Categotry Archives: Timothy C. Hobbs

Dissolution by Timothy C. Hobbs

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The boy found the bags under a pile of gray dust. He had been digging around in the kitchen cupboard for something to eat and noticed the pile of dust gathered in one corner on the floor. Under this layer of grunge he found one mangled penny, a lid to a soda bottle, and two ten piece packages of Halloween treat bags.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Timothy C. Hobbs is a consummate horror writer and his stories are both horrific and beautifully crafted. The Pumpkin Seed is Timothy Hobbs first published novel scheduled for re-release in the next few months through Visionary Press.

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From Visionary Press

By Timothy C. Hobbs, The Smell of Ginger: It’s Halloween in Jasper, Texas and Butch and Suzy are driving with their dad to trick or treat at the strip mall and the local churches. They didn’t count on the truck breaking down, getting lost in the woods, or coming across the ordinary old cabin, but there’s nothing ordinary about the tenents – two spinster sisters who have been waiting eternally for children to call their own.

PURCHASE ON AMAZON

“Must have been from who lived here before,” the woman who cared for him said as she blew the grit off the cellophane wrapping. She saw the hollow expression on the boy’s face and felt a pang of sorrow. “You know it’s too bad there wasn’t something to eat under that dirt in the corner, something that hadn’t gone bad like those beets we found on the top shelf last week.” The woman smiled and ran her fingers across the boy’s thinning hair. “But it is Halloween tonight. At least I think it is. That calendar on the wall looks like it’s still current. Maybe we could make up a few bags just in case some Trick or Treaters pass by.”

The boy looked up at her. “No candy,” he said weakly. A small line of drool formed just in the corners of his mouth but was too thick to flow out.

The woman reached down and wiped the congealing drool away. “No. No candy. But there’s all that junk we found in the bedroom and in the garage. There might something we could put in the bags.” She knelt down and hugged the boy and then put a hand under his chin and gently lifted his face. “What do you say? Might be fun. Might help the day to pass. Make things feel normal if only for a little while.”

The boy shrugged his shoulders and grinned. “Okay,” he said.

* * *

It was junk mostly, but the woman and the boy managed to fill six treat bags with bits of broken, colored glass, some small washers, and the real find—two cocktail umbrellas that they broke into small pieces for each bag. There was no indication that whoever had occupied the house in the past had had any children.

“Mostly old folk’s things,” the woman had told the boy as they sifted through the litter. “Probably a couple who had been married for years,” she said. Her eyes teared up as she thought of her husband. “They must have gone off to be by themselves.”

The woman saw that the boy had fallen asleep. She noticed his respiration was shallow. She placed her fingers on his wrist and felt a distant, slow, erratic beat. She knew it would not be long now.

The woman placed a soiled blanket over the boy. “It will be so much colder once the sun goes down,” she told herself.

The woman walked to the front of the derelict house and gazed out the spider webbed cracks in what was left of the front window. She looked down the rest of the block. The houses there were all dilapidated. She wasn’t sure if anyone else occupied any of the abandoned structures, but there had been times since she and the boy had decided to stay off the road and in this house that the woman thought she saw shadows move further up the street. It was hard to tell if they were people or not because they only appeared after sunset, and only briefly then.

“I fell asleep.” The boy stood in the bedroom doorway. The blanket was still draped around him.

The woman sat down and motioned for him to join her. The boy came and sat in her lap. “Did anyone come for Trick or Treat,” the boy asked as he nestled against her and shivered.

“Too early yet. You didn’t sleep that long.”

“I’m hungry,” he whispered.

“Later. I’ll see how much dry pasta we have left.” She held him close to try and share what little warmth her emaciated body could offer. “Sorry we used the last of the water. I’ve still got some matches. We could have made spaghetti.”

“It’s okay,” the boy said. “I like how it crunches.”

It wasn’t long until he had fallen back into a dreamless sleep.

* * *

When the boy awakened, he saw the slim flame from a stubby candle that sat outside on one of the remaining porch timbers. The cold night shimmered like graphite around it. The woman noticed the look of concern on the boy’s face. “It’s all right,” she told him and pointed out the other two partial candles she had burning inside the house. “I only used one match to light all three.”

The boy stood up from the floor where the woman had laid him when he was still asleep. He rubbed his eyes. “We have a light on then,” he remarked. “You have to have a light on for them to come.”

“That’s right. But it wasn’t always like that. When I was a child we went from house to house whether there was light on or not.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

A sick odor wafted across the room from the boy to the woman. He coughed dryly and asked, “Did you get a lot of chocolate? I love chocolate.”

The woman fought off the smell. “You bet. Chocolate and candy apples and pumpkin pie and popcorn balls. . .” She stopped when she noticed the strange look on the boy’s face.

“No. You couldn’t have had those things. You can’t wrap candy apples or pumpkin pie,” he remarked. “My parents would never let me eat them if they weren’t wrapped.” A shadow of despair fell over his face. He turned and looked out the window. “I still miss them,” he said with melancholy. “Will I ever stop missing them?”

The woman moved behind him and put her hands on his shoulders. “No,” she told the boy. “We never any of us stop.”

The woman then felt an unexpected gasp catch in her throat. Coming gradually down the street was a faint light. “Look,” she said. “Something’s moving toward us.”

The boy backed away from the window and picked up the treat bags he and the woman had placed in an old wicker basket. His fingers traveled along the top edge of the bags. “Can I give out the treats? Is it okay?”

It was the first genuine smile she had seen light up the boy’s face since the time she had found him over a year ago.

* * *

The little girl was garbed in what looked to be a combination Hobo and Fairy costume. Her dress was patched with pieces of different quilt sections. She also wore the wire support of what once must have been wings tied on underneath her shoulders. In one grimy hand she held a make-shift bag for candy that was made from old newspapers, and in her other hand she grasped the remnants of a wand that probably had matched the wings. The star on the end of the wand was broken and had only two bedraggled points.

“Trick or Treat,” the little girl cried.

“It was the best I could do,” a low, gravely voice said from behind the girl. The man moved forward into the dim candle light. “I sewed the dress together,” he explained. “What was left of the wings and the wand I found in the attic of that two story down the street at the end of the block. We’ve been there for awhile now.”

The woman took in the man’s appearance. In the dimness she could see he was wearing gray sweat pants with a matching long sleeved hoody. She couldn’t see his feet, but the woman assumed she would find tennis shoes had there been enough light to reveal them.

“I though I saw movement up the street,” the woman remarked. “But it was always getting dark and I didn’t want to take the chance on what I might find there.”

The man stepped forward. The woman saw that the flesh on his face was sunken and sallow. He had a full beard.

“Trick or Treat,” the little girl cried again.

The boy came out and dropped two of the treat bags into her sack.

“Can I open them now, Daddy?” the girl asked with excitement.

“Maybe the nice lady here will let you go inside,” the man said. “Maybe you and her son can play a little.”

The woman wasn’t sure that was a good idea, but the sudden elation on the boy’s face changed her opinion. “Sure,” the woman said. “Let’s all go in out of this cold.”

* * *

The woman and the man stood nervously by as the children opened the treat bags. They mostly smiled at each other and were content to watch the boy and girl.

“Look at these, Daddy!” the girl exclaimed as she held up the cut pieces of the drink umbrellas. “Look at the colors.”

“Very nice,” the man commented.

“How old is your daughter?” the woman asked.

Before the man could answer, the boy had a coughing fit. The woman rushed to him. The boy looked at her with pleading eyes as splatters of blood flew from his mouth. She knelt down and held his head forward. “Try to relax,” the woman said. “It will stop in a minute.”

The man came forward but offered no help. The little girl had abandoned her treat bags and stood behind the man.

The woman looked up at them. “Too much excitement, I guess.”

The boy seemed to calm for a moment and then was accosted by another attack of coughing. This time the blood came up in large clots.

“Oh, no!” the woman cried. “Help me! Please help me!”

The man picked up the boy. “Is there a bed or a cot?” he asked.

The woman led him to the bedroom where blankets lay spread on the floor. “This is where we’ve been sleeping,” she said. The woman looked back over her shoulder and saw that the little girl was bent over in the other room as if searching for something.

“I think he’s gone,” the man said.

“What?” the woman asked as she bent down and held the boy. She turned the boy’s face toward her and saw that the light had left his eyes. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she told the boy. And then she broke down.

When the woman appeared composed, the man said, “I’ll come back tomorrow and bury him for you.”

The woman nodded. “Thanks,” she said weakly.

The man collected the little girl and left the house. As they walked up the street he handed the girl a handkerchief from the side pocket of his hoody.

“Wipe your mouth,” the man told the girl.

* * *

The woman watched through the torn screens on the back porch as the man filled the hole he had dug to bury the boy in. The little girl had not come with the man today.

After the man had patted down the earth, he came inside. He had covered his head with the hood. Now that he was inside, the man pulled it from his head.

“Thank you,” the woman said. “He’d been suffering a lot lately. “

The man nodded. He reached in the pocket of his hoody and pulled out what looked like dried jerky. “Here,” he said. “You need the protein.”

The woman took the dried meat. She held it under her nose and took a long sniff. It smelled strongly of pepper. She took a small bite. Her taste buds came immediately alive. The flavor was savory, and she started to take another bite. That was when the under taste came through. Her stomach tightened and threatened to revolt if she swallowed.

The woman spit the wet lump of meat into her hand and let it drop to the floor of the back porch. She shook her head. “I never could develop a taste for it. Neither could the boy.”

“I see,” the man remarked.

The woman locked her eyes on those of the man. “Will I have a head start?” she asked.

“I’ll give you a week,” he answered. “I suggest you go back north. Everybody is heading south. They think salvation waits there.”

The corners of the woman’s mouth lifted in a weak grin. “Well, I can’t very well tell you which direction I plan to go, can I?”

The man laughed softly. “No I suppose not.”

“I’ll leave sometime today,” the woman said. “After you’ve gone back up the street.”

The man nodded and made to leave. The woman stopped him. “Promise me one thing,” she said.

The man raised his eyebrows. “If I can.”

“Promise me you or the girl won’t dig up his body. Promise me you’ll let his little soul rest in peace.”

The man was silent for awhile. He then nodded. “Okay. I’ll promise you that much.” The man then asked her, “May I ask why you told him it was Halloween? It’s really closer to Christmas. I’m pretty sure October has passed us by awhile back.”

“It was his favorite holiday,” the woman told the man. “Just a moment before you leave,” she said and left the porch. In a few minutes she came back out and handed the man a crumpled photo. The boy was in it dressed in a vampire cape. Two people stood behind him. Their hands were placed on each of the boy’s shoulders, but their heads had been cut off by whoever had taken the picture. It was easy to see that one pair of hands belonged to a female, and the other to a male.

“I’m pretty sure they were his parents,” the woman commented. “I thought I could at least give him one more Halloween. This picture was all the boy had in his possession when I found him wandering on the road.”

The man studied the photo for a moment before handing it back. He smiled briefly, and then he left.

The woman watched as he disappeared from her view. She glanced at the desolate landscape. She went back into the house to gather what she could before leaving. As she moved herself toward the front door, the woman found the sack made of old newspapers the little girl had carried for treats. It was lying where the boy and girl had played.

The woman picked up the wadded mass of paper. The newsprint had faded or had been destroyed by water. One picture was still in tact though.

The woman felt her eyes water as she studied the haggard face of The President of the United States.

The woman dropped the paper bag to the floor and walked out of the house on trembling legs and into the fading light of day.

Twitt

This Week’s Insanity

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This week’s insanity brought to you by Wendy Howard

I’ve gotten away from writing in this blog again, primarily because I’ve been busy setting up the Visionary Press cooperative. Am back though and trying to do some regular posts. Even managed to get a Friday Fright out last week.

Anyways, we’ve got a membership drive going on over at Visionary Press. If you’re interested in community publishing, drop by the website and learn more.

I’ve got a new book cover in the works for The Courier and am hoping to re-release in a couple weeks.

Tim’s story, Invitation was published in Dark Media Magazine a couple weeks ago.

This week over at Dark Media City:

  • It’s zombie month over at Horror Chat on DarkMedia City.
  • This month’s theme for Friday Frights continues with Science Fiction, the prompt being steampunk.
  • Over at The Dark Book Club we started reading the following new books.

HAVE A GREAT WEEK!!

Twitt

#FridayFright Aptitude by Timothy C. Hobbs

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Let me tell you what it feels like:

My head suddenly seems to be filling with water. There’s all this pressure. It’s not exactly painful. It’s more like your skull is threatening to explode.

It started happening to me when I reached that precarious time of life called puberty. Scared the hell out of me at first. I mean it’s bad enough that you’re sprouting hair in places previously void of it, and that your testicles develop this gnawing ache, and that your getting painful and throbbing boners. But to have your head feel like an expanding water balloon? Come on!

Okay, the hair was easy enough to accept. Made me feel a little cocky in fact. And the blue balls and erections—well those were easily relieved by my hidden Playboys and a solid lock on the bathroom door.

But this head thing! It came and went when it damned well pleased!

I finally complained enough about what my parents called ‘HEADACHES’, despite my contradictions to their diagnosis and a mountain of ingested aspirin, that my mother got an appointment with our family GP to see what was going on. There were different physical exams and multiple imagery procedures done like CAT Scans and MRIs. But nothing showed up out of the ordinary.

Nada.

The GP then decided it had something to do with my emerging puberty. ‘Probably a high testosterone level’ he told my mother. I noticed she blushed when he told her. I could almost hear her inner thoughts—‘Sorry, Doctor, we don’t say the P word out loud in our house.’

But my blood work for hormones came back okydoky as well. The GP shrugged and gave my mother a prescription of Valium for me, along with a higher dosed pill of Ibuprofen. Made me feel a little more relaxed when my head did its thing, but it didn’t cure it.

Eventually, I did figure out the way to relieve it. We were on our family vacation when it happened. That summer we went to my father’s home state of Kentucky. He came from a family of sharecroppers. His parents were still alive and living in the small home my dad had been born in along with his three brothers and two sisters.

Big family. Small house. Not much of a living in sharecropping back when my dad was growing up.

Things had changed though. My Uncles and Aunts had stayed in the area. The Uncles had purchased their own land; the Aunts had married farmers from the vicinity.

The family was close and tight, the homes and farms and dairies modern with the exception of my grandparent’s who never saw the need to change from the humble lifestyle that had suited them for many years. Their home had no running water. The H2O was provided by a well filled with spring water, which was also used to supply a metal bathtub twice a week for baths, the water shared from one bather to the next.

No television – God forbid. ‘Every one of those contraptions should be weighted down and sunk in the ocean’, at least that was my grandparents’ disposition on the subject.

An aged wood burning stove sat peacefully in their kitchen. But, they did have electricity, just not quite like you and I are accustomed to. The lines were covered in cloth and the wattage was low and you turned the lights on with this round mechanism mounted on the wall.

But it was electricity and it did put out enough voltage to allow a small refrigerator to operate—that object being the only thing besides electricity that smacked of the modern world in my grandparent’s home.

You’ll notice I didn’t mention the bathrooms. That’s because there were none. Which brings me to the most horrifying structure I had ever encountered up to that point of my existence: The Outhouse.

Now I had been to Kentucky once before. That was when I was a toddler. At my present, surging, pubescent age of twelve, I held no recollections of ever being there. My mother was always quick to enlighten me about their battle to get me to use the outhouse on that first visit; how I kicked and screamed and would not poop come hell or high water into a stinking hole cut into a stinking, stained wood bench where spiders and other creepy crawlies lived in the corners and shadows.

Not to mention the smell.

Somehow, everyone found this bit of nostalgia terribly amusing. Except for me. And even less so when my father announced we would be staying in his parent’s home for the week and not with his brother who lived less than a mile down the road, had running water, a television, electric service from an age other than the Stone one.

And, most of all, a bathroom. A real bathroom with a tub/shower combo and a porcelain throne fit for visiting royalty, and a door that could be secured for privacy when I wanted to fantasize and take care of the urgent need for emissions.

“This stay will give you some grit,” my dad advised at our first supper with his folks.

I’ll have to admit the roasted ears of corn, the fresh milk, homemade bread, country steak, and a desert of homegrown strawberries baked into a pie were something to savor under the subdued, yellow light. But later that night as I lay on a folding bed and listened to the night sounds of the open country on the screened-in back porch, I knew all those wonderful foods were busy bulking up in my colon after initial digestion. I figured I could go two, maybe three days, until the confrontation.

Boy, was I wrong.

It was either the bread or the pie or both. My grandmother must have put every available fibrous grain in them. By the time noon was approaching the following day, my guts were on the verge of spilling themselves outhouse or not.

I stumbled through the kitchen where my mother and grandmother were putting together a lunch of pinto beans and cornbread. When I saw those items I had to do a double sphincter squeeze and was pretty much making my way to the outhouse with my legs scrunched together. My dad and grandfather were sitting on the back porch. My grandfather was smoking his pipe. I heard him say something as I wobbled toward the shit-shack, but, to be honest, my head was filling up as well at that time and I couldn’t understand a word he said.

I stood transfixed momentarily outside the outhouse and tried to will the natural digestive process occurring in my bowels away.

Didn’t work.

I opened the creaky door and stepped inside the two-holer and pulled the door shut behind me. Between trying to hold my breath to keep the ancient sewer smell out of my nose, puckering up like I was in a prison shower populated by drooling Neanderthals, and trying to find one of the open holes while squinting against the pressure in my head, I damned near passed out. To be honest, I’m not certain I didn’t faint momentarily because one minute I was in the gloom, looking down, and the next I was sitting on the wood bench with my back flat against the inner wall and my ass suspended over the abyss of reeking tenants deposited there long before my arrival.

And for some ghastly reason, I still tried to hold it all in: the pressure building in my head with nowhere to go, and the force pressing against the inside of my intestines knowing exactly where it wanted to exit.

It passed through my mind then just how much crap and piss had been deposited and cleaned away over the ages of my father, his brothers and sisters, his parents, and whoever the hell came before all of them, relations or not.

Glistening turds, swimming diarrhea, and all the creatures that lived and fed in the quagmire came to my swollen mind in a ghastly array of horror.

And then it happened.

Armageddon!

My bowels exploded and my head emptied at the same time.

What I thought were swirling dots before my eyes were actually some sort of black, slimy looking bits of energy, energy that was covering the inside walls of the outhouse, energy that had somehow been focused from my brain onto and into the wood.

Then, just as my tortured body was experiencing the most rapturous relief of its twelve years, the roof and the attached walls of the outhouse were lifted away and thrown into my grandfather’s field . . . By me . .  . By my mind.

Telekinesis you see.

I had it all along and just didn’t know how to focus it.

Anyway, there I was, with my pants down and the remains of last night’s supper mercifully evacuated, captivating the stunned audience of my family. I recall my mother, her mouth open and eyes saucer-wide, was holding an empty baking pan that she let slip to the porch with an unceremonious clatter that broke the mystified silence of the moment.

My grandfather stared at me for a moment, tapped his pipe on the edge of his chair and said to my father, “Yep, just like your older brother and youngest sister, John.” He refilled his pipe and lit it and puffed a cloud of gray smoke into the afternoon stillness. “Got the power he does.”

After the lunch of beans and cornbread, my grandfather handed me a hammer, some nails, and a saw. “Best pick up them pieces in the field and get to putting things back together, young man. We all gonna’ be needing the facilities come bedtime after the lunch we just put away.”

And that’s how I became enlightened; how I learned about my aptitude: through bloatation at both ends and an aging outhouse wall.

My grandparents told me later how my aunt used her power to cook and clean. “Girl can fix up a mess of supper and run a vacuum without ever leaving her favorite chair.”

And how my uncle ran the most successful dairy in Kentucky. “It took a long while for them Jerseys to get used to invisible hands milking them, but they caught on quick enough with little or no damage inflicted to the milking barn.”

And me, third in line to the ‘Power’.

I set my sights a little higher.

After playing the fool at making sweet young thing’s clothes fall off, I got serious about my future.

Yes sir, the U.S. Government was happy to get their hands on me. I’m certainly not the only telekinetic on the block, but I am one of the more powerful ones.

No torture antics on terrorists for me, no stuffy interrogation rooms or covert ops. Uh unh. I got the best job of all.

You know those political letters you get in the mail around election time? Sure you do: Vote for this one, send money to this one, this one did this, this one didn’t do that, ect.ect.ect.ad nauseum.

Well, it’s like this.

I’ve gone a little further up the aptitude chain. I can go beyond moving solid objects now. All the ink in those political letters has my slimy, energy dots, just like the ones that first tore apart that outhouse back in Kentucky, impregnated in it. It’s to make certain the acceptable, unconscious decisions are made by you—citizen, amigo, comrade . . . . Whichever side of the fence they have me working on that week.

So relax, watch the tube, take it easy, and fuss all you want about the powers that be. It really doesn’t matter. Because I’m in your head, Fred.

And I really have warmed to the benefits, vacation time, and the security of my government job.

Not to mention those long breaks and lunches.

Let me tell you, if this ain’t happiness, friend, it’s damn sure close.

© Copyright 2012 Timothy C. Hobbs
2085 words

MUSIC BOX SONATA BY TIMOTHY C. HOBBS

At the top of a steep cliff a derelict church serves its congregation of dust, cobwebs and birds roosting in the rafters. One human occupant lives there hidden in the cellar. He is cursed never walk in the tortuous sunlight, but to roam the woods on the cliff at night in the form of a hideous beast struggling with the violent desire to kill while striving to preserve remnants of his own humanity. Purchase on Smashwords

Twitt

Moondance by Timothy C. Hobbs

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Stanley Price awoke to the smell of corruption.

His cracked window had allowed a breeze to flow into the room. It was from the south and wafted over the tide pools near his one room house, or shit-shack, as he liked to call it, on the beach of Port Aransas, Texas.

Price squinted at his alarm clock and found it was almost noon. It had been ages since he’d had to set that alarm. Ages since he’d had any real work after leaving Houston’s Finest under questionable circumstances.

He ran a hand over the nightstand and found what was left of his rot gut booze in a glass he’d quit washing a long time ago.

Price took the last swallow and felt it land in his empty stomach like a lead weight.

He pulled himself up from the sweaty sheets. He took a deep breath of the foul air. He found himself fixated for moment on his stained underwear and wondered if his monthly stipends for water and electricity would continue. Just the insane thought of having enough assets for any type of nuclear power made him laugh, and the laugh made him cough. He swallowed a warm lump of phlegm and frowned and stood up.

Price felt a slight dizziness that passed quickly. He rubbed the cracked, mucous sleep from the corners of his eyes and went and sat at the rickety table he’d found discarded down the beach about a year ago. He wished he’d saved enough tokens for a cup of black coffee. His emaciated frame should have wanted food as well, but he’d learned to bypass the hunger urges along with his sex drive and his dignity.

“Shit,” Price croaked through a parched throat. “All this high tech crap running the world and I don’t even have water to drink or to wash my filthy clothes with.”

The knock on the door passed through his mind like a shadow. He dismissed it to the hot breeze from the Gulf, or his own imagination.

When the knock came a second time, Price went to the night stand and took out his Smith and Wesson .38 Special. He cracked the cylinder and counted three shells. “Might stop one of the Goon Cyborg Squad for a minute,” he thought and then sighed, knowing they always traveled in groups of three. “They must have found out about the illegal rot gut,” Price guessed. He grinned cynically and walked to the door.

The afternoon heat was already filling the ramshackle residence. Price’s sour body odor competed with the tide pool stench. “I hope they take a deep breath,” he said to himself as he stood against the door and looked out the grimy peephole. “I’ll be damned,” Price declared out loud. “That you, Mendez?”

 

* * * *

 

“When you gonna’ get out of this puke-hole, Price?”

Angel Mendez— profiteer, pirate, boot-legger, pimp . . . you name it, and he’d do it or get it.

Angel moved back and forth across the Mexico-U.S. border without constraint.

His connections went from El Presidente in Mexico City, to the Texas Governor, and even, some believed, as far as The White House.

But he’d never personally killed a soul intentionally or by accident.

Price stared at the athletic build and privileged smile of Mendez and felt a short-lived jealousy. “You’re sitting at one of the three pieces of what passes for furniture in this ‘puke-hole’, and you have to ask why I’m still here, Mendez?” Price sat the Smith and Wesson down on the table. “No dinero, amigo.”

Mendez crinkled his nose and commented, “Not enough for air freshener, that’s for sure.”

Price scowled then let out a strained laugh. Mendez did the same.

“What if I told you I got a job for you, Price,” Mendez said through his waning amusement.

Price’s chuckles ceased. He ran thin fingers over the .38’s smooth handle. “I’d say you are out of touch. Loco in la cabeza.” Price closed his eyes for a moment against the rising temperature in the room. When he opened them, Price noticed Mendez’s white, silk, shirt was already soaked through with perspiration. Price grinned. If nothing else, they had sweat in common. “In case it’s slipped your mind, Mendez, Houston P.D. blackballed me. If I get caught doing anything other than cleaning shithouses, I will be put away for the remainder of my already miserable life.” Price expelled a heavy sigh. “Hell, Mendez, the monthly allotment they give me was almost nullified. It ain’t much, but it keeps me in water and ramen noodles and an occasional cup of coffee.” He paused then added with a sneer, “And what prohibited, rot gut whiskey I can get from some of your associates.”

“You must know something or you wouldn’t get that.”

Price shook his head. “I still got a few connections, Mendez. Not many, but a few who feel a little pity for me.”

“No one seems to know what you did anyway, Price. Something involving the premature disposal of a certain congresswoman’s son, right?’

Price raised his eyes to Mendez and gave him a hard look. “I also learned how to keep my mouth shut.”

Mendez grinned and nodded. “Sure, sure.” He pulled a flash drive from his shirt pocket and slid it across the table toward Price. “Take a look, amigo. See if this offer is worth your time.”

Price got up and ambled over to his rumpled, sweat-stained bed. He bent down and grabbed something from under it, walked back to the table and laid a beat up lap top on it. He glanced at Mendez and informed him, “I don’t have much power left in the lithium cell. And I don’t get my measly five hundred token allotment until the first of next month.” Price flipped the lap top open and added. “I’ve been without purified water almost a week now, and I’m damned tired of desalinating from the Gulf with the shit equipment I pieced together with duct tape and rubber bands, so this better be good and not of waste of time and battery power.”

 

* * * *

 

“How in Christ did they escape from the Goon Cyborg Squad?”

Price handed the flash drive back to Mendez then powered down the lap top and closed the lid.

Mendez frowned. “It was that prick Jennings,” he advised and shrugged his shoulders. “You know, that guy who won some kind of big prize for research back in the day.”

“Emile Jennings?”

Mendez snapped his fingers. “Yeah. That’s him.”

Price chuckled. “Yeah, some prize all right . . . .Just the fucking Nobel Prize for his work on Cyborgs.”

“Anyway, Jennings didn’t install a termination date on any of them.”

“Doesn’t sound like something a brainiac like Jennings would overlook.”

“He didn’t do it on purpose,” Mendez explained. “Jennings was going to extort cash from Universal Pictures. They still own the copyright for their Famous Monster series. He just assumed they were the consortium who was behind his manufacturing the Cyborg versions of Frankenstein, Dracula, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Mummy, and the Wolf Man.”

Price couldn’t help but laugh. “Who in the hell would want to have those things built then?”

“You can ask,” Mendez advised. “But I can’t tell you.”

“Can you let me in on why?”

“Sure, amigo. Last Halloween there was a supertechtronics convention at the Houston Pavilion. This company, who’s name must be withheld,” Mendez continued after clearing his throat, “thought they could liven things up and get some customers for their new hydro-converter system by putting on a show with some of Universal’s Famous Monsters.” Mendez smiled. “Heard it went over big too, until the monsters got away, that is.”

“The Goon Cyborg Squad didn’t catch any of them?” Price asked.

“Actually, they did. All but one. And that’s where you come in. The company that hired Jennings wants you to find the one that got away.”

“Just find it, right?”

Mendez shook his head. “No way. That’s not your expertise, Price.”

Price let out a long sigh. “I don’t do that anymore, Mendez.”

“Pays 1.5 million tokens, Price.”

“How much!?” Price asked. “My ears are a bit clogged with dirt, Mendez. I thought you said 1.5 million. That can’t be right.”

“Well, I get fifteen per cent for hiring you,” Mendez informed. “But that still leaves you a hefty pay day, Price.”

“Why so much?”

“It’s dangerous. Very dangerous.”

Price glanced around the one room dwelling. His eyes lingered on the wobbly table and nightstand, and on the decrepit bed. The hot air in the room suddenly seemed more foul and cloying. He brought his attention back to Mendez. “For the sake of argument, let’s say I took the job. Please tell me it was the Mummy that got away. It’s not the most dexterous of that group. I can probably take care of him with no problem.”

Mendez chuckled. “You wish,” he said. “No, it was the Wolf Man they couldn’t catch.”

“Shit.”

“That’s right. Already been twelve murders that Houston P.D. can verify. Who knows how many there’s been in the Forbidden Districts.”

Price felt his stomach tighten. It had been so long since he had hunted anybody down, much less killed them, he wasn’t certain he’d have the confidence for the job anymore. Besides, this was the Wolf Man, and a Cyborg version at that. That combination of machine and flesh had to be deadly.

“I don’t know, Mendez. It’s been awhile, and, in case you didn’t notice, I’m not in the best of physical condition anymore.”

Mendez’s face went blank for a moment. A slow grin spread over it as he stated, “Look at you, Price. Sitting at a wobbly table in your shit-stained skivvies, living in a dilapidated beach house and trying to squeeze out an existence on five hundred tokens a month . . . and not certain how long you can depend on that pitiful allotment either.”

Price flushed. He picked up the .38 and aimed it Mendez. “Maybe I’ll just shoot you, amigo. I can sell that stylish wardrobe of yours on the black market, and I’ll just bet you’ve got a flash drive embedded with a lot of tokens on your body somewhere. Knowing you, you had a scrotal pocket implanted.”

“Nobody likes to play with someone else’s balls, Price,” Mendez said with a big grin. He reached across the table and pushed the gun to one side. “I know you better, Price. You’re not a murderer. You’re a cleaner.”

Price smirked and put the gun back down on the table.

“So, why don’t you put on whatever filthy clothes you have, Price, and come with me to one of my condos on Padre Island,” Mendez offered. “I’ll let you live there for free until you get paid.”

“You mean if I live long enough to get paid.”

Mendez stood up and wiped away the perspiration rolling down his face. “I got faith in you,” he announced. He stared at Price for a minute. “I’ll even throw in some new clothes and a few cases of cigarettes. Can’t get smokes here in the states anymore. At least not without risking incarceration.”

“Marlboroughs?”

Mendez nodded.

“Hell, amigo, let me get dressed then.”

As they drove away in Mendez’s Hydro Lincoln Town Car, Price asked, “By the way, what happened to Jennings? You said he was going to blackmail Universal.”

Mendez opened the ashtray. He pulled a pack of Marlboroughs from the center console and handed them to Price. “The company that had hired him locked Jennings in a room with the Dracula Cyborg,” Mendez said and took a cigarette that Price offered from the pack. He pushed the car’s lighter in and added. “By the time the sun went down, Jennings was begging them to let him out.” Mendez puffed fire onto his cigarette’s end and passed the lighter to Price. “Jennings was then more than happy to terminate the creatures that had been recovered,” Mendez said through a cloud of swirling smoke. “Coarse they blew his brains out after he had neutralized the Famous Monsters Cyborgs.”

“Nobel Prize brains,” Price noted with a visible shudder. He took a long drag of his cigarette and laid his head back and let the smoke curl slowly out of his nose.

 

* * * *

 

The black and white glossy Price held was of Lon Chaney Jr.

Price sat in the idling hunk of junk Toyota Mendez had acquired for him. It was one of the early hydro models and had rank exhaust fumes seeping through cracks in the floorboards. Price thought it smelled like a cross between the inside of a dry cleaners and about a thousand wet dogs. But even in the area of Houston where his search had led him, Price had to keep the vehicle running. A gang could appear at any moment. To them, the broken down Toyota would be a piece of paradise.

Looking at the photo again, Price couldn’t help but laugh at what Mendez had said.

“Guy’s name is Larry Talbot,” Mendez had informed when he handed Price a box of photos. Mendez pulled out the one of Lon Chaney Jr. and said in all seriousness. “This is him here, Price. Looks nice enough until the full moon cycle,” Mendez added and then handed Price a photo of the fully transformed beast.

“You dumb shit,” Price had interjected. “Didn’t you ever see any of these old movies?”

Mendez had flushed but held back his anger. “I don’t have time for any of that bullshit.” He pointed a finger at Price. “And don’t call me dumb. A shit maybe, but not a dumb one.”

Price chuckled again and cracked his windows. The June heat mixed with the exhaust fumes was too much, even if such an action was not a good idea in one of the Forbidden District neighborhoods.

He had figured this is where the Wolfman, a.k.a. Larry Talbot, would hide. It’s where Price would have.

“So Jennings had gone the gambit on the Cyborg Universal Monsters,” Price thought to himself. “Even had the Wolfman transform back and forth between wolf and human. Quite a trick. Jennings must have used some type of flexible but sound metal alloy frame.”

Price then wondered with amusement if Dracula had been able to turn into a bat.

About that time, it started to rain. Price then noticed a figure huddled in a raincoat standing by a corner that led to an alleyway. Whoever it was, Price speculated they must have been smothering what with that thick raincoat pulled up all the way to their chin.

Price pulled his .38 Special from the glove compartment. There were five rounds in the chamber now. Silver bullets supplied by Mendez, but they would kill a normal citizen just as well as any other.

The rain came down harder. Price switched on the wipers. Only the driver’s side were functional. “Figures,” he thought and noticed through the rolling drops on the passenger side windshield that the figure was now gone.

Price leaned forward to wipe away fog that was forming on the inside of the windshield. A crash exploded by his ear. He fell unconscious through a burst of shattered glass.

 

* * * *

“They must be paying you a great deal.”

The voice entered Price’s head like a far away echo, like a distant sigh heard in a seashell.

Price squinted against his returning vision. He put his hand on the back of his head and felt something wet and sticky. He moaned as an escalating ache began to spread.

Price took in his surroundings. He was propped up in the corner of a small room. There were lines of shelving that had been pulled down. Deteriorating cardboard boxes and shreds of plastic littered the floor. He guessed the space had once been a store room of some kind. There was a dank and rotten odor about the place, and also that distinctive smell left behind by birds that had once roosted there.

The room was murky. What little light that made it in from outside was dim at best because of the overcast day. But even so, Price could see the silhouette crouched nearby, and the wet raincoat lying beside it on the cement floor.

The form lifted its head and the shadowy lines of the jowl-faced Lon Chaney Jr. emerged through the gloom.

Price instinctively went for his gun, fumbling around his belt.

Chaney, or Talbot if you will, held up the .38. “Looking for this?” he asked Price.

Price felt his stomach tighten. His mind flashed back to the one hundred thousand down-payment he had left in the wall safe of Mendez’s beach house. He cursed himself for not taking the money and getting the hell out of dodge when he had had the chance. But the total payment was too tempting. It would have come close to setting Price up for life.

But now . . .

“Price, isn’t it?” Chaney asked.

Price frowned. “How’d you find me?” he inquired. “Hell, how’d you even know about me?”

Chaney touched his nose and said with amusement, “Wolf Man? Heightened senses?”

“More like I got ratted out,” Price suggested. “It’s hard for even the Wolf Man to smell out a contract.”

“These photos,” Chaney said and pointed to the box Mendez had given Price. Along with the perpetrator’s personal images were the brutal crime scene shots. “Did I really kill all those people?” Chaney swallowed with audible hardness. “Really mutilate them like that?”

Price frowned against the pain in his head. “You’re the Wolf Man, aren’t you? Think you’d talk them to death or something?”

Chaney’s look of abject despair was like a slap to Price’s face. Chaney pulled the photos from the box and crumpled them in his hands. He grimaced and wept and screamed, “No! I wouldn’t!” He slung the photos across the room. He walked over to Price and knelt down. Chaney’s face was wet with tears. “I don’t even remember being born,” he sobbed. “Where did I come from? Why can’t I remember anything? Why am I a werewolf?”

Price glanced at the revolver Chaney had laid down just across from him. He shoved Chaney, catching the big Cyborg off guard. Chaney lost his balance and fell sideways. Price scrambled across the floor and grabbed the .38. He had a bead on Chaney as the man was trying to stand.

The explosion reverberated like thunder in the small room.

Chaney hit the floor. He turned over slowly and tried to push himself up, but the silver bullet did its work swiftly. He crumpled into a ball and screamed in agony. He had transformed about half of his body when he died.

The heavy smell of cordite merged with the dank, decayed stench of the room.

Price tried to swallow the lump of fear caught in his throat as he stared at the flattened snout, the incomplete emergence of vicious teeth, and the wiry, scattered patches of dark fur on the form spread out on the cold, concrete floor.

 

* * * *

 

“I knew I could count on you, Price.”

Mendez’s voice broke through the curtain of tranquilizer sleep Price had been shrouded in for two days. The event with Chaney had unnerved him.

“Huh?” Price rose up from the living room couch in the beach condo. No way he was going to sleep into a confined space like a bedroom anytime soon.

Price swung his bare legs over the side of the couch. He rubbed his eyes.

“You bring the rest of the contract money?” he asked though a yawn.

Mendez cleared his throat. “Not exactly,” he said and stood away from an open doorway. “She did.”

Price saw a middle-aged woman dressed in a frumpy suit enter. The clothes looked too tight on her puffy frame.

“Excuse me?” Price asked. “Who is this, Mendez?”

The woman answered before Mendez could. “We never met officially, Mr. Price. I’m Robert Dutton’s mother.” The woman smiled a haunted smile. Now that Price looked closer, she also appeared pale and sickly.

And then the recollection hit him.

“Congresswoman Dutton?” Price inquired through a sudden nausea.

She shook her head yes and handed Mendez a small envelope. “The balance is in the envelope, Mr. Mendez.” She then stared hatefully at Price. “I only wish my son were here to see this.”

“Hey, just a second,” Price shouted as she walked out the door. Mendez closed it before Price could slip on his discarded trousers lying on the floor by the couch. “What does she have to do with all of this, Mendez?” he asked with one leg in and one leg out of his pants.

“Sit back down, amigo,” Mendez said flatly.

“But I need to explain to her about her son,” Price said nervously as he continued to try and get dressed. “He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. The drug dealer I was supposed to take out tried to hide in the toilet. The bullet went through him and into the next stall. How was I to know…”

Mendez opened the front door again. A tall man walked in. He glanced around the condo as if he were confused.

Mendez pulled open the curtains covering a large bay window. Moonlight flooded the condo. The tall stranger immediately gravitated to the window. He stood as if in rapture and stared at a spectral full moon suspended above the Gulf of Mexico.

Price recognized the man then.

“Was it you, Mendez, or Dutton’s mother who tipped off Chaney?” Price asked as he slid his hand under the couch cushion, searching for the weapon he had hidden there.

Mendez smiled and held up Price’s .38 Special. “Looking for this, amigo?”

Price felt a sinking feeling embrace him. “Didn’t figure Chaney would turn out to be so guilt ridden did you? Thought I would be just another statistic. Thought Dutton would get her pound of flesh in the bargain, right?”

“I could not say no to 1.5 million, Price.” Mendez slid the gun inside his waist band. “I knew you could find Chaney. You always were a good bloodhound. Better than any Cyborg.” Mendez shrugged. “It worked out for the congresswoman, the company that had hired Jennings, and me.” He grinned weakly. “Not so good for you though, Price.”

“So what now?’ Price asked, glancing at the man by the window. “How the hell does a Benicio Del Toro Cyborg fit in?” Price raised his eyebrows. “He is a Cyborg isn’t he?”

“Sure he is. The company thought it would be fun to have both of Universal’s Wolfmen at the supertechtronics convention” Mendez chuckled and stated, “Now it is you who forget movie stars and their roles, amigo.”

“Wait a minute,” Price said with a sense of escalating dread. “Del Toro was in the remake of The Wolf Man. Universal released it back in the early 2000’s.  I . . .”

The Benicio Del Toro Cyborg turned away from the window. His facial features were already beginning to alter. “Why does it fascinate me so?” he asked and turned back and looked once more at the moon. “I want to dance with it, make love to it.” He twisted back around. The terrible visage of his face sent a shiver through Price. “The moon, she is a cold and distant maiden.” Hair began to sprout over his arms and face. “She is … unkind.”

Price glanced back at Mendez just in time to see Mendez exit and close the door behind him.

Price should have been terrified then, but a strange and unexpected calm enveloped him instead. He sat back on the couch not even bothering with his half-dressed condition. He pulled a cigarette from its pack on the end table by the couch, lit it, and took a long drag.

“I didn’t recognize the movie role,” Price said to an absent Mendez as he let the smoke curl slowly out of his mouth and nostrils, “because I hate fucking remakes.”

A baleful howl filled the room as Price crushed out the cigarette in the ashtray on the end table.

His throat was torn away before he could expel the warm cloud of smoke dwelling in his lungs.

Twitt

#FridayFrights The Predator by Timoty C. Hobbs

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The African landscape was covered in twilight. The baby rhinoceros nuzzled its mother unnerved by the quick shadows surrounding them. A smell of danger permeated the air. The mother rhino pawed at the dusty earth.

The first hyena moved in quickly from the female rhino’s blind aide. It snapped at the baby then ran for cover in the dry bush where its pack waited. The mother rhino tensed for the next attack. When they came, the hyenas rushed from different directions, using short delays to confuse and imbalance the adult rhino. But the mother was up for the challenge and met each attempt to capture her baby with charges of her own.

The hyenas were patient. Time was own their side. There were five of them and only one adult rhino. Eventually, the mother charged erratically at the swift figures, losing her sense of direction as the hyenas snatched the squealing baby away. They tore their capture apart with powerful jaws as the mother roared, charging at shadows.

Mr. Simmons raised the projection screen. Sunlight flooded his fifth period High School Biology class.

“Most people believe hyenas to be scavengers,” Mr. Simmons addressed his students. “But, as you witnessed in the film, they can be cunning predators as well.”

Mr. Simmons’ voice faded as Ron stared across the room at the new girl. Simmons had announced that Sandra was a transfer from some state, Ron couldn’t remember where, at the beginning of the fall term. Ron was one of the ‘bloodhounds’ perpetually sniffing around the halls after girls. This new girl fit his criteria nicely: shocking red hair bundled in a knot on her head, fair skin dotted with beyond-cute freckles, and a body, what a body, with firm breasts riding high on a short compact curvy assed frame. Ron’s goal was to taste this sweet apple before Christmas break rolled around. But, he would take it slow. Get to know her. Just like the hyenas, time was on his side.

It started with impromptu sittings at lunch: “Would she mind?” “Could he join her?”

She never sent him away, even when her budding friendships with other girls were threatened by their dislike for Ron. “He’s nothing but a ‘dog’” they warned her. “All he wants is to get in your pants. Just ask Becky or Susan or Mary or . . .”

His conversation was general, his questions typical: “Where you from?” “How do you like it here in Paducah, Kentucky?” “Pretty small berg for a girl like you I bet.”

And she answered. She had relocated from Abilene, Texas. She came ahead of her parents because they had six months left on the contract at their jobs and did not want her to miss the beginning of the school year. Her father had accepted an offer from the hospital in Paducah. Both of her parents were registered nurses, so her mother had been hired as a stipulation to her father’s accepting the job in charge of Pediatric critical care at Paducah General. She was staying in an apartment building, The Pomegranate Tree, and rode the bus to school each day.

“No need to ride a bus when I’ve got a car. Why not let me pick you up in the morning? I can even take you home after school if you want me to.” Ron grinned an easy smile, confident and aware of the trust building between them.

It wasn’t long until they went on dates, sometimes driving to Mayfield—a larger city with different activities to appreciate like a shopping mall, dance clubs, multiplex cinemas, or rock concerts. But mostly they hung around Paducah. There was no indoor movie theater there, but a Drive-In still hustled enough business to stay open. It was there they finally kissed and petted, and there, after a few dates, they started to steam up the windows as cold weather approached.

Then, the moment finally arrived. Ron had her flat on the back seat while the soundtrack from the drive-in speaker became a meaningless jumble of words and music. His hands unhooked her bra; he kneaded her rigid breasts while fumbling to unzip Sandra’s jeans.

She grabbed his hand. “Not here,” she said breathlessly. “Not in your car.”

“Your place?”

“No. Someone might see and it will get back to my parents. Don’t you know somewhere else?”

He was frustrated, impatient, but smart enough not to destroy his chances by forcing her. He sat up. He ran his hands through his sandy sweat-slicked hair. “Yeah, sure,” he said. “There’s a motel about two miles out on I 62. We’ll go there.”

“Just hurry,” she said almost panting, the heat rising from her body, ready and wanting. “Just hurry.”

The temperature was in a steady fall. It was late November, a time for cold weather in Kentucky. The sky clouded and threatened snow. Ron pulled in to the Wildcat Motel’s parking lot. It was Thursday night and the place was almost void of other cars. The neon sign fought the cold—the W I L C A burned steady, but the D and T flashed like strobe lights and crackled against the damp, cold, night air. The night manager at the motel, a burned out alcoholic in his late fifties named Jesse, wasn’t surprised to see Ron walk in; he was one of their steady customers.

“Hey, Ron,” Jesse said casually as he ground out a cigarette burned down to the filter in an overflowing ashtray. “Need one for a few hours or the whole night?”

Ron laid a twenty dollar bill on the counter. “As long as it takes,” he said as he accepted the key from Jesse. It was for No.11, his lucky number, the room located in the back away from the highway.

Jesse smiled, the wrinkles and dirt-lined creases on his worn face dancing as he did.

The room was cold when they stepped in, the air heavy with the smell of cheap rug and bathroom cleaners. But the two didn’t notice the cold or the odor. They were too busy pulling off each others clothes on their way to the bed.

They fell on the marshmallow mattress in a tangle of arms and legs, each groping and kissing the other in heated foreplay.

And then, Ron was inside her. At first their sex was animal and brutal, but it slowed down as the night wore on and became a ballet of rhythm, a mutual gliding of insatiable partners.

“Don’t stop,” she whispered as Ron lay exhausted on top of her. Their bodies were held together by a line of sweat that stretched with any movement.

He raised himself in a pushup motion. “My, God,” he said with a slight laugh. “Don’t you ever get enough?”

“Never,” she said then used her groin muscles to squeeze his penis, which was lying flaccid inside her.

“I felt that, you little devil.”

She did it again, this time a little harder.

As Ron opened his mouth to laugh, two thin streams of liquid were expelled from the corners of Sandra’s mouth. They landed on Ron’s tongue. It was so sudden he swallowed some of the sweet, acid-tasting fluid instinctively before spitting out the rest. The liquid coagulated with his saliva and landed with an audible plop on Sandra’s stomach.

Ron was livid. He grabbed Sandra roughly by her shoulders. “What the Hell’s wrong with you. Why’d you spit at me?!” In the middle of his yelling, another two streams of fluid were dispensed into his mouth. Unable to control his reflexes, he swallowed all of the stuff this time. His hands went to his lips. He reached inside his mouth and tried to pull the sticky material out. The fluid was stinging the soft tissue lining his mouth; the inside of his cheeks and his tongue went numb. Ron tried to speak but his larynx was anesthetized, allowing only a choked, airy moan to escape. He tried to push himself away from Sandra but her tightening vaginal muscles locked him in place.

Ron panicked and made a strong effort to free himself. An enormous pulling pressure moved him forward. His upper torso snapped in a curving motion. The strain on his spine was agonizing. His genitals were alive with pain as if being injected with battery acid.

Sandra’s abdomen convulsed in short rhythmic waves. Her mouth gaped; her arms spread out and twisted behind her head. She looked like she was in labor only she was pulling in, not pushing out.

Ron flailed his arms uselessly like a bird whose feet were stuck in cement denying it takeoff. He could not grab Sandra’s upper body due to his awkward, bent position, so he locked his fingers on to her thighs, pinching into the flesh as hard as he could, but it had no affect as Sandra’s leg muscles tensed, repelling his fingers in their effort to cause pain.

Before Ron could try and re-grip her thighs, Sandra’s internal muscles made an enormous inward convulsion. Ron was pulled deeper inside her. He was being shaped into a ‘v’ when a terrible crack split the silence in the room. As his brain exploded in agony when the splintering vertebral column severed his spinal chord, Ron’s spine fractured at the pelvic connection.

The pain then quickly abated and the pressure was relieved when Ron lost all sensation to his lower trunk and legs. He wanted to both laugh and wail as his head slipped between two feet he recognized as his own.

The fiery acid sensation continued to spread into Ron’s belly and chest, flowing slowly toward his neck. “She’s eating me!” Ron’s silent cry burned in his fevered brain. “She’s swallowing me like some monstrous snake.”

Sandra’s stomach moved in pulsing waves as it shifted the living prey into her enlarging pelvic cavity. Her abdomen bulged to the point of bursting. Ron’s face was a purple mask as the pre-digestive fluid entered his head and brain. What uncontaminated blood was left there pooled in his occipital lobe, causing a temporary elevated sense of sight. The last thing he focused on was a large water mark on the ceiling above him.

“Jesse better fix that,” Ron mused insanely to himself, “or the rain’s gonna’ pour in one day.”

Sandra’s eyes rolled back, exposing the whites. With one final tug, Ron’s head and feet were pulled inside her. She had digested about one half of his body.

By the time she left the motel, the organic material in Sandra’s womb was reduced to the size of a softball. One would only see a slight bulge in her abdomen if they noticed at all. Digestion took longer on this planet, most likely caused by the food’s composition as well as the different gravitational pull on Sandra’s fluids.

She had folded Ron’s clothes and placed them in his car which she left parked outside the room. She could not drive and would not take the chance of calling a cab as she might be identified as the girl leaving the motel. Ron’s disappearance would instigate an investigation, but it took the authorities here awhile to get the ball rolling. She would be long gone by then.

Sandra stayed off the highway. She made good time through the fields and was soon back at her apartment in Paducah. It was early morning now. The sun had not yet risen. She gathered a few clothes and walked away in the opposite direction of her apartment building. She would hitch hike until she felt far enough away and safe enough to catch a bus to another city. Farther north, she thought. Maybe the east coast this time.

The first car to stop for her was on its way to Louisville which is a good number of miles from Paducah. The driver was a woman who looked to be middle-aged. She was a pharmacy representative who covered a number of counties in Kentucky. She was on her way to Louisville to attend an area meeting of the surrounding hospitals. She was quiet and kind, offering Sandra some coffee from a thermos and half a Bear Claw pastry which Sandra declined.

As the car moved smoothly through the early morning, a light snow started falling. Sandra leaned her head against the passenger window. It would not be long, she assured herself, until the detention period on her planet was lifted and she could return to her home so far away.

Sandra sighed, drifted into a comfortable doze, and then dreamed of home.

© Copyright 2012 Timothy C. Hobbs
2085 words

MUSIC BOX SONATA BY TIMOTHY C. HOBBS

At the top of a steep cliff a derelict church serves its congregation of dust, cobwebs and birds roosting in the rafters. One human occupant lives there hidden in the cellar. He is cursed never walk in the tortuous sunlight, but to roam the woods on the cliff at night in the form of a hideous beast struggling with the violent desire to kill while striving to preserve remnants of his own humanity.

Purchase on Smashwords

Twitt

This Week’s Insanity

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This week’s insanity brought to you by Wendy

I got away from our Monday posts because a lot of insanity happened over the past couple months. That’s all coming to an end and new and exciting things are happening. In my case I had to take a few steps back to be able to leap forward, so I’m certainly not sitting around pouting, that’s for sure.

Unfortunately, I had to unpublish The Courier, which is why you no longer see it on this blog. I’m starting a new cooperative publishing company, Visionary Press, with a few respected authors and artists, and The Courier will re-release later this year. Stay tuned. More on Visionary Press next week.

I’ve started doing wine reviews on Wednesday if you haven’t dropped by to read for awhile. Wine is a passion of both mine and my hubby’s, so I’m having a blast writing these reviews. Check ‘em out so far. Tim knows whiskey and I’m trying to get him to writer reviews. Cross your fingers.

This week’s Horror Chat on Twitter and Dark Media City is about David Lynch so everyone will have to endure my fixation with Eraserhead and Dune. In June, we start a series of discussions on zombies, YIPPEE, always a popular topic.

June also starts a month of Science Fiction for Friday Frights. This week we will release stories about aliens. We have been all moved into Dark Media City for the last couple weeks too. Now we vote weekly for the stories and our favorite is published in Dark Media Magazine.

The Dark Book Club, also on Dark Media City is now run by Visionary Press and led by Blaze McRob and myself. The club is really taking off and we’ve nearly doubled the members. Drop by and join or suggest your book.

HAVE A GREAT WEEK!!

Twitt

#FridayFrights Invitation by Timothy C. Hobbs

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The emaciated black man sat huddled against the cold in a dilapidated wheelchair. He wore a dark cowboy hat that was faded in a patchwork quilt pattern of leprous, white splotches. His body was obscured from view by a trash bag that had been cut open to allow him to pull it over his head like a poncho. A few feet away, The Salvation Army bell ringer swung the metal instrument of his calling back and forth with the conviction of a corpse.

Vernon chose to ignore both figures as he sidestepped the wheelchair, keeping his stare on the welcoming Walmart entrance. “No eye contact” he repeated over and over to himself.

He was startled by the quick grip on his coattail by a hand emerging deftly from under the homemade poncho. “Hey!” Vernon complained. “Let go of me.”

Vernon gazed down into a pair of sunglasses and a wide smile populated with more metal than ivory along with a splintered toothpick drooping in one corner. A thin, pitiful looking moustache jerked above the smile.

“My man!” a black face announced.

“I said, let me go,” Vernon repeated as he grabbed his coat and tried to pull it free from an amazingly strong grip.

“Hey, motherfucker! Chill out!” The man relinquished his hold on Vernon’s coattail and held out a 5 by 7 flyer. Vernon noticed the man’s hand was trembling violently. “It’s an invite to a dinner party down at the shelter.”

“Excuse me?” Vernon asked still focused on the unsteady hand and wondering if it was alcohol or some STD that was the perpetrator behind the shaking.

“A dinner party, dude,” the black man repeated and shoved the flyer at Vernon again, his toothpick rolling to the opposite corner of his mouth. “High eatin’, brother.”

Vernon frowned and shook his head and moved forward without comment. The man grabbed Vernon’s coat and shoved the flyer in one of its pockets.

Vernon spun around. “Stop that!” His immediate instinct was to pull the paper from the pocket, but the thought of touching something from God only knew what kind of diseased fingers stopped him.

“I should call the manager on you,” Vernon stated and moved away toward the automatic doors. A smoky laugh from behind Vernon combined with the whoosh of the doors. Vernon felt a chill race over him. He turned around and saw the man had gone. Vernon shuddered then struggled to pull a stubborn shopping cart from its place in one of the snakey lines of carts. He finally succeeded and pushed forward, completely ignoring the senior standing to one side offering, “Welcome to Walmart” with a happy grin.

Vernon went through the tag detectors, the wheels of his cart screeching and wobbling. Before he made it ten feet into the store, he was stopped by a motorized shopping buggy reversing itself, a steady and annoying Beep Beep Beep reverberating from it. A man whose obese stomach spilled over the sides of the buggy swiveled his head around and growled, “Watch it, sonny!”

Vernon sighed and leaned on the handle of the shopping cart. “Another special shopping experience at Walmart,” he complained to himself.

 

* * * *

 

THE HOMLESS INVITE THOSE MORE FORTUNATE TO A DINNER PARTY.

EVENING OF DECEMBER 23rd AT THE ANGEL OF SALVATION SHELTER

1366 NORTH 4TH STREET – NO DONATIONS ACCEPTED

 

Vernon stared at the crumpled flyer lying on the top of the bucket of trash outside his apartment building. He had worn his leather gloves when gingerly extracting it from his coat pocket. Odd thing was he knew the address. In fact, he passed that shelter everyday on his way to and from work at the unemployment office located downtown. He’d paid little attention to the place though and tried now to jog his memory.

Wasn’t it that decrepit building that used to be a church? he asked himself. And, now that he recollected, hadn’t he seen an occasional homeless wretch or small group of the scroungers clustered there?

Vernon shrugged and glanced at the flyer briefly before walking down the cement path to his apartment.

Oh well, what did it matter? he mused as he entered his meager apartment, three plastic sacks full of his weekly grocery purchase gripped in his hands. He’d had his share of the loafers, the transients, and the homeless over fifteen years at the unemployment office. Fat asses too lazy to work, women constantly pregnant to leech off the city, the state, and the government for whatever they could steal, and, of course, the homeless, trying to get a handout.

Vernon’s face blushed as he put up his groceries. It was his taxes that were being robbed for those worthless, diseased scum bags!

A dinner for the fortunate? Given by the ones who persistently pilfered from solid citizens?

Indeed!

Vernon left out one TV dinner to thaw a bit before he microwaved it. He felt he needed a shower to wash the image of the black man away along with whatever filth the man had transferred to his coat.

Vernon’s bachelor existence remained as simple as it had been all his adult life. A small group of clothes hung in his closet. The furniture he kept was the same he had purchased twenty years ago, the pieces worn but still solid. He had no television and never wanted one, preferring to read and go to bed early. The bathroom he entered was populated by a toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste that he would squeeze and roll until it offered no more before buying a new tube, a set of faded towels and washcloth, and a single bar of soap he would move from the sink to the shower and back again and use until the lingering sliver produced no more suds before replacing it.

After supper that night, Vernon read then went to bed and dreamed empty dreams until the cheap but loud Big Ben alarm clock clanged him awake into the beginning of another workweek.

 

* * * *

By the time Wednesday rolled around, Vernon’s week had turned to crap. Two of his co-workers had called in sick on Monday with the flu, leaving Vernon to carry the workload of three people. He suspected the two, both women, were faking it in order to spend time with their children who were out of school for the first week of Christmas vacation.

The work load during the holiday season was bad enough with a full crew; this extra work load placed way too much pressure on Vernon. He was frazzled and filled with an evil temperament as he drove home that Wednesday evening, and even the knowledge that tomorrow was a holiday, Christmas Eve, offered him no consolation.

And it was in this state of mind that Vernon noticed the shelter as he idled to a stop behind a line of cars backed up from a traffic light. And it was then he remembered the flyer from last weekend.

There was a wooden sign hanging over the door of the shelter. The lettering was faded but Vernon could still be read: THE ANGEL OF SALVATION CENTER.

Vernon frowned against the headache he had acquired that day. He narrowed his eyes and glanced again at the shelter and wondered if there really was a “Dinner for the fortunate” this evening.

But the thought passed rapidly with every beat of his throbbing head. Vernon had had quite enough of bums and lowlifes for one day.

The tapping on his window brought more irritation than surprise. He turned his aching head sideways and squinted at the brown fingers drumming against the glass of the passenger window. A face shadowed inside a gray hoody loomed close to window. A female voice came through muffled and gravelly. “Senor?” it asked.

Vernon gritted his teeth and said as loudly as he could without actually shouting, “Go away!” Then, with what sarcasm his headache would allow, “I gave at the office.”

The woman pulled the cloth hood away. A mass of thick, black hair spilled out in winding curls. Her face struck Vernon like a hard slap. She was so stunning. Her dark features seemed to pass right through the passenger window. There was something primitive glowing in her exotic brown eyes; something that suggested hot, humid jungles; something distant and sensuous.

Vernon’s sense of place and time left him momentarily until reality came back pounding inside his head. His vision blurred. He felt an uncomfortable pressure then realized he had an enormous erection. He felt the air catch in his lungs as an unexpected orgasm seized him and he ejaculated spontaneously, the force of the spasm jerking him forward into the steering wheel.

 

* * * *

Vernon could not recall how he had managed the fortitude to pull his car out of the line of other cars and into the parking lot by the shelter.

The woman in the hoody had followed him and stood by his door. She had opened it and helped Vernon, who was as wasted as if he just ran a marathon, into the shelter through its front doors.

At that time, Vernon’s speech was almost incomprehensible: “I don’t know what… Please don’t touch me any… A mess. . .  I made a  . . .”

When his body and mind began to stabilize, Vernon found himself sitting at one of three long dining tables.

His vision was still a bit blurry, but he made out a few groups of what looked to be homeless denizens spread out along the tables. They were eating. And when his sight came back clear and focused, Vernon  watched  forks and spoons being shoved into gaping mouths, mouths lined with wrecked and rotten teeth; some simply toothless, gumming their grub with ghostly sockets.

Vernon’s headache returned. He squinted against the renewed pain and caught the sight of a wheel chair pacing its way steadily toward him.

“My man.” The voice Vernon had heard in front of Walmart grated over his eardrums. “Thought you might make it.”

Vernon stared at the black man’s face—the sunglasses still on, the mousy mustache still twitching, the toothpick still rolling from one side to the other of a mouth filled with silver.

The man glanced down at the large wet spot on Vernon’s crotch. The toothpick stopped rolling and bobbed in a stationary location. He lowered his sunglasses and revealed a set of bloodshot eyes. A smile crinkled the corners of his mouth. “See you met Circiella,” the black man said with a wink.

Vernon’s ire returned along with a hot shame. He moved trembling hands to cover the wet spot and was even more mortified by the stickiness he found there.

“Listen here,” Vernon said, avoiding the black man’s eyes. “I don’t know what happened. I had this strange headache.” He crinkled his brow. “Still do.” He tried to stand but wobbly legs forced him back down. The room felt unusually warm all of a sudden. Vernon was certain he was about to vomit. He fought back the urge. Perspiration clung clammily to his body. A soft hand fell on his shoulders from behind.

“Drink this, Senor. It will help you.”

Vernon turned and found the striking Latino woman standing behind him. She held a white, Styrofoam cup in her other hand. Steam rose in swirls from the cup. A strange and tempting aroma spread in delicate tendrils up Vernon’s nose.

But an instinctive warning came swiftly along with the drink’s allure, and Vernon turned his head away from the woman. “No thanks,” he said with a shudder. “Just show me the Men’s Room so I can clean myself and get out of here.”

Vernon glanced at the other tables and discovered their scruffy patrons had stopped eating. They were all staring directly at him.

Vernon brought his attention back to the man in the wheelchair. “Looks like I’m the only ‘Fortunate’ to show up,” Vernon said cynically, his old indignation rearing its head. “Looks like you huckstered a lot of innocent bystanders for nothing with those ridiculous flyers of yours.”

The black man’s face went blank and cold, then, without warning, raised itself in a series of loud guffaws.

“Flyers?!” the man announced through his cackling. “Flyers?! Shit, motherfucker, there was only one flyer.” The black man pointed a bony finger at Vernon. “The one I give to you!”

Vernon felt an unseen force pull him backward. His shoulders were pinned to the table by it. The Latino woman moved in front of him. Her beauty fell over his body like a heavy fog. She pulled his lips open and poured the searing liquid from the cup into his mouth.

Vernon’s headache lifted just about the time he passed out.

 

* * * *

A feeling of chilled wetness brought Vernon around. His arms and legs were stiff, his body sore as if from a hard workout.

When his senses started to clear, Vernon realized, to his horror, that he was lying naked in a small cage.

When Vernon tried to stand, his back wedged against the wire frame. The only position he could assume was being on all fours like an animal.

He tried to scream for help, and, when he did, his mouth exploded in pain. He felt a sudden urge to spit. He did so. A mixture of blood clots and mucous fell with a sickening plop on the cement floor of the cage.

Vernon’s eyes widened. He stuck probing fingers in his mouth and discovered a large area of swollen tissue that had once been a tongue, the stump of which had been sealed with a line of prickly, primitively sewn sutures.

Vernon tried to scream again only to be rewarded with a rush of painful air across his wound.

He crouched and stared out of his confinement. Just across from him was another cage. And another occupant.

It was hard to comprehend what stared back at him with tiny, dark eyes from the other cage. It was bent over, just like Vernon had to be, but it was enormously fat and almost occupied the entire enclosure.

It made an odd noise as it gazed at Vernon with curiosity. The sound from its throat was more of a grunt that sent waves of motion across its fatty, naked bulk.

It tired quickly of scrutinizing Vernon and buried its face in a large, metal bowl. Vernon then realized it was eating, slurping up some kind of lumpy, yellow gruel from the bowl. The stuff had spilled over the sides. When the thing raised its head again, the mess was dripping from its jowls. It opened its mouth and grunted, and then snorted loudly through its snout.

Its snout!

Vernon realized what it was then: a gargantuan pig, its tiny ears twitching, its obese body trembling in ecstasy as it fed.

Vernon looked away, not wanting to view the sickening sight. He heard a faint creaking from behind him. The wheelchair appeared slowly in front of his cage.

“You back with us?”

Vernon looked at the black man. Without thinking, he tried to speak. He winced and grabbed his mouth.

“You’ll get used to that, my man.” The black man rolled over to the other cage. Its occupant ignored him and continued stuffing itself.

Vernon watched as the man reached up and wiped a chalked 364 from a slate board hanging at the top of the cage. He wrote 365 over the ghost dust of the 364 then turned and rolled back to Vernon’s enclosure.

“That Circiella is one good-looking sorceress, ain’t she?” The man chuckled lowly. “Hard to image she would come all the way back to Waco, Texas with a Negro like me, ain’t it?” He smiled and continued, “But she come from a long line of witches like that. Told me her folks go back to Greece. I come across her…” The man hesitated then stroked his chin in concentration. “Let me see. ‘Bout twenty years ago down in South America. Down on the Amazon. I was doing clearing then for a big concern gonna’ put up some kind of car manufacturing plant.” He glanced at Vernon. “Cheap labor down there. Them Indians work for nothing.” He shook his head. “Damned old tree fell on me and crushed my spine. Boss found some local medicine man. Circiella was with him. She sure saved my black ass. But I guess a cripple wouldn’t change right. You know, wouldn’t turn into what she wanted because of the broke back.” Footsteps could be heard approaching from behind Vernon’s cage. “She took care of my Boss-man and the other workers though. Over the months I couldn’t believe my eyes. Hands and feet turned into hooves. Noses into snouts and . . . “

A group of men came into the room. The black man stopped talking and moved out of the way.

Vernon watched as one of the men opened the other cage. The pig looked up briefly then went back to eating. The man crouched down and eased in by the bloated body, took a long sliver of metal from his back pocket and stuck it quickly into the pig’s throat.

All hell broke loose then.

The stuck pig’s blood jetted out. It thrashed wildly against the sides of the cage but was too big to get away. Another one of the men grabbed the pig’s head while the one who had stabbed the animal held a large bucket under the streaming blood.

Before the pig ceased its struggles, five such buckets had been filled.

The cage door was lifted and the group pulled the dead pig out of its cage. A long, thick, wooden stake sharpened on both ends was produced. One man lifted the pig’s uncurled tail and began shoving the stake up the rectum.

Vernon screamed silently, oblivious to his own pain, as the stake exited the pig’s gaping mouth. The black man rolled his wheelchair over. He produced a shiny apple from his lap and stuck then slid it down the end of the stake protruding from the animal’s mouth. He turned and smiled at Vernon as two of the men grabbed the front and back end of the stake and carried the pig away.

“He gonna roast up real good for Christmas dinner,” the black man said.

By now, Vernon was in a state of shock. His body trembled. He felt chilled to the bone. The only thing he could think to do was lie down and cover his shriveled genitals with his unsteady hands. He gazed with morbid fascination at his fingers. They had already started to curl inward, the fingernails beginning to meld together into a flat, black layer of hard keratin.

Vernon heard a scraping sound. He looked up and saw the black man open the door of his cage and slide in a metal bowl filled with the same thick, yellow gruel he had watched the pig devour. The man closed the cage and said, “I know you ain’t exactly hungry right now, my man.” He rolled his wheelchair over and pulled the slate down from the other cage, rolled back, and then used his shirt sleeve to erase the 365 before writing another number on it. He held the slate down for Vernon to see. “But over the next 364 days, you’ll be sucking that slop up and begging for more.”

Vernon gasped in anguish as the number 1 glared back at him from the well-used and chalk-dusted slate.

Twitt

Ghost Dancing by Timothy C. Hobbs

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Is that her heart I hear?

Filling my room full of night,

Filling my room with the light of a colder moon?

Maddening in its melody,

Its haunted wail of loneliness and despair

In search of warmth and hunger for my flesh,

Yearning for the fury of an embrace.

Failing, it flees on a rush of midnight air

And hurries into the austere night.

I follow as if escorted by a dreamer,

Moved only by the power of loss,

The emptiness nestled in my cold breast.

I glide behind the echoes of her beating heart,

My naked feet damp against the cooling earth,

My breath cloudy and spectral before me

Beckoning me to follow.

And There! Behold!

The morning mist has fashioned her!

Oh Ghost, Oh Phantom

Whose face is that of my love,

Whose eyes pearled with dew

Stare at me from her other world!

She drifts to me,

The wetness of the dawn that is her mouth

Covers mine with icy passion,

Passion that defies the grave, the dankness of the earth.

We dance beneath the melody of the setting moon.

We sway across the very fabric of grief, of pain,

And grasp one another in desperation

To bridge the limits of the flesh.

Then suddenly the mist is gone,

Dispersed by the first rays of morning.

I embrace that emptiness as a faint, cruel whisper

Tells me she was only a phantom,

A ghost dancing with the ache that is my soul.

© Copyright 2012 Timothy C. Hobbs
1879 words

MUSIC BOX SONATA BY TIMOTHY C. HOBBS

At the top of a steep cliff a derelict church serves its congregation of dust, cobwebs and birds roosting in the rafters. One human occupant lives there hidden in the cellar. He is cursed never walk in the tortuous sunlight, but to roam the woods on the cliff at night in the form of a hideous beast struggling with the violent desire to kill while striving to preserve remnants of his own humanity.

Purchase on Smashwords

Twitt

Fat by Timothy C. Hobbs

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Leonard Larkin stared at his mother’s puffy face as she asked, “What do want for your birthday, Leonard?”

“Not to be fat.”

His mother hugged him tightly with her heavy arms, “Why, you’re not fat. Just big boned.” She squeezed him hard. He could smell the bakery oozing from her pores. “I brought home lemon meringue and coconut cream pies for our desert tonight,” she added. “And some cream puffs for breakfast.”

Leonard’s stomach grumbled.

“Now what do you really want for your birthday?”

* * *

About the time Leonard was less assaulted by fat jokes, that being the last year of elementary school, fate stepped in and threw him a curve ball, that being the first year of middle school.

The hazing started all over again: Fat Ass, Bubble Butt, and Disgusting Fat Body being the most popular insults. One of the worst, however, coming from a cheerleader, Leslie Champ, that Leonard had developed a crush on.

“Want to come to my birthday party Saturday?” he had timidly asked the perky redhead.

Leslie had actually stuck a finger down her mouth and pretended to gag. The other girls standing by the lockers had burst into laughter.

“Piggy wants me to come to his party. Or is it sty?” the redhead had chortled loudly; loud enough for a bigger crowd to gather. She poked Leonard in his sagging gut and oinked. “I don’t do pork!” she exclaimed, leaving Leonard with his head down as he shuffled away.

Leonard’s best and only friend, a skinny, pimpled, bespectacled, brainiac kid named Larry, had witnessed the incident. Larry always sat with Leonard during lunch, the two being the only occupants at the table.

Larry stirred his yogurt and looked up over his heavy lenses at Leonard.

“Wasn’t that Leslie Champ? Doesn’t she live close to you?”

Leonard nodded. “One block down. Her house has a fake wishing well in front.” Leonard frowned and looked away.

“Don’t let it get you down,” Larry said. “At least you don’t’ get all the wedgies like I do.”

Leonard’s lips drooped as he bit into one of the leftover creampuffs. The corners of his mouth were crusted with dried cream.

“My butt’s too big for them to reach under,” he stated flatly.

Larry shrugged. “Your mom invited me to your birthday party,” he advised.

“She always does. You and her are the only ones that ever come anyway.”

“What about your dad?”

“Aw, he and his wife are doing something else.”

“Oh.”

The two finished their lunch in silence. One muscled, hulking boy passed by and slapped Leonard hard on the head.

“Listen, Fat Ass,” he said with a sneer. “Keep your bubble butt away from the cheerleaders.” For added emphasis the ape tugged roughly on Leonard’s ear. “Got it!?”

Leonard grimaced and nodded, a large, half-chewed, creampuff pastry shell dropping from his mouth. It landed with a messy ‘plop’ on the table.

“Disgusting,” the ape said and pulled his fingers away sharply from Leonard’s ear. He gave one extra shove to Leonard’s back before leaving.

Larry was terrified. He kept his head lowered until he thought it was safe to look up. When he did, he found Leonard’s face to be beet red. Two hot trails of tears snaked over Leonard’s fat cheeks.

“It’s okay, Leonard,” Larry said. He waited a minute and then asked, trying to lighten the mood. “What do want for your birthday?”

“Not to be fat,” Leonard blubbered.

* * *

The following Saturday, Leonard’s mother took him and Larry to the Pizza Palace, one of Leonard’s favorite places. The patrons not only got pizza but also had a myriad collection of video and other game machines to play there as well.

Leonard was still a bit downtrodden from the incident with the cheerleader and her brutish protector, but he warmed up to the occasion after eating his meat lover’s pizza and challenging Larry to a game of foosball, which Larry let him win, it being Leonard’s birthday after all.

When the boys came back to their table, Leonard’s mother said, “Don’t you want to open your gifts, Leonard?” She positioned a German Chocolate cake, Leonard’s most favorite cake, in the middle of the table top. “We can have cake afterward.”

There were only three wrapped gifts on the table. The first one Leonard opened was The Lord of the Rings DVD trilogy his dad had sent over, the second a one hundred dollar gift certificate to a local electronics store.

“Thanks, Mom.”

She smiled and hugged him from across the table. “You can get any video game you want,” she said and planted a wet kiss on Leonard’s cheek.

The last package was a small one about the size of a penny match box. It was evidently from Larry as he wiggled in his seat next to Leonard as Leonard tore off the diminutive gift wrap.

Indeed, it was a small box. Leonard curiously slid the middle open. It was crawling with bugs.

“What the . . .?”

Once Larry had pleaded with Leonard to close the box so the insects couldn’t escape, and once he calmed down Leonard’s mother who had pulled away from the table in disgust at the crawling bugs by telling her the little beetles were only one part of his gift.

“It’s going to be a skeleton. A rat’s skeleton,” Larry explained. “I have the dead body at my house. Leonard will put the beetles in with the carcass and they’ll strip the rat’s flesh and organs away, leaving a whole skeleton.”

“How awful,” Leonard’s mother said with revulsion. “What kind of gift is that?”

But Leonard’s eyes were wide with delight. “Only the coolest ever.” He held out his fist for a bump from Larry.

After the boys had demolished the cake, they went to play games on the video machines.

As she cleaned up the crumbs, Leonard’s mother could only shake her head and say under her breath, “Boys. How weird they can be.”

* * *

“You said you didn’t want to be fat.” Larry closed the door to Leonard’s room. “That’s the gift you wanted. Remember?”

“But you said there was a rat.”

Larry shook his head and sat on the front of Leonard’s bed. “I had to tell your mom something, didn’t I?”

Leonard opened the small box slightly and glanced at the writhing bodies inside before closing it again. “I don’t get it. What are these for then?”

Larry took off his heavy glasses and wiped the lenses on his tee shirt. He put them back on and said, “For your belly.”

“What?!”

“Your belly. They’ll eat the fat right off.”

Leonard shoved the box back to Larry. “Nu unh. That would hurt!”

Larry gently pushed back Leonard’s hand. “Think about it for awhile. It’s just a few weeks ‘till summer vacation. Think about it ‘till then.”

Leonard looked confused. He shook the box gently. “They’ll be dead by then, won’t they?”

“Just hide them in the freezer. Gardener’s do it with Ladybugs all the time.” Larry reached in his pocket and took out what looked to be a tin of salve. He opened it and a sickly sweet odor wafted into the air. “Freeze this along with it,” he said as he closed the tin and handed it to Leonard.

Leonard took it with his free hand. “What is this? It stinks.”

“Dead flesh. I let it putrefy. If you decide to use the beetles, rub that stuff all over your stomach then put the beetles on. That’ll get them going.”

Leonard felt a tinge of nausea. “Gee, Larry. I don’t know.”

Larry pointed to Leonard’s window. “Leslie Champ. One block down. Got It?”

* * *

It was a week after school let out for summer vacation that Leonard took the beetles and the tin of decomposed flesh from the back of the freezer. He had hidden them behind clumps of ice crystals covering old boxes of frozen peas and corn. He felt safe with the knowledge his mother had never cleaned out the freezer. The past few weeks had been no exception.

After his mother went to bed that night, Leonard took the soggy box of insects and the tin of putrid mush out from under his bed.

“Bet they’re not alive,” he said to himself.

He slid the box open and found an amorphous black clump. He emptied it on his nightstand and turned on the lamp there. He poked at the lump and it started to pull apart. Thousands of lethargic legs began trying to crawl.

Leonard took off his clothes. He opened the tin of rotten flesh and started smearing it on his stomach. The material was cold and hard to spread, but once it sat long enough on his warm skin, it proliferated easily under the guide of Leonard’s hands. It also started to stink as well.

Leonard lay on his bed. He covered his mouth and nose with one hand and picked up the squirming mass of bugs with the other and placed it on his belly.

Then, he braced himself for the pain.

* * *

But there was none.

The American Carrion Beetle, a.k.a. Necrophilia americana, does not eat the dead flesh. It lays eggs under the skin. When the eggs hatch, it is the larvae that eat, and they do it voraciously.

In Leonard’s case, the process took less than twenty four hours.

That first night, with the insects busy laying their eggs under the skin, Leonard felt only a strange itching sensation. The next morning he found the beetles weirdly immobile and clinging to his stomach. He decided to stay in bed and pull the covers up over his body.

“Not feeling well?” his mother had asked.

“Just didn’t sleep good. Want to stay in bed.”

“You just be lazy today then. I’ll leave a covered plate of scrambled eggs in the fridge you can warm up later in the microwave.”

And then she was off to work, and so were the hatching larvae all day long.

By the time Leonard’s mother got home from the bakery, the sun was almost down. She was surprised to
find the plate of scrambled eggs untouched in the fridge. She was even more surprised, shocked really, to find large clumps of a bloody, squirming, mucous material clumped all around Leonard’s bedroom and trailing out the window, causing her to worry about her son.

She yelled out his name. She searched the house.

But there was no Leonard to be found.

A block away, Leonard stood on the lawn of the home where Leslie Champ lived, his stomach fat dissolving away, sliding in plops to the ground as the larvae ate and ate.

Leonard was ready to proudly announce to Leslie that he wasn’t fat anymore.

By now the beetles had moved up to his chest and throat and down to his legs and were busy laying more eggs. Before they found the soft gelatin of his eyes, tears flowed down Leonard’s face. His eyes were wide with despair as he read the letters FOR SALE on the sign spiked into the ground by the replica wishing well that stood in front of the recently vacated home.

© Copyright 2012 Timothy C. Hobbs
1879 words

MUSIC BOX SONATA BY TIMOTHY C. HOBBS

At the top of a steep cliff a derelict church serves its congregation of dust, cobwebs and birds roosting in the rafters. One human occupant lives there hidden in the cellar. He is cursed never walk in the tortuous sunlight, but to roam the woods on the cliff at night in the form of a hideous beast struggling with the violent desire to kill while striving to preserve remnants of his own humanity.

Purchase on Smashwords

Twitt

#FridayFlash #FictionFriday Heritage by Timothy C. Hobbs

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Steam rose from the boiling water.

She glanced at the old clock on the wall, its small pendulum moving like a judgment.

“Fifteen minutes till twelve,” she said loudly.

Her daughter came into the kitchen, leaving the wails of a birthing mother behind.

The old woman poured hot water into a glass tumbler. She then added a mixture of herbs and stirred the concoction rapidly.

“See she drinks all of this,” the old woman ordered. “She must deliver before midnight.”

“Shouldn’t we wait, Mother?” the crone’s daughter asked. “Liam should be back with the doctor any moment now.”

A hard, December wind rocked the log cabin. The kerosene lanterns hung throughout the home shuddered; their flames danced erratically and threw abstract shadows across the wooden walls.

The old woman shoved the glass tumbler roughly toward her daughter. “If the child is born after midnight, it will be cursed!” she warned. “A baby brought into this world on Christ’s birthday is an insult to God!”

”Oh, Mother, I don’t believe such nonsense. Krista’s child will be doubly blessed if born on Christmas.”

“My granddaughter’s progeny is already cursed. It is a bastard child.” The old woman’s face furrowed under a scowl. “And a child of incest as well. Too add a Christmas birth would only seal its fate.”

“I will give this to Krista to drink, Mother,” the daughter said. “But only to help her deliver and end her pain, not because of some old wives’ tale!”

As her daughter left the room, the old woman glanced again at the clock. Ten until twelve now.

She gathered up clean sheets and took the pot of water and started to go to the bedroom where her granddaughter wailed under the intense birth contractions. She stopped in her tracks when the front door of the cabin was thrown open.

Two men entered. They stomped their feet and brushed a light dusting of snow and sleet from their coats.

“Don’t mind her, Doctor,” one said as he pointed to the old woman. “That is my wife’s mother.” The man frowned and added, “She is a superstitious old fool!”

The old woman spoke, but her voice trembled. “He has no right to judge,” she said feebly to the doctor. “Just ask him who the father of the child is. Just ask him!”

Liam pushed his way past her, guiding the doctor to the backroom. “Get out of our way, witch. My daughter needs medical attention, not your black magic.”

The old woman almost fell from Liam’s shove. She dropped the pot of water and the sheets trying to maintain her balance.

She angrily went back into the kitchen. She looked at the clock again, its face seeming to enlarge into a monstrous size.

Five minutes left.

She crossed herself and paced from one end of the room to the other, voicing muffled prayers into the cold air. A baby’s cry soon halted her nervous tread. She quickly looked at the clock and found the hour hand had not quite made its way to twelve. She felt immense relief. “The baby has not sealed its doom,” she whispered. “Thank God it was born before midnight.”

Liam appeared from the bedroom. He gave the old woman a quick look. The doctor soon followed and placed a hand on Liam’s shoulder.

“A healthy boy,” the doctor announced. He turned to the old woman and added, “No matter who the father is.”

Liam took the doctor to the front door. “I’ll look in sometime tomorrow,” the doctor advised. He glanced up at the scattered clouds and found a full moon peeking through the overcast night. The doctor cleared his throat and said, “Merry Christmas, Liam.”

“And to you, Doctor,” Liam replied before closing the door.

Liam saw the old woman sitting down at the kitchen table. Her head was bent in prayer.

He grinned and retrieved the family Bible from its resting place atop a small pedestal. He opened the Bible to the family history page. He took a quill and inkwell from a nearby desk and started to record the birth.

Liam pulled his pocket watch out and checked the time. He frowned and walked over to the clock on the wall, opened its front, and took the turnkey from its slot. He wound the mechanism and moved the hands ahead by ten minutes.

“Forgot to wind it yesterday,” he said out loud, causing the old woman to look swiftly up from her prayers. “Baby really arrived just after midnight,” Liam added with a smile as he faced the old woman. “A Christmas baby then,” he said. “So much for your superstitious prattle.”

The old woman shuddered as the baby cried from the back room, its tiny wail soon transforming into a low, long howl that swirled about the cabin like a meandering spirit eager to embrace all the souls gathered there.

© Copyright 2012 Timothy C. Hobbs
834 words

MUSIC BOX SONATA BY TIMOTHY C. HOBBS

At the top of a steep cliff a derelict church serves its congregation of dust, cobwebs and birds roosting in the rafters. One human occupant lives there hidden in the cellar. He is cursed never walk in the tortuous sunlight, but to roam the woods on the cliff at night in the form of a hideous beast struggling with the violent desire to kill while striving to preserve remnants of his own humanity.

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