Gleefully Macabre Tales

by Jeff Strand

"Hey, do you know what I’ve been through these past few hours? I’ve been beat up, pissed on, insulted, handcuffed, gummed, and my fuckin’ hand is broken. I deserve to get laid. You have half an hour to get over here—without the cops—or I’m leaving town and you’ll never see me or the pages again."

  There was silence on the other end.

  "Hello?" I asked.

  Nothing.

  "I think she hung up on me," I told the head. I slammed the phone down on the receiver. "Bitch! Now what?"

  "She needs those pages," the head said. "She won’t do anything to risk that."

  "She left us in the Dumpster with the vagrants. That risked it."

  "Trust me."

  The phone rang. I picked it up. "Gretchen?"

  "Hi, Frank. We got cut off. Bad reception. What did you say?"

  "What was the last part you heard?"

  "You said ‘Hey, do you know what’ and then the signal faded."

  "Oh. I basically just said that I’ve been beaten up and pissed on and insulted and my hand is broken and that I deserve to get laid and that if you don’t show up here in half an hour I’m leaving town and you’ll never see me or the pages again."

  Silence.

  "You there?"

  "Yeah. I’m thinking."

  "There’s nothing to think about. Get your ass over here."

  "Sex, and then you tell me where the pages are, right?"

  "Well, it has to be good sex. You can’t just give it a few tugs and say we’re done. But, yeah, that’s how it’s gonna work."

  "Fine."

  I gave her directions to my place and hung up. I was putting a lot of trust in the idea that she’d actually show up instead of calling the cops, who would then discover a pile of body parts in my bathtub, but hopefully the allure of eternal life was sufficient.

  "Is there a way for me to get eternal life, too?" I asked the head.

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  "Because you have a soft mind. You can only be used as a vessel."

  "Your wife’s mind is kind of soft. Why does she get eternal life?"

  "She doesn’t. This is a trap, remember?"

  "Oh, yeah."

  "You either need to quit asking stupid questions or you need to quit getting indignant over the soft mind thing."

  "My bad."

  Twenty-six minutes later, there was a knock at my door. I peeked through the spyhole and saw that it was Gretchen. She seemed to be alone, so I opened the door.

  "C’mon in," I said, as she walked past me.

  "Where’s Michael?"

  "Who?"

  "My husband."

  "Is that his name? Michael? He’s in my bathtub. First door on the left."

  She hurried into the bathroom. She seemed relieved when she came out a few seconds later. "So now what?" she asked.

  "We get nekkid."

  "Have you even looked at yourself? You’re, like, one giant bruise. Look at your pinky—that’s hideous. How can you be thinking about sex right now? You should be thinking about an ice pack."

  "Listen, my dick is the only part of my body that doesn’t hurt right now. So I can either make it happy and get one tiny bit of pleasure out of this nightmare, or I can sit around and think about how much my goddamn pancreas hurts. I don’t even know where my pancreas is, but I can tell you that it hurts!"

  "Okay. Where do you want to do it?"

  "Bathroom."

  "I don’t think so."

  "Bathroom or no room. I want your husband to watch."

  "He’s not into that. I asked about it when we were first dating."

  "I don’t want him to get his kink on! I want to piss him off. I want him to sit there like a helpless little head while I diddle his wife."

  "That’s really tacky."

  "Sorry, but that’s the way it’s gotta be."

  "I guess I’d expect nothing less from somebody who would strangle a little boy."

  "Quit harping on the little boy. You’d think I clubbed a baby seal or something. Let’s go."

  I grabbed her hand with my bad hand, which is not something I recommend. When the tears stopped (yes, there were tears, I admit it) we went into the bathroom and got undressed. Taking off your clothes in front of a naked woman is supposed to be a pleasurable experience, but bolts of pain tore through my body with each movement, and by the time I was nude there’d been at least one more instance of tears.

  I lay down on the cold tile floor. Gretchen looked damn good naked, with breasts that looked so tasty that I wanted to bring out a knife and fork. Despite the agony in the rest of my body, my soldier had no trouble whatsoever standing at attention.

  "Salute it," I told her.

  "What?"

  "Salute my soldier."

  She looked at me with disgust. "You are such a dipshit." She saluted my soldier with her middle finger. I decided that would have to suffice.

  I put on the condom that Ms. Paranoid made me wear, and then she straddled me and slowly lowered herself onto my awesome meat. She winced a little bit, probably not used to receiving somebody of my size. Heh heh. If there was one thing I could get into, it was a hot chick making sounds of pain because I was too big for her.

  I gave a sharp upward thrust to facilitate the process, which sent a roaring wave of pain through my hip. I decided to let her do all the work.

  She started to ride me. It felt damn good, even though she wasn’t really getting into it. I reached up and cupped her fine fake tits. After a few thrusts, she started to move a little faster, and she made some sounds that indicated that perhaps she wasn’t having a completely miserable time.

  Over her soft moans, I could hear Michael’s head whispering something that sounded like Latin, or maybe German. I wasn’t sure why he was doing that now. The chanting wasn’t supposed to start until I was done.

  My thumb sunk into the flesh of her right boob.

  "Aw, shit!" I said.

  Suddenly, all in one motion, the skin slipped off her body and landed on me with a loud splat. She looked at her glistening insides in horror and let out a silent scream.

  I thrust faster. I’d be damned if I was going to go through all this shit and not finish.

  A big red blob of fleshy goo dropped onto my chest. Her eyeballs leaked out of their sockets as her teeth sprung out of her bloody mouth like popcorn.

  I thrust harder and harder, but she was becoming a lot less tight. This wasn’t fair! "You son of a bitch!" I screamed at Michael as the bottom half of Gretchen’s head splattered on top of me.

  It was no use. It was like screwing a bowl of pudding. Her arms fell off and her bones turned to whitish yellowish liquid and it wasn’t long before I was covered with a thick layer of slime that had formerly been Gretchen.

  The head laughed.

  "Real funny," I said, pushing myself up to a sitting position. "Real fuckin’ funny." I wiped some of the slime off my chest. "You couldn’t have waited eight more seconds?"

  "Like I care about your gratification."

  I stood up and grabbed a towel. I had an urge to engage in a bit of self-pleasure and finish up in a location that he assuredly would not appreciate, but my boner was history.

  "Why’d you do that?" I asked, as I ruined one of my best towels, though to be honest all of my towels were pretty crappy.

  "I needed a sacrifice."

  "You never said anything about a sacrifice. You just said revenge."

  The head chuckled. "There are many things I didn’t share with your soft mind. And now that the sacrifice is complete, my release is imminent!"

  "Oh, sure, you get to release. Prick."

  A thin cloud of black smoke formed underneath the head. I backed away. Unfortunately, I backed away into one of the many patches of slippery slime, and I fell, bashing my head against the floor.

  The head rose into the air on a layer of smoke. An arm joined it, and then another. Then the four pieces of chest came together—sort of—and hovered underneath them.

&
nbsp; I tried to get back up, but my hands and feet kept slipping on the slime. I scooted on my ass toward the bathroom door, whimpering like a baby. That’s right, a baby. There’s no shame in that.

  Michael stepped out of the tub. The pieces of his body were more or less in the right place, and though they didn’t fit together perfectly, the smoke seemed to be holding them together like some sort of…I dunno, black smoke glue.

  Slime or no slime, I was getting the hell out of there. I turned over and crawled on my hands and knees for the doorway. Once I’d reached the hallway carpet, I stood up and ran for the living room. Or at least I tried to run for the living room. Two steps and I twisted my ankle and hit the floor again.

  "Don’t kill me!" I begged. "Don’t turn me into ooze!"

  Michael floated out of the bathroom. His grin seemed to fill half of his face. "Fool," he said. It was the exact same voice, but for some reason it sounded a lot scarier now. "You mocked forces you didn’t comprehend!"

  "I comprehend them now! Please, let me go!"

  "Oh, no, I don’t think so. I have plans for you, Franklin."

  I was too frightened to even tell him what happened to the last person who called me Franklin. "C’mon, I could’ve left you in that Dumpster!"

  "You’re grasping at straws."

  I scrambled on my hands and knees into the living room. I grabbed a half-empty bottle of beer off my coffee table and threw it at him. He caught it in the air and crushed it in his fist, sprinkling glass shards and Budweiser onto the floor.

  "Your fate is sealed, Franklin."

  "I don’t think so." I picked up a 3rd place bowling trophy that I’d stolen from my father. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it was the best I had. No floating pile of body parts was going to seal my fate in my own goddamn apartment.

  I held the bowling trophy out in front of me as if it were a sword. Not pain, nor fear, nor blue balls was going to stop me this time. That dismembered son of a bitch was going down!

  I let out a battle cry and rushed at him.

  The black smoke abruptly disappeared and the pieces of Michael fell to the floor.

  Then my legs gave out and I fell to the floor as well.

  I saw stars when my chin smacked the carpet, but I blinked a few times and cleared my vision quickly in case that wasn’t the end of it.

  I was looking into my own bruised, slime-covered face.

  What the fuck…?

  My naked body got up, wiped off some more slime, and smiled at me. It picked me up by the hair and lifted me to its face. I looked down and there was no body underneath me.

  "Nice body you’ve got," it said in my voice. "You’ve treated it very badly, though. I’m going to have to find a hospital."

  "You…you…you…"

  "Me what? Are you trying to think of a good threat? What are you going to do to me—you’re just a head!"

  "It’s not fair!" I wailed.

  "Oh, it’s fair. It’s mucho fair. I think I’m going to enjoy your body. Maybe I’ll go out and get laid tonight. Wanna watch?"

  "Please! You can’t do this!"

  "Correction. I can’t un-do this." He tossed me to the floor. I landed on my nose, breaking it, and then rolled onto my left cheek.

  I let out a sob.

  "Oh, don’t worry, Franklin," he said, crouching down next to me. "As tempting as it might be, I’m not going to leave you trapped in that head. Talking severed heads attract too much attention. Sure, I could bury you, but you never know when a dog is going to dig you up or something like that."

  He got up and walked out of sight. I tried to roll myself, but my cheek muscles weren’t strong enough for that kind of thing.

  My ex-body returned, holding a baseball bat. An autographed one, signed by Pete Rose, who had become my hero after the gambling scandal.

  "What are you gonna do?" I asked.

  "Exactly what you think I’m going to do. Your soul will leave the head when there isn’t enough left of it to sustain life."

  He hoisted the bat over his head, then slammed it down upon my new skull. A large bone chunk fell on top of my right eye.

  "Please!"

  He smashed me with the bat again. I tried to repeat the word "Please" but my jaw was broken and it came out sounding like "uuuuuuuh."

  "A couple more should do it," he said. "And then you’ll see that I always keep my promises."

  He had to slam the bat down nine more times before everything went black. But that’s only because both of my eyes were squished. It took another seven hits before all sensation faded.

  When I awoke, I was back in my real body. But it was covered with black, leathery, slithering things that burned as they slid across my flesh.

  A rusty steel door slid open. Glowing red eyes and a leering, fanged grin greeted me.

  - 10 -

  Hell is the worst shithole imaginable. You’d think that after the first million or so times they flay every scrap of skin from your body, you’d get used to it, but no, it stings like crazy every single time.

  Every night, three of the most gorgeous women I’ve ever seen dance naked in front of my spiked bed. But they’re always out of reach. And when I try to at least fondle my dick, my hand passes right through it. That got old really quick.

  I do get to have sex on occasion, but believe me, it’s not fun.

  All of the food tastes like crap. Unfortunately, there’s a very logical reason that it tastes that way. The worst part is when they make me watch it being made before mealtime.

  Most of my time is spent in my cell, writing this memoir. They were nice enough to provide me with a laptop computer. I’ve been writing this thing for centuries now, because the keyboard keeps biting off my hands, but they grow back in time.

  I guess if there’s a moral to be found in my little tale, it’s that no good can come from associating with women. They’re wretched creatures. Stay away from them.

  That’s all I have to say. I hope you enjoyed my story.

  Aw, fuck, Attila is horny again…

  Story Notes

  Warning: These are laden with spoilers. Read the stories first. If you don’t, doom will befall you and those you care about. I mean it.

  Really, Really Ferocious

  This was written for the Charles Grant benefit anthology Small Bites, specifically the "Animal Attacks" section. I wanted to make sure that my choice of animal wasn’t used by any other author, and a wiener dog seemed like a safe bet. So I started writing the story without having any idea where it was headed… and then I got completely stuck.

  There had to be some kind of twist, but what? The obvious choice would be to have the wiener dog turn out to be a truly ferocious beast, either chomping off the solicitor’s hand or transforming into a terrifying creature. But the "horrifying wiener dog from hell" idea just seemed lame and predictable.

  So I brainstormed and rejected idea after idea after idea after idea until…hey, what if the old man used the wiener dog as a weapon, and just bashed the hell out of the solicitor with it?

  Bingo. One of my most popular stories was born.

  Socially Awkward Moments

  With An Aspiring Lunatic

  This was originally published as a stand-alone chapbook by Biting Dog Press. For quite some time, I’d had an idea for a humorous novel about a guy who wants to become a serial killer, but is really, really bad at it. But a full-length novel seemed like too much time to spend with this character, and I scaled the idea way down into a short story.

  This is a story where "voice" is everything. A narrator who decides, for no particular reason, that he wants to become insane is not exactly a relatable concept for your average reader, and the end product could easily be inaccessible and merely weird for the sake of being weird. So it was important to write this in a conversational, friendly style (which gradually falls apart as the story progresses) to carry the reader along with this whack-job.

  High Stakes

  This was inspired by my experience as a
little kid at a theme park. I was playing this ridiculous carnival game that was virtually impossible to win, and I’d spent way more than the market price of the stupid little stuffed animal that I didn’t even want, but dammit, I was not going to leave empty handed!

  And I didn’t. But then I couldn’t afford a corn dog and was quite devastated.

  Special Features

  I’m always amused by DVD audio commentary tracks where the participants are still in heavy-duty "ass-kissing for career ascension" mode.

  Unlike many writers, I find that coming up with the basic idea for a short story is a lot more difficult than the execution, so after my moment of "Aha! Commentary track for snuff film!" I wrote this one fairly quickly.

  Sex Potion #147

  Believe it or not, this started out as a straightforward smut comedy. It was going to be a collaborative novel with erotica/chick-lit author Michele Bardsley, but we abandoned the project after a couple of chapters, like the slackers that we are.

  I was working on "Werewolf Porno" as a chapbook for White Noise Press, and I suddenly remembered that I had "Sex Potion #147" lying around. If I could figure out a new, demented direction for it, I’d have two sex/horror/comedy tales for the chapbook, and an improved marketing angle!