9 Tales Told in the Dark 21 Read online

  9TALES TOLD IN THE DARK #21

  © Copyright 2017 Bride of Chaos/ All Rights Reserved to the Authors.

  Edited by A.R. Jesse

  Cover Art by Turtle&Noise

  No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.

  ALL WORK HEREIN IS FICTION…or so our authors tell us…

  First electronic edition 2017

  This Collection is presented by THE 9 TALES SERIES for more information on this series please visit www.brideofchaos.com *

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  9TALES TOLD IN THE DARK #21

  Table of Contents

  DEATH BY BUBBLEGUM by Chad Vincent

  FROM THE DROP by Stuart D. Monroe

  NATURAL ORDER by Steven D. Hamilton

  BIKUTIMU by Shelly Macaroy

  CUSTOM SOLUTION by Janis Zelcans

  ZOMBIES ARE NO LAUGHING MATTER by Len Dawson

  THE LAST RUN by Matthew Howley

  THE RED RED ROSE by Karen Bovenmyer

  HARMONY HOUSE by Sara Green

  NEED MORE HORROR IN YOUR DIET?

  DEATH BY BUBBLEGUM by Chad Vincent

  1981, Capon, Oklahoma

  Barbie Hanson giggles behind the counter as well as behind her hands. Her cute, young face blushing as she assaults a piece of fruity bubble gum. Beside her, Grace holds finger and thumb out as wide as they will go, chomping just as wild on the same flavor of gum. She breaks down laughing beneath a red tennis cap that spills the words Ice Cream over the top of a stitched cartoon cow. Picking up an extra-large Styrofoam cup, she slips the straw up and down, up and down below her lips. Barbie laughs, snorts, and blushes even more at the ridiculous motion and honking sound made by the straw sliding between the cutout crosshairs of the lid.

  Both girls stifle themselves as a polished older model truck grinds into the parking lot. Charlie Kreski steps out of his truck. Well-worn cowboy boots crunch across the gravel straight to the door. An early streetlamp backlights wavy hair and strong shoulders underneath a darkening red dust sky. He is muscled, good looking, charming, and drives a ’56 Ford that he fixed years ago in his daddy’s shop. It does not purr like a kitten, rather it roars like an angry Kodiak mother. At 27, he has a reputation for saving his smile for girls like Barbie and Grace, still in high school.

  “What you need Charlie?’ Grace asks as Barbie takes a few steps back to a wipe down an already spotless freezer. As her question expires from between those shiny red lips, a thundering cheer goes up from the baseball field just on the other side of the road, seeping its way into their conversation.

  Charlie chances over his shoulder but a moment, absorbs the applause as if they were for him, then focuses on Grace. “That depends,” his voice drips with an enchanting Texas drawl. He points up to the simple, hand-written menu. “Is there anything else you forgot to write up there, you know, add to the menu?” He leans in on one elbow, accentuating his muscled shoulders and flashes a smile that has disarmed many a chastity belt. And oh is it good, virtuous, and decadent at the same time.

  “Only the Butterscotch. I left it out aaall night,” she challenges that smile like going to trial. Without flinching, she faces the bear with sureness, buoyancy. “That’s the only thing I can give you for free tonight Charlie,” her smile is of triumph and finality. “I can dig it out of the trash if you like,” her own twangy intonation exaggerates the underlying defeat laid at his doorstep.

  Charlie smirks, “Then it sounds like chocolate for me.” Even his smirk has charisma.

  Even in this simple statement, his voice flows like warm honey. This guy. This guy is charming. Shifting after a short silence, he throws his long-ball smile, both dimples wink into play. His chin dips ever so slight, giving his eyes a luster like polished onyx. When Grace utterly ignores, except to hand him his cone with stony movements, he chuckles a friendly retreat. From his pocket, he throws down his dollars and struts towards the glass door. Every step is its own display. Another cheer trails through the door from the field, timed just as Charlie exits. He pauses to allow the applause and raucous yells to soar over and through him.

  “He’s so old,” Barbie whispers, making a face.

  “Yeah,” Grace takes a long drink, “he sure is cute though. Someday…” but she stops, staring though the door and glass front at Charlie’s truck, which is haloed by the right field stadium light in the distance.

  “Someday what?” Barbie asks, finishing a vanilla cone. As she turns to rest on her elbows, she too watches the outdoor scene.

  Charlie slides in, starting his truck with a single vroom. Exhibitioning for the girls, he misses three individuals staggering towards his door as they round the tailgate. The thrum of the engine covers any noise they may be making. Charlie gives the girls an ice cream salute, ending with a pointed finger at Grace that travels down a hunter’s sights.

  Grace runs to the door, waving her arms like a short-winged bird. Barbie follows, just because. Charlie smiles to their reaction and rests his arm across the steering wheel, casual, aloof. That charming smile slashes his face like a rapier. It lasts only a second. Two clutching arms reach in through the open window and clamp down on his shoulder. He jumps and shifts, expecting perhaps someone to call him out for a Friday night fight. Another looms through the window and bites deep into his shoulder. It does not relinquish, but perseveres until taking a mouthful of t-shirt, flesh, and muscle. Charlie screams over the steady bup-bup-bup of the idling big block engine.

  Barbie screams. Grace, older and braver, rushes up to stand in the doorway. She watches them drag Charlie out through the window of the truck, kicking and screaming, by a river of avaricious hands. Yet for all his muscle and strength, he exits the window involuntary. With surprising elegance he lands like a cat fallen from a fence top. On landing, he throws a heavy right to one jaw and grabs the hair of another, but the third presses forward to bite a gash out of his forearm. Charlie starts to waiver, and then falls beneath their weight. The three attackers fall on him, now hidden behind the truck. A scream of utter pain breaks over the bup-bup-bup.

  Grace stares in a momentary trance, her mind unable to interpret the melee before her eyes. Something forces her mind to focus, but not on the truck. Beyond, on the baseball field, people are running. Not around the bases, but running through the stands, climbing fences, and over the top of one another. Two men swing it out on the pitchers mount, beer guts and little league aluminum bats against ten or more, hmmm, drunks? Trying to harm them? Eat them? Her mind churns faster than her stomach.

  Grace steps back inside, closing and locking the painted glass door. Panting in fright, she turns to Barbie. To do what, she does not know. That chance does not come. She stares down at Barbie’s body on the floor, nourished on by four hideous looking creatures. Her stomach is ripped open. One bicep is bitten through, lying loose from the bone. Numerous teeth marks ring her neck. Behind the necrotic buffet, another staggering man steps through the open rear door. The screen door bends as easy as paper. This thing raises its hands and stumbles towards her, lifeless eyes boring holes into her courage.

  She turns to run out the front door, fumbling over the lock and pushing uselessly on a door she has pulled open thousands of times. Just seconds before one of the bottom feeders crawls up her leg, she smashes the door in its bloody face with a crack of me
tal edge on bone. Stepping out the door, she turns right into the arms of the three that were previously feeding behind the truck. Charlie’s skin and gristle lies stagnant in their teeth. Arms wrap her up as she attempts a scream but the engorged wad of gum blunders backwards along her worming tongue, turning her cry into a choking gasp.

  THE END.

  FROM THE DROP by Stuart D. Monroe

  The Bering Sea is an ill-tempered and cruel mistress at best. Sometimes it puts your ledger in the red. Sometimes it puts your ledger in the black (sometimes by a large margin). But the Bering Sea always takes something in return: the color in your hair, a broken bone, your family life, a crewmate, perhaps even your sanity.

  The crab-fishing vessel Sweet Maria was a 105-foot legend of the frigid sea. Her sleek black hull was adorned with white and yellow flowers intertwining around the namesake’s bold red strokes. It was home and heart to a crew of seven hardy souls who left their families for weeks at a time to harvest red, blue and Opilio gold from the depths of the unforgiving waters that lay between Mother Russia and America’s last frontier, Alaska.

  The captain of the Sweet Maria was a grizzled but decorated man named Jack Ryland. In his 32 years on the Bering Sea Jack had seen it all. He’d lost men at sea and seen a host of broken bones. He’d stitched many a nasty laceration and set more than a few crude splints. He’d cauterized wounds with a handheld blowtorch. He’d made phone calls of condolence to new widows who’d given up their husbands to their ultimate mistress (only twice, thank the good Lord). Pain and misery were no strangers to Jack and certainly not to his crew.

  Madness was also a constant bedfellow, usually brought on by days without sleep and raging storms that most people wouldn’t believe a man could endure. Jack’s crew willingly endured these things. They hauled gear and worked to the point of collapse for the all-mighty dollars that the crab brought home. It was well known that a couple of months of pain and madness at sea could earn a man what some jobs could earn in an entire year. The risk was high. The reward was higher. It was this reward that brought 22 year-old Mychael Smithfield to the Sweet Maria as a greenhorn for the Opilio crab season of 2012.

  Mychael had become obsessed with getting on as a greenhorn in the swell of the popularity of a reality show about crab fishing. He never missed an episode (thanks to DVR). He would often watch the same episode over and over again. He dreamed of being one of those wild and reckless men, braving the nightmarish seas in search of modern day treasure. Mychael craved that spotlight and the riches that came with it.

  Mychael sent resumes to every vessel on the Alaskan coast. He made countless phone calls inquiring about the need for new deckhands doing any job he could get, even if it was just stringing bait for the real fisherman. In the summer and fall of that fateful year, he fished for salmon, Pollock and other commercial fish close to the Alaskan shoreline to pay the bills. Not that he had many bills. Mychael lived alone and had no attachments, no family whom he chose to speak to or acknowledge in any way. And, at night, he sent out his resumes and filled out his applications.

  Just as his resolve was about to break from weeks of endless supplication his phone rang. It was Jack Ryland of the famous Sweet Maria.

  “Hullo? Who’s this?” Mychael mumbled into the greasy receiver.

  “Jack. Jack Ryland, of the Sweet Maria. You still lookin’ for work, boy? I got less than a week ‘til we’ve gotta pull out and get at it” said the raspy voice on the other end of the line.

  “Yeah…shit yeah! I mean, yes sir” he amended through a wide grin. Mychael was no longer sleepy. He had sat straight up, and his feet were tapping rhythmically back and forth on the dingy carpet, which was pockmarked with cigarette burns.

  “I won’t shit you about anything, boy. Ain’t my style, so listen up. You weren’t my first choice, but you were damn persistent. I’ll give you that. And I admire that. You’ve got to really annoy and piss some people off in this line of work if you want to get anywhere. You damn sure annoyed the piss out of me and a few other captains with your resume a day shit!” he let out a harsh laugh at that last that turned into a hacking cough. “So, here’s the deal. You pay your own way up here. I don’t give a shit how you get here, whether it’s by plane, car, or fucking bicycle. Just get here by Monday. It’s Friday now. You do the math, kid. You’ll be a first year greenhorn, but I don’t use any kind of a probationary system. You do full work and you’ll get a full share. There’s five other guys on deck besides you. All of them have at least two years of experience. The deck boss is my cousin, Randy. He’s an asshole and I like him that way. He’s also the engineer and drives the boat while I sleep, which I don’t do all that often. Insomnia, not that you should care. If you smoke, you bring your own damn cigarettes. No one on this boat likes a damn cigarette mooch. It’ll be a one-week burn with the possibility of a second if the fishing is bad. You in?”

  Mychael barely kept his voice from shaking as he said “Yes, sir. I’m your new greenhorn.”

  That Monday saw Mychael Smithfield stepping out of a cab onto the docks of St. Paul Harbor. Dressed in faded blue jeans and a black UFC t-shirt, he was grinning from ear to ear. Even behind his aviator sunglasses, you could see the excitement in his eyes. He threw his massive Army issue duffle bag (ten cartons of Marlboros, clothes and two Lovecraft short story collections) over his shoulder and strolled toward the Sweet Maria, tied and anchored at the very end of the docks.

  “Wow” Mychael muttered to himself as he passed the gleaming, white, and blue Northwestern. Captain Sig Hansen leaned out of the window and barked orders at his hustling crew as they stacked all the pots in their own haste to be out. On his left was the Time Bandit. There was no sign of the Hillstrands, but their crew was just as busy stacking pots and prepping the deck. Far down the other side of the dock, silent, sat the Cornelia Marie. It was a grim reminder of the toll that crab fishing could take on a man even when he was in the captain’s chair.

  Mychael reminded himself to snap out of it and stop acting like some starstruck kid. It wouldn’t do to make a first impression of being a goofy fame whore.

  The hollow slap of harbor waves against the dock and the cry of seagulls were a mellow counterpoint to the shouts of harried crewmen and the bang of metal on metal from stacking pots. Mychael thought he had never heard such beautiful music. He continued to grin from ear to ear, right up until a booming voice from the rail of the Sweet Maria intoned “Hey, fuckface…..get your happy ass up here! These pots aren’t gonna stack themselves!”

  The smile stayed on his face and he shouted up “Randy, I presume?”

  “Nope, it’s Mother Fucking Teresa….couldn’t you tell?! Now please, pretty please with sugar on top GET THE FUCK UP HERE!” he spit down with a sneer and an impatient wave.

  So began life on the Sweet Maria for Mychael Smithfield.

  Randy lived up to his billing as a first class asshole. He was impatient, snide, and completely full of himself. He was also very, very good at running the deck. Mychael wasn’t bothered by this in the least. He had worked for many rude and crude bosses in his 10 years of various fishing jobs since his dad first brought him on a boat at 12.

  The rest of the crew turned out to be a hodge-podge of rough (and sometimes lunatic) personalities. There was Rodney A’Tani, a giant Aleutian with a beard that would rival anything seen in ZZ Top and a booming laugh to match. Rodney had been with Captain Jack (as he liked to be called) for 17 years through all of the King and Opilio crab seasons. Rodney was, in Mychael’s estimation, the friendliest and most genuine of the crew.

  Joe Mills was a 30-year-old roughneck from the bayous of Louisiana. He spoke in a dialect so thick that Mychael quickly gave up trying to interpret anything that he was saying and just listened for the tone. Joe was a human fireplug, squat and thick with no neck whatsoever. A large tattoo of the LSU Tigers logo covered his right forearm. He had been with Captain Jack for 5 years of Opilio and King crab.

  Billy Bonnett was a wild-eyed Canadia
n from the inners of Saskatchewan. Although he was 42 years old he was affectionately known as “Billy the Kid” due to his almost lineless baby face, crooked smile and eerily similar name. Billy was known for never turning down a bet or a dare (and for his reckless abandon). As the ship’s resident lunatic, he was equal parts mascot and human tornado. He had given 13 years of his life to the Sweet Maria and the Bering Sea.

  Barry Drogan was a soft-spoken Englishman from Blackpool. He shook Mychael’s hand with a mumbly “Pleasure” and returned to his labor tying various knots. He did this with a deftness and speed of hand that seemed to Mychael to be a bit like a magic trick. Barry was a slight man with a balding ring of silver hair despite being only 35. He walked with an exaggerated limp and slumped shoulder. He was in his 4th year with Captain Jack, fishing only Opilio.

  Finally, there was young Rex Kelly from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Rex was in only his 3rd year on the Sweet Maria fishing both King and Opilio. At only 21 years old, he was barely old enough to shave. What he lacked in facial hair he made up for in tattoos. Both of his arms were completely sleeved in brightly colored ink of every style and type imaginable. There were demons next to angels; famous naked porn stars (Jenna Jameson) next to a stunningly rendered portrait of his late mother. On his face, just beside and slightly below his left eye, was a small red and yellow Zia. The rest of his face and ears were covered in piercings of all shapes and sizes. He spoke with the rapidity and lack of direction that only ADHD can bring.

  As the next youngest and most inexperienced of the crew, Mychael took to him instantly. During the hours before leaving St. Paul, the two young men worked closely on “the shit work” (as Randy put it) and spoke at length. Mychael had spent three blurry years living in Albuquerque himself and was not at all surprised to find out that they knew some of the same people, been to some of the same parties.