Monstrous
Monstrous Books => The Monstrous Library => Topic started by: prezhorusin04 on July 19, 2007, 11:19:10 PM
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The following story was written sometime within the first week of January, 2001.
It was collected with pen in a notebook, and aside from a couple very minor modifications, appears here, typed for the very first time.
It deals with an imaginary apparition which has always, for some reason, haunted me. They say if you want to write horror you have to write about what scares you. The creature in the following piece, while vague and still formless, in need of further manifestation, probably represents the epitome of my own personal "demons". It's quite shocking really...
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(http://img172.imageshack.us/img172/4074/tveyerh9.jpg)
Creature from Universe Twenty-Three
By Michael A. Dyer
Phantom images swirled in his dreamscape, walking on clouds of electrically charged green fluff. She was there. Taunting and banishing him with a pointing finger to some further nether region of his confused mind. Her other hand was rubbing her stomach to the expectancy of the new arrival.
He floated and drifted as if cursed, while shadowed faces gave him varied expressions of pity and contempt as he passed them by. He barely recognized some, while he knew others all too well. His high school gym teacher sped across his view, blowing fiercely on a silent whistle. His ex-girlfriend danced by so pretty like a medieval ballerina, twirling and smiling as she disappeared from sight. He should have made it work with her. He had loved her so much. Then none of this mess would have happened and his life wouldn’t feel so utterly wasted and destroyed.
She was coming at him again from the other side this time; easier to spot and looking five months into pregnancy now. “You did this to me” she cursed out accusingly and even amidst the clutter and chaos of this dream world, he was able to feel the irony of it all. His mother and father came now, standing by the fireplace in their sleeping clothes and looking discouragingly at what he knew to be the long list of bad grades and unpaid tuition bills and loans. He saw them in his peripheral now, in passing, and as they dropped the dozens of papers to the ground he noticed his mother pulling frantically at her hair while his father raised a deep, brown bottle of Tequila to his lips which held a fat and obscene worm at the bottom that appeared to be dancing.
His best friend Rex of whom he hadn’t seen in over a year since he’d joined the police force, stood there in complete uniform and pointing a gun in his direction. His one time best friend’s eyes now sought to penetrate and provoke fear in him. The gun looked through him like an eye as well, waiting for the slightest provocation and excuse to splatter his brains on the fluffy clouds of dream. Before Rex disappeared from site, as all of his other memories had faded, he pulled the trigger and a bright purple flag popped out of the barrel the read: “JOKE!” Then a long, slender living shadow crept in around him from the darkness and quickly bore down at him with a narrow, silver dagger. It was almost as long as a sword and sparkled with jeweled adornments on the handle.
His sister, the video store clerk, and faceless people who he could not name, all crossed his path in mocking amusement. In some cases it was complete hysterics, as they laughed and taunted him with tears in their eyes. His neighbor spun around and around, barbequing, drinking beer, and laughing as deeply as any man can laugh; from the gut, of which his neighbor had quite a large one. Then the sound of the crackling barbeque pit slowly turned to rushing water, and she again appeared before him. A waterfall ensued as she held up the form of the little child in her arms.
“I’ve named him Barry, after his father.” The problem lay within the fact that his name was not Barry. The baby turned to face him and it was a hideous mutt with the face of a dog and the snout and hooves of a pig. It gave a shrill cry before its mongrel tongue snorted “Da-Dee”. It called out like a thing that could only half speak and which would never know many words. It would have been a terrifying sight if it wasn’t so pathetic and ill-formed. Without warning he teetered and fell like the conveyer belt had come to an end and he heard many glasses breaking and tasted blood in his mouth. He was falling and tumbling backwards, end over end, and he feared the dark and abysmal bottom. He knew it was the endless depth of his subconscious mind, and lurking below were hidden jaws that could swallow a Great White and it wouldn’t think twice about allowing entry with the bile and the plankton.
Babies cried as if from the bosom of a tortured land and just as he felt he couldn’t take it anymore, tearing asunder with the G-force of his fall, he awoke in his darkened room to the sounds of crickets and his own panting breath. Soon after he was sitting up and alert, drenched with sweat, and saw that the clock read 2:12am. He had only been asleep a little over an hour now and already his inner demons had met up with him.
He pushed his way out from under the stained sheets and put his feet to the floor, running his fingers through his shaggy and stringy hair, which again reminded him, as his mother had so many times, that he needed a haircut. He’d applied to a half dozen places in the past month, minimum wage gigs at that, and no one had called him back yet. His mother accounted it to his increasingly unkempt appearance. A dark swath of mismatched stubble covered his jaws and neck, and he went days now, a week even, before he bathed. He no longer saw the point in such trivial concepts as hygiene, who did he have to impress? He found the jeans he’d been wearing for the past week on the floor and pulled them on one leg at a time, as every human on this miserable planet was accustomed to.
Light from the stereo gave enough illumination for him to find his flannel shirt strewn on the chair. He’d fallen asleep listening to Creedence Clearwater Revival and doing whiskey shots, while pacing the room over and over before a dim nausea filled his head. He had drank light tonight as opposed to two nights ago when he’d finished more liquor by himself than he’d ever thought possible, and then threw up consecutively the same amount that he’d drank. He’d been drinking quite a bit since three weeks ago when Sasha had given him the news, and he'd only been an occasional drinker before that. Mostly when they were arguing the most heavily, but he didn’t blame the arguments on the booze, because they both knew it went deeper than that.
He fumbled for his shoes amidst the clutter of clothes and magazines on the floor. A moment’s peace in sleep wasn’t even available to him now without her interrupting with this farked up situation she’d put them in. And with Barry? He’d known the goofy punk since high school, long before she’d even met him. Now his mongrel half breed child was incubating in his girlfriend’s body. His now ex-girlfriend’s body. No denying that. The lady had made him clear on that, and was long gone now though he’d seen her out driving around downtown and couldn’t keep himself from calling twenty times this past week, drunk and unable to do anything but curse a stream of slurred words and hang up the phone. Half of the time she hung up on him right after warning him that if he didn’t stop calling she was going to get Barry and her little brother to kick his ass.
Bring it on! He thought. Bring em both on. He finished the half shot of Jim Beam that he’d left beside the bed and wiped his stinging lips dry. A little more of the same and he thought he just might take on her daddy and momma too! He found his way out of the dark maze of his dirty room like old hat, and stepped out into the equally darkened hallway towards the sound of the ticking wall clock. He thought about stopping off in the bathroom but then decided he’d take the piss outside. Nothing like an audience. He walked through the house that he would soon be vacating due to lack of money, and tried not to let anger and frustration get the best of him. With Sasha gone, half of the rent money was gone too, and he realized, not for the first time, that their relationship was equally about finances and convenience, as it was about love. After looking at all of his options he realized that he’d now be forced to move into a small, one bedroom apartment in a deteriorating neighborhood, but it still beat the alternative of moving back in with his parents, or becoming a bum out on the streets. He didn’t really mind the thought of moving and looked forward to escaping, or at least trying to, the memories confined between these walls.
Unlocking the back door, he opened it and walked out into the warm, fresh spring night. Chimes from the neighbor’s porch stirred a little in the breeze, and he walked out into the yard amidst the sounds of crickets and rustling leaves. Twenty feet out by the tree he stopped and reached into his pocket twice. The first time was to flush his leaky pipe, and the second time was to get his cigarettes. Another thing, he’d begun smoking in the last couple of months, and heavily. At least two packs a day, which is probably where most of his money had been going, as the hypocritical farking government was always raising taxes. It was a habit he’d picked up from her and honestly hoped that she, or he, might die from. He already pictured his lungs turning black and shriveling up, and his tongue and teeth falling out. With every puff he subconsciously wished for such a thing. And her, she probably wouldn’t even quit now that she was pregnant. What a horrible mother she would make. The stupid idiot deserved a rotting mouth or cunt.
He finished up his early morning watering of Mr. Tree, shook his butter machine and lit his ‘Lucky Strike’. He was not limited to this brand however and had even been looking to score some marijuana lately. Along with whatever prescription medications or anti-depressants he might be able to find. His friend John was supposed to get a hookup on some of that this weekend and he allowed at least a slim ray of happiness in knowing that they were going to indulge in many vices this weekend as a going away party for his house, now a bachelor pad, and as good riddance to his year long relationship with Sasha. John was a good guy, but after a couple of beers and tokes off of the pipe, he was always going on and on about these weird conspiracy theories. It was interesting, but annoying when you were trying to get your buzz on.
The moon above would be full for the next few nights, and maybe even the Saturday of the coming “great intoxication”. He wondered if his lunacy would be even more heightened as the weekend approached. Badly, he wanted to call her a lady or a whore, but this time he couldn’t do it. Either he wasn’t drunk enough for the anger of the night was just too damn clear and inviting to warrant him anything but longing sadness for what had been, and what could have. He imagined that the world was full of “would have, could have, should have”, and hated himself for becoming part of that statistic. He searched the stars and settled that tomorrow he would snatch up the first girl he could find, and then knock her up real good. That would solve it all! And he’d enjoy it too. And when she came crying saying it was his, he’d deny it. He wondered if he could get the ring back that he’d given Sasha, and pawn it off for a VCR or camcorder. Maybe he’d make a visual conquest of as many girls as he could get, and secretly tape all of the many sexual adventures that were to come. But, in truth, he already knew he would do no such thing and that these were horrible thoughts, though he caught his hand in his pocket a third time, fondling his penis which had become a bit aroused at the notion.
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The neighborhood black cat, whose name was “Shady”, snuck up on him from over the fence and he quickly ceased all funny hand gestures taking place below the waist. The cat had acquired the name Shady a few years back because all it does is sit in the shade all day and out of the sunlight. No one knew who the cat belonged to or where it went in the winter, but he came back every spring, wandering around from yard to yard and enjoying all the various trees.
“Hello.” Christopher said in a low and affectionate tone. “Hello Shady.” At first the cat seemed startled and ready to dart, but then it meowed in recognition. “Out strutting your stuff, are you cat? Living the life I can only dream of.” He remembered that his real dreams had become merely chaotic reflections of his emotional devastation, and took a heavy drag off of his square. The cat didn’t comment, only purred as it briefly cuddled up against his ankles. A strong breeze swept through the yards and for another moment the chimes rang a somewhat frantic melody. The cat looked around startled and quickly hopped away back into the darkness and over the fence. Probably to pounce some canary, Christopher thought as he leaned against the tree.
It was amazing how quickly your life could be seemingly put together in comfortable order, and then scattered away like trash on the side of the road. Oh, how sweet she had been those first few months. So nice, so caring with a lover to cover him three-fold. And the hardest part was at this point he felt unable to take even half of the blame for their breakup. Sure, he had lost his job and starting drinking a little and taking light drugs, but he was almost twenty-three years old, so what? He sure as hell hadn’t gone out and slept with somebody else as petty revenge. And what now for him? What revenge could he possibly take that would sting her as harshly as she’d stung him? He wanted to punch the tree in front of his him but his knuckles were still sore from the hole he’d left in the dry wall of the bathroom.
Still, he felt the pang of a hangover and realized that he was mildly drunk from the Jim Beam he’d been drinking tonight. He breathed a deep sign in through his nostrils and began walking away from the big apple tree that seemed to be perpetually caught in mid-bloom. His addiction kept him from yet flipping his cigarette away, and he cursed a frustrated salute of anger to the lightly clouded sky. The moon cast an eerie bow of an oval through the grey fog beneath it. Everything had decided to go wrong for him at the exact same time. Loss of job, girlfriend, even his car was sitting dead and abandoned off of some dirt road, ten miles from here. He was stuck virtually penniless and would soon be losing the modest love nest that he and Sasha had established. Already he was thinking back to the whiskey and Mad-Dog 20/20 in the fridge and he promised himself that he wouldn’t become an alcoholic. He wouldn’t give her the pleasure of knowing she had forever ruined his existence.
It felt as if some awful growth had blossomed in his head and was growing with every day of her pregnancy. Something in the sky. He looked for some sign of hope, a shooting star or something that he could place his wish upon. But he saw nothing on this night. It was only a plane in the distance. He wondered where they might be headed and how far they might be going, and wished that he was up there too, a part of the trip. Even if he had to make it clutching to the wing, he thought he might be able to leave it all behind. This town, his family and friends, even his parents, at least for a year or two. They had always done him right and been supportive and no amount of depression and girl problems would keep him away forever, but he desperately needed a change of scenery. No use in entertaining such thoughts though, as he didn’t even have enough money for bus fare, or to pay the phone bill, let alone a trip to Jamaica. Or maybe Australia. An aboriginal woman might never leave him, if they allowed white people to enter their tribe. He could teach her the amazing wonders of fire, and she could share with him the ancient secrets of testicle piercing. He shuttered at the thought of some tribal chick cutting up his didgeridoo and put the notion behind him.
He hiccupped and burped the nasty aftermath of mixing booze, and continued to explore deeper into the backyard that would soon be gone to him. So many things unsaid due to his inability at this time to grasp the proper words, and her inability to be a compassionate human being. All the passion and love was gone now, along with the tenderness, sharing, and even the downright farking that they both had enjoyed so much. Where was she right now? He pictured her straddled on top of him in a dark room, riding her way into a new life without him. He wanted badly to cry again, as stinging rage struck at his heart, but he could not allow it again; tomorrow night perhaps, and the next, but not tonight. Too much time had already been wasted in the boo-hooing over a situation and girl that was well beyond his control. But again, he wondered how this could have happened and how he allowed it to get so far. He was beginning to hate himself almost as much as he did her.
Dogs began to bark and howl in the distance as he stopped in his tracks and took the last drag off of his cigarette. “Quiet, you damn dogs! I’m not making any noise!” He heard the traffic on the nearby highway from the semis and longed for the open road where the headlights were your eyes peering out into the darkened mystery, and the tires were your capable and swift feet, taking you into tomorrow. The time was coming when he’d have to plea with his parents to loan him the money to get his car fixed. He had to get out of here sometime soon. The thought of being kooked up in this house for the remainder of the month drove him crazy. Even a pink bicycle with a little bell and a basket would be better than nothing. How could he get a job without a car? That would be his selling point to his parents. He had to get his car fixed so he could get a job, then he’d pay them back.
The dogs continued to bark and he continued to whisper at them to shut up as the plane he had been watching listlessly, disappeared behind some clouds and from his view. He thought it was probably jetting away to its tropical vacation destination, and leaving him and his insignificant problems behind in the dust. That’s what he’d get. A dog, maybe that’s just the thing to lift him out of this desperate feeling of depression; he’d get a female, a lady, and he’d name it Barry, and he’d whip it and kick it across the room when it didn’t mind him. No, that wouldn’t help. Maybe he’d get a gun and go on a shooting rampage at the mall or walk into a police station. Go down in a blaze of glory. After of course he hung the two lovers naked by their ankles out in the middle of the woods and skinned them alive. Or maybe he could get the dog after all and train it to rip them to pieces. Or maybe he could gag them and tie them up and put them in the trunk of his car. There was a fishing pond that wasn’t too much farther up the road and through a trail.
Why did life always have to feel so hard and sharp? In the last two years he’d lost an uncle to a fire and a cousin to a tornado. Losing his last two girlfriends, of whom he’d genuinely loved, should have topped it all off, but he was also failing miserably out of community college, and his car was about ready for the scrapheap too. He remembered his old friend Rex, who had been in his dream tonight. His old buddy who was now on the police force, as a sinister, dagger wielding specter crept up around him from all sides like a living darkness. He hoped that Rex was alright. Maybe he’d try to find him out for a weekend of drinking and reminiscing sometime in the coming weeks. He would maybe tell him about the dream and surely he wouldn’t rat him out as a “dope head” just because he was a cop now. He had known Rex since the fourth grade and the two had shared many memories together: pranks, sleepovers, movies, gossip. Even then his friend had liked the cops and robbers action flicks over the horror films, and they stayed up many late nights watching the latest releases. They had played basketball together a lot too and he’d helped out a great deal when Rex had gotten his nose broken over a mangled rebounding effort.
Police sirens came from the not so distant night, as they always did from nearly every part of town these days. The crime rates had been sky rocketing lately and he wondered if Rex was out there working the night beat. Now all of the neighbor's dogs howled and barked in a frantic symphony as if the end of the world was nigh. He flipped the smoldering butt of his cigarette out into the night and thought about what he should do next while walking towards the house. A green apple fell loose from the tree right in front of him and into the yard. He picked it up and gave it a short examination, noticing the browning spots that grew in abundant numbers upon its once smooth surface. He threw it behind him and into the air, where it landed he knew not where. The chimes stirred again but their soothing sounds gave him no comfort this time, but instead, now mixed with the sirens and crazy dogs, almost seemed to be sending an ominous warning.
He stopped on his porch for what he knew would be one of the last times, and looked out again into the cloudy sky. Another red, blinking plane was flying ever so high in the opposite direction and across the city. It looked like a storm was brewing, and he distinctly remembered one clear night at the park with Sasha, they’d counted over twenty planes flying around simultaneously over their heads. They had made love that night in the backseat of his car, and then again after they had returned home. Here. He faced the dim reality of the door and went inside again, closing and locking it behind him. Walking to the refrigerator he looked in and noticed that there was almost no edible food left. Only a couple beers and a small bottle of Mad-Dog 20/20 were visible. He was too depressed to drink any more, and even too depressed to masturbate himself to sleep over the images of he and Sasha that always fluttered through is mind like the jerky and awkward angles of a camera lense. The hallway felt lonely and barren, and his dragging feet led him back to his tomb of a bed. Hopefully, he could fall asleep right away with dreams of female celebrities this time instead of the morbid and taunting images of his friends and family telling him what a failure he was. Whatever the case, his eyes were tired he didn’t want to face the world again until hours from now when the sun came up.
He lay down in bed and turned the orange light off from the ‘Winnie the Pooh’ lamp that Sasha had given him as a present, before rolling over the embrace the realms of Morpheus. He clutched at his pillow like a lost lover and tried to shake the visions of his previous dreams and the horrible thoughts about what Sasha and Barry might be doing right now. Flesh and sweat against flesh and sweat, bellies pressed against each other in rough ecstasy, one of them would soon be giving birth to a child that should have been his. He squeezed the pillow tighter to no likewise returned affection, when it suddenly dawned on him. He hadn’t turned the light on when he’d gotten up; it had been off when he left the room.
With curiosity he turned again towards the lamp that she’d given him, and noticed that the visible traits of electrical tendrils were meeting at the angles of his room, leaving a strange blue glow amidst his cluttered life. Before he could stop himself, he was trapped, locked in his place as if impossible headlights were pushing down upon his very being.
And in a sense, a terrible sense, they were. Something, something was in bed with him! Two enormous eyes as big as human heads were looking down into him as if perched from high above, flipping channels of TV static skipped around in those giant orbs with the jagged current of electrical tendrils running like fingertips upon the walls. Different frequencies of high-pitched squeals cranked through Christopher’s head like a pencil sharpener as insane dancing shadows of multi-colored strobe lights flashed at him from every wall.
Beneath those glassy eyes were another set, sparkling and reptilian green; a mist of bitter smelling ozone filled the room. The brief glimpse he’d gotten of the beast, and it was nothing but a beast in every sense of the word, appeared to be both foamy and slimy, somehow like a gorilla and an octopus combined. Christopher’s hair was standing on end with the build up of static and sparks, as the heat radiating from the beast made the tiny beads of sweat on his face burst forth in instant evaporation.
Psychotropic neon bubbles swirled and bobbed around the monsters head, giving a disorienting sensation as if to hypnotize its prey. And Chris was hypnotized, as his white knuckles dug through the very fabric of his pillow and met the cotton beneath its skin. The sense of vertigo was unbreakable and after a few jerky and unnatural movements of its horned, spike covered head, the beast clicked a few unholy times as it disconnected its jaws and mouth like a serpent. The mouth, beneath those multiple sets of electrically charged eyeballs, grew to even bigger proportions than its entire head, revealing seemingly millions of mismatched and jagged bits that came from every direction out of its glowing green mouth. A fat, darting tongue dripped black gore onto the once clean sheets, as the unreal creature sat beside Chris, looking down, seemingly smiling.
In the end he didn’t know if it was the heart attack that killed him, or if it was the teeth.
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I thought this story was funny. I dont understand how a wierd monster just popped up out of know where but I guess thats suppose to be the scary part huh