Schlock! Webzine Vol 2, Issue 24

by Campbell, John L; Palumbo, Sergio; Betzer, Albert; Dawson, Zak

  “Not your soul!”

  Noah snorted. “Really? And how does that work?”

  “There’s a proxy clause in our arrangement,” the imp said. “It has to be a precious soul, someone you love, that’s what makes it so valuable. And that person doesn’t know about it until…later. They go on with their entire life like nothing ever happened.”

  “How is it possible for one person to make that decision for another person? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  Dante folded his arms, irritated. “I wasn’t the one who came up with the whole contract technicalities thing. The proxy clause allows it.”

  Noah started shaking his head slowly, but Dante spoke quickly. “She’ll never know it. She’ll live a long and happy life, especially with all that money, and she won’t seem any different at all. One-hundred-seventy-three million, Noah! A life you both never even dreamed of.”

  Noah said nothing for a moment, and then it hit him. “Mom?”

  Dante nodded. “Who’d you think we were talking about?”

  “That’s…” Noah’s voice was a whisper.

  “…the only way,” Dante said. “It saves your family, keeps you together, answers all your prayers. It costs you nothing, and she’ll never know it.”

  The boy’s eyes hardened. “No.”

  Dante sighed. “Noah, considering all the things your mom’s done in her life, she’s most likely headed there anyway. You have the chance to make her life wonderful before it happens.”

  The boy considered the imp’s words. He knew his mom wasn’t the best person, and admitted he had no idea what she did when he wasn’t around, when he had been younger, even before he was born. Tanner’s nasty accusation about her made him think of the Aces Tavern again. Could Dante be right? Was she going to Hell with or without his help?

  “You have the chance to do something good here,” the imp said softly, resting a small hand on his knee.

  She could have everything she ever wanted, Noah thought. Staying out of a foster home was suddenly far less important than giving her a good life. She wouldn’t have to cry anymore, or worry about bills and a crappy car. She wouldn’t need to drink so much.

  Dante watched him closely.

  Was it the right thing to do? Make this life wonderful, since he couldn’t do anything about where she was going in the next? He pictured how happy the money would make her, saw her laughing and hugging him.

  And then the absolute wrongness of it hit him, and he shook his head violently. “No!” he shouted, pushing the horned creature away. “I’m not giving you her soul!”

  Dante said nothing, just looked at him a moment, then vanished.

  Noah lay on his bed through the night, thinking about his mother, his life, crying at times. He didn’t know where Dante was, and sleep eluded him.

  ***

  The morning sun falling through his window roused him, and he realized sleep must have found him at some point. Tired, he got ready slowly, visited the bathroom, and made his way to the kitchen. He found the lights on, his mom already up, the sharp aroma of coffee in the air.

  “Good morning, honey,” his mom said, looking like she had already showered, her eyes bright, not hung-over. Noah could feel her excitement as he sat down across from her.

  “Powerball!” she blurted, waving a ticket and laughing. “A hundred-seventy-three million! Honey, we won!”

  Noah shook his head slowly. Impossible, he had told the imp no.

  She stood, animated, still waving the ticket and pacing the kitchen. “Gotta find a new house, a big house. New clothes, closets of them, we’ll go shopping in Paris!”

  Noah watched his mom as she moved about the kitchen, talking to herself now, her son forgotten in the moment. But he hadn’t done it! His mom moved to the living room where she ransacked a drawer, looking for her address book so she could call everyone who had ever wronged her and tell them to go to Hell.

  Dante appeared in his mom’s vacant chair across the kitchen table, and Noah darted a look towards his mother, then back at the imp. “She’s going to see you!” he whispered. “What’s going on?”

  Pudgy fingers shook a Salem out of his mom’s pack and the imp lit it, drawing deeply. “Business.” He blew a perfect smoke ring at the thirteen-year-old.

  “I didn’t agree to this!” Noah hissed.

  Dante inspected the cheap Bic lighter. “I gave you a chance, kid.” As he smoked, his smooth, plump face creased and weathered, cheeks and eyes sinking, his curled horns yellowing. Gone was Noah’s funny and curious companion. What sat before him now was far older, a creature that knew things a person wouldn’t want to know. When it spoke, its voice was deep, creaking like a wooden ship.

  “You didn’t think you were my only client, did you?” Dante flicked ash on the floor and grinned. His teeth were black. “So noble and good of you not to sacrifice your mother’s soul for a lottery ticket.” His eyes revealed only contempt. “But there’s the ticket, the price of admission paid in full.”

  A foul odor had begun to drift off the creature across from him, reminding Noah of a dead raccoon he’d come across one day walking to school.

  Dante took a final puff and crushed the cigarette out on the vinyl tablecloth, melting a hole in it. “Funny, your mom didn’t even hesitate to give up your soul.” A cruel smile slit his face. “Be seeing you, kid.”

  He vanished.

  Noah could only look at the empty chair, while in the other room, his mom started singing.

  DOMINION by Zak Dawson

  Chapter 1.

  I woke to the sound of a thud in a distant part of the house. I wasn’t yet sure if it was real or my half-asleep imaginings. Nonetheless, it woke me, and I lay in bed waiting for a new sound to assure it was worth my attention.

  A few minutes passed with nothing but silence. I rolled over, placing my arm over my pregnant wife. A smile wrapped across my face as I thought about it. My eyes closed and I went back to sleep.

  In a haze of semi-consciousness, I felt something brush against my foot. I rolled over slowly with a yawn as I peered over my shoulder. A pair of eyes illuminated in the darkness shocked me wide-awake. Before I had time to react, the shadow-draped figure struck me hard across the face, sending me and the covers flying across the room. I hit the adjacent wall with enough force to cave in the drywall, causing pictures hung in the opposing hall to fall off the wall and shatter.

  My right eye refused to open, and my face throbbed with blood coursing to meet the injury. I collected myself enough to see the intruder leaning over my wife, who struggled to let out a scream, with nothing more than a sharp hiss of air managing to escape her lips. I collected myself enough to find the baseball bat hidden under the bed.

  I jumped to my feet and swung hard as I could, hitting him with a clean blow to the temple. The figure rolled over, disappearing into the dead space dividing the wall and bed. Alice hurried behind me, both of us watching the bed’s horizon while we inched toward the door. Despite the symptoms of a developing concussion setting in, I knew how hard I hit him. He had to be dead.

  I motioned for my wife to flick the lights, which she did with little hesitance. My eyes remained glued to the dead space, bat still in hand. Alice refused to leave the room, just as intent as I was to ensure the intruder was dead before leaving.

  A hand reached up from the corner, lifting the figure into visibility. It was a Hispanic man with a thin face and a black raincoat, looking at me with a jaundiced evil glare. I saw the dent the bat made in the right side of his skull, which shocked me. How the fuck is he not dead? Behind the crater, the brain had to be nothing but a mush. It was clear the bat had done its damage by the way he held himself up, left side drooping and limp. So how the fuck was he not dead?

  I stood there motionless as he tried to balance himself. He cocked his head upward in a few jerking motions, swaying a bit as he did. Alice tugged on my arm to go, but I pulled away, dumbfounded by what I was seeing. He shook as if having a seizure and fe
ll into the corner of the headboard. He then lifted himself upright, popping his left wrist around in a short circle.

  “What the fuck?” I uttered in complete disbelief.

  He waved his hand in the direction of my wife, who staggered uncontrollably into the corner past the door. Her hand rose and began to fondle her breast as the other rubbed her crotch, and she whimpered with a sad and terrified look on her face. I ran toward her, only to stumble awkwardly into the wall, propelled by an unseen force. My arm jerked upward and held the bat in the air, and despite my efforts to control it, the bat came flying down and struck me in the kneecap with a loud crack. I fell hard and screamed in pain as my knee caved inward and I collapsed on the floor. I faced Alice, who sobbed out of control, breast hanging out, and cum dripping from her legs.

  The intruder’s foot stepped in front of me and obscured the sight of my wife, and a hand suspended my head from the floor by my hair. He pulled me up to face him, still unable to control my body.

  “You really fucked up, homes,” he whispered into my ear. “I’m a bad, bad motherfucker, and I’m gonna do some bad things to you. You hear me?” he said, moving my head to face him. “I’m going to fuck you, right in front of your bitch. Do you understand me?”

  Never in my life had I felt that kind of fear. He grabbed my crotch and forced me against the wall, licking my neck with his tongue. I wanted to scream so bad, but could hardly breathe, and instead hissed in a low guttural tone. He then dug his teeth into the side of my neck, which at first stung, but quickly became numb. A vampire? I was at a loss for rational words. I could feel the blood drain from my neck in pulsing gulps, and I became very disoriented. From the corner of my eye, I saw the baseball bat rise over the beast’s shoulders, striking him in the back.

  He tore the flesh from my neck as he tried to face his attacker. Alice struck him again, in the head this time. He howled in fury and pain, lashing his arms out in wild swings. The next blow hit hard against his jaw, spewing blood across the room, strewing the black fluid all over my body. He let out an unearthly scream and scuttled on the floor. She struck him a few more times before he jumped onto the bed and dove through and shattered the bedroom window.

  We both sat for a few moments to assure the attacker had no intention to return. Alice pulled the mattress off the bed and propped it over the open space. I saved my thoughts on the futility of her action.

  “I’m so sorry,” she wept and said repeatedly, returning to picking my head up from the floor.

  I knew why she said it, but I wasn’t the sort to hold it against her.

  “The baby ok?” I asked.

  “I think so.”

  “You think you could do me a favor, sweetie?”

  “Yeah, what?” she asked, mid sniffle.

  “Could you call 911 for me?”

  She stopped for a second to let out a chuckle. It wasn’t a joke, but still, it made me happy to know she was ok enough to laugh. She left me alone for a bit to fetch the phone, and I started to drift out of consciousness. I’d done well enough to stay awake as long as I had, and the room spinning around my head was making it difficult. My wife came back, seeing me slip, slapped me and shoved some aspirin in my mouth.

  The slap helped a bit, though it made me angry. It couldn’t keep me from drifting off for long. I spit the aspirin into my hand when she wasn’t looking, remembering hearing something on aspirin’s blood-thinning properties. I saw a menagerie of lights and faces appearing in unintelligible flashes leading up to the hospital. I felt Alice’s hand comforting mine, and I distinctly made out the sound of her crying amidst the wall of noise. Much more than that though, I couldn’t filter out.

  I came to briefly in the back of the ambulance, and observed a rather distressed scene. The paramedics were scrambling about in the cramped space, trying to stave off the loss of blood. It seemed it wasn’t going well. Alice sat there tapping my wrist, trying to keep me awake. I saw one of the workers returning the defibrillator to its nook, with blood still dripping from the pads. I knew I was hurt, but seeing that, as well as the blood that mired portions of the wall, made it all that much more real to me.

  Then something caught my eye. A figure, sitting motionless amidst the chaos. He was something of a black hole in the ambulance, as if light itself bent and gave way to his presence. I looked at Alice, my anchor, to see if she too saw the black figure sitting in our midst. She was more preoccupied with me and the window, alternating glances betwixt the two. I began to stammer in place, restrained by the confines of the stretcher, attempting to draw her attention to the figure I saw plain as day.

  My attempts were met with me coughing blood into the respirator and the paramedics who worked to restrain my motions. “Look behind you!” I tried to mutter, which came out with a gurgling popping noise.

  It was no use. The paramedics turned up the morphine and I soon wafted away, back to my subconscious.

  CONTINUES NEXT WEEK

  RUN TO THE HILLS by Gavin Chappell

  4: The Devil’s Brat

  The hill of Din Faraon Tande rose above the lake like an upturned bowl, an outlier of the snow-streaked peaks of Mount Eryri that loomed behind it. All around the valley marched the mountains and as he stood silent in the camp on the reed-choked shore, they reminded Vortigern of a contingent of barbarians riding to encircle him. But no. These mighty forms were to be his protection, not his doom. Still, that was what he had thought about the Saxons.

  He turned to Maugantius, leader of his magicians, the only counsellors he truly trusted in his exile. It had been his wise men who had advised him to build his fort here, citing the favourable influence of the stars and the planets and the authority of the ancients, from Hermes Trismegistus to Solomon the King and Apuleius, and it had also been they who had told him how to solve the ensuing problems. He had heard similar suggestions from them before, and they had never entirely failed him. But it was only because of his desperation, his wish to flee the Saxons who even now ravaged the island he had dedicated so much of his life to protecting, that he was willing to entrust the project entirely to them.

  ‘And the blood of this fatherless boy will ensure that my tower remains standing?’ he asked.

  Maugantius nodded, while his companions Celestinus, Nechtan, and Saewulf sneered their jealous disapproval behind him. But Vortigern ignored them; Maugantius had the magic of Rome at his fingertips, and this impressed him far more than the conjuring of the unfrocked Pelagian priest, the Pictish druid, and the Saxon wizard.

  ‘This is true, my lord,’ Maugantius said pompously. ‘It will be found written in the most ancient of authorities, and in the traditions of this island, that the death of a powerful one - and there is no-one more powerful than he whose veins flow with the ichor of daimons - will cause the foundations of the weakest edifice to stand firm. Your tower will not crumble.’

  On the morning following the first day of building, Vortigern had gone up to see how the work was going on the peak of Din Faraon Tande, and found to his dismay that the foundations of his tower swallowed up by the earth. A second and a third attempt to rebuild the fort had the same result and Vortigern finally demanded an explanation from his magicians.

  ‘You could always accept my father’s sovereignty.’

  The now-hateful voice of his Saxon wife came from the entrance to his tent. Vortigern swung round to glare at the lithe, blonde haired woman who stood before him, slight in figure but brimming with enigmatic power.

  ‘I have already explained, Renwein,’ he snapped. ‘Hengest is bound to have me removed sooner or later - he doesn’t trust me. He never has, not since my sons overthrew me and attacked his villagers in Cantium. Even though you are my wife, that means nothing to him. He’s more likely to have you slain for staying with me.’

  Renwein sneered. ‘And why did I do that, I wonder?’ she murmured to herself. ‘Only because my father already sees me as a shameful witch since I poisoned your son Vortimer. The injustice of it! He would never have
been able to return if it hadn’t been for me - just because I couldn’t avenge Horsa with a sword, like a man could...’