by Jordan Krall
“Sure, thanks.”
“Ham and cheese okay?”
Paul nodded. Half of his notebook was full and he was close to being completely satisfied. The only thing that he really wanted to do was read those three novels. Throughout the conversation he had wanted to ask but knew that it might have been pretty presumptuous of him to even ask for that honor. So instead he sat there hoping that Don would offer. He didn’t.
Don was at the counter slapping ham onto a piece of bread when something crashed through the window. Paul’s eyes widened and he instinctively fell to the floor.
A shimmering gob of space-cum had flown into the kitchen and was now swallowing Don Patchogue whole as he was just starting to put cheese on the sandwich. What had previously been the author of Paul’s favorite science fiction novels was now a convulsing mass of gooey cosmic light and smoldering flesh. His bones were liquefying.
Paul quickly crawled across the floor into the living room. As he passed the Patchogue-thing, he could feel the air being sucked from his lungs and the sound being sucked from his ears. He made it to the couch when he heard what sounded like glass being shattered against teeth. Paul looked back.
The kitchen was empty. The thing had disappeared. Paul wondered what would happen to it. Maybe it turned into an offspring of Outer Space. It would continue to try to rape Paul and in the process, birth more and more children by its stray cum.
Though he was in saddened shock at having witnessed the warped destruction of Don Patchogue, Paul quickly thought of the three abandoned manuscripts that were still on the kitchen table. There was really no question as to whether or not he’d take them. He knew he had to even if only to read them himself.
Paul stood up, walked to the kitchen, and grabbed the manuscripts along with his notebook. He then briskly walked out of the house with a delirious grin on his face.
CHAPTER FOUR
One Year Later
Paul drove his new-used 1989 Chevy Cavalier down the Garden State Parkway on his way back to Pink Meat, tapping the steering wheel along to the music blaring out of the speakers. He smiled every time he glanced at the books on the passenger’s seat:
THE VAMPIRES OF THE APOC’O’LIPS by Paul Minisink
WEREWOLVES FROM VENUS by Paul Minisink
THE ECTOPLASMIC BOSS by Paul Minisink
When he had had read Don Patchogue’s manuscripts he knew that they were something special and it didn’t take long for him to get accepted by a publisher. The tiny voice of his conscience occasionally nagged at Paul but he never really regretted his decision. It wasn’t like Patchogue would be able to benefit from the royalties or the good reviews. In fact, Paul had done him a favor simply be getting them published at all.
He felt lucky not only because he was able to get published so quickly but because Outer Space seemed to have forgotten about him ever since it had drowned Don Patchogue in space-goo. Paul wasn’t sure if that was the reason for the absence of attacks or if simply the grudge was gone. Either way, he felt elated.
Paul wasn’t completely sure why he was going back to Pink Meat. A part of him wanted to check out Don’s house while another part wanted to check out that librarian. He hadn’t even caught her name. Being in that profession, she was no doubt going to be impressed by the three books that he had brought along.
Once he got into town, the events from the previous year came flooding back to him like a gooey deluge. He could almost smell the cosmic sperm that had enveloped both the dead cat and Don Patchogue. Paul was grateful that his last visit to the town didn’t cause any problems with the law. After the attack at Patchogue’s house, he walked back to his totaled car where the police were waiting. They concluded that it was not as a result of reckless driving. He got out of town the following day.
Since that time, Paul had wondered why the librarian didn’t inform the police that he had inquired about Don Patchogue’s address on the very same day that the guy disappeared. Was she afraid that Paul would come back to kill her or did she just not make the connection?
He pulled into the library parking lot and saw that it still contained only three cars. The town of Pink Meat had not had a literary renaissance since the last time he was there. Walking in with his books in his hands, he felt his pulse quicken and palms started sweating like crazy.
Paul walked up to the front desk and saw a woman, he figured her to be in her fifties, who looked unhappy to be there. He cleared his throat and then said, “Excuse me?”
“Can I help you?” The woman didn’t get up from her chair.
“I’m looking for a librarian. I don’t know her name, she has a British accent.”
The woman looked at Paul as if he had just cursed her off. He didn’t think it was possible but her facial expression got even nastier.
“Are you serious? Is this a joke?”
Paul took a step back. “No, why would it be?”
“Ms. Frost passed away a year ago.”
The woman stared at Paul without blinking which really freaked him out because her eyes were mean and sharp to begin with. He let the information sink in. The British librarian passed away a year ago which was around the time that he last saw her.
“May I ask how?”
That question didn’t seem to go over well. The woman sighed and then finally blinked. She seemed to be mustering all of the bitchiness possible and said, “She was murdered.”
Paul was going to ask for more details but decided that it probably wasn’t a good idea considering the woman’s escalating nastiness. Luckily another woman, this one a younger one who looked both kinder and gentler, poked her head out of a doorway and said, “They found her body in the old brick plant. Still didn’t catch the guy.”
The bitch gave the nice woman a nasty look and then went back to her paperwork. Paul nodded and tried thanking the other woman but his throat went dry. No words would come out. Desire to see the brick factory overwhelmed him but there was no chance he was going to ask the librarians. They’d think he was some sort of morbid freak or something. Instead, he decided to use the same thing he used to find Don Patchogue’s address. Paul walked to the computer and used the Internet to find the address of the Pink Meat Brick Company.
Paul drove down the street, turned right, and headed through the industrial section of Pink Meat. The area was barren; the town was no longer a hub for industry. The Pink Meat Brick Company’s building was at the end of the street, overlooking the Raritan River. Right next to it was an even more dilapidated brick water tower.
It didn’t take much to get into the building. No one seemed to have put forth much effort to block the abandoned building from vandals or squatters. All Paul had to do was climb a fence and kick in a door with minimal effort. The interior of the building looked bigger than he had expected from looking at the outside.
Paul thought about the character in The Grub Star Shudders who becomes obsessed with a pile of bricks. He looked around, thinking that perhaps that same imaginary stack would be there waiting for him but there was not a loose brick in sight.
He leaned up against a dirty wall. His books, or rather Don’s books, were still in his hands. He dropped them to the ground. One of them opened up but instead of showing the text that was supposed to be there, it showed a mish-mash of unnamable colors and shapes, all twinkling and twisting into new forms. Paul recognized all of this from when he first encountered The Book of Space Codes.
Paul took his eyes off of the book and walked outside. When he looked up into the sky, he saw it: a daylight constellation of stars shaped like a celestial phallus. It was sword-shaped, a glittering starry blade that Paul knew was aiming to cut him down with the frenzied vengeance of a rapist.
So it’s come to this, he thought. Three books published and now he was going to have to finally surrender to his fate. He would no longer be able to enjoy the small fame of being a published author. Outer Space was finally going to have its way with him.
The constellation got larger, moving c
loser to Paul who was now lying on his back. He kept his eyes on the constellation until the stars grouped together and fell from the sky like ferociously horny birds.
Paul didn’t feel any pain as his body was covered in a shroud of glistening, plasmatic space-cum. Though he had never used heroin, he imagined that the high was similar to what he was feeling. It was a tingling euphoria. As he felt himself being pulled up into the air, Paul saw something written in the sky, in glowing greenish-brown letters against the blue background of the Earth’s atmosphere. They were the words of Don Patchogue:
IT’S ALL JUST SHIT!
THE END
COMING SOON!
SPACE RAPE!
Stories
THE DUNCH HORROR
The stray beard-hair fell into Dunch’s beer as he rubbed his cheek with the back of his hand. He grabbed the glass to take another sip, looked down into it, and then saw the hair.
“There’s a fucking spider-leg in my beer, Sara,” Dunch said, putting his glass down quickly but gently. The lanky girl behind the bar gave him a questioning smile.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Look. There’s a leg of a spider in my fucking beer,” Dunch said, moving his glass to his right in Sara’s direction. She looked in it but didn’t see anything. She put a finger into the beer and swirled it around. On the tip of her finger, the beard-hair stuck like a splinter, a third of its length having penetrated Sara’s skin.
“It’s just a hair, Dunch, you moron,” she laughed, pulling it out with the fingers of her other hand.
“Oh, that’s much better. I come in for a beer and get a pubic hair in it.”
“You don’t know it’s a pubic hair. I’ll get you a new glass, how about that?” Sara started getting Dunch a fresh draft of Bud.
Dunch was the only one drinking at Walter’s Tavern that afternoon. He had arrived a little past noon as he did almost every day. Occasionally there would be some guys who came in for a drink after working all night but that wasn’t too often. Mostly it was only Dunch.
People in Fisherville didn’t start drinking until about 4:00 in the afternoon. Everyone needed a break from the working class pressures they dealt with on a daily basis. The boss was always busting balls and the bills were always piling up. Those are things that only beer or whiskey can fix. Alcohol was a holy sacrament. The jukebox, the eternally out-of-service cigarette machines, and pool tables were holy relics.
Dunch started on his brand new beer after he inspected it for stray hairs. Confident that all was well, he gulped it down almost as if he was afraid that if he took his time, something would wander into his drink.
“You in a hurry?” Sara asked.
Dunch put down the glass, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and let out a small grunt of a burp.
“Hell no. Got nothing to do today. Just ended a job last night. Won’t have more work till Monday the earliest,” Dunch said.
“That’s a whole week. How’ll you get by till then?”
“Ah, I’ll manage.”
Dunch dug into his pockets, pulled out two crumpled dollars, and threw them on the bar. They landed in a small puddle of beer-foam. “Can I have change? I’m in the mood for some pool.”
Sara nodded, grabbed the wet bills, and got eight quarters out of the register. She laid them on the bar in the same puddle of moisture.
Dunch took the change and scooted out of the bar stool. The legs scraped against the floor with a sound that caused the bottom of his back to shiver. He wondered why they didn’t put tennis balls on the bottom of the bar stools. That way, there would be no torturous sound every time someone got up to take a piss or play a game of pool. Dunch thought about the tennis balls and then about a girl named Peggy who once tried to teach him how to play tennis back in high school. He had ended up throwing the racket down in frustration and coercing her to give him head in the bushes behind the tennis courts.
He turned back to Sara. “Fucking tennis balls, Sara. Fucking tennis balls. Just think about it.” Sara didn’t respond. She was looking through a worn copy of Auto Trader that looked as if it had been wet at one time and had lost its original shape in the process.
Dunch stared at the two pool tables. Both were identical except for a slight scratch on the table near the door. The scratch was about a foot long and started diagonally from one of the center pockets to one of the corners. No one knew how it happened. As far as anyone could tell, it had just appeared one day.
It was a shame, too. He liked that table. It wasn’t near the bathroom so he didn’t have to smell piss and shit while he played. And someone had to go and fuck that up. His fingers traced the scratch back and forth, back and forth. Dunch caressed the soft, green slit like a teenage boy exploring his first pussy. He got down closer, moving his fingers around. His cock had begun to harden.
The table was an aching teenage body; Dunch slowly grinded against it as he fingered the scratch. A smell reached his nostrils. What was it? It was familiar to him. Smells like seafood or leather. Sweat. His face got closer to the table. What is that?
Dunch then put his fingers to his nose. He saw Peggy and he saw Kim, that barfly whore he screwed two weeks ago. Susan was there, too, that demon of an ex-wife. So was Christine, that cute but completely moronic waitress who had offered up her ass in exchange for Bon Jovi tickets. Dunch felt the bottom of Chrstine’s leather boot stomp his face as he grinded against the table. That’s when Sara had shouted his name, interrupting everything.
“Dunch, what the fuck you doing?”
Now Dunch stood up and realized he had been molesting the pool table. He shook the quarters in his hand. “I don’t know, Sara. I just got distracted.”
“Just keep it in your pants, okay?”
“Yeah, it’s just this fucking table and this scratch. Fucking pisses me off.”
“I know. You mention it just about every time you come in here,” Sara said, putting down her magazine and walking over to the other side of the bar, towards the bathroom. “I gotta take a piss. Can you watch the bar?”
“Yeah, sure,” Dunch replied, still shaking the coins in his hand. They felt sweaty until he realized it was his palm that was moist. A picture of Sara on the toilet shot through his mind. The sweat on his hands became Sara’s urine streaked across his palm like golden lifelines.
He shook the change again and looked down. The coins were tinted yellow. Dunch put them into the slots of the pool table. There was no sound indicating that the balls were released and ready for play. He cursed under his breath and walked over to the bar to wait for Sara. A toilet flushed. Then there was a voice from behind him. “Hey, jack-off. Come back over here.”
Looking around and seeing no one, Dunch froze. “Who’s there?”
“Follow my fucking voice. Follow it, right now. Listen and follow, listen…”
Dunch obeyed the mysterious orders, tuning his ears to the voice and taking step after step towards the pool table. Indeed, the baritone voice from nowhere was really emanating from the scratched felt of the pool table. He put his face closer and felt a weird, warm fishy breath as the voice spoke on.
“Goddamn, it’s about time, Dunchy-Lunchy. Now how about you help a poor, helpless table?” The table vibrated, shaking the fillings in Dunch’s teeth.
“What..the..fuck..is…What…?” He babbled on and on. Drool gathered on his lower lip. His bladder weakened.
“Yeah, it’s not surprising. When humans are in the presence of Goy-Sotooth, they usually react like this. Oh well. Despite your obvious shock, I ask you to please insert your scrotum into the scratch. Please.” Goy-Sotooth’s voice became louder and impatient.
“Sara…Sara,” Dunch mumbled. The toilet flushed again and a few seconds later, Sara came back into the bar. “Still not playing? The fuck’s wrong with you, Dunch?” she asked, her eyes squinting in worry.
From across the room, Dunch saw urine glisten on Sara’s palms in obscene geometric patterns: cyclopean genitals on top of inde
scribable shapes spinning into infinity. Above her head floated an iridescent globe which pulsated in suggestively pornographic rhythm.
“Just stick your sack in and everything will be A-okay, Dunchy-Dear.” This time the words came from Sara’s mouth while her eyes revealed captive horror. Without thought of the consequences, Dunch unzipped his pants, grabbed a hold of his sweaty balls and lifted himself up onto the table.
“That’s it, Crunchy-Dunchy, right there….right THERE!” Goy-Sotooth’s voice screeched. The scratch opened up and took a hold of the testicles like a toothless woman gumming a pair of bulbous grapes. Dunch’s eyes rolled back and he shook like an epileptic.
Caught in a terrified daze, Sara watched as the pool table sucked on Dunch’s balls. She felt as if she was waiting for someone, as if they were at the very door of the bar but would not come in until Dunch’s sac was sucked dry through its pores. She couldn’t move any part of her body except for her clitoris. It was growing to the size of a penis.
“Goy-Sotooth, Heel-Beg, Eight-Ball, Yowzer Yowzer Yowzer!” Dunch spoke the incantation which entered his body through his genitals and up his body like a current.
There was a tingling sensation in his face.
Dunch slapped his own cheek and felt his beard move. A convulsion of fear shook him, forcing a squirt of piss to shoot out of his dick while the table worked on his balls. He felt his face and realized that, yes, it was moving. His beard was no longer a combination of short, black ugly hairs but rather a cacophony of wet spider legs.
“Ugggghhhhh!” Dunch almost lost all coherence. The table then spoke, sounding like a child with its mouth full.
“Oy! I’m bwinging you ‘ome!! Ai! Ai!”