ll be home in a few hours.”

I walked her to the front door and watched as she made her way to the car where her husband was sitting in the driver’s seat, waiting for her. As the car slowly drove away and disappeared out of sight, I had an almost overwhelming urge to run after them and beg them to not leave me alone with their child. Instead I went back to the parlor and pulled out the book I had been reading at home before arriving. I found it difficult to concentrate, and though I had read certain sections several times, I couldn’t seem to retain any of the information. The house was so quiet. I decided to check in on Magda, who hadn’t made a sound since her parents’ departure.

I tiptoed up to the door that Mrs. Hartwick had pointed out to me on our tour of the house. I paused briefly, again intensely aware of how still the house was. The door was open slightly and I pulled it a little wider. Inside the room it was as quiet as a tomb and was almost completely dark. From the weak moonlight that spilled in the window, I could see the little girl curled up on her bed, apparently sound asleep.

I sighed with relief and went back downstairs to attack my studies with a new vigor. The next time I looked up from the book, three hours had passed and my head was throbbing from reading in the sallow light. I closed the book and made another quick check on the child. She was still sleeping and I didn’t think there was any harm in closing my eyes for just a few moments. The Hartwicks should be returning soon.

I must have drifted off to sleep because the next thing I was aware of was the sound of an approaching car. I sat up quick, momentarily disoriented. I looked at the clock and found that I had been asleep for almost an hour. My headache was gone, but my body was sore and my mouth was dry. I stood up and almost lost my equilibrium. I had to place my hand on the arm of the couch to steady myself. As I looked down, I realized that my clothes were damp and rumpled, almost as if I had been perspiring -- yet I felt chilled to the bone.  I wondered fleetingly if I’d had a bad dream, but couldn’t remember dreaming at all.  It was as if the hour had simply vanished.

Outside, a door closed sharply and I thought I had better check on the girl again before the parents appeared. I ran upstairs and was strangely relieved to see her still asleep in her bed. I was silently thankful she hadn’t woken up while I was asleep.

Her mother was in the foyer as I came back down the stairs.  “How was she?” she asked with a strange tone to her voice.

I forced myself to smile, though I was feeling unnerved. “Fine.  She went right to sleep and didn’t make a sound all night.”

Her mother frowned. “Really?  I’m glad she wasn’t any trouble.”

I went to the parlor to retrieve my bag. I looked about the room uncertainly. I had the strangest feeling I'd forgotten something, but didn’t know what it could be. I looked through my bag and made sure that all my books were there then came back into the foyer.

“Are you alright, Susan?” Mrs. Hartwick asked sharply.

I looked up from my bag and saw she was regarding me with concern. Her expression seemed to fuel the unexplained panic that was building in me. I had to get out of that house. “Yes, I’m fine.  I’m just tired from all my reading.”

Her concern became fear. She put a hand like ice on my arm and looked at me with piercing eyes. “You didn’t fall asleep, did you?”

I swallowed painfully as her words cut into me. “No. Why?”

She pulled her hand away and stepped back slightly but her eyes didn’t lose their panic. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound so accusing.”

“That’s alright. I really should get home though, I have lots of work to do tomorrow.”

“Right. Well, thanks again Susan. I’m glad things went well.”

She handed me some money and I shoved it in my pocket and left as quickly as I could without seeming like I was running away. As the door closed slowly behind me, I thought I heard the sound of Mrs. Hardwick’s heels pounding furiously up the stairs. 

Once I was in the familiarity of my own car, the strange panic dissolved and I was left feeling foolish. Why was I  so afraid? In all honesty it had been the easiest babysitting experience I had ever been paid for and it was definitely the nicest home I had ever been in. I pulled down the long driveway, scolding myself for getting so spooked over nothing.

Nearing the end of the driveway, I leaned down to turn on the radio. When I raised my eyes again to the night in front of me, I was startled to see a woman standing not twenty-feet from the car. I pulled the wheel to the left and slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting her. As the car shuddered to a stop on the soft shoulder, I tasted the coppery flavor of blood in my mouth and realized I had bitten my tongue. 

I looked out at the woman and saw she was holding something that looked like a length of rope in her hands. She was looking about so frantically as if searching for something or someone, that she barely noticed the car until she was almost on top of it. I opened my door and stepped out into the cool night air. At the sound of the car door opening, she rushed toward me. I felt dread washing through my body.

As she got closer to where I was standing, I saw it was a leash she was holding in her hands. Her eyes were red from crying. When she spoke her words were shaky and rushed. “Have you seen a dog? A small dog with black and brown fur? I let him off to go for a run, like I always do and he just took off. I heard him barking and growling like he was chasing something and then I don’t know where he went. I’ve been looking for over an hour and I still can’t find him.”

An hour?

When those words left her mouth, I shuddered uncontrollably. I looked back in the direction of the Hartwick’s house. That would have been when I was asleep, I thought.  I shook my head and tried to appear calm. “No, I’m sorry.  I’ve been inside all night.”

The woman opened her mouth to speak again, then turned and walked away. As I got back into my car I heard her calling for her dog.  I put the car into drive and drove away from the house as quickly as I could. I spent the whole ride home peering into my rearview mirror, as though something might be back there, following me home. 

As I finally drifted off to sleep that night, I had to smile at my childish behavior. Nothing happened. The Hartwick’s might be a little strange, but they certainly weren’t dangerous.

When she called me again a few weeks later, I brushed aside any reservations and accepted. Again, Magda was asleep the whole time and each time I checked on her she was curled up like an angel on her bed. Like the previous time I awoke at the sound of the Hartwick’s approaching car, realizing I had fallen asleep. 

A few days later, as I sat at the table over a cup of coffee, an odd article caught my eye. It appeared that a herd of cattle on a farm near the Hartwick’s house had been attacked and two of the animals were killed. The animals had been savagely violated and there were bite marks of an undetermined source found. The close proximity struck me as odd, but it couldn’t have anything to do with the Hartwicks. Did I think they were out attacking farm animals while I was babysitting their child? I laughed out loud at the ridiculous thought.

Over a month later when I was home watching my roommate’s daughter, while she spent a rare night out with her boyfriend, I received another call from Mrs. Hartwick. “Sorry to call last minute like this, but I was wondering if you were free to sit for us tonight?”

I hesitated, but didn’t think my roommate would mind if I brought Bailey with me to the Hartwick’s. “I can come, but I’d have to bring another child with me that I’m already watching tonight.”

“Oh…I don’t know if that’s a good idea…”

“I don’t think it will be a problem. Bailey’s a very easy child and she won’t fuss or keep Magda up if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“No, I wasn’t worried about that.” I could hear her sigh. “I guess it’s alright then.”

I was over there an hour later with the diaper bag and portable playpen. I left a note in case Bailey’s mother returned before I did, but didn’t think that would be the case as the Hartwick’s were always home at a reasonable hour. Mrs. Hartwick eyed me uneasily and she seemed to take longer to leave than she normally did. She checked on Magda twice and then seemed to relent. Finally, it seemed they were on their way.

 I watched out the window as she walked to her car and for the first time caught a glance of Mr. Hartwick in the flesh. The moonlight was very bright that night and as she opened the car door I clearly saw the profile of an older man with a heavy jaw, long nose and full eyebrows. Then the door shut behind her and the car pulled away.  Something about him, in that quick glimpse, had been strange, but I couldn’t quite pinpoint it.

As I predicted, Bailey was fine in the strange surroundings and went to sleep in the playpen without any fuss. I sat in my usual resting place on the couch with my papers and books spread out around me and went about working on my term paper. Within an hour, my eyes grew heavy and I fell asleep.

“HE HAS CLAWS!” the words ripped their way out of my throat as I awoke from a dream and I knew in icy certainty that it was more than just the workings of my imagination. I saw the moment, replayed again and again, as the door opened and I understood what had been so strange about the husband’s appearance -- as brief as the moment had been. The bright, silvery moonlight had revealed a pair of large male hands, covered with thick dark hair that ended in long, yellowed, deadly sharp claws. I heard myself whimper, blinking wildly as my eyes adjusted to the almost complete darkness of the room.

I leaned over the end of the couch to the table where I knew a small lamp sat. I almost knocked it to the floor as I fumbled with the switch for what seemed like an eternity. I finally managed to turn it on. It cast a soft, hazy light, but it was enough to see the vague details of the room. I lunged towards Bailey’s playpen, heart pounding, and looked inside. I felt my knees buckle and my mouth was instantly as dry as sand. I gripped the sides of the playpen and willed myself not to cry. She was gone!

I burst from the parlor as though it were on fire and raced up the stairs to the room that I was by now completely terrified of. As I made my way down the hall, I could see the door was ajar. My blood turned to ice. I distinctly remembered shutting it after the last time I checked up on Magda. My footsteps sounded unbelievably loud on the hallway floor; each step in-sync with the furious rhythm of my drumming heartbeat. I outstretched my trembling hand, steadying myself against the doorframe before I entered. I turned on the lights and couldn’t believe what I saw before me.

As I stepped over the threshold into that room of horrors, my life was changed forever. I still wake up at night, my body slick with sweat from the horror of what I discovered in that room.

Little Magda, who had always been so peaceful, even despite her mother’s warnings, was awake, seated on the floor in her blue cotton nightgown. She looked up at me briefly with eyes that burned red, and held not a trace of humanity in them. She decided I was no threat to her and returned to what she was doing.

What was left of Bailey’s body was clasped in her tiny claws. Magda brought her face down to the ruined flesh and tore off a chunk with fangs like a wild animal. I heard the child greedily lapping up the blood as it spilled, then watched in complete revulsion as she pulled out one of the baby’s thigh bones, snapping it in half and then began to suck out the marrow. I gagged on the taste of vomit in my throat then heard frantic screaming, which I came to realize was my own. I was paralyzed with fear and had no choice but to watch as the scene played out before me. She continued her meal until there was nothing left but bones and hair, which she gathered up and threw into the hearth and onto the dimly burning fire. To my amazement she climbed up onto her bed and instantly went to sleep.

I sat there, shaking, crying -- unable to process what had just happened right before my eyes. I pulled myself up finally and turned to leave the room, realizing we were not alone. In the window, standing on the narrow ledge, was a man with the same red eyes that I had just seen on the child. The face was very familiar, but now all covered with fine black hairs. When he smiled in my direction I saw impossibly sharp teeth that glowed in the moonlight. I bolted from the room, heading for the stairs. I looked back, lost my balance, and felt myself begin to fall. I tumbled head over heels, until I hit the marble floor below. Blackness overtook me.

I woke in a hospital. What I have been able to piece together is I was found passed out on the side of the road, on the outskirts of town.  When I had regained consciousness, I tried to explain what happened, but the fear was still too real. My words were rambling and incoherent. I have remained here for the last five months.

None of my story can be substantiated. The house had been deserted, the university had no record of the advertisement, and no one has come forward with any information about the Hartwicks. Bailey’s remains were never found, so now I remain the one and only suspect.

So here I sit, dreaming of that house of horrors, and waiting for the prosecutor to determine my fate…

*

Liz Strange was born and raised in Kingston, Ontario Canada, where she still resides. She lives with her four children and a menagerie of pets. When she’s not working, writing, spending time with family, she enjoys reading or watching scary movies, spicy food, soccer and has a fascination with ancient Greece and Easter Island. In addition to her debut SOTM story in SNM, her debut novel My Eternal Love will be published in 2010 by Lyrical Press. She loves to hear from readers and writers with story comments. Visit her website or twitter page:

                                    www.lizstrange.com

                                              Liz Strange

Born in a Dead World

Daniel Fabiani

A syrupy breeze pries open my eyes on this ghastly morning. The room swirls double fold around me, seems not to cohere together. I stand within a barrage of stained white tile, my feet planted firmly and eyes staring curiously. Faded streaks of crimson stains are smeared across the bathroom in vertical, horizontal and diagonal slashes; the landscape formed is that of a spilled red life.

I strictly remember it being July, so why am I so cold? My bones quaver like a wet cat under the gelid breaths of a frosty December. Claustrophobia comes to mind as if I am locked in a refrigerator like some fat piece of deli meat. I am trapped in this body. My arms are gray with sped-up age; starved. They rake the walls like a despondent prisoner thriving to out himself. Fingernails rip furrows deep into the languid wallpaper; they tear away from the fetid flesh beneath. My hands are stained black with tar like an oilrig worker’s. It drips from the tips and draws fingerprints like cooking coals up and down the walls from my curious hands.

I see no trace of veins throughout my limbs; no healthy circuitry of red or blue. I feel no eagerly pumping heart to feed warmth to my shaking corpse. Only hollows of blood vessels, brown and withered, now drifting to the surface of my ashen complexion like dead flower stems. My hands have all been sucked of life, prune dried and crusted, as brittle as a baby blue robin's egg. My arms are littered with scabs, leaking unhealthily and ripped open as a cold sore splits too many times from smiling lips.

I am in the living room. It seems to be intact. The beige velor loveseat is in its resting place in the corner of the overly lacquered floor. The coffee table is broken through the middle, a nefarious set of glass teeth glisten like the pearly stars of the universe. Something is in its center...an arm? Yes, a woman’s arm. The fingers are oddly clean, the polish fresh indeed, but the forearm is splinted as if gnawed by weak jaws.

The rip is clean at the base by a force I can not fathom, but a familiar strength builds within me as drool bubbles down my chin for this piece of meat. It falls to the floor with a wet, flesh- smacking sound. This is my wife’s arm. How I have licked and indulged on these beautiful fingers time and time again. I have savored the sweat that has poured from her tepid female meat, so I must keep searching. But my body does not listen to my mind. It is its own leader.

I still smell her coriander cooking and the frankincense she has burned throughout the house. My stomach speaks to me once again and her fingers reach my lips; my cankered tongue. They enter my mouth like sweet lady fingers; I crester lint, hair piled in viscous clumps as if a group of cats heaved them up. A lone eyeball looks at me with query from below, a hellhole of china blue in its center. Threads of dark pink nerve swagger like tadpoles out of water at its end.

A cautious wave of animosity reveals itself beneath my skin. Uncontrollable thoughts demand satiety from the pit of my stomach. They implore with an iron grip and hang onto my weak bones for answers. My mind is grandiose with famine; inquisition. It supplies me the strength I need to press forward. I lick my fingers to stop the salivation, stuck together with a purplish paste like a drying jam.

They reach my nose first and I can see their garish state, wincing I despise the sting of bleach to my senses. They reach inside of my mouth and slide passed my pallet like a vulgar, exploring my dry tongue. The consistency is that of sand; tastes familiarly hot and sour like spoiled milk. But the alien taste buds in my mouth allow me to enjoy this creamy, foreign flavor of rot.

The lucid quietude is crucifying me. A transcending, cosmic expansion of insanity is unable to contain itself within my mind; wonder consumes my brain. Where is my family? The bathroom darkens as electrical power shows the last of its face, an intermittently beating heart dying to the clamor outside my residence. It obscures my true vision, makes peripheral sight impossible. I can only see straight ahead.

A rumble pushes me to the toilet as if side-swiped by a diesel truck. My knee slams into it, a hard and marble fulcrum. I can make out its white exterior, the sticky smears glistening like cranberries in water. But I don’t know what to make of this. All I can think of is some kind of food.

My stomach churns in vicious cycles, initiates a swimming feeling in my head; a sparking, tender throbbing in my heart. Voracity slowly envelops my mind, deprived of the saccharine, copper-tinged flavor of blood. The shed of gore around me is proof that an ungodly presence has scoured the insides of my home. I don’t know where my family is now.

My legs move and take me away from the bathroom. I do not control them. I am robotic, sentinel, and as my head turns to find the door I am already walking out; the destruction is clear. My body enters the hallway with arms outstretched and rigid as if they want to choke something; fingers viscid and prepared to grasp unwilling flesh to present them with my gift. I sense vacillation, the want in tearing into its cold dead skin and massaging its phlegm-like consistency; the prodding fingers of a pathologist; but also the need to pass the gift instead -- to not give into hunger.

I chivy out of the hallway and witness devastation funch the bones as sacred ivory, the shards creep down my loathsome throat and ferrets the inside. It scrapes and holds back no destruction to my lifeless esophagus. She still tastes heavenly though; better by blood than by lust or love. If she only could have been granted this gift.

I throw the arm to the side as my body craves something new. Moving again, regardless of the failed attempts from my shrinking brain, I am led into the kitchen. There I am educated on the reasons to my chill; I see daylight through the small broken window. Beams of a risen sun desperately trying to cut through black smog of bone and ash like a yellow blade; but fails as the odd mist continues to suffuse a cumulus cloud of burnt flesh.

The rest of my wife lies here without dubiety. Freshly split wounds trail red and thin across her face, accentuating the flesh of a once stunning woman. My head bends down to her, at the near smell blood. Her eyes are open, sunken in and calm, the right one is empty. That beautiful girl I opened my own eyes to this day is now identified.

She is still beautiful: even in the wake of her demise. Her body the temperature of a wine cellar as my tongue reaches past her pale clavicle. A cool liquid issues from a ruptured, gray intestine like a sewage drain seeping blood and feces. My hands grab for her neck and crave the delicacy-like soft spot in a baby’s skull. Something is telling me to pass this gift on.

I peruse her wan throat, my tongue scabrous and heavy and parched. The atrophied veins are limp beneath, her skin paper thin; sallow. My cragged teeth sink into the rubbery flesh, tear it wide and expose the dry, cracked tissue beneath; the dim color of an overused fireplace. She does not react, only lay there as death winnows from her wounds and takes my offering, my alliance to her, and the love that will keep us together forever.

She still smells of coriander and of the many perfumes I have given to her as gifts. Her cheekbones are solid, but have sunk within the hollow of her dead, yawning mouth. Her entire face has taken a shape of extreme terror -- or reluctance.

The fleeting lines over her face taste ripe as my tongue wriggles around and laps at the crusted blood like a dog at his water bowl. My arms drop her back to the floor; face heaped in the soapy blood of my former wife. I sense a disturbance on the outside of my house and my head twists toward the kitchen window once again, eyes meeting the aimless masses springing forth from the overcast as if in stampede.

They turn in circles stupidly, faces contorted, eyes as black and shining as obsidian stone under florescent light, like a cat’s nighttime glare. They seem to be confused by the limbo of the outside world, they do not know where to run, where to hide, what to eat. The bodies are physically similar to mine, but they bestow a gratuitous mouth in exchange only for simple and supple flesh. I need to give the gift.

A crowd of innocent people run betwixt the slew of the hungry dead. The beast of famine beckon for them, faces in permanent frown. They pray for the deity of blood depravity. Their skin is quite archaic looking, hollows formed in place of their nostrils; black burning stars for their eyes. They seek no remorse, are unified in the need for meat, the utter cannibal-urchin within them.

And this is no ordinary daylight. My eyes now beg for the attempts of the dull shimmer of saffron beams wanting to break through the blackened fertile haze; the haze that has quickly enveloped my town like a sandstorm. The chill is from lack of heat from the sun for an amount of time I cannot measure. The massive gray blanket has coveted all things life-giving.

The sky is folded into layers like a patina of metal and ash, the hand of the heavens begging for breath by forcing that pitiful yellow light through the fog. They cry goops of bone dust upon the vacant soulless bodies, their fierce, gripping hands, their perpetually vacant faces. Hark; the heavens have no place here.

The kitchen radio blaring a broadcast, the longest day with no tomorrow, according to news prompt. And as more volcanic waste plummets from above in wet torrents of soot, the blood of the newly risen continue their stroll, unaware of their bleary surrounding landscape.

What I catch through the  window glare is neither worry nor indifference, but my own reflection. Through the broken pieces of the dirty glass, I see my own bane form. Dark indentations have mushroomed over my eye sockets. Bite marks from tiny, ravenous mouths have indented my skin and raised the flesh to a greenish tint as if with toxic saliva. The cartilage where my nose should be is rotted to a shriveled flap of skin like bruised fruit.

My teeth are bridges of brown decay that lay in pairs of wasteful, jutting pieces of solidified calcium in my mouth; lips dry cracked and bleeding. My head of rich ebony is now a depleted baldness, bleached white, clammy. The skin atop my head falls to the side as I tilt and reveals a cranium as pale as the full moon. My eyes are the same dull, mindless caverns surrounded by starving black tissue like the rest of the beasts before me.

I disband my wanton reflection and put my fist through the window. I move toward another part of the house in need of food. My fingers leave a viscous residue on the granite topped counters as if the tips bleed spit. My walk is insouciant, devoid of character; my mind only focused on food. But the formerly pulpous sack that was my brain wants only to quench this defiance of character, to pass this gift to the unwilling.

Up the stairs and around the hallway where the bullet holes have created their own form of wasted wallpaper, my body takes me. The path to the upper quarter is beaten, ravaged of life and elation. Footprints in the broken floorboards make the shape of fine arches, weakened by massacre. The banister soon crumbles to wood chips beneath my unintentional grip. I nearly topple over, but my limbs are rigid and do not bend like those of the living.

This limp vessel that controls me sways pendulum-like; a mobile leaning tower of Pisa, as if I was preemptively cognizant of the banister’s ratty condition. I make it to the top floor and a puddle of blood leads the way to my daughter’s bedroom. The gray light outside sparkles with flame once again. Caroms of terror sift their way through the blockade of grit; echo into my home. The maroon-lit path glistens like a nightlight from the spread of fire outside. I pass this mess, my feet streaking in the wetness all around me, to enter Helena’s bedroom.

In New York City most things are dark, milk chocolate colors of exquisite marble or linoleum. Helena never attuned to that notion of dark colors for her own bedroom. From the day she was able to sleep on her own without the comfort of her mother’s pink and milk ridden nipple, Helena would yell at the mere sight of darkness. Her shrill vocal chords would scream and pillage my ears, bursting the sensitive tympanic membrane until I showered her in light.

I decorated her room accordingly and now this place that used to shimmer with white car pets like a Miami Beach side, violet walls the color of a Caribbean sunset and furniture so bright that it looked nearly surreal, is all dusted in darkness.

I turn toward her bed and hear a swamp of gurgling fluids; fecal matter sits in the center like a liver spot. Two light brown eyes, a watchful pair, have been carefully scooped from their sockets and placed at the foot of the bed: they roll off as another shock wave commences.

The great vanity stands alone in the battered room. I turn to it. Scratches and gun shots have transformed the place of outer beauty into a dump yard. I stand before it and move not one inch to allow my mind to begin to make sense of the waist-long hair sitting atop it like an old dirty mop.

A rancid scent wafts into the cleft of my nose, the stink of new death, of fresh fear. I walk toward the body, place my dirty fingers atop the wet seaweed of hair. The clumped strands part easily, the hard pieces pull away and I graze my palm across her arid white skull, drained completely of vitality.

It is like sandpaper unto my fingertips. My lips, as cracked and grooved as a lattice, a chafe beyond recognition, rest upon her scalp. A parasite the size of an adult cockroach creeps out of the morass of her hair. Its lengthy and curious antennae proffer something to me like a friendly gesture, but I ignore it and turn my attention back to my daughter.

It scuttles away with its hastened, thousand little legs from the rigor mortis jolt in her body. I reach down for Helena’s neck, scrape away the wall of rust colored blood and groan as my teeth grab for the lifeless crease of her throat. My tongue enters the parted wound and explores its savory whereabouts, searching for a vital vessel. And as if my tongue was of magic, my spit of the gods, spidery shocks motion her back to life like an external automated defibrillator.

She rises haphazardly and crooked; her spine not of  its conscious control. Her face freezes at the mirror fogged with blood and slabs of gore. She meets my insidious stare and hisses, the peeled flesh of her cheek pulsating like the gills of a fish. Her eyes are like the embers conjured by witches, black flames that only beings of pure evil could produce. She was my daughter and now she has the gift.

Helena stands fully, removes her scaly hands away from the top of the heavily beaten vanity. Nails snap away from her tenuous grip, release the same fetor that lingers beneath my skin; the thickness of sulfur during low tide. Some gummy substances drag along the surfaces of everything she touches. She bleeds the same cherubic saliva from her fingertips a tilted head and a furious, predatory grin upon her face. I know it well.

Biding by the same beckon of voracity that I have abruptly woken to this morning, we move along in silence. No words are needed in this unison of deathly living. We scurry away like two car accident victims who were spared physical harm trying to flee from the scene. Her long strides gestured the same tread I had possessed since this morning. Helena’s lips, readily ripped from her face, reveal the sickly, xanthous flesh beneath her once rosy red complexion. She spits out the same incessantly clear and red stringy globs as I.

We look more the same as I stare her down. Her perfect girl’s nose now the same basin-like cavity containing the few drops of blood left within us, sticky like raspberries. Helena’s eyes are careless, seeking; mouth open and heart wrenching. She meshes in completely with the rest of her extended family beyond the very prison of this house.

Our minds make decisions together, like holding invisible hands, bestowing apparitional judgments. Our hearts begin a rhythm of a predetermined destiny; they beat in time with our barren stomachs. The electricity within us churns our thinning innards and spins the dead threads of our blood vessels and pumps energy into our circuitry of forgotten life. Our journey is toward the dying light, against the wall of bone dust and the harmony of the dead.

The journey back down the stairs is crucial to our survival. We must fend for dinner or there shall be no life for the dead. After all, the dead are best fed by the living. We all walk a path down to the kingdom of the fallen one way or another, so why not speed up the process?

Now back in the kitchen Helena moves toward her mother, shamelessly laps at the dank spread of blood on the linoleum. She heaves at the flavor, the dryness of death rapes her already parched throat, but yet she continues. My wife lies still as Helena feasts upon her fingers like long sugary sticks.

The snap of the thumb on her lovely hand is like the bed of twigs set atop a ditch as the animal falls through to its sepulcher of leaves and mud. Helena loves the taste, I can see it in her rabid eyes; the eyes that beckon the same thing I have come for: meat. But exit is imminent; the gift shall be spread.

She stands dutifully as if knowing to go; her eyes bleeding from the darkness of the outside world. Her mind is inquisitive like the curiosity of a hundred adolescences all looming impatiently within the iced cadaver of her heart.

I study her piously; inquisition is the key to victory. I look about my kitchen one last time and dally in the immediate destruction that lay within. The clock radio continues its hymn of help or hope. Voices of an unknown tribe of the living offer their services continually. As my eyes catch another glimpse of the outside, the glass reveals to me my sluggish wife.

She drools like the jowls on the sweatiest of canines. Her chin gleams a thousand tiny diamonds even in the blackout of the day. Many grooves from nails and bites along her beaten face have made her façade a theme park of scars. Patches of fresh bruises like tankers and their crude black oil pushing into cerulean waters blotch her face; her one-eye sugar white.

From here my hand pushes against the glass, stains it like a branding iron of sweat and blood, of mucus and ash. Helena moves first and my newly risen wife follows obsequiously. The door pushes open and we trail out into the gloom of grit and granules and smog; of war and impending doom. Helena shows us that the outside is okay, that the prison of these bricks was meant to be evaded and the night’s rapacious coo is benevolent.

The air outside is as molten and slow as hot glue. Corpses walk beside me, next to me, adhere to the same gate that my family and I have taken on. A world of endless meat is what we seek, what we need. Dead bodies are rampant like broken statuettes, sopped in the rainbows of vital life juices. Stringy intestines sucked dry of miasma and of human nutrition lay open, smelling clearly of rot.

Faces are frozen in frightened positions, their bodies curled like ectopic fetuses. Claw marks dug into the flesh of the newly dead and are rimmed a dark scarlet. The walking monstrocities carry on as if the dead can feed off of the other dead. They are still uncultured to the unwritten laws of the deceased. Only true delight can be found in the living to devour innocence that makes a tongue seethe and a belly rumble like an earthquake with insatiability.

They rake innocuous eyes from babies as frantic mothers are shredded in the battle against her killer. They destroy love and challenge loyalty, feasting on the wretched hands of a society that was never meant to survive. They indulge on the sheer innocence of an unknowing social catastrophe.

Fathers protect their families but they are no match for the hunger that reverberates within us. This is the day with no tomorrow, we have made it that way, and we will spread this disease until every last breathing individual is carved clean of the wet cells in their innards. We will rise eternally and take solace in this everlasting exploration.

I move to the left and lose my family in the web of constant gun fire, toward a heavily bleeding red sun sinking into its necropolis of a wanton gray sky. A mushroom cloud splits the dying azure in the near distance. Tall buildings crumble and heap upon one another like a shoulder to cry on. Concrete and paper and bone rain down upon the bodies and simmer at my feet. A hot amber flame whirls into the fog and licks my skin, sizzles it into an even more ghastly pallor. More innocent souls run as my arms outstretch for them, as my foul mouth gapes for their ember warm flesh.

They sense the careless slack of my body, of my stilled heart. There is no other way to survive this unholy holocaust. The constant cannibal urchin within all of us cannot resist the palpability of living limbs. The masses cannot thwart our lust for the ruby velvet of tissue, or the silt texture, the softness in our mouths like baby venison. New York City is bloated with people like an overstuffed sack of larva.

I hear the screams and cries of the multitudes. Something nuclear with chemical weapons has just occurred. News reports are stentorian through the ashen blocks of this squalid Queens neighborhood. They claim the enemy has found a way to force the people to collapse into themselves. “The dead rise!” I hear from a yelling radio. I still do not believe what they say as my consciousness does not make sense of fairy tales. Does it not take into consideration that a weapon of mass destruction can initiate the mind of vile creatures like me?

I witness more flaming mushrooms in the bleak sky. They continue to crack it open like a coconut which bleeds coral light. The near pang is something I have never heard in my life. A muscular twitch from the bomb knocks me to my knees and more apartment buildings crash land into piles of pitiful rock. Train stations that can not withstand the sonic boom blow over to the side and break down more blocks of a once vibrant city. But do I seek shelter? No. My body only prays that it can find some steady source of liquid life, the need that awoke me with desire as red as a virginal body.

I continue my strut, a sorry excuse for a walk, but I forgive my legs for they do not sense the commands of my head. They walk like two aimless sticks whose direction is geared only for food; for satiety. Boisterous shrieks emulsify my senses and crucify the fine membrane of control. Most of the bodies have their limbs, although the burning cloud of nuclear doomsday has begun to deteriorate the elasticity of their skin into smelted larvae.

And as they crowd around me and beg to breathe through the opaque cloud of bone and rock, their soft, spongy lungs seared with radiation, I find solace in a woman whose cry is that of despondency about a death she cannot control.

A once beautiful  brunette stands before me in a judgmental position. Her arms are charred as if bathed in charcoal, glossed with sweat, slick with splashes of blood poisoned by radiation. Crackles of despair are lined on her young skin, once as chalky as a geisha. Tear lines have cleaned two measly tracks in her face caked in chemical dust debris; eyes lined with red webbing, the lids cleanly singed off from the blast. My only thoughts are to relieve her of this cataclysm and be benign to her suffering.

She grips burnt grass for food, stuffs a clump of it into her parched mouth and grimaces at the flavor of brick, scorched flesh and synthetic residue. Downpours of tears commence again, her mouth droopy as if the bomb forced the onset of a stroke. Uncontrollably loathsome the woman screams as more mindless dead souls pass her and the bulbous treat of her rapidly-beating heart. I soon find it my goal to put her out of her misery.

My arms reach for the haggard woman, to which she swats at me with agonized and feeble hands. I begin to rage with pleasure as my fingers roll up and down her weakened frame, traversing her half- scarred, half-rich flesh for a soft spot to gnaw.

I cannot stop myself from sticking two fingers down her throat, toying with her vocal chords like a guitar out of tune, digging deeper to bring up a damaged lung; the radiation’s effect executed. Chunks of clotted ash and gelatinous grime fall from it like a leaking faucet. Her feeble grip gives up its place; flaccidly her arms snake their way back to the sides of her jutting hips and I offer my gift to her. A life of no pain and a cessation of sentiments, she believes me to be the enemy but this catacomb of mass destruction around us is the true enemy.

I grasp her sweaty throbbing neck with my mouth and taste her effervescent life. The rapid throb of her jugular is succulent. All I want to do is baste myself in this blood and her essence. My jagged teeth grate her throat and sink in deep. They flay the skin; my tongue parts the meat, exposing her flaming carotid. I sweetly savor the beating blood vessel as my dried lips scrape against her jugular vein. When it shows its pleading face I slurp it out as she soon releases control of her muscles completely, collapsing her dead weight in my arms.

I drain her of her vitality, of the things she needs most to survive. But what she does not know is that she will wake with the gift of everlasting life -- in death! To never feel the maladies that life has to offer and infringe upon ignorant souls. She will never have to suffer the end of the world or the end of time like the living. She will walk into the elongated shadows of power, hunger and resilience with her new mind and singular goal.

The skin on her body may change and the hairs upon her head may fall off and rot into a swab of dust as the chemical combustions light up the sky and implode like a supernova. There may be a time when she may feel useless, albeit we do not feel, we only eat. What she does not know, as I am leaking my gift into her tissues with my festered spittle, is that she has been saved from the mass devastation that has slaughtered the greatest city the world has ever known.

We shall walk the lines of these new ruins, not knowing why the bomb was dropped or why the ravenous caverns of our meaty souls order us to seek out the living. After all, the living does the best job of obliterating one another, so what is the harm in tagging along? The dead are a brotherhood and will stick together as one, always against the living until there are no more left.

The immolated path of this city is where this new addition of the dead shall rise. This is where we are destined to sanctify the flavor of fear as life crumbles. We will face the bombs that are fabricated to alter us forever as we walk the fine line of sanity and democracy.

As the newest explosions of human deceit and narcissism raise high in the sky like a slithering, temperamental enemy, we shall follow the streaking, scarlet ribbons of its residue down the arduous pathway in the labyrinth of no tomorrow as I have somehow been born in a dead world.

 *

*A special thanks to Daniel for helping us with this issue.

Daniel Fabiani makes a strong return at SNM with his 5th published piece. This is his 3rd publication here. He really captivates readers and lures them in with his unique narrative and vocabulary. A freshly turned 22 year old kid from New York City, Daniel makes his living by working in a hospital where his encounters with the dead are an everyday affair. He is a lover of all things horror and is working on his BA in Journalism and Creative writing. He has a novel that has been long overdue in the works. He has a live journal and FB. His live journal link is: http://prose-lover.livejournal.com  After reading Daniel's story you would not expect him to look or be so young. You will be seeing more from this very talented wordsmith in the future. Dan has been published in Drops of Crimson and Microhorror. *You can also contact Daniel by email with story comments:

  dfabiani46@yahoo.com

 Daniel Fabiani

Behold, The Retch

Danny Rider

He retched again and felt the tight pain in his gut, chest and throat as the excess material passed through his mouth. Sweat dripped from his forehead and a constant waterfall of saliva followed the vomited contents past his taste buds. He spit several times into the toilet bowl to rid himself of the aftertaste.

It hadn’t been this way initially. The discomfort and pain he at first attributed to a passing sickness. He dismissed the purple splotches around his eyes as damage from the vomiting spell. He was familiar with many a hangover and nausea was no stranger to him; nothing was out of the ordinary…at first.

But when the sickness remained when he had past the stage of vomiting only the paltry remnants of juice his stomach could muster did he realize this affliction was more than a severe bout of influenza or food poisoning.

Gradually the flecks of spit and stomach acid he managed to throw up became flecked with color. Not red like that he had expected, but gray. The gray flecks were replaced with streaks of purple and finally the pale yellow-green stomach acids were replaced entirely by black. The dark ink stain which ringed the bowl of the toilet was as bizarre as it was disturbing. Weakly he thumbed the flusher and stared, panting mouth agape as the unnatural regurgitated bits circled the bowl before vanishing.

He backed up feebly from his porcelain perch and staggered to the sink, desperate to see his reflection and wash away the remnants of the bizarre filth from his mouth. He cupped the water between his hands as it fell through his fingers into the sink. The image greeting him in the mirror made him freeze. 

No longer did light purple pricks rim his eye sockets, but rather large splashes of purple and red welts covered his eyes. His cheeks appeared sunken in and his entire appearance was one of exhaustion. He likened his image to that of a junkie. Pinpricks of red dotted his cheeks, creating the illusion that he was wearing a mask. Before he could examine it any further, the sickness returned and he reeled over the toilet with more unnatural blackness pouring from his mouth.         

He reckoned he should have died from dehydration or at the least, lying unconscious in a delirious state. But despite the fatigue he felt, regardless of the hours he lay there convulsing on the bathroom floor, he remained alive and awake. When he tried to force himself to sleep during the brief moments of serenity that appeared between vomiting sessions, his chest and abdomen spasms would start up again; usually when his mind would reach the near-foggy haze of sleep. The burning and clenching of his gut would break the tranquility and remind him that this disease, this curse, this foulness, was still not through with him.

He pictured his stomach wrung out like a towel clenched between two clawed, unforgiving hands during the worst of his pain. Talons shredded the flimsy sponge-like material of his innards and twisted them tight, pressing vital fluids from every orifice. The image did lessen his suffering; only the torturous release of the foul black murk eased the feeling in his gut.

It was the murk that frightened him most of all. More than the pain, more than the impossible length of time he spent vomiting, more than the thought of his own frail mortality, the murk, by its existence, was the most unnatural and unnerving of all -- for it had come from within him. As it continued to exit his system over and over again and the longer he stared at it through blood shot eyes, the more he felt it to be unnatural.

It would bubble up at him like gas being slowly released from tar. Occasionally, he thought he had caught images in the murk’s greasy swirls: Skulls with open oval mouths issuing silent screams; serpents swirling through the brackish fluid, engorging themselves on one another; flames burning naked bodies in burning baths of lava. The sound from the murk was that of wet, sloppy squish as it pooled itself into the bottom of the toilet and remained silent each time he got up the strength to press the flush lever.

The smell it exuded made him gag, and not because it reeked of stomach acids and gases, but because its odor seemed beyond those smells. It was a putrid stench, a ghastly excretion of acidic woe. It burned the air with an unnatural perfume. It was compost, sweet rot and sulfurous poison; the aroma of hell and the stink of pestilence all in one. The aftertaste was like the filthy backwash of soapy water or a wet grime and gritty dirt; warmed swill and fetid pus. The tang of foul tastes stung his tongue. His teeth felt as if the enamel had somehow eroded away overnight.

Each time he managed to spit the bitterness from his mouth, another attack would grip him, and his mouth would be forced to endure the flavors of a moldy soot. And to add to the elements of taste, sight and smell to his crippled senses would be enough to humble any man. He cried long, fat tears of pain and sorrow, not knowing what was possible for him to do in this plight. Snot would sometimes mix with his tears before he’d smear them away with the back of his hand and begin to puke some more.

He babbled incoherently to no one, for no one could hear him; he lived alone. He cried out to God, to himself, to anyone who could listen. He begged for it to stop, he pleaded for mercy. Half-delirious by this point, he found himself head first in the toilet, screaming at the black goo to leave him be, begging the unnatural, the unholy, to be on its way. Hadn’t he suffered enough by now?

The goo replied by belching a large wet popping bubble.

He screamed in madness and agony, then another wave of gut wringing seized him, and he lost himself in the gagging pain of the nausea. Hours dragged by and still the sickness did not relent. Now every muscle in his body burned in pain. He was sure something internal was bleeding or broken, or both. The torturous sensation of vomiting was adjoined by a seething pain, which was searing his stomach. He pictured his organs as a maze of pipes and wires, sagging from exertion and spilling, leaking and spraying his vital fluids through holes, rips and tears from the throes of constant vomiting.

He felt he would die unless he got some help at once!

Shakily, he pulled himself away from the toilet and began to crawl toward the door. He was too weak to stand, so he continued to drag himself across the floor, out the bathroom and into his bedroom.

He made it several feet before the murk came up his throat again. He spit out the muck and let the foul black stain his carpet, but he made sure to keep his hands free from the pile of goo which lay quivering on the bedroom floor. He grabbed at a rumpled shirt on the floor and tossed it pathetically over the substance, trying to cover it.

He moved to his nightstand, shuffling across his bedroom floor like a drunken cripple. He kept his eyes focused on the phone which lay atop the nightstand. Only his determination on closing the distance to the phone kept him hobbling further. Sweat fell from his face in large drops that splashed his hands as he made the impossible journey. It was only ten feet for a healthy man; it might as well have been a mile. He threw up twice along the way, where it seemed to sink into floor.

It took him a half hour to cross the void of his bedroom and reach the phone. He fumbled with it for a moment, trying desperately to focus on his task. He rested his head against the cool surface of the nightstand and pressed firmly on the dial pad: 9-1-1.

He wasn’t sure what they could do for him. Would they take his call seriously, or fail to see the horror he was facing? Would they be capable of expunging the evil which plagued his innards?

The phone rang once then, uncontrollably, he vomited all over the receiver. It had come on so quickly he hadn’t had time to react. He felt a muscle in his neck spasm and gagged on the acids lingering in his mouth. He stared in disbelief as the blackness sunk into the phone and shorted out its battery.

It knew!

A new wave of horror swept over him; panic combined with his already delirious state shook his sanity to the breaking point. He backed away from the poisoned phone and looked at his hands, now covered with the black substance. He rubbed his fingers together reflexively and shuddered at the touch.

It was smooth, slimy; greasy. It was tangible like mucus, but with a viscosity that led him to be reminded of children’s silly putty. Despite the fact that it stuck to his skin, he felt the bizarre sensation of movement as if the horrid mass was now floating across his skin, moving around it and past it, rather than seeping into it. It was cold, the chill of which caused the hairs on his arm to stand. He already had chills induced by the fever of his sickness, but as his breath began to fog in the air; he was certain the icy coldness he felt now was being brought on by the heaving.

He lurched backwards as the sensation took hold of him. He flung his arms about, desperately hoping the muck would fly off and away from him, but it remained on him like a stain. A small reserve of adrenaline kicked in and he managed to stand up and stagger several feet to the bedroom door.

It was futile to try to outrun the substance as it clung to him, but he had to get out and escape somehow. He pulled the door open and fought to free his hand from the doorknob. The stick residue on his hands nearly glued him to the handle. With a frantic yank, he managed to free himself with a wet puckering slurping sound. He began to stumble down the hallway, the front door still yards away beckoned. He had to make it to the door, lest he would be at death’s door.

Vomit welled up in his throat again and he fought against his body’s natural instinct to expel the waste, forcing himself to keep the bile down. His throat burned and he started to choke on his tongue. Blackness began to foam near the edges of his mouth then burst forth past his lips dripping down his chin and covering the front of his bare chest. The cold touch shook him and he half-screamed, half-gagged in despair as he felt himself falling. The front door turned sideways in his vision and then tumbled out of sight.

He lay curled up sideways on the floor, quivering. Tears rolled from his swollen eyes and he gasped a horrendous sob of anguish. It was all too much. He wished himself dead; begged for death to come and claim him. He demanded sweet release from this plague. His body quivered and his mind, broken by exhaustion and delirium, wandered aimlessly.

He looked into the swelling shadows of the hallway and saw snickering faces with teeth that gnashed together gleefully. The carpet was a rolling like a wave of smothering foam and the furniture loomed over him like towering beasts awaiting his death so that they could feast. He caught a glimpse of himself in the corner of a mirror hanging on the wall: a crumpled heap of torso, arms, legs and hair. The black coated the majority of his body and made the reflection appear as if he was the rubble from of some discarded sculpture.

A small portion of his face was barely visible beneath his hair which was now plastered to his damp forehead. The purple splotches which had once surrounded his eyes, now completely encompassed his skin. His mind was too tired to recoil from the image, so he simply lay staring at his reflection a while longer, contemplating his fate, waiting for death.

The evil, he surmised, had won.

Was he the only one he silently wondered. Was he enduring this torture alone, or was this vileness afflicting others across the world? In the barely conscious recesses of his mind, he pondered this briefly. What if his phone call had gone through and the person on the other end had already succumbed to the same predicament he was in now? What if the world was coated in this strange blackness and he was simply oblivious to it?

A slight tremble chilled his body and he felt the blackness shift slightly across his body. Light whispers and echoing hisses ran over his ear in soothing tones; the foul muck covering him seemed to be trying to sedate him with sweet lullabies. He understood from the strangely delicate noises coming from the blackness, that this special brand of horror was being visited solely on him.

An hour passed and he continued to lay still on the floor. Paralyzed, catatonic, unwilling and incapable of moving even a muscle, light began to creep into the room, but the small slivers of early morning sun were too meager to pierce the shadows which housed the blackness.

A swelling in his throat interrupted his train of thought and, too weak to fight it, he opened his mouth to allow the blackness to pour from it once again. This time, however, something else came. At first he didn’t notice the slight itching sensation, but as it spread through his throat, the feeling caused him to cough. Tiny pricks of pain began to sting his esophagus and his eyes watered from the uncomfortable feeling. He wanted to cough again, but whatever it was had become lodged in his throat. He panicked, fearful that he would suffocate! Before he could work himself up further, the thing dislodged itself and slowly began to emerge from his mouth.

It was long, smooth and cold. He actually felt tiny clawed hands scrambling at the backs of his teeth until fingers wrapped around the tip of his tongue and pulled. It was painfully unique when compared to the vomit sensation that to which he had grown accustomed. As the thing untangled itself free from his throat, he realized this was the heart of the evil; the root of his ailment.

His mouth was forced open wide and he felt a sharp pop as the thing continued to spread his jaws wider. Raw pain seared through his head; he was certain his jaw would be broken. He remained motionless and completely conscious; his attention fixated on the thing ripping itself free from his gaping maw.

There was a wet plop on the carpet and he felt the long, thin end of the creature slither past his teeth. Out of the corner of his tearing eye, he saw a dark coil shoot across the room and into a corner. Sharp green eyes peered at him from behind obsidian scales. Silver fangs smiled within a small mouth. The creature’s face was round and flat; featureless. Only the eyes and teeth projected the semblance that this thing was a living creature.

It began to clean itself. A tiny tongue darted between the fangs over black scales. Unable to do anything but watch, he gazed at the creature as it bathed itself…and began to change. It grew, the slender body widened out. A scaly thin tail soon smoothed over and gradually receded into the creature’s newly shaped body. Patches of skin and hair broke through gaps left from the scales, and the thing’s arms and legs swelled and transformed into long thin limbs. Claws receded into fingers that belonged to hands, which became almost human looking.

He garbled a horrible sound from his broken jaw as he looked into the monster’s new face. It was his own. He tried to scream, but only a dry, clicking noise issued from his throat. His body shook and he began to cry weakly.

The monster cocked its head slightly at the whimpering sounds of his pathetic cries and gazed apathetically at him. After a moment, it crouched down as if to examine him further. He felt terrified and helpless as it sat there studying him coldly with those green eyes from within his own visage. He waited for the end to finally come; for the creature, monster, demon or whatever it was he had birthed, to reach out and pluck his life from his broken body. It would be horrible, but a sweet relief in comparison to the agony he was enduring.

But death did not come sweetly as he had hoped. Instead, once the monster seemed to be finished with its examination, it smiled. Those unnatural, silvery teeth flashed behind parted lips split in a sneer that sent a ghastly shiver down his spine.

He stared at that smile and its green eyes that looked at him so coldly and he knew that evil had a face. Or rather, it allowed him to know. It granted him that one special privilege, to know its true origins, its plans and the wonderful sins that it would conduct under the guise of his flesh.

It spoke briefly, using the soft hisses and dark whispers of the earlier blackness to convey its message. He cringed when it thanked him for bringing it forth, for opening the doorway within his soul with a key wrought by his solitude and forged with the fires of debauchery and avarice. Tears of sorrow bled from his eyes as the vile, tinkling whispers assured him that the vile deeds the creature intended to perform in his stead, the lascivious, perverse and dreadful evils were in line with his own inner ambitions.

The monster then stood and shuffled out of sight. He lay there weeping as the awful truth bared itself down upon him. Finally, the monster reared itself once more before his fading vision. A small ray of morning sun shone on the wretch as it watched through distorted eyes and slithered out the door and into a beautiful and unsuspecting neighborhood.

 THE DEEP BLUE DOOM

ROBERT NICHOLAS

“Mr. Saxon!” Abigail Barlington hailed me from the boat dock, resplendent in black from head to waist; her honey colored hair tossed in the sea breeze. “Over here!”

As I approached, her husband appeared at her side.

“James!” Will welcomed warmly, clasping my hand.

My thoughts drifted back to our meeting. To say I was impacted by them would be a gross understatement. Abigail, famed high priestess and matriarch of a coven known as Atlantis’ Children, had impressed me immensely with the grace and eloquence by which she conducted her daily affairs. Will, with his congenial nature and dark sense of humor, was easy to befriend. He smiled genuinely, as he helped me onto the boat.

“We are so glad you could make it.” Will ran a hand through his short curly hair and squinted into the sun.

“It took some doing,” I replied, “but you sounded so urgent, I came as soon as I could. So what’s the hurry?”

We went collectively below deck with Abigail leading. Once my eyes adjusted to the shadowed interior of the cabin, I was captivated by the array of ritualistic artifacts lying about. Some of the items I had never seen the likes of, yet there was little question of their authenticity or their value.

“Worthy of your own collection, I assume?” Abigail remarked, seeing my amazement. “Here before you I present the grand ceremony tools of my coven. Rarely do these items leave the safety of our sanctuary.”

“The professor should be here soon,” Will chimed in. “We know about as much as you at this point. He called me last week from Inverness. It would seem that book of yours is quite a find and we, my friend, are on the threshold of immortality.”

“Oh, Will!” Abigail laughed, arranging some trinkets on an altar centered in the cabin. “He’s so enthusiastic.”

Will Barlington, being the renowned author of The Devils Deep, had met his wife while researching the metaphysical side of his undersea odyssey. Since then, the two have traveled ‘round the world in search of esoteric knowledge. Their coven began to experiment with magical rites and ceremonies upon the sea with tangible results. I had been an admirer of their publicized endeavors since my teenage years.

By now you’ve probably realized that I am none other than the infamous J.T. Saxon; singer, adventurer, and scholar of the black arts. I had purchased the odd Grimoire from the estate of an English nobleman at auction.

As near as we could tell, the hard, smooth binding is fashioned from the skin of a strange species of squid. The scaly pages are that of an unidentified sea dwelling creature. Yet the precise, intricate inkings and characters appear to writhe and twist. It is dense and deceptively heavy. Professor Devonshire believes that parts of it could have been printed well before recorded history of any type. So impressed by the book was he, that he pleaded with me to let him research it at length.

To be quite honest, I did not understand much of the Grimoire or its history. Nor did I care. Up until this doom, I was merely the front man for Saxon Cross. On my third trip to Egypt, I had the distinct pleasure of meeting the Barlington’s. Being a champion of their occult theories involving the ocean, I wasted no time showing off the treasured, enigmatic book that I had acquired.

Will had a theory that the land of the dead lay far beneath the ocean and that a proper necromancer could tap into this power if one could locate the portal. Abigail lent her considerable personal power to the search. The professor procured the boat, equipped with a functioning bathysphere.

“Ahoy!” A call from above alerted us of the professor’s arrival.

Professor Edward U. Devonshire III was a stately and dignified man, well versed in occult lore and phenomena. He wasted little time with amenities. He ambled as quickly below deck as his advanced years would allow. We followed closely behind.

“This book,” he explained in a hushed, quaking voice, “is more than any of us could have imagined. Much more.”

Reverently removing a black strongbox from his duffel bag, he opened it revealing the book. He took it out and carefully opened it.

“You see, these first twenty pages are older than any document known in the world. They seem to be written in a variation of the Indus Valley civilization, which would be around twenty- sixth to twentieth centuries BCE.” He paused to allow this to sink in, his watery brown eyes glimmering anxiously. “They outlined a ritual -- one promising great power.”

“Each chapter in succession seems to be a record of those who have completed the rite.” He paused then, closing the treasured manuscript. “The trouble seems to be that each record of the ceremony appears to end in madness and delusion.

“Furthermore, the pages themselves, while of varied ages, all appear to be made from the same strange material. I had a friend run some tests on it. It would seem it is of the flesh of some type of creature residing deep within the dark recesses of the floor of the great Pacific. Although it has human qualities and properties, a large part of its composition contains the exact ten elements found within seawater. Stranger still, the same hand recorded the history, although given the time frame of each installment would be quite impossible.”

“Your Englishman’s account of his own experience with the rite is also in here. In fact, it is the final entry. He warns of dire consequences, the nature of which we cannot decipher as the language in which it was recorded is nothing that has ever been seen or documented. I can tell you that the same character group is the final entry in each of the chapters.”

“What does this mean to us?” I asked.

“It means,” Abigail interjected, “that we must be careful and see to it we are protected while performing the ceremony.”

“Also,” Will broke in, “we must be strong of mind and resolve.”

“True,” the professor continued. “The first chapter contains a warning of sorts. Do you see these symbols? As near as my language expert in Scotland can tell, they warn of forces that attack the senses of the seeker, often times causing a complete breakdown in the ability to distinguish fantasy from reality. We must tread lightly, my friends.”

For two days we sailed, the Professor at the helm following the thin diagrams and mathematical equations contained within the strange text. Will, Abby and I fasted and prepared for the ceremony. Finally, one evening, the professor announced our arrival and turned off the motor.

“The rite has to take place at the very moment of the setting of the sun,” Devonshire excitedly announced, rubbing his hands together and smiling anxiously, “so we must waste little time.”

Each of us took our prescribed place around the circle and lit the candles. Abby prepared to begin the litany.

“I had each of our own parts translated for the sacred rite,” the professor explained, slightly breathless. “My man in Inverness can only make an educated guess about some of the passages, so I felt that it was best to use the words provided in the text, which I have broken down to phonetic pronunciation.”

“Gather to the circle, children of light, children of darkness!” Abby proclaimed with authority.

As she spoke my sight wavered and an incredible feeling of giddiness gripped me. A feeling that is hard to describe came over me, almost as though I was becoming detached from my group and the very fabric of reality.

“Alacalackha! Mardulus! Satavius profundum! Marilurat Dencasiack! By the four watchtowers and the Great Lady of the sea, we call to you to aid our rite!” she called, arms aloft and outstretched.

Our craft lurched to a complete standstill. The ocean around us rose and fell. The gusting winds stirred the flags at the rail, yet our ship sat still as death.

“Clamack Arragus Faldas Moora!” Abby chanted, in a voice seemingly not her own.

Abruptly Abby stopped the rite, wide-eyed and shivering, as though in the throes of some type of fugue. The Grimoire had slipped from her hands. It thumped onto the deck. With a cry the Professor dove for it, upending the altar table. A frantic look upon his sweaty face, he continued the incantation.

Abigail shook her head; her hands outstretched as if warding off an attacker. I was dimly aware that I too had taken up the chant. Each of us proclaiming the guttural phrase over and over. The words seemed to take on a tangible quality, swirling around us, vaguely stinging.

I began to tremble and I could not hear right. The complicated sounds of the canticle seemed to caress my body; my anxiety and trepidation mounted. By then it was all too late.

To my grim horror and astonishment, my chanting companions began to levitate. The sound of their voices faded to silence, yet their mouths frantically moved; their pupils rolled upward. My tremors ceased and I realized that I floated six to ten inches above the polished deck.

Far below, from the depths of the ocean a tremendous blast sounded. Deep and ominous it broke the surface. A collective gasp issued forth from our coven. Our ashen faces became a macabre mask of realization, hopelessness and despair.

Like marionettes we remained aloft in silence. White flecks of light danced and streaked about us. The air around our vessel was thick and sour. Heavy convulsions overtook our small group as the odd illuminations vanished with stellar speed.

We fell to the wooden floor hard. Far below the ocean surface another heavy rumble. The water around us roiled and tossed, yet stock still our craft remained. I leapt to my feet, screaming profanities whilst pulling out tufts of my hair.

Abigail swayed too and fro. Muscles tensed and ridged. Vacant, milky eyes stared ghostly at me. She sneered and hissed and rubbed her thighs with flat, veined hands.

Professor Devonshire continued on with the terrible rite. His voice warbled and cracked. He was on his knees in supplication.

“Clamack! Oh my god! My god! Arragus Faldas Moora! Have mercy on us! Oh what horror!” I watched as the man fell to pieces, his words reduced to jabbering blather.

My friend, Will, I barely recognized. He stood beside Abby; his eyes were bulging and purple. He wept in gasping sobs through clenched teeth. Blood streamed from symmetrical gashes left in the wake of his well manicured nails as he clawed at himself.

“I didn’t know!” Abigail screamed into his face. “I didn’t know!”

“Bastards!” I railed, filled with an irrational contempt. “Filthy fucking dogs! Weaklings!”

I threw my hair in their hideous chattering faces, cursing them. The power we unleashed was filling me. I felt as though I would burst. I turned to the rail and began to vomit. As I wretched loudly over the side, I could now see them.

Marine life of all kind; large, small, average and fantastic fleeing our vicinity. As far as I could see they migrated in droves. The last of the widening ring was a mile away and distancing fast. Next to the ship the water turned and roiled, with us still as stone.

“How long have you known?” Abigail gripped my shoulder; nails digging and desperate. Will wailed uncontrollably, barely identifiable to the friendly, easy going man I had come to know.

“We would have followed you!” Abby shrieked, staring at me with terrified awe. “Gladly we would have followed! I did not know!”

I looked at her through bleary eyes. Blood streamed down from my now hairless cranium and I realized what was required next in this bloody rite. I glared at Will, but he was useless now, sobbing madly, pulling at the shredded cartilage of his right ear.

Fortunately, we had the Professor there.  I put my hand on his shoulder and he turned sad, pleading his eyes to us, and we nodded. With a soul wrenching sigh of woe, he entered the yellow bathysphere.

Abby and I chanted and wailed phrases and syllables that shook the very foundations of the earth. The deep sea explosions were more frequent now, or perhaps I had imagined them.

Together we bolted the hatch of the bathysphere. Neither Abby nor I knew how to work the air pumps, but that did not matter. I hit the switch and we lowered him quickly.

Will drooled and bled. The great author’s mind had snapped. The smoking revolver clutched in his unsteady hand had gone unnoticed. That is until his wife collapsed in a pile; the back off her head blown wide open.

“Worm!” I yelled, aghast. “Coward worm, what have you done?”

I advanced on him with murderous hatred in my heart. My hands clenched, preparing to pummel him.

He put the pistol to his head. I yelled in a voice foreign to my own ears. He pulled the trigger and missed! I rushed him, but his second shot was well-placed.

The ship listed hard to port, but quickly recovered. It was the only movement during the entire ghastly ritual. With a jolt of fear I grimly realized that the dreadful ceremony continued of its own volition. In my folly, I failed to realize the true gravity of this dire situation. I ran to the rail.

With a thunderous crash, the bathysphere broke the surface. It sailed in a graceful arc over the vessel. I saw the terrified face of Professor Devonshire looking down; his mouth frozen in an oval  silent shriek.

The craft landed with a tremendous splash but did not sink. Instead it bobbed twice then crumbled into itself like tin foil. The heavy cable snapped with a hollow metallic twang as the crushed bathysphere disappeared, snatched clean from below the heaving surface.

An eerie silence loomed about; the air was heavy and smelled of ozone. I moved the Barlington’s below. Will’s initial suicide attempt left the motor useless, the stray bullet having cracked the block. I laid their bodies on the oily planks.

Quickly returning to the main deck, my old friend and partner, Will Barlington, author of The Devils Deep, and his formerly lovely wife Abigail lie below deck. An eight foot length of steel cable is all that remain of the university’s bathysphere as well as Professor Edward U. Devonshire III. The twisted iron boom from which it dangled was bent upward and slightly to the left. The frayed end scratched the side of the boat from time to time, which was most unnerving.

I surveyed the vast watery expanse. The night was cold and dark, yet it did not bother me. My precious book was nowhere to be found. I crawled along the slimy planks, blindly groping. My neck throbbed and I wished for salvation of any type. My flesh was burning and I felt as though I would be sick again.

Wildly I looked around for the source. It sounded from all around me. The pain in my neck was becoming unbearable, as though the flesh was being torn from the inside of my body. I began to spit bloody phlegm onto the deck.

“Come meet your destiny, great one, for you are the seventh.”

Upon the water it stood with large, milky gray eyes, solemn and imploring, gazing at me. The thing resembled a man in form; that is, it had two arms and two legs. The oblong head appear too large for the neck that supported it. The lipless slash of a mouth barely moved as the strange creature communicated with me:

“Do you still not see?” it queried.

Then I did. I saw the seven watchers in each of the seven seas. They saw me and acknowledged my power. That was what Abigail meant. I am now the seventh chapter. With a touch of dismay, I realized that the ritual had been a complete success and the promises contained in the Grimoire were true.

The burning sensation I was experiencing became more acute as I tore at my clothes; my eyes still riveted upon the ghastly apparition.

“Come.” It insisted urgently, and for the last time.

Discarding the remaining rags of my clothes, I followed, passing over the rail and slowly descending into the comfortable depths of the sea.

My neck pulsed in a peculiar fashion as I found myself gilding over alien blue and purple terrain. Leviathan beings, hideous and scaly, watched in anxious anticipation as we sailed along. I felt serene and empowered. Answers flooded my mind. All the questions I agonized over my entire life lay open.

Before me, a vast obsidian wall stretched as far as I could see and vanished into the darkness. It was jagged and smashed. Monstrous creatures darted out from its murky depths. Things with eyes wide in pure reptilian fashion gazed coldly upon me, awestruck by my appearance; amazed by the devastation that heralded my coming.

Hades! The gates of the hereafter! Call it what you will, but here lies death’s destination! I was ecstatic. My brain was reeling as my throat pulsed wildly and rhythmically. I settled onto the hard sandy floor; my arms outstretched. The tyrant cometh.

Again the curious bits of light returned, filling me. Eels with cherubic faces twined about me, singing in high pitch tones that stung my ears.

My body began to itch intensely. Bright iridescent flashes, not quite light, rather lighter shades of the darkness. Within the shadowy intervals spider like images I'd studied in the Grimoire had morphed with each burst.

My eyes sharpened and the shadows lost their depth. The odd crystals of radiance, I could now see were the souls of my ancestral family enraged with my meddling in such affairs as these. They clawed at me with smoky limbs to no avail, howling and ranting in their frustration.

“Your throne, my liege.” The thing had informed me,and then vanished into the recesses of the darkness.

The mutant aquatic monstrosities gathered around me. In the incandescent glow of their gaze I could see awe and anger -- both imploring and disparaging. Mutely, the many eyes stared.

Phrases were torn from my lips; words burned my skin and blistered my throat. The fathers of my fathers cursed me for my arrogance.  I bound them with powerful phrases, which now came out of me in commanding torrents.

The ground beneath my feet quaked; I rose until I could behold the entire midnight valley. Arms aloft, my voice thundered like hammers on iron, I chanted, cajoled, and commanded.

As conductor of this orchestra of the dammed, I directed the abhorred giants. They erected colossal pillars over the surface and formed these mountainous barricades. Repulsive beings scuttled about flitting from rock to rock, driven and herded by demonic, fish-headed beasts. The pulsing in my neck steadied, as newly formed gills separated air and water. The incantations flowed from within me as natural as oceanic currents and each word etching itself upon my skin as it was spoken.

Now the baby-faced eels flay my body as I mumble rapid fire spells to bind the dead that we have released. It has become as natural as breathing as I guard the portal. Sometimes I wander the seas during the new moon when the world is its darkest, a printed wraith bewailing my fate and harvesting subjects for my seven kingdoms of horror.

For a week I’ve been lost at sea and for an eternity I am meant to wander here alone...   

*

      forthecorn@verizon.net                

Eternal brood the shadows on this ground,
Dreaming of centuries that have gone before;
Great elms rise solemnly by slab and mound,
Arched high above a hidden world of yore.
Round all the scene a light of memory plays,
And dead leaves whisper of departed days,
Longing for sights and sounds that are no more.

Lonely and sad, a specter glides along
Aisles where of old his living footsteps fell;
No common glance discerns him, though his song
Peals down through time with a mysterious spell.
Only the few who sorcery's secret know,
Espy amidst these tombs the shade of Poe.