The Sick Stuff
Page 9
But it did not come. No, something much more horrifying took place. He felt the thing's brawny arms encircle him, lifting him from the pathway. Quentin shut his eyes in revulsion as it pressed him closely to its broad chest, almost tenderly so. He struggled to break free, but there was no chance of doing so.
Quentin pleaded as Jonathan headed through the canebrake with him in tow. Onward into the bayou it took him, until they reached a broad clearing amid a crescent of ancient swamp oaks. There the zombie took a few steps forward... and sank...returning to the mire of the quicksand pit it had been confined to following its untimely death.
Quentin screamed until the quicksand slowly sucked them both downward. But as they went under, he realized that he was not suffocating as he should. The Curse of the Deveroux had not ended with the shooting of Mojo Mama. It continued, even more terrifying than before.
Sinking toward the pool's murky bottom, Quentin Deveroux knew that he would spend eternity in a heightened state of torment and mortification, unable to die, trapped in the unyielding arms of the victim of his father's unbridled jealously and rage.
As he hung there, suspended between life and death, he felt the creatures within him panic and surge into battle. Snake against toad, scorpion against spider, a nest of hornets against an invading army of angry red ants. All converged within him, biting, stinging, bringing agony and boundless fear... but, alas, no promise of finality.
AFTERWORD
So... exactly why did I write this godawful "sick stuff"?
Well, it's like this...
A peculiar thing happened in the early 1990's. Those who wrote in the horror genre at that time did their best to outdo each other. They wanted their fiction to be on the "cutting edge". They wanted to push the envelope to the limit, so to speak.
In other words, they did their very best to gross their readers out.
Much of that had to do with the Splatterpunk movement that took place in the late 80's and early 90's. Horror writers such as John Skipp and Craig Spector, David J. Schow, and others showed that extreme fiction of the dark kind was a valuable commodity back then. And, because it was so popular, most writers of horror and suspense jumped on the blood-and-guts bandwagon for the ride.
I was one of them... at least for a while. There seemed to be an air of intense competition in the genre at that time. Most of the small press magazines -- and even some of the big dog publications -- wanted shocking, visceral fiction, rather than creepy, atmospheric work. So everyone scrambled to come up with the most gut-wrenching and disgusting tales of terror that they could dredge from their imaginations. I remember receiving rejection letters from publishers saying that my stories weren't "bloody enough" or "lacked shock value". That just fired up my determination even more. I was bound and determined to write what everyone seemed to crave, therefore I would conjure up every gruesome and gory image that popped into my mind. Truthfully, some of those tales that I penned should have stayed in the muck and mire of that cesspool of misguided inspiration, never to be set forth on the printed page.
To give an example, I once wrote a particularly disgusting piece of fiction titled "Quetzalcoatl's Revenge", intending to submit it to New Blood Magazine, which, at that time, specialized in extreme horror fiction. The fine details of this story escape me, but I do remember that the main character had pissed someone off during a trip to Mexico City and been cursed with a rather nasty case of dysentery. The tale ended with a winged serpent ripping its way out of the protagonist's ass, dragging his intestines along with it. Charming, huh? Better be glad that one got misplaced.
My dark detour into "cutting edge" horror was a short-lived one, lasting about six months or so. Then I was back to writing the kind of stuff that folks liked to read from me; tales of down-home horror set in the American South. Not that my writing career suffered from my foray into visceral literature; I just cringe a little whenever I come across one of those old stories that crossed the line a little too far.
The collection you just read included seven examples from that period. The first, Diary, was published in an issue of Cemetery Dance back in 1990. Of this story, Richard Chizmar wrote "Diary is an unusual tale -- a bit nastier than Ronald's normal work"... which may be putting it lightly. A couple more are Housewarming and Old Hacker, published in Eldritch Tales and New Blood respectively, but were presented here in their more repugnant, uncut forms.
Three other stories -- Mass Appeal, Pins & Needles, and The Abduction -- were previously unpublished pieces. The trio would have probably languished in the darkness of the filing cabinet if several friends had not urged me to bring them out into the open. And, by the way... if you came away from The Abduction believing Little Buddy was a dog... WRONG!
You wouldn't believe how many folks get that impression. Give it another read and look for the clues hidden throughout. Then you'll realize Buddy's true identity.
Of the bunch, Mojo Mama was the real oddity of the bunch. Also previously unpublished, I wrote it back in 1992, lost all traces of it during my ten year hiatus from horror, then decided to completely rewrite it for inclusion in this collection. And I'm happy to say -- in my opinion, at least -- it turned out ten-times sicker and nastier than the original version could ever hope to be.
In a strange way, I have fond memories of that time in my writing career. It was a time when I spread my wings and broke the boundaries of what I then considered "acceptable" fiction. In the Ron Kelly archives, the tales that made up this collection is considered my "sick stuff"... the kind of stories that twists at your innards and make them scream "Uncle!"
Ronald Kelly
Brush Creek, Tennessee
December 2008
About the Author
After a ten year hiatus from the horror genre, Ronald Kelly returns with his distinctive brand of Southern horror fiction. He is the author of such novels as Hindsight, Pitfall, Something Out There, Father's Little Helper, The Possession, Fear, and Blood Kin. He has penned over a hundred short stories, many appearing in major anthologies like Borderlands, Shock Rock, Dark at Heart, and Hot Blood. His audio collection, Dark Dixie: Tales of Southern Horror was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1992 for Best Spoken or Non-Musical Recording. His first short story collection, Midnight Grinding & Other Twilight Terrors, was published by Cemetery Dance Publications in 2009. His upcoming publications include Undertaker's Moon, Hell Hollow, and the Essential Ronald Kelly Collection.
He lives in Brush Creek, Tennessee with his wife, Joyce, and three young'uns, Reilly, Makenna, and Ryan.
You can check out his website of Southern-Fried Horror at http://www.ronaldkelly.com.
Table of Contents
FOREWORD
DIARY
HOUSEWARMING
MASS APPEAL
PINS AND NEEDLES
OLD HACKER
THE ABDUCTION
MOJO MAMA
AFTERWOR D