by Mike Miller
Mr. Bowlings stared at the clock. It was now 2:30 in the morning with only a few more hours left. “You damned bastard!” he screamed mightily at no one in particular. Perhaps himself or everyone else.
The homestretch reinvigorated him as he reached for another cup of boiling water to pour over his head. He closed his eyes and titled the cup.
Nothing came out.
“Herman!” shrieked his wife.
His eyes opened with a massive explosion. The thunderclap silenced the cacophony of the stereo and TV, and replaced the sound with a low pitter-patter of raindrops backed by the trembling howl of gusting wind. The house fell into pitch-blackness, but then was suddenly cast into view by the bright flash of a lightning bolt. The accompanying thunder rattled the fixture and frame of the large home.
Mr. Bowlings dropped his empty glass to the ground, which smashed silently on the wooden floor.
“Herman!” his wife screamed again, emanating from the upstairs bedroom. The echo rattled through the high-ceilinged house.
There was nowhere to run. She was waiting for him.
Instinctively and robotically, Mr. Bowlings began to walk across the floor, moving closer into the inevitable nightmare. He could not force himself to disobey the call.
Ascending the stairs, Mr. Bowlings slid his hand along the banister, massaging its smooth oak finish. The hard and cold sensation was still strange to him as he wondered if he was really dreaming. Perhaps he had simply just devolved into madness while wide awake. Perhaps she wasn’t even there this time.
Mr. Bowlings noticed a trail of bloody footsteps walking up the steps. He lifted up his left foot, and saw that it had been sliced open by shards of broken glass. He picked out a piece, examined it closely as its exposed surface glittered beneath the blood. Mr. Bowlings picked at the wound next and felt nothing. Now he really couldn’t tell. If he was dead asleep or completely mad. Or maybe the entire experience really was just happening as he was living it. His wife was still alive, and her death was only a tormented dream.
“Herman,” she sang, sweetly and pleasantly. Her voice was natural and loving, just as Mr. Bowlings had requested. Upon reaching the top floor, he smelled the lavender perfume wafting into his eager nostrils. He gently opened the door, and his smiling joy immediately dissipated.
Across the room, seated on the opposite side of the bed, his wife faced out the window with her back turned to him. Her hair was tangled and damp. Her gown was soiled and torn. Her body trembled in an unholy manner, a violent spasm that made her head jerk and twitch awkwardly from side to side.
“No,” Mr. Bowlings moaned.
“Herman…” her voice called sweetly to him.
Mr. Bowlings retreated backwards a step.
“Herman, I love you!” she cried, swiftly spinning around. Mr. Bowlings whimpered in terror as his wife’s corpse sprung up into the air. She was now practically a skeleton.
While hovering above the floor, she rapidly rushed right for him. Her dead hair gently trailed behind her as bits of rotten flesh fell from her arms when she reached for him. Her face had decomposed to the point that gray pieces of skull were exposed from beneath her dead skin. Her hollow eye sockets both focused squarely on Herman, cutting right through into his breaking heart.
Mr. Bowlings stumbled backwards from the room to the balcony banister. He nearly fell over it, but recovered.
He turned to flee down the stairs when he felt the icy grasp of boney fingers wrap around his neck.
He yelped, and toppled headfirst over the railing’s edge.
With only a moment to fall one story, Mr. Bowlings closed his eyes and braced for impact. A lifetime’s worth of memories flooded his head, and Mr. Bowlings could only wince at its pathetic meaningless.
He fell square upon his back, landing face up. He groggily resuscitated himself, despite the odd fact that he felt no pain. He went to lean up and brace a hand under himself for support, but Mr. Bowlings then discovered that he could not move. Dread began to invade him.
Upstairs the house was empty again. The wind continued to growl, the rain slammed against the roof. Mr. Bowlings listened to his own heavy and hushed breathing in horrified anticipation as he saw his wife’s rotten fingers crawl across the balcony rail.
Lightning crashed on top of Mr. Bowlings, momentarily blinding him. But when the residual bolts thundered off in the distance, he could see flashes of his lover’s corpse hanging above him in the rafters. Slowly and precisely, she descended down towards him through the air. She held her frail arms aloft towards him, her head cocked sideways in a near expression of kindness. “Why?” she asked.
Mr. Bowlings struggled to move, to escape, but his body was riveted to the floor. He attempted to close his eyes to avoid the monstrous vision, but he was still helpless. He could only watch as his wife moved to just above him. As she magically tilted flat, their bodies became parallel and face to face.
“I love you, Herman,” she said softly. Her voice was calm and pleasant but creaking with a ghoulish drone. Mr. Bowlings shivered as she ran her cold squishy palm over his balding dome.
“Why…?” she asked, her face inches from his. Her breath smelled putrid, like ancient refuse. Her gaunt lips opened, and from behind jagged rows of dull gray teeth, a blue tongue slithered out towards his face. It slid across his mouth, leaving a trail of rancid saliva.
Mr. Bowlings began weeping. His blubbering mouth now open, he tasted his wife’s death, causing him to retch.
She pulled her grotesque face back away from his. With delicate precision, her skeletal hands began stripping his clothes away.
“I love you, Herman, but why…?” she asked sweetly. She ran her boney fingers through his thinning hair. Within the black depths of her eye sockets, Mr. Bowlings saw a faint glimmer, the tiniest shine. Though softly sparkling like an aquamarine diamond, it quickly grew into a burning red glare.
“Why did you kill me?!” she roared.
“I’m so sorry,” he pleaded through his sobbing. “Forgive me please!”
The fiend embraced him and began to squeeze. The hug grew tighter and tighter. The clammy vise crushed his insides.
“Why do I love you?” the ghoul asked with tender curiosity, caressing his trembling body with her boney hands.
* * *
Mr. Carver fidgeted restlessly with the pens in his drawer, unhappy with any arrangement he tried. Another slow day at the office.
“Sir!” Crispen exclaimed, charging through the door. The youth dutifully knocked on the wood despite having already entered.
“Yes?” the boss asked apathetically.
“It’s Mr. Bowlings,” Crispen explained. The boy was obviously shocked and struggled to collect his thoughts. Mr. Carver patiently waited by drumming a pen on his desk. “He’s dead. Police found him this morning, but think it may’ve been a few days ago.”
The boy pointed at a new article on his screen, but Mr. Carver paid no heed.
After pondering the news for a moment, the man asked, “How?”
“They say it was kinda a lot of things. Heart attack, stroke, multiple lacerations, suffocation. And they think he fell downstairs from the balcony while sleepwalking.”
“So why does this concern us?”
The boy knew his boss knew. So he gulped before saying, “Well, they have the records of his numerous phone calls to the office. So I think they’re coming any second.”
“Probably.” Mr. Carver relaxed back in his seat., the cushion moaning with the swollen fatigue that comes after the heartiest meals. “Don’t worry, Crispin. Our legalese and disclaimers has it all covered. Thanks for the update, but I’ll handle everything.”
Crispin began to walk away and started to shut the door, but then he stopped.
“Sir,” he pronounced boldly, causing Mr. Carver to look up from his drawer full of unorganized pens. “I think what we’re doing is wrong.”
Mr. Carver patiently waited to see if his assistant’s sudden audacity was just an aberration.
“We can’t do this stuff anymore,” Crispin explained.
Mr. Carver smiled mischievously. “Well, you can leave if you want, Crispin. Quit. Be my guest.”
The assistant grew calm and meek. “Well, I mean,” he stammered. “I like the job. And the company does well. You’re a good guy too. But I just don’t think what we’re really doing is…” Kripsin wanted to phrase his words precisely and diplomatically. “Right?” He spoke with complete uncertainty as if he had forgotten the language.
Crispin failed miserably at his carefully chosen speech.
“Right?” Mr. Carver screamed. “You don’t think we’re right?”
The boy cowered at the attack.
“That man was a cold-blooded murderer! He killed his own wife and got away with it! The lack of remorse was written all over his memories.” Mr. Carver pounded his fist on the desk in rage. “That scum got everything that was coming to him. How dare that vile monster ever get to enjoy anything ever in this world? And he wanted us to further pervert things by making him happier? With us and our tech?”
Mr. Carver’s nicely combed hair had become disheveled. His soft baritone creaked with anguish.
Then he cleared his throat, and smoothed back his bangs. He calmly settled into his seat, which sighed like a tired old man after a hard day’s work.
“Frankly, I think it’s a damn shame that he got the easy way out,” said Mr. Carver with a grin.
Crispin quietly closed the door behind him.
1
Even the baby could tell this was a bad part of town. Her odd behavior was the only way to communicate that something was wrong here. A car ride this long would normally put her right to sleep. But now she was loudly awake, her toothless mouth agape with gasping sobs. Crying of this intensity was generally performed with clenched-shut eyes. Yet through the tears, her tiny brown eyes remained wide alert and concerned with the unfamiliar surroundings.
This crying did not sound like the usual whines of fatigue and irritability, akin to a hungry kitten. These laments were as powerful as her small body could muster. They were heaving gales of absolute anguish and hopelessness which often made her choke and gag. Had the little infant been gravely injured, she could not have cried any harder, even though she was safely secured in her car seat. This was the way she let all the older people around know that she was not only sad but frightened.
Outside the car’s dirty glass windows, the green trees had long vanished, replaced by streetlights and brick walls. The buildings were broken and dirty like grizzled vets of a horrible war. Even the sky had a green-grey pallor like it was nauseous and ill.
Though she had been whining and screaming constantly throughout the drive, Dad’s occasional yells did nothing to slow the little girl’s despair. “Fuck! Would you just shut the fuck up?” Sometimes he’d simply slam his hand against the dashboard or wheel to announce his fury.
From the backseat beside the little sister, older brother Jim caught his father’s angry eyes in the mirror. He stared backwards with a wild rage now, similar to when something accidentally broke, or his football team was losing. The dad then shifted his glare to Jim, as if the wailing was somehow his fault. “Can’t you shut her up?”
“Be quiet,” the boy hissed at Lucy.
She glanced over to her brother, her face a terrified plea for help. When he refused, she gazed back out the window to scream her appeal to the world instead.
Maybe Lucy was crying because she actually knew where they were going. Jim had no idea, but he would not cry about it. The boy always loathed being compared to the little sister by the adults. She was a small baby, yet he was almost three years old. She still wore diapers and couldn’t walk or use a remote control. In his eyes, the differences were countless.
The old car began to slow, its tired engine rattling down to a lower pitch. The trio descended from the heavens of the highway to the surface streets below. While the ugliness of the world was only caught in brief fleeting glimpses in the city skyline, now Jim knew he was being immersed in an entirely different world than he had ever known.
Giant buildings were all much higher than the flat homes of his neighborhood. They punched into the air like large, grey fingers reaching for the clouds. A golden setting sun popped through the silhouettes of the city. Save for those small bursts of dying daylight, the world was slowly succumbing to the shadows of nightfall.
The sidewalks were lined with people. Some were going somewhere, but most simply stood in place, already planted at their final destination. Most wore disheveled clothes that hung in tattered robes from their body. They moved slowly and huddled together in small bands. Jim saw some of them pushing shopping carts, though they were outside from any store.
Despite the change in scenery, Lucy’s wailing continued its feverish squall.
Though the boy knew how his father would answer, he couldn’t help but ask. “Dad, where are we?”
“Shut the fuck up,” his father groaned wearily.
The car came to a stop at a light, and Jim returned his gaze outside. Past his sister on the passenger side, he saw two men standing around a tall fire. In the afternoon darkness, their wrinkled faces were lit in bright orange. As Jim studied the strange grooves and marks on their features, one of them caught him staring. As the stranger’s eyes focused on Jim’s own, the boy was both frightened and puzzled by the emptiness of the bloodshot pupils. It was as if a pair of hard stones was stuck in the sockets.
Sometimes at night, Jim would sneak out from his room and watch whatever was on the TV when his dad had passed out. From that late-night self-education, Jim could decipher all the telltale signs of the locals. He concluded that they were surrounded by the shuffling undead known as “zombies.”
Jim shivered as he turned away, glad that the back windows were rolled up. If the scary monsters wanted to get in through the open driver window, they’d have to get through the ornery adult in the front. Should that happen, no matter which side was victorious, the situation would be almost win-win for the boy. The thought made Jim smirk.
His happiness was short-lived. The lad heard a threatening rumbling in the distance. The sound quickly grew louder, shaking the entire car. The low booms were next joined by strange, unearthly shrieks. Jim dug into his own car seat in preparation for the coming monstrosity that emitted the awful noise. It approached from behind, so his seat’s harness and head supports restrained him from seeing the source of this ferocious noise. Its thumping bass was rhythmic like a march. But the sharp squeals, clicks and zaps on top were like the snapping jaws and snorts of a crazed dragon.
Dad remained calm despite the new commotion, which grew so loud that it even overpowered the baby’s horrific yowls. Sensing defeat, Lucy quieted her crying, though she remained alert with fear. Though he covered both ears, Jim still felt the beats rattling his skull. He braced for attack.
A car slid to a stop beside them with music blaring. It was long, flat, shiny and purple. Two men with shaved heads sat in front. Their eyes were shielded by dark sunglasses. A heavily tattooed arm dangled a cigarette out the passenger side. In the still afternoon air, the wisps of smoke crept into the family’s sedan like probing tentacles of a hungry sea monster.
When one of the men caught the curious boy studying him, he gave a brief nod.
Jim turned away in embarrassment and fear.
The boy’s father squirmed uncomfortably and mumbled something.
The words had no impact on the situation.
So the man screamed, “Shut that jungle music down, bro!”
The driver leaned forward, and the music increased to an even shriller decibel. The smoker smiled wide to reveal gold fangs.
The mad dad laid a gun on the windowsill, pointing the muzzle at the two men.
The smiles vanished, and the music quieted to a barely audible thump.
The driver held a finger to his throat, then sawed it slowly across his neck.
When the light turned green, t
he sinister duo’s wheels screeched as they fled.
“Motherfuckers,” grumbled the father as the family car began its sleepy procession back through the streets. Lucy resumed her tearful pleas for escape.
2
The car rolled to a leisurely stop on the side of the street. The trio parked a few inches behind an even older car than their own, a dusty red claptrap that had cardboard taped over the back window.
A few minutes ago, Lucy had finally succumbed to exhaustion. She was asleep with her head bowed awkwardly to the side. Her neck stretched unnaturally, but she snoozed comfortably.
With the engine turned off, the three sat in perfect silence. The dad shifted in his seat, and the squeaking crunch of the vinyl was as loud as Lucy’s tears.
Then Jim heard his father’s breathing. From his perspective in the backseat, the shaggy hair on the man’s head rose and fall as the breaths increased in volume and pace. The son heard a small sniffle, and the rasping breaths dissolved into a long sigh. The man turned around in his seat.
His eyes were red. Jim has seen his father awake with similar bloodshot eyes, but now the coloring was different, brighter. The rings around the white irises were a striking red, and the surface of the pupils was glossy and wet.
Finally, he gasped and mumbled, “I dunno, I dunno, I dunno…” He shook his head back and forth to rattle some cohesion into his brain. With another series of odd snorts and sputters, Jim realized now that his father was trying not to cry.
Jim wanted to say something, but was too afraid.
“Close your eyes,” his father asked softly. His own eyes were both closed and averted during the request.
Jim did not move. His vision remained locked on his father.
When the man finally looked, he found his startled son defying the instruction. “Close your fucking eyes,” he snarled.
The next request would not be verbal.
Jim reluctantly closed his eyes.
He waited in the darkness, listening for a sign. Off in the distance, a car zoomed along.