“Fuck you,” Glont said.
“Because now you can die here! Or else get the fuck outta town!” Lance lifted a sausagey finger of condemnation at Glont. “I, Lance Montgomery, your goodly king, do hereby command thee to bite off thy bottom lip while plucking thine own eyes out of thy face! There’s no saving you this time. If you don’t comply, then say goodbye to your job, asshole. Ahh-ha-ha-ha…”
Before Glont had a chance to respond, who should step out from behind a parked SUV and stand midway between him and Lance? Why, it was none other than Chillington, the Chillmaster of Chillville!!!
“You got that wrong, son,” the Chillmaster said to Lance. “I’m afraid it’s you who’s about to say goodbye. And not just to your job. To your fucking life!”
Eyes squinting, brow knitting, Lance tilted his head quizzically. “And who the fuck are you supposed to be?”
“I’m Chillington, the Chillmaster of Chillville.”
Lance glowered at the Chillmaster for a moment before speaking. “The Chillmaster of Chillville? Pfft! You look more like the Turdmaster of Fagtown to me. Now, get the fuck off my property before I knock your goddamn head off, oldster.”
“Aw-Yeah!” the Chillmaster called as he raised his hand, beckoning the creature to come forth from behind him. Aw-Yeah waddled out into view from the shadows, halting at its master’s side. The crowd gathered behind Lance uttered a collective gasp.
“What in tarnation is that?” Ma Ruth asked, her Freddy face peeking around Glont’s shoulder, startling him. Glont turned around to see both her and Old Crub standing behind him.
“Ma, I told you two to stay in the goddamn car!”
“What is that thing?” Lance uttered, his face paling. “Is that…fucking TERROR MANNEQUIN?”
“Shut him up, Aw-Yeah,” Chillington said.
As the dummy reached its free arm toward Lance, the man went bug-eyed with panic and terror, the muscles of his arms and legs gone rigid under Aw-Yeah’s paralysis spell.
“But to answer your question—no, that’s not TERROR MANNEQUIN. TERROR MANNEQUIN was destroyed long ago. This is Aw-motherfuckin’-Yeah.” Chillington turned to Glont. “By the way, you might as well know the truth. I was the one who took down the barbed wire and all the KEEP OUT signs.”
“What?” Glont said. “But why?”
“All the things I told you about myself were true, but I didn’t tell you everything, like how my violent fantasies started to change over time, how I also started to fantasize about maiming and murdering good people—innocents. At one point, the darkness took full control over me, like a demonic spirit. It made me take down the barbed wire and all those signs to lure trick-or-treaters back to Fallingwater. I was going to have Aw-Yeah kill everyone who came through! Luckily, only you guys made the trip. And when you arrived, something brought me out of the dark place I’m in, or at least partway out. I’m not positive, but I think it was being in the presence of Tom Two—of bearing witness to his purity, innocence, and chillness of spirit. Anyway, now I must cleanse myself of the last bit of darkness within me by making this final human sacrifice, one that is truly deserved.”
Chillington turned to Lance. “Hey, asshole. Bite off thy bottom lip and pluck thy eyes out thy face! Aw-Yeah, make him do so! But slowly so he suffers! Oh, and make him stuff his eyeballs up his ass, too! Shit, might as well have him rip his balls off, too, and insert them into his empty eye sockets. I mean, why not, right? Heh-heh!”
Raising his fingers to his eyes, Lance sucked his lower lip into his mouth.
Despite hating Lance with every fiber of his being and knowing he totally deserved what he was getting, Glont had no interest in witnessing the gory spectacle that was about to unfold before them.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said under his breath to Amanda, grabbing both her and Ma Ruth by their arms to sneak away. They resumed walking hurriedly back to the car.
“Now, you let go of me!” Ma Ruth protested. “I wanna see Lance stick his peepers up his butt!”
Smiling manically, Chillington glanced over his shoulder. “Not so fast, Glont. Aw-Yeah, freeze him!”
As soon as the command was uttered, Glont released Amanda’s and Ma Ruth’s arms and turned in place to face the house. No longer in control of his body from the mouth down, his eyes darted about in panic.
“This one’s for you, my friend,” Chillington said. “You need to watch this. I mean, this fucker’s been tormenting and harassing you your entire life. Pantsing you. Locking you in lockers. Beating your skinny ass. Making you eat dog turds in the schoolyard. Humiliating you. And twice tonight he and his asshole friends were ready to watch you bleed to death out here on this driveway. Well, I have a funny feeling that Lance’s bullying days are over. See, I suspect there’s little else more permanently subduing to a person than being forced to gouge their own eyes out and stuff them up their ass before ripping their nuts off and sticking them into their empty eye sockets!”
A mixture of tears and blood leaked out of Lance’s eyes as his fingers dug deeper into his orbits, twin rivulets running down his cheeks to meet in the cleft of his chiseled chin.
Word of what was happening quickly passed from the front of the crowd to the back, and more people came out of the house to see what the commotion was all about. Guests began to panic. Two of Lance’s douchebag frat boy toadies came to his side. One was dressed up as a pregnant nun, the other as a hillbilly having sex with a sheep.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, bro?” the pregnant nun asked. He grabbed onto Lance’s left arm while the hillbilly grabbed onto the right one. They pulled with all their strength in a futile attempt to get their bro to take his fingers out of his eye sockets.
“Aw-Yeah!” Chillington said. “Make these two assholes rip each other’s faces off and feed them to each other while they—oh, I don’t know—engage in Irish step dancing to the best of their ability.”
Lance’s pals immediately released him, then went at each other’s faces.
Just then, Ma-He’s-Makin’-Eyes-At-Me appeared at the edge of the confused crowd, which continued to grow on the veranda and spill out into the driveway. As usual, she was dressed as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. Glont noticed her immediately. He tried to break free of the paralysis spell, to turn around and warn Amanda just in case she wasn’t in the know about the danger of Ma-He’s-Makin’-Eyes-At-Me and her diabolical mother. However, he couldn’t break free from the unholy magic.
Chillington noticed her, too. He took a few steps forward to get a better look. “Well, look at you,” he called to her. “Great costume. Your dress actually falls below the knee. Just like the real thing. Hey, kudos for being the first woman I’ve seen tonight who’s not dressed up as the ‘sexy’ version of something or other—the little sluts!”
An attractive woman at the front of crowd then gave him the finger. “Hey, fuck you, old man. Don’t you know it’s archaic to slut-shame people?” She was dressed up as a Sexy 9/11 Twin Tower (her costume consisted of a low-cut, cleavage-showing, skintight, gray bodysuit printed with a grid-like pattern of windows, the words “NORTH TOWER” sewn across her jutting bosom in white block letters). Her equally offended friend stood beside her dressed in the same getup except for the words “SOUTH TOWER” embroidered under her cleavage.
Somewhat smitten with Dorothy, Chillington ignored those assholes. “And you even look like Judy Garland in the face! Anyone ever tell you that, miss?”
That’s when Ma-He’s-Makin’-Eyes-At-Me stepped forward, pointed at Chillington, and recited that dreaded string of words: “Ma, he’s makin’ eyes at me!”
Oh, no! Glont thought.
A beat later, the tall shrubs that flanked the eastern wing of the mansion parted to let through an invisible bulk, a deep growl rumbling in its throat. It trampled over a parked Jaguar two cars down from where Chillington stood, the car’s windows shattering outward as the roof caved in.
“Shit,” Chillington muttered, only now recalling how G
lont had told him about Ma-He’s-Makin’-Eyes-At-Me and her mother—the invisible, monstrous Mrs. Smith. Just as he was about to run like hell the other way, the invisible horror knocked him off his feet and onto his back on the concrete. He screamed as something sharp ripped through his Bob Ross t-shirt to carve a red slash across his belly. At the same time, something like a frenzied horde of tiny invisible mouths commenced biting into his clothing and at his exposed skin.
As Aw-Yeah’s number one duty was to protect its master, the dummy and the wax doll released their sorcerous holds on Lance, his two friends, and Glont in order to assist Chillington.
Lance’s lower lip hanging inside-out on his bloody chin and barely attached to his face, he sank to his knees and pulled his fingers out of his ruptured eye sockets. His two now-faceless buddies ceased force-feeding one another their own faces and Irish step dancing to the shrill music of their own agonized shrieks.
Glont turned to Amanda, moved in front of her to block her view of the scene. “Hey, see that chick dressed as Dorothy? Don’t look her in the eye for more than a second or two. If she catches anyone doing so, she—”
“She tells her invisible monster of a mother,” Amanda interrupted. “And the mother tears them apart, just like she’s doing to your friend there. Yeah, my realtor warned me about her before I moved into my house.”
Aw-Yeah’s Chicken McNugget head tilted in confusion, and its little mouth opened in a shocked o-shape as it gawked at its master thrashing about on the driveway. A moment later, the thumb, index finger, and middle finger on Chillington’s left hand disappeared in a spray of blood as an unseen mouth bit them off with a snap.
“It’s fucking invisible!” Chillington screamed at Aw-Yeah, his face a bloody, grated mess. “Use your power! Turn this fucking thing inside out! Make it stick its invisible fucking head up its invisible fucking ass, Aw-Yeah! Ah-aaaeeeeeeehhh…”
The dummy reached with its free hand at the general area above Chillington, the space presumably occupied by the invisible attacker. Its hand fanned out, fingers dancing, as it attempted to drive its telekinetic hooks into her, but its power had no effect because it could not see its target. Not knowing what else to do, Aw-Yeah dove onto the unseen beast. The mannequin freed up its left arm and grabbed onto the thing’s back. The dummy—now unseated, the mannequin’s hand still embedded in its back—clamped onto the beast’s unseen hide with its free arm. While the mannequin and dummy held on tight, the wax doll and the voodoo doll beat the thing with their free limbs. For its part, the Chicken McNugget head repeatedly headbutted the invisible monster. From the perspective of all onlookers, Aw-Yeah appeared to float four or five feet in the air above the Chillmaster as the wax doll, the voodoo doll, and the Chicken McNugget struck nothing but air.
Something quite incredible then happened: Since Aw-Yeah and Mrs. Smith were both supernatural entities born of dark magic, their physical contact acted somewhat like an electrical short, shutting off both Mrs. Smith’s invisibility and Aw-Yeah’s telekinetic power.
The crowded gasped.
Above Chillington’s struggling form slouched a creature with the muscular body of a werewolf that was over eight feet tall when it stood upright on its powerful hind legs. Its warped head was that of a demonic clown—waxy-white face, coal-black eyes ringed with blue, yawning blood-red mouth stretching from misshapen ear to misshapen ear. Crowning the demonic clown head was a hissing, writhing mass of snakes like a gorgon’s, except each serpent terminated in a smaller copy of the demonic clown head. These plumb-sized demonic clown heads were themselves crowned with snakes the size of earthworms, which themselves ended in even tinier, snake-capped demonic clown heads. Like mirrors within mirrors, this fractal pattern went on forever, the demonic clown heads and snakes disappearing into infinity.
For arms, the monster had two 5-foot-long juvenile great white sharks, each attached by its tail to one of the massive werewolf shoulders. Orbiting the beast like angry wasps around a ruptured nest were dozens of zombie air-piranha, though most of these flying, undead fish were busy picking away at the fallen Chillmaster. Though Aw-Yeah continued to hold onto to Mrs. Smith’s back via the mannequin and the dummy, and though the wax doll and voodoo doll kept beating her with their free limbs, Mrs. Smith seemed unaware of Aw-Yeah’s puny presence.
Glont turned away from the struggle, dragging Amanda and Ma Ruth with him back to the car. Amanda got into the passenger seat and shut the door while Glont helped his mother into the backseat. The throng of panicked party guests began to disperse, some running for the neighbor’s yards, others giving the now visible Mrs. Smith, Aw-Yeah, and Chillington a wide berth as they ran for their cars in the driveway. Glont glanced back at the chaos as he opened the car door to get in. He spotted Old Crub several feet away from the struggle tearing pieces of his face off and devouring them while his gangly legs kicked about in some sort of terrible imitation of an Irish jig. And he was doing so of his own volition! Lance’s two buddies, who had both collapsed to bleed out onto the driveway, had apparently inspired the nuthouse-bugshit insane old man to imitate them.
And peeking out from behind a parked car not far from Old Crub were Tom Two and The Membrane!
“Shit!” Glont said. He lowered his head into the car. “Tom Two and The Membrane are up there. Wait here.” Leaving the car door open, he ran back toward the house.
“What the hell are you guys doing?” he yelled when he reached them, grabbing Tom Two by the shoulders and turning him away from the terrible spectacle. “I told you guys to stay at home! You’re supposed to be in bed, Tom Two.”
The Membrane left me all alone in the house, Tom Two signed. I was scared, so I got out of bed when I heard him leave, and I followed him here.
Man, I was just hoping to score a piece of ass at this party, The Membrane signed.
“Christ. C’mon, let’s get outta of here!” Glont said.
But before he could reach down and sweep Tom Two up onto his shoulder like Tiny Tim, Lance came up from behind him, shoved him hard. When Glont spun around to face him, Lance sucker-punched him in the face, laying him out on the ground and causing him to black out for a second. When he came to, Glont was sprawled out on his stomach on the driveway, his nose bleeding and broken from smacking against the pavement. As Lance fell upon him, Glont rolled onto his back to see the man’s disfigured face—bulging, bloody eyes and flappy, mostly detached lip—hovering above his own.
“Your fucking friend mutilated me!” he spat, grabbing Glont’s head in both hands as if to crush it. “But he didn’t finish what he started. I still have my eyes, see? Looks like you’re the one who’s gonna get his eyes shoved up his ass tonight after all.”
Glont grabbed Lance’s wrists, pushing back as the man’s thumbs edged closer toward his eyes. A beat later, The Membrane slid up Lance’s back and enveloped his head. Lance’s hands immediately abandoned Glont’s face as he clutched at The Membrane in an attempt to pull the thing off, but the creature tightened its grip, its outermost edges wrapping around Lance’s neck to choke him, suffocating him while its secreted digestive juices ate away at the man’s skin.
Still disoriented from getting punched in the nose, Glont took the opportunity flip over on his belly and crawl out from underneath Lance. As he did so, he found himself looking beyond the landscaped circle enclosed by the driveway to the expansive lawn that separated the mansion from the street. The wind picked up, and pockets of dry leaves skittered across the short-clipped grass, momentarily mesmerizing Glont in his delirium, causing him to think of herds of tiny wild horses. And there, out near the middle of the lawn, he espied in his blurry vision a white, oval-shaped form. Something about the thing gave him pause. He squinted to see it better, trying to discern what the shape was. Whatever it was, it slowly grew as it approached the house.
Just as Glont crawled out from under Lance, one of the demonic clown-headed serpents that grew out of Mrs. Smith’s head finally noticed Aw-Yeah clinging to her back. It sidewinde
d its way down the beast’s spine, and its terrible, little chalk-white face and round, red nose stopped an inch short of headbutting the Chicken McNugget head. The clown head’s red lips peeled back to reveal jagged, nail-like teeth lining its mouth, before it pulled back a few inches to strike at the McNugget head like lightning. However, its aim was off: its teeth closed around Aw-Yeah’s spring-neck, which snapped as the clown headed-snake retracted like a whip.
The McNugget’s face scrunched into an “oh no!” expression as it tumbled to the ground. At that same moment, the ventriloquist dummy’s eyes rolled back into its head, and the wax doll’s orange-glowing pupils dimmed to black. The mannequin’s right arm slid limply out of the dummy’s back, the dummy’s right arm withdrew from the wax doll, and the wax doll’s right arm pulled out of the voodoo doll, whereupon the voodoo doll released the crank of the now unoccupied jack-in-the-box. The mannequin and the dummy then released their holds on the monster—Aw-Yeah’s separated pieces fell into a pile on the driveway. When the physical contact between Aw-Yeah and Mrs. Smith broke, the monster once again turned invisible.
Several feet away, Lance finally managed to pry The Membrane from his head and toss the thing away. Steaming in the cool night air, the man’s entire head and neck had been stripped down to quivering, beet-red muscle, his eyeballs flashing white with terror and agony in the melted wreckage of his face. Only after he took in and released the deep breath for which he’d fought so hard did Lance commence screaming in agony.
Still prostrate on the concrete, Glont continued to stare at the approaching pale form out on the windswept lawn. He realized it was some sort of humanoid figure, its gait stiff and mechanical, and that it appeared to be carrying something. It reached the other side of the circle driveway, began to cross the landscaped circle. That’s when Glont realized what the thing was.
“Holy shit,” he whispered.
He scrambled up onto his hands and knees, hauled himself upright, and turned to face the others.
“Hey, everyone—it’s fucking TERROR MANNEQUIN!” he shouted through cupped hands, trying to be heard over Lance’s terrible shrieking and the screams of the many confused and terrified party guests.
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