F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction (New Weird) Author

Tales From The Darkside

Plaything

by

Things That Go Bump In The Night (Image by By Alec Perkins from Hoboken, USA, 80 SAM_3196 [CC BY 2.0, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)
Things That Go Bump In The Night (Image by By Alec Perkins from Hoboken, USA, 80 SAM_3196 [CC BY 2.0, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)
I actually vaguely remember writing this. And its inspiration is the obvious: things that go bump in the night.

We’ve all heard the unexplained sounds that always assail us in the weird hours of the night. Was it the house settling, a stud contracting from the cold, nighttime air…or something else?

And what really lives in-between the walls of a house or apartment?

Do we really wanna know?

This has never been published.

 

Plaything

© F. P. Dorchak, 1987

 

Mrs. Agnes Helderman lay in her bed, thick comforters her only guard against the night. Alongside her, the Big Ben ticked quietly away into the two-thirty a.m. morning. A waxing moon shone through the blinds, winds tussling branches outside her window.

In her kitchen dishes sat in the sink, bits of oatmeal crusted in a pot, several cups filled with dirty water adjacent to it. A nightlight dully illuminated the hallway leading into the living room.

The furnace suddenly hummed to life, preparing to spew heated air out into Agnes’s cramped living quarters.

Agnes snoozed.

Until the noises again woke her up.

This was the second night in a row. It was quite distressing, especially when she needed her sleep. She wasn’t young anymore, and what with a weak heart to begin with (ever since the death of her husband, Edgar, her health had been rapidly failing), well suffice it to say she didn’t need this.

Her eyes popped open.

The clock tick-tocked.

Clutching her comforter closer, Agnes scanned the bed-room.

Nothing.

Listened…

Nothing.

Klink!

She reached for the lamp at bed-aside, knocking it against the wall, and nearly off the nightstand. Her light now on (all the better to hear with…), she strained her ears—

There…inside a living-room wall…something…thudded!

Rats.

Had to be rats, they do that sort of thing you know, she told herself.

Wide awake, now, she sat up in bed, listening for more noises…but, nothing came.

She didn’t fall back asleep until nearly four in the morning.

Agnes got up about six.

Exterminators, that’s what she needed.

Throwing on her robe, she cautiously entered the living-room, a wooden backscratcher her only defense. She stopped in the entrance-way.

Peered about its walls… nothing.

Fully entering the living room, she began knocking on the paper-thin walls, testing their integrity, though she didn’t know what she’d do if she found something within them anyway…or something knocked back.

She’d probably have a heart attack.

Get to be with Edgar that much sooner.

 

It was about two that afternoon when someone finally arrived. “We kill bugs” was painted on the van’s side, an upturned cockroach with an “x” for each eye, emblazoned at the end of the words.

“Well it’s about time you fella’s got here!” she scolded the two thirty-something’s.

“We’re sorry ma’am, we got here as fast as we could.”

Agnes went back to her television while they worked.

The exterminators attacked every nook and cranny they could get their tools into, spraying all sorts of wonderful poisons into and around her place.

“Fred, I don’t think there’s anything in these goddamn walls,” one exterminator said to his partner.

“I believe you, Lou,” said the partner. “I think she’s just losing it, know what I mean?” he said, making coo-coo motions with his finger beside an ear.

Finished with poisoning the apartment, the men told Agnes to have a nice day and packed up. Agnes, relieved, sat down with a triumphant smile upon her wrinkled face, “Got you, you little bastards,” she said with more than a little relish.

 

After her cup of warm tea, Agnes crawled into bed and pulled the comforters up and over her deteriorating body. She lay there with the light on, not quite wanting to sleep.

What if they hadn’t gotten them all…or whatever they were supposed to have gotten had gone out for the day?

Or was immune to the poisons they used?

Opening her nightstand, she took out a romance novel. It occupied her mind for the next hour or so, however sleep won out in the end, her book falling to the floor.

Tick-tock, tick-tock went the merry, merry little clock….

 

Then from the linen closet it came.

A rustling.

At first she didn’t hear it…dreaming about her wedding night, fifty years ago. But the rustling…again…transmogrified into an all-out THUMP!

Agnes jolted upright.

Her heart raced.

She listened.

THUMP!

…and again…

THUMP!

The noise traveled along the hallway walls…getting closer.

As if something was looking for something…but was coming from the inside of the wall rather than outside….

Agnes had had it.

She’s paid good money (from her fixed income!) for those two bug killers to do their job and do it properly—but, that was the problem with today’s world. No one cared about quality and doing things right the first time. Always in a hurry, even though they’d spent two hours at her place.

Yes, Agnes had had quite enough.

Mustering her resolve, she crawled out from underneath the blankets and went to her bedroom closet. She emerged with an old golf club that belonged to her Edgar. The 1 wood, but she didn’t know this. He’d always been quite handy with “the sticks,” as he’d called them.

Edgar.

Turning on her main bedroom light, she went after the hallway noise, turning lights on as she went. The noise persisted…jumping around from top to bottom, side to side…wall to wall….

But her resolve never wavered. She’d had it. She’d show it what-for.

Finally at the entrance way coat closet, the noise ceased. She flipped on the closet’s light with the end of the driver. Agnes scanned up and down the closet, poked around inside among the coats, but found nothing.

Angered by her fruitless search, she closed the closet door and braced a chair up against it.

Damn this was getting old.

 

The next morning, she called the same exterminators, complaining they didn’t know their job from a

(18-hole...)

in the ground. Threatened to take them to People’s Court. The head bug-killer said he’d be right over to check it out personally. He arrived an hour later.

“Mrs. Helderman? Tim Spanner. May I come in?”

Without saying a word, Agnes hobbled aside to let him in.

“You gonna fix it? Get rid of the whatever it is?” she asked, eying him. She coughed, pulling a tissue from her wrist’s sleeve, using it, then stuffing it back into her wrist’s sleeve. “And I ain’t paying a penny more.”

“Mrs. Helderman—”

“—don’t ‘Mrs. Helderman’ me,” she said, shaking a crooked finger at him, “I don’t need double-talk, I need results. Now are you going to kill this thing or not?”

Exasperated, the exterminator said, “Where were the noises coming from?”

Humphing, Agnes led him to the linen closet in question.

“It started in there,” she said, pointing the golf club she picked up from against the wall, “and ended up at the coat closet up front,” she said pointing to where they’d just come from.

“Thank you, Mrs. Helderman,” Spanner said, stepping past her for the closet. He opened the door and took out a flashlight, poking around inside and in between the folded and ironed linen. It smelled as if none of the linen hadn’t been used in years and looked as if they’d all contained permanent folds. Spanner started to feel sorry for the old lady. Thought about all the life she’d been through and the fact that her husband was dead (she’d mentioned three times over the phone…how if her deceased husband, Edgar, had still been around she wouldn’t have needed their services) leaving her all to herself.

Lonely.

“Find anything?” she asked. She got right up behind him and he could smell a really sour smell coming from her. “Anything?”

“No, Mrs. Helderman, nothing yet.”

He banged about the walls, checked the shelves and anything else that could have the possibility of making a sound…movement…anything. Nothing. For another hour or two, with Agnes in tow, they searched the entire collection of corners and dark places the apartment had to offer.

Not one trace of vermin.

Not one.

They had, however, found an old neckless Agnes had thought forever lost. Why hadn’t the first group found this, she wondered?

Because they hadn’t properly done their job, that’s why.

The bug man left. He was glad to be rid of her. Some people can really get on your nerves, and others can really get inside your skin. Mrs. Helderman was the latter.

And she smelled.

 

Before turning in, Agnes took one more look into the closet before closing it. After her tea, it was beddy-by time. Lights out.

And as usual…2:30 in the morning…the noises again did their thing. This time they were much closer…in the hot-water heater’s closet.

Agnes arose quietly this time…tried to sneak up on it. She got up to the door of the unit, put an ear to it…when the sounds stopped. She stood back up, grasping her club and reaching for her sore back. Mustn’t do that again.

Childlike laughter erupted from the water heater’s compartment!

Kids?

What and how would kids be in there—and at this time of the morning?

“Get out of here, you rascals!” she said, shouting at the hot-water heater’s closet door, “Get out and get back home where you belong!”

But the giggling continued…only to fade out a few minutes later.

Agnes went to a window and looked out into the night-time parking lot.

Had some hooligans actually gotten into her apartment?

And how had they done so?

That must be why no one had been able to find anything—kids…it’d been kids all along! Coming out to harass her!

Well, at least now she knew.

Rats of a different sort.

She’d get them for what they were doing….every last one of them….

 

The next day, Agnes kept a wary eye on every child that looked at her or her apartment…telling them to shoo and be-gone. Some of the much younger ones she’d actually made cry.

Served them all right. All of them!

A rat was a rat.

Agnes hadn’t always been such a bitter person, but ever since the death of Edgar she’d taken a big dislike to youth and life in general. She secretly wished she could join her husband.

Why had he left her?

They’d been married almost fifty wonderful years! How dare he leave her!

Growing old was scary and hard…and doing it alone….

She’d lost sight of the former person she once was. Fun loving, friendly…attractive. She used to catch the eye of many a man in her day….

But not now.

Now she was old, withered, alone…and bitter. Had a bad case of IBS.

Well into the night did Agnes keep her vigilance. Tonight was the night. She was going to catch them come hell or high water.

Well, she was going to…but sleep has this unnerving way of sneaking up on you.

Again her book fell to the floor.

Two-thirty.

And again the noise.

This time, it came from her very own bedroom closet.

Agnes lost no time in getting out of bed (damned back…she tweaked it again). She fumbled for her club, alongside her bed, but in her sleep must have knocked it over, because it wasn’t where it was supposed to be.

She’d moved just a little too fast in getting up and was already out of breath…and she couldn’t seem to get it under control, her heart rate increasing. She pushed away from the headboard and lay back down, comforter yanked back up around her neck, eyes bugging, struggling for a breath.

The panic rose in her chest and she was unable to stop it.

“Go-go away! Go away, I said!” she said, wheezing, “Leave me alone!”

Her heart-felt like a brick in her chest. Felt like she was trying to breathe through a plastic bag.

“What do you want?”

The noise continued, now sounding more like rummaging than anything else. Child-like giggling filled the air, she could hear boxes and things tumbling about—

Golf balls came rolling out of her closet.

Agnes clutched her chest, panting.

Air felt like so much mud in her lungs.

More scrambling and giggling came from the darkness, bits and pieces of her things—her things!—came flying out of her closet.

Agnes bicycled her varicosed legs, trying to get away from whatever it was in there that was trying to get out…and knocked over a nightstand picture of her husband, shattering the glass.

Edgar..!

“G-go awaaay, I say!”

The child-like laughter continued getting closer with each giggle. She swore she saw something move in there—

The shadow now threw entire boxes out into the bedroom, laughing.

“Please, please…leave me alone! I-I c-can’t take this, please—”

From out of the closet bounded a creature the size of a large stuffed animal. I flew high through the air and onto Agnes…landing square on her chest. It stared down at her and looked a cross between a gremlin and a teddy bear, with big brown eyes. It’s head twisted back and forth, then it jumped up and down on her chest.

“Let’s play! Let’s play!” it squealed, “Let’s play! Let’s play!”

Agnes had her heart attack.

“Let’s play!”

 

Short Story Links

Links to all my posted short stories are here.

 

Short Story Listing

by

What Lies Beneath...And Beyond? (Image by Jan C J Jones, Freelancer Ink, © July 1, 2016)
What Lies Beneath…And Beyond? (Image by Jan C J Jones, Freelancer Ink, © July 1, 2016)

Well, here it is, the complete listing of all my short stories and their dates…those already released on this site and those scheduled for release on this site…and their scheduled dates. As they get released I’ll update my Short Stories page, though this page may not be as quickly updated, if at all.

Admittedly, not all of these are short stories…some are poems, and one, “Nightdrive,” is an essay I put out on my Reality Check blog. And these are not every short story I’ve ever written. Just the better of them…and the ones I’ve found. There are many hand-written ones I haven’t gotten to, but those are the ones written during high school and earlier.

When I release my short story collection (scheduled for 2017), I will take only what I consider to be the best of the below-listed stories. My purpose in the free releases on my blog was to show the work in as close to their original form as possible, with only minor editing (though some did required more!), but when I put them into my short story collection I will edit harder…though (as it currently stands) I do not plan on updating them to present-day technology, et cetera. And yes, there are a couple new stories (2016) in this collection as well (“Rewrite” and “Broken Windows”…that latter started in 1997 [four double-spaced pages], but the remaining 19 double-spaced pages were written this year)!

The dates listed below are when they were released on my blog sites and is not their original creation (and copyrighted) dates. For those not-yet-released those are their scheduled release dates…though I may move them around. Short stories should technically be “quoted,” as in “Tail Gunner,” but I’m not gonna do all that; it’ll make it too busy looking, so I left all quotes off.

Feel free to forward or link to or reblog anything of interest, just give proper attribution.

Original copyright creation dates are all listed on the individual story postings.

Thank you for stopping by and taking the time to read and comment! These have all been hidden away for far too long (well, some can’t be hidden away long enough, perhaps…), been toiled over for years, in some cases, and it was so much fun revisiting them and giving the best of them renewed life!

  1. Tail Gunner – 11/27/15
  2. The Death of Me – 12/04/15
  3. The World’s Greatest Writer – 12/11/15
  4. The Coming of Light – 12/18/15
  5. Dark Was The Hour – 12/24/15
  6. Tick, Tick, Tick, Tock – 12/31/15
  7. The Ice Gods – 1/1/16
  8. Rainy Nights and Christmas Lights – 1/08/16
  9. Fear – 1/15/16
  10. Spirit of Hope – 1/22/16
  11. The Ballad of fReD BeAn – 1/29/16
  12. Brains – 2/05/16
  13. Saint Vincent – 2/12/16
  14. Entombed…Resurrection…Unbound…. – 2/19/16
  15. Etched in Stone – 2/26/16
  16. Bone Poem – 3/04/16
  17. Clowns – 3/10/16
  18. Garden of the Gods – 3/18/16
  19. The Girl Who Chased Gargoyles – 3/25/16
  20. Snow Paper – 4/01/16
  21. Crypt of Vampyres – 4/06/16
  22. Nightborders – 4/15/16
  23. Red Hands – 4/22/16
  24. The Chain Letter – 4/29/16
  25. Contamination – 5/06/16
  26. A Conversation With Hell – 5/13/16
  27. Nightdrive – 5/18/16
  28. Walkers – 5/20/16
  29. Rewrite – 5/27/16
  30. Blondie’s – 6/03/16
  31. Allergies – 6/10/16
  32. For Whom the God <burp> – 6/17/16
  33. Bloodtales and Flies – 6/24/16
  34. What Dreams Are Made Of – 7/01/16
  35. Drive-Ins – 7/08/16
  36. The Running – 7/15/16
  37. Casa – 7/22/16
  38. Spiders – 7/29/16
  39. Plaything – 8/05/16
  40. Freefallin’ – 8/12/16
  41. The Way We Were – 8/19/16
  42. Jumper – 8/26/16
  43. The Lifter – 9/02/16
  44. Attention Span – 9/09/16
  45. Werewolf – 9/16/16
  46. Seeing Things – 9/23/16
  47. The Interview – 9/30/16
  48. Shelf Life – 10/07/16
  49. Blue Diamond Exit, Mile Marker 15 – 10/14/16
  50. Red Envelope – 10/21/16
  51. Love, What a Way To Go – 10/28/16
  52. The Hallowe’en Tree – 10/31/16
  53. A Sermon Unleashed – 11/04/16
  54. Please Have A Seat, Mr. Jordan – 11/11/16
  55. The Wreck – 11/18/16

Short Story Links

Links to all my posted short stories are here.

What Dreams Are Made Of

by

Everyone Needs A Vacation Now And Then. (Image by By Deepshikha Sansanwal [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)
Everyone Needs A Vacation Now And Then. (Image by By Deepshikha Sansanwal [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)
Wow, when I first reread this at the end of June, it just blew me away! I’d forgotten about this story, but once I began reading it—not unlike the character in the story—I began remembering things… creepy, unsettling things. Well, about the story. But not all of it! I was thinking about placing this in November… then, when I finished reading it, I just had to place it sooner.

I love these kinds of stories!

I think you’ll see what I mean once you get into it—and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do! There are several instances in this story that are taken from real life: the scene where the character remembers a childhood moment about getting out in the rain to use a restroom and that talk about lights on the pavement—I still remember that moment as a kid as I was the one doing it…remember the lights sparkling on the late-night/early morning pavement; the talk about Dr Pepper…yup remember that day; the time my dad and us went camping on a small island—also true. I also remember at least one—maybe two?—times we went to a KOA.

And the van. Well, that’s taken from a time when I was a kid returning from swimming at the lake across from our house and a van pulled up before me…”asking for directions.” A guy opened the rear sliding door and leaned out to me in a really creepy mode and I suddenly felt quite uncomfortable. You have to understand that where we lived we got stopped many times during the summer and were asked for directions, mainly from Canadians, but never had I ever felt uncomfortable. This time I did. And there were three guys in the van. Right about then, my dad comes purposefully striding down our crushed-stone driveway with a mattock in one hand. “Can I help you boys with something?” my dad calls out from across the road.

They suddenly forgot their question. Sped off.

Years later I asked my dad about that situation and he said he’d asked his State Trooper buddies and they told him they’d found that van down the road a way, abandoned. That it had been stolen.

This story has never been published.

 

What Dreams Are Made Of

© F. P. Dorchak, 1994

 

Wake up, Harry, time to go!

Words that were more than a distant echo, they were pain. I tossed about, caught in blankets that refused release. It seemed an eternity before I finally broke free. It was so comfortable, the warmth of my bed. So unyielding.

Let’s go, Harry—

The words again. Do I know the speaker? I feel I should. Where am I? What time is it?

Summer. That’s right—summer. The first day of summer vacation. I’m home from my first year at Syracuse. Damn, but how those finals twisted your thinking around, getting you to believe there’s nothing outside of school. Nichts. Professors’d have you believe there’s only English Lit, Physics I (and lab), German for Beginners, and any of a number of other courses you’d rather forget. I’ve got big plans, so I bulked up this year. Twenty-one credits. It nearly killed me.

Where am I?

I open my eyes to find it dark, and feel movement. We’re in a car…but I just thought I was at home—the bed, the blankets—

It’s raining outside, a constant, soaking rain. A comforting sound if you’ve ever just listened to it.

I’m so tired!

The voice stops calling me, but reminds me of a time when I was a kid, about thirteen, I think. My dad and us would all pile into that red station wagon of ours at one in the morning. Our big vacation down into Pennsylvania. Amish country. We’d drive straight through, stopping only for potty breaks. Once we stopped at a gas station early one morning. It was also dark and raining. Dad had stopped and Mom had asked us (there were four of us) if we’d needed to use the rest rooms. My sister and I had, and we’d sprinted through the rain until we made shelter, did our business, then sprinted back. I thought how neat it had looked, lights sprinkled across the damp, rain-pockmarked pavement. The fact that it was maybe three in the morning, and the rest of the world was still snuggled away in bed. It was so peaceful, so mystical.

But now I’m traveling down an unknown road with my dad behind the wheel, and Mom, no doubt (because I haven’t actually gotten around to poking up my head yet), sitting against him, eyes closed; drinking in the steady hum and rock of the station wagon, as was I.

But I need to get my act together.

When did I get here? I remember how we’d talked about taking a trip when I got back from college, all of us, but I also remember something else, just outside the memories. I wasn’t coming straight back after school. I was going somewhere else first…a party. Yes, that’s what it was. There had been this party someone I knew was throwing, or maybe not someone I knew…but there was this party I was to go to. Only then was I going to begin my trip north…hitchhiking…to my home at Dead Bog Lake. Despite its name, a beautiful, deep lake that we lived directly across from, complete with boathouse and lakefront property. Dark waters. My dad’s a Forest Ranger. Mom works as an Administrative Assistant down at Land’s End, a rich folk’s estate. But something doesn’t feel right…isn’t complete…like I’m missing a crucial part to some puzzle.

Have I remembered something wrong?

The car’s slowing. We’re coming to a stop. Potty break. Not for me; I don’t have to go this time.

It’s still raining.

 

We’ve been going for several hours now, and I lift my head. Dad’s driving, his right arm around Mom, who’s fast asleep. He and Mom are all wet, as I notice, I am too. The car pleasantly smells of Borkum Riff pipe tobacco, the only brand my dad used. Smoking’s supposed to be bad for you, but I love that smell, especially that brand. Besides, he’s my dad; he’ll live forever.

“Almost there, Son,” my dad calls back. His voice brings out such deep emotional tones from me. I wonder where the rest of us are: Stephen, John—Lindsey. Is it just me on this trip? I guess they all had other commitments. It’s been a while since I’ve seen my folks—about a year. Christmas vacation I had to spend at an apprenticeship downstate. I didn’t mind—I knew I’d see everybody soon enough, and this was school—my first year, as I’ve already said. My first year as—

(how could I have forgotten?)

The car again slows. Mom’s up. She turns around to look at me, strands of hair matted against her face. She looks as if she’s been crying, but her voice betrays no such emotion. “Hello, dear,” she says, “did you have a good nap?”

“Sure did, Ma,” I say, pleasantly. Her voice also makes me feel warm. I’m happy to be home again. Feels like I haven’t been this warm in a while. After all, don’t know the next time we’ll be together. Like I’ve said before, I’ve got big plans for yours truly….

“Well,” continues Mom, turning back to the front, “we’re here.”

“That’s right,” Dad agrees.

God, I love that tobacco. Cancer or no cancer, it’s a comfortable smell. Brings back warm, cathartic memories: fireplaces, Dad-talks and walks. Fishing. Lord, how it’s so easy to get wrapped up in

(blankets)

studies. School. Fucking finals just throw your life all to hell. But that’s past. We’re on vacation now. Just the three

(where are the others?)

of us.

 

We unload the wagon. Still, it’s raining. Heavily clouded—like we’re going to get squashed between heaven and earth—

It’s a beautiful day.

There’s no one else around. That’s fine, we’re not here to see others. It’s funny that there was only this one old man at the KOA entrance. No one anywhere else. The man had no teeth, it looked like, but a big fat grin. Pulpy face. “Thirty bucks,” he’d grunted. Dad gave him the cash and we found a spot.

“Hey, young man,” my dad shouts out over the top of the car as I reach over to unload, “you sit your butt down. This is your vacation. Let your mother and I do the work. You’ve done quite enough already!”

For some unnerving reason, I don’t quite know how to take that, but okay, I say, and pick out a stump. I almost fall down. My feet are tangled in that damned blanket again. Christ. But the blanket reminds me of the time we went down to Gettysburg, Pee-Aee. We’d stopped along the road one sunny day at a rather large rest area. Mom had pulled out a blanket—probably this very same one—and spread it out over the grass. We sat under a large shade tree. Dad had gone to the soda machine and spent his change getting all six of us sodas.

Dr Pepper. I love Dr Pepper.

Ah, vacations. I wonder how many more I’ll get to go on before I’ve become part of The Working Class. Before—if and when—I ever have a family of my own.

Now there’s a thought.

 

The tent’s all set up and the rain pummels us harder. Dad started a fire that managed to keep itself going despite the downpour, and Mom was busy cooking fish we’d caught after making camp. I love the smell of roasting trout.

“You couldn’t have picked a nicer day, dear,” Mom said, beaming to Dad. Thunder rumbled its throaty growl across a fractured, purple sky.

“Yep, well, I try to get God to bend an ear every now and then.”

They laugh, and Mom curiously eyes Dad. I didn’t for some reason; something still nags at me. It had to do with that party, I think. I’m not really sure, and that bugs me. What went on there? Where was it? Did I even make it? Why is everything so damned hazy? I need to sort things out.

“Mom; Dad; I need to take a walk.”

They both look at me like I’d slashed my wrists or something.

“Honey,” Mom suggests, her voice quivering, “how about we go with you? I mean…how often do we get to see you? You know? You’re away in college; probably take another apprenticeship—who knows?”

I reconsider. She has a point. Anyway, I guess I really wouldn’t mind the company, but I shiver. “Okay.”

Mom and Dad are back to smiles.

“It’s a beautiful evening for a stroll, anyway!” my dad boasts, large drops of water still raging down from an angry sky.

 

We walk. Mom and Dad are in front of me some. I hold back. They’re like lovers rediscovering romance. That’s cool. I don’t have a girlfriend. A couple girls I boinked back in school, but that’s about it. Lookers, too. Well, one was more homely-looking than the others, but, boy, the largest set of knockers. She had this red hair and cute freckles. I met her while working the information booth at the student union. Her name was Anna, and she was also new, looking for some information about movies and stuff. One thing led to another, and we ended up doing the nasty. She had the largest, deepest brown eyes. So understanding and open. God, how I suddenly miss them. I couldn’t loved her. I can’t wait to get back to her. But summer came, and she went to her home in the Catskills and I headed north to the Adirondacks.

North.

To that party.

I’d hitchhiked. Didn’t tell my folks, they wouldn’t have approved. Shit, my dad’s a Forest Ranger, next best thing to a cop up there; a gun, cuffs, and everything. Ranger of the woods. They didn’t always carry ’em, the guns and handcuffs. I can remember when he told me how scary—my word, not his; I don’t remember what he used—it was to him that they were told they had to. Was a big change for The Department. That and all those Coll-edge boys. They’re taking over the place, he complained. Don’t know a damned thing about the woods, but sure are makin policy.

So I get this ride north. Actually more than one, it’s a bit of a ride by the speed limit—which is about all you can do with all those damned troopers out there. They just keep spilling out of the State Police Academy. Thicker’n gnats on a hot summer’s evening, Dad says. Uckers—

That’s when I fall. Now, I mean, following my folks. I tripped over a log I wasn’t paying attention to.

(what’s so important about the log?)

Mom and Dad hear me tumble and turn to me in wide-eyed horror. Rush to my side.

“You okay, Son?” Dad asks, hastily checking me over. Mom’s examining my face, wrists, and ankles. She used to be a nurse.

“You look okay. How do you feel?” she asks.

I start laughing. “I’m fine, Mom! I just wasn’t watching where I was going, that’s all.”

“Well you should know better than that, young man, or there won’t be a next time,” Dad spit. His face was set. Puffed and angered.

“Now, Lloyd, there’s no need to get all out of sorts. It was a simple mistake. You can’t fault him for lack of judgment. He’s young—still learning.”

“Just think what could’ve happened!” he insists.

“But nothing did…here,” Mom said. She brought a hand to his face, trying to calm him down.

“Dad—I’m all right, really. Remember that time I put my hand through that door window—the facial cuts looked worse than they w—”

“These ain’t no facial cuts, dammit.”

“Okay, okay,” I say, “I’ll be more careful next time, all right?” I pick myself up and brush off the mud. After all, it’s still raining, though more of a drizzle now. Mom pulls Dad away. I see the fire in his eyes. Why all the fuss? All I did was trip. Over a

(familiar)

log

Sheesh.

 

We complete our walk and return to our camp. Water has already started to build up around it. It’s late now, so we hit the sack, but I don’t sleep well. I feel this constriction around my neck, but each time I reach to loosen it, there’s nothing there. I lay on my stomach to look out our tent, into the night, and wonder what’s out there. I listen to that pleasant pitter-patter of rain and watch the drops splash in the water about the tent. Don’t touch the sides of the tent, my Dad used to say, it’ll kill the waterproof. I don’t. It’s so quiet. So peaceful. The smell of wet things and rain. I feel at home. How strange, I’ve never been here before—or have I? Doesn’t really matter does it? I mean, vacation is vacation, whether or not you’ve been there before. I like it here. We’re by ourselves.

What more could you ask for?

 

I must have finally dozed off last night, because I’m the last to get up. The rain has let up some, and is now only a misty drizzle, but water is everywhere…like an enormous wading pool. I pushed myself up out of it and exit the tent.

“Good morning, hon!” Mom greets. She’s already getting a start on the day, clad in a swim suit on a reclining lawn chair. She’s holding a sun reflector under her chin. I notice how the water mists on the reflector under her neck and get that eerie feeling again.

“Good morning, Son,” Dad says. He’s cooking up fish and bacon, but it smells funny. The day feels thick and I feel sluggish. Just a little weak. I look down to my feet before I walk any farther and see that damned blanket again wrapped around my ankles. I caught it this time so I don’t fall. Dad ought to like that.

“What would you like to do today, honey?” Mom asks.

“Gee, I really haven’t given it much thought, Mom.”

“Well, you better start giving it some thought, mister, or your vacation’ll be over before you know it. Do you want that?” Dad asks.

Do you really want that?

Suddenly I’m no longer hungry. All I want is a Dr Pepper.

“There’s one in the cooler, dear,” Mom says. I get it. It’s in a bottle. An old, crusty one with dirt encrusted under the cap’s lip.

“I didn’t know they made these in bottles anymore,” I say.

Mom looks up at me, kind of queerly, and says, “oh, they don’t.” She says it just like I should have known better. Sitting down on a large log by the campfire, I

(logs)

watch Dad.

“Be careful not to fall over that thing,” he says severely, looking over a shoulder and shuttling the fire.

“Oh, Lloyd, take it easy on the boy,” Mom counters, and he mumbles something under his breath. Dad’s only toying with the fish now.

“Dad, uh, are you going to eat that?” I ask.

“No, at least I hadn’t planned on it.”

“What’s that with it? Bacon?”

“No.”

“What is it?”

“It’s…it’s seaweed, okay? Kelp.”

(seaweed)

“It adds…flavor…to the fish. It’s something I learned in the Navy.”

Oh, I nod. Some things are better left unasked.

 

After not eating breakfast, we go off for our hike into the rain-soaked woods. Mom and Dad, instead of being close to each other, this time are very much apart. Carrying on a discussion that they tried not to let me in on, but I still catch in pieces.

“…but it’s a vacation, dear,” she whisper’s. “Who cares?” Dad says, “it’s only going to end—then we’ll all have to go back home. Go back to the way things are.” “So?” Mom says, “what’s the difference? What’s done is done. We’ll have next year.” “Sure,” Dad says, but then I lose track of what they’re saying and remember another trip we’d taken. A canoe trip. Just Dad and us kids. Fish Creek I think? We’d canoed out to a small island and set up camp. All the essentials taken care of, we set out swimming around the island. Well, more like snorkeling. Dad was right there in the water with us. It was a dark, sandy shore. Smooth, silky, water.

(feels so familiar)

It felt great. We just drifted. Became one with the water.

(why do I feel so uncomfortable?)

Later in the day we hung out in the tent, and the sky began to howl rain down upon us in sheets. We were situated under trees, but the force of the rain was incredible. It shook our tent, sent little tributaries of water inside the fabric along the seams. Water rushed down on all sides of our little shelter and we got scared. Dad asked us if we wanted to stay. We chickened out. The rain let up and we broke camp and hightailed it back to the truck across rough open water before it again opened up on us.

Rain.

(rain rain go away come again another)

Party.

Water.

I shake with a sudden, tremendous awareness.

I remember my hitchhike now.

I remember two men—and a woman. A van. A ragged, rusty-looking thing that seemed to have weeds or

(kelp)

hanging from it. Had I known it was so ragged looking I wouldn’t have stuck out my thumb, but it was getting dark that day and I was almost home. Hell, I thought, one more try. They’d stopped, and the guy in the back slid open the side door. There was a strange look to his eyes. I felt

(like I do now)

uncomfortable. But I was already there, know what I mean? No turning back. Tough guy…can handle myself. That’s when I hear this female behind him telling him to either let me in or to close the fucking door. I get in. Mistake number one. I smell incense. I’ve always hated the smell of the stuff. She’s in the back, in a dark corner, and when she sees me, comes out. She liked me. Thought I was cute. As we drive, I tell them about this party I’d gone to. They tell me about another.

Where? I ask.

Dead Bog, they tell me.

Really? You from there?

From around there, they say. Wanna come?

I-I don’t know, I stammer. I really should just get home.

You nervous? the girl asks. She’s pretty fine looking under those haggard eyes and ratty hair and clothes. I notice what looks like an old, deteriorated cameo choker of some kind around her throat. Her breasts float out from under her blouse as she leans over to me. I swallow hard. I mean hard. No, I reply.

Well, good, we wouldn’t want that, now, would we? she says.

Just then the guy in the back with us whispers into her ear. She smiles, one of her hands caressing a nipple. I look away. I definitely feel like I got myself into something I shouldn’t have. Hey, I say, you can let me off anywhere you want, you know. I wouldn’t want to be a bother. It’s not much farther, and—

The girl comes over and puts an arm around me. Her body brushes up against mine. We have something we’d really like to show you, she says. At first I swear she’s cold, a friggin damp cold, but that quickly passed as I saw more dark nipple. Her breath smelled of something I couldn’t quite put a finger on, but was, it turned out, alarmingly arousing. Her eyes were dark slits of seduction.

No bother, Harry, they say, we’re your friends. Don’t you like us?

Ah, sure, I say. Sure.

We can be pretty friendly, she says.

Sure.

I want her. There’s something incredibly erotic about the way she moves. Breathes.

Now just relax, and we’ll all have a good time at this party of ours. I’m just going to change, she says. No prob’lem, I say, but before I realize it, she’s stripping down before me, keeping her eyes on me. She lifts a finger to her lips, lips I suddenly feel very much like eating…biting right out of her mouth. I watch as her lips part and she places the finger between them, hooking her lower teeth. I become her finger and feel her lips wrap around me. Watch and feel their moisture as she sucks, closes her eyes. I want her so much it hurts, but remember the guy who’s in back with us. I think back to my family and wonder how I got into this mess. I feel hopelessly distanced from my life. My mom and dad, brothers and sister. None of this feels right. None of it. But I’m aroused, painfully aroused, and need more. She’s naked, now, openly flirting with me. I know the guy’s watching, but I can’t help myself. Her body is smooth and available and I want her in the most evil of ways and I no longer care if he’s there. I need those lips. For real. Those breasts. I want whatever it is she has, and I’ll pay whatever price she demands.

She leans back, knees teasing back and forth, breasts falling comfortably to their places. She stares at me. Begins to run her finger about her body. Inside and outside of places. Her scent is heady. I think of Mom. Would she approve of what I’m about to do? Would Dad take me outside and slap me on the back and say, “Hey, way to go, stud!“?

You sure you don’t want some? the girl teases. She doesn’t have to read my mind. I no longer mind the incense. Before I know it, she’s brushing her finger under my lips. Around them. I shut my eyes, drugged by her touch.

Fuck, I’d kill for her.

Gently she presses her finger between my lips and wedges it in…again forming that hook. I’m so drunk with her I can’t see straight. I grab hold of her and try to force myself upon her, but she holds me back. Slowly, she says, but I don’t want slowly.

I seem to have lost consciousness as my heart pounds up into my throat. I feel like I’m suffocating and suddenly find the girl atop me, her hair flying wildly about her, almost floating. She moans; gyrates. Claws at me. Then she explodes…and I explode with her….

 

I am jolted back to my walk. Dad and Mom are sitting on a stump holding hands and looking at me. Really looking at me. I feel guilty, like they know my thoughts. Had I really done that? Had I really—and do they know?

They get up and walk away. I feel like shit.

God, it’s all coming back to me. Those people. That van. That party; a party I should never have gone to. I stand up shakily. I don’t feel right. I raise a hand to my face and wipe away the water that runs down it. I trace my face and neck and flinch. There’s a painful, ringed area around my throat. I can’t see it, of course, but I do feel it. That girl…raped me. Those people…I was seduced. They—

Aren’t human. Something about them was…is…will always be…wrong.

I looked around for my parents, but they already head back for camp; Dad with his head down, Mom casting me a backward glance. She pulls Dad into her and cradles his head against her.

What’s wrong? I wonder. What did I do?

I sit there for some time before heading back. The rain’s stronger and colder. Like little knives raining down from the sky. The water’s up to my knees now and I schlosh through it. My sneakers are swollen and heavy. Water is everywhere, rising higher. It’s like a shallow lake with bushes and trees sticking out from it. Me. But I need to remember more. That girl…whatever she was…is…continued to attack me—

Or had I attacked her?

Oh, how I was intoxicated with her! Her scent! I could smell her passion like a beast in heat. Even now, when I remember how her body moved, I feel an instant need to have her. Seek her out and take her as no man has ever taken anyone before. I want her—and the pain.

She taunts.

 

Finally we had gotten to Dead Bog Lake, and their party; down through a windy, shaded road. I felt strangely nostalgic as we passed my house, lights on in the kitchen. I saw a shadow at one of the windows and felt sad, like I’d never see them again…yet I had her.

That’s all I really needed.

We drove to the outskirts of town, well, actually a township—a hamlet—until just before the outlet. There’s a strong, fishy smell to the air. We pull into a driveway and there’s all sorts of vehicles, all kinds of people. And all the vehicles look as did the one I came in. Decayed and rusted. Covered in vegetation. As we stop, the others, The Three, as I came to call them, pile out of the van, and I’m left sitting in it alone, staring out into the mass of people, bonfire, and booze. The party feels odd. Smells corrupt. I try to get a good look at some of the people, but it’s difficult. It’s dark now, and the voices seem a jumble. Where is that girl—I don’t even know her name.

How had things gotten so out of control?

I stumble out of the van and lean against it for a moment. I could just keep walking…right on up that road…to home…with the golden kitchen lights and my parents waiting up for me. They think I’m still on the road.

Again the guilt.

Home was so close, yet this woman and her seduction much closer. I hear my name and spot her. She’s waving for me. This isn’t right, isn’t right at all. Things are feeling more and more absurd, more remote as moments pass. I feel a sudden urgency to run—to just get the hell out of there and as quickly as fucking possible. I feel a dark shape stalking me from the shadows. Huge, looming, and thirsty. Burrowing into my deepest, most recessed and cobwebbed of places, and find it difficult to breathe. Thunder cracks out along the darkened sky. Deep, drawn-out rumblings that seem to go on forever.

Mistake number two, I follow after this girl.

She is just as naked as when I last saw her. She moves her hips in wicked, sinful ways further igniting my lust. A man grabs her and they disappear from view. I rage! I must have her, my body screams, and I lunge after her. I will kill that man. I will rip apart his body!

But I’d lost them. My head spins.

I need her. I MUST HAVE HER!

I stumble about. Cannot see clearly. A red haze blinds me and grips my senses. All I can picture is her body, wrapped around that man.

Hear.

Her crazed desire.

I lash out, wanting to give her nothing but pure pain.

Little deaths, I laugh, I’ll give her many.

I push through the crowd, bellowing my passion and anger. I hit shapes that were supposed to be people, but feel funny and soft. Bloated. I didn’t care. I’m insane for her. My name is sung above the rising storm, above the din and clatter of the party, and I follow it down to the lake shore. To where I spot her, indeed wrapped around that man, their bodies rocking in the sand. Her screams are the only sounds I hear. My head splits with jealous furor! I shake with anticipation of tasting blood. His blood. I will slowly rend that man’s flesh from his bones.

When a sudden thought strikes me cold: what would my parents think?

God—what do I care?

But as I continue forward, I begin to slow. My head hangs heavy for my conscience is strong.

What have I become? What in God’s name have I become?

I look up and find her alone. Gyrating like Mata Hari. Teasing. Again. I try to look away, but cannot. I try to walk back to the road, the one behind me and a million miles away. But I…can’t….

Sorry, Mom.

Dad.

 

I shake the memory from my mind. I’m back at camp with my mother and father, aghast of my recollections. I can barely believe them. The water is chest level, now, and Mom and Dad are sitting by the station wagon staring at me. I go to them. Maybe I don’t need to know everything. Maybe I can still enjoy what’s left of our vacation. I mean, how often do we get together? What’s done is done, right?

“Mom; Dad,” I begin, but they just stare at me. I don’t finish what’s on my mind. Something is lost between us. They look worn out and wasted. The water continues to rise; the downpour steady and forceful.

“It’s a good day, isn’t it?” Mom finally says to Dad. Her words are flat. Two-dimensional. Dad merely nods. “Remember more,” he says to me. “Go on.” Then he hands me a plate of whole, raw fish on a bed of kelp.

I scrunch my brow together. “Why?”

“Because you’re going to anyway.”

“What’s happening?”

“Everything. Let’s go inside, dear,” Dad says to Mom, and they disappear beneath the water and enter the tent. I’m left alone.

I remember it all, all right, and I’m angry. They tricked me, just like everyone else at that party. Like they tricked—

 

I want to go home, I tell that devil-woman back at the party.

You’re not going anywhere, she hisses back.

You can’t keep me here, I say, and begin to leave—but she grabs me. I’m spun around, and no longer is she the seductress I knew, but a bloated, distended horror. I can’t even tell if it was a male or female corpse I stared into the empty eye sockets of.

We’re not done with you yet, he/she/it seethes.

I see things crawl beneath her skin. I scream. The others are upon me. I reach up to push them off, but my hands sink into bloated and stinking flesh. I am forced to the wet, muddy ground. Hands are all over me, tearing off my clothes…she—it—straddles atop me. I want to die. Please, God, just die.

What’s the matter, she gurgles, you no longer want to kill for me?

I freeze. She brings her lips down to mine—I cannot take this! Kill me! KILL me! What are you?

They laugh. We cannot tell you, they say, laughing, but we’d really like to show you—

Out from behind my vision, a large water-soaked log is dragged. A noose is fastened around my neck and attached to the log.

We can’t wait to have you in our little family—

 

I no longer want to think. I sit at the camp, the water now over my head. I’m still holding the plate of fish Dad gave me. I no longer fear the water, for now I know it’s coming back to claim me. Mom and Dad are out of the tent, plowing through the water like nothing’s going on.

“Hello, dear,” Mom says. “Would you like some dessert? Fish?”

I jump to my feet and toss away the plate in anger. My mother looks to me, saddened.

“Well, I guess that’s it, then,” she says, and she sighs and goes back to my father, who seems to be crying, but I can’t tell because of all the water. We’re a part of it now.

I feel heavy.

I try to go after my parents as they return to the van, but find I can’t. There’s a log tied to my neck. It’s heavy and I have many rope burns. I try to loosen it, but it’s impossible. All I can do is watch as my parents pack up and leave.

Didn’t we arrive in a station wagon?

I sit back down, log lashed to my throat, and watch them disappear into the murky, underwater distance. Then I see others. Three others. I grow cold. Shiver. I know them. As they get closer, they beckon. They are The Three. Reclaiming me. I get up to follow them and find I am not at the campground, but Dead Bog Lake. To where I’ve always been. It was a dream. All of it. A vacation from the bottom of its dark and cursed waters. I awaken to my place among the fish and the seaweed. Where my feet are eternally tangled.

(no blanket)

Where the log keeps me.

(no more tripping and falling)

Where my old, dirt-filled Dr Pepper bottle lies directly before my own dead and glassy eyes.

(no more coolers)

And now I know things. About this lake. About my new family and my new life. The girl and the guy in the back of the van drowned in 1807. A canoeing accident. The driver of the van drowned in 1973. Drunk, he’d driven off an embankment into the lake. And the old man at the KOA? He’d killed someone back in ’51. Robbed a man for thirty bucks, only to be tracked down and killed by the kin, then thrown into the dark, slippery waters. The party was bait, as were The Three. As I will be so used. Bait for the lake to reel in more. Set its hooks. A lake with a dark, unspeakable hunger.

And once the taste of meat is acquired, it’s a hard thing to shake.

 

Short Story Links

Links to all my posted short stories are here.

 

Allergies

by

Gesundheit. (Image by James Gathany, CDC Public Health Image library ID 11162 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons).
Gesundheit. (Image by James Gathany, CDC Public Health Image library ID 11162 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons).

This is a dark little ditty inspired by my sudden discovery one day that I’d apparently developed an allergy. I’d never had any allergies before.

In the mid-to-late 80s and the early 90s, while living in Colorado Springs, I’d driven up to Denver on a weekly basis to attend a writer’s critique group. I no longer attend the critique group, but am still part of the writer’s organization, Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. At one member’s home, where we met, was a cat. It was literally something like 20 years old. That’s another story. Anyway, I used to  let it sit on my lap while there, with nary “a problem.”

Then—like a light switch—one day I noticed all this sniffling and watery eyes.  I’d thought I was coming down with a cold, but as I drove home…the farther and farther I got away from the house…all symptoms disappeared.

Long story short, I realized that the cat was doing it to me…or more to the point…I’d developed a fricking feline allergy, where before there had been none! Just like that.

How do these things happen?!

You might well ask that of this story. It ain’t pretty…though it has…well, “heart” (again—not in the way you’re expecting)….

This story had been returned by Thin Ice, because it was too much like a previous story they’d published. It’s not that they didn’t like it…they’d just already published something similar.

So…this story has never seen the light of day—or a handkerchief.

Allergies

© F. P. Dorchak, 1993

            “Gesundheit.”

“Thank you.”

“So how long have you had this…allergy?” Dana asked, bound to a chair by thick cords of rope that angrily bit into his skin. It was a dark, dank enclosure, and there was an oil lamp on the table in front of him as the only source of illumination. The crypt stank of expected graveyard mustiness and its darkness bore down about his shoulders like several tons of dead weight. Dripping echoed everywhere.

Dana knew there had to be bodies hidden behind those shadows. Lots of dead bodies.

Knew it.

“Since, well, since I was a kid, really,” his captor replied.

“And how do you know it’s not all just in your mind, you know, like psychosomatic or something—”

“Because. Just because.”

The shadowy figure again sneezed.

From their earlier introductions Dana had found his captor’s name to be Reed. Nothing else, just Reed. He’d been polite enough when they had first met, just inside the mausoleum’s heavy, wooden door…and just before Reed had whipped out that club and politely cranked him over the head with it.

“Oh, come on, that’s no answer! You mean you’re going to kill me—just because?”

Reed looked away before answering.

“No. Because I’ve done…things…you know?”

Exasperated, Dana tried to twist away.

And all this because of some stupid-ass frat prank.

It was just supposed to have been a gag. A harmless prank. He was supposed to go into this “haunted” graveyard (of which the haunter now stood across from him), knock over a few gravestones, then paint his name and date on the inside wall of the entrance-way to this crypt.

Curiously he recalled how he had not seen any other names (or dates) on those walls…

And that’s where his troubles had only begun.

Reed.

A psychotic of some sort who thought he had the ultimate allergy….

“Okay, okay, so you have this fucking allergy—”

“—I don’t know when it all began, really,” Reed said, oblivious to Dana. “It was almost like it happened overnight. Just like that. At one moment I didn’t have it, then the next, boom, it was there. The allergy. I had become allergic to everyone. People. Life. Animals. Anything that lived, breathed, or grew.”

Dana rolled his eyes. Continued with his struggle to free himself. This guy was definitely out there, all right, and this clearly wasn’t his first kidnapping. He was too calm, almost rehearsed, and he had him tied tight. Good and tight.

“Then…I don’t know…I began doing things—”

“What things, already!”

Reed shot a quick look over to Dana, then got up. Lost in thought, he wandered over to one of the darkened recesses and remained there in silence.

Dana heard him inhale. He must have been here a long time, he thought.

Sure, there’d been stories of folks disappearing around this cemetery over the years, but he’d never quite believed them.

Until now, that is.

Maybe there was more to this guy than he’d really cared to believe.

Reed sneezed.

“I began killing…cats…mostly. Some dogs, too, though only the smaller ones at first. The larger dogs scared me—then—but no longer. Nothing scares me anymore.”

Reed turned to face Dana, but Dana couldn’t see his features. He had the curious feeling that he was smiling back at him.

Then Reed suddenly shot out of the darkness and flew across the room directly into Dana’s face.

Dana tensed, and for the first time since his abduction actually became scared. Up to now he thought this might still have all been part of his initiation…more of that frat-joke-thing…but not now, as he looked back into Reed’s crazed eyes and realized that this guy just might be the stuff of those stories—and more. What he saw, was no fear. No joke. What he saw

Was death.

“C’mon, man, let me go, enough’s enough. Look, I got inside, okay? Can’t we just settle it at that?”

Reed whipped about dizzyingly fast and gripped Dana’s face in one of his bony, but incredibly strong, hands. Dana felt the grit that came with that hand and embedded itself into his face.

He was certain that grit didn’t come from topside.

And Reed’s breath smelled most foul as their faces came nose to nose. Words hit Dana like a sucker punch.

“Look, here—you don’t know just how fucked you really are. Because you came here, I have to kill you. Have to! I have no other choice!”

Reed relaxed his grip and dropped his hand. Continued pacing the room.

“I have no anger towards you,” Reed said, “I have no emotion one way or the other, really. Hell,” Reed said, sneezing and wiping away trails of snot from his face, “I don’t feel a damned thing for or against any one person that walks across the face of this earth! Nothing.”

Coming to a halt, Reed composed himself and retreated back into the darkened confines just outside the oil lamp’s boundaries.

Dana heard the squeak of a chair as he visualized Reed sitting down in it and tried to spit out the grit that had gotten caught in the corners of his mouth. He tried to take his mind off of wherever that dirt might have come from, but found it hard to do so. He already felt like he was in his own grave and that didn’t sit well with him at all.

“Yeah, back then I had fear all right, all sorts of fear,” came the disembodied voice from the darkness. “So I used to grab the little dogs, the little cats. I used to grab ’em—” Reed’s hands projected out from the darkness and Dana could see how knotted up they were…fists clenched so tight they shook violently with tension.

“Grabbed ’em. Use to grab ’em I did. That annoying little bitch of a dog from next door was the first to go. A fucking Chihuahua. Yap-yap-yap all day long…all night long. Yap-yap-fucking-yap.

“So I took care of the little fucker. Took care of my mother’s cat. Those damned little noisy birdies, too. I took care of them all, I did, and I found out I liked it. Oh, it wasn’t that I hated all I killed—except for that little Chihuahua bitch—no, just that I liked what it was I was doing.

“Robbing each thing of its life.

“The feeling of undeniable power involved. My undeniable power.

“But you have to understand me…it wasn’t me, not really. It wasn’t until later that I realized something was different about me when I killed. Within me. It was like it wasn’t really me doing all this stuff, this killing, you know. Not the me-me, the right-here-and-now me that you see—no, it was like there was another aspect of me that was doing it. A ghost-me from some other dimension that took over. Like the I-me I knew was just sitting there, along for the ride, so to speak. Helpless. A captive passenger, if you will.

“Shit, sure, you say, everybody kills cats. Bugs. But I was different, I tell you.”

Reed again came forward from the darkness and was ready to say something, when he unexpectedly broke out into a severe bout of sneezing and wheezing.

Dana again took some of it in the face, but Reed kept his distance and sneezed violently several times more, his entire body shaking and convulsing.

Reed retreated back into the shadows. As Dana looked at the stuff that clung to his clothes, he noticed how it seemed to have a peculiar iridescence to it.

“Damn. Excuse me. Sometimes this stuff hits me really hard. Let me get some of that off you.” Reed rushed over, and rather hurriedly, swiped away most of the phlegm that had covered Dana.

Dana stared back, speechless.

For all the sneezing and wheezing that had been going on, Dana could tell that there actually was something different about him. He could feel it now. It was like there was a cold, dead pocket of air surrounding him. A stillness that reached out and numbed. Horse latitudes, he remembered, curiously. Utter lifelessness. But it was even more than that. It was almost as if he had actually seen another ghost-self of Reed shift aside from his body during the sneezing bout. Like there had been a vague outline that shadowed his every movement that was more than Reed—

Death.

Dana listened, his heart pounding incessantly above the hollow and steady drip-drip of the cavernous reaches of the mausoleum. When Reed next spoke, he could feel the waver of his voice…his entire body…and it unnerved him.

Something about himself was different…definitely not entirely right. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he felt it went beyond fear.

“S-so…what are you going to do with me?”

Reed shook his head. “I told you, already. I think I’ve made myself quite clear on the matter. To you all this is a joke. Fun. A gag, you called it. Well look around you, Dana-boy, I am not joking. Look.”

Reed shot out of the darkness and snatched up the oil lamp before Dana could register what was happening. He held it out high above him and shone it around into the darkness, almost maniacally. Exposing all the dark corners and crevasses Dana had not been able to see into.

Dana gasped.

What was once intangible was now the tangible and stared back at him. He now saw what else he was sharing the room with.

Corpses. Bones. Bodies. Body parts. Man and animal.

He was everywhere surrounded by the unearthed and the decayed…and all of them were tossed about in crazy, contorted positions. They all looked as if they’d been toyed with.

Used.

“Come ooon, man, y-you can’t be serious. You gotta let me go—I won’t tell anyone! Just untie me—I-I-I’ll walk right out of here! P-please, guy, you gotta let me go!”

Reed replaced the lantern on the table and wheezed again as he pulled out the piece of cloth from his pockets. Lowering himself to Dana’s ears, he whispered, “I don’t have to do nothin’.”

Reed backed away and spoke in a more regular tone.

“You forget. I feel nothing toward you, remember? But…I can’t let you go, either. I can feel this other me…he’s around…somewhere…probably already taken over. You’re an allergy to us. Something we don’t need. Something that could bring back other allergens, and we can’t have that.

“You see, when I kill, I don’t need to use weapons. I just hold them. Be near them. You don’t even realize it, but you’ve been dying since I brought you in here. There’s no turning back now. Were you to leave this very minute, you’d still die. It’s…irreversible.”

“W-what?”

“There’s no way I know to reverse it. It’s like a plague. Look at your body. Feel it. You know what I’m saying to be true, even if not now. But very soon. You see, I have no choice. I let you go, you go to others, they try to find out what’s happening to you. If I keep you here, you die anyway. Either way, it’s not pretty. The only thing I can do is kill you. It’s not a sweet death, my curse, but my murder is. It’s the only thing I can do to keep you out of both our miseries.”

“You’re crazy! Let me outta here! Fuckin’ asshole, you’re a crazy-fuckin’-son-of-a-bitch-lunatic-crazy man! There’s no such thing! No such thing!”

Reed turned away. Pulled his chair out into the light, and sat in it. He watched Dana.

Sat and did nothing.

But sneeze.

Do you believe me now? asked the darkness.

I don’t know what to believe. I feel…different.

Of course you do.

How do you know this?

I know.

The darkness surrounded Dana like a suffocating kiss. He didn’t really want to leave it. It felt right to remain where he was. To yield. To give in. To—

The darkness changed. Grew tighter; more oppressive. Then Dana saw it. An even darker spot within the darkness that came toward him. It split open. Dana knew what it was.

A mouth.

Jaws, to be precise.

The mouth had now opened far too wide for him to see the edges any longer, and it quickly came down upon him.

Dana screamed.

Screamed voiceless into the pitch and realized a part of him was already gone.

He didn’t know which part, only that a very real section of what he was, was now gone.

And the pain was incredible.

Unfathomable…like every nerve fiber within him was on fire—lit up. And it didn’t go away with the demise of the nerve endings, but started over.

Regenerated.

Redistributed.

And the jaws came down again. And again…and with each new time brought yet another searing bolt of agony that fired through him, as still yet another part of him was ripped away.

Chunks were torn from him.

Not just flesh.

Jagged, diseased jaws scooped out his insides and took out the essentials of what it was he was.

Ate his identity.

His life’s core.

Do you believe me now?

Dana stirred.

Lifted his head.

Dizzy…he was disoriented. Felt desiccated…nothing but a husk of his former self.

And his body responded differently….

“W-what?”

“I asked you if you believed me now. That you’re dying.”

Dana twisted his head up towards the voice. Felt extremely stiff, unable to control his limbs. He didn’t know how long he had been out, just that he had been trying to do something really, really weird…like feel his skin…get inside his nerves. He was indeed weaker…felt it…there was no longer any doubt about that.

He was a wilting flower hidden away in a dank cave miles below the earth’s surface.

Reed got up and brought something over to him.

A mirror.

Even in the dim illumination, Dana could quite clearly see that the wrinkled and withered face that stared back at him was his own.

“I-I refuse…”

“It’s okay. It’s okay to refuse. Everyone does. That’s why I have to kill. Put them out of their misery. Mine. Rid myself of their allergens. I guess it’s the last human decency about me, even though I try not to care too much about it. It’s just like another thing I have to do. I don’t pretend to understand it, I just do it. Like watching the deaths as the other-me does them. And some of the dead I keep, just for a little while, you know, and some—well…some…they come back to me.”

Dana looked up. “Come…come back?”

“I really am sorry. Really. You’re not a bad sort. Just in the wrong place at, well, well we all have to go sometime. ‘Cept me. I’m the exception to the rule, I think. I don’t know how it’ll happen to me, if it ever does. But it’s your time.”

“No—no, please, I beg of you, let me go—I’ll do anything!”

Reed shook his head, opened his arms in a gesture of mercy and understanding, and came in to him.

“There’s nothing I can do, friend, really. Nothing…I can do—except this.”

Reed sneezed twice, again splattering Dana’s face and upper chest…then he put his arms around him—

And hugged him fiercely.

“Good bye,” Reed whispered quietly, seductively.

Dana wept into Reed’s shoulders.

Reed withdrew the knife, a long-bladed object, from one of the folds of his garment, and plunged it unhesitatingly through Dana’s back and into his heart.

Dana jerked once, his mouth a perfect “O,” eyes huge as silver dollars.

Reed forced it in deeper and felt the blood spurt out and curl around his hand. It burned his skin.

Dana jerked again. Coughed.

Reed heard the strained and surprised wheeze of air that now whistled through a section of Dana’s punctured lung.

Felt the blood that erupted from Dana’s mouth and soaked through to his own shoulder.

When Reed withdrew the blade he heard Dana sputter several times more as his head cradled up against his ear. Then he got up and backed away from him, placing the knife down carefully on the table. He retrieved his shadowy chair and sat patiently opposite the quickly expiring Dana.

Felt the allergy as it began to drain away like an unclogged drain pipe.

When he was sure that the last of his allergy was finally gone, he got up and left Dana’s body. Left for an adjacent chamber. It would be light soon, and he needed rest. Besides, he didn’t like light.

Had an allergy to it.

Short Story Links

Links to all my posted short stories are here.

 

Rewrite

by

Profound Love. Profound Angst. (Image by Leonid Pasternak [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)
Profound Love. Profound Angst. (Image by Leonid Pasternak [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)
This is my newest effort! A brand new short story I was inspired to write April 8th, and wrote April 9th. I’ve since been polishing it (including having Mandy Pratt, my tireless, proofreader/editor, go over it). It’s a dark, troubling tale about what not to do in a relationship.

I was mentally pummeled with the idea while working out at the gym that previous Friday afternoon. This is perhaps the worst time (in my mind) to get inspired to write anything, because, well, I’m working out. I don’t have time to just stop what I’m doing and start scribbling notes for 10 or 15 minutes. It screws up the workout’s momentum, kills the cardio, and puts me in a different frame of mind (I’m in AGF mode at the gym, not Writer Guy mode). But, in this case, I was done with the iron and transitioning into cardio, so I grabbed a pen and paper and scribbled the steady stream of ideas as I used the Elliptical trainer….

This is a story of questionable redemption. This is…#WeirdFiction.

Thanks also go out to Marc Schuster for some literary fiction “technical support,” and to Karen Lin for some “grammatical consultation” on a particularly vexing phrase that I ended up using.

I feel I must also mention Stephen King’s short story “Nona.” This story used to be one of my favorite King short stories. I was not thinking of it when I wrote “Rewrite,” but afterwards the tone of “Rewrite” certainly reminded me of

Do you love?

“Nona.” I have not read “Nona” in something like 15 or 20 years.

So, this is “Rewrite’s” debut! My newest effort! It will be in my short story collection I am planning for release by early 2017.

 

Rewrite

© F. P. Dorchak, 2016

 

Do you love me?

Yes, there were the affairs.

Do you?

The shame.

I can’t live without you.

The disintegration.

How could something that had been so right…so beautiful…turn so hideous, so…obscene?

Whose fault was it?

Does it matter?

 

I was a writer. A literary author, if you must know the truth. Authors are published. Writers aren’t necessarily. I wrote and got paid for it. Rather well, for one in my capacity. But I didn’t want to be like most of my peers, writing about affairs and incest and abuses of substances or the body. I wanted to write about the metaphysics of life. Its philosophy. Things Humanity overwhelmingly thirsted for. Things we could get some use out of…provide application to our daily lives to make them better on a far more expansive scale, thereby improving Humanity’s Collective. Writing about one’s body ink (“tattoo” was far too vulgar a term for my employment) or the evil that men and woman do does not advance the race one bit. Sure, it might be cathartic to the author, stir emotions in the reader, and make both rail against the injustices in the world…but how did it fix anything?

Yes. I wanted to fix Humanity.

So I wrote about hard questions and troubled people. Those looking for something more. Asking and finding answers greater than themselves that transcended societal constraints. Wrote of examinations of the soul and how we can all apply our newfound epiphanies. As a public figure I also attended conferences, spoke at luncheons and banquets. University graduations. Received thunderous applause. Bookers, Faulkners, a Pulitzer. That kind of thing. I say this with no measure of pride. It just was. It was my life.

I’d grown up in a well-to-do family, both parents well-regarded Princeton professors. I attended Princeton and did not disappoint. It seemed writing was what I was born to do. I was born to arrange words and profoundly manipulate their order…able to peer into the hearts and souls of Humanity. Mainly, it seems, those of the long locks and graceful curves (and I did have quite the thing for the ladies)…men, it appeared, were not interested in my words. At least, not straight men. And those were the ones who most sorely needed my words.

I received my doctorate in English, Literary Theory. Conducted writing retreats that quickly became boring. Won many awards that really meant nothing, when you got right down to the writing. The writing stands on its own. It must. To write with honors in mind is to wax mendacious. I cared not for awards. I cared for words. I cared for people.

Like most of the women I met, I met my wife, Emelia, at a literary conference. She was of the aforementioned long locks and graceful curves. Long, dark hair and eyes…eyes that questioned God. She, I’d noticed, had always hung back from the crowds that had gathered around me asking about my sources of inspiration…my deepest, darkest secrets…and whether or not what I’d written had actually happened to me. Many would reach out and touch me, “casually” brush past, while making intended contact. I’m sure they also tried to inhale my scent. But she…this Emelia…would always hang back behind the others who kept trying to get closer and closer…she…kept her distance.

Observed.

I should have paid this greater regard.

We finally met at the conference’s banquet, and my “thing” for other women evaporated. She’d lingered around the table where I sat, one with my name embarrassingly emblazoned upon a tall placard. I invited her to sit in a chair I had secretly “saved” just for her—tipping the chair forward into the table—hoping to again see her. I was incredibly taken by her. Mysteriously so. With some hesitation, she took my offer. We were in bed that night.

We

Do you love me?

married a year later.

I loved her…loved her pain. She was a struggling artist who worked at an art gallery and had read all my work. My work was similar to what she was trying to do with her oils and acrylics. She had a sullen, brooding way about her that belied her desired optimism in Humanity.

Desired.

I deeply loved her.

As our lives progressed, I got more successful, while her artwork languished. But she was good at managing other people’s work…running an art gallery…and perhaps out of some measure of self-pity took the promotions until she was running the gallery when the owner unexpectedly passed.

We talked about it…how it would affect her work…but she’d already taken it. The position. She wanted more and was tired of being left behind. Tired of being…

In my shadow.

Her new position had taken up more and more of her time to the point where she no longer painted. This seemed a more distressing time for me than her. She seemed to fill her days with meetings and luncheons and showings. She’d finally “made it.” On her own.

I couldn’t tell if she was happy…or just occupied.

My schedule grew even busier, and I traveled even more. More speaking engagements, more book tours, and now, film deals—which I fought, though my agent said it was just another way to get my words out there. She said couples go to these films. Couples. That means guys. Straight guys…those who would otherwise never have been exposed to my work. Here was a way to get my message out to an entirely unexplored audience, whether or not they mentally rolled their eyes…consciously or subconsciously they would be receiving my profoundly manipulated words.

So I did them. The film deals.

As I grew busier, my wife also grew busier…and that’s when we began to

Do you love me?

grow apart. Even when we were together, we weren’t…she on her tablet or cell and I on mine. We were both providing our attention to others, not to those with whom we were with. The irony of it all was that we’d both given into these contraptions to get us out from behind our respective businesses

Do you…

to spend more time with each other. I remember one day in particular. I was in contact with my agent, awaiting a response to my next book deal. It was to be my most principal arrangement to date…Emelia and I were sitting in the living room…a fire burning softly…the lights low. She was uncharacteristically not on her tablet. Just staring into the fire, arms comfortably crossed. Quiet. As I attended to another, I heard

“Do you love me?”

I chuckled. “Of course I do!” I said, looking up and casting her an immense, tender smile.

I returned to my agent.

“You’re not growing bored with us? Me?”

I again chuckled as my tablet dinged with the e-mail I had been waiting for and the request for yet more attention.

“Of course not!” I said, amused, as I got to my feet. “I have to take this!” I said to my wife, as I left her sitting alone in our low-lit living room…a romantic fire crackling and sending my shadow across her seated form….

From that point on we rarely seemed to see each other. We’d become more like roommates. We were polite enough, superficially cheerful, even. But, one or the other of us would be too tired for intimacy…or the other had something more pressing to do that would inexplicably materialize and need to be done just then. Someone else needed something. There was always…something…else….

Like energy attracts like energy.

I had my ever-growing conference circuit to attend to. Banquets and book tours. Speaking engagements. Emelia had her gallery showings, her wining and dining of artists and “their people.”

Then, one day, while at another writers conference, I’d received an e-mail from an unknown admirer to my business number. Attached were photos of my wife. Her mouth and hands attached to another.

I excused myself from my table and went outside.

Somehow…somehow…

Do you love me?

Are you bored with me?

…I found myself in my hotel room’s shower with a statuesque woman whose name was “Juliette” or something similarly tragic.

There are no coincidences.

I allowed Juliette her exit…and spent the entirety of the evening sobbing.

I spiraled down from there. Sometimes it’s so much easier to take the wrong path. To feel sorry for oneself. I’d become everything I’d loathed in others…in other’s books. I’d become that novel’s story that everyone loved to read. Loved to hate. That story that fixed nothing.

And I couldn’t stop myself.

I found there were no shortage of women who wanted to “listen”…to…“ease my pain.”

How could I fix Humanity…if I couldn’t fix myself?

And my wife said nothing. Became more withdrawn. We rarely spoke. Our lives had become clinical. Separate. There were times I’d be awoken in the middle of the night by moaning…groaning…in one of our bathrooms…followed by sobbing. And it was during one of those nights that I’d had enough. I had decided to change the course of my story-that-fixed-nothing…to change the course of our lives.

I went to my wife. Found her upon the floor, cradling the toilet and puking up her soul. It seems she was more expressive of her love for me in private.

I begged forgiveness.

Begged to confess all of my sins…to come clean—but she would have nothing of it. She, in turn, begged for mine…just wanted us to start over. To be like we were. How things had been. When we’d been in love.

Once.

Could we—

Do you…

love each other again?

I told her I’d never stopped loving her. I had just become…absent.

We both had.

We spent the rest of the night in each other’s arms.

 

Not long afterward, I was at another engagement, the Keynote Speaker, in fact, when I got the call.

I had just begun my address when I’d suddenly clenched up inside…all my words had seized in my throat, as if a part of my soul had been ripped away.

I couldn’t breathe.

Holding a hand up before myself and my audience, I uncomfortably laughed it off…paused…took a sip of water…found a way to

Do you love me?

continue.

There’s been an accident

Do you…

the voice had said. I collapsed.

It seems my wife…the woman I loved…the love of my life with whom I’d reconnected…had been at a restaurant. They’d all been outside. A car had veered out of the way to avoid hitting another that had run a red light…and

The rest was lost on me.

 

Emelia had come to me that first night.

She’d stood before my bed. Looked at me. Just stared at me as she always did. I looked back to her. I cried. Reached out.

I love you, but the dead can’t return, she said.

I miss you! I cried. I can’t live without you!

I love you, but the dead can’t return, she again said. We can dream…but we cannot return….

And she was gone.

I’d cut off all contact with everyone—my agent, publisher. Family and friends. Women called…came to my door…to comfort me. I sent them all away.

I’d once written a story about a woman who’d died in a car crash. The crash was from a car that had veered out of the way from another…and struck this woman, this fictional character I had created.

For inspiration I’d written it from the point of view as if I’d lost my love. I’d poured all that I thought (at the time) was my heart and soul into what it would have been like….

I…knew…nothing.

I reread it. Cried. Reread it again. I went to my living-room fireplace and started a fire.

Stared into the fire.

Had I killed her?

Had my words? My metaphysics? Had they wielded that much power?

It was but one short story of many.

Coincidence.

But my entire life’s work was about the lack of coincidence in life. How all of life had meaning. Nothing was to be so inconsequentially branded and dismissed as “mere coincidence.” I’d written about lives like these. How my characters had gone on to recreate new lives in the various faces-of-loss….

But my wife was gone.

Forever.

The love of my life.

The woman with whom I’d sinned against…but who had taken me back.

The only hand I’d forever hoped to hold as we grew old together.

She was not some fictional character in a novel.

 

“Do you love me?”

“Of course I do!”

“You’re not growing bored with us? Me?”

“Of course not!”

 

My books…my words…meant nothing.

Only Emelia had meant anything. Everything.

And she was gone.

I brought out the story.

Crumpled it.

Uncrumpled it.

Began to tear it into pieces…when I stopped.

No. There are no coincidences.

I believe this.

 

I rewrote the story.

I rewrote our lives.

Top to bottom. Beginning to end. With what I now know. I slept and relived all that our lives had been…and what it’d meant to me.

Was supposed to have meant to us.

I created a new beginning. A new end. A chance to start over.

As I slept, I again dreamt of Emelia. Of those pictures sent to me of her and that man. Only in the dream, the pictures had come to life. Emelia and the man were sitting there…in the restaurant. Casual. Peers in the art community having a few drinks. A few laughs. Joking around with others in their party. Until they kissed. Long. Lingering. Hands everywhere. The rest of their coalition departed.

When they were done, she’d come to her feet and the man left. Simply left.

She turned to me.

But…I brought us back together. Why are you showing me this? I asked.

I’m not showing you anything. This is what you imagined. It’d never happened that way, but it’s what you imagined had.

I love you. I need us to be together again!

We cannot.

Come back to me!

I love you…but the dead cannot return.

 

I awoke and went back to my story. I rewrote it again over the course of several days. Willed it into existence. When I slept…I dreamt about it. About her. She always appeared.

You know what she said.

 

So I rewrote it one more time…then ventured out into the world I had forsaken. I would make my story work. I would compel it into existence. Live my own words and their new, most profound order. I obtained what I needed. I needed something that left no room for error. Something that would perform even if I couldn’t. Wasn’t totally up to the task. On the mark.

I wanted results.

 

I lay in our bed, in the dark. Crying. I’d lost her. Forever. Lost myself. There was nothing left. Nothing more to do. I couldn’t live without her. I grasped the weapon…regripping it several times as if I knew what I was doing…and brought it out from under the blankets and comforter.

Comforter.

I smoothed out the bedding with my hands…remembering all the warmth and comfort it had afforded us over our brief history together. I looked over to her side of the bed and remembered the feel of her nakedness beneath the bedding as she’d snuggled up beside me. How we’d held each other.

Once.

How she used to be there.

Choking sobs erupted from me! Uncontrollable torrents of rain and pain!

Oh, how I heaved!

I wiped away the tears with the back of the hand holding the .45. I closed my eyes and rammed the muzzle firmly up and under my chin, ever-so-slightly angled. The metal felt wrong, but in its wrongness felt…

Acceptable.

I undid the safety. Cocked the hammer.

Could I really do this? What would it feel like to instantly conclude a life? Would there be pain—or would it happen so fast as to feel like falling off to sleep? What was the other side really like? Was my life’s work on the mark…or was I to be damned like all the traditionalists ranted?

I would soon know.

I placed my index finger around the trigger…when I heard…

In the hallway.

Someone was out there.

I opened my eyes.

Footsteps.

I heard them. Soft. Considerate. Mindful.

Hers.

In those slipper-socks she always wore.

Is that something I would really hear?

Do you love me?

I love you…but the dead cannot return.

She came closer. Entered the room. I could feel her…feel her presence!

Her!

She got into bed with me…the bedding lifted, the bed shifted…her body slipped in beneath the sheets. Snuggled up against me.

I was again moved to tears! I couldn’t stop crying! I wailed!

Then her hand…oh, dear God, her soft, warm

(it was not warm)

loving hand touched mine! Wrapped itself around mine…

And together we pulled the trigger.

 

Short Story Links

Links to all my posted short stories are here.

Walkers

by

Keep Moving, People. (Image by By Jaurès_-_Histoire_socialiste,_I.djvu: Jean Jaurès, sous la direction de derivative work: YSpirine [Jaurès_-_Histoire_socialiste,_I.djvu] [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)
Keep Moving, People. (Image by By Jaurès_-_Histoire_socialiste,_I.djvu: Jean Jaurès, sous la direction de derivative work: YSpirine [Jaurès_-_Histoire_socialiste,_I.djvu] [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)
I remember writing this short story quite well!

What I remember (I checked my writing records) most was that it was accepted for publication in a letter to me, March 13, 1992 (Friday the 13th), by Thin Ice…but Thin Ice went under before it could be published! I was even told that it would be the lead story in that issue of the magazine…but it wouldn’t be published until Summer 1994 (two years later!). But then it was delayed yet another year.  Yeah—so, I waited three years for publication, only to have the rug pulled out from under me in 1995. The editor (whose name I realized I’ve since forgotten—I’d remembered her name for years and years…) even said I could submit elsewhere if I wanted to have it published earlier….

So, now…24 years later…I am finally giving it that life!

I am and have always been fascinated by walking…that by walking you can literally get anywhere on this planet. Okay, you might have to take a plane or a ship or two, but still…it’s by walking that would get you there to take that plane or ship. Or that swim. And I love walking…the physical (and metaphysical) locomotion through time and space. Yes, you probably never gave the “time and space” part much though, did you? One is moving through both TIME and SPACE when one locomotes. And if you let your mind wander…run free…you’re also wandering the universe when you walk. So, there’s really a whole lot more going on when you take those physical steps than perhaps is initially imagined….

And what if there existed a race that that did everything while in constant motion?

That was my inspiration all those years ago, and I just love this story! It has intrigue and sex (well, okay, an “honorable mention,” since sex is mentioned…) and mystery! Horror! Metaphysics! It’s a quest—and so much more I can’t get into without giving away the twists and turns that this 6,000-word story takes! It’s one of my favorites. I wasn’t sure if I would post it here, because of its length…I think it might be the longest on this blog. I have a couple longer short stories I’ve been holding off posting because of their length…but decided to go with “Walkers.” I might include one or two of the others, as well, later….

So, yes, “Walkers” is also unpublished…returned to me by Thin Ice, on May 11, 1995 (delayed a year from its original publication), because the magazine had gone under, but it was intended for publication (as the lead story!) in that Summer 1994 (1995) issue….

 

Walkers

© F. P. Dorchak, 1992

 

Severen’s feet mindlessly shuffled on with bland reiteration, as he opened sandied eyes. The sky was clear and there was a chill in the air, as early morning reds and oranges splashed across the horizon. The terrain was dusty and desolate.

Severen lifted his head and stretched.

He’d dreamed of being confined to something called a “chair”…with wheels on it…unable to use his legs. He remembered it’d been a good dream.

“Another day,” he said, and rubbed his eyes, cracking open his mouth into a wide, morning yawn. Severen look around and saw Techen, immediately to his left, who also began to stir.

“Mor-ning, Tech,” Severen greeted, mouth full of sand. He spit out the silicate granules.

“Yeah, right.”

Severen smiled back and shook dust from his hair, then looked around to the faces immediately behind him, several rows back. Most were still asleep. Then there were the faces behind those, and still more behind those…the unfathomable mass of Walkers that filled in all the way to the rear horizon. And all of them walked…all of them trudged aimlessly across desiccated terrain. They were a people of many ages and varieties, and the sound of their incessant plodding unmercifully assaulted Severen’s morning grogginess, bringing him back to a reality he’d much rather preferred to have escaped. It was an ancient march. A tiresome one. At its best, it was

 

“…time to send one of us to investigate. Agreed?” It was Strutter, an Old Walker, who had finally came out and said it. “With that having been said, we must send one of us.” His voice was weary with age, but he was the wisest of the Walkers. All of the Council nodded, including Severen.

“We’re sorry to drop this upon you, Severen, my friend, but it is the will of the Council that you should go. You are the healthiest of us to withstand the rigors of the journey.”

Severen flinched, but remained strong—Council-bound—and accepting of the challenge. Somehow, he had come to expect this, despite the fact that he knew of two others who were supposedly younger than him. Smoothing out his Council uniform, he straightened up and addressed Strutter.

“I agree and accept.”

“Good. We wish you our best.”

There was something about Strutter’s look that sent a chill through Severen.

Those not of the Council, but closest to them, turned to each other and began to spread the word, and with a bow of his head, and eyes closed, Severen immediately slowed his pace and began the rearward journey. He shifted his shoulders and twisted his body, as he allowed the peopled interior to swallow him up. It seemed

 

Colder back here. Emotionally colder.

He had never been back more than a half-a-generation or so before, and had labored long and hard to get to his present position on the Forward Council. People in the interior were less friendly, less open (how well he remembered that), and now he had to go back in—deeper—to investigate rumored trouble at the rear.

The Rear.

He’d heard of only one other walker who’d gone as far back as one generation, and now he was to go all the way back.

To the end.

As far as he could physically reach—and to make matters worse, he was to come all the way back.

If possible.

It was a quest that bred mixed feelings among the Council, a quest that Severen felt severely hindered by, for further progression on his part, at least for the time of the journey, anyway, but he was duty-bound and the rumors had to be laid to rest. The killings (if there truly were any killings) had to be investigated…stopped.

Feet on autopilot and still facing to the front of the March, Severen retreated deeper into the interior. Uncountable bodies, both familiar and unfamiliar, brushed and flowed past.

If there really were any killings going on, it would probably do the horde well, he thought. Everyone knew there were far too many Walkers, and that, no matter how heretical the thought, they really could stand to use a thinning.

Facts were facts.

As Severen continued backward, he noticed something no one had ever mentioned. This feeling of going backward was almost an erotic, stimulating affair…and he wondered why it was so outlawed to the common masses. He noticed that going back just two or three rows had no real effect, but once you got the momentum going and traveled through at least a quarter of a generation, the sensation suddenly overcame you. It was a heady, whole-body phenomenon that was very much like sex. Everybody, except the aging and dying, went forward, and he had not known anyone who had gone this far rearward before—except in childhood tales, of course.

(forward)

But it was a good feeling.

Severen also noticed how some began to regard him with suspicion. Or fear. Many turned to those beside them and whispered, all the while keeping a watchful eye upon him. He couldn’t hear them all, but occasionally did catch something like: It is not often one from the Council travels rearward. They must surely imagine something dire. Or: What becomes us that one of them dares invade our privacy? But, overall, Severen found the people most accommodating, actually somewhat more talkative than he’d expected. He would have quite an enlightening report to pass on—if he ever made it back—or passed it on to a Communicator.

 

Although he had probably been doing it for the past few rows, Severen became aware that he was slowing down. He had come across a tightly knit group at one point and found that he was growing increasingly bogged down. Twisting about, Severen glanced behind. He saw that the jam-up seemed to go on for quite some distance. He faced forward. Just enjoy the ride, Sevvy, he told himself. He looked around to the people beside him and attempted conversation, but as usual, only ended up in passing people by. Until he spotted a particularly quiet and hulking figure of curious intensity, off to his left. Temporarily delaying his rearward passage, Severen redirected himself laterally toward the man. People moved, respectfully, out of his way.

“Good day, citizen!” Severen hailed, “perhaps you can assist me? My name is Severen, of the Forward Council.”

The man wheezed once, then gave him a quick, non-interested glance. “Yeah, so?”

“I’ve been sent by the Council to investigate goings-on at the rear. There have been recent rumors surfacing—”

“Surfacing? Where’ve you been, mate? Them’s rumors been around fer generations.”

“Excuse me?”

“I means, yer frigging behind the times, mate—an why would the Council send back one-ah its own? Why not someone more expendable?”

Severen bit his tongue. He needed to regain control of this conversation.

“Okay, so we’re a bit behind the times, can you assist me or not?”

“What do you want?”

“Information.”

“What’s in it fer me?”

“A better position in the March—”

“Oh, sure, an where would that get someone like me? It’s not like we’re getting anywhere with all this drudgery.”

“I can see about making you a Communicator.”

“Oh, a Communicator, huh?”

“Yes. It’d be low level to start, but it’d be a beginning.”

“Well, I can’t tell you much, y’see, I’ze only heard the rumors, like you, but there’s somethin nasty going on back there. I only heard a one guy who made it back, and he went mad. Was sent back to the rear. You ain’t gonna like what you find—if it don’t find you first.”

“Please, elucidate.”

The man looked back disapprovingly at the Councilman’s choice of words.

“It’s dark back there, people…disappear…an…an there’s somethin else.”

“What else?”

“Don’t know. The man went n got all unscrewed before he could tell—but he was about to say somethin, I could see it in his eyes. It was like he couldn’t quite bring himself to say it.”

“That’s all you got?”

“Told you it weren’t much.”

“What was his name, this fellow?”

“Chim, or Jorg—no, Chjort, that was it. Chjort.”

“Thank you. Want the position?”

“Whatever.”

Severen allowed the crowd to advance past, as he continued rearward.

“Sev’ren!” the man yelled back.

“What?”

“Take it easy, mate. It turned Chjort nutty. Killed the others.”

Killed others?

(expendable?)

“Thank

 

You never really knew just how large the whole damn thing was from the front. Never really knew until you got inside it. All you saw were rows upon rows of bodies, and bodies going back as far as the eye could see. Way back. But as Severen ventured in, he got a true feeling for just how large this exodus was, more so than any of the Communicators (those who ran messages within assigned districts and kept the masses informed), the Forward Council, or any other mythical hero he’d ever heard about. Communicators came close to getting a truer feel for the size of the March, but they never ventured beyond their own boundaries. Each generation had several districts, but the number depended on how large a generation was. Lately, generations had been growing.

Council members…they really knew nothing.

Anybody could be a Council member, though there had to be a proving to see whether that person was truly worthy of the position. Everyone wanted to be up front, to make laws and institute changes, but not many were willing to work for it. To pay the price. To see something other than the backs of their contemporaries. That was what had initially driven Severen. That, and the love of a woman, or, more to the point, the scorn of one.

Severen had fallen in love with a woman named Thea. She had been strong, and the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on. He’d first seen her when she was only two hops over from him, magically having appeared out of nowhere. They’d flirted, and when Severen finally made his move, he found her more than interested. They were soon marching side by side. Copulating. Inseparable. Then he began to tell her of his ambition, that he wanted to start a family of his own and become one of the Forward Council. That was where things began to deteriorate. It seemed she had no ambition to go to the front, a place where you couldn’t hide.

Hide.

She had something to hide. She didn’t like being put up for display. She liked where she was, free to drift about…to see others. And Thea had no intention of starting a family. She liked being able to see whom she wanted, and do what she willed. Severen had been nothing more than a passing encounter for her. Sure, she liked him…even the sex and good times they’d had together…but that was all. Severen had awoken one morning to find her gone. Just as he’d found her…he’d lost her.

He never did find out what it was she had to hide, but figured she was probably trafficking in the powerful sleep drug, Utopa, the most common offense in the March. The drug gave the power to dream while awake, for as long as three days, after which subjects usually became hooked and zombie-like. Some, those of stronger constitution, lasted longer and became junkies, but most withered away and died. Either way, all were eventually sent back to the rear. In the end, Severen’s break with Thea had been for the better. Associating with pushers wasn’t conducive to a Council position.

Severen found himself again eavesdropping.

“…Celila and Trax were doing pretty good until Celila’s Communicatorship,” a pair of Walkers discussed.

“Took her away, didn’t they.”

“Yep—but they’re still seeing each other, wouldn’t’cha know it. It’s been a hard road since she’s the youngest Communicator and gets all the rotten routes—she’s gone nearly all the time.”

The other gave a knowing nod and wrinkled his face disapprovingly. Severen remembered that name. Celila. She was new. Swift. She was also a good Mediator for the Council, which wasn’t good for her man, since she’d most probably get promoted and see even less of him. It wouldn’t be until her next promotion, a supervisory position, that she’d have any time for a relationship—and who’d want to wait that long?

Severen angled off into a different direction, and looked up to the sky. It had darkened noticeably since he’d last checked. He realized he was now into the very heart of the March, sand almost completely obscuring the sky. And don’t even talk about the noise. It was also decidedly colder…not just emotionally, but physically…and he didn’t like that. It should have gotten warmer, from all that body heat. But it

 

Wasn’t life a bitch? It seemed that all one had to look forward to was to live long enough to get to the front lines. Then what? Severen had gotten there, and where had it gotten him? He was back where he’d started—hell, he was further back than where he’d started. He’d actually regressed….

And he had just blindly accepted this task. How easy it had been to plod along aimlessly in life and be the yes-man.

(easy)

This whole thing was entirely overrated. What was he supposed to do once he found what he was looking for? The gruff-one had mentioned that others had been killed.

What others, and why; what had killed whom?

Severen had no knowledge of anyone else being sent that far back, let alone being killed off.

But what if others had been sent back?

Was there something the Forward Council wasn’t telling him? What was that look in Strutter’s face all about?

Was he even supposed to make it back?

That last thought rocked him like an earthquake.

Maybe he was an offering. An offering.

“No, no—that can’t be. The Council isn’t like that. They’re Law-givers. Elders.”

So why choose him? The only ones on the Council who had any real power were the old ones. The ones who’d been around a while. So where did that leave the younger members? If the elders didn’t die, then the younger went nowhere.

(except on journeys like this)

But he knew of no one—

Then it hit him.

There was something about a journey!

He remembered…as a child…that his parents had told him about a Council member they’d met who’d gone back on a similar trek. Severen didn’t remember the purpose of the trek, but did remember the look on his parents’ faces when they talked about it. They were scared.

Why?

Because little Sevvy had already made up his mind that he was going to join the Council when he grew up.

Millions of tiny switches clicked on and off inside his head.

Spark.

And there were always bogeyman stories from childhood about what went on back there…way back there. Stories of the dead coming to life and ripping the aged from their generations, never to be seen again. Of screams and howls in the dead of night. Maybe there were more to the legends and myths than people cared to believe.

Spark.

Spark.

Or tell.

Contact.

A conspiracy within the Council!

Severen was suddenly slammed into.

It wasn’t the normal hiking-through-the-lands-trip-and-tap—no, this was a full-on grind that lifted him up off one foot and had him tottering for a moment as he skipped across the terrain, trying to regain his balance. When he did regain his footing, he whipped around hard to see the face in the crowd that must have started the upset. It was a face that sent a chill up his spine. It was an evil, twisted face that didn’t look real…but continued to hold his gaze.

Severen maneuvered out of the face’s path to see if it would follow.

It did.

No sooner had he repositioned himself, then the face again followed him…but had also gained in row. Severen looked around. Found that the generation of people around him suddenly seemed to have aged a great deal. Many were white-haired and bent over…more shuffle than walk to their strides. Many had only half-opened eyes, or failing eyesight.

This meant the dead were even closer than he’d imagined. Maybe a lot closer.

Severen maneuvered toward a stout individual and there held his position. The old man looked to him.

Why do you come to me? his gaze begged, I am old and not long for the March. Go away.

I am sorry, old man, but I have no choice, Severen’s eyes replied, I am on a mission. From the Forward Council.

So you would have me killed for the Council?

Before Severen could make his reply, the stalking face was upon the old man. Severen had been so hypnotized by the ancient one’s gaze that he’d forgotten to keep track of his pursuer. He looked on in horror as he saw its face—and what was left of its body. It was dead and stank of carrion. Powerful, clawed arms raked out from underneath powerful, shredded shoulders…arms that hopped and grappled from shoulder to shoulder and supported a smoldering torso. It tore asunder those it touched. It was a torso that supported a head and shoulders—and nothing more. There was nothing below its gaping and dangling chest cavity.

Severen watched as the old man was torn apart by the corpse; he backed away with weak, flaccid knees…and noticed that those alongside the old man had also moved away…silently and without question.

As if this was accepted routine.

“No!” Severen shouted.

But still his feet took him away.

“No!” he shouted, but still his gaze was upon the old man.

“No!” he shouted, but still the corpse crawled and rended. Rended the ancient one to pieces….

“NO!”

Severen watched as the old man’s eyes were separated from their sockets….

His words had no effect on the killing. No effect on the dismemberment that went on (as he watched). Words that could not stop the direction his feet were taking him. Away. Severen saw the old man crumple soundlessly, wordlessly, to the ground.

Accepting.

Why do you come to me, the ancient man had pleaded.

Because I am on a mission, he had replied.

A mission.

He was on a mission to find out what was going on at the rear. Well, he’d just found out—and now he was running away.

This is the real reason I was sent back. I’m no investigator—I’m a sacrifice.

Looking to a cripple beside him, Severen saw the walking stick he possessed and grabbed it without thinking. The cripple looked to him and smiled, then allowed himself to fall to the ground, quickly trodden asunder by those that flowed over from behind. Severen was shocked to discover he felt no emotion one way or the other. Turning, he looked back for the clawed corpse and hefted his newly acquired weapon. He was lucky, the wood felt solid and sturdy. It was dense and would wield well.

Severen backed up and readied the staff; glanced behind himself several times, but still could not see his attacker. It was getting darker. Colder. Out of the corner of his eyes he thought he saw something, and turned slowly, not sure there was really anything there. Yes, three positions over…a face glared back at him with a mouth full of teeth and decayed flesh.

Grinned hideously.

Severen followed that smile down to its neck, then down to its chest.

Down to its waist.

There was now more body to this corpse than when Severen had first encountered it!

Severen looked to the newly acquired legs…legs that had not originally belonged to that creature. Legs, he recognized, that had belonged to the ancient man

(why do you come to me?)

with the penetrating gaze.

The creature had stolen the ancient one’s body.

The very thought made Severen’s stomach heave, and, indeed, he nearly did. He tried not to imagine the horrors the ancient man had been put through to give up those legs.

The monster approached, and the crowd widened.

Good, Severen thought, more room to swing this thing.

“Come on!”

The corpse lunged awkwardly, but Severen managed to hold his ground as he lifted the staff in a backward arc and quickly snapped it forward. It connected, and the corpse took the full force of it in its waist, easily splitting in two. The top half flew forward and the bottom half crumpled to the dirt. Severen then watched as the creature latched onto another walker. Not allowing it time to gain another claw hold, Severen again rushed it. He rose his weapon high over his head and brought it crashing down onto the center of the corpse’s cranium, splitting it open. It emitted a rancor that made Severn gag. The thing writhed in pain, but uttered no sound, and the walker it was attached to hardly seemed cognizant of the attack. Severen finished off the creature by hammering it free with the staff, and it went tumbling bulkily to the ground—and to the rear of the March.

Great, that’s the last place I wanted this thing to go, he thought.

The March then folded back in around Severen as if nothing had happened, and as he wiped the sweat and fear from his brow, one of the walkers adjacent to him turned and smiled. Severen regarded him blankly.

Then vomited.

 

What was going on back here?

Severen no longer knew just how far back he was, and it didn’t really matter, he guessed, because things weren’t right. He could no longer see the sky, and it was almost always dark, now. And there were times he had actually thought he’d heard screams—and laughter, hideous, hideous, laughter—from the rear. Every time he would look back, fear would grip him and give him a good throttling. He didn’t want to go back there. It was a No Man’s Land. A festering graveyard. Nothing good was back there….

He had given up on the quest long ago—blew it all off. His sojourn had now become more of a matter of principle. Of what was right. He recalled how it had bothered him to accept the quest…at why he should have been chosen…but found he didn’t feel this way about this new revelation. Some things just felt right, even if they were wrong….

But who would know of his intent?

There were no longer any Communicators this far from the Council, so information of his whereabouts wouldn’t exactly be known, and to the masses he would just be remembered as the “one from the Front” performing his duty in the defense of his people. He would fade away into the annals of history as just another soul lost to the rear.

Or sacrificed.

His blood boiled.

He had his pride and no one was going to sacrifice him.

As unfortunate as his present situation was, he had to make the best of it. He was too far back to just turn around (so to speak) and return home. If not for the Council, then he had to do this for the others. His fellow walkers.

But, by the gods, the more he thought about it, the more it made sense! Send the young! The virile! Those who could better challenge the Old Ones. Send them to the rear to appease whatever was there—just keep it from coming forward. Keep it away from the front…from the Forward Council.

Severen looked to the staff. To those around him. If they weren’t dead, they were very near. Their shuffling was pained and slow, their bodies decayed. It wouldn’t be long now.

He was scared as hell.

 

Severen’s pace had slowed quite a bit, either from fear or uncertainty, but slowed down it had.

The air now had a distinctly different feel to it, and it stunk. Rotted flesh. Nervously he glanced behind himself (as he tore off a piece of fabric from his uniform and tied it around his mouth and nose), but could no longer see beyond two or three rows. It was as dark as night and there was a thick haze, one that he’d walked right into.

Like he had any choice.

Rotted, moldy flesh, he thought, so much particulates in the air.

His mind began to drift back to the conspiracy. As right as he knew he was, he tried to coax some sense out of the activities that had led him to his present situation. Of course the Elders wouldn’t have taken this journey themselves, they probably wouldn’t have survived it, and sure he wasn’t the youngest—not by far—so why was he picked above all others?

Maybe because you’d risen from within the March, Sevvy, old boy.

Of course.

He hadn’t been born into the Forward Council, like the others. Strutter had always been there, had been there even before his parents had grown, and Techen—Techen was born into it, he knew that. But what about Quix? Se-Er? Yes, they, too, all claimed birthright. In fact, Severen now saw, he couldn’t think of one of the Forward Council who wasn’t of direct bloodline (except Strutter, but he was the Elder, the Rule-Maker), so why would the two younger members be any different?

They wouldn’t be—unless another insider was being cultivated as he had been….

This wasn’t exactly the feeling he needed just now.

An unexpected rocking from the row directly behind him caught him off-guard and sent him into an adjacent walker as he tripped across a particularly deep rut. The man he hit crumpled to the dirt and had, in fact, actually disintegrated.

“Oh, no—no…I can’t be there yet!”

Another walker near to him opened a hardened, white eye and winked weakly.

“Y-yer not…there yet….” he said.

But you’ll wish ya were.

The words put Severen temporarily at ease. If one was dead, then others were sure to follow, and soon. The graveyard

(answers)

was not far away.

Destiny.

Ah, the hell with it.

Spinning around on his heels and actually facing toward the rear, Severen hefted his staff before him and marched forward.

Into the pitch blackness of the unknown.

 

It wasn’t long before he found that all those surrounding him were, indeed, dead.

None moved out of his path as he approached, so he came to wielding his staff and smashing them out of his way. Their bodies crumbled into dust as did the first. Or as near as he could tell, in this darkness, to which his eyes had grown exceedingly well accustomed. He also saw that the ranks had thinned out considerably, and this bothered him.

What was beyond? Was there a beyond?

Would he fall off some edge that rolled up after the March’s passage?

Old wives tales told to disobedient children.

Yet tales that still scratched at his troubled, adult psyche.

Movement. There was movement ahead.

Severen felt the fear again seize him, but fought it off and cocked his head. There was a figure that ran behind the few bodies that still shuffled past. He squinted, but the figure had darted back into the darkness. It was an upright figure, to be sure, like him—but quick. All this time, he thought he was alone. The fear returned.

There’s nothing good back here.

He tightened his grip on the staff.

What had he gotten himself into?

He continued forward and heard noise…this time behind him.

Then the noise moved somewhere to his left.

Then back again, behind him.

Spinning around, Severen brought up the staff just in time to deflect the brunt of an attack. A dark figure had bounced off him and run back into the dark, but not before leaving tears in his clothes and stinging gouges in his flesh. Severen thought of the similarities between this attack and the earlier one—but that this one had legs.

Severen spun around several more times, making sure that the thing was gone. At least temporarily. His temples throbbed with his quickened pulse, and his chest heaved with shortened breaths. Adrenaline surged throughout his body. There was more movement…more of them.

Terrific.

“Who’s there! By the power of the Forw—”

A black thing lunged, and this time Severen wasn’t as lucky, his staff slammed up hard into his forehead. Warmth spread down and over his eyes. At the same time, something ripped deeply into his right arm and there was another liberating splash of warmth upon his face. Blinding pain quickly followed…then the thing was off him.

By the time Severen managed to reopen his eyes, another was upon him.

Pain or no pain he cocked back the staff, and, twisting around with it, slammed it hard into what he surmised was the torso of the creature. It took all the spring out of the thing’s attack and Severen watched it crumple into a heap. Quickly recovering, Severen barely had time to react to another one, so he ducked…only netting a gash to his forehead…and followed the shape around. He brought his weapon down square on the thing’s back and there was a more-than-satisfying crunch. The thing didn’t get back up. Severen backed away, whirled his stick about him, and peered into the darkness for more.

But none came.

 

The ache of his body grew more painful as the shock wore off, and his gait turned into more of a labored shuffle. He’d managed to stem the flow of blood from his wounds, but the pain that racked his body had to be more than just from cuts and bruises.

Infection.

Infection that spread rapidly. If Severen didn’t miss his guess, he probably wouldn’t make it til sunrise, if there was a sunrise anymore….

 

Severen dreamed as he dozed. Dreamed of a dark and thick blackness…a blackness from which nothing returned. He saw eyes…two large…all-seeing orbs that emerged from the darkness, only to return back to it. And he saw claws…lots and lots of claws…that all tore and ripped into him. Ripped him into big, chunky pieces—

He awoke with a start. Couldn’t believe he had

(been allowed to survive)

dozed. He was alone. Except for the occasioned walking dead he passed. He no longer swung at them.

Severen had never really given much thought to what was actually at the rear, the ultimate rear. To what it might actually look like. He just wished he wasn’t there, now. On the surface, he tried to convince himself that he didn’t care to know, but deep down he did feel a sense of duty. A yearning for more.

Must know.

Must.

Bring back information…crush the conspiracy….

Back—back to whom?

The people.

The Council could no longer be trusted. They were all suspect. All in on it. Had been since the dawn of eternity. All those sent back in the legends and myths had been sent back as fodder for some evil god. Sent to keep whatever was there from coming forward and destroying the rest of the March.

Was sure of it.

Dead sure.

Never had there been any mention of the dead coming back to life from the graveyard. Never. Had always been left as a black void of nothingness. A place not spoken of during the light of day, barely even whispered of during nightfall.

It was a lair.

But a lair to what?

What evil force made its home there, and to where did its power extend?

Severen checked his arm’s dressing. It was a mass of dried blood and torn material…and there was a gangrenous pus that festered around the wound. Severen touched it with the end of his staff and it burst, splattering onto his face a smelly spore-like substance that got inside his mouth. He didn’t bother to check his other wounds. He felt the infection as it ate away at him. He didn’t need any further confirmation.

Heavily, Severen lifted his throbbing head.

“What…are you?” he coughed into the darkness.

Two blazing red eyes opened their lids from the darkness before him.

“What do you want from me. From us?”

The eyes floated. He was sure they were amused with him.

Gathering all his effort, Severen hefted his staff and swung it out before him. The eyes remained untouched…were now filled with a mass of scrolling stars.

Not much further to go. Care. No longer cared. Never make it back….

Eyes.

Disappeared.

Severen plodded forward, used his staff as a crutch. Lost all feeling in his left side. Numb on his right. Vision grew cloudy….

DO. YOU. KNOW. WHO. I. AM?

Came the voice.

DO. YOU. KNOW. WHO. I…AM?

It was a voice. Inside his head. This was it. Had finally gone delirious. Alone; seeing ghosts. Hearing voices. What difference did it make if he answered? Was dying anyway….

No, I do not know…who you are…but I’m sure this…poison…has invented something good…for me.

I AM…THE…UNNAMED.

Severen looked into the blackness and laughed.

Well, aren’t you a grand delusion!

I…AM…ALL.

Pleeeased to meet you….

Silence.

Severen felt the uneasiness that accompanied that silence. Felt, for the first time since his last attack, that maybe, maybe he wasn’t all that alone…maybe it wasn’t delirium he was talking to….

YOU HAVE COME…FOR ME…YOU ARE TO BE MY…COMMUNION.

PREPARE YOURSELF.

“Who are you?”

I AM ALL.

“…said that, but…what are you?”

No immediate response.

I AM…THAT WHICH KEEPS THE MARCH…FORWARD.

That which keeps the March forward. Severen shook his head. “Don’t…understand.”

IT IS NOT YOUR PLACE…TO UNDERSTAND.

PREPARE YOURSELF.

That which keeps the March forward. Could it be possible that the March was evoked by this thing? Controlled by it? That the March was nothing without it? But the March had been going on since time immemorial….

Forever.

I AM BEYOND THAT.

Eternal.

Severen’s head hurt. He stumbled. I’m going to die, I’m really going to die….

Severen placed the staff out before him for support, bore the majority of his weight on it…but only managed to continue forward in short…shuffling…movements. Movements that brought immense pain. Severen jerked; felt something burrow into his brain.

ENOUGH…TIME.

A gigantic claw shot out from the darkness, and with it, a deafening clap of thunder. It smashed through Severen’s stick and grasped him mid-body, lifting Severen up off the ground. Severen went limp and expelled a loud huh! as his staff clattered in pieces about him. He had a sudden flashback of helplessness as a child…the time he was caught first-time masturbating…and felt like that child again. But there was also an unexpected ease with who he was…what he had become.

He felt small and puny…yet complete. He retreated inward.

There was warmth there.

 

The two large, red eyes again formed in the darkness before him and Severen was pulled in. Severen looked directly into the eyes and spoke:

Go on…I’m prepared….

 

Severen floated. Drifted within nothingness. There he found the thing he had come for. The quest. The reason. It was fear, plain and simple. Fear from the Walkers as they had built it up over their generations; over eons.

FEAR.

From turning back. Fear…from looking behind—and forward. Fear that they were being followed…devoured from that which was behind them. Darkness. And it had caught them. Exacted its toll. Its price for existence.

PAY HOMAGE TO THAT WHICH CONTROLS THEE….

 

Short Story Links

Links to all my posted short stories are here.