F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction (New Weird) Author

Monsters

A Sermon Unleashed

by

You just never know who some people are when you meet them. Especially at night in a KOA campground. I remember one or two times our family stayed at some KOAs. It was fun…the six of us and our family dog. The smell and crackle of campfires and pine trees and grilled food. The conversations from faceless people who seemed friendly enough….

I’m so glad we never ran into any of the sort in this next story.  At the rate they were going, I don’t think they had many converts. Always keep your vehicles parked facing your getaway. Just sayin’.

This story has never seen the light of day…or been published.

 

A Sermon Unleashed

© F. P. Dorchak, 1989

 

A large part of his oxygen escaped, his knees rubbery.

“How do you know this?” Phil asked. It was dark, the smell and crackle of campfires in the air, and he and a guy named Darrell stood in an open area of a KOA.

Darrell chuckled again, and this one was much worse than before. There was no doubt as to the vileness in his tone. And the darkness just exaggerated everything.

“Because I made it all up!” Darrell said, his voice now rising above their personal conversation and carrying over to some of the closer people around them, including a group at a van. His laugh was unabashed and wicked and Phil’s eyes froze on Darrell’s shadowy face. He wasn’t sure…but it seemed like Darrell’s face was…changing? In the process of change? It had to be a trick of what little light there was. Why and how would Darrell’s face be changing, it didn’t make any sense, but that was how it registered to Phil’s mind.

“In a way, buddy, I feel sorry for you,” Darrell said. “You are not gullible and stupid like they are,” Darrell said, forcing thick words out of a now extending mouth. It sounded like his tongue was impeding coherent speech. And there were weird, abrading sounds seeming to come from Darrell. Like muscle and bone were moving around…pushing each other out of the way….

In the next instant Phil felt a powerful force strike him. Not that he knew it, but it came from a hairy but muscular hand and clobbered Phil like a flying slab of concrete. Bowling over, he smacked his head hard on a good-sized rock. That was the last he recalled before blackness….

 

Out from the shadows charged a figure.

He was tall…and he drooled as his face contorted and his cruelly clawed limbs completed their restructure. From under a quickly thickening mane hissed one word:

“Faith….”

“What’s going on here?” someone asked from the darkness. Flashlights clicked on everywhere at once. A girl named Brenda, from that group, whipped her head around and saw shadows running toward her group. She quickly made for her boyfriend’s truck. She’d just managed to dodge out of the path of some rushing thing that went past her for the group she’d just left.

“Phil? Phil?” Brenda called out. No answer.

The crowd behind her was hit by a rude flurry of fangs and claws. Their shrieks cut into the air as the group split up, people trying to outrun the faceless fury that ripped apart their bodies. No matter where they ran they all blundered into more of the same…it was like hitting a wall of rotating knives.

The attacks came from everywhere.

Sounds of screaming, tearing, and growling.

Brenda continued calling for her boyfriend. She never saw him…on the ground only ten feet away…unconscious.

The shrieks from the growing feeding frenzy increased. Other groups further up the campground’s road were going through the same agonies. Brenda saw several of the van group try to rush back into their van. One, a rather large lady, fell hard to the ground. She never got back up, as a closely following beast quickly fell upon her. Another growling shadow continued on to the van. It lunged inside it with the handful of people doing the same.

The van rocked

(don’t come knockin!)

violently.

Brenda’s voice was frozen in her throat.

She watched as silhouettes from the friends she’d just been with were being ripped apart into smaller silhouettes.

Something bump against her foot.

Whatever the thing was, it had hit her foot like a heavy, wet rag doll and she was afraid to look down. Rag dolls usually had more than just hair.

Gradually the sounds of struggle died…and all that remained were the sounds of quiet tearing. Squinting, Brenda saw several silhouettes run off into the night, but still saw no Phil.

The rocking van stopped.

Somehow spared, Brenda slowly backed up to the driver’s side of her boyfriend’s truck, and inched her way into it, ducking low. Silently she cried Phil’s name, tears running down her face. She fumbled several times with her keys before starting the truck. Dirt spat out from the tires and she dug two deep channels on her exit from the massacre. Several spitting stones hit Phil, who remained unconscious behind the van. A hairy head popped up from within the van, then went back to its business. Several of the other werewolves looked up at her as she sped away, one beginning to give chase…when Darrell called her off. She could go…they had enough for tonight. There would be plenty of time for her later.

There was always time.

Phil lay in the dirt. Blood pooled against his back as it sluiced out from the van. All around him lay the spoils of slaughter. The breeze was still warm, but it now carried a sickly sweet aroma with it. Amid the quiet sounds of eating, echoes of screams and agony still hung thickly in the air.

There were no more revelers, stargazers, or lovers.

Only mutilated bodies.

Phil slowly came to…his eyes painfully straining around in their sockets. His face was pressed into the dirt.

He was afraid to move.

But his consciousness was short-lived, and he again fell back into blackness.

A tall, naked, and muscular man emerged from around the van. A man with gray hair, his body covered in blood and gore. He came up to Phil’s position, his watery eyes looking down upon him. With one mighty, still-clawed hand, he lifted Phil’s unconscious form effortlessly into the air; examined it. A diseased grin formed beneath rabid eyes. What formed on its tortured face could have been called a smile.

“Phil,” the creature said, chuckling, “you always doubted me; doubted your girl. You never had the faith…but your girlfriend does…and to get her, I need you.” He chuckled. “Come along, my friend, we have much work to do!”

Dust whisked along the roadside. The blood that had been pooling up against Phil until now broke through the built up meniscus and branched out into chaotic little patterns in the sand.

“Faith, dear people…a little faith can get you through the worst of times!”

Darrell laughed into the morning dusk, returning back into the hills from which he and his kind had come, Phil’s unconscious form draped across his powerful and scarred shoulders. His followers grabbed their spoils, and quickly followed….

Amen.

 

Short Story Links

Links to all my posted short stories are here.

Attention Span

by

I got the idea for this story while attending a multi-level marketing seminar some twenty-five, thirty years ago. I still remember as I sat in the audience (on folding chairs) and looked around, everyone (except me) was focused in what seemed to me enraptured attention at the speaker. The speaker bored me. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I’d had this same feeling when I’d later attended an AMWAY seminar at the urging of a friend. That was the weirdest multi-level marketing program I’d ever attended—and my last, and where I may have actually birthed this story. I’d learned my lesson. At that AMWAY seminar it literally felt like a cult (sorry those of you who participate in AMWAY; you may not feel this way, the culture may have since changed, but that is how I felt all those years ago). All the women had been in conservative “church-goin'” dresses, all the men in dark, conservative suits with power (red) ties. And the smiles—

Oh, God, the sickening, saccharin smiles….

Unnerving posters were up around the auditorium with “positive statements” and other things I no longer remember…except that it was all decidedly creepy.

Disturbing.

The way everyone talked…what they talked about and how they presented themselves…the speakers, the layout. The attire. How they all seemed to have the same “certain point of view” on life, religion, world view. Then there was this line in my story that I remember so well: “Shaking his hand was like holding a sea cucumber.” Yes, the guy described in this story…his handshake…it was real, and that was exactly what I remembered thinking while shaking his sweaty, clammy hand.

And had there really been a gong onstage?!

Anyway, I’d attended these seminars because I was still in the Air Force and had been looking for a way out…something to get into that could support my exit from the military. As I sat there and observed everyone, I thought…what if…what if….

This story originally appeared in Tyro, issue #26,on June 1990.

 

Attention Span

© F. P. Dorchak, 1990

 

Hi, I’m Alex. What I’m about to tell you, you will not believe. Why should you? Nobody else did. I can scarcely begin to believe it myself, even though I’m sporting all the proof I’ll ever need.

It all started, innocently enough, with one of those “Hey Come see Us, We’re Great” cards I got in the mail one rainy afternoon. It came sandwiched between the usual bills for the Visa, furniture and utilities (why do they all come at once?), waiting patiently for my retrieval from the tiny silver box apartment complexes use. That day I remember in particular because I had gone to interview for a certain very desirable management position at McGraw-Hill Books. It was a position, I regret to inform you, that did not come my way. Somebody better than I had secured the reigns. As usual, I would remain in the background.

Had my brush with that form of mail-advertising ended there, there would be nothing to tell and I’d be able to walk out of this room on my own. But it didn’t happen that way. Later that night I also received, free of charge, the complimentary phone call. It, too, was extending the same invitation that the piece of paper had already screamed at me.

I remember I regarded that call—true to form—with much suspicion. I’ve always prided myself on my cynicism: it’s the one thing I can always count on without letting it go to my head! Anyway, as I lay on the floor, as I usually do when I’m on the phone for any length of time, I began listening to the voice on the other end. Not to what was being said, mind you, but how it was being said. There was something in this guy’s voice that bothered me. He sounded slimy.

Maybe out of pure curiosity, maybe out of sales pressure, I decided to show up at the designated place, at the designated time. When he started saying stuff like: “All your co-workers are coming, why not you?”, I felt like a worm. You know how it goes, can’t show your face at work the next day because everyone at work is walking around with shit-eating grins on their faces ’cause they’re privy to the Greatest Deal On Earth and you’re not.

That card has since disappeared. I never was able to relocate it. Presumably it was lost in the myriad piles of paperwork littered about my apartment table. I never did clean it up. And so it goes.

So there I sat, considerably more casual then the other bodies around me and finding the atmosphere of the auditorium rather oppressive. Somewhere I heard the sound of an air-conditioner, but it surely wasn’t in this room. It wasn’t so much that it was hot (though we could’ve done with a few degrees less), as it was stuffy. It reminded me of how dank cellars can smell on a good day. It was indeed an odor that was very much out of place, and why no one else was unnerved by this was, at the moment, beyond me. But that wasn’t the only thing out of place here. I was out of place. This looked more like a business convention what with all the formal evening wear galore and I wasn’t even wearing a jacket.

Up on the front stage, aside from the screen and podium, stood a small brass gong complete with hammer. How cute, I thought. The velvety backdrop was swaying to some movement from behind it, and I noted how there were two guards to either side of the gong. They were smartly dressed in the official uniforms of a bodyguard, their hands folded to front. Watching them for a few minutes, I noticed how they didn’t seem to be looking at any one thing in particular, just staring straight ahead, unblinking. I thought I had seen something peek through the bottom of the curtain, but couldn’t identify what it was.

The speaker, who was to shortly take the stage, was mingling with the crowd and shaking hands, trying to get elected into whatever office he thought he was running for. It was only an investment seminar.

His person bothered me.

Appearing dumpy and pliable, somewhat like the Pillsbury Doughboy, there was something about him that seemed as stolid as granite. Like ones and zeros in a computer, when he was on, he was congenial…and when he was off, he was cold, almost lifeless. He was a contradiction in terms, two people occupying the same space; impossible yet irrefutable.

It didn’t take too long before he made his way to me. I shuddered at the thought of having to meet him, for it meant that now he could associate a name to a face. My name, my face. I wished to remain as anonymous as possible in this crowd. The only fame I had ever collected came from the local gym where I found (much to my surprise) that I could move mass quantities of weight all by myself. My strength quite belied my size, at five foot eleven, a hundred and sixty pounds. Nothing much a girl would look at.

Shaking his hand was like holding a sea cucumber—have you ever held a handful of snot? There was no substance to his sweaty grip, or to his personality for that matter, and I quickly wiped my hand on the seat of my pants. Why were people so taken in by this guy? Conservatively clad in some nondescript men’s wear, there wasn’t a speck of dandruff on his lapels as he emitted an odor of impeccability.

His face was clean-shaven to the point of boredom. He had a nose that was small and unassuming, looking more like an afterthought than an intention—and his lips! His lips were puffy looking—like someone had spent the better part of an afternoon beating on them with a rubber hose! Topping his head, his graying hair was slicked back with some form of hair crème. But his eyes were the screwiest part of him, resembling dark pieces of coal stuck into a pale, chubby face. There was no two ways about it, this man just plain looked weird.

The congregation assembled and niceties completed, the gong was rung. We were ready to begin.

 

“…and so, friends,” ejaculated the speaker, “I believe I can convince each and every one of you to invest in our program. How you ask? Well, allow me just a moment of your time…”

Yes, it was indeed getting very boring. I kept waiting for his tongue to get tangled up in his lips. We’d only been there some, oh—let me see, fifteen minutes? Fifteen minutes, and my butt was already feeling that wet, prickly sensation. There he stood before us, gesticulating with the authoritative air of a southern Baptist evangelist when I finally noticed something, even sitting all the way to the rear where I was. His eyes had taken on a strange, new quality.

By virtue of his taking position at the podium, his eyes transformed from the lifeless pieces of dark coal they had been earlier…to that of a strangely disquieting quality that seemed almost as if they belonged to somebody else. Or that perhaps someone else was looking through them at us. There was a fever being injected into those orbs, an infusion of near-righteous frenzy that seemed to increase with every sentence…forcing you to desire nothing else but the depths of his gaze. It was as though everyone in the room was being converted.

Everyone that is, but me.

So, unaffected and quite bored I decided to take advantage of this time by attempting total character assassination of our speaker. He did seem quite different now, more like another person had suddenly taken over. He still looked the worm, mind you, but I tried to find a description that would now describe the new him. The only thing I could come up with was roadkill.

Aside from his new steely gaze, he was still disgusting to look at. Everyone in the room was absolutely riveted to his gaze, his word, his every movement. The only way I could try to explain this was to look at it from the point of view of roadkill.

Dead animal meat alongside a highway is a disgusting thing to look at, but everybody does it. There are just some things in this world that defy explanation, and craning your neck about a bug-stained windshield to steal a peak at some roadway slaughter was one of them. What is it that attracts those passing stares from motorists? Fascination? Fear? Was that the secret to this whole audience fixation thing? Was it a fear of looking away—a fear of death?—the curiosity of trying to feel what it must be like to die, either among friends or alone on some deserted byway, hot screaming metal suddenly splattering through your brains and sending their remains all over the pavement? Feeling your last breath slowly ebbing away, your lifeblood warming cold, uncaring asphalt and your last view of the world some topsy-turvy angle of dirt, an unknown but active ant scurrying past your clouding vision and knowing—beyond a shadow of a doubt—that you are indeed dying, your life ended. You try to figure out what must’ve gone on within that animal’s mind during its last few moments, vainly attempting self-conciliation in a fleeting nanosecond to console yourself and your frail mortality…that swatting a roadside mammal is no different than swatting a household fly.

Who knows. All I knew was that he reminded me of roadkill, causing me to look out of curiosity, and all philosophy aside, I was dying here! This “free” dinner had better be worth it…

“…yes, our property is like no other! In the heart of the Heartland! Ripe for both the daring and the conservative at heart! All we ask is…ah—but just a minute. I’m not going to tell you that just yet! If it were that easy, I wouldn’t be here. In fact, I’d be out of a job (roar of devised laughter)! Now take a look at these figures for a moment…”

No, nothing’s worth this! How in the hell did I ever let myself get suckered? I guess I had nothing better to do on a Saturday night. But as I sat there in the very last row, watching all those Good Little Citizens hypnotized by this joker at the podium, I knew that I could be doing something better—like beating off in the john with Miss August. What tits.

But hey, no. I’m here. Listening to Mr. Charm and Charisma Himself, Joe Fishlips, or whatever he claimed his name to be (you never quite get their names, you know, and when you do, it seems to keep changing…).

“…now if you’d just be kind enough to bear with me…”

Oh yeah, right, like let’s play to the dain bramaged audience as if there were a choice! Fellow acceptance to a yuppie is everything! Besides, he got his laughter, and now he’s just one o’ the gang: “Hey, how ’bout that ‘ole Fishlips…”

“…you’ll see we offer something that absolutely no one else in the industry can offer…”

Yeah, public dumps offer something no one else can offer.

It was getting pretty deep, so I just tuned out ‘ol Joe and started eyeing the crowd, to see how many of them were actually that brainless as to be totally duped by this patronizing orifice. Scanning, I lost all respect for the Human Race. Was I the only one? It was indeed a dark day for Humanity, let me tell you!

But that wasn’t all. There was something…something else. I didn’t know exactly what it was at the time, but there seemed to be an uneasiness rippling through the crowd—an undercurrent of something indescribable, and though it bothered me greatly, it didn’t seem to bother the lot of them. There seemed to be a sudden abundance of casual shifting among the audience as they sat there in their rickety chairs, cigarette smoke weaving dreamy patterns in our oppressive enclosure. I hate cigarette smoke.

All of them had that same sick grin of blissful ignorance on their faces, that way people get when they think they’ve found the Answer to Everything. Had I been listening to my intuition, I would’ve—should’ve—gotten out of there, then and there. But like the yuppie I so detest, I stayed, picking at the stiff hairs along my arms. Forget the dinner, Arby’s would’ve been a lifesaver!

No, something sinister was underway and I was too entwined in my own cynicism to take heed. For one thing, can you imagine being seen as the only one getting up and leaving from an assemblage like this one? I’d have no one to talk to at work—not that that in itself especially bothered me, but I did have to deal with these people sooner or later.

So I stayed.

Yeah, I sat and I observed—not Motormouth the Charismatic, but the audience and the “bouncers.” They seemed to be eyeing the audience too, and apparently hadn’t yet noticed me noticing them. There was something definitely not right here, a dream-like quality to the whole affair. There were several times in which I had to actually concentrate on what I was doing. All the smoke, the incessant droning of our speaker and the stuffiness tried vainly to win my attention, but I wouldn’t concede.

Then something unfair happened, something so cunning and devious that it capped my stay for sure. Dinner was announced. It totally threw my whole evening.

So we were all herded out, instructed to follow those stupid little cards marking the way to the dining hall, even though everybody already knew how to get there (the paranoia of those guys at losing even one individual!). There seemed to be much conversation going on along the way to the dining hall, but each time I tried to focus in on any one of them, I couldn’t make anything out. It was as though it was all gibberish, meaningless dribble devised to give the impression of conversation. I was beginning to feel very much alone.

The meal wasn’t all that great—pseudo-adult portions of some bastardized version of a Swanson TV dinner. You had a choice, (and what a grand selection it was too!) either the chicken cordon bleu, or Spam.

Scattered randomly throughout the dining room, a few of us relaxed after our allotted 45 minutes of entrée. Just then the bouncers came back to see that there were no stragglers. Shit, after a muddy parfait one hardly had time to enjoy Dom Perignon-Ripple, served chilled. Oh well, the show must go on.

Marching some 20 paces to the rear and right of us, the Guard herded its quarry back into the corral. We “be-sat” ourselves in the Great Chamber. Isn’t it amazing how everyone gets the same chair they had previously?

No sooner had I “be-sat” myself, when that same feeling of uneasiness once more returned. The other, intoxicating quality, however, had not yet overtaken me. I attributed this to being able to leave the microcosm, reorienting my psyche back to its rightful compass setting. I know not why the others were not similarly affected, maybe I have some gene they don’t have. Whatever the case, by this time I was marked—the door-thugs had spotted me. Great, now there was absolutely no chance of sneaking out.

The room seemed darker, the rickety folding chair I sat in, squeakier. Everyone was so hypnotized by our narcissistic speaker except for me, and that, my dear friends, bothered the hell out of me.

Why was it that I, out of all these other people, was immune? Were there that many fools on this planet?

There it was again, that same rippling movement throughout the crowd. That same squirming.

Except for me.

Someone brushed at one of my legs. I shifted my foot.

I looked back at the thugs, who, unfortunately, were still there. Damn it all, if it didn’t seem like the room was getting darker! Was it just me, or were the lights actually growing more dim?

Think I’d get the hint? Hell, no!

I had lost all interest whatsoever in our arrogant speaker a long time ago and just had to find out what it was that was going on here. It wasn’t until some five minutes later that I didn’t give a damn and just wanted to get out as fast as I could—to erase that whole night from both my mind and the consciousness of the Human Race.

Once more I felt my leg brushed, but this time noted that the people around me hadn’t moved, or even affected their heartfelt apologies for breaking the Unwritten Law of—oh, heaven forbid!—touching another body! I looked down at my feet and lost all interest in Miss August.

Entwined around the lower structure of the puke-brown folding chairs were—and I kid you not—tentacles! Sickly-green and vomit-yellow! I looked up and down the rows around me, my mouth agape.

They were everywhere!

But more than that, they were attached to everybody’s legs. Everyone’s

but mine.

Ho-ly fuck.

What in hell was I supposed to do now? Ee-yuck, it still sickens me! No one even knew what was going on. The tentacles sucked and sucked, their huge trunks swelling with bodily fluids, looking like snakes apregnant with swallowing prey. There was a sick, puss-like film over each extremity, but there was not a one on Yours Truly. Some people had several on them, blood oozing from the inflicted wounds. Listening closely, I could hear the sucking sounds beneath the drone from the front. Gag. It made me wanna chunk right there!

Yet I was amazed at how calm and collected I remained. I guess that came from reading Stephen King. All I knew was that I had to get out of there, and now—not in three seconds, but yesterday! I looked back over at the bouncers, still there of course. It was just about then when one of ’em looked over at me again. I was nailed, no two ways about it. The guy stared right into me, he knew I wasn’t in the least bit mesmerized. Terrific. I had to do something. Be calm.

That’s when it all dawned on me why we were here. We were offerings to this—whatever it was—demon-god. Somehow we were all to be hypnotized, then fed upon. But something had gone wrong with me. Too tough for ‘ole Fishlips, I guess. Well let’s see how tough I am against a squid!

I started to get up, metal chair squealing at the release of my weight, tattle-telling to my naughtiness. That was when I felt tentacles sliming after my gams. Fawwwk, it was disgusting! Sliming after my legs—me!

No one in the audience moved. Fishlips stopped momentarily to take note of my singular movement, but masterfully continued, motioning for the Guard to deal with me. No fuckin’ way Hoser, I was roiled. Adrenalin pounding, I grabbing my chair from the clutches of a slime-hand and smashed it into the side of an approaching bouncer’s head, who went crumbling into a heap on the floor, but three others were soon joining in, not to mention those suckers. The audience continued focusing in on Joe’s chanting, several people silently collapsing either to the floor or onto the shoulders of those adjacent to them. The demon was feeding, and feeding well.

I just managed to sidestep a tentacle when one of the guards got up behind me, attempting restraint. Lifting weights gave me an edge the dude didn’t expect, considering my size, or lack of it. As strong as these thugs were—and they were strong—I managed to wiggle free enough to butt my head up into the guy’s jaw. I heard a crunching sound as he reeled back, his grip released, but a tentacle snagged me. Terrific.

It pulled me in. It was pretty tough, and I thought of all those other tentacles already out there and of the hellish damage they could—and were—doing. Quickly I grabbed my bent chair and started wailing away on the slime-fiend. It didn’t have too strong a grip on me yet and I managed to pull free, but I still had two bouncers to contend with, plus the bludgeons they were pulling out. I really didn’t need this.

I worked my way into a corner, preparing for the worst. There was no way this creature was getting me: I’d die first. I’d really rather die first….

The first thug lunged. I side stepped him easily, smashing the other across the face, blinding him and causing him to stumble right into the network of hungry suckers. Before it had even registered on my mind what had happened, the tentacles had whipped themselves around the figure and pulled him to the ground with such violent force that his body ruptured in several places. For the first time, I really looked at the bouncers. They seemed slightly sluggish, as if they too, like pal Fishlips, were not all there.

The other turned around, handling his weapon with both hands, eyes boring in on me. We paced around each other, my clothing ripped in several places, scrapes and cuts beginning to sting. Fishlips started to look real worried. Unfortunately for me, I maneuvered right into the zombie’s trap, two tentacles again grabbing me, but with firmer grips, pulling me to the ground. No way, I kept telling myself, no way! I wasn’t going to give this creature—or Fishlips—any satisfaction! I was going to make it out! Frantically I kicked and fought like a drowning man attempting to keep his head above water, tentacle vomit covering me.

The thug stood over me staring—no expression on its pale face (which I now noticed, was indeed pale). With both hands, it raised the club over its head. The tentacles that had latched onto me bit deep into my flesh, causing me to wince, but I had other things on my mind just then. The mindless guard swung at my head. Twisting, I managed to evade him at the last moment, sending a crack through the weapon as it bounced off the hardwood floor. The suckers weren’t making my life any more pleasant, either, but I got free of most of them.

Chair still in hand, I swept it across the floor and swept the guard off his feet, landing him (it?) on his back with a muffled thud. In a comical kind of way I noticed how his neatly combed hair flew up from his head as he fell, coming to rest about his forehead in a less-than-neat manner as he landed. A tentacle lashed out at one of the guard’s flailing arms, loosening it from its socket. As situation would have it, the bat rolled over to me and I grabbed it. The guard was simultaneously trying to get at me and undo the tentacle that was on him, drawing blood. I swung at him but missed. He got closer and I swung again, missing. Shit, fine time for the getaway car to stall, I thought. The zombie tried to right itself, but fell back down to the floor towards me, its useless arm banging helplessly at its side. I took advantage of this and swung the club with all my might, splattering the guards brains all over myself and the floor, not to mention splintering the bat, which now resembled more of a short spear.

Immediately I started hacking away at the tentacles on my legs. It was tough going, especially since others were still rooting for my corpuscles, but the sentinel’s remains next to me managed to divert the demon’s attention for the moment, and I wasn’t sure how long that moment would last. I lost all feeling in my right leg, my other one fast losing all sensation.

I managed to cut free, crawling as fast as my elbows would carry me. Fishlips was definitely worried now. His sales pitch, if indeed he was pitching anything, was much more hurried and higher in tone. The Watchmen up front with him made a gesture towards me, but he halted them.

He had let me go.

 

Well, to make my long story short, I managed to crawl out (and curiously enough, didn’t see a soul—or shin—the whole time exiting). But by then, I had lost all feeling in both legs, and they were actively bleeding out open gouges. I lost consciousness somewhere near Cascade boulevard….

 

So here I lay now, in a hospital bed, one leg gone, half of the other still in my possession.

No remorse you say?

I once remember reading a story asking the question of how much pain can a person endure? The answer was how much did that person want to live? Well, I want to live. Yeah, it’s my own fault. I guess I deserved what I got for being shallow and spineless—but what a price to pay for so trivial a problem! Of course no one believes me. I tried to tell them, and anyone else who would listen, but they all thought—think—that my story was brought about by my condition.

Fuckin’ A right of course it was, I yelled!

No dice. Of course, when they did check out the hotel, all there was was an empty convention hall reeking of smoke and B.P.O.E. stickers. Terrific.

All I can say is that no way am I ever dealing with an another telemarketing scam again, or “free” seminars. Ever. And I am going to find that Son-of-a-Bitch Fishlips if that’s the last thing I ever do….

Fucker.

 

Short Story Links

Links to all my posted short stories are here.

 

Nightborders

by

There Are No Monsters. (Image by Internet Archive Book Images [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons)
There Are No Monsters. (Image by Internet Archive Book Images [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons)
There is truth to the saying that those who piss off a writer may well end up in said writer’s story…and not in a good way (like, “Ewww, hurt me!”).

I knew a girl once…back in ’89…who said a spiteful thing to me one night. Fine. Be that way, I thought. And that was the end of our on-again-off-again relationship. Then I’d had a story idea…a really nasty horror-story idea…and I put it together with the aforementioned Miss Nasty’s comment in mind. It’s funny how things materialize into stories when you write them. Yeah, this is not my best work (a bit over the top in several ways)…but it is amusing-in-concept. The idea behind the story, the whole “night borders” thing. Ever had the same crazy idea in the middle of the night? No? Nothing you’ll admit to? Well, I bet you can’t say “Candyman” five times while looking at yourself in the mirror, either….

I’m not at all a spiteful, tit-for-tat kinda guy in any way…but the irony in the putting of the two events together was not lost on me and had in itself a certain…well, psychic…poetic justice to it. I didn’t—nor do I to this day—wish her ill. I hope she lived and lives a fine life, wherever she is.

But in this story….

This story has never been published…and probably for good reason. It will probably give you night terrors and insomnia…and that’s good thing, in—

 

Nightborders

© F. P. Dorchak, 1989

 

Quentin Strangefellow was possessed. Not by demons, but by a strange and unreasoning fear. Perhaps consumed was a better word.

This fear had followed him since his childhood, and now as an adult it had grown completely out of proportion. When you’re young it’s easy to take things at face value, but once face value has been passed on, things start taking on different weight.

This fear had no basis—no real basis, anyway—for coming into being, and definitely no basis for any furthered continuation. What’s more, Quentin had no past experience with which to draw upon for this fatuous phobia. It all began (as far as he could remember) one lonely night in a childhood bedroom. No rhyme, no reason. Like so many other childhood afflictions it just came into being on its own. A spontaneous conception.

His fear was of borders.

Nightborders. Borders of the nighttime bed (of course it was at night, things like this didn’t happen during the light of day). That imaginary perimeter between protection and annihilation, physically manned by the edges of the mattress that extended up to the ceiling.

It was an anxiety that no one ever put much stock in…yet some continued to live with in quiet-to-utter terror of their entire lives…quietly and unobtrusively following their hidden and unorthodoxed rules…their wives and girlfriends, husbands and boyfriends never coming into The Knowing.

So Quentin lay there, alone, eyes open and staring.

Once again, he hadn’t been able to get back to sleep and it was now three-twenty in the morning. His body had become rigid—it had never been this bad before—and lately he had found himself dwelling more and more on the borders. It wasn’t so much the borders themselves as it was what lay beyond…

Of what was to happen to those who trespassed.

Still quite awake, Quentin really didn’t feel like getting up and doing anything (like going through the piles of correspondence that kept collecting on the table, or watching TV), but he couldn’t get back to sleep, either. Restless and uneasy, he twisted in his sheets. Even if he had wanted to leave the confines of the bed the sheets would not have allowed it. Sheets were meant to keep you in bed, all of you, safe from the perils of the Nightborders.

Yet the heat was too much and he had thrown off the top blanket. But he was too afraid to turn on the bed-side radio for fear of attracting the attention of whatever there was just beyond the mattress’s edges…any motions he did make outside of these imaginary lines were quick and jerky—as if he were trying to beat the grip of some waiting demon….

Looking down the length of his bed into the darkened interior of his apartment, Quentin half expected to see a shadow rush past. He tried projecting his mind into the other rooms, to see where every piece of his furniture was…every little odd scrap of paper…to feel the familiarity he needed right now.

He saw the dirty dish with the half consumed pizza slice, which was probably quite hard by now…tipped over some dirty silverware and a washcloth covered glass. Saw the bundle of newspapers lying about his floor and couch…his plants quietly sleeping….

Lying there, his arms and legs neatly confined to the interior of his bed, he gave his fear more detailed consideration.

How had all this come about, anyway? And why?

Well the why wasn’t too difficult, he decided, childish imaginations were always quite active, active and somewhat unchecked. Quentin felt—and felt quite strongly—that his imagination was still every bit as active now as it ever had been as a kid. It was just more firmly under control now.

For instance, he no longer believed in monsters under his bed, or in his closet (quickly flashing an embarrassed glance to his closet), or in Tooth Fairies. His closet door was open, and there were clearly no monsters in there. And he wasn’t about to check beneath the bed just now.

He didn’t feel like getting out of bed, that’s all.

In fact all of this morbid indulgence brought back to him a poem he had once read, and for some strange reason remembered. It went something like this:

“It was the Devil’s own pitch

A darkness utterly corrupt and vile.

 

“I couldn’t see a thing, couldn’t hear a thing

The silence absolute—except of that internal ringing sound.

 

“I turned, slowly.

The only way I could know this

Was by the steps my feet made over each other.

 

“That’s when I came face to face with it—

Teeth ripping my face apart…. ”

The poem’s title was “Fear.” He’d always remembered that because it totally described how he felt being in the dark, and it pretty much described how he felt about his damned Nightborders.

Something was going to rip his face off, and his arms, and his legs…

But, he wondered, what would happen should he decide to tempt Fate?

To put to the test his old unreasoning horrors. Looking up to the ceiling, Quentin traced the image of his bed onto its stuccoed facing.

See, nothing there!

Hand reaching for the wall at the head of the bed, he quickly felt that out too.

Nothing. Nothing at all.

But to…to…

No, he still couldn’t quite bring himself to dangle an arm over the side.

What was the cause for all this sudden preoccupation? Shit, what a sissy!

What of reason?

How could dangling your limbs off the side of the bed bring about anything other than sleep? What is there in here that was going to harm you? You’re alone in the room (you checked that before the lights were all turned off), and there’s no such things as monsters.

Quentin had slowly become quietly neurotic.

It had gotten into his head way back that…for some strange reason…if you slept with any of your legs or arms outside the borders of your bed you would wake up more or less dead…

That your limbs would get sliced off by invisible guillotines from hell.

Or that some beast from the netherworld would come and rip them off if the guillotines missed them. It was all childish…totally unreasonable.

It was all just plain stupid and he bloody well knew it.

Now all he had to do was prove it.

Right.

Another night.

The next night was much the same as the previous, insomnia and neurosis reigning as King and Queen…but it was getting worse. And this time he was not alone. He’d met an old girlfriend in the supermarket, and, well, one thing led to another and before he knew it she’d come home with him. Quentin was not too fond of this girl, hence the reason for the “ex” before “girlfriend,” but he had been rather lonely lately and was growing tired of sleeping alone. Besides being rather bitchy most of the time, Tammy was attractive and her good points at night sometimes outranked her bad points.

Today her bad points seemed non-existent.

But he still couldn’t get the satisfying sleep he wanted, even after romping in the sack with Tammy, who was now contently snoring away at his side. He stroked her arm.

“Why do you have to be such a bitch?” he quietly whispered to himself. She just snuggled in closer. She’d gotten what she wanted and so had he.

Quentin lay on his back, feeling her warm body next to him. It had been so long, feeling the warmth of another beside him in bed….

Sleep, goddamn it!

Frustrated and cranky, he flipped on the bed-side radio at low volume, an AM station merrily chattering to itself. Quentin lie there, a leg dangling off the edge of the bed, Tammy’s body still positioned beside him. The queen-sized mattress was perfect for two, heaven for one (more room in which to avoid the borders…).

Unconsciously he drew his leg back in. Recalled how he had told Tammy about his fear of the borders and how she had just laughed at him.

One night he had awoken in the middle of the night to muffled giggling, only to find Tammy crouched beside the bed, holding out one of his legs over the edge of the bed. She’d looked like an evil troll there in the darkness. Lightening wasn’t fast enough to catch his actions as he pushed her off him and snatched his leg back in. That had been the start of their problems. The beginning of the end for their relationship. She continued to nag him (sometimes in public) that he was becoming a whimpering wimp.

Putting his hands behind his head, he brought that same leg that had been out up in a bend, knee pointing ceilingward. Thinking about nothing in particular, he started swaying the knee back and forth to the music. Tammy moved away from him slightly, murmuring something in her sleep, something that involved someone by the name of “Jack.”

“Hope it was good,” he whispered back to her.

Suddenly changing position, she arranged herself nearly diagonal to the bed’s length, feet over one edge, head against his body again. It was a decidedly uncomfortable position, he soon found, so he moved his body to allow her her room.

He finally began to drift off….

Quentin’s dreams were troubled and he tossed and turned, groaning.

Our hero was being chased by monsters and demons…was just able to outrun them….

Sweat poured off him in tidal waves. He’d all but forgotten he was in bed with Tammy, who now had a different leg hanging over the bed-side.

In his dream, he was on his back—when his leg was grabbed.

He looked down to find an iron shackle cinched around an ankle.

Frantically getting up, he tried undoing the binding.

His demons had finally caught up with him!

Time to wake up now…time to wake up—now.

He did.

He felt the bed jerk.

Tammy!

He noticed she too must have been having troubled dreams, her mumblings no longer light and airy, but troubled and near sobbing. There was periodic moaning, which got him excited, but at the same time horrified.

Where was that movement coming from?

He felt around her naked body…the tugging intensified, and to his horror he realized it wasn’t originating from her—

Tammy’s eyes flashed open and a scream came from her mouth.

AM music continued to play from the radio.

Tammy twisted and thrashed about violently in bed, and shot a hand to her ankle. She’d tossed Quentin away from her and slammed his head into the wall at the head of the bed. He saw all manner of stars and white light as he tried to regain mental stability and looked back to Tammy. She was bolt upright, shouting and screaming and there was something about something about her leg….

Quentin squinted, wincing at the pain in his head. Directed his gaze down the length of the beautiful naked from of his ex-girlfriend to…to what?

There was…there was—

A rusty iron shackle was attached to Tammy’s ankle.

Was that right?

Was he still dreaming?

No this was too real…this was no dream.

Tammy had reached down to her ankle and he’d seen something sticky had came off in her hand.

Quentin immediately curled his legs up about him.

His throat had frozen up. Was unable to move.

He watched as Tammy had now reached out for him, her face a grimace of horror. He looked back to the shackle. The shackle held her tight. She grabbed at him.

He lent no help.

“Help me! Goddamn it, Quentin, help me!”

Quentin tried to say something, but nothing came out. He just stared at her…wide eyed and opened-mouthed. He balled himself up into a tighter ball, pushed himself farther away from her and her pleading, from her outstretched hands.

Finally he found his voice.

Found his anger.

“You laughed at me, Tammy…laughed and ridiculed me! I told you about the Nightborders and you laughed! Made fun of me to our friends! You’ve always laughed at me and taken advantage of me! No more! This time you pay!”

“What are you talking about? Goddamn it, Quent, this is real—I’m dying here! Help me—I’ll never laugh at you again! Please!”

“I know you won’t.”

The words came out thick as ice.

Tammy froze in mid-plea.

Quentin watched as she was jerked several times—hard and rough—the fear in her eyes…her mouth an open, silent “O.” He couldn’t see her eyes, but knew how they must look.

He actually felt sorry for her.

Tammy reached back over to the other side of the bed. Quentin heard the sounds of chains and things rattling…saw several things suddenly whipping through the air, but carefully remained within their border…outside the mattress edge.

Tammy was jerked about again, her screams renewed when she saw that her wrists had now been grappled with harsh, rusty shackles like those on her ankles.

“Quentin! Please, please help me!”

Quentin closed his eyes and covered his ears. Shouted back at her.

“I tried to tell you but you wouldn’t listen! I…I can’t help you now! You trespassed! You broke the rules!”

Tammy clawed at the mattress. From her shackles blood flowed out and onto the bed.

Her body was yanked perpendicular to the bed…then yanked and drawn up a foot from the bed…her arms and legs outstretched by the chains that held her. Her painful screams to Quentin were now so mixed with her tears, it brought Quentin to tears as well.

He couldn’t let her die this way.

He broke from his huddle and went to her. Bitch or no bitch, she was still a person…a human…not a piece of raw meat to be so drawn and quartered.

He grabbed her writhing body at the waist, trying to pull her down.

“I’m sorry, Tammy, so sorry, but I tried to warn you! Forgive me!”

She looked to him, her stringy hair swinging in the air as the chains that held her rattled and pulled. Chains that came from above and below.

“Quentin!” The pain in her voice sounded unhuman.

Then a shadow emerged from the floor in front of them.

It followed the contours of the furniture and walls as it rose. It was manlike, arms to its sides.

Straining her head up to see it at its full height of seven or so feet, the shadow stood before them for a second before taking quick powerful strides to the other side of the bed. It checked the shackles. In a flash the figure was back in front of Tammy, who writhed in pain.

The night creature chuckled, filling the room with a contemptuous laughter.

“You shouldn’t have tempted the Fates, Miss Fowler. You should have listened to your boyfriend. Now you have to listen to me and my words are fatal.”

Numbed by her blood loss, Tammy was frozen by the demon’s voice.

It had spoken her name—her name—and that can mean only one thing: there was a spot in hell just for her.

“Let her go!” Quentin shouted, still pulling at her waist.

“I cannot. I am compelled to perform my duty. She has crossed borders that were not meant to be crossed. Illegally trespassed. For that she must pay.

“Good-bye, Tammy.”

In stereo Quentin heard sheathing sounds—just like a guillotine—that came in unison from both ends of the bed. One set had come from the ceiling, down…and the other came from the floor up. It deafened his senses, not from the sounds they made but from the effect he now held within his arms.

Tammy no longer screamed and no longer twisted.

No longer did she call out his name.

No longer would she ever sleep with him…or belittle him.

Quentin sank to his knees.

“Nooo! Why couldn’t you have listened to me—why!” he sobbed. “Damn you, Tammy!”

Quentin sobbed over the draining torso of Tammy Fowler in his arms.

The chains and shackles retreated back to wherever they had come from. Something wet and warm…smelling sickeningly pungent…unloaded onto his bed sheets and pooled about his knees.

The night creature picked up the separated remains of Tammy on the bedroom floor, holding them by their still-attached chains as he went to the quarters of the bed she’d over hung. He collected his due.

It again spoke.

“Obey the rules, my friend, and we can have a long and profitable relationship. But trespass and meet your reaper.”

It held up the limbs and head of Tammy Fowler and chuckled darkly…slowly disappearing the way it had come.

Quentin heaved the body over the borders…and cried….

 

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Where’s Mummy?

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English: A screenshot from The Mummy Italiano:...
Who’s your daddy. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Ok, I’ve been having fun this month with all-things Hallowe’en (man, next month I’m really gonna have to get back to my mss work…), but all this talk about the undead got my juices dessicating! So…I’m going to put myself to a test.

Next week I’m going to post a prose poem about my favorite monster. Now, I’m not saying this is going to be another Ozymandias, or anything, but I’m going to give it my best shot and come up with something I’ve wanted to pen for a little bit. I’ve actually already started it and hope to post soon.

Now, as a kid I had several monster interests. Though I was interested in the Bram Stoker version of Dracula in vampyres, werewolves were a pretty strong interest. One of my favorites stories was The Werewolf of Ponkert, by H. Warner Munn, which was actually two stories. It’s interesting looking at some prices of this book today—geesh!
I also got into some of the Dr. Phibes, work (books and movies: “Love means never having to say you’re ugly”; I know, très unPC, but check out the man’s visage), like Dr. Phibes Rises Again! I was a huge Vincent Price fan. And who could forget “Vulnavia,” played by Virginia North? I mean, whata cool name! The Dr. Anton Phibes movies were so campy, over the top, and full of dark humor, I loved them!

(in case the above doesn’t work, try this link: http://youtu.be/yBo0H3oYSoo)
What’s not to like, right?
Vulnaaaviaaaa….
I was also, as you may have guessed, into your basic “undeads,” rising from the deads, clawing out from grounds, ghosts, that kind of thing. I was, basically, a fan of all kinds of Hammer Films movies about anything supernatural, and it looks like they’re still around, which is interesting, since I haven’t heard anything more out of them, since I left home for adulthood.
But, when it really came down to it, I became quite interested in one monster in particular, and it was my last teenage dress-up for Hallowe’en. Even as a teen, I had an eye for authenticity, and I pulled out the needed sheet and begged and pleaded to my mom to do the unthinkable: rip a perfectly good bedsheet into shreds. Well, to this day, I’m always amazed that she let me do that, but, hey, that’s what mom’s do, right?
So, on my last teenage Hallowe’en, I wrapped up and went out horrorizing the neighborhood, and painted “Denn die Todten reiten schnell”  (“For the dead travel fast,” from Dracula) on rocks all along the railroad tracks from which I lived across (yeah, literally), in green flourescent paint.
Mummy Me, c. late 1970s
Mummy Me, c. late 1970s
So, if you haven’t figured out my favorite monster, stay tuned! I hope to have something. ummm, unwrapped, next week….