Dark Anonymous Confessions

Vincent V. Cava

Edited by

Kirsten Milliron

Copyright © 2014
by Vincent V. Cava

All rights
reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including
photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the
prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other
noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write
to the publisher at the address below.

vincentvenacava@gmail.com

The Author

Vincent V. Cava

His
tales have been known to induce seizures in small children.  Merely
skimming through one of his stories can lead to anxiety, nausea, and internal
bleeding.  You should not read anything written by him if you are
currently pregnant or nursing (including this author’s bio…although it’s
probably too late by now).  He’s a man whose mind is so dark, not
even the World-Wide-Web could contain his horrific imagination.

He
is Vincent V. Cava!

The
son of NASA researchers, Vincent V. Cava’s writing has quickly amassed a
following over the Internet.  His stories have been translated into
dozens of different languages and have been used to promote major studio
films.  You can find out more about Vincent by following him on Facebook, Instagram,
or Twitter.

Subscribe to his mailing list for FREE
exclusive stories and promos

Table of Contents

The
Pastel Man

Fast
Enough

The Ocean’s Cool Air

You
Shouldn’t

Love
Hurts

Brown
Stone

Sweet
Talk

Little Black Bugs

The Eye
of Ra

The
Woman In The Red Sundress

POW

The
Pastel Man

To My Dear Son,
Mathew,

I can’t imagine
how strange it must feel to receive a letter written a decade ago from your
father who has long since been dead.  Don’t be cross with your Aunt
for withholding it from you all these years.  She was simply honoring
my wishes.  She’s a good woman and I’m sure that she and your Uncle
Benjamin have done a wonderful job raising you in the absence of your mother
and I.

I merely wanted
to wait until you were old enough to fully grasp what I am about to tell
you.  I also did not want to burden you while you were still a boy
with the information that I will be imparting to you – on this your eighteenth
birthday.  A child should not be forced to bare the weight of their
father’s past mistakes.

It’s funny,
eighteen is such an arbitrary number, but this day does carry some
significance.  It represents your transition from a boy into a
man.  From today on forward you are expected to have your own
responsibilities, create your own experiences, and endure your own
hardships.  Your Aunt and Uncle will always be there for you, but if
they raised you to be as strong as I expect them to, then you should be able to
handle yourself out in the real world just fine.  It is that reason
that I chose this day to reveal to you the circumstances surrounding my death.

That being said,
disclosing to you the cause and reason of my passing only helps to satisfy half
the aim of this letter.  The other is to serve as a caveat, in hopes
that I can prevent you from making the same mistake that I did that cold winter
night, kneeling beside my father’s writhing body on the living room
floor.  So I prey that you heed my warning, son, and read this
cautionary tale with an open mind.  If for whatever reason you forget
everything else I’ve ever told you, then I beg that you remember this one
thing.  In the event that it ever comes to you during a moment of
weakness, as it did me all those years ago, say no to the Pastel
Man.  It doesn’t matter how much you love the person that it promises
to help, nothing is worth what it wants in return.

It was 1985 when
I first encountered the creature, well before you were born, but ever since,
not a day has gone by where its awful face hasn’t haunted my
thoughts.  I was a teenager then, but I look at that evening as the
night my childhood died – corrupted and violated by a callous hell beast
with pale blue skin.

Even though it
happened years ago, I still remember the events of that fateful first encounter
vividly.  I could tell you what my father and I were wearing, the
toppings on the pizza we were eating, even the score of the football game
playing on the TV.  It was around half time when my father’s speech
started to become slurred, which I found odd since he had been nursing the same
bottle of beer since kickoff.  Stranger even, I had seen him drink a
six-pack to himself in the past without even appearing tipsy so I was having
trouble understanding how a single drink could have such an effect on
him.  I realized it wasn’t the alcohol when half his body went limp
and he slid off the couch.  I asked him if he was all right, but his
words had now become incomprehensible so I grabbed the phone off the coffee
table and dialed 911.

“911, what’s your
emergency?”

“I think my Dad’s
having a stroke.”  The thought had only crossed my mind a second
before the operator answered the phone.

“Ok, we have your
address.  An ambulance is on its way.  It should be there
soon.  Is he conscious?”  The operator’s voice was calm,
yet frustratingly distant – almost apathetic in a way.  Here I
was, a teenage boy traumatized and terrified, and the person on the other line
was speaking to me as if it was just another day at the office.

Where’s the
empathy?  I remember thinking.  Where’s
the concern?  A man is dying!

“Yes.  He’s
conscious, but I can’t understand him.” I responded.

Nonsensical
jumbled sounds were spilling out my father’s mouth.  I was afraid.  He
was all I had.  My mother passed away when I was a baby so I never
got the chance to know her, but my dad was always there – doing the job
of two parents.  If I lost him, then I knew I’d be alone.

“That’s normal
with strokes.  It’s good that he’s awake – “ And I didn’t hear
the rest because that’s when I dropped the phone.

I was having one
of those moments where everything faded into the background while my world fell
silent.  The football game playing on the television, the operator
giving me instructions over the phone, even the sound of my father’s voice as
he wailed in agony on the carpet became white noise – dissolving into the
air as I lost all awareness of my surroundings.  All of my attention
and focus was now on one thing.  The horrible abomination that was
standing in my kitchen, watching my father and I with a twisted smile across
its disgusting face.

Its head narrowly
missed scraping against our kitchen’s 9ft ceiling as it shifted from side to
side, fidgeting with anticipation like a giddy child in class on the last day
of school waiting for that final bell to signal summer vacation.  The
pastel blue skin that covered its entire body, from the creature’s head all the
way down to its feet horrible grimy feet, looked weathered and wrinkled like
leather that had been left out in the sun for days.  Hanging off its
long, lanky frame was a plain brown satchel with black stitching.  It
lightly caressed the strap of its pouch with a long finger while it looked on
with an eager expression on its face.

I had also
quickly become aware of a drastic increase in temperature.  Beads of
sweat began collecting on my forehead.  The room was now as warm as a
sauna. The air too had changed.  It was thicker, heavier, and much
harder to breath.  It felt as though the living room had suddenly
adopted the climate of the Amazon Rain Forest.

At first I
thought I had gone mad from the sight of seeing my father have a stroke, but
the closer the monstrosity slinked towards us, the more I realized it was no
hallucination.  It ducked its head under the light fixture in the
living room and stepped a spindly leg over the couch.  Though the
monstrous freak of nature was clearly bipedal, it had moved down to all fours
and appeared to be stalking us like some kind of wild animal hunting its
prey.  I should have been terrified, but the god-awful smile on its
face made me feel more anger towards the thing than fear.  It was as
if it was taking pleasure in my father’s misery.  Closer still it
crept and I grabbed my father’s hand out of desperation in some veiled attempt
to protect him.  The creature stopped its face mere inches from mine
before shifting its attention down to my father and uttering a string of words
that have forever changed my life.

“I can save him, if
you’d like?”

I was taken aback.  I
had prepared for the terrible thing to bite a chunk of flesh out of my neck or
dig its black crust covered nails into my face, but speaking to me was the last
thing I expected.

“He’s dying, but
I can save him.  If you’d like?”

I sat there,
mouth agape, cradling my father’s head in my arm and staring into the two pink
bulbous eyes that took up more than a third of the foul thing’s
face.  I remember thinking that they reminded me of Easter Eggs
– a bizarre connection for my mind to make given the
situation.  It stood back up on two feet and once again I was
reminded just how physically imposing the creature really was.  It
told me its name, which I dare not repeat because it also explained that
speaking it would summon the beast.  For the remainder of my story I
will refer to this entity as the Pastel Man – just a name I came up with
due to the pigment of its skin and the light shade of pink that was the color
of its eyes.  That and for some reason using such a foolish title to
refer to the creature always helped to make me feel less afraid of
it.  Not much though.  Not much at all.

Finally, my mind
had recovered enough from shock to allow me to stutter out a few words, “What
do you mean you can save him?”

“What I do is
make deals, young man.”  Its voice was surprisingly angelic –
like a thousand choirs all singing in unison.  If one were to close
their eyes while the creature spoke to them, they might imagine they were
listening to a seraph, not the hideous monster sporting a depraved grin in my
living room.  However, its extraordinary voice only managed to make
me more uneasy.  It wasn’t right that something so beautiful
would belong to such a repulsive creature.

The Pastel Man
gestured to its satchel.  “I have the ability to save your father’s
life, but we’ll need to come to an arrangement first.”

“What kind of a
arrangement?”

“Everything
happens for a reason, even death.”  Its mischievous smile widened
just a bit as if the creature was getting to the punch line of a joke. “It’s
true that I can save your father’s life, but someone must die in his
place.  One must die, so another can
live.  That’s the deal.”  I clutched my
chest.  “Not you, what would be the point?  No, no, no, I’m
giving you the option to choose the person who will be replacing your father
this evening.”

I was stunned by
what I was hearing.  Feeling woozy from the heat, I wiped some sweat
from my brow in an attempt to stall long enough to recollect myself.

“Are you death?”
I asked.

The Pastel Man
threw its head back and let out terrible howl.  It was only later
that I would come to realize that was how the wretched thing
laughed.  “No, I’m certainly not The Grim Reaper, although you aren’t
the first person to ask me that.  I’m not the devil either, nor do I
work for him.  Let’s just say I’m an independent contractor, shall
we?”  Two tiny holes that lied on the center of its face in the
absence of a nose flared in satisfaction of its explanation.

“I can choose
anyone?”

“Well, not anyone.  That
wouldn’t be very fun, would it?” I could see a row of shark like teeth hiding
in its mouth as it separated its lips to speak. “Your father’s replacement must
be someone else in your life.”

“I’m not a
murderer.” My voice was tiny and barely escaped my mouth.  I looked
back down to my father.  He had lost consciousness and his skin was
becoming pale.  “And I don’t think I could kill anyone I know.”

“You won’t have
to get your hands dirty, young man.” The sly creature was moving into its final
pitch. “All you have to do is tell me who it is you want dead and I will do the
rest.  Surely there must be someone you wouldn’t mind out of your
life?  A teacher, an ex-girlfriend, a nasty neighbor perhaps?”

There was
one.  I had fantasized about it many times, but never in my wildest
dreams would I have ever acted on it.  Everyone has that toxic person
in their life.  Someone who makes getting up in the morning
more difficult and I was certainly no exception.  “Walter Flannigan,”
I muttered under my breath.

“Who?”

“Walter
Flannigan.  He’s the guy at school who gave me this.”  I
lifted my shirt and showed it the handprint shaped bruise on my chest that
Walter had given me during one of his infamous “hazing sessions” in the locker
room earlier that week.  “He’s been shoving me into lockers, and
beating me up since I was a freshman.  The faculty doesn’t do
anything about it since he’s the biggest football recruit to ever come out of
my school.  He’s already committed to play for a major university
next year.  Sports Illustrated even did a piece on him.”

“Ahhh,” The
Pastel Man began to snicker to itself.  It somehow widened its
already enormous pink eyes even more then crouched back down to get face to
face with me again. “What fun is being a king, without peasants to torment,
eh?”

“Well I’m tired
of being tormented so just go and kill him before I change my mind!”

The Pastel Man
shot a massive hand out and wrapped its long fingers around my
face.  The grin that it wore since I had first laid eyes on it had
now replaced by a scowl.

“YOU DO NOT TELL
ME WHAT TO DO! ARE WE CLEAR?!”  I nodded sheepishly.

The grip it had
on my face was so tight.  I understood then and there that if it
wanted to, the creature could easily snap my neck or crush my skull like an
egg.  My heart began to pound so loud that you could have heard it
from the street.

“Good,” it
continued.  “Because it’s not so simple, young man.  There
are steps that must be taken.”

“Steps?”

“Yes,” A playful
smirk once again returned to the Pastel Man’s face.  “You will have
to be present when this Walter Flannigan dies.  In fact, I need you
to summon me or else I can’t complete my end of the bargain.  Get the
boy alone, there must be no other witnesses, then speak my
name.  You must watch him die by sunrise or else you will be
violating the terms of our agreement. So do we have a deal?”  I
nodded again and the monster released its hold of my face before snatching my
hand.  Its giant paws swallowed my palm as we shook to cement our
arrangement. “Excellent!  With this handshake our deal is
binding, young man.”

I watched
curiously as the Pastel Man reached into its satchel and fumbled around until
it found what it was looking for.  In between its repugnant fingers
it held a strange looking insect about the size of a quarter.  It
resembled a beetle, but not the likes of one that I’ve ever seen.  I
have never had an affinity for insects.  In fact, you could even go
so far as to call it a minor phobia of mine, but this beetle was
beautiful.  Every color of the visible light spectrum was represented
on its outer shell.  Vibrant yellows, pinks, and greens swirled
around in patterns on the insect’s back while hypnotic purples, reds, and blues
stole my gaze and captured my attention. It was reminiscent of something that
one might read about in a fairy tale.  The bug buzzed its wings in
attempt to flutter away, but could not escape the Pastel Man’s
grasp.  With the creature’s free hand, it pushed down on my father’s
jaw in order to open his mouth.

“What are you
doing?” I asked, but the Pastel Man ignored my query.  To my horror,
it violently stuffed the insect into my father’s mouth jamming it down his
esophagus with its filthy, dirty, fingers.

The Pastel Man
rose once more to its feet. “There, the deed is done.  Your father
will recover in full.  Now it’s your turn.  Remember, the
boy dies by sunrise or the deal is off.”

It turned its
back to me and began to slither away.

“What if I change
my mind?” I asked.

The creature
stopped almost mid stride and twisted back around.   Again its
smile had been supplanted by an angry sneer and I felt even less safe then when
it was holding my face in a vice grip earlier.

“Your father’s
health has already been restored so someone must replace him.  One must
die so another can live.  That was the deal.  If
you fail to complete your end of the bargain then that someone will be
you.  Believe me when I say this, young man, I don’t need to be
summoned once our deal has been broken.  I will come for
you.  That is a promise.  And when I do, you’re going to
wish you never crossed me.”

With that it
continued out the kitchen and through the backdoor.  I chased after
it, but by the time I got outside into the back yard, the thing had
disappeared.  The chilly winter air felt like a gift from heaven
after being in the sweat box that was my living room, but I didn’t have time to
enjoy it because it was only a moment later when I spotted the lights of an
ambulance as it pulled up across the street from my house.  I flagged
down the EMTs and led them inside to my father.

***

This is without a
doubt the most difficult part of the story to write.  How does a man
go about confessing his biggest regret in life to his one and only
son?  It pains me that a terrible decision I made before you were
born may dismantle any favorable notions of me that you may have had, but this
is one part of my legacy that I cannot hide from you.  If I am to
protect you, then these words must be said.

It wasn’t
difficult to find Walter.  I knew exactly where he was going to
be.  For a week a boy from my school named Eddie Gillen had been
spreading word about a party he was throwing to celebrate the end of our high
school’s football season.  These sorts of festivities were usually
attended by kids who ran in the “popular” circles at my
school.  Social outcasts like myself weren’t welcome and would often
be turned away if we tried to show up.  I was never much into
drinking or mingling with boorish oafs anyways so I didn’t mind being excluded
from these get-togethers.  I was however, certain that it was here
that I would find Walter.

I had lost track
of time at the hospital while waiting to hear from my father’s doctors at the
ICU and needed to hurry in order to complete my end of the bargain before the
sun came up.  It was somewhere around 3:30 AM when I pulled my car up
to Eddie Gillen’s house.  The celebration had somewhat died down and
I feared that I had missed my opportunity to catch Walter.  My
concerns were alleviated when I saw that his raised pick-up truck was still in
the driveway.  I parked a little ways down the street so my car
wouldn’t be spotted.  Another thought crossed my
mind.  What if Walter had gotten too drunk and passed
out?  I tried to think of away to get into Eddie’s and get the
football star alone long enough for the Pastel Man to do whatever it was the
creature had planned.  Luckily for me, it wasn’t too long before the
sports hero stumbled out of Eddie’s front door and climbed into his
truck.  I let out a sigh, having just evaded a potentially
challenging hurdle and shifted my car into drive.

He pulled into
the street and I followed behind, staying far enough away so that I wouldn’t
tip him off.  He was drunk.  Even from the distance I was
tailing him, I could see his truck swerving in and out of its
lane.  The Pastel man’s remarkably radiant voice played itself over
and over like a heavenly broken record in my mind.

You must watch
him die by sunrise

I could feel
adrenaline begin to rush through my veins.  I was excited –
something that both surprised and frightened me.  Thoughts of my
father had retreated back into the inner recesses of my sub
consciousness.  He was a distant memory – my focus was now on
Walter and all the torment I had received at his hands.  No longer
would I be forced to put up with his physical and mental abuse.  The
power was mine now.  With one little word I could end it
all.  I was Gabriel, my voice was my horn and I needed only sound it
to bring Walter’s world crumbling down.

My thoughts
turned towards the Pastel Man.  Oh, how his terrible smile unnerved
me.  It would most likely be the last thing Walter ever
saw.  Yet somehow this thought brought me comfort. I was
possessed, but not by the Pastel Man or any other ghoulish
apparition.  It was the spirit of vengeance that had coiled itself
around my soul, crushing and squeezing away any lingering trace of innocence
left within it.

I looked out my
driver side window.  A pink ribbon lined the horizon – the very
first signs of sunlight making its presence known in the dark evening
sky.  In a couple hours morning would arrive and I would be too late
to summon the demon.  Nevertheless, I would see the Pastel Man again,
one way or another.

Walter lived up
in the foothills outside of town where some of the wealthier people owned
homes.  He and a friend of mine were neighbors.  From time
to time I would go up to his house and see Walter in the drive way tossing the
pigskin around with his old man.  I wondered briefly how his father
would react to Walter’s death.

Mr. Flannigan was
a good man – I knew him well.  When my mother passed, there was
a dispute with my father and the life insurance agency over her
policy.  The money he was supposed to receive when she died was held
in abeyance.  Both of my parents worked and depended on each other’s
salaries in order to cover the bills.  Without that extra income
coming in my father quickly found himself swimming in debt.  Mr.
Flannigan worked at the bank and called in a few favors to get a very fair loan
approved for my father even though there was a chance he wouldn’t be able to
collect on my mother’s life insurance.  Without that money, my Dad
would have been behind on the mortgage and may have lost the
house.  Once the insurance company finally caved two years later, my
father was able to settle his debt with the bank.  It was risk that
Mr. Flannigan didn’t need to take, but did anyways out of the kindness of his
heart.  Years later he and my father remained friendly and still made
small tall when they saw each other around town.

When I asked him
once why he put his neck out on the line to approve such a dangerous loan for
us, he told me this, “Your father had just lost his wife and you were just a
baby.  You and Walter are the same age so it wasn’t hard to put
myself in your old man’s his shoes.  Sometimes we’re so wrapped up in
our own problems that we forget to think about others.”

I had been
consumed with vengeance, but now a sense of guilt was beginning to build inside
me for what my actions were about to put Mr. Flannigan
through.   Those feelings were only fleeting
though.  Walter was going to pay.  I pushed any and all
distractions behind me in order to focus on the task at hand.

We had come to a
more secluded part of the road that cut through a wooded area so I decided that
was where I would make my move.  I sped up until I was tailgating the
truck then started flashing my brights and honking my
horn.  I was prepared to rear end the truck in order to get him to
pull over, but that wasn’t even necessary to get the job done.  He
must have been panicking because Walter’s truck started to swerve violently
across the street before running off road and sideswiping a tree.

I rolled up
behind his now stalled vehicle and paused for a second before getting out of
the car – a moment of hesitation brought on by that tiny bit of innocence
the spirit of vengeance had yet to crush.  I pictured Mr. Flannigan
standing next to Walter’s grave, bouquet of carnations and lilies in hand,
mourning his only son, but the vengeful spirit within me tightened its grip and
my reservations were quickly washed away.

A cold winter
breeze whipped across my face.  The cool air stung as it nipped at my
ears so I zipped up my coat and pulled my hood over my head.  I left
my headlights on and stood in front of my car so Walter could see me.

“Hey Walter,” I
shouted out.

It wasn’t long
before his door jerked open and the inebriated football prodigy dropped out of
the cab to the ground below.  I could see the gears turning in his
intoxicated brain while he slowly pieced together what had just
happened.  By the time he recognized me the look of confusion on his
face had shifted into a picture of rage.  Walter stormed across the
road towards my car with both fists clenched.  Memories of the
beatings that I suffered through and the teasing that I had faced darted
through my mind.  Then those words, spoken by that beautiful,
terrifying, otherworldly voice replayed themselves again in my head.

One must die
so another can live

They were words
that had lost all meaning to me.  I could barely remember my father,
much less the reason why I had originally agreed to offer up Walter to the
creature.  I was consumed by hate and I finally had the opportunity
to return back all the abuse I had received over the years ten
fold.  Walter was close now and it was now or never.  In an
eruption of malice and fury I shouted out the Pastel Man’s name directly into
Walter’s face.

He stopped in his
tracks, almost as if he was being physically restrained by my outburst, but
quickly gathered himself and shoved me hard against the hood of my
car.  The Pastel Man was nowhere to be seen.  For the
second time that evening I wondered if I had gone insane.  The boy
grabbed me by my jacket’s collar, spun me around and raised his
fist.  I shut my eyes to brace for impact, but the only thing that
struck my face was a powerful wave of heat.

The temperature
outside had rapidly increased and I could feel myself begin to sweat profusely
inside my coat.  I opened my eyes to see Walter’s mouth hanging open
just as mine had when I first caught sight of the Pastel Man earlier that
night.  I turned my head just in time to see that unmistakable, long,
lanky body slink out of the shadows.  It was really going to happen.  The
Pastel Man was going to kill Walter and it was because of me.  I
thought that the monster’s presence would be a relief, but strangely now all I
wanted was for it to go away.  All the hate, anger, and rage I had
been feeling just moments before had flushed itself from my body
entirely.  Old man vengeance had packed up, gone home, and left
behind the hollowed out husk of a scared little boy with nothing but a broken
soul.

I may have been
more frightened than Walter.  I hadn’t anticipated the instant
feeling of regret I experienced upon seeing the demon’s face.  That’s
when a realization caused my stomach to drop.  Walter was about to
die and it was my fault.  And for
what?  Because he pushed me around in school?  I wanted to
tell him to run and hide – anything that would give me a chance to right
what I had done.  I thought that maybe I could talk to the creature,
offer myself in his place even, but the only thing I could do was mumble a
worthless apology under my breath.

“I’m
sorry.”  I was, but sorry doesn’t save lives.

The creature
moved in front of my car’s headlamps and we could see it more clearly now.

I couldn’t take
my eyes off of the Pastel Man, but I think that had more to do with not being
able to look Walter in the face than fear for my life.  Wave after
wave of intense heat bombarded my face as the temperature climbed even higher,
it felt like I was standing in front of an oven.  Walter said nothing
– and what was there to say really?  The two of us stood in
silence as the thing continued to creep closer to us.

The lights of my
car fell flush on the Pastel Man’s face now.  That must have been
what snapped Walter out of his trance.  He made a break for his
truck.  The boy was fast, I’ll give him that, but the hell beast
leapt towards him with a surprising amount of speed and agility that I had not
yet seen it demonstrate.  Walter fell to the ground and tried to
shuffle backwards in a futile effort to put distance between he and his
devilish pursuer.

The guilt was
swallowing me whole.  I wanted nothing more than to wake up and find
out that it was all a bad dream.  It was Houston in the Summer time
hot.  Droplets of sweat dripped from my face to the ground below,
sizzling on the asphalt before rising back into the air as puffs of steam.   The
sight of that thing as it lurked ever closer to the terrified boy was so
dreadful that I turned my head in an effort to avert my eyes, but the Pastel
Man made sure to remind me of our agreement.

“YOU MUST WATCH,
YOUNG MAN!  DON’T FORGET WE HAD A DEAL!”

I forced myself
to peer back at the massacre that was about to take place.  The
creature’s smile had mutated from mischievous to depraved.  It looked
as if it was deriving some sort of sick sexual pleasure from what it was about
to put Walter through.

The Pastel Man
grabbed Walter around his throat, easily hoisting the quarterback into the air
with one arm.  It stood there for a while, toying with him while
forcing Walter to stare into those terrible pink eyes.  After it had
its fun, the creature reached into its satchel with its other hand, pulling out
a much larger insect this time.  It was different than the one it had
forced my father to ingest, both in size and in appearance.  If the
bug I had seen it remove from its bag earlier that night was the size of a
quarter then this one must have been as large as a golf ball.  It was
slimy too – the mucous like membrane that encased its body glistened in
my cars headlights.  The maggot like insect squirmed and shimmied between
the creature’s grimy fingers like a worm on a fishing hook.  The
Pastel Man teased the boy a bit longer, dangling the nasty bug in front of his
face.

“Now be a good
boy and open your mouth.”

Walter screamed,
which in retrospect was probably the worst thing he could have done.  That
gave the blue beast the opening it needed.  It thrust the slimy
insect in his mouth and past his tonsils with utter glee and
elation.  I watched on as Walter gagged on the oversized maggot as it
made its way down his throat.  It wasn’t long before he began to lose
color in his face and started choking.  I desperately wanted to save
him, but there was nothing I could do.  A minute later and the Pastel
Man dropped his lifeless body to the ground.  It examined the carnage
for a moment, as if it was pondering over a masterpiece in an art exhibit then
shot a wide grin in my direction.

I could barely
manage to speak, but I somehow managed to force out a few words, “You- you
killed him.”

The creature
flared its nostrils again in satisfaction, but its face had become much more
somber and serious.  It wasn’t sneering or scowling as I had seen it
before when it lost its smile, instead it bore what I can only describe as a
look of concern, like it was about to deliver some delicate news to me.

“Not without your
help.”

With that the
demon turned away, retreating back towards the shadows and disappearing into
the night without saying another word.  I stood in the road,
surveying the horrible scene.  The frigid winter air returned back to
the street that I was standing in, but even relief from the heat did little to
soothe my distress.

Nothing had gone
the way I had expected it to.  I did not feel justified, or validated
from the part I played in Walter’s Death.  The boy had not been
eviscerated in some fantastical explosion. There was no brilliant light
show ending in Walter’s soul being dragged down to hell.  There was
just a dead boy in the road.   A dead boy and his
murderer.  The Pastel Man was the gun that he died by, but I was the
one who pulled the trigger.  In a way there were two dead boys in the
road that evening.

I knew that I
didn’t have time to dawdle.  At any moment a car could have come
driving down the street and find me standing in the middle of that
massacre.  I sprinted back to my vehicle and sped down the road
towards town.  I’m not sure how much later the sun rose that
morning.  I couldn’t bring myself to look.

The coroner
attributed Walter’s death to a drinking and driving accident, although there
was understandably a lot of suspicion regarding the odd circumstances
surrounding his demise.    The autopsy revealed no evidence
of the slimy bug that the Pastel Man had placed in Walter’s
throat.  The town was devastated.  I remember a candle light
vigil was held in his honor.  A couple of big news outlets even
covered his death because of Walter’s status as an elite college football
recruit.  But no one was more ravaged by his death than Mr.
Flannigan.  He fell into a deep depression.  A year later,
his marriage fell apart and his wife moved across the
country.  Understandably, he wasn’t up for chitchat when I ran into
him around town.  I would still see him from time when visiting my
friend, standing in his driveway holding a pigskin and pining over his fallen
son – an empty husk of his former self, much like my soul that had been
bled dry in the road that fateful evening.

***

My father made a
full recovery and just a couple of days after his stroke was released from the
hospital.  I always had always appreciated the time we spent together,
but after his near death I started to cherish every moment we shared.

I would go on to
graduate high school and meet the love of my life the very first semester at my
university.  Your mother was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen
and it didn’t take much for me to fall head over heels for her.  We
married shortly after college.  You were born not much later.

I was happy,
Mathew.  You and your mother helped me to forget about that
night.   No, forget isn’t the right word.  You helped
me to ignore it.  The shame was always there, but because my focus
was directed towards providing a good life for the three of us there was little
time to dwell on my past mistakes.  In time, I had learned to bury
those memories deeper and deeper inside of me until they almost didn’t feel
real anymore.  For eight years you helped me find
peace.  Words cannot express how thankful I am for that.

Still, I feared
that one day my serenity would end and the Pastel Man would show its terrible
face to me once more so it could offer up another deal.  Even on the
eve of my father’s passing, as I sat with your sleeping head resting on my
shoulder in his hospital room, I was sure the Pastel Man would
come.  It did not and after that night, I started to believe that I
was free of the creature. A weight had lifted from my chest, and even
though I still carried the burden of my past deeds, life was going better than
I could have ever dreamed.  It was the type of thing that would make
a man scoff at the concept of karma.  After all, I had everything I
ever wanted so why would such a wonderful life be afforded to someone who had
committed such a terrible sin?  But karma caught up with me,
Mathew.  Lord knows, karma caught up with me.

You were eight
years old when it happened so I don’t know how much you will remember about the
accident by the time you read this letter.  You and your mother were
on your way back from the airport after visiting your
grandparents.  I was swamped at work and had to pull an all-nighter
in order to finish a project by its deadline so Diana told me she would hail a
taxi rather than ask me to pick the two of you up.

It was around
midnight and I was alone in the office when I got a call from the police
department.  They told me a drunk driver had collided with your cab
on the highway coming back from the airport.  Your mother and the
cabbie were killed on impact and I was told that you were in critical
condition.  I sat at my desk, unable to move or formulate a coherent
thought.  I remembered Mr. Flannigan and how he must have felt when
the police informed him of Walter’s death.  I was so wrapped up in
despair that I hadn’t noticed how much warmer the room had
gotten.  Surprise struck me as I looked up to see the Pastel Man
perched atop my boss’ desk, that abhorrent smile once again painted across its
nasty wrinkled face.  It didn’t need to speak or even make me an
offer.  This I believe the creature already knew.

“Can you save
them?” I asked.

“Yes and no.” it
sang in a harmonious voice.

“What do you
mean!?  Just spit it out!”

The Pastel man’s
smirk disappeared and I could tell that it was not pleased with my
tone.  Memories of the vice grip it had on my face the last time I
demanded something from the creature bled into my consciousness.  But
I was beyond the point of threats and perhaps it realized this because instead
of lunging at me as the creature had done in the past, it decided to clarify
its cryptic response.

“I cannot pull
someone back from death’s clutches, only save them before it grabs hold of
them.  Your wife is dead.  Now make your peace with
that.  Your son’s life on the other hand can be salvaged – for
a price of course.  You know the deal.  Tit for tat.”

I racked my
mind.  I couldn’t think of a single person in my
life who deserved to die at the hands of that pale blue
monstrosity.  Even Walter’s bullying hadn’t merited the gruesome
death he suffered.  How could I inflict that on yet another
person?  Then I thought about you, Mathew, clinging to life in a
hospital bed.  You didn’t deserve to die either – not
because someone else had made a poor decision that evening and
got behind the wheel of a car when they were too intoxicated to
drive.  I wasn’t going to let that happen lose your life.

The Pastel Man’s
glorious voice filled the room again.  I seemed to be hearing it from
all directions.  “The drunk driver that crashed into your family’s
cab is still alive and in the very same hospital as your son.  Why
not him?”

For the first
time that evening I looked into the large pink eyes of the
creature.  The heat had become unbearable.  It felt as
though my body was being held directly over a fire and I half expected my skin
to begin blistering and bubbling over.

“You said it has
to be someone I know?”

“Semantics.  It
just needs to be someone who has directly impacted your life.  The
moment he drove his car into your wife and son’s taxi he became a
candidate.”   The Pastel Man flared the tiny holes on its face
with glee the way it always did when it was content with itself.

“Fine.  Let’s
do it,” I said.  I shook its massive hand to make the arrangement
official and The Pastel Man then gave me the instructions I needed to complete
our deal.

When I met with
the doctors at the hospital they updated me on your
condition.  “We’ve done all that we can, but he’s a fighter,” They
feigned optimism, but I could see in their eyes that they didn’t expect you to
make it through the night.

They led me to
your room so we could spend some time alone together.  The Pastel Man
was already there when I entered, smiling down on your broken
body.  Quickly I shut the door behind me and nodded to the
creature.  It reached a gangly arm into its satchel and pulled out
the same type of colorful insect it had shoved down my father’s
throat.  I opened your mouth and with two grubby fingers the creature
crammed the bug deep into your oral cavity.

“He will make a
full recovery,” it said.  “Now it’s your turn.”

The heat in the
room began to dissipate as the Pastel Man disappeared behind the hospital curtain
next to your bed. It was gone and I knew that if the creature showed itself
again, then it would be because I spoke its name.

When I agreed to
the bargain at my office The Pastel Man had told me what room the driver was
being kept in.  His injuries were far less severe than yours were so
he was resting in a different wing of the facility.

I could feel my
heart pounding as I made my way towards his room.  With each step the
beating in my chest grew more violent.  Already the same guilt I had
felt, looking down at Walter’s corpse lying in the middle of the road began
wash over me.  Mr. Flannigan’s heartbroken face occupied my
thoughts.  I felt just as ugly and horrible as the Pastel Man
looked.  I didn’t have pointed teeth or wrinkly blue skin, but I
wondered if going through with the deal made me a monster too.

I stepped as
stealthily as possible through the door, hoping no one would notice me sneak
in.   As I looked down at the face of the driver lying
unconscious in his bed, I instantly felt a familiar pang of
regret.  He was a boy, no older than Walter the night his life was
snuffed out.

The driver was
teenager – just a stupid teenager.  One who made a
horrible mistake.  I saw Walter in the boy’s face and my stomach
began to churn.  I wondered about who his loved ones
were.  Would his death crush them the same way my wife’s death had
crushed me?  Would it tear apart their lives like Mr.
Flannigan?  I tried to call out the Pastel Man’s name, but
couldn’t.  The little angel on my shoulder wouldn’t allow
me.  I decided then and there that I would not be responsible for the
death of another boy.  I would not pull the trigger.  I
walked out of his room and headed back to yours where I spent the rest of the
evening sitting next to your bed and holding your hand.

The first few
rays of morning sunlight that snuck into the hospital room caught my
attention.  I peeked out through the blinds and watched the sun rise
for the first time since before the night Walter died.  It was
beautiful.  The pink ribbon that lined the horizon had blended into
the sky creating a dazzling purple hue.  I had my light show, and it
was spectacular.

I broke my deal
with the Pastel Man and in doing so my fate now rests in its filthy
hands.  On the plus side, I know that you will recover from the
accident.  That’s something that gives me great joy.  I
know it will be hard for you growing up without your parents, but you’ve always
been close with your Aunt.  She’s a wonderful caring woman and promised
us the day you were born that she would always be there if you needed
her.  Her husband, Benjamin, does well for himself and they’ve never
had a problem with money.  The life insurance policy Diana and I took
out combined with the money we had been putting away for you to go to college
will ensure that there should be no financial issues while you’re under their
care.

It’s only a
matter of time before the Pastel Man comes for me.  I have accepted
that my death is near, but I’m not scared.  The room has already
gotten unbearably hot and the humidity has made it much more difficult to
breath.  In a way I look forward to it.  It’s almost as if
the boy that perished within me on that terrible night has been given another
chance.  When I die all the guilt and hate that I’ve had for myself
over the years dies with me – wiped away so that my soul can cross over
to a new plane of existence pure and innocent.  The way it was before
I ever met that monster.

One must die
so another can live.

That’s what the
Pastel Man said.

Love Dad

Fast Enough

I run down the
block – just as fast as my legs can possibly take me.  And as I
move into a full on sprint, so too does the beast.  I think to myself
that the sidewalk looks as though it must be ten miles long.  It’s
amazing how the street of a seemingly ordinary residential neighborhood can
transform into what feels like an endless stretch of road given the right
circumstances.  My heart is beating a million miles per hour and I
don’t know if it’s from fatigue or panic.  The demon, doubt, is
screaming inside my head.  It wants me to stop, to give
up.  It tells me there’s no use in running, but I know I can’t
listen.

The dog is
massive, 150lbs easy – a rabid blur of black matted fur, charging with the
rage of a thousand nuclear blasts.  As it snarls, mid gallop, I can
see its horrible teeth.  Teeth designed for ripping apart and tearing
into flesh; teeth that it has every intention of using.  It doesn’t
have the controlled, focused look of a predator.  Instead its eyes
are wild and ruthless.  It wants to do more than kill; it wants to
maim – inflict pain.  I’m moving faster now than I’ve ever
moved in my life.  Terror is an unbelievable motivator.

There may be even
more adrenaline pumping through my veins than blood at this
point.  My legs burn as lactic acid starts to flood my quadriceps and
hamstrings like it’s flowing from a broken levy.  The muscles in my
neck go tense.  With every fiber of my being, I will myself to speed
up even more, but deep down in the pit of my stomach, I know that I won’t be
fast enough. The dog is too quick and I’ll never catch it.  Not
before it gets to my three-year-old son in the driveway.

The Ocean’s Cool Air

Vincent V. Cava

I stared up and into the heavens.  Stars dotted
the evening sky like little white splotches of paint haphazardly splattered
across a black canvas by some wannabe artist believing himself to be the second
coming of Jackson Pollock.  It reminded me of the type of piece one
might find in a terrible, surrealist art gallery.  One where pretentious hipsters sip Two-Buck
Chuck out of plastic cups, all the while hoping their idiotic interpretations
of each exhibit will make others think they’re more intelligent than they
actually are.

On a nearly moonless night the tiny twinkling specks of
light were the only things illuminating the darkness brought on by dusk. I had
grown to look forward to nightfall. The days had become unbearable due to the
constant bombardment of UV rays that I had been forced to
endure.  The evening’s cool air tended to my damaged skin and gave me
reprieve from the daily beatings I took from the sun.  The night also
provided constellations, which had become a welcomed distraction. The stars
told stories – stories that helped me forget – forget about the
decrepit old lifeboat in the middle of the ocean that I was stranded in.

I barely noticed the commercial fishing boat as it approached my
dinghy – a testament to how far-gone my mind had become from the weeks of
isolation out at sea.

“Hey there! Are you ok?”

The young man was looking down at me from the bow of the
ship. His piercing blue eyes almost glowed in contrast to the black sky behind
him.  I looked up at him; my sight
had adapted to the darkness.  I
could see the whiskers that had begun to sprout from his face – a result
of going days without shaving while out on the water.  As he
scratched his stubbly chin, more of the crew crowded around the front of the
boat to take a gander at me.  I suppose a half-dead man marooned out
at sea was the strangest sight they’d seen in quite a while – an honor I
would hold for only the briefest of moments.

“He’s alive!” one of the fishermen shouted, “Let’s get him
up here now!”

As I watched the crew frantically buzz
around the ship’s deck like a bunch of worker bees, trying to figure out how to
bring me aboard, a laugh escaped my mouth.  Not a loud bellowing one,
mind you, just a tiny giggle.  It was the irony of the situation that
I found comical.  Perhaps that last little chuckle was the humor
center of my brain finally fading from the weeks of emotional agony I had
sustained.  Going out not with a bang, but with a whimper –
just a tiny giggle.

It started with a loud crash across the starboard
side of their boat.  The fishermen struggled to retain their footing
when the powerful impact caused their vessel to rock onto its side, nearly
capsizing it.  Shouts and expletives streamed from the mouths of the
startled sailors as I watched them desperately try to make sense of what had
just occurred.

Another thunderous CLANG rang
along the side of their ship and this time it tipped.  The once
silent ocean air was now filled with the sounds of chaos as the trawler smashed
across the surface of the sea, flipping completely upside-down, and sending the
men toppling overboard into the cold, murky water. I struggled to lift my head
in order to peer over the side of my dinghy at the anarchy taking place around
me.

The fishermen barely had a chance to
breach and catch their breaths before it began pulling them back down into the
abyss.   Their panic quickly intensified as one by one, they
started to realize their crewmates were disappearing into the deep, dark
sea.  You’ve never truly experienced pandemonium until you’ve heard a
dozen grown men screaming for their lives in the middle of the
ocean.  The young man who had first greeted me from the ship’s bow
thrashed and kicked through the water, urgently trying to make his way towards
my lifeboat.  With salvation mere inches away, he flailed his arms
wildly, reaching and grasping with reckless abandon, attempting to grab on to
the side.   I watched the hope in those piercing blue eyes of
his turn to hopelessness as a black, sludge covered tentacle wrapped itself
around his ankle and yanked him back down under with one quick jerk.

It was the fishing boat’s turn
now.  Still submerged, the sea-beast easily crumpled the already
twisted hunk of metal, before sinking it down to the watery graveyard at the bottom
of the briny deep.  There it would join countless other vessels that
had shared a similar fate.

Without warning, the massive creature
erupted from the surface of the sea.  I wondered briefly if the salty
taste of the water that splashed my face when the beast made its appearance
stemmed the ocean itself or the blood of the men who had died in
it.  I shut my eyes, hoping not to catch a glimpse of its horrible
features.  The sound of water trickling around the leviathan’s body
as it waded towards my lifeboat caused me to wince in fear.  Though
my eyes were clenched tight, I could still feel its awful presence as it closed
in on me.  I gagged and choked as the rancid smell of its hot breath
forced its way into my nostrils and down my throat.  With a thud,
it dropped a mangled human limb across my lap – one of the fishermen’s
arms to be precise.

It spoke only one word.  The
same word it had said to me many times before and the same word it would repeat
many times after.

“Eat.”

And with that it slithered back into the
sea, leaving me to myself again.  I opened my eyes and stared down at
the mutilated piece of flesh lying across my sunburnt thighs.  For a
moment I was tempted to throw it back overboard, but thought the better of it,
fearing retaliation from the creature for not listening to its
commands.  For whatever reason, it seemed to want me alive, but I
wasn’t about to test its patience.  I sunk my teeth into the skin and
tore a chunk of muscle from the bone.  It had been a week since I had
last eaten.  The hunger pains in my stomach helped to subdue the
horrors in my mind and made the atrocity of cannibalism slightly easier.

I let out a sigh and looked back up to
the starry night.  I was alone again, and once more only silence
reigned over the ocean’s cool air.

The Wendall Lane
Diaries:  You Shouldn’t

Disclaimer:  I am not a paranormal
investigator.  I am an author.  While looking for
inspiration for a book, I came across a series of stories surrounding a home in
the American Pacific North West. It is an extremely ordinary looking house in
an extremely ordinary looking residential neighborhood, but the stories that
have emanated from its former residents and the people who lived in the town
that it’s located in are quite extraordinary.

Through my
research of the house on Wendall Lane, I have come across accounts that
range from the super natural to just plain bizarre.  In order to
protect the privacy of the people in the town and the current inhabitants of
the house on Wendall Lane, I have not only changed the name of
everyone in these stories, but the name of the street as
well.  Wendall Lane is just an alias for the true location of
these accounts.

***

Alan Palmer
lived in the house on Wendell Ln. from September 2002 to July
2003.  After months of trying to contact him about his time there, I
finally received an e-mail agreeing to set up a meeting.  Quite a few
of the house’s prior residents had turned down my requests for face to face
interviews so I jumped at the chance to talk to him in person once the
opportunity presented itself.

Palmer, who
worked as a socioeconomics professor at the University of Washington, arranged
to meet me and talk over drinks at a place of his choosing in downtown
Seattle.  The bar was called Oliver’s Lounge and was located in the
historic Mayflower Park Hotel.  Upon arriving, I was surprised to see
just how crowded it was for 3:00 PM on a Tuesday.  There were people
seated at nearly every table while food runners and waiters dressed in white
servers' jackets and black bowties hustled and bustled about the room bringing
people their orders.  Windows stretching from floor to ceiling
allowed for an ample amount of sunlight to illuminate the space, giving it a
genuinely open and inviting ambience.  I spotted Palmer in the corner
sitting at a small high table and sipping on a glass of scotch.

He greeted me
with a hearty handshake and a bright smile after I introduced myself to
him.  The man was greying a little around the ears, and I could tell
shortly after meeting him that he was incredibly intelligent, but aside from
that he seemed to have the demeanor of a fellow 15 years his
junior.  Palmer was a light-hearted gentleman who loved a good joke
and he insisted on telling me a few of his favorites before I turned my tape
recorder on.

Once he had
his fun we started the interview.

Believe it or
not, you’re not the first person who’s tried to contact me about the time I
spent living on Wendell Ln.  Apparently there are all kinds of “ghost
enthusiasts” out there who’ve heard about the house through the various online
forums these types of people tend to frequent.  Nerds and losers
– you know the type – they spend their time sifting through thread
after thread on the Internet, pretending that they’re doing something
productive with their lives.  Hell, most of them are probably
overweight man-children sitting in their parents' basement and conducting their
“research” in between anime cartoons.

Palmer let out
a laugh, seemingly pleased with his depiction of the paranormal research
community.  I decided to omit the fact that I first heard about him
through one of the online forums he was talking about.  He took a sip
of scotch and continued on.

So naturally I
ignored your e-mails thinking you were another one of those ghost
geeks.  It’s strange. I probably wouldn’t have agreed to meet, but I
came across one of your books by complete accident.  My nephew
mentioned your work in passing when I was over at my brother’s house for dinner
a few weeks ago.  I put two and two together and realized you were
the same author who had been e-mailing me so I figured why the hell
not?  I’m game to talk about it if you are, all though I must admit
my story probably isn’t as interesting as demons or monsters or whatever the
hell it is you write about.  Not a whole lot happened while I was
living there.  In fact, the only reason I lived in the house for such
a short period of time was because an old colleague of mine offered me a full
professorship here at the University of Washington not long after I purchased
it and the commute was just too far.  My workplace at the time had no
job security, I was on the chopping block every year so there was no way I
could turn down the offer.  This was before the housing bust in
'07.  It was a sellers' market; banks were giving away loans like
there was no tomorrow so it wasn’t difficult to turn right back around and flip
the place.  Hell, I even made thirty grand!  Plus, I love
Seattle.  The weather sucks, but this city has culture!

We made small
talk for a bit.  He told some stories about work, his travels to
Europe, and even asked me about some of the upcoming books that I’ve been
working on.  I was beginning to wonder if flying all the way out to
Seattle to speak to him had been a big waste of time.  After all,
Palmer appeared almost completely uninterested in discussing any and all
aspects of the house. I directed his attention back towards the reason why
we had met when I asked him to describe the most bizarre encounter he could
remember having in the short time he lived on Wendell Ln.

Haha!  Now
you’re starting to sound like the Internet ghost geeks!  Fine, fine,
let me think.  Like I said, nothing really strange ever happened,
that’s why I –

He paused for
a moment and looked out the window towards the street.

There was one
thing.  I had almost forgotten about it – the TV
incident.  It was a Friday night in June, about a month before the
house sold.  There was nothing on.  You know how crappy
television programming can be on the weekends, especially in the summer
time!  I was scrolling through channels on my TV’s menu looking for
something to turn my brain off to when the title of a show caught my
eye.  It was called “You Shouldn’t Watch”.  I figured with
a name like that, how could I not give it a go?  Also, the show was
on a channel I had never seen before – Channel 732.  To be
honest, I don’t watch much TV and when I do, I don’t usually venture out of the
HD channels so I wasn’t even sure if it was covered under my cable package.

Now, I don’t know
what yours looks like, but the way my cable provider’s menu was set up,
different colors were used to distinguish between different types of
shows.  You’d get green for sports, purple for movies, and blue for
everything else.  However, the menu color for this particular show
was black.  The text was yellow, which was also unusual since the
show’s title is always written in white.  Even the font was different.  Don’t
ask me to describe what it looked like because I really can’t
recall.  All I know was I had never seen letters written in that way
before.  I know that sounds odd, but the best description I could
give you is that even though the lettering looked completely alien in
appearance, my mind could somehow interpret what it said – “YOU SHOULDN’T
WATCH”.  Now I’m starting to sound like the
Internet weirdos.  Ha!

Palmer
polished off his glass and called the waitress over to order another drink.

Anyways, from the
very second I turned on the program, I knew I was watching something very
strange – very strange indeed.  The black and white picture on
my television was of a mostly empty room.  There were no visible
windows or doors; the place seemed cold and uninviting – like how I’d
imagine a jail cell in Bangladesh would look.   Not dead center,
but slightly off to the left of the frame was a man sitting at an old rusty
table.  He was shirtless and looked to be very malnourished.  It
reminded me of those old photos you see of the Jews who suffered through German
concentration camps during World War 2.  I remember wondering if he
was a prisoner there.  The frail man wore a pair of tattered slacks,
but no belt or shoes.  His mouth hung a gape as if his jaw was too
heavy to close.  There was no music or dialogue; the only noises
radiating from my speakers were the sounds of his wheezy, raspy
breaths.  God!  It sounded like he was suffering from
emphysema or something.  I followed his gaze down to an old rotary phone
sitting on the tabletop.  He just gawked at the thing like a buffoon
while I stared at the screen, mesmerized by the odd scene
taking place on my television.

I hit the info
button, hoping to read a synopsis of what the show was about, but of course there
was nothing so I just kept watching.  For minutes he didn’t
move.  I giggled to myself for a bit – you know, the way you do
when something makes you uncomfortable and your brain thinks laughing will ease
the tension.  The whole time I was waiting, hoping for something that
resembled dialogue.  Anything to prove that I was just watching some
weird movie and had simply turned it on at the wrong time, but nothing ever
happened.  Perplexed and a little bit bored, I stood up from my couch
and headed over to the kitchen to rummage through the fridge for a little late
night snack.  I was about halfway done making myself a sandwich when
I heard the most terrible noise.

Palmer paused
briefly.  At first I thought he had stopped his story because of the
waitress returning from the bar with his drink, but he barely acknowledged her
presence.  The man was caught up in deep thought as though he had
just remembered something important.  When he finally began speaking
again the tone of his voice had completely changed.  Gone was the
chipper upbeat persona I had come to know him by.  Palmer was clearly
distraught.

It sounded
horrible – like a dying animal.  I remember an awful sensation
of nausea washing over me; it was the strangest thing.  There was an
ominous feeling in the air too – death, ruin, calamity all hanging over
my head.  Once I realized that the noise was coming from the
television, I put down my sandwich and hurried back towards the living
room.  The scene on the TV was essentially the same except now the
sickly looking man had turned his head up towards the ceiling and was howling
and groaning in the most unpleasant of ways.  The longer I watched
the more it made me feel like I was going to retch.  The whole thing
was utterly abhorrent.  The man would moan for 30 maybe 40 seconds at
a time before stopping suddenly, then he would take another deep wheezy breath
and the terrible sounds would begin anew.  I cringed as I took it all
in.  My visual and auditory senses were being assaulted by the most
disagreeable of stimuli and I was still fighting off the urge to vomit all over
my living room carpet.  Just when I thought things couldn’t get
worse, the man still groaning mind you, turned his head in the direction of the
screen and stared straight into the camera.  The thing is, I was
certain he was looking directly at me.  That’s what it felt like; it
was almost as if we were in the same room.  I probably should have
turned off the show, but after minutes of nothing something was finally going
on and I felt compelled to keep watching even though I was suffering immensely.

I stared into the
glazed over eyes of the sickly looking man until he turned his attention down
towards the phone sitting on the table –

Palmer hunched
over in his seat and removed his glasses.  He seemed visibly
shaken.  The 42-year-old econ professor clasped the bridge of his
nose between his thumb and index finger and let out a deep
sigh.  Beads of sweat had begun to form on his forehead.

I’m sorry,
forgive me.  I haven’t thought about this night in a long
time.  I suppose it’s possible that my mind pushed this episode to
the back of my consciousness and I forgot all about it – kind of a
defense mechanism type of thing.  I’ve read about case studies where
army veterans who witnessed horrific events develop amnesia about their time in
the military.  It seems as though I may be going through something
similar, except as I sit here and talk to you, everything begins to come back
to me.

I asked him if
he wanted to continue.  He agreed and then resumed his story.

His hand quaked
violently as he lifted the phone to his ear.   His arms were
rail thin and it looked as though he was struggling mightily to hold it in
place.  With his other hand, he clumsily started spinning the rotary dial.  That’s
when my cell phone started ringing.

A chill ran down
my spine, my nausea got even worse, that ominous feeling in the air had
transformed into full on horror.  I prayed with every fiber in my
being that it was a coincidence as I looked at my phone’s caller
ID.  You have no idea how bad I wanted the number to be one that I
recognized.  I didn’t recognize it of course.  Hell, it
wasn’t even a number.  It was something else entirely.  `In
that same strange, alien text from the TV’s menu were the words “YOU SHOULDN’T
LISTEN” written where the caller’s number should have been.

That was enough
for me.  I hung up the phone and reached for the remote on the coffee
table.  I must have pressed the channel button a dozen times, but the
picture never changed.  I tried the power button and still nothing
happened.  The man began to dial the phone again.  Once
more my cell started to ring.

Palmer had
gone pale.  He looked completely different from when I first met him
– the polar opposite of the smiling man who shook my hand earlier.

I tried to turn
off the TV manually, I even unplugged it from the wall, but by this time I knew
it would do nothing.  The sickly, pale man continued to stare at me
– his horrible, empty gaze felt as though it was tearing me to
pieces.  Stomach bile slowly started to crawl its way up my
esophagus.  I don’t know why I answered the phone, I couldn’t help
myself; maybe I thought if I did then it would all just end.  My
finger trembled as I pressed the answer button.  I slowly lifted the
phone to my face.

I didn’t even
need to say, “hello”.  He just began speaking as if he was watching
me answer the phone through the television screen – and perhaps he was.

Tears began to
well up in Palmer’s eyes.  I tried to tell him that he didn’t need to
go into further detail if he was uncomfortable, but he kept talking as though
he never even heard me.  By that point, he would have finished his
story even if there was no one sitting across the table from him.

He spoke to me in
a terrible voice – it sounded like he was gargling shards of
glass.  His lips moved on the screen, but I could hear him clearly
over the phone… he said…he said, “You shouldn’t tell”.  Then in one
horrible, inhumanly quick motion, he leapt out of the frame as the screen went
to black.

Jesus Christ, he
said, “You shouldn’t tell.”  Did I just tell?  Vincent
please, does that mean I just told!?”

Palmer fell
silent and stared awkwardly into his glass for a moment.  Then he
apologized and excused himself from the table.  It was the last I saw
of him that night.  He sent me a text message 15 minutes later
explaining that he had to go home and instructing me to charge the bill to his
tab.  I tried to contact him once I got back to California, but he
never answered my calls or e-mails.  A few weeks later I found out
what happened to him after performing a simple Google search of his name.

Twelve days
after Alan Palmer and I met to talk about the house on Wendall Ln, he
was found dead in his Seattle home.  There was no sign of a struggle
or forced entry, however, due to the horrific nature of his death, Seattle PD
does believe that he was murdered.

Palmer’s body
was discovered in front of the television on his living room couch missing
ears, eyes, and tongue.

Love Hurts

I met her in a
hotel bar.  I was just some lonely sap looking down at the bottom of
an empty glass.  Three Side Car’s deep and I was feeling a little
tipsy, but I still had my wits about me.  I spotted her eyeing me
from across the room.  She was gorgeous.  You should have
seen her.  This gal had fire engine red hair, emerald green eyes, and
a body that just wouldn’t quit.  A woman like that could have any man
she wanted.  I didn’t know what it was she possibly saw in a guy like
me, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to complain.

She made her way
over to me and ordered a drink – a Lemon Drop I think it
was.  We got to chatting, she told me her name; I told her a few
jokes.  She chuckled at them, but now that I think about it, she
probably would have laughed at anything to get me upstairs.

We headed up to
my room for a nightcap.  The red headed seductress made me one more
drink from the mini bar before things started getting hot and
heavy.  I think I fell in love with her right then and
there.  Her lips were so soft.  They felt amazing as she
pressed them against my neck.  That’s the last thing I remember
before everything went black.

When I opened my
eyes I was lying naked in the bathtub.  Blood was gushing from a freshly
opened gaping hole in my body like a geyser.  That’s when I saw
her.  She walked into the bathroom carrying an icebox and a surgical
kit, still looking as radiant and beautiful as ever.  When she
noticed that I was alert and cognizant, her face went white.  I’ll
never forget her scream as she ran from my hotel room and out of my life.

It took years to
get over that night.  I still think about her from time to
time.  Love hurts, you know?  I gave her my
heart.  I guess it just kind of freaked her out that I was still
alive after she removed it.

Brownstone

The large
brownstone apartment building I used to live in was mostly
empty.  The only other tenants were a nice elderly
lady on the first floor named Doris, and a young couple who lived across the
hall from me on the second floor.  Coincidentally, their apartment
was directly above Doris’.  I didn’t mind the young couple, but I
found them to be a bit anti-social.  They pretty much kept to
themselves, barely acknowledging me when I passed them in the hall or ran into
them in the laundry room.  Every now and then the young man would
give me a head nod, but even that was a rarity.  The thing that did
bother me about them was the constant arguing I would frequently hear coming
from their apartment.  Shouts and cries would echo through the
building’s hallways, carrying all the way into my bedroom – sometimes in
the dead of night.

Over the winter
months, as a blanket of snow fell over the city, the young couple's arguments
began to get worse.  Often I found myself lying in bed, covering my
ears in an attempt to drown out the sound of the man's voice as he viciously
berated his young lover.  Even the quieter evenings were not without
the occasional boom of a fist colliding with a wall or the crash of shattered
glass.  It was the day after one of these particularly nasty
arguments that I noticed a black eye on the young woman as I passed her in the
hall.  When I asked her if her boyfriend had hit her she broke down
in my arms, sobbing uncontrollably.

I took her into
my apartment to ask some follow up questions and make her some hot tea, but
once inside, I barely had time to boil some water before she threw herself at
me and gave me the most passionate kiss of my entire life.

We made love
right there, on my kitchen table.  Even with her swollen eye I still
found her beautiful. We held each other for what felt like an eternity before
the banging started on my door.  It was her boyfriend and he didn’t
sound pleased.  I told him to get lost or I would call the cops and
report him, which was something I still planned on doing anyways. Eventually,
after an hour long standoff, he gave up and retreated back to his
apartment.  I never even asked the young woman her
name.  We just lied in bed, laughing and talking in each other’s
arms, before falling asleep.  When I awoke in the morning she was
gone.

Of course I was
upset. I had developed strong feelings for her, but I was more concerned for
her safety than anything else.  I had no idea what her boyfriend
would do to her if she went back and told him about what happened between
us.  I slipped into some jeans, ran across the hall, and started
knocking on their door to check in on her.   My knocks were met
with only silence.  I put my ear to the door in hopes that I could
hear voices, a television, anything, but there was no noise.

Later that day I
stopped by Doris’ on my way out of the building and asked her if she had heard
anything going on in the apartment above her earlier that
morning.  She looked at me like I was crazy when I mentioned the
couple and how I was genuinely worried for the young woman.  Doris
mockingly placed the back of her hand to my forehead as if she was checking for
a fever.  She went on to inform me that no one lived above her and we
were the only two tenants in the building.

I called the
landlord and told him about the young couple, but he insisted that the
apartment had not been rented.  Just in case, he decided to come down
later that day and open it up in order to make sure the couple I described
weren’t squatters.  He arrived to the building at around three in the
afternoon.  I pointed out the apartment to him that the young couple
lived in, but when he opened the door the place looked like it hadn’t inhabited
in years.  There was no furniture and a thick layer of dust coated
the floor.  The landlord gave me an irritated look and asked me why I
was wasting his time, but all I could do was stand in the barren room wide-eyed
and slack jawed.

If you think that
this story ends with the couple disappearing, never to be heard from again then
you are wrong.  Later that evening a loud commotion rumbled from the
mysterious apartment. The sound of the young woman’s wails tore through the
air like a buzz saw.  Even from behind the door I could hear her
boyfriend’s palm as it struck the soft cheeks I had been kissing just the night
before.  I tried to force my way in, but the heavy oak door wouldn’t
budge when I rammed my shoulder into it.  I called the police, but
the ruckus subsided before they arrived.  Needless to say, they
weren’t too pleased once they finally got the door open only to find the unit
unoccupied.

However, as the
months rolled along and the snow melted away, the arguments continued
on.  Doris never heard the screams and shouts above her even though
the fights had gotten louder and were carrying on longer than
ever.  I called the police a couple more times.  Each visit
they found the apartment completely empty.  I eventually stopped when
they started threatening to take legal action.  But the fighting did
not.

Every once in a
while I would still see the young woman in the hall, always looking down to
avoid eye contact with me as she passed by.  Not once would she
answer my questions when I tried to speak to her.  Even more
disturbing was the state her face had become – more battered and bruised
each time I saw her.  After a while both eyes had become swollen shut
and puffy like a prizefighter's immediately after a hard fought bout.  Black
and purple bruises covered almost every inch of her skin and she wore the
outlines of her boyfriend’s fingers around her throat like a
necklace.  The bridge of the young woman’s once straight nose had
become crooked and zigzagged off in multiple directions.

Her boyfriend on
the other hand, just stared at me with the most disdainful eyes every time I’d
see him.  He too would remain silent when I tried to ask him
questions or threaten to have him arrested.  I wanted to hit him, but
unprovoked violence is against my ethical code.  Besides, had I
struck him, he would surely take his anger out on her.

On top of it all,
I was beginning to doubt my sanity.  I could hear the couple, see the
couple, I even felt the young woman’s touch, but every time I demanded to be
let into their apartment, either by the police or the landlord, it was just as
empty and dusty as the first time I had seen it.  Still the fighting
in the apartment across the hall never ceased.

I finally decided
that the environment was too toxic for me to deal with so I decided to move to
a newer, more modern building on the East Side.  I hoped to put the
awful experiences from the brownstone behind me, but unfortunately this was not
the case.  Not a day passes by where I don't catch a glimpse of
them.  I see the couple when I get off the elevator, exit my car in
the parking lot, or walk alone down the hall at night.

Her face is more
twisted and contorted than ever – so smashed and swollen that it could
not even pass for human anymore.  Her head dangles haphazardly off to
the side, as if her neck was no longer capable of supporting its
weight.  Puss oozes from open sores on the young woman's arms, legs,
and face, while yellow bile dribbles from her mouth, down the front of her chest.  Scar
tissue has formed over half of her scalp where her beautiful golden hair used
to be.  And perhaps worst of all, those supple lips, that once felt
so soft and comforting as they pressed against mine appeared to have been torn
clean off her face, exposing a set of jagged teeth jutting out from her
bleeding, swollen gums.  And he just stares at me through those
hateful eyes as the two of them follow me down the hallway and all the way to
my apartment door.

Sweet Talk

“I love you,” she
said.  Hearing her talk like that made me feel all warm and fuzzy on
the inside.  “You know,” she bit her bottom
lip.  The naughtiest little glimmer danced in her eye. “I can’t get you out of my head.”

“I can’t get you
out of my head, either,” I whispered.  Just being around her made me
so nervous.

She
giggled.  “Alright then, goodnight.  Call me in the
morning.  I can’t wait to hear your voice again.”

“Goodnight,” is
what I think her boyfriend said on the other end of the line.

She hung up the
phone.

That’s when I
opened up the door of the closet I had been hiding in, making sure to block off
the exit of her bedroom.  I pulled a roll of duct tape from my jacket
pocket…

Little Black Bugs

It’s important you understand that I’m
not insane.  I say this because the tale I’m about to recount may
seem preposterous – outlandish even!  So bizarre that if you
didn’t know better, you’d think you were reading the words of a
madman.  Nevertheless, I assure you this narrative only contains the
unequivocal truth about what happened to me – about how my life
brought me to this.

I’m afraid that I must write quickly
though.  I wish to tell you the whole story, but unfortunately I’ll
have to omit some details due to the time constraints that are being placed
upon me this evening.  The guests at my door are growing restless and
if I don’t write this confession in a swift, prompt manner then I fear I won’t
get the chance to finish it.  It is for that reason that I am
apologizing in advance for giving you the abbreviated version of my
account.  You see?  A loon would never feel remorse for
such a thing!

My story began six weeks
ago.  I had just moved into my brother’s apartment – the very
one I’m composing my tale from this evening.  I use the term
“brother” loosely because that’s the type of designation one might typically
employ to describe another human being.  Donald was more of a pig
than a person – a slovenly, fat oaf who did nothing but sit around in his
shit-stained underwear, smoke weed, fart, and eat junk food all
day.  Everything about him made me sick – from the greasy,
curly hair that sat on top of his blubbery head, all the way down to the crusty
unkempt toenails I would often catch him nonchalantly picking at on the
sofa.  You should have seen the way he mined the dirt and grime that
settled under those claws of his, only stopping to flick his nasty toe-filth to
the carpet below or to wipe it on the couch’s cushion with his crud covered fingers.  Things
like that often made me wonder how it was even physically possible that the
same two people sired us.  I would have assumed either he or I to be
adopted, but unfortunately, if you looked past his pimples, greasy skin, and
stretch marks, it was obvious that we bore far too much of a resemblance to
each other not to be related.

It was my first year at
college.  Donald was a junior, though I’d barely call him a student
since he rarely went to class and was hanging on to a C average by the skin of
his teeth.  My parents had decided that it would be best for us to
room together while we were both in school.  The living arrangement
saved them money since they wouldn’t need to pay for two apartments and I think
they hoped that my studious, tidy habits would rub off on my older brother.

The apartment was located in student
housing off campus.  The building held about 40 units, all of which
were inhabited by students at the university.  I of course, being the
social butterfly that I am, decided to introduce myself and make friends with
many of the buildings tenants.  This is a completely rational,
non-crazy thing for a person who just moved into a new building to do, don’t
you think?

As I went door to door, shaking hands
with each of my new neighbors, it became increasingly more evident that the
building had a strong community atmosphere.   Many of the
students knew each other and I found out there were regular soirees and
get-togethers in order to help the newbies like myself mingle and make friends.  I
was having a great time meeting new people and everyone seemed to be genuinely
inviting.   Of all the students in my building that I met that
day, it was Elizabeth in apartment 303 whom I liked the best.  She was
a beautiful girl with a sweet and charming demeanor.  I like to think
of myself as somewhat smooth, but I must admit, I was at a loss for words when
she answered the door.  It was her gorgeous green eyes that caught me
off guard.  They were absolutely stunning, like she was looking out
at me through a pair of brilliant, gleaming emeralds.  Her hair was
equally as breathtaking – a dazzling auburn red she wore knotted into a
French braid that dangled carelessly over her shoulder, lightly caressing her
bosom.  Oh how I longed to be that braid!  If that
wasn’t enough, she was intelligent too.  Elizabeth was in her second
year of school, studying biochemistry – by no means an easy
subject.  She even had aspirations of going to graduate school and
becoming a PhD – not just one of those pretty girls who gets by on her
looks!  No sir!

Some of the other neighbors I talked with
were surprised to find out that I was not only rooming with, but also related
to my disgusting older brother.  A few of them even shared horror
stories about the foul stench they would sometimes encounter when they
accidently passed too close to his apartment door on the way to the laundry
room.  Others joked about the stomach turning sights they had caught
glimpses of on those rare occasions Donald opened the blinds of his windows to
let sunlight into his unit.  I felt a great deal of shame and
embarrassment listening to their anecdotes – not just for my brother, but
for myself as well.  It was a curse to be related to such a revolting
troll!

As bad as the other tenants assumed
Donald’s apartment to be, I’m certain no one really had any idea just how
terrible it actually was.  I don’t think I could have ever shown my
face around that building again if they knew the truth. When I moved in, the
apartment was one of the most repulsive places I had ever had the displeasure
of laying my eyes upon.  Donald lived alone before I became his
roommate so for two years there was no one cleaning up after his over-weight,
unrefined ass.

Trash bags full of fast food wrappers and
stale, half-eaten pizza crust laid strewn about the living room, producing a
smell akin to that of a hobo defecating in a McDonald’s dumpster on a hot
day.  The fridge in the kitchen was filled with rotten meat, moldy
fruit (that I’m sure he never touched), and multiple containers of Tupperware,
each occupied by a different putrid, soupy substance that resembled the habitat
of an alien world more than something you could eat for lunch.

The bathroom was even more repulsive and
sickening than any port-a-john you might come across at a summer music
festival.  The inside of the once white toilet bowl had been stained
a deep orange from the years of abuse at the hands, or rather, ass of my
brother.  Not once had he considered cleaning away the sludge that
had collected along the walls of the pot.  Tiny brown bits of fecal
matter even sprinkled the seat itself!  How do you get shit on the
seat!?  Given Donald’s repugnant nature, I might have understood
if it was just the toilet, but the shower and sink were equally as mucky. The
drains of both were clogged with coarse black curly hair and some sort of thick
yellow goop that looked as though it might have been radioactive.

Then there was his bedroom.  Oh
God, his bedroom!  Just thinking about the way it looked that first
day makes me shudder.  Where shall I start?   Well,
for one, there were the plastic solo cups sitting on his nightstand and
windowsill filled to the brim with urine.

“I’m just too tired to get up and walk to
the bathroom in the middle of the night.”  He would later explain to
me.  “That’s why I always keep a ‘piss cup’ near by.  You
know?  In case nature calls.”  Why he never thought to
empty them out, I have no idea.

I found used wads of tissue paper, soaked
in what I can only assume to be the special ingredient one might use to create
horrible, miniature pig-babies, scattered around his room like some sort of
terrible Easter Egg hunt from Hell.  His clothes were
everywhere.  I’m not sure if the human bag of waste had ever heard of
a closet, but I’m fairly positive the concept of a washing machine was
completely foreign to him because every t-shirt or pair of socks I picked up
off the floor stunk worse than George “The Animal” Steele’s jock strap after
wrestling a 45 minute “slobbernocker” in Madison Square Garden.

My living conditions were unfit for a
barnyard animal and desperately needed to be addressed.  Some of the
people I met from the building (Elizabeth included) had invited me to a
start-of-the-school-year BBQ.  As much fun as it sounded, I was
forced to decline due to enormous amount of cleaning I had ahead of
me.  The last thing I wanted to do was return to that nauseating
place with a belly full of red meat and beer.  If I did, I can
promise you one thing, my belly wouldn’t stay full for long!

I first noticed the insects that night
when I was tidying up the kitchen.  It was around a quarter past
eight and I had just set about cleansing and disinfecting the
fridge.  I was dumping the last container of primordial soup down the
garbage disposal when I felt a little prick on the nape of my
neck.  This triggered a knee jerk reaction, causing me to reach back
and grasp wildly at the source of my irritation.  To my surprise,
when I brought my hand back from behind my neck, I realized I had caught
something between my fingers – a little black bug, no bigger than a
millimeter in diameter.  Its body was round, similar to that of a
ladybug.  Two long antennas protruded from its head.  It
wasn’t dead yet; I had crushed it’s body, but its legs were still moving in a
fruitless attempt to escape.  I didn’t get more than a quick glance
at the pesky thing before another one scurried by me on the kitchen
counter.  One swat of my hand later and both the little buggers were
dead.  I believed them to be pantry pests, like a rice weevil or
something of that sort, though in time I would come to discover that this
theory was wrong.  Lord knows how wrong I was!

Naturally, Donald was of little use when
it came to cleaning.  I worked tirelessly just to keep the apartment
livable while he would completely undo everything by the time I got back form
school.  As the weeks wore on, I started to realize I was fighting a
losing battle.  The good days were the ones where I could maintain
equilibrium and go to sleep with the apartment looking no more dingy then when
I woke up that morning, but I never cleaned fast enough to gain any ground on
the chaos and clutter my brother created.  While I scrubbed and
scoured away at the stains on the carpet or threw load after load of his dirty
unmentionables in the washer he would already be busy constructing another
mountain of garbage for me to clean up.  It was around this time that
I began to develop genuine feelings of hatred for Donald.

Those bothersome bugs had become a
constant reminder of the filth I was living in.  I’d usually see them
one or two at a time, sometimes congregating in the bathroom, trying to get
into my tube of toothpaste or crawling along the top of cereal boxes in the
cupboard.  On occasion, I would feel that familiar prick on
my arms or legs and look down to find the nasty little vermin feeding on
me.  I had never lived in a home with pests before, but I was no
fool.  There were more of them, hiding behind the walls.  I
was sure of it.  Where there’s one there’s a million.  That’s
what they say about infestations.  The thought of a thin layer of
stucco being the only thing separating me from that army of insects made me
tremble on more than one occasion.  It frustrated me to know that it
was my brother’s bad habits that had most likely attracted them there in the
first place.

I would often daydream about inviting
Elizabeth over to hang out, watch TV, and well…do other things, but I knew that
as long as my pest-ridden apartment continued to be treated like a garbage
dump, our relationship could only remain a fantasy.  How
humiliating it would be if she saw how I was living!  I was far
too embarrassed to get close to her and I had my brother to thank for
that.

***

Blast!  Those idiots knocking at
my door are nothing if not persistent.  I keep telling them that I
need more time, but it’s clear that they’ve become impatient with my
stalling.  I might as well skip to the important part of the story
then.

Things went from bad to worse the day I
ran into Chuck Volderschmidt while he was smoking a cigarette down by the
dumpster behind my building.   Chuck was a simple fellow, a
second year senior only slightly brighter than my brother.  He was
one of the few residents of my apartment complex other than Donald whom I had
developed a strong distaste for in my short time living there.  Maybe
it was because he was the type of guy who majored in woman’s studies and took
poetry as an elective because it was “a good place to meet dumb
broads”.  The guy had all the honor and integrity of a used car
salesman and it wasn’t hard to picture him twenty years from now working as a
clerk behind the desk of a porn shop, balding and sporting the kind of pencil
thin mustache you only see on child molesters.  I had just finished
tossing away a garbage bag full of Donald’s “love tissues” (which I had found
all over his bedroom following one of his infamous all-day marathon sessions)
when Chuck finally decided to acknowledge my presence.

“Sup man?” he said in the most comically
detached, too cool to care voice I’ve
ever heard.  “What’ve you been up to?  You missed a great
party in 412 last week.”

“I’ve been busy with school,
Chuck.”  That wasn’t a lie.  Acting as Donald’s live in
maid afforded me little time to study.   I was spending my down
time catching up with my classes.  I continued on.  “I know
I haven’t been around all that much, it’s just that –“

“Hey check this out, man.”  He
cut me off.  Of course he was only interested in sparking up a
conversation because he wanted to brag about something.  “You know
Elizabeth in 303, right?”

I raised an
eyebrow.  “Yeah.  What about her?”

“I totally finger banged her in Jessica
Brakowtzki’s bathroom at the party!”

“I don’t believe you.”  I
didn’t.

“Seriously, man! Here, smell,” he lifted
his finger to my face.  I swatted it away.  He giggled like
an idiot while I silently talked myself down from cracking his skull open on
the pavement.

“Yeah man.  I’ve been hittn’ it
for a week now.  She’s totally in to me too.  Best part is,
I don’t even need to buy her dinner or nothn’.  She just comes over
and I smash that ass ‘till the sun comes up.”

It took every ounce of my energy not run
my fist into the shit-eating grin on his face.  I knew he wasn’t
trying to annoy me; he was just a moron.  Chuck didn’t know about my
feelings for Elizabeth and I’m sure if he did, the little coward wouldn’t have
dreamed about saying those things to me.

“Cool, man.  Good for you,” I
said.

I brushed past the smarmy boob on my way
back into the building and proceeded up the stairs towards Elizabeth’s
apartment.  If Chuck was telling people lies about her then she
deserved to know.  My heart started to beat emphatically in my chest
as I neared closer to her door.  When I arrived, I knocked, then
cupped my palm over my mouth once I heard her footsteps approaching, exhaling
into my hand in order to make sure my breath was pleasant.  It
smelled exquisitely minty and fresh – as per usual.  Elizabeth
answered the door wearing the cutest pair of pink shorts and a workout top.

“Oh hi,” I said, slightly taken aback by
the sight of her silky smooth legs.  “I, uh…” and suddenly I didn’t
care about Chuck Voldershmidt anymore.  All I wanted was to place my
arms around her lovely waist and run my fingers along her elegant
curves.  It was now or never.  I had decided to finally man
up and ask her out.  I didn’t care about her seeing my apartment
anymore.  Surely an angel like that would understand my
plight.  Maybe if things went well between us, I could even move out
of my brother’s place and in with Elizabeth.

She stood leaning against the doorframe,
watching me with a perplexed look on her face, probably wondering why I had
shown up at her apartment.

“What’s up?” she asked me.

“Elizabeth…” I stuttered.  “I…um…I
was wondering if…if you’d like to grab a bite to eat sometime?”

She smiled (The most enchanting smile
I’ve ever seen!) and looked out at me with those sexy green eyes of
hers before uttering a dispiriting string of words that ground my heart into
powder and scattered its remains into the wind.

“I’d love to, but I’m actually already
kind of seeing Chuck Volderschmidt.  You know him right?”

Chuck Volderschmidt.  Chuck “No
Means Yes, Captain Fingerbang, Fucking” Volderschmidt!  It
isn’t even fathomable how a woman like Elizabeth could find herself interested
in a guy like him.  Yet somehow, as ridiculous and unlikely as it
sounded, that was precisely what she had told me.  I don’t remember
what I said to her after that or how pathetic I looked as I slinked away from
her door.  All I do remember is that I ended up shuffling back to my
apartment in a depressed haze with my tail tucked between my legs.

Of course Donald was asleep on the couch
by the time I came back.  When I had left he had been laying in the
same position watching TV, one hand in his pants cupping his balls, the other
pinching the roach end of a joint.  The place looked like
hell.  In the time I was gone, he had managed to knock over the glass
of Hawaiian Punch that was sitting on the coffee table, creating a large red
stain on the carpet and leaving the living room looking like a crime
scene.  During his siesta, he dropped the still burning roach on the
rug and was lucky he hadn’t started a fire.  I shook my head in
disgust as I picked it up off the floor.

I decided a bit of busywork would help to
take my mind off of Elizabeth and Chuck so I began
cleaning.  Donald’s bedroom was a good place to
start.  There was always something in there that reeked so bad it
could make a man forget his own name so I grabbed a trash bag and made my way
into the pigpen.

My bag was about halfway filled with soda
cans when I came across a pizza box from a local restaurant called Fat Sal’s
sitting next to Donald’s industrial size tube of “hand” lotion on the
floor.  I recognized the box.  Donald ordered pizza from
that place at least a couple times a week.  He and the delivery guy
even seemed to be on a first name basis.  On the box’s lid, an
over-weight Italian American stereotype in a chef’s hat was
pictured.  One hand rested on his pudgy hip while the other extended
a thumb into the air to go along with the portly chef’s approving
smile.  There was no slogan written on the box, but I came up with an
appropriate one in my head.

So what if my food takes years
off your life and gives you a worse complexion than The Toxic
Avenger?  At least it tastes good!  -Fat Sal

It was only morbid curiosity that
motivated me to lift the lid.  I was interested to know what it was
about the place that made Donald prefer it to the fifty thousand other pizza
restaurants around campus.  Perhaps I should have been better
prepared for what I was about to see.  After all, I’d surmise that a
few weeks of cleaning Donald’s disaster of a room is enough to desensitize
anyone to even the most objectionable sights and smells, but for whatever
reason I wasn’t ready for what was waiting for me underneath the obese chef’s
cardboard portrait.

I felt my stomach drop the instant I
raised the lid.  Scuttling around inside the box, crawling over
leftover crust, and collecting around puddles of grease like caribou at a
watering hole were dozens of those little black bugs!  It was by far
the most I had ever seen in one place.  A jolt of panic darted down
my arm, causing me to drop the pest-ridden thing to the floor. The thud must
have startled the insects because next thing I knew they were dispersing
throughout the room, scurrying for cover in all directions.

The thunderous blare of Donald breaking
wind erupted from the living room, accompanied by a beastly snort that made me
cringe so hard it caused my entire body to tremble.  I followed the
awful noises to find my brother still sawing wood on the
sofa.  Sordid thoughts of Elizabeth willingly allowing that perverted
snake, Chuck Volderschmidt, to defile her hallowed Garden of Eden in Jessica
Brakowtzki’s bathroom once again started to swirl through my mind.  It
was Donald’s fault.  He was the reason I had been afraid to ask
Elizabeth out in the first place.  All the filth he created, his
disgusting lifestyle – I had been far too self-conscious to allow anyone
close enough to me where they might learn the truth about him.  And
then it came to me – an answer so simple I was shocked I hadn’t thought
of it before.  There was only one way that I could ever truly be
happy.  I had to get rid of Donald.

Before I get into the next part of my
story I want to explain to you that I thought long and hard about how to deal
with the situation.  A crazy person might have reacted on pure
impulse after coming to the realization that had just made itself plainly
apparent to me.  But I’m no crazy person!  I made
certain to evaluate every possible option in exhausting detail before finally
deciding to kill my brother.

Once my choice had been made, I slowly
crept towards the napping ogre, although I’m sure that due to the marijuana
induced coma he was currently sleeping off, I could have been doing cartwheels
and he wouldn’t have woken up.  Looking down at his chubby cheeks
made me feel queasy.  Quite honestly, I felt like I was about to do
him a service – like putting down a mangy dog that’s blind from cataracts
and suffering from arthritis.   I reveled in the moment as I
cautiously wrapped my hands around his flabby neck, taking care not to wake him
before I was in position.  Then, in one rapid movement, I threw my
body on top of his, straddling his tubby torso and squeezing his throat as hard
as I could.  Almost immediately his eyes shot open, but his startled,
terrified stare only helped to empower me.  Donald may have been
larger than me, but I was stronger.  His muscles had atrophied due to
years of lounging around the apartment while mine had become more developed
from my daily outings to the gym.  Desperate pleas for mercy
sporadically leaked from his mouth, but I couldn’t make out a word he was
saying (Nor did I care to hear them!).  I could feel his
windpipe crushing under the grip of my hands.  The pressure caused
his eyes to bulge from his head like one of those goofy stress management toys
that at least one jackass has on his desk in every single office on the
planet.

It surprised me how long it took to
finish the job.  I must have been at it for at least ten minutes
before I was sure he was dead.  By the end of it, I was drenched in
sweat.  Lactic acid rushed through the muscles of my arms producing a
mild burning sensation in my biceps and triceps.  Donald’s face had
turned a greyish hue; black and purple rings encircled his fat neck where my
hands had been choking him.  His tongue hung from his mouth like a
dog stuck out in the sun without a bowl of water.  As I looked at my
dead brother, not an ounce of remorse lingered in my
consciousness.  Donald had brought death on himself.  As
far as I was concerned, my brother was barely alive before I strangled him.

I knew that keeping him in the apartment
would not be wise.  Storing his corpse was something only a
psychopath like Ed Gein or John Wayne Gacy would do.  Eventually his
body would rot and smell (even more than the apartment itself) and
people would complain.  If enough tenants raised a fuss the landlord
would demand to investigate and then I’d be finished.  My parent’s
summerhouse was only an hour and a half from the university.   I
was positive I could get rid of it there.  All I needed to do was
sneak his body to my car in the parking garage without anyone noticing.

***

Transporting Donald’s corpse from the living room to my car turned out to be
easier than I thought it would be.  It was midterms week and most of my
building’s occupants were locked away inside their apartments cramming for
exams or pulling all-nighters at the library.

There were always
oversized cardboard boxes, discarded by tenants after whatever furniture
delivered inside of them had been removed, stacked up next to the dumpster
behind my building.  I selected the biggest one I could find then headed
back to my unit with it.  Donald’s limp body felt like it weighed a thousand pounds,
but the adrenaline coursing through my veins gave me the strength to hoist his
hefty cadaver into the box without too much difficulty.  I dragged the
thing down the hall, into the elevator, and up to my sedan, trying my best to
appear as inconspicuous as possible.  Luckily for me, I didn’t run into
any inquiring minds eager to know what was inside the package I was
hauling.  Could you imagine!  I’d probably be forced to
blubber out some sort of pitiful, Jack Tripper-esque excuse if people started
asking questions.   Just like an episode of Three’s Company, only
with less boobs and more murder!

The drive up to my parent’s summerhouse
was a quiet one.  I didn’t feel like listening to the radio and Donald
wasn’t in the mood to do much talking.  I was surprisingly calm for having
just committed fratricide.  To be honest, I was more relieved Donald was
dead than distraught.  He was a terrible brother and from what I could
tell growing up, he wasn’t much of a son to my parents either.  Once the
matter of his body was taken care of, I would be able to get back to school and
start living a normal life.

I had a plan, in case you were
wondering.  Only a complete whack-job would kill someone without an exit
strategy.  My parent’s vacation home was conveniently secluded and located
on a massive lake.  When I was little, my father and I used to take his
old rowboat out on the water before Donald or my mother would wake up so we
could go fishing.  We’d spend the morning together, usually catching nothing
and waiting for the sun to peak out from over the eastern hills while he
spouted off obscure trivia to me about the lake.

“Yup.  This lake has a surface
area of approximately 17 square miles.”  He’d say to me.  “It’s been
measured at 518 feet at its deepest point.  Better keep your arms and legs
in the boat, no telling what could be down there.  Just about anything
could hide in a body of water this big.”

He always said the last part just to
get a rise out of me, but the sheer size of the lake always stuck with
me.  There was some truth to his teasing.  Anything could
hide down there – even my blob of a brother.

My plan was to dump his corpse in the
lake and ditch my car ten miles south of my school (the opposite direction of
my folks summer house).  From there I would have to find a ride back to
the campus; if I could make it to the school before people in my building
started waking up, no one would realize I had even left.  A little later I
could report my brother missing and my car stolen.  It wouldn’t be hard to
make it look like he had taken my car.  I could leave his sweatshirt in
the back seat, smear his fingerprints all over the steering wheel, and maybe
even sprinkle a little of his hair around to make it seem like he was driving
it.  Donald had a couple minor run-ins with the law when he was
younger.  Nothing major – he got hit with a misdemeanor for
marijuana possession when he was 17 and some vandalism stuff when he was a
little younger, but compared to my squeaky clean record he looked like a felon.
Convincing the police that he had finally gone off the deep end and skipped out
on town wouldn’t be a problem.

I pulled my car around to the back of
the lake house and killed my headlights.  The closest neighbors lived
about a mile away, but I was taking no chances by unnecessarily drawing
attention to myself.  It was getting late; the clock on my dashboard
flashed 11:30.  The light from the numbers bathed the inside of my car in
a pale green glow.  For a few seconds nothing felt real to me –
like I had somehow been transported into the plot of a David Lynch
movie.  I quickly snapped myself back to reality and got to work.

I dragged Donald’s corpse out of the
trunk, and lugged it down the gravel path that lead towards my father’s tool
shed.  I had one more precaution I needed to take in order to make sure I
wouldn’t be caught.  If watching hours upon hours of Horatio Caine
catching bad guys and solving murders down on South Beach taught me anything
it’s that no matter how terrible the crime, there’s always time for an
inappropriate stomach-groaning pun (YEEAAHHHH!!!!).  If it taught me
anything else, it’s that dental records and fingerprints are by far the easiest
way to identify a body.  Donald may have been dead, but he still had a
mouthful of teeth and all ten of his fingers.  My Dad’s shed, however,
stored a sturdy set of pliers and a handy pair of heavy-duty pruning
sheers.  I think you can put two and two together and figure out where
this is going.

I rolled Donald’s cumbersome corpse the
final few feet through the shed’s door and propped it upright against the
wall.  I must have inherited my affinity for tidiness from my father; he
always kept his things so neat and orderly.  Suffices to say, his shed was
no exception.  I had little trouble locating the pliers I would need to
remove my brother’s teeth.  The operation, I estimated, would most likely
be a bloody one so I decided to reel out the blue plastic tarp that was propped
up in the corner in order to catch any “DNA evidence” that might escape my
brother’s mouth while I yanked away at his brownish-yellow, smoke stained
incisors.  I had just finished laying it down on the floor when I
noticed something out of the corner of my eye that made every muscle in my neck
go rigid and sent a wave after wave of fright pulsating throughout my
body.  I blinked thrice, silently praying to God, Jesus, Buddha, Krishna,
and any other holy deity whom might have happened to be observing the scene
that what I had just witnessed out of my peripheral vision was nothing but an
optical illusion.  Unfortunately for me, my prayers had gone unanswered
because my vision had not deceived me.  Donald’s chest was moving.

I was too afraid to turn my head.
An hour earlier he was dead.  I had even checked his
pulse.  People don’t just come back to life, I told
myself.  That was something a crazy person would believe.  Slowly, I
rotated my neck in his direction in order to get a better look.
What happened next was something I have not been able to forget in the days since
the incident -- no mater how hard I've tried.

Donald’s body still sat limp against
the wall of the shed – the skin of his lifeless face had gone from grey
to pale white during the drive.  There was nothing in his cold, empty
stare that would suggest any signs of vitality or even a single trace of
consciousness, yet his chest was clearly throbbing up and down with alarming
frequency.  I tried to swallow, but realized my mouth had gone bone
dry.  With a thud his body slumped to the floor, causing
me to jump three feet off the ground.  The trunk of his core continued
to move.  He was laying
on his back now; his colorless face turned in my direction.  Perhaps
against my better judgment, I called out to him.

“Donald?” I managed to mutter
out.  There was no reply.  The only thing I could hear was the sound
of my own heavy breathing.

Moments later, Donald’s body began to
stir – slowly at first, but gradually his motions became more
violent.  I fought back a scream as his carcass started to convulse and
writhe on the shed’s floor just a couple of feet from where I was
standing.   His arms and legs were flailing through the air while his
torso shook and jerked like he was having a seizure.  A low hiss seeped
from his mouth – a sound that violated my ears while I trembled with
fright from the scene unfolding before me.

No, this can’t be happening.  It
can’t be real, I thought to myself.   But it was happening, and
I can tell you with the utmost sincerity that it was very real.

The hiss grew louder.  I covered
my ears with my hands and shook my head in disbelief.  Donald’s jaw
started to twitch as if he was trying to talk.  I was terrified of hearing
his voice – of hearing the damning words I expected to come out of his
mouth.  But it wasn’t words that emerged from between my brother’s lips
that evening.  No sir!  What came out instead was much
more horrifying.  An endless stream of those little black bugs began to
pour from his mouth, flooding the room like a biblical plague, and swarming
nearly everything in sight.  They scuttled along my shoes and up my pants
legs.  I swatted at them frantically, doing everything in my power to get
the vermin off of me, but the more I brushed them away, the more they overran
me.   My mind was panicky; I needed to remove the filthy things from
my person as soon as possible.

The lake!  I
remembered.  Still crawling with bugs, I leapt over Donald’s now
motionless body, burst through the shed’s door and made a break for the dock
right next to my house.  I was moving so fast the evening’s cool air began
stinging my face while I sprinted through the darkness.  When I reached
the end of the dock, I threw myself head first into the icy cold water without
hesitation, in an attempt to drown the bugs still clinging to me.

In all the excitement and panic, I
forgot to close my mouth and hold my breath before diving into the lake.
The frigid water rushed down my esophagus in an effort to invade respiratory
system, nearly drowning me in the freezing depths.  Frantically, I kicked
and thrashed underneath the surface, trying to make it to the dock’s ladder
while water continued to usurp the air in my lungs.  With one last
desperate attempt at survival, I grasped onto one of the ladder’s rungs and
yanked myself free from the drink, into the night air, gasping and choking in
the moonlight.  Exhausted, but relieved to be alive, I slogged my shaking
body back up to the dock and collapsed on its deck.

I had little time to relax though;
there was still work to be done.  Donald’s body wasn’t going to dispose of
itself and I knew that I needed to move fast if I wanted to be back at the
school by sunrise.  The bugs were mostly gone by the time I got back to
the shed.  They must have scattered into the back yard or the wooded area
that surrounded the house when I made my dash towards the lake.  A few of
them had stuck around and were lingering on the floor and walls when I
returned, but I could cope with that.   There really wasn’t time to
stop and contemplate the peculiarity of what I had just witnessed.  I was
well aware of the inexplicable circumstances surrounding the little black bugs
and Donald’s body – never in my life had I ever heard or read about
something so odd or terrifying, but I was on the clock.  In order to
secure my alibi, I needed to finish the job and get back to school.

I picked up the set of pliers, dragged
my brother on top of the tarp, and kneeled down next to his corpse.  Some
of the insects were still trickling out of the corner of his mouth.  I
brushed them away and got down to business.

I pulled each and every one of my
brother’s teeth out with those pliers.  His hands were a bit harder to
remove with the shears then I thought they would be, but my father’s Dewalt
Diamond Tipped Heavy Duty Hand Saw did a satisfactory enough
job.  I don’t know why a handsaw needs to be diamond tipped – all my
father ever did with it was cut firewood, but I was more than thankful for his
testosterone fueled purchase that evening.  Needless to say, it sliced
through my brother’s wrists faster than an emo kid looking for attention.

I wrapped what was left of his body up
in the blood soaked tarp and lugged it all the way back to the dock where my
father’s rowboat was tied up.   It was late and with the weather as
cold as it was, I knew I wouldn’t see anyone else on the lake, not at that time
of year anyways.  For about twenty minutes I paddled out, not stopping
until I knew I was in a place where the water would be deep.   Next,
I deadlifted Donald’s fat carcass up from the boat and dumped it
overboard.  It sunk down into the murky depths, disappearing from sight
like attractive people at a “Magic: The Gathering” tournament.  I
chucked the teeth I had extracted into the lake as well, watching them quickly
scatter and vanish below the surface.  When I got back to land, I used the
hands I had removed to plant Donald’s fingerprints all over my steering wheel
and the dashboard of my car before burying them out in the woods.

I made sure to straighten up the shed
so my father wouldn’t find anything amiss the next time he was in it.
Before I left the lake house that night, I went inside and headed up to my
parent’s bedroom.  My father kept a revolver in the nightstand by his bed
and I figured it might come in handy somewhere down the line – just a
contingency plan incase things started to spiral out of control.  Crazy
people don’t come up with contingency plans so you can see how clear and level
headed my thinking was.

I got back in the car and fired up the
engine.  All I needed to do was ditch my ride; then I’d be home
free.  A tiny, painful prick on my neck startled me,
momentarily breaking my concentration.  I reached back and snatched the
little black bug that had bitten me, pinching it between my fingers.  It
tried to squirm away, but I crushed it’s body before it could, popping it like
a pimple while I laughed maniacally at it’s plight like a super villain high on
shrooms.

***

I left my car in the parking lot of a
Carl’s Jr. about twenty minutes South East of my campus.  I’m not
really sure why I chose Carl’s Jr.  I guess it just seemed like an
appropriate place for Donald’s trail to run cold (one last Double Western Bacon
Cheeseburger for the fat ass before his vanishing act).

The bus would be my ride
back.  My school was too far travel by foot so running was out of the
question and I was concerned that calling a cab would be an easy way to get
noticed in case the police came snooping around, looking for
witnesses.  I needed to stay as discreet as possible.  My
alibi would be a failure if someone like a cabbie, could pinpoint me in the general
proximity of the car I planned on reporting stolen.  Even though it
was likely I would encounter people on the bus, I reasoned that since it was
still early, no one would be interested in making conversation (or even eye
contact) – especially not before the break of dawn.

I had studied the bus routes earlier.
There was an express line I could catch that would drop me off near the
school.  The first bus was supposed to come by at 5:00 AM and only
made a few stops before reaching the campus.  I checked my
watch.  It was 4:30; with any luck my ride would be on time and I
could make it back to the apartment before people started waking
up.  I took a seat on the bench and waited alone in the dark for the
bus to arrive.

Just a few minutes later, a scruffy, old
hobo hobbled up to the bus stop and popped a squat next to me.  A
pungent stench wafted through the air; I winced in the realization that I was
sitting down wind from the homeless man’s foul fragrance – an awful
combination of urine and rancid milk.  I scooted over until one of my
ass cheeks was hanging off of the edge of the bench, attempting to put as much
distance between myself and the terrible funk as possible.  The
vagrant sat hunched over with his hands inside the pockets of his dirty, ragged
sweatshirt while he mumbled something incoherently to himself.  His
hood was pulled up over his head, covering most of his face, but from what I
could see, he looked as if he was in desperate need of some dental work.

He started to rock back and forth on the
bench as the unintelligible garbles spewing from his mouth became louder and
more frequent.  Still, I couldn’t make out what the troubled man was
saying.  I checked my watch – it was only
4:37.   I remember the time exactly because that’s when things began
to get strange.

We were all alone at that bus
stop.  Aside from the occasional car zipping by there wasn’t another
soul in sight.  None of the stores around were open yet so there was
no warm, safe place for me to duck into while I waited for the bus to
show.  The homeless man clenched his decaying, rotten teeth and began
to violently shake his fists in the air.  His ramblings had turned
into a fit of angry shouting and I finally started to understand what he had
been saying once the raving lunatic started barking into the dark morning sky.

“He’s dead!  He’s
dead!  His own flesh and blood!  His baby
brother!  Why!?  Why, baby brother!?”

I shot up from the bench and stumbled
backwards for a few steps.  I told myself that he was just some
maniac – that there was no way he could have known about Donald, but
somewhere deep down inside me I couldn’t shake the feeling that all his hooting
and hollering was directed towards me.  I checked my watch again; it
was only 4:43.  Time was moving slower than an octogenarian wearing
ankle weights.

He stood up from the bench and started
shambling towards me like a zombie, all the while, continuing to shout out
accusations out at the top of his lungs.

“Why, baby
brother!?  Murder!  His own flesh and blood!”

I backed off into the street, but Nostrahomelss followed.  A
flash of light illuminated the dark road we were both now standing
in.  I turned my head to see the bus I had been waiting for about a
block away, sitting at a red light.  Salvation!  I
thought to myself.  It had arrived early, but before I had the chance
to rejoice the mad hobo lunged at me, grasping me around my wrists with both of
his hands.  He lifted his head and met my terrified
gaze.  For the first time I could see his entire face and I felt myself
get woozy from the appalling sight staring back at me.

His lips were horribly chapped – so
dry and cracked that blood began to trickle from their pussy sores as he smiled
his rotten grin. The bizarre homeless man’s teeth were worse than I thought.  The
black and yellow giblets jutted out from the bum’s disease ridden gums in
arbitrary directions, sometimes even overlapping each other.  As he
continued to squawk at me, I noticed an additional sound beginning to emanate from
the homeless man’s mouth.  It was a horrible low hiss, one that I had
heard earlier that evening – in the tool shed right before the bugs began
to spill from the mouth of my dead brother.  I felt myself get sick
at the mere thought of those things swarming me back at the lake house.

“He’s Dead!” he
shouted.    “Baby brother,
why!?  Murdered by his own flesh!”

I was too terrified to look
away.  The hiss became louder as bugs began to crawl out of the
homeless man’s nose, scurrying down his face.  I broke his grip,
falling over backwards onto my rear end, and started to shuffle away on the
ground as fast as I could.  The light in the street got brighter and
I realized the bus was advancing towards us.  Seeing this, the
deranged homeless man darted out of the road, leaving me sitting on the asphalt
as the express line pulled up to the stop.   The last thing I
needed to do was miss my bus so I stood up, dusted myself off, and headed for
the door.

The driver didn’t even look twice at me
as I boarded.  I’m sure she’s seen her fair share of crazy working
that route.  I was thankful for it too.  As far as I was
concerned, the less people that could pick me out of a lineup the
better.  There were only two other riders on the bus and both of them
looked half asleep.  I took a seat in the very back and tried to
catch my breath.

Could he have really known about Donald?

No, I told myself.  Something
like that just doesn’t make sense.  It would be completely illogical
to assume that the stinking schizoid had any knowledge of what happened between
my brother and I.  I was able to eventually reason that he must have
been talking about someone else.  You see?  A sensible
person can always come up with a rational explanation for things.

I sat in a daze for the rest of the ride
back to campus, trying to erase the mental image of those bugs moving about the
homeless man’s face.  I still see it when I close my
eyes.  I still hear them hissing too – only I know that’s not
in my head.

***

I stumbled into my apartment before
daybreak.  I had forgotten how messy the place was before I
left.  It was ok though, I took great pleasure in fixing up the place
knowing it would be the last time I ever had to clean one of my brother’s
messes.  Fatigue settled in by the time I was wrapping up and I
collapsed on my bed where I fell asleep for hours.  By the time I
woke up, the sun was already making its descent from the sky.  Every
single one of my muscles ached and the joints in my arms and legs burned as if
they were on fire.  I realized that the night had taken a greater
toll on my body than I originally anticipated.  All I wanted to do
was lie in bed and not move until the pain went away, but I knew my job wasn’t
done yet.  I had to pad my alibi.

I called the police and reported my car
stolen.  After about an hour of waiting, an incredibly bored looking
cop came by and took down my information.  He seemed even less
impressed when I divulged to him that my brother was the most likely
culprit.  The expression on the officer’s face told me he’d much
rather have been at the doughnut shop, sipping coffee and talking football with
the rest of the boys than dealing with me.  Nevertheless, I put on an
act for him that even Laurence Olivier would have been jealous of.

“Oh please officer, tell me if you hear
anything!?  Honestly, I’m more worried about Donald than my
car.  I think he may have finally lost it!”

The cop nodded his head, reassured me
that everything would probably be alright, and drove off in his squad car,
presumably to get back to his busy day of consuming coffee and chowing down on
bear claws while debating Tom Brady vs. Peyton Manning with the rest of his
overweight, mustached compatriots.  I was confident my performance
would be enough to throw the police off my trail.  Excluding the
psychopath at the bus stop and the hiccup with the bugs in the tool shed,
everything was going exactly as I had envisioned.  It wasn’t until
later that evening when my plan would begin to fall apart – and
fall apart it did!  I remember the exact point things started
going haywire.  How could I forget?  My life has become a
case of situational irony akin to that of a Shakespearian
comedy.  And how appropriate is it that the catalyst – the very
thing that got the ball rolling, was an all too familiar prick on
the back of my neck?

***

I was sitting at the desk in my room when
it happened.  Disposing of my brother’s body had cost me a lot of
very valuable study time and I was trying to take advantage of every minute I
had left before my midterm exams by burying myself in my coursework.

The sting of the insect’s bite took me
surprise, snapping my attention away from the textbook I was
reading.  I let out a yelp and twisted in my chair, attempting to
swat the irritating little nuisance off of me, but paused, suddenly stricken
with fear when I took notice of a sound that had begun to infiltrate the room
– one I was starting to become far too acquainted with.  A low
hiss seeping through the walls – the hiss of those little black bugs.

The noise seemed to be loudest coming
from the wall on the opposite end of my room near the foot of my
bed.  I approached what appeared to be its origin cautiously and ran
my fingers along the wall.  Terror’s dark hand gripped me tight as
the vibrating stucco sent tiny tremors up my fingers when I touched
it.  I could feel them moving, crawling, even squirming over
top of each other, just behind the thin plaster barricade between
us.  The thought made the contents of my stomach rise halfway up my
throat.

The hiss begun to get so loud it became
deafening.  I jerked my hand back from the wall as the terrible noise
persisted to increase in intensity.  The bedroom wall was throbbing
now, just like Donald’s chest in my father’s tool shed one night
prior.  I feared that any moment the bugs would come bursting through
the wall like puss spurting from the center of a ripe zit.

I barely had time to cringe in fear from
the terrible sight before the hiss began to change, mutating and warping itself
into something that sounded like words.  The voice was inhuman
– unlike anything I’ve ever heard before.  Almost as if it was
speaking to me through the sound of flesh sizzling over an open flame.

“He’s dead!  He’s
dead!  Why baby brother!?  Why!?”

The words pervaded my ears and burrowed
themselves into my brain like a parasite.  I turned to run, but
toppled over the ataman, jamming my left wrist when I put my hands out in front
of me to break my fall.  I looked towards the wall again, where the hiss
had originated; it was moving as if half of my bedroom had begun breathing.

“You killed him!  Why!?”

The wall continued to swell up and down
like the waves of an angry sea.  I began to prepare myself for the
worst.  I was certain that death would be riding into my room in next
to no time – a six-eyed horsemen with the mandibles of an arthropod,
ready to drag my soul to hell.

“He was ours, now you’ll be
too!  You’ll be ours or we’ll ruin you!”

I screamed.  The wall was
writhing and twisting in ways that defied physics.  The entire room
looked like a bad acid trip.

“You’ll be ours or nothing!”

It was madness.  If I didn’t
know for sure that my mind was so healthy and sound, I might have believed that
I was losing it (Of course a crazy person would never acknowledge that kind of
complete and utter insanity to be anything out of the norm.  I
however, was well aware of the implausible situation I had found myself in,
thus proving the lucidity of my mental state of being).

I curled up into a ball and shut my eyes,
cradling my head in my hands (reverting back to the most primal of self-defense
mechanisms).  The walls were closing in on me and the hiss had
reached an unbearable pitch, but just when I thought certain doom was upon me,
another noise filled the apartment – a knock on the front door.

It took me a minute for me to gather
myself, but eventually I noticed that the walls had returned back to normal and
that the hiss had vanished almost as soon as the knocking had
begun. Another knock brought me to my feet and I proceeded to the door
(albeit still shakily).  To my surprise Chuck Volderschmidt and
Elizabeth were standing in front of me when I opened it.

Chuck was shirtless, although his pasty
white chest and sun burned forearms made him look like he was wearing a
t-shirt.  Elizabeth (looking as stunning as ever) was wearing nothing
but an oversized G-Unit football jersey – the kind of shirt you might
find bundled up on the floor at Burlington Coat Factory or Nordstrom Rack.  I
winced a bit once I came to the realization that it was most likely Chuck’s.

“Bro,” said the turd.  “We
thought we heard a scream!  Is everything ok or were you just
watching porn with the speaker turned up too loud…cause I do that some times.”

“Umm, no Chuck.  Thanks for
your concern, but I just tripped over the ataman in my room and sprained my
wrist.”

“Ouch!” said Elizabeth.  And it
was that moment that I decided that the G in G-Unit must have stood for
Goddess.  “Do you need a doctor?”

I shook my head and forced a laugh, “No,
no.  Just startled myself.  I guess I should watch where
I’m going.”

“Fucking-A you should,” chimed
Chuck.  “Next time I hear a scream like that from this apartment it
better be because you have a hot biatch in
here!  L-O-L.”  He actually said “LOL”.  Chuck
grabbed a handful of Elizabeth’s magnificent rump.  “Come on
babe.  Let’s get back to your apartment.”  He turned
towards me and mouthed something that rhymes with meeting that wussywhen
she wasn’t looking while thrusting his pelvis in the air and flicking his
tongue between the peace sign he was making with his fingers as they walked
away.

I shut the door behind me and leaned
against the wall, trying to get a grasp on everything that had just
occurred.  Part of me was still terrified that the hiss would begin
anew and my six-legged tormentors would pick up where they left off, but deep
down inside, I knew they wanted me alive.  The bugs were
actually speaking to me.  Not just speaking, but
delivering a message – a warning.

Now you’ll be ours too!  You’ll
be ours or we’ll ruin you.

I understood what they
meant.  Those little bastards were the only witnesses to Donald’s
murder.  The bugs loved my older brother.  He was like a
benevolent god to them!  They gorged themselves on the heaping piles
of garbage he left lying around the apartment.  The place was like a
paradise for those terrible things and then I moved in and took it all
away.  Now they wanted me to take his place – to maintain the
status quo and continue showering them with gifts.  It was a threat
– become as foul and nasty as my older brother, return their home to
paradise or somehow they would “ruin” me.

Well, if it was a god they wanted, then
it was a god they were going to get, but not the kind they were asking
for.  I was about to go Old Testament on those
little black bugs.

***

It’s the police who keep knocking at my
door.  They won’t say they’re the cops.  Actually, they
won’t say much of anything.  It doesn’t really matter though; I know
it’s them.  They must be here to arrest me for what I did to
Donald.  I’m sure the smug sons of bitches are going to pat
themselves on the back for breaking the case. The idiots.  I
was careful.  They never would have known if it wasn’t for those
goddamned bugs.

I purchased a fogger at Home Depot the
following day.  I don’t know much about exterminating so I let the
guy at the store convince me to splurge on the most expensive one they
had.  It came in a canister that looked like an old Soviet warhead.  On
the side of it was a picture of a mushroom cloud with the words “BIG BUG BOMB”
written in a bold yellow font that told me it meant business.

When I got back to the apartment, I set
it up in my bedroom (the sight of my earlier run-in with the little
pests).   The instructions on the container said that the fogger
released a cloud of poisonous gas capable of reaching a radius of 2,500 square
feet, which is a distance that’s easily more than twice the size of my humble
living accommodations.  All I had to do was pull the tab, leave the
apartment for a couple hours, and let the gas do the work.

I was positive the bugs would mount an
attack and come gushing through the walls in an effort to thwart me, but it
never happened.  I set off the bomb just like the instructions said,
placed the fogger down on my desk, and escaped with zero resistance.

I thought that I’d be able to forget
about everything that had taken place while I was at school that day, but
unfortunately my midterm exams weren’t even enough to help me ignore the
constant reminders.  I would look into my study materials, doing my
damndest to take my mind off of the recent horrors I had experienced, but no
matter how much I tried to clear my mind, terrible memories still plagued me.

At times, I could have sworn I smelled
the homeless man’s nauseating aroma as I ambled around the campus.  I
feared he would be waiting for me every time I turned a corner, shouting
accusations at the top of his lungs like he had that night at the bus
stop.  To anyone watching, I must have looked like quite the nut,
peering over my shoulder every ten feet or so, keeping an eye out for the
invisible boogeyman.

Then there were the things that weren’t
in my head.  Over the course of the day, I would catch people giving
me the most judgmental, scornful looks – two girls whispering to each
other and pointing in my direction as I walked by, a professor shaking his head
when I turned in my test, even the barista in the coffee shop turning her nose
up at me when I stopped in to get a mid afternoon pick-me-up.  I was
beginning to feel the paranoia seeping in.  The way everyone was
glaring at me, it was as if they knew what I had done to Donald.

I ducked into the library to get away
from the judgmental sneers and disapproving stares.  I needed a quiet
place to think and clear my head, but the coffee I guzzled down hadn’t given me
the caffeine boost I was looking for and I quickly found myself nodding off at
a desk in the computer lab once I settled in.  My nap was far from
restful though.  The vividness of my nightmare saw to that.

The warmth and safety of the library
faded away only to be replaced by the last place on Earth I wanted to
be.  I barely had time to realize I was back at the lake again,
treading along the surface of the icy water I had dumped my brother in when I
felt myself begin to sink.  I tried to swim, but no matter how hard I
kicked and paddled I couldn’t free myself from the water’s pull.  It
began to envelope me, slowly but surely swallowing my body
whole.   I took one last desperate gasp of air as my head
submerged under the surface of the lake.

Ten feet under water and sinking fast, a
sense of hopelessness began to overwhelm me.  I stopped trying to
fight my way to the surface.

When I reached forty feet, I could feel
the pressure in my ears and behind my eyes start to build.  It felt
like my head was being crushed in a vice.

One hundred feet and plunging deeper, my
lungs felt as though they were going to burst.  No longer able to
stand the pain, I opened my mouth to scream and felt the lake rush down my
throat just as it had when I dove into the water the night I killed Donald.

Deeper I descended into the darkness,
suffering, drowning, a victim of the water’s merciless onslaught when I saw
something waiting for me at the lakebed.  Dread shot through my
already agonizing body when I recognized what I was being pulled towards.

My brother’s bloated corpse was sitting
at the bottom of the lake – his body hanging halfway out of the tarp I had
rolled him in.  Days of water damage had turned his skin a sickening
greenish white.  The fish had reached him by then and a few of them
were still feeding on the exposed flesh of his face as I touched down to the
lake’s floor.  His eyeballs were gone.  They’re always the
first to be eaten; it’s the easiest part of the body for the fish to
digest.  I read that somewhere once.  We were now face to
eyeless, partially consumed face.  To my horror, his puffy swollen
lips began to slowly move.  He was speaking to me and somehow under
hundreds of feet of unforgiving, freezing cold water I could hear him.

“They’re not dead,” he said to me in a
wheezy croaking voice.  It reminded me just how hard I had squeezed
his throat that night.  “You can’t get rid of them.”  He
stared at me through the empty sockets of his face with the same disdain that I
had once viewed him with.  “They want to make you like me.”

I wanted to respond, but the freezing
water gagging and choking me prevented any sort of retort.  A smile crossed
his decaying, half-eaten face and I could tell that he was pleased by
this.  I’d even go as far as to say that he was laughing at my
plight.

“You’ll be theirs,” he
said.  “You’ll be theirs or they’ll ruin you!”

A deep low hiss began to flood my
ears.  If the lake hadn’t already collapsed my lungs I would have
been shrieking at the top of them.  The hiss grew louder and louder
as my brother began to open his mouth.  Once more the noise had
become deafening.  Donald’s mouth had stretched far too wide (as if
he had unhinged his jaw) making his horrible face even harder to look at.

Then in an instant, I was back in the
library – my cheek flush against the desk I had fallen asleep
on.  I had woken up.  It took a second for reality to
settle in.  I took a few hurried gasps, trying to remember what
breathing felt like.  The dream had felt so real.  Once I
got my bearings back I sat and reflected on it for a while.  Donald’s
words had sent a chill down my spine.

They want to make you like
me.  He had told me.  You’ll be theirs or they’ll ruin
you!

I looked up.  The librarian, a
pretty undergrad, was scowling at me from behind her desk.  Everyone
I was coming in contact with seemed to hate me.  There was only one
possibility; it had to be the bugs!  I found myself
contemplating the plausibility of that idea.  Sure it was crazy, but
what other reason could there have possibly been for my recent status as a
social pariah?  After all, the little bastards had demonstrated
that they had the ability to communicate.   Perhaps they were
talking to others, revealing to them my dirty secret.  Maybe that’s
what they meant when they said they would ruin me.

My brother was most likely
right.  There was no way some stupid fogger I purchased at the
hardware store was going to kill off those things.  They had some
sort of (I know it sounds nuts) supernatural abilities that extended way beyond
resistance to insecticides.  Their motives had become clear to me:
either I gave into their whims, or they were going to rat me out.  A
feeling of desperation started to brew inside me.  I needed
exterminate them once and for all.

***

My fears were confirmed when I heard the
hiss coming from my apartment before I had even made it halfway down the
hall.  The Big Bug Bomb had performed about as well as a quadriplegic
in an Ironman competition.  It didn’t matter.  They might
have been able to fend off the noxious fumes of the fogger, but I had a new
plan.  If the pesticide didn’t work, then maybe fire would do the
trick.  In my back pocket was a case of matches, in my right hand was
a can full of gasoline, and in my mind was the unrelenting desire to finally
rid myself of those little black bugs.

They weren’t hard to find when I opened
the door.  The little buggers were everywhere!  I locked
the door behind me and quickly began splashing the walls of the living room
with petrol. Again that terrible hiss started to buzz through the
apartment and I knew that the bugs were assembling – preparing for war.  Unlike
before though, I found the sound encouraging.  The bug bomb didn’t
even frighten them enough to warrant a reaction.   The fact that
they were stirring made me think that I had them on the ropes a little
bit.  I knew that I needed to work fast.  It would be
important to hit every room so the bugs wouldn’t have a place to run to once I
set the apartment ablaze.  For once they were afraid and I was
reveling in it.

“You like that you little
bastards!”  I shouted.  “I’ll teach you to snitch on me!”

After I finished in the living room I ran
to the kitchen, where those awful things had first bitten me – the hiss
followed close behind.  Once more the appalling sound assaulting my
ears began to form words.

“You can’t do this!  You’re
ours now!”  I ignored their threats and continued to paint the walls and
counter with gas.  “Stop this!” the hiss
commanded.  I started to laugh out loud.

The bathroom was next.  By the
time I got in there, bugs had begun seeping out of the showerhead, trickling
from the sink, even crawling their way up from the drains.  I ran the
faucets in an effort to drown as many of them as possible.  Somehow I
kept my composure long enough to spill some gasoline on the wall next to the
toilet.

“STOP IT, STOP IT, STOP IT!” the
nasty things screamed out at me.

I staggered out of the bathroom like a
drunk girl in a nightclub and bumbled my way down the hall towards Donald’s
room.  Even with the stench of gas spreading throughout the
apartment, I could still smell my brother’s distinctive funk when I entered his
lair (for all I knew, it would manage to linger even after the room had been
reduced to ash and embers).  I had just begun dousing his bed’s
disgusting, bacteria riddled sheets when a sudden thud caught
me on the back of the head, knocking me to the ground and causing me to drop
the gas can.  I felt my vision blur and my head become as light as a
balloon – two obvious signs that I likely experienced a
concussion.  Blood started to dribble from back of my head where I
had been struck, spilling down my neck and onto the floor – an even more
obvious sign that I likely experienced a concussion.

Woozy, but still determined, I willed
myself to wobbly feet.  The blow to the back of my skull had raised
more than a few questions in my aching head – questions that were
answered as soon as my eyes began to regain their focus.

It was standing in the
doorway.  At first I thought it to be some sort of hallucination
– an image of delirium brought on by my recent head trauma, but the
longer I tried to convince myself that what I was looking at was imaginary the
more I realized it wasn’t.  Its shape was vaguely
anthropomorphic.  I say vaguely because it seemed to be trying to
mimic the human form, but failing miserably at it.  The figure had
arms, legs, and a tiny bump where the neck should be that looked like a sorry
attempt for a head.  It was black as soot.  So dark in fact
that I didn’t realize at first that what I thought was its skin was actually
moving.  But moving it was!  You see this lone, dark
figure that had apparently struck me wasn’t a single entity at all.  No
sir! It was an assemblage of those little black
bugs!  Millions of them all converging together like Voltron.

I scrambled for the gas can, but the
abomination tackled me back down to the floor.  A multitude of tiny
insect legs tickled my skin as the monstrosity pinned me to the ground with its
makeshift hands.  It was extremely strong; I squirmed and tugged as
hard as I could, but I couldn’t break its grip.  The hiss of the bugs
was so loud at this point that I was positive my ears were going to start
bleeding.

“You’ll be ours!  You’ll be
ours right now!”

The figure pinning me to the ground
suddenly began to disperse as the little black bugs, thousands at a time,
launched into an attack.  I was swarmed with them and not just
externally.  They invaded every orifice of my body.  I
could feel them crawling up my nostrils, maneuvering in and out of my sinuses.  They
traveled down my trachea, using it as a tunnel, and scurried along the inside
walls of my lungs.  I tried to cry out, but my screams were stifled
by the thousands of bugs flooding my mouth.

That wasn’t the only place the nasty
things decided to violate though.  They entered me through every part
of my body – even making themselves at home in my digestive tract and
my... urethra.  The pain was immeasurable.  The last thing
I remember was passing out in agony – that horrible hiss drowning
everything out as the world faded to black.

***

I wish I could tell you that the bugs
were gone when I came to or that I somehow found a way to expel them from my
body, but I’m afraid that I would be lying if I did.  You see, they
attacked me a day ago and haven’t actually stopped since.

I woke up on the floor of my brother’s
room in even more pain than when I had passed out.  My skin is on
fire from the millions of bites I’ve suffered since they started swarming
me.  The slew of bugs crawling up and down my throat makes it feel
like I’m breathing through a straw.  I swallow them by the hundreds,
but more just keep coming to replace them.  They’ve probably laid
their eggs inside my intestines by now.

It’s ok though because I’ve won and they
know it.  That’s why they called the cops on me.  Even when
they invaded my body, I refused to cave to their demands.  I refused
to become my brother and they hate me for it.

Pretty soon the little bastards won’t be
able to torment anyone ever again.  My father’s revolver is sitting
in my lap as I write this and I have every intention of using it before the
police come crashing through my door.  But it gets
better!  The carpet is still soaked in gasoline and I sure as hell
don’t plan on going out alone.  It should only take one match to turn
this whole apartment building into a scene from Backdraft.

So Adiós world – and a very special
goodbye to those little black bugs.  I suppose we’ll meet again in
Hell.  I’ll be smiling when I see them though…because I know the
score.

***

From the Miskatonic Times,

October 22, 2013

6 Dead In Student Housing Fire

Police Investigating Possible Arson

Six people were killed in the tragic fire
that occurred at a student-housing building located off the University campus
late Tuesday night.  Many of the building’s tenants were able to
evacuate the scene.  The building was reportedly engulfed in flames
even before first responders had arrived.  Witnesses say they were
awoken by a gunshot coming from the apartment that the fire is believed to have
started in.

“The fire spread fast,” said Fire Chief
Bill Marshall.  “The death toll might have been much higher if the
gunshot hadn’t alerted many of the building’s residents.”

The shot is thought to have been fired by
third year student, Donald Miller.  Both the fire and the gunshot are
suspected to have emanated from his apartment.  Miller lived alone
and those who had met him, described the junior to be “extremely introverted”.

“I didn’t know him too well,” said one of
his neighbors who survived the fire, “but he was always so hard on himself when
we did speak.  He really seemed to have self-esteem
issues.  It was strange, he was constantly cleaning his apartment and
complaining about how dirty it was.  I never saw the inside of it –
I don’t think anybody did, but I couldn’t imagine it being as bad as he
said.  It seemed like every other day I would see him walking to his
door with a shopping bag full of cleaning supplies.”

Miller’s mother and father declined to
speak to the Miskatonic Times about whether or not they believed their only son
was responsible for the fire, but have offered their condolences to all of
those who lost loved ones in the tragic event.

Miller’s body was one of the six
recovered from the fire.  The coroner’s report states that he died
from a fatal gunshot wound to the head shortly after the fire
started.  There were no drugs or alcohol present in his body at the
time of his death.  However, some of the coroner’s findings have
raised questions about Miller’s death.  According to the report, even
though he was not badly burned his body was recovered with severe skin
damage.  These injuries do not appear to be inflicted from the fire
and may possibly have been caused by insect bites.  His body has been
transported to St. Joseph’s Medical Center so more tests can be run.

The Miskatonic Police are currently
investigating Donald Miller’s role in the fire.

The Eye of Ra

Jay Bennett
hadn’t noticed the chubby man sitting alone in the corner booth until it was
nearly time to close.  He had been wiping down a couple of pub tables
in the bar area when he spotted him, noshing on a plate of Big Buck’s
En Fuego Jalapeño Poppers and watching Division III college football
highlights play on the television mounted on the wall.  There was
nothing particularly interesting about the chubby patron.  His brown,
argyle sweater vest and khaki trousers didn’t exactly command attention and his
plain unassuming features did nothing to accentuate his remarkably ordinary
appearance.  Yet still, there was something curious about the man
that Jay couldn’t quite put his finger on.

Closing time
meant Jay would soon be spending the next hour and a half mopping puddles of
urine off the bathroom floor and hand drying dishes in the kitchen, while
Trevor, his nineteen-year-old zit-faced assistant manager, played Candy Crush
and browsed Facebook on his phone.  Jay hated closing the restaurant
– mostly because he despised answering to a lazy, community college
washout almost half his age.  From where he was standing, he could
see Trevor sitting in the office at the back of the restaurant, staring into
his phone and giggling away like an acid-dropping rave bunny at Burning Man.

Any
minute, Jay thought to
himself.  Any minute the little shit’s gonna stroll his
pimply ass out here and force me to scrub the toilets ‘till they fucking
shine.  I just know it-

“Um, Excuse
me?”  The voice that interrupted Jay’s pity-party was soft and
sophisticated.  Right away he could sense an air of intelligence in
its tone – something not commonly heard at Big Buck’s Wings &
Beer.  Jay looked up to see the man in the brown argyle sweater
vest waving him over to his booth.  “Yes, you sir.  Excuse
me, but may I speak to you for a moment?”

Jay glanced back towards the office.  Trevor was busy furiously
tapping away at the screen of his iPhone.  He let out a sigh and
sauntered over to the booth.

“You need the
check?  We’re closing soon.”

“Not necessary,”
replied the chubby fellow.  “I already cleared my tab with the pretty
young thing who works behind the bar.”

Jay tossed the
towel he was holding over his shoulder and folded his arms across his chest
like a nightclub doorman.  “Then what can I do for you, mister?”

“Well,” the man
paused briefly to collect his words.  “You’re Jay Bennett, correct?”

Hearing his name
come out the mouth of a total stranger felt like an unexpected punch to the
gut.

“I am,” Jay said,
doing his best to appear unmoved by the chubby man’s inquiry.  It was
defense mechanism he had developed during his stint in prison.  Jay
found out very fast while serving his time that the best reaction to an
unforeseen predicament was typically having no reaction at all.  “And
you are?”

“Oh yes, where
are my manners?”  The man in the sweater vest extended a sweaty palm
out towards Jay.  “My name is Robert Wilkins.  Uh, Doctor
Robert Wilkins.”  Jay remained silent, stonewalling the doctor,
causing him to retract his hand.  The chubby man studied the ex-con
silently before continuing on.  “FYI, I’m not the kind of doctor who
went to med school.  My degrees are cultural anthropology and
archeology – Ancient Egyptian studies to be exact.  My
colleague and I have published hundreds of papers on the subject.  Feel
free to look me up if you don’t believe me.  A quick Google search
should confirm my claims.”

“Honestly, I
don’t really give a shit,” grunted Jay.  “What is it that you want,
already?”

The doctor neatly
folded his napkin and used it to dab his brow – a mannerism reminiscent
of a 19th century plantation
owner.  “Right.  I suppose there’s no further need for
introductions. Might as well get right down to it.  Jay Bennett,
I’m here tonight because I have a job for you.”

“I already have a
job.  And if you’re trying to hire me to do something illegal, then
look elsewhere.  I’m on parole and I don’t plan on going back to
prison any time soon.”

Jay snatched the
towel from his shoulder and started towards the bathrooms.

“Wait!  Please!”
the doctor desperately blurted out.  “This job pays well I
promise!”  Jay spun around with every intent to tell him
off, but froze when he spotted the sly smile that had crawled its way across
the chubby man’s face.  “ Besides, it’s a hell of a lot more fun than
scrubbing toilets.”

***

The doctor waved
a hand, inviting Jay to sit across the table from him.  With two
pudgy fingers he nudged his plate of Jalapeño poppers aside then bent over to
retrieve a black leather briefcase that had been sitting at his
feet.  Jay scooted in to the other side of the booth.  He
swiveled his head to glance back at the office.  Trevor was still
gawking like an idiot into his phone.

“How do you know
my name?” Jay asked.

“My associate
gave me your information,” he said.  “Who you are.  What
you do.  Where to find you.  He told me about your criminal
record.  Twelve counts of burglary, three counts of drug trafficking,
and assault with a deadly weapon.  He said you beat a man with a
crowbar?”

“I was defending
myself.  The guy shot my partner.”

“Yeah, after the
two of you broke into the man’s house.  You’re lucky he made a full
recovery or else you’d probably still be locked up.  I’m surprised
you even found a gig at a hole like this.”

Jay glared at the
doctor, his lips twisted into a frustrated scowl.

“I’m not here to
judge though.  After all-” the chubby man popped the latches of his
briefcase and lifted the lid, “I was hoping to encourage you to break the law
one more time.”

He removed a red
envelope from his briefcase and placed it on the table, pinning it with his
index finger.  “What do you know about Egyptian mythology, Jay?”

“I know a
little.”

“Have you ever
heard of Ra, the sun god?”

“I think so,”
answered Jay.  “He’s the one with the bird head, right?”

“Very good!” a
proud light beamed in the doctor’s eyes.  “That is
correct.  Ra is the most important god in Egyptian
mythology.  He was believed to have ruled over the sky and
earth.  And his head wasn’t just that of any bird.  Most
often, it was depicted as either a falcon or hawk.  Now, this was no
accident.  You see, birds of prey have the keenest of eyesight and
legend has it, the Eye of Ra could see all.”

He scooted the
envelope across the table towards Jay then lifted his finger, releasing it
before renewing his spiel.

“There’s three
thousand dollars cash, a photograph, an address, and a phone number in that
envelope, Jay.  The money is yours whether you take the job or
not.  If you do accept my offer, there will be an additional $7,000
in it for you.  The photograph is of an artifact I’m asking you to
steal for me.  It’s called the Eye of Ra.  It’s a very rare
gold coin with an extremely special engraving in it.  It was
excavated during a dig I helped oversee one year ago and I want it back.”

“And the address
is where I can find it?”  Jay was already thumbing through the
envelope’s contents.

“Yes.  It’s
the home of an ex-colleague of mine.  He’s the one who has taken
it.  It shouldn’t be too difficult for a man
like yourself to retrieve.  He doesn’t own a gun and I’m
certain he never turns on his home security system.  Plus he’s
blind.  I mean, all you have to do is keep your mouth shut and
there’s no way he could ever identify you.  Call the phone number
once you have the Eye of Ra in your possession.  We will arrange a
rendezvous point and I will gladly pay you the rest of the money when you hand
it over to me.”

“This artifact is
worth a lot of money?” asked Jay.

The doctor
laughed.  “No monetary value other than the gold it’s made from,
which by the way, wouldn’t get you as much as I’m willing to
pay.  However, for me the artifact is priceless.”

The doctor
snapped his briefcase shut, quickly securing the latches before standing up
from the table.

“Hold up, where
are you going?” asked Jay.  “I still a lot of
questions.  Why me?”

“Every single one
of your questions will be answered soon, Jay, but I’m afraid I don’t have time
to stick around right now.  You’re a skilled thief.  This
job will be a cinch for you.  Call me tonight when you have
the Eye of Ra.”

“Tonight?”

The chubby man in
the brown argyle sweater vest flashed him a haughty smile.

“Goodnight,
Jay.  Hope to hear from you soon.”

Jay tucked the
envelope into the waistband of his pants as he watched the peculiar patron
amble out the door.  A shrill high-pitched screech suddenly broke the
silence of the now empty restaurant floor.

“Bennett!”  Jay
twisted around in his chair to see Trevor’s lanky frame hovering in the office
doorway.  “Big Buck doesn’t pay you to sit on your
ass!  Get in the bathroom before I call your P.O!  I want
to be able to eat off those toilets!”

***

The rest of Jay’s
shift seemed to fly by as he mulled over the doctor’s
proposition.  Every now and then he’d run his fingers across his
waist, feeling for the contours of the envelope still stuffed inside his pants,
just to make sure he hadn’t dreamed the whole conversation up.  The
doctor had told him the gig paid $10,000 – more money than he made in
three months wiping down tables and washing dishes.  He thought about
how degrading it was working under Trevor.  There was only four
months left on his parole and he had already decided he was going to quit his
humiliating court appointed job as soon as he was out from under the thumb of
the justice system.

That kind of
cash would really help out until I could find a new way to make some
money, he thought to himself while
puffing on his after work cigarette in the parking lot of Big Buck’s.

Jay tugged the
envelope from his jeans and searched through it until he found the photo of the
artifact.  An icy cold chill swept through him as he gazed down to
the picture in his hand.  The design etched into the face of the coin
was breathtaking – a pattern so mesmerizing Jay didn’t even
notice the cigarette fall from his mouth while he ogled it.  All at
once, he felt the urge to hold the coin – to grip it between his fingers.

“The Eye of Ra,”
Jay whispered.

His decision had
been made.  Not more than a minute later he was punching the address
into his GPS as he pulled his car out of the parking lot.

***

The clock on
Jay’s dashboard flashed 2:00AM by the time he pulled up to the house his
navigation system had directed him to.  He killed the engine and
stared out the window at his target for what felt like an eternity, watching
for signs of life.  With any luck, the doctor’s former colleague was
out of town and Jay would be able to search the residence at his
leisure.  He slipped his hand into his sweatshirt pocket and gripped
the handle of his butterfly knife – a safeguard he hoped he wouldn’t need
to use.

Jay exited his
vehicle and crept around the back searching for an open window.  The
home was in a fairly secluded area with no visible nearby houses, virtually
eliminating the possibility of nosy neighbors and unexpected
eyewitnesses.  It was the kind of place that a cat burglar dreamed of
hitting.

Jay slinked his
way through the shadowy yard towards a wide arched window in the back of the
house.  With a gentle nudge of his hand against the glass it swung
open, allowing him to slip inside.

The doc just
might have been right about this being an easy job, Jay thought.  This guy doesn’t even lock
his windows.

He was now
standing in a living room decorated with expensive looking furniture and
ostentatious art.  Hanging on the wall was a replica of
Picasso’s The Weeping Woman.  Jay examined it closely,
trying to discern if it had any value, even going so far as to lift it from its
hanger, before he noticed the Aaron Brother’s Art Mart sticker tag that was
still attached to the back of the frame.

“No need to hang
it back up, Mr. Bennett, I never liked that piece anyways.  My
ex-wife decorated the place.”

The voice stopped
Jay dead in his tracks.

“Yes, Mr.
Bennett.  I know you’re down there.  Won’t you please join
me in my study?”

Jay leaned the
painting against the wall, and scanned the room searching for the source of the
voice.

“The study, Mr.
Bennett!  I’m in my study upstairs.”

He located the
staircase in the foyer.  Without a word, Jay removed the knife from
his pocket and tiptoed up the steps.  The voice had identified him by
name.  Panic shot through every inch of his body.  Visions
of once again donning an orange jumpsuit began swimming through his mind like
deformed, mutant goldfish in the New York City sewers.

“Second door on the right,” the voice called out when he reached the top of the
stairs.

The floorboards
squealed under Jay’s feet as stepped down the dark hallway towards the door the
voice appeared to be emanating from.  He paused when he reached it
and squeezed the handle of his knife tight in his fist.  There was no
hint of light leaking out from underneath the door.  Whoever was
waiting for him in the room was doing so in pitch-blackness.

“No need to
knock, Mr. Bennett.” answered the voice.  “I’m already expecting
you.”

Jay pushed down
on the handle and cracked the door.  Its hinges seemed to scream as
he opened it just wide enough to poke his head through.  There was no
visibility.  With his free hand he yanked his cellphone free from his
back pocket, turned on the screen, and waved it in front of him, bathing the
room in a pale blue light.

Floor to ceiling
bookshelves lined both sides of what looked to be an office.  At the
wall directly opposite Jay was an elegant cherry wood desk.  Sitting
behind it in a leather office chair was an elderly bearded man.  Jay
cringed when he looked closer to see the upper half of the man’s face
completely wrapped in bandages.

He turned his
head in Jay’s direction.  “Come on in, Mr. Bennett.  I
promise I don’t bite.”

Jay pushed the
door all the way open and took a couple timid steps inside the room.

“I hear you’re
looking for the Eye of Ra,” said the old man – a perverse smile warped
his wrinkled face.  “Well, it must be your lucky day because you’ve
come to the right place.”

***

“I don’t want to
hurt you,” warned Jay, “but I’m prepared to.  Just give me the coin
and I’ll be on my way.”

The old man
scoffed.

“Ha!  You
don’t want to hurt me?!  Unfortunately that’s not for you to decide!”

“Listen-”

“Quiet, Mr. Bennett!”
the old man snapped.  “You’ll be leaving with the Eye of Ra
tonight.  There’s no question in that, but I figured I’d at least
disclose to you a little about the Hell you’re about to unleash on yourself
first.  My associate, Dr. Wilkins, already told you about the
coin.  We excavated it a year ago during a dig of an ancient unmarked
tomb recently discovered 53 kilometers outside of Cairo.”

“Dr. Wilkins?”
asked Jay.

“Yes, Dr. Robert
Wilkins, my associate – the man who hired you to steal the artifact.  Who
do you think requested him to seek you out?  I’m afraid you’ve been
set up, friend.  I know that must come as a bit of a shock.”

“I’m not
shocked,” replied Jay.  “I just don’t believe you.”

The old man
smirked.

“Oh you will in
time.  Now, where was I?  Ah yes, the
dig.  Wilkins and I were able to recover quite a bit from the tomb
– most of which is currently touring the country, travelling from museum
to museum.  The exhibit is quite lovely and I’d advise you to give it
a visit next time it stops back in town, but that won’t be necessary.”

Jay darted
towards the old man and swung his knife downwards, burying it in the desk’s
polished wooden face.

“That’s
enough!  Just give me the coin or the next time I stick this knife in
anything it’s going to be your neck!”

The old man
opened the drawer of his desk and extracted a small leather pouch from
it.  Now that he was closer, Jay could make out brown splotches
speckling the bandages that covered his eyes – dry crusty
blood.  It looked like the wraps hadn’t been changed in ages.

“The coin is
right here, Mr. Bennett, but I hope you don’t think you’ve intimidated me into
giving it to you.  It will be yours in time, but I will finish
telling you my story first.”

“Listen I don’t
care about-”

“Not all of what
we recovered from the tomb made it to the exhibit though,” the old man
continued.  “You see, the coin in this bag conveniently went
missing without anyone else even knowing it existed.  I discovered it
myself, in the hand of one of one of the mummified corpses we found in the tomb
– a young priestess no older than sixteen when she was
buried.  It goes against my code of ethics to take souvenirs from an excavation, but the
coin…well just look for yourself.”

He reached his
fingers into the pouch drew out a gold coin about the same size as a fifty cent
piece then placed it on the desk in front of him.  Jay held his
breath.  The design etched into its face was hypnotic – far
more captivating in person than it was in the photo.

“The Eye of Ra,”
the old man whispered.

Jay reached out
an arm, but the old man snatched it up before he could grab it.

“Not yet!” he
shouted.  “I’m not done with my story!  I discovered
something fascinating about this artifact very soon after taking it in my hand.  It
passed on to me a strange ability – a sort of clairvoyance if you
will.  I could sense things, Mr. Bennett.  I knew what
others were thinking before they said it – what things would happen
before they actually occurred.  Soon after, these powers took on
other attributes.  I learned I could read minds, anyone’s I
wanted.  I didn’t’ even need to be in the same room as them –
hell the same continent even!  That’s how I discovered my wife was
having an affair.”

Jay tried to say
something, but he couldn’t find the words.  His eyes remained glued
to the coin in the old man’s hands.

“Dr. Wilkins was
the only other person I ever shared this secret with, but even he doesn’t
understand what my powers would eventually become.  He thinks they
just drove me mad, but he doesn’t understand.  He doesn’t understand
that the Eye of Ra really does see all!”

“Give me the
coin,” muttered Jay.  “I…I need it.”

The old man
laughed.

“Of course you
do!  I knew that the power was getting to be too much once I realized
I couldn’t turn it off.  The thoughts of billions of people all
streaming through my mind was maddening in its own right, but that was just the
tip of the iceberg really.  The Eye of Ra’s true power is much more
horrifying.  Imagine, Mr. Bennett.  Imagine being able to
see everything!  Everything that ever did exist and everything that
ever will exist!  My eyes no longer perceived the world the way that
you do.  My mind no longer experienced time in a linear
fashion.  I’ve seen it all; all the good, and yes, Mr. Bennett,
all the evil as well.  I witnessed Vikings rape and pillage
civilizations that no longer exist.  I viewed countless genocides
occur throughout the course of human history.  I looked through the
terrified eyes of a 12-year-old Pakistani girl in the year 2087, as the heat of
a nuclear bomb engulfed her and her schoolmates in flames.

The old man
whipped his hand up to his face and began tearing away at his bandages.

“I couldn’t take
it anymore, Mr. Bennett!  I couldn’t bear to look any longer!  That’s
why I did something about it!  That’s why I dug my eyes out of my
face!”

Jay recoiled at
the horrid sight now in front of him.  Two gaping blood caked craters
sat in place of eyes on the man’s mutilated face.

“Dr. Wilkins
believed he was helping me con you into transferring the curse, but he doesn’t
realize it doesn’t work like that.  It won’t transfer; it will
spread.  Even removing my eyes has only given me temporary
relief.  The visions are already starting to come back to
me.  Soon, they’ll dominate my every thought again.  The
only way to be rid of it is to die.”

“You’re fucking insane!” shouted Jay.

“And you’re in
denial.  There’s no point trying to convince you
anyways.  You’ll learn the truth soon enough.  You’re the
next man to bear the burden of this power.  I’ve already seen
it.  That’s why I had Wilkins convince you to come
here.  There is no escaping time, Mr. Bennett.  Tonight you
will wield the Power of Ra just as I have and I…tonight I will die and finally
be free of this wretched curse!”

The old man
stretched an arm out and ripped Jay’s knife from the desk.  Without
warning, the maniac dove at him, slicing the blade wildly through the
air.  Jay grabbed hold of his arm knocking the blade away, but
dropped his cellphone as they wrestled to the ground.  With Jay’s
only source of light gone, darkness once again enveloped the
study.  The old man was stronger than he had
anticipated.  Jay gagged as the blind lunatic wrapped a hand around
his throat.  It felt as though he was crushing his
trachea.  Jay reached his arm out, desperately searching in the
blackness for something to strike his attacker with.  A hard plastic
object brushed up against his fingertips and instantly he knew what it
was.  Jay wrapped his hand around the handle of his knife then thrust
his it upwards until he felt it penetrate flesh.

The grip began to
loosen around Jay’s neck and with a thud the old man slumped to
floor.  Jay could feel the warmth of his blood begin to pool around
both of their bodies.  He pawed around on the ground for his
cellphone, eventually finding it underneath the cherry wood desk.  A
pale blue light swam back into the room when he powered the screen back on.

The old man’s
body lay motionless on the floor, the point of Jay’s butterfly knife submerged
deep within the side of throat.  Jay leaned against the desk and
gasped for air.  Under the light from his cellphone the blood still
spilling from the old man’s neck took on a deep purple hue.  Jay bent
over, yanked the blade from his throat then wiped it down on a part of the
carpet the old man hadn’t gushed on.

In the dead man’s
hand Jay spotted the coin.  He pried the artifact from the corpse’s
fingers and stumbled out the door.  An ice-cold shiver ran up his
spine, causing his body to tremble when he looked down to the bewitching
artifact resting his palm.  There was something strangely comforting
about holding it.

When he made it outside to his car, Jay searched through the red envelope the
doctor had given him until he located the phone number then dialed it into his
keypad.

“I’m sorry, but
the number you’re trying to reach has been disconnected.  Please hang
up and try again.”

Jay cursed into
his phone at the automated message.  He had been given a fake
number.  He sighed and started up the engine of his
car.  At least he still had the doctor’s name.  It wouldn’t
be hard to look him up.  Now that Jay had a homicide on his hands, he
figured he’d pay the doctor a visit in order to tie up any loose ends.  As
Jay pulled away from the house he reflected on what the crazy old man had said
to him.

The Eye of Ra
see’s all.  What a crock of shit.  He
thought.

A pair of
headlights approached in the distance from the opposite
direction.  Ever so briefly, Jay felt his brain go numb as a static
image appeared in his head – a picture he could see in his mind’s eye.

“It’s a blue
Dodge Neon,” he unconsciously blurted out.

A 2005 marine
blue Dodge Neon drove past his car.

The Woman In The Red Sundress

The wind feels amazing as it
whips past my face. There she is.  She is but a speck in the
distance, but she’s there, the woman in the red sundress. She doesn’t know me,
but I will meet her very soon. This I promise.

I wonder when we meet what she’ll
sound like, what she’ll smell like, what she’ll feel like. I wish I could
freeze this moment in time just so I could admire her from afar, but alas, the
woman in the red sundress grows closer.

You can never truly appreciate
the majesty of the city unless you’ve seen it like I’m seeing it right now.
It’s breathtaking. The chaos and disorder of this metropolis – rough
and rowdy city streets I’ve traveled so many times. They seem to transform into
a picture of serenity and tranquility from here.  Still, the woman
in the red sundress grows closer.

Her hair is raven colored with
auburn streaks.  I can see it more clearly now.  I close my
eyes and stretch my arms like a bird, letting my other senses do the
work.  The freedom overwhelming my body is
intoxicating.  It’s as if all my sorrows and all my anxiety have
escaped me.  And though my eyes are shut tight, I know the woman in
the red sundress grows closer.

After a few moments I open my
eyes again.  People are looking at me now. A balding man in a suit
with a briefcase points up at me.

“Look out!” he shouts.

I don't care.  I feel incredible,
like a shooting star that's journey is finally coming to an end after eons of
aimlessly wandering the cosmos.  I can see her face now. The woman in
the red sundress is staring at me. She’s so beautiful. Her candy red lipstick
matches her ensemble. I can even smell her perfume.  Its lavender
scented.  I had guessed it would have been citrusy, but I am not
disappointed.  She reaches her hands to the sky as if she’s beckoning
me. I can almost touch her now.  She screams-

Splat

POW

As far as I know
the mission is still classified and I’m pretty sure that I could get into a
whole lot of trouble for recounting the events of that night.  Hell,
I’ve heard about guys getting court-martialed for less.  Back when I
was doing basic, I heard about a story out in San Diego, about about a Naval
Officer who was rung up for sticking his dick in a subordinate’s glass of
chocolate milk.  Chocolate milk.  I mean, I love a
tall glass of milk as much as the next guy, but is that really a
reason to strip a man of his accomplishments? Of his dignity? Someone
who’s devoted his whole life to defending the rights and freedoms of his
country?  If you ask the Navy it was.  God help the
serviceman who does anything to rock the boat.  Well, I have a
feeling that this little story of mine is going to do a whole hell of a lot of
boat rocking.

Thing is, I’m not
in the U.S. Military anymore so I don’t really give a damn what Uncle Sam
thinks.  Besides, it seems like now days any ex trigger
puller who’s seen his fair share of shit is cashing in on a book deal
or getting some pretend tough guy, Hollywood actor to play them in a
movie.  The difference between them and me is that I’m not doing this
for the money or fame. I’m doing it because I feel like I have to
– like I have an ethical obligation to keep the public informed.  Part
of me hopes that others will read this story and remember what my unit and I
went through.  If so, then maybe they’ll be able to recognize the
signs that I wasn’t able to see.  Maybe they’ll be able to trust
their gut enough to ask the right questions when things just don’t add
up. The other part of me thinks that I’ve gone completely insane for even
entertaining the idea that inspired me to write this.

Before I go too
far, please understand that if you’re expecting this to be some sort of
moralistic tale about the horrors of war or a political statement about the
United States’ foreign policy, think again.  I never was much for
politics and as far as I’m concerned, anyone who’s gotten paid to kill (be it
for country or otherwise) doesn’t really deserve a seat at the table when
discussing what’s right and what’s wrong with this world.

Once my story is
out, there won’t be any hiding where it came from.  If the CIA wants
to find me and lock my ass up in Gitmo, it shouldn’t be too hard so I might as
well lay all my cards out on the table.  My name is,
James Williar.  From 1996 to 2008 I was an active member of the
military.  For seven of those years I served as team leader for an
Elite Special Forces unit for the U.S. Green Berets.  As a member of
the United States Army Special Forces I’ve pretty much done it all – from
providing protection to foreign diplomats in war torn countries to assisting in
the raid of South American drug compounds.  It was the type of job
that takes you all over the world.  Before I turned 28, I had been to
four different continents and visited over two dozen countries.

This particular
story takes place in February of 2002, when my unit was called upon to take out
what we were told was a suspected terrorist training complex nestled within
Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush Mountains.

It was a
different time.  America had just invaded Afghanistan; most of the
world was still reeling from September 11th.  The war’s
approval rating was through the roof and the whole damn country was out for
blood.  My unit was no different.  We were hungry, we
wanted in on the action.  It was personal for us soldiers back then.  Maybe
that’s why we were so eager to jump into a fight even though we knew there was
something unusual about the job we had been selected for.

Even in briefing,
the details surrounding the mission didn’t smell right.  A lot of us
knew it too, but like I said before, we didn’t care.  Besides, I
learned a long time ago that you don’t get anywhere in The Army by asking
questions.  When your superiors order you to do something, you do
it.  What you don’t do is poke and prod for additional information.  They’ll
give you all the intel you need to know to get the job done, but not an
ounce more.  Compartmentalizing is what they call
it.  That’s how the higher ups like to operate
things.  Everyone’s just a cog in the machine, working together to serve
a higher purpose.

We were told that
the compound was located on the outskirts of a small isolated village about
150 Klicks due east of the Afghanistan-Pakistan
border.  Only about one hundred people, mostly impoverished
villagers, lived in the area surrounding the training center.  Twice
a month, a group of Islamic extremists, believed to be associated with
the Haquanni Network, would drive a truckload full of food and
rations to the locals and distribute it out.  This was considered
strange behavior because the villagers didn’t appear to produce anything useful
of note.

Often times,
terrorist organizations offer assistance to groups of people who harvest and
cultivate marijuana or poppies (used for opium).  For just the price
of a few goats, some bread, and cheap medical supplies, they can turn around
and sell the crops for big money to help fund their outfit.  However,
in the case of this particular village, the people were never asked give a
thing – and still the insurgents would show up with supplies. Just to be
clear, these weren’t benevolent militant radicals.  They were known
to be ruthless drug smugglers and arms dealers – psychopaths hiding under
the guise of religious revolutionaries.  Intel had more than enough
evidence linking them to some pretty horrific stuff, including the rape and
pillage of a small village that was being extorted by a rival
group.  Thirty-two men and boys executed while the women – even
the young girls – were sold to sex traffickers in Eastern
Europe.  To these people, human life held little value.  They
didn’t just do things out of the goodness of their hearts.

Even more
peculiar than the relationship between the terrorist group and the villagers
was the facility that we had been instructed to hit.  It had been
known about for some time, but satellite images suggested that it hadn’t even
been active since July of 2001, a few months before the 9/11
attacks.  All indications pointed to the place being completely
deserted, yet we had been passed the incongruous orders to infiltrate and terminate
any and all terrorist threats residing inside the compound.  Keep in
mind, a drone strike could do the exact same thing – quicker and more
efficiently too, but for some reason Washington decided to send us.

All of this left
us a little baffled as to why exactly our number had been
called.  Even though we weren’t used to getting the whole story, it
seemed like we had been afforded even less information than
usual.  It was obvious to most of us that something was definitely
up.  A few of the boys even joked after the briefing that all
the hush hush surrounding the assignment might have meant
that they were sending us in after Osama.  Of course if we really
were being sent to scratch a big name off Uncle Sam’s hit list, we probably
would have been informed to keep an eye out for him.  That’s usually
the protocol with high profile targets – information even a cog could
find use for.

Two black hawk
helicopters airlifted twelve of us in the same night we were
briefed.  The choppers touched down right in front of the facility
just long enough for us to put our boots to the ground before taking off again
into the night sky.  They weren’t going far though; I was told that
they’d be available for air support if things got too heavy for us on the
ground.

Aside from the buzz
of the helicopters fading off over the mountaintops, there wasn’t a sound in
the air that evening.  We may have been flown in under the cover of
night, but if someone really was in the compound, then it would have
been impossible not to hear us coming from miles away.  In the
village, a few curious locals began stepping out of their huts to see what all
of the ruckus was about.  As the team leader, I told my men to think
of them as civvies and not to engage unless given orders to fire.

I remember how
uncharacteristically warm the weather was for February in
Afghanistan.  The heat and humidity felt artificial as we stood
underneath the stars that night – as if it was being syphoned in from
another climate.  I could feel the perspiration begin to collect on
my forehead as the abnormally muggy desert air swathed my unit.  It was smothering.

The compound
wasn’t massive, but right away I could tell it would take a while to do a
proper sweep.  From the drop off point the main building looked to be
somewhere around 4500 square feet, although it felt like a palace, towering
over the tiny, flimsy huts of the villagers.  A ten-foot cement wall
ran all the way around the perimeter of the large grey building, fortifying the
facility and giving it the look of a penitentiary.  Thinking back, I
find it kind of amazing that they were able to get the materials they needed to
erect the impressive structure all the way up into the mountains considering
there was only one windy dirt road that accessed the area.

We proceeded with
caution to the south end of the facility where we found the gate chained shut
and secured with a single padlock.  The odd thing was, it was facing
outwards towards us as if whoever locked it did so from the
outside.  One quick snip from a pair of bolt cutters later and we
were through the gate, standing in the courtyard of the compound.

We found no
surprises behind the walls.  It was laid out exactly how the photos
had suggested in the briefing.  There was a couple of latrines and an
empty, unlocked storage shed, but aside from that, little else.  The
building itself had no windows, making it impossible to get a glimpse of anyone
who might have been waiting for us inside.

I broke my unit
up into three teams of four – each one lead by a different soldier fluent
in Farsi, the main language spoken in
Afghanistan.  Sergeant Horrowitz, my unit’s Warrant Officer, was
the most fluent so I left him in command of the team at the entrance of the
compound.  The villagers appeared to be getting more curious so I
instructed Horrowitz to warn them off if they got too
close.  The other two teams, one lead by Sergeant Nichols, who was
also fairly proficient in the regional dialect, and the other lead by myself,
were tasked with breeching the facility using the doors located on the Eastern
and Western ends of the building.  Once inside, our mission was to
clear the compound and make sure no potential terrorist threats were left
alive.  All three teams were to remain in radio contact at all times.

Before we entered
the facility, I made sure my entire team was alert and on their
toes.  Even though satellite images hadn’t spotted anyone on the
premises in eight months, I wasn’t about to let my unit get caught with our
pants around our ankles.

There’s really no
way to describe the kind of adrenaline rush you feel when you know that at any
point, the place could erupt into a firefight.  It’s that sense of
walking into the unknown – the idea that death could be waiting for you
just around the corner that gets your blood pumping like nothing
else.  It’s some sort of sick combination of excitement and
fear.  You could liken it to the
sensation you get right before your rollercoaster hits its first drop, only
multiplied by a thousand.

There was no
firefight though.  No gunshots, no militant extremists, no nothing waiting for us on the first
floor.  The place was just as empty and uninhabited as
our intel had suggested.  No, not empty, that’s not the
right word.  It was abandoned.  As if whoever
was there got up in the middle of whatever they were doing and
left.  Loaded guns were propped up against the wall, half-eaten moldy
bowls of crud were sitting on the tables, there were even prayer mats laid out
across the floor.  From the looks of it, the place had been deserted
for a long, long time.

We rendezvoused
with Nichols and his team after a quick sweep.  I ordered them to
look for any hidden doors or exits while my team headed upstairs to the
building’s second level.  We had just started our ascent up the steps
when I heard Horrowitz – still out by the gate – chime in
on my headset.

“Captain Williar,
the civvies are grow’n in numbers, sir.  We got ‘bout three
dozen of ‘em out here right now.”

“How close are
they,” I asked.

“Still ‘bout a
hundred meters away.”

“Sit tight,” I
said.  “Try not to get spooked.  It’s not every day a
couple o’ choppers land in your back yard.  They’re probably
wondering what the hell is going on.  If they get closer, warn them
back.  Do not use force unless it is absolutely necessary.”

“Copy that.”

Click.

I could
definitely tell Horrowitz was jumpy over the com.  I
don’t blame him, I probably wouldn’t be all that comfortable either if I was
tasked with staving off a growing mob of restless villagers.  He and
the rest of his team were outnumbered 9:1 out there.  Still, for
whatever reason, I’d have gladly switched places with him.  There was
something rotten in the air and it wasn’t the developing situation outside that
was tripping my alarm.

Expertly trained
marksmen carrying high tech weaponry flanked me as we started to sweep the
second floor of the compound, but still I felt small.  My nerves were
working overtime.  It had gotten hard for me to breath, like a
thousand pound weight was sitting on my chest.  I had become aware of
an appalling sense of dread pervading its way through my
consciousness.  Each room we entered seemed to have a sort of
unnerving consistency to it – discarded Korans lying on the floor,
half-drunk canteens of water, stockpiles of fully automatic weapons left
unattended.  It was as if everyone had simply gone poof and disappeared.

I couldn’t shake
the feeling that at any moment we would be stumbling upon something too
horrifying for words.  It wasn’t terrorists I was worried
about.  I think subconsciously, I felt like something much worse than
armed insurgents was waiting for us in the upstairs rooms.

“Willi, this is
Nichols.”  Willi was Sergeant Nichol’s nickname for
me.  He knew I found it annoying, but insisted on calling me that,
especially during missions where correcting him wasn’t high on my priority
list.  “We found a door down here on the south-east end of the
complex.  Looks like it leads to a basement.  Could be a
tunnel down there.  We’re going to check it out.”

“Ok, let us know
if you find something,” I replied.

“Will do.”

Click.

We only had a
couple more rooms to clear and our sweep of the upstairs would be done, but I
was still on edge.  The ominous sense of dread that I had been
feeling was growing stronger with each and every passing minute.  A
terrible notion floated through my mind; like we were being funneled down a
deep dark hole, into the expecting jowls of some sort of carnivorous hellion
with a ravenous appetite waiting for its next meal.

I’ve been on
hundreds of missions and never felt as hopeless as I did advancing through that
dark corridor towards that final room.  It was different from the
others; I could feel it – almost as if it had been the source of the dark
aura that I had recognized the moment we stepped foot in the
facility.  Its door was noticeably bigger, easily twice the size of
the ones in the rooms we had cleared.  I practically swallowed my
tongue when I noticed the strange symbols and hieroglyphics carved into the
paneling.  I may not be able to read Farsi, but I
know the language when I see it written.  Like I said, my job has
taken me all over the world.  I’ve been immersed in dozens of
different cultures, but those markings were unlike anything I’ve ever seen
before – completely alien in nature.  I reached for the handle,
but stopped short when I heard Horrowitz’s voice crackle over
the com system again.

“Sergeant Williar,
we have a situation.  The villagers are armed.  I repeat,
the villagers are armed.”

“What?  What
do you mean?  How many of them are armed?”

“All of ‘em,
sir.  They’re waiving their guns around
and hollern’.  Would you like us to engage?”

“Negative!  Do
not fire on those villagers.  You have cover behind the walls, but
the four of you don’t have enough fire power to pick a fight with thirty armed
and angry Afghans.”  I tried to radio Nichols and his team in order
to send them out to the gate for support, but they weren’t
responding.  I assumed they had lost the signal when they went
underground.

Horrowitz spoke
up again.  “Sir, there’s twice as many of
‘em now.  I’d say closer to sixty.”

“And they’re all
armed?”

“Affirmative, I
don’t know how they got their hands on a stockpile like this, but if I had to
guess I’d say every able-bodied man and boy in the village is out here right
now.  Thing is – and I know this sounds nuts – but they
don’t seem aggressive.”

“What do you mean
they don’t seem aggressive?” I asked.

“Well, it looks
like they’re trying to wave us over to ‘em.  Some of ‘em got
their hands in the air and not a single one is point’n their weapons
directly at us.  They keep yelln’ stuff, but it don’t sound like
threats.”

“Can you hear
what they’re saying, Horrowitz?”

“Yeah,” he said,
“but it don’t make much sense, sir.”

“Well, what are they
saying?!” I demanded.  I was biting my bottom lip, praying our
chances of getting out of that place didn’t come down to a gunfight between us
and sixty pissed off Afghan villagers.

“They’re…they’re
saying to get away from the building.  That the weapon will kill us.”

“What!?  Are
we dealing with an IED here?  Is this place booby-trapped!?”

“No, I don’t
think so…I mean, I don’t know.  It’s hard to tell cause there’s so
many holler’n and they’re so far away.  They say we need to
leave and lock the gate…that we can’t trust you anymore.  They’re sayn’
that the buildn’ – it’s damned and y’all are too.”

It sounded like
the kind of ridiculous heretic you always hear in that part of the
world.  The building is damned.  They might as well
have been telling us that our souls were destined to rot in hell or
that Allah was about to smite us, but there was something about the compound that was making
me feel anxious and the villagers “warnings” weren’t helping to ease
those sentiments.  We only had one more room to clear and then I
could figure out how to deal with the situation outside, but working up the
will to finish our sweep was getting increasingly difficult.  I was
actually looking forward to getting out there and facing off with the
gun-toting villagers.  That’s how bad I wanted to leave that
god-awful place.

“Alright, sit
tight,” I instructed Horrowitz.  “We’ll be out there as soon as
we finish in here.”

“Roger, just be
careful, sir.”

Click.

I looked back to
the large door with strange markings carved into it.  I can’t speak
for the rest of my team, but the sight of it sickened me.  I pushed
through my sudden irrational feelings of disgust and tried the
handle.  It was locked of course.  A couple of us put our
shoulders to the door, but it we couldn’t get it to budge.  The thing
was solid as a rock.  I racked my brain, trying to figure out the
best way to breach it.  There was no way to predict what was behind
the door.  We had already found weapons in the complex and if the
room contained any sort of flammable materials then a controlled explosion
would be dangerous.

The sound of
Nichol’s voice over the com interrupted my train of thought.

“Willi, I’m here
at the base of the stairs on ground level.  I think we lost
radio contact when we were down in the basement.”

“Then you didn’t
hear Horrowitz,” I replied.  “Looks like the situation outside
is getting worse.  Those villagers may not be friendlies.”

“I didn’t hear
gunshots.  How bad is it?” he asked.

“Stable for now, but barely.  I don’t know how much longer we have
until things get serious.  You need to get your team out there while
I finish up here.”

“Copy that, but
we can’t leave until I show you what we found in the basement.”  That
was the last thing I needed to hear.  If I spent any more time in
that building, I felt like I was going to lose my mind.

“I think,” he
continued, “ that we might have found out what happened to some of the
terrorists we were sent here to take out.  I got six corpses down
here and one warm body.”

There were two
things that had made themselves immediately present to me.  First and
foremost, Horrowitz and the others were sitting ducks out there
without any backup or support and we needed to get back to them as soon as
possible.  Secondly, as bad as I wanted to get out of that building,
I couldn’t in good conscience leave until we had combed every last square inch
of the place – and that meant checking out what Nichols was talking
about.  I made an executive decision and decided to save the room at
the end of the hall for last.  It was clear that it would take more
manpower to get the thing open anyways so we about faced and headed back down
the stairs where Nichols was waiting for us.

“Find anything up
there?” he asked.

“No bodies, but
we’re not done.  We’re going to need to head back once you show me
these corpses.  Where’s the rest of your team?”

“Waiting for us
in the basement with the prisoner.”

“Prisoner!?”

Nichols glanced
over his shoulder, directing my attention to the hidden door they had
found.  “Yeah.  There’s some kind of holding cell down
there.  The only one alive is the guy that was locked up, but that’s
not all you need to see.”

We followed
Nichols and Diaz down to the basement of the compound where the other two
members of their team were already waiting for us.  To say the stench
in that small compact room was unpleasant would be have been an
understatement.  The smell of the decomposing bodies lining the
cellar floor was overpowering.  I could feel my stomach begin to toss
and turn, but fought hard to suppress the queasy sensation.  As the team
leader, I knew how important it was to keep it together in front of the
boys.  If they see you’re off your game, then they won’t be able to
trust you to make calls when their lives are on the line.

There were eight
of us down there – team I was leading and the one I had put Nichols in
charge of all sharing a small space littered with corpses.  Needless to say, it was beginning to
feel cramped.  I instructed four soldiers back to the gate in order
to free up elbow-room and provide Horrowitz with a little
more support.  It was now just Nichols, Diaz, Barker (a weapons
sergeant who had been part of my original team) and myself.

On the far end of
the cellar was a heavy metal door that joined a much smaller connecting
room.  At the base of the door was a small window that allowed guards
to pass food, water, and waste in and out of the jail cell.  Just like the gate, the door was
fastened with a chain and a single padlock.  I stepped over the
bodies, slid open the small window, and took a look inside the
cell.  Sitting on the floor was an Afghan male who appeared to be in
his mid to late thirties.  He was dressed in the traditional garb of
the people who resided in the area and sported the typical chinstrap beard that
was worn by many of his fellow countrymen.  His body was rail-thin,
as if his muscles had wasted away, yet he seemed unfazed by this.  He
was alert and upright, if anything almost a little bored by our
presence.  All in all, there was nothing particularly off-putting
about the way he looked, but for some reason, watching him brought out the same
terrible feeling of dread I had been experiencing upstairs.

Nichols could
tell I was curious about the prisoner.  “I’ve been questioning him
about what went down here, but he’s not talking.  You can try
yourself if you want.”

I turned my head
back towards Nichols, “What do you think went down here?”

“Don’t know, but
whatever happened was weird as shit.”

“What are you
talking about?” I asked.

“Open your
eyes, Willi!  Look at these bodies.”  Nichols got down
to one knee and extended a finger to the neck of one of the
corpses.  “This looks like an exit wound from a .22.  Every
single one of these corpses has the exact same hole in the front of the neck.  Check
yourself if you don’t believe me.  Naturally, at first I assumed this
was some kind of execution, but look!”  He yanked so hard on the
rotting stiff’s head to lift it that I was surprised he didn’t pull it off.  “No
entry point at the back of the neck.  It’s like the fucking bullet
was fired from inside the guy’s throat.”

“My theory is the
bullet entered from the front of the neck and Nichols is getting his panties
riled up about nothing.” Diaz said from the corner of the room.

“Yeah, its not surprising
an idiot like you would come up with a theory like that.  See how the
skin and the muscle seem to stray outward?  It’s clear something came
out of this hole not in it.  Even if it had entered here, don’t you
think at least one of these guys would have an exit wound, Willi?”

“It’s curious,
but we don’t really have time to speculate right now.  We weren’t
sent here to play CSI and Horrowitz needs the rest of us
outside.  Snap some photos, grab the prisoner and lets get out of
here.”

“Grab the prisoner?”  Nichols
looked stunned.  “What, are we taking P.O.W’s now?  How can
we be sure he’s not one of the guys we were sent here to hit?”

“And how can we
be sure he’s not a friendly?” I said.  “He was locked up when you got
here so we know someone put him in the cell.  He certainly didn’t
lock himself away.”

Nichols shook his
head, “No, no, no, the guy’s giving me a bad vibe, Willi–”

“I don’t really
give a damn what kind of vibe he’s giving you.  We don’t just kill
people because they give us the heebie
jeebies.  He looks like he’s in
need of medical attention.  We’re
not leaving him here.”  To be honest, the prisoner was making me more
than a little uncomfortable.  There was something wholly unpleasant
in the air and I couldn’t help but feel like it was radiating from that
cell.  I had made up my mind though.

“This is
bullshit!”  Nichols shoved a gloved finger into my
chest.  “We had our orders.  We’re here to terminate any
POTENTIAL terrorist threat in this facility!  That guy feels like bad
news and you know it.  Let’s take him out and be done with
it.  Last I checked, we weren’t told anything about bringing back
P.O.W’s.  I mean think about it.  How thick could your
skull really be? These corpses on the floor have been dead for weeks
– months maybe, they should be nothing but bones by now.  Why
are they rotting so slowly?  Plus, even if they did lock him up, how
the hell is he not a corpse yet too?  Who’s feeding him’ or cleaning
up his shit for that matter?”

“Stand down!” I
fired back.  “Last I checked I was Papa Sierra of this
outfit.  You got a problem with that, fine.  We can discuss
it later, but we are getting that prisoner out of this basement right
now.  That’s an order.  Now get that lock cut!”

Diaz cut the lock
using the same pair of bolt cutters that we used to get past the
gate.  He and Barker entered the cell, grabbed the prisoner firmly by
each arm, and hoisted him to his feet. Standing between the two soldiers,
he looked mind numbingly skinny.  I remember thinking how he wasn’t just
swimming in his baggy robes – he was drowning in them.  I
wondered if he’d even be able to walk.  Nichols didn’t protest as
Diaz and Barker dragged him out of the cell and into the room, but he didn’t
have to.  I could see the disapproving look in his eyes.

The sudden sound
of gunshots erupting upstairs broke the tension between us.  There
was no need to bark orders; everyone in that basement
knew Horrowitz and the rest of our unit needed as much support as
they could get.  I took point and lead us up the stairs followed
closely behind by Nichols while Diaz and Barker, still holding on to either arm
of the prisoner, brought up the rear.  By the time I reached the top,
shots were still tearing through the mountain air.  I was already
starting out the door when I heard a CRASH behind
me.  I whirled around just in time to see Barker and Diaz fall to the
floor as the prisoner sprinted up to the facility’s second
level.  Somehow the sickly looking man had been able to toss two
Green Berets in their physical prime aside like they were children and was
making an escape.  Without missing a beat, Nichols took off up the
steps after him.

“Diaz!” I
shouted.  “Go with him and meet us outside.”  He gave chase
while Barker and I hauled ass to the front gate where we
found Horrowitz and the rest of the team hunkered down behind the
walls.

The villagers had
launched a full on assault on my unit.  Flashes of light flickered in
the darkness as a hail of gun-storm rained down on us.  Our attackers
almost seemed to meld into the shadows, disappearing behind cover every time we
fired back.  It didn’t take long to realize they had been trained
– even the children.

Horrowitz looked
relieved to see me.  I don’t think he wanted to be the one who made
the call to air support.  “They didn’t start shootn’ till they
noticed the group comn’ outta the buildn’!”

“Nichols and Diaz
should be right behind us,” I said.  “I’m calling the choppers right
now!”

My radio’s
connection was shoddy at best, but I was able to get a hold of the
pilots.  The birds were about ten minutes away.  I
instructed everyone to stay sharp, lay low, and fend off our attackers until
they showed up.  I tried Nichols and Diaz over
the com since they hadn’t made it out of the facility yet, but
neither answered.

“We need to get
‘em outta that buildn’!” Shouted Horrowtiz over the
shots.  “There’s a good chance the gunners on those choppers might
start shootn’ up the compound.  It is our target,
after all.”

He was
right.  When I radioed for help, the mountains had been playing hell
with our signal.  I tried to warn air support not to hit the
building, but I had no way of knowing if they got the entire
message.  Nichols and Diaz still hadn’t made it out, and I couldn’t
risk them getting caught in there when the helicopters showed up so I left Horrowitz at
the gate and instructed Barker to follow me back inside to look for them.

The unbearable
humidity in the air had nothing on the crushing sense of desperation whirling
through my mind as we made our way through the upstairs rooms for the second
time that evening.  The choppers were coming.  That much I
knew, but what I didn’t know was whether or not we’d still be inside when they
were leveling the building.

I had expected to
hear Nichols or Diaz’s boots stomping around once we reached the second level,
but the place was eerily silent.  Just like before, Barker and I
moved from empty room to empty room making our way towards the oversized door
at the end of the hall with the bizarre markings engraved into it.  Time
was short.  We hustled over to it but paused when we realized that it
had been opened – a tiny trickle of light leaked out from the crack in
the door.  I turned towards Barker, his face, a mask of uncertainty.

“Barker,” I said.
“Am I crazy or were we not able to get this door open earlier?”

“You’re not
crazy, sir.  We tried, but couldn’t get it open.”

The sound of
helicopter blades spinning through the air started to bleed into my ears.

Barker grabbed me
around my arm.  “The choppers are here!  We need to hurry
up and get the hell out of here!”

But I shook him
off and told him we weren’t leaving without the rest of the team.

There was no more
time to take precautions.  I burst into the room with little regard
for my personal safety.  And as soon as I did, I felt my reservations
about the assignment magnify ten fold.

The room that had
been hidden behind the door was quite a bit different from the rest of the
facility.  More bizarre symbols had been carved into the wooden
floors – hieroglyphics and weird patterns, peculiar cryptic shapes that I
had never seen before, all forming a semi circle that spanned nearly half the
room, facing the western wall.  Candles were everywhere – their
flames had long been snuffed out before our arrival, leaving only melted
disfigured forms behind, like the lowly unfortunate survivors of a horrific
nuclear attack.  Nichols and Diaz were standing in the center of the
room, the prisoner’s dead body sprawled across the floor at their feet.  The choppers blades grew louder.

“Let’s go!” I
shouted.  “Everybody out now!”

Nichols and Diaz
remained in place, statuesque, cold, looking apathetic and indifferent.  Their
faces were expressionless.  I rushed into the room and shoved them
towards the door.

“What the hell is wrong with you!?  Didn’t you hear me!?  I
said get out now!”

That was enough
to get them moving.  They followed Barker into the hall and down the
stairs.  I started out after them, but something caught my
eye.  Books bound in leather laid open on a rusty old metal
table.  They looked to be religious texts, but not
Islamic.  In their pages were bizarre drawings of otherworldly
creatures and more of the same strange hieroglyphics that had been carved into
the floor.  Next to one of the leather bound books was a note
pad.  On the paper, there was a message written in Arabic.

It came from
the heavens, but brings hell upon this world.  It breeds.  It
is not human, but it hides inside us.

Those last nine
words made me feel sick.  I looked over at the prisoner’s body, still
face down on the floor and suddenly I was reminded that I was now alone.

It is not
human…

I took a step
towards the corpse, half expecting it to spring back to life.

But it…

The choppers
blades were even louder now, but my radio was getting nothing but
static.  I couldn’t even reach the rest of my
team.  Gunshots were still crackling outside and I prayed none of my
guys had been hit.

hides inside
us…

When I got close
enough I slid the toe of my boot under the dead prisoner’s torso and flipped it
over.  In the front of his neck was a hole identical to the ones we
had found on the corpses in the basement.

I’m not entirely
sure how long I stared at the prisoner, trying to process what on Earth was
going on.  Questions were swirling through my head.  What
the hell had Nichols and Diaz been doing in there?  I fought the itch
to look around the room for answers, deciding I’d be pushing my luck if I
stayed in that place much longer.  The next thing I knew I was
sprinting down the stairs of the facility and out the front door just as the
choppers started filling it full of shells.  A few seconds earlier
and they would have taken me down along with the facility.

The villagers
were still firing on my team when I got back to the wall.  Thankfully,
we hadn’t taken any casualties yet.  Soon after, the black hawks
buzzed over our heads and began raining down bullets on the Afghan
village.  Their choppers’ heavy-duty artillery easily leveled the
little huts and swatted our attackers away like gnats.  Hot shells
sliced through the bodies of men and boy’s alike, as the area around the
compound became a scene of absolute carnage.  In all my years working
Special Ops it was definitely the most violent altercation I have ever been
involved in.

Once
the choppers had landed and it was safe to board we left the cover of the
compound walls and made our way back to the birds.  I’m rarely taken aback
by the aftermath of a skirmish, but the village and the area around it had been
completely obliterated.  Horrowitz, Barker, and four other members of
my unit entered one of the choppers while Nichols, Diaz, myself and the rest of
my team crossed the battlefield to get in the other.

We
were about 20 meters from the helicopters when I felt something snag my
ankle.  I spun around to see an elderly bearded man on ground the
trying to tell me something.  His body had been riddled with bullets
and he was bleeding profusely from multiple wounds.  I could tell it
was only a matter of time before his organs would begin shutting down on
him.  He looked up to me and opened his mouth to speak.  I
don’t know exactly why I bent down to hear him better.  Perhaps it
was the expression in his eyes.  I’ve seen the look on a man’s face
when he’s about to die. It’s usually one of panic; sometimes regret, or
sadness, occasionally peace, but this man’s eyes showed only that of concern.

His
words were faint.  The old man did his very best to get them out, but
he was saying things in Farsi that I couldn’t understand.  Some of
the words I recognized, but before I could ask him to clarify, the sound of
Nichol’s .45 boomed through the air, and silenced him.  I looked up,
furious that he had just put a bullet in the dying man’s head.

“I
put him out of his misery,” Nichols said.  “He was going to die
anyways.”  We boarded the chopper and took off from that god-awful
place on our way back to HQ.

During
the flight, I pulled out a piece of notebook paper from my bag and wrote down
phonetically what I heard the villager say before Nichols shot him.

“Do
you know what this means Nichols?” I asked.   “That man said it
to me before you shot him.”  I repeated what I wrote down.

It
was then that I noticed the look in Diaz’s eyes.  He was still
relatively new to my unit, but I had read his file and as far as I know he
couldn’t speak a lick of Farsi.  His face told me a different
story.  Diaz looked like a cheating lover getting outed by
his spouse.  Nichols seemed bothered too.  He took the
paper from me and asked me to repeat what I heard.  When I complied,
he snickered, tore it in two, and tossed it aside.

“Pfft,
it’s nothing, sir.  Just some garbage about Westerners being filthy
pigs.”

“What
were you and Diaz doing in the room upstairs, Nichols?  And why
was it locked?”

Nichols
scratched at the stubble on his chin.  “The prisoner attacked us in
there, sir.  I don’t know what he was thinking.  He was
aggressive and Diaz and I were forced to fire on him.”

“He
was unarmed,” I said.  Nichols shrugged.    “I
checked out the body.  The hole in the prisoner’s neck was identical
to the corpses in the basement.  Can you explain that?”

“Yeah,”
Nichol’s said. “I guess I was wrong about my initial assessment of the
situation.  I popped him in the neck.  The bullet didn’t pass all the way
through, sir.”

Sir.

He
said it again.  Nichols never called me that on missions, only in
front of superiors.  His story sounded like a bunch of horseshit, but
I assumed he was just trying to cover for Diaz and himself.  As far
as I was concerned he had just shot and killed an unarmed man because he didn’t
like the vibe he was getting from him.  We remained quiet the rest of
the way back, only breaking the silence with occasional one word answers when
the pilots would ask us a question.

I
could still remember the phonetic spelling of what that villager had
said.  After we landed, I slipped away for a moment and wrote it down
again.  As curious as I was about following up on it, the villager’s
last words became a trivial concern to me due to the fact that I was more
worried about Diaz and Nichols actions with the prisoner.

I
excluded the bit about them shooting him and just reported that everyone in the
facility was dead upon our arrival.  To be honest, it was more to
save my hide than theirs.  The last thing I needed was for my unit to
get sidelined while the Washington bureaucrats launched some needlessly long
investigation.

Diaz
went home to Los Angeles for some “R&R” just a couple weeks
later.  That was the last time I ever saw him.  He went
AWOL after that and never returned to duty.  Nichols would retire from military life
just months after that and head back to his hometown just outside Charleston,
NC.  The strange thing was, he only stayed briefly before
collecting some things and disappearing off the face of the Earth.  Even
his family didn’t know where he had gone.  Nichols was young and for
as long as I had known the guy he was a career man looking to climb the ranks
so his departure from active duty just seemed sudden.

About
seven years after Nichols disappearance, Diaz’s dead body was found in a gas
station restroom off the side of I-40 in Oklahoma.  It had the same
hole in the front of the neck as the prisoner and the insurgents in the
basement.  I along with every member of my unit that the government
could locate was called in for questioning about that night.  They
all stuck to the original story I put in my report – everyone was dead
when we arrived.

I
was given an early severance package and let go from the
military.  It was a unique situation.  One day I was
commanding my own special ops unit and the next I was a civilian.  I
did get to keep all my veteran benefits thankfully.

I
still see some of the boys every now and then.  Horrowitz and I
grab a beer (or nine) together whenever he’s in town.  It was a
discussion I had with him on one of these nights that has caused me to
sometimes question my sanity whenever I think about what really happened
between Diaz, Nichols, and the prisoner in that room.

We
were out drinking at a local watering hole, watching the football game that was
playing on the bar’s TV.  It was my turn to pay for the
round.  When I pulled out my wallet and opened it up, I caught a
glimpse of a folded up piece of paper sticking out of one of the side
pockets.  It was the very same paper I had written down the dying old
villager’s words on when the helicopter picked us
up.  Horrowitz spoke Farsi better than anyone I knew so I
decided to read it out to him.

“What?”  He
laughed after I read it. “Are you sure you heard that right?”

“Yeah,”
I said. “Nichols told me that it was something about Westerners being filthy
pigs.”

Horrowitz shook
his head, “Well then Nichols, wherever he is, needs to pick up
Rosetta Stone ‘cause that sure as hell ain’t what you just
said.”

“I
didn’t think so,” I said.  “The very first thing you learn when
you’re over there is all the good insults and curse words and this was one I hadn’t heard before.”

“That’s
‘cause it ain’t no insult.  It sounds more like a warning,
but it doesn’t make a whole lotta’ sense.  That’s why I asked if
you heard it right.”

“I
know what I heard.” I insisted.  “What’s it mean?”

“Well,”
Horrowitz leaned back in his chair and took a sip of beer.  “If
you’re sure that’s what you heard, then what that villager said is
this:  It came from the stars.  It cannot be killed, but it
can be contained.  Do not release the parasite or it will breed and
spread.”

Want More?

Make sure to
check out Vincent V. Cava’s:

Decomposing
Head: Frighteningly Funny Tales That Will Rot Your Brain

Written by the authors of several Top 100 Kindle eBooks (in their darkly
comedic and satirical genres):

Here you have found a book so foul, so
repulsive, so horrifying... that you will undoubtedly find yourself running to
the nearest bathroom in an effort to both relieve your bowels and scrub your
hands clean of its putrid filth. Though these attempts will be in vain -- just
as the authors of this demented book of short stories have planned. I speak of
none other than the intolerable Mr. Vincent V. Cava and his dimwitted pen pal,
S.R. Tooms (the pair oftentimes billed simply as Hideous and
Handsome). They have finally released this humorous collection of terrifying
tales, despite the bitter public outcry which demanded these pages never
see the light of day... and perhaps for good reason.

Inside this tome you will read such stories as
the much talked about "Gas Station Bathroom," which has been known to
cause many travelers to rethink their next rest stop pullover.

The psychological masterpiece in "The
Horror of Knowing" will never allow you to gaze upon your friends in the
same light again.

"A Favor for a Favor" depicts an
unparalleled moralistic look at the true nature of mankind -- complete with an
exquisitely satisfying finish that will have you shaking your head with sinister
disbelief.

These are but a few of the many finely crafted
tales lurking within this haunted collection. To those of you with a few screws
loose in the noggin or those with a twisted smile (and crooked tooth or two), I
bid you enter this haven of horror...

Just A Little Terrible:  A Terrifying Collection Of Flash
Fiction

Just a little…

Haunting – These tomes of terror will stay with you
long after you put your book down and go to bed for the
evening.  They’ve been known to burrow themselves into a reader’s
imagination and are capable of warping dreams into twisted, unspeakable
nightmares.

Just a little…

Unique  – These aren’t your standard
horror stories.  Don’t think this collection will include tales of
haunted mansions, or blood sucking vampires.  Expect one-of-a-kind
takes on every gothic ghoul and hideous monster you read about in this book.

Just a little…

Frightening – Prepare yourself for some of the most
chilling flash fiction ever penned.  The mad genius, Vincent V. Cava,
has done it again with the latest entry in his creepy catalogue.  Do
yourself a favor and leave the lights on when you read it.

Just A Little…Terrible

Dead Connection

Reader beware!

The stories that lurk within the pages of this
book will have you cowering under the covers in fear, praying that the shadows
shifting underneath your closet door are nothing more than an optical illusion.

Delve
into the depraved minds of horror's newest authors in this chilling collection
of tales.

Available on Amazon