Struggling With the Afterlife

by Ronald Stanley Jr.

“Yes indeed!” Johnny said. Then, he grabbed the troll suddenly, surprising them both. The troll shook in fear. “You fuck with her or abuse her in any way, I’ll fucking kill you like I did my stepdad.”

  The threat was heard loud and well. The troll nodded heavily in agreement, its nose bobbing up and down like a dribbling beach ball. Outside, a storm had started. A light rain drizzled, then turned to heavy rain, accompanied by thunder and lightning.

  Johnny saw one of the Sad Clowns outside. It made no effort to hide from the rain and thunder. It walked slowly and limply - almost submissively, as if it deserved to be soaked in rain and shit its whole life.

  Johnny went out to the Sad Clown, who looked up from its walk and trance kind of surprised.

  Johnny did something then that surprised them both. He reached out and touched the clown where its heart was (or had been). As he did so, both breathed inward in unison. Johnny felt his positive energy go into the clown’s.

  “Gone!” Johnny heard himself say as the rain got heavier.

  “Death - gone!”

  The clown then gave him a surprised look, then did something Johnny hadn’t expected. It smiled. Then, some of its paint started to chip and fall off(it wasn’t the rain; a few more clown’s around them walking the same way still had the paint on despite the rain).

  The once Sad Clown smiled brightly as more of its paint chipped off. It took the Book Of The Bird and threw it onto the sidewalk beside it. It then patted Johnny heartily on the shoulder and strolled off, marching like a victorious trooper after a long battle.

  And maybe it was, Johnny had thought, regarding the thrown - away book by the sidewalk. As the clown strolled off, however, Johnny felt the others around him slowly turn their macabre heads towards him with a scowl.

  Oh fuck, he thought. Oh Honeysuckle Bugfuck. What have I done now?

  He headed back towards the house with the olive-green chipped paint and yellow sidings. He heard a piano being played inside.

  It was Jenny, he saw as he made his way in.

  She stopped playing, then looked up at him with a smile.

  “Saw you in church today Johnny - you did fantastic!” she said. “Lunch is on the table and fresh clothes await you upstairs! Please take a shower in one of our luxurious showers newly made! Pink, red and green marbled await on the other side!”

  She then turned, and as she did her dress got stuck on a nail sticking out. She moved to undo it, and as she did, Johnny saw something.

  On her back, within her skin, was a large 6- inch wide, 2 -inch tall robotic microchip. It had little switches and letters within it Johnny couldn’t make out.

  Half human, half robot, he thought with shock and horror.

  I knew something was wrong with her...

  He went over and helped her with the nail by the door. She turned to him, and now he heard the soft whining of machinery as she did so.

  “Thank you, Johnny!”

  “You’re welcome Jenny!” he said back.

  She then went upstairs, maybe to prepare fresh clothes for him.

  She went out of view, and soon a new view came to him when he went into the hallway.

  It was the troll. Holding his wheelchair from his past life. The wheelchair his asshole stepfather had put him in.

  Rage once again overtook him. His clothes ripped as he felt himself get bigger, stronger.

  He sprang at the troll, who immediately let go of the wheelchair and cowered into the corner of the room where it was a moment before. Johnny thrust the door leading into the darkness of the cellar open. He threw the wheelchair down the steps.

  CLASH - CLASH - CLANG!!! The wheelchair crashed onto the concrete floor, smashing and breaking as one of the wheels fell off and rolled into the darkness.

  It all came back to him now as he slammed the door shut and regarded the troll, who had pissed himself now (a spot was on his pants where his peepee presumably was).

  To his right on the table were the documents the troll had of his past life. Johnny took them and threw them at the troll, who protested aloud for the boy to please stop.

  As the documents got tossed in the air, many pictures flung out of it, spilling across the floor and on the troll also.

  Pictures of bloody faces and carved up bodies. Pictures of women screaming their last breath. It all came back to him now as he regarded the troll, fixing his glasses now and tipping them up on his nose.

  “I’m not your boy,” Johnny whispered to the frightened troll, who was covered in piss and pictures of tortured bodies now.

  “I’m a serial killer.”

  More flashes of his past life came to him, bit by bit until they flooded his brain.

  He sat down and ate the sandwiches that Jenny had made for him. Then he ate the trolls and saved the 2 others for Jenny.

  Mr. Picklenose wouldn’t be needing those sandwiches anymore today.Johnny got up from his chair after eating. He went over to the drawer by the sink. Pulled one of the drawers open and found the biggest knife out of them all.

  The troll ran for it, the pictures falling from him as he scrambled towards the hallway.

  Picklenose was clumsy though.

  Clumsy little fuck, Johnny thought, stalking the troll with the long knife. He then lunged at the troll, burying the knife in the back of its head. Green blood that looked like jelly spurted out of the troll. It covered Johnny, who laughed as he turned the troll over and stabbed him in hte heart, chest and peepee.

  Oh, this was fun! He thought, a wicked smile coming across his face. Both were covered in green slime now. That was good enough for Johnny.

  He put the knife in the sink, then stepped over the corpse of the troll, heading upstairs.

  He needed a shower.

  Chapter 4

  Jenny Goes On A Date

  Jenny Parker finally got a date after years of bad luck and abuse from her ex and just duds she’d talked to on Plenty of Fish (though it was free and she’d heard of many success stories from her coworkers and friends , so had decided to give it a shot). This one she’d met on Match - a dating site like Plenty of Fish, but a little bit more pricey(but not as pricy as eHarmony and a little better, she thought).

  This was Herman. Herman Maxwell, who claimed to be into real estate.

  Happy Herman, she’d thought of him when she’d first met him. He had an oval shaped face, light brown curly hair and dressed very nicely. He always had a bright smile, wide across his face.

  Jenny and Happy Herman dated for about 6 months. They went to fine restaurants and Casino’s, talking about their career’s, and past relationships.

  It was then that slight red flags were starting to creep in with her.

  Happy Herman had claimed she was his first true love, and he had no other relationships before that.

  “W-wait - none???,” she teased once.

  “And how old are you?”

  To which he’d just smiled, flicking his eyelids rapidly.

  “I’ve always been reclusive,” he’d said, breaking into a small laugh. But then, very quickly, she thought she’d seen something.

  Plaster. His face was made of plaster.. or was it..

  Porcelain?

  His hands had come up to pay the bill and she saw that yes - they seemed to be made of porcelain.

  She was the first.

  No others before her.

  Oh Jenny, watch it! She heard her friend inside her head exclaim. It was the one that told her about the dating sites - Wendy Perkins.

  Something about Herman wasn’t so happy.

  After that date, she’d blown him off. The porcelain hands and face only came quickly, then with the blink of an eye, they were gone.

  But she saw them. And his story and eyes - everything was too good to be true and fake.

  Then the calls came. He left messages
wanting to know what he did wrong and if they could make up for it over dinner sometime. The happiness in Herman’s voice was turning to rage. Then, suddenly one night when she finally told him off, with her friend Wendy in the background threatening to report him to her boyfriend who was an FBI agent, the phone calls abruptly stopped.

  She’d changed her number just in case.

  “He seemed like a nice guy Wendy but who hasn’t had some kind of relationship beforehand? You know?“ She left the part out about the porcelain hands and plastered face. Not to mention his curly blond hair that seemed fake as well.

  Then, one night she was out with her friends and saw him again. He was enchanting a similar girl, doing a magic trick with a coin in his hand.

  He told the woman he was a magician. He then produced some cards from seemingly out of nowhere and was shuffling them about, enchanting his date, making her laugh. But in that instant, Jenny saw him for what he truly was. Saw the Curli-cues gold painted on his blue skinned face. Saw his quilted furniture-like costume, interwoven with barbed wire. Saw his porcelain face and hands doing the magic trick with the cards..

  Then it was just Happy Herman - red suit and tie, white skin and yellow curly hair (had it been light brown before? She wasn’t sure, but in that moment didn’t care).

  In that moment also, Happy Herman looked up and saw that Jenny saw.

  She saw a moment of rage in those

  “happy” eyes just for that moment. Then he put the cards away, smiling gently to his date. He then took her arm in arm shortly after, escorting her out of the restaurant.

  Jenny told all of her friends at the table that was him! They all looked on, studying Herman and his new date. “Freak!” Wendy muttered underneath her breath. All the girls giggled.

  A couple days later, Jenny got a frantic call from one of her other friends.

  Wendy was missing.

  Jenny called Wendy and no answer.

  Frantically, she went over her house, knocking on the door. She then went to the police station. Her other friends, it seemed, had beat her to it and an investigation was on the way. A couple days later, Jenny got another call. They had found Wendy. Her head was stuffed in a blood, and feces, soaked toilet in a stall by a popular beach they liked to frequent - Hampton.

  “Fuck Jenny -fuck! Lock your doors girl!” her friend had told her.

  She had.

  A year or so had gone by and no lead on the killer, and no sightings of Happy Herman.

  As far as the cops or anyone knew, he never existed.

  Then, reports of murders happening in bathroom stalls in different states suddenly started to spring up in the news.

  “Police are giving this serial killer the name - The Bathroom Killer,” a news reporter said as Jenny watched on with horror.

  Happy Herman, she thought. Happy Herman was the Bathroom Killer!

  Fuck, I dated a serial killer!

  Well, she wouldn’t have been the first

  , right? The Ted Bundy’s of this world these days weren’t always few and far in between.

  Panic swept the nation as the hunt for the killer was under way with cops working around the clock. 14 murders in 5 different states so far. Somewhere out there, Jenny thought, Happy Herman was enchanting some girl, playing magic tricks and pulling out his cards.

  Then enticing them into his house, or bathroom stall, and brutally murdering them.

  And they meet him on one of those damn websites! Well fuck - if all was bad with them, they’d be out of business. It’s best to stick with going out to local bars and restaurants. That’s exactly what Jenny had done - go out with her friends and meet people that way. She’d even met a guy or two (and always checked if they had a past relationship or were made of fucking porcelain). Yes - all checked out normal so far.

  Time went by and the string of murders seemed to stop for a long time. Other creepers came out of the woodwork to overshadow the event. One night, years later, Jenny found herself out with friends at Hampton Beach. They played ski ball and ate fried dough and ice cream. So much so that Jenny had to use the stall. She reckoned she would be on there for a while.

  She excused herself, telling her friends she’d be right back.

  She made it (almost shitting herself and not wanting to make a scene - but fuck it was close!).

  Something about a good loose bowel movement from a Robin Williams movie so long ago filled her head (it was a shame he’d committed suicide just a little while ago). She had sat there for a good 10 minutes, feeling better - lighter.

  She was just about to get up when a smell overtook her nostrils.

  It smelled like someone died.

  Somewhere to the right of her, a door slammed hard. Sounded like an iron door, not the wooden one she had come in.

  Then, a large puddle of both shit and blood oozed towards her from the other side.

  Fuck.

  To the left of her, the toilet flushed, and more liquid shit and blood flowed down, into her stall as a toilet flushed itself. Sea water now joined the mess and mass of it all from the other stall.

  She opened the stall door to see a dungeon - like room filled with massive marble colored toilets.

  Each was painted with cartoonish eyes, but all she saw had different personalities. Some were happy, some sad, some angry.

  Her stall was the only normal looking ones - the others were made for giants to shit in, the toilets being at least 30 feet tall.

  The once wooden door leading out to the fried dough and ice cream was now replaced with an iron door slammed shut.

  The puddle of feces and blood had been coming from a flooding sink, much too tall for her to wash her hands if she’d wanted to.

  The stall on her left was closed.

  She saw a number on top of it: 213

  Jeffrey Dahmer’s apartment number

  , she thought with disgust and horror. Then she screamed as it slammed open.

  No toilet on the other side. Instead, a large beast with porcelain skin, golden hair, eyes and curli-cues interwoven within its face greeted her. Happy Herman, she thought. Well, not quite..

  It had quilted furniture, blue in color to match its face, as what it wore for its suit and legs. Its legs were hoof-like, also made of porcelain. Barbed wire was interwoven within the quilt it wore.

  Its hands, also made of porcelain, carried a large butcher knife, bigger than any she would ever find in her kitchen.

  The creature lunged at her, and before she had time to scream, it was stabbing her all over - neck, body, chest and heart.

  “You will not die like the others Jenny, no..,” she heard the beast say to him as she screamed in protest, blood and shit covering her. Then, she was too tired and in too much pain to scream and slipped into unconsciousness.

  Then the lights went out.

  When they came on again, her first thought was being grateful and relief; the beast had not succeeded to kill her; she was alive!

  Then, something clicked. She wasn’t the same. Something had changed. She still felt the pain of being stabbed (and later on dissected into pieces, though she hadn’t consciously lived that part).

  She got up from the blood and shit soaked floor, and almost immediately noticed something in the corner of her eye: a giant mop, soap and water.

  Waiting for her.

  She then saw a bright, beautiful red dress hung over one of the stalls, waiting for her. In another stall, water was running. Clean water, she saw as she opened it. She then looked around at the other stalls. The toilets were less sad and angry; more seemed in happier spirits than the ones she saw before.

  Where, oh where, was Happy Herman?

  To answer this thought, she saw a toilet with that very nature in one of the stalls.

  For the next 2 hours, she took the mop out (and later on the bristled huge brus
h she saw awaiting her behind one of the other happier toilets). Her brain slowly started to process just why she was here and didn’t question anything else. The robotic parts intertwined within her skin soon healed and went inward, so all people saw was her skin and not the robotic parts she was also made of. Don’t question, don’t ask - just clean, clean, clean!

  From somewhere on the other side, three frantic girls were trying to get into a stall, blocked off by police. A woman was found murdered in there - her head stuffed into a toilet bowl filled with blood and feces. The Bathroom Killer had struck again.

  A man with an oval face and curly blond hair, well dressed and mannered, was telling police he’d smelled something awful in there and that’s why he decided to call 9-11. One of the girls recognized this man and pointed him out.

  The man saw this.

  By the time the police had tried finding the man again after the girls reported that’s who the girl had been dating before, the man was gone. Almost as if he had never been there to begin with..

  Chapter 5

  Johnny Hatches

  Betrayal. That’s what had changed him.

  That’s what changes us all, Johnny thought, looking first at the bloodstained knife in his hand, then at his mangled wife with their unborn child in her womb. Lying next to her was the corpse of his “friend” Miguel who he’d gone on bike rides with as a kid and played Nintendo games with. They’d talked about girls they’d like.

  Obviously fucking his wife hadn’t been in the planned cards or he wouldn’t have let the bastard come over to visit.

  And it wasn’t like the whore hadn’t wanted it; there is no rape if it’s consent.

  Johnny had come home from work and caught them both fucking on the couch.

  It was in that moment that he wondered if the kid was even his. They had been trying forever and the doctor had given him pills for it. But now, looking at the mass of blood, bones and flesh on the soaked couch, he wondered if the kid was Miguel’s.

  Johnny felt that old rage come back to him as he stood over the corpses of his once loved ones.