by Stacey Longo
“I don’t think we should be here,” Warren stammered then added, “It’s miraculous.”
Despite their common fear, the pair delved into the darkness.
“I saw her, Warren, before. She can’t be far.”
Large fungal blooms like mushrooms grew straight out of the rock and drifted lazily as if in a breeze. Brown spots across its umbrella topper vibrated and opened and Godfrey saw a dozen human eyes blinking back at him. They were crying.
They passed a flabby, grey toad bigger than most dogs. It blinked white, unseeing eyes. Its nostrils flared as they passed, but it made no move. Its white, soft underbelly rolled and Godfrey saw a human’s face press against it from the inside, pushing the soft belly outward. The face opened its mouth in a silent scream and then faded back into the bowels of the creature. The toad belched quietly and exhaled.
They sensed something large but unseen moving to the left in the shadows; laborious, heaving. It grunted feverously and fell silent. Ahead in the mist humanoid shapes lumbered towards them, and Godfrey instinctually glanced back at the hole they had entered. It looked a thousand miles away; the Dimensionator was a small pop-gun in the distance.
“What should we do?” Warren asked, fear in his voice. He was the madman, not Godfrey, for being talked into this.
“We trick them,” Godfrey said and pulled his mask down over his face.
“But I don’t have a mask,” Warren said.
“That’s because you’re the treat.”
The bullet struck Warren in the knee and he dropped hard on the rock. He screamed and the moaning grew louder. The humanoid shapes solidified—lurching, pale figures, wet and soft. Their huge orb eyes rolling in their heads.
“What have you done, man?” Warren yelled through his pain.
Godfrey squeezed the trigger of his double-barreled derringer again, placing a round of hot lead in Warren’s abdomen this time. He reached inside his house robe, pulled out a short stack of letters bound together by thread, and tossed them on Warren’s chest. Warren recognized the writing on the envelopes; it was his, inscribed so carefully on the love letters he’d sent to Edith a lifetime ago.
“That was a long time ago, Godfrey. It was wrong! We were wrong and I’m sorry, but this won’t change anything. Killing me won’t change anything. Don’t do it,” Warren pleaded. “Please!”
Godfrey stared down at him as the shamblers, still just shapes in the mist, closed on them through the darkness. “I know it won’t change the past...but it makes me feel better about the future.” He took a step back from Warren as the denizens of this black world appeared, pale and fleshy, their sopping, eager mouths full of teeth like ground glass. They sniffed at him, but passed, his simple disguise blending him with them in the blind darkness.
Trailing the pack was Edith. She shambled and was as pale as the others, her figure had gone to pot, but that was to be expected—she was dead, after all. A few days, or possibly weeks, topside and she would be good as new. She still had the ebony locks, the ice blue eyes that could burn as well as soothe, calm and sear. Yes, they needed a few days of rest, Warren was right about that, time to get past all this infidelity business and back to their happy married lives.
The evil spirits of the dead suitably distracted, Godfrey took Edith by the hand and guided her back towards the hole and home.
Warren tried to stand, but fell immediately, his knee unable to carry his weight. The underworlders were upon him, clawing with wet nails and rendered him limb from limb, devouring him soul and all. He cried out to Godfrey and his faithless love Edith, with his dying breath.
Godfrey and Edith began to trot then run as the screams echoed, past the toads and other horrors in the darkness. Edith was no runner, but she managed. They stumbled through the dimensional hole, and Godfrey spun the knob hard to the left and slammed the toggles down. The Dimensionator buzzed and sputtered and fell motionless with a final flatulent rattle and a burst of hissing steam. The clear, dimension-ripping beam vanished, and the red liquid began to rise again as the clock now ticked away from the Celtic New Year. Godfrey turned to his love who staggered past him on her way to the foyer.
“Dear. My love?” Godfrey trotted around her and placed his hands on her shoulders. “Edith, it’s me, Godfrey.” She stared at him unblinking, unrecognizing, and he remembered the mask. “It’s me, Edith. It’s Godfrey.” And he yanked the mask off, snapping the rubber band. “See!”
She did see.
Edith’s eyes were still unblinking, icy blue and flat. She raised a plump, water-logged hand and pulled her own mask down. The long black hair dropped around her shoulders like a fisherman’s net. Behind the Edith flesh mask were the terrible, blind eyes and the maw filled with rows upon rows of jagged teeth.
Godfrey floundered for his mask as tears of fear and sadness welled up and spilled over his cheeks; he hoped to revive the charade, but it was too late. The Edith thing groped for him, found him, and bit into his soft neck. Godfrey squealed and thrashed about, but his efforts were useless; it was all over but the dying.
The underworlder reseated the Edith mask with a slurp of wet flesh, gurgled and shuffled through the dusty house, following the sounds of dancing children.
About the author:
Sean lives in central Oklahoma with his beautiful wife Tammy. They share their home with a couple of short haired felines and a pair of three legged dogs. His short fiction can be found at various e-zines and publications.
Ride into the Sunset
by Marc Sorondo
It always did seem to be about a woman, Billy Langman thought as he slid his arms through the sleeves of a tan, suede jacket; his daddy’s jacket. Well, sometimes it was about more than one. He felt a clarity at that moment that he had desired for months; he felt the weight of the jacket slide over his arms, felt the heft of it redistribute over his shoulders and back.
He stood before a mirror, inspecting the jacket, making sure it fit the way it was supposed to, and noting the worn spots, the slight tear at the end of one sleeve, the way it hung down to just past his knees, covering the two bulges that were strapped to his hips.
It was a situation that called for a hero, of that Billy was certain, and he decided to be that hero in the only way he knew how, like the only heroes he’d ever known: Wyatt Earp, John Wayne, and his own father.
So he’d thrown on a pair of blue Wranglers and slid on his daddy’s snake-skin boots. A thick leather belt with a holster on each hip, Daddy’s dusty tan cowboy hat, and his long jacket, and Billy knew that he was almost ready to do his thing and ride off into that cinematic sunset. But he lacked two not-so-small, oh-so-important details.
Billy walked through his apartment (Not his home. That little mud-puddle apartment wasn’t his home. He’d lost that once things had been finalized four months ago), into his bedroom, and over to his dresser.
His mother had wanted him to keep them out, displayed, to be shown off to so many people who just wouldn’t understand, couldn’t fully appreciate everything that they represented.
But Billy knew better. He knew that Daddy’s six-shooters were more private than his most secret thoughts. They were personal, to be locked away and cherished only by those who could fully comprehend that they were missing pieces of his soul, that they were every ideal that could never be realized, the tool of the hero in a world without any.
He opened a drawer and pulled out a wooden box. A brass clasp held it shut. He opened the clasp and then the box, slowly, ceremoniously. He reached into the box with both hands and pulled out two 1873 Colt Peacemakers. They were beautiful, and originals, not some piece-of-crap replicas. They should have been in a museum, but Billy would never part with them. He didn’t know how his father had come across them, but he sure as shit knew that he wasn’t about to give them up.
He slid the two guns into the holsters he was already wearing and let the jacket fall back down to cover them.
He closed the box and slid it back into his dress
er drawer. He pulled out another box, this one full of ammunition, special, custom made for his guns. Billy loaded each gun and put some extra shells into the small pouch on the left side of his holster belt. He put the second box back and slid the dresser drawer shut.
He was ready. It was time to do battle.
***
He was supposed to go home, but the old lady rang the bell…the goddamn bell, which at Johnny Ringo’s meant that said old lady was buying the whole bar a round.
Normally Billy would have just paid his tab and taken off, gone home to his wife, gotten bitched at for a little while for coming home drunk or for just being a screw-up in general, and gone to sleep.
That night was different, though, because he’d gone to Ringo’s due solely to the fact that the bitching had started earlier than usual and with more ferocity. Emily was in an especially pissy mood for God only knew what reason and had decided to chew him out until he finally got sick of it and left.
So he’d sat, drinking beers and dividing his attention between the old lady (who had to have been at least seventy five, and had been sucking down cosmos and playing darts with what must have been her granddaughter since before Billy had gotten there), the guy he was sitting next to (some construction worker that he’d met once or twice, but whose name he couldn’t for the life of him now remember), and a gorgeous blonde who sat by the jukebox (who he’d noticed before but never spoken to).
Years earlier, before Emily, his undivided attention would have been on the blonde, but now he struggled to ignore her, to not look at the curves of her body, which were visible beneath the little denim skirt and tight, black Jack Daniels t-shirt she wore.
Her hair was fairly short, coming straight down to hang just above her shoulders. He’d met her eyes a few times, and though he’d almost immediately averted his gaze, their blueness had remained even after he’d looked away, like the remnant of a camera’s flash that dances playfully before the eyes after a picture is taken.
But he wasn’t like that; he couldn’t do it, so he’d asked for his check so he could go home, back to his wife. She might have been psychotic, especially earlier that night, but she was still his wife, so he’d be damned if he was going to sit at a bar and ogle some blonde chick.
He got his check and then the bell rang, and it was the old, dart-playing, cosmo-drinking lady, and that was just too good to resist, so he sat back down, had the beer that had been bought for him, and that led to another, and another…
…And when he’d sobered up enough to once again understand what was going on, where he was, and what he was doing, he was looking down at the face of the blonde, and she was sweating and moaning, writhing beneath him and clawing at his back, and last but certainly not least, he realized that he was inside of her, thrusting and grinding up against her. For some reason far too fuzzy to remember, he had “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones stuck in his head.
Then she came, screaming, “Oh God, yes!” and his mind screamed back, Oh Shit, no! But he knew it was too late for prayers to Shit to do any good.
He couldn’t even remember her name, let alone how he’d ended up having sex with her in…her apartment, house, a motel; he didn’t even know.
And then it was over and he found himself stumbling out while pulling on his clothes and swearing that he’d call her and promising himself that he never would.
When he got out the door he saw that they were at an apartment, and when he left the building he found that he was only a few blocks from Johnny Ringo’s. He walked towards the bar, not caring how drunk he still was, just wanting to get in his car and drive home, to put some distance between himself and what he’d just done.
He reached into his pocket for his keys and felt a scrap of paper that hadn’t been there before. He pulled it out and unfolded it:
Susan Walker – 748-9764
“Well, Susan Walker, did I tell you I was married, or did I lie? Would you even care either way?” Billy stopped, thought about the fact that he was talking to himself, and stuffed the paper back into his pocket. And why did he keep it? He didn’t know.
He got into his car and turned the key in the ignition. As the car came to life he looked at the clock. It was 4:16.
Still, “Sympathy for the Devil” played in his mind; he found himself wanting to scream out, “Please to meet you! Hope you guess my name!” And why was that song stuck on a loop in his head? He didn’t know.
All he did know was that he could never even think too hard about what he’d done, let alone call Susan Walker.
***
But of course, he did, because once the unthinkable had been done, it was so much easier to do it a second time.
First he’d called her having convinced himself that he should explain the situation to her, tell her that he was married and that he’d drank too much and made a terrible mistake.
He got as far as saying that he was married. Then things went off course.
“First of all,” she said, “you already told me that. And second, I don’t care.”
Then she had laughed about how he’d first approached her. After she’d put on a few Stones songs, she noticed him singing to himself, but once “Sympathy for the Devil” came on, that’s when he decided to come over. And guess what he sang as his introductory line to her with a half-assed little bow and a drunken grin on his face.
And he found that he liked her sense of humor and her smile, and that she made him laugh even though he didn’t want to.
And he found himself thinking that, damn it, he’d married the wrong woman, and then that, no, we were so in love once. He got more and more confused, his resolve slipped away, and soon enough he found himself in that same apartment, with Susan Walker naked and screaming for more, their sweaty bodies mashed together, and this time, he knew he couldn’t blame it on the booze.
***
And as with all stories of that nature, Emily began to suspect. A hint of perfume, a stain that could have been anything but looked a hell of a lot like burgundy lipstick (a shade she never wore) on one of his shirts, an increase in the frequency and duration of his little excursions to Johnny Ringo’s. Well, it all added up until it was impossible for her to ignore or for him to deny.
Billy had expected the time would come, but he’d never imagined how it would actually feel.
Then the time did come, when she sat in the dark, silently waiting in his chair, the ratty, old recliner that she always bitched about and he never let her throw away; she had the audacity to sit in his chair, surrounded by silence and night shadows and wait for him to walk in, to guiltily bring the smells of sex and sweat and foreign perfume into the home of their marriage.
He noticed her silhouette although it was little more than an oil slick on fresh asphalt. In his mind he saw her dramatically flick the switch and illuminate the room.
Instead she whispered sadly but sternly, “I know.”
“Turn on the light, Em. Why are you sitting in the dark?”
“I don’t want to look at you. I just…I want a divorce, Billy.”
Though he couldn’t see it, he knew her lip was quivering, knew that her eyes were full but that she refused to cry, that she wouldn’t release; it was all in her voice, conveyed in the pauses, in the drawn out syllables and over-harsh accentuations.
“Em…”
“Don’t bother, Billy.” She stood from his chair. “I can’t be sure of exactly how long, but I know you’ve been fucking her for months. I’m hoping it’s just one her.”
“Em…” Now he was pleading. He’d felt so in control, so very on top of things, but now things were spilling out from beneath him, and he felt himself tumbling down, but into what, he didn’t know.
“Damnit!” Release, although she’d refused it, came anyway, an explosion of frustration and tears, fueled by the torching of futures that would never be. “No matter how bad things got, no matter how miserable, I never even thought about being with another man!”
Now he
didn’t tumble, he was in a freefall, making his way towards those same burning possibilities that fueled her anger. He swore he could feel their heat. In a panic, he reached out and grabbed her shoulders.
She pushed him with more strength than he thought she had, and he stumbled back. For a moment her eyes caught light from outside. They gleamed, wide and bright, twisting the faint reflections into sharp, dangerous points from which he wanted to hide.
His back hit the wall, and Emily stomped past him, up the stairs, and to the bedroom. The door slammed and locked almost simultaneously.
Billy stood with his back against the wall and marked his progress, his descent, until he hit the fires and burned.
Any future with Emily, hell, any delusional idea that things could work out with Susan, were nothing but ash to be scattered by a light breeze. The past was fucked, the present was painful, and the future was burning away before his mind’s eye.
***
Any and all free time became time at Johnny Ringo’s…playtime. There was time to sit and line up shots of Wild Turkey or Jack Daniels, to sit in the quietest corner of the bar all alone and line up those shots and take them slowly, at a steady pace, savoring the lingering, burning pain as each oozed its way down to his belly, to eat away at the festering lump at his core.
After the heat had spread out from his gut, to numb him out to his fingers and toes, only then did he switch to beer. He would sit, drunk and mean, fueling himself on booze and his own misery, using it to get more drunk, more mean, more miserable, and the perfect cyclical nature of his engine seemed unending, perpetual motion, friction free.
But of course friction is inevitable, perpetual motion is a myth, and every now and then Susan Fucking Walker would stroll into Johnny Ringo’s in short shorts that showed off her ass, or a little tube top to accentuate her tits, or, by far Billy’s favorite article of her bar-slut uniform, some stupid pink and black cowboy hat.