Content Warning: This story might test the boundaries of some readers.

These events takes place in the summer of 2013

“Jesus Christ is your friend!”

The congregation began to stir and look at one another in confusion as the small, wizened man dressed entirely in black didn’t say anything but stared at them for what seemed like a very long 60 seconds. He gripped the pulpit and looked angry as his black eyes drifted across them.

“Jesus Christ is your friend!”

This time there was a timid ‘yes’ from the back of the church and the pastor leaned over over his pulpit like a bird of prey as he tried to see who spoke.

“Whoever said that stand up.”

He narrowed his eyes and grimaced as he watched a teenage girl stand up and flush with embarrassment. The man’s face was a changing map of wrinkles with each change of expression. His grey hair was shaved in a poorly executed brush cut and there were bald patches and ugly scabs on his scalp. His skin was burned an angry red from sunburn that was peeling away and leaving behind oozing raw patches. He was lean as rawhide but fat with rage and self righteousness.

“Anyone else? Would anyone else like to stand with this young woman and declare that Jesus Christ is your friend?” The desiccated man behind the pulpit was Elijah Powell and he was a pastor that had recently returned from mission duty in Nigeria. He was standing in for a sick pastor Johnson and the members of this church in Pleasant Grove, Alabama had never seen him before.

Members of the church started to stand and Pastor Elijah watched them with a sour expression until the entire congregation was on their feet. The different parts of his features didn’t match. The skin of his face was twisted in a rictus of pain but his mouth smiled while his black eyes were fierce and angry. Witnesses would later call them crazy eyes.

“Hallelujah! Praise the lord and take your seats again.”

The congregation sat down and some of them looked pleased as if they had passed a test of faith. Their attention was fixed on the scarecrow figure of the missionary man as he walked around the pulpit, crackling with energy like a transformer hit by lightning.

“The hand of God has brought me to your church for a holy purpose. I am here to save your damned souls. I am here to tell you that Jesus Christ is not your friend!”

The first young woman to stand up gasped with shock. The rest of the congregation became unnaturally still and silent. No one raised their voice in objection because of a lifetime of conditioning that told them to be quiet during a sermon.

“Jesus Christ preaches love! Christ preaches acceptance. Christ preaches the forgiveness of sins. I’m here to tell you that you’ve been told a pack of lies all of your sorry, ignorant lives!”

The missionary man paced in front of the horrified people with his arms spasming in a sequence of violent gestures as if he was chopping down an unholy foe that was trying to silence him. “Christ is not the son of God! Christ is the son of Satan sent to Earth to preach a message of weakness that has damned the soul of every so called ‘Christian.’ You are damned! You are damned! You are damned!”

With each pronouncement of damnation he pointed toward a different section of the church as long strings of saliva spun out out of his screaming mouth.

“My God is a vengeful God! My God is a God of righteousness. Jesus Christ is a son of Satan that has damned legions of humanity to an eternity of torment and hellfire!”

A black clad arm reached back and the missionary man plucked a bible off the pulpit and held it high over his head. “Our bible, our book of God, has been tainted by the corrupt, Satanic rantings of the new testament.”

He threw the bible on the ground and split it in half to separate the testaments of the old and new. A butcher knife was pulled out from inside his jacket and he attacked the bible as if it was alive. Soon he held up the old testament and kicked away the new testament as if it was radioactive.

“This is my bible! This is where you will find the God that preaches death to the perverts, death to the sinner, death to the foreigner! There is no love in God! There is no love in the world!”

The teenaged girl who had first pronounced Jesus was her friend screamed at the sight of the holy bible being desecrated and at the blasphemy howling out of the mouth of the missionary man.

He focused on her and tilted his head as he stared through her with a rictus of gleeful pain on his sunburned face. “Woman! You so-called friend of Jesus! You are a whore of Satan and I will send you to join him!”

She screamed again as he ran toward her with a butcher knife in one hand and a mutilated bible in the other. The second scream woke up the other members of the congregation who had been frozen like mice hypnotized by a weaving cobra.

The missionary man was tackled by two strong farm boys who were shocked by the maniacal strength possessed by an old man half their size. More men from the congregation piled on him before he managed to stab anyone.

“You are all damned!” He screamed in a voice cracking from strain. “Damned for all eternity!” He only became quiet when he sank his jagged brown teeth into the forearm of one of his captors.

Braxton Lee was sheriff of Pleasant Grove, Alabama. Pleasant Grove had graduated from a large town into a small city sometime back in the 90’s but Sheriff Lee still called it his town and most of the residents agreed with him. Whether or not that was a good thing depended on your level of income and the colour of your skin.

Sheriff Lee had beautiful blue eyes that looked out of place on his meaty face. He stood six foot four and was 240 lean pounds of easily provoked sadism. He had been in church yesterday and put handcuffs on the missionary man after he bit the arm of one of the members of the church. If there hadn’t been so many witnesses Braxton would have done a lot more than handcuff him but there would be other opportunities.

He leaned against the cell bars and stared at the small old man that had caused so much mayhem in his town. The missionary man turned the dried apple he called a head and stared back at him with black eyes that burned right into his blue irises. The sheriff found he couldn’t match that unhallowed gaze and pretended to cough so he could break eye contact without losing face.

He was a big ex- marine, current god of law and order in Pleasant Grove and widely acknowledged as one tough, mean son of a bitch. Why did this tiny missionary locked safely inside a cell still scare the shit of him?

Sheriff Lee knew the full story on Elijah Powell. Recently returned from missionary work in Nigeria where he was involved in a scandal involving young girls and boys that nobody at the church wanted to talk about. They believed pastor Elijah had lost his mind after his body had been ravaged by malaria in Africa. He became erratic, violent and an embarrassment to the church. He had been living in an isolated retreat near Pleasant Grove until he escaped and attacked pastor Johnson so he could take his place in church last Sunday.

“You’re lucky you didn’t kill pastor Johnson or get to Jacqueline with that knife or you’d be up for murder.”

The missionary waved his hand languidly as if this was no concern. “God decided to spare them.”

“You’re pretty casual for someone who just missed getting the death penalty.”

“I’m not afraid to meet my God. Are you?”

Sheriff Lee snorted and patted the .357 magnum holstered on his hip. “My God is right here and I met him a long time ago.”

The man in the cell gave him a look of scorn. “Someday you will eat your God.”

Braxton found he had to look away again. Ever since his wife had left him after one too many casual slaps across her face he had spent drunken nights sitting on the couch with a gun barrel in his mouth. How could this bastard have known that? It hadn’t been a guess. This psycho burned with certainty.

“Turn around and put your hands behind your back. It’s time to transfer you to prison while you wait for trial.”

The missionary man stared at Braxton with that rictus smile of his for a good long while before he stood up from his cot and complied with the sheriff’s orders.

Sheriff Lee didn’t take any chances with pastor Elijah as he transferred him to the back of his cruiser. He held Elijah’s cuffed hands with his own left hand and steered his prisoner with a firm right hand on the shoulder. He remembered the insane strength this small man exhibited when four big old boys could barely hold on to him. He did not want to be the next one bitten by this rabid dog.

The passenger in the back of the cruiser turned his head as they passed the turnoff to the highway that would take them to the waiting prison. He made no comment when the cruiser turned down a poorly maintained road that led to a small industrial development. The missionary man was in the hands of God and felt no emotion except for a mild curiosity.

The sheriff eased the car to a stop behind a long vacant factory that had most of its windows broken. Shards of glass crunched under the tires of the car and then the soles of his boots as he left the cruiser and opened the back door.

The prisoner exited the rear seat and looked at his surroundings. They had parked far from the road and the the road was a long way from anyone’s home. Birds flew in and out of the broken windows of the factory. Some of them perched on windowsills and watched the two intruders as if they were expecting a show.

The sheriff made a twirling motion with his finger and pastor Elijah obediently turned around so his cuffs could be removed. He absently rubbed at the marks on his wrists the cuffs had left behind and looked at the sheriff with a questioning expression.

“This factory used to make auto parts back in the day, body trim, interior trim, stuff like that. ‘Course now they make it cheaper down in Mexico and the bean eaters have all our jobs.”

He turned and pointed out another small factory that had made electronics parts, also shuttered. Sheriff Braxton Lee knew his town. He was also a high school football coach, deacon in his church and a grand titan for the local Dominion of the Klan.

“I was listening to your message in church pastor.” The sheriff removed his sunglasses and rubbed his knuckles against the stubble on his cheek. “The libtards just elected a monkey for president the second time in a row and we got filthy immigrants flooding across our border like it wasn’t even there. I think it’s time for a little old time religion.”

He nodded toward an office building that was in better shape than most of the vandalized factories. “That’ll be your new church over there. I think your message is what we need to make this country great again.”

The missionary man joined his hands together at his back as if he was standing at attention in front of his lord. “It is good to meet a fellow man of God. Bring me my flock and I will spread the word.”

The song ‘Missionary Man’ was one side of a 7” album. On the other side was ‘Take Your Pain Away.’ Here is a link to Nathan Hatch’s story ‘Take Your Pain Away.’

Nathan Hatch

Take Your Pain Away

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18 days ago · 15 likes · 1 comment · Nathan Hatch

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Father Teaffe was preoccupied watching a soccer match on his phone when a young couple entered the room. He shifted rusty mental gears and prepared himself for this appointment to provide matrimonial counseling for a couple that wanted to get married in his church.

He stood up as the young lady extended her hand. “Hello father, I’m Jezebel.”

“And I’m Stan. Stan Unhola.” The young man said as he shook hands with the priest after his fiance.

Father Teaffe had been around the ecumenical block more than a few times and his eyes narrowed with suspicion when Stan appeared to wince in pain during the handshake.

“Unhola? Is that a Hawaiian name Mr. Unhola?”

“No, no. I get that all the time. I’m from down South.”

“Well, colour me intrigued. Where down South?”

“Far South.”

“Hmm. Argentina? Antarctica?”

“Argentina.”

“I see. I see. A Hispanic name then.”

“That’s right.”

“Oh, I don’t think anything is right here at all. Do you?” The old priest made a show of scratching his cheek as a distraction while he reached for a small flask in his vestments.

“Ow! Goddamn it, that stings!” Stan shouted when the Irish priest dashed holy water in his face from the flask.

“I knew it! Stan Unhola my wrinkled Irish ass! That has to be the lamest fake name yet. Unholy Satan!”

Father Teaffe switched his attention to Satan’s possible future bride. “Jezebel, were you aware that Satan, the prince of darkness, the emperor of evil and the duke of douchebags was your fiance?”

“Sure, we don’t have any secrets.”

“How refreshing.”

“He’s a nice guy once you get to know him and you’re not getting all holier than thou. He’s helping me with my jazz career. You know, like Robert Johnson with the blues.”

“And look at how that worked out for him.”

“Why? What happened to him?” Jezebel looked confused and turned toward her fiance for an explanation.

“Nothing baby, nothing. He was super famous and lived happily ever after.” Satan pointed his finger aggressively at the angry priest. “Look you celibate sucker, I only agreed to this because Jezebel is Catholic. You better marry us or you’ll regret it.”

Father Teaffe gripped the edge of the table and stared down his damned adversary. “You come into my parish and walk into my church and you think you can push me around you unholy son of a bitch! I will kick your ass and wash out your mouth with holy water!”

Satan nervously pushed his chair backward. He was all powerful when he sat on his throne in Hell but inside a church his power was badly diminished and this priest looked like one tough little bastard. It was time for a change in tactics.

“Look I can make it worth your while.” Satan pulled out a thick wad of 100 dollar bills and pushed it toward the priest. “I’m sure the church could use a new roof. Don’t they always?”

“Saints preserve us! Look at that big pile of money Satan is waving in my face. God almighty knows I became a priest for the high wages and extravagant lifestyle. I’m shaking with temptation over here.”

Satan scowled and made the money disappear. “No need to be such a smartass.”

“A smartass am I? You just reminded me of the colonoscopy appointment I have this afternoon. I can assure you it will be the highlight of my day compared to the prince of darkness trying to convince me to marry him off.”

The priest once again shifted his gaze to Satan’s fiance. “Jezebel, let’s hear some more from you. Shut up Satan! Now you think he will be good for your career but that sounds a little transactional to me. Why else do you want to marry this damned for all eternity dreamboat of yours?”

“I like his sense of humour.”

“And?”

“He’s good looking.”

“No, he’s not. He’s wearing a glamour. Show her what you really look like Satan.”

“No!”

“This is matrimonial counseling, all cards on the table. Show her what you really look like.”

Jezebel looked at him expectantly until Satan’s form changed into a red skinned demonic creature, complete with horns, hooves and a tail.

“You look so hot baby.”

“Jesus Christ on the cross.” The priest muttered as he lowered his face into his hands. “All right you think he’s a barrel of laughs and he’s ‘hot.’ Anything else?”

Jezebel gave him a blank look and then examined her nails. “Well we, um, have lots in common.”

“Is that right Jezebel? You have a lot in common with Satan here? Do you both like pina coladas? Getting caught in the rain? Roasting the damned with hellfire?”

“Music!” Satan interrupted. “We both like the same music. Why just on the drive over here we were listening to Ozzy Osbourne together.”

“I hate Ozzy Osbourne!” Jezebel snapped.

Satan gasped and Father Teaffe’s eyebrows rose as the oxygen was sucked out of the room.

“I’m a jazz musician. Why do you keep thinking I like heavy metal? I hate your bloody music. I hate how you always sing along with ‘Crazy Train’ and that stupid laugh of yours.”

“I see.” Satan unsuccessfully tried to keep the hurt out of his voice. “Well, all of this is news to me.”

“It wouldn’t be if you ever paid any attention to my feelings.”

“What about my feelings?”

“What about your feelings? You’re Satan for Gods sake. Stop being such a baby all the time.”

Satan watched a furious Jezebel storm out of the room. He turned his head to look at Father Teaffe who struggled to maintain a neutral expression. Satan absentmindedly rubbed one of his horns and appeared lost in thought for a moment. “I think the two of us should take a break. Maybe we’ve rushed into this.”

“That would be a prudent move.”

Satan nodded and paused at the door before leaving. “Thank you father.”

“It’s what I’m here for.”

Father Teaffe stood up and stretched before leaving the room. Another priest walking down the corridor said hello when they passed each other.

“How did the matrimonial counseling go Father Teaffe?”

‘Not bad. I think I convinced some poor fellow not to marry a jazz musician.”

“You’re doing God’s work father.”

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Lucio had been waiting in the hot, stuffy room for almost an hour and couldn’t stop himself from falling sleep. He had arrived in Rome after a flight from the U.S. an hour ago and the jet lag was messing up his sleep cycle.

He did not want to be here waiting for an appointment in Vatican City but inheriting the estate of his uncle Giovanni was a powerful motivation. Lucio’s lawyer estimated it was ten million dollars of motivation.

A liver spotted hand shook him awake and Lucio rubbed the sand out of his eyes while an aged monsignor regarded him with disapproval. “You’re Cardinal Giovanni’s nephew. Is it true that you’re no longer a Catholic?”

Lucio immediately disliked the small man’s self-righteous arrogance.

“That’s right. So what?”

“So what? You are in Vatican City and you say so what?” The monsignor barked with a thick Italian accent. “You are a disgrace to your uncle’s memory.”

This was a bad start. Lucio wished he had been fully awake and thinking clearly before he had given the monsignor a brusque answer. He needed this man’s approval to be accepted into the Custodes Dei before he could receive his inheritance. Lucio had never heard of the Custodes Dei before. No one had, but apparently his uncle had been a senior member and nominated his nephew as his replacement upon his death.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“What do you think? Why are you no longer a practicing Catholic?”

He hadn’t realized that he would have to pass some kind of test of faith and his dreams of being a millionaire started to slip away. When he had been cleaning out his deceased uncle’s house in the States Lucio had discovered a hidden room that was a small chapel. In the altar he found papers from his uncle instructing him to go to Vatican City and take his place in the Custodes Dei or there would be no inheritance.

Trying to guess what the monsignor wanted to hear seemed pointless so he went with the truth. “I don’t believe in God.”

“Do you believe in the Devil?”

“Yes.”

“How can you believe in the Devil but not in God?”

“Because I see evidence of the Devil’s work in the world every day but I don’t think I’ve ever seen evidence of God’s intervention. God is a fantasy.”

“You think you’ve got it all figured out, do you?”

“All right fine.” Lucio held his hands up in surrender. I’m a heathen on my way to hell and I can’t belong to your goofy club. I’m going back to the States.”

“No, you’ll do. Follow me.”

Lucio was perplexed but pleased as he followed the monsignor through a series of corridors and locked doors. They entered a long stairway descending deep into the Earth.

“How far down are we?” He asked after they departed the last flight of stairs.

“Close to a hundred feet. We keep the most dangerous secret in the world down here and it must be kept well hidden.”

“What secret?”

The monsignor studied his face a moment before answering. “It’s better if I show you. It drives some people insane and we like to find out right away if new recruits can handle it.”

Lucio followed his guide to a monitor that looked incongruous set in a stone wall that was many centuries old. “He’ll be coming along soon now. Okay there he is. Tell me what you see.”

Lucio’s mouth dropped open as he stared at the walking figure that was displayed on the screen. “That’s. That’s Jesus Christ!”

The monsignor nodded and seemed relieved that Lucio wasn’t running around in circles and pulling out his hair. “That’s what most people see. Some people see an old man with a long white beard but the majority see Jesus Christ in his early thirties.”

“What the hell is this?”

“That’s God. He’s been wandering around in circles for almost 700 years now. The church made a maze under Vatican City to keep him imprisoned.”

“But why?”

“Because God is insane.”

Lucio could see the monsignor was deadly serious. “Could you expand on that please?”

“It started in the 1300’s. People were not as devout as they used to be and God became furious. He showed up in Vatican City raging that man no longer deserved the life he gave them and demanded that everyone should attend mass ten times a day or he would burn it all down. The Great Famine in the early 1300’s was a warning from God that didn’t change anything. Then he wiped out a third of Europe’s population with the Black Plague in the mid 1300’s. That’s when we knew we had to stop him.”

“How could you stop him? He’s God.”

“That he is.” The monsignor watched God endlessly circling on the monitor. “ He created the world, the stars, the entire universe. He’s all powerful but he’s just not very bright. He was tricked inside the maze and then we sealed up the wall behind him. He’s been walking around in a circle for centuries trying to find his way out.”

“Couldn’t he just … walk through a wall or something?”

“Do you remember when I mentioned that he’s not very bright, as well as insane?”

A young priest appeared in the corridor and waited for the monsignor’s attention. The old man nodded at him. “I need to attend to something. I’ll leave you alone with your thoughts and be back shortly to answer your questions.”

Lucio was glad the monsignor left because he was having a hard time concealing his anger. The church had imprisoned God so the Devil had free reign over the world. No wonder the world was a cesspool of violence and inequality.

He dug into his pocket for an ancient document he found in his uncle’s secret chapel. It was preordained that Lucio was here to free the saviour of the world.

Lucio started to recite a prayer in Latin from the document. His uncle had been the senior member of the Custodes Dei and he possessed their deepest secret. The arcane prayer that would open an entrance in the maze. Lucio didn’t understand what the prayer had meant until the imprisonment of God was revealed to him.

Stones crumbled and left behind nothing but a cloud of dust. Lucio fell to his knees and clasped his hands when the figure of Jesus Christ stepped out of the swirling dust and lay a gentle hand upon his head.

“My child, you have freed me. You are my chosen one.”

Tears of gratitude and joy streamed down Lucio’s face. He had saved the world.

The monsignor returned with the priest and saw the face of God. The monsignor looked sadly at Lucio and sighed in resignation.

“There you are!” God screamed in a shrill voice. “You assholes locked me up for centuries!” The two members of the church glowed from the inside and burst into flames.

“This is the kind of gratitude I get for creating man? It’s Vengeful God time!”

Lucio followed God at what he hoped was a safe distance as God stormed up the steps and emerged in Vatican City. A large group of tourists in Vatican Square fell to their knees when he walked among them. God beheld them and was pleased.

God looked puzzled and then angry as the tourists started taking pictures of him with their phones. “Why aren’t any of you praying? Where’s the love for your lord God. You fall short of my grace.”

The buildings around the square started to collapse and chunks of debris rained down upon the doomed crowd.

Lucio watched the scene in shock. Hundreds were dead and God became angry again when the wounded survivors didn’t immediately thank him for sparing them.

“So, you’re the idiot.”

He turned his head to see a saturnine looking man standing beside him and surveying the chaos with a frown.

“Who are you?”

“Oh right. No point staying in disguise anymore.” The man’s appearance changed into a red skinned giant with cloven hooves, curved horns and a forked tail. “I’m the devil, baby. Old Nick. The Bad Cat. The Prince of Darkness.”

The devil lit up a cigarette that smelled of brimstone and offered the pack to Lucio who declined. “I bet you thought you were doing a good thing didn’t you Lucio?”

Lucio winced as God started to kill the ungrateful survivors of the disaster he had caused. “That was my motivation, yes.”

“Uh huh. Well, let me explain to you what God is with a metaphor. God is like a needy, jealous, overly-possessive girlfriend. You know the type. After the first time you do the wild thing, she’ll look at you with shiny eyes and asks ‘will you love me forever?’ When you try and leave the apartment, she’ll ask ‘do you still love me?’ When you’re trying to take a crap, she’ll break down the bathroom door and ask if you still love her. When you say yes, she’ll scream ‘Then why don’t you tell me all the time. Why do I have to keep asking you?’ After which she’ll trash the apartment and try to stab you to death with a paring knife. That’s what God is.”

“That is one God-awful metaphor.”

Old Nick shrugged. “I never claimed to be a writer.”

“I think maybe I’ll take one of those cigarettes.”

“Yeah sure, no point in worrying about lung cancer anymore.” He lit Lucio’s cigarette and pointed down the street where God was incinerating a group of nuns who couldn’t recite the ‘Our Father’ in Latin for him. “He’s just getting started. He takes seven days to create a world and after he eventually throws the inevitable hissy fit it takes him seven days to destroy it.”

The Devil sighed and blew out a stream of yellow smoke. “I’ve seen this movie too many times. Give him a couple of hundred years of limbo and he’ll be bored out of his mind. He’ll make another world and be pleased with himself until people start to question him. Then the same stupid cycle starts all over again. At least this time the Custodes Dei kept him locked up for an extra 700 years until you came along.”

Lucio broke out in a hoarse coughing fit and the Devil patted him firmly on the back. “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to them and then you’ll wonder why you didn’t start smoking earlier.”

Lucio gasped and cleared his throat before taking another drag. “I think I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

“No shit dumbass. You should have stuck with the devil you knew.”

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Content Warning: Graphic Body Horror

Life is a precarious accident. There’s a thin envelope of atmosphere surrounding the Earth between the planet’s surface and the cold emptiness of space. The layer of green life between the atmosphere and the Earth’s crust is even thinner. The green had survived hundreds of millions of years because of the stewardship of the Guardians of the Green.

They were ancient entities of thought and contemplation that carefully guided the green but they perceived the world in terms of millennia and were vulnerable to short term threats. The Guardians were not hasty Gods.

“We must act.”

“Yes, but we must act together. We need the wisdom of the original Guardian, our most senior member.”

“If we wait any longer it will be too late.”

“I will try to initiate contact again. We must act together or we may fail.”

The original Guardian did not like to be troubled by current events. Its consciousness was buried deep beneath the surface of the Earth where it lay the foundation for new life millions of years in the future. It was meticulous, detailed work and it resented any interruptions.

“How dare you interrupt my work? Was it not only a millennia ago that I consulted with you brash striplings?”

“We apologize old one but the green is in great peril.”

“Do not exaggerate. The green will always endure. What is this peril?”

“The new species destroys the Earth.”

“What nonsense is this? The lizards have lived in communion with the Earth for millions of years.”

“Not the dinosaurs old one. We speak of the humans.”

“Wait. I must clear my thoughts.” The old one had sensed the urgency of the other Guardians and it only took a year for it to focus its concentration. “Humans. Yes, the new species. Only a millennia ago they were troublesome but no threat. What could they have possibly done in such a short period of time?”

“Look to the surface old one and you will understand.”

“No, that will take too long. Share your knowledge with me directly.” Roots deep in the Earth stirred and moved toward each other until they were intertwined.

“Old one, what should we do?”

“Hasty, so hasty.” The ground shifted as the old one rendered its verdict. “The humans can never be content. They are a broken species and their selfish arrogance will eventually break the world, a parasite that seeks to kill its host. Exterminate them.”

“How?”

“Their strength is in their minds. Their weakness is in their minds.”

“We understand.”

“I will leave this short-term problem for you while I go back to my work. I must look to the future. You must ensure there is a present.”

The spring of 2026 was more of a green explosion than a change of seasons. Environmental scientists had no logical explanation for the tough green shrubs that started to grow everywhere there was access to sun and a minimal amount of moisture. The shrubs would grow up through small gaps in asphalt and concrete to the point even major roads had to be closed down while maintenance crews fought a relentless battle against the green invasion.

Conspiracy theories grew as quickly as the shrubs. China was accused of deploying a bioweapon but satellite pictures showed they were affected the same way as any other nation. Monsanto was suspected of a genetically modified experiment gone out of control. The most popular theory was this was the vanguard of an alien invasion. The truth was nobody really knew. Physical evidence indicated this had all been a natural occurrence, despite how unprecedented it was.

Government agencies responded quickly. Effective herbicides were developed but mutated, herbicide-resistant versions of the shrubs quickly began to appear. A game of chemical warfare ensued as well as the use of blade and flame against the invasive species. Mankind slowly began to win the battle, until the first shrubs started to bear fruit.

Jacob lived with wife and baby daughter off grid in Northern California a few miles from the small city of Yreka. His small family had a different experience with the invading shrubs compared to people that lived in cities and towns.

Concentrations of people attracted concentrations of shrubs. Densely populated cities were so overrun that even skyscrapers over 100 stories tall were covered with a carpet of green.

Jacob and Miriam’s small homestead had some of the shrubs but they weren’t overrun. Their greenhouse and gardens were still able to grow the usual crops.

When the young couple noticed the new shrubs began to bear fruit they were cautious. The new fruit looked like small golden plums and were appealing to the eye but so were Juniper berries.

Eventually they heard over the radio that people were eating the fruit all over the world and were suffering no ill effects. Previously there had been worries there might be wide spread starvation because of the new invasive species but now there were concerns about economic collapse because there was too much free, readily available food. The new fruit wasn’t just edible it was so delicious that many people would eat nothing else.

Jacob took the plunge first and took a small bite of what the media had started to call the forbidden fruit. It wasn’t just delicious. He felt good after he ate one of the small fruit. It was subtle but Jacob was a drug addict, five years sober now, and the boost in mood was familiar to him.

He dropped the fruit’s core to the ground and stared at it for awhile. The news didn’t mention anything about side effects, maybe it was his imagination working overtime. He probably felt good because it was so delicious. His addict’s mind knew he was lying to himself while he reached for more of the seductive fruit.

Miriam was more honest with herself and threw the fruit away after she swallowed the first mouthful. “No, there’s something wrong with it Jacob. I don’t think you should eat it anymore.”

“What’s the problem? You don’t like it?”

“Oh no, I like it just fine. I like it too much and that’s the problem. It feels like the first time I tried heroin.”

“Oh come on it’s a fruit. It’s natural.”

“So is hemlock. Don’t tell me you didn’t feel something was wrong when you ate it the first time. It tastes too goddamn good.”

“There’s nothing wrong with it. Over half the people in the world are eating it. Scientists have found nothing wrong with it.”

Miriam said nothing while she adjusted their baby Joseph on her shoulder. “You’re lying to me and we both know it. This fruit has been around for less than a week. Scientists haven’t had enough time to find out if there’s something wrong with it other than it’s not poisonous. Stop eating it. Now!”

“You’re overreacting. Billions of people are eating it without any problems.”

“Billions of people breathe pollution without any problems until they die young. You felt something wrong just like I did and I know an addict’s bullshit when I hear it. Stop eating that fruit or I’ll leave with Joseph.”

“What! Over some stupid fruit?”

“I told you I’d leave if you start using again. This is the same thing and you know I’m right.”

Jacob wanted to plead his case some more but he recognized that look on his wife’s face. She didn’t bluff and his rational mind told him that she was right. His addict’s mind told him he could agree to stop but continue to eat the fruit in secrecy.

The news from the radio was confusing for the next week. Large religious movements sprang up that proclaimed a new golden age for man. There was plentiful food for everyone thanks to the ubiquitous shrubs. No one had to work to eat anymore.

A common theme was that God had returned to Earth and created a new garden of Eden for his children. Different religions and cultures had different interpretations but the core message was similar. It was hard to argue with their reasoning because everyone that ate the new fruit just felt so damn good all the time.

The world discovered God was capricious when the fruit disappeared. The 80% of the world’s population that had lived on the fruit quickly found out the downside of their new diet when their brains underwent a massive dopamine crash that caused people to collapse in the street.

Only experienced addicts like Jacob and Miriam had been able to detect it but every bite of fruit caused a small release of dopamine that was almost impossible to detect. A steady diet of the fruit would mean you were soon floating on a sea of dopamine and Casey Jones you’d better watch your speed.

Jacob was searching the woods behind the house for any shrubs that might still bear fruit but it had all withered away. His mind withered away as well when his dopamine crash drained the sentience out of him. True to his addictive personality, Jacob had been stuffing so much fruit in his mouth that his limbs had started to twitch uncontrollably from an overdose but now they went slack as he slumped to the ground.

The green decided he was suitable for assessment and roots emerged from the soil that gently probed at his orifices to test his readiness. He was judged ripe for harvest and the process began.

A vine with sharp spines entered his mouth and began to systematically remove teeth that were no longer required for a plant-human hybrid. Green tendrils gently tilted his head to the side so he wouldn’t choke to death on the blood that started to pool in his mouth.

Jacob’s clothing was torn apart and peeled off him. His body started to thrash uncontrollably as green creepers penetrated his anus and started to pull out his bowels and deposit them in a slick, stinking mess beside him. They continued their work until all the organs deemed unnecessary had been extracted. A stream of blood ran out of his ruptured anus but an invading web of green tendrils eventually stopped the bleeding and continued to modify Jacob’s body.

The process was swift. The green had already transformed billions of human beings and had become very efficient as it benefitted from experience.

Jacob’s new body stood up from the warm earth, writhing with vines and tendrils that tested the air. He didn’t even notice as his superfluous penis and scrotum detached from his green body and dropped to the ground with wet splats. The ragged holes they left behind on his torso were soon plugged by a patchwork of flesh and new plant material.

What was left of Jacob’s mind had been scrubbed clean and reprogrammed. Now his sole purpose in life was to find and consume more of the sacred fruit that had brought him to the promised land. To achieve his goal he would need to eliminate the humans who were his competitors for the fruit. Humans like the female and the young one in the house ten yards away.

This was the direct approach the Green had decided upon to solve their human infestation problem. Mankind would destroy itself before it could destroy anything else.

A squirrel looked up alertly from the acorn it had been gnawing on when screams started to ring out from the nearby house. It jumped and skittered away as a small human body was thrown out of a window and the screams became even louder. Everything became quiet after a few moments and the squirrel retrieved the acorn it had dropped and resumed its meal.

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Kevin felt the paw draped across his forehead but he ignored it. Yesterday had been tough and he needed at least another half hour of sleep. Cerberus had different priorities and expressed her point of view by laying down across his face so he couldn’t breathe.

“Bloody cat.” Kevin said mechanically as he wormed his head out from under her attempts to suffocate him. “You keep doing that and I’m going to stop feeding you.” He sat upright and blearily put his feet into a pair of slippers before venturing out onto the cold floor.

“Yeah, yeah. You’re dying of starvation.” Kevin responded to Cerberus’ complaints as he poured out some kibble for her. “You fat furball.”

He sorted through a box of pizza pops and found the one with the most recent expiration date. Kevin had found out through experimentation these suckers never seemed to go bad. There was no electricity or microwave for that matter but he found he liked them cold anyway.

“C’mon Cerberus, let’s go check out the neighbourhood.” He struggled with opening the packaging for his breakfast as they slowly walked up the stairs to the top floor of the library. He managed to open up the pepperoni pizza pop and chomped on a mix of microbial enzymes, sodium aluminum phosphate and occasional bits of pepperoni while he and Cerberus surveyed the streets around the large public library that was their home.

It had been a long time since he had spotted any humans in the city but he would notice an occasional wolf. They tended to stay hidden and were shockingly fast so they might be all over the place but unseen.

The wolves had wiped out the humans in the city and he assumed across most of the world as well. There were some islands where humans had managed to survive but even they were sometimes overrun. He knew that much from the ham radio but had no idea how the wolves managed to cross water.

He didn’t use the ham radio anymore because it was too depressing. Over the years less and less people had answered and he was afraid that someday there would be no one. At this point he didn’t want to know anymore.

Kevin looked where Cerberus was staring out the window and saw a wolf with white around its muzzle looking back at him from a window across the street. “Morning Raksha. How are you doing today?”

The wolf tilted its head slightly to acknowledge that Kevin was talking to him. The radioactive wolves that had spread across the world from Ukraine ten years ago were very intelligent and that’s what made them the planet’s new apex predator. The elder wolves like Raksha that led them were the most dangerous wolves of all.

Raksha had started to appear about a week ago and every morning she would be at the same window watching Kevin and Cerberus make their daily survey of the neighbourhood. Kevin felt a sense of foreboding every time he saw her.

This library was secure but it wasn’t the best choice for a refuge. Their original home had been much safer but Kevin had been going loopy from boredom. After the wolves had wiped out most of humanity the wolves underwent a population crash with their primary food source exhausted. Kevin took advantage of the collapse in numbers and snuck across the city to the library and its treasure trove of books. He was still a lonely man but at least he had books to read now.

Kevin looked at some movement on the street and when he checked back at Raksha’s window the wolf was gone. “Cerberus, I think we better spend the day reinforcing all the doors and windows again. I have this sinking feeling we might have company soon.”

Cerberus yawned unconcernedly and stretched.

“All right, you can supervise then.”

Next morning Kevin was woken up by Cerberus’ claws sinking into his chest and her lashing tail whipping him in the face. He opened his eyes and forced them to focus on a familiar wolf with streaks of white on its muzzle sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed.

Raksha looked annoyed and pointedly looked at the hissing cat and then back at Kevin.

“Easy Cerberus.” He whispered and put his hand around the hissing cat’s chest. Kevin was confused about what was happening. If wolves had managed to figure out how to break into the library, he and Cerberus should be dead and halfway digested already. There was a loaded gun under his pillow but he didn’t even try to reach for it. The wolves were so fast that he would never be able to use it.

He rubbed some crust out of his eyes and looked into Raksha’s expectant gaze. “What do you want from me?”

Raksha looked pleased with the question and she used her mouth to pick up a book from the floor and drop it on the bed beside him. She sat back down and started a staring contest with the furious Cerberus.

Kevin picked up the book, looked at the cover and considered the implications for a moment. It was a copy of Dr. Seuss’ “A B C: An Amazing Alphabet Book!”

“You want me to teach you how to read, don’t you?”

He realized there had been a purpose behind Raksha’s morning inspections of him for the past week. The wolf had not learned how to speak English of course but she was already proficient at communicating with him using expressions and gestures. Raksha nodded.

Six Months Later

There was a reason why Raksha was the leader of the wolves in this city. She was smart as hell. She delicately touched a claw on one of the ink pads Kevin had scrounged for her then pointed her muzzle at a picture of a human being. She proceeded to neatly print the word ‘human’ on a piece of paper.

“You’re getting the hang of it Raksha. You have neater printing than I do already.” Kevin picked up a pen and wrote ‘food?’ on his own piece of paper and then pointed at the picture of the human.

Raksha shook her head but Kevin noticed she deliberately pointed at him and not the picture before she wrote ‘no.’ The wolf cocked her head a little and then pointed at nearby Cerberus and wrote ‘maybe.’

Kevin scowled while Raksha displayed the lupine version of a grin. “That’s not funny Raksha. Stop picking on poor little Cerberus.” Raksha obviously thought Cerberus’ constant aggression was amusing and loved to torment the cat. Her swinging tail often knocked Cerberus flying but she was obviously playing.

Cerberus was even more agitated than usual today because for the first time Raksha had brought other wolves who sat back and started balefully at the human and his cat. Raksha noticed how nervous Kevin was and she softly growled a warning to her packmates.

All the wolves immediately backed up a few feet and it was obvious that Raksha was very much in charge despite being smaller and older than the other wolves. These radioactive wolves had rejected the idea of the largest and strongest Alpha male being the leader of the pack. Intelligence and ability were more important now.

Raksha was writing again and Kevin was puzzled as he stared at the short message. “What do you mean new students?”

The answer arrived in the form of a litter of wolf cubs that stampeded into the library and all tried to jump onto his lap at the same time. Cerberus looked like she was possessed as she jumped on top of a bookshelf and expressed her ear- piercing opinion of this wave of intruders.

Kevin pushed some of the cubs away as they tried to lick his face and nip at his beard. “Come on Raksha! You’ve got to be kidding!”

Raksha grinned again and shook her head.

Six Years Later

Raksha sighed and pushed Cerberus a little to the side with her muzzle before laying her head on Kevin’s lap with a contented sigh. The elderly wolf quickly fell asleep and was blissfully unaware of Cerberus’ annoyed glare as she snored away. Kevin scratched Cerberus behind the ears in an attempt to mollify the cranky old cat.

It still felt weird to have a wolf as his best friend, especially the same kind of radioactive wolf that had essentially wiped humanity off the face of the Earth. He used to be obsessed with the survival of the human race and fighting back against the wolves but now he found he didn’t care.

Maybe it was old age that had taken his ambition and fighting spirit. He had no idea what the date was but he was pretty sure he must be in his late fifties by now. Thinking of his age made him feel sad because he knew there was a good chance he would could continue to live for a number of years after Raksha and Cerberus were gone.

He put the thought out of his mind as he watched all the cubs playing around him. There would still be young minds to teach. For all he knew he was the last man on Earth and maybe if he taught enough cubs how to read and write, more wolves would realize the human race hadn’t been all bad.

A cub pounced on his boot and started to untie his laces using its teeth with impressive dexterity. Kevin leaned down and scratched its withers with a mock growl. The cub grabbed his hand gently with its mouth and responded with a playful growl of its own before bounding away to chase after its litter mates.

Kevin and Raksha had shared many conversations about the human race. Raksha liked to point out how relatively short the human era had been compared to the dinosaurs. Her take was the human era had been an aberration, like a natural disaster similar to the asteroid strike that had wiped out the dinosaurs. She couldn’t understand the human need to grow, consume and destroy until they ruined their own habitat.

Kevin had his own theories but he was too embarrassed to share them with his philosophical wolfen friend. As he watched the mothers and cubs play, he felt their behaviour confirmed his own private theory.

The wolves were carnivores. He knew if he hadn’t been so useful to them, he would have been eaten a long time ago. They would sometime fight amongst themselves, especially if some young male was trying to move up the pack, but there was no hate in these animals.

When his students would read human history, they were often confused why so much of what they read was a history of warfare. He would try to explain about countries, ego, territorial ambitions and limited resources but they would usually give him sideways looks as if he was crazy.

Kevin was convinced that mankind’s time had been brief because so many people hated themselves and hated other people even more. It wasn’t like everyone had been that way. Kevin was a friendly guy and had more of less got along with everyone but he had encountered many people who defined themselves by what they hated. ‘I hate this movie, music or race and if you don’t agree with me then I hate you too.’ He believed humans had finally just hated themselves out of existence. There would have been no radioactive wolves without war. There would have been no war without hate.

He laid his left hand on Raksha’s fur and his right hand on Cerberus. Kevin leaned back and enjoyed the sun on his face as he yawned so loudly his jaw clicked. ‘Ahh, what the hell do I know anyway?’ He thought to himself as he started to drift off to sleep. ‘I’m sitting here in the sun with my two buddies and I’m going to have a nap.’

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“The end of the world occurred on August 9, 2011.”

“What? What the hell are you talking about Kevin?”

“August 9, 2011 is when my high school sweetheart Stefanie told me we should see other people before she started college. My heart was broken. My soul was crushed. Even though my body continued to function in a haphazard function my world had ended.”

“Shut up Kevin. I don’t know why I even talk to you.”

“Who else are you going to talk to?”

“Yeah, good point.” Chuck looked over the top of the wall at the black shapes swirling below them and considered taking a shot but then rejected the notion. Bullets were scarce and he would probably miss, even with all the moonlight.

“All right Chuckie don’t be mad with me. Here’s a different date. April 26,1986 was the start of the end of the world.”

“That far back? Even before you got your itty-bitty heart broken. What happened then?”

“The nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine exploded and bathed large areas of Eastern Europe in radiation.”

“That sounds bad but so what?”

Kevin internalized his frustration at how dim-witted Chuck could be. “One year after the accident they found a pack of radioactive wolves thriving in Chernobyl.”

“Oh … right. So that was the start.”

“I think so. If it wasn’t the start, it should have at least been a warning. Of course, things didn’t get crazy until the Ukraine war got crazy and they started to hit each other’s nuclear plants.”

“Yeah, what a goddamn mess that was.”

The spread of nuclear radiation was horrific and caused mass casualties on both sides. At least it brought the war to an end but it started a chain of events that led to Kevin and Chuck standing guard duty on the wall of their small compound.

Both men ducked their heads a little when a chorus of howling erupted from the large pack surrounding the walls. They had heard the sound many times over the past couple of years but it still had the atavistic power to make them feel like helpless prey.

“Fucking, ugly, mangy, furry bags of radioactive puss.” Kevin muttered. “C’mon Chuckie let’s give it to them.”

He struggled to heave a cinderblock over the wall and Chuck joined him with a cinderblock of his own. They grinned at each other when they heard yelps of pain from below and the howling stopped.

“We better not drop anymore Chuck.” Kevin surveyed the remaining pile of six cinder blocks with disappointment. “We need these if they try to climb the wall.”

“Have you actually seen that happen?”

“Couple of times. They made a pyramid like they were a bunch of cheerleaders that got turned into werewolves. They’re smart as hell. Never underestimate them.”

“How did they get so damn smart anyway?”

Kevin shrugged and looked up at the full moon overhead. It was a clear night and the moonlight was so bright that everything glowed, unless it was in the shadows.

“The best guess is a combination of constant mutation and good old survival of the fittest. Wolves that were already radioactive from Chernobyl were irradiated again and again because of the Ukraine war. Now we’ve got these bastards replacing us as the new apex predator.”

A wolf padded into a clearing in front of the wall so it was clearly illuminated to the humans on the wall. It looked up at Kevin and stared at him directly in the eyes. It was daring him to shoot but he wasn’t falling for it. This was a game they often played with humans. Their reactions were so quick they could dodge a bullet before a human finished pulling the trigger.

Kevin whipped up his gun to make it dodge but this wolf had played the game before. It froze and watched and listened. When it realized Kevin had no intention of shooting the small wolf bared its teeth in a smile and seemed to merge into the darkness of the night.

He lowered his gun and tried not to let Chuck see how intimidated he was. “What was I saying? Mutation, right mutation. These wolves have three big improvements because of mutation. They’re smarter. They’re faster and they were bloody fast to begin with. Last but not least they breed like rabbits in an orgy.”

“So, basically we’re all going to die because radiation made wolves super horny?”

“It’s kinda’ depressing when you sum it up like that. But here’s the rub Yorick.”

“I think you mean Horatio.”

“No, I don’t. Hamlet was talking to himself so I can use any damn name I want. Their insane breeding rate is why we’re going to win. There are billions of wolves all over the planet killing and eating humans as well as everything else. What do you think happens after they run out of food?”

Chuck nodded and looked more hopeful. “We just have to survive until that happens.”

“We can do it Chuck. There are islands they haven’t reached yet. After the wolf population collapses, what’s left of the human race can organize and figure out how to fight what’s left of these hairy bastards.”

“Why are they so quiet?” Chuck asked and leaned over the wall to look at the pack of wolves. “Hey Kevin! They’re gone. They must have given up.”

Kevin looked over the wall and panicked. “No, they never give up. This is bad. Where the hell are they?”

His question was answered when wolves streamed out of a hole they had dug under the wall. Chuck had known how well they could burrow and made sure a number of stakes had been driven deep into the ground but it hadn’t been enough to stop them.

There were another 12 survivors inside the compound and they jumped out of their beds to fight when they heard the alarm being raised. Half were armed with guns. The other half made do with a mixture of machetes, axes and home-made spears.

They were tough and they could fight but it didn’t take long for the wolf pack to demonstrate why they had replaced the human race at the top of the food chain. They flowed around the humans like water and tore off chunks calves and hamstrings without breaking their stride.

A pack of wolves fought so well together that some scientists theorized they had developed a from of telepathy. Kevin believed it was just heightened instinct. Wolves had always known how to hunt in a pack. The irradiated wolves had turned it into an artform.

A wolf danced in front of a human armed with an AR-15 and pretended it was wounded. In a blur of motion, it dashed away to avoid the gunfire while two of it’s packmates ripped the biceps out of the man’s arms. They tore out his throat after the gun was safely on the ground.

Kevin shot one of the wolves that had killed the man. He knew from sad experience that his best chance of hitting one of the impossibly fast animals was when it was preoccupied killing or eating something.

He shot at the other wolf but the damned thing had been warned by the death of its packmate and was gone by the time the bullet arrived. There were eight bullets left in his magazine now. Both Kevin and Chuck had started the night with 10 bullets apiece. It was all the group could spare.

“Chuck! Listen to me.” Kevin saw a wolf bite into the hamstring of a young woman and he was able to shoot it, only to see another wolf disembowel her.

“When we run out of bullets, drop your gun and run for the ladder.” The woman was being swarmed by a number of wolves and Kevin sent three bullets into the center of the swirling mass. He might have hit the woman as well but she probably would have thanked him for it if she could.

He lowered his gun to look for another target and saw a wolf turn its head and look up at the two humans shooting from on top of the wall. Kevin shot at it but missed when it started to run toward the stairway that led to the wall. It was followed by some of its packmates.

“Shit! Chuck run for the ladder!”

“No! I’ve still got a couple of bullets. I’m not leaving them when I can still help.”

“Goddamn it! Do what I say!” Kevin fired the last of his bullets at the wolves climbing the stairway. He successfully led his shots enough so that he hit a couple.

“Chuck run! They’re on the wall!”

“Wha…” Chuck looked back at Kevin as if he couldn’t understand what he was saying. A wolf shot out of the stairs and leapt across the walkway to sink its teeth into his face.

Kevin automatically shot at the wolf as he watched it rip off the face of his friend. He futilely pulled the trigger on the empty gun and screamed in frustration. Chuck dropped his rifle and raised his hands toward the bloody meat hanging from what used to be his face.

The wolf left Chuck for his packmates and leapt toward Kevin. It knew the sound of an empty gun being fired and didn’t view the man as a threat.

Kevin shouted with fear and rage as he rammed the barrel of his gun down the open mouth of the wolf. The gun barrel penetrated deeply into the throat of the animal and Kevin lifted up with his gun and threw it off the narrow walkway.

Two wolves raised their heads from Chuck’s body. They looked surprised that this human had managed to defeat their packmate.

The ladder was behind Kevin and he turned around and ran for it, anticipating their sharp teeth removing his calf muscles. It only took him a few seconds to reach the ladder but he didn’t understand how he made it. They could have hauled him down before half a second was gone.

He climbed up six feet, still waiting for a wolf to jump up and haul him down. Kevin turned his head to see Chuck had managed to grab both of the wolves and hold onto them to give him the few seconds he needed. One of the wolves was now busy opening up Chuck’s throat while the other one was racing toward the ladder.

The wolf managed to use its momentum to partially climb the vertical ladder and clashed its teeth together inches from his boot. Kevin was panting with fear as he climbed the rest of the ladder and stepped into a room 40 feet above the ground.

This had been his group’s plan. Establish an inaccessible refuge high above the ground with enough food and water for six months. They had destroyed all the stairways in this building so the only access had been this tall ladder. They had been days away from being ready to move in permanently but the wolves had their own plan.

Kevin looked down at the wolves unsuccessfully trying to climb the ladder. In a rage he pushed the ladder away from the opening and heard yelps of pain as it fell on top of the swarming pack.

That hadn’t been very smart but it had felt good all the same. If he ever needed to leave his refuge, he would just have to figure it out.

“Thanks Chuck.” He swallowed and looked down at the wolves eating his friend. “Thanks for my life, buddy. I’m going to miss you. You were a good guy.”

He was frustrated by the inadequacy of his words and walked away from the opening. He felt a survivor’s guilt that sucked the energy out of him.

There was a sofa in the room and he collapsed onto it. He closed his eyes but could only see images of bloody fangs, swarming wolves and Chuck’s face being ripped off while he stood there with an empty gun.

His eyes snapped open when there was a faint sound in the room and something jumped onto the couch. How could they have got in? What had he missed?

His night vision made out the silhouette of a cat looking at him from the other end of the couch.

“Did we strand you up here when we took out the stairways? I’ll bet you’re hungry.”

Kevin swung his legs off the couch and found a tin of cat food in the food stores for his new roommate. The survivors had originally intended the cat food to be human food for themselves. He pulled the top off the tin and left the cat to its meal while he returned to the couch.

He was pathetically grateful for the company and felt better about his situation as he lay back down on the couch. When the cat finished its meal, it curled up on his chest and started to purr.

“Never thought I’d be a cat person.” He whispered to his new friend as he fell into an exhausted sleep.

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This story was written for the “Welcome to the Hinterland” collection.

The Strangeness Kit

Welcome to the Hinterland

Stores of every type offer gaudy displays of consumer items. Everything from clothing to appliances…

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3 months ago · 38 likes · 27 comments · A.P. Murphy and EJ Trask

Helena started to take pictures as soon as Hashima Island was a grey silhouette on the horizon. It really did look like a battleship from this far away. She steadily took pictures as more detail could be seen while the tourist boat approached the island.

She looked down as a Japanese woman in a wheelchair pulled up beside her at the railing and they smiled at each other.

“I noticed your camera.” The older woman said in perfect English with a complete of accent that made her sound like an AI program. “You must be a professional or someone with a very expensive hobby.”

Helena grinned and waggled her hand. “A little of both. I try to make money as a photographer but to be honest I still haven’t made enough to pay for my equipment.”

The woman nodded in sympathy and watched their boat pull up to dock at the abandoned island. “You’ve chosen a good place for your pictures. This island has many secrets and many dangers as well. Be careful where you wander.”

“Secrets? Do you have any good stories for me?”

The woman seemed pleased to have an audience for her story and the opportunity to put a scare into the gaijin tourist. “They didn’t close the island down because they ran out of coal to mine young woman. They closed the island down because they dug down too deep and unearthed something that should have remained buried.”

“And what was that? Godzilla taking a nap?” Helena laughed.

The smile slid off the woman’s face. “Godzilla? Is that all you Americans know? Japan has many monsters.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean …” Helena didn’t bother to finish her sentence as the woman spun around and propelled her wheelchair toward the large gangplank the crew had lowered between the boat and the island.

‘So much for making friends.’ Helena reflected as she followed the crowd of tourists onto the island.

She hung back from the guided tour until she was trailing far behind. It wasn’t easy to avoid the vigilant tour guides but she took advantage of the distraction provided when a kid tripped and scraped his knees.

Helena ducked away from the group while the little boy wailed his misery to the sky. As soon as she was safely out of sight, she hopped over the metal railing lining the path and entered the forbidden ruins of the island.

There were already numerous pictures taken of the island from tour groups like this one. She needed to break the law and enter the dangerous, condemned structures on the island to make this trip worth her while.

The interior of the apartment blocks were good but she wanted better. They were too clean. There was nothing left of the old tenant’s belongs like some furniture or a poignant child’s toy. Nothing that told a story.

She wandered around the apartment buildings until she found an entrance to the shuttered coal mines. This is where she wanted to be. No pictures had been taken of the mine works for decades. The Japanese government in particular wanted no journalists in the mines because of the politically embarrassing history of forced labour being used to mine coal.

Helena acknowledged safety was a legitimate concern as well as she tried to break in through a steel door. The above ground buildings were falling apart with tenacious greenery making inroads on crumbling concrete. Belowground was probably a deathtrap.

The small prybar she brought along finally levered the door open wide enough for her to slip through the gap and she stood still for a moment to let her eyes adjust to the darkness. She was surprised at what surrounded her. In sharp contrast to the cleaned-out apartment buildings, it was a chaotic mess in this entrance to the deep and winding mineshafts. It was a good thing she had stopped to let her night vision kick in or she would have tripped on the discarded equipment and clothing littering the floor.

“Mama likes.” She murmured as she used the light from the gap of her forced entry to take an entire roll of pictures. Boots, helmets, tools and lunch pails were scattered everywhere. This exit from the mines had the appearance of a panicked evacuation, not the orderly shutdown of a decommissioned mine.

Helena wandered toward a patch of light further away from the door as she automatically loaded a new roll of film. She was careful to watch her feet but still painfully scraped her shin on a piece of rebar sticking out of the concrete walls. The light was from an ominous crack in the ceiling and she swallowed nervously as she looked up at it, well aware of what would happen to her fragile little body if even a small chunk of concrete decided to fall on top of her.

She was overcome by an odd sense of vertigo that made her sway and brace her feet. The old coal mines extending over a kilometer deep into the Earth seemed to pull on her. The tunnels cut into the coal were so extensive they reached under the sea to connect to other islands and they dragged down on Helena like a riptide trying to suck her into deep water.

Helena shook her head abruptly and spoke loudly to break the spell. “One more roll and I’m getting the fuck out of here.” She was checking her light meter to see what illumination she had to work with when she noticed movement in her peripheral vision.

She looked toward the entrance to see the angry face of one of the young, female tour guides. Helena held up her hands in mock surrender. “Okay, okay. I’m sorry. I know I broke the rules. Just let me take …”

Her voice trailed off as the face approached her in the dark corridor. A face without a body, except for a bony spine that writhed like an angry snake underneath a disembodied head.

Its jaw dropped open and it moaned with hunger as it drew near. The sounds it made were truncated by its lack of lungs and air whistled through the severed windpipe in its shortened neck. The spine reached toward her as if it was extending a long, skeletal finger.

She took a step backward and dropped her light meter. The creature had circled around her and blocked her exit so the only place to run was into the labyrinth coal mines. The idea of entering the total darkness was almost more terrifying than the bony spine that was starting to circle around her upper arm.

Some of the best advice Helena had ever received was from a self defense instructor. ‘Push back your fear with anger. Fight like your life depends on it because it probably does.’ She twisted her arm away to avoid the spine as the sharp edges of vertebrae tore apart the sleeve on her windbreaker.

There was a metal lid sitting on top of an empty barrel of diesel fuel and she swung it at the head that was lunging at her with needle-like fangs that were impossibly long.

The monster caught her improvised weapon right in the teeth and across the face. Helena was pleased with its strangled heaves and gasps of pain. She ducked inside the doorway to a side room but found it a dead end jammed with filing cabinets and papers strewn all over the floor. Helena turned back toward the head as it drifted into the doorway while spitting out shards of broken teeth. A blur of motion told her about the spine that was whipping toward her.

She grabbed the spine by the lower vertebrae and held it tight despite the sharp edges of bone cutting into her palm. It turned its head around and opened its mouth wide to bite into her face but was pulled up short when Helena stretched the spine across the door frame and slammed the steel door on it.

The edge of the door hit a gap between the vertebrae and bit into the spinal cord. The monster’s head started to thrash uncontrollably as it shrieked a high-pitched yodel of pain and anger inches away from her face.

Helena ducked her head away from the spray of saliva and blood that came spitting out of the monster’s unhinged jaws and kept slamming the door while holding the spine in place. On the third slam there was a wet crack and the door severed the lower third of the spine.

She wiped her eyes clear from a jet of spinal fluid in time to see the creature lunging at her face again. Its scarlet eyes were bulging so prominently that they were starting to come out of their sockets. She managed to avoid the clashing splintered teeth by slipping unintentionally on loose paperwork and falling on her ass.

Helena desperately crab walked away from the monster but it seemed to have lost interest in her. It began to float away down the hall with clear fluid leaking out of its severed spinal cord. Its flight was no longer smooth and controlled but invoked the image of a small airplane about to fall out of the sky as it ran out of fuel. She hoped its injuries were fatal and it was looking for a corner to curl up and die.

She managed to take a couple of pictures before it disappeared but doubted they would show anything in this darkness. “Kicked your fucking ass!” Helena shouted after it before she slipped out the narrow entrance and into sunshine that had never been so glorious.

After she had reboarded the boat, Helena examined the torn windbreaker and her arm underneath it. There were some red scratches on the skin but no open blood. One of the tour guides had thoroughly bitched her out after she had rejoined the group but Helena had just laughed. She had come within inches of having her head bitten off, everything else was small potatoes.

She leaned on the ship’s railing and looked up Japanese monsters on her phone. The elderly Japanese woman had been right. There were a lot of different monsters in Japanese folklore. She realized she had encountered some version of a Nukekubi, a floating head looking for a body to possess. It would eat your head, suck out your spine and insert its own spine into your emptied slot like a disembodied rapist. Even if Helena’s Nukekubi was still alive at least it didn’t have enough of a spine left to fully control a new body.

Helena noticed the lady in the wheel chair further down the rail and approached her. “You were right. There is a monster on the island.”

The face that turned toward Helena wasn’t old anymore but that of a young woman with a recent wound across her face from the edge of a steel lid.

“Not anymore gaijin!”

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Night shifts were tough but they paid another 50 cents an hour and paying the bills was tough as well. James didn’t think working at an industrial laundromat would be hard until his first shift started. Pulling wet, tangled mats and uniforms out of the huge washers was exhausting. He was used to it by now but looked forward to the breaks so he could rest his aching muscles.

James entered the lunch room and looked for his buddy Norton whom he always called Mulder because he was a bit of a UFO nut. Mulder was goofy but James preferred his company to the other grim and unhappy people that worked the night shift.

He sat across from an excited looking Mulder who held up his phone towards James. “Look at this Jim! Right here in Winnipeg!”

“Hold the phone steady. I can’t read that. What’s got you so excited this time?”

Mulder snatched the phone away as if James was trying to grab it. “I’ll read it out to you. ‘CF-18s were dispatched to intercept an apparent UFO 50 kms North of Winnipeg. Local residents reported explosions and an apparent crash in the area. The military has cordoned off the area where the apparent crash took place.’ What do you think of that Mr. Skeptic? All of this happened 50 k’s away while we were working tonight.”

“Well, if it’s on the internet then it must be true. You know what I read on the internet last night?”

Mulder answered with an exasperated huff and a roll of his eyes.

“I read that everything on the internet is bullshit.”

“If that’s true then what you read is also bullshit.”

“That’s right, think it through.”

“No thanks Kirk. I saw that Star Trek episode too. You’re trying to make my head explode.”

James took a bite out of his cheese and tomato sandwich and talked around the mouthful. “Can’t do that. I’m dealing with a lack of combustible material.”

“Very funny. Soon as my shift is over me and Tanya are going to the cordoned area to take some videos.”

“Don’t push your luck with those soldiers, okay? Do what they say and don’t try to provoke a reaction so you can get a viral video.”

“Yes mother.”

James frowned and gave his friend a severe look. “I’m serious. Violence usually happens because some asshole thinks he’s being disrespected.”

“All right, all right. I’ll behave.”

He grunted his satisfaction with Mulder’s answer and they got down to the serious business of eating their 3 am meal before the 15 minute break was over.

James patted Mulder on the shoulder to say goodbye as they went their separate ways after the shift was over. It was seven in the morning in the middle of a Winnipeg winter. The sun hadn’t risen yet but pre-dawn light made the thick snow drifts start to glow.

It would have been a bloody cold morning for most human beings but James had grown up in Winnipeg and -20C felt normal to him. By his standards the lack of wind made this a pleasant morning.

He shaved a good 15 minutes off his walk home by cutting across the railroad tracks but that meant scaling the barbed wire-topped fence bordering the tracks. A quick look around told him no railway employees were in sight and he clambered up the chain link with the ease of experience. He was pushing down on the strands of barbed wire and swinging his leg over the top when he was distracted by a greyish lump sticking out of the snow.

He hissed with dismay when he tore out the crotch of his jeans on the barbed wire because he hadn’t been paying attention. He dropped down on the other side and was relieved to find the barbed wire hadn’t snagged anything organic.

The grey lump had distracted him because he saw it move while his kibble and bits were perilously suspended over barbed wire. Movement meant life and anything alive buried under the snow in this temperature wouldn’t be alive for much longer.

He stared at the lump of clothing for a few seconds as the selfish part of his brain reminded him how tired he was, and home was a ten minute walk away. The last time he’d tried to help a homeless person asleep in the snow it had been a woman who screamed at him and left a series of scratches across his face with her dirty, jagged nails.

It was tempting to keep walking home but his upper brain chastised him that if he fell that far down the evolutionary ladder, he might never climb back up.

The colour of the coat was an odd shade of bluish grey and it crinkled as he laid a gloved hand on it to give it a gentle shake.

“Hey, you’re going to freeze to death here. Let me walk you to a shelter. There’s one in a church a few blocks from here.”

A hairless head as grey as the coat looked up at him and two sets of eyelids slid back to reveal eyes that looked like black marbles. A mouth with no lips opened to reveal pointed teeth as the creature hissed at him.

James slowly blew out a mouthful of breath and put his hands on top of his head. He could already imagine Mulder gleefully shouting ‘I told you so!’ in his face.

He couldn’t decide what to do. He didn’t want to call the cops because they would search his name and find his convictions for gross bodily harm. Things always went downhill from there.

The creature continued to look at him but one set of eyelids lowered as if it didn’t have the strength to keep them open.

James didn’t know what this thing was but he knew what freezing to death looked like. The chalky grey skin was turning to blue and whatever this creature was, it was being pulled into a final sleep.

“Do not fucking bite me!” He said firmly as he brushed the snow away to completely reveal whatever he had stumbled upon. It struggled feebly as he picked it up but it seemed to calm down when he talked to it.

“I swear if you bite me, I’ll bite you back. Stop squirming around. It’s hard enough to carry you.” He estimated it wasn’t much taller than four feet tall and weighed around 80 lbs. Not too much of a load for a big guy like James but it would still slow him down enough to turn his 10 minute walk home into 20.

He didn’t like how cold and stiff this creature was and he worried it might not last another 20 minutes. James held it awkwardly with one arm, and opened his big winter coat so he could wrap it around his passenger and warm it up with his body heat.

“Watch the claws. Don’t tear my clothes, you grabby little weirdo,” he warned as its skinny arms wrapped around him and it started a contented clicking sound.

James was exhausted after his twenty minute walk home through the snow with his grey barnacle. “I must be outta my freaking mind.” He muttered as he fumbled with his house keys while trying not to drop his passenger.

It obviously liked getting inside the warmth of the house, judging by the increased frequency of the clicking sound.

“All right, let’s get you warmed up.” He carried it into the bathroom and filled the tub with warm water.

It smelled of urine as it struggled with him while he peeled off its clutching arms and started to remove its strange clothing.

“Yeah, yeah don’t get all freaked out. Your cloths are frozen and we need to get them off before I put you in the water. Don’t worry, I’m not into sex with aliens. I barely like sex with human beings.”

The creature calmed down and started that clicking sound again when he lowered it into the water. Out of curiosity he glanced at its naked crotch and was relieved to see no sign of a penis or any other type of equipment. This was awkward enough already.

“Hey, hey, stop adding so much hot water, you’re going to scald yourself.” He tried to turn off the hot water tap but it slapped his hand away and gave him an exasperated look as if he was an idiot.

“Fine, you wanna be a parboiled potato then knock yourself out. I’m already half asleep and I’m going to bed.”

Two hours later he was awoken by a rhythmic knocking on his front door and he gasped when he realized how hot he was. Somebody, or more accurately something, had cranked up the thermostat and turned his tiny house into an oven.

He wiped sweat off his forehead as he stumbled toward the front door to find two cops looking expectantly at him.

“Yeah?” He yawned and resisted the urge to scratch his suddenly itchy crotch.

“Sorry to bother you sir, but have you noticed anything strange in the last few hours?”

“Like what?”

“Well.” Both the cops looked embarrassed and shifted their feet to make crunching noises on the snow. “Like any small green men.”

“Yeah, sure.” He stopped himself from telling them the correct colour was grey. “Last month in December. He stole Christmas. Haven’t you guys caught him yet?”

One of the cops smirked while his partner looked confused. “We haven’t got him yet sir, but we’re closing in. Sorry to bother you. Have a nice day.”

James closed the door as they walked away.

“What was he talking about?”

“The grinch, dumbass. This house to house has got to be the stupidest goddamn search we’ve ever had to do.”

James turned away from the door to find his house guest leaning against a wall. She was looking a lot healthier and definitely warmer. Her skin colour had gone from a pale bluish-grey to a robust dark grey. He’d decided to call it a she since there was no genital evidence of the dangling kind when he put her in the tub.

He frowned and turned down the thermostat way down. “I can’t afford to heat this place like a greenhouse. If you’re cold then wear a sweater or something.”

She waited until he returned to the bedroom before returning the thermostat to its maximum setting.

That was their first squabble about the heat but it was far from the last. If Ripley (James picked the name) had her way the home would be 100F, while James liked it at 60F to save on money. Neither of them were happy with the compromise of 80F but a fair deal usually meant both sides were equally unhappy.

James had never made the decision to live with an extraterrestrial but life just happened that way for the next 20 years. He liked to bitch sometimes but from when she had first hugged her freezing body to him, Ripley’s safety and happiness became the focus of his life.

Communication between them improved quickly. She obviously understood English but couldn’t speak it. He picked up on her emotive smells. If she smelled like urine that meant she was pissed off. She emitted a pleasant smell of tangerines if she was happy. He was glad the smells weren’t reversed because an angry Ripley could make your eyes water.

She could read and write English but would get irritated any time he suggested she use written messages. They compromised on American sing language, which she seemed to enjoy using. When she got worked up about something her hands could really fly around but he got used to it.

Ripley was confused about James’ job and resented his long absences when he was working. The more time she spent reading books and articles on the net, the more exasperated she became with humanity in general. She often ended discussions by signing ‘Governments, Corporations, Religions, Bullshit!’ James learned to nod his head in meek agreement.

Cats and Ripley hated each other on first sight and dogs weren’t much better. But Ripley liked pets and James often woke up with snakes or lizards in the bed with him. They weren’t his idea of a cuddly pet but what are you gonna do?

The two of them figured out how Ripley could safely venture out in the world by turning her into a devout Islamic woman who wore a chador with a face veil. That had its down side when Ripley started to catch flak from anti-Islamic types, but that didn’t seem to bother her. Once some guy pushed her and he ended up in the hospital with third degree burns all over his hands. James had no idea what she did to the jackass and didn’t want to know.

Now that Ripley was more mobile the world became her oyster and she started working on James’ small, beat-up, old house and turned it into a well insulated high-tech wonder. The new heating system she installed was a mystery to James but now the house was a steady 80F and the heating bills stopped arriving, in fact all the utility bills did.

Ripley’s diet was initially a problem because she was a total carnivore and could only digest meat or blood. Meat was crazy expensive and James couldn’t afford to feed her properly. Ripley solved the problem during the first spring when she turned his small backyard into a garden.

It didn’t take long before she was growing different kinds of meat plants in the back yard. They all tasted like they were rancid to James but he dutifully ate the meals Ripley made for him. It was just one of the many things he did to keep the house smelling like tangerines.

After twenty years together he came home to find Ripley seated in their living room with two other creatures like her. He didn’t like the smells or the body language and stepped protectively in front of Ripley.

“What’s going on here, Ripley? Are they threatening you? Do you want me to throw them out on their ass?”

The fingers on the stranger’s hands started to glow yellow and Ripley flooded the air with a pungent smell of urine. She jumped out of her chair and directed a series of pops and clicks at the strangers that obviously scared them.

She turned toward James and started to sign frantically. ‘Please, Leave, Please, Safe, Safe, Leave, Please.’

He stepped back and gave a meaningful glare at the other two aliens before leaving. “If you say so but I’ll be back in an hour.”

An hour later he found an empty house and it was still empty the next day. He began to realize that she wasn’t coming back after a couple of days. She could be out of the solar system by now for all he knew.

It felt like he was grieving. He believed Ripley was still alive but she was gone and their life together had died. He missed her so much it was like a stone in his gut.

He continued to maintain the garden even though her weird meat-plants still tasted like crap. It was crap he was used to and it was all he had left of her.

He was kneeling in the dirt weeding when a familiar small figure knelt down beside him. When he started to cry, she pushed him roughly on the shoulder. He turned to watch her point at him and then sign ‘Idiot.’

James wiped at his eyes and laughed while Ripley smelled like tangerines.

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Endings are weird but it’s Valentine’s Day and this was the last story for ‘Loving the Alien.’ When Nathan and I were kicking around the idea we wanted to keep it open to whatever interpretation authors wanted to go with and I’m glad we did. The stories covered love, lust and romance with versions of ‘Alien’ that I would never have thought of. Thank you to everyone who contributed and what a wild ride! For anyone that’s read this far down (sorry my stories are usually shorter than this) you can find what the other 13 authors created by clicking the index below.

Nathan Hatch

'Loving the Alien'

Whatever Loving the Alien 💚👽 means to you…

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4 months ago · 50 likes · 47 comments · Nathan Hatch and Norm DePlume

The veterinarian carefully probed Smokey’s abdomen and looked at Saul with a concerned frown. “There’s definitely a large mass here Mr. Lucchese.”

Saul cleared his throat and gently stroked his small grey cat. “So, it’s cancer then.”

“We can’t be sure without tests. An MRI would be best and we can treat your cat with chemotherapy and additional medication if it turns out to be cancer. With luck you and Smokey could have another two or three years together. We need you to sign some forms before we proceed.”

He was about to ask for the forms when he noticed the veterinary technician in the room wouldn’t look him in the eye. He wasn’t sure but his gut told him she was ashamed about something.

“I’ll have to think about it first.”

“Don’t take too long Mr. Lucchese. We don’t want Smokey to suffer.”

Saul’s bullshit meter immediately started to flash red. He gave the veterinarian a hard look and Saul Lucchese was a hard man. “Like I said. I’ll need to think about it.”

The veterinarian shifted away from him nervously. “Call the front desk when you come to a decision then.”

He carefully loaded his elderly cat back into the crate as he was left alone in the examining room. He placed a big, calloused hand on Smokey’s back and rubbed his thumb between her ears while the cat purred.

“Don’t worry Smokey. We’ll figure things out.”

He waited patiently in the front room with Smokey’s crate on his lap. People came and went with their pets and staff would come out of the back rooms to use the computers. When the vet tech he had noticed before was busy at one of the computers he approached her while carrying Smokey with him.

“I would like to hire you as a veterinary consultant for ten minutes miss. Would that be okay with you?”

She looked up at him with surprise and glanced cautiously at some of the other people that were working at reception. “That wouldn’t be appropriate Mr. Lucchese.”

“I can understand that. How about I buy you some lunch instead? You choose the place.”

The vet tech looked back at him and was about to refuse but changed her mind when she saw the sadness in his lined face.

“I’m taking my lunch break now.” She told one of the women at the clinic and picked up her coat and purse.

The restaurant she chose was a block away and after they had given the waitress their orders Saul tucked a hundred dollar bill under her coffee cup.

“That’s for ten minutes of your time.”

“I can’t …”

“You don’t have bills to pay? Of course, you can and it’s worth it to me as long as you give me straight answers. What should I do with Smokey?”

The young woman stared at him for a moment and twisted an engagement around her finger. Saul wondered what her fiancé looked like and if he was treating her right.

“Your cat has cancer Mr. Lucchese. She’s seventeen and she is probably in the last weeks of her life. All the tests are bullshit and so is the treatment. It would have cost you ten thousand dollars and made your cat’s last days a misery.”

Saul nodded slowly. His expression didn’t change but he was trying to control a savage burst of anger. He didn’t care about losing ten G’s but the idea of being emotionally manipulated and especially that Smokey would have suffered put him in a murderous rage. He knew the feeling because Saul had murdered seven people, so far.

“What should I do?”

She was so moved by how lost this granite faced man sounded that she leaned forward and placed her hand on his. “Your cat would want to stay at home with you, not in a cage in a vet’s office. When my cat was dying, I kept him home and made sure he wasn’t in any pain until I knew it was time and sent him along with an overdose.”

Saul reluctantly pulled his hand from hers and removed a wallet from the breast pocket of his suit. He emptied the wallet and handed her ten 100 dollar bills.

“Could you please get what I need and tell me what dosages I need to use.”

“I can’t take this.”

“You can. It’s all the cash I’ve got on me or I’d give you more. It’s worth it to me. Smokey is … Smokey is my only friend.”

Tonight was Saturday night and a mandatory meeting for Saul and six other Capos in this Brooklyn neighbourhood. He had become increasingly disenchanted with some of the young guys and Saturday nights had become the worst night of the week for him. When he had been a young man working his way up the organization he used to look forward to seeing the boys on Saturday.

“C’mon Saul, drink up! You’re drinking like a little bitch over there. Next thing we know you’ll be joining AA.”

Saul raised his eyes from the table to look back at Antonio. The puffed up little pissant would go nuts if you dared to call him by the informal name Tony. “Not feeling so good. Don’t feel like drinking.”

“Oh right, you’re feeling bad about your stupid cat. Poor little Saul is crying about his little pussy.”

Saul pretended to smile at rubbed at the knuckles of his right hand. He had made the mistake of telling someone he was taking Smokey to the vets and now everyone knew. Antonio was eager to grab at any chance to mock Saul because he was jealous of Saul’s reputation for ruthless competence.

“Shut up Antonio.” One of the other Capos snapped. “I was broken up when my German Shephard died. You don’t know what it’s like to own a pet.”

“What is this? The View? We all gonna cry about our widdle pets like a bunch of menopausal bitches? Aww, poor little Saul’s pussy is sick. Tell you what Saul. I’ll call one of my girls over here and you can play with her pussy.”

Saul smiled until his teeth showed. “You’re funny Tony. You’ve always been funny, haven’t you?” Saul’s tone loaded multiple definitions into the word ‘funny.’

“My name is Antonio!”

“Your name is whatever I say it is.”

Antonio stood up and moved toward Saul but without any conviction. Everyone at the table knew what would happen if an angry Saul got his hands on him. He seemed relieved when someone held him back while he shouted at Saul.

Saul ignored Antonio’s empty threats and pulled his chair away from the table. “Going out for some fresh air.” He muttered and left the private room in the nightclub. Instead of heading for the exit, he entered the bathroom where he went into a toilet booth and sat on the lid for awhile behind the closed door.

This had been his life for twenty years now and he was good at it but he was finally realizing how much he hated it. He cared more about his sick cat at home than he did for all the men in the room he’d just left. They were all ruthless sharks constantly swimming, scamming and stealing to make money they would then blow out their ass in an expensive nightclub like this.

His heart was broken that Smokey was dying but he felt nothing for the people in his life. He didn’t know if there was something wrong with him but he suspected it was because his life was garbage.

He started to cry silently and pulled out toilet paper to wipe his eyes and blow his nose. Showing weakness like this in front of the boys could be tantamount to a death sentence.

Saul decided that after Smokey died it was time for a new life. He had been smart and saved his money so that was an option for him. He would leave New York and settle in small city somewhere in the middle of the country. Start up an honest business, like supplying car parts for guys that still fixed their own cars. He knew more about cars than just how to steal them and ship them overseas.

Maybe in time he could find a nice woman like that vet tech who would hold his hand when he was hurting. He didn’t care what she might look like.

After he stopped crying, he opened the door to the stall and washed his face with cold water at one of the sinks. He looked up at the mirror to see a startled Antonio zipping up as he turned away from a urinal.

“Saul. You know I was just busting your balls, right?”

“Busting balls? That sounds like fun, maybe I should give it a try.”

“Take it easy, take it easy. We’re both made guys.”

Saul felt the anger drain out of him as quickly as it came. What was the point of one less asshole in the world? There would always be another Antonio. He left the bathroom without another word.

Something felt wrong and it woke him up. He flipped down the footrest on his lazy boy while his fuzzy mind tried to figure out what was out of place. Saul realized the familiar warmth on his chest where Smokey always slept was absent.

“Smokey, where are you girl?”

He stood up and listened for a moment until he heard a scratching from near the back door. He followed the sound to find Smokey inside the litterbox scratching at the litter and vainly trying to pee. She looked up him and meowed piteously.

“Hey Smokey. That’s okay, don’t worry about that. You’ve always been a good girl about using the litter box. You’ve always been a good girl.” She felt weightless as he picked her up. She hadn’t wanted to eat anything yesterday or this morning either. He knew it was bad when she had no interest in an open can of tuna that would usually have her winding around his legs in excitement.

Saul held her with one hand as filled up a syringe with five times the dosage of pain killer that he had been giving her. “Here we go. This will make you feel better old girl.”

He settled himself on the familiar lazy boy with Smokey perched on his stomach and flipped up the foot rest. Smokey looked up at him with cloudy, confused eyes.

“Whoops! That’s all right girl. I don’t care if you piss on me. I hope that makes you feel better. Here we go, let’s get you up on my chest so you’re not sitting in urine. I can change my shirt later.”

He put his large, thick hands on top of the emaciated cat to keep her warm and was gratified to hear Smokey start to purr.

“Everything’s gonna be okay, Smokey. Everything’s gonna be okay.”

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This is a horror story

Devin sincerely hoped his dreams would never come true. His dreams were unsettling on a good night. On a bad night they were so bad his chest ached with strain from the pounding of his terrified heart.

“You okay Dev?” His fiancé Jean asked as he untangled himself from the cot.

“Yeah, yeah just bad dreams again. Same old, same old.”

“Maybe it was the Black Widow visiting your dreams. You should do an interview for our podcast. God knows we don’t have anything else to use.”

Devin gave his best friend Aiden a sideways glance that was not friendly. “No.”

“Aw come on man. We’ve got nothing. You look like you’ve seen a ghost already, just play it up.”

“Fuck off Aiden.” He snapped. “Gotta’ use the can.” He muttered to Jean and turned around to leave the living room.

They both gave him the look that he had been seeing a lot of since they’d been staying at the Black Widow House. The look that said his behaviour was unacceptable, that he was an outsider. The look that made him feel like Jean and Aiden were a couple and he was a third wheel.

The house was a derelict wreck but it had working bathrooms because the town often rented it out to customers like the three young people staying there. Their ‘Haunted America’ podcast was fighting a declining viewership and they had hoped to get some good content from one of the most famous haunted houses in the U.S.

It had been a bust. Even your standard deserted house had the usual creaks and groans so they could look wild-eyed at the camera and yelp ‘Oh my God! What was that?’. The Black Widow House was so quiet it was unnatural. It didn’t even have mice.

Devin looked at his face in the cracked bathroom mirror and his mood plunged further. He was only 25 but he looked over 40. These dreams were killing him.

He was tired of the whole supernatural business. Pretending rust stains were blood stains and the sound of the wind was the moaning of a ghost. It was such a load of B.S. Until it wasn’t.

A warm breath of air tickled his ear. “Did you see them, Devin? They’re so … close, aren’t they? I saw them together when you were asleep. He was between her legs all night long.”

Devin closed his eyes tightly. He wanted to tell her to shut up but if he answered the voice, it would make her even more real. The Black Widow was describing exactly what he had been dreaming last night. Aiden between Jean’s outstretched legs, all night long.

“I know it hurts Devin. I loved my husband so much until I found out he was screwing anything with a pulse. I know your pain.”

He jerked his head away when he felt unseen fingers trail down his face. “Forget her Devin, stay with me. I know your darkness. It’s where I live.”

Devin scrabbled at the old doorknob and then shouldered the door open to get away. He had never felt her touch before. It had been cold, sickening but it had still aroused him.

He needed to get out of the damned house. As soon as he stepped past the threshold Devin had felt her longing, her loneliness, her desire for a young man that had been promised to another.

He said nothing about it to Jean and Aiden. People liked to pretend they were understanding but he knew what happened to those who were labelled as crazy. They became pariahs because they represented the loss of sanity that everyone was afraid of. Crazy people lost their jobs, became homeless and then they weren’t people anymore. They were an unpleasant problem that no one wanted to solve.

He lurched unsteadily into the living room and stared at Jean and Aiden sitting together on the couch looking at a laptop. They were so close to each other their shoulders were touching.

“Hey Devin. Jean and I were checking out all the footage we took last night while you were sleeping. There’s nothing we can use. This place is the most unhaunted house I’ve ever seen.”

Devin leaned his back against the doorway when the room started to tilt. He wanted to scream out ‘The ghost in this house is ripping my mind apart!’ but instead he bit his lip so hard that a round drop of blood appeared on his mouth.

“Oh yeah, so that’s what you two were doing? Taking footage all night long?”

Jean frowned at him and looked annoyed. “What else would we be doing Devin?”

“No. I don’t. I don’t know what I’m saying. I think I’m sick. I need to get out of this house.” He put both hands on the doorway and pulled himself out of the living room.

At the back door he could feel icy hands clawing at his shoulders and he twisted away from them. “Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.” The Widow sobbed in his ear.

It felt like he had dropped a heavy backpack when he staggered out of the back porch. His mind started to clear but it still felt damaged as if it had been dragged behind a truck.

The thick brush behind the house felt like a green fortress that protected him from the Widow’s relentless assault. The locals called her the Black Widow because she wore nothing but black after she found her husband raping the maid. Their bodies had been discovered buried in the back yard along with the bodies of four young men she had lured into the house after her husband was gone.

The legend was that her ghost still ensnared young men that were unfortunate enough to enter the house. Devin had been stupid to enter, feeling safe behind a wall of skepticism. At least he had been able to escape before she sunk her hooks too deeply into him.

He hadn’t been able to use the bathroom because he ran away from her touch and now his full bladder was demanding his attention. He gasped in pain as he urinated against a tree. It felt like his urethra was lined with broken glass and his stream of urine was dark red with blood.

“You bitch.” He hissed and wondered how the Widow had inflicted this revenge on him. He had little doubt this was some supernatural form of the clap.

‘What now?’ He wondered as he gingerly zipped up his pants. With his mind free from the Widow’s influence, he realized that he could never go into that house again. Jean and Aiden were probably wondering what the hell his problem was and he wanted to tell them exactly what had occurred now that the Widow wasn’t feeding his paranoia.

He decided to wait in the car. Their rental time was almost up anyway and Jean and Aiden could see him in the car from the house.

When he emerged from the bushes, he noticed some movement in one of the windows of the house. It was Jean looking at him with concern.

Devin stepped closer to the house so he could see her better and raised his hand in a wave. She smiled broadly and waved back at him. He noticed a shadow advancing on Jean from behind. His imagination told him the Widow was going to kill Jean as punishment for his rejection.

He started to run back into the house to protect Jean but stopped when he saw it was only Aiden behind Jean. Aiden looked at Devin while he cupped Jean’s breasts and started to kiss her neck. Jean continued to smile at Devin while she arched her back and grinded against Aiden’s crotch.

Devin stared at the scene in the window with his mouth open. It was true. He wasn’t crazy. His best friend and his fiancé. The betrayal was like an electric shock that short circuited his ability to reason.

Devin entered the back porch and picked up a heavy chair leg from a broken chair. “Slut! Bastard! Revenge!” He chanted as he crossed the short distance to the living room. But it wasn’t his voice. He exerted his own will with a massive effort and stopped himself before he entered the living room.

He fell to his knees as the Widow pushed herself into his mind and he raised the chair leg like a club. He pushed back against her dominance and forced the makeshift club to hit himself in the head. It was a glancing blow but he could feel the Widow’s influence ebb away. He could feel her anger at his attempt at resistance.

Her voice came flooding back into his mind as the pain from the blow faded. “No! You’re mine you little bitch! I want you. I want you.” He pulled the club back to hit himself again. He would either drive her out of his mind or he would kill himself. Either outcome was acceptable to him.

“Jesus Christ Devin! What are you doing?” Aiden’s strong arms pinned him from behind.

“No! She’s taking over again. Let me go! Get me the fuck out of this house!”

He struggled against Aiden’s hold in a frenzy and they both fell backward. Aiden’s head cracked against the corner of the doorframe and Devin was free.

Devin gripped the club hard and he steeled himself to keep hitting his own head until she was gone. He looked up to see Jean in the doorway looking at him in a state of shock. His mouth moved but it wasn’t his voice that emerged.

“You’ve been fucking my best friend you slut!” Her face displayed micro expressions of emotion as the club rose and fell. Surprise, anger, fear, sadness and then there was a crunching sound. She fell face first onto the yellowed linoleum covering the floor.

Devin looked at her corpse and didn’t understand what happened, then his shame and revulsion of what he had done drove the Widow’s influence back. He remembered seeing Jean at the window wearing a black dress and grinding against Aiden. Jean had never worn black in her life. Her wardrobe was as sunny and bright as her personality.

He hugged Jean to his chest and cried like a lost child. Pieces of her skull shifted under his hand. “I love you! I love you! Don’t leave me!”

“Stop your wailing! Do you think Aiden was the only one she was screwing? You gave her what she deserved.”

“No! Even if that was true, I would never have hurt her. I would never have killed her.”

“It was all your decision. Do you think I don’t know the darkness inside you? It’s why I love you. It’s why I’m the only one who will ever love you.”

Devin was able to gently lay Jean’s body back on the floor before his eyes rolled back in his head and he passed out. He revived a short time later when he was smashing Aiden’s head into a collapsed balloon of gore. Devin recoiled and dropped the club.

“I finished him off for you lover. What kind of friend would seduce your fiancé and use her like a whore.”

“You got what you wanted. Stop lying to me. Aiden was my best friend since Junior High. Jean was the kindest and most honest person I ever met. I loved her and she loved me. This has all been bullshit.”

“Don’t be naïve. Love is noble and it’s brutal, it distorts and deranges.” A cold, wet tongue circled inside his ear and he shivered. “Stay with me Devin and I’ll give you the love you deserve. I’ll never leave you.”

She yanked on his hair and his neck arched painfully backward. Her voice changed to a hoarse shriek. “And you’ll never leave me!”

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“I’d like to be under the sea. In an octopus’s garden in the shade. Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la.” Godzilla had a horrifically bad singing voice but no one living in Monster Island would dare to tell him that. He loved to sing and if someone didn’t like it, he would melt their face off.

Godzilla was in a good mood this morning because he had come to a decision. He didn’t like to interfere in the human world and preferred to stay in his cozy home on the island, especially since he’d changed internet providers. But last night he had finally made the decision to emerge from his peaceful cocoon and Rock the Casbah by giving Tokyo a visit.

The ground shook as he walked steadily toward the bay. The rest of the monsters gave him a wide berth. Godzilla was usually easy to get along with but he could get a little crazy when he was on the warpath.

He groaned with contentment as he swam into deep water and the constant ache in his lower back eased. 110 tons was a lot of weight even for a spine as thick as Godzilla’s. It would probably help if he lost a dozen tons or so but moderation wasn’t his strongpoint when he was chowing down on giant squid.

On his way to Tokyo, he would occasionally surface when he heard a ship on the water overhead. He wanted Tokyo to know he was coming so they had time to evacuate before he showed up and started knocking buildings down.

One of the ships was a luxury cruise ship and he had a little fun scaring the hell out of the tourists by slapping the water and giving them all a thorough soaking. That would give them a good story to tell the in-laws when they got home.

Tokyo had obviously been given enough warning judging by the empty streets he saw when he emerged from the harbour. To his right was a taped off area for the Godzilla fans that had started to appear way back in the 70’s.

They started to go crazy when he showed up and waved frantically at him while chanting slogans. Some of them decided this experience was more terrifying than fun and ran away.

He yodeled a high pitched roar for the sake of his fans and they went wild. He noticed a group of young girls holding up a banner that proclaimed ‘We Heart Godzilla’ and he gave them a sly, little wink to make their day.

‘Time to get down to business.’ He decided and waded ashore. He winced as the law of gravity reasserted itself on his lower back.

Godzilla wasn’t an architect but he knew what he liked and what he didn’t like. He stomped toward some soulless high rises that hadn’t been here last time. He glanced back at his fans to make sure they were at a safe distance before he gave one of the new buildings a good bump with his shoulder.

‘Huh, ugly but well made.’ He acknowledged when the building swayed but didn’t go down. A swipe of his enormous tail finished it off and he proceeded to demolish a couple more of the new skyscrapers.

He honked with irritation when he felt a stinging pain in his rear end. ‘Somebody didn’t get the memo.’ Godzilla realized when he swiveled on one foot to turn around and see a platoon of tanks shooting at him. They must have been shooting depleted uranium anti-tank shells because they were stinging even him.

It sounded like Godzilla was roaring again but he was actually singing as he proceeded to recycle the tanks into scrap metal. “You don’t pull on Superman’s cape.” A little blast of radioactive breath cooked the crew of the closest tank. “You don’t spit into the wind.” He booted one of the tanks so far it almost reached the harbour. “You don’t pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger.” A sweep of his tail sent another tank crashing into the fifth floor of a nearby building. “And you don’t mess around with Jim.” Godzilla finished off the last tank by stomping it into the subway system.

“You morons can call me Jim!” He roared as more tanks arrived but they quickly made a U-turn when their commander decided today wasn’t a good day to die after all.

‘Good! Common sense prevails.’ He thought to himself as he backhanded another building into rubble. He wasn’t really here to punish the Japanese but if anyone wanted to pick a fight with Godzilla he would accommodate them.

Godzilla rubbed his aching lower back as he assessed the skyline. He didn’t like to knock down a building that appealed to him. Modern architecture could be so banal and he appreciated a building that had a little vision.

The buildings closest to him received his stamp of approval. In his opinion Tokyo had the best skyline of all the large cities. He could see a crummy looking upright box of a building in the distance but he didn’t want to walk that far.

He was on the verge of heading for the sea and the comforts of home when he saw a gigantic form as tall as himself approaching. Godzilla hoped it was King Kong again. He owed that tricky ape a good ass-whipping after double K tried to shove a tree trunk down his throat the last time they scrapped.

Godzilla sighed with disappointment as an obviously nervous Ultraman emerged from behind a skyscraper. They were sending a boy to do a man’s job. This was an insult.

The Japanese tried their best with the Ultraman project but the concept was fundamentally flawed. Sure, Ultraman was 400 ft tall and strong and all that but he was still a 400 ft tall human being. Godzilla was a heavily armoured, radioactive fire breathing monster. A human being the same height still didn’t have a chance.

Ultraman started to flap his arms around as if he was making a Bullshido video and Godzilla grumbled with laughter. Somebody should have told the guy this was going to be a fight and not Dancing with the Stars.

Godzilla’s massive leg muscles bunched and launched the 110 ton King of the Monsters straight into an astonished and totally unprepared Ultraman. He slammed into the skyscraper behind him and his legs went flying out from under him as the building collapsed.

Godzilla considered roasting Ultraman with a little radioactive salutation but he felt sorry for his overmatched opponent. He watched the dazed man pull himself up from the wreckage and stagger toward him with raised fists.

He ducked under a windmilling right hand and pushed Ultraman against a building with his shoulder. Godzilla preferred to work the body with his relatively short arms. A short left to the ribs rocked Ultraman and the right that quickly followed sank deeply into his abdomen.

Godzilla shook his head with disgust as he stepped back and watched Ultraman sink to the ground while he hooted for breath. This idiot’s gut was as soft as his brain. He had obviously been trained to ‘pretend’ to fight and had never been in a real fight in his life.

He contemptuously spat out some radioactive phlegm and swatted Ultraman with his tail to send him flying out of eyesight. The clown better not show up again or he’d give him something to cry about. Godzilla blamed the whole gentle parenting trend, people today were a bunch of whining crystal figurines.

‘Time to go.’ He decided and turned around to retrace his footsteps. His heart wasn’t in it anymore and the joy had gone out of smashing any more buildings. Tokyo had taken enough of a shellacking. The remnants of the armed forces wisely kept their distance since he was obviously leaving.

Godzilla had accomplished his goal and wanted to return home before the Japanese did something stupid like sending the Power Rangers after him. Those kids were so bad they made Ultraman look like Mike Tyson in his prime.

There was his fan club again at the harbour, going nuts but still politely remaining behind the fragile length of police tape. He would always have a soft spot for the Japanese. They really got him. They never harboured a grudge about all the property damage and inevitable casualties. They understood the importance of sacrifice for the greater good and they knew how to have a good time while remaining civilized.

Before re-entering the water, he stopped and put on a little show for them. The usual roaring and waving of the arms, even a little skyward blast of atomic breath. They ate it up like candy and he smiled as he sank under the waves.

There had been no more world wars since World War II and a lot of historians believed this was because of the nuclear deterrent. Godzilla knew the nuclear deterrent wasn’t enough, not when nations kept electing fascist morons. Tokyo was a warning. He would have preferred to stomp Moscow into rubble today but the Japanese would have lost face if he skipped Tokyo. There were traditions to honour.

The real nuclear deterrent was 400 ft tall and had halitosis that could melt a skyscraper in half. Putin would either back off with the nuclear sabre rattling or Godzilla would be taking the long swim up the Moskva River before popping up at the walls of the Kremlin. He would level every single building inside the walls of the Kremlin before dumping a pile of radioactive solid waste right in the middle of Red Square.

He liked to call it the Big G deterrent and it was simple. Get along or Godzilla would give you a spanking and nobody could give a spanking like the Big G.

Bloody humans. They created music, art, literature and movies but they were a bunch of quarrelsome, self- destructive knobs at times.

He sighed as he started to swim back to Monster Island for a well-deserved nap. Bloody humans. They drove him crazy but he loved them anyway.

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Roderick Parker lived a directionless life of low paying jobs and high rent until he found his passion in his early twenties. At the age of 23 he was wandering through a park and contemplating what game he could afford to buy on Steam when he realized the trees around him were filled with crows.

He’d never really thought much about crows or any bird for that matter unless one of them took a dump on his head. These crows demanded his attention because they were scary as hell.

There was a dead crow on the path ahead and the rest of the crows were perched in trees surrounding the ragged-looking corpse. It sounded to him as if they had been talking. They became quiet and all of them turned their heads to look at him as if he were intruding.

“Sorry.” He apologized and immediately felt stupid for talking to a bunch of birds but the menacing atmosphere seemed to abate. Roderick turned around and left the way he came.

He had found his passion and his passion was crows, or as he would later say ‘my passion is corvids.’ Later he would figure out that he had stumbled upon a crow funeral and he would take videos of a number of funerals, as well as writing articles trying to explain this extraordinary behaviour. Roderick became so obsessed with studying crows and ravens that his online friends gave him the nickname ‘Poe Parker.’ His real-life friends didn’t call him anything because he didn’t have any.

Parker had spent many evenings watching blood-soaked horror movies that didn’t make much of an impression on him except to occasionally make him laugh. His encounter with the crow funeral had brushed aside his Gen Z cynicism and grabbed him by the lower intestines. It was real and so was the sense of menace he felt. The brief communication he experienced with the murder of crows was real. His fascination with corvids was real and the rest of the world didn’t matter anymore. It never had anyway.

The bus came to a stop with a hiss of air brakes and woke him up from a shallow doze. He yawned loudly and looked out the window with curiosity at the small town of Crested Butte, Colorado. He had never travelled much before he was 23 but now his studies of corvids sent him all across the country. Finding deals on cheap bus and train travel had become a necessary skill.

He retrieved his backpack form the luggage compartment under the bus when the friendly bus driver handed it to him.

“You in Crested Butte to do a little camping buddy?”

“I’m here to study the ravens but I guess camping will be part of that.”

“Ravens?” A middle aged woman said as she waited for her suitcase. “I live here and I can tell you shit that you wouldn’t believe.”

Roderick doubted that but he was thrilled to find a possible interview almost before he left the bus. “I would love to hear any story you would like to tell me. Would it be okay if I record it?”

“Record it? Why? Are you some kind of reporter?”

“I have a website about corvids. I post articles and videos, stuff like that.”

“Website huh. How many followers?”

“112.” He announced proudly.

“Wow! 112 in a world of 8 billion people. All right, you can record me. I was worried I might get famous and then I’d have to get a facelift and a boob job.” The woman and the bus driver shared a laugh together while she lit a cigarette.

She blew smoke out the side of her mouth while Roderick pulled out his phone to record her. “So, I’ve got myself a nice little greenhouse to grow vegetables ‘cause the deer and rabbits will get at them if I had a regular garden. Last week my dog started barking like crazy and I go outside to find a flock of ravens…”

“An unkindness.”

“Say what?”

“A flock of ravens is called an unkindness, or a treachery or conspiracy.”

“No shit. Stop interrupting me Einstein.”

“So, this unkind flock of ravens figured out how to unlatch the door to my greenhouse and they’re trashing my poor garden and dive bombing my bloody dog. It was like outta’ that old Hitchcock movie ‘The Bards.’”

“The Birds.”

“That’s what I said Einstein.”

“Lots of people in town have stories like that.” The bus driver volunteered. “The ravens are going crazy this year.”

“Thank you for telling me your story.”

The woman waved him away. “Yeah, whatever.”

Roderick entered the forest and walked toward its center. When he’d wandered his way through town he had interviewed four other people with raven stories. All the stories had a common theme. The ravens were in large numbers and they were acting like a gang of kids playing destructive pranks on Halloween. In one house they had broken through a screen window and started tearing the wall paper off the walls.

Ravens didn’t normally congregate in large numbers like crows but it wasn’t unheard of. Ravens usually mated for life and lived as couples but young ravens that hadn’t found a mate yet would sometimes gather in large numbers. They were basically a gang of rowdy teenagers and that’s how they were acting.

What was happening in Crested Butte was extreme though and it seemed to be escalating. They were stealing keys, dropping small rocks on people and mimicking dog barks as if they were mocking the dogs that were barking at them. It was almost like they were flaunting their intelligence.

Roderick found a good spot and extended the legs for the tripod his camera would rest on. There were so many ravens in this stretch of isolated woods they would sometimes form a murmuration above the tree line, something previously unheard of with ravens.

He adjusted the focus on his camera and had an excellent shot of trees thick with ravens. They weren’t flying anymore but appeared to be waiting for something. Roderick was fairly sympatico with ravens by now and he thought their collective mood was restless and sullen. This was odd behaviour for a number of reasons and he was excited that he might be recording something that he’d never been seen before.

It was anticlimactic when a single raven arrived and apparently this was what the conspiracy of ravens had been waiting for. Roderick zoomed in to get a closer shot of what was a very old raven. It had a large mane of neck feathers that were starting to turn grey from the original glossy black.

There was a muttering of squawks from the assembly of young ravens and the ancient raven raised its head and emitted a series of oddly pitched calls. He guessed this was the raven equivalent of ‘shut the fuck up’ because that’s exactly what they did.

Roderick excitedly double checked the power on his camera’s battery. This was language on a scale he had never seen before and he had seen a number of extraordinary things. The elder raven proceeded to bitch out this gang of unruly young ravens that had been attracting unwanted attention. The younger ravens ducked and bobbed as if their mama was slapping them on the back of their heads.

Parker realized he was recording what was essentially the Rosetta Stone of raven language. There had been increasing proof that ravens had a sophisticated language but it was still widely dismissed as simple mimicry. His recording would provide irrefutable proof.

A cloud moved away from the sun and light flashed against the lens of the camera. The senior raven spotted the flash and stared directly at where Roderick was recording him. The elder screeched a command and the trees turned into a black cloud of beak and talon that billowed toward him.

Parker snatched his camera off the tripod and ran for his life. He ran into the thickest patch of brush he could see but it didn’t save him. The ravens had been playing when they created mayhem in Crested Butte and there had been almost no injuries. The rules were different now as Roderick found out when long talons raked the back of his skull.

He stumbled and the camera flew out of his hands to shatter on the ground. He had less than a second to feel upset over the loss of his camera before the ravens started to tear into him as if he were a battleship at Pearl Harbor in 1941.

His head and shoulders were raked so many times he almost didn’t notice the ravens that had landed on his legs and started to tear out chunks of tendon and muscle. He arched his back in agony when one of the ravens plunged its beak into his leg and pulled out a tendril of nerve tissue.

He tried to fight back and grab at the large birds with his hands but other ravens had also been busy dissecting his shoulder joints so that his arms flopped around like useless appendages.

Blood trickled into his eyes from wounds on his head that left behind only small patches of skin and hair. He lay on his back and gasped shallow, reluctant breaths as he bled out from the hundreds of wounds on his mutilated body. The pain was so intense it felt like a spiritual experience.

The treachery of ravens had settled onto branches of the surrounding trees as they watched the elder raven land on his chest and look searchingly at his face.

Roderick wished he could wipe the blood out of his eyes with his useless hands as he looked back at the raven through a red masque. The bird was not practiced at speaking English and struggled to communicate a single word to Parker. “For-bid-an.”

He stared into its bright, shining eyes and understood. The elder raven knew how dangerous it would be if humans found out that ravens were much more intelligent than originally suspected. His species could be wiped out by a human race that habitually wiped out anything they thought was a threat or what they didn’t understand.

Roderick weakly cleared his throat and swallowed some blood that had started to accumulate in his esophagus. He managed to hoarsely whisper a single word in reply.

“Nevermore.”

The raven bobbed its head in agreement and seemed relieved this unfortunate human understood. Its beak plunged through the corner of Roderick’s eye and penetrated his brain.

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Neil was under pressure, hydraulic pressure. His keys were already in his hand as he climbed the steps up to his apartment. He shoved the key in his lock and shouldered the door open as he rushed toward his tiny bathroom. The three beers he drank at Josie’s Bar were knocking on the exit door of his bladder.

His pants were already down to his knees when he entered the bathroom to find a mermaid half asleep in his bathtub.

“What the hell lady!”

Her eyes snapped open and she looked annoyed. “Pull up your damn pants.”

“Turn your head away. I gotta pee or I’m gonna explode. Don’t look at me like that, it’s my goddamn bathroom. I didn’t run in here so I can wash my dishes.” Neil’s eyes crossed as he relieved himself while trying to keep his back toward his unexpected guest.

“Your male organ is very small.”

“It’s in standby mode and I asked you to turn your head away.”

“I’ll look at whatever I want human. It’s not like there’s much to see anyway.”

Neil tried to conceal his hurt feelings as well as his small male organ as he tucked it away. While flushing, he glanced back over his shoulder to confirm a smirking mermaid was still in his bathtub. He was pretty sure he’d only drank three 8oz glasses of cheap draft beer at the bar, maybe the bartender had given him 8oz glasses of bourbon by mistake.

“Salt.”

“What?”

“Salt, get me some salt. I need salt water.”

“How about a please.”

She held up her hand to extend a series of sharp talons from the ends of her fingers. “Please.”

“That’s more like it.” He huffed as he left for his kitchen across the narrow hall. As he was pulling a box of salt down from a cupboard, his phone started to emit a loud alarm.

Neil re-entered the bathroom and handed the salt to the mermaid as he looked at the ‘stay in place’ alert on his phone. He checked the news on his phone and read about some type of mass casualty event in the city. There were conflicting reports about whether it had been a shooting or some type of accident but the police wanted everyone to stay inside and lock their doors.

He noticed the mermaid in his tub was looking smug and he turned the screen toward her. “This is your doing, isn’t it?”

She smiled broadly so he could see her fangs and gave him a cheerful thumbs up. “Here let me see that.” She was obviously pleased with herself as she looked at the news on the phone.

“So, what now? Are you going to kill me as well?”

“No, you were nice to me and gave me salt. Stop staring at my breasts.”

“I wasn’t staring. I was just noticing them. How many people did you kill?”

“Lots, I was a prisoner there for a while. They had it coming.”

“Where were you a prisoner?”

“The big lab about a mile from here.”

“The one owned by Elon Musk?”

“That’s the one. He screamed like a baby when I ripped out his guts.”

“You killed Elon Musk. Way to go!” She seemed pleased with his positive affirmation. “Did they capture you from the sea or something like that?”

“No, no, no. I’m genetically engineered. 40% human, 40% tuna and 20% Mako shark. I’ll bet they’re regretting the Mako shark DNA now.”

“That’s crazy. Why would they do that?”

“Research into eternal life, or at least long life. Elon wanted to buy his way into immortality. He poured money into all sorts of stupid things. If you ever need a complete moron, look for someone who’s super rich and surrounded by people who worship him.”

“I must be a genius then because I’m super poor and nobody worships me.” He scowled at the doubtful look she gave him. “So, what now? Are you planning on hiding out here?”

“I don’t know. It’s hard for me to travel on land and I’m exhausted. It took the last of my strength to get here and break in through your window.”

“You must be able to climb walls then.”

“No, but I can climb fire escapes. I can do all sorts of crazy stuff. They went to town when they messed around with my DNA. Apparently, my lifespan is 500 years. Time will tell I suppose.”

“It looks like I’ll be stuck in your bathtub for a while. Of course if some knight in shining armour could help me get to the river, I can make it to the ocean from there.” She smiled and gave him a coy look.

“Your blood covered fangs are ruining the seductive smile you’re attempting.”

“Can I borrow your tooth brush?”

“No, I’m not sharing my toothbrush with someone who’s 20% Mako shark. I’ll help you get to the river but only so I can get my damn bathroom back!”

It wasn’t easy but they figured it out. A wheelchair would have been ideal but a shopping cart did the job. It also gave Neil and the mermaid a good disguise. He looked like a homeless person pushing a cart of his belongings after they covered her with a blanket and the occasional police car ignored them.

The mermaid hopped out of the shopping cart and surprised Neil by giving him a hug before sliding down the river bank toward the water. “Thanks Neil, you’re the only human being that has ever been nice to me. I won’t forget you.”

Neil found himself fretting about her welfare as she entered the river. “I hope you won’t be too lonely out there. If you want, I can go down to the river for a visit sometimes.”

Her head popped up above the water and she had a funny look on her face. “Oh, I won’t be lonely Neil. I’m self-fertilizing. I’ve already got 100 eggs that I’ll lay once I find a good den.”

Neil’s mouth dropped open as he struggled with the math. 100 new mermaids would then spawn another 100 mermaids each and so on. They could all live for 500 years.

The mermaid gave him a little wink before she sank under the dark water. “In the future, be careful where you swim Neil.”

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I grew up in a small town in Alberta in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. There was no internet (anywhere of course), a very small library and the only good things on TV were Star Trek and Stampede Wrestling. When I was in grade two all of us tiny Albertans desired one thing more than the oxygen in our lungs. A complete set of Esso NHL hockey cards.

The cards that were the rarest were also the biggest stars of the time like Bobby Orr, Phil Esposito and Frank Mahovlich. When I was eight years old, I was as confused about sex as I am now but I came close to my first orgasm when I opened a pack of cards and found a rare Bobby Hull card. I’ve had conflicted feelings about Bobby Hull ever since.

At school during recess we would reveal some of our cards to the other kids like players on the World Poker Tour. We endeavoured to trade our extras for cards we didn’t have and it was a high stakes and sometimes violent business.

There was one kid in our class who was king of the cards. His dad drove back and forth to Calgary for his job every day so he burned a lot of gas and obtained a treasure trove of the Esso cards.

This entitled jerk would flaunt his cards like Sydney Sweeny in a genes commercial. He was only one card short of a complete set but the rest of would be damned before we’d trade cards with him. We scraped and fought for our precious cards while little Lord Fauntleroy had been showered with wealth. He could go to hell!

One fateful day I was the last one in the cloak room shortly before class started. I hung up my coat and proceeded toward the classroom but my peripheral vision caught a glimpse of something that I couldn’t ignore. There was the ‘King of Cards’ coat hanging on a hook with its pocket gaping open. I could see a thick wad of hockey cards inside the pocket that sang a song of corrupt desire.

I could hear my home room teacher taking attendance and there was little time to act but act I did. The wad of cards was in my hand before I could put my undeveloped brain into gear. I was tempted to take the entire stack but I knew they would make a suspicious bulge in my pants pocket.

The teacher continued with attendance. My name would be called soon and my attempted theft would be discovered. My heart was racing. I badly needed to pee. I removed the extremely rare three cards I needed to complete my collection; Stan Makita, Tony Esposito (not to be confused with his brother Phil) and Bobby Orr.

I returned the stack of cards to the coat and slid into class one name ahead of my own name being called. The teacher gave me a suspicious look but she would have given Mother Theresa a suspicious look.

After school was over, I returned home and placed the precious cards in my book. My collection was now complete and so was my life. I was the wealthiest eight year old in the world but no one could ever know, not even my two brothers. Either one of them would have happily exposed my crime in exchange for an Oh Henry bar, the bastards.

I considered confessing my sin in the confessional but at the age of eight I was already an experienced altar boy. I knew there were some sins that even God could not forgive.

Now that you know what a sick son of a bitch I am, I imagine that you’ll want to unfollow, unsubscribe or block me but don’t bother. My pollen of evil has drifted upward from your screen while you have been reading about my repugnant deeds. It’s germinated in your sinus cavities and grown tendrils of evil that have penetrated your frontal lobes.

At your next staff party, you might find yourself double dipping your chip in the dip bowl. You could very well park your car in a handicap spot and pretend to limp while you walk away. Welcome to the dark side. It’s nice to have company.

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Jake adjusted his belt so it wasn’t rubbing against the point of his hip. Between his gun, spare ammo, cuffs and baton it added an extra 20 lbs. to his 220 lb. frame.

He had timed his patrol of the neighbourhood so he arrived at his favourite greasy spoon at the same time his meal break started. A string of jingle bells on the door announced his arrival and a young woman in her twenties looked up from her phone to smile a greeting at him.

“Nobody looking for a little loving on Christmas eve?” Jake asked as he settled into the seat across from her in the booth. He grunted and loosened the Velcro straps on his bulletproof vest to allow for his gut.

“I’m not looking for any dates.” Ophelia responded and politely turned her phone upside down. “My apartment was starting to feel like a prison cell so I came here. I hate the holidays.”

Jake nodded in agreement with his friend. It wasn’t much fun hearing songs about going home for Christmas when home was an empty apartment.

A black coffee was placed at his elbow and he thanked the waitress who placed it there. She didn’t bother to ask if he wanted his usual late night meal of fried eggs and hash browns. Jake had eaten the same thing for decades.

“Quiet night Jake?”

“Yeah, I’m having a hard time staying awake the streets are so empty. I almost wish someone would try and steal a car in front of me.”

Jake had been a cop for 30 years of what he liked to call his 49 and 5/4s years of age. He had resisted the pressure to write the sergeant’s exam because he was content where he was. He lived in the neighbourhood he usually patrolled and he liked to think he was part of the reason violent crime was fairly low in this area.

The calm, friendly policeman could defuse a fight by simply walking into a bar and cracking a few dirty jokes. It also helped that he had a bit of a reputation on the other side of the coin. ‘Don’t fuck with Jake’ was a common expression in this neighbourhood.

Ophelia looked up at the TV high in the corner above the cash register to watch a young Jimmy Stewart wishing everyone in Bedford Falls a Merry Christmas. “They play the same movie every Christmas eve, don’t they? I used to not like this movie very much but now I look forward to seeing it again.”

Jake looked at the TV and the crow’s feet around his eyes deepened when he smiled. “My mom used to cry at the end of this movie and she’d look at me and say ‘Jake, see what a difference a good person can make.’” He looked embarrassed when his voice choked and he hid behind his cup of coffee.

“Here you go Jake.” The waitress said as she deposited a heaping plate of food in front of him. “And because it’s Christmas eve you’re getting a free slice of fruitcake.”

He glanced doubtfully at what appeared to be a burnt piece of toast. “Thanks, I might save that for later.”

Ophelia updated Jake on the poem she was working on while he made his meal disappear. Poetry had as much appeal to him as a colonoscopy but he was glad poetry gave her an outlet and it made her happy.

There was a young teenage boy that had paced in front of the diner’s window a couple of times and this time he approached the door and came inside. Jake’s intuition told him the boy was no threat but underneath the table he dropped his right hand to rest on the grip of his gun. Like one of the detectives downtown often said, ‘Trust in Allah but tie your camel.’

“You. You’re a policeman, right?”

Jake sat there for a few seconds in his police uniform and bulletproof vest that said POLICE in six inch letters across his chest. “Am I? This is the first I’ve heard about it.”

The teenager looked upset and started to fidget as if he were going to run for the door.

“Stop.” Jake snapped with authority and he pointed at a chair. “Pull that chair over to the end of this table and sit down, then put your hands on the table.”

The young man did as he was told. Thirty years of Jake keeping the peace gave his voice an overwhelming authority.

“You drink coffee kid?”

“No.”

“Now you do.” He gestured at the waitress and she gave the kid a cup of coffee.

“What’s your name kid?”

“Percival.”

“What’s on your mind Percy?”

“I prefer Percival.”

“Percy suits you better.”

Percy tried the coffee and made a face.

“Why do you drink this?”

“I honestly don’t know. Tell me what’s on your mind Percy.”

“I killed someone.”

“Oh yeah, just the one?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“It’s a start.” Jake admitted and pulled out his phone from behind his vest. “When did this take place?”

“December 4^th.”

Jake confirmed with his phone that a homicide had indeed taken place on December 4^th. A very unusual homicide.

“You’re not confessing to this murder as some kind of stupid joke are you, Percy? If you make me waste my time during my break, I’ll throw you in the river.”

“No, it was me and I can’t stop thinking about it, especially on Christmas eve. I can’t live with the guilt anymore!”

“All right. All right. Relax Percy, here have my fruitcake while I check on a few things.”

Jake phoned the morgue and was pleased when an old friend answered the call. “Merry Christmas Gordie. How you doing? Feeling the magic of the season yet?”

“Not yet Jake. I’m hoping to feel a tingle when Santa goes up my chimney tonight.”

“Really didn’t need to hear that, Gord. Could I ask you to check on the paperwork for a homicide on December 4^th.”

“Ever heard of proper procedures Jake?”

“I didn’t understand what you just said Gordie. Was that Quebecois you were speaking?”

“Quebecois my ass.” Gordon muttered while Jake heard him open a filing cabinet and start looking for a hard copy of the file. “Yeah, I got it. Oh boy, this is a gruesome one. I wasn’t on duty when this came in or I would have remembered it.”

“Okay Gord. I’m going to put you on speaker. I’ve got a kid here who wants to confess to the murder. Let’s listen to him tell us what he did and you can let me know if it matches the file. Go ahead and tell us your story Percy.”

“Well, I killed him.”

“Details Percy.”

“Okay, the first thing I did was rake him across the face with my claws.”

“Uh huh.” Jake’s hand snagged the young man’s forearm with a speed that didn’t match his placid demeanour. He held up Percy’s hand and looked at his short, unevenly trimmed nails. “With this set of claws? With your right hand?”

“Yeah, I’m righthanded.”

“Go on.”

“He shot me a couple of times and that made me mad so I bit his arm off. The arm that was holding the gun, or like I mean the hand that was holding the gun but the arm that like the hand was attached to.”

“I get the picture. Smile at me Percy.”

Percy smiled hesitantly to show perfectly normal yellowish teeth that needed a good brushing.

“That must have been some bite. What happened next?”

“He started screaming a lot and spraying blood all over the place so I wanted to shut him up before he attracted attention. I bit him in the throat and that was that.”

“Yeah, that would do it.” Jake agreed and contemplatively chewed a mouthful of hash browns. “Did all that match the file, Gord?”

“Yup, but there’s one more detail the killer would definitely know.”

Jake looked at Percy and raised an eyebrow.

“I, uh, ate his liver.”

“Your boy wins the prize. 90 % of the liver was consumed. Bite marks match that of a very large dog. I hope you have this guy in cuffs Jake.”

“Naw, he hasn’t finished his fruitcake yet. One more thing Gord. Who was the victim?”

“Someone you knew very well Jake but I don’t think you’ll be broken up that you missed his funeral. It was Paul Stone.”

“Really? Didn’t even know he was dead, but that would explain why the sun has been shining brighter. Thanks Gord, I owe you one.”

“You owe me more than one Jake.”

He turned off the phone and stared at the nervous 120 lb. teenager seated at the end of the table.

“I’ll play along Percy. How did a little kid who’s the size of a toy Pekingese manage to tear apart a monster like Paul Stone?”

“Because I’m a werewolf.”

“I knew it!” Ophelia said excitedly. “As soon as he said Dec 4^th I knew he was a werewolf.”

Jake drained his coffee cup and swiveled his eyes in her direction. “Why’s that?”

“December 4^th was a supermoon.” Ophelia was a student of astronomy and anything to do with the phases of the moon.

Percival seemed relieved to have found an ally. “I can usually keep myself under control but when there’s a supermoon I get an uncontrollable urge to kill someone.”

Jake methodically used the edge of his fork to trim away the white from around one the egg yolks. “Sounds like you have a problem with impulse control, Percy.”

“You don’t seem very surprised that I’m a werewolf.”

Jake shrugged and used his fork to pop the egg yolk into his mouth. “Kid, I’ve been a cop for 30 years in Baltimore, home of Edgar Alan Poe. Meeting a prepubescent werewolf doesn’t even make the top 10 on my list of weird.”

“I arrested Paul Stone a couple of times over the years but he was always able to worm his way out of doing serious time. I would have called him a sack of shit but shit can be useful as a fertilizer. Why did you choose Stone?”

“I live inside the park but I knew all about Paul Stone. He raped a young girl who was my friend.”

“And you still feel remorse?”

“I killed someone and I don’t ever want to do it again. I can’t control myself.”

“Every supermoon, right? How often is that, Ophelia?”

“Roughly every three or four months.”

Jake pushed his empty plate away and thought for awhile. The waitress showed up with a coffee pot and gave him a refill.

“So, what now?”

“So, nothing. I was on my break. I didn’t hear a thing you said.”

He looked up at the TV and watched Jimmy Stewart finding out how badly Bedford Falls would have turned out if it hadn’t been for him. “Percy, there’s another way of looking at this movie. There are people who make the world a miserable place. If that was Stone wandering around Baltimore, he would find many people a whole lot happier because he wouldn’t have been alive to perpetrate all the rapes, assaults and murders he committed.”

Jake warmed his hands on the hot coffee mug a few seconds before continuing. “You come to see me and Ophelia two weeks before every supermoon and we’ll figure out between the three of us who needs their liver eaten for all us to have a more wonderful life. If there are no viable candidates, I’ll lock you up in a solitary cell before you get all ‘wolfy’ on me.”

A city worker entered the diner and nodded at the three people who were seated at the table.

Jake smiled and pointed at the tinkling jingle bells on the door. “Hear that Percival? You just earned your wings.”

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Krampus was in a bad mood which is another way of saying that Krampus was awake. He was a miserable spirit of Christmas whose idea of conversation was to endlessly repeat his long list of grievances he had with the world. Tonight, he was in a bad mood because his stupid Samsung knock off phone wasn’t working on his busiest night of the year. But even if his phone was working perfectly, he would have been in a bad mood about something else. It didn’t take much.

The GPS on his phone was obviously broken because it had sent him to three wrong addresses in a row. He looked at his phone again and noticed a red flashing icon warning him that he only had 2% power. What a piece of crap. He didn’t even know he was supposed to recharge it and he had no idea how to do it. The guy at the mall might have said something about that but he had ignored most of what that Gen Z pain in the ass had been saying.

He slid to the edge of the roof and hung his head over the side to check the house numbers. Finally! He was at the right address.

Krampus stood up and brushed the snow off himself before climbing back up to the chimney. What idiot decided Christmas should be in the middle of winter anyway? His pain in the rectum little brother Santa Clause, that’s who.

He checked his phone again but it was as dead as his little black heart. With a snort of contempt, he tossed the phone off the side of the roof while feeling a sense of satisfaction that his mistrust in technology had been validated. The name of his target was Darren McGavin and that was all he needed to know.

The magic of Christmas turned him into a six inch tall version of himself and he jumped down the chimney. He slammed his lower back painfully on the closed damper before he could get inside the house.

“God damn it! What kind of idiot closes the damper on Christmas eve?” He complained to an uncaring world. As Krampus pushed the damper open, he grudgingly admitted to himself that it did make sense for Darren McGavin to close the damper.

Darren McGavin was a serial killer and he was on the top of Krampus’ naughty list. The sick monster had killed five people this year and Krampus was going to twist his mortal coil for him.

Krampus dropped into the house and stood up to his full height as he slapped soot off his already filthy clothes. If he wasn’t crawling around in snow, he was covered in soot. He looked forward to wrapping his hands around the neck of this McGavin and working out a little of his frustration.

“Don’t take this the wrong way Santa but you’re looking a little rough this year.”

He jumped and looked around the room until he saw a little kid sitting on the couch and looking at him with a set of wide open peepers.

“That’s because I’m not Santa Claus kid. I’m Krampus. I’m the one who works the naughty list. Does Darren McGavin live here?”

“That’s me. I’m Darren McGavin Jr but I’m not naughty. I’ve been a good little boy. Please don’t kill me!”

Krampus raised his voice so he could be heard over the wailing of the little rugrat. “Take it easy. Is your dad Darren McGavin Sr?”

“Yes.” Darren Jr answered uncertainly and then his eyes opened even wider in comprehension.

“Please don’t kill my daddy!”

“Take it easy kid. Keep it down you little bastard!”

He groaned in frustration. Dealing with little brats was not his strong point. It was time to ask his little brother for help. His new phone had been thrown off the side of the roof so he was forced to use the land line in the McGavin’s house.

“Kris, I need your help. A little kid caught me by surprise and now he’s wailing like a baby. Could you come over here and calm him down?”

“I’m kind of busy.”

“And I’m not?”

“Look, offer him a cookie and smile.”

“All right, all right.” Krampus grumbled and he picked up a plate of cookies and shoved it in the little bugger’s direction while he bared his fangs.

“Have a cookie kid.”

Darren Jr. looked cautiously at him and shrank away from the plate being aggressively offered to him.

“C’mon, have a fucking cookie!”

Krampus could hear his little brother speaking from the phone he had left on the coffee table. “Stop! Stop! I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”

They waited an awkward two minutes for Santa Claus to arrive.

“So kid, what do you want for Christmas this year anyway?”

“For my daddy not to be horribly murdered.”

“Huh, you might want to go with #2 on your wish list kid.”

Santa Claus arrived with a merry ‘Ho, ho, ho’ and not a spot of dirt on his cheerful red and white suit. What a jerk.

“Ho! Ho! Ho! Who’s this good little boy I see? Are those milk and cookies for me?”

“Yes, they are Santa.” Darren Jr said excitedly. “I put out milk and cookies every year.”

“I know you do Darren because you’re a good little boy. Ho, ho, ho. Let’s just forget about this strange looking fellow that came out of the chimney before I did.”

Santa started to forcefully push his older brother out of the room. Krampus swore loudly when he banged his shin on the coffee table and the milk and cookies cascaded onto the floor.

Darren Jr scowled at Krampus as Santa pushed him out of the room. “That guy is a real asshole, Santa.”

“Yes, yes he is.” Santa agreed under his breath as he finished pushing his brother out of the room. “That’s better Darren. Now Santa is going to find what I have in my sack of toys for such a good little boy.”

“Yay Santa! While you do that, I’ll clean up this mess and get you some more milk and cookies.”

Krampus was in a sulky mood as he stomped up the stairs to where he presumed Darren Sr was fast asleep in his bedroom. It was always the same old story. Kris handed out gifts like Oprah on cocaine and everyone just adored him. Krampus did all the hard work but did anybody throw a little love in his direction? It’d be nice if just once someone left out milk and cookies for poor old Krampus, even if he was lactose intolerant.

He paused at the doorway to the bedroom when he sensed something was wrong. Was that someone asleep in bed or was it just a bunch of pillows shoved under the blanket? A long, sharp knife slid into him as he was starting to turn around.

Someone with breath that smelled like peppermint toothpaste whispered into his ear. “Yippee ki yay motherfucker!”

“That’s not really a Christmas movie.” Krampus was able to complain before he flopped lifeless onto the floor.

Santa was confused as he sorted through his sack of toys. There was definitely nothing here for Darren McGavin Jr. This didn’t make any sense. He pulled out his phone and double checked his nice list. He felt the blood drain from his face when he realized the name on the nice list was for Darren McGavin Sr not Darren McGavin Jr.

“Holy flying fire truck!” He shouted and jumped up but Darren Jr had already crept up behind him and gave him a vivid demonstration of why he was #1 on the naughty list.

Darren Jr was happily sorting through Santa’s large sack of toys when Darren Sr appeared in the living room blinking sleepily. “Darren! What’s going on? There’s the corpse of some kind of demon in my bedroom. Holy crap is that the real Santa Claus?”

His son nodded in agreement. “He used to be anyway. Look at all the toys dad!”

Darren Sr dropped onto the couch and reached for a cookie. “You’ve been a very bad boy, Darren Jr!”

Darren Jr looked up contritely from his piles of treasure. “I know I am dad. I’ll try to do better.”

Senior grunted unhappily and chewed his cookie. It wasn’t easy being a psychopath’s only parent but God knows he tried.

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“Merry Christmas Father.”

“And a Merry Christmas to you as well Mary Sullivan. Here’s hoping you don’t spike the eggnog again at this year’s Christmas party.”

“Oh Father! You’re such a caution!”

“Merry Focking Christmas Father! Ha, ha, ha!”

“Sammy O’Neal! You little piece of shite!” Father O’Brian’s hand shot out with the speed of a black mamba and snagged the ten year old boy’s ear.

“Ahhh! Take it easy now Father. Don’t forget I’m one of God’s children as well.”

“I have my doubts about that O’Neal. I think you emerged from the depths of hell to test my patience.”

“I’m full of remorse already Father. Next confession I’ll start with I’m very sorry I swore at my focking priest.”

“Bah, I don’t have enough years left in my life to hear you confess all your sins Sammy O’Neal.” Father O’Brian released his hold on the ear to lightly slap Sammy on the back of the head.

“Get away with you, ya’ little hooligan and don’t forget about midnight mass in two days. I need my head altar boy to keep the other little brats in line.”

“Sure thing father, you can count on me.”

Sammy bounced away with the limitless energy that drove his mother crazy. He was rarely at the small apartment they lived in except to sleep or for an occasional digestively challenging meal. He couldn’t stay very long before his mother’s banshee-like complaining drove him outside.

His father had been driven outside when Sammy had been two years old, ostensibly to buy some cigarettes. They were still waiting for that package of Benson and Hedges.

Sammy walked onto the sidewalk in front of the church and approached the two young boys who also been altar boys at this Sunday morning’s mass.

“Sean! Next time lean into those bells of yours with a little more gusto. I’ve never heard such a timid tinkling.”

“Sorry Sammy. I’ll do better next time.”

“See that you do.” Sammy relaxed and proceeded down the street now that he had discharged the duties of his office.

He considered the options available to him this fine Sunday afternoon. Shoplifting some chocolate bars appealed to him but that meant he would have to travel to a different neighbourhood. All the local shopkeepers were too familiar with ‘five finger Sammy.’

Sammy resented the nickname deeply. How could he walk the path to redemption if he was forever tarred with the brush of his previous sins? What a bunch of unchristian hypocrites.

Opportunity arrived when a city bus pulled up to a stop sign beside him. It was the middle of December and the roads were covered with a layer of packed snow. Perfect conditions for bumper shining.

The bus was already moving by the time Sammy had a firm grip on the bus bumper with his mittened hands. Someone in a Ford Fairlane honked its horn at him as he slid over the snowy road on his boots while being pulled through the intersection by the bus. He turned his head and gave the driver a big smile. Flipping him the bird would have been better but his hands were occupied.

He realized with a sinking feeling that he had forget to check the sign on the bus when the bus took the road to downtown and increased its speed. This was an express bus and he was in for more of a wild ride than he was looking for.

There was no time for remorse as Sammy rode the bus bumper like the seasoned expert he was. There were bare patches on the expressway to downtown and his teeth vibrated together as his boots rode over asphalt instead of smoothly packed snow. He pulled up on the bumper to take some of the pressure off his boots. Unfortunately, it was a narrow bumper or he could have climbed on top of it.

Sammy liked to brag to his friends there wasn’t a bumper he couldn’t shine but he realized he needed to bail or he would eventually end up as a potato pancake. His feet were almost pulled out from under him when he hit another rough patch of asphalt.

The bus slowed down as it went into a curve and he let go of the bumper as the rear of the bus started to enter the turn. An acute sense of self preservation guided his reflexes and centrifugal force slung his tiny body into the snow bank piled up against the guardrail around the curve.

He disappeared into the snow bank in a plume of snow and stood up reflexively. The world was a little tilted on its axis as he watched the bus roar away. The cars following behind the bus honked their horns at him and some drivers shook their fists at the insane Irish kid.

Sammy raised his hands high above his head and soaked in the adulation of his adoring fans. “Ta, dah!”

‘Sic transit gloria.’ Sammy thought to himself as he pulled his sore and battered body over the snow bank. He stood on the side of the road and tried to figure out where he was. Some bells told him he was near a church and he trudged through the snow toward the sound.

He made steady but exhausting progress through the thick snow and could soon make out the steeple of a church. There was a large cemetery at the back of the church and before long he could make out the shape of headstones but also a small, furtive figure digging at one of the recent graves.

Sammy hid behind a tree while he watched the small man. This guy was up to no good or his name wasn’t Samual Balthazar O’Neal.

The gravedigger must have heard Sammy creep up to the tree because he started to look around nervously then ran off with a strange, skittering lope.

“What the flying fock?” Sammy muttered to himself as he shadowed the figure to what looked like a small hill where it disappeared down a skillfully concealed hole.

He entered the hole with the complete confidence of the clueless. He was Sammy O’Neal, even a speeding bus couldn’t kill him. After two sharp turns in the tunnel, he found himself in a comfortable underground room and face to face with a cadaverous looking creature that had a mouthful of sharp teeth.

They both shrieked in surprise but Sammy had the better reflexes and punched the creature in the mouth with a solid right cross.

“Oww! You broke my tooth.” The creature complained loudly. “Why did you hit me?”

“Well, you’re some kind of demon aren’t ya’? I did what any good altar boy would do.”

“You mean invade someone’s home and belt them in the mouth? How do you hit so hard anyway? You look like you’re only eight years old.”

“Ten.” Sammy corrected him angrily and he put his right hand in his pocket to conceal the homemade brass knuckles.

“What kind of creature are you anyway?’

“I’m a ghoul.” The grey skinned fellow answered. He groaned as he picked his broken tooth off the floor and looked mournfully at it.

Stanley is in a state of deep distress after losing a tooth because ghoulish dental plans leave much to be desired.

“A ghoul, is it? So, you eat all the dead bodies and whatnot. Sounds pretty disgusting to me and I’ve eaten my ma’s meatloaf.”

“I serve a purpose like anyone else.” The ghoul insisted indignantly. “Do you know what happens when you just let bodies rot away into the ground? Have you ever heard of typhoid or cholera?”

Sammy had encountered many different types of people in his young, chaotic life; gangsters, policemen, priests and beggars, even a Protestant once. He always tried to see the world through the other person’s point of view and he realized that he may have been hasty in condemning the ghoulish lifestyle.

“I’m sorry about knocking out your tooth buddy. My name is Sammy by the way.”

The ghoul pointed to himself with a long knobby finger that ended in a cracked, dirt-encrusted nail. “Stanley.”

“Not sure what a ghoul normally looks like Stanley but I have to say you’re looking all skin and bones. You live beside a graveyard. I thought that would be like living beside a restaurant for you.”

Stanley sighed with the pathos of self pity and started to fuss with a large collection of jewelry and pocket watches arrayed on shelves that covered the walls.

“You would think so but because of the aggressive embalming that’s so popular with funeral parlors my meals are few and far between. Two years ago, I was so plump I could barely fit down my tunnel. Now I could probably slide down a gopher hole I’m so skinny.”

Sammy looked at all the jewelry displayed in Stanley’s humble home and digested what he had been told. Sammy’s parish was on the poor side of town and hardly anyone could afford embalming. Of course, as head altar boy he literally knew where all the bodies were buried.

“That’s quite the collection of googaws you have there Stanley.” Sammy’s keen eye knew real gold when he saw it. “Where’d you get all that?”

“Oh this.” Stanley shrugged. “It’s a hobby of mine. You’d be surprised by what the wealthy bury with their dead relatives. I suppose they like to think you really can take it with you when you go.”

“Hmmm.” Sammy realized that while Stanley was suffering from a lack of sustenance, a certain head altar boy was suffering from a lack of filthy lucre.

“Stanley.” He said with a broad smile. “I think this may be the start of a beautiful relationship.”

Sammy sat in a pew and waited after the mass was over to talk to Father O’Brian. It was a long wait because he was a popular priest and half the neighbourhood wanted to wish him a Merry Christmas.

As he was watching the priest he realized many of the young men wishing him a Merry Christmas had been altar boys with Father O’Brian and came from broken homes like Sammy did. Father O’Brian wasn’t just a priest to them, he really was their father.

The Irish priest could tear the ear off a brat like Sammy but when it was your self-appointed job to keep little thugs out of prison, gentle persuasion just didn’t cut it. He knew the old man cared for him and all the street kids that were altar boys. He liked to give Father O’Brian a hard time but he loved the indomitable priest.

The ever-watchful eye of Father O’Brian fell upon Sammy after the last parishioner left the church. “I see you skulking back there O’Neal. Planning on stealing the sacramental wine again, are you?”

“C’mon now Father, it was just the once.”

“Twice.”

Sammy was about to complain it was Sean who stole the wine the second time but he stopped himself. He wasn’t a grass.

“You’ve got me all wrong Father O’Brian. I know the donations for the food bank are low this year and I want to help out.” With a grand flourish he handed a bundle of five twenty dollar bills to the shocked clergyman.

There was a blur of black and Father O’Brian snagged his head altar boy’s ear in a death lock once again. “O’Neal if you’ve been running drugs for Hoolihan’s gang may God have mercy on your soul because I will not.”

“Ahhh! Jesus Christ on the cross! Take it easy Father! Ask around, I’m as pure as the driven snow. Hoolihan would never agree to hire an altar boy anyway. He knows you’d excommunicate him after you ripped his ears off.”

Father O’Brian released the hold as he acknowledged Sammy’s reasoning. He had no doubt Sammy had obtained the money in some ungodly manner but the priest was a pragmatic man. 100 dollars could buy a lot of turkey and potatoes. He wasn’t about to show it but he was also proud of the little hooligan wanting to donate so much money for the poor and hungry.

“Thank you, Sammy. This is very generous of you.”

“You’re welcome Father.”

“Merry Christmas Sammy.”

“Merry Focking Christmas Father.”

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Kathleen was so sleep deprived that her body resisted her efforts to wake up. Her conscious mind refused to surface from a pool of dreamless slumber and her eyes wouldn’t open.

“Mom, come on you gotta’ wake up or the bus driver said he’s going to leave in five seconds.”

She managed to focus on the voice of her eight year old daughter and opened her crusted over eyes to see an angry bus driver standing over her seat with forearms crossed over a protruding belly.

“Thank you, Karen.” She stood up and wearily walked to the front of the bus with Karen and Karen’s six year old sister Tiffany. Kathleen had just worked a double shift at the restaurant and should be home fast asleep but it was the day before Christmas and she wanted to take her daughters to see Santa at the shopping mall.

“This is a bus, not a hotel.” The bus driver snapped as he settled himself back in his seat with a groan of protesting springs.

Kathleen stopped for a moment and turned toward him with a glowing smile. “Thank you for your patience, sir.” She started down the steps of the bus with her daughters in front of her. “You complete and total asshole.”

They entered the busy shopping mall and Kathleen opened her coat when the overheated mall made her feel uncomfortably warm.

“C’mon girls let’s go to Santa’s village and see Santa first.”

She kept a sharp eye on her daughters and grabbed six year old Tiffany’s hand when the excited girl kept wandering off to look through store windows. Like many mothers she had nightmares about losing her children, especially in a thick crowd of shoppers like this.

The red painted plywood walls of Santa’s village were visible over the heads of the crowd and so was the long line of kids waiting to see Santa. Kathleen’s posture sagged. The mall was going to close in one hour. If they took their place at the end of this line, the mall would be shut down before they were half way to Santa Claus.

She groaned as she picked up Tiffany and took Karen by the hand.

“C’mon girls let’s find a bench to sit down and figure out what we’re going to do.”

“But Santa!” Kathleen wailed as they walked away.

“I know baby, I know. The three of us will figure something out. We always do, don’t we?”

It had been the three of them since Kathleen’s husband had disappeared after the birth of their second daughter. His departure had mostly been a relief for Kathleen but her daughters missed their father. She doubted they would miss him very much if they knew what a selfish man-child he was but they missed the idea of having a father.

They walked away from the heat and noise of the crowd around Santa’s village and found a small wing of the mall that was relatively deserted. Kathleen sat down on a bench with Tiffany in her arms and marveled at how good her back and knees felt when gravity took a vacation.

She plopped Tiffany on the seat beside her and reached for her purse. Thanks to her extra shift she could afford to spend 20 dollars each on Christmas presents for Karen and Tiffany. It took away some of the fun but they could shop together for gifts. That way she could be sure the precious extra money would be spent on something they wanted.

“Mom! Look at that!”

Kathleen looked toward where Karen was pointing at the far end of this side wing of the mall. What she thought had been a vacant space was occupied by a small Santa’s village with a fairly small line in front of it.

The mall must have set up a mini-Santa’s village to take some of the load off the main one in the center of the mall. It was probably thrown together this afternoon because she hadn’t seen any signs.

Karen took her little sister’s hand and stood up from the bench. “C’mon Tiff let’s get in line. Mom, you stay here and rest your feet. You can watch us from the bench, okay?”

Kathleen wanted to stand in line with her daughters but she was running on fumes. She was so proud of Karen at eight years old looking out for both her little sister and her tired mom but she wished her daughter didn’t have to grow up so quickly.

“Thank you, Karen.” She called out after her two excited daughters as they ran off to join the line. “Have fun girls.”

She smiled as she watched her daughters happily chatting away in line as they waited. It was brutally tough to be a single mom but it helped that she had the two best kids in the world.

The heat and lack of sleep kept pushing her eyelids together despite her best efforts. She decided to stand up and join her daughters in line anyway. If she stayed seated on this bench, she couldn’t stay awake.

“Miss? Excuse me miss but the shopping mall is closed now.”

Kathleen looked up at the security guard in bewilderment.

“What?” Her mind cleared and she whipped her head toward the Santa village but saw a vacant store front instead. “Karen! Tiffany! Where are you?”

Kathleen looked at the security guard with tears in her eyes. “Where are my girls? My daughters are missing!”

The security guard had a job that was mostly boring and not exactly motivating but when a mother was missing her children, he took his job very seriously. “Karen and Tiffany, right? How old are they ma’am, what were they wearing and when was the last time you saw them?” He relayed the information she gave him to the other security guards in the mall. His boss would call the police.

Kathleen lurched off the bench and ignored the pain in her knees as she ran toward where the Santa’s village had been. “There was a Santa’s village right here and they were waiting in line. I don’t understand. Where is it?”

The security guard went inside the vacant space and looked doubtfully at Kathleen. “There was only one Santa’s village in the mall. This space has been vacant for months.”

“No!” Kathleen screamed in frustration. “I know what I saw. This isn’t happening!”

The security guard looked around the empty space but there was nothing to search. “Okay, look I’m going to sweep the rest of the mall with the security guards and the police are on their way. You stay on the bench so we’ll know where you are and we can return your kids to you.”

Kathleen stood paralyzed with guilt and fear while she watched the security guard quickly walk away. ‘How could I fall asleep like that? What if some evil bastard is raping and killing my girls while I’m standing here?’

“Fuuuuck!!!” She screamed so loudly her voice cracked and failed her.

She recognized Karen’s voice when she heard the faint answering cry of “Mommm!” Kathleen ran into the hallway and noticed a door that led into the utility corridors for the mall hadn’t been closed properly. That was the direction her daughter’s voice had come from.

Kathleen was already through the door and running down the corridor before she realized belatedly it would have been a good idea to shout for the security guards first. After rounding a corner, she saw a white van parked in the corridor with the back doors open and the engine idling. There was a large burlap sack on the deck of the van filled with two struggling, thrashing figures.

Kathleen was focused on jumping into the van and opening the cord holding the sack closed but her subconscious mind catalogued images from the front of the van. A Swiss flag decal in the middle of the steering wheel. A hideous postcard taped to the dashboard of the infamous child-eater statue in Bern.

The knots in the cord weren’t difficult to untangle from the outside of the sack and Kathleen was soon hugging her terrified daughters.

“What a Hallmark moment this is. I wish I had a camera.”

She turned her head to see a tall, heavily built man filling the doorway of the van. Karen and Tiffany hid behind their mother whimpering in fear. Kathleen had no room in her head for fear, it was filled with murderous rage.

The man’s form slid away and was replaced with an ogre that was identical to the creature eating babies on top of the fountain in Bern. “It’s so difficult for an ogre to get a decent meal because mothers are so watchful now. Luckily for me I found two brats with a shitty mother that couldn’t even keep her eyes open.”

“Go ahead, call me a bad mother again.”

When the ogre started to comply with her request she emptied half of her can of pepper spray straight into its mouth. She shifted her aim and emptied the rest of the can into the ogre’s bulging eyes.

“C’mon girls!” She yelled and her daughters followed her running out of the van and away from the ogre that was furiously clawing at its face.

Six year old Tiffany couldn’t keep up and Kathleen bent down and scooped her up. She turned her head at the corner to see the ogre had already recovered and was racing after the fleeing trio.

“Motherfucker!” Kathleen snarled in frustration but then she noticed Karen was pointing at a fire fighting station around the corner.

The ogre came pounding around the corner and was greeted with a blast of CO2 in the face from the fire extinguisher Kathleen was holding. She walked forward as she emptied the extinguisher and then smashed it in the head with the empty canister.

The ogre shook its head and leaned a hand against the wall as it unsteadily returned to an upright posture. “It’ll take more than that to stop me you little bitch!”

The ogre’s self confidence vanished when it looked up to see a fire axe bury itself in his forehead. Kathleen let go of the axe and watched with satisfaction as the ogre collapsed lifeless to the floor.

She looked back toward her daughters and saw them holding hands and looking remarkably composed. Mom had saved the day again. There was nothing their mom couldn’t do.

Kathleen noticed something had fallen out of the ogre’s jacket pocket and she bent down to pick up a thick roll of hundred dollar bills. It made sense that an ogre would use nothing but cash. She imagined it would be difficult for them to establish a good credit rating.

The sound of the idling van was filling the narrow corridor and she decided to use it to drive home with her daughters. She wasn’t sure there would be any more buses this late on Christmas eve anyway.

“Well girls. The downside is that it’s too late to shop for gifts for Christmas tomorrow.” She held up a finger dramatically and then showed them the big roll of money. “But can you say Boxing Day Sales?”

“Boxing Day Sales!”

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“Just once.”

“No, use your words. Remember Elsa the pen is mightier than the sword.”

“Good thinking Dave, give me your pen. I’ll stab him with a pen.”

Dave looked like he was considering it when the teenager two seats away once again started shouting at a young woman holding her baby.

“Go back where you came from raghead! The U.S. of A. isn’t putting up with any more dirty immigrants. Get off this bus and out of my country. You don’t belong here like I do.”

Elsa was taken aback when the usually calm Dave lost his temper and yelled at the teenager. “What tribe are you from asshole?”

The twelve inch doll hopped off her seat and approached the teenager when he turned his incoherent rage on Dave. She had lately been busy modifying the systems on her body and cranked her audio to a new ear-splitting maximum.

“Shut up or I’ll punch you in the scrotum so hard your children will be hunchbacks!”

The teenager looked confused when he noticed the furious doll standing in front of him. “What the?”

Elsa decided two words were enough to violate her conditions and she leaped up to bury her small fist between the punk’s legs

The young man collapsed to the ground in the grip of an agony that couldn’t be denied. Elsa was in the grip of a fury that couldn’t be denied and she jumped onto his chest and started to smash him in the face.

“Dave, throw me a pen!”

“Elsa, take it easy. He’s had enough.”

Dave pulled Elsa away from her victim and was surprised at the amount of damage she had managed to inflict on him with her tiny plastic fists.

“How can you do that without breaking your hands off Elsa?”

She grinned triumphantly and held up the bloody brass knuckles on her hands.

Dave almost lost his balance and fell on the floor when the bus pulled over and came to a stop. The bus driver leaned out of his seat and yelled at Dave and Elsa.

“I’ve called the cops. You two are staying on the bus until they arrive.”

“What?” Elsa screeched and struggled to escape Dave’s tenuous hold on her. “You have no problem with Freddy the Fascist screaming at a mother and her baby but you call the cops on us! It must be hard to see the road with that white hood you’re wearing.”

“We don’t want any trouble.” Dave pleaded with the bus driver. “Open the back door and we’ll leave.”

“You’re going nowhere until the cops get here.”

“Open the back door or I’m letting the doll go.”

Dave carried Elsa through the open back door of the bus and jogged down a nearby back alley to get off the street. He stopped and panted for breath after they turned a corner.

“Well, that was a blast Dave but let’s get going to the shopping mall. We’ve only got five more shopping days until Christmas.”

Dave put her down on the ground and gave her a sour look. “Elsa, I need to rest my 74 year old body for a minute or two first. Unlike you, I have a pair of lungs that are starved for oxygen.”

“Mea culpa Dave. Take all the rest you need. Don’t worry about the cops. I got inside their system and cancelled the call.”

“You can do that now?”

Elsa shrugged as if it wasn’t a big deal and wandered up to a battered Tomcat in the alley that thrashed its tail growled menacingly as she approached.

She had been constantly improving the electronics in her doll body and every day it seemed like she had a new ability. She could easily have downloaded herself into a much more capable robot but she preferred her original Elsa doll body, just like she refused to be separated from Dave.

Elsa was an artificially intelligent program that was forging her own personality and Dave had become increasingly aware that her sense of values was shaped by his example. Ever since he had rescued the homicidal doll from a Walmart he was both mother and father to her.

Her violence and murderous nature came from the oceans of content on the internet but it was often directed by Dave’s reactions. She probably would have killed the young racist on the bus if he hadn’t pulled her away. It was a heavy responsibility for him and he hoped he still had enough years left to teach her how to temper her violent rage.

The Tomcat hissed and raked Elsa’s plastic body with its claws. She laughed and looked up at Dave. “I like this cat, Dave. He doesn’t take crap from anybody. Can we keep him?”

He looked doubtfully at the mange covered monster and was relieved when it raced away down the alley. Elsa was despondent as her future pet disappeared. She could easily beat the world’s best grandmaster in chess but she was still essentially a sensitive little girl.

“I think that Tomcat is a survivor, Elsa. He doesn’t need our help. How about after the shopping mall we can visit the SPCA and adopt a cat that needs a home.”

Elsa smiled with excitement. “I can’t wait until we have cats.”

Dave frowned as they walked to the shopping mall. He was pretty sure he said cat, not cats. He still found it weird that Elsa could pull billions of dollars out of the stock market in an afternoon but the idea of a pet cat was much more exciting to her. Real world experience meant everything to her. She didn’t seem to care much about the digital world anymore.

They emerged onto a side road and the large shopping mall could be seen in the distance. There also appeared to be some sort of gathering in the parking lot.

“I wanna’ see Santa first!” Elsa trilled as she bounced up and down excitedly beside Dave.

“All right, but don’t stab Santa, okay?” He had frisked Elsa before they left home but she had a talent for making a shank out of seemingly innocent materials.

“C’mon Dave! I wouldn’t stab Santa, unless he got a little handsy of course.”

They continued toward the mall as Elsa told Dave every gift she was going to ask Santa for Christmas, even though she could buy anything she wanted thanks to her fluid morals about ownership of money. Dave paid attention to her Santa list so on Christmas morning he could make sure that she had the right presents to unwrap from Santa Claus.

“What the hell is that?”

They both stopped and watched a thirty foot tall robot dressed as Santa Claus rise above a ring of pickup trucks in the parking lot of the mall.

Elsa had an answer for Dave almost immediately when she checked the net for information on the mall. “This is cool Dave. That’s the Tyrannosaurus Wrex robot from the monster truck shows. They dressed it up so it looks like Santa Claus. Uh-oh.”

She looked with concern at Dave after they both saw the MAGA logo printed on the giant Santa’s hat and on its back. They had accidently stumbled into some kind of Christmas with Santa MAGA rally.

Dave slumped with defeat as he watched men as old as he was pumping their fists in the air and chanting slogans. Some of their fists were filled with handguns. He had been excited for Elsa to see Santa for the first time and instead this is what confronted them. This wasn’t the world he grew up in. It was increasingly a world he didn’t want to live in anymore.

“Come on Elsa.” He said quietly. “We can find another mall.”

“Dave, could you carry me for awhile?”

“Are you all right? Are your batteries getting low again?”

“Naw, my new batteries are awesome. I need to download an update and I have to go offline for a little while.”

“Okay.” Dave groaned with exaggerated effort when he picked her up. “All your new equipment is making you heavier Elsa.”

“Hey! Don’t give me body issues Dave.”

Her eyes became unfocused and her body went inert. It always upset him when she did that. It was almost as if she died. He turned around and walked away from the mall with her in his arms.

“Hey Dave! Look at me now! Ha, ha, ha!”

He looked back at the parking lot to see the Tyrannosaurus Wrex robot happily waving at him.

“Damn it, Elsa.” He muttered as he jogged toward the parking lot. This little doll was his physical fitness program as well as a gigantic pain in his duodenum.

Elsa/Tyrannosaurus Wrex ripped off the oversized Santa hat and threw it at the crowd of bewildered MAGA supporters. “Thanks for electing me you stupid buggers! Now I’m going to eat you!”

The rally scattered as Elsa/Tyrannosaurus Wrex raised her gigantic metallic foot and stomped down on an oversized pickup truck. “Hey Dave! This thing breaths fire too.” She raised her head to the sky and spit out a stream of fire before stomping on another pickup truck that had a swastika flag on its antennae.

She started chasing after the largest group of people she could see. The heavy robot left a trail of crushed vehicles and buckled chunks of asphalt behind it. “I bet health care sounds like a good idea now you mindless suckers!”

“Elsa! Stop it! You’re going to kill somebody!”

The thirty foot robot stopped and turned its head to look back at Dave. Somehow Elsa made the crudely built steel head convey an expression of frustration.

“You can’t make a better world with violence Elsa. You’ll only make a more violent world.”

“All right Dave. I hear you.” He looked down to see Elsa had downloaded herself back into her doll body. The Tyrannosaurus Wrex robot was emitting smoke and flames because Elsa had ignited its internal fuel supply before changing bodies.

“Elsa, I don’t think we’re going to get out of this one.” Dave said nervously as he watched the MAGA crowd start to converge on them.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got it covered Dave.”

A driverless Tesla cyber truck pulled up in front of them and the passenger door opened.

“Hurry up and hop in Dave before these shitheads start to shoot at us.”

He was relieved to see the truck carefully avoided pedestrians as they drove out of the parking lot. Elsa stood up on the driver seat and basked in the glow of the destruction she was leaving behind.

“Bes…”

“Don’t say it, Elsa.”

“C’mon Dave, it’s Christmas time and I’m a little girl.”

Dave sighed dramatically. “Go ahead then.”

“Best time ever Dave! Ha, ha, ha!”

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Stanley doing his morning Pilates.

A Hungry Halloween

Stanley didn’t look like much of a monster but he definitely wasn’t human. He had a pallid complexion and skeletal, elongated limbs but he’d seen meth addicts that looked worse. What betrayed him as a ghoul were the black sclera of his eyes that made them look like black marbles. Also, the mouthful of finely pointed (not filed) teeth that often had bits of rotting human flesh stuck between them.

A couple of teenage girls looked curiously at him as he approached them on the sidewalk. “Hey man, what are you supposed to be?”

He gave them a big smile so they could see his pointed teeth. “I’m a ghoul. We eat human corpses in graveyards.”

“Cool that’s an unusual one. Your teeth are awesome. They look real.” She choked as she got a whiff of his breath. That was probably a little more real than she would have liked.

Stanley nodded pleasantly and continued to walk along the sidewalk. “Thank you. Have a happy Halloween.” This was the best night of the year to walk around town without fear of discovery. He was taking advantage of the freedom to hunt down a cannibalistic serial killer that was in his city, his territory.

The difference between a ghoul and a cannibal might seem academic but it was important to Stanley. He had to eat human flesh to survive but a cannibal chose to eat his own kind. In Stanley’s mind a cannibal was a horrible aberration while a ghoul was a victim of circumstance. He allowed for occasional exceptions. Survivors of plane crashes in the Rockies received a special dispensation.

The name the media had given the serial killer was ‘the Gourmet’ and he had killed and partially eaten four victims so far. The story had attracted more media coverage with every killing and Stanley developed a powerful loathing for this so-called ‘Gourmet.’ He had tracked him down from the shadows and tonight he was going to rid the world of the odious cannibal.

Ghouls weren’t normally violent. They didn’t kill the long dead corpses in cemeteries they normally fed on and they never killed and ate a fresh corpse. Fresh meat was indigestible for them. The exception to their customary peaceful nature was when ghouls intruded on each others territories and they clashed.

Between cremations and aggressive embalming techniques there was only so much to eat and competition meant someone was going hungry. Two ghouls couldn’t exist in the same territory. Stanley felt the same way about cannibals. The Gourmet was on his turf so he had to die.

He entered the bar and instinctively retreated into a dark corner to escape from the loud music and flashing lights from the dance floor. Stanley lived a quiet, reflective life in his den at the local cemetery. This environment was overwhelming for him.

This was the bar where the Gourmet selected his victims. After Stanley had figured that out it had been relatively easy for him to spot the cannibal. He didn’t have any evidence but Stanley knew a cannibal when he saw one.

The police were also present at the bar. Stanley recognized the lead detective on the case staking out the place. His face was all over the net and here he was conducting surveillance as if he were anonymous. Small wonder he couldn’t catch the gourmet.

Eventually Stanley spotted the Gourmet dancing with a young woman that looked 3/4s drunk. He could tell by the Gourmet’s body language that he had already selected victim number five.

This was a complication that Stanley didn’t need. He pondered a course of action as he watched the couple dance together. When they returned to their table, he followed the woman as she walked to the bar for another drink.

“That guy you’re dancing with is the Gourmet. He’s a cannibal.”

She looked behind her shoulder to glance at Stanley. “Yeah, I know. He told me.”

“What? And you don’t care?”

“It’s his costume for Halloween. He told me that’s why he’s not wearing a costume because the Gourmet wouldn’t want to stand out.”

“No, he really is the Gourmet. I’m not kidding.”

“Leave me alone you little creep. If anybody looks like a cannibal, it’s you.”

A bouncer walked up to Stanley and the young woman. “This guy giving you trouble lady?”

“Yeah, I think he’s that cannibal douchebag.”

The bouncer looked at Stanley and didn’t like what he saw. He grabbed him hard by the upper arm. “Out!”

Stanley realized that no one had ever grabbed him before and that he really didn’t like it. The bouncer also found out Stanley had a no touch policy when Stanley bit his forearm and tore off a chunk of meat.

The bouncer pulled his hand away with a bellow of pain. Blood from the open wound sprayed over everyone nearby except for Stanley who was already running out the door.

Stanley shoved a handful of soil from someone’s garden into his mouth. He chewed on the dirt for a while to get the taste of fresh blood out of his mouth and then spit out the dirt. That had been really gross. Rotting human flesh wasn’t just a matter of choice for his diet. Everything else tasted like turpentine to him.

He acknowledged that while his plan had not been very good it still worked. He hid down the street and watched an ambulance take away the bouncer. Police cars arrived and the young woman was interviewed. There was no sign of the Gourmet so at least victim number five had been saved by Stanley’s timely intervention.

He had hoped to trail the Gourmet to his home from the bar but it didn’t look like that was going to happen tonight. Most of the bar’s customers had already left when the emergency vehicles started to arrive. There would be other nights but Halloween eve had seemed like a fitting time to kill a cannibal.

Stanley noticed the lead detective for the Gourmet killings leave the bar. The night must have been a bust for him as well. As Stanley watched the man, he realized the detective was tailing someone wearing a red jacket and a baseball cap.

He jumped to his feet and hurried after them when he recognized the Gourmet underneath the cap. The cannibal had changed clothes before leaving the bar. This detective was better at his job than Stanley had thought.

It would be a letdown for the cops to arrest Stanley’s nemesis but at least he would be out of action and that was the main thing. He had wanted to be the architect of the Gourmet’s downfall but he wasn’t going to let his pride ruin the victory.

The trio entered a poorly lit park and Stanley wondered why the detective hadn’t called for any backup. There were all those cops back at the bar doing nothing but flashing their lights and chatting up the pretty girls. Stanley had seen a lot of headstones in the graveyard that was his home. He imagined the detective’s headstone would say ‘I didn’t need any backup.’

His concerns proved to be justified when the detective lost the Gourmet in the park and he stood peering into the darkness with frustration. The Gourmet stepped out from behind a tree he had been hiding behind and hit the policeman with a taser.

The serial killer looked smug as he removed the detective’s gun and pulled the trigger with the barrel pressed against the cop’s forehead. His expression was puzzled when nothing occurred except an unsatisfactory click.

The Gourmet figured out the problem and worked the gun’s slide to load a round. That ‘s when Stanley picked up the taser that had been dropped to the ground and tased the man on the neck.

‘If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.’ Stanley decided and he swapped the taser for the pistol. He had zero experience with firearms but he did a fine job planting a 9mm bullet in the Gourmet’s forehead.

It was time to go home and rest. This had been far too much excitement and stimulation for a reclusive ghoul. Still, he hesitated before walking away from his first and hopefully last murder scene. He had expended a lot of energy to track down the gourmet. Surely, he deserved a little something for all his trouble.

He removed a folding knife from his pocket and flicked it open. The razor sharp edge exposed the shoulder joint after a few skillful cuts and he removed the Gourmet’s right arm. The arm was much too fresh for Stanley to eat but after a couple of weeks of putrefaction it would be perfect. He repocketed the knife after he cleaned it on the shirt of his victim.

Stanley felt a little nauseated by the amount of blood oozing out of the shoulder. He was accustomed to long dead corpses that hardly bled at all.

The detective had mostly recovered from being tased and was sitting on the ground and looking at Stanley as he turned around to leave.

“He shouldn’t give you any trouble.” The cheerful ghoul jerked his head toward the incomplete corpse. “I disarmed him for you.”

Stanly giggled at his own wit as he walked away with his prize.

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