“I like chiwawas.”
“Cute, right?”
“Yep. Ultra cute.”
That was a new word she’d picked up from Gemima.
“Nothing to be afraid of. They’re just doing a service. Like dustbin men. But just for bogies.”
Sarah giggled again.
“Now settle down, that’s it, nice and snug. Goodnight, Sweetheart. Sleep tight.”
He kissed her on the forehead, and she turned over onto her side. He watched her from the doorway and she was asleep in seconds.
Before she drifted off, he could have sworn he heard her say she was going to catch herself a pet bogie man.
He turned off the hallway light and left her in the glow of her low-lamp.
Sarah and Graham Winters slept. Neither heard the soft yet insistent scrabbling in the walls.
*
“Morning, Miss Winters.”
Sarah rubbed her eyes and said “Morning, Mr Winterth.”
“No lisping today, OK?”
“OK.”
She walked over to the table and kissed him on his stubbly cheek which he offered.
“Tickles.”
“I’ll have a shave today. Promise.”
“OK.”
“What shall we do for breakfast games today?”
“Don’t know, Daddy. What do you want to do?”
“Well, a little birdy told me you’d been calling David at school names.”
“How did you know? He kicked me in the shin.”
“Well, how I know is a secret just for grown ups, but you can’t call people poohead anymore. I thought we could make up some names to call people. But you know, like nice names?”
“What, like Fatty?”
“Well, nice names. Instead of fatty we could say, um, disproportionately proportioned.”
“Dispoport-nately Portioned?”
“Hmm, well, perhaps not that.”
“Mum always said she was big boned.”
“Really?” he said, a quicksilver look of sadness washing over his face. “She told me it was her hormones. OK, so what could we call stupid people?”
“Thicko.”
“Yes, but a nice name.”
“Tiddlebrain,” said Sarah without a pause for thought.
“Well, I was thinking more along the lines of ‘Special’.”
“Like Gemima’s mum?”
“Just like that, but remember that’s our secret.”
“OK.”
“So what are you going to call David if he kicks you again?”
“Special.”
“That’s my girl,” he said. He felt he was trying. Whether he was actually getting anywhere or not, he couldn’t tell. Only time could do that.
They ate breakfast in companionable silence, and after a few false starts and a lost shoe crisis, left for the school run and then work for the adults.
*
School had been fine, in the way of school, but Sarah felt it was a bit baby. When she was at home she could do what she wanted. At present her dolls were lined up for the great crusade against the infidel rubber plant. She had learned about the crusades from Daddy. The things he told her seemed so much more interesting than making stupid finger paintings and multiplying numbers. What was the point in multiplying numbers? You couldn’t play with them.
She was a bit concerned that she didn’t have any proper soldiers. She was fairly sure the crusaders didn’t wear pink or miniskirts, but Daddy said women could kick arse with the best of them.
“Sarah, dinner’s ready!”
She leapt up and ran to the kitchen. The Children’s Crusade would have to wait until after tea.
She clambered up into the chair and picked up her knife and spoon.
“Spag Bol of the gods!” said Mr Winters with aplomb. Aplomb is difficult to manage when presenting Spaghetti Bolognaise. Mr Winters managed. He was adept at making things seem interesting.
“Thank you,” said Sarah.
She twirled the long pasta around her fork then proceeded to slurp up the pasta.
“Yum,” she said.
“Well, I’ll take that as high praise indeed. Early bed tonight. Saturday tomorrow. I thought we’d go to the Saturday Morning Picture Show.”
“That’s from the fifties, Daddy. There’s no such thing.”
“Is too. It’s in the front room from eight.”
“Video day!”
“Yep. Adam Sandler marathon tomorrow.”
“Wow!”
“Yep, I thought a bit of treat was in order. A little birdy told me you told David he was special and didn’t make him cry.”
“I could’ve made him cry.”
“I’m sure you could, but you didn’t, and that’s a good thing.”
Sarah beamed.
They finished dinner, talking of random things and telling stories about their day. He read Sarah a story in bed, called Mummy’s Ickle Shoalja, which was sweet, then when her dad went downstairs she leapt out of bed and set about making her trap.
She’d been figuring it out all day.
First, she pushed the door to, so that her father couldn’t hear her shuffling about. She was good at being quiet. She was sure he couldn’t hear her over the noise of the television. He’d probably be watching some stupid news or something pointless. Adults TV was crap. She wasn’t supposed to know what ‘crap’ was, but Gemima’s mum said it all the time. Among other things.
She took the spare sheet from the drawer under her bed and folded it in half. She figured if it was folded in half it would make it tougher, so that the bogie man couldn’t tear his way out.
Then she rested it on top of her duster, making sure to leave a gap for the bogie man to climb in. She took her tissue she’d been saving from her school bag and opened it up. The bogies were a bit dry. She hoped the bogie man didn’t mind dried food. She put the little prize under the centre of her makeshift tent. It was a bit wobbly, but it was the best she could manage.
Daddy said a bad workman always blamed his tools, but then he also said you should always use the right tool for the job, so she wasn’t sure what to believe.
Then she lay back on the bed. She didn’t want to look, just in case the bogie man was shy, but she peeked at her tent through one eye.
Then she fell asleep.
*
She was woken by a rustling from beside the bed.
Her first impulse was to cry out for her dad, but then she remembered what she was doing. She sat up quickly and saw that something was roving about under the sheet, and that her duster had fallen down like she hoped. She jumped out of the bed, all fear forgotten in the excitement of the moment and grabbed up the sheet in her arms so the bogie man couldn’t get away.
“Ha ha!” she said, but quietly. “I’ve got you!”
Something muffled, perhaps words, came from within the blanket.
“You’ve got to do what I tell you now! Be quiet!”
The shifting sheet stilled. She could feel a small lump within. She didn’t think to be afraid of whatever was in the sheet. She trusted her dad. It was the bogie man, and it wasn’t dangerous. It just wanted bogies.
“Erm?” she hesitantly enquired.
“What?” said a voice that seemed somehow grumpy and resigned at the same time.
She jumped with surprise and dropped the package.
A muffled ‘oomph’ came from below the sheet.
“Bugger!” it said.
“You mustn’t say that!” Sarah told it in a mortified voice.
“Get this bloody sheet off me then.”
“Ooh, you’re irritable. Have you got a hangover?”
“No I bloody haven’t, but I’ve got a headache now.”
“Sorry,” she said, and pulled the sheet off.
She revealed a small scaly creature with big dopey eyes and a rising bump on what was already a bumpy head. The creature was rubbing its green head and scowling at her.
“Sorry I dropped you,” she said
politely.
“Well, now you’ve caught me, what the bloody hell do you want?”
“What do you mean, what do I want?”
“I presume you want a wish granted, untold riches, straight teeth, big boobs? That kind of thing?”
“Eeuw! What would I want big boobs for?” she said. Then she pursed her lips in serious thought. Sarah hadn’t thought much beyond the actual catching things stage.
“Um, I don’t know. Don’t I have to guess your name or something? I mean if you’re going to grant me a wish, it seems only fair?”
“Right then, a smart one, I see.” The bogie man sat cross legged at her feet, staring at her.
“I tell you what. You seem like a nice girl. I’ll write my name down and you see if you can pronounce it. If you get it right, I’ll give you a wish. Anything you want.”
“I know how this goes,” said Sarah carefully. “Daddy says when a genie gives you a wish they always twist things to teach you a lesson.”
“Smart man, your Daddy. But I’m not a genie, see? I’m a bogie man. I’m feeling full, too, so I wouldn’t trick you.”
“You couldn’t, anyway. My Daddy says there’s no flies on me.”
The little demon laughed. Sarah frowned. She didn’t think she’d said anything funny.
“Right, got a bit of paper?”
She scrambled over to her desk and drew off a post-it note, then picked up a pen.
“There you go, Mr Bogie Man.”
The bogie man just shook his head. Then he began writing. He carried on writing for some time.
In the end, he passed Sarah a sheet which he tore off the top.
“There you go,” he said.
Sarah read the bogie man’s name. It looked something like this: Unchanangausmalakichmalovapromsquichmanktoromobloop.
“That’s what it is in my native language.”
“Hmm,” said Sarah, thoughtfully. It was a very long name. She tried it out in her head.
Then she remembered what her Daddy always told her. When you were dealing with things you didn’t understand, keep it simple.
“OK.”
“OK?” said the bogie man, looking bemused.
“Yep. OK. I can do it.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Gerald.”
The bogie man’s jaw dropped. “Bugger me! No one’s ever guessed it before! It’s so embarrassing. I mean, I’m a demon. Gerald. I ask you.”
Sarah beamed. She was very pleased with herself.
Gerald shook his head. “OK. A deal’s a deal. You get a wish. One wish, mind you.”
Sarah nodded seriously.
She thought of many. Foremost in her mind was to ask for her mother back. But she’d seen Pet Sematary. She knew that was what her Nanna would call ‘foaly’, which meant you were like a stupid horse.
“Got one,” she said. She told Gerald. Then she went to sleep.
Only time would tell.
*
“Morning, sweetheart. Sleep well?”
“Yes.”
“Any dreams?”
“No, but I did catch the bogie man.”
Graham Winters sat and regarded his daughter. She seemed quite serious.
“How did you do that then?”
So she told him the story, the whole story, right up to guessing the demon’s name.
When she told him that, he laughed and laughed.
Sarah just looked at him with her ‘I’m very pleased with myself’ face on that Mr Winters so loved to see.
“What did you wish for then, Miss Winters?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Don’t you think it will come true?”
“Perhaps it already has,” she said.
“Ooh, very enigmatic.”
“I’m not being eggymanic, I’m being mystewious.”
He laughed again. It was a lovely sound.
Sarah smiled her cutest smile and got down from the breakfast table. Then she kissed her father on the cheek and went to get ready for their Saturday Morning Picture Show.
The End
See? Sometimes I'm sweet.
But back to the real business at hand...my weird and slightly esoteric collection.
Now, I don't really write zombie stories...except when I do, I generally like to put a little twist in...then pull off the arm and GNAW IT! Rargh...flesh brains flesh brains! Oh, you're still there.
(flssshhh...)
Hiding Behind the Sun
Having a finger chewed off hurt. It seemed like a no-brainer of a statement, but most people don’t know what it’s like to have a finger chewed off. Not bitten, in one chomp, but chewed. Savoured.
Maybe someone, somewhere has had a finger bitten off in a bar fight. Maybe in a pub called the Railway Tavern, or the Red Lion, or the King’s Head. The name of the bar’s probably not that important to you if you’re bleeding and hurting and just coming to realise through the pain that you’re going have to figure out a new way of doing certain things.
It happens. People get things bitten off from time to time. In the kind of fight where small fragments of glass are left in the eye after surgery, it’s not unheard of for a finger or a nose or an ear to find its way down into the sewers in a roundabout and through the backstreets kind of way.
You don’t have fingers gnawed upon in ordinary circumstances because you just wouldn’t sit still for long enough for someone to nibble, but Frank Harding really loved his brother, and really, once you’d fed your own brother even the smallest part of your flesh, what did the rest of it matter?
Most of the world had turned by now, and out here on the island rock it was just the two of them, Samuel and Frank, and at the heart of it, Samuel was always more important and would be ‘til the end. He was a star, for Christ’s sake, a bona fide fucking star.
Frank watched, fascinated, as Samuel chewed at the finger. He didn’t get through the bone. Bones are pretty tough to bite through with human teeth. You need to really crunch down with the molars. The incisors or the canines just aren’t up to the job. Frank knew molars would do the job, because with a little coaxing Samuel had already taken most of the fingers of Frank’s left hand clean off.
The coaxing had been necessary, because when Frank looked at his gnawed fingers sticking out of his mangled hands he felt a little queasy. Like his flesh was those kind of fingerless gloves people wore because they wanted to able to use their fingers on a cold day, though your fingers just froze anyway.
Frank wanted to save his right hand for a while. He figured he’d give up his feet next, then his legs. He could sort and snort with one hand. He’d have to. He loved Samuel, but being eaten was fucking painful, whichever way you looked at it. The coke helped a fair amount, and Samuel had a good stash of it. It’d see him through ‘til the end. There was enough there, if he wanted to end it right now, he could. He wouldn’t, though, because then he’d lose and he’d been losing to Samuel all his life. It was time to be a winner. If you couldn’t be a winner at the end of the world, then the way Frank saw it, you may as well have never lived. Coming last in a football game, there were twenty-two people on the pitch. Come last in a race, there were maybe eight lanes on a track.
Come last out of two, that’s proper losing.
Frank jammed the stripped finger into Samuel’s chattering mouth and worked it round to the side until Samuel took the index finger off, through the bone. Frank slipped and got his thumb in there, too, and Samuel took the tip right off, up to the first knuckle, through flesh and bone alike, taking the nail away.
Frank might have screamed a bit, but when he came too he snorted a little coke and sprinkled (poured) a large amount on the leftovers of his thumb.
People don’t really know, but cocaine is licensed for medicinal use. Doctors use it to constrict the blood vessels in the nose in recurrent nosebleeds.
Frank knew that kind of thing because he was a writer. He researched. He took his time. He got things right.
Samu
el was a writer, too, and if the bastard had done five minutes research in his whole life Frank’d eat his own fucking hand.
But he did love him. Kind of. In the sort of way that was right next to hate. Like neighbour’s who greet each other each morning on the way to their separate cars in separate driveways and call each other cunts to their wives who tell them not to use that word, but they use it just the same.
The pain from his thumb hit him again, like the pain had just realised it was forgotten. Then he figured maybe it was closer to hate, in as much as he was thinking at that point.
The pain wasn’t uniform. It came in waves, a bi-polar sort of agony, cycling really fast. Up, down, up up up into hypopain, then a lull. It went that way for a while, but Frank had no way to tell the passage of time.
To compare the pain of being eaten to anything was pointless. It wasn’t like a paper cut. Being kicked in the balls hurt pretty bad. Stepping barefoot on a plug. Things like that, ordinary people could get. They could relate to it.
Being eaten’s a little different.
Crunch.
Strangely, the bone didn’t hurt. Maybe, Frank figured, there were no nerves in bones. Maybe it was the coke. Maybe it was the fact that after the rest of the fingers had gone, his definition of pain had changed.
Crunch, and that thar’ thumb, there it was gone. No more space bar for him.
Gone done bone, he thought for a second and giggled. Fuck it. Bone didn’t rhyme. He didn’t care.
Yes. Yes, he did. He cared because of the two of them, Samuel would’ve made it work. Maybe Gone Don Bon.
No. Fuck. That/Too/Do/Suck.
You can think like that, like it’d look on a page, when your brother’s eating your fingers and you’re looking forward to feeding the rest of yourself to him, little by little, just to punish yourself further for always hating the smarmy bastard.
Samuel, winner. Frank, loser.
Writers both, it was Frank that won all the prizes, but lived alone in a townhouse in the city.
Samuel wrote shitty horror novels that sold by the thousand, ten thousand, then a hundred. He lived the life out on this tiny island off the east coast of Scotland, in an honest-to-God castle.
Angels in Black and White (Horror Short Stories) Page 6