A Feast of Flesh: Tales of Zombies, Monsters, and Demons

by Aaron Polson

  “Can you see the car?”

  Barry shook his head. “No. No that’s not it. It’s those god-damned birds, man.”

  The air filled with the scratch-clunk of Ben’s awkward gait until he joined his friend and leaned panting on the walking pole. “Where’s the car? We…should be able to see the car…from here. The road at least.” He sheltered his eyes with one hand and squinted. “Nothing.”

  “Ben.” Barry patted his friend’s shoulder. “Ben—that’s a dude down there.”

  Below them, at the bottom of the fold between two hills, a black shape twisted in the grass. He—it looked like a man—was only a few feet from the trail, on his back, waving his hands in the air. From a distance, he could have been a black beetle, legs kicking the sky in death throes.

  “It’s like he’s wrestling something.” Barry brushed his arm against the sweat on his face. “Looks like he’s trying to get to his feet.”

  “Barry…those birds are right over that guy.” Ben gave his friend a shove. “We should help.” The bigger man lurched and began an awkward, teeter-tottering jog down the hill. Ben followed as quickly as he could, almost hopping exclusively on his good leg. His head wobbled uncomfortably as he tumbled down the last few yards of incline. Ahead on the path, Barry stopped short and held out his hand a few yards from the stranger.

  When Ben caught up to him, he understood why. The man’s clothes hung about him in jagged tatters and loose strips, filthy with mud and spatters of something darker, likely dried blood. Tiny cuts criss-crossed his face, making a network of red lines like the burnt image of a net. He wore at least a week’s worth of beard, short and patchy, with plenty of smudges on his exposed skin. As he struggled, he let out a few raw grunts.

  “Don’t just stand there—” His wild eyes circled to Barry and Ben. “I need some help, Goddamnit—”

  Barry didn’t move. Ben took another step forward. The man’s mouth clenched in a half-grimace, half-smile as his arms seemed to be stuck below the surface of the prairie.

  “Huh…” The man’s arms flopped to one side then dropped on the packed dirt of the trail. His eyes rolled into his head and closed.

  Ben and Barry exchanged a look.

  “Hey, buddy…are you okay?” Ben leaned forward, resting his left knee on the ground with the injured ankle behind him. From that distance, Ben received a face full of the stranger’s body odor, an ammonia stench which indicated he hadn’t washed in days.

  “Unnnnh,” the man groaned. “Just lost my balance—fell into some of that devil grass.”

  “We’ve got a car—”

  The man’s arm shot out and snatched the hiking pole from Ben’s hand. Before Barry could move, the stranger knocked Ben to the ground and perched on his chest, holding the aluminum bar across Ben’s throat while his knees pinned Ben’s arms to the ground on the trail.

  “Who the hell are you?” White, foamy spittle trailed out of the stranger’s mouth.

  Barry stepped away with his hands in front, palms forward. “Hey—I don’t want any trouble.” Ben’s face swelled red like a steamed beet. He kicked his legs and tried to free his arms from under the stranger’s weight.

  “Who the hell are you?” the man repeated.

  Hoarse, choking sounds eked out of Ben’s mouth.

  “Just a couple of hikers…checking out the trails…” Barry’s eyes darted between the stranger’s face and Ben’s. “You’re killing him.”

  “Fucked.” The stranger leaned back, releasing the pressure from Ben’s throat. “You bastards are fucked, too.”

  Now free, Ben rolled away, grasping at his neck. He coughed, and the color of his face gradually returned to normal. “What…the…hell…was…that about?” he rasped.

  The man’s eyes narrowed. “Can’t be too careful.” He scratched his beard. “Out here.”

  “Look man, we’re just tying to get back to the car, get Ben here some help.” Barry knelt next to Ben and helped his friend to his feet. “Sprained his ankle.”

  “Huh. That’s how it got Andrea.”

  “Who?” Ben asked, leaning on his knees as he panted for breath.

  “My girlfriend. Six days ago.” The stranger stood, glancing to his left and right. “It got her ankle, then…she tried to cut across a open patch…get back to the car faster…” His chest shuddered and he covered his face with one hand. “God. God…it took her.”

  “Took her?”

  “The grass.” He reached out and grabbed the lose collar of Barry’s shirt and tugged him closer. “It devoured her. Smothered her.” The stranger looked at his hand, then Barry’s shirt and face, and released his grip. “The birds got what was left. Sorry…sorry…oh God. Do you have some water? I’m dying…”

  Barry slipped off his pack and rummaged around until he found an aluminum bottle. He passed it to the stranger.

  “What’s your name?” Ben asked.

  “Nick. My name’s Nick. Andrea and I…we were just gone for an afternoon.” Nick tilted his head back and poured the water into his open mouth; droplets meandered through his stubble to the tip of his chin. He swallowed, and pulled back one shirtsleeve. “I know you think I’m nuts. I’d think I was fucking crazy, too, but look.” His voice shook as he extended his arm toward the others. Tiny scars marred his flesh, each puffed and pink.

  “How’d you get all those cuts?”

  Nick glared at Barry. “It’s hungry again.”

  Ben shifted the hiking pole to his other hand, allowing his weight to shift. “We better get to the car.”

  Nick wheeled, his eyes blazing. His tongue seeped out of his mouth, past chapped and peeling lips. “That’s just it, isn’t it? There is no more car. When are you—” He broke off, eyes open and alert. “Listen.”

  The grass answered with a swish-swish.

  “That sound?” Ben turned and looked behind him. “What is it?”

  The waist high blades to the south bent toward them. The swishing grew louder. Closer.

  “It’s coming again. For fuck’s sake, run!” Nick pushed Barry out of the way, and the big man tumbled into the grass toward the oncoming mystery, dropping his heavy pack next to the trail.

  Ben lifted the pole in his fist, raising it above his head like a club despite the pain in his left ankle. The action was instinctual, without thought. He limped toward the matted grass where Barry went down. Barry howled and groaned. Green-gold stems folded across his body.

  “Barry?”

  Barry shot up, shaking like a seizure, with fresh wounds oozing on his face and one arm. He roared and flung his arms. The grass waved in the distance, a game of pantomime working against the breeze. “Jesus,” he cried. “It fucking cut me. Bit me.” He stumbled backward, found the path, and turned to follow Nick’s flight up the hill toward the highway.

  Pole held aloft, Ben watched in disbelief as the stand of Switch Grass near the path stretched toward him. Barry’s staggering footfalls sounded up the hill, but the sound of whispering blades swallowed the world. The grass moved. Swish-swish. Its roots wove into the dark soil of the trail. The sun caught a glint from the aluminum pole as Ben swung like a reaper with a scythe, striking at the advancing blades. The pole whooshed through the grass, but still the roots crept toward him.

  Ben turned and started toward the hill, staggering as well as he could against the incline. Ahead, Barry and Nick squatted near a rocky outcropping, both facing away from the trail.

  “What the hell was that—what’s going on?” Ben felt the fear in his stomach, cold and heavy.

  “The grass. It’s alive,” Nick muttered. “And hungry.”

  Ben rubbed his face with his free hand. “Bullshit…grass doesn’t eat people.” He said it aloud as much to cool his own fear as he did because he believed it to be true.

  “God, Ben. What got me?” Barry’s face was ashen, drawn. He lifted his right arm, blood oozing from fresh wounds, and pointed toward in the direction of the road, only there wasn’t a road. “Something fucking
cut me. And…and we’re lost.”

  Nick coughed and spat a dark mix of blood and mucus on the ground. “You aren’t lost…you’re trapped.”

  Ben shook his head. “Bullshit. Barry, try your phone again.”

  A moment passed in which none of the men moved. The air sagged around them, humid and thick, the sun waiting directly overhead. Barry slowly pushed his hand into a pocket and fished out the phone. He flipped it open.

  “Nothing. Still nothing.”

  “It’ll come back, you know.” Nick nodded in the direction they’d fled. “It will keep coming until we’re all dead.”

  Ben turned and started down the opposite slope. He did so without a word, without warning, with only the broken rhythm of his shuffling gait in his ears. There was something in the valley below, something dark, shaped like a car, obscured by a mound of grass.

  “Wait!”

  Ben stopped and turned to see Barry waving his arms above his head.

  Barry cupped his hand to the side of his mouth. “I’ll come with you. I have to grab my pack. I dropped it. I’ll run. Make it quick.” His voice trembled as he spoke. He vanished over the crest of the hill. Nick melted into a black lump at the top of the ridge.

  “Jesus, Barry,” Ben muttered, and forced himself back toward the rocks. Clouds, fluffy like stretched bits of poly-fill from a torn teddy bear, encroached on the western horizon. Ben allowed his eyes to circle the rim of the sky in all directions. Nothing but hills, grass, and the distant dark blot of a cluster of trees. He pulled in a breath of hot air. Barry was below, jogging down the slope along the path.

  “You coming with me, too?” Ben asked Nick.

  “Strength in numbers?”

  Ben shook his head. “No, to get out of here.”

  “I told you, man. There isn’t any ‘getting out’. It’s a trap.”

  The word trap resonated in Ben’s ears as he watched the scene unfold in the valley below. A breeze sent the waves rippling from the southwest, but a large cluster of prairie grass—defied the wind. Ben’s throat tightened.

  “It’s coming for him…the tops of the hills are the safest bet…too rocky up here for it to have a good foothold.”

  As they watched, the grass swallowed the trail. Barry shouted, his words muffled and indistinct. Lithe shadows crossed overhead, swooping down toward the path.

  “Vultures…” Ben clenched the hiking pole and shifted his weight to climb down the hill.

  Nick’s hand wrapped Ben’s left arm. “Don’t. He’s done. They always stay near the grass…the thicker grass down below. They know how to get an easy meal.” Another howl of pain echoed from below.

  Ben wheeled on Nick, striking him with the pole across the left shoulder. He swung a second time, this blow cracking against ribs after Nick raised his hand in defense.

  “Shit…uhff.” Nick tumbled backwards, landing on his bottom.

  “That’s my God-damned friend down there.”

  “He’s…dead,” Nick panted. “That’s how it got Andrea…”

  Ben drew the pole back a third time, but hesitated. “But you were down there when we found you—you were fighting. You got out.” The pole lowered.

  Nick’s head shook back and forth. “I…don’t know how... the grass is a monster.” He sank to all fours. “Too late for us all…only a matter of time.” His chest began to heave, laughs and sobs coming together. “You’ll either starve or…”

  With the pole still clenched in one fist, Ben turned. He took a tentative, limping step down the slope toward his friend, but his friend was gone. The trail was empty. The grass waved in the wind, long, sweeping ripples like waves cresting across the ocean. “Barry?” He leaned his weight on the pole and cupped a hand to his mouth. “Barry!”

  The vultures flapped their great dark wings and alighted near the path.

  “Jesus…”

  Nick, still on his hands and knees behind Ben, coughed. “You…and me…trapped. It likes to toy with you…fuck with you.”

  Turning away from the trail, Ben limped past the prostrate man and started down the other side. “I saw a car earlier. In the distance. I think it was a car. It couldn’t be ours, but…” He staggered down the slope, pain still radiating from the ruined ankle. His head throbbed, his eyes blurred with tears, his mouth dry and hot in the sun. Nick cried out, but Ben was deaf, focused, driven despite the burning pain.

  As he approached the meter-high Bluestem, Ben slowed. He glanced back toward the top of the hill. No sign of Nick. His eyes circled around front again, eyes that must have lied. There, nearly buried in the thick grass, was a car. A silver Honda—just like Barry’s, but wrong. The front windshield spider-webbed from several punctures and scratches marred the paint.

  He ignored the pain, and half-ran in a limping, ungainly fashion, closing the distance to the car, sure to stay on what path was left. Nick’s warning, trapped, echoed in his head. He peered into the window, found his cell phone lying on the console, snapped in two. The steering wheel was pulled from the column, wires hanging loose like a disemboweled pig. Dirt and glass fragments littered the seats and dash.

  “Fuck,” he pounded a fist against the door with a hollow thunk. The impact shot through his arm. “Barry’s car…it’s Barry’s car…” His mutterings faded past a whisper as the grass rattled in the distance. It was coming, heading toward him, bringing blades like sharp, biting teeth. The roots scratched a foothold on the open path. He tightened his grip on the metal pole and pressed his back against the car.

  Trapped.

  Bona Fide King of His Realm

  Uncle Rego is a giant earthworm. I’ve known for a little while, even though most of the family might think I’m bona fide crazy if I said anything about it. It’s not just the clammy touch of his skin, or the color, or the way his breath always smells like the nice, black dirt they put in Styrofoam cups for the night crawlers down at Jenkin’s Bait and Tackle. No, I’ve seen the pictures that prove Uncle Rego’s an earthworm, and what happened to my aunt is only what some folks might call “icing on the cake.”

  I don’t know much about icing, but those pictures do a nice job of putting the chill on my spine. I’ve got them tucked away in the old Converse box under my bed for later. I made the mistake of talking about Uncle Rego to Pa once, and he gave me the back of his hand. Hell of a lot harder than his palm, even with the calluses. When I tell one of my folks about Aunt Tessie, it won’t be Pa.

  I figure Mama listens pretty good most of the time.

  See, Rego is Mama’s brother—her only kin left on that level since Uncle Garth got killed under his motorcycle last October. Mama doesn’t talk about her childhood often, but when she does, I see the pale-as-potato-grub look on her face at the suggestion of Rego.

  “Rather not mention that son-of-a-bitch,” she’ll say, or, “I don’t talk about that dirty bastard.” Once, when she and Pa were having one of their “heated debates”, he said something I didn’t quite understand about Mama and Rego doing “unnatural” things. Mama cried and cried and put that debate fire right out with her tears. When they were cooled off, Mama explained that she was just a little girl and Rego was so strong and he’d gotten into Grandad’s whiskey and she ran off to the river that night with a bar of Ivory Soap and scrubbed and scrubbed until her skin glowed like mercury and even bled in a couple places. At least I remember she said something about blood.

  Sometimes I try to shut off my ears because I don’t really want a piece of what they’re talking about.

  Still, if I’m going to tell anyone the truth about Uncle Rego and Aunt Tessie, it’ll be Mama. Besides, she’s the one who sent me across town to Uncle Rego and Aunt Tessie’s trailer that afternoon.

  I rode my bike because that’s what I always do, and sure enough, I nosed the awful dirt smell when I got there. Rego didn’t have his disguise on at all. I could see the pale-brown slickness of his naked earthworm skin through a window. And, being curious like I am, I made my way right to the sill and peeked
in.

  Like I mentioned about those photos—ice all over my spine. Felt like I might vomit, too. There he was, curled up on that bed of theirs, pinkish-tan and slimy, and Aunt Tessie reduced to a pile of dirt. Her undergarments poked out of the black-brown lump, so I knew it had to be her. What was left of her. No lesson from biology class will ever stick as well as the one about earthworms and what Mr. Block calls “the ecosystem.” Used to make me kind of sad, thinking about my old dog Max and how the worms must have had at him when he died. Now, I just feel like I want to throw up—either that or get the biggest spade I can and slice old Rego in half and watch him squirm until he dies.

  But I don’t have that much courage. Not to face a big, king-of-the-realm worm like that.

  Of course, Aunt Tessie just turned up missing. Uncle Rego put on his human skin again and called the police, moaning and bitching about his wife, then getting all frightened like he feared he’d never see her again. Lies and deceit, like Grandma Shoemaker used to say. Lies and deceit.

  If—when—I get around to telling Mama, I’m going to dig out those old photos, especially the one from when she’s a little girl and Uncle Rego’s touching her shoulder. I’d swear on Max’s grave, it’s not a hand at all, but his earthworm tail poking through. Mama must’ve known it, too, by the awful, sour-milk look on her black and white face.

  Down There

  We’d been talking about basements. Joking really, telling silly stories about how basements were the focus of so much childhood trauma and fodder for hackneyed horror stories. Travis, Jerry, and I sat with Heather in her tiny rented house, our heads clouded with a few rounds of microbrew after parent-teacher conferences. Outside, the October wind knocked against the siding and kicked dead leaves down the street.

  “The truth is, nothing scary ever came out of a basement. Except for a little mold. Or a couple rats, and that’s only if you’re a massive chickenshit,” Travis said. He was the prototypical history teacher/football coach hybrid whose body hinted a fit childhood but now carried a sizable gut. “It’s you artsy-fartsy types—all that Poe shit Aaron makes the kids read.”