Bleed

by Lori Michelle

  “Don’t touch that!” said Mr. Loeb, hurrying over to Abner.

  “I wasn’t gonna pull it down,” Abner protested. Louise came to his side, but looked at her husband like she didn’t know whose side to choose.

  “Your reflection is your soul,” said Mr. Loeb. “Mirrors, when you look into them, reflect your soul. When someone dies, we cover up all the mirrors so they don’t trap them inside. It’s an old custom, probably silly, I know, but our customs give us structure. Keep us safe.”

  Just then, the look on his mother’s and father’s faces told Abner that Mr. Loeb broke a custom just then with something he said, but if it were true, they didn’t say what it was. Another moment or two passed with them bouncing glances off each face in the room, like trying to read thoughts. They looked at Mr. Loeb, they looked at Abner, and they looked at each other, but they didn’t look at Mary. She sure is sleeping soundly, thought Abner while his parents watched him from across the room, suffering some kind of paralysis.

  Mr. Loeb guided Abner to the chair. “Would you like to put Mary in his arms?”

  More uneasy glances. Uneasy paralysis.

  Finally, Abner’s mother reached into the bassinet. She used to reach for the baby easily, willingly, even eagerly. But she didn’t do that now. She reached for Mary like she was made out of ash, and would blow away if she touched her. She reached for her like the baby would break into a million pieces and cut her. She reached for Abner’s sister like she would burn, and lifted her out, her tiny dress drooping off her straight legs like funeral bunting. Abner had seen plenty of funeral bunting since the Spanish flu.

  Mr. Loeb guided Abner back to the seat and Abner’s mother set Mary in his little arms. She was so light and fragile. He knew now why his mother didn’t want to touch her, or did want to touch her and didn’t all at once. Touching death was a fairly intolerable thing. And somehow, he had known it all along that Mary wasn’t sleeping. Mary was dead. And before they put her in a box and scooped dirt over her, his parents wanted a photograph to remember her by.

  Holding Mary felt like holding a doll, cold and rigid. And despite the fact that he knew she was dead and wouldn’t be coming back, a part of him didn’t believe it. He could still see her breathing. He could still see the fidgets and flings of her arms and legs. He wasn’t remembering them. He could see them. And seeing his dead sister move all on her own made him go almost as rigid as she was in his arms, but he couldn’t look away. He tried to close his eyes, but it was like closing his eyes in a dream, and he could see right through them. Mary’s skin was so white, not like the chubby, pink flesh he had so loved drawing his fingers over before she got sick.

  “Look over here, Abner,” said Mr. Loeb from behind the camera, his head covered in a black drape.

  Why is everything draped today? thought Abner. He looked into the camera lens. It was like a mechanical cyclops with a square, wooden head, and that eye was vacuous. Abner didn’t know the word but he knew the meaning. The lens wasn’t just empty, it was a sucking hole into emptiness. Black but not blind. An inhuman, insect eye, or worse. At just four years old, Abner didn’t have the words for it, but he knew terror. It was closing in on him from all sides. He was holding it in his arms.

  “Okay now, Mom and Dad?” said the photographer, waving them over with his hand. “Stand behind your children.” Here he drew in a breath, as if he was running past an awful smell. “Right there. Good.”

  When Mr. Loeb paused, the hole was enough to make Abner nervous about the mention of Mary, like saying her name would keep her out of Heaven, or maybe bring her back from the dead, and not in a good way. Mary didn’t seem to mind, and Abner was watching her. He still couldn’t take his eyes off of her perfect, china-doll face.

  “Ready?” asked Mr. Loeb.

  His voice was far away to Abner. Very far away. Even Abner’s parents were distant, like pictures themselves now. Only Mary was real. Cold and real. Abner stroked her face, and it really did feel like china now. Bone china. White. Perfect. And still. But somehow Mary was breathing. And kicking. Literally. Abner held her tight, so she wouldn’t roll out of his arms.

  “I’m going to count down from three,” explained Mr. Loeb, his tinny, distant voice coming from the bottom of a tomato can. “And when I do, be very, very still, or you’ll blur the image, and the plates are very expensive, so we want to get this right.”

  He breathed in deeply, and the cloth over his back swelled, making him and the camera look even more like a hunchback cyclops than ever to Abner. He was glad Mary couldn’t see it, because she might be scared. Abner was pretty sure Mary was safe from being scared now, but he couldn’t be sure. Like he couldn’t be sure she wasn’t really moving. He tried to look away, even at the cyclops, but the movement was more certain than ever on the edge of his vision, so he gave it up. It would be over pretty quickly now. He just had to hold Mary and wait.

  “Three . . . two . . . one . . . ”

  And that’s when the cyclops took on a much greater dimension of terrifying than Abner had ever known in his short life. More terrifying than the basement, with it’s funny smell and shadows hanging like cobwebs. More terrifying than the bugs he found under the tire at the spare lot on the corner. More terrifying than holding his sister’s corpse in a strange, black draped room. It made him shiver. But that was nothing to what it did to Mary.

  It happened during a long moment, during which he was able to move at normal speed while everyone else was frozen. That moment reminded him of the bits of taffy his father brought him from the dime store sometimes, cut into inch-long strips wrapped in wax paper. When it was cold, the taffy was hard and brittle, but if the conditions were just right—just moist enough, or warm enough—that taffy would pull into a long, thin filament and then snap, a fine umbilical cord like a spider web between the two halves. But the taffy had to get awfully long first. Like the moment the Harringtons’ picture was taken at Mr. Loeb’s studio.

  Abner was rigid while the shutter snapped at the turtle pace of early photography, and all the while, a weird, wet ripping sound vibrated in his chest that started as a low growl, and then turned into a high-pitched whistle.

  He didn’t exactly look around, but he knew somehow that the adults in the room didn’t hear it. He didn’t even hear it himself, so much as he felt it, every inch of his body a single nerve, or antenna, receptive to the disturbance. Mary’s lips parted, and a white vapor, like Bumpa’s pipe smoke, slithered out of her mouth. It drifted at first, but then the cyclops caught a hold of it, at first a gentle beckon, and then a hard, nerve-wrenching yank, so hard that the mist almost came out of its skin, if it had such a thing. The force of it alone terrified Abner, but by itself, that would have been forgotten after several nights of diminishing nightmares.

  What stayed with Abner, long after the picture was framed and hung in the Harringtons’ parlor in Mont Clare like the head of a rhino in a big-game hunter’s home, was how Mary looked behind the glass. Like she was trapped there. Under ice. It was a constant reminder of the face he saw in the vapor just before it disappeared in the cyclops eye of the camera lens. When he got a little older, he noticed how faces appeared in the strangest places—the side of a tree, for instance. But it wasn’t like that at Loeb’s. He saw Mary’s face in that smoke, and he heard her scream, the thin goat-like scream of a terrified infant, and that moment, echoing years later, was captured in the funeral portrait in the Harrington’s parlor along with his baby sister.

  IMPOSSIBLE IS NOTHING

  Jack Ivey

  Originally from New Jersey, Jack's creative journey began with music, becoming proficient on piano and guitar, eventually adding songwriting to his list of accomplishments. Now living in Texas, his writing has grown to include, short stories, flash fiction and poetry. He has had both poetry and flash fiction published in Dark Eclipse and recently, his short story, “The Chrysanthemum Moon,” was published in Dark Moon’s Zombies Need Love, Too anthology. You can also find his work on Heli
um.com, Authorstand.com, Bookrix.com and Writerscafe.org.

  He struggled with the moment

  In time and space he stood

  Dreaming of a miracle

  Somehow he knew he would

  A dollar in his pocket

  With wings on which to fly

  A sign of his depression

  The final tear he’s cried

  Now standing at the crossroads

  Searching left and right

  Shouting to the heavens

  “I think I see the light”

  He started on this journey

  A brand new walking stick

  Monsters in the shadows

  Sent to make him sick

  “Impossible is nothing”

  He was heard to say

  With dust upon his tennis shoes

  He headed on his way

  To follow the directions

  Collected in his mind

  He left the word “impossible”

  Wallowing behind

  He put his best foot forward

  This monster he’d defeat

  Along this winding walkway

  As fate did bring to meet

  With firm determination

  He spit into the wind

  And realized it was possible

  To start his life again

  THE GIFT

  Lindsey Beth Goddard

  Lindsey Beth Goddard has been published in the anthologies: Night Terrors, Welcome To Hell, and Mistresses Of The Macabre and in the magazines/ e-zines: Sirens Call, Hogglepot, Flashes In The Dark, Morpheus Tales, and Yellow Mama. Upcoming appearances in Mental Ward: Echoes Of The Past, Fresh Fear: Contemporary Horror, Nightmare Stalkers & Dream Walkers, Infernal Ink, and Dark Moon Digest. www.lindseybethgoddard.com.

  “Who did you buy this for?” Tears shimmered on Ty’s chocolate brown eyes as she held the tiny gift box with the gold and silver bow. Trevor studied her face as he cleaned his harpoon. This was the first time he had seen her cry. Six weeks they’d been dragging dead bodies from the building by day, hiding in his apartment by night. Six weeks and Ty hadn’t shed a tear. Until now.

  She looked at her feet, eyelids heavy with makeup, and Trevor had to stifle a chuckle. Even in times of crisis, Ty found the time to apply eyeliner and mascara. Fresh gloss shined beneath the sterling silver hoop in her lip.

  When she spoke, her voice was shaky and demure, nothing like her usual tone. “If there was someone else, I need to know.” She wiped at the moisture on her face with the sleeve of her black cotton jacket and turned to gaze at the dark sky full of pinprick stars. The lights of the city used to drown out those stars, but now she could see them all, thousands of them.

  “Who was the present for? Who did you love before the world turned to shit?”

  Trevor’s heart broke at the sight of her quivering lips and the wetness that formed on her cheeks. Then a thought occurred to him and he blinked, shaking away the stupor. “Wait a minute. Why were you going through my stuff?”

  Ty looked at him, a guilty wrinkle forming in her brow. Worry lines creased her forehead. The truth was written all over her face: She had been snooping, found the box, and jealousy got the best of her. She hadn’t taken the time to formulate an excuse before storming up the staircase to confront him. She stood, doe-eyed in the headlights of Trevor’s questioning glare as the moon glowed bright overhead.

  After a moment of silence, Trevor smirked and shook his head. He wiped the last smear of blood from the pointed tip of his harpoon and gestured behind him. “C’mon. I need your help.”

  A breeze blew through her short black hair and rustled the once-purple streaks, which had faded to a violet-gray. She fiddled with the silver jewelry in her upper ear, a nervous habit that Trevor both loved and hated. He enjoyed watching her slender fingers move, but he hated that she felt nervous.

  He turned and led the way across the rooftop. Ty followed, her boots thudding in time with his sneakers. She stuffed the gift box into her jacket pocket and zipped it shut. Trevor was right. This was an argument for another time. Not on the roof, not now. It wasn’t safe up here.

  A disturbing chatter filled Ty’s ears, and she stopped. She scanned the sky with wide, leery eyes. A loud clicking sound, out of rhythm with their footsteps, had echoed off a neighboring skyscraper. It sounded like the “clacker” toy she had as a kid—a plastic noise maker she received as a party favor. Her mother hated it, and the noisy toy quickly found a place in the garbage. She reached out and squeezed Trevor’s arm. He stopped, and they listened to the city together.

  The clicking sound didn’t repeat itself, but they heard the flapping of gigantic wings. A silhouette swooped over the moon. They froze, watching, waiting . . .

  The creature glided through the air, heading towards the beach, its leathery wings carrying it further into the distance. They sighed in unison and exchanged a look that expressed an unspoken agreement: They needed to hurry up, finish their task, and get their asses back inside.

  They neared the metal railing of the fire escape. Ty was hesitant to approach. A mammoth creature lay motionless on the cement. Its black wings were pulled close to its furry body. A portion of its head was missing. Pieces of brain matter and skull littered the ground. Ty put a hand over her mouth. It smelled like rotting meat, but Ty guessed that was because the creature had been feeding on corpses. It was too freshly dead to be decaying.

  The hair that covered the creature’s snout was stained a dark red, and its mouth hung open, revealing pointed teeth the size of Trevor’s fingers. Ty fought off a shiver. She had witnessed identical teeth ripping her family and friends to shreds, an all-you-can-eat buffet of humans.

  “This has got to be the dumbest idea ever,” Ty noted.

  “Agreed. But I don’t want to starve.” Trevor knelt down and opened a backpack that lay near a congealing pool of crimson bat blood. The shotgun lay just within reach, but he was hoping he wouldn’t need it any more tonight.

  He reached into the canvas pack and pulled several plastic bags and two knives from inside. “You’ve got to help me. We need to get back inside before long. This guy here was an early bird,” he said, pointing to the corpse and forcing a fake smile.

  Ty knew he was right. Most bats didn’t wake up the very moment night fell. Just as humans used to sleep past sunrise, the bats liked to snooze for a while before breakfast. The moon had just started to shine in the dark sky. But soon . . . soon there would be too many to fight.

  Trevor tossed her the knife, and she removed its leather sheath. “Take these, too.” He threw a pair of rubber gloves at her feet. The were yellow, the kind used for scrubbing dishes. “I found them at Mrs. Jenson’s place.”

  Ty donned the gloves and set to work, slicing a thin layer of furry flesh from the bat’s body and discarding it onto the blood-soaked ground. She carved deeper into the meat, trying to find a piece that resembled something she could eat. Her mind raced. “What if it makes us sick?” She pushed the finely honed blade through the animal’s flesh, coming away with strips of meat that she dropped into a plastic bag.

  “It won’t.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t know that.”

  Trevor drove the blade into the creature’s muscle tissue, pushing until the handle stuck straight out. The knife stayed in place as he bent over to tie the two sides of a plastic bag together. His blood-soaked hands smeared the bag with crimson droplets.

  “We can’t get sick. Everyone else . . . they got sick so easy. A sneeze. A kiss. It spread like wildfire. Hell, maybe it was airborne in the end, who knows. But we didn’t get it. We still haven’t. We’re immune, Ty. It can’t hurt us.”

  She shook her head and stopped cutting the meat. She squeezed her eyes shut, biting her lip until it turned white around the tooth. Memories of the disease went flashing through her mind—the illness that turned her loved ones into drooling madmen. It caused hallucinations, hysteria, and it racked their bodies with pain. Like rabies, it spr
ead through the bat bites, but this new strain was much more severe and a hundred times more contagious. The disease was like nothing the world had ever seen. It all started with the bat bites, and it went to hell from there.

  Ty released a deep breath and opened her eyes, frowning. “I’m scared. I don’t want to eat one of these . . . things.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, but you’re out of luck. The nearest grocery store is three miles away through an area thick with nests. I showed you through the binoculars; you know this already. The people in our building were poor, Ty. They didn’t have well stocked kitchens, and well . . . we’re out of food. Nada. Zip. Zero.”

  “Okay, I get it.” Frustrated, she gripped the knife handle—knuckles white—and scowled as she carved the meat. Her stomach grumbled. Even with the world in ruins and no use for money, Ty still had it worse than the rich folk. If two yuppies were stranded in that upscale apartment complex that ran along the beach to the west, they surely had a much better stockpile of groceries than the slim pickings Trevor and Ty had found around their building. The entire world had changed, but one thing remained the same: Things were rougher on this side of town.

  The sound of thumping wings pulled Ty from her thoughts. Followed by another sound. The clicking noise again? No. It was closer, much louder this time. A series of abrupt screeches assailed her eardrums, like the incessant squeaking of a rubber bath toy, but baritone and feverishly fast.

  There was a loud shriek. A large shadow moved over the moon. She felt a gust of wind as the creature descended, closing in.