Year's Best Hardcore Horror Volume 2

by Wrath James White

  Stanley had been right. Rose’s womb was an instrument of revenge. The emptiness that filled Rose made it so easy for people to get inside her. And when they did, something deep within her always died.

  <<====>>

  AUTHOR’S STORY NOTE

  I’m not a genre purist, especially not when it comes to horror, I don’t worry whether zombies run or shamble or talk. Nor do I worry about being labelled a horror writer. I don’t try and pretend I write ‘weird’ or ‘dark’ fiction so my mother won’t be ashamed to mention my work at her weekly sewing circle. When I see the word ‘horror’ on a book or a film I think: ‘yes, I’ll probably like this’, so I’m happy to have the label on my own work.

  This said, a lot of my work is a mash-up of genres. I don’t do this consciously, it’s just that other genres seem to creep into my stories more or less organically. The following novella is a mash-up of sub-genres, namely Quiet Horror, Erotic Horror and (given that this is a hardcore anthology) Extreme Horror. Each sub genre tries to do something a little different with horror. I’m generalizing here, but Quiet Horror tends to make you uneasy, Erotic Horror aims to turn you on while it scares you and Extreme Horror wants you to lose your lunch. By mashing them up I was curious to see if I could subvert the genres a little. Rather than relying on the atmosphere of Quiet Horror to unnerve you, for instance, I wanted to see if I could use the Erotic element to do that, or even to outright repulse you? I’ll leave you to decide how successful I was.

  “Bed of Crimson Joy” comes from a ‘what if’ moment. We live next door to wonderful older couple who often look after our house when we’re away. As we were leaving for one vacation, my mind started to wander in a strange direction (as you might imagine, this happens to me a lot), a direction that deeply disturbed me and one that I couldn’t get out of my head. In fact, it proved to be so disturbing that I thought: ‘hmm, there’s probably a story here.’ Six drafts, and some 15,000 words later, it seems I was right.

  PLEASE SUBSCRIBE

  ADAM CESARE

  From Splatterpunk’s Not Dead

  Editor: Jack Bantry,

  Publisher: Splatterpunk Zine

  ______

  U ploaded 1 Month Ago

  “Hey guys. Melody here and this is my first of what I hope to be many videos.”

  We’re in a typical webcam medium shot.

  The girl on screen is attractive but not the most attractive we’ve seen.

  And that’s okay, because she’s got stiff competition. We do watch a lot of videos. And once she watches a few more, herself—some tutorials on proper lighting (the difference between key and fill), a couple of make-up how-tos—then maybe she will rank among the most beautiful.

  “I’m new to this whole thing, but I see that the surefire way to get likes and subscribers is to live-stream myself playing video games. But, and I hate to break this to you, Internet, but: I’m not a gamer. Unless phone games count.

  “No. My content is going to be …”

  She scrunches up her nose in a way that can only be described as self-aware. It’s a calculated movement. Calculated, but we are all in agreement that the nose-scrunch is undeniably adorable.

  Yes, her first video isn’t of the highest quality, but this is a girl who knows what she’s doing. This channel will get more interesting. It’s definitely worth sticking around for the remaining two minutes and thirty-four seconds of her first video.

  “Well, I actually don’t know what the content on my channel is going to be. And I’m hoping that maybe you guys could help me decide. Leave me a comment and slap a like on this video to help me get some views. But, before you leave, let me tell you a little bit about myself.”

  She begins a list, counting off her attributes on her fingers like she’s only got the ten.

  The list goes:

  She’s eighteen.

  She doesn’t say where she’s living now, but she’ll be attending Rutgers in the Fall. That gives us a general location, if she’s going away for college but not too far away.

  Melody Bliss, her channel name, isn’t her real name. No duh!

  Her interests include music (classical music, actually, she was first chair violin in high school and hopes to continue the instrument in college), volleyball, and watching bad TV with her friends. And that’s not an editorializing on our part, she actually calls it “bad TV”, which is a level of self-reflection that many young women do not possess. Especially young women who post cell phone videos of themselves online.

  She has two dogs. Which is boring.

  But she also has a hermit crab that she got at the boardwalk two years ago. She seems proud she’s been able to keep him alive this long. “He’s molted three times!” she tells us. We’re not sure what that means, but her enthusiasm is quirky and adorable (that word again) and already on-brand.

  But there’s a big clue in that hermit crab discussion, because she called going to the beach going “down the shore.” That means we’ve successfully triangulated her to the tri-state area. Probably Philly or South Jersey.

  Melody signs off—as most of them do—with a plea to subscribe to her channel.

  So we subscribe.

  UPLOADED 3 WEEKS AGO

  “Hey guys. Did you miss me?”

  She’s back. Very few young vloggers stick to a schedule. Some never even make a second video, forgetting about that silly dream of internet stardom after their first video fails to break fifty views.

  But this girl. She’s got moxie. We’re all in agreement there.

  Moxie and a black eye. She’s tried to hide the injury with concealer, but she must not have watched a tutorial on that, either: the bruise is glaringly apparent.

  Whatever happened to her eye must have happened not soon after she recorded her last video, because the mark has already begun to heal. There’s a thin crescent of discoloration against the bridge of her nose that’s brownish instead of a dark, attractive purple.

  Her makeup technique is no better, but she’s learned some video production tricks.

  This video has a custom thumbnail. Also the lighting and framing is worlds better.

  This is quality content.

  “So I got a few responses to the last video, some comments, and I thought I’d go through and address some of them.”

  We all lean a little bit closer to our screens at hearing this. It doesn’t matter the size of the screen, even if we’re watching on a phone and could more easily lift the screen closer to us, we still lean forward.

  Because maybe she’s going to address our questions directly.

  Maybe she’s going to say our name.

  “The request I received the most was if I could play you all something on my violin. And maaaaaybe I will if we can get my page to 100 subscribers by next week, but I don’t think I’m feeling up to it today.”

  She touches the side of her face with the bruise, but doesn’t address it directly.

  Melody: you’re holding out on us.

  How did you hurt your eye?

  We all want to know.

  “And then there were some comments that were …” she pauses, searching for the words in, by this point, her trademark, cutie-pie way. “Let’s call them rude.”

  She looks deeper into the camera.

  “I had to delete many of them. Sorry, pervs! This is a family show.”

  She smiles, changing the subject, switching gears with an almost audible click as her smile brightens.

  “There was one other common viewer request that I think I can give you all the hook up with.”

  She reaches both hands under the frame and our collective hearts leap because not only can we see a little further down her shirt, but she comes back up holding …

  A fish tank?

  An empty fish tank, with a fog of condensation on the sides and cling wrap over the lid.

  “You all wanted to meet Pablo the hermit crab. And he wants to meet you!”

  She removes the lid, lifts out a pathetic littl
e creature in an oversized shell. She places Pablo flat on one hand. A few seconds elapse as she waits silently for him to poke his antennae under his shell. He tastes the air, then pops his eyestalks and legs out and makes a beeline for the edge of her hand.

  “Nope. Yer not allowed to play outside of your cage, buddy,” she says, not to us but to the small land crab.

  “Well, that’s Pablo. I feed him pellet food I order online, mostly. But occasionally I’ll chop him up some fresh vegetables or give him some peanut butter. But that’s just on special occasions. Right, Pablo?”

  “Si,” she says, in Pablo’s voice. The choice of language and accent, coming from this white girl, is … problematic. Then she drops the little critter back into his cage.

  “If you all want to get your own crabs, I’ve linked some good care instructions down in the description. Be sure to check those out, because there’s a lot more to taking care of hermies than just the wire cage they give you at the beach.”

  Deep breath. Here comes the plea.

  “If you want to see more of me or Pablo, please like this video, then hit the subscribe button. I’ll see you here next week and maybe even play you a song, if we hit our goal. Remember: I’m still not sure what this whole thing is, so any suggestions are appreciated.”

  We hit like.

  Then we prepare our comments.

  UPLOADED TWO WEEKS AGO

  Melody doesn’t say anything to kick off her latest video. There’s ten seconds of silence, her staring at the camera with her mouth closed around something.

  The pose is like she’s holding her breath under water, puffing her cheeks out.

  The bruise is still there. Barely. But still there, some slight discoloration that only serves to make Melody look tired, not battered.

  Then she opens her mouth and Pablo crawls out over her tongue and plops into her waiting hands.

  In Melody’s much-improved lighting, his shell glistens. But other than the sheen of spit, Pablo seems none the worse for wear. He cleans off one antenna with his smaller front claw.

  Then Melody begins laughing, an embarrassed but unrestrained outpouring of “can you believe I just did that?”

  Coming from many other YouTubers, the laughter would read as self-conscious and cloying. But on Melody it’s endearing.

  “I watched a video that explains you have fifteen to twenty seconds to capture your audience’s attention.”

  She holds Pablo up to the camera so we can see that, yes, he is indeed okay. Maybe a little bewildered. But it’s hard to read any emotion in his tiny black eyes.

  “Do I have your attention?”

  Yes she does.

  The video then cuts to a bumper. It’s a simple fading in and out of Melody’s name, but when we cut back to her, there’s also an annotation that pops up on the side of the screen imploring us to subscribe. She has come so far, so fast. Learned so much.

  Without her cheeks puffed out to hold her pet inside her mouth, it’s becoming apparent that Melody has lost some weight since posting her first video, two weeks ago. She doesn’t mention it, but we can see that the line where her neck meets her chin is a little sharper.

  Her cheeks are less full, but it looks good on her, accentuates the dimple on her left side. You could lose a penny in that thing.

  We all sigh when she smiles wide enough to flash the dimple. We like her better this way. We’ll tell her so in the comments.

  “I’m sure many of you know by now, but we did reach our subscriber goal, so I’m going to play you a song at the end of this video, but first I wanted to put a question out there: what are your essential dorm room items? I, like, just this morning found out that I’m going to be in freshman housing, in a double, which means that I’m going to have a roommate. I hope she’s cool. So, on my list I’ve already got Christmas lights, collapsible hamper, and flip flops—for the showers.”

  She exhales, inhales. She’s getting better at talking to the camera, but still needs to work on pacing. “But I’m sure that there’s a ton of stuff I’m not thinking of. Leave me a list! Give me some life-hacks!”

  We can all think of a few suggestions.

  We take our eyes off Melody for a moment and look around the frame at what else we can see in her bedroom. There’s a pile of laundry that she maybe doesn’t realize the camera’s picked up, because on top of that pile is a little pink bra.

  “Moving on,” she says, leaving a slightly awkward pause in instead of editing it out, as she seems to have done in her previous two uploads, which are so tight.

  She’s not getting lazy. She’s just allowing herself to appear more human, less processed. We approve.

  “A few of you had noticed that I have a black eye and wanted to know what happened. I guess I’m not as good with makeup as I thought. Or you’re all very perceptive [dimple smile]. But no, nothing scandalous. That’s just what happens sometimes on the court. The volleyball court. I’m not like, being abused or anything. My videos aren’t a cry for help or something. Just want to reach out.”

  Then there is an edit, no pause, and in the next set-up, more zoomed out, Melody has her violin resting under her chin.

  “I read somewhere that videos over six minutes don’t do well. So this is going to have to be a quick song,” she says and begins to play, beginning with a down stroke, a deep sound. There’s a little bit of echo in her bedroom, but she has the camera far enough from the instrument that there’s no feedback.

  We alternate between watching her hands as she plays and watching that pink bra.

  She’s quite talented. The song isn’t mopey, but it’s not joyous either. It’s neutral, fast without being particularly invigorating.

  “That’s all for this week,” she says, ending mid-song, it would seem. She tells us to like and subscribe and share.

  We are left wanting more.

  UPLOADED A WEEK AGO

  “A knife, garbage bags (the heavy-duty kind), condoms (all sizes), a shovel,” she says, reading off a list.

  “You guys are hilarious, but those aren’t the kind of dorm room supplies I was talking about.”

  God, between this week and last week she must’ve lost fifteen pounds.

  The bumper cuts back in after she’s done talking. She’s got this “starting with a hook” thing down to a science. Who wouldn’t want to keep watching?

  Not us.

  She’s rearranged her bedroom. We can no longer see the pile of clothes. Or the bra. She’s moved a bookshelf to the edge of her desk and put Pablo’s cage on top of the shelf, so we can see him in there, clinging to a knotted length of driftwood.

  “Got a lot of comments on last week’s video. Also got a lot of hate for my trick with Pablo. Some people called it animal cruelty. Some called it just plain gross. But you know what I say?”

  No, what do you say?

  “Eff the haters! Efff them right in the ear!”

  It’s like she can hear our applause from the other side of time and the internet, because she pauses to let her bold stand against “teh haterz” sit for a moment.

  Yeah. Eff them. Eff those fucking fucks.

  “But those people are in the minority. So thanks to all my viewers who left me comments of support. And for those of you looking for me to do something bigger and crazier … all I have to say is stay tuned.”

  She almost, almost, said ‘fans’ instead of viewers. The hesitation was microscopic. But we all felt it.

  We detected that wriggling diva larvae. The diva that we’ve planted deep inside the base of Melody’s skull. The diva seed.

  She longs to call us her fans, wants us to tear at the hem of her garment, wants us to tear each other apart but she won’t get it. Not yet. As of this video, we are a united front.

  There’s been no indication as to what the content of this video will be and there’s less than a minute left to it. Hardly time for another song or stupid pet trick. What are you going to show us Melody? Is this even a full episode? A measly two minutes is su
pposed to be our weekly fix?

  We are unimpressed.

  “Today I …”

  “Today I …”

  It’s like she’s stuck, but then we notice the drip that streaks down below her left nostril. There’s a watery red line drawn above her lip. She’s gotten a nosebleed but she doesn’t cut the camera. Instead she covers it with one bent finger, trying to stopper the nostril with a knuckle, and keeps talking.

  “That’s all the time I’ve got for today, check back soon for something really spectacular, keep those comments coming in and make sure that you like and subscribe, if you haven’t already.”

  Before the video ends she gives us viewers a quick wave, not with her free hand but with the one she’s been using to staunch the blood.

  The flow has trickled down, from the knuckle of her pointer finger down so that it drips off the end of her pinky. It’s like she’s made of marble and in the middle of a Roman Fountain, the water pumping from her a dark red.

  Her wave is such a quick motion that the blood forms a fan. The video cuts off right when the spatter peppers the side of her desk, the bookshelf and Pablo’s tank.

  Getting only a two-minute video seemed like a rip-off at first. But we’ve watched it, collectively, 5,000 times by this point, a mere three hours after it was uploaded.

  We pay special attention to that last twenty seconds, trying to map out where all the droplets of Melody Bliss will fall.

  UPLOADED JUST NOW

  We’re beginning to suspect Melody may have an eating disorder.

  Or suspect that she takes comments on the internet way too seriously.

  We feel that she’s done what she swore she would never do. She’s let the haterz get the better of her.

  Ironically, she’s grown an immense audience in a short amount of time. We hope that she knows that this type of success is atypical. We’ve never seen anything quite like it. It’s not like she has millions of views. She hasn’t gone viral. But it’s fair to say that she’s got a cult audience.