3VIL (volume 3)

by Mike Miller

  The creature thrashes its head back and forth as the old man’s blood splatters against the ceiling. The color seems to drain from the man as he becomes blanched and pale. His body gradually tears in half.

  I fight with the locks to open the door.

  Then I shove my wife through the opening and race through the parking lot after her. The outdoors have been blanketed in darkness again. An invisible trash can trips me to the ground.

  My wife takes the lead on the driver’s side, slipping easily behind the wheel. I get to the passenger side a moment later to find the door locked. Even in the midst of this hectic commotion, my wife still managed to dutifully lock it as she left.

  “Let me in!” I yell, wrestling with the handle.

  My wife focuses on starting the car.

  As I try the car’s back door, a loud smash forces me to turn back around. The nightmarish creature emerges through the station’s wall, debris clattering down about it. Through the cloud of dust, its mouth is pink and splattered with fresh blood. Its four red eyes focus squarely upon us. Its jaw quivers in a low snarl.

  I turn to tell my wife to go, but she’s already driving off in a fury of squealing wheels. The car scatters tiny pebbles at me feet. I did not intend to be so heroically sacrificial, but she spared me the opportunity by beating me to the punch. I am granted only the tiniest moment of enraged stupefaction before I need to concern myself with my own survival.

  The creature lowers itself, then springs forward. In two mighty bounds - its mouth agape and ready to feast - the creature is upon me. But I fling myself aside, and it swiftly whizzes by me to effortlessly crush through both the pumps and a reinforcement column of the stand’s roof. The entire construction topples down from the destruction. Gas sprays everywhere like a casino fountain.

  I scramble away in retreat. I hope the structure’s collapse will have stopped the beast, but the creature’s glow bleeds through the rubble. It rises up powerfully in a small explosion of metal and concrete, then easily pounces from its trapping.

  With the quickest glance around the local environment, I snatch up a broom and brace myself.

  The monster steadily advances, its pale halo the only source of light against the midnight landscape. I watch its powerful muscles tensing as it slides closer. Its mouth opens into a sick smile as a long white tongue flashes against its teeth with glee.

  Then it attacks.

  My mind races, serving to slow the creature’s pounce. My youth, my parents, my wife, our lives - I realize that this is the telltale life flashing before my eyes even while I also watch this massive beast land atop me.

  The monster hits me hard. Its agape mouth surrounds my head and knocks me back on the ground. My would-be weapon skitters away on the concrete like a toothpick.

  Even through my closed eyelids, I can see the creature’s brilliant luminescence shining through. I hear nothing but the heavy panting of its cold breath on my face and brace myself for death.

  It does not come.

  When I open my eyes, I am staring through rows of teeth and down the beast’s white and wet throat. My head basks in its pungent breath. Its giant tongue lays limp upon my chest.

  I scoot myself out from under it, but it remains locked in position. The being has ceased to move, frozen in mid-chomp. Its giant body heaves erratically as it struggles to breathe. The eyes are groggy and blink weakly.

  The creature’s glow wanes while its hide begins to sizzle, emanating a noxious mist.

  A car engine zooms steadily towards us. I peer out around the phantom’s giant head to see the high beams rapidly approaching.

  I struggle to free my trapped legs from underneath the monster in time.

  I cannot.

  Both monster and I are crushed by the onrushing vehicle. The beast’s body absorbs most of the blow, but the violent collision still sends me tumbling across the parking lot.

  I lose consciousness instantly.

  I awake in my wife’s arms. Her dear eyes stare compassionately into mine as she runs her fingernails through my hair.

  “You didn’t leave,” I whisper in terse pain.

  “I did leave,” she sobs with happiness and sorrow. “But I changed my mind.”

  She leans in to kiss me, but a strange burbling disrupts us.

  I see the albino creature laying a few feet to my side. Its body is contorted in odd angles. Numerous wounds expose gooey insides which are as white as its outsides. The remaining headlight of our smashed car continues to shine on the dying animal, where its bright glow has become flat and grey.

  The creature’s body begins to convulse erratically on the ground. It splatters milky blood and saliva onto the cement as it gasps for life.

  With a plethora of pain pinging throughout my body, I manage to rise to my feet.

  My wife says, “Don’t worry. It’s over.”

  “No.” I clutch a metal display sign for an oil change and drag it back to the creature. “We need to end it.”

  The monster’s red eyeballs widen at my appearance. It winces as I raise the metal club back above my head.

  “Don’t look,” I tell my wife, though there is something inside of me that enjoys the fact that this cursed killer can’t help but look.

  I sink the edge of the sign squarely into its skull with a squishy thud. Radiant white blood splashes across the ground from the blow.

  I bash the creature over and over with the sign, bludgeoning its head and chest.

  Though it stops moving, I continue the beating. The sign bends from the thrashing assault and becomes painted white from the gore. I watch the glow from the monster’s body completely vanish, leaving a pile of dull muscle and skin.

  And still I beat it.

  My body sore and hurt, I stumble back to my sobbing wife on the ground, falling into her arms.

  We hold each other tightly as if to crush the other.

  Eventually she looks back to me and smiles. I had almost forgotten that smile. It makes me smile too. I close my eyes and rest on her. She sighs and rubs my beaten chest.

  She softly says, “No.”

  “What?” I am confused, wondering if my ringing soreness has caused me to mishear her.

  “Oh, my God,” she cries quietly. I look up to see her terrified face staring off into the dark horizon once again.

  In the distance is another shimmering light, glowing a slightly darker shade of purple than the creature’s. Above the mysterious light, a circle of sky is dead, remiss of any stars.

  As the light draws closer to us on the ground, the darkness above spreads as well. The emptiness crawls steadily across the sky like a ripple in a pond.

  Beneath the growing hole in the stars, the lavender light too becomes larger on the horizon. Unlike the phantom’s dot, this glow spreads out into a wave. The crest soon expands so wide that it breaks into smaller pieces. First, into several lights. Then dozens. Then hundreds. The landscape is filled with the night’s lost stars. Now, in every direction surrounding us. They are getting bigger as they charge towards us for revenge.

  We huddle tightly in the light of the car, clutching each other close.

  “Why…?” my wife laments. “Why is this happening to us?”

  “I’m sorry,” is all I can offer in conciliation. I think especially hard about what my next words should be since they are likely my last.

  When the creatures approach, they slow down and circle us. They form a horde of deformed entities in a multitude of shapes and sizes. Some beasts are larger than houses, others tiny as bugs. Feathered wings, long necks, scaled hides, upright stances – nearly every trait in the known animal kingdom is represented somewhere amongst their ranks, yet in gross, new combinations

  One animal looks like a hybrid of an elephant with a tarantula. Another is a winged possum with an alligator-like head. The vicious zoo features a menagerie of parts like the unfinished outcasts of a deranged experiment with cross-breeding. The only traits they all share in common are the purple-white
glow and bright red eyes.

  The nocturnal beasts form a perfect circle around us, all keeping a distance of a few dozen feet. They noticeably keep their distance from the car’s lone headlight, though their collective brightness casts us in a harsh and overpowering light. The glow of their menagerie lights every scar and crust of dirt on my wife’s lovely face.

  “I love you,” I tell her.

  “I love you too,” she says, tears streaming down her dirty cheeks. “I’m sorry too,” she adds.

  “It’s all right. Me too.”

  One of the creatures screams first. The others join the cry with a deafening chorus of shrieks and howls.

  The car’s headlight cracks and sizzles, and then goes dark.

  The group of creatures slowly descend on us from all sides. Their ghastly voices continue their horrific song.

  We close our eyes, and hold each other tightly to make two bodies into one.

  We kiss for an eternity.

  We kiss until the creatures’ screams stop.

  We kiss until I curiously open my eyes to see that the monsters are gone. Even the original we had slain is now missing. They have all vanished.

  Now a new light burns beyond the horizon. The sun is returning to reclaim the world. Its imminent appearance casts an orange glow to the heavens, warming the black of night into purple. The details of our destruction become more visible. My wife comes better into view by the moment.

  We hop into the car and race for the sunrise. The old thing is even more broken and beat than ever, but it keeps going just fine.

  We laugh together with half-mad glee.

  “It’ll be simple.” Mr. Carver smiled confidently when he spoke. He fidgeted with his wristwatch to slyly flash its rich display into his customer’s eyes. Another covert sign of confidence, a little presale hypnosis. “The easiest thing you’ve ever done,” he added.

  And that customer, Mr. Bowlings, took another look at the four-page color brochure spread out on the desk between the two men.

  The smiling people with perfect haircuts and nice clothes. The bright, bold and italicized words shouting at him. The graphs, charts and numbers proudly proclaiming their indisputable science and facts.

  And so many exclamation points, seemingly all building into one giant club to hammer home the point.

  “I don’t know…” mused Mr. Bowlings while scratching his bald head.

  He focused on the final part of the literature. It was a graphic of a man asleep on a pillow, a man who might well have been Mr. Bowlings in the prime of his life just a few decades ago. A large thought-bubble sprouted from that fellow’s slumbering cranium. In the fluffy white dream cloud stood that same man, except now he was awake, joyful and supreme. On his head lay a golden crown. He basked in a hail of candy-colored confetti. In one hand he clutched a pile of money, and in the other a giant shining trophy. Around that happy man was a trio of adoring women, each a different flavor of exotic beauty.

  Not even the sparkling golden glow on the fringes of the dream bubble went unnoticed by Mr. Bowlings, a man who always endeavored to do the most thorough research possible to come to the right conclusion. Patience was greatness.

  “So…” Mr. Bowlings drawled slowly. He wasn’t sure why he was slyly haranguing for more time. The decision was practically made almost a week ago when he had first heard of the service from the local news. The stalling and finagling was just his way. “How much will it cost me, Mr. Carver?”

  Mr. Carver leaned forward so that his soft leather chair sighed like a small chorus of exhausted cherubs yawning as they awoke from a summer nap. “Well, Mr. Bowlings, it just so happens that we’re having a special this week.”

  The pen clicked. The paperwork shuffled.

  * * *

  When Mr. Bowlings returned home, he clicked on the light to the entry chandelier with a tired moan from the long day. While Mr. Carver had been faithfully correct in saying that the entire process was simple, easy and painless, he had not mentioned brief. Mr. Bowlings’ old body was quite spent from the extensive duration of the procedure. The various operations and examinations had lasted from early afternoon and into the late evening.

  But now the moment was just the way Mr. Bowlings had envisioned it. While giddy with anticipation, he did not want to rush a thing. He wanted to preserve this delightful buildup to the main event. So he artificially lingered in his nightly routine just to stretch out the foreplay to the evening’s sleep.

  He ordered some Chinese food to be delivered for dinner, forgoing any modesty with some additional egg rolls and an extra chow mein.

  He changed out of his suit and tie and put on some slippers and his coziest robe. It was a plush number made of lavender velvet with silver trim.

  He tipped the delivery boy twice as much as usual, which finally made it an adequate tip from this miser.

  Next, Mr. Bowlings watched the television for a while, particularly enjoying a montage of several amateur short films about racehorses.

  He yawned briefly, but he was not tired enough. He muscled through some more banal television programming.

  A few moments later though, he yawned a mighty roar which rattled through the empty house. Finally, it was time for bed. He clapped his hands together like a child rising for Christmas.

  He flipped off the TV, dropped the box of leftovers on an end table, and skipped upstairs into the bedroom. The excitement was near overwhelming, and he almost tripped on the final steps. But Mr. Bowlings dutifully executed the last remainders of his evening rites.

  He brushed his teeth quickly but powerfully, nearly choking on an excessive gulp of water on the rinse, gargle and spit.

  He set his alarm clock for 7 a.m. sharp. Then he changed it to 7:15. Then 8:30.

  And then Mr. Bowlings went to his dresser and pulled out his wife’s favorite nightgown. From atop the bureau, he grabbed a bottle of perfume and sprayed it into the air. Mr. Bowlings waited, waited, then delicately fluttered the dress through the dying mist.

  Mr. Bowlings climbed into the bed and held the gown before him. First, he studied the soft white lace and ornate designs that punctuated the silk. He closed his eyes and rubbed the garment tenderly against his cheek. In a quiet and barely audible voice that was filled with simmering, rapturous passion, he moaned and visualized his wife’s sweet face.

  Then he was downstairs in his living room sitting in his chair. A sea of candles flickered dark light across the vast, blackened chamber.

  Mr. Bowlings knew to look upstairs to the bedroom. He could feel a force pulling his attention there. Unlike every other night for the past few years, Mr. Bowlings was no longer alone.

  “Herman…” her voice called. “Herman, where are you?” She ached with gentle longing.

  Mr. Bowlings started charging up the stairs, but forced himself to slow down. He didn’t want to be hurt in his rambunctiousness, and he wanted the impending experience to be nothing short of perfect. So he marched up the stairs deliberately and proclaimed, “I’m coming, dear,” like a conquering hero. His voice was calm and assured, but his face was wild with excitement. His fingers trembled with nervous anxiety.

  He arrived at the door to the bedroom. It was ajar to reveal a sliver of black darkness.

  “Herman…”

  He entered with a slight push on the door.

  Moonlight filtered in from the far window, casting a crooked rectangle of midnight luminescence across the floor and onto the bed. Sitting at the far edge of the bed facing the window was Mr. Bowlings’ wife. Her white nightgown glowed in the broken and refracted light. It was the same dress he caressed every night, but at last she was wearing it once again.

  Her back was to him as she faced out the window. She sat completely motionless except for her black hair. The long strands wafted towards him in the wind like reeds floating underwater.

  “Herman…” she whispered.

  “I’m here, my love.” His voice cracked from the melancholy joy of finally seeing her again.<
br />
  He strode across the room and quickly took a seat beside her, placing a hand on her back.

  But her body was cold, chilling to the touch. Confused, Mr. Bowlings leaned forward to look at her.

  His wife’s dead eyes stared emptily out the window. They were milky and opaque, and only the faintest outlines of her gorgeous green pupils were detectable in the dark pools of her eye sockets.

  The slender lips of her mouth were blackened and swollen.

  Her once fair skin was a sickly shade of blue.

  “Herman…” her disembodied voice said from somewhere very close and intimate to his ears. Mr. Bowlings was horrifically entranced by the sight of his deceased wife, yet he did not see her mouth move when she spoke. So he knew that the voice was hers, and was not spoken from where her corpse currently sat.

  Her dead head turned slowly to face him. He could not look away from its hideous visage.

  “Why am I like this?” she whined.

  He awoke with a gasp.

  Mr. Bowlings was alone in his bedroom. The room was well-illuminated by the bedside lamp without a single spooky shadow in sight. His wife’s nightgown laid spread across his lap.

  As he held the empty dress in his hands, he was partially relieved the nightmare had ended. But then he shivered from its horror when he recalled its macabre events. From the neckline of the gown, his mind’s eye could still see her death’s head resting within it. The recent memory now painted his mind with all the myriad ways her beauty had become poisoned and deformed.

  He still smelt her perfume in his nose. While it still held that gorgeously sweet aroma, there was now the subtlest undertone of sour decay.

  In the lonely bedroom, Mr. Bowlings struggled to stay awake for the next few hours before work.

  * * *

  Mr. Carver dreamt of a very loud groan. But doing so would be too unprofessional. As he watched this old, strange and nervous little customer reviewing her epic list of notes, his false smile threatened to break his face. He was accustomed to handling many horrible people, but right now, this lady felt like the worst.