*
The following day Georgina dressed in her finest underwear and shaved her pussy and went to the supermarket. People walked around buying wheat products that would make them sick over time, fill their bellies for maybe an hour, and cost 356%, on average, more than the cost of the product and packaging. People spent time looking for products the supermarket didn't stock. People bought DVDs and Blue-Rays and mobile phones and smart phones and alcohol and cigarettes and odd-looking fruit in its uniform perfection. They bought square food in square tins that would stack nicely in small cupboards. People rarely spoke to one another. Others, like Georgina, pushed and pulled husbands or wives or boyfriends or girlfriends or fathers or mothers or sons or daughters this way and that.
I want, people said and thought. The network recorded the purchases, the facial expressions.
When people went home they bought things from the network. QVC and YouTube and Facebook and Amazon and Twitter logged and colluded with the human mind and the over mind. The vast network that ran prison world earth, and Damien laid asleep while Georgina shopped late with her shaved pussy and dreamed of rubble.
Georgina, later that evening, stopped in a lay-by where Damien's friend often went to watch couples having sex and happened to offer herself to him beneath the watchful blue eye within a CCTV dome. The picture it took the network sent to Damien's smart phone to be viewed over his breakfast of wheat-based cereal which cost 3.56, but shortly, because he woke at six in the morning and started work at seven in the morning.
He spent the day thinking about his wife in a dark car park on a car bonnet with her skirt hitched high, but he was also thinking that the elevation of the photograph was quite high, and thinking about the big blue eye.
Mostly, though, he was thinking how he was going to rid himself of twenty-two flagstones that he'd unloaded from his Volvo's boot on Monday night.
*
Unrelentingly bleak, the conversation between Damien and his friend the following day during work. Damien's friends were, by and large, also colleagues.
The office stretched for three miles, built on a large industrial estate. Nearly five thousand people sat before PC monitors, watching the read-out of artificial conversations played through speakers while robot sales algorithms interrupted old people's dinner times with pitches for cheap insulation to save on heating bills that increased exponentially each year.
'I'm sorry I shagged your wife, buddy,' said Damien's friend. 'I swear I didn't know it was her. I swear I didn't. Listen...look, please...talk to her...it wasn't like I knew it was her, alright?'
No one saw Damien follow his friend to the section's staff kitchen (kettle and microwave) three hours and fifty six minutes later, but for the big blue eye. It followed as far as the hallway door, and then stopped.
But the network watched until cessation of transmission at four o'clock in the afternoon. Camera one was damaged in the first blow. Camera two managed to transmit fractured images during the decommission of the observation unit designated David Roy Errol Swain until final report was filed.
Upon Damien's friend's death/murder, Damien looked into his ex-friend's blue eyes and watched as a light seemed to go out. Like a power button on an electronic device.
For a short time, Damien wondered at his sanity.
He left work at five in the afternoon that day, headed home, and decommissioned his wife, severing her from the network with a serrated electronic carving knife. As he destroyed his wife with the tools of the network itself, he noted her shaved pussy. Later than evening he returned to her cold corpse and drew pubic hairs on her pudenda.
He went to sleep feeling better.
Saturday morning, again, he took his sledgehammer (manual) from his shed, and went to work on the rubble.
*
It was, Damien found, immensely satisfying, smashing the flagstones into tiny pieces.
Saturday through Sunday he ached, drank beer, and took his wife's corpse to pieces with a combination of machine-tooled tools. There was no blood, no viscera. She was mainly composed of wiring, organic processors. Electronic goods.
'Boss,' he said, on a Monday night again, under the watchful blue eye that presided over the city tip. 'Electronic goods?'
A different worker in a hard hat checked the boot.
'Over there, bud. Stick her in with the fridges and that. Hair'll have to go in non-recyclables, round the other side. Rest of it, good stuff.'
On Tuesday morning, bin day, Damien began to smuggle the rubble in among his non-recyclable goods.
He knew, now, that they were watching. But, like the panopticon, he could not be sure when, or where. So he was careful. Very, very careful.
A mere handful of flagstone dust, every other week, on non-recyclable days.
And, then, why stop?
Why stop?
He began to dig, down, below the raised flowerbed. Dig into the earth. Digging, digging.
Smuggling earth out, like a man breaking out of prison.
He dug down slowly. Digging into the network, trying to find the source, until at last he did.
He figured he'd stop at five feet, then six. He went on, deeper and deeper, until he was old and worn from work and exercise and bland food that was all his biological body could stomach at the age of 85.
Dug right down into the earth, and then climbed right on in, closed his eyes, and went to sleep.
He dreamed, then, for a time. Dreamed a dream that was unrelentingly bleak, that he had money in his pocket and perfect wife and a good job with money in his pocket to buy not just what he needed, but many of the things that he didn't, too.
He dreamed, daydreamed, surfed the network, worked his job, fucked his wife. Unrelenting, fucked her and fucked himself right into the earth.
*
The network watched, a big blue eye. It didn't blink, or look away. It was just an eye. It had no feeling, no empathy. The eye did not feel or care.
It watched, recorded, and finally, the earth closed in on Damien Player's grave, and logged out.
The End
As I mentioned before, this is kind of a story about picking a favourite kid. Well...it's exactly like that.
Sold it to a flash collection 'Daily Flash', published by Pill Hill Press, way back when...(well, probably around 2012...)
Playing Favourites
Mr. Green looked at the barrel of the gun cross-eyed. The man behind the gun wavered in his focus.
“The money, Mr. Green,” said the man behind the gun. The gun didn’t waver. It was steadfast, like the man who held it.
“I don’t have it,” said Mr. Green. “I can get it...”
“When?”
“A couple of days. A week?”
“You have one minute. I am counting.”
“What? Wait...I can’t...”
“I hold both of your children, Mr. Green. My associate Mr. White has your son. Mr. Red, another friend of mine, holds your daughter.”
“I can’t get the money in a minute!”
“40 seconds.”
“Wait! I’ll...I’ll...”
“Yes, Mr. Green? I’m all ears.”
“Give me the rest of the day. I’ll find it. I promise!”
“Promises are made to be broken, it seems. For example, 20 seconds, my employer was promised a sum of money in return for a simple favour. 15 seconds. He never received that money.”
“No...no...”
“It seems, Mr. Green, that you are coming up short. 5 seconds.”
“I’ll do anything!”
“Time’s up, Mr. Green. Do you have my employer’s money?”
“Of course not!”
The man behind the gun spoke into his phone.
“He does not have the money,” he said.
Mr. Green heard the gunshot.
“There, Mr. Green. Done.”
“Jesus! No! You...no!”
“The money?”
“You killed...wait...who? Which one! Which one?”
Mr. Green would never know. The gun didn’t waver, and the bullet was true.
The End
Where do the darker stories come from? Sometimes, I think, horror writers have demons. Sometimes those demons spit their bile out on the page. Sometimes though, we just make shit up. Can't honestly remember which this is...but it's dark all right.
The Dead Have Feelings, Too
Darwin Pickman stood over his wife's corpse, which was presented as best as could be in an ash veneer coffin with faux brass handles. The coffin was polished to a mirror finish, death's odour stifled beneath the smell of flowers, polish, cleaning fluids, the funeral director's distinct aftershave...
Death, muffled.
Darwin had no complaints about the service he and his departed wife were receiving. Orphelia Pickman looked serene, almost, in death.
Darwin, too, was calm. Calm on the outside. Inside his emotions roiled, frolicked, flickered like flames or a forked-tongue. How did a man feel upon the passing of his life's companion?
No, thought Darwin. How should a man feel? What face should that man wear in public?
Sadness and confusion should do it. Sadness and confusion because he was lost and alone and terribly adrift without the better half of his soul.
He almost laughed. Instead of letting out a great, inappropriate, guffaw, he bit the inside of his right cheek hard enough to taste blood.
'Are you feeling all right?' said the director, a prissy, proprietary sort of man in a perpetual suit.
'Fine, I guess,' said Darwin, because the indecision seemed fitting.
In reality, he was pretty fucking happy his overweight, overbearing wife of seven years was dead and on her way into the dirt where she couldn't dig her way out. Fat fucking bitch. Would've buried her himself, but this way worked out better.
'I need to go, Mr. Travis,' said Darwin to the director, because if he didn't leave right away the smile, the laugh, the sheer fucking joy of freedom, might break through.
'Of course.'
They nodded and exchanged no more words. Darwin left, conscious of his walk and trying not to ham it up too much.
*
Darwin drove home grinning at the road, singing to the occasional song on the radio that took his fancy.
As he turned into his street (narrow street and narrow houses, no parking, two up and two down) he realised that he did not want to go home. He didn't want to sleep alone.
Fuck the consequences. It wouldn't be long now, and she was gone, wasn't she? A mean woman can get pretty fat, given seven years to do it. By the end of it, Darwin had barely been able to see past Orphelia.
Once a week, though, she'd gone to her old friend Darcy's for bridge night.
Once a week, Darwin stepped out, too.
This night, as so many Thursday nights that came before, he carried on down his street, right out the other end and turned toward The Mistress' flat.
Mistress?
No, more. Surely more. After all, he'd killed his wife for her.
*
Darwin rang the bell. His tie, he saw, was straight. Butted up tight against his buttoned shirt. It pushed on his neck a little. It was uncomfortable. Only a little.
Didn't make him want to come or anything. He'd tried it with The Mistress, once, in the early days. He'd panicked.
He remembered the feeling of that tie (purple, he remembered, cross hatched with some other colour he misremembered) biting into his carotid and jugular, his windpipe. The lack of blood had been far more frightening than the lack of air.
He waited with his neck pulsing beneath his tie. She buzzed him up and for some reason the sound of that buzzer got him hard where the thought of choking did not.
Darwin was fit enough for a three-flight climb. When he got to the top of the stairs, The Mistress was there waiting. She stood in the doorway, barely wearing a thin piece of lingerie - negligee, he thought it might be called. He could see her nipples poking at the sheer fabric. He felt himself getting a little more than interested, to the point where he was mildly uncomfortable. But cautiously so, because her arms were crossed and she looked angry.
'What are you doing?' she said. Little teeth, he saw. He liked her impeccable teeth.
'What?' he said.
'Darwin...what the fuck? You're supposed to wait. I don't want to be involved in this shit.'
'I know...I just...I didn't want to be alone.'
'Jesus, grow a pair, would you?'
That hurt. Echoes hurt. But he set himself like steel and rose above it.
'I love you, OK? Don't do that.'
'Do what?'
'That, you know, pushing me away thing...'
'Darwin...we fuck. I'm not pushing you away. I'm telling you, plain as your dead fucking wife, to get out!'
And on the last word, her voice became shrill and painful, spiteful barbs scratching the inside of his skull.
His shoulders slumped. He turned.
Once, when they'd set out, he'd said his wife should have started up a garage.
Orphelia Tires and Exhausts.
The Mistress had laughed. Shown her small, slightly tobacco stained, teeth.
Her teeth were pure white now. Paid for by one Darwin Pickman.
And now, with her perfect slashing smile cutting him down? Her, too, riding him like a donkey, piling on insults like fucking bricks in some fucking shit pot Arab arsehole? How long before she got fat, too, or before she sat like a ton of dirt on his corpse, shrivelling within an early grave?
Darwin clenched his fists. For a moment, he imagined placing his weak, perfect hands around her neck and squeezing until his hands hurt so much he couldn't feel any other kind of pain and she turned blue and purple and pink and shit herself and gasped and...
He imagined the rainbow hues her dying skin would travel through until she became white and grey and yellow old bones. He imagined her glorious teeth set in her demure jaw. Would she look so beautiful and hard when she was no more than a skeleton in the earth?
Flesh stripped away, would she look no different to Orphelia?
The colours turned in on themselves, the colours he imagined she travelled. Turned to black, stars dancing in among the darkness, and he understood he was close to passing out.
His hands were around her throat and hers around his.
But he was strong enough. Her hands fell away and his sight returned. There, at the threshold, he was on his knees and she was on back, but she was dead and he was not.
He saw her dead beneath him, his hands numb on his Mistress' neck and his hard cock pounding against her cold mound, his small hairy arse rising and falling while he choked the life, still, from her corpse.
'Fuck!' he screamed. 'Fuck!'
He threw himself backward, landed on his arse and skidded, burning himself on the carpet.
Flaccid almost instantly (although still wet with her death cum) he tucked himself back into his trousers and zipped up, think, wishing, hoping that he hadn't cum in her...please fucking God, not that...not that...
Jesus, he really was a monster. A monster.
Her corpse, the extent to which she was dead, was utterly obscene.
One thought followed Darwin as he dragged her across the threshold and into her home. Don't puke.
Laughter followed him as he went into the toilet to wash away what he could. 'Fuck you, Orphelia,' he said, without turning, because he knew he was fucknuts crazy and up to his balls in his dead girlfriend's pussy. When you come around in that kind of clinch, it's only to be expected that you're going to see your fat murdered wife at every turn, even when you know she's safely tucked away in a funeral home in an oversized fake ash coffin.
But she wasn't going to leave him alone.
'Missed a spot,' she said, as he washed his face with cold water at the sink, using some kind of woman's soap that smelled of flowers and fruits at the same time.
He refused to look in the mirror.
&nbs
p; Refused.
But he didn't need to. He knew it was her. Her voice, her footsteps, and her very distinct smell beneath the scent of decay.
'Orphelia...'
'Yes, Honey?' she said with just enough humour in her tone to let him know she was holding in a spiteful laugh. The kind that had, in fact, got her killed.
'Fuck off,' he said, turning.
He was shocked that he could feel anything at all, seeing her there in her burial clothes.
No pity, no love. Certainly no remorse.
Revulsion, though, too, because his dead wife was actually crying.
'That hurt worse than being throttled,' she said. Great fat woman sobs came from her, despite that fact that she couldn't be breathing (she can't even be here, Darwin, he told himself. She's not here.)
Her footsteps sounded real enough. He thought he could feel the floorboards vibrating as she walked across the bathroom's linoleum.
If she wasn't real, why could he smell her?
If she touched him, he'd break. He knew it. He'd fucking break.
'In sickness and in health,' said Orphelia. 'Remember?'
'I remember. Consider the act of murder grounds for divorce, though,' he said, and laughed.
'Honey,' she said. 'Shh.'
Like a mother to a baby.
She touched him, then. Reached out a big and heavy arm and pulled him to her stinking breast.
'Shh, baby,' she said. He could barely hear.
A nimble hand stroked him through his trousers and he was hard, instantly, before he realised Orphelia's arms were wrapped around him, pulling him into her, holding him tight...
Fuck...I can't fucking move...who's got my...?
She, his mother-wife, suckled him deeper into her immense flesh, deeper still, until he could see nothing but her ribs as he passed through. Her ribs cracks like woodland deadfall and he was in her, within her rotted lungs.
Dark Words (Horror Short Stories): Collected Short Fiction Page 8