Jill pretended to eat her sponges and sneaked them into the napkin on her lap.
The sounds and smells of cheerful vomiting saturated the air around her. Like a mosaic of fountains, the children spewed all over the elegant glass chamber. The sponges went in bright and colorful and came out black and mucusy and stunk like gasoline. During it all, the children grinned because it tasted as good coming up as it did going down. She remembered how they used to feel traveling through her body. Wriggling around like they were washing her from the inside.
Jill faked throwing up under the table and watched Sick Dog as he scampered about and licked up the mounds of upchuck off the floor. Sick Dog didn't look sick really, in fact he wagged his tail all the time. But Jill always imagined what his insides must've looked like eating what he did. Whatever it was.
Tuck
"This is a special day for the both of you." Martha sat on the chair between Jill's bed and Jeff's. She held two wrapped presents-see-though, like everything else, and yet the gifts inside were invisible. Just two boxes filled with nothing but air, it seemed. "These are for you."
"It's not my birthday." Jill crossed her arms. "It's not Jeff's either."
"I know." Martha placed the gifts on their laps. "Today is special for another reason. It has been exactly one year since the incident. Since I became your guardian. These gifts are not meant to celebrate what happened that day. Certainly not. Only to symbolize your progress. I am so proud of you both. You know that, yes?"
"Yes," Jeff replied.
Jill shrugged.
"Well…open them." Martha clasped her hands together and grinned.
Even after the year she spent with Martha, Jill wasn't sure she trusted Martha's smiles. They seemed sincere enough. As honest and naked as her body, but there was just something about the way she revolved around Jill and her brother. All of the other adults Jill knew had better things to do than read their children stories, watch them as they played, clean the house so that everything was clear and never scary. Martha seemed to know perfectly well that both Jill and her brother believed in monsters. Why else would she make the house impossible to hide in?
Jill appreciated all that but she still thought Martha was strange. No husband, no job, no pets. Her life was the children.
"Come on, Jill," Jeff said, ripping open his gift.
Although she gave no commands to her body to do so, her hands clawed at the crystal paper, revealing a colored box inside. She hadn't been able to see the color through the gift-wrapping. And Jill didn't like that.
Her gift was exactly the same as Jeff's. Jack-in-the-boxes. Striped with blues and purples and reds. The box strained her eyes-no, hurt them. She wasn't used to such boundaries in Martha's house. Nothing was hidden here. She didn't have to pull a drawer open to know exactly what was inside.
But this box. This stupid little box hid its contests from Jill. She joined Jeff in twirling the handle around and around. The music wasn't music at all. It was her parents. Crying. The sound burrowed into Jill's eyes and made them close, tight. Tears began to seep out.
She heard Jeff's box burst open.
Jill immediately forced her eyes open and swiveled her head to see what Jack looked like. But Jill saw no Jack.
Jeff was staring at his box with a smile. "Thank you, Momm…Martha."
"I thought you would like it," Martha responded.
"Let me see," Jill said. Jeff handed the box over and she looked inside. Nothing but darkness. "Do you see something, Jeff?"
"Don't you see?" was his reply.
"I…I don't know. I don't think so. What does Jack look like?"
"Sad."
Jill returned the box and went to work on her own. Every turn singed her tummy with pain. She didn't want to hear her parents cry, but she didn't want to stop until Jack came out. But he just wouldn't.
"Mine won't come out, Martha," Jill complained. "It's broken."
"No, Jill. It is not." She took a deep breath. "It is time for bed now. You can play with your gifts more tomorrow."
"But Martha…" Jill started.
"I am sorry, but you need your rest. Tomorrow, Jill, you and I will go to the Shack again."
Jill's stomach went inside out. "I don't want to go."
"I know." Martha tucked them both in tight and left.
Jill felt cocooned by the quilt, even if it was transparent. Warm, but tight. Maybe too tight. She wondered if she could get out if she wanted to. Better not to try. Not to know.
Overzealous Cuticles
Nightmares didn't last long in Ticketyboo. At least not without a conscious effort to keep the dark things from turning into dead things. It was the Big Hand that reached into Jill's mind and changed her dreams. If a monster chased her, the hand plunged into the beast's throat and yanked out its bones so the flesh would collapse like a deflated balloon.
There were no dark corners in Jill's nightmares tonight though. She sat under an umbrella in a vast desert and drank lemonade. It hadn't taken long for her to realize that these monsters were part of her mind. The shadows had tried to keep that information from her, to cram her with fear. But she'd destroyed the darkness and nothing was scary anymore. The monsters were under her control now and she redirected their rage toward the Big Hand. She didn't hate the Big Hand, but the rage had to go somewhere.
The hand worked with a frantic fury. It decapitated a vampire with its sharpened fingernail, squished a werewolf between two fingers (Jill watched the guts ooze out like a bloody furball and yawned), and flicked a moaning zombie into the sun. Jill wondered how long it could keep fighting like this against an endless supply of monsters, covered with protruding veins, cuts and bruises. The hand had been so strained lately it didn't even take care of itself properly anymore, with hangnails and overzealous cuticles.
Jill took another sip of her lemonade and didn't even mind the eyeballs floating in her glass, the juices of which made her lemonade pink.
Bound in White
The Shack was made of frozen milk. Not cold, just frozen in time. Solidified. It made the air stink like too much melted butter.
Jill sat in the center of this whiteness, strapped to a chair. The first couple months she had struggled, but soon accepted the fact that the effort was futile. And there was no point in closing her eyes. Martha had washed them too many times, and her eyelids were clear now. So she had to watch it. Over and over.
The milky waterfall spewed down from a slit in the roof, swallowed up by a hole in the ground. Something made the images appear on the waterfall, but Jill wasn't sure what. Maybe they projected right out of her eyes.
It wasn't easy watching the images. To see her parents bleed and scream and cry. Sure, there was some sadness, and Jill savored that feeling. But inside there was also something else. Little claws that clenched her stomach and twisted it around. And tiny volcanoes under her skin that burned her from the inside out until she felt like there were too many blankets wrapped around her.
Hatred. She wanted the bad men who hurt her parents to suffer. She didn't like hating so much…
Oh, to be a little girl again. To be able to jump rope without remembering the girls playing on the sidewalk who were splattered with blood, and got all their pretty dresses dirty.
In order to avoid some of the rage from escaping the little black box she'd built inside her heart, she tried to pay attention to the details. Like the kitty with a black spot on his nose that was walking on the fence…and when he heard the gunshot all the hairs on his back stood up like a comb. Or the yellow butterfly with black spots that danced past the smoke that flew up into the clouds from the crashed car with bullet holes in its windows. Or the pool of blood on the asphalt shaped like an elephant. Or-
"How do you feel?" Martha asked, unstrapping her from behind.
The milky waterfall stopped flowing and that made tears come out of Jill's eyes. "Martha, you made me stay here too long this time. It never lasted this long before."
"How do you feel?"
she repeated in the same sunny tone.
"Bad."
"Angry?"
Jill realized something at that moment. This exact dialogue had occurred every other time she'd been to the Shack. How do you feel? Bad. Angry? Yes. And that was that. Jill was tired of it. So this time she responded, "No. Not angry."
"Are you sad, Jill?"
"Yes. I'm sad."
"I'm glad."
Bad Men Must Die
Jill awoke in the middle of the night because she felt frozen. Blues and purples and reds filled her vision. The flower field. She was outside.
One of the bad men towered over her. Smiling. His clothes were baggy, too big for his body, just like before. Like he was trying to hide a skeleton underneath. Trying to be big when he was really small.
Jill remembered what he did to her parents. She remembered their tears.
"I hate you! I hate you!" She grabbed his gun. The weight of the thing made her collapse onto her behind. The bad man didn't do anything. He just stayed still and stared with that skeleton grin.
She raised the gun as high as he could and fired. The gun flew right out of her hands and she scrambled after it. When she looked back at the bad man, she saw that his shin was bleeding. He stood there like a flamingo for a moment before he tumbled over.
The fire inside her made her walk onto his stomach and jump up and down. Every time she landed on him his lips made funny shapes. Always a little different. Then she knelt down on him and bashed his chest with handle of the gun. She kept doing it until she heard something crack. The sound kept going even after she stopped hitting him.
She remembered the look on her mother's face.
She pointed the gun at the bad man's left eye. More than anything else she wanted to fire. He deserved to-
Wait…
No. This wasn't him. A real bad man would fight back. A real bad man would take the gun and shoot her in the eye. And then shoot her in the other eye even though she would already be dead.
Jill dropped the gun onto a purple flower, which crushed it.
"You did it, Jill," the bad man said, in Martha's voice. "You beat it. You beat it."
Jill quickly rolled off of the bad man's body.
"I am so proud of you," he said. "My sweet, sweet Jill."
Going Home
Jill rushed into the living room and found Martha polishing the floor. Martha always did the floors first thing in the morning.
"Martha! Martha! Look!"
"What is it, Jill?"
Jill held out the jack-in-the-box, grinning. It was wide open. "I did it! I did it!"
"You did. I knew you would." Martha arose and touched Jill's cheek. "You see now? Your parents are sad, but they are okay. The bad men did not kill them too. They are together."
"I see it." Jill stared into the box.
"This has worked out wonderfully. Now you and Jeff may return to the world together. You are both ready. Jeff! Come here, my dear!"
Jeff made his way down the stairs, drowsily, picking the sleep out of his eyes. "What is it, mommy?"
"I am not your mommy, Jeff," Martha said, to Jill's satisfaction. "I am glad you think so highly of me though. I called you because I have good news. You can go back now. Both of you. Together."
"Where?" Jeff asked.
"To the world. You can see your mommy and your daddy again. You can see whatever you want to see, and go wherever you want to go. You can talk to your grandmother. The one who died. And no one will ever hurt you ever again."
"Not even the bad men?" he said.
"Not even them."
Jeff smiled.
Jill smiled too, but she wasn't thinking about her grandmother or even her parents.
"Goodbye, Jeff. Goodbye, Jill." She hugged them both, pressing her naked breasts against their cheeks. "You are good children." A tear strolled down the side of her pale nose and plopped onto the part of the floor she'd been polishing.
Martha pointed at Jeff and he disappeared. Then she pointed at Jill.
Jill now understood the reason she and her brother were sent to Ticketyboo after they died. Because Martha and her friends were afraid Jeff and Jill would haunt the bad men for making their parents cry so much. The word haunt did not do justice to what Jill was capable of. Adults without good imaginations would haunt. Jill wanted to torture them and make them suffer in ways no one ever had before.
She felt herself being swept away. Soon she would be at the world again, and she could do whatever she wanted to the bad men.
Martha was so stupid. Maybe she'd figure it out someday though. Maybe she'd be gardening in the field. And she'd dig up Jill's jack-in-the-box. The one that never opened.
Jeremy C. Shipp
Jeremy C. Shipp is the Bram Stoker nominated author of Cursed, Vacation, and Sheep and Wolves. His shorter tales have appeared or are forthcoming in over 60 publications, the likes of Cemetery Dance, ChiZine, Apex Magazine, Withersin, and Shroud Magazine. Jeremy enjoys living in Southern California in a moderately haunted Victorian farmhouse called Rose Cottage. He lives there with his wife, Lisa, a couple of pygmy tigers, and a legion of yard gnomes. The gnomes like him. The clowns living in his attic--not so much. His online home is www.jeremycshipp.com and his Twitter handle is @jeremycshipp
A Peaceable Mind
by Jon F. Merz
Joey strolled in wearing his shirt untucked, trying to be all subtle about it. I'd been in Medellin, Colombia through the mid-90s so the fashion sense was familiar to me. Either on the back of a hip or in the small of his back, Joey had himself a piece. Knowing Joey, it'd be the right - his strong arm side. A quick flick with his fingers to get the shirt clear and then the draw would be a smooth one-action coming out of low-ready to instinctive fire - bang, bang.
Question was: who was he here to drop?
I took a sip of the Grey Goose and tonic in front of me, tasted the wedge of lime when it kissed my lips like the tawdry citrus bitch it was and let my gaze wander.
Joey settled himself at the end of the bar since it gave him a good vantage point. Guys like Joey grew up watching all the usual suspects on TV and in the films. Then when he got interesting enough to the right people, they plucked him out of fantasyland and gave him a crash course in "grow the fuck up quick."
But still, Joey liked to milk it the way the movie toughs would have.
I knew the sentiment; I'd gone through it, too.
I spotted a couple of possibles cheating each other out of twenties and tens over hands of five-card stud at the small table near the bandstand. No band tonight, though. Lem, the guy who owned the joint, hadn't been able to book anyone to play the place since Vic Demoulas got his third eye opened unconventionally a month or so back. Wouldn't have been so bad if the wanna-be Disney teen stars hadn't been crooning about cafeteria lunch lines and corndogs when ol' Vic went down streaking bone and grey ooze across the linoleum right in front of the suburbanized moms keeping watch over their flock. I thought Lem was going to have break out the cardiac defib machine he'd had installed; coulda sworn I saw a few pairs of eyes roll over white.
Joey ordered himself a white Russian and I blanched. In my book, milk and liquor are two things that should never shack up with each other. Sacrilegious. I dunno. It's like a dog riding the hell out of a pig. Might look kinda funny, but you definitely don't want to see the offspring.
It was when he walked over to my table that I felt a twinge of surprise. He nodded at me as he crossed the floor, sort of a flag of truce so I didn't put two into him before he got any closer. Not that we had bad blood between us, but in this town, the day you started assuming anything was the day they started digging a hole for you.
"How's it going, Ken?"
I lifted my glass and thought about how badly I wanted about four more of them to help me forget. "You come over here to ask me about my day?"
"Sit?"
I shrugged and Joey sat down across from me, his back to the rest of the place. Interesting. "You giving your back to t
he room? Must be something good you need to discuss."
"I'm on a job."
"No shit."
"You know?"
"Shirt gave it away. I've seen it before." I took a sip and tasted more ice than vodka. "Who's the mark?"
Joey sipped his white Russian and it left a pencil thin moustache along his lip. Made him look like he was fish on his first night in cell block D. "Don't know if I can handle this one alone."
"Why's that? You back in therapy? All concerned about your role in the universe?" I smiled to show him I was only kidding. But Joey didn't rise to the bait.
"Might be out of my league."
"Awfully humble of you."
Joey downed the rest of his white Russian and the glass hit the table hard. "I know my limitations."
"Clint says that's a good thing." I sipped the icy water in front of me. "What team's the mark playing for?"
"Does it matter?"
I stopped drinking. "It does for me. I don't like pissing off friends."
Joey sniffed. "As if you and I have any friends. We're just pawns in this whole thing, man. You know that."
I looked him over. His eyes had bags hanging beneath them. Dark, like he hadn't been sleeping worth shit. "You're definitely back in therapy."
"I need your help, Ken."
He was being way too up-front with me, Coming from Joey, whom I had only a marginal level of respect for, it made me suspicious. But then again, I was pretty much suspicious of anything. Or anyone.
I stared Joey down, trying to see past the beady, tired eyes and get some clue as to what he was up to. He kept his eyes on me, but there was nothing defiant there. Just exhaustion.
"You in?"
I shrugged. "Pay?"
"What I heard you were getting last time I checked." He waited. Patient. Joey always had been good at selling things.
I tilted the glass back, caught the wedge of lime and bit into it looking for the last bit of juice before slapping it back down on the table. "All right."
*** ***
The clouds pissed on us as we drove across town, Joey next to me with his hands folded like he was going to church. "Heard you got away for a while."
Brimstone Dreams: A Horror Anthology Page 8