Night Things: The Monster Collection

by West, Terry M.

  “Jennifer, if you can hear me in there, I won’t use my fangs,” Lenny said to the wolf. “Please return the favor.” He cautiously descended on her.

  Lenny worked himself inside of her slowly. She panted harder and pushed her hips upward. This gave Lenny confidence enough to increase and strengthen his thrusts. The beast encouraged him, raking at his back and licking his neck. They bucked against each other so hard that Gary was afraid the bed might collapse. The headboard punished the wall, and all in attendance watched in silent wonder.

  The boy finally came, his fangs protruding from his mouth as he joined his lover in a pleasure-filled howl. He fell on her, and she licked his cheek. Gary saw a motion beneath them that he thought must have been her tail attempting a wag.

  Ella looked away from the lens and stared at Gary. He nodded, and then motioned to the momentarily nameless but trusted production assistant by the door. The young man whispered into a walkie-talkie.

  The door to the room burst open. Six large men in dark robes rushed the bed. They were hooded and armed. Lenny lurched up and flashed his teeth at them. They sprayed garlic water into Lenny’s eyes. He cried out. Two of the men grabbed Lenny. The men pulled Lenny’s flailing arms behind his back. A third man joined in and hammered a stake into Lenny’s chest as Ella followed close with the camera and rolled on it. Lenny died quickly and quietly. The reanimated life in him simply ceased when the stake hit his heart. There was no gripping at the wood or melodramatic clawing at the air. He was just no more. The reality of it was a little disappointing to Gary.

  The wolf on the bed strained the chains, but could do no more than growl menacingly at the intruders. One of them waited for Ella to position her camera and then he aimed a pistol with a silencer at Jennifer’s temple. He planted a silver bullet there. The wolf fell back and immediately reverted to the girl. Jennifer’s head rolled to the side and her dead eyes stared across the room at nothing.

  “Cut,” Gary said. “And that’s a wrap. Great job, guys.”

  The hooded exterminators hooted and then admired their handiwork before leaving quietly. They weren’t being paid. They were a group that Mike had scrounged up somewhere through his dark connections. Killing the monsters was something they enjoyed and payment enough. Gary thought Mike should have charged them. The blood-thirsty bastards would have definitely paid.

  “Well, I need a girly cocktail with a small piece of fruit in it,” Ella said, handing off her camera to Felix. She looked at Lenny’s dead body on the floor. “What a handsome waste. Too bad they don’t turn to dust like in the movies. It would save a lot of the clean up. This is an awfully dark fraternity we have just pledged, my friends.”

  “We’re just flushing a toilet, Ella,” Mike insisted. He surveyed the stain near Lenny’s corpse. “I hope the blood comes out.”

  Gary tried to balance it all, and he ran a small edit list in his head. He needed insert shots of the band members dressed in the hooded robes of the killers. He needed some quick facial grimaces to sell Bruce Von Stiers and his band mates as the death dealers of the piece. Bruce had campaigned for the Bloody Carnivores to actually commit the slaughter, but Mike had wisely talked him out of that. No reason to risk human life for a silly video. Those brutal volunteers of Mike at least had a degree of training and would have not hesitated to kill one of their own, if tainted.

  Gary imagined the death scene cutting together in his head with flashes to the band members. He even had the specific piece of music from the CD Bruce had given him that would accompany the finale. Bruce Von Stiers would have his fucking mind blown and hopefully Gary and Mike would be able to finagle some more money from the Bloody Carnivores. It was one huge tit that Gary could suck on for a long while, if he played it right.

  Ella collected her belongings and left with a tired wave goodbye. Gary had nothing to gather but himself. He was ready to leave the room to the people Mike had hired to clean and properly dispose of the bodies.

  Gary wanted to go home. He wanted to dull his senses and dream about a project that he wouldn’t have the talent or confidence to approach. Gary wished to roam the streets afterwards in a buzzed wanderlust. He would step among the night-goers at an entirely different speed of reality. Maybe he would even wear his gris-gris bag and shake his ass at a few monsters. He would walk the streets until dawn, he decided, and watch things make slithering retreats into the city shadows when the light stretched awake. Then he would have his breakfast. He wondered if Anteia would be on duty. He needed more sweeteners and honey for his apartment.

  “I almost lost it when she asked for more money,” Mike confessed, smirking and shaking his head.

  “Well, at least we don’t have to worry about her ruining our reputations any further,” Gary said, sarcastically finding a bright spot. The demons were starting to claw at him. “We ready to go?”

  “One second,” Mike said, approaching the bed. He looked down and snickered darkly at Jennifer. “You’ll never work in this town again.”

  Heroin in the Magic Now

  Gary Hack was having the memory again. It always hit him when he was near the nod. He had hunkered down in an alley to smoke an A-Bomb and get the fuzziness back in his head. He was feeling daytime now, so Gary sat on a garbage can and settled back into the warmth.

  He was in grade school. He wasn’t sure which grade he was in when this occurred or his age at the time of the incident, but he was very young. Gary was in the Principal’s office and he stared up at a heated debate going on between his female, hippie art teacher and the starch-collared, male principal. Gary couldn’t recall the names of the adults who were airing their philosophical views in front of him, but he remembered the source of their argument.

  He had made a drawing in his class. He had drawn a nude devil with tits and a penis. Gary couldn’t remember why he had done this. It had just happened, and his reason for it escaped him now and he just hoped the influence for the illustration hadn’t been a sketchy thing.

  The art teacher was in Gary’s favor. She talked of free expression, classical art, the beauty of the human body and the boldness that showed in the work. The principal, however, claimed he knew a deviant when he saw one. So Gary was sent home early and his mother whipped his ass for interrupting her soaps while she tended to this.

  Gary didn’t know why this memory always rang him when he was under the influence. But he got it, of course. It was the seedy story of his life. He had been a struggling horror fiction author who got tired of living hand to mouth and working day jobs until his big break came along. Gary had found easy money and an instant career in b-movies, soft and hard porn and fetish videos. It was something that he had easily fallen into. He had met a couple of low budget film producers at a horror convention while hawking his homemade chapbooks and collectibles. These independent industry people trolled conventions looking for the hungry artistic types, and that was definitely Gary Hack.

  So Gary had jumped in hard and feet first, welcoming an opportunity to create and get paid for it. He had started out writing scripts for bad exploitation and soft-core films. But when larger paydays were waved in front of him by adult industry people, he began to quickly churn out hardcore scripts (bare as they were). He was surprised to discover that the filmmaking process came very naturally to him. He was a prodigy, if there were any designated for bad movies and pornography. Besides his writing chores, he took extra cash as a production assistant. And while many would use this opportunity to feed their inner perv, Gary had learned all that he could. He found a crash course in filmmaking on low budget sets while he picked up coffee for the crew or chauffeured talent around. This caused him stress with his wife, but she couldn’t argue with a steady paycheck.

  It wasn’t long before the bosses let Gary try his hand at directing, and Gary took to it quickly. He became a seasoned professional at a moderately young age, and he was still considered a profitable and reliable director. Even with the rumors, garbage, habits and the infidelity that had cost him
his marriage, house and child.

  His appetites had darkened and grown when he started playing in the shady make-believe land of the adult industry. Gary experimented with the drugs. He screwed the actresses that would have him. His producers told him this was all expected and okay. His id had swollen up and he had believed that all of this behavior had been acceptable because he was an artist and he lived in his head and this was his process.

  Of course, he would give it all back, if he could. He would go back to being that timid and hardly known little writer he had been. He had gotten over the divorce and personal losses years ago, but he wanted his reputation back. Gary didn’t want to be a joke or a cautionary tale. And while some fans did see merit, somehow, in his work, most hated him. Trolls worked him over so much that he didn’t venture onto the Internet anymore. Gary wanted a clean slate and a compass he could point in any direction.

  He bobbed a little on the can, and then he realized hands were on him. One hand held his fat gut off of his belt while another unbuckled him and dug toward his groin. Gary pushed the hands away and looked down. A zombie hooker stared up at him. She had a grey miasma over her eyes and the dirt she drooled had stained and hardened on her chin; she had been coughing up the grave. Gary had heard that zombies swallowed a lot of earth when they dug themselves out. Stupid twats just needed to keep their mouths shut. The undead lady of the night had been buried in a tight, red dress (a pimp-sponsored funeral, no doubt), and the outfit was muddy and ripped at spots. Her hair was tucked under a dingy black bandana. The zombie smiled, close-mouthed, mindful of her wrecked teeth that she had wasted away on meth before her undeath came.

  “Just gonna make you feel a little better, hun,” she assured, sitting back slightly. “I smelled what you were smoking when I happened by and thought maybe you would share if I took care of you.”

  There were two things Gary Hack was terrified of: ten cent pistols (as poisoned heroin was called on the streets) and zombie whores.

  And because he was a fiend who would never quit his habit, Gary avoided the tainted stuff by buying from a trusted dealer he knew only as Sergio. Sergio had dark features, wore vintage disco shirts and he had an accent. Gary had no clue where the man was from. He was sure that Sergio tapped the bags; there wasn’t a dealer out there that wouldn’t fuck you somewhat and there was no department where you could file a complaint. But at least the stuff he bought from Sergio was safe; depending on its consumption, of course, and Gary was sure his could easily sicken a novice.

  But Gary needed no willpower to avoid the undead hookers on the street. They were nasty, smelled bad and there were a ton of print and video PSAs about the diseases you could catch from them. Besides, his libido had been broken by his heroin use a long time ago. He couldn’t recall his last erection.

  Gary grasped the gris-gris bag around his neck and shook the small leather pouch at her. “Get away! You can’t hurt me when I wear this.”

  The hooker grinned, flashing her green teeth momentarily before cupping her mouth. “I ain’t trying to hurt you. I just wanted to walk your dog for you, sugar.”

  Gary dug the remainder of the joint out of his chest pocket and gave it to her. “Here. Enjoy.”

  He buckled himself back up and brushed past her and he walked back onto the crowded city sidewalk. She had fucked up his buzz. Gary pushed down the street, frowning with disgust. He wondered how long it had been since the undead had suddenly appeared and had joined society as a proposed equal. It was a couple of years at least, he wagered, since the graves gave up their dead.

  Some days, Gary felt like the creatures were merely haunting his head in a metaphorical way and he could bury them if he quit his addictions, but everyone around him seemed to be in a quandary about the monsters and their rights and the dark impact they were having on the world now. Gary didn’t know all of the details as this eruption of dark magic had occurred while he was deep into his habit. He had barely noticed it until the monsters were everywhere.

  It was fall and the night breeze felt like cool silk on Gary’s skin. He loved the temperature this time of year. Gary paused at a store window, a news item catching his eye on the television that played behind the glass. Some lady in one of the Dakotas was lobbying to marry a Sasquatch.

  Gary shook his head bleakly, and then his eyes found his hazy reflection. He had a baseball cap pulled over his bald head, because he resembled a larger version of Larry Fine without it. His hair made horns on either side of his head, which might have been appropriate, but it wasn’t very flattering. He could have shaved his head, but it was a chore he would never keep up with, like his beard, which was long and curling into his lips. He constantly swept the mustache hairs to the sides.

  Gary was fat- had been his whole adult life. The heroin diet he was on and the long twitchy walks he took around the city had very little impact on his figure. Maybe it was his thyroid. He didn’t know. He wore clothes that had been robbed from the shallow grave of his hamper. The shirt he had on was sprayed with cologne and stained at the pits by his stick deodorant.

  He turned away from the mirror he would have not knowingly stared into. Gary resumed his walk, and he realized he had no more red chicken on him. He would have to go home and indulge. There were no plans this course would dent. Gary had no work lined up and he was actually at the dregs of cash from his last gig. And that gig was another blemish on his soul, these days.

  Gary had done a project that had pushed him into an even darker place. He had been approached by a heavy metal band by the name of The Bloody Carnivores. Their front man, Bruce Von Stiers, had hired Gary to produce a monster porn piece featuring the sexual liaison between a vampire and a werewolf. It had actually been a snuff film that was charting a new and supernatural course. Few involved with the production actually knew it, but the vampire and the werewolf that had been cast for the video were killed during the end of the production, with most of the crew excused from the closed set of the finale.

  Of course, the consequences for this weren’t that dire; not really and not yet. But Gary gave the liberals a year or so before there would be hate crime laws passed and sensitivity videos and seminars; true equal rights for these nightmares that would eat you, given the chance.

  Murdering something without a pulse was not yet illegal and killing a shifter on the hairy side was closer to a crime of animal cruelty. Sure, there could be fines for what Gary had done, if he were caught, but there was not much else in the way of punishment that he fretted over.

  The video Gary shot, called Dracula’s Erotic Guest, had played on The Bloody Carnivores’ website for a couple of months before it was pulled due to complaints, death threats and boycotts. The video began with a declaration that nothing had perished in the making of the video, as per the band’s skittish recording label. But Gary knew there were bones beneath the skin of it. It was something that got stuck in him sometimes, and it had to be washed down. Gray area or not, he felt bad now for the undead lives he had erased for his art and drug habit.

  Gary sighed and realized that all of this crappiness was suddenly seeping into a sobering brain. He needed a measured snort to send all of the distress packing. He pointed himself toward his apartment building and marched.

  When he finally aimed his key at the entrance of his building, he felt a strong hand clamp down on his shoulder. He turned around quickly and two large men in expensive suits stood over him.

  “You Gary Hack?” the white guy with the military haircut and strong jaw asked.

  Gary looked between him and the other man, a quiet African-American who glowered with violent potential at the timid filmmaker.

  “What’s this about?” Gary asked, anxiously. “Are you cops?”

  The men grabbed him and pulled Gary toward a dark limousine that idled softly near the curb.

  “What’s going on?” Gary asked, frightened for his life. “What are you doing?”

  The African-American man flashed his jacket open, a gun peeking out from
under his belt. “Just shut the fuck up and get in the car, man,” he growled.

  Gary did as he was told. He was sandwiched between the large and silent men. Gary tried to get a look at the driver, but a tinted privacy window hid whoever was behind the wheel.

  They drove for several minutes, and Gary was too petrified to pay attention to where the limo was travelling. His eyes bounced frantically between the dangerous men who bracketed him. The car stopped and Gary was scooped out of the vehicle. He was escorted into an exclusive building. He was ushered past a doorman who greeted the husky kidnappers but didn’t seem that concerned with the frightened-looking man whom they steered toward the elevator.

  The men took Gary to the penthouse. They tortured him on the way with their indifference and silence. He felt like a bug that they could squash at any moment. The elevator doors opened and the men pushed Gary into a luxurious formal room and bar area. The men stayed inside the elevator as the doors closed. Gary looked around the darkened room. Lights faded up slowly and a fire suddenly lit up the fireplace. A large figure appeared from the shadow. The man was huge, larger even than the men who had just delivered Gary to the room.