Unburied

Barbra knelt and pulled the tray of potpies from the oven. She straightened and shut the oven door with her knee.

Her husband, Albert, cleaned his hunting rifle on the coffee table. Albert liked to consider himself a skilled sportsman, though he only once ever bagged anything bigger than a rabbit.

The elk in question still hung (its head, at least) over the fireplace. Barbra thought the thing monstrous, but she kept her peace about it.

Enough screams already filled the house. Barbra’s thirty-four-year-old daughter, Emma, always screamed.

Emma, an attorney for a small, family law firm, spent several hours a day on the phone, usually in the midst of a heated argument. Barbra suspected that Emma argued louder than necessary to draw attention to her “demanding career.”

Emma did work hard. She graduated top of her class. Barbra and Albert had missed Emma’s graduation speech. The van had broken down, and they couldn’t have loaded Billy’s wheelchair into the pickup.

Billy sat in his wheelchair at the kitchen table, which Barbra loaded with the fresh potpies. A string of moist drool hung from his lower lip.

The accident changed him. He had hit his head hard in that car wreck. The doctors had mistakenly considered his subsequent death inevitable.

Albert had planted a cross on the side of the road to mark the site of Billy’s accident. The cross would serve as a reminder of the dangers of drunk driving . . . and as a grave for Billy’s former self.

Billy hadn't spoken since the accident. His doctors doubted that he could even form complete thoughts. He wore diapers. He used to play football.

The accident had deformed more than Billy's mind. The car had, upon its roll down one of Colorado's thankfully shorter cliffs, claimed Billy’s right ear and twisted his right hand into a hooked mass of tattered meat.

“Dinner’s ready,” Barbra said.

“Be right there.” Albert reassembled his rifle.

Emma raised her voice from her bedroom/office. It sounded as if she argued with another lawyer over the phone.

Emma would arrive at the table late as always. She would afterwards complain in machine gun fashion about how hard she worked. She would report every obstacle and subsequent victory of her workday.

Barbra tucked a napkin into Billy’s front collar. She would have to spoon-feed him his pie.

The phone rang. Barbra frowned.

“Let it ring.” Albert seated himself at the table. “People shouldn’t bother folks this late.”

The phone continued to ring.

Barbra sighed, entered the kitchen, and scooped the phone from its hook. “Hello?” she said into the receiver.

“Mom?” Billy’s voice.

Barbra straightened with alarm. She hadn’t heard her son speak since the accident.

Her eyes darted past Albert (who watched her with an expression of annoyance with a side order of concern) to her son, who sat in his chair, his eyes vacant.

“Mom, why did you bury me? I wasn’t dead.”

Dread corkscrewed through Barbra. “Whoever you are, this isn’t funny.”

“You have to dig me up, Mom.”

She slammed the phone into its cradle so hard that Albert flinched. Emma wandered with a stunned expression from her room (she had that damned "smart phone" thingy pressed against her ear).

Albert stood. “Who was that?”

Barbra shook her head. “Nothing.” She seated herself at the table.

The phone rang.

Albert tossed his napkin on the table and stood. “I’ll handle this nonsense.”

“Don’t!” Barbra shrieked, though she couldn't explain why.

Her husband treated her to a curious expression. He marched towards and lifted the phone’s receiver. “Parker residence. What can I do you for?” He froze. His mouth dropped. “Who the hell are you? This ain’t funny, you little shit.”

He slammed the phone twice as hard as Barbra had.

Emma whispered into her cellphone. “I’ll call you tomorrow.” She disconnected, stared from her mother to her father. “What happened?”

“Nothing worth fretting over.” Albert reseated himself. His hand shook while he raised his fork.

The phone rang.

“Damn it to hell!” Albert launched to his feet. “I’ll handle this.” He marched into his den, slammed the door behind him.

Emma’s cellphone rang with an overly cheerful tune. Emma had not programmed her cellphone with a cheerful tune.

Emma’s face screwed with confusion. She set her phone on the table, then touched the screen to both answer her call and put it on speakerphone.

A crackled of static preceded Billy’s voice, which echoed unnaturally from the cellphone's speaker. “Dig me up, Mom! If I have to claw my way out of this cold dirt, I’m gonna tear your fucking face—”

Emma shut off the phone. She sat, breathed very hard.

Barbra glanced at Billy, who continued to sit and stare into the near distance, unaware of anything that surrounded him.

Seven insect-like legs sprouted from the potpie in front of Barbra. It scurried towards Emma, who scrambled out of her chair so fast that she knocked it backwards onto the hardwood floor.

The pie halted, bubbled, liquefied. The pie and its legs dissolved to steamy mush, until only a human ear rested in its place.

Albert screamed a blood-curdling scream that arrived from above the fireplace, where his head now hung in place of the elk’s own. The decapitated head choked on its own cries. Its eyes rolled. Foam frothed from its lips.

The door to the den slammed open. Albert’s naked body (his head replaced by the elk’s) trampled from the den into the kitchen. The creature tried to run on all fours, crashed sideways, and threw itself threw the nearest window.

Crash. The creature fumbled onto two legs, sort of mastered the idea, and raced into the dark woods that surrounded the house.

. . . Barbra and Emma took a moment to catch their breaths.

The phone rang.

“Ignore it,” Emma whispered. Her voice shook.

The phone fell silent.

Emma’s cellphone, still on the table, produced another overly cheerful tune. It coughed static and other white noises until Billy’s voice seeped from its speaker.

“Diiiig me up, you biiitch. Diiiig me the fuuuuck up.”

“Fine!” Barbra screamed.

She grabbed her keys, ignored Emma’s objections, raced outside, and climbed into her pickup. She fought to turn its stubborn engine. The vehicle awoke. The cheerful tune from Emma’s cellphone blasted from the radio speakers.

Barbra’s frantic hand turned the volume down on the radio. Silence followed.

She thought she saw the shadow of her naked husband leap over a fence in the distance.

A new sound dripped from the speakers. The sound that torn fingernails might make while they dug at hard packed earth. It continued while Barbra drove to the site of Billy’s accident. The sound gained speed and urgency along the way.

She slammed her fist against the radio, over and over again, until the sound stopped and her wrist ached.

She arrived too late.

She stepped out of her car and approached the cross that her husband planted at the site of Billy’s accident. Something had forced its way up from the ground in front of the cross, something bigger than a man. Or a bear.

Clawed footprints led from the ruined “grave” to the woods beyond it.

A cheerful tune played from inside Barbra’s car. Emma’s cellphone sat on the passenger’s seat, though Barbra knew she hadn’t brought it with her.

The tune groaned to a rusty halt. Heavy, bestial pants rose from the phone’s speaker.

Barbra wandered towards the phone as if she walked through thick sheets of syrup. The phone displayed footage of Barbra’s kitchen. Billy sat in his wheelchair at the kitchen table.

She heard, through the phone, the squeak of her front door. A mammoth shadow spilled over Billy. His eyes, which hadn’t focused on anything since the accident, rose to face whatever stood before him.

A smile crept across his drool-coated lips.

A blur swept over him, and the screen went black.

Terminal

The airport offers countless gates, a monorail, windows (through which one can see nothing save fire and smoke), but no doors. If you board the train, it’ll circle the building before it returns you right back where you started.

I have marched through every gate (save one), walked down the narrow, metal tunnel that connected the doorway to one of the planes stationed on the tarmac. The planes never leave.

The airport offers plenty of pay phones. I hear my younger self when I pick up one. I try to communicate with him, but he can’t hear me. The phones won’t work both ways.

I served as a soldier for the United States Army. Tomorrow would bring my twenty-forth birthday, except that I died about a month ago.

Misinformation multiplies, so I can’t say for certain who started the last World War. The American government swore that the Middle East started it, that the Iranians developed Rage Serum.

A person catches the virus in one of two ways. A bomb releases the virus via gas. A person inhales it and goes bat shit. She or he will attack anyone, which brings us to the second way that the virus infects someone: bites.

The Iranians, supposedly, launched the first bomb. We responded with one of our own. It might’ve ended there, if not for the whole infection-via-bites-thing.

I remember the day that old woman infected me. She smashed through the boarded up door of the abandoned house that a few other runaway soldiers and I found. I shot her down, but not before she sank her foamy teeth into my ankle.

I should’ve confessed my injury to the others, but I knew they would’ve hung me by my neck before the virus overtook me (we couldn’t afford to waste bullets on each other). I convinced myself that the woman failed to infect me. I felt fine.

My guts turned hot an hour after the hag bit me. My vision turned clouded. I felt paranoid, angry. Everyone spoke too loud, too fast. I couldn’t think. I drooled.

I attacked my best friend that night, sank my teeth into his throat before someone (probably Rizzo) hosed me with a shotgun.

I awoke in this airport . . . with the other ghosts.

We still have bodies. We still feel.

Many of us tried to kill ourselves again. We keep whatever injuries we acquire in the suicide attempts, but we never die. We can’t. We already did.

The “hobgoblins” attack us every so often. None of us knows anything about the creatures.

We call the one with the wide shoulders and bad posture “Regret.” His skin shares the same color as a wet sidewalk. Chains giftwrap him. He drags them along, so we hear him when he hunts us.

“Revenge” runs the fastest, despite her lack of muscle (all skin and bones, that one). She shrieks, especially when she runs across the walls. Her eyes glow crimson. Her narrow teeth drip amber poison.

“Doubt” oozes right out of his victims’ shadows, grabs them, and pulls them into their own darkness.

“Depression” attacks from the ceiling, slides down on a thin cord like a spider on a silk string. Her victims usually notice her shadow right before she pounces them, but few ever escape.

They can’t kill us, for obvious reasons. They eat our skin, and the ghosts they catch never regrow it. Most ghosts, after a hobgoblin catches them, crawl into a ball and scream, skinless muscles raw, wet, and bloody.

The goblins never catch me. I plan to keep it that way.

I tried to shatter the airport windows. I never accomplish a single crack across their glass surfaces and the hateful reflections stretched across them.

I often wander by Gate B4, the one guarded by my ex-wife, the gate I can’t force myself to enter.

Screams echo across the airport. Another soul lost her skin.

I raise the business end of a random pay phone, hold it against my ear, hear my younger self say something stupid, like “I can’t stay with you, babe. I can’t watch the cancer eat you alive like this.”

You coward, I want to tell myself. Stay with her. Hold her hand. You vowed to experience the rest of your lives together. Life. Death. You can’t separate them.

I didn’t stay with her, though. I fled. She died a few months later without a hand to hold—a year before the Rage Serum outbreak.

I still remember that abandoned house, my fellow ex-soldiers and I huddled and hidden within it while we waited for the sum of our sins to crash upon us.

I wander past the gate where my ex-wife, bald and skeletal, rests in her hospital bed. Her wet eyes watch me with silent petitions. I continue to walk, away from my past and towards nothing at all.

(You can catch my novels, such as "Daughters of Darkwana," on Kindle. Thanks for reading!)

The Trade

She sat in the back seat and waited for her to shut up.

“Has he found a new floozy?” her mother asked from the driver’s seat.

She kept her face a neutral mask. “How should I know?”

“Have you asked him?”

“No.” She stared straight ahead, willed her mother to silence.

“Why not? Didn’t I ask you to ask him?”

“Yes.” More a sigh than a word. She wished she could stay home and watch cartoons on Saturday mornings, like a normal kid.

“So ask him. I have a right to know. But don’t let him know that I asked you to ask him. Have you seen anybody with him?”

She wished she could seep out of her body, rise into the air.

“Sweetie? I asked you a question.”

“Not that I’ve noticed, Mom.”

“You’ve never seen anyone with your father? Never?”

“I don’t really pay attention.” She wanted to spin a black shell around herself, something through which no one could see her.

“I’ll tell you what,” her mother said. “I’ll write down everything you should ask him. You have to make it sound like you thought of the questions, yourself. Will you remember what he tells you?”

“Yes, Mom.” Invisible. She wanted to become invisible.

“And you have to remember how he says it. What sort of facial expressions he makes.”

She redirected her stare out the window, watched the trees fly past her mother’s car.

“He never was the faithful sort,” her mother continued. “Heavens knows I tried to look the other way when he and I were married, but I could only ignore so much . . .” She continued to talk.

The girl continued to stare out her window. Her parents had completed their divorce over a year ago. They had, ever since, traded her every Saturday morning.

Whichever parent had her would drop her off at the McDonalds halfway between their homes. They wouldn’t wait with her. They didn’t want to see each other.

She listened, half the month, to her mother bitch about her father. She spent the other half of the month with her eyes closed while he father bitched about her mother. If even one of them spoke true, half her genes proved tragic.

They arrived at the McDonalds.

Her mother scribbled furiously on a sheet of paper. She passed it into the backseat, into her daughter’s hand. “Here are the questions you should ask him, sweetie.”

She took the paper, got out of the car, and went inside to wait for Dad.

She sat at a booth, watched her mother drive away. Her father would arrive soon. Soon, she would sit in a car with him, listen to him tell her about her horrible mother who drove him out of the house.

She stepped out the door, found some bushes, and squatted behind them. She heard, after a few minutes, the familiar cough and sputter of her father’s engine. She peeked through the bushes and spotted her father’s beaten car.

The engine quieted. The door opened. Her father stepped out, marched into the restaurant.

She waited. Her fist squeezed the list of questions her mother had given her.

He came back out, circled the building, and went back inside it.

. . . He stepped outside about ten minutes later, a cellphone pressed to his ear. He waited. Frowned. Pocketed his phone. Got back in his car. Waited some more.

Go, she begged. Leave.

An eternity crawled past her before he finally started his engine and drove away. She watched his car grow smaller and smaller, until she couldn’t see him at all.

Silence

Another failed relationship. He couldn’t understand it.

He brewed a bit while he worked on his car. He ducked under the rusty hood and tried to install his new thermostat—only to realize he had purchased the wrong size.

He frowned, struggled to force it to fit. The part snapped into place. It’s sides cracked.

Miss Jess Ture, his housemate for the last six years, steered her bicycle up the driveway, slid to a halt, and waved to him. He returned the gesture. He almost offered a verbal greeting before he recalled that such words would prove wasted.

He wiped his oily hands off on a rag while she parked her bike inside the garage. He approached her, tossed his rag into the nearest trashcan, and used sign language to ask her how her day had gone.

She signaled back, gave him a brief description of her day at the vet clinic, where she worked. He nodded, though he didn’t pay attention to half of what she told him.

He watched her enter the house. Why couldn’t he find a nice girl like Jess?

He returned to his vehicle, slammed shut its hood, and headed inside the house. He passed through the living room, which Jess had converted into an art studio.

He showered, dried, dressed, and grabbed a beer from the refrigerator. His eyes drifted across all of Jess’s health-nut foods. He cracked open his beer, enjoyed a liberal slug.

Jess, he noticed through a sliding, glass door, had changed into her blue bikini. She jumped into their pool and swam a few laps.

He watched her while he flopped onto the sofa, appreciated her curves. She always seemed cheerful and energetic. He again wondered why he couldn’t meet someone like that.

He flipped on a football game.

Jess, wrapped in a towel, entered the house fifteen minutes later. He waved at her, pointed at the television. He raised his eyebrows to indicate that his team had scored.

She half-smiled and rolled her eyes.

The game ended (well, in fact). He drained the last of his third beer and rose from the sofa. He slowed to a complete halt. Something occurred to him.

Why hadn’t he and Jess dated? They knew each other well, cohabitated without a hitch. It only made sense that they should become a couple.

He knocked on her door before he remembered that she wouldn’t hear him. He pressed the wall-mounted button that made the red light in her room flash. She, signaled by the light, opened her door with a curious expression.

He noticed, over her shoulder, the countless paintings she had produced, each based on scenes from local nature hikes.

He used sign language to propose his idea.

She blinked too many times. Bit her lower lip.

He signaled all the reasons he considered it a good idea, promised her a good time, and insisted that their friendship wouldn’t sour between them if the date went poorly.

She agreed . . . slowly.

He took her to a Bronco’s game that Sunday. He bought them both a beer and a deep-fried pretzel. She stared at the food as if he had handed her two oversized worms.

He cheered for his team. Leapt from his seat and pumped his fists whenever the Broncos scored.

. . . For some reason, Jess didn’t share his excitement.

He drove her home after the game. She faced him while she unlocked the door. He recognized her expression—two parts apology and one part annoyance.

The date hadn’t worked for her. He didn’t understand what he had done wrong. The game proved wonderful. The food great. How could the day have gone better?

He signed that he would drive around a bit. No, he didn’t feel upset. Everything remained fine between them. He just wanted to return a DVD to a Redbox stand.

She pretended to believe him.

He drove a few blocks before his car started to rattle. The engine coughed and died. Smoke poured heavenward from beneath the hood.

He pulled over, stepped out, opened his hood, and stared at the busted, new thermostat.

He guided his car to the side of the road before he checked his cellphone. His battery looked too low to complete a call.

He spotted a payphone across the street. Eyes locked on it, he stepped forward—when a hand grabbed him from behind and yanked him backwards.

A bus blasted past him. He turned his wide eyes towards the stranger (a bald man with the thick, black glasses) who saved his life. The stranger held a thin stick.

“Are you . . . blind?”

The stranger nodded. “Last time I checked.”

“How did you see the bus?”

The stranger laughed. “I listened. You can go about your business blind or deaf, but not both.” He grinned.

(Abrupt ending, I’ll admit. However, I’m on top of a snow-covered mountain—the only place around here where I can achieve Internet access—and my fingers are so numb, I’m more-or-less slapping my keyboard with the sides of my hands.

(Movie theaters don’t exist up here, so while I’m in the Rockies, I’m publishing top five lists on my other blog, moviesmartinwolt.blogspot.com, instead of movie reviews.

(The third novel in my Diaries of Darkwana series arrives this January. You can catch, in the meantime, the first book, Daughters of Darkwana, and the second, Dreamers of Darkwana on Kindle.)