Horror 8, p.1
Horror #8, page 1
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Ruby Garden by Kimberly Rei
Grounds for Divorce by D.M. Burdett
Feeding the Crows by AmberM. Simpson
Becoming Invisible by Gary Smith, Jr
Death and Rabbits by Joel R. Hunt
Sunny Side-Up Eggs by Jacqueline Moran Meyer
I Don’t Remember Who I Am by Karen Avizur
The Gift by Lynne Phillips
Dark Mass by Nerisha Kemraj
A White Picket Fence by Susanne Thomas
Something’s Wrong with Mom by Warren Benedetto
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
The Ruby Garden
by Kimberly Rei
Winter had been hard that year. The frosts came early and lingered in the diminished sun. It was a good time for tucking in and planning the future, for reflection.
Annabelle sat at her kitchen table, fingers sliding over each line in her ledger. She paused to make a note here and there. This one needed more light, this one more water. She was pleased with the progress of most. There were a few, though, who were disappointments. No matter how much love and care she showed them, they refused to bloom. They would have to be culled. Her garden was so very important.
She stood and stretched, sighing as nearly every bone cracked and slid back into place. Company was coming and she needed to tidy up.
She hummed a sweet song as she went about her chores, mind ever on the most satisfying task of all. Finally, when everything was dusted and put away, she turned to the closed door. The red door. Or, as it was stored in her mind, The Red Door.
Her hand shook as she tugged the chain holding the key out of her dress. She kept it close to her heart, as she should. The heart was the place of love and she had so much of that to give.
The door opened to a greenhouse, made of intricate wrought iron and specialty stained glass that cost a fortune. A few years ago, one of her guests broke through a pane and it was months before she could replace the glass. Each panel was etched with arcane sigils, circles within circles, lines and symbols. The sigils had been hand painted a deep red that glimmered in the moonlight.
Annabelle paused in the doorway to drink in the glorious sight. A dozen young women hung from silk and velvet harnesses. Their heads hung forward, matching blonde hair covering their faces. Annabelle preferred it that way. Their beauty was in what they could offer, not in their features. Modest cotton shifts covered their curves. Tubes ran in and out of them, carrying nutrients to keep their bodies sustained and taking away what was not needed. Most precious of all, a thin line guided rich ruby life from arms to a tall crystal decanter in the centre of the greenhouse. It took time, distilling the blood and letting it blend to the perfect formula. But her love, her heart and soul, the moon of her existence, had very specific tastes. Annabelle had spent years creating the perfect recipe for her.
She yelped and clamped a hand to her mouth as a strong arm wrapped around her waist and dragged her back into the house. Cool lips pressed a kiss to her throat and she felt the slight sting of fangs as her lover took the first sip from her. It was never more than that. Just a bit. Enough to keep their bond strong.
A voice growled in her ear and she shivered, “Happy Anniversary.”
Grounds for Divorce
by D. M. Burdett
I awoke. My head felt heavy and my vision blurred into a thousand fractured pieces of darkness.
I felt no pain.
A vague memory of the monster fluttered at the periphery of my consciousness and I moved my eyes to find him in gloom.
I saw him eating, but I felt no fear.
The monster’s prey looked at me with dead eyes. A hazy memory of those eyes - bright and alive and filled with love - floated to the surface but was snuffed out by a white-hot compulsion that blinded my thoughts forever.
I crawled over to share my maker’s meal.
Feeding the Crows
by Amber M. Simpson
Harold threw a handful of grapes on the ground and sank back into his favourite bench at the park. He loved to watch the crows swoop down and peck at the fruit, cawing and fighting each other for the choicest bits. He used to bring bread and crackers, but the crows seemed to respond more to the juicy red grapes, and he couldn’t blame them. They were delicious. Popping one in his mouth, he settled in for the show.
He waited until a large mob of them were gathered. Smiling, he sat up straight.
“Get ’em.”
Lester, his old bloodhound, leaped from behind the bench where he’d been lounging. He tore into the murder of crows, snatching one as the rest dispersed to the sky. Lester shook his head viciously back and forth, snapping the crow’s neck, black feathers flying.
Harold chuckled and threw a few more grapes in his mouth, excited. This was his favourite part. When Lester shook the crow so hard its head flew off, Harold roared with laughter, throwing his own head back to the sky.
The half-chewed grapes lodged in his throat.
Clawing at his neck, Harold jerked and fell off the bench, the bag of grapes scattering.
“Les,” he wheezed, for all the good it would do, reaching out to the dog with one gnarled and veiny hand. But Lester was too busy enjoying his catch, rolling back and forth over the dead carcass, tongue lolling.
Harold flopped on his back, twitching, red eyes bulging from their sockets. His pale wrinkled lips opened and closed, like a goldfish breathing under water. In the sky above him, the crows circled, waiting.
When Lester’s back was turned, they descended. One landed on Harold’s chest and stared into the dead man’s face. As the grapes on the ground were quickly claimed by the others, the crow on Harold’s chest laid claim to its own. With a definitive caw, it extended its neck, and plucked the juicy red grape from its socket.
Becoming Invisible
by Gary Smith, Jr
I am invisible to all those around me. I am not a magician, a mystical wood elf, nor a dragon in guise. I am the man that empties the latrines, and I have been the palace’s emptier of latrines for over five years.
At first, I wasn’t invisible. Other young men would sit near me in the dining hall. Palace maids would whisper and smile as I passed. My visibility lasted until my occupation was discovered.
The ladies were the first to lose the ability to see me. The lords soon followed. This is to be expected. Admitting that I am in the room is the same thing as admitting that your shit stinks. Royalty will never admit that.
It took longer to become invisible to the common servants. First the maids and other female servants couldn’t see me. Next came the manservants, squires, and butlers. The stable boys and other lowly servants took a while. They know their shit stinks. But in time, they didn’t like the constant reminder.
I wasn’t disappointed when I became invisible. Invisibility was the biggest reason I asked for this job. I prefer to live my life without any interaction or attention. I just want to do my job and be left alone.
Each day is the same as the day before. After breakfast, I start at the top of the palace. The royal families don’t want their latrines to sit for long. I work my way from the top to the bottom of the palace. After lunch, I empty the latrines on the top two storeys again. The lower floors will wait for the next day. They don’t mind a little shit smell. They’re used to it. After dinner, I empty the royal latrines one last time.
Today began just as any other. After breakfast, I walked the steps to the top floor of the palace. I always started with the quarters of the King and Queen. As I approached the double doors to their rooms, the guards did not see me. They can’t see me. I’ve emptied their latrines for years. I am invisible.
I walk into the King’s rooms and notice he is alone at his large sturdy desk. The land has been at war for seven years, so seeing him alone is extremely rare. I walk to the corner far behind his desk where his latrine is always located. I am more invisible to him than anyone else. He knows his shit doesn’t stink.
He doesn’t hear me approach. He doesn’t realise I am in the room until my knife slides into the back of his neck. Blood pours down the back of his robe as I pull my knife out and wipe it on his sleeve. His head hits his desk with a dull thump.
The last thing I think before walking invisibly out of his rooms, and out of the palace, is that when his body is discovered, everyone else will know that the King’s shit does stink.
Death and Rabbits
by Joel R. Hunt
When I was growing up, being the Easter Bunny was a death sentence.
You see, Easter wasn’t originally about chocolate. It wasn’t about eggs or rabbits or fluffy little chicks. Easter was about the torture, death and resurrection of God’s only son Jesus Christ. To some Christians, the very existence of the Easter Bunny is nothing short of blasphemy. And my parents did not tolerate blasphemy.
Father, in particular, resented what he saw as the distortion of the holiday. He took it upon himself to create a new tradition just for our family; one that would ensure, for the remainder of our days, that we could never think about the Easter Bunny without also thinking of the execution of Christ.
Before I go into more detail, you need to understand that my father was a twisted fucker. He never showed his children any love or emotion. He told us at length and in detail about how we were on our way to burning in Hell for all of eternity; he beat us for laughing or playing or just generally acting like children. He saved the worst of his beatings for Mother, which happened in front of us and seemingly at random, but don’t feel sorry for her. She was jus
To make matters worse, both of our parents rejected modern medicine. I never saw a doctor in that household, nor a dentist, nor a chemist. Mother and Father believed solely in the power of prayer. I had to watch several of my siblings die from what I now know were completely curable illnesses or injuries. Mother would be at their bedside praying day and night, and we would be beaten for not joining in, but the moment my brother or sister—their child—died, Mother and Father would simply bury them and move on. They took the lack of recovery as being God’s judgement. In their minds, our prayers went unanswered not because the prayer was impossible or unnecessary, but because the child wasn’t deserving of God’s mercy.
After the death of a loved one, a normal family might say that “they’re in a better place now,” or “they went home to God.”
Not the bastards who brought us up. Whenever one of our siblings passed away, their response was:
“The Devil took them back.”
That was my childhood. That was the only life I knew until I escaped years later. But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, you should know about our Easter Bunny tradition. We kept a variety of animals on our land, all horribly mistreated and underfed. The most unfortunate were the rabbits. As I said, Father bore a particular resentment towards rabbits, because he felt that the very concept of the Easter Bunny was an insult to our Lord. So he found a way to punish them—and us—while drilling in what he saw as the most important lesson of Christ’s life: We are all sinful, and we must all suffer for the Lord.
Each year, Father would march us out to the rabbit hutch and force us to choose one of them to be the Easter Bunny. At first we used to pick our favourites, but we soon learned better; in later years, we would choose the scrawniest rabbit we could find, vainly hoping that the ceremony wouldn’t last as long for them. Once we’d made our choice, the newly-declared Easter Bunny would be taken to a special spot in the garden. We would all be forced to sit in front of a small wooden structure, with Mother standing behind us to ensure we watched. Then, reciting Biblical verse from memory, Father would thrust the rabbit against the wood.
And crucify it.
Did you know rabbits scream? They’re normally so quiet, it catches you off guard. A shrill, shrieking wail. Every year I hoped I’d be ready for it, but every year it cut to my core. One nail through the first paw. One nail through the next. One through the legs.
Then we watched, and waited. Waited until they died. Sometimes they’d last half a day, but even when my youngest siblings were crying from cold and hunger, we were forced to watch until it was done.
Afterwards, the sacrificed rabbit would be taken down from its cross, and my father would lead us to a narrow cave at the edge of the forest. There he would place the rabbit’s corpse, and the cave mouth would be sealed with stones.
Three days later, on Resurrection Sunday, the whole family would march up to the cave and kneel, with Father leading us in prayer. We would ask God to forgive us of our sins and to share with us His glory. When we had finished, Father would remove the stones one by one, and a true miracle would be revealed to us:
The Easter Bunny would be inside the cave, alive and well.
As a child, this brutal ceremony was softened by the magic and wonder of the rabbit’s resurrection. It was proof to me, and to all of my siblings, that God was real, and that He worked through Father’s hands. Of course, as an adult, I know better. I know that on the morning of the third day, Father would find a similar-looking rabbit, head to the cave before us, and replace the mangled corpse with a living copy, sealing it back up for us to find later that day.
Looking back, I’d like to say that this ghoulish Easter tradition was the worst thing my father did. But it wasn’t. The worst thing was what happened to Joshua.
Joshua was one of my younger brothers, and he was always a little different. Joshua cried when nothing was sad, or laughed when nothing was funny. He struggled to use words, but grunted and groaned almost constantly. He never fully learned how to use the toilet, even with Mother’s increasingly vicious beatings after each accident. Any other family would have known that Joshua was disabled. He wasn’t a bad child—far from it, he often surprised us with his kind and gentle nature—but he was different, and for our parents, that was unforgivable. In his final few years, I don’t recall Mother even calling him “Joshua”. He simply became “the Devil’s child”.
One winter’s night, something unusual happened. Father announced he was taking Joshua to work with him. This had never happened before, not for any of us; Father hated spending time with his children, and work was his escape from us. Yet for Joshua, it was the most exciting development in his young life. He hugged Father and let out a kind of moaning squeal. Father grabbed Joshua’s wrist and pulled him through the door. I watched them go. When they walked out of sight, I ran upstairs and watched from my window, tracking them past the barn, through the fields, and into the woods.
For hours, I waited. I whispered with my brothers and sisters about what they could be doing out there, even after Mother caught us and beat us for keeping secrets from her. For once in our lives, we were excited for Father to return from work.
He came back home that evening.
But Joshua never did.
I realise now, of course, that Father killed him. It seems strange that there was a time I didn’t know that. It’s incomprehensible to me that none of my siblings, not even Mary, the eldest of us, once considered contacting the authorities. We knew Father was a monster. We knew what he did to defenceless rabbits. But as a child, the realisation that he was capable of murdering his own children was just too much of a leap for us. I think, deep down, I was still trying to convince myself that Father was a good person.
My parents never acknowledged what happened, and all of our questions about our missing brother were deflected or ignored. His name was never again uttered by either of them, and soon we stopped asking as well.
We stopped asking, but not thinking. I lay awake for countless nights wondering if Joshua was still out there, cold and alone. If he was dead, I wondered whether God would take pity on him—like he did on the Easter Bunny—and bring him back to life. I wondered if there was anything I could have done to have saved him.
But Joshua’s death does not lie with me, nor with any of my siblings. That sin lies squarely at the feet of my parents. Yes, both of them. Make no mistake, Mother knew exactly what was happening. She resented Joshua every bit as much as Father did, seeing him as some kind of personal failure on her own part. I told you she was a cold bitch. She never loved a single one of us.
I finally got out of that wretched house when I was sixteen. I packed everything I had into a rucksack and walked out in the middle of the night. I left a note for my remaining siblings, but nothing for Mother and Father. I didn’t care what they thought about me leaving. I was just glad to be rid of them.
I travelled as far away as I could go and set about starting a new life for myself, far away from the hell of my childhood.
I never once dreamed I’d be back there ten years later.
It was Mary who brought me home.
Her letter arrived one morning, explaining that Mother was on her deathbed and unlikely to survive the week. A doctor, of course, was out of the question, regardless of how much Mary tried to pressure our parents to change their minds, so Mary had little choice but to reach out to us. She felt, regardless of our history, that children should be there for their parents’ final moments. She always had been the most responsible of us. It came naturally to her, given that she was the only real caregiver me or my siblings had in that house. As the oldest child, Mary was the one who provided comfort and guidance. Mary was the one to bandage our wounds and teach us the difficult words from the Bible. Mary was the one who advised us when to own up and accept punishment, and when to bury a secret and never speak of it again. One of my brothers, Paul, is only alive today because Mary forbid him from ever mentioning his sexuality to our parents. I have no doubt that Father would have done to Paul what he did to Joshua, rather than allow a gay son to live.
