The Best of Horror Library: Volumes 1-5

by Bentley Little

  Corey’s brows gathered in the center of his smooth forehead.

  “Wikipedia defines spontaneous human combustion as ‘the burning of a living human body without an apparent external source of ignition.’ That frakked up computer, those burns on your shirtsleeve,” she let her voice fade.

  “Yours, too?”

  She smiled. “Wikipedia also says its victims are mostly lonely people,” she looked down at the bar, swirled a finger atop its pitted surface. “Are you? Lonely?”

  Corey considered that for a moment. He had friends, a life. Since he’d split from her, he’d been out on the occasional date. But he also thought of the evenings at home on the couch, the cold meals, the long nights alone in his rumpled bed.

  From all of these, it was her that was missing.

  “So what is this place?” Corey swallowed, flexed his still tingling arm, looked around.

  Amy tilted her head. “A place.”

  “Does it have a name?”

  “Not really. It’s just a place we meet. We meet at a lot of different places.” She shrugged, lifting the glass and tilting a melted chunk of ice into her mouth.

  “Who’s we?”

  Watching him carefully, certain that he was paying full attention, she pushed the chunk of ice to the front of her mouth with her tongue, caught it between her teeth. Another tongue, this one of fire, darted from her mouth, melted the ice cube almost instantly. A puff of steam escaped between her lips, and she smiled, giggled again.

  “People who want to feel things…feel life. You know…one of us.”

  “One of us? What are you? Magicians? Carnies?”

  Amy laughed hard at that, taking in the dregs of her drink, and setting the glass onto the bar. “Are you a magician? A carnie?”

  Corey shook his head.

  “Then you’re one of us,” she said. “We’re, like, made for each other.” She looked up suddenly, her violet eyes dark as wounds in the dim light of the bar. “But I’m tired of the tears, Corey. So, how far?”

  “How far what?”

  “How far are you willing to go…this time? How much of yourself are you willing to give?” Her eyes focused on him. “How much are you willing to feel? ”

  Corey blinked, not sure of what she meant…then sure of what she meant.

  “As much as I need to, I guess.”

  She considered this for a minute, weighed it.

  “Okay, buy me a drink and I’ll show you around.”

  * * *

  Amy led him, her arm entwined in his, and she felt soft and warm. The new skin of his arm tingled as she rubbed against it, maddeningly painful and sensual at once. And she seemed to know, because she held her body close as they negotiated the crowd.

  She seemed to have a destination in mind as she pushed through the crowd, leading him. As they progressed, Corey took in his surroundings.

  Here, a man stood on a small platform, shirtless, bearded. A blazing ring encircled his head, forming a crown that burned white and gold. From his eyes, flames guttered. His hands were outstretched, palms facing the crowd, more flames, blue and violet, dancing atop his fingertips. He was talking, reciting poetry, his voice sonorous, enchanting over the rush of the conflagration. His gaunt appearance and blank eyes were startling, like a prophet of the apocalypse.

  There, a woman, also topless, hair swirling as if caught in an underwater current. A necklace of fire crawled across her chest, her shoulders, a thin string of blue flame beaded with balls of orange the size of marbles. The whole thing moved, orbited her body, rolling across her flesh. Her face was raised, rapturous eyes cast to the dark ceiling. Corey could see their whites.

  Barely visible through the crowd, a man and woman stood nude on a slightly raised dais, entwined, the entire circular platform rotating slowly, affording the crowd a changing view of the couple.

  Amy’s tug on him lessened, and he realized that she wasn’t watching the couple, she was watching him…his reaction.

  The couple was completely enshrouded, burning fiercely. Flames rose from their heads, squirted between their lips, followed the line of leg, the curve of hip. Rose-colored, amber, orange, jet-blue tinged with jade green, the blaze moved about them, sensuously, avidly, sinuous and alive.

  Corey could feel the heat from the performance, could hear the flames crackle, the whoosh of the air that fed them like an open, uncontained furnace.

  He turned to Amy, leaned into her, the sounds, the permeating smell of ash, the greasy smell of roasting flesh overwhelming his senses. She reached to touch his face.

  He sensed, rather than saw, the corona of flames that surrounded her hand, felt its heat as it neared his face.

  As if she had drawn it forth, a tuft of fire erupted from his cheek, guttered there in anticipation of her fiery hand.

  When it came, when her enflamed hand softly caressed his cheek, the entire side of his face burst into luminous blue-green, covering it like a caul.

  He watched her through these flames, watched her smile, watched her close her eyes and move in to kiss him.

  Only then did he feel the heat…really feel it.

  He pulled away from Amy, thrust her roughly from him.

  Corey brushed at the flames. The skin of his cheek stung, throbbed.

  Amy’s eyes searched his; something deep, pleading swam in them. He allowed her to press against him, allowed her to find his lips again. They were chapped, hot. He felt pressure building inside his skin, but willed it to stay down, stay inside.

  They kissed, and this time he kept his eyes open.

  They kissed and he saw the couple on the stage, now extinguished, saw them naked of their fire, saw the burns and scars and weals that covered their bodies, the raw, red skin, the charred flesh of thigh, of palm, of chest.

  They kissed again, and Corey closed his eyes.

  * * *

  When he awoke, he stared at the ceiling for a minute, trying to figure out where he was.

  Amy’s place. He recognized the crack in the ceiling, the muted street sounds through the closed window of her apartment.

  He felt it as he moved, the sheets sliding over his body…that tingling, pain/pleasure sensation that raced electrically across him, across his new skin…

  …new skin burned to life from the old.

  He quietly rose from the bed and padded into the bathroom. The door closed with a gentle click, the light came on with another.

  What greeted him in the mirror caused him to gasp, clench the edge of the sink.

  The face that stared back was tight and shiny, red, scalded. His eyebrows were gone, his hairline scorched. His lashes, too, were gone, melted. His eyelids were red, puffy, filled with fluid.

  His chest, his arms were burned, deep enough to make his skin feel stiff, drawn. The hairs on his chest, under his arms were gone as well, as neatly as if he’d shaved them. Burns trailed further down to his stomach, his groin, his thighs…

  Corey gasped, not in shock, but in feeling…all of this new skin, all of this exposed skin brought with it overwhelming sensation. Over the pain, there was an almost euphoric sense of feeling, as if for the first time.

  He felt the edge of the countertop press his legs, the shivery coolness of the porcelain sink, the stir of the air conditioner…all of them, all at once, and it was almost too much.

  Trembling, hands shaking, he fumbled open the medicine cabinet, raked across its contents, sending them spilling into the sink, clattering onto the tile floor. He found a tube of burn ointment, twitched its cap open, squirted a thick dollop of it into his palms.

  She pressed into him from behind, and the contact, the silken warmth of her body conforming to his, made his eyes roll back in his head, his hands clench on the sink and the tube of ointment.

  It was as if someone had pressed a bare electric wire to his spine.

  “What are you doing?”

  He thought of the woman, the one with the flaming necklace, how she had raised her head to the ceiling, her eyes white w
ith rapture as the fire burned her skin, burrowed a groove in her flesh.

  “The burns…got to put something on them,” he gasped, pushing her away. Cool air flooded the space between them, making every remaining hair on his body stand on end.

  “Why?”

  Corey took a deep breath.

  Was she kidding?

  He turned to face her, was not surprised to see that she, too, was covered in red, scalded skin. Some of her hair was singed, her eyebrows. There were raised, red burns across her breasts, the flat of her stomach.

  “We burned each other. Here, let me…”

  Amy looked at him sadly, slapped his hand away, spattering the blob of ointment against the wall.

  “No!” she said. “That’s what we do…who we are. I’m not going to cover all the new skin we’ve burned off. It lets me feel so much more. It lets me feel you.”

  She stepped closer, put her palm against his red chest.

  “Don’t you feel it? Don’t you feel me?”

  He could feel her, the coolness of her palm, the moisture. The enlivened nerves of his new skin seemed to triple, quadruple the normal feeling of it, sent it slamming into his brain in a rush, a sensation that threatened to incapacitate him.

  Corey took her hand gently, pulled it from him, held it. He saw the pads of her fingertips, the wrinkled moist palm, all red, all burnt. He thought again of the couple they’d seen at the warehouse, entwined, enrobed in sensuous, living fire. But then he remembered how they looked after—the seared flesh, twisting scars, melted skin.

  “Look at us,” he croaked, through blistered and cracked lips, through lungs that felt sere. “We’ll burn each other to death.”

  “No,” she said, beginning to cry, trying to get close to him, to touch his skin with hers. “No, don’t think of it like that. Think of it like we’re burning away the loneliness, burning away the empty evenings, the lonely nights. We’re not burning to death…we’re burning to life. A new life together.”

  Corey looked at her, and despite his love for her, all he could see were the burns, the angry flesh, the swelling. All he could think of was the pain, the fluids rushing in beneath the appalled flesh, flushing away dead cells, trying to heal that which had been hurt.

  “No,” he said. “It’s too much…I can’t do this…”

  She cried harder, her breath hitching, tears trailing down her cheeks, across her naked breasts. “You said you would…give as much as you needed to…this time.”

  Corey wanted to reach out, to hold her, to tell her that he loved her. But he saw his own hands, shriveled, burnt, and drew them back.

  “Not this way.”

  She looked away. “I should have known…this is just like last time.”

  “Jesus Christ! You’re asking too much of me. Too much!”

  She stepped away, let him pass.

  They did not touch.

  Corey sat on the edge of her bed, put on his clothes slowly. As he drew them over his skin, each movement was a symphony of sensation. His breathing quickened, his pulse became erratic, thready.

  When he was dressed, he turned to her, standing still, silent in the bathroom doorway, limned by its colorless light.

  She said nothing, and her face was in shadow, but Corey heard her sobs.

  “I can’t do this anymore. I won’t cry for you anymore.” She sniffled. “This is it.”

  Within the darkness of her face, a small flame appeared, centered on her right eye.

  It flared there, intensely bright, as violet as her eye.

  Just as quickly, it went out.

  He heard her gasp.

  He heard a small pop!

  He heard something drip to the tile floor…plipplipplip.

  He was horribly sure that it wasn’t her tears falling. But he could think of nothing to say, to do.

  So he turned and left, silently, carried away on the scent of violets, of burning flesh…

  * * *

  Months passed, Amy disappeared, quit her job, left her apartment. No new employer noted, no forwarding address left. And for a while, that was fine with Corey.

  …for a while.

  He went back to long days at work, longer nights at home, eating alone, sleeping alone.

  Numb.

  Old skin had grown over the new, insulated him again from feeling anything.

  Numb.

  Until he thought about The Immolation Scene. That’s what it was called on the jewel box for the movie soundtrack CD. The name fit, so Corey took it, used it for her group.

  The Immolation Scene.

  He watched the movie on his DVD player over and over, because that scene came the closest to showing how it actually felt.

  Or maybe how he wanted it to feel…

  In the movie, the antagonist (or was he the protagonist here?) sprawled atop the dark beach—injured, defeated, a river of magma flowing past him like a hot line of hate; a sky of lurid, blackened clouds boiling overhead. Fire all around him, in the air, the ground, the river…

  When his body erupted into flames, though, those flames came from without, Corey thought, not from within, like his own fire.

  Corey always believed that his fire was something else, something different…a wick tapping into some deeper fuel, a fuel that burned only the grace from him. He could relax, not worry about it consuming him; not worry about losing himself in it.

  But that man there on the screen? It didn’t just consume him, it changed him, altered his soul as he lay on that black sand beach. You knew because the movies were made out of order; you already knew, going in, what the fire did to him, what it made of him.

  He had thought all of this then, but now…well, now he knew better…since he met her…lost her…again.

  Now he paid more attention to the fact that the character in the movie had also let the flames make of him what they would.

  And for what?

  For hate.

  She had asked him to do the same, but for love. And he had resisted that, misinterpreted it.

  Just as that character had.

  You’re not willing to let yourself feel anything.

  If someone’s willing to do it for hate, he told himself, you should be willing to do it for love.

  Corey thought about that as he watched a tiny bloom sputter atop the pores of his left arm, let it roll down to his hands, crawl up his fingers. The fire was white hot, radiated heat in great pulses that he could feel on his cheeks.

  He had never let the fire get far enough for that, though…

  …not even for her.

  Numb.

  No more…

  He let the fire go, to make what it would of him.

  To make him feel.

  And he did…the heat grew until it sent tendrils of pain down his hand, into his arm. He smelled the ash, the charring skin, the cooking meat.

  First one, then another of his fingers fell to the floor, sloughing embers like cigar stubs.

  Corey fell to the floor, too, on his knees, weeping, feeling…feeling it all…

  He had to find her.

  He had to tell her that he felt, show her how he felt.

  * * *

  Glass…shattered glass.

  Corey stoops to pick up a piece that sparkles in the swirling lights, the twitching firelight. It has melted its way into the soft asphalt at his feet, like a small meteor hurtled to earth, and he must pry it from the gummy material.

  How many more of these warehouse fires will I have to visit before I find her?

  He needs to find her; he knows that now.

  He needs to tell her, he understands that now.

  It isn’t sharp, jagged like shattered glass should be. Its edges are blunted, blackened. It is as smooth as a pebble worn by water.

  The size of a quarter, it is egg-shaped, perhaps a broken piece of something larger, probably a window in the building that is completely engulfed. Corey turns it in his hands, his hands smudged by the black ash that slicks its surface, and thinks t
hat it looks familiar.

  He is close…so close now…

  As he rubs the ash aside, Corey sees a flash of color within the glass. Perhaps the window bore a painted sign, the name of a lawyer or the logo of some pharmaceutical firm.

  But it’s not that…it’s not a piece of a window or a cocktail glass. He realizes this as he holds it in the ash-smudged palm of his ruined hand. It pulses with deep purple light, the color of violets…

  Amy’s eye.

  His heart lurches, his hand bursts into white-hot flame. He feels it scorch his palm, melt the glass fragment to slag, which drips to the pavement between his remaining fingers, plipplipplip, like the original that this glass one had replaced months ago.

  Another tear, shed for him.

  She wants him to find her.

  He is close…so close now…

  He feels it.

  He feels everything.

  Open Mind Night at The Ritz

  by Shane McKenzie

  The Ritz was the best place to see flesh-benders in the whole city. And Sunday was the day to go, because it was Open Mind Night. Caleb had been showing up for months, planning to show off his Talent, but could never persuade himself to actually get on stage. Especially when he’d have to follow Radical Raymond. Nobody could follow that.

  Caleb’s hands were slippery and began to shake. He shoved one hand into his pocket and rolled the cube of flesh between his thumb and forefinger. It was a piece of his dead aunt’s corpse. The funeral had been a few weeks back, and Caleb had cut a perfect square from her neck; nobody noticed. He’d reached into the coffin, making like he was stricken with grief, then sliced it away, a portion under the collar of her dress, covered it back up before anyone was the wiser. He kept it in his freezer in a plastic baggie to keep it fresh, but every week, he’d fish it out and take it to the Ritz with him, the meat cube thawing out in his pocket. The smell got slightly more potent every time. But he brought it each Sunday, hoping to take it on stage and bend it for the crowd. But he couldn’t do it. And every time, as he watched the magnificent display before him by a man that was nothing short of his idol, he knew he’d have to dig deeper into himself than he’d ever had before to find the courage.