HELP! WANTED: Tales of On-the-Job Terror

by Edited by Peter Giglio

  Later that afternoon the events of the previous two days seemed a million miles away. Eddie and I had finished the day’s chores and were sitting down to lunch when Bobby appeared in the doorway, holding his head. There was dried blood on his forehead and his fingers, and he looked profoundly tired.

  “What the hell happened? Jesus, what did I hit my head on? It feels like it’s about to bust open.”

  “You don’t remember?” Eddie asked him.

  “No. The last thing I remember was you driving us down that embankment last night. Jesus, what a headache. Terrible way to spend Christmas.”

  “Yesterday was Christmas, Bobby,” Eddie told him. “You missed it. You got so drunk after we came back here that you fell and hit your head on the pool table and passed out. You were out the whole day. Don’t worry, though. I carried you on-duty on the pay sheets.”

  “That freaking Mexican tequila is from the devil,” Bobby said. “You guys do me a favor and stop me before I get into that junk again.”

  I looked from Eddie to Bobby and back to Eddie. Eddie was staring off into space, his coffee cup poised at his lips, and I knew he was thinking about souls, and the horrible things we do to fight for them. My own mind was racing for a rational explanation, but all I could say for sure was that the rec room still smelled like something was burning.

  Joe McKinney is a sergeant in the San Antonio Police Department who has been writing professionally since 2006. He is the Bram Stoker-nominated author of Dead City, Quarantined, Apocalypse of the Dead, Dodging Bullets, Flesh Eaters and Dead Set. His upcoming books include The Zombie King, St. Rage, Lost Girl of the Lake, and The Red Empire. As a police officer, he’s received training in disaster mitigation, forensics, and homicide investigation techniques, some of which finds its way into his stories. He lives in the Texas Hill Country north of San Antonio.

  Visit Joe at joemckinney.wordpress.com for news and updates.

  Expulsion

  Eric Shapiro

  1.

  What we do is, we expel.

  Air from our gut pockets. Piss, shit, and come by way of boiling glands. Babies from God-knows-where, by way of deflated wombs.

  Up comes the pressure, out comes the force.

  Such is why the gun holds such appeal. It’s not the kind of thing you can put on an ad. But in our tissues, in our crevices, somewhere where we can’t explain, we understand its build-build-build-release logic.

  Which is why it satisfies so deep.

  Which is why, if you think about it, all of us owe our survival to the gun.

  Tear down the statues and houses of worship. I pray before the steel on my palm.

  Or at least, that is, I did. Until last Wednesday.

  2.

  The mirror, in the morning, showed not a handsome man. Not a charismatic man. Not a man worthy of a second look.

  But the mirror, what it did was, the mirror lied.

  For whatever fibs my outside tells, my inside can knock you dead.

  3.

  I went into the office prepared to issue mayhem on two rungs. Rung one was essential: the pres, the vice, their secretaries, Larry from accounting. Rung two was optional: the interns, the front desk receptionist, the guy who updates the water cooler.

  What interested me, then as now, was force. An adrenal situation was developing inside of me, in places where the mirror can’t see. Let me put it this way: if you took a living stallion’s adrenal glands and implanted them within the living body of an ether-addicted gorilla, you’d have something resembling my minute-to-minute mind-frame.

  In line at the post office, stirring, it was like, “Let me make these fucking people bleed.”

  On the subway, it was always like, “These men and women would look better minus faces.”

  Street corners, alleyways, crowded restaurants, and I’m like, “Too much air in these people’s lungs. Two many blinks in their eyes.

  “An excess of thoughts within their heads.”

  None of this said out loud, of course. Who would stand still for such rabid constructions? Particularly from the mouth of one as bland as myself.

  And besides, no volume of mine could compare to the volume of the gun.

  4.

  In my pocket.

  As I paced, sloppy-haired, toward the boardroom.

  Heart acting like the experiments done by the gods when creating thunder. Throat so dry it’s like the same gods forgot to make water.

  But this release was overdue.

  Let me, at last, be lightning. Let me be people’s destinies articulated.

  Let me be anything but the vanilla pudding seen by you.

  5.

  Way back when, for me, it was all weakness. It was us ‘round the dinner table; me catching sneers from my parents. One would say, “He’s not the brightest,” and the other would seal the deal with “He’s not even close.”

  But, goddamn it, I had thoughts inside of me.

  Good ones. Big ones. Ones that could block out a rural sky.

  6.

  Rung one, or most of it, was in the boardroom. Only Larry from accounting was missing. But he was two doors down, and not fast enough to run. Gut hung so low it would no doubt get in front of his feet.

  The gun was plain at that moment, a fact that I loved. In other words, if you could see me, you could see it.

  And then the steel pellets aligned within its curves.

  7.

  The thing is, there’s a crust over everything. We spend our whole lives trying to crack it open.

  The crust is the glass we look through, darkly. It’s the lie lain like fresh snowfall upon all we perceive. Only unlike snow, it never melts in the sun.

  No season has arrived yet to loosen this crust.

  Perhaps, though, acting God-like, I can usher one in.

  Pierce the veil; isn’t that what we want? What artists want. What revolutionaries want. Narrowing the distance between the seen and unseen, praying for a train wreck of revelation once that distance is nil.

  Such is why, at last, we desire expulsion.

  Release the shit from our intestines. The come from our scrotums. The life from our wombs.

  Crack it open. Shed the waste. Expel, at last, the force.

  8.

  But I’m so stupid.

  An error grabbed me.

  Story of my goddamn life.

  I am, after all, the guy who goes to the gym without his sneakers. The guy who can’t memorize the dates when his bills are due. The guy who, one time, given bad directions, spent four hours in a gay bar awaiting women.

  9.

  The error I made—which to all but me was fortunate—was to contemplate the nature of the first rung before entering the room.

  Looking in upon them, I peeled back some crust.

  Only this layer was inside of me, and beneath it was the nature of these people…

  10.

  The pres, before then, was a parasitic being, a man for whom waking up was only worth it if it meant sucking in more money.

  At that moment, though, gun in my hand, he became a creature of persistence, somebody who never backed down from a fight, somebody whose tenacity could spur humility in most living others.

  11.

  As for the vice, his prior, ill status as a perverse mouth-breather got replaced by an immodest standing as a creature of solidity. Day in, day out, as steady as the moon and sun. To be sure, his titty jokes fell flat, but was the man not entitled to his own releases?

  12.

  The secretaries, formerly bitches or brats, got upgraded to a baker of a mean pear pie (the pres’s) and the owner of a gorgeous face (the vice’s).

  13.

  Larry from accounting…he…

  14.

  What was it that I had against him?

  15.

  Still, however, was all that adrenaline. Dark as the moment of night when it’s farthest from day. Pumping so hard it may as well have been motionless.

  Making my soul want t
o split from this shitty chrysalis.

  16.

  By the time I lowered the gun, it was too late. One of the interns had spied me from behind. The phone got dialed—two digits/three key strokes—and I then had men in ironed cloth grabbing toward my love handles.

  Since I shot nobody, I may go home someday.

  And between you and me, the beautiful things that I saw might have just been worth it…

  17.

  City behind me. Chatter behind me. Horns and screeches and metal and fumes, all behind me.

  Above me, spinning-spinning-spinning, red lights, blue lights, patriotic essentially but candy-apple-psychotic in actuality.

  Biting steel about my wrists, causing a click in all the blood that passes that way.

  Ahead of me, a future without my clothes. Without my things. My apartment, gone. Wallet, hidden somewhere else. Refrigerator, manned by people in hairnets.

  Gun in a cellophane bag where no breath can leave it.

  Mirror only in the bathroom, where a hard and permanent fog keeps me from knowing what I look like (but is the fogged reflection any sharper than the real one?).

  Brain, however, still in my head. Lit up like a nuclear Christmas on the moon’s lonely surface.

  18.

  And it’s hard to be like I am inside of a cage. Mind stretching outward, ripping and expanding in the ways of a scream. But like a scream, it touches nothing—save, of course, for the source from which it emanates.

  Which undergoes a sweetish char of pain.

  19.

  Humans aren’t only expelled when born. Schools expel them. Jobs expel them.

  Society shakes its head and says, “Come on—get out of here.”

  Some of us don’t fit within the grid. Try to put us there and it gets all bent.

  We, however? We’re bent to begin with.

  20.

  Me to the guard:

  “Some water, you think?”

  But the guy’s already turned the corner.

  The featurelessness of his back defying me.

  Though certainly he, like all others, is possessed of useful things.

  21.

  Certainly whatever’s beneath the crust is only dark when encrusted.

  And yet it gets light when the crust is gone.

  Certainly our expulsions can be marked by dankness.

  And yet carry its opposite, too…

  22.

  And certainly I, as I pace the concrete, have a most novel nature to contemplate.

  For I’d like nothing more than to expel this grand force.

  But I’m afraid, goddamn it, that it’s made of love.

  I’d be such a good killer if only I hated people.

  Eric Shapiro’s acclaimed 2005 novella, It’s Only Temporary, was on the preliminary ballot for the Bram Stoker Award in Long Fiction. He directed and produced the motion picture Rule of Three (2010), which had its world premiere at the Fantasia Festival and its U.S. Premiere at Fantastic Fest before being released on DVD and Netflix Instant. In 2010, Permuted Press published an omnibus collection of Eric’s three short novels and a handful of selected short stories called Stories for the End of the World. Eric lives in Los Angeles with his wife and producing partner Rhoda Jordan.

  Career Day

  Scott Bradley

  “It’s career day!” shrilled Mrs. Greenwood. “You must behave yourselves for our guests!”

  The children, excited and purple, tried to contain themselves and mostly did.

  They drank juice.

  They gobbled sweets.

  They whispered amongst themselves during the morning lessons until Mrs. Greenwood’s steely gaze froze them back into silence.

  Career Day was a very special day.

  This was the day the Grown-Ups told them all about what they did for a living out in the World.

  The Grown-Up World.

  So secret, so mysterious.

  The children whispered at recess about the Grown-Up World.

  At 1:00 p.m. exactly (because Mrs. Greenwood was never anything but punctual), Career Day began.

  “My name is Mr. Tanner and I sell Real Estate!” The large, wheezing, mustachioed man grinned ominously. “Do any of you know what that is?”

  None of them did.

  But one pale girl named Emma—who liked music and her cat and sometimes wondered why the sky was blue—ventured: “Something real?”

  After a big “HA-HA” from Mr. Tanner, Emma was jerked harshly out of her seat by Mrs. Greenwood, rushed into the hallway, and never seen again.

  It went on like that for another two hours.

  It took some of the children very little time, all things considered, to understand when they should speak and when they shouldn’t.

  For the other children—those too smart and those not smart enough—the less said, the better.

  By the time the 3 p.m. bell rang, even Mrs. Greenwood—who had been through this on so many days for so many years—was taking little stabs at herself with one of the classroom’s crisply sharpened Ticonderoga #2 pencils.

  There were ten children (out of the original eighty-seven) still in the classroom.

  Mrs. Greenwood looked at them.

  They looked through her.

  Mrs. Greenwood, as she had for so many years, after so many Career Days, unleashed the monsters on the world.

  She nodded and said: “Class dismissed.”

  Scott Bradley was born on July 25, 1972 in Springfield, Missouri, the birthplace of serial killer Francis Dolarhyde in Red Dragon by Thomas Harris. Scott considers himself generally better-adjusted than Mr. Dolarhyde, however, and even earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. In 2008, he co-edited The Book of Lists: Horror (HarperCollins) which earned him a nomination for the prestigious Bram Stoker Award. He is the co-author of “The Better Half: A Love Story,” appearing in the anthology Werewolves and Shapeshifters: Encounters With the Beast Within, edited by John Skipp, and his critical essay on the 1986 cult film “The Hitcher” appears in Butcher Knives and Body Counts, edited by Vince Liaguno. His criticism and journalism have appeared in Film Quarterly, The Kansas City Star, Creative Screenwriting, among other publications. He is working on a novel, a screenplay, and (with Jason Aaron) on the literary biography of the legendary Vietnam War author Gustav Hasford.

  Scott lives in Los Angeles and suggests you join him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/SBradley1972.

  Acknowledgements

  For everyone who submitted to this anthology, thank you. Great authors worked hard to create the tales in this tome, but other, equally talented scribes, toiled with different results. Could I have accepted every story, my job might have seemed easier at times, but then this collection would be larger than a New York City phonebook and scheduled for release some time next decade. Alas, an editor must make decisions and I stand by mine. A grateful thanks to all who tried. I hope you will do it again.

  A special debt of gratitude is due to Charles Day. Those who know Charlie know he’s a jubilant spirit with an unwavering sense of commitment. When Charlie shared his dream of opening a small press that specialized in speculative fiction, he gained my attention. But when he asked me to launch and run the press, he caught me by surprise. After delivering a tentative series of “maybes” and “we’ll-sees,” I finally gave in, but with one caveat. “Later,” I said, “I’m too busy writing right now.” A few days passed and I couldn’t write. I became anxious, Blofeldian delusions of world domination dancing in my head. Before the knowledge of my actions set in, I had posted a submission call for Help! Wanted: Tales of On-the-Job Terror. Charlie laughed at me and pointed out, “We’re a lot alike.” He was right. I’m grateful for his enthusiasm, trust, and effective (often selfless) carnival barking. Without him this endeavor would never have been as much fun or as fruitful. Gracias, you evil little jester!

  For putting up with all my bullshit, I thank my wife, Karen. And to our three glorious cats—Cup
, Baby, and Bert—I offer thanks for the comfort of soft pelts at moments of frustration. The cats don’t read very well, but Karen, our resident “Cat Whisperer,” will read this to them, and they’ll understand…or so I’m told.

  To my dear friend and collaborator, Scott Bradley, who encouraged me to reach out to Stephen Volk, I can’t begin to properly express my appreciation. When Scott—the bona fide E.F. Hutton of the horror genre—speaks, I listen. Thanks, amigo.

  I’m indebted to all the members at the EJP Forum. Their humor, suggestions, and words of encouragement have helped me through many rough patches. Thank you, all!

  And last, but certainly not least, thank you. Yes, you, the person holding this book or e-book. You not only bought the anthology, you took the time to read the Acknowledgements. Wow! I hope that means you’re hungry for more.

  —Peter Giglio

  August, 2011