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.
In Raiders of the Damned, yet another biological weapon has been unleashed on mankind and created the zombies. Only difference, the zombies don’t lose their intelligence and ability to organize. When a helicopter, transporting the scientists working on an anti-zombie serum goes down in the middle of zombie territory, they send in soldiers to rescue them. This film has some scathing reviews, but it was my favorite this week. I highly recommend you watch Raiders of the Damned, but leave your critical side out of the viewing. Don’t take this movie too seriously, after all, it’s described as campy. The actors and the characters they portrayed carried the movie despite some of the poor acting. And sure the special effects sucked, the picture quality sucked, the zombies’ mismatched make up sucked, but the storyline wasn’t bad and you even got some zombie/human lovin’. If you watch it and still hate it, feel free to bash me in the comments. It’s all in fun, and it’ll still be one of my favorites for the month. I give it 4 out of 5 bloody brains. My son’s comment, “Better than what we saw last week.”
Oasis of the Zombies or The Treasure of the Living Dead wasn’t on my original list. I added it after finding another one of my titles was not a zombie movie. This was a new streaming release I’m glad I found because it’s a Jesus Franco movie and I love his films. Yes, you read me right. He’s a director people love or hate for the most part. Take a look at his filmography and you’ll find he’s directed quite a few low budget films. You don’t usually get much of a storyline in Franco films, but there’s just something about the atmosphere of his movies I love. Apparently this is two movies spliced into one, which I didn’t notice. This is something Franco is know to do. What was it about? The search for rumored gold, stashed in the dessert by Nazis. When treasure hunters get close to finding the gold, they encounter an army of zombies, guarding the horde. Personally I think this was one of his better films despite the fact that the picture quality sucked. The best part of the movie were the low budget zombies with worms and insects crawling all over their faces. Not much of a gory movie compared to other flesh eating horror. Don’t watch this one unless you appreciate Franco films or want a good taste of what he creates. I gave it 3 out of 5 bloody brains.
Death Valley: The Revenge of Bloody Bill mixed together a western, a ghost story, revenge and zombies, and at least tried at a decent storyline. What it mostly delivered were zombies running amok and turning more people into zombie followers of Bloody Bill. There wasn’t enough of Bloody Bill in this movie, who should have been a more evil character like a Freddie Krueger. In the end, I can’t say I liked it or didn’t like it. My son thought the movie was all right, but the actors were annoying. Still he gave it 3 out of 5 bloody brains. I’m somewhere between 2 and 3.
I’ve heard a lot of people complain about the 2008 version of Day of the Dead, so I went into the viewing with low expectations. Maybe that’s why I thought it wasn’t spectacular, but I enjoyed it. I think this film stands on it’s own though, and any reference to it being a remake is ridiculous. Maybe that’s one thing turning people off. I suppose my favorite part of the film is that it takes place in Leadville, Colorado, me being a Colorado girl and all. I did have a problem with the cause of the zombies being a biological weapon, created by the government. Anyone who knows anything about Leadville knows there are enough toxins in the environment that the town should already be infested with the walking dead. All kidding aside, I love horror movies where women kick butt, and I think Mena Suvari did a pretty good job, leading the fight against the zombies. I was even okay with the superhuman zombies. How they transformed and how quickly they burned sent me into a, “Yeah, whatever” moment though. I also thought a larger budget film should have created better gory torture scenes than a bunch of crazed zombies biting the crap out of people. Oh, and holding the zombie captive was just stupid. My son enjoyed this one more that I did and gave it 4 out of 5 bloody brains. I couldn’t give it any more than 3.
C’mon people, Day of Darkness was awesome! My second favorite of the week. This time a comet falls to earth and releases a dust into the atmosphere that creates the zombies, and in this case there’s another surprise. This movie goes beyond zombies and turns humans into incubators for alien parasites, and in a not so nice way. I can’t spoil this one, so you’ll have to watch to find out or go read another review. It’s some of the weirdest shit I’ve seen in a movie and not for the squeamish. One of the things I liked about this movie is that it brought together a diverse group of survivors who couldn’t get along or work together, and the low budget actors played their parts well. There wasn’t a lot of zombie action in this one though, which brought my rating down a bit. My son didn’t watch this one with me, so no comments from the peanut gallery. I really enjoyed this one and would put it at the top of my list of favorite horror movies. So for me it’s 4 out of 5 bloody brains.
Zombie Island Massacre was more like watching a mixed episode of Fantasy Island and Scooby Doo. Typical bad acting, bad script, blah blah blah. What I liked is that they went old school voodoo zombie. It didn’t keep my attention and was a bit boring to the point I can’t even think of anything else to mention. 2 out of 5 bloody brains.
Jackson directed, wrote (with help) and appeared in Bad Taste back in 1987. In the movie, “the population of a small town disappears and is replaced by aliens that chase human flesh for their intergalactic fast-food chain.” 
I remember watching Dead Alive/Brain Dead with my youngest son, although it’s not a movie I’d recommend you let your kids watch. Dead Alive is a mixture of extreme gore and comedy, so no surprise, he and I were glued to the TV screen laughing and cringing all at the same time.