Frightmares: A Fistful of Flash Fiction Horror (11 page)

Up to her elbows in blood, Abigail roars, breaking all the rules.

Milo James Fowler
is a teacher by day, writer by night. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in over 30 publications, including
Daily Science Fiction, Shimmer,
and
Criminal Element
. You can find more information at http://www.milo-inmediasres.com..

LOBOTOMY

PEDRO INIGUEZ

Renzo Zapata lay in a dimly lit room, strapped to a crude operating table. They’dbe coming for him soon; the Skin-Slitters, the Bone-Grinders, the
Brain-Eaters . . .

He’d been sent here to get better. Family and friends; the police, and judges all agreed; Renzo was
special . . .
not crazy; they never used words like that, no matter how much his actions might warrant it.

Footsteps echoed through the cramped hallways of Bloom Memorial Hospital. They were coming; the
Neurosurgeons;
coming to cure him of his sickness; to scoop out the diseased meat of his mind and leave him hollow, like the rest.

C
razy . . .
that’s what they meant, behind the pretty lies. He was crazy. But what chance did he have in a world where the dead were health-bringers, where
eaters of minds
were responsible for mind’s restoration? Ha!
Crazy . . .
if so, it just put him on even terms with the rest of the world.

But not for long. They were coming, and soon, under their ravenous care, he’d be as sane as the rest . . .

Pedro Iniguez
lives in the small town of Eagle Rock, California where he reads and writes the hours away. He’s had a love of horror fiction since childhood, when he won the Best Horror Story contest in elementary school.

THE MAILBOX OF BROKEN DREAMS

PAVELLE WESSER

I knock on the door, waiting as it creaks heavily open. Nobody’s there.

“Hello?” My voice echoes as I call into the darkness.

“Fetch me the mail,” an ancient voice replies from deep inside. Before I can respond, the door slams shut in my face.

At the end of the driveway, the brass number on the mailbox reads 206.
This isn’t right
, I think, reaching inside for the mail and withdrawing only a handful of bone fragments. I stare at them.

Now this is truly odd.

When I knock again, the door creaks open on rusted hinges, and a desiccated hand emerges. “Mail, please.”

“Sure,” I step into the darkened entranceway, then turn toward a tapping sound at the window. I gasp at the sight of black moths beating their wings against the filthy windowpanes—then I throw my handful of bones onto the floor.

“Sorry, that’s all I found in the mailbox.”

“Because that’s all that’s left of you,” the voice informs me. As electrical charges pulse through me, the voice continues. “Why can’t you just accept that you’re dead?”

“Because I’m not!!” I flap my wings, only to find them beating helplessly against a pane of glass. I’m trapped, I realize—just like all the others.

Someone else knocks on the heavy wooden door. Slowly, it swings open and allows them to enter.

“Hello?” This newcomer’s voice is an unsure, hollow echo that makes me long to beat my wings against the walls of their failing heart.

On the front of the door, I glimpse the number 206. Now I recall that this is the exact number of bones contained in the human body. I reflect on this as the new visitors splinter into fragments.

With the other moths, I take flight toward the sunlight. It is a fatal impulse, but then aren’t all impulses utlimately so? Together, we fly into the mailbox where the little door closes, leaving us enveloped in familiar darkness. Daylight is temporary, after all—just as life is finite. The next person who looks inside this mailbox will find wings instead of bones. Would that they could fly . . . and perhaps when their dreams turn to nightmares—as mine have—they will!

Pavelle Wesser
’s fiction has appeared in many ezines, including
Antipodean SF, SNM Horror
and
Eclecticism
. She is included in anthologies such as the
Flashshot 2010 Contributor Edition
by G.W. Thomas and
66 Twisted Tales in 66 Words
by Kimberly Raiser and is forthcoming in other anthologies by Wicked East Press.

NEIGHBOUR FROM HELL

PAUL JOHNSON-JOVANOVIC

Friday

I was looking forward to a quiet night at home. After a hard day at work–hell, it’d been a hard
week
at work–all I wanted to do was to put my feet up and relax.

So I made a shopping list and went to the supermarket for my bits and bobs.

•
Packet of salted peanuts

•
Pack of sweets

•
Horror DVD

•
4-pack of beer

I got back and kicked off my shoes, putting in the DVD before settling into the settee with a weary smile on my face. I opened a can of lager and savoured my first swig of cold liquid gold.

That’s when the noise started. Coming from next door: the steady
thump-thump-thump
of music. It wasn’t too bad at first, and I was able to drown it out by turning up the TV’s volume. But fifteen minutes later, it began to get progressively louder . . . and louder . . . and
louder
. . .

“For fuck’s sake!” I blurted out, exasperated. “What a racket!”

The new neighbours had moved in the previous day. I’d hoped that they would be as quiet as Mr. and Mrs Jones, the previous residents.

No chance of that. After a few hours I felt like I was living next to a night club. I went round to have a word, but no one answered the door—probably they couldn’t hear me knocking above the blaring music.

The music went on throughout the night.

I got no sleep.

Saturday

I had to go to the shop again. My girlfriend, Marie, was coming over for dinner and I wanted to impress her. So I made another list and off I went.

•
Candles

•
Wine (El Plonko)

•
Strawberries

•
Stroganoff mix

•
Aspirin

•
Box of economy chocolates

It was quiet when she arrived, and I was optimistic that all would work out well. But just as we sat down to dinner, the music started again:
thump-thump-thump
. . .

After five minutes or so, I stood up. “I’ll see if I can get them to turn it down.”

No matter how loud I pounded, no one answered the door.

When I returned, Marie was putting her coat on. “I can’t sit here and listen to that noise, Dave–it’s giving me a headache!”

We went to the pub instead. Not exactly the romantic evening I’d hoped for.

The music was still blaring when I got back home at 1 a.m.

I got no sleep again. I was seriously pissed off. I could have pulled my hair out.

Sunday

Now that Friday and Saturday were out of the way, I figured things might quiet down. I was wrong. Throughout the day, the music kept playing. It was time to pay a visit to the hardware store. I made myself another list.

•
Axe

•
Shovel

•
Black bags (heavy duty)

•
Cleaning solution

I took care of business, and now it’s quiet next door. I hope the next people who move in aren’t so noisy.

Paul Johnson-Jovanovic
has been writing for a few years now and had stories published in various mags:
7th Diminsion, Spinetinglers, Morpheus Tales, Dark Tales
, to name a few. He should have his first novel finished very soon.

POPSICLES

CHARLES NATHAN CAPASSO

My wife and sister were in the house, cooking something green; possibly with tofu; undoubtedly healthy. It made no difference to me:
Congenital anosmia,
which, in layman’s terms, means I can’t smell anything, and by extension, have almost no sense of taste. Sometimes it’s more a blessing than a curse.

But I’d noticed the wrinkle in my nephew’s nose as he peered into the kitchen. I snuck two popsicles out of the freezer in sympathy. We sat on the patio in smiling conspiracy, ruining our supper.

“So, what’s new champ?” I asked.

“Not much,” he said, swinging legs that didn’t reach the wooden planks of the patio. “I made a rocket last week.”

“Really?” I smiled.

“Yeah, it was cool. Mom showed me how to mix stuff so it would shoot really high.” He waved his red popsicle around in imitation rocket flight.

“Sounds like fun.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You staying out of trouble this summer?” I wondered how much food coloring and corn syrup had been used to get such a deep shade of red.

My nephew grinned. “Last night I became a vampire.”

“Oh really?”

“Yeah, Mom’s one, too. She came in and bit me.”

“Well that wasn’t cool,” I said, licking a trickle that ran down the wooden stick to my finger. No taste, but I can still feel texture. The liquid seemed awfully thick. I wondered how long they’d been in the freezer. Can popsicles go bad?

“Naw, it is. Now we can run around at night and hang out.”

“Oh, well. That’s okay, then,” I laughed. “You know, I always suspected something like that from your mom.”

I looked down at my nephew, licking his popsicle. He looked up at me and we smiled. For a second, it seemed his teeth were awfully long. And sharp.

“I think you’re fibbing me,” I said, finally. “It’s daytime, and you’re outside.”

He giggled, his mouth smeared with thick, red stickiness. “Yeah, I am. We’re really werewolves.”

Charles Nathan Capasso
was born in Boston, Massachusetts and raised in Akron, Ohio. He graduated from Denison University, where he majored in English with a concentration in Creative Writing. He currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia.

NUMBER THIRTY-SIX

ALBA ARANGO

CLICK

January 16, 2011.

There she is, number thirty-six. Dark brown hair, dark brown eyes, caramel colored skin—she’s perfect. Although, I must admit, I did initially question whether she was the right one. But then I thought, well . . . Nevada DID belong to Mexico once upon a time, so I was right to pick a Mexican girl. And a showgirl . . . come on! You don’t get more Nevada than that.

Hold on a sec . . . okay, there we go. She turned on the bedroom light. Another ten minutes and she’ll hop in the shower . . . and then number thirty-six will take her place in history!

*
sigh*
Ten minutes to kill. I guess I could start doing my research on number thirty-seven. Let’s see . . . thirty seven, thirty-seven . . . ah, here it is! State number thirty-seven: Nebraska. Hmm . . . farmer’s daughter maybe? Shouldn’t be hard to find. After that, there’s only thirteen left. Man, time goes so fast. It seems like only yesterday that I spotted number one—Miss-High-and-Mighty Delaware. I wonder if the police ever found her fingers? No matter—it’s not like they’d fit back on her hand anyway.

Whoops! Looks like number thirty-six has just picked her clothes out for tomorrow. Now that presents an interesting dilemma: do I leave her in the buff or put her in the clothes she has so carefully chosen for tomorrow? I suppose I could do both . . . leave part of her one way and part of her the other. I wonder if Ted Bundy ever wrestled with such decisions?

Well . . . it’s almost two-thirty. She should be ready for her shower soon. What crazy schedules these showgirls keep. Honestly! They should be paid extra just for working these God-forsaken hours. I wonder what fool came up with the idea of having an eleven o’clock topless show? Had to be some sad, pathetic, got-nothing-else-to-do-on-a-Monday-night, pitiful excuse for a man.

Oh! Shower just came on. The clock reads two twenty-nine—time for me to get to work.