Fear, p.47
Fear, page 47
Of course, there are other terms for appetite as well. Craving, coveting, hunger, lust, gluttony, ravenousness, want, yearning, and passion, just to name a few. South of the Mason-Dixon Line, we call it a “hankering”. Southern folks possess a hankering for a lot of things: gravy & biscuits, sweet tea, pecan pie and homemade ice cream. If you’re hanging at the honky-tonk and downing your twelfth beer, you might get a powerful hankering for a hellacious fight or some late-night loving (although most Southern wives refuse to accommodate their men in that area if they stagger home all liquored up).
When thinking of appetite, two supernatural beings come instantly to the minds of horror fiction readers; vampires and werewolves. I’ve explored both in larger bodies of work – my novels, Blood Kin and Undertaker’s Moon (Moon of the Werewolf) – and, in a more limited way, several short stories. Those tales of the blood-sucking undead and the beastly lycanthrope are featured here in this collection. Since it is also dedicated to “things that go bite in the night” these stories also explore other creatures with equally voracious appetites, from man-eating caterpillars to backwoods succubi to monstrous things that lie patiently in wait by the side of the road.
So, if you hear something scratching at your front door or lurking in the shadows of your darkened bedroom following the reading of this collection, don’t blame me. It’s just the dark things that run rampant between dusk and dawn, looking for a little midnight snack.”
UNHINGED
It usually happens by chance. You are alone in a deserted parking lot or at an interstate rest stop, when a man approaches you out of nowhere. An average-looking fellow with a good-natured smile; a man who, in your opinion, certainly couldn’t harm a fly.
Then, in a flash, it happens. The pepper spray, the duct tape, the forceful imprisonment in the oily darkness of a car trunk. You lay there and listen as the car tires hum on the smoothness of asphalt, then the crackle of gravel, then the rutted instability of a lonesome dirt road. Above the noise you can hear your abductor humming a familiar tune cheerfully to himself… The Doors’ “Riders on the Storm”. It is at that moment that you realize that his grin was anything but good-natured and that his brain – and dark intentions – are as twisted and slimy as a nest of squirming nightcrawlers…
In Unhinged: Tales of Darkness and Depravity, Southern Horror author, Ronald Kelly, explores the blackest recesses of the human psyche in eleven chilling tales of dark suspense and terror. Serial killers, mass murderers, and other no-account folks stalk these pages, donning the mask of mediocrity and normality, until the masquerade comes abruptly to an end and the abominations lurking beneath are laid bare and unbridled. And, by then, it is too late. There can be no escape… for the one who has possession of your body and soul is hopelessly unhinged…
The stories included are:
Breakfast Serial
The Winds Within
Fluid
Yea, Though I Drive
Diary
Romicide
Depravity Road
Mass Appeal
Scream Queen
Wood Shed
Exit 85
Ronald Kelly, Fear
