Digital Horror Fiction Anthology E-Book

Jason A. Wyckoff

• Herausgeber: Digital Fiction Publishing Corp
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

DIGITAL HORROR FICTION ANTHOLOGY25 Horror Fiction Short Stories2:51, Behind the Caterpillar — Gregory L. NorrisA Dream for Sugar — Bruce MemblattA Pocket of Madness — Samuel MarzioliAces and Kings — David M. HoenigThe Animals — Aaron GudmunsonThe Borrowed Man — James DorrHis Own Personal Golgotha — Geoff BrownBuilding Condemned (Seeking Asylum) — Adrian LudensCompartmental — Jay CaselbergDemocracy — Larry HinkleDemon Driver — Adrian ColeLate for Eisheth — Tracie McBrideGiving at the Office — Geoff GanderShadows of the Darkest Jade — Sarah HansIntermediary — Jason A. WyckoffArk of the Lonesome — Jenner MichaudSdroW — Bruce Lockhart 2nd & Suzie LockhartRoadkill — C.M. SaundersSapphire Eyes Shining — Rie Sheridan RoseSuggestive Thoughts — H.L. FullertonSymeon — Bill ZagetThe Good Life — Michelle MellonThe Great White Bed — Don WebbThe River Slurry — Rue KarneyWhere There Is Life — Renee MillerScroll up and grab your copy today.Thank you for your interest in our novel. We hope you enjoy reading it as much as we have enjoyed presenting it. - Digital Fiction Website: DigitalFictionPub.com Facebook: Facebook.com/digitalfictionpub Twitter: @DigitalFicPub

Leseprobe

DIGITAL HORROR

FICTION ANTHOLOGY

25 Horror Fiction Short Stories

Volume 1

Copyright © 2018 the authors

Published 2018 Digital Fiction Publishing Corp

All rights reserved. 1st Edition

ISBN-13 (paperback): 978-1-988863-70-2

ISBN-13 (hardcover): 978-1-988863-68-9

ISBN-13 (kindle): 978-1-988863-69-6

ISBN-13 (epub): 978-1-988863-71-9

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

2:51, Behind the Caterpillar Gregory L. Norris

A Dream for Sugar Bruce Memblatt

A Pocket of Madness Samuel Marzioli

Aces and Kings David M. Hoenig

The Animals Aaron Gudmunson

The Borrowed Man James Dorr

His Own Personal Golgotha Geoff Brown

Building Condemned (Seeking Asylum) Adrian Ludens

Compartmental Jay Caselberg

Democracy Larry Hinkle

Demon Driver Adrian Cole

Late for Eisheth Tracie McBride

Giving at the Office Geoff Gander

Shadows of the Darkest Jade Sarah Hans

Intermediary Jason A. Wyckoff

Ark of the Lonesome Jenner Michaud

SdroW Bruce Lockhart 2nd & Suzie Lockhart

Roadkill C.M. Saunders

Sapphire Eyes Shining Rie Sheridan Rose

Suggestive Thoughts H.L. Fullerton

Symeon Bill Zaget

The Good Life Michelle Mellon

The Great White Bed Don Webb

The River Slurry Rue Karney

Where There Is Life Renee Miller

Thank You

Copyright

2:51, Behind the CaterpillarGregory L. Norris

––––––––

While reading comic books in the carriage house, Georgie asked Max what superpower he would choose, if granted such an awesome wish.

“Ultra-strength?” the other boy nudged, though Max suspected Georgie really wasn’t there, and he had started to wonder if his secret pal was, in truth, a side effect of Big Bob’s routine beatings. “X-ray vision? Energy bolts launched from your fingertips?”

“Invisibility,” Max answered.

He hastily gathered up the new comics and hid them inside a newspaper before starting the long march across the lawn to the imposing manor house’s back entrance, just in case Big Bob was home. Big Bob hated superhero comics.

Glancing at the newspaper, Max saw that the annual traveling carnival was back in town, and got his wish.

Escape.

The actual possibility of exiting his miserable life at 72 Cranmore Avenue in the upscale Olde Cottage neighborhood struck Max while Big Bob was smacking him around with a particularly nasty backhand. One of those full-fingered jobbies whose sting doesn’t set in completely for several anxious seconds; long enough to make the impact worse because of the anticipation.

Rain was coming down, and Max had left a window open. As Max foolishly reached for his cheek and Big Bob, who was quite big, a fucking Lurch Georgie once snickered, hit him again, he knew he would have taken the punches if the day was sunny for leaving the window closed. You couldn’t win with crazies, Max learned long ago. The best you can hope for is to get away from them. So a few days later, after carefully planning his liberation, Maximillian George Cullette the Second vanished.

Some of it was stuck in envelopes behind a row of dusty books. Considerably more had been hidden in the pages of a set of encyclopedias. Big Bob wasn’t much of a reader, apart from his subscriptions to several tawdry men’s magazines. The books were his late dad’s, and so was the money, which really made them Max’s property.

Big Bob didn’t work, but for at least a year, as Max’s eighteenth birthday loomed, he’d noticed the bastard spending a goodly amount of time in the manor’s library. Like his dad, Max was a reader. When he needed a snippet of information on the endangered Karner Blue Butterfly, instead of logging onto the computer he crept into the library, where he’d been expressly forbidden to enter, and opened an encyclopedia. While searching for blue, he’d uncovered green, and plenty of it. Max figured this was where the college fund his dad left for him, a quarter of a mill, had gone.

In a moment of rare boldness during the winter, while Big Bob and she were entangled in the manor’s master suite, Max and Georgie had stolen a look at the latest bank statement. Max didn’t find nearly that much hidden in envelopes and books, and knew he could have reclaimed more of his inheritance if given enough time, but the carnival was in town, and he needed to make sure that when it left, he went with it.

He traveled lightly, carrying only his backpack, because leaving almost everything behind would buy precious time by lending to the illusion that Max was still there, an afterthought in the house except when Big Bob wanted to go a few rounds. Max knew from reading encyclopedias that in the wild when dominant males die in many mammal prides and packs, those that rise up to claim their females often start cleaning house by killing the late alpha’s offspring. His death at Bob’s hands was only a matter of time, so Max moved quickly.

Comfortable newer sneakers, jeans, a T-shirt under a black hoodie. Three changes of underwear and socks in his backpack, an extra T, the original comics his dad had gotten him way-back-when, including the issue of Action Comics featuring the first-ever appearance of Superman, which he’d won at an auction in New York City. A Bible, with hundred-dollar bills on every page—he’d wrapped a rubber band around it and stuck random torn paper slips bookmark-fashion throughout the gospels to complete an appearance of devoutness. In Max’s experience, most people he crossed paths with were more superstitious than actually religious, so even if someone did rifle through his things, they’d more than likely pass over that particular good book.

He hurried down Cranmore, crossed Dean Avenue, and followed Hemlock Circle to the vacant lot. From there, he exited the Olde Cottage neighborhood onto North Broadway, grabbed a soda at the mom & pop near Governor’s Lake, and began to circle the pond, headed toward the town fairgrounds. His calves ached by then, as did his jaw. Max blamed the latter on Big Bob until he caught himself grinding his teeth and realized this lone wound was self-inflicted.

“Escape,” Max whispered on the final trudge up the crushed gravel path, past the colorful signs and the cars parked in the field where soccer games would soon take place. A cacophony of unintelligible voices, some shouted over bullhorns, others mixing together with laughter and good-natured screams, rose up into the air. Carnival music and bells counterpointed. The smell of butter and spun sugar drifted on the young autumn breeze, exotic and intoxicating.

Head held low, Max approached the gate. A sign proclaimed: This Weekend Only!

He paid for a ticket with a hundred-dollar bill and stuffed the change in his pocket. The girl in the kiosk was short and quite round, with a dirty blonde pageboy haircut and dark beads for eyes behind tiny granny glasses. The odor of her sweat struck Max’s nostrils, sour and tangible, seasoned with the fetor of aged wood from the booth.

“Who’s in charge here?” he asked.

The girl snapped, “I am.”

“No, I meant in charge of the carnival.”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Why are you giving me such a hard time?” he fired back.

The girl—he later found out that her name was Imogene—rolled her eyes, clacked her thin, pale lips together, and directed him toward a camper among the convoy of trucks parked at the far side of the fairground. “Ask to talk with Barney.”

“Barney?” Max parroted. “Like the dinosaur?”

“Yeah, that’s him. A real T-Rex.”

Barney was a short beast of a man with a huge, hairy mole on his throat.

“Extra muscle?” he snorted. “Real generous, but you don’t look like you’ve got all that much muscle to offer.”

Max instantly disliked the man, who reminded him of Big Bob despite his lack of height. Barney was mean; you could see it in his tattoos, smell it in the too-thick haze of his cologne, which seemed to have been splashed on by the bucket to cover up some foul stink rather than to attract the fairer sex. And that mole, bristling with stiff hairs...

“I’d work cheap.”

“You should pay me,” Barney said. “Okay, minimum wage, plus board. You’ll shack with Frank, but don’t expect to be sleeping much. We pack up Monday at the crack of dawn and are heading north for Hanford Falls.”

“Who’s Frank?”

“He’s the guy spinning fire.”

“Spinning fire?”

“What are you, part mynah bird?” Barney told him to fill out the necessary paperwork in the common tent, then to look for a “puke” who would be “dancing like his ass was on fire, because with one bad slip, it would be.”

“Ballyhoo,” Max said.

“Huh?” Barney said. “You blowing me attitude this soon?”

“Nothing,” Max said.

He was hungry, but Max’s guts were tied in knots and he knew anything he ate would make a swift reappearance. He thought about Big Bob and wondered if the prick had yet noticed the missing money. They wouldn’t notice Max missing; not for a while. Not until Big Bob went into the library to count his pilfered fortune.

The pressure on Max’s stomach doubled without warning. His gorge rose as he hurried away from the common tent and vomited into the grass. What felt like a long time later, enough for the sky to darken, the pressure abated. Max wiped his eyes. Sharp shards of pumpkin-colored light struck his gaze with a brilliance that bordered on painful. Painful, yes, but also beautiful.

Somewhere among the strings of bright lights, the Teacups, the Caterpillar, and the concession stands, licks of fire danced. They drew Max, moth-like, out of his hunch and toward the man named Frank.

“Will you look at that,” Georgie gaped. “Look at him.”

“I see him, now shush it, would you?” Max whispered from the left corner of his mouth, afraid that somebody might overhear them. No one did, because Georgie wasn’t really there, and the calliope music and clanking bells and general chatter would have swallowed his voice even if there were two young men and not, in actuality, simply one suffering the effects of a subdural hematoma.

But Max didn’t need Georgie, the brain bruise or the spirit of a lost child he might have once been before his dad’s death, to appreciate what he was seeing. The man stood tall and proud, well over the six-foot mark though, for an instant, Max imagined he wasn’t really a man but some powerful superhero or a lesser deity; Prometheus, a force of nature, in command of the element of fire.

Undeniably handsome, a man with poise and grace, Frank’s face bore a day or more’s worth of stubble on his cheeks and chin. His dark brush-cut hair was partially concealed behind a navy handkerchief wound around his head—to protect him from the licks of fire crackling from his hands, Max assumed.

No, not his hands...fire fans. Max had seen photos of fire dancers before, in books in his father’s library. The four tips protruding from each fan were lit. The man—he was a man again, now that Max saw the flames came from fans and not fingertips—spun them in a figure-eight with athletic finesse. His entire body moved in coordinated sweeps. He spun the fire; he mastered it. It was an extension of him. Max sucked in a deep breath and swore he detected a hint of sweat, male and magnificent, through the oily smell of whatever accelerant was feeding the flame and the aroma of sugar oozing out of the concession stands. The scent of him, of Frank, awoke the dormant attraction for another human being that Max had never experienced before.

“Yes, he truly is...” Georgie started to say.

Max blinked himself out of the spell and glanced to his right. Georgie was gone. As he again faced the fire spinner, Max noticed a hideous creature standing behind the magnificent man, hunched and bloated, with a coarse green hide and beady black eyes and claws extended, ready to grab and gouge. Then he realized the beast was Imogene, that she was holding an old green army surplus blanket in her clutches.

“Just in case he screws up and starts to burn,” she said after the performance ended, and Frank took a bow.

Once the show ended and the audience tossed singles, fives, the occasional bigger bill, and loose change into an old metal bucket in appreciation, Max picked up on the closeness being telegraphed by Frank and Imogene’s body language. She slithered her arms around his, demanded a kiss the way he’d seen clingy women like his mother express to their men. Frank, like Big Bob, accommodated, likely just to shut the woman up. But there was something more. And something less. Frank, magnificent Frank, went rigid when their lips touched, as though inwardly the act of kissing her disgusted him.

“They’re a couple?” Georgie asked. He’d slipped back into existence, will-o-the-wisp.

“How the hell can he stand her?”

“Maybe he can’t. Maybe that scabrous woman has something over him, like a secret. We’ve got a secret. Maybe he does, too, and she knows it and is holding it over his head.”

“Or she’s got a voodoo doll with a lock of his hair, and if he doesn’t do what she says, she runs a match over it.”

Max realized he was thinking out loud and stilled his tongue. He waited for Imogene to count the money in the bucket and to leave with it. The way she plodded off inelegantly, the bucket hanging from her arm, reminded Max of a milkmaid. By then, he was high on the smell of butter and sugar and sweat. In something of a daze, he approached the fire spinner, who was in the process of gathering up his things.

“F...Frank?” Max stuttered.

The man faced him directly. Frank’s eyes glowed in the light from the nearby concession stands, a stormy shade of blue, gray around the edges. The look contained within those lenses was wild, like a wolf’s.

“Who wants to know?” Frank demanded in a masculine voice that verged on musical, even if its tone was accusatory.

“Hi, I’m Max,” he managed. “B-Barney told me to say howdy. Said I’m to bunk with you, in your camper. Just started with the carnival today.”

Frank’s wolfish good looks continued to bristle as he absorbed the information. Max extended his small hand, aware that it was shaking. For a terrible instant, he expected Frank to bite his fingers, hard enough to take them off at the knuckles. Then recognition dawned in Frank’s expression, and the rabid spell passed. He grinned, exposing a length of clean white teeth, the gesture more snarl than actual smile, and shook Max’s outstretched hand with his much-larger version. Max winced. If Frank wanted to, it was clear he could snap bones.

“Hi, Max, I’m Frank. But you already know that, duh.”

“I loved your show.”

“That?” Frank shrugged. The air of paranoia hanging around him evaporated, leaving a man who seemed genuinely down to earth. And oh, what a man.

“I’m supposed to help you, you know, with things around here.”

Frank smiled wider. He clapped a hand to Max’s shoulder in that safe buddy-buddy way that makes every male stranger an instant pal. “That’s good to know.”

“Yeah, good,” Max said and, truly, the gentle strength of Frank’s hand on his neck and then his shoulder felt great.

“Come on, I’ll show you the ropes.”

Part of those ropes was a white travel camper with asymmetrical orange stripes parked among the convoy of vehicles. Upon his approach, Max realized the stripes were, in reality, bands of rust.

Frank, walking a step ahead of Max with a kind of swagger that instantly reminded him of cowboys, pirates, and bikers, yanked the side panel open. Inside, dominating most of the camper, was a twin mattress. A cot-sized pad stretched along the length of the rear double doors. Every available space, including the overhead storage racks, was crammed to capacity with clothes, books, plastic shopping bags and jagged bits and guts of electronics, all of the latter looking ready to be connected but none of it up and running. A bitter mélange of mildew and stale sweat socks billowed out. Not surprisingly, Frank moved quickly inside to tidy up the piles of discarded underwear and dirty socks that dotted the landscape.

“Bit of a mess,” he said, embarrassment painting a crimson note across his face.

“It’s fine,” Max said.

“Not a lot of room. Where’s your stuff?”

Max unholstered his backpack. “Right here. I’m traveling light.”

“Good, then you can have the back bedroom.” He aimed a smudged thumb at the cot and chuckled. “You know where the toilets are, though we dudes usually just whip it out behind the nearest tree if it’s only a leak situation. Laundry and showers are in that vehicle, over there.” He pointed toward one of the newer rigs, a big one. “Meals are in the mess tent. We got an early start tomorrow morning. I have my watch alarm set for four.”

“I’m gonna sleep the instant I drop,” Max said, which wasn’t a lie, though the most that he managed that first night was to pass out for an hour or so at a time. He ached, and his nerves about Big Bob and what might be happening on the other side of the lake kept his heart in a gallop.

And then there was Frank.

In the vague light seeping in through the windows, Max had watched the man strip from the cut of his eye, so as not to appear obvious. Frank peeled off his T-shirt and the masculine-smelling bitterness of his armpits doubled. The way he removed his socks and then his pants was pure poetry. Georgie sighed beside him, and only the fear of being caught observing kept Max from reprimanding his traveling companion.

“Goodnight,” Frank said.

Max responded similarly, but Frank had already begun to snore.

He’d done it, taken himself out of the situation and off the grid, off Big Bob’s and that woman’s—he couldn’t bring himself to refer to her as his mother anymore—radar. All he needed was to follow this particular underground railroad a few stops farther along the line, and then he could jump ship. Go wherever he wanted to. Ballyhoo! That cry of the fearless acrobat as the cannon exploded, sending him soaring across space beneath the big top...hopefully toward a net.

“Ballyhoo, indeed,” Max whispered.

Frank snored.

For a brief time, everything was perfect.

At some untimed point in the darkness, Max heard a door open. Through watery eyes, he tracked it toward the front of the camper. A brisk gust of air spirited in and around him. The door then closed and Max, paralyzed with fear, waited.

A grunt, a woman’s, sounded. A shadow passed between the windshield and the lights from the campground. There was someone in there, with them.

Max tried to call Frank’s name, but no sound emerged. Bringing his hand up to clear his eyes took Herculean effort. When Max dared look, he saw the sheets above Frank had billowed up pregnantly. Frank was still visible at the bottom, his huge naked feet and hairy ankles sticking out at one end, his face at the other. But something rotund had scurried beneath the bedclothes with him. Max heard it working around, atop Frank’s body, grunting and snorting as its mouth traveled across the sleeping man’s neck. A wet, sucking sound emerged, hideous upon the ears.

Frank moaned, but his reaction wasn’t so much arousal as pain. Eventually, the hideous undulations subsided, and the creature detached itself and exited the camper the same way it had entered, through the driver’s side door.

Frank briefly returned to snoring, but soon after began to sob in his sleep.

“So where are you from?” Max asked.

Frank hunched over his bowl of cereal, gripping the spoon in a pose that looked positively prehistoric. “Buffalo. You?”

Max’s mind drifted into the stacks of the library on Cranmore Avenue. I am from Heliopolis, the City of Sun, he thought. From Neuschwanstein, the castle of Mad King Ludwig. From Beijing and Boston, from Walachia, Transylvania, and Walla Walla Washington, but only because I saw that place mentioned in a Bugs Bunny cartoon once. And you, I know, really hail from either the planet Krypton or Ancient Greece, most-magnificent Mister Frank...

“Akron, Ohio,” he settled for instead, and for no particular reason.

After breakfast, Max snuck back to the camper and removed both the Bible and the precious comic books out of his backpack and hid them beneath the cot’s mattress, just to be safe. On his way out, he lifted the bedclothes on Frank’s mattress, expecting to find bloodstains. But there were none, only a discoloration of sweat.

Perhaps he’d dreamed the nocturnal visit. He didn’t think so, and tabled the whole internal monologue less than five minutes later when, on the march to the Caterpillar where he was expected to change the overflowing garbage liners, he caught sight of Big Bob and that woman.

It was impossible to miss a man of Bob Tillman’s height. He towered easily a full foot above anybody near him. Max detected a flash of bottled red and knew he wasn’t hallucinating. No, the monster had tracked him down!

Big Bob was impossible to miss, but Max wasn’t. He was short and slight of build and—

“Invisible,” Georgie reminded, tugging on his hand right at the moment Big Bob began to pivot in their direction, sniffing at the air, as if scenting them on the breeze.

Max and the personification of a brain bruise vanished into the crowd, and around the nearest corner.

Boom...

The ground shook.

Boom...

Max waited, holding his breath, worried the monster had recognized him by smell. The choking odor wafting up from the chemical toilet might disguise his scent. Or might not.

Boom...

The giant footstep rocked the portable toilet and sent the contents beneath the seat splashing around. Big Bob had grown to a height of a dozen stories tall. A shadow passed over the wall vents. The colossal thing standing outside growled in its mutant voice, and Max swore he felt the sour warmth of its breath rain down, pouring through the gaps in the walls.

“Bob?” Her. Outside. With him.

“Thought I saw...only there were two of them. Identical. A couple of weak, useless thieves.”

To Max’s right, Georgie whispered, “He saw me.”

Max clamped his hand over Georgie’s mouth. It was like trying to hold onto a wisp of smoke or a cloud. The latch jiggled. For a horrifying second or two, Max couldn’t remember if he’d locked it behind him. Even if he had, would the door hold against an enemy so gargantuan?

The latch rattled, and Max saw his own death. Big Bob would kill him in front of the crowd, only no one would see the deed because Max was invisible.

Mercifully, the shadow moved on. Max heard the door to the next toilet clatter open and bang shut. He hunched down and waited.

“Do you think it’s safe?” Georgie eventually asked.

Max expected to open the door and find the giant-sized version of Big Bob waiting outside, and it would devour him, crunching his bones with hard, happy chomps. But Big Bob and the woman were gone when he ventured forth from the portable toilet, and after what he’d suffered in there, the tongue-lashing he got from not-so-big Barney barely pushed Max’s blood pressure.

“Come on, help me with this,” Frank grumbled.

This was part of the ticket kiosk, which broke down into four sections. Everybody in the carnival pulled multiple duties—Frank spun fire for the crowd and labored to disassemble and set up the concessions and various tents between acts.

Max held onto one section of the kiosk while Frank unfastened clips and did his best not to stare as the tall man’s biceps puffed and pulsed. Not an easy challenge to rise to, and nearly as difficult as the previous two nights of sleeping in the camper with him, with the cadence of Frank’s snores and the smell of his body, so male and raw and strangely comforting, filling Max’s breaths.

In his dreams, Frank was Icarus, who mastered the fire without burning. He was Phaeton, pulling the chariot of the sun across the sky, only in this scenario the chariot never crashed and, holding the reins in one hand, he spun fire with the other and the sun followed him, checks and balances, the universe maintained.

Max woke erect, powerless before the vision of this half man, half god. But then he would glance over to see Frank sitting on the edge of the mattress, rocking back and forth, a haunted look on his pallid face. In the muddy light streaming in just before dawn, he saw Frank’s lips moving, only no words were being spoken, and Max feared that Frank was under a spell, and that Imogene had placed the curse upon him.

They left for the next stop on the road, the village of Hanford Falls.

At 7:52 the following morning, out behind the Caterpillar and a hundred or so miles from Big Bob, who had likely torn the library apart—and, perhaps, Max’s mother—in search of the missing money, Max bumped into Imogene.

“You,” the scabrous woman said.

Until that moment, Max was engaged in cleaning up garbage from the previous night’s crowd. A traveling carnival was a messy entity, and the visitors who attended it to swig cherry freezes and eat greasy fried dough with globs of powdered sugar didn’t much care where they dumped their paper plates and clotted plastic cups.

“Oh no, it’s her,” Georgie whispered.

“Quiet,” Max whispered.

“Don’t you tell me to be quiet,” Imogene hissed. She licked her lips, and the image of that pink lump of flesh gliding back and forth reminded him of something amphibious that fed on live insects.

“I didn’t—”

“Shut up and listen,” she said, getting closer, almost right into Max’s face; close enough that her smell hit him fully, far worse than the rancid dregs of half-digested hot dogs with kraut regurgitated into the garbage to fester in the September sun, or the particularly nauseating odor of burnt sugar when somebody spun cotton candy the wrong way and the result was a caramelized mess that then had to be scraped out of the machine, and the offender caught hell from Barry.

Max listened.

“There’s...something about you,” she said, rocking in place, making sharp gestures with the stubby sausages of her fingers. “Something I don’t like, and I don’t like you.”

Max righted and set down the garbage bag at an awkward angle. Its top spilled open, dumping the contents onto the ground, creating one more mess for the mess-boy to clean up.

“Don’t, Max,” Georgie warned. “This one’s dangerous.”

He gave Georgie a nudge with his right elbow, jabbing him between the ribs. “You shut up,” Max said to Georgie, and then laced into Imogene. “And you listen. I don’t care if you like me or not. I don’t care what you think.”

He didn’t, because after Big Bob’s love-taps, what could this rancid, upright cow do to him?

“You don’t sign my paychecks. You don’t...”

“I can do a lot worse to you than you might imagine,” Imogene snickered. She licked her lips, smiled. Her grin steadily turned more frog-like. “So you just remember that.”

From the path between the Caterpillar and the tent where Madame Zondra read fortunes and Tarot cards, an angry voice shouted, “Stop lollygagging and pick up that mess.” It was Barney. “And when you’re done, run a rag over the chemical toilets.”

A low, throaty chuckle sounded behind him. Max turned to see Imogene walking away, the morning breeze catching in her frayed velvet skirt and scattering her fetor across the lot.

“You’ve done it,” Georgie said. “You’ve really gone and done it now.”

Max started to reprimand Georgie but the words, like Frank’s each morning in the camper, never emerged, leading him to wonder if the curse’s shadow had extended itself over him as well, like a shroud.

Frank spun fire. The green-scaled creature loomed behind him, ready to jump and douse his flames, steal his energy.

During that second performance of the carnival’s first night in the town of Fetchings-Far, Max could clearly see that Frank’s game was off. His sweeping movements lacked their usual grace and twice he dropped a fan. The second time came with an unexpected jolt: a glop of the white gasoline accelerant he used to light the wicks of the fans splattered the membrane between his right forefinger and thumb. Frank then dropped both fans and danced in place, howling. The green thing behind him pounced, engulfing him in its mass.

“Get away from me,” Frank roared. He exited Imogene’s shell, shaking out his injured hand.

“I’m trying to help,” she said, doing that angry rocking motion, her dark eyes roiling angrily behind her granny glasses.

“I don’t need your help,” Frank snapped.

A sympathetic bystander handed him her slushy-ice, and Frank dunked his reddening hand into the cup, wincing as seared flesh met Red Dye Number Three.

Max hurried over to him. “Frank, what can I do?”

Angrily, Frank said, “Gather up my fans. By the handles. Be careful.” Then he stormed away.

Max moved toward the abandoned fire fans, only to come up against the amphibian, still holding the green blanket, still rocking.

“Don’t you dare touch those,” she said.

“But Frank said...”

Imogene lapped at her thin lips. “Frank belongs to me.”

She reached down and grabbed the fans before Max could, leaving him alone to suffer the ridicule of the thinning yet quite vocal crowd.

Frank didn’t return to the camper for some time, though Max noted the red telltale of a cigarette burning in the darkness beyond the windows and figured that Frank was the smoker.

He locked the driver’s side door and hunkered down after checking his backpack and secret stash beneath the mattress. Everything was as it should be, except for Frank. Frank, outside, injured and angry because of that horrible woman.

Max huddled on the tiny mattress. Georgie rested across from him, a reflection in the window. “What do you think? Should we leave now?”

“What about Frank?” Max asked, shaking his head.

“Frank’s with her. He made his bed, as the saying goes.”

“I can’t believe he’d want to stay with that...vile...porcine...” Max’s mind drifted out into the darkness, to Frank. “I like him, Georgie. Maybe even...”

Max’s voice trailed to a whisper. Footsteps, heavy and steady, reached his ears through the camper’s hard shell. The panel door slid open. Max sat up quickly. A shadow surged in.

“Frank?”

“Yeah, buddy, it’s me.” The acrid stink of cigarettes wafted in with him.

“You okay?”

Frank didn’t answer.

“Your hand?”

“I’ll live.”

“Frank?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m gonna leave soon. Do you want to run away with me?”

Frank huddled on the mattress, hugging knees to his chin and rocking in place. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay.”

Max rolled over and eventually drifted asleep. Later, he heard a dragging scuffle outside the camper and was jarred awake by the angry jiggling of the driver’s door handle.

“You pull a stunt like that again, I’ll light you on fire and spin your ass like a top. You understand?” Barney said.

“Yes,” Frank answered.

Barney handed Frank an envelope. Eyes heavy with guilt, Frank accepted it. Barney’s focus then shifted to Max. “What the hell are you looking at?” The question was rhetorical. “Hey, you with the eyeballs, here.”

Barney tossed another envelope from the stack at Max.

“What’s this?”

“Your birth certificate, you little abortion. What do you think it is? Your paycheck.”

Max picked the envelope off the ground. Barney huffed a swear under his breath and lumbered away. So much like a monkey, thought Max.

Frank growled out a rosary of expletives and cast a scowl at the departing man. Once he was out of sight, Frank opened his envelope, hawked up a wad of phlegm, spit it out. “How the hell are we supposed to escape on this?”

Max glanced at the paltry numbers of his paycheck and shrugged.

“I know you like him, but...” Georgie whispered, peering over his shoulder.

“You say something?” Frank asked.

Max choked down a heavy swallow. “No, I didn’t.”

“But I heard...”

“Frank, there’s something I want to tell you, need to tell you.”

Frank eyed him suspiciously. “What is it?”

“I love...” he started, but Max couldn’t say the rest.

“We could to Buffalo, you and I,” Max said untold minutes into the conversation. “Have a fresh start. Live our lives the way we want to, together.”

Frank stood and stretched, bending his elbows and yawning. As he rose, so did his shirt, exposing the taut muscles of his abdomen and the fur-ringed knot of his belly button.

Max’s emotions crashed over him. “You’d be free. Free of this place, and of her.”

Frank exhaled and rejoined Max on the ledge of the camper’s open sliding door. “That bitch has ruined my credit, my sense of smell, my life. I hate her so much.”

“We could both start over, just the two of us,” Max said.

Frank’s eyes met his, and Max’s last vestige of hesitation crumbled. “Could we?”

Max nodded. “I have money.”

“Where?”

“It’s in a safe place. We—”

Then Frank leaned down and silenced Max with a kiss. The moment their lips crushed together, something inside Max’s head shorted out with an unpleasant pop and what he at first thought was the wind screaming sharply around the camper he would later realize as being Georgie, who vanished completely in that single act of passion.

“Where?” Frank persisted.

Max caressed the other man’s stubbled cheek. He was so in love with Frank, he would confess anything to him, and he did. “The Bible, under my mattress.”

Frank smiled. “We’ll leave tonight, you and me.”

“For Buffalo?”

“Anywhere, as long as we’re together.”

Frank kissed him again. The rest after that passed in a hypnotic blur.

“We’ll take the camper, after everyone else is sawing logs,” Frank said. “We’ll have to ditch it in case someone comes looking.”

“Who would do that?” Max asked. Frank’s silence answered the question. Imogene. Max glanced up, but Frank’s eyes darted away. “We can get a new car, something fast and shiny.”

“Yeah, let’s pack up now, before Barney notices we’re missing and thinks we’re in here beating our meat.”

From the corner of his eye, Max watched Frank stuff things into plastic bags. Socks and T-shirts, books and electronics, all going in together helter-skelter.

“I’ve never been to Buffalo,” Max said excitedly.

He grabbed the Bible and the comic book, thought about shoving his dirty clothes into the backpack’s maw, but then figured he could buy new clothes alongside his new love, in their new—and Frank’s old—stomping grounds.

“The two of us, together, we...”

And then Frank clobbered him over the head with a particularly heavy piece of electronic equipment, a VCR or computer tower, Max imagined, as the world turned red in front of his eyes, the same shade as Valentine hearts and long-stemmed roses. Exquisite pain washed over him, and everything went dark.

Max woke in the rangy patch of woods behind the Caterpillar. Imogene’s amphibious smile hovered between him and the Big Dipper.

“I warned you not to screw with me,” she said. “What did you think, that my Frank was going to be your lover? That you could buy him?”

Max attempted to speak, only to gag on a mouthful of blood, metallic and nauseating. He tried to move, but arms and legs snapped back. He was tied, in two points.

“And now you have to pay.”

In the poor light, he saw that she was holding his backpack. She clutched the Bible to her chest. Anger briefly consumed him, only to be smothered by cold fear. Max tipped his head to the side. Frank replaced Imogene in the dark space above his eyes. The cursed deity’s flesh shone pale in the night and his eyes gazed down blankly, all whites.

Frank held an object in his hands. He gave it a shake. Thick, foul liquid rained onto Max. White gasoline.

“No, Frank,” Max pleaded.

Frank set the container down and stepped back. “Buffalo,” he huffed. “Yeah, right.”

“Do it,” Imogene urged, her voice giddy.

Frank struck a match. The match lit. Frank tossed it.

At 2:51, behind the Caterpillar, two shadowy figures stood around a fire. They watched it burn for a while, then kicked dirt and leaves over the remains, covering up what they had burned. Together, right before sunrise, they drove away in a rusting camper, headed nowhere in particular.

A Dream for SugarBruce Memblatt

––––––––

It was just like it appeared to her in the dream; A table, a bottle of wine, the sound of water running through the tap, the breeze, the curtains blowing in the window against a moonlit night, and the body splattered across the pavement twenty floors below.

In the dream she pushed him through window, but here in the real world there was no sign of a struggle beyond the fallen body and the blood oozing on the street below. The door was safely locked. The apartment remained undisturbed. The bottle of wine was the remnant of a dinner she ate alone hours ago. The water ran for the dishes she’d left undone. Seldom had she left the sink on, but tonight...

Perhaps she was still encased in the dream, burrowing through a restless sleep. There wasn’t a knock on the door. Shouldn’t there be a knock on the door? The police armed with questions? The answer was clear. She didn’t push the unknown cadaver that lay below to its unfortunate end. It was a coincidence, the dream, just a dream. The two worlds; her dream state and this strange reality remained separate and independent.

They called her Sugar, but her parents named her Mabel. She sang at a club downtown along one of New Orleans winding streets. She lived in one of the taller buildings in the city. Sugar liked to be high like the clouds. She carried herself with a sophisticated air in spite of her humble beginnings, and her even less impressive present conditions, but Sugar knew how to stretch a dollar. Sugar also knew just the right people in New Orleans; people who would help her get by with no strings attached just because she was Sugar, and just because it was The Big Easy.

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!