Amid the Recesses: A Short Story Collection of Fear (16 page)

“What the fuck! What the fuck!” Porter
screamed again and again.

His vision obscured as something slid
over it. He reached up and wiped at his eye and pulled a whole
sheet of his face flesh and held it like fresh kill.

“Let me out!” Porter
screamed.

“Ain’t nothing to be done.”

“Ain’t nothing.”

Blood pooled around Porter
and crept beneath the plush scarecrow doll that then laid on the
ground next to him. It bathed in the massacre. Porter fell to the
ground and stared at those button eyes. The left side of his head
collapsed with the fall and his brain tried to understand the part
of him that was broken and couldn’t.

“Fucking… soup.” Porter
gargled through his smashed throat. Blackness.

“Best keep in him in that cage, Earl.
You know he’s be comin’ back. They come back.”

“They do. It ain’t right, but they do.
Nighty, boy.”

They all watched Desirae’s mouth. It
paused and she smiled. She wrapped her arms around herself and a
forfeited hiss let out of her puffy pink jacket.

“That it?” Harry asked.

“What else is there to
say?”

“I thought you’d talk about him when
he became a zombie.” Jacob said.

“I don’t see why that’d be important.
What’s exciting about zombies?”

Willow looked to the fire.

“I guess there is one more thing.”
Desirae said. She zipped down her coat a few inches.

They all looked up and sat
still.

Desirae reached into her jacket and
pulled out a small plush scarecrow doll. “I have Sam.”

The group stood and screamed and ran
from the fire toward the house. Bowls rolled over and toppled onto
the ground, spilling a gore of tomato soup around the fire. Desirae
burst into laughter and turned the small doll to face her. She
kissed it and put it back inside of her jacket and skipped to the
house.

RETURN TO THE TABLE OF
CONTENTS

The Widow, I

Dip down dark into the
obsession, obsession: depression, depression-obsession, to realize
perhaps that it wasn’t a lie, the intent I invoked, the morbid
widow, I. Did you see my glory, hatched in the winter? The blood
that was drawn, the cut at his center? Did you feel my pride when
you cut away the stitching, feel full and glorified by its
enriching? There’s nothing I would change, nothing to be undone,
nothing to be reconsidered and nothing more fun. I did what I
wanted on that wintry day, and I’d do again, I promise what I
say.

For down in the cellar,
that’s where it’d begin, where coals were being shoveled into fires
burning sin. For the eyes I once had that bore pits in the man, now
only were pits, and pits for him. This love-awe struck me with
bladed precision, and fell in love more with each incision. Did you
see his eyes? I think you did not. At least from the head which
they were originally wrought. They sat as diamonds amid this
pillar, this dagger, this edge, his eventual killer. While
something I thought could be easily discarded, I thought it much
better if in my belly they rotted.

And rotted am I from his
benediction to death, from the time that he realized that my death
would be best. But do not worry, I did not cry, I rose from the
grave, the cursed widow, I. When his eyes were severed from the
encapsulation above, I licked at the sockets as though a mouth made
to love. I tasted a sweeter fruit than he’d ever bore, in all my
days that I played the role of his whore. It made me wonder, in my
brain a rot, what exactly held me from potential thought; thought
of making him dead like me, no longer floating through the living
sea. My patience, I say, my patience, it kept! But his invigorating
complacence is what lingered and crept. It brought him to a place
where convened the wicked, and the wicked did come, making all
quite limpid. From the grave, I wretched, then turned and twisted,
I felt the rage only death insisted, and when hands burst through
the shallow dirt shelf, my hunger, it called for the wicked
myself.

My legs did not walk as
they did in the living, but dragged like weights, cumbersome,
unfitting. Nothing would stop me, not limp or weary, nothing would
stop me from my charming man, dearie. So here I am, in the cellar
below, continuing the story, as you know it will go.

I watched from the window,
boney hands on the pane, and the fire burnt higher but short of my
flame. Nothing was as hot, not one thing so steamy, and the love I
would make last on the cellar floor, dreamy. But the man did not
react, and there was no buck, so I had at him ravenous ‘til no
blood left to suck. I left him there at the cellar floor dry,
eyeless and bloodless; unable to cry.

Satisfied by my vengeance,
I crept from the deep, up into the house where we both would sleep.
My mangled body lay down on the bloody sheet mess, from where the
blood came, hardly a guess. As my crippled mind sought any memory
retained, as I looked through the shelves of my sinewy brain, I
tried to remember in which fashion he smitten me, whether he’d
beaten or bashed, or feverously bitten me. I stood from the puddle
that drowned now the bed, stringy fingers reaching forward, out and
ahead, for a sign, or a blade, which was used for my destruction,
or whatever sickly device managed his seduction. In my search I
bumped a chair, it rocked and creaked, and made me aware: This was
the place where it all happened thereafter, but not in this space,
but at the rope through the rafter. My pits rose to ‘look’ to the
ceiling, and that beam that took me, that provided
self-killing.

“
Wait!” I exclaimed, as I
came to realize, “How could this be?” chant in surprise. “Did this
man not kill me, or hang me himself? Certainly I didn’t do this
myself.” But I remembered then as my mind’s journey ended, and
recalled the moment where only I offended. It wasn’t that man whom
I ensured would die, it was me, myself, the foolish widow,
I.

“
You did.”

I heard then from a nearby
place.

“
You did, and your corpse
hung, swinging in space.”

It was him, that man, the
man I had killed, the man I thought killed me, through revenge
thought fulfilled. But the revelation was clear now, more so with
his survival... but no, that’s impossible, this too was revival. He
stood in the doorway, as eyeless as I, explaining what seemed an
incredible lie.

“
The evidence is here,
there’s no point in doubting. You did this to yourself, so quit
with your pouting!”

Despite what seemed
obvious, there was one thing amiss. How did the blood stain the bed
amid this? I furrowed my brow and clenched my fists, and scream
from my dry tongue, “Silence! Desist! Explain that, you heathen,
explain this red flood, as something must have happened to evoke
all this blood!”

“
Something happened, I
assure you, my dear, for once you were silent and I so queer, so
queer that I thought, ‘Why not this one time, I make love to her
while she sleep, in death make her mine.’ I used a knife for my
passion, to carve a smile that struck me, and used the rocking
chair that you fell from to have you helplessly fuck
me.”

I was stunned by his words,
made speechless by his tone, but the story did melt my wretched
heart of stone. I brought my cracked lips into a formidable smile,
and watched as he did the same, amused by our guile. Death did not
stop us, and lust left us craved, and not even for our deaths did
it seem it was saved. I crept across the planks, mudded and a mess,
for the last thing I felt necessary to confess. With my long arms
extended and wrapped around his neck, in our bedroom a disaster; a
macabre little wreck, I said, “I love you, forever---may it never
die, I love you forever, the charmed widow, I.”

RETURN TO THE TABLE OF
CONTENTS

Epilogue

In a hellish tandem they
bled until they were dry as old peppers and picked away by the
scavenging beaks of time itself and what was left were the bones of
something that never had structure and never had a reason to be
upright so the world made it that they weren’t by beating them down
with a paddle of fate or the devices of their very own minds and
feeding them to each other like pigs left without food with hope
only that the one next to them and the one just like them gave in
and stopped beating and turned into something less than it was so
that it could continue to be hungry and alone and dead eventually
anyway but now sick and hungry again and wasteful and stupid. And
as it sits within its brandished apocalypse like a dumb child
floating in circles in the middle of a pool too deep to survive in
the sun flips around head over foot until it isn’t a damn thing but
a pile of bones like islands in that fetid sea that drift without
purpose to and fro until they collide into something like an
anachronism of silly life.

RETURN TO THE TABLE OF
CONTENTS

Preview of
A Penny Down the
Well: A Short Story Collection of Horrifying Events

Down the Drain

“
So, what do you think?
It’s not, um—“ The manager of the shoddy, fourth story apartment
stalled but went on with his pitch. “It’s not so bad. Could use a
little work. This apartment was a difficult one. The last tenant
had a serious metal allergy. Weird, huh?” The building manager
scratched his sweaty neck.

Jared looked around from the threshold
of the apartment’s open door. The paint peeled from the walls and
the wooden floors needed replacement. He walked in and the floors
creaked and groaned under his feet. A cold must filled the
air.

The building manager placed his hand
down on the counter separating the kitchen area from the living
space. The tile rocked under his weight. He stepped away. “And, you
know, you can’t beat the price!”

Jared stood middle of the room and
looked over the space. He sighed and admit in a defeated tone,
“I’ll take it.”

“
You will?” The manager
asked with wide eyes. “I mean, you will! Alright, then I’ll draw up
the paperwork. Remember, it’s a six-month lease, but that’s not a
problem for you, right? You look like a classy guy. No problem at
all! I’ll be back. Acquaint yourself with your new apartment,
mister!” The chubby man trot outside into the hallway. He banged a
fist against the door of a neighboring apartment as he passed. A
thumping bass blasted back against the knocking.

“
Turn it down in there,
Matt!” The manager muttered as he continued toward the elevator.
“How many times do I have to tell that kid?”

Jared examined the apartment. The
kitchen was bare and dirty. Jared noticed that all the faucet
handles were plastic, which he expected of a cheap place. It
reminded him of building manager’s comment about the prior tenant’s
metal allergy.

Jared stepped through the bedroom into
bathroom. He looked into the mirror over the sink. Long streaks
that looked like baked flatworms ran across the mirror, each a few
inches. Jared brought his face closer to the mirror. A black line
ran through the middle of his reflection and split him in two. He
noticed a bumpy texture in the streaks that bubbled from the
mirror. He swept a finger across the bumps. A residue stuck to his
fingers at he touched the mirror, both clearer and thicker than
water. He brought the residue to his nose. It smelled like copper
or dried blood. Jared turned on the sink. A tapping sound rang
through the narrow metal faucet but no water came from
it.

“
No water.” Jared shook his
head. “Can’t stay here if there’s no—“

Water burst from the pipes. A red
sludge shot into the sink and washed away as clearer water flowed
in.

Rust
, he thought.

He returned to the bedroom. The room
was small and would barely fit a queen-sized bed. The carpet’s
edges were flat from traffic. White adhesive strips littered the
walls, arranged in squared. Jared assumed it was how the prior
tenant hung frames.

“
No nails.” He said to
himself. He touched a strip. It lacked tackiness.

Jared stepped into the living room. A
blonde, twenty-something year-old leaned against the living room
wall. The boy wore bright colors, highlighted through a tie-dye
shirt.

“
Hey, man.” The boy said.
“You moving in here?”

Jared looked past the stranger and
into the hallway. The neighboring door was open. Music blared from
the open apartment. Jared assumed the apartment belonged to the boy
in front of him.

“
You usually just walk into
stranger’s apartments?” Jared asked.

“
You left the door open.”
The boy said.

Jared looked to the boy’s open door.
He said nothing.

“
Just trying to be
friendly, man. I can leave if you’d—“

“
No.” Jared lifted a hand.
“It’s fine. Sorry. I’m Jared.”

“
Matt.” The boy
said.

“
Good to meet you.” Jared
wasn’t sure he meant it.

“
Can’t believe you took the
place, man.” The boy brushed the long hair from his face. His blue
eyes were bright and showed intelligence. His voice made him sound
stupid, high-pitched and erratic.