Showing posts with label dark fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dark fiction. Show all posts

Sunday, September 27, 2015

Corrupt Love


Corrupt Love
Dark Fiction by Rodolphus


Another evening wasted at the theater and Reginald was certain it was their relationship, and not the movies, that dragged his spirit, shrieking, down to the lower realms. Granted, the zombie movies were bad enough. But to hear Zoe go on, and on, and on again about the truisms in zombie movies, the greater importance of death over life in zombie movies, he just might have to think up a creative and colorful means of exploding his own head. Now that would be poetic justice.
He stared out the window at the full moon. And sighed.
He knew if he broached the subject of them splitting, going their separate ways, oh, he knew how that would end up. The same way it always did. And he did not wish to go there. Not again. Really, not ever again.
He liked Zoe well enough. There were things that worked in their relationship, some of them important things.
But the whole zombie thing.
Zoe’s massive library of paperback zombie books, more than a thousand books (and there was not a single werewolf book in there, anywhere, despite pop culture), I mean come on, should there even be a thousand zombie books available for purchase? What does that say about a person? What does that say about collectors? What does that say about writers? And every movie ever made, even the Japanese zombie movies, as well as a Czech zombie movie that did not even have English subtitles, she not only owned them—she, ahem, collected them, in their pristine packaging—but she also watched the insipid flicks, usually two movies per night seven nights a week.
And she liked everything Rob Zombie, whether it was what was unimaginably called music or what some zombies unimaginably called movies. Maybe that one didn’t count in the whole zombie fetish. But there was a certain ring in the name, wasn’t there?
Reginald even suspected her name was not the name her parents chose for her birth certificate. He had hinted that she had merely removed the “m” and the “b” and the “i” to come up with “Zoe.” She denied this, of course. And she was as likely as Obama to ever show him the document (not without a little Photoshop, that is).
She was actually getting a Masters in Zombology, which Reginald felt should not even be a 101 offering at a junior college, let alone a post-graduate degree at a major university. But she certainly excelled in her Zombology studies; maintaining a 4.1 grade average in graduate school was nothing to sniff at. In many ways he was quite proud of her.
He just didn’t get the whole zombie thing. And he doubted he ever would.
Granted, she didn’t get his Lord of the Rings fetish, either, but he didn’t major in Gimli, or drag Zoe to movies that featured elves, or faeries, or even orc-like creatures. Come to think of it, orcs were somewhat like zombies—perhaps third cousins twice removed—except that orcs talked, kind of. But Zoe refused to even watch any of the Rings, and wasn’t at all excited about the approaching release of the expanded Hobbit movies on blu ray.
Tonight she dragged him to see a special retrospect midnight showing of I Was a Teenage Zombie. Hundreds of people were in attendance, all dressed and made up like zombies, all of them chant-reciting the lines of the movie. None of her friends showed any interest when he broached the original movie from the 1950s starring Michael Landon, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, because, it was about a werewolf, duh. But that at least meant something to Reginald, because his father used to show it on their old movie projector (well, the 8-minute version, anyway).
He began to undress and suddenly she was there in his face.
“I cannot,” she began, giving more than a pregnant pause for emphasis, “believe…that you…Reggie…fell asleep during IWATZ. I mean, come on, you’re not stupid, for Romero’s sake. You’re not completely an idiot. What am I supposed to think? Don’t you care about anything important?”
“I tried,” he began, and was about to say to stay awake, but she cut him off, as she always did.
“You won’t participate in the whole role playing thing, which you know would make me happy, and I mean, come on, the least you could have done would have been to stay awake, or paint eyes on your eyelids to at least try and trick me.” She sniffed, not quite prettily. “You could at least attempt to trick me into thinking that you like me. That you love me.”
“Look, I liked the original Night of the Living Dead, you know that, and I even liked the modern Dawn of the Dead even though it’s not as good as the original. But come on, everything else…”
“Please don’t patronize me. If you start in about racism and group mentality and spiraling out of control society, and a sick food system bent on producing a real zombie apocalypse, I might bite your throat out,” she snarled, with real anger, looming over him. “You’re missing the whole point to zombies. You’re missing the death cult aspects, you’re missing all the sly jabs at religion. Please don’t turn my passion for zombies into a diatribe about a sick society. Reggie. You know I don’t like it when you turn everything into a psychology show, Reggie.”
“Would you please, please not call me…Reggie? My name is Reginald.”
“I will never call you that. That is a horrible, ugly name, and I won’t call you Reginald. Reggie.”
There. She was taunting him. Did it always come to this, with her pathetic badgering, as she attempted to get his hackles up. Well, he would not participate, not tonight.
“We need to break up,” he said. He just spat it out. Despite his resolve, he just went and said. And he meant it.
As expected, she lifted him off the bed and slammed him into the wall.
“Would you please not do this, you’re going to get us kicked out of another apartment,” he began, and got most of it out, but by then she was doing that stereotypical low moaning, that unearthly wail that froze most people in their tracks, robbed them of all volition to move or scream or fight. And that’s what kept zombies in business: no flight, no fight, just fulfillment of zombie appetite.
He pushed her backward, only a foot before her undead strength kicked in and she slammed him into the wall, again, and again.
“You are making me angry,” he said, “and I haven’t fallen off the wagon in two whole months, please don’t get me started.”
It is doubtful he got most of this speech out, because she was slobbering on him, her jaws clanking shut like steel bear traps, just missing his face.
And then he was emerged, his deeper form exposed, and he loomed over her, bristling with teeth and fur, growling his low, diesel engine chug.
“See, we’re good, just like this,” she said.
He had to admit it, as debased as the whole thing was, it did work. Sordid, really. Corrupt. In his rational moments, it seemed like a nightmare. But when they were both overcome by their true selves, there was a certain satisfaction to the whole relationship.
“Beast,” she said, keeping her low moans at least quiet enough that the neighbors above them, and those below and on each side, did not suffer myocardial cardiac infarction, thus producing an instant zombie apocalypse.
You did not want to mess with lycanthropic zombies. There had not been a bad movie made yet to prepare you for that horror.
Nasty relationship? Yes, but it had its points. Even corrupt love was still love, well, sort of. And neither of them believed in divorce. And since death would not part them, they might as well make the best omelet they could from these rotten, decomposing eggs.




http://unknownwriter-dclwolf.blogspot.com/2015/12/vestigial-surreality-one.html
Read Vestigial Surreality Online FREE:
01 02 03 04 05 06 07
08 09 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
29 30 31 32 33 34 35
36 37 38 39 40 41 42
43 44 45 46 47 48 49

50 51 52 53 54 55 56


Douglas Christian Larsen FREE Short Fiction
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Common Platitudes of the Damned

Rodolphus

Common Platitudes of the Damned
Dark Fiction by Rodolphus


On the drive to work the dread seeped ever upward in his gut, oh septic backwash. He steadied himself, or at least attempted to calm himself, just don’t take it seriously, he affirmed again, and reaffirmed yet again, and again, it’s not that bad, and it could be worse, and all the other trivial absurdities that people reassure themselves, when they feel the paranoia slamming at the iron bars of its cage.
I don’t think it is paranoia. But of course, that’s what all paranoid people think. They all think it is real. They all think they are not crazy. Everyone thinks that everyone is after them, even when they’re not. But then again, sometimes they really are after you.
Logically, he understood that he could be paranoid, as well as correct. Utterly sane, and bonkers as all bananas. It could all be real, and 100 percent certified nutzoid.
He parked in his usual parking space and steadied himself again. Just go in, do your job, ignore the witches, and make everyone think everything is as usual.
At his desk he stared at his computer screen. Cramped at this insidious modern cubicle, he could feel their attention upon him, even as they pretended to do their assigned duties. They were all cheerful with each other, blatantly loud and gossipy, but as soon as they crossed the opening of his cubicle they instantly silenced. It was as if they entered a dead space. Or as if death had just passed by his space, passing too closely.
The Giant Slug woman focused her mind on him, malevolently. Oh, she had never actually said anything mean to him, had never even been rude. But in her quiet, passively aggressive way, she was zapping him with her negative intentions. He could almost feel her casting her spells. Great gobs of Jabba the Hut mucus aimed his way.
The Mummy Woman on the other side, she was another story completely. Every morning she would bounce gaily down the line of cubicles simpering: “Morning!” and “Hey, Good Morning!” and so on until she came to his cubicle and she would go silent, marching in her Gestapo stride, until she made it to the next cubicle whence she bubbled over again: “Good Morning!”
Yes, the Mummy Woman took every opportunity to be rude to him, hissing, to snipe at any of his suggestions, and to hit him with her soul-draining cold hexes. Just knowing that she was taking up space only twenty feet away from him was enough to make him feel nauseous.
If nasty people were all he had to deal with, he could live with it, unpleasant as that could be. That would be no problem. He could live with rudeness. He had lived with such things before. But, the coincidences. Yes, the coincidences.
The coincidences were another matter. They popped up all around him, every day.
If he picked up a book at work and began reading, anywhere, randomly looking at a page that he flipped to, within one minute of reading his eyes might fall on the sentence “the corporate intersection of ideas” and even as his eyes fell on the word intersection, someone close by would say: “Oh look out at the intersection, a cop is stopping someone.” These and other impossible bizarre coincidences happened on a daily basis—nothing extravagant—just tiny puzzle pieces snapping together.
His frustrating dilemma was that despite the pieces of the puzzle coming together, he still could not discern any understandable picture to the greater whole.
The irritating cell ringtone of the ditz in the cubicle next door began its flatulent wak-wacca-blat, wak-wacca-blat. That had to be the most irritating thing he had ever heard. It blared through a maddening 30-second cycle, if not answered. And she left the cell phone on the top of her desk when she went to meetings, so for two years now he had listened to that insidious ditty many, many times a day.
He was only fifteen minutes into his day. Well, look at the bright side, only about eight hours and forty-five minutes to go; he could deal with that, couldn’t he? It’s not like he was fading away in a concentration camp, was it? Yes, you can deal with this, just survive, make it through.
“Dave?”
He looked up. It was kindly Mr. Torez, the tall, thin and graying director. Mr. Torez was not his boss, but in the corporation he was parallel to Dave’s boss.
“Yes, Mr. Torez?” Dave said, feeling no warning vibes at all.
“Can I have a word with you in my office?”
He assented and followed the kindly older man down three hallways to sit across from him at the director’s great desk.
“You’re still not quite…assimilating, are you, Dave? I mean with your team?”
He stared at the director for several moments, unsure of which can of worms he was about to open, and still thinking it might be possible to keep all the cans intact. Let those worms be!
He could not talk about the Mummy Woman. Everyone in the company must know about her. She was nasty to so many people, and she was so…untalented…at her job, it was amazing she had racked up nearly twenty-five years in the company. A gooey twenty-five years of hissing from her darkened cubicle.
And he certainly could not broach the subject of the Giant Slug woman, or even the Ditz, because they did not seem to offend too many people (doing all their sly, dirty deeds only when backs were turned). There was the leprechaun just down the hall, the little guy with white hair who leapt into the air at odd moments, clicking his heels together, cackling and jiggling loud change in his pockets.
Or Bloody Mary, he certainly could not talk about her. Or It, really. Bloody Mary was not really a woman, not even really a person, but a mechanical contraption that galumphed down the hallways, the handle on the side of her box cranking even though no human hand would dare touch the crank, let alone actually wind the key. It galumphed around the building, cackling, rolling its vacant blue eyes, its artificial red hair waving, its spindly arms emerging from its box to swing a great ax in circles above its head. No one ever seemed to comment on this thing, this recent addition to the menagerie.
“You can talk to me, Dave. Tell me anything.”
Dave smiled at the kindly, gentle-eyed old man. He wanted to spill his guts, but soon enough everyone would think he was crazy. No, really, they would know that he was insane.
“What’s on your mind, Dave? Trust me.”
It all opened up, Dave told the older man how it seemed that everything had happened before, even this, the meeting in this office, this very meeting, it had happened before, and Dave could remember complete snatches of it. That déjà vu kept happening, eerily, that Dave felt like a prophet, at least sometimes, as if everything fell into place moments after he remembered it in just such a fashion.
How he heard the weird women in the office chanting together, that he believed they were some sort of coven, all sipping chamomile tea, delicately discussing where they should plant the next body, and what flower should grace its mound, oh and how they all hated him—Dave—and that he didn’t really mind, because he found all of them so distasteful. Their smell, it was not quite natural, was it? The air of sickness about them. The great slimy trails the Slug Woman left behind her passage. The hisses from the Mummy Woman’s dark cubicle. It really seemed as if they all felt instinctive hatred toward him, the same kind of loathing he felt toward them.
Only, it seemed as if they hated him because he was so normal. Because he was alive.
After five minutes of this, poor Mr. Torez rubbed between his eyes with a long, bony finger, slowly shaking his head.
“Do you think I’m crazy?” Dave said.
“I don’t think you’re crazy,” Mr. Torez said. “But be honest with me, is there anything else that seems to be…prying into your mind?”
“I’m starting to think that time itself is a great big cycle, like a computer program, and that it has been loaded up several times, with mostly the same results happening over and over again—like a massive hologram—with certain people changing, or waking up, I guess you would call it enlightenment, while mostly everyone else has dropped out of the program, that they have developed, or evolved as far as they can, and now they are just like computer-generated people, and that there are fewer and fewer real people in the program. And what is mostly left are the dark, slimy things, the creatures, the monsters, all these things around here.”
Wow. He really got that all out in a major rush. It was just like vomiting. He felt somewhat better for cleaning out his system, just dumping everything. Poor Mr. Torez. He now looked like he was afraid of Dave, that it was now all confirmed, he was insane. Dave was bonkers, nuts, completely off-kilter, a living Looney Tune.
“Aren’t you happy here, Dave? You don’t have a lot of responsibilities, your workload is never that heavy, you received a raise and a bonus soon after you were hired. And your starting salary was quite good, you agree with all of this, don’t you, Dave?” Mr. Torez said, almost pleading. “Can’t you just be happy. Stop worrying. And stay with the program? Can’t you just ignore the strange things that seem to go on around here? Can’t you just pretend that everything is normal? That the Slug Woman is just a slightly batty old crone, that we are being kind in keeping her on, despite her dementia? And that the Mummy Woman is just a negative, unkind woman, bitter at the world? And the Ditz, she’s not so bad, is she? Sure there is all that stuff with the Slug Woman, but things like that happen all the time in the work place. Can’t you try to just ignore it all?”
“Well, I try, but these coincidences just keep happening, and it’s like I’m seeing through the people. I mean, I’m wedged between three of the worst people I’ve ever known, and yet they are playing it as if they are nice, friendly people, and yet they are just so plainly…evil.” He could have said foul, grotesque, hideous, but it really boiled down to the fact he had never known anyone or anything as evil as these…beings.
Mr. Torez sighed. He buried his face in his hands. “I’m so sorry, Dave. I just, am, oh, so sorry.”
Great, first Mr. Torez tells him to trust him, and now that it is all out on the table, yep, now comes firing time!
Dave felt almost relieved, he really didn’t care, he needed to escape from this nightmare pit. He felt a sudden welling sense of freedom bursting like firecrackers in his chest. Thank God! I’m free, I’m free at last! He could get another job. He could move his family away from this hellish place, I mean come on, whoever heard of a wind-up jack-in-the-box waving an ax, at work? He just needed to get away, and thankfully, it looked like that could happen now, he might escape!
“Do you want me to clear my desk?” Dave said, attempting to be helpful. Might as well get started. He would need to find another job, and fast.
Mr. Torez removed his hands from his face. He pushed back in his chair, sighing loudly.
“I wish it were that easy, Dave. But don’t take this personally. You made it so much further, this time around, and I am betting that when the next cycle starts, you are going to really go far, I really do believe that, Dave,” Mr. Torez said, kindly, looking over Dave’s head at someone entering the room. “If you can retain anything, just remember that dreams are not important. Imagination is trouble, and will only bring you grief. Try not to think so much, Dave, just be more accepting, and try and fit in. You’ll be fine, you’ll see.”
Dave glanced back with a feeling of dread. Here they came, filing into the room, the Giant Slug Woman, the Mummy Woman, and the Ditz. And oh, such malevolence, such palpable hatred. Their eyes were fastened upon him, blood-thirsty leeches. Dave swallowed, and tried to scoot his chair away from them but they were already surrounding him.
“The next cycle begins in about one hundred years, and I’m sure we will meet again, Dave,” Mr. Torez said, easily, turning away and lifting the handset of his telephone.
“Disposal?” the Mummy Woman said, in her bright, false voice.
“Yes, please,” Mr. Torez said, tossing the two words over his shoulder as he focused upon his telephone conversation.
As they seized him with their pincer hands, he struggled, but only briefly. He thought of his children, and only slowly began to realize that he would see them again. And perhaps he could be a better father, the next go-round, a much better husband. Maybe all this was his fault, because really, who cared about hissing Mummy Women and Jabba the Hut slugs leaving trails in the office corridors? Who cared about the feasting noises from locked offices? The distant cackles and all the screams, really who cared?
“Do you want to go out for lunch today, it’s payday,” the Giant Slug woman said to the Ditz, almost as if the three of them were alone, and that Dave was a nonentity, dragged and crumpled in their midst.
But I’ll remember, next time, he suddenly knew, and he realized that this is why the three of them hated him so much, because he was real, and would run again, while they had petered out long, long ago, and were now just simulacra of the realities they used to be, with only the worst of them in evidence, with only the remnant evil remaining.
Dave saw a bland version of himself passing the other way. They bland empty version of himself nodded at the three creatures and continued on his way, apparently not seeing Dave, Dave the real Dave, the real Dave being dragged by the foul things, the slimy things, the hideous things. Dave realized that the simulacra Dave was heading to a meeting. He wondered how many real people remained and would attend the meeting, and if any of them might sense that Dave was not Dave, but only a bland version of himself, a blind, dreamless husk of the real Dave, the Dave heading to Waste Disposal, the Dave who would not activate again for a hundred years.
I will remember, he tells himself, ignoring the white pain in his body, and I will dream, and I will imagine, and I will not fit in with these things. I will never accept them, or be one of them.
Down the hall in the darkened recesses of an empty conference room, Bloody Mary waited, sprung from her box, her key crank winding furiously, the ax doing circles above her painted red head, the bugging vacant eyes blue orbs spinning like clockwork.
“We should plant poppies on its mound,” the Ditz said, even as it snuggled up to the Slug Woman.
“Poppies are appropriate, for this thing,” the Mummy Woman hissed. “Wild and dreamy, wild and dreamy, disgustingly bright and full of light.”
“Sitting here,” the Slug Woman burped. “Sitting here. Sitting here. Sitting. Here.”

Dave sighed, dragged amidst the things, and he told himself, over and over again, it’ll be okay, it’s not so bad, everything will work out in the end, and other common platitudes of the damned.



http://unknownwriter-dclwolf.blogspot.com/2015/12/vestigial-surreality-one.html

Read Vestigial Surreality Online FREE:
01 02 03 04 05 06 07
08 09 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
29 30 31 32 33 34 35
36 37 38 39 40 41 42
43 44 45 46 47 48 49

50 51 52 53 54 55 56


Douglas Christian Larsen FREE Short Fiction
Available on Kindle, Nook, iBook, and Kobo

The Dragon & The Wolf - Free Novella by Douglas Christian Larsen

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Monday, August 24, 2015

The Wolf Doth Grin

Bizarre love triangle including a dryad, with a giant Wolf in hot pursuit
The Wolf Doth Grin

When Kory began his bizarre game of sexual one-upmanship, he never bargained on the ultimate price he and Clarence would pay, nor the terror that would relentlessly pursue them. Strange beings rustle through the dark woods and the painting of Natasha seems to breathe and move. The dark and angry eyes of the wolf draw near, guilt personified, and savage justice approaches. Justice draws nigh, and horror. Still, there might yet be time for a little dryad love. Rodolphus wrote "The Wolf Doth Grin" at the age of 21. Now for the first time in e-read, the dark romantic horror that is both hilarious and terrifying.

The Wolf Doth Grin
Rodolphus
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Kory and Clarry had no idea what they were involved in when they messed with Natasha


http://unknownwriter-dclwolf.blogspot.com/2015/07/rodolphus-dark-fiction.html


©Copyright 2011 Rodolphus. The Wolf Doth Grin, by Rodolphus. All Rights Reserved by the Author. No part of this book may be reproduced (except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews) or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the publisher, Wolftales UNlimited. This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental. The short story Comes the Snowplow (©Copyright 1983 by Douglas Christian Larsen) was reproduced herein with permission by the author, Douglas Christian Larsen.

The Wolf Doth Grin
by Rodolphus
JUST PRIOR
A cry echoes through the dark woods on the edge of town. The woods hold still, listening, holding its breath, fearful to move its branches or whisper its wind or release its nocturnal creatures. The woods is fearful because something moves through the trees, nearly imperceptible but for its anger, nearly invisible but for its wrath.
            The something is nearly godlike, but for its dark humor. The something nears the edge of the woods. It approaches the alien rockiness of the highway, pauses, hungry eyes watching, tall ears devouring the night, sucking down the preternatural silence. The something waits, rocking back on boot heels, grinning, eyebrows cocked and crooked, teeth glimmering in the night.
            And another something plods along the highway, toward the town. This something is loud and ponderous, as ungainly and stupid as the first something is insidious and sleek. This second something mutters and grumbles, scratches its crotch and belches wetly. It slogs forward, its feet huge concrete blocks pummeling the pavement, its fat round head hanging forward, its gigantic hands swinging apelike below square hips. Suddenly the second something stops, jerking its head abruptly, its tiny eyes focusing upon the edge of the woods. Slowly it focuses upon the first something.
            “So, like what do you want me to do?” the second something growls, cocking its dangerous claw-fists upon lumpy, hard hips. “Huh? What? Get him on a dark street? Sideswipe his sportscar? How do I do it?”
            The first something displays its palms whitely in the darkness.
            “Do absolutely nothing. Nothing. Do not look for him. Do not bother him. Just do whatever it is you like to do and he shall find you.”
            “Do I kill him then?” the second something — a very big man, not so much tall or fat as immensely solid, fantastically large and bulky — croons. His great round shoulders and huge slabs for hands roll and flex. His pocked cheeks lift his mud-colored glasses as he smiles.
            Humans, ah, the woods sighes. Only humans. The wind whispers through the trees, waking the creatures which scamper and chitter.
            For a while it seemed that something old had entered the woods, something ongoing and foul, but now it is apparent, ah, only humans, two strange and foul men, disgusting, but yet only men. Insects purr. Arachnids waltz. Miniature bipeds heatedly fornicate beneath whispering branches.
            Trees breathe and slowly bend close to share secrets.

— O —

            The two men stood in a close grove of trees in the darkness of predawn. One, enormous with shoulders the size of boulders, a protruding paunch which probably weighed over a hundred pounds on its own; the other slim, lithe, proportionate of limb and head. This second man, although sleek and sinewy, dwarfs the first man, the troll.
            “I have not the greatest faith in your capabilities. And, yet…I think you should prove the test sufficient.”
            “You stinking magicker — you want to test me yourself?” the troll snarled, hooking giant fingers into claws.
            The other laughed.
            “Come on! Come on!” the troll said, stepping forward.
            The other grinned, teeth all long daggers.
            The troll retreated.
            “Just do as I bid,” the other said, not ungently. “Do as I have instructed thee and, when thou hast failed, return again unto thy own.”
            The giant turned and vanished into the darkness of the grove.
            The troll, breathing hard, exuding fumes of frustration and fear, pulling its leather jacket close about its shoulders, began pushing the blocks at the end of its legs toward the street and the small town less than a mile away.


ONE
“Nothing happened,” she said, opening the door, obviously disappointed.
            “Is it dead?” he asked, only looking at the small furry gift from the sides of his eyes. If you looked straight on at such a thing you would need to think about the kind of woman you chose to be your lover.
            “Of course it’s dead, silly — it was cooked from the insides out. It’s ready to be eaten!” she laughed, almond eyes sparkling, grabbing the spider by a leg and dangling it over her upturned and opened mouth.
            He watched, face contorted and heart disgustedly sour — but watching raptly nevertheless — he watched her with the same fascinated attention as when she first closed the glass door on the arachnid.
            “Stop it,” he whispered.
            She laughed again. This time her laugh was not sweet, musical — it was a nasty laugh. She tossed the spider at his face.
            Flinching, backing up in a spasm, groaning involuntarily, he slapped at the stiff dead thing as it furred against his cheek.
            Then she attacked him. She seized him. Kissed and licked him. Bit his neck until he forgot about the spider.
            She capered the length of his body. She was an insane monkey. She was a siren with hot silken tongue, white teeth cruel, and cunning lips whispering to all his secret places. His soul demanded he refuse, beat her away, while his body greedily partook.

— O —

            That night he dreams about it. He dreams of her black twisted sense of humor. He dreams of the microwave oven. The bell jar inside the radioactive machine. But. But, something more than a nightmare, this visitation.
            The spider skitters about under the bell jar — only, it is not the same spider. No, this spider has tiny human eyes. Eyes scrunched, contorted with terror. Eyes begging freedom. Let me out of the oven, only you can let me out of this holocaust. The eyes plead not to be popped in this Nazi pleasure cooker.
            And then he is the spider. Clarence beats upon the glass with his fists. The glass is thick — his heart warms — bubble, bubble, toil and trouble — and Clarence realizes he is being cooked from the inside out. All the juices warm and hot and burning and flame. Warmer and hotter, his skin now tanning, that deep rich Cocoa-butter healthy glow, ripe with cancer spots. His head swells, a gorged condom, his viscous blood thins, began to bubble, begins to boil and burn and trouble.
            He nears explosion.
            Natasha smiles in at him through the black grate of the microwave. Her tongue swells suggestively between her sensuous lips. And Clarence sees her smiling, pointing, laughing at him. And many people behind her watch and laugh.
            The many people were all of them men.
            And all of them, all of the men, they smile and point and thank Clarence for such an amusing theater.
            Waiting, all of them, waiting for Clarence to erupt in viscous red blossoms.

— O —

            He wakes. Staring at the dark ceiling. Heart doing that bum-bum-bump-uh-dump-uh thang. Natasha beside him. Air, just breathe. A void. Vacuum. Cannot breathe very well, no. Chest tight. Chest constricted. Dying. He rolls his eyes in the night. A crazy horse. Terrified. Heart screaming. He rolls his eyes in the dark and spots Natasha at the periphery of his vision. His eyes roll up and lock upon her.

— O —

            “You are the spider,” he whispers, managing a breath. He swallows hard. Damn it, but the sound of his whisper in the night, the air from his parsed throat escaping into the suffocating oven of the bedroom — his whisper, and exactly what he says and what he means, frighten him more than the nightmare.


TWO
At work the telephone rings. That familiar kind of call where there is only silence. No breathing. Only nothingness — and you try very hard to catch some clue of who is on the other end of the line by smashing your ear against the receiver, feeling their emanations, the tick of blood running through their throat, pulsing against the mouthpiece, rushing close to your ear — only there is nothingness.
            His boss is royally pissed (you wimp, you bastard!), blaming Clarence for the many silent calls (you no-good idiot, what is your problem?) — at least seven mysteriously silent calls a day — his boss declares that only the kind of dog Clarence dates (your woof-woofs!) would call a construction company so many times a day and say absolutely nothing (airhead woof-woofs, that’s what you see when you’re away from the real world, you loser deadbeat).
            Clarence knows who is on the other end of the telephone line.

— O —

            “It’s heavenly, darling! You always know the perfect gift — I’ll cherish it always. No. Forever. Let’s see,” she says, voice a sensual purr, drawing a too-long, slender finger through her pouting lips, “I think I’ll put it on the pedestal.”
            Clarence watches her float through the room, the small lamp made large by her tiny artistic hands. His eyes dine upon every line and curve of her figure: high breasts, not small but neither large, the almost abnormally petite waist about the flat belly, the flowing swells of her sculptured hips, angles, sweeping and curved — the gracefully thin but well fleshed, long, long legs, ripe with rippling hard calves.
            She shines in a black silk kimono. An embroidered animal paw-print on the back of the kimono shines in the soft candle light. She seems illuminated in the embracing, clinging kimono — a glittering black glove, a second skin, enhances her ripe body.
            Tingling spasms rocket his groin.
            Clarence ceases breathing.
            “Almost as if they were made for each other — just like us,” she croons, placing the lamp upon an ancient ivory pedestal. The antiquated pedestal is priceless, yet it is one of Natasha’s lesser possessions.
            “I’m glad you like it, Natasha Plath,” he says, his eyes hardly able to look away from her as he lights one of the long dusky cigars she encourages him to smoke.
            She turns and stares at him. A long time. He can barely discern her dark eyes from across the dim room, but he feels the pull of her eyes. She reaches up to her hair and sweeps back a shimmering strand from before one eye.
            He sets aside the cigar.
            He can feel her smile.
            Her milky white hand rises again — this time pulling the strand of raven hair sexily in return before her eye.
            Then she floats across the space to him. She seems to hover and drift through the air.
            — or was he moving to her? — clarence is not quite sure which —
            But she is fluid and graceful, shimmering and swaying, a tastefully erotic slow-motion dance, so graceful, too graceful despite her six-inch heels — she moves in what appears to be a breathless hush of wind, until her arms swim up to encircle his neck, and she pulls him down to her until her glowing lips reach his mouth, but do not quite touch.

— O —

            “Now the hungry lion roars, and the wolf behowls the moon; whilst the heavy ploughman snores, all the weary task fordone,” she whispers, quoting Shakespeare (or misquoting, Clarence can never quite tell).
            He moves forward. Their lips brush lightly — she moves away — he seeks her with his entire body, groping mindlessly and yet impossibly holding back, and their lips brush together, dancing soft as butterfly wings; her eyelashes sweep with butterfly feet upon his cheek, his pulse races and his blood surges — his groin solidifies, rock-hard — his need, terrible, so terrible, nearly shrieks in desire, and he experiences a wash of nauseating lust, demanding. Her arms tighten about his neck. He presses her body to him, their groins grind in delicious friction.
            Natasha pushes him away. He tells himself to be strong, don’t even play her games. He cannot help himself, Clarence groans.
            Natasha stares deadpan at his mouth with her strange dark eyes. Then she turns upon her towering heels and draws him by the hand into her dark bedroom.


THREE
He wakes. His first impulse is to roll over onto her and slide deep within her, slam into her, quietly, but not quite gently, because there is again this sense of uncontrollable need, a desperate yearning, oh to enjoy the deep, the musk, the wet, while she sleeps.
            It is not quite blackness in the room.
            He is fully erect, angrily bloated.
            There is some tiny particle of light hovering just beyond his peripheral vision.
            His chest hurts, almost as bad as his throbbing, itching erection. He wants her, wants every part and piece of her, insanely, even if it is the fourth time this night.
            But is neither the light in the room nor his anxious erection that has awakened him.
            That slight sensation of dread you feel up your back when you are in a house alone and suddenly you know someone is going to appear around the corner. You know this, and yet, logically, you have no way of knowing this because the feeling is not keyed by any of your normal senses.
            He lay prone in the bed, rigid and straight, with only the sheet to lend him security. His desire, only moments before so achingly insistent and nearly sickening, vanishes. His erection flees. Chilled sweat pools in the shallow concave where neck meets chest.
            He wants to move. He wants to move. But he remains prone, listening, sweating, not moving. Not moving.
            He desires to roll over, to touch Natasha, flee the room, scream — anything. But he stares at the ceiling.
            Chittering. Mice? Some odd sounds. No. Whispering? Then his hearing clears somewhat — it is as if his ears suddenly unplugged. And he listens. A muttering voice begins — disembodied and floating — a voice high, nearly a cackled whisper. A muttering voice with the timbre to bring sharp and burning prickles to the back of Clarence’s neck.
            But what is worse than the sound of the disembodied voice is the meaning of the words:
            “Who would have thought the young man to have had so much blood in him?” quavers the voice. “Hell is murky! Here’s the smell of blood still; all the perfumes of Chanel will not sweeten this little hand. Oh! Oh! Ooooh!”
            Clarence is able to free the prison of his head enough to peek to his side and discern a figure hovering over a candle.
            “Wash your hands, put on your nightgown, look not so pale: tell you again, Clarence is buried and cannot come out of his coffin.”
            Awareness strikes Clarence like a cold hand on the ass. Natasha. The ghostly apparition: Natasha. Natasha, standing over a candle, hunched and weird, doing an excellent and very spooky Mrs. Macbeth!
            His fright quickly turns to anger.

— O —

            “What the hell do you think you’re doing!” he shouts, leaping from the bed, suddenly free of the clinging paralysis — hoping to compensate for his fright by scaring her; more, he desires to smash her. He has never struck a woman in his life, but right now the impulse and the reality are nearly one. In another universe, only a single vibration removed, he is throttling Natasha, grimacing as her life flees her body.
            She does not turn nor acknowledge him, but continues with the wringing of her hands over the flame.
            Clarence suddenly is truly afraid. Something is wrong with her — he always knew her weirdness, always recognized it — but now she really snapped!

— O —

            Natasha burst into laughter, turned and cast off her ancient shawl and, naked — silhouetted in the candle glow, her hair a halo with golden light — she looked a perfect nymph of the night, a faery dancing just outside half-dreams.
            “Didn’t we enjoy our midnight matinee, love? It’s my gift to you — because you are so sweet to me. A token of my eternal love, Clarence — I love you! Aren’t you pleased?”
            And she dashed to him and with an unnatural strength lifted him bodily from the floor and flung him down upon the bed.
            And then she attacked him, attacked him more severely than he had just moments before envisioned attacking her. She was upon him and he felt only terror, but surprisingly his body reacted to and answered her inspiring terror and soon his erection was returned despite himself, and she would not relent, Natasha would not back off, she bit him and ravaged him and would not let him be.




The incarnation of guilt creeps into the old secret sin of best friends, and things go darkly wrong.

The Wolf Doth Grin
by Rodolphus
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Natasha and Clarence never stood a chance, not with wicked Kory grinning from just out of sight







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