Popular belief has it that the universe is comprised of atoms. In reality, the universe is actually made up of…
Everyone who ever met Susa knew there was something not quite right with the soft-spoken alabaster-skinned little girl but not one single solitary soul could have told you what it was that set her at odds with the rest of humanity.
She appeared to love her parents dearly, was respectful to adults, kind to animals and everyone she met, and never spoke a bad word against anyone or anything, never threw a tantrum, and was never angry or upset with anyone over any matter, not even when people were unkind to her.
But each time Susa’s head touched the pillow, the young girl would spend her sleeping hours traipsing through the dreams of the unkind others, pulling them into a phantasmagorical landscape which showcased the death of everything, their loved ones, hopes, ideas, memories, and every other type of death both real and imagined.
Not as revenge or punishment, mind you, but as an example of the rewards that awaited those determined to remain on the wrong side of her good temperament.
We cannot help who we are attracted to and even the most hard-hearted among us have fallen victim to one or more of the five maindeterminants of attraction: physical attractiveness, proximity, similarity, reciprocity, and familiarity in their lifetime. But there are behaviors that we find charming in romantic comedies and romance novels that would unnerve us in real life.
Submitted for your approval is a love story of sorts:
It was a secret place, a quarter acre of Eden abandoned and erased from the mind of mankind the instant the original sin was committed, and I had stumbled upon it quite by accident. No, that was a lie and I promised myself I would not defile the sanctity of the garden if it could be helped. I was not proud of the actual reason of how I came to be in this place, simply because I was a stalker [Continued here…]
Because of the argument with her mother, Lakshmi wasn’t able to sleep. It happened ten days ago to this very minute and her hatred for her mother hadn’t abated one iota. Truth to tell, she wasn’t able to remember who started the argument or what the initial disagreement was about but, as with most feuds, it opened a doorway for all the other things, the niggling bits of minutia to spill out, and words were exchanged and feelings were hurt on both sides.
Ten days of freezing her mother out. Ten days of refusing to eat or talk or even be in the same room with that woman. Ten nights of lying awake in bed, staring at the headlights of passing cars that trailed rectangles across her ceiling. Lakshmi knew every inch of the ceiling and walls of her room like the back of her hand…which was why she was shocked when her eyes fell upon the crack.
It was beside the mirror that sat atop her chest of drawers, a horizontal crack no longer than a foot in length that resembled a demonic smile. Lakshmi stared at the crack long and hard, wondering how she had missed something so obvious before…when it blinked. All right, so perhaps blinked wasn’t the proper word, but she could have sworn she saw a light flicker from within the crack.
Probably just the wiring, she thought as she pushed a chair against the wall beneath the crack. At night, Lakshmi regularly heard mice scurrying between the walls. One of them must have nibbled on a wire and exposed it. She’d have to remember to tell her father in the morning as it had to be a fire hazard.
Standing on the chair to inspect the crack, she ran her index finger along its jagged yet smooth edge which was surprisingly cold to the touch and she thought she felt a slight suction…then the flicker again!
I didn’t imagine it, Lakshmi thought as she leaned forward and stared into the crack. There was something moving within and she was surprised to see that it was…
Herself.
It was like watching a movie. She watched herself being herself, doing the things she normally did, but not on any day she ever remembered. The images began at a normal pace, then sped up to such a degree where, to anyone else, they would have appeared to be nothing more than a blur but Lakshmi was able to follow along because she was somehow connected to them. They were her personal images, of her life and she was living them, retaining the information contained within them as the events unfolded.
Eyes glued to the craggy slit in the wall, Lakshmi watched the rest of her life, the entirety of her existence, unfold before her in a series of flashes. Her life was quite literally flashing before her eyes.
Flash: Her relationship with her mother falls apart after a series of little spats over the next few years, which leads to the fight to end all fights when she turns seventeen which causes irreparable damage. That will be the final time the two will ever speak to one another.
Flash: Her father grows miserable with all the constant fighting, which wears on his soul until he can’t take it anymore. Lakshmi cries uncontrollably the day he finally leaves their home for another woman. She begins smoking to handle the stress.
Flash: Her dream career of becoming a geophysicist vanishes that day she quits college for a job that allows her to move out of the family home and away from her mother for good.
Flash: She works so many menial jobs, none of which manages to hold her attention for very long, and slowly saps all the dreams and creativity she holds in reserve. With each successive job, the sheen in her eyes dulls a bit more.
Flash: As with the job situation, so too her love life. Her many attempts at love fail for the same reasons time and time again. Somehow, she becomes relationship poison and seeks the same.
Flash: Eventually, her worries and frustrations in finding a mate cause her to settle for a man beneath her worth, a man who adds nothing to her life, a man who also works dead-end jobs with no hope of career advancement.
Flash: Then comes the struggle to save money for secondhand furniture and a used car, and as rents increase, their apartments over the years become smaller and rattier.
Flash: She cries alone in the bathroom with a pregnancy test showing a positive result.
Flash: The birth of her daughter, Rani, is agonizing and when it’s done and the baby is placed in her arms, she knows she should feel something, tries to feel love, but the emotions just will not come.
Flash: Not long after, she’s pregnant again with a premature boy this time, Samesh, and makes the effort to spread the already nonexistent love even thinner.
Flash: Samesh is born sickly and remains that way. Medical bills mount that they’re unable to pay, and her husband comes home later and later, complaining of overtime that is never reflected in his paycheck.
Flash: Fed up, her husband leaves in much the same way as her father did, for another woman, and she now is forced to get a second job to make ends meet.
Flash: Her already distant relationship with her daughter grows volatile when Rani turns to drugs after running with a group of delinquents.
Flash: Samesh’s condition worsens and neither her husband nor Rani are present at the hospital when he dies.
Flash: She develops a cough that turns into a hacking fit that turns into lung cancer that kills her a day before her sixty-sixth birthday. And like her son, she too dies alone.
Lakshmi thought the images would stop there, but she was mistaken. Somehow she was actually able to see beyond her own death, where Rani, holding a one-year Narcotics Anonymous recovery coin, arrives at her hospital room moments too late. Too late to apologize, too late to make amends, too late to say “I love you.” And the pain of this sends her running back to a drug den to score, where a fatal hot dose takes her life.
***
A noise, the sound of wood and plaster breaking in reverse, pulled Lakshmi away from the visions of her future and back into the room with such a quickness that she staggered back, falling off the chair, and hit the hardwood floor with a heavy thud.
A concerned woman’s voice called from outside the room. Her mother. The woman she hated mere moments ago and wished all the nastiness a seven-year-old girl’s mind could muster…but now, there was something else. Something she couldn’t quite remember. The images of her future started jumbling inside her head to the point they no longer made sense and began evaporating like so much mental vapor.
Something about her father and her husband leaving? Something about a baby…a girl, or maybe a boy, sick and dying? And a fight, a big fight…
Scrambling to her feet, Lakshmi raced out of her bedroom and down the hall as memories greyed out and faded from her mind. There was something she had to do, something before these feelings vanished and she went back to being angry.
She burst into her parents’ room, where her father, just about to fall into a deep slumber, leapt out of his skin at the girl’s sudden arrival.
Her mother, on the other hand, was fastening her dressing gown, about to investigate the sound from her daughter’s room, when Lakshmi rushed up, arms flung wide, and embraced her.
“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” Lakshmi sobbed as the recollections of her future life disappeared completely.
Her father watched in confusion, while her mother shrugged at him, smiled, and stroked her daughter’s hair, cooing, “Everything will be all right. Everything will be just fine now.”
***
In Lakshmi’s room, the crack in the wall, once the length of a wooden school ruler, began to shrink, as the wall knitted itself whole again.
The hawk was most definitely out tonight as I stood at the bow of the Staten Island ferry, coat collar popped and gloved hands thrust into pockets. This particular hawk bore a vicious set of teeth and wasn’t afraid to bite, which was fine by me. The colder weather combined with the icy wind that whipped off the bay afforded me some much-appreciated elbow room, a concept that was foreign to most New Yorkers.
Being all alone out here wasn’t a problem. I had been alone most of my adult life. Alone in a crowded room. Alone in committed relationships. The people closest to me, those tenacious few who loved a challenge, were kept at an equidistant arm’s length.
Alone was my appetite.
Alone was my mantra.
Alone was my destiny.
“Not too cold out tonight, is it?” a female voice said, almost sending me out of my skin. There, suddenly beside me, was a woman bundled against the chill air, lips curled slightly in sarcasm. Right next to me. Within the boundaries of my personal space.
“Not as cold as it could be,” I replied more out of reflex than want. What I wanted was a little privacy, to tend to my own affairs as other people on the ferry tended to theirs. It was part of the unspoken rule when you agreed to live in this city. You avoided eye contact and kept yourself to yourself.
I looked at this stealthy woman who took me totally unawares. A full foot shorter than me, pretty, petite, and of an ethnicity I could not readily identify, not that I was a whiz at determining a person’s country of origin on sight alone but her features suggested an exotic mélange that was almost otherworldly and anachronistic.
The immediate thing that came to mind wasn’t how stunningly attractive this woman was. My first thought was actually, Why are you talking to me? As a point of clarification, that was one of the things I admired most about myself, whether it was my face or the vibe I gave off, people generally never felt the need to walk up and talk to me. Unless of course, they were stark raving mad, or out to start a fight with a stranger they mistakenly assumed was harmless. She was clearly neither of those.
But the thought evaporated as suddenly as it appeared. She blurted out a simple statement of fact and I happened to be within earshot. Conversation over. Turn the page.
But it wasn’t over.
“Do you know who you are?” she asked in an accent that wasn’t exactly foreign but didn’t slot into any of the thirty-some-odd American English dialects, either.
“What?” I was taken aback by the suddenness of the question. “Of course I do. What kind of question is that?”
“I am not speaking of trivialities such as your name or occupation, your nationality or sexual preference, those are merely the tinsel people decorate themselves with to appear grander than they actually are. I want to know if you had to describe yourself to an absolute stranger you had no interest in impressing, what would you honestly say?”
“Most likely? Nothing.” I admitted. “I’ve never been fond of delivering self-summaries.”
Cavitation filled the long silence between us and I believed the conversation to be over.
I was mistaken.
“How old would you say I am?” the woman asked.
“I’ve never been good at guessing ages,” I replied, again out of pure reflex, something I’d have to learn to control better in the future.
“I am fairly certain that if I gave you one hundred guesses, you would not come close,” she said and for the briefest instant, her expression took on a sadness that could only have belonged to reminiscence. “You may not believe me but I am so old that there is no map in existence that can pinpoint my birthplace, a location lost within a faded memory that I have traveled the entire globe in search of, visiting places you probably do not even realize exist.”
“You’re probably right about that. Geography really isn’t my strong suit and I haven’t really traveled outside of the five boroughs.” I was instantly embarrassed by my lack of worldliness. “So, what brings you to New York?”
She remained quiet for a moment before answering. “I work for an organization, currently in a state of transition. It suffered drastic downsizing due to image problems and public opinion. My employer is in the midst of rebranding and taking on new staff to suit the company’s new direction. You can say that I am one of many headhunters.”
“Bravo. That was an artful dodge. You just said a mouthful and told me absolutely nothing about what your organization does to make a profit.”
“I can tell you, but only if you really want to know because that information comes at a price.”
“Which is?” I asked.
“Your undying loyalty.”
I chuckled. “Of course.”
“Of course, you agree to my terms, or of course, as in mockery?” she cocked an eyebrow my way. “We must be clear about this.”
“The latter, no offense.”
“I see,” she ran a hand through her hair to remove it from her face. I noticed she wasn’t wearing gloves and hadn’t actually appeared to be cold, the more I thought about it. “You asked me what brings me to New York. Would you believe me if I said it was you?”
I held up my hands in surrender. “All right, this is where I officially check out of this conversation.”
She took a step closer. “Your loneliness, your isolation is like a beacon to me. I am drawn to you. I know your kind. I have seen your future and you will most assuredly die alone. No mate, no children to carry on your legacy.”
“I hate to break it to you, lady, but I’m happily married with three kids who adore me.”
“Not true in the slightest. You have lived alone ever since your cat died of leukemia two years ago.”
“How—how could you know that?”
“The same way I know the first girl to break your heart was Shirley Hartsdale in the sixth grade when she began dating your best friend behind your back and made you the laughing-stock of the school. To this day you hold a distrust of people because of that incident, even friends and family.”
I hadn’t caught the last part of her sentence. My brain was flooded with thoughts of Shirley Hartsdale, someone I hadn’t thought of in years and even now, she left a bad taste in my mouth.
“The organization I work for has that sort of information available to them, not solely on you but everyone on the planet.”
Oh God, I started to panic. She’s a terrorist. Part of some ferry-riding Sleeper Cell that uses attractive women to pry information out of dumb single Americans. My photo was going to land in some Homeland Security dossier marked Terrorist Sympathizers. At that moment I just wanted this woman to be away from me. Far, far away.
“I am not a terrorist,” she smiled. “Nor am I a member of a cult. What I am is an adherent of a peacekeeping task force that seeks to restore balance to the world with the help of people like you, the overlooked, the forgotten, the unloved. More than an organization, the company that employs me is my family and is directly descended from the first family ever to touch foot on the Earth. It can become your family, as well.”
“What I can offer you is a love unparalleled,” the woman continued. She touched a finger to my temple and the wind died away. The air barely moved for several moments and I listened as she spoke. My world began spinning savagely. I winced and swallowed hard to prevent nausea from triumphing as her words poured images into my mind, saturated with so much sensory information and emotion that I thought I might have burst at the seams.
“You will want for nothing. I will bear you many children and you will have a family the size of a small nation. A family who will worship and adore you. All this and more if you will simply pledge yourself to me forever and always.”
She moved her finger away and the stillness of the air vanished, and the wind rose once more. I staggered a moment, my mind reeling with the imagery that pressed a palpable weight on me. When I regained my balance and sight, I stood there stunned and in comparative silence after being shown a world that only existed as the flimsiest of pipedreams. The reality finally hit that I was dealing with something way beyond my limited comprehension, something that threatened to swallow me whole if I wasn’t careful.
“And you will be free to follow your secret dreams. Let loose the novelist that resides in your heart and millions will read your words. You will be well received all around the world. Spend your days lecturing, even teaching and sculpting young minds, if that is your wish.”
She went on to say, “Or write and direct films that interest you, and your following will be massive. Fellini, Scorcese, Hitchcock, Kubrick, Tarantino, would not be able to hold a candle to you. Release a film each year, all guaranteed award winners, featuring stars of your choosing, all eager to play even a minor role.”
“And all this will happen because of you?”
Her tone became sharp as a knife. “No, because of your pledge to be with me and only me.”
“Like signing my soul over to you?” I knew the answer but had to ask anyway.
“What an archaic notion. All I need from you is your promise, sealed with a kiss. The question is: Do you want to live the life you have always dreamed of living or not? After years of struggling and going unnoticed by women and society at large, you learned to wear your isolation like a protective shell but this is not who you truly are, who you were meant to be. If anyone deserves a shot at the brass ring it most certainly is you, is it not?”
The weight of her stare made it difficult to maintain eye contact. “That’s tempting, it really is…but I can’t.”
“You would turn down everything?”
“I’m too old to believe I can have everything, and while I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed, I’m smart enough to know I won’t be happy. Maybe at first, on the surface, I will, but as time goes by I’ll know deep down that I didn’t earn any of those things.”
“Your struggle is a matter of record, my offer is simply payment overdue.”
“And you’re an unbelievably beautiful woman…”
“Thank you.”
“But I’m a man, cursed with all the frailties of the male ego.”
“I do not understand.”
“If I did this thing, if I let you alter the course of my destiny, I would need you to love me in order for it to matter.”
“I do love you,” the woman said and her bewitching eyes were filled with so much pure love that it made my heart ache to see.
“No, I need you to love me even if I had nothing of value to offer you. Don’t ask how, but I know all you’ve said so far is true, you’ve been careful not to lie, it’s an expertly constructed contract. But even with you offering the perfect life I wouldn’t be satisfied because you wouldn’t be with me because you loved me. You’d be with me because you needed something from me. Something I’m not clever enough to figure out at the moment.” I felt foolish because I truly couldn’t work out the angle. My soul wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on so I had to be in possession of some undiscovered value that was worth her organization’s while.
And suddenly I was aware of the nearness of the woman and no longer thought she was in my personal space but that I was in hers and I worried about what being within her sphere of influence might do to me. I was afraid that her essence, the power she projected would have tainted me, marked and cursed me forever.
“It appears I misjudged you,” the woman said, her expression as icy as the wind. “Your ego-driven need for unconditional love is just a mask. Your problem is not being too old to possess everything you have ever wanted, it is being too afraid.”
“What?” my voice cracked as I felt a sudden pang of terror.
“You are a dichotomy of fear. You are afraid of dying home alone, yet you fear leaving your house to meet a woman you can form a relationship with, you fear being friendless yet fear making friends, fear being childless yet fear the responsibility of having children, you fear being loved, fear being hated, you fear life and just about everything else and you are content to let it rot your soul as you waste away out of existence.”
The wind rose in unison with the pitch of her voice and I was hit with a blast so icy it made my eyes water. When I wiped the tears away and cleared my vision, the woman was gone.
I went inside the ferry because I felt the sudden and dire need to be around other people, to be close to them, to feel their warmth. I settled down in a seat between two strangers, neither of them pleased that I had invaded their personal space, but I was past the point of caring at the moment.
Looking down at the opposite end of the ferry, I saw the woman talking to a man, most likely another lonely bastard like me. I wanted to go over and warn him but he probably wouldn’t have believed me, and wasn’t it up to him to face his own temptations? Who’s to say that he wouldn’t have been within his rights to accept? And was I a fool for letting the opportunity to end my loneliness pass me by?
Then and there I made a promise to change my life, to put Shirley Hartsdale in perspective as I got on with living, and reconnect with old friends if it wasn’t too late, and I pledged to make new friends as I sought out the love I deserved and stopped waiting for it to come to me. If there was indeed some undiscovered value within me, I was determined to find it.
At least that was the lie I told myself as the ferry pulled into the harbor.
Popular belief has it that the universe is comprised of atoms. In reality, the universe is actually made up of…
I almost passed on the blind date. I mean, when had that sort of thing ever really worked out? A friend who claimed they knew you, your tastes, and your interests, matching you up with your soulmate? In reality, all it really amounted to was pushing two single strays together to avoid being the couple saddled with a fifth-wheel friend.
But the moment I saw her, Orelline, my blind date, I knew two fundamental things at the exact same time (1) that I was punching above my weight class because she was phenomenally out of my league, and (2) I would be so nervous and foul things up so badly that this would be our one and only date.
And I was nervous, embarrassingly so, and clumsy, and tongue-tied, and trying way too hard to seem more interesting than I actually was. I replayed that night over in my head at least a thousand times, cringing at every fumble and misstep, and for the life of me, I could not understand why this stunningly gorgeous woman agreed to a second date.
I wish I could say that the second date went better than the first, but whatever small measure of confidence I had amassed over the years abandoned me completely. I floundered like an insect drowning in yogurt. And when the date ended and I saw her to her door, I was prepared to apologize for, well, for being me, for not being good enough for her, and I probably would have stammered my way through that speech, that I had been mentally preparing on the way to her house, had she not shut my thought processes down…with a kiss.
By date eight, we had forgone the need for meeting in a restaurant or catching a movie, or going to the theater. Instead, Orelline insisted that I come to her place and bring a change of clothes. I would not allow myself to presume what that meant but I secretly prayed that what I thought might happen would indeed happen.
Her text notified me of the key under the mat and when I let myself in, I discovered a trail of rose petals, lit by a row of candles that led to her bathroom. I had brought with me a bottle of champagne to help ease the pressure of our possible first time together and made a detour to the kitchen in search of glasses.
The bathroom door was slightly ajar so I entered but upon seeing me, Orelline hid her body beneath the suds of her bubble bath.
“I’m sorry,” I said, immediately regretting my intrusion and turning to leave. “I shouldn’t have come in unannounced. I just thought this would be sort of, I don’t know, romantic? It was stupid of me.”
“No, don’t go, it’s sweet, really,” she beamed a smile that seemed forced. “You just startled me, that’s all.
“Look, if you’re not ready for this, if we’re moving too fast, just say so. I can wait until the time is right.”
“No, it’s not that.”
“Then what is it? And please don’t hand me the it’s not you it’s me line. I’d prefer it if you were just honest with me.”
“But it is me,” Orelline confessed. “I’m afraid.”
“You’re afraid? Of what?”
She couldn’t meet my eyes. “I’m afraid that if we make love, your opinion of my supposed beauty will change drastically.”
I studied her face and the peaches and cream flesh of her exposed arms and answered, “I can’t imagine a scenario in which that would be even remotely possible.”
She exhaled slowly and stood up in the bathtub. The soap suds slid down her glistening body, revealing the fact that every inch of her skin that her clothing normally covered was a labyrinthine knotwork of scars.
“I’m into a particular kind of sex,” she said, as the champagne flutes slipped through my fingers.
Six months. That’s all it took for the world to collapse. Six months after the first demon portal opened and if there was another living human soul left on the planet besides Mitchell Larkin, they’d be living an isolated life within a hidey-hole in the deserted ruins of some city or town, which meant they might as well be on the moon.
But that hadn’t meant Mitchell gave in to defeat, no siree bob. Part of his daily routine, after searching for food and supplies, was to scour all the books on the occult that he was able to scavenge, searching for a way to reverse the damage done by that lunatic couple in the deadly viral video.
He never had much use for religion, never believed in the supernatural, let alone the occult, but now, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more devout man on the face of the Earth, that was if you could have found another man on the face of the Earth.
He managed to survive so long because he barricaded himself inside his heavily fortified house, setting snare traps along the perimeter, and studied the patterns of the demons’ movements and attacks, assessing their strengths and weaknesses. That, and he uncovered a ritual that somehow masked his house from the demons’ senses. The practicing of dark arts went against the principles of his newfound religion, but he was a desperate man working on the fly so he hoped God would realize this and cut him a little slack.
This wasn’t to say that Mitchell was always on the top of his game. There were days that he simply went through the motions, and it was on one of these days that he accidentally stumbled on a possible solution. Within the pages of a book he thumbed through a thousand times, there were details that, when combined with a separate incantation from another book, should theoretically do the trick of exiling those bastard demons from Earth forever.
Mitchell was now a man with a mission. He checked and triple-checked his calculations, made special runs into dangerous territories to secure the items he needed, and prayed that God would look the other way this one last time. The newly converted should have been eligible for a three-strike rule, in his humble opinion, even if this was strike four.
The ritual was dangerous in the extreme, and if Mitchell mucked it up he could wind up pushing daisies, and to be clear, he didn’t want to die, but he couldn’t see any other options at this point.
Pulling off the ritual required knowledge and power. The former Mitchell was sadly lacking being a novice and all. The latter? Well, he just had to hope that the power of his convictions was good enough.
Mitchell created a large circle out of sea salt in the center of the living room floor and inside that circle, he salted the pattern of a pentacle. Dragging a steak knife across his left palm, he squeezed several drops of blood on each of the star’s points. Then he stripped down to his birthday suit, placed a lit white candle anointed in olive oil within the circle at magnetic north, and sat in the middle of the power circle.
Concentrating on the candle flame, Mitchell attempted to clear his mind of all distractions even though the salt was irritating his bare butt. His nervousness showed in the recitation of the rhythmic chant, he was speaking the words too quickly and had to force himself to slow his pace. Yes, time was running out for the human race, but in truth, he had all the time in the world.
He repeated the incantation over and over again, to the point of his throat becoming raw, and he thought he made an error somewhere, mispronounced a word, Latin wasn’t his strong suit, after all, and his confidence was on the verge of faltering…when the air suddenly crackled with charged particles.
Then he felt it, the tingle of the raw power of the earth itself, traveling up his chakras, filling his frame with the awesome energies of nature. For the briefest of moments, Mitchell existed in the sweet spot of existence, breathing in the rarified air of a cosmic entity as his soul made a connection with not only the planet of his birth but the entire universe as well.
And he wasn’t alone. Something tapped the outer fringes of his expanding awareness, a force that was unmistakably feminine. As their essences intermingled, Mitchell discovered her name was Flora when she used to have a physical body. She had been an astral traveler exploring higher planes of existence when the demons feasted on her dormant flesh.
Mitchell’s chanting drew her essence to this spot and as she had a score to settle with the beasties, Flora graciously infused his energies with her own. For a scintilla of a second, Mitchell felt invincible, filled to bursting with power and endless possibilities. Alas and lack, this power brought about its own set of difficulties.
The Mitchell/Flora union caused an energy surge that shattered the magicks which cloaked his home from the demons and, to make matters worse, it served as a beacon, beckoning the interdimensional invaders, challenging them to come. And they came in droves, from every direction, wave after wave.
Flora tried her best to keep the creatures at bay in order to give Mitchell the chance to finish the ritual and send the hellspawn packing back to wherever the hell they came from, but they both knew sure as bread fell butter side down that there was no way in hell that their combined energy was strong enough to see the matter through. And even if they had been able to draw upon more power, neither had the knowledge base to pull off a feat of that magnitude.
In his final act, Mitchell thanked Flora for trying to help and released her energy back into the universe. There was no sense in taking her with him. And when the ravenous demon horde eventually tore through his makeshift security measures and entered the room, an odd thought struck him:
“Will I taste like chicken?”
And that just about does it for the 13 for Halloween series. I want to thank all of you who followed me on this experimental journey. I know I run this phrase into the ground but, it's very much appreciated.
And not only is it Halloween but it also happens to be my birthday, so please feel free to pick up a slice of PumpKill BirthSlay cake (okay, okay, I'm officially laying off the Cryptkeeper puns) on your way to the egress. HAPPY HALLOWEEN, all!
Once upon a dimension, there existed four little hellspawns named Qemno, Gatoix, Byanki, and Iczer, and they lived with their mother in the festering pus sac of a decaying creature trapped in the dried magma of the root of a very large bleeder tree.
“Youngling rapscallions,” said Mama Hellspawn one morning, in her guttural native tongue. “This pus sac is devoid of nutrients and so you must go out into the realm and fend for yourselves for a while. You may have noticed portals opening to badlands, stay away from these doorways. Your father entered one and was slaughtered by the beasts called hoo-mans. They are unnatural creatures and must be avoided at all costs.”
“Why?” asked Iczer.
“Because they will put you in a stew and eat you until you are no more,” answered Mama.
“No, Mama, why did we open the doorways to danger?” Iczer clarified.
“The hoo-mans opened the portals…to slay us. Now, run along and feed yourselves but do not become prey. When I have found a new home, I will send for you.” Mama Hellspawn turned to leave, resetting her jaw from conversation mode to evisceration mode in order to hunt and take down a large beast for their new home.
Qemno, Gatoix, and Byanki were obedient hellspawns and did as they were bade, venturing out and using their enhanced sense of smell to detect the scent of victuals and root through the gravepits until they reached pockets of cadaverous dung worms.
But Iczer, the disobedient one, scampered straight to the nearest portal and clambered his way into the badland place his mother called Errth.
But what made these lands bad? Iczer wondered. He encountered several beasts that traveled on all fours just like him. Were these hoo-mans? No, for they were not scary at all. He unhinged his jaw and swallowed them whole for his stomach teeth to gnaw on.
But then, when his belly was slaying the meal inside him, whom should he meet but a hoo-mans! Mama was right, it was frightfully ugly and walked on twos instead of fours.
The hoo-mans ran after Iczer, waving a painstick and screeching something unintelligible. Iczer was most dreadfully frightened; he rushed all over the badlands, for he had forgotten the way back to the portal. He lost one of his legs when it became wedged in a crack in the stone ground and he was forced to detach it to evade capture, and sacrificed an exploding eye which emitted a poisonous gas to choke the hoo-mans.
After losing the hoo-mans, Iczer thought he had gotten away altogether, but he unfortunately ran into a web of some sort and got himself all tangled up.
Iczer gave himself up for lost as more hoo-mans came with their painsticks to kill him, but he remembered Mama showing him how to escape a web, so he wriggled and wriggled just as he had been taught. It was no use, he was still trapped even though he was sure he had done everything the right way.
The hoo-mans beat him with painsticks and he was helpless to defend himself. Iczer shed big tears and let out a wail that only made the hoo-mans beat him harder. They beat him and beat him and when they tired themselves out or lost interest because he was unable to scream anymore, they picked him up within the web, probably to put him in a stew and eat him all up. He would have cried if he had any tears left.
This was the end, he felt it in his three hearts, so he said the only prayer he knew, a youngling’s prayer for safety before hibernation, and tried to be a brave little hellspawn as he gave up his life.
But there was a commotion and he was thrown violently to the ground. All around him the hoo-mans were squealing, squawking and yawping at a decibel that hurt his ears to hear. And they were exploding, spraying liquid everywhere.
Was that what their blood looked like? Iczer wondered. And when the last of them had fallen, the reason for the sudden burst of chaos came into his line of sight…Mama.
“I came as soon as I heard your call,” Mama Hellspawn said, extricating the broodling from the web.
Iczer collapsed into the folds of her being, comforted at first by her cooing. When her tone turned to admonishment, he didn’t care for he was safe within her now, and the world was normal again.
And after she was done reprimanding and punishing him, he would ask her to show him what she had done to the hoo-mans to rescue him because Iczer planned to return to these badlands when he was stronger and make every single creature here pay for their cruelty.
So, your plan is to court my daughter, is it? Please, step inside freely and of your own will. Once I have taken your coat, please make your way to the sitting room and help yourself to some refreshments. Be uninhibited and eat to your heart’s content. Gluttony is not frowned upon in this house. Neither is avarice or wrath, but you will discover all this if you make it past the vetting process.
What was that? My daughter never informed you that her father and I intend to determine if you qualify to date the precious fruit of our loins? Her mistake. And yours, if you are not afraid. Our daughter is an extension of us and if you underestimate us then you are definitely underestimating her.
Do not be an underestimator.
The rules are simple and as follows:
One.
On the table to the right you will find three forms, one for consent, the second a waiver, and the final a non-disclosure. These must be read fully, initialed in the appropriate fields and signed and dated with the pen provided. When using the pen for the first time, some suitors have complained of a sharp pain in their writing hand. That is quite normal, I assure you. It is simply the pen’s piston converter filling device tapping an artery, as you will be signing in your own blood.
Two.
My husband will administer a unique personality test. Please endeavor to answer all the questions contained within truthfully as The Great Old Ones know when you lie and their retribution shall be swift and merciless. Be aware that we will not be accepting applicants who score below “Severely Aberrated.” Standards must be kept.
Three.
You will be escorted to a subterranean cavern and descend six thousand steps to a pit, seated with a shoggoth and made to read the Necronomicon – fleshbound volumes are available for purchase in my library for the insanely low price of your firstborn – front to back and back to front. You will do this aloud and the shoggoth will ask you questions at the end of each section to ensure proper comprehension.
Shoggoths are shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles. They are also extremely sensitive about their appearance. Avoid commenting on their faintly self-luminous skin, and the myriad temporary eyes that form and un-form like pustules. This is for your own safety as they are extremely hungry, and they are not herbivores.
Four.
You shall be put through your paces. I will endeavor to push you past the limits of your physical endurance while simultaneously quizzing you to determine your intelligence quotient. Your hormones will be set out of balance and your psyche unraveled, dissected and scrutinized to ensure that you are a suitable suitor. Not to fear. I will reassemble you in the exact manner in which I found you.
More or less.
You have signed a waiver, after all.
Five.
If you have completed the tests successfully, you will join the ranks of prospective suitors at a ceremony in the deep woods, where you will battle one another under the supervision of a protean deity whose name you will have committed to memory by that point.
Important to note: if the idea of death, evisceration, and dining on the organs of slain foes makes you feel even the slightest bit uneasy, perhaps you are not the proper match.
Six.
Once you emerge victorious, and hopefully whole, you must leave old puny mortal faiths by the wayside and choose a new path. Our daughter prefers the Esoteric Order of Dagon, while her father and I are partial to the Church of Starry Wisdom, but there are others, such as the Brothers of the Yellow Sign, the Cult of the Skull, Chorazos Cult, the Cult of the Bloody Tongue, and so on. Do not be swayed by any of us. The choice is yours.
Nothing involving aliens and volcanoes, though.
Seven.
You must take a blood vow to serve my daughter, though the path will surely lead you into the depths of insanity. You pledge to sacrifice yourself without question in order to continue her existence, if called upon to do so. And you swear to take her hand in yours and spread the entropy until you revive the ancient, powerful deities who once ruled the Earth from their deathlike sleep and bring the Great Elder God back in power.
This is non-negotiable.
Eight.
You are finally free to date. And since we realize in modern society sexual activity amongst adolescents has become a commonality, her father and I fully support this. The only proviso we have is that should a union occur, you shall not spill your seed. Nor shall you engage in any sort of contraception. We require younglings.
Felicia Dunner hated people. Always had. Even as a little girl.
Why? Because people were ineradicably violent, unavailingly vindictive, immeasurably self-righteous, and the list went on. But plants? Oh, with plants she could just sit in their company for hours, enjoying the warm summer nights, breathing in the relaxing scents of honeysuckle and jasmine, plumenia, and gardenias.
Nighttime was always best. When she was young, Felicia would sneak out of the house while the rest of her family was asleep, step into the peaceful hush of her dormant neighborhood, kneel in the rich soil and listen to the gentle and soft evening breeze that rustled the leaves in the trees. And it was on one of those oh so long ago summer nights, when she was fed up with dealing with people, that her lifelong purpose came to her with a clarity she had never experienced before or since.
She studied botany, first on her own, devouring any and every book the library had to offer, then as an elective when it became available in school. Felicia had been blessed with strong analytical, mathematical, and critical thinking skills, and threw herself into the fields of botany, plant science, and biology to earn her doctoral degree.
A sizeable grant aided her in setting up a research facility deep within the Amazon Rainforest under the guise of discovering a plant-based cure for cancer. In reality, Felicia’s goal was to transcend the trappings of matter and biochemical pathways in order to twist evolution by stripping two disparate species and braiding them into a new, better, and stronger whole. If successful, the homo sapiens would experience the slow fade of an endangered species and give way to plantae sapiens, a race of human plants.
During her college years, she dated voraciously. Those who were narrow-minded and envious of her accomplishments branded Felicia as promiscuous, while those who sought to know her better thought she was coming out of her shell, stepping outside her comfort zone. Little did either faction know that she was collecting samples. Enzymes and plasmids were needed to help fuel her gene splicing and cloning experiments, so she compartmentalized her disdain for human contact and cast a wide net into the dating pool, male and female alike. To her, flesh was flesh, and as she was asexual and only interested in collecting raw genetic materials, she was immune to the preference of one gender over the other.
Felicia was plagued with failure upon failure, approaching her experiments from the standard cloning procedures of taking the plant-human spliced DNA and preparing an egg cell, inserting somatic cell material, convincing the egg that it was fertilized, and implanting it into an artificial womb. And it wasn’t until she had exhausted all of her genetic materials that she realized her error and cursed her meat-based brain. She was approaching the matter all wrong, thinking like a human.
Her misanthropic manner eventually drove away all her assistants so Felicia was forced to use samples cultivated from her own body, and instead of creating a replica of a human egg, she created a plant-like seed the size of a peach pit.
Felicia placed the seed in a container filled with a solution infused with human and plant enzymes and stored it in a dark place at room temperature for twelve hours to let the seed soak and initiate the germination process.
Failure.
Then she tried sowing the seed in quality soil with a sterile, seed-starting mix, planting it at the proper depth according to her calculations. She watered it wisely, maintaining consistent moisture, kept the soil warm, fertilizing, giving the seed enough light, and circulated the air.
Again, failure.
Giving up was never an option, but Felicia couldn’t deny she was balancing on the precipice of admitting the futility of her efforts, when, out of the blue, a thought struck her. Had she been planting the seed in the wrong soil? It had been nutrient-rich, to be sure, but perhaps it was missing that certain something, that bit of magic that existed in the blindspot of her prejudice. A human variable.
Hoping against hope, Felicia extracted the seed from the soil, rinsed and drained it, and then replanted it in the richest soil she possessed. With equal amounts of care and effort, she placed this unique seed, neither fully plant nor human, deep within her lady garden. She knew full well the dangers of retaining foreign objects in the uterus: infection and purulent malodorous discharge, granulation tissue formation leading to adhesions, and fibrosis, but she was desperate.
At first, she thought she was facing yet another failure but a missed period and tender, swollen breasts clued Felicia in that she was finally on the right track. All the other symptoms soon followed: nausea, but thankfully no vomiting, only dry heaving, increased urination, fatigue, light spotting, cramping, bloating, and constipation. Also, her sense of smell and taste became heightened and she was experiencing abdominal twinges, the sensation of her stomach muscles being pulled and stretched. All this occurred within the first three days.
Felicia’s stomach became upset on day four, as if her digestive system was in turmoil, swelling like a tidal wave before gradually subsiding. On day five, she awoke to a dull ache in her back and lower abdomen and there was a pressure in her pelvis that was indescribable, accompanied by strong waves that felt like diarrhea cramps. They couldn’t have been labor contractions, it was far too soon, and it hadn’t matched with any of her calculations!
Despite that fact, there was a pounding in her uterus and a wrenching intestinal cramping that felt like severe gas pains and just when it felt like she was about to pass out, her entire body was flooded with numbness. Felicia was aware of anesthetics that existed in nature. Was the seed releasing eugenol to numb her nerves?
Reclining on a makeshift examination table, she watched in absolute calmness as if detached from her physical body, as thin tentacle-like vines pushed their way free of her lady garden, extending, probing her thighs and calves until they located her ankles. Snaking around the bone just above her feet, the vines slowly drew her legs close. Felicia could feel her baby shift and move, it was extricating itself, pulling itself free from her womb, in essence, birthing itself.
Once breached, the vines released her ankles, leaving nasty welts, and crawled up to her belly, using its tentacle appendages as legs. Felicia cupped the leafy infant in her hands. It was so light yet so firm and it radiated such heat. She tickled the bulb of its head on some sort of motherly instinct and the petals began to unfurl to reveal the humanish face within that bore a resemblance to pictures of herself as a child if she had been made of foliage.
Felicia bore her breast and placed her baby’s lips to her nipple. This was indeed a product of her loins, her experimental hybrid baby was a flaming success, the next step in evolution, and yes, it would replace humankind but not in the way that the botanist had envisioned. Homo sapiens would become an endangered species because her progeny was a creation born not with the need for mother’s milk, but with the taste for human flesh, and she had no other choice than to see that her baby was properly fed.
A fortnight after the news reported the first interdimensional portal opening, Campbell stepped out of a gutted convenience store with several tin cans missing labels, a few jars of baby food, and a couple of packets of smashed ramen in his backpack. It was the first find in the seven stores he visited and while it wouldn’t have passed as fine dining, it was a damn sight better than the zero food in his apartment.
The main avenue outside looked like the aftermath of a demolition derby, abandoned cars smashed into one another in the street and on the sidewalk for more than three blocks. It was eerily quiet, especially for the city midday, and the air stank of insect musk and mildew. Soot-laden clouds hung so low a person could stand on the roof of a building, reach out a hand, and touch their underbelly as they drifted past.
He was about to head off in a different direction to try another store when he spotted a woman standing in the intersection, naked and alone, shivering in the ninety-degree heat. Campbell stopped dead in his tracks and rubbed his eyes almost like a cartoon character trying to clear a mirage from his vision. Head on a swivel, he looked around for any sign of demon threat and when he found none, against every ounce of common sense in his possession, he approached her.
Campbell made a throat-clearing sound and it startled the woman as if she hadn’t noticed him although she was looking directly at him as he approached.
“Don’t worry,” Campbell put his hands out. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“…hurt you…” the shivering woman said. Her quavering voice was an octave higher than his but still on the husky side, and she spoke in an accent that he couldn’t quite place.
“Now, I know how this looks,” Campbell said as he set his backpack down and began unbuttoning his shirt. “But I assure you I’m not that kind of guy, okay? You just look like you need help.”
“…need help…” the woman repeated. She wrapped her arms across her bare breasts.
Campbell held his shirt out. “Here, take this.”
The woman said, “…take this…” but stood motionless, paying no regard to the shirt at all.
Poor thing must be in shock, Campbell thought, or maybe she didn’t understand English, the way she kept parroting the last words he spoke.
Holding his shirt out like a muleta, Campbell approached the woman slowly like a timid matador and made the shushing noise parents used to calm newborns. She remained stock-still as he maneuvered behind her and draped the shirt over her shoulders, but shied away when he tried to adjust it for a better fit.
“Okay, no touching,” Campbell said, backing off. “Understood. It’s all good.”
“…all good…”
“Are you all right?” asked Campbell, moving back into her line of sight. “What happened to you? Are you alone? Where do you live?”
“…you live…”
“Okay, too many questions at one time. How about this, are you hungry?” Campbell mimed putting food in his mouth and chewing.
“…hungry…”
Scooping up the backpack, he opened it and pointed at the tin cans and ramen. “Food.”
“…food…”
“That’s right, food, eat food, but we can’t eat here, we have to go someplace safe. I live nearby…”
“…near by…”
“I’ll share it with you but you have to come with me back to my apartment.”
“…apart ment…”
Campbell sighed. He wasn’t sure how much of what he said had actually gotten through but too much time was spent standing out in the open in this one spot and he was beginning to get nervous. And if he was being totally honest with himself, he had never been comfortable with his body and he was now shirtless in front of a beautiful woman. Yes, even though she was covered in grime, there was no denying how breathtakingly beautiful she was.
That wasn’t the reason he stopped to help her, he told himself, and almost believed it to be true.
Slipping the pack on his bare back, Campbell gestured for the woman to follow him before he turned and walked away. If she did, fine, and if not, then he tried, but he wasn’t about to risk burning any more sunlight out in the open. He hadn’t looked to see if she was following because if she wasn’t he’d be more depressed than he was willing to admit, but he did walk at a much slower pace than normal, just in case.
Remarkably, there was almost a peaceful quality to the city today, no roaming packs of either demons or human scavengers. All things considered, it was a good day in the apocalypse. And it just kept getting better because when he reached his apartment building, the woman was ten paces behind, walking with an unusual gait. He hadn’t lost her or his lucky shirt.
I’ll check her for injuries once we’re safely upstairs, Campbell thought, because the woman walked with an unusual gait, which made the climb up the stairwell time-consuming. When they eventually made it inside the apartment, the sun was beginning to set and the power had gone out eight days ago, so the first task was to light a few candles.
He silently cursed himself for not thinking to look for more candles when he was out. Sure, he had enough votives to last a few nights but having extra certainly wouldn’t hurt. He was going to have to learn to start making lists before going out to forage for supplies, especially now that he’d be providing for two.
He offered the woman a seat several times while he was darting around trying to tidy the messy apartment up but she continued to stand by the front door, shivering.
When his place was as clean as it was going to get at the moment, Campbell ducked into the kitchen to fetch a bowl which he filled with distilled water from a plastic jug. The building still had running water but the pressure was so low as to be nonexistent. He added a few drops of dishwashing liquid and gave it a quick stir with his index finger to kick up some soap bubbles.
Snatching a mostly clean tea towel off the rack, he set it along with the bowl on the foyer table near the woman.
“Get yourself cleaned up,” he said. “I’ll rustle up something for you to wear.”
“…to wear…” the woman said but paid no attention to the water or cloth.
“Look, you’re gonna have to get that gunk off you if you wanna stay here…”
“…stay here…”
With a huff of exasperation, Campbell took up the tea towel, dipped it in the sudsy water, and attempted to wipe the schmutz off her face, which up close was even more beautiful, almost unreal, like an oil painting.
The woman twitched and from somewhere inside the apartment came a scrabbling noise, which made his hand jerk and touch her face. A faultline appeared where the cloth made contact and divided her features. He gasped and took a step back as the crack in her face traveled down her body. She was being torn apart!
Campbell’s mind clutched at the straw of reason, explanation, anything that could have made even the tiniest bit of sense out of what he was seeing. The first thing to come to mind was that a creature had somehow burrowed its way beneath her skin and now it was eating its way out but as he watched the way her body segmented itself and rearranged the parts in a way that defied the laws of biology, he saw that she wasn’t being eaten alive. Something unholy and unnatural was unfolding from within her.
All too late he pieced the clues together. Of course, she was too beautiful to be real because it was a clever disguise, a camouflage used to lure in dumb human apes, the way certain animals and insects disguised themselves to fool predators or attract prey. She wasn’t shivering because she was cold, it was struggling to keep itself compressed within the bits of its carapace that resembled a human woman when pressed together in the proper formation. And its voice, that sounded oddly familiar now that he thought of it, was his own parroted back at him at a higher pitch.
What a complete and utter fool he was, thinking that rescuing a helpless beauty would put an end to his loneliness when all it actually did was end his life.
MADD FICTIONAL 