by Todd Russell
Flash O'Lantern
by
Todd Russell
Copyright 2011 by Todd Russell
License Notes
All rights reserved. Scream if you hate reading these notices. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, witches, living or dead or undead, business establishments, cemeteries, pumpkin patches, events or locales is coincidental.
About Flash O'Lantern
Flash O'Lantern contains 13 award-winning flash fiction short stories of 1,000 words or less and discussion of 13 noteworthy events that happened in October.
Other books by Todd Russell
Mental Shrillness - collection of short stories
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004U7FI6A/
Fresh Flesh - debut psychological thriller, horror novel
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005QHTIIC/
* * * * *
For Joel David
Thank you for all the help.
I love you, son.
* * * * *
Contents
Foreward: Why I love to flash
October 1, 1974: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Story 1: "Brush"
October 2, 1959: The Twilight Zone
Story 2: "Graveyard Crazies"
October 7, 1849: Edgar Allan Poe
Story 3: "A Non-Boring Costume"
October 11, 1991: Massacre at Luby's Cafe in Killeen, Texas
Story 4: "Website Scares"
October 15, 1981: The Evil Dead
Story 5: "The Spider Cometh"
October 16, 1946: Convicted Nazi leaders of main Nuremberg trial
Story 6: "Yep, Error"
October 17, 1931: Gangster Al Capone
Story 7: "Payday Assistance"
October 18, 1931: Thomas Edison
Story 8: "Almost Human"
October 20, 1882: Bela Lugosi
Story 9: "Count Wadsworth"
October 25, 1993: Vincent Price
Story 10: "Bobbing"
October 29, 2004: Saw
Story 11: "Can't Bear To Finish The Job"
October 30, 1938: The War of the Worlds radio broadcast
Story 12: "The Remdee Gate"
October 31: Halloween!
Story 13: "Rachel's Number"
Flash O'Lantern Author's Notes
Trick-or-Treat Story 14: "They Call It Home"
"The Illusion" excerpt from Mental Shrillness
Fresh Flesh novel excerpt
About The Author
Foreward
Why I Love To Flash
No, I don't love that flashing, but I do enjoy reading and writing flash fiction.
They were called short shorts when I first started writing them back in the late 1970s. It doesn't seem like it's been 30+ years, but the calendar reaper is a lousy liar. Calendars should be bordered with a black robe and have a scythe at the side jutting further out as the years pass, because they are a constant, and sometimes painful, reminder of how much time is here today and gone tomorrow. The good news is our brains keep some illuminating snapshots in our lives; brief pictures that linger.
Good flash fiction can linger too.
What follows are thirteen stories of 1,000 and under words in length. For those unfamiliar (and I'm guessing most reading this are familiar, so please forgive the history lesson) this type of story is called flash fiction and the stories were created intentionally short.
All the stories herein were written and entered into online writing contests during 2011 that had maximum word count restrictions. The stories were also the result of writing prompts offered by third party independent readers and judges.
Thirteen historical events that happened during the month of October are included too. Anybody who follows me on Twitter (@Todd_Russell) will learn that each day I've been tweeting a historical event, often with a horror slant. Therefore, including an expansion of these tweets in this collection seemed like fun.
Important October events in horror history are covered like the theater release dates of Halloween (1978), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (originally titled as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in 1974), The Evil Dead and, the newest torturefest phenomenon, Saw. Also, the day Vincent Price and Edgar Allan Poe died and the day Bela Lugosi (Dracula!) was born. All of these historical entries are being flashed too, meaning they are 1,000 words and under. Even the foreward that you're reading this moment and the afterword that bookends this collection have been flashed.
Everything is flashing in this collection.
So here's your flash quiz: are flash fiction tales intended to be traditional length short stories?
(Answer: no, they're intended to leave some of the story to your imagination.)
Are you excited as I am to get started? To dance on the razor's edge of these tales and see how it makes you feel? What sort of thoughts, dreams and ideas will these stories prompt? What will linger beyond the end of each tale?
I look at flash fiction (1,000 words and under) as a kiss, a short story (1,001-7,499 words) as a date, a novelette (7,500-17,500 words) as a few dates, a novella (17,500-40,000 words) as a short relationship and a novel (40,000+ words) as one or more relationships. A love comparison, if you will.
Recently, a friend of mine was chatting with me about one of the stories in my first story collection, Mental Shrillness. There are nine flash fiction stories and one longer short story (7,200+ words) called "The Illusion" in that collection (an excerpt at the end of Flash O'Lantern is included). My friend wanted to make sure she understood what the ending of one story was saying in a greater sense about the human condition. It was a heavy topic tackled in a small few hundred words and her explanation nailed it. I complimented and thanked her for reading my story.
That's what flash fiction symbolizes in a microcosm to me. It's the writer releasing some semblance of universal control to you, the reader. Flash fiction is almost poetry-like in that the stories can be read very fast, but the weight of the words is deceptive. It's the reader's analysis of the words, the rhythm and underlying message that lingers. Why was this word used over that word? Why was this sentence so important in the overall story? Everything matters in a story that can only be a few hundred words long.
I think this is what keeps me coming back to flash fiction: that I enjoy stories that keep me thinking. I want to imagine what happens before and after a good story with intriguing people. It's a type of brain food that without I'd mentally starve.
Brains, brains! I'm hungry. While the calendar reaper isn't looking, let's eat, shall we?
Horrifically Yours,
Todd Russell
October 22, 2011
October 1, 1974
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre first hits theaters.
Directed and produced by Tobe Hooper comes this nightmarish tale of grave robbing cannibals and the chainsaw-wielding Leatherface. Less than $300,000 USD was spent making this low budget, harrowing horror film that draws some inspiration from the real life horror of Wisconsin cannibal Ed Gein. The movie Psycho written by Robert Bloch and made into the famous movie by Alfred Hitchcock was also inspired by Ed Gein's bizarre story. In the Texas Chainsaw Massacre the family used human bones for furniture and Leatherface wore a mask made out of skin. Gein made lampshades out of his victim's skin.
The film was made in a 1900s farmhouse near Round Rock, Texas.
According to texaschainsawmassacre.net, Tobe Hooper was at a crowded shopping mall in Austin and saw a chainsaw in the hardware department. He thought this might be a "quick way of getting out of this crowd."
Leatherface was played by a
ctor Gunnar Hansen who made it look easy holding the heavy Poulan 306a chainsaw. The Poulan was made from 1972 to 1980.
There is a Texas Chainsaw Massacre fan club at tcmfanclub.com
Some consider this to be the scariest film ever made. Was it the chainsaw, the use of dead skin and bones or both?
Let's talk dead skin.
According to the Boston Globe in a September 1, 2008 article 30,000-40,000 skin cells fall off you per minute. That's an average of 8.8 pounds of dead skin cells falling off your body every year. If you live 80 years, that's 704 pounds of dead skin you'll shed.
Body horror can be scary. Just ask Wayne . . .
Brush
The impulse to steal the candy from the little trick-or-treating ghost was not an act of cruelty, Wayne was hungry. The ghost's father chased Wayne down Fir Street shouting obscenities at him. Despite being penniless and homeless, Wayne still had high school running legs and easily outran the ghost's father. Some candy spilled out of the overflowing pumpkin bucket, but Wayne didn't stop.
They can get more, Wayne rationalized. He couldn't. He tried trick-or-treating last year. Nobody bought his phony stories of doing it for his kids and they slammed doors in his face. One man shouted at him, "Get a job!"
Wayne had tried to get work, but that proved more elusive than food. Nobody would hire a bum, which is what he looked like wearing the same garbage-stinking clothes every day.
He reached his makeshift home in the alley between Sixth and Main, next to a green dumpster. Behind the garbage can was a small crawlspace that led to the unrented, sometimes heated warehouse inside. Hey, it was warmer than sleeping outside. His black garbage bag of aluminum cans and other meager possessions were stashed inside the warehouse.
He moved through the crawlspace, pumpkin with candy in hand and poked his head through the hole in the warehouse floor. A single rat raced across the floor in the distance.
"Hey H.P.," he said. He'd given other rats in the warehouse names: Stephen, Edgar—all first names of his favorite horror authors. He loved going to the library and checking out horror books to read.
He went into the warehouse bathroom. The owner of the warehouse had kept the water and electricity running which gave Wayne the luxury of being able to brush his teeth. He looked in the cracked mirror with the naked hanging light bulb. Whatever money he could cobble together he bought a new toothbrush and toothpaste.
My teeth are all that's left of me.
He smiled in the window and saw the new black spot on his front tooth.
"No," he started brushing to remove the spot on his tooth. He didn't have any decay. Good teeth were his last piece of dignity. He applied more toothpaste and brushed harder. His gums began to bleed.
He looked closer in the mirror and between the long cracks he saw he'd brushed the black spot gone. Wayne smiled and breathed relief. A rolling growl from his stomach filled the bathroom: grrrrrrrr.
"Ok, I'm on it." He patted his stomach.
He went back to the spot where the pumpkin bucket sat and dug through the candy. He separated the chocolate from the candy. Skittles, SweetTarts, Bottle Caps, Reeses—oh man, he loved those—Babe Ruth, Butterfingers, a green apple.
He stopped at the apple and chuckled. Did they think he was stupid enough to bite into an apple? Remember, Wayne Drayton loved reading horror. He knew all about the razor blades in the apple trick. He dug his pocket knife out and sliced the green apple into pieces.
There they were: several razor blades with menacing sharp edges and pieces of apple clinging to the edges. Wayne howled with laughter and started ripping open bags and feasting on the candy and chocolate. He got up a few times to drink water from the bathroom sink.
Each time he made it to the sink he looked in the mirror at his teeth. Mashed chocolate on his teeth to brush away. He tried wiping away the chocolate with water and his hand but the chocolate stayed. On his third trip to the bathroom to get water he grabbed his brush, squirted toothpaste on it and started brushing.
He rinsed and checked the mirror. The chocolate was gone but now he had two tiny black spots on his front teeth.
"Come on." He brushed harder, breaking the gums around his teeth again and copper taste filling his mouth.
Rinse, check. The two black spots had spread. He had three of them now. The blackness in his mouth was spreading, eating his teeth.
"No . . . way," Wayne said, running back to the candy spot and eyeing the empty wrappers evidence. This can't be happening. My teeth.
He reached into his bag and pulled out some dental floss. He returned to the mirror and started running the floss over his teeth, sawing through his gums and having blood squirt out of his mouth.
Rinse, check. Four black spots on his top teeth and a thin string of black inching across his bottom teeth. He spat a mouth full of blood in the sink and raised his toothbrush.
"You!" His toothbrush wasn't strong enough to brush away the blackness. He needed something stronger. Walking back into the room, still spitting blood, he saw the apple pieces and gleam of the razor blades. He looked down at the dental floss and knew what had to be done.
He wrapped the razor blades around the toothbrush with the dental floss with the razor edge facing the same direction as the bristles. Wayne returned to the mirror, rinsed and checked. The blackness kept growing and spreading.
He started brushing with the razor blade toothbrush, scraping the metal across his teeth. Scraping away the blackness from the enamel and slicing through his gums like raw meat. Blood rushed out the corners of his mouth and he wiped it away with his dirty flannel shirt.
Rinse, check. The white was returning. He was beating the blackness!
Fifteen minutes later, his mouth a bloody, throbbing mess, he returned to the floor by the candy. A sliver of light struck the side of the pumpkin candy bucket.
"Nrrooo." With part of his tongue gone, he could no longer say 'no' clearly. Wayne had seen it in the mirror. He saw what his mouth was becoming.
He ran back into the bathroom and used the razor brush harder.
In the other room the pumpkin bucket with his orange-red face grinned with a mouth full of crooked, black teeth.
October 2, 1959
Rod Serling's original Twilight Zone first debuts on TV
The pilot episode of The Twilight Zone was called "Where is Everybody?" and tells a thirty minute story in black and white of a man who comes upon a town where there are no people. There are signs of people all over the town but the man can't find anybody.
Each week Rod Serling, the creator, host and primary writer of the series, would return with another thirty minutes of outstanding fantasy, science fiction and horror. The lighting, shadows and creepy music combine to make this one of the eeriest shows ever created.
The Twilight Zone was also popular for having twist endings. The show would often take you in one direction and then jerk you violently another at the end.
Serling sold the rights to The Twilight Zone to CBS. His wife said he did this because he didn't believe it would recoup the costs.
The Twilight Zone real twist ending was that Serling was wrong a thousand times over.
The original series ran for five seasons from 1959-1964 and would spawn two color version series: one that ran from 1985-1989 and another from 2002-2003.
There was also a Twilight Zone movie in 1983 produced by Steven Spielberg. During the filming of the Twilight Zone movie a helicopter accident decapitated actor Vic Morrow and killed two child actors. The accident led to a decade of legal action against the filmmakers and a change in regulations involving children working on special effects-heavy scenes.
Serling would host another anthology television show called Night Gallery that enjoyed mild success. Serling was frustrated with this show and that he had much less creative control than what he had with The Twilight Zone. Some of Serling's scripts were rejected. This was a darker show than The Twilight Zone and began with Serling walking around a museum and unveiling pain
tings. Night Gallery was a more monster-oriented show than The Twilight Zone which Serling knocked as being "Mannix in a cemetery" but like some other widely-successful creative people, Serling was more critical of his work than was deserved.
Rod Serling died on June 28, 1975. His work continues to be loved and appreciated by many.
Somewhere there's a painting in a room panning from a star-filled black sky down to a well-lit grocery store during graveyard shift on Halloween . . .
Graveyard Crazies
Working the graveyard shift on Halloween, Parker encountered drunken monsters, witches and others in costumes swerving and swaying around the store. He almost hit Frankenstein with a pallet jack on aisle seven. On aisle nine Elvira—er, a woman dressed like her—tried to stuff a package of frozen chicken in her chest.
"Umm, ma'am, you can't do that."
"Waaahhhat?" she said, pulling the chicken out and one of her naked non-chicken breasts with it. Parker turned and politely told her about the wardrobe malfunction.
Around two o'clock things got even stranger.
Two guys, one dressed as toilet the other as a castle tower, tried to make a late night beer run—without paying. The lone security guard, Frank, easily apprehended them before they made it to the parking lot. One of them kept trying to bum quarters so he could play the claw amusement game.
While waxing the floors around three o'clock, Sherlock Holmes kept following him around and making notes. He sucked on a prop corn pipe with a blank stare. At one point Parker swore he heard the man say something about "Watson" when he was the only one in the store.
When Parker punched out, the security guard Frank could only shake his head. "Another wild year."
The security guard had a bright cross that caught an angle of light and hit Parker's eyes, and a long neck with bulging veins.
"Yeah, a bunch of crazies," Parker replied.
Parker drove home, reaching just before dawn rose. He went into the fridge and removed a glass of red, juicy goodness. It came from one of the checkers who had failed to make it home one night last week. Parker had his eye on Frank's lovely veins next.