Terror Scribes
Page 16
“Dadda . . . Dadda . . . ” she repeated. Then she said. “Sorry.”
Her foot slipped on the top step of the stairs and Sam reached out. But his gripping hands, the ones he was always so proud of, failed him at just the wrong moment. The doll fell down the flight, toppling over and over, accompanied by a crunching sound that somehow managed to drive a spike through Sam. He looked down at Clara near the bottom. She wasn’t moving.
He descended, noticing even before he got there that more of the red liquid had been spilt, and was flowing out of Clara. Crouching down, he dabbed at the doll’s mouth, at its shoulder, but the liquid didn’t stop this time. And Clara’s head flopped on a neck that could no longer support it.
Sam wished that he was able to leak too . . .
The assistant didn’t seem very surprised to see Sam return with the box a day or so later.
“You remember me? I bought a ‘skin doll’ a few weeks ago . . . ”
The man said that he did. “What seems to be the trouble, sir?”
“There was an . . . accident. My daughter was injured.”
The assistant continued to smile his painted-on smile, but it had suddenly lost some of its spark. “Oh dear. I do hope she’s all right?”
“Her arm came off,” Sam said bluntly.
The man remained silent.
“She’s had to have a new one.”
“And this was caused by the doll, sir?”
Sam nodded.
“Where is it now?”
“In the box. I’ve brought it back. It’s broken; not moving. You might be able to repair it, but it’s no use to us anymore.”
The assistant opened the box and looked inside. “No,” he said, bowing his head but still smiling. “I’m afraid it will be impossible to mend.”
It was Sam’s turn to say nothing. He opened and closed his gripping hands.
“In view of what’s happened I think the very least we can do is offer our apologies and your money back . . . ” The man raised his head. “That is, unless you would like to pick something else from the shop.”
Sam opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. Sally had been very shaken up by the whole experience, and he doubted whether Suzie would ever speak to him again. Perhaps there was something he could bring back to make amends.
“Another doll, for instance?”
Sam shook his head. “No way. Not again.”
The assistant smiled. “No, no, you misunderstand me. I don’t mean another one the same—we don’t have any ‘skins’ left in stock at the moment anyway. No, I was thinking, this time you might be better off with something a little more . . . ”
“Life-like?” Sam said.
“Exactly,” said the assistant, and smiled. Then guided him once more in the direction of the Missy Daydream selection.
Paul Kane is the award-winning author of numerous horror/dark fantasy stories, and books like Alone (In the Dark), Touching the Flame, FunnyBones, Signs of Life, The Lazarus Condition, Peripheral Visions, The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy, RED, Of Darkness and Light, The Gemini Factor and the bestselling Arrowhead trilogy (Arrowhead, Broken Arrow and Arrowland). He is also the co-editor of Hellbound Hearts, The Mammoth Book of Body Horror and the forthcoming Beyond Rue Morgue from Titan. To find out more about him and his work visit shadow-writer.co.uk.
Transmogrify
by Richard Thomas
In order to live I have to die.
I close my eyes for a second and her hot mouth is on my nipples, her hands cupping my breasts as our pale limbs writhe on the bed. A shock of air and my eyes flick open. I run my tongue over porcelain teeth, breathing in the crisp November air, and exhaling strawberry frost. Still, the remorse. When will I learn?
Numb to the bone I stand in the empty graveyard as the sun creeps over the horizon, limping home, drenched in a bloodmist that constantly frames my vision. The acid-rain will soon eat through the screeners I’ve put on. At this time of year AR50 may not be enough. As much as things have changed some traditions stay the same. I come back to the rituals. The burial.
In the distance leaves burn, wet and moldy. A dense cloud of dirty smoke drifts over the skeletal forest that rings the iron fence, chipped and forgotten. I am alone, as expected. The obituary was a formality but I’m a stickler for details. Long slender fingers push deep into the cashmere overcoat abyss that drapes to my knees and hugs my empty shell. The sharp wind rapes me again and again. I play a game in the flayed tresses that flit about my face. They are as black as my heart and I hide from the very surroundings I set out to embrace today.
Footsteps. I glance around, picking up the motion of a lone figure, head down, treading towards me. Dark and tall, it must be Remy. Who else would show? Who else was left? I shiver but not from the cold. I fed last night and am still full of the sustenance of her lifeforce. She had been expecting something akin to a gothic romance but was sorely mistaken.
The evolution didn’t happen all at once. It took time. Years. Lifetimes. But I have plenty of time. I have eternity.
I rub the port at the base of my skull, a nasty habit like twirling my hair. I have to see DocAught soon. Time for a tune-up. A little nanotech and a full viral upgrade and nobody will be the wiser.
A thousand voices whisper and my eyes shoot to the dead branches. A Starling catapults up into the fading light, fluttering its wings. Panic stricken eyes gaze my way as it drops from the sky, twitching for but a moment, then still. Rigid.
He is closer now. There is nowhere to run. Not that I could have. I miss him. When he finally looks up his eyes go wide and his brow furrows, stopping in his tracks. A heat flushes my skin and for a moment I hesitate. The longing blurs my vision as the heat flows to a million points of skin that weep beneath my clothes.
“Excuse me, miss,” he says.
“You must be Remy,” I say.
“Um . . . well, yes, but . . . ” his eyes are on my face like a magnifying glass - inspecting, doubting.
“I’m Cinder. But you can call me Cindy,” I offer.
“OH, right. Wow. Finally we meet. It’s just . . . ”
“I know. I look just like her.”
“Well, twenty years ago, right . . . the same blue eyes, uncanny.”
“Consider it an homage. I had them dyed to the same Tiffany blue a couple of years ago. Mine had always been such a boring brown.”
“Right.” He turns to the grave and stares at the headstone. “Old school.”
“It’s mostly symbolic, you know, with the organ laws and all . . . ”
“Yes. She’s not in there. I know.”
“You ok, Remy?”
“I didn’t think there’d be anybody here, especially not you. I thought you were a myth, something that she talked about at night, a phantom that didn’t really exist.”
“Long story. Nothing you need to know about. Pedestrian.”
“Right.”
“I was just leaving anyway, it’s getting late. Curfew.”
“Yes.” He stands close to me, a massive presence, more grey at the temples than I remember.
“Here, Remy, she wanted me to give you this.”
I walk over to him, every bit of silk rubbing against my flesh, screaming out. I wrap my arms around him and press my head against his chest. The pounding. His hands are on my back and I find myself turning feline. I purr into his grey woolen coat and rub my face in his musky scent. Wormwood and formaldehyde burn my nostrils as I brush up against his legs. My knees are like a cricket making music as they rub together.
For a second he lets down his guard. Remorse and anguish float to the surface like a bloated corpse wrapped in black trash bags. Against my own wishes I take a sip. Just a bit of him for posterity. A quick inhale and he coughs. I lick my lips, rubbing out a bitter coat of wax that I’d pasted on earlier. Ruby Woo. The casing is new, but the inhabitant, ancient.
I push away and step back. For a moment we are knee deep in snow, the Celtic crosses and cracked stones
dusted with powder, as his breath exhales in a cloud, eyes dimming to dull ashes. He staggers, barely able to raise his hands from his sides. A crack over the horizon as the sound barrier breaks. The 6:42 to Los Angeles. Always on time.
“It’s ok, baby. Everything is going to be fine.”
Remy falls over on his side, glancing up at me, his eyes empty.
“You won’t remember this moment, for I’ve taken it. Forget me. Forget her. We’re gone, and won’t be back. It’s better this way. Consider it a bullet dodged Remy and move on with your life. Let it go.”
“Ok.”
“Down the street from you, that blonde with the synthetics, the skin job on a leash she calls a dog, that one. She’s a good catch for you. Don’t come here again.”
“Ok.”
I need to go home and jack in. Now. My hunger has been awakened. He’ll be ok. He’ll be alive. It’s the least I can do for him after all of these years. Samantha is dead now. Long live Cinder. Half of the time I’m gone anyway. It doesn’t matter.
I’ll always be alone.
Standing at the grocery checkout the young girl with the blonde ponytail can’t look at me enough. Her face flushes red every fifteen seconds. She scans the bizarre selections that I’ve grabbed in a frenzy as the ache washes over me in waves. Six blood oranges. A 24 oz. bottle of Intrigue K-Y Jelly. 1 gallon of compressed nitrogen.
“Are you, like . . . I mean, do . . . . ” she sputters.
“No.”
“Oh, ok.”
12 razor blades. A six-pack of Frost Gatorade. 8 cellular protein cutlets.
“Are you sure? I mean, didn’t I see . . . ”
“No, sweetheart, you didn’t.”
12 feet of Tripp Lite U042-036 High-Speed USB 2.0 cable. A tube of black cherry lip balm. A 6.8 oz. Red Currant Votivo candle. A 50-count bottle of Vitamin B12-H_SharkOil.
“I mean, I don’t like girls or anything, that’s not what I’m trying . . . ”
“Honey, look at me.”
The high school cheerleader with the punk rock fantasies pauses for a moment with a can of Vienna Sausages in her left hand, the other wandering up to her shirt collar, fiddling with the tab, running behind her neck to massage the only acceptable exposed flesh.
A flash of light and french doors fly open. An empty bed rests in the middle of the room as pale blue moonlight fills the space with stardust. A cigarette smolders in an ashtray on the nightstand as the dull patter of a shower running seeps from beneath the bathroom door. There is an indentation in the mattress. Lace trim edges the sheets, wrinkled ivory bunched in piles. It is quiet in the room but for the echo of a gasp, the exhale of air, and the sigh of completion.
“You couldn’t handle it . . . ” squinting at her name tag. “ . . . Jennifer.”
I extend my wrist to the scanner, and run the bar-code over it. BEEP. Cinder Bathory. $426,384. Transaction ok? $1,235.45. Accessing account. APPROVED.
Welcome to Facebook. Facebook helps you connect and share with the entities in your life.
I try to pry the plastic off of the new USB cable. These damn things are so hard to open. My hair is pulled back and to the side for easy access to my port. My skin is pink and splotchy from the blistering hot shower and the obsidian silk robe clings to my damp body like tape.
My hands shake and drop the package to the floor. The third one I’ve burnt out this month. Nothing has any depth anymore, nothing satisfies. Everything is manufactured, and that makes it farther from the truth, the core of it all, the purity. Soon the snacking will not be enough.
I pause for a second to gaze around my sparse studio apartment. I live like an eccentric millionaire, eating cans of cat food and fearing my own demise while my checking account stands at $400,000. There is nothing but Glacier water and a hexagrid of hemoglobin cubes in the fridge. The grocery bag stands on the counter forgotten for the moment. A king size four-post bed covered with 1000-thread count sheets fills the room. It was hand carved by Buddhist monks four thousand years ago. A blinking 36” monitor sits next to a hybrid computer that I found in Chinatown. Resting on the beaten Salvation Army desk, it waits for me, the leather desk chair eager for my supplication. It has Intel guts, Mac OS XX_Cheetah, a terabyte of hard drive space, and enough security to route whatever happens back to the very brown coats that might be tracking me.
I should move to the desert and leave it all. I’ve evolved beyond my needs, and my life is more complicated for it. The itching of the nanodrones is in my head, DocAught says. It isn’t possible for me to feel them. But I do. They crash around the inside of my veins and the siren songs, the rapture, makes me double over and crash to my knees. I tear open the plastic, slicing my index finger in the process. By the dull glow of the monitor I suck at the broken skin, as my eyes slide into whiteness. My history will be my undoing, but it is not the crimson shot I want tonight. They wait for me, a bunch of addicts, scratching at the scabs, ready to tear them open again. And I’m coming. I’m coming.
I unravel the cord and jam it into the side of the computer. Sliding into the small leatherbound swivel chair I fumble around at the base of my skull and plug it in. My eyes flutter and a gasp escapes my lips. Fingers fly to the keyboard as I login. I have 432 friends. I have 23 new messages. I’ve been poked 12 times. I skip it all and head to a special private chat room. There are others like me. Others that think they are like me. But they aren’t.
Tomorrow they’ll be weak, fatigued, with headaches or migraines, depressed over something they can’t quite figure out. Their immune systems will plummet and regardless of the hypodermics they shove into their thighs or the bots they have infiltrating their systems, my tech is better. They plug in just like I do, seeking something to fill the void.
PRIVATE CHAT - Room 2112.0101
Bloodrunners
[2] members present
Ashestoashes has entered the room
cureforpain: hey ash, wassup
breakingthebroken: so i didn’t think that was fair, you know?
cureforpain: nk, lb
breakingthebroken: sistersister, where have you been?
ashestoashes: oh you know, same old stuff, stupid job, stupid boyfriend, blech
breakingthebroken: we were just talking about that crap
cureforpain: ask her, she’ll tell you
ashestoashes: what?
breakingthebroken: oh, nothing, stupid boy i think is working me
ashestoashes: what do you mean?
breakingthebroken: i’m just being paranoid that’s all
ashestoashes: what happened
cureforpain: come on, spill it or i will
ashestoashes: you can tell me
breakingthebroken:
I lean back in the chair and close my eyes. The flow is slow but unmistakable. Fear, bits of anxiety, regret, remorse. Even Cureforpain is letting it out. He’s been trying to get Broken in the real world for months now. Anger, frustration.
ashestoashes: let just tell you something, and you just listen, ok?
breakingthebroken: ok
cureforpain: here it comes, preach baby :-)
ashestoashes: if he never returns your calls, if he never has sex with you, if he blows you off for his boys, if he’s always working late, never wants to see the movies you do, never wants to eat the food you like, basically, he just doesn’t care about you, move on . . .
The rig has been filled and the air tapped out. Leaning forward I’m blinded by a shroud of white as memories cut in and out. Mountains and a cabin, AUF WIEDERSEHEN! gunfire and the pounding of horses hooves thundering by. The cold stone of an empty hallway lost deep in the bowels of some ancient castle. Snow and the soft rub of animal fur on my naked flesh.
My fingers fly over the keyboard, lecturing the kids once again.
. . . if he won’t let you look at his phone sadness, frustration, anger, betrayal that means there are calls on there or texts he doesn’t want you to see, numbers, and if his phone rings fury, despair, failure, remorse, exhaustion, nausea at his apartment and the voicemail starts to pick up and you hear a female voice, and he purrs in your ear, hold on a sec baby abandonment, suicide, desperation, failure, anger, anger, anger, stupidity, loss while he jumps up to answer it and you hear the words nothing or nobody or later, then he is screwing you over he is using you loneliness, rage, fury, emptiness, anxiety . . .
breakingthebroken: omg i’m gonna barf
breakingthebroken has left the room
ashestoashes: too much?
cureforpain: naw, she needed to hear it
ashestoashes: so what’s up with you?
The sun peeks under the edge of the velvet drapes. Exhausted, I breathe in and out, my skin heating up, tightening. I’ve turned back the clock three years tonight. I’m five pounds lighter. Sweat glistens on my exposed throat, and I lean back in the chair as my hand slides down the front of my robe. My eyes close as I embrace this mortal coil.
There are predators and there are prey. Donors and recipients.
I have to move around a lot. I have a Xenon AmTran card. I have five million frequent flier miles. Conway, Arkansas. Rolla, Missouri. Peoria, Illinois. Off the beaten path. The security is too dangerous in the metropolitan factions. You can only nibble on the second shift of the Dell computer parts factory for so long. The Caterpillar assembly line. The AT&T Global telemarketing center. They start to get sick. People stop showing up, and glances dart my way. They think it’s sex. When the whispers at the vending machines start, it’s time for me to disappear into the night.
The places where emotions are raw and on the surface, that’s where I linger. But in time I find that no matter how depressing the job, how dismal the future, how anxious my friends become, it has its limits. People leave, people get a bad vibe about you, and they stop opening up. The funeral homes call the police. The hospitals ask for ID. The AA meetings start questioning your steps. Their hackles go up, and their senses heighten. Online it’s easier to sip. And the body of water that I surf with reckless abandon is much larger and better stocked.