Downstairs it was dark, too. He hadn’t bothered to put on any lights, and he stood in the darkness near the back door in the kitchen.
“Here,” was all he said.
I knew he’d found her, knew he’d found the cat… the kittens.
Yeah, I thought of running, bolting out the front door and leaving.
But I couldn’t. Above me, still sleeping, was my mom.
I’m doing this for us.
He stood by the back door with an old wooden beer case. He had a few of them that he kept his record collection in. It sat by his feet, closed.
Tossing me my coat, he opened the back door. “Go out there and get as many rocks as you can carry. Big ones. Bring ‘em in.”
I knew… I knew where Lucy was, where the kittens were. Knew what he was planning. But what could I do? I was only eight, remember?
So I went outside and gathered rocks by the light of the dusk-to-dawn in the alley. Found as many as I could carry from the garden my mom had abandoned—the ones she used to edge the cleared space. The ground was hard, frost-rimed, and I had to yank the rocks out like impacted teeth.
My pockets stuffed, I returned to the door, gave him the rocks. Twice I went back, twice I returned.
The last time he met me on the concrete patio.
“Take an end,” he huffed, slinging the box toward me.
It was heavy, christing heavy.
For a moment, I thought I’d lose my grip, and the box would drop, hit the ground, spill open.
Rocks would spill from it… and tiny, furry bodies.
But I held it, and he glared at me, wanting to hit me… oh, he wanted to hit me so badly. But he knew that if he did, I would drop the damn thing.
We walked into the alley. It was very cold and dark, and a light dusting of snow had started to fall. It was barely visible unless you looked up at the streetlight, and then it was like blue powder sifting down.
He grunted, threw his head to the left, and I knew he wanted to go to the woods, to the pond.
We turned onto the gravel road that led behind an abandoned garage. The woods appeared as a dark, indistinct wall that rose up from the night. The trees were bare, angular, but the blowing snow blurred their edges, made them indistinct.
We walked a long time, and I was cold. The box was heavy. I started crying at some point, and he freaked. He told me he was gonna beat the shit out of me.
He knew I knew what was in that box. And it wasn’t just the rocks.
Box… rocks…
You’re as dumb as a box of rocks.
Jesus… Jesus God… I get it now… holy shit… I get it…
Yeah, fuck… okay… okay… let me get to the end here…
We got to the pond, and there was a gray smudge on the horizon where the sun was trying to come up. The snow fell, harder now, denser…
The pond was gray, too, a huge gray oval. It wasn’t frozen, just scummed over with ice.
We swung the box once… twice… three times… and it arced up, out, hit the thin ice, and sank from view with barely a splash. In a minute, even the ripples faded.
I was glad, you know. Glad they were together. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like for Lucy if he’d killed the kittens and not her.
I tried to think what it would be like for my mom if he killed me someday.
What it would be like for her to be without me… alone.
“Stupid bitch. I told her. Told her I didn’t want any more. No more.”
I didn’t know what he meant.
I know that we went home, and my mom was gone.
I know that she’d gone to the police.
I know that they came later and took him, took me.
I know that she came once to the police station but hasn’t visited me here in years, years.
That’s all I know.
* * *
Okay, fuck this shit. I’m tired of this. If I had matches, I’d burn this entire fucking place down.
I tell you what I know… what I remember… and all you do is shake your head, Doc. Shake your head and tell me that I’m making it up… forgetting.
You think I’m stupid, like him.
Dumb as a box of rocks.
But I’m not.
I know that he didn’t want to have any kids.
I know that.
And I know I didn’t have a brother.
I know that, too.
But what do you mean, we never had a cat…?
NOTES
I am excited about this first collection of my work and somewhat daunted that it’s taken me 20 years to get to where I am. The much younger man I was when I started writing thought for sure he’d have a meteoritic rise to writing fame. By this point, I was supposed to have been ensconced in an authorial mansion somewhere sorting through fan mail and counting my money. In reality, I don’t know which I have less of at this point.
No long, drawn-out stuff here. Just thanks for picking up this book and giving it a read. Hopefully you liked a few of the stories. Maybe they helped pass some time during the day or gave you a reason to keep the hall light on at night. You probably didn’t like every story here, and that’s okay. Not every story is for everybody, as I have learned. Sometimes the ones I like best are the ones readers like least, and vice-versa. That’s the way it goes, and I’m okay with that.
I’d like to thank James Roy Daley and all the folks at Books of the Dead Press for believing in my work and bringing it to a wider audience. If you want more of my work, or news on what I’m up to, visit me at johnfdtaff.com and drop me a note or follow me on Twitter at johnfdtaff.
Now, here are my the answers to the age-old question of where I got the stories came from… somewhat… maybe.
Bolts
This is my Frankenstein story, my homage. It came to me, complete, in a dream, from beginning to end. Doesn’t happen too often, but when it does, it’s like a gift from the God of Short Stories. My girlfriend, Debbie, said that this reads a great deal like our life. Well, except for the whole death and reanimation thing, I guess.
Calendar Girl
Remember date books? Some people used to live out of them before Blackberries and IPads. And while today’s devices are much, much smaller, they are every bit as annoying.
But For a Moment… Motionless
Why even try to emulate the master? And Poe is, let’s face it, the master of the horror genre. He damn near invented much of what we consider horror today, in addition to detective stories, mysteries, and even science fiction. How can anyone find it surprising that it may have driven him to drink, may have driven him mad? Those are his words that appear in the story. I wrote this specifically for an anthology that it was not accepted for. (I think they were looking for something blunter and more horrific. Oh, well…) I like the idea of responsibility that is central do this story and the hope, however dark, expressed in it.
The Water Bearer
This one is a favorite of my early pieces. Yes, unrequited love. It’s a perennial theme with me. But also—and I like to explore this, too—is the idea of what love does to inanimate things. How does human love affect, say, a car or a favorite chair or a house? People say that things can’t feel emotions, but speak sharply to a plant for a while, and it’s bound to die. So, who knows? This one’s a pond… and a jealous one, at that.
The Closed Eye of a Dead World
Aren’t windows kind of creepy? I think sometimes they are. Who’s looking in your window? Ever look up and see something out the window that doesn’t seem quite right? Personally I can’t sit with my back to a door or window. Gives me the heebie-jeebies. So, this is my take on a good, old-fashioned monster story. I like the pulpy 1950s feel of this.
Snapback
This story is, perhaps, a function of too much Star Trek. Time travel stuff gives me a headache, but this story came pretty quickly and pretty definitively. Written for an anthology with a very specific focus, the story lost its home when the antho folded. Well, it turned
out that the antho wasn’t on the up and up anyway. But I was left with a very specific story that I thought would be a hard sell. It turned out not to be. It sold pretty quickly, and people seem to enjoy it. But because of this experience, I don’t like to write stories specifically for themed anthologies.
The Mire of Human Veins
I wrote this for my mom, who is afraid of spiders. Like all my stories, this one started out with an idea, then took a turn that spun it in a completely different direction. This became much more of a dark fantasy tale, but still pretty creepy.
The Scent
I think a lot about the things around us that go unnoticed. The converse of this is true, too… the things that are noticed. The things that people notice are peculiar, since all people notice different things—notice them differently—and are affected by them differently. Thus we have the unreliability of eyewitnesses. The differences in how we internalize the things we see, how we peel things away from the reality that our senses provide us and integrate them into our lives never fails to astound me. This guy sees something horrible—truly awful. What he takes away from it reshapes a seemingly unconnected, random part of his life. Makes you think about the changes we make in our own lives… and the reasons behind them. This story was going to be part of a longer, literary fiction short story collection I was working on for a while. But, I figured, screw that. I’m a horror writer. Why put on airs?
Child of Dirt
How many men, how many fathers have that one thought, however fleeting, however ridiculous: What if it’s not mine? A woman never has this feeling… at least, I’m assuming so. She gets to feel the child grow within her, see it removed from her. A man never really has this same certainty, does he? This guy has that feeling of uncertainty, in spades, and it makes him more than a little crazy… or does it?
Orifice
From my erotic horror writing days back in the 1990s when these were, somehow, really popular. Of the several I wrote, this is my favorite because of, again, the unrequited love. But this time it’s kind of turned around the other way.
Helping Hands
My attempt to do a Ye Olde Englande piece, complete with an alienist, a madman (or is he?) and lots of moody atmosphere and Sweeny Toddish action. Of everything in this piece, it’s the fingers snapping as the man falls that really gets to me.
In Men, Black
Wrote this for an anthology, and it didn’t make the cut. What the heck. Sometimes it happens. Convinced me not to waste time writing stories for some very specific anthology. What the hell do you do with them if they’re not accepted? Stick them in your own damn collection, that’s what. Anyway, I thought this was a funny little riff on the whole men in black/mothman legend.
Darkness Upon the Void
I love stories with unreliable main characters. There are a few of them in this collection. I like the friction of not knowing whether the protagonist is really seeing what is related in the story or if he’s crazy. In some stories, even at the end, this question remains up in the air. Not so in this one.
Sharp Edges
From too many hours spent watching shows like CSI, I picked up that there are organized and disorganized serial killers. And I wondered how an organized serial killer might reconcile the messy things he does against a very button-down, careful life. And it came to me: compartmentalization. This is what I came up with.
The Lacquered Box
One of the first stories I ever wrote, and it took me nearly 20 years to sell it. Never throw stories out. That’s the lesson I learned. Eventually, you might become a better writer and be able to go back and repair what didn’t work before. At least, that’s what I think I did.
Here
There is a truism in life every bit as definite as death and taxes. You are either a dog person or you’re not. There is no real middle ground here. I was not born a dog person; I evolved into one. For the longest time, I was strictly a cat person. Dogs seemed… well… dumb. As I grew older and went through some extended down periods in my life, I got a dog, Sylvia, and she converted me. Dumb now seems loving and loyal. A few years after that, I got another dog. He was as unlike the first as is possible, and I loved him dearly. At only a year and half, though, he was killed by a hit-and-run driver. I have never, and I mean never, mourned harder for a living thing than I did for that dog, whose name, like the dog in the story, was Hector. This story took me a long time to write, simply because I would sit down, write a couple of paragraphs or a scene, and then become too emotional to write more. But, thank you, Hector: writing this story was cathartic, and opened me to a prolonged writing jag where I cranked out some of the stories featured here. My father read this and asked me what was true and what wasn’t, since many of the details of the story were lifted from that experience. Honestly, these days, I can no longer tell.
The Tontine
As a writer of genre fiction, I have those moments when I curse the state of the genre, especially seeing how a venerable horror staple such as the vampire has been… well… castrated over the years, for want of a better word; turned into something that better fits teen angst and romance novels. Yuck. Who wants that shit? Not me. Give me Salem’s ‘Lot or one or two of the first Anne Rice vampire books before she went all porno and everything. Got me thinking about how those actual horror staples themselves might feel about the situation… the state of horror, so to speak.
The Mellified Man
Yes, this is real. There really are such things, which just goes to show that some of the weirdest shit out there doesn’t have to be created by a horror writer… just integrated into his version of reality. I wrote this for my brother, Bobby, who has and continues to have a tremendous sweet tooth… and is probably too old to be called (or at least want to be called) Bobby. Oh, and by the way, I lifted the first two lines, slightly modified (of course) from what are probably the best opening lines of any novel: Peter Straub’s Ghost Story. I love me some Peter Straub.
Box of Rocks
It’s funny, but horror is probably the only fiction genre in which subtlety is an ongoing concern. Neither readers nor authors seem too concerned with subtlety in science fiction or westerns or romance books. But for some reason it is a yin-yang thing in horror. Too much blood or gore or spooks or whatever? Or not enough? Show the body or merely hint at it? Sometimes, subtlety in horror heightens the fear. Look at Hawthorne or even Straub. But sometimes subtlety muddies the waters. Look at James. I thought much about the question of subtlety while writing this story. As an author, particularly a horror author (and perhaps no writer other than a comedy writer can appreciate this), you want the reader to get it, to understand explicitly what is going on. And sometimes the fear of the writer is that, unless you’re slapped in the face with it, you won’t. I’m taking that chance here.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to everyone who has been forced, either through obligations of blood or friendship, to read the stories featured here, to comment on them, and talk to me about them ad nauseum. Thanks go to my parents, brothers and sisters, teachers, editors. Thanks also to my girlfriend, Deborah Deming, Chris Frisella, Randy Kalin, J.D. Streett, Jonathan Edwards, Tom Lewis, Larry Mudd, J. Travis Grundon, Erik T. Johnson, Jonathan Edwards, Tom Lewis, Larry Mudd, Sharon Shinn, Diane Kline, Kathy Tongay-Carr, Margaux Medewitz-Zesch, Jerry Rabushka, my Aunt Susan Pardo and Uncle Pat Pardo, my cousins Lori and Lynne, my Uncle Woody, and anyone else I’ve forgotten or otherwise omitted.
With love to my children, Harry, Sam, and Molly.
“Bolts,” copyright 2012. Original for the collection.
“Calendar Girl” first appeared at Short-story.me. Copyright
“But for a Moment… Motionless,” copyright 2012. Original for the collection.
“The Water Bearer,” first appeared at Short-story.me. Copyright
“The Closed Eye of a Dead World,” copyright 2012. Original for the collection.
“SnapBack” first appeared in Schrodinger’s Mouse, Issue #1, 2011,
copyright 1995.
“The Mire of Human Veins,” copyright 2012. Original for the collection.
“The Scent,” copyright 2012. Original for the collection.
“Child of Dirt” first appeared in One Buck Horror, Issue #3, copyright 2011.
“Orifice” first appeared in Hot Blood: Fear the Fever, copyright 1996.
“Helping Hands,” copyright 2012. Original for the collection.
“In Men, Black,” copyright 2012. Original for the collection.
“Darkness Upon the Void,” copyright 2012. Original for the collection.
“Sharp Edges” first appeared in Morpheus Tales, Issue 12, copyright 2011.
“The Lacquered Box” first appeared in Jack O’Spec, copyright 2011.
“Here” first appeared at Short-story.me. Copyright
“The Tontine,” copyright 2012. Original for the collection.
“The Mellified Man” first appeared in Midnight Chill, Issue 1, copyright 2010.
“Box of Rocks” first appeared in Box of Delights, Aeon Press, copyright 2011.
Preview of:
TONIA BROWN’S - BADASS ZOMBIE ROAD TRIP
Chapter One
Somewhere just outside of Buhl, Idaho
Dale Jenkins snored like a wild animal on the prowl. At first he chuffed in great swells of exasperated grumbles, mounting and climbing those scales of throaty growls until, as if spying his dream prey, he peaked with a gargantuan, heart-stopping roar. At the apex of this outburst, his snore would stall, his sleep engine seizing as Dale choked and sputtered. After this minor struggle, he would settle down again, and the whole process would recess for a few moments of blessed peace. Before long, the grumbles would begin anew, escalating into growling, and so on and so forth. Windows shook in their sashes, neighbors beat upon the walls, small animals wailed in the streets, and Dale always snored on in utter, somnolent bliss.
Little Deaths Page 27