9 Tales Told in the Dark 16

by 9 Tales Told in the Dark

  Hurling themselves at the source of their pain two dozen wasps stung him, but Mica felt only a crackling of nerve endings, a surge of exhilaration within his general sense of vivacity and well-being.

  With the nest fallen, burnt to sheets of disintegrating ash, he began to hunt piecemeal, picking through the smoldering, apocalyptic scene, stomping, crushing the frangible bodies with his hands.

  At dusk, chapped and singed, his red flesh pocked with weeping white lumps pinching the stingers, Mica went up to his room, exhausted.

  Healthy and happy.

  Basking in the triumphant afterglow of the day’s work, Mica pulled the shoebox out from under the bed, and arranged his trophies on the windowsill.

  Reverently, hands trembling with pride and excitement, he placed the praying mantis skewered with the sewing needle, its head thrown back and arms flung up in shock and agony; the carpenter ant with its head spattered in a spray and the rest of its body perfectly intact; pregnant spiders and rearing centipedes and vicious termites perpetually frozen in lacquer…

  Mica looked at this world he had created and his mind cleared peacefully.

  If only, he had frequently thought, there were a way to make this feeling last. To take it outside of this room, into the real world.

  But every morning, the moment Mica stepped out the door for school, the congenital dread and shame would return, heavy and hobbling, until he made it back home to his sugar water and aerosol cans...

  Recently, Mica had experimented with raising the stakes in the hope of producing a more enduring ameliorant for his affliction. One evening, waiting until his father had weaved upstairs to bed, Mica had taken the old man's twenty-two out of the coat closet and waited on the back stoop until a squirrel had come chattering into the yard. Mica shot and the squirrel's head exploded. Standing over the carcass...Mica had felt nothing. Maybe a mild twinge of disgust.

  The next day, it had occurred to Mica that perhaps the lack of satisfaction had been due to the impersonal method with which he’d gone about his business. So he'd sat in the woods, still as a stone, for over an hour until a squirrel had come sniffing right up to the peanuts in his hand, and his other hand had descended with a fishing net. This time, Mica had intended to get as personally, intimately involved as possible.

  Donning a pair of heavy leather work gloves he'd squeezed the creature until things had popped inside of it and a disproportionately voluminous quantity of blood had spewed from its orifices. Looking at the ruined ragged thing at his feet, smelling it, Mica had felt vague annoyance at its weakness, nothing else.

  He'd been just about to abandon the experiment when that evening it had occurred to him that perhaps a more significant target would be more likely to enact the desired effect. Squirrels, after all, were so ubiquitous that their lives didn't have much value, and it was impossible to tell one from another.

  Mica had taken a handful of hamburger from the fridge and gone out walking.

  An hour later he’d returned with the black lab from the farmhouse at the edge of town. Leading it into the shed he'd fired his father’s nail gun into the top of its skull. Instead of dying the dog had begun to spin, staggering in a seemingly endless circle, upsetting coffee cans full of nails. Mica had leapt onto the dog’s back and beat it to death with a shovel.

  He’d stood over the dog, breathing heavily, pitching aside the bloody tool, waiting.

  Waiting…

  That night, burying the dog in the woods, Mica had officially declared animal-killing of no use to him.

  He appreciated the wry humor in this. How this act, the putative precursor to serial killing, the provenance of the Satan-worshipper, struck him as bland and petulant. An impotent idiot's childish revenge on a cruel world. Too obvious to mean anything. Too brutal to be evil.

  But with the fields of insects dying at his feet...

  That was what made Mica feel like a world maker. World breaker. That felt like communion with the submerged, dark elements of the universe. After all, he thought, Satan is Lord of the Flies, not Lord of the Dogs.

  And whereas killing a cat might get him evaluated and institutionalized, slaughtering bugs had simply made him an outcast. The boys, realizing he was too big to bully, had ostracized him. And the girls...

  Mica had never gotten along with girls. With one partial exception.

  Getting into bed, pleasantly sated from the afternoon's events, his thoughts turned to Skylar Garcia.

  Skylar, Mica's desk mate due to alphabetical proximity during grades one through six, had been the ultimate champion of the underdog. She had routinely saved scabrous stray animals and vanquished bullies, and she had befriended Mica.

  As Mica's fascination with dismembering insects on the schoolyard had grown more pronounced and disconcerting, while the other kids had simply forced him away, she had made it her full time business to try and stop him. If he picked a worm out of the mud she would try to knock it from his hands. If his lighter and aerosol can went missing, she would confess to throwing them into the canal…

  Following an incident when Mica, overwhelmed with the need to destroy, had shoved her on the ground to get at a patch of dirt crawling with doodlebugs, ashamed at his own aggression, he had screamed at her “Why do you care so much about these stupid bugs!”

  “I don’t even care about the bugs,” she’d said, crying softly. “I care about you.”

  “What? You think I want you following me around, bothering me all the time?”

  “No. I know you don’t now.”

  “So…What?”

  “It’s called karma. Everything you do, whether it’s good or bad, is going to happen to you too.”

  This had struck him silent.

  “You have to stop,” she'd whispered. “Everything you do, comes back to you. The earth, the universe, protects itself.”

  He had helped her up, walked her home.

  And while her words that day hadn't necessarily saved the life of a single insect or annelid or arachnid, he'd continued to hear her voice, throughout the years.

  He heard it now, drifting off to sleep.

  As the wheels of the car came off the cracked blacktop, crunching onto the long dirt driveway Katy suddenly grabbed Phil's arm, looking wildly out the window as if she expected someone or something to come bursting out of the forest. “Nope nope, turn around, not tonight. We'll come back tomorrow, in the daylight.”

  Mica snapped awake and sat up with the feeling that someone else was in the room with him. “Dad...” he said softly. It wasn't uncommon for the old man to miss a turn en route to his own room after a long day and night of drinking beer in the doorway. In the past, Mica had been awakened by the sound of a body hitting the floor or a cracked voice soliloquizing, or both. He'd gotten up to piss in the night and bumped into the old man standing in the center of the room breathing heavily, staring off into God knows what.

  But this was not his father. In the pitch black room Mica had the impression of vast occupied space, as if the darkness had turned solid. And as he concentrated into the silence, he could feel…not breathing, exactly, but voluminous respiration, as if all of the air in the room was being rhythmically consumed and expelled.

  Then Mica’s eyes adjusted.

  Millions of unctuous, vitreous glints appeared, filling the darkness.

  He heard the rustling of course hairs, the clicking of chitin.

  And then they were upon him.

  Ants, spiders, wasps, centipedes, a roiling mass heaped floor to ceiling, breaking like a wave…

  As the flood flattened him against the bed Mica crushed them in his hands until his fingers, riddled with stingers, bitten, turgid with poison, swelled to soft fleshy appendages unable even to offer that token resistance. They chewed away his eyelids and lips, pushed open his jaw and packed his throat so dense that the rising vomit struck their barrier and stopped, and the boy convulsed, realizing with the plucking of his flesh that he would feel himself reduced to bone before completely d
ying.

  His father began to shriek downstairs.

  The window above his bed shattered, and he heard the beams above him creaking, the ceiling cracking, sheets of plaster crashing down.

  The sky opened, with a shriek of metal and splintering wood as if the world was caving in on itself, and then he was falling.

  Lying amongst the rubble, Mica saw that his ravaged body had broken into segments. Everything he'd glimpsed in the nightmare daydream was coming true.

  He heard termites chewing the wood. He heard beetles digging, and the appliances and furniture tumbling into the holes.

  And the last thing the boy ever saw, lidless eyes pointed at the night sky, were the clouds of flies draining down to pick the flesh, and the microscopic gnats, dense in their billions, come to eat the bones.

  Phil glanced over at his wife and set his hand on her leg. “We're not in any hurry, you know. There's always tomorrow.”

  She nodded, sighed through her nose. “I'm doing alright. I guess, now that we're actually here...” Her eyes drifted away from him, out the window to the morning sun breaking through the trees.

  She shut her eyes, willing both peaceful calm and steel resolve. She felt the gravel of the driveway, the car slowing, stopping. She took a final deep breath and opened her eyes...

  Her brain floundered to grasp the impossible reality of what she saw.

  Or rather didn't see. It was utterly gone. The house, the shed. All that remained to indicate that anyone had ever occupied this space was a clearing of dark tilled earth.

  Phil watched his wife closely. His hand rose to touch her, and retreated. He opened his mouth to speak but remained silent. Katy's eyes stretched wide, as if by doing so she might find the missing buildings. Deliberately, stiffly, as if moving underwater, she let herself out of the car and walked to the center of the clearing, Phil following at a slight distance.

  Katy walked the perimeter, looking into the trees, looking at the ground. When she turned to face him, there were tears dangling from her jawline. “Whoever...The demolition...Look at this. There isn't a fucking splinter or a nail left behind...”

  “We can find out who...I know they usually take pictures before, at least...”

  “This is...” Katy shook her head. Her face fell apart. “...this is so much better.” She took Phil's hand. “Oh, God.” She dug the tears away with her fingertips. “It's gone. All of it's gone. I'm done with it.” She laughed through the residual sobbing. “Let's go get married.”

  Phil laughed, crying a little, too. As they stood looking over the clearing, heads pressed together, several birds that had been flushed by their arrival returned to the clearing. As they watched the birds waddling, staggering, pushing their beaks into the loam, it struck both of them that these were the fattest birds they had ever seen, nearly headless with their swollen bulk, walking with difficulty. And the birds continued to eat well, snatching ants and centipedes up out of the mud.

  There was something unsettling about the spectacle of the gorging birds, antithetical to the moment they'd been having, and with a light frown Katy had just turned to Phil, intending to say “Let's get out of here, go back into town to celebrate,” when a huge rust-colored barn cat jumped from the weeds pinning a bird beneath her claws and biting into its midsection, rearing up with the bird's intestines dangling from her jaws.

  “...Christ...” They backed to the car as the cat tore the bird to pieces, then leapt upon another that had been too immobile to flee the slaughter.

  Pale, silent, they backed down the driveway, flipping onto the asphalt just as the fox slid from the weeds like liquid, ripping out the cat's throat while the cat continued chewing.

  THE END.

  WHORE ABLE TO DIE by Sara Green

  The drain gurgled, swallowing the last of the foamy toothpaste.

  Janine tapped her toothbrush on the sink and remembered to clear her throat. Then she sang, “I’m ready.”

  Silence answered her outside the hotel bathroom. It wasn’t the worse thing she could’ve heard, but she hated the quiet ones. She quickly sized up her memory of her client’s appearance and readied her speech about additional charges. She punched open the bathroom door and tried to wear the same smile she’d worn for 16 years.

  It’s what had earned Janine repeat customers. At least, that was what she liked to pretend had made her services irresistible. There were other things she did that in her youth she once took pride in. It was all mechanical now. Like a professional athlete who practiced making the same lay up over and over and over, and then over and over again. It was a reflex.

  But that smile. Those reflexes.

  They went belly up and what Janine saw had frozen her, half-naked and illuminated only by the light of the bathroom behind her. The sheets were no longer on the bed, but draped over the television and dresser, the small desk and chair. The pillows were also no longer on the stained mattress.

  Nor was her client.

  She could hear him breathing—panting beneath the bed.

  “Role playing is extra,” Janine said.

  She kept away from the bed. Worried this man might have some sort of rape fetish. She imagined him grabbing her ankles if she got too close. She backed into the bathroom instead and bent over, trying to get an angle where she could see just where her client was hiding under the bed.

  All she got were shadows.

  But he was under there alright. She heard him scoot along the carpet in an effort not to be seen.

  Janine had actually experienced similar situations. A man gets up the never to pay for a prostitute, then as she washes up in the bathroom he freaks out, sobers up, realizes he is supposed to be happily married.

  Crying usually followed, then begging, then maybe a handful of cash to just forget about it all. Her business associate (pimp) would demand as much as the man had on him. And this particular guy wasn’t going to get off easy tonight, seeing as it was Reggie who was next door waiting for Janine to give the okay on receiving her payment. There were worse ways lose money on a Tuesday night, and for Janine there were also worse ways to make money.

  “Come on out, big boy,” Janine cooed. The sexy voice existed only as a sound. The expression on her face made irritated look complacent.

  The bed slammed. The metal frame rattled. The old springs jingled.

  “This is new to me,” she said. “Tell me wha—”

  The mattress flipped off the frame. It crashed into the wall and took the hotel phone with it. The old rotary rung as it bounced all the way to Janine’s heels.

  Janine screamed as a beast rose from the bedframe.

  Hair covered everything except its eyes, nostrils, and wet fangs.

  It stood like a man, but stared like the prowler among the trees.

  A werewolf growled like laughter and thunder entwined.

  It lunged across the room. There was nowhere else for Janine to go except the bathroom.

  But that was a dead end.

  Her dead end.

  She swung out of the door frame and the werewolf’s attack just missed her. Had she been wearing clothes, it surely would’ve snagged a loose fitting blouse with its claws.

  But the move had not improved Janine’s situation. It now blocked the exit. And it knew it.

  The werewolf paced, proudly guarding the door.

  Janine’s heart raced as she tried to time her next move, for it may be her last. Beneath the white sheet covering the television and dresser, was her purse. She’d sat it there before using the shower. She stabbed beneath the sheet and yanked it, the television followed, crashing to the floor.

  Her purse followed and the innards of Janine’s purse spilled on the moldy hotel carpet. Lipstick, blush, a knife, flashlight, keys, pepper spray, condoms, matches, a vial of Holy Water, and most importantly, a silver dagger, eight inches long with a wolf’s head for the pommel. She never left home without it.

  Her long plastic fingernails pushed the dagger out of reach. Drool dripped from the
werewolf’s fangs. The stench of its foul breath had now stained her arm. That was all the meter of being hell of a lot of pissed off needed to max out and boil over. She threw her hand and her body followed the exact number of inches to reach the dagger. Within the same thrust she came back with the dagger and jammed it in the werewolf’s heart.

  It bit and tried to throw its weight upon her. But she rolled her hips away came up on the werewolf’s abdomen like a saddle.

  Its jaws snapped at her as the force of the dagger kept it pinned to the carpet.

  “Next time, wolf, pick meat you can kill.” She twisted the silver dagger. The werewolf moaned. Its clawed feet fluttered, rapping against the dresser drawers in some sad attempt to run for greener pastures. When the kicking stopped, the furry beast was reduced to a middle aged-man with a gross amount of untamed body hair and a festering wound surrounding his heart and Janine’s silver dagger.

  Removing the dagger took extra effort, and a spurt followed her success. She wiped the werewolf’s blood into the moldy carpet, but knew she’d have to wash it in alcohol and Holy Water later.

  Janine needed a tub worth of Holy Water for her bath as well. She never liked bathing in it. She always felt like she’d have to pay for it later, like she was still that seven year old girl receiving her First Holy Communion and needed to go to confession first.

  Those were the old rules. The rules others had to live by. Janine had long since found a new set of rules, and while she was sure she’d die someday, those rules had kept her alive.

  She searched the bundle of clothes on the floor, looking for the dead man’s wallet. She doubted there’d be any money. Werewolves and their ilk rarely brought money when they planned to feast on some supposedly unsuspecting prostitute. She just wanted to find his license so she could give Reggie the man’s address and he could ransack it for anything worth selling.