Torn Realities

by Post Mortem Press

  The winds of madness howled at the edges of Aaron’s mind, threatening to blow away his sanity. Where did they come from? WHERE?

  Focusing his will, he forced back the gibbering rush of lunacy creeping over him and took a step forward, then another. When none of the strange creatures attacked him, he began to walk quickly down the street.

  Hunching down, he tucked his head between his shoulders. Aaron tried to ignore the sights that assailed him, some of which were so strange that he could not even look directly at them for fear of collapsing into a quivering heap. He let his eyes slide right by the gelatinous thing that oozed out of an alley. Was that a cat being digested inside of it? He quickly turned away, only to see what appeared to be a walking, rotting corpse happily whistling through the gaping hole of its slashed throat. Again, he averted his eyes, as if keeping the sights to mere glimpses would spare his mind the full brunt of the shock of such terrors.

  There were not an overwhelming number of these oddities and horrors, but they were interspersed amongst the ordinary humanity, the latter going on about their business, ignorant of the monstrosities around them. Each of the strange beings seemed to be housed within a shadowy outline of a normal human, what he likely would be seeing if he had not been feeling the aftereffects of whatever had happened in the girl’s den.

  He noticed that a few of the otherwise normal-looking folk of the city had odd glowing nimbuses about them of varying hues. Several of these appeared to be aware of the true natures of the beings plaguing the streets and gave them a wide berth.

  It was all too much. Aaron pushed through the crowds, heedless of angry glares and protestations. He had to get away, had to somehow escape this cavalcade of nightmares.

  A dark-skinned young man approached Aaron, faintly glowing lines on his forehead forming a stylized eye. "Are you ok?" The man stared closely into Aaron’s eyes. "Do you need help?"

  Shaking his head, not trusting himself to speak, Aaron started to move away. The man’s eyes followed him, a strange look on his face. His eyes reminded him of mood rings, the pale nimbuses Aaron had seen on other people was particularly bright with this one; Aaron felt he should know this person, but the brilliance obscured the man's features.

  "Oh, my friend," the stranger said. "You stepped in some serious shit, eh?"

  Stopping, Aaron turned. As if a switch had been thrown, the man's nimbus softened and he saw it was Rishi, but somehow a stronger-looking, more confident Rishi. A red eye glowed in the center of his forehead..

  "Rishi?" Aaron called out as he stepped up and clutched at the absurd winter coat. "Rishi, is it you? Where's Sean? Did he ditch you?"

  "Ditch me?" Rishi laughed, putting his arm around Aaron’s shoulders. "That buffoon could not have ditched Rishi if he did not wish to be ditched. Hang in there, my friend. The spell is already fading. It will be gone soon."

  "How do you… " Aaron managed to squeak out. "You know? Do you see them too?"

  Rishi tossed a lurid gaze in the direction of a scantily clad girl with large cat eyes and feline features, a tail twitching and swaying behind her. "Not all of mankind chooses to be blind," he said with a smile as the eye on his forehead winked. He reached forward and touched Aaron's chest. "And some merely need a push to help them truly see."

  "Can you get me to The Grasshopper coffee shop?" Aaron said in a weak, shaky voice. "I...I need to get away from this."

  Still smiling, Rishi nodded. "Sure, my friend. Rishi will get you there."

  *****

  Leaning on the railing of The Grasshopper’s porch, Aaron stared into the wavering reflection of lights on the dark water. With a heaving retch, he puked up the beers that he had downed in the last half-hour. He ignored the mutters and complaints of the coffeeshop’s other patrons as his vomit plopped into the murky canal, shattering the reflected lights. After wiping his mouth on his sleeve, Aaron took another pull from his bottle of beer, swished it around, and spit it out.

  The stars are different over here, he thought, glancing up at the now clear sky as calmness washed over him. The constellations were in the wrong positions or something. He recalled a time when he and Dana had gone out onto a golf course late at night after a party at Sean’s parent’s house along one of the holes. They had lain on the short, soft grass and talked until dawn. Dana had pointed out the Big and Little Dippers, Orion, Cassiopeia, and all the rest. Yet, she had given them other, more exotic names. She had even tried to make him see other shapes in the sky. The Shepherd's Crook, the Pentagram, the Three-Headed Goddess, the Stag, and others. He had laughed, making a joke about her new freak friends corrupting her. He did not think he would be laughing at her anymore or her friends for that matter. Maybe there was something behind the smug, knowing expressions that had earned them scorn, derision, and occasional beatings in high school.

  Turning back to glance at the men and women seated at the tables nearby, he saw a host of normal human beings. Whatever had affected his vision was gone now. He tried not to look at the tall thin man in the corner. What he had seen when he first stumbled into The Grasshopper… No, best not to dwell on that.

  A pair of girls had joined Rishi at the table that Aaron had abandoned in a hurry when the wave of nausea had hit. The three of them were drinking, smoking, and laughing. Aaron looked back out across the canal, hand reaching up to rub at the place on his chest where the tattoo, normal looking once again, could still be seen beneath his torn shirt. He had caught a glimpse of a different world tonight. Although he could see it no longer, he knew it was there. It was as if he was in a pitch-black room and encircled by imagined horrors, claws reaching, teeth dripping ichor, hungering for blood. The thought terrified him, causing his bowels to clench and madness to tickle at the edge of his mind. At the same time, he found his blood stirring and his heart racing at the thought of somehow turning on the lights in that room to truly see what surrounded him. He felt both drawn to, and repulsed by, the strange, terrifying world he had glimpsed tonight, a world that Dana apparently had some insight into. No, that was not right. She had way more than mere insight; she was a part of that world. And she had also somehow managed to protect him from its very real dangers.

  Dana had been persistent and ruthless in her attempts to coax him into allowing her to tattoo him. Looking back on the day that he had relented, he recalled how hard she had concentrated, how focused she was, how her lips had moved as if she were speaking to herself the entire time. Dana had poured a part of herself into that tattoo, or ward, or whatever it was, purely because she cared about him, asking for nothing in return. Such selflessness was a far cry from Aaron’s experiences with Sean and the rest of his friends who always seemed to have a motive behind their actions. Aaron could see that the path on which Sean and the rest of his friends walked led to a small life, full of hollow joys and meaningless triumphs. Were he to walk at Dana’s side, he would find himself on a much darker path, yet one that promised to draw back the veil and let him see the truth of the world.

  Sighing, Aaron turned from the rail, forced a smile on his face, and headed back towards the table with Rishi and the two girls. Regardless of what happened when he got back to the States, Dana had some explaining to do. She could start with the ward she had given him that had somehow saved him from a gruesome death. Thinking of the demon prostitute, he grimaced as it occurred to him that he would likely have to do some explaining of his own.

  THE RESIDENTS OF MOSSY ROCK

  Lee Davis

  Is there anything more horrible than friendship, particularly when that friendship can lead you to hell? Lee, who's an illustrator and writer of children's books usually, says "no" pretty solidly in "The Residents of Mossy Rock". There's a snake-faced infant that will haunt you after you finish this, and I relish your reaction to it. After, check out Lee's website at www.leedavisbooksandart.weebly.com.

  When you backtrack through your memory, cataloguing the many ifs that lead up to an unwanted event or revelation of any significance, the circumstanc
es that fell into place to open a door to such horrific understanding can, in their simplicity, seem absurd.

  What if that one night, after my second brandy, I hadn’t finally set up a profile on one of those stupid social websites? What if I hadn’t included in my profile my personal phone number? What if Brian Alexander had never found me through that website? What if he’d never bothered to give me, his old drinking buddy from those dark days of public high school in the city, a call after two decades, just to catch up?

  At the time I was elated to hear from my old friend, more so to learn of the path he’d led. Brian was the sort of guy I’d expected to be full of stories of drug abuse and jail time, but though his story was not a pretty one, it was far from the sordid mess I would have expected.

  Brian had been a wild man back in those dismal days of teenage angst where weekend benders became our self-destructive solution to a frustrating teen life. The thing is that I never imagined Brian would be able to pull free from it all. But graduation came and we went our separate ways, and even after I’d gone through college and landed a job, later starting my own property caretaking company and finally unfolding that life of comfort I’d worked for, I’d never expected that a guy like Brian would have escaped that mess. But he had.

  He’d joined the military, shortly thereafter landing a job as an interrogator. He’d been called back into the field shortly after an incendiary device had detonated, killing one troop and wounding another in a battle zone shouldering his station. The enemy had snipers in the fortified apartment building, and despite the cover fire Brian’s squad members offered, he’d taken two shots in the side before collecting the wounded soldier and making it back to cover. After his recovery he was honorably discharged and found himself back in civilian life, eager for work that suited his experience. Brian was recommended for work as an interrogator in local law enforcement. It began with intense "conversations" with the bloodiest of gang thugs and drug dealers.

  One fateful conversation Brian described was the time he’d been interrogating a gang member who’d severed the hands of an innocent Chinese shop owner. "He must’ve seen that gleam in my eye," Brian explained, "because he went from the nastiest dude I’ve ever seen into a kid pissing his pants. And I’m not kidding. He pissed himself. Shit a little, too. I showed him the pictures of the man he’d mutilated. Some of the pictures showed the man’s family gathered around him, cryin’ and all. I don’t think he felt remorse but he must’ve seen what I was feeling. When I got a whiff of his piss and shit, somehow that nasty smell just made me madder. I broke his back. Last I heard he can move his jaw and a couple fingers, but that’s it. Considering who he was and what he’d done, it was ruled temporary insanity. But I lost my job."

  "What are you doing now?" I asked, trembling a little from the story he so casually detailed.

  "That’s the funny part, they said I should talk to people that aren’t so much evil as they are just crazy. I interview mental patients at a psychiatric hospital now."

  "You can just switch professions like that? Don’t you need different qualifications?"

  "It was decided after I was locked up in the mental hospital. The doctor interviewing me knew what was going on. I was sane, I’d just gotten angry and knowing what he knew he couldn’t much hold what I did against me. He saw it and he had me sit in on interviews, eventually assist. This was after I’d done my time there and was technically a civilian again. The doc asked me to come back. The work was disturbing, but not like I’d seen before. It was different. Fascinated me instead of pissing me off."

  "Fascinating like how?" I asked.

  "Like this one creepy guy I’ve been speaking with since his family checked him in. He is out there with his talk about his gods, reaching the other worlds and such, but I’m rooting to the source of his insanity. What’s crazier is I’m thinking it’s not all his own delusions, you know? I think he’s the product of a cult, and one of the really ugly ones you hear rumors about. I’m thinking of using personal time to check it out, apply a little of what I learned in the service. Like I said, fascinating stuff."

  When it was my turn to catch Brian up on my life, I gave him a brief rundown of the last twenty years; my house by the lake; my souped up pickup truck that I had lifted and fit with monster tires for off-roading on the weekends; no I hadn’t settled down with a Mrs. yet, but yes I had a few candidates in mind. It was decided we should do some more catching up in person on the coming weekend, and that sounded just fine to me.

  Brian had ended up further south, settling near the same psychiatric hospital where he’d served his time and now, ironically, was employed. It was a small Appalachian town, about seven hours south from where I lived. I happily agreed to make the trip to his place, as he stressed that the closer he came to our hometown the grumpier he got, and I’d wanted to do some exploring further from my neighborhood anyway.

  It took only a few short emails to arrange a specific time for that coming Friday. In the last email I received from Brian, he mentioned something about being out of town for "personal work," but that he would definitely be in by that Friday at noon, our arranged time for my arrival. I was caught up in the excitement of getting to once more kick back with my old high school buddy, both to reshape our conversations over the realities of our adulthood, where the pains and woes of our teen years would, as we once promised ourselves, only be something to laugh about as grownups.

  I hit the road before the crack of dawn that next Friday. I made good time on the road, loving the fresh air that grew warmer as I made my way south. My GPS led me up into the mountains, branching away from the interstate, deeper into rural Appalachia, and finally up into the secluded town of Rural Park. The houses here were mostly in states of neglect, but I could sense the fortitude and pride that they’d once been built with. Most of the townsfolk stared rudely, but I waved and paid no mind, and after a few turns I found Brian’s small house where it stood on the slope of the mountain with a fine vista of the town that mingled with the trees in the valley below. I parked, stepped up onto the front porch and knocked on the door.

  A moment passed, and then the door opened to reveal an attractive, if a little thick in the middle, woman of about forty.

  "Hi," I greeted her, ignoring my confusion. "Is this the home of Brian Alexander?"

  "Yes," she replied timidly, eyeing me with open suspicion. I found her demeanor a bit rude, but nothing less than I’d expect from an Appalachian that’d discovered a groomed suburbanite on their doorstep.

  I cleared my throat. "I’m his old friend, Ralph. Did he, um, mention I’d be coming by?"

  She put her hand to her forehead, closed her eyes as if the throb of a severe migraine had just struck. "I’m sorry," she said, blinking her eyes open as she took her hand from her forehead and began to stroke her fingers through her hair. She looked nervous. "I’m really confused. I shouldn’t even be in here. When did you last talk to Brian?"

  "About a week ago. Is everything okay?"

  "That’s what I’m trying to figure out. I’m a nurse at the psychiatric hospital. I work with the same patient that he’s been interviewing, and . . . just today, right after I gave up trying to get through to Brian on his cell phone, this patient—god, I don’t even know why I’m telling you this. Did Brian tell you anything about what was going on?"

  I thought back. Something was up and I felt a natural desire to assist this woman, regardless of how little I knew about her. "He sent me an email and said he’d be out for personal work, but that he’d be back by, well, today, now. That’s the last I heard."

  I explained the nature of our friendship, and how we hadn’t been in touch for two decades. She seemed concerned, and eager for my assistance, though I couldn’t quite make sense of her distress. It didn’t seem so abnormal to me that Brian would be late for a rendezvous, or that he hadn’t answered his cell phone for a bit.

  "Look," she said, "my name is Tracy. I have no business in his house. I’m trespassing, but I kno
w Brian would understand. I wouldn’t have been so worried about Brian not answering his phone, not until after I spoke with that awful patient of his. He looks like a corpse, for starters, but when he started telling me that he had encouraged Brian to go to Mossy Rock to ‘meet the master,’ it made my skin crawl. I was a little concerned at first that maybe there was something to it, but I haven’t been able to get it out of my head, and now I’m terrified for Brian. I have to know he’s okay."

  "You really think this could be something serious?" I asked.

  "Do you know anything about Mossy Rock?" she asked, not bothering to answer my question, though I figured her mental state was answer enough.

  I shook my head. Brian had never mentioned the place.

  Again, she was hesitant, but then her thoughts came in a steady, coherent stream of information as she explained Mossy Rock’s background to me. The backwater town was like the deformed, demonic little brother of Rural Park with rumors aplenty of cult worship, hard drugs, prostitution and inbreeding. The town was a few mountains away and was connected by a single road that was so worn down and difficult to drive that only the most adventurous of Rural Park’s inhabitants ever bothered to check it out. And those that did go there were quick to get right back out.