Gerald Dean Rice's Blog, page 103

But I Don't Have a Kindle and I'm Allergic to Books...

Well now The Ghost Toucher is available to people just like you.  The Ghost Toucher is now prepped and ready for all formats through Smashwords and soon will be distributed to just about any website you can think of that sells ebooks.  It's $5.99 just like on Amazon, but for the next week, for anyone who goes to Smashwords to purchase, you can get 25% off.  Just type in code AU49P at checkout! 

And as an extra special treat, two pages of the follow-up to TGT are included at the very end.  Get ready for The Golden Ones later this year!

I like exclamation points!

!!

Sailing

Hope you enjoyed that little surprise there.  Night was probably the first story I wrote when I decided I wanted to do it as a hobby/profession.  There was so much I just didn't know then.  I thought "woman was really a zombie and not alive in the end" was an innovative twist.  Shows what I knew.

Got a few things in the pipeline and I may start blogging something new in a few days, depending on what it looks like when I finish plotting it.  Something old turned into something new...

Night of the Loving Dead - pt 11

Jessie pushed Ed back up in his seat, licking her lips. She didn't know how she was what she was, but she didn't care now. The only thing that mattered was eating. Eating and…

Jessie suddenly felt another urge come on strong like the first one. It hit her like the dome light had suddenly gotten hot and raised the temperature in the car twenty degrees. She looked at Ed again and saw more than food. He was a man. A living, breathing man. And she was still a woman.

Her hand slid slowly down his shirt and onto the crotch of his jeans. She squeezed gently and found him there, ready. She straddled him, clenching her teeth tightly so she wouldn't bite him too soon and reached to his other side to flip the lever to recline the seat.

After quite a bit of undoing, she was naked and so was he from the waist down to his ankles. She helped herself to a little treat first by ripping off his ear and swallowing it without chewing. As she straddled him again for real this time the last coherent thought that went through her mind was if this was the best sex she would ever have or the best meal.

Night of the Loving Dead - pt 10

Jessie drew back, repulsed, and flung Ed's head away from her. He went almost to sitting upright before slumping back, his head almost touching the vomit-coated armrest. She threw open the car door, spitting the patch of hair out onto the ground and retching. She dropped to her hands and knees as she continued to dry-heave and cough, only nothing would come out.

When the feeling subsided, Jessie opened her eyes, trusting the dirt she was looking at to be as it was supposed to. Everything else in the world was wrong. Zombies aren't real, you don't pull foot long pieces of shrapnel out of your head and you definitely don't eat your boyfriend! Just then, Jessie's eyes settled on the piece of spat out scalp, lying skin up so she could see a string of vein in it. She stood up suddenly so she could turn away from it, but then she was looking at Ed again, slumped over in his seat with a patch of flesh missing from his bleeding head. She put her hands to her mouth to suppress a scream and a moaning wail slipped through her fingers. She was horrified at what her body was intending to do, at the tide that was slowly but surely sweeping away her mind, but just as she knew she couldn't stop the hunger pains, she knew she couldn't stop the physical urge she was feeling now.

Calmly, Jessie sat back in her seat, not bothering with closing the door.

"Ed, you're dying," she said plainly. "And I can't get help for you. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't." She turned in her seat and looked at him. "And I know you would do anything for me if you could. So I shouldn't let you go to waste then, right?" Even with her rationalizing, she knew it was important to eat while he was still alive. Somehow, somewhere inside her, she knew.

Night of the Loving Dead - pt 9

What should have been the white of her eye was crimson red and the pupil was dilated almost to the point of swallowing the brown of her eye. The other eye looked normal, though it had begun tearing up. She perforated the skin under her left eye and a thick, yellowish fluid ran out like a tear accompanied by a pbbbt sound. Jessie clenched her hand on the mirror as she rotated it up.

A single shard of metal stuck out of her head about an inch above the hair line like a comb she might have forgotten there. She gasped in surprise, but studied where it was buried in her scalp.

"Where did that come from?" she asked aloud and was amazed at how calm her voice sounded. Jessie glanced down briefly from the mirror and saw the hole through the center of the windshield. Great, she thought. She grabbed the shrapnel firmly by its end and drew it out, with quite a bit of effort. The clean end was about five inches long and the bloody end was about seven. It hadn't hurt one bit.

Ed began to gurgle on either his spit or blood, reminding Jessie he was there. She laid the piece of metal on the dashboard and tenderly tilted his head to the side to let his mouth drain. She rested his head against her shoulder and with a shudder, he vomited, splashing it on the armrest, the seats, on her and on him.

The immediate smell was rich and delicious and made her think of steak sauce or ketchup and she felt her stomach rumble more gently this time. The scent of his hair and skin and sweat was so alive and was suddenly making her mouth water. She ran her fingers through his thick, wavy hair and began to lick her fingers clean of the natural oil from his scalp. She grabbed two fistfuls of his hair, bringing his head forward and took a bite like an apple, her teeth going through the skin and scraping against his hard skull.

Night of the Loving Dead - pt 8

Jessie ran all the way back, the woman's waking screams reaching her not long after she passed them, but she never stopped, never looked back. She got into the car and quickly slammed the door shut behind her. She thought she saw something wrong with her reflection in the rearview mirror, but was too panic-stricken to think twice about it. She had no idea what to do to help Ed now. The cornfields would be too easy to get lost in, they had driven miles on this road before getting stuck here and there was no way she was going back down there. Besides, she was so exhausted she didn't think she could have made it ten feet in any direction. They hadn't followed her this far, had they? She began to think of the couple and cinched the memories before the horror of it could really sink in.

Jessie reached over to check Ed's pulse. What was that? she thought to herself as she had a pain in her stomach. There was an accompanying growl that went with the pain the second time. It felt like a hunger pain, she thought, but it felt wrong somehow. As if all the times she had ever been hungry before had been rolled up into one great big ball and then unleashed in her stomach right then. There was another growl with another pain that felt like knives raking across her stomach lining and she doubled over in agony, feeling sweat prickle on her forehead and cheeks. She sat up straight and clenched the steering wheel until the feeling subsided and looked at her reflection in the rearview mirror. Her skin looked pale and clammy, but that was no real surprise. Her eyes though… they seemed dark. Especially the left one. Jessie turned on the dome light.

"Oh no," she said, putting her hand to the mirror to adjust it. "No. No, no, no."

Night of the Loving Dead - pt 7

"John! John, what's happening?" a female voice downstairs called. Jessie hurried down the stairs and tried to help the man up, but he screamed even louder when she came near. Hearing one of the doors being torn apart she didn't wait for him to realize she was there to help and ran down the rest of the stairs.

A woman in a blue pants suit stood in the doorway, looking back and forth between her and the man on the landing. She made a move to come in when a figure leapt off the stairs onto the landing and fell on the man. His screams intensified briefly, followed by the tearing of cloth and… other things.

The woman screamed, backing out of the door. Jessie turned quickly as she ran out the door and saw a thing behind her in the general shape of a man, but its facial features were all askew like his head had been stuck in a microwave and the skin melted. Jessie gave a yip and was out the door, running in about twenty yards behind the woman. She ran towards the hill Jessie had come from and Jessie flashed on the man she had seen there who had eaten the cricket. Just then a shadow lashed out at the woman, hitting her in the face somewhere. Her feet went out in front of her as she left the ground and she hit hard enough that Jessie heard the wind escape her lungs. Those eyes were there then, looking at Jessie, followed by that smile that made it look like something was wrong with the face. That smile widened even further and Jessie saw the lower half of his face had been split and she could see down to the bone. The muscles seemed to move independently of the skull, as if they weren't anchored to it, making it look like his flesh crawled. He literally was smiling ear to ear. Suddenly he vanished, falling on top of the woman and tearing at her clothes. She ran around them in a wide berth, but she was close enough to hear he was chewing on something crunchy.

Night of the Loving Dead - pt 6

Jessie could see she was wearing a nightgown and she saw a single male leg on the inside of one of the woman's and embarrassed, she stepped back.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know you were--" the woman half grunted, half screamed and leapt off the bed at her. She immediately toppled to the floor and the man was half dragged off the bed with her. But not before Jessie saw the deep claw marks that had made at least half his chest a ragged mess. The woman thrashed about on the floor, taking the man down with her in the process, but she managed to get her feet under her and was coming towards Jessie. And she was dragging the man with her. Jesse saw the bloody nightgown clinging to her skin before she saw the face. The man being dragged moaned softly as if he were half conscious. The woman swung her hand wildly in Jessie's direction and her hand slapped the door, shutting it. She still screamed on the other side and clawed at the door, all the while Jessie was pressed against the bookshelf.

Just then the panting sound from the far door got louder and more animal. It sounded like a man's voice and then the grunting was joined by a woman's screams as if she had just woken to something horrible happening to her. The grunting got more excited sounding until the screams were cut off by something heavy smacking firmly into something else, like a sledge hammer being brought down on a pound of raw hamburger.

Jessie turned to run, not wanting to wait to see what was happening in there when she almost ran into a tall figure at the top of the stairs.

"What's going on up here?" the man asked and Jessie gave a start as he folded his arms around her. He was dressed in a brown wool suit with the tie still in place. He drew back suddenly from her, holding her at arm's length and shaking. Jessie saw a fresh cut on his chin and his mouth worked up and down, but no sound came out. He abruptly turned away from her like he was going to run and fell down the stairs. His leg snapped audibly and he rolled onto his back, screaming.

Night of the Loving Dead - pt 5

"Hello?" she called almost timidly, realizing if someone was up there, they wouldn't be able to hear her over the TV. "Hello?" she called louder.

She reached the landing and tried to peer up the next flight to see. There was only a single door that she could see from there and it was shut.

"I had an accident, just up the road? My boyfriend's hurt really bad and I could use some help. Or if you could at least tell me where the nearest pay phone is?" No answer.

She continued up the stairs and saw the light switch at the top. She flipped it and saw there were three more doors, all shut except one that was slightly ajar. It was a thin hallway with not enough room for two people to pass shoulder to shoulder, but it had a dark wood bookshelf that took up a third of the hallway's width and went almost to the ceiling. It was filled completely with books.

As her ears got used to the sound of the hissing television, she began to hear the sounds from up here. In one of the rooms there was water dripping probably into a sink full of water. There was a sound like bed springs squeaking and she was sure that from the room at the end of the hall there was a dog panting with a metal leash clinking around its neck.

Jessie peaked in the door that was slightly open. It was dark so it took a second for her eyes to adjust, but she thought she could see a head and a pair of shoulders going up and down in silhouette against the single window with the house light just outside.

"Hello?" she said quietly, touching the door. It gave a high-pitched groan and opened about two inches and the head and shoulders whirled suddenly, the light hitting the figures back.

Stolen

You stole my words

Took a vowel and

Picked your way inside

Slithered in on crooked letters,

Scraped the air as I absent-

mindedly spoke and plucked

Something I was saying

Right out of my mouth

 

You left with my words

Patted your little black sack

And tossed it over a shoulder

crept like a lower-case j

Right after my eye, so low

You were halfway through the floor

I heard just as you left

But you stopped me flat with a period.

 

I have no more words.

There's something I would say here.

Could say, to tell how uncool that was.

It would have been poetic, epic.

With maybe a metaphor or two.

Maybe even an end-rhyme.

Or a nice meter to it.

I rummaged through some old stuff.

In the back of my mind, but only had this.