Frightmares: A Fistful of Flash Fiction Horror (12 page)

Signing off for now.

CLICK

Alba Arango
is a secondary school teacher of twenty years. She recently received her AA in creative writing and enjoys the telling of a good story. She’s had several short stories published in various anthologies, but Number Thirty-Six is her first work of horror.

NOT VERY LONG LEFT

T. E. SAMAD

Duggy doesn’t have much time left in this hell hole. He’s not completely alone in this dump, though; he has Frank for company.

“Are you scared, Duggy?” Frank asks.

“Nah, not one bit,” says Duggy with not much emotion on his face.

“You’re about to die. I would be terrified if I was you.”

“But you’re not me, so you have nothing to worry about. Is asking you to stop tapping that pen on that pathetic excuse for a desk too much to ask, seeing as how I’m about to die?”

“Oh, sorry.”

“Thanks. Can I ask you something?”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“How long have you been doing this?”

“My job?”

“What else?”

“Oh, I would say about fifteen years. Why are you asking?”

“Well, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to make conversation before whatever is going to happen to me.”

“That’s understandable. What else do you wanna to know?”

“How many?”

“How many people have been here?”

“No. I mean how many people have you killed?”

“Are you sure you really wanna know? I don’t think it’s gonna make you feel any better.”

“Just say it, man.”

“I don’t think I can give an exact number.” Frank pauses, his lips moving silently. “I’m sure it’s more than two hundred, give or take a couple.”

“Jeez, man. You’re the neighborhood psycho, aren’t you?”

“It’s just a job.”

Duggy looks at his hands held loose and dangling between his legs. “I can’t believe I’m in here. It’s not like I committed a crime.”

“Oh, in her books, cheating is a crime!”

“I’m just a flesh-and-blood guy. I know I’m not the only dude in the world that cheated on his girl.”

“But you didn’t just cheat on any girl. You cheated on a mob boss’s daughter. Didn’t it occur to you while you were nailing that blonde that what you were doing might have consequences?”

Duggy is about to answer, but is interrupted by Frank’s phone, which beeps softly, deafeningly in the silence. Frank picks the phone up and reads the text message.

“Okay, Duggy, it’s time.”

“Can you make it quick, at least?”

“My orders are to slowly strangle you to death. Sorry.”

Duggy’s cell door is opened, just long enough for Franky to do what he has to do.

T. E. Samad
is a poet and short story writer based in England. He began placing more emphasis on his literary pursuits a few years ago. Since doing so, he has had many of his poems published as well as a few stories.

FEED

SUZIE SAVAGE

The last thing I remember was blood on the floor. A lake of crimson. The baby couldn’t have survived. I don’t remember the ambulance ride, or the surgery.

I wake. Someone has laid it on my chest. For such a tiny thing it’s heavier than mercury. I can’t breathe.

“Get him off me.
Get him off me now
.”

My throat’s scratchy from the general anesthetic.

Colin leans into view. “Hello, Sleeping Beauty. Time to meet your son.”

He holds the baby so I can see what I’ve produced. I wait for the surge of familiarity I felt with my daughter, the feeling that you always knew this wonderful, ancient person.

I feel nothing.

The baby opens his myopic eyes. It’s not the heavy-lidded curiosity of the newborn, but rather the survey of a digesting snake.

“He’s gorgeous, Julie,” Colin says. “So calm . . . not a peep out of him since your caesarean. I think he’s hungry, though.”

“He’s not hungry,” I say. “He’s already fed.”

“Sweetheart, he needs milk.”

A midwife pulls the curtain that surrounds my cubicle open with a wrenching motion.

“Morning, Mum. Morning, Dad.” Her voice is
tra-la-la
efficient. “You’re a pickle, Mum. It was bit of a worry there for a while, but all’s well now. Baby’s doing splendidly.”

She helps me to sit, then takes off my bedclothes and pulls up my nightdress.

My belly feels as though every muscle has been ripped apart. Instead of the full pregnancy bulge, there’s a flaccid sac. My skin sags to one side, discarded.

“Wound is looking excellent. Have we tried yet to feed Baby?”

With an air of ownership, she manhandles my swollen breast. “Don’t be concerned, Mum, but your little chap has been born with teeth. Natal teeth.”

She takes hold of the baby and draws down his lower lip. Two sharp translucent spikes emerge from his gum pads.

“I know,” I say. “He kept biting me.
Inside
. He’s the reason I bled.”

My husband and the midwife give each other a quick glance.

“Now Mum, that’s nonsense. He wasn’t biting you. You were probably just feeling him kick. Let’s get Baby some dinner. Breast is best.”

I want to resist, but he’s already clamped on, the spiteful teeth scraping my nipple, cheeks drawing rhythmically inwards.

“Dear little Baby. Both of you only have one job now.
To feed
. We’ll leave you two in peace.”

“Don’t go,” I say. Colin just strokes the baby’s head, then mine, and disappears behind the curtain.

The baby looks at me with narrowed eyes. He bites down. My tender flesh tears. Sinews—glowing white under the hospital lights—are dragged away from my bones by the tiny daggers in his mouth. Veins coil around his tense tongue.

I want to scream, but can’t. Instinct tells me
this is why I’m here.

To let him feed—

Suzie Savage
knows there's an axe murderer in every basement, the desiccated bones of an insane maiden aunt in every attic, and if you look into a mirror at midnight you will see your own death. Having this knowledge makes the long winter evenings pretty nerve-wracking.

SPRINGING FORWARD

STEVEN JENKINS

The bitter March morning seemed unreal.

The onset of Daylight Savings Time haunted Phil Cambridge. A dream-like state left him feeling weightless, almost invisible. The mystical sense that an hour truly had been lost only increased his sense of detachment. It left him feeling that something far beyond his control had changed along with the clock.

Phil looked down and watched the surreal swing of his polished shoes, wondering why they did not disperse the new layer of downy snow over which he passed.

The Colorado town of Marshall didn’t wake up early on Sunday. The burg’s narrow streets were normally vacant, save for the handful of devoted, making their way past dogs barking behind white picket fences.

No dogs barked as he passed.

Phil continued his trek to Marshall’s Community Church. When there, he would pray for redemption from the transgressions that had consumed his life, leaving him a slave to the bottle.

Unwelcome thoughts tormented him. Phil had left Hart’s bar at closing, but he had no recollection of anything after two a.m–the moment that the clock sprung forward and left a sixty-minute black hole in the space-time continuum. He pulled out the knurled wheel of the Timex encircling his wrist and rotated the minute hand clockwise to compensate for the change.

An instantaneous vision stabbed his brain, demanding Phil to halt and close his blue eyes. He stood there, wavering in the bitter air, watching the inexplicable picture playing behind his eyelids. The granular, sepia depiction appeared like a video from a convenience store’s surveillance camera stationed far above the earth . . .

An obscure man staggered out of Hart’s Bar onto the sidewalk bordering Main Street, across from the church. He tried to determine if it was safe to cross over the slick asphalt road. No headlights shone, only the sound of a vehicle’s spinning tires sounding in the distance.

Halfway into the southbound lane, the ghostly image of a racing Dodge Ram pick-up suddenly appeared ten feet before him. Recoiling, he tried to avoid the violent encounter with the speeding mass of cold steel.

The impact was brutal. The man ended glued to the truck’s shattered windshield, mortally crushed . . .

Phil peeled his eyes open, trying to convince himself that this experience was only a subconscious delusion. He continued along Third Avenue and turned the corner.

A yellow police tape blocked Main Street in front of the church. A small congregation gathered at the doors of Hart’s Bar, joined by a handful of the tavern’s patrons. With heads bowed low, some placed flowers on the sidewalk.

Phil rushed toward the scene as fast as his phantom legs would carry him. He stopped behind the reverend. “What happened here?” he asked.

There was no direct response, only the near murmur of the holy man in front of him, “Dear Lord, please embrace Phil Cambridge and welcome his tortured soul into the kingdom of Your blessed Heaven.”

Steven William Jenkins
lives in Denver, Colorado with his wife, Katy and three dogs. He builds split-cane fly rods for a living, while writing tales of horror and suspense when time allows. He has penned two novels,
Windigo
and
The Horribilis Path
.
Windigo
is currently available at Amazon.com.

PROTOTYPE

NIALL MCMAHON

The sky is a bloodbath. Red as hell. The sun sits on the horizon haemorrhaging fire, igniting the clouds. Jesus, it looks like heaven is wounded–emptying its arteries into the jet stream.

I feel night’s shadow at my back, and for once I don’t care. Let it come. Let me die beneath this slaughterhouse sunset. This is all my fault.

***

I’ve seen seven people die over the past few nights.

Perhaps it’s
their
blood in the clouds . . .

Shit.

I keep having thoughts like that–insane, illogical crap that seems to make sense. Is this what losing your mind feels like? A redefining of the implausible, of your personal laws of physics? Shut up and run. Just fucking run.

Because it’s coming. It’s coming back and this time there’s only me.

***

Carter died first. It cut his head off. I saw his face after it had parted company with his body. He was still alive in those moments–I could see the confusion in his eyes. Carter who told us this mission would be safe. Carter who guaranteed our survival. Almost as stupid as me.

Then Becka. She was on guard that third night. I heard her rifle–then two blasts from her handgun. Then she screamed. Good Christ, what a sound. It cut her open from her groin to her collarbone. That was the first time I glimpsed it–a jagged, violent shape that re-entered the night like a blade.

Then Mitchell and Hughes. Hard-nuts the pair of them–Gulf vets. By the state of them they tried to fight back. It wasn’t easy to tell which pieces were Hughes, and which were Mitchell. Except for Mitchell’s head–it was sliced straight down the middle like an apple, the two halves side by side and served up with shattered teeth. I laughed when I saw them–between vomiting.

Karl virtually killed himself. “I ain’t running from that fuckin’ thing any more,” he declared. “Fuckin’ genetic freak can kiss my arse.” As we ran I heard nothing. He died silently, probably too pissed to scream.

Just before Ian died he said, “Can’t believe no bastard is pulling the plug. It works. The thing works. Didn’t Carter have a fail-safe? Does it have to do us all before it passes the test?”

“New weapon, probably malfunctioning,” I lied.

“But it’ll kill everyone. Everywhere.”

An hour later, it killed him.

Then just me and Fox. She was a tough cookie–could probably have taken any of us.

She gestured across the sea to the mainland. “If it learns to swim . . . ”

I think she injured it. As it tore her up I heard it shrieking.

***

Now just me.

Me beneath the massacre sky.

***

“It’s your secret,” the tech boys had told me. “Any problems, this shuts the prototype down.”