Necro Files: Two Decades of Extreme Horror (10 page)

Jesus help me
, prays Meggie.

“Here, now,” says Mama. The thermometer comes out and Meggie draws her legs up beneath the hem of the dress. She does not want to hear the reading.

“Bless me, looks like we done hit it on the head!” Mama is almost laughing. “Up nearly a whole degree. Time is right. My little calendar book keeps me thinking straight, now don’t it? I’ll go get Quint.”

Mama goes out into the hall. Meggie watches her go. Then she falls from the bed and crawls on her knees to the Jesus picture. “Oh dear blessed Lord you are my shepherd, I shall not want I shall not want.” Jesus watches the lambs and does not see Meggie.

Meggie runs to the window and looks out at the flowers and the dead sandbox and the burned cornfield over the top of the joy woods. It was those woods that killed Quint. One second of carelessness that crushed Quint’s skull beneath John Johnson’s felled tree. Quint had gone to help the neighbor clear a little more land for crops. John and Quint had been best buddies since school, and they were always trading favors. But when Quint went down under the tree trunk, brains and blood spraying, and he died, and when he rose up again, he was through trading favors. He wanted a lot more of John than he’d ever wanted before. And he got it. There wasn’t enough of John left to rise with the other dead folks, just some chunks of spine and some chewed up feet.

Mama Randolph found Quint after this meal. He showed no immediate urge to eat her as well, so she brought him home and found he was just as happy eating raw goats and the squealing pigs he had tended as a live man.

Mama is in the doorway again. Behind her is Quint. He is dressed in only a pair of trousers that are gathered to his bony waist with a brown, tooth-marked leather belt.

“Abed!” says Mama. “Let’s have this done.”

Meggie goes back to the bed. She lies down. She knows what Mama will do next. It is the worst to come.

Quint is directed to stand in front of the old chair. Meggie cannot see Jesus anymore but that is a good thing. What is to happen is not for anyone’s eyes, especially the Savior’s. Meggie looks at her husband. His hair is gone as is the flesh of his mouth and the bulk of his nose. There is a tongue, but it is slimy and gray like an old rotted trout. The left side of his head is flattened, with the exposed brain now blackened and shimmering, reminding Meggie of a mushroom she tried to save once in a sandwich bag. The eye on the left is missing, but the right eye is wide and wet. The skin of Quint’s abdomen is swollen and it ripples like maggots have gotten inside. One hand has no fingers, but the other has three, and they grope awkwardly for the zipper of his trousers. Quint somehow knows why he has been brought upstairs.

Mama Randolph moves beside Meggie and motions for her to hoist up her dress. Meggie flinches, hesitating, and Mama slaps her. Meggie does not hesitate again.

Mama then rolls up her sleeves. She says, “Quint needs the extra stimulation to do what he has to do. Watching helps him. You know that. So be still and let me do my job.”

With the perfunctory movements of someone changing a fouled diaper, Mama coaxes the younger woman’s legs open, and parts the private folds so Quint can have a better view. Then she begins to rub Meggie’s clitoris slowly, while stroking the sensitive skin of Meggie’s inner thighs with the other hand. Meggie will not watch. She digs her fingernails into her sides until the pain sings with the rush of blood to her genitals.

“Quint, do you remember? Do you see Meggie? Her pretty dress?” says Mama. “Look Quint, now isn’t this lovely?” She leans her face into Meggie’s crotch and licks the whole length of slit. The breath from her nose is warm; the wetness of her saliva is cool. Meggie groans. Shame boils her mind and soul. Pleasure teases her body.

Mama, Quint, Jesus, no! I shall not want I shall not want!

Quint grunts. Meggie bucks her head and shoulders and glances at him. He has opened his fly and has found his penis. It is yellowed and decaying, like a bloated fish on a riverbank. As he pulls, it rises slightly. The pre-cum is purpled.

Mama sucks gently and then with a fury, Meggie’s body arcs reflexively. Bile rushes a burning path up her throat and dribbles from the corners of her mouth. When Mama’s lips move away for a second, Meggie crashes back to the mattress. The acid rockets upward once more and Meggie gags. Mama brings her tongue to Meggie’s spot again, and then thrusts her thumb into the opening. Meggie feels the walls of her vagina gush, betraying her in her ultimate moment of revulsion and horror.

I shall not oh dear God Jesus I shall not!

“Good girl,” Mama says matter-of-factly.

Meggie writhes on the bed, enraged tears spilling from her eyes and soaking the mattress. Mama stands up.

Quint has a line of moisture on what is left of his upper lip. One side of his mouth twitches as if it would try to grin.

Mama gestures to her son. “Come now, Quint, Meggie can’t wait for you.” Quint stares, grunts, then stumbles forward. As he passes his mother, she says, “I’d really love a granddaughter.”

Meggie turns her face away. She closes her eyes and tries to remember last summer. Days of light and shadows and swimming and play, days of work and trials and promises of forever. But all she can do is smell the creature climbing onto her. All she can do is feel the slopping of the trout-tongue on her cheek and taste the running, blackened brain matter as it drips to the edge of her lips. He burrows clumsily; his body wriggles as his knees work between her knees, and his sore-covered penis reaches like a dazed, half-dead snake for her center.

Meggie bites her tongue until it bleeds to keep from feeling the cold explosion of semen. And as if in some insane answer to it all, her vaginal walls contract suddenly in a horrific, humiliating orgasm.

It is all over quickly. Mama pulls Quint off, then gives Meggie a kiss on the forehead and tells her to stay abed for at least an hour to give the seed time to find the soil.

Alone, with the door locked and the lunch tray balanced on the smelly chair seat, Meggie lies still, her dress still hunched up. She holds her left hand in her right, pretending the right one is that of a living, breathing Quint. She puts the hand to her face and feels the tender stroking. And then she lowers the hand to her abdomen, and presses firmly. There will be a new human in there soon, if Mama has her way. There could be one already. This could be Mama’s magic moment. Meggie wishes she could know. It is not knowing if or when that brings her mind to the edge of twisting inside out.

She looks at the window. There is no breeze now, only the persistent heat. The edge of sunlight stands on the carpet stain.

“S’different,” Mama Randolph had said. “Different world now. Just adjustin’ to cold water is all. Might not wanta do it, but sometimes just can’t be helped. Gotta survive, after all.”

Meggie holds herself and closes her eyes. She wonders about the different world. She wonders if there will be a baby to grow and use the playground outside her room. And she wonders if the baby, when it comes, will be cuddly and bouncy and take after his mother.

Or if it will be stillborn, and take after its father.

“I
am
He that Liveth and was Dead … & Have the Keys of Hell & Death” was first published in
Grue
magazine No. 14, summer 1992. The story is an excerpt from their novel
Duet for the Devil
, published by Necro Publications in 2000.

‡

Randy Chandler is the author of
Bad Juju, Hellz Bellz, Dead Juju
, and various short stories. He is also the author of
Daemon of the Dark Wood
and
Dime Detective
, both coming soon from Comet Press. He lives in Georgia.

t. Winter-Damon was a writer and illustrator from Tucson, Arizona whose works of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry appeared in hundreds of magazines and anthologies. Tim passed away in 2009.

† † †

Tim Winter-Damon would be pleased that this piece of Duet for the Devil is included in this book. I have the feeling that he is looking on from the Vast Beyond with a wicked grin on his mug.

Before he became something more than human, he liked to hang out in punk joints & coffee houses like Nouveau Expresso & 90 Night—funky little clubs where young radicals & Post Beat post-hip poets & punk musicians gather for mutual ego massage or to have their philosophies styled in the latest fashion. In that previous life, Slice was an angry young poet known as “The Bard of Bones,” because he always wore his hand-tooled leather-&-bones outfit when he read his mad poetry in public. T-bones, chicken bones, porkchop bones, dog bones, cat bones (painted black), squirrel skulls, a human femur, all rattling musically as he moved about like a demented witch doctor, mouthing his bone-chilling poems & death hymns. His outfit was topped off with a spooky hoodoo headdress made of a cow’s skull & hung with chicken feet & bird feathers. He strutted his killer stuff & the tight little pussies in the audience (those with the kinkier libidos that flamed darkly to the spark of his hellcoals-&-gris-gris laden rap) would get wet & squirmy, aching for that big bone bulging beneath his loincloth. The Bard of Bones got a lot of pussy in those days.

Then came his Bloodbone Poems & his subsequent arrest on obscenity obsession with sordid sex, urban bloodbath & megaviolence. Neither did they appreciate his state-of-the-art collection of S&M, fetishist & bondage zines. Their bootheels & balled-fists-in-the-gut made that rather clear …

He was convicted, placed on probation & ordered to undergo psychiatric counseling. He enjoyed the cat-&-mouse mindgames he played with the shrink, entertaining private fantasies of extremely creative carnage. The drawback was that he lost interest in writing poetry. But he convinced Dr. Howard (who looked too much like Moe of the Three Stooges) that he had no desire to perform in public again. The baggy-eyed quack never scratched the surface of his mind’s core—that dark chamber of id-horrors inhabited by a psyche blown wild by storms of evil. The stupid shrink never even caught a glimpse of the bloodlust boiling behind those hooded eyes. His Freudian flimflam was a total flop. The Bard of Bones became “Slice” right under Herr Doktor’s big nose, & now he is someone else—
something
else. Something more than human. A nocturnal predator attuned to the poetry of the blooded flesh. He sees the universe in bones laid bare by his blade. Slice became the hunter of the blue nocturne.

He blows into 90 Night like a storm-building thunderhead.

“Bones! Is that you, man?” squeaks a rat-faced faggot.

Slice shakes his head.

Negative, asshole
.

He picks up the sultry scent of choice prey.

His bootknife shifts against his ankle.

A pretty drag queen is sitting on a stool, reading into the mike a long poem about the gay plague.

Slice slinks across the room & sits at a vacant table. A butch lesbian wearing a dildo on a rope around her neck looks into his face, then quickly looks away. He can imagine what she saw there: saw him stuffing that dildo dick down her fucking throat, fucking her with it till blood filled up the torn crater of her mouth.
You ain’t butch enough to handle me, cunt. Choke on it, you half-human bitch
.

The queen on the stool ends his epic by ripping off his blonde wig & spinning around on the stool to reveal a death’s-head mask on the back of his head. The audience applauds & cheers. Slice hawks up thick phlegm from the back of his throat & spits the blue glob on the floor, causing three punks at the next table to look in disgust at him & move to another table.
Don’t you know artistic criticism when you see it?

The scent comes in stronger.

Something dark & powerful stirs in his belly & groin.

A prettyboy MC steps to the mike & says: “Ladies & gentlemen—Miss Phaedra Flame!”

The prey mounts the stage. The black sheen of her long hair, the black body stocking & black lip gloss accent her milk-white face.

A demonic grin sharpens the predator’s face.

Phaedra Flame holds up a slim red-bound book, & says, “These are my Torch Poems.” She holds up a blowtorch in her other hand & a tongue of fire licks at the book. Then flames engulf the book, & she tosses it into a bucket of water. “I hereby proclaim the death of the printed word!”

The audience whistles & cheers.
Mindless sheep
.

“Now I do real poetry,” Phaedra says with a sly smile.

From the Olympus of his heightened blue awareness, the new god Slice looks down upon the roomful of ragged mortals & savors the coming creation.
Destruction in creation. Reductionist to the Nth
. His artistic medium will be flesh/bone/blood. Each slaughtered lamb a work of art, impermanent like ice sculpture. Art that literally sends spirits soaring into the great unknown.

Phaedra is putting her body & soul into her impromptu scat poetry, moving with feline grace, slinky and seductive, speaking directly to the new god, though she is not consciously aware that she is doing so. “… hungry in the hamburger air, tossed aside like a used condom, wearing the emblem of a washed-out revolution, alone with my own bloody abortion …”

Slice studies her every move, the jiggle of her full breasts, the quiver of her firm thighs, the pucker of her lips as she wraps them around every word. He is mentally outlining his artistic approach, planning the impetus of his strokes, finding cosmic inspiration in the poetry of her moving body.

The revelation hits him with such force that he is thrown back in his chair, his long hands dangling below the seat. He sees it all with crystal blue clarity: his handiwork must be exhibited for the masses, not merely for the homicide police & the coroner. He will display his blood art, like human graffiti, to the public. Phaedra Flame will be his first message to the world. The more sensitive souls will see the meaning beyond the carved & flayed flesh. Perhaps a few will even glimpse the coming
blue doom
.