Chad A. Clark's Blog, page 4

Baked Scribe Flashback : Always On The Bus

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“I don’t understand what you’re so worked up about.” Dean snatched the paper away from Hilton and looked over the article again. “She was killed by a mugger, what’s the big deal?”

Hilton took hold of Dean’s wrist and turned it down so that the paper was lying flat between them, and pointed at the picture of the victim.

“She sits across from me on the bus every night.”

“You mean she sat across from you on the bus every night.”

“No.”

“She used to sit across from—”

“Look at the date. This happened over a week ago.”

“Yeah, so?”

“I just saw her last night.”

Dean stared at him for several moments that drew out like hours before shaking his head and turning back towards the kitchen.

“That’s it?” Hilton asked. “You’ve got nothing to say so that’s it? You’re just going to walk away?”

Dean turned back to face him. “All right, I think you’re a fucking loon, is that what you wanted to hear me say?”

“If that’s what you honestly think than yes, I want—”

“You come up to me talking about dead people riding on the bus with you, what were you expecting me to say?

“I’m not crazy.”

“Well, I’m sure most other crazy people have thought that at one time or another.”

He would just have to prove it to him, beyond any possibility of debate or denial. So the next night, even though he knew full well that this was a mistake, he ended up on the number sixty five bus, tapping his knee with his phone, ready to get photographic proof of how sane he actually was.

Two hours, every night he rode the bus, occupying the same seat, paying each time the bus restarted it’s route so that the drivers wouldn’t give him a hard time. This went on for a week to no avail. He was getting ready to give up on the whole venture, to concede his grip on reality, that he had simply seen another woman who looked eerily similar. That explanation should fly. He was ready to give up the search as soon as he got to his stop when he saw the woman again.

He had just gotten off the bus. No one boarded as he stepped off and the bus had been nearly empty. Still, as he glanced back over his shoulder to watch it pulling away from the curb he saw her, sitting right across from where he had just been. He tried chasing it down, screaming and waving his arms but the driver either didn’t see him or didn’t care.

The next night, he spent four hours on the sixty five. He was starting to fall asleep in his seat, almost out of loose change when he saw her. It was out of the corner of his eye and was as if she had just appeared out of nowhere and he turned back to face her, turning slowly so as to not alarm her. She remained facing forward, not acknowledging his existence or presence.

The woman was wearing a simple, flimsy looking dress of faded green. It was definitely the woman from the newspaper article, he was sure of that much. After all this time spent, he had finally found her and now that he was here, in the moment, he found himself floundering to decide what to do. He felt drawn to her for reasons he couldn’t explain, even to himself. The urge to reach across the aisle and caress the exposed skin of her arm, the base of her neck, he actually had to sit on his hands to keep them from roving.

The bus jostled as it hit a bump in the road, tossing him against the side wall. He glanced out the window for a moment and saw her out there, now walking down a darkened alley. It couldn’t have been her though, the bus hadn’t stopped. He could still see her in the reflection in the window, sitting there in her seat. It occurred to him suddenly that she was actually looking at him

Staring at him, eyes black as the night sky outside.

Hilton jumped in his seat and turned back. She was gone, the seat now occupied by a nurse on her way to or from work. He shook his head and yanked on the pull-chain, requesting the next stop. The bus had barely slowed before he shouldered his way through the back doors and stepped out onto the street.

The alley was just a few blocks back. He ignored the glances and comments from people he passed, even though he recognized his rudeness as he jostled through the crowd.

“Why are you so obsessed with this?” the voice inside his head was his own, admonishing him in a tone that suggested that he should know better to leave well enough alone. Still, his feet carried him on.

A cold breeze flowed over him as he stuck his head around the corner, peering down the alley. He could see no one, even though there was almost nowhere in the alley to hide. A construction site on the next block over had sealed off the other end, making it a dead end. There were no doors into the surrounding buildings, only ladders to fire escapes, too high to be used from the street level. There wasn’t even a dumpster to hide behind.

Still, there was no sign of her. He supposed it had to make sense, if what he was thinking was true, if the implications of what he had seen was correct, wouldn’t she have the ability to appear and disappear at will? Would she truly be tethered to the laws of this universe? Or would she be somehow above what dictated reality to all of them?

Hilton began turning around in circles, looking through the shadows cast by the streetlights to try and see her. He couldn’t even hear the traffic from the street anymore, just his own sharp intakes of breath as he searched for her, needed her. The walls around him began to blur, spin on their own accord until he realized that he had stopped moving altogether.

She stood before him, eyes fixed on his for the first time. He looked into her eyes in the flash of that moment, felt every ounce of her pain and rage, amplified a hundred fold. He clapped his hands to his ears, which were already starting to ooze what he had to assume was blood.

She stepped forward, as if for an embrace, opened her mouth and screamed.

Hilton staggered back as if he had been struck. His arms were pulled back and he vaguely felt the bones snapping. He felt pressure like two invisible thumbs on his eyes, pushing further in until he felt the cornea flex and start to break. He saw streaky light and darkness before falling to his knees, now realizing that her screams were now inter-mingling with his own. The world went dark and muffled, as if a sack had been pulled over his head.

He looked down, realizing that he was watching his own feet as they were walking down the center of the number sixty five bus. The other passengers seemed oblivious to his presence as he passed. The world outside the bus seemed to no longer exist, an impenetrable fog bank. All there was for him now was this bus.

He also had the alley, and any others that he could manage to draw there.

He took a seat across from a young attractive passenger. In time, he would figure out how to reveal himself to them.

These passengers could all be his.

 

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Baked Scribe Flashback : Mistaken Intent

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He didn’t know how to tell her that the night before had been the extent of his interest. Nothing against her, but the sex was done, and beyond that, he would have preferred to not see her at all this morning. The only reason he hadn’t called her a cab the night before is because of the screaming fits of rage women seemed to go into when you asked them to leave at 2:30 in the morning.

This one wasn’t leaving though. She stood there in the room, tapping her foot on the floor looking at him expectantly, like she was waiting for him to do…

What exactly?

It was always a little awkward even though he had done this dozens of times. That was how the scene worked. You hit the clubs, pick out the one you want and bring her home for a little after-party party. Why couldn’t that just be the end of the exchange, with the transfer of fluids? He wanted her, and clearly she had wanted him the way she had responded to his advances. No need to complicate this whole thing with strained conversation.

In the midst of his dull recollections, he suddenly remembered her body pressed up against his outside the coat check at the bar. What was she whispering in his ear? He shook his head.

“Look…” he started, reaching into his memory for her name and finding nothing, “Look I don’t know what you were hoping for here, but—”

“Eddie.”

He stopped, again with a feeling in his gut that there was some key part of this exchange that he was forgetting, something that was important. Blank slate was all he could come up in his mental loft.

“What?”

She smirked and shook her head. “You owe me three hundred and fifty dollars.”

 

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Issue #190 : After The Laughs

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Georgie stopped short, the mop bucket slamming against his knees as he did so. He grunted in pain as he bent down to massage his leg, keeping his focus on the front window.

Standing outside, in the middle of the raging storm was a clown. It was waving at him wildly as the neon colored pom-poms on the front of his costume danced crazily in the wind. 

Georgie went to the door, twisted the lock and cracked it open.

“Yeah?”

Relief was clear underneath the smeared makeup.

“Thank you. I’m so sorry to be a bother. My car broke down up the road. Would you have a phone I could use?”

Thunder crashed overhead, causing both men to jump. Georgie stepped out of the way to let the other through and relocked the door.

“Thank you, I didn’t know what I was going to do. I’ll call for a tow and be out of your hair.”

“What are you going to do?” Georgie asked. “Call the truck and sit in your car, out in the rain for an hour and half?”

“I don’t—”

“I’m the only one here until 5 o’clock. Just have the truck pick you up here.”

“Really? I can’t thank you enough for—”

Georgie waved him off. “Just don’t start doing balloon animals or magic tricks or juggling or some shit. Just think of it as a kindness.”

The clown nodded. “Well, I appreciate it. Names Derry, by the way.”

“Okay. Good meeting you. Phone through there”

He watched as Derry retreated to the front office and returned to his mopping. He could only hope that the man would instinctively know to wait for the tow truck in relative silence. He didn’t need to be a mute, but Georgie didn’t want him jabbering his ear off either.

He heard the sound of Derry’s voice from the other room for several minutes before the clattering of the phone onto the receiver. Derry emerged, looking like he had tried to wipe most of the makeup off his face.

“I don’t want to be a pain,” he said. “I’ll just wait by the front there.”

Georgie nodded as he watched him take a seat, looking out into the rain as he did so.

“Helluva storm, isn’t it?” The guy evidently had a different idea of what it meant to not be a pain. “I’ve always loved the storms.”

Georgie nodded without responding, not giving two shits one way or the other. 

“These long-distance gigs are brutal. I get back so late and the cost of gas barely makes it worth it. But I have to work, you know?”

Georgie let the squeak from the bucket stand as his only response.

“Yeah, you get to see a really different side of the world this late at night. It’s surreal, you know? Easy to get lost in yourself.”

The conversation was rapidly nearing the end of his patience.

“You know in some cultures, it’s believed that during a thunderstorm your soul is reborn.”

Georgie let the mop handle drop to the floor and retreated to the back. The guy was still babbling on about Eastern mysticism or something as Georgie reached into the closet and pulled out a long handled axe, the heavy metal head glimmering in the light.

He knew there had been a good reason to bring it to work today.

 

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Baked Scribe Flashback : In The Dark

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The sound of the cry cut through the woods and he sat up in his sleeping bag, looking out over the clearing. He looked across the dying embers of the fire at his friend, who seemed unfazed.

“I told you the locals around here called them Howler Woods, I guess it was for a reason,” Zeke said.

“I just figured it was just passing stories around,” Don said, “I didn’t take it so literally. What do you think that was?”

“What do you mean, you don’t think it’s the dead?” Zeke rolled his eyes, “I can’t remember what they call the effect, something that has to do with the way the woods are situated and air drafts coming through and causing weird sounds.”

Don stared him down for several moments before responding. “Yeah, I think I’ll still with the cries of the dammed, thanks.” He stabbed his long metal fork through another hot dog and held it out over the fire, sitting in the silence and watching the skin of the meat blister and pop. Zeke cracked open another beer, the popping of compressed air followed close by the smell of hops. They looked back over their shoulders at the sound of wood snapping somewhere off in the darkness, as if under the weight of a footstep.

“Animal,” Zeke said, shrugging again as he returned his attention to the beer.

“Big animal,” Don said, squinting into the shadows beyond the tree line. There was no sign of movement or further noise that he could detect.

“Told you,” Zeke said as Don turned back towards the warmth of what was left of their fire. He didn’t know why he had let himself get talked into this absurd trip in the first place, other than the fact that he had really wanted to get out of town and away from things. He didn’t even like camping but sometimes it was good enough to simply not be doing anything else. Zeke threw some more wood on the fire and it flared up again.

He felt himself starting to drift off, soothed by the popping from the fire and the heat flowing over him, the cries from the birds overhead. His brain had gotten so foggy that it was several minutes before it occurred to him that it was too late for birds to be out.

Don’s head snapped up at the realization as at least a dozen black colored birds descended down out of the trees and began circling them, shrieking loudly and shattering the silence. They looked like ravens but several times larger and continued to pour down on them from the trees until they were surrounded by a cyclone of birds, obscuring anything else around them.

He could hear Zeke screaming, could see the fear in his eyes that had to mirror his own. Don grabbed at the sides of his head as the birds took up the sound of a train bearing down on them, the pressure in his head increasing with the wind. The fire blinked out and the birds swarmed in on them, blacking out whatever light was left and shrouding them in darkness.

Don blinked and looked around, no longer feeling the forest around him and not knowing where he even was anymore. He saw a cloaked figure striding towards them, face obscured by a dark, crimson hood. He thought he could hear the sound of branches blowing against each other and in the shrieking howl of the wind, he thought he heard a voice, whispering in his ear, so high pitched and abrasive that he felt like something was being jabbed into his head. He felt warm fluid coming out of his ears that had to be blood. The cloaked figure raised a hand to point and Don soon felt searing heat ripping through his temples.

He woke up on the ground. To the left, nearly fifty yards away he could make out their campsite. Zeke was nowhere to be seen and there were no sounds of anything out of the ordinary, just the normal night life of the forest.

“Hello?” he called out as he struggled to his feet, hoping Zeke would answer, jump out from behind a tree but there was no sign. He was about to call out again when a par of hands grabbed him from behind and threw him against one of the trees. He cried out as something cut into his back and he fell to his knees.

Zeke was looking over him, reaching down with one hand to grab at his shirt, the other already balled into a fist, drawn back to strike.

“Wait, stop!” Don called out to try and talk some sense into his friend but the only answer he received was the fist, driving down onto his nose, cutting through skin and breaking bone underneath, causing blood to spray out in all directions.

The image of Zeke crouched over him began to blister and smoke, the forest around him trembling, like film that was starting to tear in a movie. Instead of his friend that

he was looking up at, he now saw a large mass of some kind of black substance, oily and slick but still bearing some vague human form as it reached down for him. Electricity sparked off of it, burning him wherever it touched and he struggled to get free.

When he came to, whatever was left of Zeke was strewn around him in pieces, on the ground. The only way he could even identify the remains was by Zeke’s plaid shirt, still plastered to the severed torso that was lying near him. Don looked at his hands, now coated in blood that he somehow knew wasn’t his. He leapt to his feet and began to run, trying to out-distance whatever was happening here. A cacophony of snarling cries rose up all around, sounds of movement from the underbrush around him.

The world went dark and silent, the feel of the ground underneath him now absent. He felt weightless, as suspended in midair, seeing nothing but darkness. He was about to speak when searing pain lanced down his back, a blade of some kind piercing the skin and making its way down. The words he was about to speak was drowned out in a sudden outpouring of sound, a scream of inarticulate pain and rage. He wasn’t even sure if the scream was his own.

The sound caught in his throat as he began to cough up blood. He could see more of his surroundings now. The large trees of the forest stood all around him. He was tied to one of the massive branches, hanging upside down, swinging from side to side on the back of a stiff breeze that brought pain up and down his body like a thousand pin pricks.

On the branches of the other trees, Don could see the bodies of others, also hanging and fighting against their bonds. They seemed to blink in and out of existence, like a bad television signal. Despite this, he still heard the constant sound of their cries, eerily similar to what he had heard earlier, sitting next to the fire. He was starting to struggle against the force holding him to the tree when he felt the cutting begin again.

He began to howl.

 

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Baked Scribe Flashback : Walking Yesterday’s Roads

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Gregory sipped the wine and gazed out the window at the ocean raging below. They could hear the sound of the surf crashing against the cliff, a constant buzz underneath the conversation which had been ongoing, all night long.

“You remember the Christmas party? Emory asked, already laughing through a mouth full of dinner roll.

“Which one?” Leona asked, starting to giggle herself. “The one where he got into an argument about Faulkner with a seven year old? Or the one where he insisted that Peter, Paul and Mary were actually the leaders of a Satanic cult?”

Emory was now laughing so hard that his face had become close to the color of a tomato. He put a hand out on Gregory’s elbow to steady himself and catch his breath. “I forgot about the first one. No, this was the one where he got so off-his-ass drunk that he ended up stripping down and running out into the snow, insisting that he was going to find a twenty four hour nude bowling alley.”

“I remember how it took us over an hour to find him,” Gregory said as he swirled the wine around in his glass. “I had to drive him to the hospital myself, he almost lost half of his toes because of that.”

“He was the only one, you know?” Leona said. “He was the only one who realized what was happening the second those ships dropped down out of the clouds.” Her voice hitched and her eyes were starting to glisten from the tears. The others didn’t voice what she was clearly hinting at. Of all of Stanford’s friends, she had been the most vocal in ridiculing him for what they had all seen as crazy ravings and paranoid fantasy.

The whole planet had been taken in when the ships arrived. When the communications from their leaders had been broadcast out over the globe, everyone had believed them in their benevolent intentions. It had all been a smokescreen of course but no one had seen through it.

None of them, save for Stanford.

Towards the end, he had been harder to get in touch with as he progressively fell further of the grid. They never knew for sure if he had gotten involved with the terrorist groups who had tried to rise up against the visitors. They didn’t know and didn’t go out of their way to find out, even though they all suspected that it was true. When the warrant for his arrest had been handed down, they had disassociated themselves with him, claiming ignorance to the authorities but also cutting off their friend for good. Gregory had tried to tell himself that this was just as much for his protection as theirs.

Stanford’s body had been found a week later.

Even this, they had written off as just a close friend meeting the end which he had likely brought upon himself with his own actions and poor decisions. If Stanford had been there, he would have been raving about how the visitors were likely behind the killing, about the folly of still referring to them as “visitors”, even though they were clearly here to stay.

Their only saving grace that evening was that the dead couldn’t say, “I told you so.”

They did it for him anyway, punishing themselves with their memories, flogging themselves with the guilt that they all felt but never actually vocalized to each other.

“We couldn’t have done anything,” Leona said, half as a question, sounding like she was trying to convince herself as much as anyone else.

“Nothing we could have done.” Gregory echoed the sentiment as he lifted his glass for another sip. They toasted each other, ensconced in their own seeming confidence that the statement was true. The wine went down smoothly, the scent and the tannins obscuring what they were actually ingesting.

Society was on the brink. Security forces had descended down from the ships and were now corralling the citizens of Earth, crowding them into camps and jails. There had even been some public executions.

Stanford would have been the one to push for action, the scream for the need to do something, anything other than the pathetic self-doubt and fear which they now hid behind.

Tonight wasn’t about dwelling on their own depression though. It was about looking back, seeking, through their reflections, a way to make their final moments as pleasant as possible. This should have been a celebration, not a reason for despair.

“I miss the trips out to the bluffs,” Gregory said, “We used to take the kids out there every summer.” His family was gone now, caught in the rubble underneath the school which had been bombarded for being a suspected safe house for insurgents. He should have been there as well for a teacher conference, but had been running late and his life had been spared by mere minutes.

“Tuesday nights,” Leona said. “Sid and I … it was the only night we actually had together…” She trailed off. Sid had been killed in one of the worker’s riots, quickly put down with violent precision.

“I’m going to miss the three of you,” Emory said, including Stanford, despite his absence.

“I just don’t understand how things could have gone this far,” Leona said. “Why didn’t anyone see anything sooner?”

It was a moot point. There weren’t any answers to be found anymore and even if there were, they had chosen the path to take and it was too late to turn back. Leona swirled the wine in her glass and took a long drink, as if willing the effects to come on faster.

“I’m surprised I can’t taste it,” she said.

“No reason why you…” Emory trailed off as his mouth slipped open, as if on a hinge. He swiped away the drool that was starting to form with the back of his hand and shook his head. “Is this…” He wasn’t able to finish the sentence and his head nodded down slightly, as if he was falling asleep.

Leona was crying now and reached out to take hold of Emory’s hand. Gregory took hold of the other, gripping it tightly, thinking that there might have been a response to the touch but it was hard to know for sure. It was getting difficult to see or hear clearly. He blinked and jerked his head up. Leona was laying her head down on the table, reaching out for his hand.

All he could think about was how dry his mouth felt as he began inching his hand towards hers. His field of vision was beginning to narrow down to a fine point. He felt like he was looking up from the bottom of a deep well. In the depths of his awareness, he felt the touch of Leona’s finger against his, already cold. He slipped away, escaping the horrors of their future, wrapped in the memory of his past and the faces of his wife and children. Taking one last, short breath, he allowed his eyes to droop shut one last time.

 

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Issue #189 : Over Heels

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His last memory was of the bicycle underneath him. Now that relationship had been reversed as he sensed the weight of the frame hovering over him. The ground was down there, seemingly miles below and everything was spinning. A second ago he had heard Ricky screaming his name but now, all he heard was the sound of rushing air and his own panicked breathing.

All he had wanted was to fit in. It was hard enough finding friends in the seventh grade, having to learn a new structure at a new school. So when he finally made his way into a group, he wanted to do whatever it took to stay there. He wanted them to think he was cool. He wanted them to think he was a hard-ass.

Every day, they rode their bikes through the apartment building’s parking lot. A dirt hill separated the two halves of the lot and every day they rode up and over it. He loved the way his stomach dropped out from underneath him and every time he wanted to get just a little bit more air. He wanted this jump to be that much more bad-ass.

He was going to blow them all away, get himself a piece of history. 

The street plummeted down at a steep angle before emptying  out into the parking lot, six or seven blocks to accelerate to an unknowingly suicidal speed. The four of them started out together but he put his head down to the handlebars, pumping hard on the pedals and had soon left them far behind. He kicked the bike up into the highest gear and put every bit of muscle into each revolution. The wind rushed past him even louder as the parking lot grew closer.

He rode out into the parking lot and watched the mound of dirt draw closer. There was the vaguest sound of Ricky screaming out his name, surely to cheer him on, disbelief at the level of awesomeness that they were about to witness. He stopped pedaling and let the bike coast the rest of the way, bracing himself for his ramp up into teenage fame and legend.

The front tire hit the small hill and in less than a heartbeat he was spinning around through open space. He couldn’t see anything and in his sudden disorientation couldn’t even remember for sure how he had gotten up here. The world around him had become distorted; a blurred perception of what would later become a flashback, now happening before him in real time.

Was that concrete rushing up at him? Why wasn’t he slowing down? Almost nonchalantly, he stuck out a hand to ward off the impact.

Dark. Empty spaces.

The first thing he saw was the floor of the woman’s kitchen. It looked familiar and made him think about their old apartment but this couldn’t be that kitchen. They didn’t live there anymore. Everyone was staring at him while somehow diverting their gaze uncomfortably. When had they all come inside, anyway? The woman was speaking to him now, asking him questions. Was that his blood on the floor?

Then he was trying to remember his phone number, giving the woman three or four different ones before finally getting it right.

It was only then that he wondered if they were going to be able to fix his bike.

 

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Baked Scribe Flashback : Hole In One

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“What the hell is wrong with you?” Derrin pressed a hand to the side of his face, feeling blood trickling through his fingers.

“I’m sorry, all right? Are you okay?” Jerry asked.

“No. I’m not okay. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Look, I said I was sorry, I didn’t know you were going to put your face there.”

Darrin took a step back and looked around, as if he was expecting some unseen audience to react to the absurdity of the statement. “What does that have to do with anything? Who the hell taught you how to play mini-golf anyway?”

“All I can do is apologize. You’re so God damned quiet, I didn’t even hear you walking up next to me.”

“I didn’t think I needed to announce my presence. Why can’t you pay more attention to what you’re doing?” Derrin noticed Jerry’s hand tightening around the grip to his club and wondered if maybe he was pushing this too far. The problem was that letting go was a little easier said than done. “Why can’t you just admit that you made a mistake? God forbid, maybe you could even apologize for—”

“That’s bullshit, I just apologi—”

“Like you mean it fuck-stick.”

“Don’t call me that.” This time, the putter was lifted halfway up, drawing back slowly as if to strike. This was stupid. There was no point to dragging out this argument. He just needed to clear his head and calm down. Darrin shook his head and began walking towards the next hole.

“Where the hell are you going?” Jerry’s voice had jumped several octaves and was starting to crack as he spoke. Darrin waved off the question and kept on walking. He heard Jerry’s shuffling footsteps and even the whistle of the club swinging through the air but didn’t register it soon enough to avoid the blow. Brilliant light exploded around him as he heard a dull thud coming from somewhere inside a deep, dark hole that he was now falling in to.

Sarah glared across the way at the two douche-bags, now in full blow-up mode as they screamed at each other. It was beyond her what could have transpired during a game of mini-golf that could have led to an argument as heated as this.

Her heart jumped in her chest as douche-bag number one actually hefted his club in his hand and cracked it across his friend’s skull. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. What had started as an annoying disturbance had turned into an emergency, someone in need of her assistance. Isn’t this why she had been preparing herself for all this time? All of the classes, the practicing at the range, the permit to carry, this moment would be the justification for all of that.

Sarah began walking towards the two, hand shaking as she reached into her satchel.

Bryce watched the woman as she began making her way towards the feuding frat brothers. She had a set, determined look on her face as if she was psyching herself up for something. His breath stopped as her hand came out from her bag holding a … Jesus, was that what it looked like? He need to stop this before it got out of hand.

“Hey!” he yelled out at her, taking a step forward. She spun towards him and jerked at the unexpected noise. He had just enough time to register the look of dismayed shock on her face before he saw the muzzle flash and felt the impact to his forehead.

Any remaining conscious thought he might have had exited through the rear.

 

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Baked Scribe Flashback : On Tour

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He pushed the bicycle up the hill, grunted as he muscled the tires through the deep patches of mud and tried to brace himself against the driving rain. For not the first time, he began to wonder what crazy notion had led him to attempt this trip in the first place. Get out of the city, see the progression of the countryside as he traveled west, all from the quaint view of his bicycle seat. Right about now, he was guessing that he would find the trip just as quaint from behind the steering wheel of his car. There weren’t even creepy, rural area motels for him to take advantage of. Nothing but the road, the dark, the cold and the mud.

Then, when he was nearly to the breaking point, he looked up and saw that to his right there was a house up at the top of a steep hill. It was huge, three stories and all of its windows lit up with an inviting, warm glow. James dropped the bike at the base of the path winding up to the house and set to making his way up. His feet slipped several times before he reached the porch. He could hear music coming from inside despite the late hour. There didn’t seem to be a doorbell but there was a length of chain hanging down from the ceiling next to the door. James took hold of it and pulled. There was resistance at first but eventually the chain moved, grinding with a metal on metal sound which was followed by a booming proclamation of bells and chimes within the house.

“Help you?” The voice came from behind him and made him actually jump, dropping the satchel that he had just pulled up over his shoulder. The man was standing there, halfway up the steps, tall and thin, nearly seven feet tall. Despite looking to be in his early sixties, the man looked spry and healthy. He looked at James with a blank expression on his face, seemingly unaffected by the weather raging around them. In his arms was a load of firewood.

“Hi,” James said, not sure what else would be appropriate. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to trouble you this late but I’ve been caught out in this storm and yours is the first place I’ve come across in a while. Would it be at all possible to stay here for a while, maybe just until the rain stops?”

The man squinted as he looked up into the night sky. James frowned as he noticed the man tilt his face up slightly and breathe in deeply, as if he was sniffing the air.

“Ah, gonna be a while before that happens. Best if you just spend the night.”

“No, I couldn’t put you out like that, I just—”

“It’s no bother.” The man unrolled his arms, letting the wood tumble out onto the porch and wiped his hands off on his pants. “Besides, if you’re just gonna stay until the weather blows over, that’s all you’ll end up doing. Trust me, these summer storms come rolling down onto us and they stay for a long time.”

“Well … all right, I guess. Only if I’m really not inconveniencing you though.”

“The bed’s there, might as well be yours.” He walked into the house, nodding for James to follow.

The room he walked into looked like it could have been an elaborate set for a fifties-era movie. In the center of the room was a huge rocking recliner. The small table net to it sported a mug with contents that were still hot enough to produce steam. There was also a radio that looked like it came straight from the antique shop. There was a fire going strong in the hearth and James could feel the warm, inviting heat even from across the room.

“Guest room’s upstairs. End of the hall, to your right.”

James headed up, shouldering his bag and wiping the moisture from his face. He walked down he hall and turned into the room, surprised to find the bed turned down and a towel folded neatly on the bed Maybe people passing through was a more common occurrence than he was giving the area credit for.

His host was stirring a small pot of soup when he made his way back down to the kitchen. “Figured you could use something hot to eat,” he said, his back staying turned. “My name’s Edward, by the way, didn’t catch yours.”

“Sorry. I’m Jacob.”

“No worries. I’ve pretty much settled with your generation not having much regard in terms of manners.”

James paused, halfway into sitting down at the table. He straightened back up, trying to regain his mental footing at the sudden verbal jab from the man who, up until now had been congenial.

“Um … I … sir, I’m sorry if I—”

Edward waved him off, still without turning and spoke with the same deadened tone of voice, “I”m only foolin’ with you son, take a breath.”

James nodded and sat down, hearing the friendliness in the man’s voice but wondering how genuine it really was.

“Right. Sorry, I guess that’s what being alone all these weeks gets you.”

“How long you been out there in the rain?”

“All night.”

Edward chuckled. “Well, then you need this.”

James took the bowl of soup that Edward offered and went straight to it, only slightly aware of how rude he was acting, shoveling the food into his mouth like a slob.

“I got coffee too,” Edward said. “And if that don’t work the bourbon’s downstairs.”

“Thank you.”

“Been dry as a bone here the last few weeks,” Edward said. “We need this rain.”

“I’m sure.” James looked around the kitchen, still feeling like he was in the middle of a World War II exhibit at the museum.

“Have you been here long?” he asked, trying to at least be the one to start a topic.

“Oh, pretty much the entire time,” Edward answered.

James frowned. Something about the way Edward had answered the question seemed off but he couldn’t quite explain why.

“I’m just glad I came across your place when I did.” He floundered around, trying to think of something else to add to his sentence but instead resigned himself to lowering his head, fighting the awkwardness in the room but also savoring the warmth from the soup. “Do you live here alone, or do you have family?”

“Just me for now, holding down the fort. They’ll send more when they’re ready.”

Again, James was struck by the oddity of the answer. He opened his mouth to ask what Edward had meant but as he did so, his mouth and tongue went numb and all he could manage sounded alien even to himself.

“D’you ev …”

James shook his head violently, trying to clear the fog in his mind. He couldn’t really be this tired but it had suddenly become too much of an effort to even keep his eyes open. A voice screamed at him from his head that something was wrong, that he needed to get away.

It was too late for him to care, too late to act on any thought that might intrude into this haze of mental nothing-ness. His arms felt like they weighed fifty pounds each as they dropped to his side, knocking the soup off the table. The bowl shattered in an explosion on the floor, spreading tomato soup and shattered glass all over the kitchen.

“See now, look what you’ve done.” Edward’s voice was booming in his ears, so much so that James’ first thought was of the great and terrible Oz. He tried to talk, to ask what was going on. One word was all he could manage to get out and it was delivered distorted and stretched as he said it.

“You …” It sounded like a record being played at a slower speed. His eyes dropped and he gave in to sleep.

When he woke up, he was lying on a cold, hard table. There was no sensation of anything below his neck. He opened his mouth to call out, sending bolts of pain through his face and into his neck.

“Don’t bother,” Edward said from the corner. “I removed your vocal cords some time ago. This is actually the third time I’ve told you this, you keep passing out from shock.”

James shook his head and recoiled on the inside as Edward, or whatever he had been in the first place, stepped out from the shadows. He had grown in size to the point that the top of his head was nearly brushing against the high, arched ceiling. He had sprouted three more arms from somewhere behind him that were swirling around in the background, grabbing at the air with pincer-like movements and his skin had gone a deep purple color, scaled like some kind of lizard.

He began to buck up and down on the table, or at least he thought that was what he was doing with so little sensation to confirm the action. Despite what he had just been told, he opened his mouth to scream, seeking purchase from a voice that had abandoned him.

The thing in Edward’s clothes darted forward and backhanded him. It bent down until their faces were only inches apart. “Do not pass out!” It howled at him, so loud that he could barely understand the words. The house itself felt like it lifted up from its foundation for a moment and settled back down. He was looking up at the ceiling at the dust and debris that had been shaken loose when he felt the sharp end of something metal first pressing against, then breaking through the skin of his belly. He sucked in his breath as he heard Edward speak, suddenly clinical in his tone.

“We all want this project to succeed so please, tell me. Exactly where does it hurt?”

 

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Issue #188 : More Than We Think

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Lyanne dropped the scalpels into the cleaning solution and walked to the back of the work room. The stainless steel of the autopsy bed glimmered from being cleaned and  sanitized. The concrete floor was spotless, with any residual fluids or matter flushed out of the house. The walls had been cleaned thoroughly. Lyanne took a step back and scrutinized the room, not wanting to leave behind any suggestion of what she had done here. It was ironic that the actual disposal of the body was the easiest part of the process. The challenge was eliminating any sign that the body had been here in the first place.

She looked at the tabletop, at the last remaining piece of evidence. The man’s driver’s license was still there, the image staring up into the air as blankly as its owner now was. Lyanne traced a finger over the name, wondering who he had been before crossing paths with her. She wondered where he had been heading or where he thought he was going to end up. Chances are, it wasn’t in the basement of this house, never to be found. Lyanne opened the heavy door to the incinerator and tossed in the license. It joined the already smoldering remains as it started to boil and snap from the heat.

It was harder to find satisfaction doing this one at a time, but she had to admit that it did give her a reason to look forward to the weekend. And adding too many guests to her basement too quickly was just asking to get caught. As much as she hated limiting herself, it would be even worse in prison. She had to ration herself and be careful.

Morning came too quickly as she put on the clothes of her slave life. Her eyes felt swollen and blurry as she stumbled through it all, pretending how much she cared.

One of the big boys from the top floor bumped into her as she was passing with her mail cart.

“Watch out a little better, huh?” he called out at her over his shoulder. She nodded and even from that distance could hear him muttering to his friends. “…doesn’t even know what she has coming. She’ll find out soon enough.”

The laughter followed them out of the office and into the hallway. Lyanne returned to her mail and wondered if it would be a good time to make sure all the blades on her instruments were as sharp as she needed.

 

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Baked Scribe Flashback : In Distress

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The car was parked along the side of the road. Jessie leaned forward, trying to see better through the windshield, and unconsciously eased off of the gas pedal to slow as he passed. The windows of the other car were so fogged up that it was impossible to see inside. But how could there really be anyone in there? It was 2:30 in the morning and, if someone was just hanging out, chances were good that whatever was going on in there, it was something that he probably didn’t want to walk in on. In the mirror, before the car dwindled into the horizon, he caught a flash from the corner of his eye as the dome light inside the car came on. He craned his neck around to see, sure that he must have caught a reflection off the moon. His second look verified what he had seen though, as the light was indeed on.

It wasn’t important. Just a car, nothing that he hadn’t seen before. Still, something tugged at the back of his mind, a need to make sure that the person back there didn’t need help. How would he feel if the next day he turned on the news to find out that some guy had died from a heart attack there on the side of the road, watching cars pass him by until it was too late?

Jessie pulled off onto a side street, and headed back to where the car had been parked. He pulled up behind it, gingerly stepping out, as if someone was about to jump out of the other car and reprimand him. His head filled with the sound of gravel crunching under his feet as he approached the vehicle.

The car was some kind of generic sedan, reminding his of the cars his grandparents would drive them around in when they were kids. The motor wasn’t running and there was no indication of movement inside. Save for the fogged windows, he saw no sign of life.

“Hello?” His call was quickly absorbed into the increasingly brittle wind and he received no answer. He stepped closer to the car, moving carefully towards the driver’s door. It was as if invisible fingers were reaching out from the darkness and brushing against his neck. his skin felt electric, as if his hands and feet were falling asleep.

“Hello?” he called out again, leaning in closer to the window and with one hand reaching out to rap a knuckle on the glass. The sound was dull to his ears, carrying no weight in the cold air, and there was no answer from within.

Jessie reached out and placed a hand on the door handle, fingers trembling against the cool, moist surface. His breath was starting to come in ragged hitches, fully expecting something to jump out at him, to burn his hand for the offense of intruding where he shouldn’t have been.

He yanked his hand free at the sound of an air horn, blasting behind him. A semi blew past with a rush of air and sound that pushed him up against the car. He turned to glare, long enough to catch a glimpse in the darkness of a giant yellow smiley face on the backside of the rig. In the wake of the truck’s passing and in the newly found silence, he thought for a moment that he had heard someone moving around inside, an exhalation of breath followed by the car shifting slightly.

“Is anyone in there?”

Another sound, again almost too quick to hear but, even in that split second, he had an image of overnight parties as kids, shushing each other before the parents came in to shut down the fun.

Don’t open the door!

The voice was his own, spoken from the deepest bridge where the unconscious crossed over into conscious thought. He wanted to listen, to take heed, but it was the other part of his brain, the one that reminded him that it was important to put others before yourself, that voice was the one that ultimately won out and made it impossible to move away from the car.

Don’t open the door!

His hand made its way back down to the handle, was sliding on the moisture as it pulled up, hesitating at the resistance from the bolt inside, the scintilla of added applied force that would be needed to open the door.

Don’t…

The voice was pleading now, but also sounding resigned to whatever path he was determined to set himself onto. Another voice of responsibility was lecturing him now, on the importance of people’s privacy. You couldn’t just go around, letting yourself into whatever car you felt like.

He had to do this.

What if he was the one trapped inside the car, slowly bleeding to death, or worse? Maybe a broken leg, or having just had a stroke, the door just out of reach and unable to respond to the other person’s calls. If the situation were reversed, wouldn’t he be mentally admonishing the person for taking so long to just open the damn door?

This was stupid. Why had he pulled over in the first place if it wasn’t to try and help this person? If he happened to interrupt some random person in the middle of sticking it to the nanny, he would just have to live with that embarrassment. He had a momentary flash of possibility, as it occurred to him to simply call the police. But what would they say, really? What would happen if he filed a report on what ended up being a parked car?

Don’t open the door.

He grabbed the handle and lifted, pulling the door open and peeking inside. The door stuck at first, and made a wet sound as it opened. From the inside, the car began to chime softly, indicating that the keys were still in the ignition. No one was sitting in either of the front. When he looked at the passenger seat, however, he could see the moisture left behind on the leather, as if someone had been sitting there for a long time and had just stood up.

“Hello?” he called out again, but nobody answered. From the corner of his eye, he thought he saw movement. He also heard breathing, labored as if whoever it was back there was in a great deal of pain. Jessie kept his hands braced against the roof of the car, ready to shove off and start sprinting if he had to, and stuck his head through the door. The backseat was also empty. He felt like smacking himself on the head for his idiocy. He didn’t understand why he allowed himself to get so worked up. Somebody had car trouble and had gone off for help, or had called a cab. Harmless. The dome-light must have come on somehow, by accident.

Something brushed past him from behind.

Jessie screamed so loudly, that he actually startled himself. There was no one there, but he felt the distinct sensation of bodies brushing past him. He heard footsteps. His panic spiked, and in that moment, of needing to act, to be anywhere but here, he sat down in the driver’s seat, behind the wheel, and slammed the door behind him.

The inside of the car wasn’t merely quiet. What he felt was the complete absence of sound, a vacuum in which even his breathing was amplified several times louder than it should have been. It was a cold feeling that he associated with funeral homes, places where you caught glimpses into things that you weren’t supposed to see in this life.

This was like being in the presence of death.

Still, footsteps sounded outside, circling at a slow, shambling pace, the car occasionally shifting as if someone was bumping into it as they passed. He had to repress the urge to slap his hand against the door lock, knowing somehow that it would do no good.

His breathing was starting to echo in his head until he began to realize that it wasn’t just his own breaths that he was hearing. They could be heard beside him and from behind. He could feel the sobs, already catching in his throat, crying out at himself for not choosing to drive on, screaming as he reached for the door release, to try and escape even though it was likely too late. He heard what sounded like metal scraping across a sharp edge.

Outside, a dark colored bird fluttered down out of the night sky, and alighted on the roof of the parked car. It stood there for a moment, preening in the moonlight until a shrieking cry ripped out from the inside, startling it back into flight.

Inside the car, the dome light flipped back off into darkness.

 

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