For your perusal, "The Silver Wraith"

Though Blogger has had the Page Feature for some months, I have yet to see anyone actually use it. How does that work into this post? Keep reading.


My story "The Silver Wraith," was originally intended for Astonishing Adventures Magazine, but it really didn't mesh from a tonal standpoint (IMHO, not the Editorial Staff's). It's a little too long for Thrillers Killers 'n' Chillers, so at this blog is right where it will stay. If you go to the top of the blog, it's the tab in the middle, right underneath the header.

So, if you add one part crime fiction + one part pulp + one part horror = "The Silver Wraith."

All Hallow's Reave

Here is Halloween, in all of its terror, and by "terror," I mean adults in costumes that fall under the category, "things you cannot unsee." To take your mind off of that, we at Cormac Informercials™, have the second story in Katherine Tomlinson's NoHo Noir Series, "Wrong Turn." Check the Mark Satchwill illo-




Plus, you get horror from across The Pond. Lewis J. Peters has a short one up on his blog called, "The Horror of Halloween."

Oh, and call me lazy, but I will repost "Succuba," yet again. But if you call within the next five minutes, I'll even add "Introductions Are In Order," at no extra cost. Just pay shipping and handling. So call now, operators are standing by.

"Introductions Are In Order" is up at Dark Valentine Magazine's October Frenzy

The magnificent Molly Brewer provides this wonderful illustration...

...and I provide the words. Check out my story "Introductions Are In Order" at Dark Valentine Magazine's October Flash Frenzy. It's dedicated to all the fathers who have daughters.

"La Espina"

“In the distance I saw all kinds of birds circling over something, but I couldn't tell what from where I was.”

Agustí lets out a long sigh. Julio and he have been lifelong friends, but Tomás has insisted that a confession be wrung of Julio, and no one says “no” to Tomás. To those that have dared, death was as welcome as a cup of water after crossing the Tabernas in the middle of summer. As they say here in Sevilla, “God forgives…Torquemada doesn’t.”

“Please, Julio, don’t prolong this any longer. If you will just admit to dabbling in witchcraft, I can hopefully convince the Inquisitor General to show some mercy.”

“Listen to my story, Agustí, and then I will gladly sign anything. I will admit to being a warlock, I will admit to being a Jew, I will admit to being anything that your friend Tomás desires, but I will have my say first.”

Agustí’s two assistants are visibly disappointed. They know that they will eventually have their fun making this infidel see God by giving him a taste of Hades, but what artisan wants to wait, when he takes such pleasures from his endeavor? Maybe one day soon, even Agustí will be under their auspices. Oh, to hear the over-demanding, never satisfied voice of authority begging for mercy.

One of the assistants looks about the small dungeon walls as to determine which combination of instruments will create a unique symphony, as the other stirs the fire under the coals, making some of the strange-looking implements in the brazier glow a bright orange. The first assistant walks over to the far wall and sits down because inhaling the smoke has made him a little dizzy. There always seems to be a slight breeze of relatively fresher air wafting around in this corner.

Agustí reluctantly nods and Julio clears his throat. “It was weird, this thing that the birds circled…I still cannot accurately describe it now. I can tell you, though, that it was almost near the end of its life.”

“Was it man or beast, Julio?”

“Yes...and no. I mean to say that it was both.”

“This is no time for jokes or chicanery. Remember that we were friends once and that is the only reason that you will not suffer the same fate as those that have dared to mock me before.”

“Agustí, in all of the years that we have lived side-by-side, gone to the same schools, worked at my father’s shop, have you ever known me to tell a falsehood?”

“No, but certainly you could tell what kind of creature it was…or is this another wild tale that was brought over from the so-called “New World” by charlatan Cristoforo Colombo?”

“I am unfamiliar with the recent adventures of that explorer, as this incident happened some eleven years ago.”

Julio’s posture and stature grow, as if the chains are no longer suspending him, but he instead is using them to hold the very walls together. He looks down at Agustí and his voice finds strength as he says, “You remember that day, don’t you, Agustí? The day that you were careless in my father’s shop and you accidentally cut yourself? It seemed that no bandage or poultice could staunch the flow of blood that was escaping from you.”

One of Agustí’s assistants smiles with glee, until his superior quashes it with a baleful glare.

“You recall that don’t you, Agustí? I rode as fast as I could from here to Gelves, to find that apothecary that blended the very herbal cataplasm that saved your life? Well, your mortality was not the only one that I had rescued that day.”

“So, are you saying that this creature was a demon?” scoffs the sitting assistant.

“I am saying that this creature spoke our language just as well, if not better than you,” Julio snaps back. “And though most of him did not seem to be human, he has apparently more heart than your overseer here. Yet here we have this so-called “man” that stands before us. Agustí, you who had no family that would take care of you, no roof over your head, no food in your belly, you would let them bring me here. You would subject me to this, knowing that I have lived a just life and unlike yours, a life without sin!”

“Silence!”

“No, Agustí, I will not be silent. You call yourself a Christian, yet you have never lived your life like Jesus. You have never truly served your fellow man. I could list the acts of kindness that you’ve done in your lifetime on one fing—”

Agustí slaps Julio once to silence him, and then he backhands him for good measure.

“Give me the parchment; I can sign his name better than he can himself,” Agustí barks at his standing assistant. The aide lays it out on the table and produces an inkwell and quill.

Julio clenches his lips and slowly regains his posture of strength.

“Agustí? Do you remember the fables that my father would tell you from time to time?”

The Inquisitor Minor does not reply, as he chooses instead to concentrate on forging Julio’s signature accurately, yet with a flourish that is too cheery, considering the circumstances.

“Agustí, in particular, remember Aesop. Remember that tale of The Slave and The Lion? How The Slave came upon The Lion as the great cat was in pain from the thorn in its paw? He removed the thorn from The Lion and they became friends. Well, it wasn’t a thorn I removed, but I saved the life of a good friend. He is a remarkable friend that promised me he would never forget his debt.”

As he admires his penmanship, Agustí grumbles, “No doubt this friend is even more foolish than you.

The sitting assistant shifts, as somehow the draft of air has increased and the wall seems to be nudging him in the back.

“No, Agustí. He is more human than you, because he understands the concept of redemption…”

A quick yelp is followed by snap like a hundred twigs being stepped on at once. Agustí slowly turns around to witness his other assistant succumbing to the same fate as the first, being torn in two like a tree split by lightning. He wants to scream, but his voice has taken flight, along with his sense of reason and sanity. This horrific creature lumbers towards Agustí as blood drips from its fangs.

Julio says with a smile, “Unlike you, he also knows that a true friend always repays his debts.”

The End

For Friday Flash Fiction #36, Welles Fan is a particpant that came up with one of the three starter sentences that we could from. His was, "In the distance I saw all kinds of birds circling over something, but I couldn't tell what from where I was."

"Type"

This is for the "Sweet Dreams Flash Fiction Challenge" by Patti, Aldo and Gerald.


This is one of the few bars left in San Francisco that has a jukebox that still takes change and still plays vinyl, and that's why I love this hole-in-the-wall.

Did I say "hole in the wall?" Yeah, there’s that too, from where Jay slammed an unruly drunk into the corner, just right past the last booth. That was last week, and he just duct-taped a plastic sheet over it this morning and called it "fixed."

What I don’t like here is Annie Lennox in the blue dress.

She’s not Ms. Lennox herself, but close enough that David Stewart would want to start a reunion tour with her. She has played “Sweet Dreams” ten times in a row, which is about four times too many even for a Eurythmics fan, which I am not. She has on a $400 electric blue dress, yet the nail polish on her fingers and toes is chipped. She never strays far from her raggedy purse, but that’s to give her .40 caliber Glock a reassuring (and what she believes to be discreet) pat.

She is from the Pamela Anderson School of Acting, with her ersatz twitches and faux withdrawal symptoms. She might use many things, but I doubt she uses meth, coke or heroin. Everything about her, including her high-end salon dye job, clashes with these surroundings, and who she is supposed to be. Jay will see through this right away, and he will bypass slamming her into the wall for cutting her up in the basement.

“It’s gonna be awhile. Jay went to the bank to get change…so you might want to go somewhere else,” I mention.

"Do you know when he's going to be back?" she asks firmly. She's trying to seem braver than she feels, and I used to be scared like her, too, but that was more than a lifetime ago.

I swirl and sip my shot glass of rotgut like it’s fine cognac as I say to her, "He's not holding today."

"That's not why I'm here," she blurts.

"So you're here to meet a date?"

“No,” she says with the all the warmth of Finland in February.

“Then you’ll probably want to go where you’ll find one.”

“Are you the owner?” she demands.

“I’m just watching the joint for him,” I mumble, and shake my head. She sizes me up for the first time and sees an old barfly in a denim outfit that’s older than she is. She looks away and instantly writes me off…big mistake.

“Then pour yourself a glass of ‘Shut The Fuck Up.’”

I pour myself another shot and I say, “Noroc!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means ‘to your health’ in Romanian.”

“You’re weird.”

“My dear, I’ve been the same that I’ve always been…it’s the times that have gotten stranger. If you live long enough, though I don’t see this happening, you will come to realize this too.”

I close the distance between us and her eyes widen as I get closer, then they go blank. Her mind is…malleable, though not enough to get her to leave this place. I sniff around her and I was right; other than her beauty, she lacks that certain something. Jay enters the bar and the sunlight from the door snaps her out of it.

“I’ll see you sooner than both of us would like,” I whisper, but her attention is already completely focused on Jay. He has that effect, and we both want Jay…for the wrong reasons. This time he’s not alone; he has some psycho named “Daily” with him. I don’t know how that sociopath got his name, but I’ve seen him stab people over $5 bets. The Lennox clone, a.k.a. Officer Newcomb, has arrested him before, yet she unfortunately doesn’t recognize him.

I leave this bar and maybe I leave my conscience there, too.

***

I have lived a long time, a lot longer than my apparent age and longer than you can imagine. Still, I have just thimbleful of wisdom to show for all that time. So I have to work hard at most things, just like anyone else…sometimes, more so. It would be easy for me to leave Officer Newcomb to her death in the basement, because all I want out of the equation is Jay and saving her would jeopardize that.

As I slip in behind them, she trembles with her own gun being jabbed into her head by Daily. Being a coward, he has blindfolded her. All the better to do what needs to be done, which should lessen the need for no unnecessary explanations later on. Daily is easy to subdue, Jay…much less so, though I knew that going in. I leave Officer Newcomb still trembling down in the basement; she’ll come around, though I don’t know if she will ever recover.

As for Jay, my rare AB+ treasure, I have to figure out how to get him out of the building without being seen. I wish I could explain everything to Officer Newcomb. How we don’t run around in tuxedoes with our hair slicked back, and we sure as hell don’t fucking glitter. But I have no faith in her intelligence, because she came into a place like this without wearing a wire or having any backup. So I doubt that she would ever understand the ways of the Nosferatu.

The End

Patti Abbott said- Maybe I'm an April Fool and there have been too many of these challenges going around lately, but I feel like writing this story-or having you write it better than I can. It's been rolling around in my head for days.

It begins in a food/drink establishment of some sort. The radio/juke box/band is playing "Sweet Dreams" by the Eurythmics. A red-headed woman in an electric blue dress comes through the door.

And then what?

The story doesn't have to center on these elements. I'm just giving you the initial setting.

You can take it from there.

Stories under 1000 wrds. End date: May 3. If you don't have a blog, Mystery Dawg will post it on Powder Burn Flash.

Dark Valentine Magazine is here!

Image from http://www.myspace.com/odbal-imaging

Katherine Tomlinson is one of my favorite authors and certainly one of my favorite editors.

Joanne Renaud is one of the artists that I admire the most, and if you are a regular reader of this blog, you already knew that.

Well two of the driving forces of Astonishing Adventures Magazine have gotten together with Editor Joy Sillesen to form Dark Valentine Magazine. Katherine shot me an email with all the details-

The first issue will be in May, deadline is April 1.

We’re soliciting entries for our THROUGH A LENS DARKLY (they’re not paid) and we will pay $10 for stories and $10 for illustrations that run in each of our quarterly issues of DARK VALENTINE. We know that’s not much but it’s coming out of our own pockets.) Web design is by the multi-talented Sarah Vaughn, whose stories and art you may remember from Astonishing Adventures Magazines #7 and #8.

We will be specializing in dark fiction—mystery, horror, romance, slipstream, urban fantasy, fantasy, sci fi, cyberpunk, you name it. Our influences range from E.A. Poe to Tanith Lee. We know you’ve got a story to tell us.

Here’s where you send it: submissions@darkvalentine.net.

If you look over the FAQ, you will notice that they are taking both story submissions and illustrations.

Get Plugged In #4

Jean-Paul Sartre said that, "Hell is other people."

Super Editor and author, Katherine Tomlinson has a brilliant story up at A Twist of Noir called "Another Day In Paradise," that says Sartre was only half-right.

But that's not all, she also the Chocolate Editor for BellaOnline. Her article not only has recipes, but everything that you can think of that is chocolate-related. Health links, Vegan links, books, how you can prepare it sans sugar, and gifts for chocophiles.

Last but certainly not least, Johnny Dollars a.k.a. Editor JDC a.k.a. Publisher JDC a.k.a. John Donald Carlucci, has made the leap to webisodes.

I've already checked out the first episode of "Fierce Cravings," and it's good stuff...along the lines of a certain low-budget, super successful film from the 90's. Check out his press release for more details-

MANITOWOC, November 19, 2009 – Darke Media, the film production studio and producer of the digital magazine “Astonishing Adventures,” today announced the release of the new webserial “Fierce Cravings.”

Looking to explore online sources for distribution, Darke Media is releasing the entirety of “Fierce Cravings” for free through sources such as YouTube and iTunes. Plans are in place to launch a second serial, starring the mascot Scarlett, of Astonishing Adventures, in mid 2010.

“Uncertain where the horrific changes to his body and mind are leading, the masked man begins documenting his descent into Hell.”

“Fierce Cravings” tells its chilling tale in the same cinematic style utilized by hits like “Paranormal Activity”, “The Blair Witch Project”,and “Quarantine.”

For more information on Darke Media please visit the dedicated website at http://darkemedia.wordpress.com/

For the online in-story diary of “?” from “Fierce Cravings” http://fiercecravings.wordpress.com/

Paulie Decibels types softly...

It is not a question of "if," as it is a just a question of "when" the British crime fiction wave will wash over our shores.

Over at the other side of the pond, they bring a fresh perspective to noir and quite frankly, it tends to have a little more depth than most (though, not all) of American crime fiction. It is my belief that among those writers to change things up over here, will be Paul D. Brazill. He shifts from the abyss, to humor, to poetry, and all with amazing ease.

I will give you an opportunity to see for yourselves, by giving you two links to some of his horror writing:

His story "This Old House" is up again at A Twist Of Noir, and let's just say Bob Villa wouldn't last a minute in that abode.

And part of Erin Cole's Thirteen Days of Horror, comes "The Friend Catcher."


Enjoy.

Thrillers, Killers and Chillers has "My Old Haunts" up!

Try to stay calm.

Don't scream.

I said, "don't scream."

C'mon, give me a break, stop screaming already!

Seriously, save it for when you read the story. "My Old Haunts" is up the excellent site, Thrillers, Killers And Chillers.

You may resume screaming.

Oh, wait, let me leave the room first.

Okay, go ahead.

"Hunger Pangs" on Erin Cole's "Thirteen Days of Horror"

In honor of Halloween, Erin Cole has started "The Thirteen Days of Horror" and John Donald Carlucci kicks off Day Two with "Hunger Pangs."

Welcome back to the Internet, JDC!

Best Of: "Snow And Sacrifice"

Well, that post went over badly, without comment and cue the chirping of the Internet crickets. Here's the same post linked to a different story-

It pains me to read some of my old work, though not exactly for the reasons that you would imagine. I can write with greater economy now and I've gotten better at building suspense, though that is not saying much at all. What really annoys me is that I can't write horror the way I used to. I can't up the stakes with horror in the same manner as I can with crime fiction, and I can't create a twist that I am happy with, and still have the story come out to more than 200 words.

Super Editor Katherine Tomlinson is sitting on a horror story that I wrote for Astonishing Adventures Magazine, that you will probably never read unless I become famous. That story has a strong premise, a decent beginning and not much else. It's all sizzle and somehow the remaining steak turned into really mediocre tempeh. I have an old story that deserves another go, and hopefully you will read it in the next three months.

In the meantime, let this tie you over. It's called "Snow And Sacrifice" and please note, this was originally written back in June, 2006, so some aspects of the story are a little dated.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you "Snow And Sacrifice" and please, don't ride the white horse.

Best Of: "Succuba"

Horror is hard for me to write. I find real life to far more scary and the trick with horror is to either come up with something that nobody has done before...or introduce a new perspective. I had to go with the latter and Succuba is the end result. If something in the basement sounds too good to be true...

Horror, Courtesy of The Baroness And Hachette Book Group USA

Look what came in the mail a couple of days ago, courtesy of The Baroness and the Hachette Book Group USA, The 13 Best Horror Stories of All Time.






So far, I've re-read "The Tell Tale Heart" for the first time since the Carter Administration and it seemed more terrifying back then. I read"The Bottle Imp" by Robert Louis Stevenson for the first time and I am about half-way through "Green Tea" J. Sheridan Le Fanu.


Make no mistake, these tales are scary and they are riveting, but one the thing that sticks out the most is loonnnnggg prose of the 19th Century. Why say it with just one sentence, when you can say it with at least ten more? I guess because they had the luxury of time back then, they decided to reflect that with their writing style.


Now, I'm not saying this takes away from the tension, I'm just saying that the most terrified people of that era, were probably the book editors.

"Sleep Like The Dead"

The blue green apparition floated through the open door and came to a stop, hovering over Jesse's bed. Jesse opened one eye, pointed to the only chair in the room and said calmly, "welcome...take a seat."

The specter hesitated, and then other specters slowly materialized right by the chair. With the same tone, Jesse said, "take a seat...right next to the bank robber I shot, right next to the innocent bystander that was run over during a car chase, and right next to my partner who couldn't take all the madness that came with this job, and ate a bullet from his own gun.

"I've made peace with all of my ghosts a long time ago, though they'll never let me know a moment of peace." Jesse tugged the covers up to his neck and said "but know this; I've never missed a night...or a minute of sleep in all of my life."


Note, count the number of sentences and that will tell you who passed on this short without comment.

Seven More Stories For Six Sentence Readers

For those that have wandered over here from 6S, please check out the following stories below-

"Eggplant Parmigiana." from Powder Burn Flash

"Snow And Sacrifice." Just say "no," or something else will say it for you.

"Succuba." If something in the basement sounds too good to be true...

"They Call Her The Breeze." There's a new gal in town, but is her house empty?

"Think Inside The Box." The "Heist Man," cometh.

"A Cool Breeze Licked The Back Of Her Neck." Horror comes in all sizes.

"When Gunpowder Gets In Your Eyes." Sometimes the perfect poker hand comes at the wrong time.

Then you might want to check out these seven stories. It's up to you, no pressure.

My Old Haunts

Oh, yeah, I love dancing. I've been dancing since I don’t know when, it seems like forever. I go to the clubs and some cats, they just leave. They know about my abilities and they split. I keep up on all the latest dances, though my clothes are falling a little behind the times, and I wish there was more I could do about that.

I like to hit my favorite old haunts and check things out. Women are a lot wilder than I remember, sometimes for the good and sometimes they bring out the prude in me. I love the hip-hugger and low rider jeans. The tight shirts, the thongs, all that, is all good.

I can’t appreciate, however, the piercings and the tattoos just right above their butts...I can’t handle that. Then the clubs? Everywhere I go, it seems like they’re playing music from another planet. I can hardly keep up and most of it doesn’t sound like anything I was listening to, just yesterday.

The ladies love me, though. I don’t come there to hit on them or to drink: it’s strictly dancing with me. They don’t have to listen to a bunch of lines or nonsense. We get down on the dance floor and it’s cool.

And when we dance? I can’t even describe it, but I’ll try anyway. It’s kin-etic, it’s elec-tric, it’s as close to sex as we can get. Sometimes it gets a little freaky, but we keep our clothes on...for the most part. And when I touch them? The ladies shiver...they always shiver. I got that effect on them.

So I always wind it up at the Beat Box, because all that has changed over the years with clubbing, a few people still know of me there. It’s almost closing time and I’m still going strong, the ladies dig that.

Like this one tonight? She’s been going on about how she like my “retro” threads, whatever that means. I don’t know, it’s like sometimes we’re talking another language altogether, but whatever keeps the party going, you know?

She feels good during the slow dances, almost too good, you dig? But when the music picks up? She complains that she was working hard today and she wants to rest. That ain’t cool. So I know that there’s just one more dance to go before last call and she just turns her back on me. Not cool, I’m not dancing with that chick again.

“I’ll have a Seven and Seven.”

“I’m sorry, Lady. The last call is in two minutes and quite frankly, I think you’ve had a few too many already.”

“I’ve had only one drink all night.”

“Right, whatever. I still can’t serve you alcohol.”

“Well, let me have some mineral water and give the dancing fool whatever he wants.”

“Who?”

“The guy.”

“Who? What guy?”

“The guy I’ve been dancing with for the past thirty minutes.”

“Lady, you’ve been dancing with yourself all night long.”

“No, I was with a guy. He had retro clothes and old school hair. He looked like one of those disco guys.”

“Oh...Pierre, I think we’ve got another one.”

“Are you sure? Who?”

“This lady, right here.”

“What do you mean, “we got another one?”

“Did you dance with a guy in a blue polyester outfit and platform shoes? Did he have big, permed hair out to there?”

“Yes.”

“That was-“

When things get odd, it's my cue to split.

I wait outside and she keeps me waiting thirty minutes...I guess, I’m not sure, because I don’t have a watch. Pierre is walking with her and I don’t know why. It’s not like I’m scared of him or that I have any problem just walking right up to her and touching her on the shoulder, right in front of...

“Ohhhh, shit!”

C’mon Pierre, be a man this time.

This is ridiculous.

Look at them running away, you’d thought that they had seen a ghost.

Pussies.

Well, like I said. Oh, yeah, I love dancing. And I lovvve to hit my favorite old haunts.

"Succuba"

“I swear, Clive, summer drags on around here, like a snail trying to crawl through a field of salt.”

“Yeah, I wish someone would renovate a house, so we could watch the paint dry.”

Clive and I were throwing a Frisbee around. Not “tossing,” throwing. I kept the banter up to distract him, because I was throwing it, just a little bit harder each time. I was trying to lead him into the old widow, Mrs. Martin’s yard. I saw her curtain pull back just a little, the fuse was lit.

“Yeah, if only there was a cow to tip, that would be an upgrade for this town,” I shouted, hoping that Mrs. Martin would be the one having a cow. In an amazing feat of athleticism, Clive leapt up like a wide receiver at the goal line and snatched the disc just before it went into her yard. Then, he threw right back to me…and beyond…shit, Yao Ming couldn’t have caught that one.

I gave Clive a look. He smiled and gave me a look back that said, “serves you right.”

Unfortunately, that was no ordinary Frisbee. My grand uncle gave that to me before he passed on, the only kindness the old jerk ever showed to me or my little brother. He would miss the Frisbee the most of all, because he looked up to the old rat bastard.

It had to land in the only other place I wouldn’t want it go besides Mrs. Martin’s, the abandoned Grimsrud house. The specifics of what happened in that house have been lost through the generations, but not the sense fear and trepidation. I do know that it had something to do with just about every missing person within the neighboring three states and a wood chipper, but that’s all I could discern from the many people that the tale had passed through and the years of misinformation.

As I turned around, I saw the disc sail through an already broken window. As I jumped over the fence, I gave Clive the one-fingered salute and wondered just why it was, that no one ever demolished creepy, abandoned houses. Was that too much to ask? I mean, it was a known rat hotel and God knew what else decided to set up house there. Hell, even the stoners and huffers gave the place a wide berth, they knew to stay away, even when they were out of their minds.

My trembling hand reached through the broken window and slid the lower portion open. The Frisbee landed on the far side of what appeared to be what was left of the living room. All the furniture and furnishings were left just as they were when the house was abandoned. They were covered in dust, mildew and mold.

The pictures and paintings left behind of this family would make the Devil tug on his collar like a comedian bombing on stage. A whole different level of evil lived right across the street from grandparents back then and they knew nothing about it, until the last Grimsrud that survived that night of carnage, was arrested.

As I picked up the disc, I heard a sound that was decidedly…female. I guessed that it was either a couple of huffers, or people from out of town…doing the nasty in the basement. The woman had just started moaning and my first thought was how to sneak a peek without getting caught. I threw the Frisbee out of the window and stole down the basement stairs as quietly as I could.

I deliberately eased gently, down each step and each step let out a low creak. Yet, apparently they, or she, didn’t hear me. I didn’t hear a man, or another woman, so my mind raced with a different permutation for each step. If there wasn’t anyone else there other than this ecstatic woman, I was more than at the ready, to volunteer some assistance. As I got to the next to last step, I just remembered that Clive was outside, I hoped that he would stay away from the house.

When I got to the basement floor, the moaning stopped. It was fairly dark down there, save for a beam of light from the lone window. I saw a woman so pale, her skin was almost translucent. She smiled at me with her lips clenched, then her upper lip curled and fangs appeared. In the blink of an eye, she came at me and she rebounded back just as fast.

She lunged at me again and I saw what was holding her back. Her arms were shackled to the stone floor and her wings were constricted by leather bindings. She wore a thin, veil-like outfit that look like something out of a Frazetta painting, and her eyes turned from green to red. I had the misfortune of backing up in the wrong direction, I should’ve moved towards the stairs. When I went for the stairs, she came at me again.

The chains had enough slack in them to keep me from reach the stairs or the window. Now all of sudden, I wanted Clive to come barging on what I misconstrued as going to be fun. This creature had suckered me in with her sounds of pleasure. The only climax that would be reached, was when she would get to feast on my neck. I heard footsteps coming down the stairs and I knew it had to be Clive! Here comes the cavalry!

Something flew down the stairs and the creature pounced on it with cat-like quickness. Jesus, it was Clive’s head! Thanks Clive, did you get your cavalry lessons from Custer? Oh shit, I was done for! I looked over to the stairs and it was Mrs. Martin! Oh, how she was smiling and that smile looked familiar, somehow. The thick, coke bottle glasses that she had on, were even more familiar.

Then I remembered, she reminded me of one of those evil offspring in a picture that was over the fireplace. Give or take forty-five years, you could still see the resemblance, she was a Grimsrud. Mrs. Martin threw the Frisbee at me and it landed at my feet, smeared in blood.

Clive must have followed me in here and she killed him. Mrs. Martin went back upstairs and I started to scream for help, knowing that it was next to useless. Everybody in town was at the County Fair, except for Clive and me, but a last resort is better than no resort at all. There was nothing I could use as a weapon, I wasn’t sure if that was because Mrs. Martin didn’t want me defending myself, or so that the creature couldn’t use anything on her, or to get away.

My cries for help were silenced when another object flew down the stairs and it appeared to be one of Clive’s hands. I started to yell for help again when that's when the light came on and then I saw the bones…so many of them. I had no idea where one body began and another started, but I knew from the skulls that a lot of people had met their demise from Mrs. Martin or the creature. I also saw a painted circular line that I determined was the boundary as to how far the creature could reach.

I didn’t know what to make of the creature herself. If I saw her walking down the street with her wings covered up, I would’ve thought she was one of the most beautiful women in the world. Though beauty is skin deep, horror is to the core. The little head rightfully packed it in and the big head took over. I thought it over and I had only one way out of here.

“I know who took your ring, Mrs. Martin.”

Nothing. I bellowed, “Mrs. Martin, I know who took your ring and I know where it is!”

I waited for a minute and just as I wondering if she heard me, she came storming down the stairs. Without looking, she stopped just before the line.

“Did I hear right?”

“Yep. The ring that was stolen four years ago? The one that you were cried about two years after the theft? I know where it is.”

“Then tell me.”

“What, and then you feed me to her anyway? No thanks.”

“You’re not getting out of here.”

“Then you’re not getting your ring.”

She stormed back up the stairs. I shuddered because as I looked over to the creature, I saw that she had cleaned all the flesh off of Clive’s hand, leaving just the bones, which she threw into the pile. She looked at me and smiled, and I couldn’t tell as to which smile scared me more. Hers, or Mrs. Martin’s.

Mrs. Martin came back down the stairs with a whip and a bloody machete in her hand. She just confirmed what I already knew, that her and the creature weren’t on friendly terms, or there wouldn’t have been that painted line.

Mrs. Martin cracked the whip at the creature, but the creature only took half a step back and she was coiled to strike. Mrs. Martin cracked the whip twice, in quick succession and I charged her on the second strike. I guessed that with those coke bottle glasses that her peripheral vision would be poor and I was right.

She brought the machete up, but it was too late as I twisted it away from her hand and pushed her towards the creature. I felt a great rush of air as the creature pulled Mrs. Martin away. I think I only touched three of the twenty steps on the stair case as I went up, and I nearly slipped in the blood and gore that used to be Clive. There was quite a battle going on back there, as I could hear the screams between the monster and the human monstrosity as I went past the front door.

I got all the way to the front gate before I stopped, then I ran back in. I grabbed something from Clive’s coat and ran back downstairs. What I saw down there, amounted to the longest fourteen seconds of my life, then I fled the house twice as fast as I had the first time.

********

“Jake, you know that I will lock you up for filing a false police report.”“Sheriff, you don’t have to believe me. I just want you to take a look down there and if you don’t believe me, you can lock me away and throw away the key, because I’ll be safer in jail.”

“Boy, you better not be messing with me, Josie will have her corndog stand closed by the time I get back to the fair.”

I hesitated as we got out of the car. I stopped at the front gate and the sheriff pushed me ahead.

“Did you call on the deputies, too? I don’t think you’ll be able to handle her by yourself.”

“Listen, Jake, I can handle any woman, God put on this Earth.”

“Yeah, that God put on this Earth.”

“If I found out that this whole thing was a joke, you’ll be washing all the county’s squad cars...everyday, come rain or shine.”

We got to the front door and he saw the remnants of Clive. The sheriff immediately arrested and handcuffed me. He put me in the back of the squad car. He called for back up from all the surrounding counties and he went inside.

The wait between when he went inside and when a back up car arrived was agonizing, I was afraid that the creature would have me for dessert and there wouldn’t be a damn thing I could do about it, handcuffed and locked up in this car. Two more cars pulled up, then the sheriff came running out.

“Jake, what the hell did you to your best friend?! What did you do to those people?”

“It can all be explained…in my right front pocket, sheriff.”As it turned out, the creature was gone and she had picked that old crone, Mrs. Martin, clean. The sheriff reached into my pocket and pulled out what I had gone back for, Clive’s cell phone. In those fourteen seconds that I returned to the basement, I had taken three pictures of the creature and the last struggles of Mrs. Martin.

They still thought I had fabricated the whole thing, until the forensic pathologists from the state, coupled with the skeletons stripped of flesh that were popping up all over the nearby counties with me still in jail, convinced them that I had nothing to do with this.

The sheriff had paid a visit to my house a week after I was freed and we talked things over. From what they found, they believed that the Grimsruds were using the wood chippers to get rid of evidence and that they had kept the creature for generations. Mrs. Martin must have somehow smuggled the creature away when the last of her kin was arrested, though they would never know for certain how the clan had met their demise.

As for me? I moved to the Canary Islands because I figured that the creature couldn’t fly that far. My love life has been tepid at best, because I don’t care how beautiful a woman is or how wonderful she seems. If it is female and flies? I don’t want to know. That includes stewardesses.



Note: JJ's starter sentence was, "her arms shackled to the stone floor and her wings constricted by leather bindings..." and it's based on a Frank Frazetta avatar that a fellow blogger had. Peter Stormare's character Gaear Grimsrud, is the one that fed Steve Buscemi's character, Carl Showalter into the woodchipper in "Fargo."

"The Hair Of The Pill"

I was late for an appointment in the City. I should've already been there an hour ago and the train had just pulled into Berkeley. I just dry-swallowed the pill that I take to keep my disease in check, but it's efficacy was in question. It could be likened to allergy pills in that eventually you build a tolerance to the stuff and then the sneezes will come at the most inconvenient times. The doors opened and I was blindsided by a Yuppie jerk, wham, in the chest. I almost spat the pill back up, just catching it with the skin of my teeth like this idiot that I saw on TV as a kid who used to catch bullets, only in reverse.

I winced and made for the door when the Yuppie grabbed me.

"There! Don't go on there! Vampires on a train! There are!"

Now that I had a second chance to study him, the guy was as off as his sentences were. His clothes were about twelve years out of style, his shirt was misbuttoned, his face had smudges of God knows what on it and then, his smell hit me in the worst way. This guy was a "5150," which is the designation under the California Penal Code for someone who is criminal insane and the label that those in the law enforcement profession, use for nut jobs.

I've seen his type before. They lose their jobs or their minds, in either order. Then they still "go to work" with their briefcases filled with old newspapers or drawings and scribblings that reflect how far off the deep end they've gone.

I ignored him and stepped on to the car, he grabbed me and pleaded, "no! There are vampires on there!"I rubbed my five o'clock shadow and told him calmly, "my father is Italian and my mother is Korean. With the dishes that they taught me how to cook, I eat at least a bulb of garlic a day. If anything, the vampires should be afraid of me."

The doors closed and he tried to pry them open as they train pulled away. I was going to laugh at him or flip him off, but I figured the guy is in enough torment from his own mind, and it would do no good to compound that. It was just before lunch so there wasn't a lot of people on the train, though some of the passengers wouldn't have to work that hard to pass for monsters on Halloween.

There was a man in a suit that was tuxedo-like and his hair was all too slicked back. He had so much stuff in his hair, I could've turned him upside down at the next stop and he would've slid out of the train, despite the carpet. He definitely would've been a "Dapper Dan Man" if such a product actually existed, but I imagined that he had used a whole jar of gel to get that effect. I saw him eyeing a bike messenger in such a way that he definitely wasn't looking at the bicyclist's neck nor was it his blood that he was after.

Then there was a Goth chick. So pale that she was almost translucent and her hair was dyed-pitch black to match her makeup and clothes. The empty look behind her eyes and the snarl on her lips made her seem more zombie than vampire. Then there was a tall cat sitting right behind with scars all over his face. I imagined that he was in an accident and that he probably went through a window. If you painted him green and pulled the discs that he had through his earlobes down and fashioned them into bolts, you would have Frankenstein.

Then there were the real life, aspiring monsters and you could see it their eyes. Cats on their way to job interviews and their only ambition in life is to be like Ken Lay, only, they want to get away with it. I sat as far away from them as possible, the stench of their twisted souls smelled worse to me than that crazy man.

I got off at Glen Park Station and caught a bus to my appointment, a decrepit house on other side of University Mound, a small neighborhood where most of the streets were named after universities. The gate was wide open to the house with the tunnel entrance and the tunnel was dark, though I had no problem seeing with such little light. I guess the locals had figured out a long time ago not to come in there for in that darkness, two Afghan Wolfhounds stood guard.

They had decided that I wasn't a threat before I even passed the threshold of the gate, though they were clearly annoyed at me by the fangs that they bared. I climbed to the top of the stairs and stopped. There was no doorbell, no door handle, no knocker or door, for that matter. I knocked on three walls that faced me, then the wall in front of me, lit up.

There on the wall were lights showing all phases of the moon and the wall slid open. A small Australian Aborigine stood before me, flossing his teeth.

"Hi, sorry that I'm late. I-"

He held a finger to his lips to shush me, then he flossed some more. He took a piece of food from the floss and flicked it at me.

"You're not sorry, mate, you're fucked."

"I had a relapse last night and it got involved. I couldn't get here any sooner than-"

"You know who I am, you know what I can do. You piss-fart around with my time and you wind up buggered. Plain and simple enough, bye."

The wall slid closed and the dogs growled. I turned around slowly and sidled past them.

I don't know how long I wandered around the City in despair, but it was dark by the time I got back to Berkeley. I had a feeling that all the pills in the world wouldn't prevent a relapse and that my last hope slid closed with that wall. As I cut through a dark wooded area on the fringe of the campus, I heard a twig snap, then footsteps.

"The train, you got. The vampires, they didn't get you."

It was that Yuppie Bum and he had a box cutter in each hand.I started shaking and my forehead broke out into a cold sweat.

"Yeah, I got away from them," I said, my voice fluctuating like a guitarist was using it as a tremolo bar.

"Then, something...you must really be good, you. There's no way anyone is that good."He took a step closer to me and I visibly shook.

"What are you doing with those in your hand?"

"These? What, these? Oh, no. I'm houses. I'm cutting houses for my friends."

He motioned downward with one of the box cutters toward some refrigerator boxes that he was making into cardboard cabins with. My shaking, amongst other things, was past the point of no return. He looked at me with shock and pity, then he quickly put the box cutters away and out his hands as if to assure he me that he didn't mean any threat.

"I thank you for the warning, but there was nothing to really be scared about on that train."

He put a hand on my shoulder to console me, my eyes bulged.

"No, your warning wasn't necessary, because vampires don't exist."

A growl crept up from my belly and as I saw the fear in his eyes, I knew that he had an inkling that my disease had a little more to it than the common cold.

The timbre in my voice deepened as I muttered, "now, werewolves? That's something else altogether..."

Note: In response to the "Snakes On A Plane" -hype, JJ wanted a story that had "vampires on a train."

"Snow And Sacrifice"

“This is why I cleaned floors for forty-six years?”

Even though he was nearly passed out, Jason heard the cold, metallic voice all too clearly. His right eye fluttered open and his lips trembled. His head that was hanging off the edge of the abandoned couch, flew into the upright position like someone had attached cables to his ears and gave him a jump start from beyond.

He looked up and down the dark alley that looked like it was covered in dusty, ashen cotton. The darkness, the garbage and soot of the city, gave the snow that complexion. Jason couldn’t find the owner of the voice, nor did he want to. It made him feel even colder than a swirling February wind coming the wrong way off of Lake St. Clair, and it ruined the good high that he had going. The good high that kept his mind off of the fact that he stole a twelve-year old girl’s cell phone to get this fix in the first place.

“Whoever said that, must have been using a speaker,” Jason giggled and mumbled. “No one in their right mind would be out here right now. They would have to be an Eskimo or twice as high as me.”

He sniffed, not from the cold, but from the prospect of facing another Detroit winter as a worthless junkie. His grandmother and mother wanted so much more for him. He did too, until he fell in with the wrong crowd and after that, he would fall down all day in trying to get his next fix. Jason had run out of veins to tap and his mother ran out of patience. She threw him out a year ago and his grandmother died the year before that, on her way to the pharmacy to pick up her heart medicine.

Jason couldn’t get comfortable on the couch and his mood changed from sad to livid. He was supposed to be the first person to graduate college in his family and he didn’t even have enough money to buy a loaf of day old bread from the bakery. He really got angry when he mulled it over and figured out that the cell phone he had traded for a bad batch of skag, had both a camera and blue tooth.

“Trey ripped me off. I could’ve got a cheap hotel room off of that” he groaned. Jason shifted, tossed and turned until he got as comfortable on that couch as he could get. A light snow commenced and the flakes melted on his face. He imagined the snow was his grandmother caressing his hair like she did when the world was simple and right, then something tangled in his short curls.

Jason tried to get up, but the unknown pulled his hair and his head back down on the couch. He looked up wide-eyed at the withered and taut skeletal face hovering above him. The corpse pointed a gray brown finger at him, then slapped him across the head. Jason tried to run again, but was yanked by the hair even harder and slapped twice this time.

Jason tried to scream, but his vocal cords were as frozen as the rime forming on the dirty snow. He tried to pull the hand off of his hair, but hands flinched with revulsion when he touched it.

“Don‘t pretend that you didn‘t hear me boy! Is this is why I cleaned floors for forty-six years?”

“G-g-g-g-randma?!”

“Is this why I left Arkansas? Is this why I changed bedpans? Why I change urine soaked sheets? Why I wiped the stinkiest-”

“Stinkiest is not a word, grandma-”

“Shut up!”

“I could be wrong, but I don’t think it’s a wor-”

Slap!

“Don’t you interrupt! Why I wiped the stinkiest, foulest, more putrid than a pot of chitins left out all summer long, crustiest, butts at the old folk‘s home, just so you could waste your life?”

Jason couldn’t believe it. Here was his grandmother, feeding worms for two years and four miles away from her coffin, yelling at him. She was so desiccated that she had no eyes, how did she find her way here? She was so rotted, that there was no way that she could have any vocal chords, yet he could hear her all too clearly.

“How many jobs did I work every week, to put food in your belly and clothes on your back?”

“Three, grandma.”

Slap!

“I didn’t hear, didn’t I teach you not to mumble?!”

“Yes, grandma! Three.”

“How many vacations did I take?”

“None, grandma.”

“How many dates did I pass up on, so that someone would always be at home to watch over you at night?"

“But grandma, you were working all the ti-”

Slap!

“You went on no dates, grandma!”

“So, I worked hard all my life and given my life up so that you could be the first of us to go to college, right? This is how you pay me back? This is how you honor my memory? This is how you treat your mother?”

She gave Jason one last hard tug and pulled out three tufts of his hair in the process, then she pushed him off the couch.

“You better get your shit together!”

Jason got up and took off running!

“Or the next time I visit you boy, you’ll wish that-”

He didn’t hear the rest because at that point, he found his voice…literally. Jason screamed while he ran three blocks, which was not an easy thing when his diet for the last six months consisted of heroin, candy and Twinkies. By the time he stopped screaming, he still couldn’t hear a thing because of his racing heart and throbbing head. He didn’t hear or see Trey until he ran into him.

Jason begged Trey to lend him some money, but Trey wouldn’t go for it. Jason explained to Trey that Trey had been getting the better of the dealer-junkie relationship and Trey said that was the cost of doing business. Jason then convinced Trey to front him some drugs because he knew some rich kids from his high school days.

Trey did so reluctantly and Jason did sell the drugs to the rich kids, only Trey never got the money because Jason ran off to the bus depot. He took the first bus out of there and wound up in Taos, where he got a job in a Laundromat. Jason is now enrolled in a local community college and working two part-time jobs.

Jason keeps his head clean, inside and out. He shaves his head and he’s never had the urge to take up the “H,” China white, black tar, skag, or even anything stronger than aspirin…the three patches of skin where his hair never grew back, tell him that grandma will visit him if he is ever tempted by drugs calls again.

Note: JJ wanted a story about "sacrifice."