Frightmares: A Fistful of Flash Fiction Horror (13 page)

A small, black remote with a single red button–a like a cliché from a Bond movie. “Just one press.”

Have you ever lost a remote control?

I have.

Niall McMahon
is a 40-year-old teacher and writer. He has had short stories published in several different markets and has several still-born novels. He doesn’t intend his stories to be horrific but, inevitably, that's the direction they take all on their own.

BLOOD OF GLEUVINN

NICHOLAS CONLEY

To a vampire, the emotions of anger and blood-lust are intrinsically linked. None knew this better than the vampire Gleuvinn. Wrapped in bandages that hid his horrific disfigurement, Gleuvinn perched on a bench in Grand Central Station, observing the milling herds; an outcast from their number. In the past, it hadn’t bothered him; humans were
food;
witless cattle whose judgments meant no more to him than those of cows or swine. Now he’d decided to no longer live as a slave to his addiction. Things had become . . . complicated. The craving was overwhelming. The
humans
walking by had no idea what he had sacrificed for them; likely wouldn’t have cared if they did. If he were to remove his bandages, revealing the black veins covering his face; his pink eyes and sharp teeth, they’d only be disgusted,
horrified
. They wouldn’t spare a single thought for his suffering.

He respected humans for their morals and their capacity for love;
hated
them for their
apathy.

A young boy and his father sat on a nearby bench. A large sketchbook lay open in the boy’s lap. Much as Gleuvinn hated to admit it, seeing fathers and sons together unsettled him. He’d been a father once, long ago. His son had died young, deformed from birth.

“Hey Dad, have you got a pen?”

The son tugged on his father’s sleeve. The father ignored his offspring’s pleas, intent on his newspaper. The disregard this
human
showed toward his offspring infuriated Gleuvinn, kindling a fire in the pit of his stomach.

“Can I have a pen?
Please
?”

The boy pleaded.

Blood. Gleuvinn needed blood. His veins throbbed, the black, oily saliva in his mouth thick and copious.

He could tear the man’s neck open, feed upon the one who so callously wasted the gift of Fatherhood. He didn’t
deserve
his blessings, or Gleuvinn’s mercy . . .

“Dad?”

Again the father paid no attention. Gleuvinn stood up, digging his hands into his trench-coat pockets. The man glanced up as he approached, apparently deciding the bandaged stranger was of more interest than his newspaper.

“Can I help you?”

Gleuvinn listened to the man’s pulse with escalating hatred, agonizing hunger. He could almost taste the iron on his tongue.

“Yes,” Gleuvinn hissed like a snake. “I wanted to give your son my pen. Here. You can keep it.”

Gleuvinn handed the boy his pen. The child looked up, eyes swimming with a contradiction of fear and gratitude. As Gleuvinn walked away, the boy started drawing.

Underneath his bandages, the vampire smiled.

Nicholas Conley
, as an author, artist and traveler, spends his time searching for inspiration, strange places, interesting people and new experiences . . . well, when he’s not up past 5:00 AM writing his newest story, anyway. Nicholas has published over 20 short stories. His novella “Enslavement” appeared in the anthology
The Road to Hell.

LA RANA

CYNTHIA (CINA) PELAYO

Jerry felt hesitant as he followed the old man into the dark basement. The cramped, cement room smelled of earth and mold. White, red, and black votive candles outlined a red pentagram painted on the floor. On warping wooden shelves surrounding the room were stacked ragged boxes which overflowed with dried herbs, chunks of bark, and twisted roots.

It was the first Friday in March. Today, the Black Mass would take place in a cave off one of the largest mountain tops in the town of Lake Catemaco. It was thought in these parts that today was the most powerful day of the year to cast a spell.

Crossing his arms and standing off to the side, Jerry watched the old man make his way to an aquarium, its glass covered in a layer of grime.

“How did you learn to do all of this?” he asked.

“You don’t learn magic,” the old man said with disgust. “It’s in the blood.
My
blood. Something people have carried in this town before the damned Hernán Cortés arrived on this land.”

Visiting a town known for its large population of witches and warlocks was not something Jerry ever thought he would do, but he was here now and there was no way to turn back. Money, a large sum, had already been paid.

His original plan had been to go to Cancun and let loose, and he had done so. In Cancun, he drank every night and slept with any woman who would go back to his hotel room. But the booze and the women didn’t solve the problem he knew he would return home to in a few days, and every hangover, every post-coital throb in his testicles seemed to hammer that fact home. Then, a bartender at his hotel had told him about this town, and the upcoming mass, and he boarded a bus and made the twenty-two hour journey.

“Why is the Black Mass held in a cave?”

The old man turned away from the aquarium with a toad in one hand and a hand-stitched doll made of black cloth in the other. “It is the cave where the devil loiters.”

The old man pointed to the center of the pentagram. “Stand there,” he said. Jerry did as instructed. After murmuring some words, the old man put the toad in Jerry’s left hand and the doll in Jerry’s right hand.

“Now, feed the doll to the toad.”

Jerry did as he was told, prying the slimy animal’s mouth open, and shoving the doll down its throat. The toad wrestled, writhed, and gagged, but Jerry managed to force the doll into its mouth.

The old man then handed Jerry a rusted, threaded needle. “Now, sew its lips together and when you are done your wife will die in thirty days.”

Jerry took the needle into his hand, smiled and pierced the animal’s lip.

Cynthia (cina) Pelayo
grew up in a haunted house, so a lifelong fascination with horror and the macabre seemed fitting. She holds degrees in journalism, marketing, and writing. She wears black – most of the time and whenever possible avoids the sun. She is also the Gravedigger/Publisher at www.burialday.com

APPLE OF MY EYE

RAMONA GARDEA

I know what I’m doing. I’m writing this down to make that perfectly clear, before things get blown out of proportion.

It’s the only thing I could have done.

I love my son. I’ve done it so he can finally be happy.

He just wouldn’t stop screaming.

Simon started screaming a few weeks after he was born. Mike and I weren’t exactly certain what was wrong, but like all new parents, naturally we worried. We consulted Dr. Tubbs as soon as we could. Dr. Tubbs told us not to worry, that it was probably just colic. He said nobody really knows the cause of colic and there’s no definite cure. However, it’ll generally resolve itself by the time a child is three or four months old. In the meantime, Dr. Tubbs told us he could run some tests to see if a change in diet would help.

But it wasn’t colic. And the screaming didn’t stop. Even as Simon approached his fourteenth month, the screaming persisted. Constant. Piercing. Vibrating the walls of the house and the walls of my skull.

Simon screamed all through his first birthday party.

Dr. Tubbs said it was just an unusually long case of colic. Everything else about Simon was normal.

Mike started spending the night at the office. He needed to sleep, but Simon was always screaming.

Well, that’s not
quite
true. Simon didn’t scream whenever he fell into an exhausted sleep. But he never slept long. And I noticed that if he were left alone, he didn’t scream at all. He didn’t even cry.

But he screams when he sees me. I’m sure that’s the only time he screams. And I can’t leave him alone. He needs me. I need to be with him. So, he’s always screaming.

I told Mike about it one night when he came over for dinner. He doesn’t eat at home every night anymore. He says he feels bad about leaving us alone like this, but he’s doing what’s best for all of us.

I know now that my son screams because he sees me. So, the solution was to make sure he couldn’t see me.

He was screaming long before I used a melon baller to scoop his left eyeball out of its socket. I made sure to boil the melon baller first, to sanitize it. I also sanitized the scissors I used to cut the optic nerve before cauterizing the retinal vein and artery. I made sure I’d done as neat a job as I could before moving on to his right eyeball.

Don’t worry. I wore latex gloves. I’d done some research online on what to look for, and I’m not squeamish when it comes to doing what’s best for my son. And I have plenty of baby aspirin for the pain I can’t kiss away.

But the important thing is Simon isn’t screaming anymore. I’m going to go hold him now, because he’s laughing. I’ve never heard him laugh before.

Ramona Gardea
is a native Californian currently living in western Kentucky with her husband and n+1 house cats. She has been published in
Kaleidotrope
and won second place for fantasy and was also a double finalist for horror in Escape Artists' 2010 Flash II contest.

POLLY GONE

NATHAN ROBINSON

Another damNed hair. She’s been gone for more than two years and I still keep finding them everywhere. The last time was about six months ago, when I found one beneath one of the sofa cushions. Sunset orange, like a dark-red sliver of fire. Thought I’d gotten them all when I’d scoured the entire house to remove every last trace of her.

But she’s still here; I’m still finding reminders once in a while. I cried when she went. I still cry now.

Found half a toenail the same day I discovered that strand of copper underneath the cushion. It was painted pink, so it was definitely hers. She was a pink sort of girl. A girly girl, always happy and lacking a care in the world.

I found a strand more than a foot long, trapped in a road map that I keep on a shelf in the study. Page twenty-five—the Dales—where we’d spent our honeymoon. She’d done the navigating. We’d argued about directions, as most couples do, and she’d closed the map book when we’d arrived at the hotel, sealing her wisp of keratin as a bookmark. A wispy reminder of a time when we were mildly happier. Before . . .

Whenever I find one of her hairs it gets me thinking about her. I try to forget, but the bitch keeps haunting me. Even after I moved house, I still find evidence of her scarlet locks in boxes, on clothes, and in my bed. Drives me mad.

Kirsty didn’t like it, either. She threw a plate at me, convinced that Polly and I were still sleeping together.

She left anyways, despite my assurances that I was in love with her, not Polly. Polly’s hair all over the place had convinced her that I was lying.

The day after I reported her missing the police came to interview me. I told them that I’d come home from work to discover that she’d taken a bag of clothes, her purse and left. Her credit card account indicated that she’d booked an online train ticket the day before she disappeared. One way.

I phoned her in front of the police but the phone number led nowhere. They explained to me that sometimes relationships don’t work and that people abandoning their spouses without warning; happens more commonly than you might think.

I know.

There was nothing the police could do, given how it looked like Polly had left of her own accord with no signs of struggle.

I had to distribute my own missing posters, but I knew she was dead.

I met Kirsty shortly thereafter. She was sympathetic about my loss at first, until the hairs came between us.

You can’t divorce a woman who isn’t there or doesn’t want to be found.

Insurance wouldn’t pay me out without a body.

So I head down to Polly’s vegetable patch with a spade.

It’s six feet down . . . but I’ll give them a body.

She’s still driving me mad.

Nathan Robinson
lives in Scunthorpe, England with his wife, two adoring twin boys and a three-legged cat called Dave. He’s won the Spinetinglers monthly competition six times, four stories published by Panic Press, four with Static Movement and many more to come. Check him out at www.facebook.com/NathanRobinsonWrites for more stories.