A terrified hooting assaults my eardrums. Turning, I see Lament being surrounded by lumbering beasts. Tears stream from her singular oculus; her unfortunate countenance has gone mayonnaise-white. Finally, I am roused from my stupor. Lament’s fate stands foremost in my mind.
I grab two bowls off the food tables, the others having been overturned during the tremors, and rush off in Lament’s direction. The girl is spinning in circles, again and again, with unfriendly boarillas meeting her on all sides. Without time to spare, I blanket her proximity with peas and chicken.
As the boars set upon our leftovers—sucking their repast from the dirt, slurping sickly—I dart into their midst and pull Lament to my chest. She pats my cheek, a silent benediction, as we flee to the edge of the forest. There, I meet Starshine, who attempts to comfort a shivering Ariel. The boy rocks back and forth on his toes, staring groundward. For a moment I consider joining him. Instead, I hand Lament over to Starshine.
“Get them back to the lodge and barricade the door,” I tell her. “Don’t open it for anyone who doesn’t speak English.”
I kiss her before she departs—an act forbidden within our community—and watch as the trio disappears amidst alder and ash. Then a boarilla is upon me. During our struggle, I somehow manage to bash its skull in with a rock.
My eyes rove the clearing, which has become a scene of damnation. Clutching a jagged chair leg in each hand, Michael Clark stands upon a pile of dead boarillas, but most in the community fare far worse. I see bodies reduced to bone shards, flesh ribbons hanging from tree branches, and various members of Lodge Cherubic siding with the boarillas. Whooping and hollering like rowdy football fans, these deformed unfortunates gleefully consume human flesh.
A boarilla runs by with Eileen’s head raised triumphantly. Her spinal cord dangles beneath it. Passing me, her bleeding eyes stare reproachfully.
I see one barbwire-boxer flaying flesh from a monster, the geriatric gentleman heroically throwing jabs and hooks amidst pure pandemonium. I see Mitch zigzagging across the clearing, dodging boarillas and Lodge Cherubic denizens alike.
But the creatures continue emerging from the crevice, an unending cavalcade of brutish monstrosities. Soon, our celebration’s survivors will be entirely overwhelmed. I’d like to join in the bizarre brawl, but my strong sense of self-preservation suggests that an observer’s role better suits me.
A rope hangs from the crotch of a proximate ash tree, a giant specimen nearly three stories tall. I rush over to it and kick my way up the trunk, climbing until I find a branch stout enough to hold me. I can only hope that no passing boarilla spots my vantage point, as the creatures have already proven themselves master climbers.
Granted a bird’s-eye view of the clearing, I see humans and boarillas butchered in combat, and Lodge Cherubic denizens realize that the creatures aren’t on their side after all, as ragged tusks shred them to pulp. Seeing his sibling’s head ripped from their shoulders by a ten-foot-tall boarilla, a conjoined twin angles their body to drink spouting blood. Eventually, the poor fellow topples over, and is consumed by a swarm of monsters.
Hearing the drawn-out drone of a didgeridoo, I can’t help but shiver. The residents of Lodge Unknown have arrived, pouring from the trees in robes made of scaled skin, peeled from no creature that I’ve ever seen or heard of.
During my time at the commune, I’ve glimpsed just one Lodge Unknown dweller, a shifty-eyed fellow I observed in clandestine conference with Prognostrum. It’s said that they live in an underground lodge beyond our property’s perimeter, but no one seems to know its location.
Forming a rough ring around the clearing, the Unknownians chant in a bizarre multi-syllabic language entirely devoid of vowels. The chanting bores into my eardrums, making nails across a chalkboard seem tame by comparison.
Noticing wetness on my cheeks, I wipe it away. My fingers come back red. Apparently, I’m crying tears of blood. And still the didgeridoo sounds; still the hellish chanting continues.
The tide of boarillas begins to reverse. Hands clasped over their ears, the creatures rush back into the fissure. Some club each other to the ground in their haste, soil-stomping their comrades with black cloven hooves. They too weep blood, as do all the humans remaining in the clearing. Only the chanters remain unaffected.
After the last boarilla has disappeared into the earth, the chanters form around the fracture and join hands. With no preamble, these hooded individuals begin vomiting up their own intestines. Long sausage-like coils eject from between their lips, and they collapse forward into the chasm. A single Unknownian remains, clutching an ancient tome bound in the same material as his robe.
From within the folds of his garment, the man withdraws an ivory dagger, and runs it across his palm. In the silence of the clearing, he drips life force into the crevice. I see his lips moving, but cannot make out what he utters.
Whatever he articulates causes the ground to resume trembling. Wiping blood from my eyes, I watch the fissure begin closing. Inexorably, layers of strata grind back together, until the soil has reclaimed its previous appearance. Still, dozens of mangled bodies fill the clearing, both human and otherwise.
After the one remaining Unknownian has vanished amidst the trees, I finally descend from my perch. Painted with drying blood, survivors mill about the clearing, I move to join their throng. Some mourn absent limbs; some seek signs of life in apparent cadavers. Mashed into the soil, mangled neighbors moan through shredded mouths. It’s hard to believe that things could have gone so wrong so quickly.
I locate Mitch amidst the carnage. Winding our way homeward, we return to a barricaded lodge. It takes much convincing to persuade Starshine to let us in. After finally relenting, she envelops us in fierce embraces, crying tears of relief.
Sending Ariel and Lament to bed, Starshine demands that we explain the evening’s events. This we attempt, but our words hardly lend clarity to the situation. At last, our colloquy trickles into insignificance. Night carries us into morning.
With Kenneth, Raul and Eileen gone, the lodge feels practically empty. Their vacant beds serve as cruel reminders of their flyblown remains. And with my departure, the household will shrink down to four, what could almost be labeled a nuclear family.
7
Recruitment Drive
At the group funeral the next morning, we dine on roast boarilla, ingesting the flesh of our enemies while putting our loved ones to rest. The meat is undercooked and gristly, but the act’s symbolism is lost on few mourners. The majority of us wear the previous night’s attire, now shredded and bloodstained.
The cemetery lies on our property’s southwestern edge, parallel dirt mounds nestled amongst weeds and hyacinths. Now, there are nearly fifty open graves awaiting occupants, fifty lonely orifices waiting to be filled. And with the thought of open orifices, my mind returns to the sisters. The ladies had escaped the massacre entirely unscathed, and tomorrow night I will enter their lodge for the final time. They float angelically across my thoughtscape, eternally dancing in seductive spirals. It helps to take the edge off my grief.
Positioned alongside their final resting places, my dead roommates appear far from restful. Raul and Kenneth are just piles of disconnected limbs now, and nobody could locate the rest of Eileen’s body. Viewed together, her head and spine resemble a nightmarish seahorse, but at least somebody closed her eyes.
On this bitter morning, many of the menfolk are absent. With Prognostrum gone, a new Prognostrum must be named, and over the next couple of weeks, they’ll determine who will bear that title. Traditionally, gladiatorial combat would be used to select the community’s new leader, but with last night’s bloodshed, the idea seems obscene. Instead, the new Prognostrum will be whoever identifies the largest number of potential recruits.
With only a limited number of bloodlines circulating amongst our neighbors, it is sometimes necessary for our little group to hold recruitment drives. These are typically held every half-decade or so, in cities all acr
oss the United States.
Once on the commune, new recruits are eased into communal life by some of our friendlier mothers. Quickly, they learn that there is no communication with the outside world: no phone or Internet access, not even a mailbox. The commune is so remote that one could expire before walking into another population center. Their only choice is to adapt or die.
Some fail to adapt. They attack their neighbors, spend weeks moaning and crying, or pretend to be fine with their new situation, only to cut throats in the dead of night. Those individuals are here now, resting under dirt mounds—which brings me back to the mass funeral, only just beginning.
Our community’s funerary rites are bizarre. As a chorus of daughters hums a funeral dirge in unison, we file one by one through the rows of cadavers. At each fresh corpse, we bend down and kiss their cold lips, now stiff with rigor mortis. For those whose lips were a casualty of the boarillas, we simply lean over and kiss the spots where their lips should be, the pulp heaped upon gleaming jawbones. In this way, we send them to the afterlife upon wings of love, or at least that’s what I’ve been told.
As I make my way through the corpse trails, lips reddening with half-congealed human jelly, I pass a few individuals missing heads. Unable to kiss them goodbye, I settle for vigorous handshakes. In one case, I settle for a foot shake. And then, mercifully, we are done. Coffinless, our erstwhile neighbors are pushed into the earth, to be stripped down to skeletons by ravenous worms.
Stomach protruding with partially digested boarilla meat, I return to my lodge. All chores have been called off today, a tribute to the departed, and a long nap sounds just about right.
8
The Last Day
This will be my last day at the community. Tonight, I will visit the sisters, to revel in their soft embraces for one final time, before passing through the floor door into a new situation. A weird mixture of melancholy and elation suffuses me, as I wonder what strangeness awaits.
Studying the oaken floor door, I notice that it has grown. It takes up nearly the entire living room now, seemingly too heavy to lift. I see it when I close my eyes; the entryway chases me into my dreams. It calls in silent whispers, cajoles with muted promises.
My housemates are still asleep, and I watch the television without bothering to switch it on. It seems that every time that I do now, The Diabolical Designs of Professor Pandora beams directly into my retinas, and I can’t bear another sight of that ghoulish countenance. Eventually, the tedium grows overwhelming, and I venture from the lodge to visit one of the milking sheds.
Stepping into the building, the smell of bovine feces hits me like a brick to the face. Shit buckets line the opposite wall, all full to overflowing. Soon, the manure will be composted into fertilizer, but for now its sole purpose is to kill my appetite.
Moving to an aluminum picnic table, I pull latex gloves over my hands. I then grab two clean buckets, and fill one of them with lukewarm hose water. With a cow brush shoved into my back pocket, I bypass the feed bins, heading directly to Matilda’s stall.
Of all the cows in the commune, Matilda is easily the largest. Weighing nearly 2,500 pounds, she has the body mass of a good-sized bull, and positively dwarfs her cattle peers. Dozens of teats line her massive udder, and the old gal has been known to bite tentative milkers.
Placing the buckets on the floor, I snatch a leather strip from the edge of the stall, and use it to tie Matilda’s back legs together. Pulling up a splintery stool, I begin to clean her, brushing warm water through her thick Rorschach blot hair. When this is finished, I wash the lady’s udder with the remaining water, and dry it with a paper towel.
With these preliminaries accomplished, I push the dry bucket underneath her udder, and grab Matilda’s nearest teat. With my index finger and thumb, I pinch the top of the teat and tug it downward. Gently, I squeeze milk from the animal, moving from teat to teat like a free jazz musician. By the time that her udder is depleted, I’ve filled a number of buckets with Matilda’s thick fluid. Patting the cow’s head, I exit the stall, avoiding her indignant gaze.
Other bovines await my tender touch, but first I must lug Matilda’s harvest over to the milk cooling tank. It sloshes in the bucket as I slowly trudge forward.
* * *
With the day’s milking under my belt, I bathe and return to my lodge. As I don fresh attire, random articles snatched from an unkempt closet, I imagine that I can see the door in the floor through the wall. But it is nearly time for my date with the sisters, and I’ll be damned before forfeiting one last collective embrace.
With our new Prognostrum still unnamed, Dining Lodge remains vacant. A proper dinner cannot commence without our leader’s benediction, a custom that the community has always adhered to. So instead, my housemates and I have a picnic behind our lodge.
Ariel, Mitch, Starshine and Lament join me upon an expansive blanket, and we distribute sandwiches from a black woven basket. Chewing cold chicken, lettuce and tomatoes, Lament hoots contentedly, and we’d be remiss not to follow her example. With a jug of fresh milk to wash down our repast, listening to the song of the cicadas, we watch the sky darken and sprout constellations.
Belying the previous night’s tragedy, we keep our talk pleasant, drawing shy little Ariel into the conversation whenever possible. No mention is made of our missing roommates; no one speaks of my imminent departure. As time drifts away from us, stolen by a furtive breeze, I can’t help but notice Starshine and Mitch gently rubbing against one another, flirting strictly through bodily contact. It seems that romance is in the air, a development that can only lead to doom for the couple. But that lies somewhere in the future, and there is no need to dwell on it now.
Basking in the love of my housemates, I let our last picnic linger on for as long as I’m able. But my date night arrives, and I can no more ignore it than I could chew off my own nose.
Standing, we silently regard each other over the remnants of our meal. I plant a kiss upon Lament’s forehead, a pat upon Ariel’s back. Starshine receives a lengthy hug, and Mitch a firm handshake. After taking a mental snapshot of my family, I leave them behind. I will never forget this quartet; I’ll never forget my time at the commune. But I can’t stay here any longer.
* * *
Beset with trepidation, I approach the sisters’ lodge. As I walk, recollections of past visits swirl up from my subconscious, flickering images of lust and spectacle. These memories are infused with unreality, like half-remembered dreams rather than concrete experiences.
The lodge has two rooms, both quite expansive—a bedroom and a bathroom, nothing more. The sisters rarely leave the place. Mothers bring them meals twice daily, scrub the floor and bathroom, and provide fresh linens for their massive bed. And when I say massive, I mean massive. The bed, a yards-wide mattress resting upon wooden slats, takes up nearly the entire room. It is so wide that children could play soccer atop the pad.
Entering the lodge, I find it candlelit. Ringing the room’s perimeter, giant red candles are arranged in an oval. By their dim illumination, I can just make out the sisters, fourteen fragile organisms pouring forward to greet me.
Circumventing the bed, they sway leftward, then rightward. Naked, they approach me, with oiled skin and eyes gleaming. They carry a fragrance, like apple blossoms at dawn. Every countenance radiates serenity.
Pressing upon me, the sisters remove my clothing with expert precision. As they caress my exposed epidermis, my abdomen begins to tingle.
Gently, the ladies herd me toward their bed. No one speaks; within such surroundings, oral communication seems blasphemous. Woven rugs hang from the walls, depicting beatific individuals in various states of ascension.
Pushed into the bed’s center, I find myself drowning within soft green sheets. Placing a small golden pillow beneath my head, I observe the sisters forming a circle around me, maneuvering until each kneels shoulder to shoulder with her confreres. Braiding together their two unconnected pigtails, they close the loop.
Thrusting and screaming, I desperately attempt to satiate the sisters’ lustful appetites. One orgasm follows another, until at last my muscles give out entirely. No longer can I keep my eyes open; no longer can my body generate fluid. I wonder if I’ll even be able to walk later. Within a sprawl of limbs and faces, I let sleep overcome me. But even in this blissful unconsciousness, the door calls to me.
9
Goodbye
I awaken in darkness, momentarily unsure of my surroundings. Yards of wet-sheeted mattress remind me of the setting: the sisters’ lodge. Aside from my own trembling form, the bed is empty. Assuming that the sisters have retreated into their bathroom, I stand with joints creaking.
Moving from window to window, I open the blinds. Diffused moonlight illuminates depleted candles and my discarded attire, still resting where it had fallen. Dressing quickly, I find myself aching with every movement.
Pulling my shirt over my head, I notice that it is wet. Licking my forefinger, I taste salty blood.
Eyes adjusting to the dimness, I become aware of a blood stream, winding from the foot of the bed to the sisters’ bathroom. Against one clapboard wall, a rusted axe rests, also dripping plasma.
I follow the stream into the bathroom, entering a realm of hyperventilation and continuous sobbing. The sisters huddle against the far wall: fourteen frightened faces, only two of which remain tethered to torsos.
Onyx Neon Shorts Presents: Horror Collection - 2015 Page 13