by Ray Garton
Cut Corners
Volume 2
Sinister Grin Press
MMXV
Austin, Texas
Sinister Grin Press
Austin, TX
www.sinistergrinpress.com
October 2015
“Cut Corners Volume 2” © 2015 Sinister Grin Press
“A Flat and Dreary Monday Night” © 2015 Ray Garton
"Exposed"© 2015 Monica J. O’Rourke
“Bleeding Rainbows” © 2015 Shane McKenzie
This is a work of collected Fiction. All characters depicted in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without the publisher’s written consent, except for the purposes of review.
Cover Art by Jim Agpalza
Book Design By Frank Walls
Text Design by Travis Tarpley
A Flat and Dreary Monday Night
Ray Garton
It was on a Monday night that someone tried to kill us, and on Monday night, there was nothing worth watching on any of the hundreds of TV stations the cable company piped into our living room for much more money than they were worth. The same could be said of every other night of the week, but it was especially true of whatever night it happened to be, and this one was a flat, dreary Monday at the end of March. An hour earlier, my wife Louise had suggested we turn on Netflix, and we’d browsed the titles a while before deciding on an episode of McMillan and Wife. There we sat at about 10:40 with all those TV channels and all that technology at our disposal, and we still ended up watching a show that was canceled more than two decades before anyone had heard of email.
We were comfortable at each end of the couch with our two cats, Buddy and Sally, stretched out between us. It was a warm night and we had the front door open with the security screen closed and locked. I was recovering from knee replacement surgery and had my right foot up on a footstool in front of the couch with my cane leaning against the end table. I had another week of sitting around the house between physical therapy appointments before I could go back to work driving truck for a grocery distributor, a job I’d held for sixteen years.
As Rock Hudson and Susan St. James exchanged witty banter in their bed on TV, a shrill scream sounded in front of the house.
Louise and I exchanged a glance as Sally hopped off the couch and hurried down the hall, which was what she always did if it sounded like someone was approaching the front door. Buddy lifted his head and blinked sleepily as he looked around. I got to my feet, took my cane from its place against the end table and hobbled over to the open front door.
A scream was not a particularly unusual sound in our neighborhood. There were a lot of children and some teenagers on our street and they were sometimes noisy, even at night. I looked out through the security screen.
Beyond the porch, our front lawn sloped downward to the sidewalk, with a row of round step stones that led up the center of the lawn from the sidewalk to our porch. Hurrying up that path with one arm outstretched as the other clutched her Chihuahua Percy to her chest was our new neighbor Amber from the house across the street, a single nurse in her late twenties who had moved in a few months ago. Closing in behind her was a skinny young man of about twenty who flailed his arms as he shouted at her. When Amber moved into the glow of the porch light, I could see that the corners of her mouth were pulled back in a look of distress and her cheeks were wet with tears.
Then, in a heartbeat, they were both on our porch, directly outside the door, and Amber was whimpering, “Please let me in, please let me in,” while the young man shouted, “You’re doin’ it and it’s gotta stop, you hear me, it’s gotta fuckin’ stop!”
I hung my cane on the inside doorknob and put my hand on the security screen’s deadbolt, about to unlock it so I could get Amber inside, but he pounded a fist on the screen and screamed at me, “Don’t you see what she’s doin’, dude?” More pounding. “Don’t you fuckin’ see it?”
The pounding froze me in place for a moment, and his eyes kept me there a moment longer. They were the eyes of a trapped animal. I recognized a meth addict when I saw one because I’d seen plenty on the road while working. Most of the lot lizards who worked the truck stops along I-5 were messed up on meth and did what they did only to fund their addiction. They all had the same skinny, pale appearance, the same desperate look in their eyes, the same sores on their faces as the guy screaming at me through my security screen.
I rethought opening the door because he was right there, standing just outside and in front of Amber, who now had her back to the wall beside the door. I could get her into the house, but what if I could not keep him out? I felt paralyzed.
I turned to see Buddy fly off the couch and disappear down the hall. Louise was walking toward me and I said, “Call 911. Get the police over here.”
“Who is it?”
“I don’t know, just call them, please.” I was speaking quietly and deliberately, which Louise rightly took to mean that something was very wrong and hurried to the phone.
Through my exchange with Louise, the crazy guy on the porch shouted at the top of his voice.
“This neighborhood is bein’ marked! It’s bein’ fuckin’ marked, don’t you understand? And you know all about it!” he shouted in Amber’s face. “You’re the one’s been doin’ it, ain’t you?You’re doin’ it!”
His right arm struck with the blurred speed of a cobra and punched her in the face, slamming her head against the wall. Percy yelped as he went tumbling through the air. I saw him hit the lawn running and head straight for home. The sharp sound and sudden movement from the dog startled the guy and made him stumble backward off the step.
I took advantage of that moment and unlocked the deadbolt, pushed the door open just enough with my left hand while I reached out with my right and grabbed Amber’s upper arm, just below her shoulder. I pulled, but she needed no encouragement and slipped into the narrow opening. I tried to pull the security screen shut as he grabbed the handle on the other side and pulled, shouting, “Let me in, goddammit, I gotta have this house, I need this house as a base, don’t you fuckin’ get it, man, this neighborhood is gonna be marked!”
I grabbed the door handle with both hands and pulled.
Amber clutched my shoulder and dug her fingernails in as she said, “Don’t let him in, Harry, don’t let him in!”
Behind her, I could hear Louise quietly talking on the phone.
On the other side of the door, the skinny kid with buzz-cut blond hair pulled on the handle with both hands, lips peeled back over his crooked teeth, screaming, “She’s doin’ it to you now, man, don’t you see that? She’s manipulatin’ your vibrations and when I get in there, I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you for helpin’ her, you hear me, you motherfucker, I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you!”
Everything froze in that moment, time itself, the air around me, my heart, everything but my ability to think, and in that frozen, elongated moment as all the sound around me was drowned out by the drumming of my heart in my head, I looked through the screen at that crazed and desperate face and understood that life had changed quite suddenly and unexpectedly, in a quick instant, and this was no longer a flat, dreary Monday at the end of March with nothing worth watching on TV, now it was a drug-crazed lunatic threatening to kill me when he got on this side of the door, and all that mattered at the moment, all that mattered in life, in the world, in the universe, was keeping him outside so he wouldn’t kill all of us.
I braced my right foot against the wall and felt no pain in my knee as I pulled the door
in place, turned the deadbolt, and nearly fell on my ass when I released the handle.
He pounded on the screen with both fists and screamed his incoherent rage. I swung the front door shut and locked that deadbolt, as well, before turning around to face Louise and Amber.
My heart was doing things in my chest that I never would have believed it could do without killing me, and my legs felt like pasta that was just al dente enough to keep me upright, but only barely.
“The police are on their way,” Louise said tremulously, still holding the phone to her ear. Then she spoke quietly to the dispatcher. “He’s still on the porch screaming and threatening us.”
I went to her and put an arm around her shoulders, then turned to Amber and said, “Do you know this guy?”
She shook her head emphatically. “No, I’ve never seen him before. I walked down to the Quicky Mart to buy cigarettes and he was there. He followed me home and tried to get into my house. When he punched me, I ran over here because I didn’t know what else to do.” Her whole body trembled as tears spilled from her eyes and a bead of blood dribbled from a small cut on her lip. “I hope Percy’s all right.”
“He ran home,” I said. “I’m sure he’s fine.”
All three of us were trembling and Louise and Amber looked stunned and vaguely confused.
“No, they’re not here yet,” Louise said into the phone.
Outside, he continued to gibber and rant.
“She’s a fuckin’ witch! She’s not human! She’s evil and she’s gonna take this whole fuckin’ neighborhood! She was gonna kill me, that’s why she brought me home! She was gonna fuckin’ sacrifice me! In a fuckin’ ritual! She’s gotta be stopped and I’m gonna stop her, you hear me? I’m comin’ in there and I’m gonna fuckin’ kill her and anybody who tries to stop me!”
Amber’s shoulders quaked with quiet sobs and she whispered, “I wish he’d stop.”
And he did. The lunatic outside stopped shouting and the deafening silence that followed was unnerving. The three of us stood there in the living room looking at each other, listening and waiting. I was about to say that maybe he’d moved on, but before I could speak, an explosion made all of us jump. Louise and I were facing in the right direction to see something shatter through the window over our dining table and hit the kitchen floor with a thud.
I waved Louise and Amber down the hall to the back of the house as I thought frantically about where I could find a weapon. I’d been talking about getting a handgun for years, and every time I did, Louise said she absolutely did not want one in the house, and that was as far as we ever got.
All the knives were in the kitchen, which now had glass all over the floor, and I was wearing slippers.
He shouted angrily just outside the window. “Don’t you understand that bitch was tryin’ to kill me? She was manipulatin’ my vibrations and she was gonna sacrifice me and drink my fuckin’ blood!”
I saw his hands testing the shards of glass sticking out like fangs from the edges of the window, looking for a place to get a handhold. It looked like he was standing on the chair outside the window and reaching over the potted plants lined up on a shelf just under the window’s bottom edge. And he seemed to have every intention of coming inside.
“They mark their fuckin’ territory, these people, and she’s gonna mark this neighborhood as hers and you’re helpin’ her, motherfucker!”
Everything outside my body seemed to slow down to a crawl while everything inside seemed to move so fast that I felt ready to explode as my eyes bounced wildly around the living room in search of a weapon. They fell on Killdagger.
It certainly looked intimidating, even deadly, with those curved spines coming out of the bottom of the batwing handle made of pewter and cut to look like it was covered with scales, and the double-edged steel blade that curved up from three long, bony claws that seemed to be clutching it. But it was heavy, unwieldy, never meant to be used as a weapon.
I’m a reader, especially fantasy and science fiction, and especially the Tales of the Wanderer books by Eric Spindler, about an interdimensional warrior whose favorite weapon was a venomous knife called Killdagger. My son, who had picked up my love of reading, knew how much I enjoyed the books, and for my most recent birthday — my fifty-fourth, yeah, I’m not young anymore, I know — he had spent a ridiculous amount of money on the expensive, attractive, but useless Killdagger replica that hunched menacingly on its display stand on the fireplace mantle.
It was all I had.
When I rushed to the fireplace my knee felt no pain and I didn’t even limp because all I could feel was the adrenaline pounding through my veins. I took the knife from its stand, tore the plastic safety strips from both edges of the blade, then hurried to the window over the dining table.
I glanced to my left into the kitchen and saw the jagged blades of glass and their sparkling crumbs scattered all over the floor, and the dirt-encrusted brick beside the cats’ water dish against the wall. A couple of months ago, Louise had used some bricks to prop up a board at the edge of the grass to keep the sprinkler from spraying the front porch when she watered the lawn. I had been trying to come up with a better way to accomplish that, but the board worked so well, I’d forgotten all about it. I was never a yard guy. The front yard was Louise’s domain. I had always been much better in the kitchen.
All of that bubbled in my head as I stepped up to the edge of the window. I hefted the heavy knife at my side in my right hand, waiting.
“I need this fuckin’ house! I need a base! I’m not safe, man, I’m not fuckin’ safe!” First his left arm, skinny and pale and already spotted with dark scabs, emerged through the window over the sharp fangs of glass that jutted upward, and it was followed immediately by his right as he continued to rant.
I spread my feet and hunched a little — still no knee pain — and swung Killdagger up with all my strength and drove the sharp steel tip into the underside of his skinny, pale, upper arm.
He screamed like a child, a small girl, high and piercing, as he snatched his arms back.
“Fuck, dude, what the fuuuuck!”
He kicked the chair angrily, but it was a heavy, wooden chair, and he shouted incoherently in what sounded like pain, but in his current state it was hard to tell.
My right hand clenched the knife so tightly, I wondered if I would ever be able to relax it again. That was assuming my heart didn’t explode first, which seemed to be a grave possibility judging by the erratic jackhammer rattling against my rib cage.
Psycho McScreamy was still jabbering on outside, but he had moved away from the window. I turned and listened, tried to follow his voice. He stayed on the porch but passed the front door and went to the living room window. The vertical blinds were closed above two club chairs and a small glass table. The window was double-paned.
Screaming something about Satanists and their rituals, he punched the window at the nearest end. The taut screen softened his first blow and he merely cracked the outer pane, but the second punched broke through. I waited for a third punch, but it didn’t come. Instead, his ranting grew louder as he made his way back to my end of the porch.
This son of a bitch is coming back for more, I thought as I turned back to the window and positioned myself, got ready to do it again. I was nearly panting and made a conscious effort to slow my breathing and calm myself.
“She’s fuckin’ with my vibrations and I gotta make it stop, you hear me, you motherfucker? And I’m gonna kill you for helpin’ her!”
He punched the shards out of the bottom of the window and leaned in again, bloody hands first.
I swung the knife up again and the blade went into his forearm, on the same side. He shrieked and pulled back again, but not very far this time. He put his bloody hands on the edge of the of the window frame, leaned in with a hideous grin and growled — I’m serious, it was a growl that formed words, like a talking wolf, or something, and for a second, I think I expected him to sprout fangs and fur — he growled,
“I’m gonna kill you all, motherfucker.”
You’ve got to get in here first, I thought vaguely as I struck with the knife again. This time, the blade went into his left cheek. I did not stab with as much force as I’d used when I stuck him in the arm, but it was hard enough for the tip of that dull, decorative blade to pierce his face. He screamed and pulled out of the window, lifting both hands to his face.
I heard voices behind him in the front yard. Neighbors were converging on our yard, shouting at him. Two male voices told him to get away from the window and leave our house alone. They were joined by a third voice, deep and masculine, threatening to mess him up if he didn’t stop harassing us.
I recognized a couple of the voices — our neighbor to the left, Nick, and our neighbor to the right, Fred — but the third voice wasn’t familiar. I was glad to hear them and hoped they could distract the lunatic until the police arrived.
He ignored them and launched himself from the chair on the porch through the window, landing face-down on the glass-covered table with a rattling thunk.
He’s in, he’s in, he’s in, I thought, staring at his body stretched out on the dining table, the toes of his ratty sneakers still resting on the edge of the window. He pressed both of his bloody hands flat to the table and began to lift himself up, glass cracking and crunching under his hands.
I knew if he got up, I was in trouble. I did not take time to think about it, I simply did it.
Clutching Killdagger in both hands, I lifted it high, then brought it down hard. The blade struck bone, then penetrated his flesh and sank into his back, and the sensations that traveled through the knife and into my hands were sickening.
His arms collapsed and his body fell flat on the table again with a guttural wail that seemed to go on forever. I stood there for a moment, every muscle in my body tense, feet spread, arms stiff, with both hands still wrapped around the handle of the knife, the blade buried to its bony claws in his back.