What the Hell Did I Just Read (John Dies at the End, #3)

by David Wong

The “man” with the Toblerone gun had screamed, “WHERE IS IT?” in a voice like a spider that had learned to imitate human speech via some online courses it had taken.

playing a song called, “This Venue Is a Front for Human Trafficking, Someone Call the FBI, this Is Not Just a Joke Song Title.” When John’s first girlfriend asked him what his ideal threesome would be, he had answered, “Me, Hitler, and Prince. I just watch.”

I closed my eyes and let out a breath that smelled like I’d eaten an entire wet dog and washed it down with sweat wrung from a hobo’s undershirt.

You look like a bag of smashed asshole.”

Lurking behind everything are these walking shadows who can manipulate a human soul as easily as a finger puppet is manipulated by a drunk mime’s penis.

“Past experience has only taught us not to rely on past experience.”

group of former college friends had invited her to a gaming convention in Indianapolis

I grabbed at the fingers clutching my arm. Some of the fingers came off, then grew tiny wings and flew away. I was only mildly surprised by that.

The cannon’s payload was not, in fact, a T-shirt. It contained the Shroud of Turin—the legendary piece of cloth that the body of Christ was wrapped in after crucifixion. Experts were divided as to whether or not the shroud was real or a fake produced during the Middle Ages, an era when selling “holy” relics was all the rage. That was probably why John had managed to buy it for just $150 off eBay, which he thought was a good price either way (listing: $$$ ACTUAL SHROUD OF TAURINE—STAINED WITH SWEAT OF JESUZ—GOOD CONDITION—FREE SHIPPING—WOW!! $$$).

Whether he had found in his home a dozen mutilated corpses or a tomato that was sort of shaped like a dick, John would announce it in the exact same way.

the rain, which had turned into the kind of delicate drizzle that feels like a ghost is silently sneezing in your face.

We will live and die according to how we interpret the unfamiliar. All of human culture is nothing more than that very process, playing out again and again.

“GET THE FUCK DOWN! ALL OF YOU!” suggested Ted.

Out from the shadows popped a pair of white leathery wings stuck to a sinewy grasshopper body. The creature the locals had dubbed BATMANTIS???

You remember Dutch Vogless, from high school? He’s a doctor now, in Indianapolis. He was a dipshit. Fuck that doctor.”

I’ll tell you right now, if there’s such a thing as fate, it can eat a bag of dicks.”

“I found the next note. In advance, this time. It’s written on my penis, in Magic Marker. It says, ‘Check David’s ass, there’s an important message written on it that contains valuable information.’” I said, “It clearly does not say all that.”

a neighborhood that looked like it had dressed up as Venice for a costume party and then woke up in a dumpster.

The phrase “muff diver” did not come to mind then or at any point after, and I’m not sure why you assumed it would.

could feel puffs of frozen dread pouring from the wound. It was a unique sensation; the best comparison I can offer is if you opened your fridge to realize something was rotten in there, then when you opened the cheese drawer, you found a photo of your mother fucking a Dalmatian.

“Why can’t we roll her over?”

Hilarious

That was like an Internet provider running out of snide indifference.

“Jesus, you don’t just sneak up behind people and start spouting wisdom at them.

The choice between feeling the toxic ooze of self-loathing and the fire of mindless rage is no choice at all.

having really hairy legs is the way I am, and I still shave them regularly. In our natural state, we’re all smelly, sticky, angry creatures nobody would even pay to look at in a zoo. We’re all at war with that awful, primitive version of ourselves, every day. You’re scared. I get it. You’re scared you’re going to get cured and suddenly be this corny, boring person. Well, I have good news—there is no cure. You just wake up another day and fight it, day after day, until that’s who you become. A fighter. Look, it’s up to you. Only you can do this. But I’m not going to spend the rest of my life watching you slowly rot to pieces, stuck to the sofa like some kind of an airplane that is totally unable to take off from a treadmill, due to the laws of physics.”

was a brisk October morning, the sky the glorious blue of that fluid barbers use to disinfect combs.

I’m not a nihilist. I don’t write horror to make people more afraid of the world, or to be scared of the unknown. I feel like good horror, or even the kind I write, is scary in the sense that undiscovered territory is scary. It should take the brain out of its comfort zone and, if nothing else, leave it with a better sense of just how much we don’t know about our world and about ourselves. Maybe it can even add a touch more empathy and understanding to a world that desperately needs