“You’re shitting me.”
“No ma’am,” Carl said, “Kaye actually fired off a couple of battle preps, thinking something big was incoming.”
Andi covered her mouth and tried not to laugh. She was not very successful.
“It’s okay, you can enjoy it,” he said, “Hell knows we did when the truth came out.” Continue reading
Cleaning house. An interesting turn of phrase that embodies getting one’s shit in order, tightening up the ranks and rectifying a long standing obstacle or wrestling one of the monkeys latched onto your back. The exhilaration felt after a good house cleaning always seems to overshadow the perceived weight of the task which had loomed insurmountable. Yet, we never seem to see the freedom which awaits around the next bend, more content to rationalize the status-quo of the burden. There is always so much else that requires management on the ever scrolling list of priorities. Right?
Bullshit. Continue reading
Gordon’s alarm was going off. The shrill trill slicing into his sleepy warmth. One flapping arm found no nightstand, but was greeted by the sodden earth and the crush of leaves. His eyes snapped open and he stared along the forest floor that served as his bedding. The sharp singing of a nearby songbird brought his displacement into focus, and he lifted his head, searching for remnants of the corpse which had snatched him.
Only the rich visage of nature stared back. He plucked a slug off of the back of one hand and rose to his feet with a weary creak. The ancient forest around him was awash in a muted glow. The high canopy shielded the mighty trees which ranged as far as he could see. The slow turn and stare he made came to a halt as a man stepped into view. Continue reading
“We’re not implementing nookie for cookies,” Andi said, “We’ve been over that. A lot.”
Carl chuckled. “And it’ll cause more problems than it’ll cure. I get that. It’s just–”
The snack cupboard exploded open. One hinge mangled, the door hung askew as boxes of cookies fell from the cabinet in a steady waterfall. Well, cookiefall. Carl watched the cascade with fascination. The pooling cookie parts on the floor tickled his appetite, and he actually felt himself walking across the crunchy floor. He wouldn’t remember it later, but his darker self fancied picking cookie bits from the soles of his feet and popping them into his mouth. Continue reading
Dappled sunlight skated across Gordon’s eyelids but it was the gunfire which brought him to his senses. At least he thought it was gunfire. The reports were muffled and distant, the shouts which accompanied them oddly harrowing. He opened his eyes and the blurred vision cleared into a woodland canopy on a clear, crisp day.
The pain of his groin still ached with the throb of his pulse, but he crept to a sitting position. His nose finally caught up to the rest of his senses, and the stink of the grave assailed him. He looked around and nearly placed his hand on the putrefying corpse behind him. Pain forgotten, Gordon flew to his feet and stumbled back from the body. Continue reading
“The cookies call to me.”
Andi looked across the table at Carl. She could see his eyes flick to the cupboard where they kept the snacks. There was a fine sheen of moisture on his lips, and she thought that he was actually salivating. She was about to speak when he continued his daily confessional.
“I dreamt they were crying last night,” he said, eyes seeing the sleep scape he described, “The cookies. Horrified that I would abandon them. I think I woke crying as well. This was after the parade of bicycles with cookie tires with the coconut confetti, mind you.” He rubbed his face in his hands and chuckled in the present, his stomach growled in ill humored synchronicity. “Shut it,” he said to his groin. Continue reading
Gordon was all too aware that he was very likely trespassing. The approach to the vicinity was easy enough, but there were clear barriers between where he was and the tent which summoned him. “Fuck it,” he said. His mental demons trespassed without care, and he was going to confront them one way or another.
He parked his car in the shadow of the golem, a flippant dare if ever his mind saw one. But what was going to happen? Was the hulking figure going to take a stony shit on his car? No, he didn’t think so, but the image lodged in his mind all the same. He was chuckling as he walked toward the speedway. Continue reading
Lydia bulled through the exit door and the notion of rifling for her keys withered. Every single tire of the ten or so cars she could see was flat. The all-seeing eye within her knew that every tire on every vehicle would be flat. Such was the method of her stalker. At the thought, she spun around and pushed the exit door closed, dragging a pair of carts in front of it.
There were bodies dotting the parking lot. A pair trampled in flight. A man who had wrestled with the killer. A mother and a young girl splayed into the back of an SUV. As she rounded the entry portico near her car, she almost tripped over the legs of a young worker, impaled by a length of pipe. Continue reading
How many times had Gordon driven by that automotive wasteland? The hulking shrine to speed stood desolate for the majority of its days. Those few times when RVs painted the landscape and the reek of sweat and septic baptized thousands were nightmarish. For any who worshipped this particular god it was a time of celebration and revelry. The rest forsook the area as plague ridden.
The commute was ninety minutes each way, and Gordon was starting to wonder if a life change wasn’t overdue. The wasteland sprawled ahead of him, the stone golem guardian looming. The banners and flags flapped in the wind as life poured by on the thoroughfare. Gordon’s mouth turned down at the corners, his psyche all too aware of his namesake shared with one of this religion’s paragons.
A lone tent of blaze white tarp nestled against the base of the autodrome, razor wire garland shining along its peak. It was the flapping of one angled corner which caught Gordon’s eye. It was the ghost of a figure standing just beyond which caught his mind. Continue reading
The greenhouse employee reached for his belt and withdrew his walkie talkie. “Jan, it’s Karl. Call an ambulance. We have some people bleeding in house six.”
Lydia stared for a moment, surprised that he hadn’t been murdered yet. Karl didn’t even seem to register the killer’s presence. Didn’t see him, which meant– “Oh God,” she whispered. Her primal instincts kicked in and her head swiveled, searching and almost too late.
The maniac stalked toward them from house four, having circled back around, driven by whatever hunter’s instinct such a mind possessed. “Jan?” Her fevered senses picked up on Karl’s struggle to pierce the white noise on the other end of his line.