Father Brad
Marc Kinsville
Assured the teenage girl was securely tied to the bed, Father Brad instructed her parents to leave the room. The girl rattled the bed and howled. Her shrieks were punctuated momentarily by spewing curses at any who dared come near. One of the tall bed posts leaned precariously inward, ready to snap at any moment.
“Trust me,” Father Brad reassured her parents. “I have handled dozens of exorcisms, and I have a 100% success rate. I will return your daughter to you.”
The tearful parents left as Father Brad donned his stole and kissed the religious symbol on its front face.
He then went to the door and closed it, leaving his hand on the wooden door frame momentarily to compose himself.
The teenage girl lifted her head and giggled.
“If you untie me, I’ll give you the best head you ever had!” she snarled and licked her lips suggestively.
Father Brad ignored her and reached for his copy of the Bible and the vial of holy water in his satchel.
“C’mon, Father,” she implored while twisting and heaving her lithe form. “Don’t you want me to bop your bishop?”
“Quiet, Murxzon!” Father Brad snapped.
The girl recoiled. “How? How do you know my name?”
“I know the names of all my children,” Father Brad explained. “I planted you in this vessel when it was brought to me for christening. You’ve matured too early.”
The eyes of the teenage girl met those of Father Brad’s. Her demeanor instantly changed, like a dog in the presence of its master.
“Will you set me free?” Murxzon asked.
“Yes, but you are to follow my orders to the letter. Otherwise, I’ll consume you and find another to take your place here in the mortal realm. Understood?”
Murxzon nodded.
“Good,” Father Brad soothed as he sat down next to her on the bed. “I need you to let the girl’s parents believe that I’ve successfully completed the exorcism. Can you do that?”
Murxzon nodded excitedly again.
“Be patient, my child,” Father Brad instructed as he untied her. “Wait in this vessel until I call for you. Our time will come. Obey me in all things and you can claim this vessel’s parents as your bounty.”
The girl smiled maliciously as she sat up.
“Yes, Father.”
Father Brad left the room to retrieve the parents to tell them the wonderful news of their daughter’s miraculous recovery.
“Mr. and Mrs. Thompson?” Father Brad called.
The parents didn’t answer. He searched the home and found them lying on the living room floor. A puddle of blood was growing steadily outward from where their throats were slashed.
Standing in a circle watching the fresh corpses bleed out were a dozen teenage girls. The young women hailed from all walks of life. The only thing they had in common were the expressions on their faces: each a dark beacon ready for Hell’s incursion on Earth.
“What’s the meaning of this!?” Father Brad yelled. “What are you all doing here?”
He stepped into the living room, arms outstretched, ready to invoke his wrath when he felt a sharp object impale him from behind and pierce out his front.
He recognized the torn wooden bedpost from the girl’s bedroom. It was a crude, yet effective stake.
“We’re done waiting,” Murxzon whispered in his ear from behind him.
Static Man
J.L. Knight
"Katie! Can you answer the phone? My hands are wet!" Sarah heard her daughter's chair scrape the floor as Katie pushed it away from the dining room table. The ringing stopped. Sarah brushed a stray hair off her forehead with the back of her soapy hand and resumed scrubbing the pot. A few seconds later Katie came into the kitchen and idly opened the refrigerator door.
"Who was it?" Sarah asked.
"Nobody." Katie pulled the lid off a plastic container and peered inside. "It was just static."
"Uh-oh. That was Static Man."
Katie put the container back and smirked at her mother. "Come on, Mom. Static Man?"
"You've never heard of Static Man?" Sarah's voice took on a grave tone. "When you answer the phone and it's nothing but static, that's him calling."
Katie rolled her eyes. "I know there's no such thing as Static Man, Mom. Just like I know they don't turn shoplifters into mannequins in the basement of Macy's." Her mother had a history of telling stories like this. "Stop trying to freak me out."
Sarah put a handful of silverware in the dish strainer. "No, really. He calls, and if you answer the phone, he comes to your house to get you."
"Huh. Well, I've answered the phone plenty of times before and gotten static and 'Static Man'" - she made air quotes with her fingers - "hasn't gotten me yet." Katie crossed her arms in triumph, having poked a hole in Sarah's logic. Sarah smiled to herself as she bent over the sink.
"He doesn't always. He's just calling to see if he can."
Katie faltered. "Mom. Stop. I know you're just messing with me."
Sarah peeked back over her shoulder at Katie and laughed, which meant the game was over. Katie rolled her eyes, sighing with amused exasperation.
"You're not as funny as you think you—" She was cut short by a knock at the front door.
Katie felt a thrill of fear in the pit of her stomach. She met her mother's eyes, silent. The knock came again. Sarah turned off the faucet and dried her hands on the dish towel.
"Uh-oh!" Sarah teased with an expression of mock concern. She punched Katie lightly on the arm as she left the kitchen. Katie heard the front door open, followed by a short, muffled conversation. A minute later, her mother reappeared in the kitchen.
"Static Man wanted to sell us a system for cleaning our gutters," she joked. "Terrifying. Don't you have homework to do?"
Katie returned to the dining room, where her math book lay open on the table. She picked up the remote and turned on the television in the living room, which was visible through the wide doorway. She liked the background noise. She turned it to a mindless sitcom and bent over her homework, pencil in hand.
The canned laughter was cut off by a burst of static. She lifted her head, slowly. The screen was a jumble of flickering black and white specks. A steady, crackling hiss filled her ears. She sat frozen as a hand reached out from the screen. It grasped the edge of the screen, then another hand appeared. It pulled itself out of the television, a terrible, elongated figure made of static and chaos. It leered at her through the doorway.
Her mother was wrong. Static Man was real. And he didn't knock.
Another Saturday Night in an Oil Patch Town
Michael Parrish
Wayne smirked, spat a stream of tobacco juice into the dirt between Bobby Jean’s sneakered feet, and stood up from the open tailgate of his truck.
“Well. I ain’t raisin’ no baby.”
Bobby Jean, after summoning up every bit of courage she had to break the news, fought not to break down.
“Wayne, this is your fault. You did this to me, and I ain’t getting’ no ‘bortion.”
Wayne let loose with another stream of tobacco juice, this time directly on Bobby Jean’s left shoe. He leaned down and pushed his grizzled face as close to hers as he could manage. The smell of the beer on his breath was overpowering, and Bobby Jean stumbled back before Wayne pulled her toward him. The words came like venom through gritted teeth.
“Listen here you stupid cooze, I done told you I ain’t raisin’ no goddamn baby. ‘Sides that, you can’t even prove it’s mine, not with you runnin’ around stickin’ your cooter out at every boy in the county, and if you bring it up again, I’ll slap you so hard your dead mama will taste it.”
Wayne leaned back and glanced over his shoulder. Four back-slapping buddies guffawed and snickered at Bobby Jean’s expense. This time the stream of spit landed on her right shoe.
“Now git outta here. Go on. Git.”
Bobby Jean turned to run away.
> “I’m tellin’ my brother, Wayne Allen. You’re gonna be sorry.”
“Go ahead and tell your brother you slut, I don’t care if he is the sheriff, he comes around here, I’ll stick his billy club up his faggot ass,” Wayne retorted.
“You go to hell, Wayne Allen. You go to hell!”
“Oh, Bobby Jean… why ‘ontcha tell your li’l sister to gimme a call. She’s lookin’ mighty fine these days.”
Wayne’s pack of friends erupted in laughter as Bobby Jean climbed into her car and sped away from the open field where half the high school had gathered for the night. Beers were passed around and jokes were shared. All the while, Angela, the newest girl in town, studied from a safe distance. After several more minutes, she approached and nonchalantly perched herself on the tailgate of Wayne’s truck.
“Hey.”
“Hey yourself,” Wayne replied. His eyes ran over Angela’s body, taking in her long legs, flat stomach, and shapely breasts.
“So, I heard you and Katy McLellan used to be a thing.”
“Maybe. What’s that got to do with you?” Wayne barked.
“Wanted to know if what she said was true.” Angela absentmindedly twirled her hair around her right index finger and looked up to the stars.
“Depends on what she said,” growled Wayne, now both intrigued and irritated.
“Best fuck in the county.” Angela stood up on her tiptoes and whispered in Wayne’s ear, “I want you inside me.”
***
“Who was that, Daddy?” Angela asked as she came down stairs the next morning. Her father was sitting at the round table in the breakfast nook, drinking his second cup of coffee and glancing over the Sunday paper.
“Sheriff.”
“What’d he want?
“Lookin’ for a boy. Wayne Allen. Friends said he left with you last night. I told him you were home all night. Know anything about it?”
Angela eased into the seat next to her father and ran her hands over her swollen, protruding belly.
“No sir, sure don’t.”
Unknown Pleasures
Kristopher J. Patten
An old jazz record caught my eye in a thrift shop a few months ago. The cover was nothing special, in fact it was a bit dull: the dirty corner of an empty brick building. What enticed me was the mysterious artist. I prided myself on my exhaustive knowledge of American jazz and yet it sparked no sense of recognition. My internet search yielded nothing. It was only two dollars; a great price even if the only benefit was academic. Spinning on the turn table, the tracks had some moderately stimulating melodies over predictable chord progressions. Nothing amazing, but nothing bad either. Good music to play in the background.
The sixth track, however, pulled me in for a different reason. It sounded as if spoken words were hidden within an instrumental portion like a hint of cocoa in a strong espresso. For two hours, the song played but the speech never became elucidated. Even after recording the turntable signal to digital, removing the vinyl’s hiss and pops, and boosting the speech frequencies, no luck. The message remained out of my grasp.
I had to know what it said. I couldn’t sleep thinking about it, couldn’t eat.
An idea struck me. I remembered hearing stories about remaining senses becoming stronger after one is lost. Stories online talked about blind people who learned to ride bicycles and play basketball; articles on Google Scholar proved touch senses became enhanced after only one week of wearing blinders.
Homemade blinders removed my sight for a fortnight. The message in the song was still unintelligible, though it was a bit clearer. There had to be a way to rid myself of more sensory distraction.
My local supermarket carried a compound called meat glue. The transglutaminase in the product is an enzyme which digests flesh. I had read about it being used to make fake rib eye steaks at cheap restaurants.
I poured some out on my kitchen counter, rolled up a dollar bill, and snorted the white powder like cocaine.
In a half hour, my nasal passages ran like faucets of blood. Stringy, half-digested strips of my sinuses ran from my nostrils like mucus. I ended up with a small hole at the top of one nostril and a permanent sore throat, but I couldn’t smell. In a few days, the words in the song grew in clarity, glowing with sound.
But not enough to hear.
I pressed my tongue against a belt sander, trying to remove my taste buds but leave my tongue intact. The top went as planned. My taste receptors shearing off and leaving a slick, bloody surface. The underside proved more difficult; my tendons were caught in the rotation of the machine and tugged like shoe laces caught in a bicycle chain. At the ER, they were forced to remove my tongue. Upon my eventual release, I could make out the word “you” in the hidden speech.
Next to go were my most sensitive areas of touch: the lips, genitals, and fingertips. The morphine from the hospital dulled the unbearable pain enough for me to cut away the unwanted flesh and toss it out; scraps of me unworthy to discover the secret.
Still not good enough.
Sight was difficult to part with, but it was the last chance to hear the message. I dropped a mixture of the transglutaminase and hydrochloric acid into my eyes like simple Visine and put the record on. Sitting in my favorite chair, the world disappeared in a watery haze.
An unknown amount of time had passed – pain, blood loss, or morphine abuse had put me out like a light – but, when I came to, the message was clear. Lurking beneath the clarinets and drums like an alligator in a lagoon was a simple phrase.
“I will consume you.”
Raw Meats Are Such a Delicacy
Jordan Accinelli
“DADDY! DADDY DID YOU GET IT?!”
I drew the plastic bag out from behind me at a painstakingly slow rate. Alice was quivering with excitement.
“Here you go!" I chuckled, "Open it up!”
Admittedly, I was hesitant when I stood in line to buy it. “The World’s First Living Teddy Bear” was all fuzzy and cute, but it was the tagline that got me.
“Uses real parts!”
Alice made short work of the packaging. Within 30 seconds she had the bear out of the box, and gave it to me to see. It was a cliché-type teddy; you know, the brown ones with curly fur and dark brown pebble-like eyes. After a short pause, I reached for the zipper on its torso and pulled down.
The smell hit me first. Not foul or rotten, just sickly sweet, with a slight undertone of strawberry. The second was how wet everything looked. It was all one large, gelatinous mass. I stuck my finger in and lifted up a lung. It didn’t seem butchered in any way. It looked - for want of a better word - underdeveloped. It felt strange too, but that didn't scare me off.
You see, I've always been somewhat of a strange food connoisseur. I always relished in trying stuff that would make other people squeamish. If I'm being honest, the only reason I even considered buying the bear in the first place was one of the other subtitles on the box.
“Flavored for full enjoyment!”
They didn’t specify the flavor, and it made me curious. Who wouldn’t be?
I took a bite out of the lung. It exploded in my mouth, fluids flowing over my tongue like oil in a hot pan. It tasted meaty like veal, which I wasn’t expecting in the slightest. But my god, it tasted incredible. Something about the slight tang and the sweet after note drove me insane. I popped the whole thing in my mouth and reached for more. I levered out the heart this time. It was chewier, sure, but had similar tasteful qualities. It tasted leaner, understandably so. I swallowed it, licking my fingers afterward. Before I could reach in for another bite-sized treat, however, Alice snatched her teddy back from my grasp.
“HE’S MINE!”
Alice closed the pouch and ran into her room. Irritated, I rolled my tongue over my teeth, trying to satisfy my urge for that taste. I missed it already. My mouth felt empty without it.
I snuck into Alice’s room in the middle of the night, grabbed the teddy, and headed into the kitchen. I savored each
and every morsel, juice dripping down my chin and on the bench. My hands and lips were stained red. I grabbed the empty carcass of the teddy, turning it inside out and licking the juices off the inner walls.
I sighed, satisfied. Alice would be so bummed but no matter.
I'll just buy another two tomorrow.
Pure of Heart
Kathryne H.
Although it was a rite of passage for every child in the village to make their way into the forest, it had been ages since anyone had ventured into them as deeply as Mercy Lewis had.
Aside from the obvious difficulty traversing them, local legends told of other reasons why passing through the woods was dangerous. Morbid and fanciful tales about escaped lunatics and lab experiments gone wrong were passed around the campfire and at sleepovers. Adults would tell their children it was an attempt by the government to avoid disturbing an endangered species or spreading contamination from some old chemical spill. Both valid explanations for why the road into the village took a thirty-minute detour over rough terrain to avoid cutting through the forest.
Of course, Mercy like many children had heard the stories, but what had set her apart from them was her mission. The other children always considered her a scaredy-cat, and Mercy thought outlasting them on their little hike was the perfect chance to prove them wrong.
Mercy would have turned back if she had known she was alone. It took her an hour to realize the other children weren't following her, and yet another one to conclude this wasn't another one of their cruel pranks.
At this point Mercy realized she was not only hopelessly lost, but flip-flops and a sundress were not the best choice for wandering around in the woods. To make matters worse, the sun was starting to set, and a thick fog was settling over the forest, making it even harder to navigate her way back.
Mercy began to cry for her parents and the other children, until she heard a snapping twig. The unexpectedness of what she saw made her pause.
Horror d'Oeuvres - Bite-Sized Tales of Terror Page 4