Screaming to Get Out & Other Wailings of the Damned

by J. F. Gonzalez

  Rick was in Kansas City, Missouri for the World Horror Convention. Thanks to his newly found fame in the small pond of SF/Horror fandom, Rick was now in high demand at such gatherings. So far, he’d only accepted one convention invitation, to be the Guest of Honor at this year’s WHC. The con had started out okay, but it was beginning to wear on him.

  “Yeah?” Rick asked.

  “Sorry to bother you,” one of the guys said. He was tall and lanky, with blonde hair, wearing a bulky jacket. His male companion was short and stout with brown hair. Both appeared to be in their late twenties or early thirties. The woman appeared to be in her mid-twenties maybe, with shoulder-length auburn hair. Attractive.

  Rick’s gaze lingered on her a minute and he could tell she noticed by her smile. His gaze swept back to the tall lanky guy. “What’s up?”

  “I didn’t get to talk with you at the autograph party last night,” the guy said. He held out a hand. “I’m Lance Grey. I’m a journalist.”

  Great, Rick thought. Another journalist. He shook Lance’s hand disinterestedly as Lance introduced his friends, Don Tristano and Tracy Little. He shook hands with Don and Tracy, the first warning signs already going off in his head. “Listen, I can’t talk right now,” Rick said, the rehearsed script flowing immediately to mind. “I’ve had a long day of panels and I’m beat.”

  “Oh, hey, no problem,” Lance said. His good-natured grin suggested he was not a professional journalist, especially of the tabloid variety, which he still wasn’t used to. “I know you’ve been talking to a lot of reporters lately and we don’t want to talk to you about a story. We have something we want to show you.”

  “Well, that’s good,” Rick said. He relaxed a little at the comment that they didn’t want to interview him for a story. Rick was tired of giving interviews. Tired of the limelight. Ever since the attacks on Baltimore and DC two years ago, his life had been a whirlwind of media interviews, book tours, signings, and all the nonsense that went with them. Things had started good; Simon & Schuster had immediately contracted him for a book, part memoir, part tell-all about both the Phillipsport and DC attacks by the Clickers and Dark Ones. The money had been great. What hadn’t been so great was the media fallout. In a way, Rick was still suffering from it.

  He’d almost cancelled out at the last minute on being the Guest of Honor at this convention. The organizers had signed him up shortly after the DC incident when he’d been thrust back into the limelight. Kansas City was perfect. It was in the middle of the country, far enough away from the ocean. He had not anticipated certain aspects of his life to spiral out of control. His girlfriend, Janet, leaving him last winter. His ex-girlfriend and the mother of his daughter, Ashley, spurning his attempt at trying to rekindle their failed relationship. Worse yet were her attempts to keep his daughter from seeing him. She claimed it was to keep Melanie away from any negative influences. Rick had blown a gasket. The economic recession was affecting business at his bookstore, and he’d been forced to close it a year after the DC incident. Thankfully he had his book deal with Simon & Schuster, otherwise, he would be in serious financial trouble.

  “I’ve got to admit,” Rick started, “I’m dead tired. Whatever it is you want to show me...”

  “It won’t take much of your time,” Lance said. “We’re just down the hall from you.”

  “Okay,” Rick agreed. “But then I’ve got to get to my room and take a nap.”

  “No problem, man,” Lance said.

  As they stepped into the elevator, Rick asked them what they wanted to show him. “It’s a surprise,” Tracy said with a grin, a knowing twinkle in her eye.

  “The last time somebody wanted to show me something in their room at a WHC, it was a groupie who wanted to demonstrate her ability to down a bottle of beer without holding it in her hands,” Rick said. His eyes flicked to Tracy’s ample breasts, then to her face. “Please tell me you aren’t going to try a similar stunt.”

  Tracy laughed. “Not at all. And I’ve never tried anything like that. I don’t think my boobs are big enough.”

  “Sure they are, Tracy,” Don quipped.

  As they rode up the elevator to the sixth floor, they made small talk. “How’s the con going for you?” Lance asked.

  “Okay,” Rick said. To be truthful, it sucked. There were only a handful of genuine fans of his work in attendance. The rest of them had come to the convention in the hopes to get his memoir signed and to pump him for information on the Clickers/Dark Ones. Rick didn’t want to talk about that anymore.

  “You had a big line at your table last night,” Tracy said.

  “Bigger line than Clive Barker’s,” Don added.

  “If you ask me, it should’ve been the other way around,” Rick said.

  “Your books are great, man!” Lance exclaimed. “Baron Semedei was my favorite!”

  “Thanks.” Despite the majority of the attendees who sought him out wanting him to sign his memoir, there were some old school hardcore fans in attendance that were genuinely interested in his fiction, which including a few who told him they’d been reading his work since his fiction began appearing in magazines like Night Cry and The Horror Show back in the 1980’s. They’d come bearing tattered and well-read copies of his first four novels, all paperback originals, as well as anthologies and magazines containing his short fiction. It was nice to sign those battered copies.

  The elevator let them off at the sixth floor and Lance led the way down the hall.

  “Are you back to working on novels again?” Tracy asked.

  “I’d like to. Unfortunately, the only thing editors tell me readers want is more books on the Clickers. Publishing really sucks now.”

  “Oh yeah?” Lance asked.

  “Hell yeah! The last novel I sold was shortly before the first Clickers invasion, in the early nineties. Publishing was imploding then, but it was nowhere as bad then as it is now. With a few exceptions, the mid-list paperback industry has disappeared. All editors want to buy these days are tell-all biographies and bullshit self-help books. If you’re a blowhard like Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, they want you to write these worthless political screeds that they can sell to illiterate morons. And don’t get me started on fiction. All they want now are Twilight and James Patterson knock-offs. Plot by the numbers thrillers. People do want to read about the Clickers and Dark Ones, and now that this book has been a hit, my publisher wants more non-fiction material like this from me. No wonder writers of my generation have either moved to writing for film or television or jumped to comics or graphic novels...or got day jobs and are content with publishing with a small press.”

  “That bad, huh?” This from Tracy. They’d stopped at a door halfway down the hall.

  “Absolutely.” As Lance fumbled with the key card, Rick continued on his rant. “Being on the best-seller list is no picnic, either. I used to yearn for it, but now I wish that when Simon & Schuster made me their offer, I’d turned it down. Ever since that goddamn book came out I’ve had nothing but dumb reporters and even dumber paparazzi following me around, trying to provoke me.”

  Lance got the door opened and they entered. Rick followed them in, not really paying attention to the details of the room. Typical con abuse: half-unpacked suitcases lying here and there; bags of books on the desk, the table, the nightstands, the twin beds. A sheet was draped over a large stack of what appeared to be coffee table books on the table. Rick was thirsty for a beer. “You got anything to drink?”

  “Beer’s on ice in the tub,” Lance said.

  Rick stepped into the little bathroom off the entryway. The bathtub was filled with ice and a case of various beers, imported and domestic. Rick selected a bottle of Sam Adams, twisted off the cap, and took a long pull from it.

  “Hey, what’s that shit about you threatening some couple at a bookstore signing you did?” Don asked.

  Rick stepped out of the bathroom. Don was standing near the table, a curious look on his face. Rick shrugged. “You want the tru
th? I was on a twenty-city, fifteen-day book tour and my publicist had kept me up the previous night because he insisted we go to dinner after our signing because he wanted to make favorites with the local Borders Bookstore Manager. Chick was as dumb as a rock. I have no idea how she got her job because she clearly couldn’t tell you what a book was if the latest Dan Simmons novel hit her on the head. I’d had too much to drink, the flight to the next city was murder, and I got zero sleep. Next city I get to, this...” Rick struggled to put the anecdote into the proper words. “...this couple showed up at the signing. They seemed okay at first, didn’t make that much of an impression. But they hung around until everybody else was gone and I engaged them in small talk, just to be friendly. That was my first mistake. The guy was a wanna-be writer and kept asking me the usual questions—How do you get published? How do you get an agent?—that kind of shit. I was polite. They showed up at the next signing in the next city a few hours away and I started to get worried. Then they tagged along when my publicist and I went out to dinner. He actually thought it would be a good idea if we let them sit with us, even though I just wanted to be left alone that night. Then, when I went to my hotel room that night they followed me.”

  “They followed you?” Tracy frowned.

  “Yeah. Said they wanted to talk more, and I politely told them that it was great to meet them, but I was tired and really needed to get some sleep and that’s when it turned ugly. They got mad. The wife was going on like, “how dare you treat my husband that way’, that they’ve supported me ever since my first novel, that I should be grateful I was getting this much attention from their fans. I told them I was grateful for them but that I didn’t want to be their buddies and that they should just go home. The argument got louder and uglier and I told them to go home. I went into my room and slammed the door.” Rick paused. “Next thing I know, they’d called the police, told them I’d threatened them with bodily harm.”

  “What did the police say?” Lance asked. It looked like all three of them were enjoying this story.

  “It was clear to the cops that they were crazy,” Rick said. “My publicist heard the commotion and came down. He showed the officers the dust jacket photo on the book and explained what was going on. The police told the couple they’d be arrested on a stalking charge if they didn’t leave the hotel immediately. They left and started posting a convoluted and totally false version of the story all over the Internet saying I’d threatened to have them eaten by a Clicker.” Rick laughed at this. “Right. Like I have physical access to one of those goddamn things.”

  Lance, Don, and Tracy chuckled and traded glances.

  “Anyway, the stress had really gotten to me.” Rick shrugged. He took a sip of his beer. There was more to his problems than that, of course, but there was no need to go into that now. He did not want to mention his arrest for DUI, or being busted for cocaine possession. That last had been pure stupidity on his part. He’d been in LA, at a party in the Hollywood Hills. His newfound fame had garnered film interest in some of his older novels and one of them, Thirst, was optioned by a well-known producer. He wasn’t even the slightest bit buzzed when he left the party, but he was popped by LAPD as he turned left onto Hollywood Boulevard from the hills. He’d been holding a miniscule amount of cocaine in a tiny zip lock baggie.

  “So what is this shit you want to show me?” Rick asked again. He took another swig of his beer.

  Lance grinned. “Ready to see this?”

  “Yeah. What is it? It isn’t an old issue of The Horror Show or New Blood, is it? I know you guys have wanted a collection of my short fiction—” He stopped. For the first time, Rick had the sense they didn’t bring him here to show him something literary related. “So, what is it?”

  Lance moved over to the table where the sheet was draped over the large stack of coffee table books. “Well, we’re not only big fans of yours, but we’re also amateur herpetoculturists.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We collect reptiles,” Tracy explained.

  A cold chill passed through Rick as he eyed the sheet-draped object. “So you want to show me a turtle or something? A baby python? What?”

  “It’s like this,” Lance began. The sheet had yet to be removed from the rectangular shape on the table, which Rick was now beginning to think was not a stack of coffee-table sized books, but rather a small aquarium. “In addition to book collecting, I’m into collecting rare, venomous reptiles.”

  “Venomous?” Rick asked, turning to Lance. They wanted to show him a rattlesnake? A Gila monster?

  “I have eye-lash vipers, various pit vipers like Gaboon vipers and Desert Horned Vipers, I’ve got various cobras like speckled and spitting, even a King Cobra.”

  “Lance even has a Black Mamba,” Tracy said, grinning. “It’s the largest specimen in private captivity.”

  “Eleven feet,” Lance said. “My King Cobra is pretty big too. Fifteen feet. He can be a handful.”

  “You keep these things in your house?” Rick asked. He was looking at the three of them as if they were totally insane.

  “They’re kept in secured vivariums,” Lance explained. “My King Cobra has a room all of his own in the back of my house. Guys that keep large pythons like retics and Burmese, they usually keep them in a room-sized enclosure.”

  “The trouble is, people who keep King Cobras forget that they’re ambush hunters like large pythons,” Tracy said. “So they’ll keep them in smaller enclosures. Their keepers get careless, will open their cage one day, and if the snake is in a pissy mood and they aren’t paying attention—wham! They get nailed.”

  “Exactly,” Lance said, nodding. “When they have their own room you have the space to work with them, to maneuver them where you want them to go.”

  “I’d want to maneuver them out of my house,” Rick said. He was eyeing the aquarium again. He wasn’t afraid of snakes, but had never seen their allure as pets. Back in his old life, a friend of his had kept a boa constrictor and a Burmese python as pets. They were nice animals, but they weren’t Rick’s cup of tea when it came to pets. He preferred dogs and cats.

  Lance continued. “Most guys that are into what is known in herpetoculture as ‘hot herps’—venomous reptiles—will have the standards; rattlesnakes, copperheads, water moccasins, maybe some of the pit vipers and cobras: green mambas, eyelash vipers, Gaboon Vipers, spitting cobras. A relative few will have species like the various kraits or tiger snakes or a King Cobra.”

  “But you do?”

  “Absolutely. I’ve got a Jarararcusso—”

  “A what?”

  “Jarararcusso,” Lance said, pronouncing the word slowly. “It’s number ten on the most venomous snakes in the world list.”

  “No shit?” Rick eyed the sheet-draped object on the desk again. Why did he have to have such insane fans?

  “I’ve got a banded krait, a Fer-de-Lance, a yellow-jawed Tommygoff—”

  “That’s a dumb name for a snake,” Rick said. He took a casual sip of his beer.

  “Yeah, but they have an irritable disposition and they strike with little provocation. Their venom is hemotoxic, extremely painful and hemorrhagic, which means it causes profuse internal bleeding. It also causes massive tissue destruction. If you get a bite on an extremity like a leg or arm and you live, you’ll most likely lose whatever body part that was bitten.”

  “Lovely.” Rick took a casual step back from the table.

  Tracy and Don noticed his sense of alarm. “Don’t worry!” Tracy said. “We don’t have one here!”

  Lance chuckled. “It’s cool man, we don’t have any snakes here. Honest. I’m just giving you a little background info.”

  “Lance even has a banded krait, a Philippine cobra and a North-West Australian Taipan,” Don said.

  Rick frowned. “Aren’t those the kind of snakes that Steve Irwin guy, the Crocodile Hunter, was always picking up by the tail? I always expected him to get nailed by one.”

  Lance nodded. “Yeah
. The North-West Australian Taipan is the world’s number one toxic land snake of all. You get bit by one of those, you can die within minutes. Fortunately, they’re generally very docile. Mine’s a sweetie.”

  Rick shook his head, took another sip of beer. “I once had a pit bull. She was a sweetie too. Very docile, very loving. My neighbors were afraid of her, though.”

  “Exactly! If you treat animals right, they’ll respect you.”

  Tracy spoke up. “In addition to the Taipan, Lance owns what may be the most venomous snake species in the world.”

  “That’s right,” Lance said. He turned to Rick. “Not many guys that are into venomous species will even try handling a Taipan. But I can’t think of anybody that has a Hydrophis belcheri.”

  “A who?”

  “A Faint-banded Sea snake,” Lance said.

  “It’s the most toxic snake in the world,” Don said. “Even more toxic than the Taipan.”

  “They live in the Indian Ocean,” Lance said. “They’ve been found near the Philippines, New Guinea, Australia, the Solomon Islands. I keep one in a two-hundred gallon salt-water tank with feeder fish. They’re very easy to handle and docile. Usually fishermen get bitten by them when they get caught in their nets.”

  “And you have one?”

  “Absolutely!” Lance smiled. “But that’s not the most venomous thing I have in my collection. Check this out.” Lance stepped toward the table and removed the sheet that covered the shape that Rick first mistook as a pile of coffee table sized books.

  It was a small aquarium. A fifty gallon one, judging by Rick’s dimensions. His ex-girlfriend, Janet, kept a fifty-gallon aquarium for a pet ball python she’d had for the past fifteen years. Rick actually liked the ball python. It was very mellow.

  “So what do you think?” Lance asked. He was grinning.

  Rick looked into the aquarium. He was aware that Lance, Tracy, and Don were grinning, were waiting for some kind of reaction from him, but Rick didn’t know what it was. He had no idea what he was supposed to be looking at. The aquarium they’d uncovered was relatively unremarkable; the bottom was half water and half gravel, the water about six inches deep on one side. The gravel portion had a little fake palm tree and a rock enclosure with a hole in it—a hidey spot for whatever critter was supposed to be housed inside. Rick bent over and leaned closer to the aquarium to see what was inside. “You brought me up here to look at a frog or something?” He’d heard some frogs were highly venomous; they had toxic skin.