“Yes, I think so,” said Father Matthew. “I have everything I need.”
“Mrs. Villalobos, she gave you the intercessions list?”
“Well I have the list, yes...”
“Good good,” Father Tim said tiredly, going to his closet. “You’ll be fine.”
Mass was a blur. He sat in the chair and blinked bleary eyed at the stupid faces of the congregation. He was getting old, for one night without sleep to do him in so badly.
He moved his mouth for the responses, aped the rising and kneeling mechanically, muttered through the First Reading. It was like his altar boy days. Six thirty mass, barely awake, going through the motions. He had been tired the day he’d dropped the Host too.
He let Father Matthew do the lions share. Read the Gospel, lead the choir, sing. He nearly fell asleep during the young priest’s homily, but it must have been a cracker because the people laughed and were all smiles when they rose for the intercessions.
Father Matthew prayed for America.
“Lord hear our prayer,” said the respondents.
He prayed for the unbelievers, that they might come to know the love of God.
“Lord hear our prayer.”
He prayed for the indigent and the sick, the suffering and maybe for aborted babies and their mothers.
“Lord hear our prayer.”
He prayed for the recently departed, rounding it off with;
“....and for Timothy O’Herlihey, we pray to the Lord.”
Father Tim’s eyes snapped wide open in disbelief.
And the first person he saw, sitting in the front pew, staring right back at him with a smug and portentous smile on her desiccated lips, was Mary Ladhe.
He rose trembling from his chair.
“You bitch!”
His roaring voice boomed over the microphone clipped to his robes and the collective intake of breath from the people in the pews was infinitely more aghast than the one that had driven him from the Church when he was eleven.
He ignored it. Stomped across the marble floor and to the podium, eliciting more gasps as he reached up and tore the list from Father Matthew’s fingers.
There was the list of the dead, in Mrs. Villalobos’ hand....except for the final name, penciled in a broad, bold hand.
His own.
She had intercepted the list somehow, wrote in his name, and given it to Father Matthew herself.
The blood pounded in his ears, boiled in his head and face, coloring him a bright pink.
He gnashed his teeth and flung the paper down, tearing away his stole and vestments as he jumped down the steps and clambered over the communion rail. The mic squealed and whined and cut off as he ripped it free and flung it down.
People were getting up from their seats, looking fearful, amused, bewildered, drawing their children back, crossing themselves.
He locked eyes with Mary Ladhe as he stalked past her down the center aisle. She alone was unperturbed, and sat primly in her seat, a slight smile on her face, eyes unflinching from his.
He had to get out of her sight. Had to get out of this church. It was hot in here. So hot. His face was burning up. His head. His chest was tightening. There was a sharp pain in his left wrist.
Was this how it would come?
No. He had to get air.
He ran pell mell down the center aisle, burst through the doors and staggered down the steps.
The bus that struck him out of his shoes carried him twenty feet like the coyote in the cartoons, his face mashed like a waffle against the grill. The horn blaring in surprise at his sudden appearance in the street sounded to him like a blaring trumpet blown by the lungs of a wrathful archangel.
Who knew? Maybe that’s what it was.
* * * *
Father Matthew kept his hand clamped over his mouth as the coroner wagon pulled away from the curb. He didn’t want the people gathered in front of the church to see his curling lips. He had to be strong for them.
He wondered though, if anyone would pick up Father Tim’s bloody shoe, and if tomorrow the long trail of blood on the street would be washed away. He wondered if he should get a hold of the janitor or maybe do it himself to spare the schoolchildren coming home in a few hours the sight.
A small, but firm hand clutched his elbow and he looked over to see Mrs. Ladhe looking at him, her blue eyes brimming with compassion.
“I’m so sorry, Father Matthew,” she said, “it’s a tragedy. And on your first day too.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Ladhe,” he said, patting her dry, bony hand. “I’m only worried about the...I worry the children will see something they shouldn’t.”
“You’re a good priest, Father Matthew,” said Mrs. Ladhe. “But Mrs. Villalobos told me she rang Eladio and he’s on his way to clean things up. You needn’t worry.”
“Oh thank God.”
“Why don’t you come over to my house for dinner? You don’t want to go home and cook for yourself now.”
“I could never impose. I should stay and help Eladio.”
“Ah, it’s a good priest you are. Well, do as you see fit. I’ll have a plate of leftovers waiting for you in the sacristy in the morning. Fresh roast chicken,” she said, smiling.
“Thank you, Mrs. Ladhe. That’s very kind of you.”
She turned then, and hobbled off down the street, the lights of the squad car and ambulance splashing the bloody street in alternating blue and red.
This is probably the grossest story I’ve ever written, one of my first forays into body horror. It came out of a humorous conversation I was having with my friend Jeff Carter on the way down to Yuma, Arizona on one of our why-not road trips, ostensibly to research the old territorial prison for Merkabah Rider 3.
The scariest comic book I’ve ever read was Junji Ito’s Uzumaki, which I picked up on a whim at a Borders on Sunset while waiting with my wife to see a movie across the street at the Cinerama Dome. I think I read two thirds of the comic just sitting on a bench while my wife perused the arts and crafts section, and it literally got me to break out in a cold sweat. There are images from that book, particularly in the chapter where two students morph slowly into giant snails, and in another where the top half of a kid who was struck by a car and ground up into the wheel well comes flying out of his grave, the suspension coil fused with his broken spine making him bounce and spring like a bizarre pogo stick, burned themselves onto my mind, so much that I had to close the freakin’ thing and put it back on the shelf when it started going into a hospital nursery.
OK so all that’s much creepier than anything in “The Wrath Of Benjo,” which is a joke that probably only made me laugh, but was definitely inspired by the body horror in Uzumaki. Don’t bother watching the film adaptation. I thought it played up the inherent silliness to the detriment of the real horror of the original material.
As a side note, I misunderstood the extemporaneous nature of a ‘gross out’ story contest at the first World Horror Convention I ever attended in Salt Lake City, and read part of this story. Even after I realized I was in over my head, I mainly went through with it because one of my literary idols Joe R. Lansdale was sitting in as a judge. I read it with my back to Joe and facing an audience, so I have no idea what he thought of it.
Probably better that I don’t.
The Wrath of Benjo
Benjo wept bitterly as the rain struck the barred windowpane.
Long had he gone hungry counting the tiles on the floor, staring at the dirty white walls, at the chromed hinges and latches of the gray stall doors. He had marked his time by the disgraceful yellowing of the paper rolls as they grew old, brittle and angry. He would council them to keep heart, to maintain their cleanliness, remember their duty and be watchful, but after many years the hunger and resentment had at last seeped into his heart too. The paper had shriveled and gone silent.
Even the attendant had ceased coming. He had resorted to cleaning himself as best as he could.
“Useless! Useless!”
His cries bounced off the empty walls for the thousandth time, matching the lightning and the thunder.
For many years he had wiled away the lonesome hours imagining the luxuries he would bestow upon his next guest, if ever one came.
But that dream had died long ago. He knew only the ravenous hunger now.
* * * *
Araki gritted his teeth as the headlamps of his car slashed the night, illuminating nothing but copious streaks of rain and the winding road through the forest. The storm was very bad. He had missed a sign, no doubt. He had disengaged the dashboard GPS to save the battery a while ago seeing as he had no idea when he’d find a recharge station. He was now bumping along one of the nameless old roads that cut across the countryside, useless since the proliferation of maglev trains and tri-level superhighways. At this rate he would be lucky indeed if he even found the crummy little village of Inakadate with their crummy hundred year old rice stalk art festival for his crummy editor, Mr. Reiko. The life of a photographer was as thankless as....as that of a rice stalk artist, crafting pictures of Prince Yamato and prancing Yokai in the paddies once a year to the delight of weekending salarymen and gaijin tourists.
Probably more, he reflected. Inakadate had been doing their rice art since 1993 after all. In 2193 who would celebrate his dull travel photos?
On top of it all, he had to shit.
The cheeseburger roll in the western fusion bento box he’d bought at that roadside grill before the rain started had raced through him. He had thought it quaint that some backwater entrepreneur had started a fusion stand, but now he cursed the man for a poisoner.
He had been sweating for the past hour, wondering where he could possibly go to shit in this empty country, in this torrential downpour. Then his angry bowels thrilled to see the lights of the old rest stop just ahead.
He put the accelerator to the floor, nearly tipping his auto on the turn into the empty parking lot. It looked to be as old as the Inakadate festival. He was surprised the lights were on. But of course, it was still a public building. Someone cut the grass, because though long, it had not grown over the door.
He kicked open his door, immediately drenching his leg, and pulled his jacket up over his head. Paper. Would there be any? He looked frantically around the disordered car and found one of the glossy travel magazines. Who cluttered up their lives with print nowadays? He tucked it under his arm and plunged into the rainy night, praying he would make it, that the door wouldn’t be locked.
The pipes were groaning and making a terrible noise when he forced the rusty door open with a bang and stood inside, shaking himself off like a hound. Well, that was a good sign. He hadn’t figured on the plumbing even working.
He wondered when this place had been visited last. There was a thick layer of dust on the bank of sinks. Stagnant, old-smelling water covered the green tile floor. That didn’t bode well.
One of the four gray stall doors was open wide enough to see a Japanese-style toilet within, but his heart and the lump in his guts sagged. Some animal had gotten in from outside and nested in the little porcelain trench. He did not care to squat over the mess of brambles and old food. He could well imagine a badger or something pattering in under the stall to find him totally vulnerable, gripping the grunt bar with his naked ass poised over its bed.
One by one he checked the stalls. The toilets were filthy, most broken, likely by one of the numerous earthquakes that had struck the islands over the years.
But the last in the row, a western style commode, stood intact, surprisingly clean, shining like something from heaven.
Araki was already fumbling with his belt as he bumped against the wall of the stall. He wiggled clumsily out of his trousers and flopped down on the cool white seat, putting his elbows on his knees, his forehead in his hands.
He unloaded loudly on the convenience, experiencing in that moment a sensation of perfect, satisfying relief. He had been sure he would wind up squatting beneath a tree, being soaked to his bones by the storm on the side of the road. Finding this place, finding this one unmarred toilet had been a godsend.
Benjo wept again, but these were tears of unmitigated joy. Like a samurai who had gone too long under the guise of a farmer and had last taken up his sword again, he felt a renewed sense of his purpose.
He blessed the stranger and hungrily accepted his offering, not as the servant he had once been, but as the lonely god he now was.
Araki heard the redoubled groaning of the plumbing as he tore out Mr. Keiko’s bio page and slid his hand behind to clean himself.
He suspected it was the rain and long years of neglect. The pipes were fit to burst. Already there was moisture leaking from the tank, wetting the small of his back.
It was disgusting, but he made up his mind not to tempt fate by flushing, to let the rain wash his hands.
Benjo felt the shift of the man’s weight. His years of loyal service and experience with numerous patrons prior to the gods rewarding him with sentiency as a tsukumogami (an honor bestowed upon all useful items after a hundred years) had instilled in him a veteran’s instinct. He guessed the traveler’s intent.
A flood of outrage swelled through his tank. He closed his jaws around the man’s bottom.
“How dare you!” he roared.
Araki had thought he was finished, but when the toilet seat closed around his buttocks and the muffled voice growled angrily at him from the bowl, he found he was not.
He attributed it to his imagination. He had only slipped, no doubt. But no, he was quite unable to move. Disbelief gave way to panic. He pressed his hands on the sides of the too-small seat and straightened his legs, trying to force himself up, but he was firmly wedged in.
He heard a rushing of water beneath. The toilet had begun to flush on its own. He twisted around to look, but didn’t see a motion sensor anywhere.
To be subjected to such indignity after waiting patiently for so many years! Benjo was beside himself with rage.
He summoned all the considerable power in the vast network of subterranean pipes and pumps which he had commandeered from his brothers and sisters over the years as they had succumbed to neglect and disrepair. He sucked hungrily at the discourteous human.
Araki’s eyes bugged as he felt the pressure drawing and releasing methodically on his bottom. The rim of the shrunken seat was purpling his skin. His genitals grew quickly numb. The powerful force drew more of his partially digested lunch forcibly from his rectum, with such intensity that his lower intestine became distended.
Then there was excruciating pain, like liquid fire in his bowels as he felt his guts being stretched taut and pulled from his body, down into the drain.
And it wouldn’t stop.
He screamed as it slurped at his intestines, sucking them down like an unbroken noodle. Blood spurted from his body, so much that it brimmed in the bowl and splashed his buttocks. The stench that emitted sickened him into heaving convulsions that wracked him with even more pain. He vomited on his own knees.
He felt his genitals retract inward into his pelvis, shrieked as they tore away from their fleshly housing and moved in time with the relentless sucking through his body and finally out his tearing anus.
The pain was so intense as to be unbearable, like a knife working through his lower body. Araki’s overloaded nervous system could take no more and shut him down, planning to reboot when the agony had subsided.
But that time never came.
The toilet continued to suck him inside out. His connective tissue could not resist the force the thing was mustering and tore loose.
After an hour his entire digestive tract was wending slowly through the maze of pipework beneath the rest stop, his stomach bobbing in the bloody bowl.
Engorged, Benjo released his iron hold on the traveler’s buttocks. The corpse slid forward and fell face first onto the wet tiles, still connected to the sloshing stomach by a mass of drawn out esophagus tubing that stretched from the mutilated rectum like an umbilical chor
d still connected to a bloody afterbirth.
Benjo thought to part the tubes, but who knew when the next traveler would happen by?
He dozed lazily, sucking now and then in his sleep like a child.
The traveler’s glassy eyeballs drew slowly in and out of their sockets.
Killer Of The Dead first appeared in Murky Depths Magazine, August, 2008
The Blood Bay first appeared in The Midnight Diner, August, 2010
Conviction first appeared in Corrupts Absolutely?, Damnation Books, March, 2012
Tell Tom Tildrum first appeared in Tales From The Bell Club, Knightwatch Press, March, 2012
The Wrath Of Benjo first appeared in Slices Of Flesh, Dark Moon Books, March, 2012
The Better To See You first appeared in Dark Moon Digest #7, April, 2012
Bigfoot Walsh first appeared in Welcome To Hell, E-Volve Books, June, 2012
The Exclusive first appeared in Danse Macabre: Tales Of The Grim Reaper, EDGE Publishing, October 2012
Mighty Nanuq first appeared in Monster Earth, Mechanoid Press, January, 2013
A Haunt Of Jackals first appeared in Betrayal On Monster Earth, Mechanoid Press, March 2014
Sea Of Trees first appeared in After Death, Dark Moon Books, April 2014
Devil’s Cap Brawl first appeared in Kaiju Rising, Ragnarok Books, May, 2014
Thy Just Punishments first appeared in That Hoodoo, Voodoo, That You Do, Angelic Knight Press, January, 2015
Philopatry first appeared in Flesh Like Smoke, April Moon Books, July, 2015
In Thunder’s Shadow first appeared in Edge of Sundown, Chaosium, July, 2015
Crocodile first appeared in 18 Wheels Of Horror, Big Time Books, October, 2015
Previously Unpublished:
The Mound Of The Night Panther
Spearfinger
Edward M. Erdelac, your humble, dilligent angler in darkness, was born in Indiana, educated in Chicago, and lives in the Los Angeles area with his wife and family.
News and excerpts from his various works can be read at his blog, Delirium Tremens, at http://www.emerdelac.wordpress.com
Angler In Darkness Page 35