"Payroll Man's Ordeal"

Payroll Man's Ordeal

(originally appeared in EMBARK TO MADNESS anthology)

C. Dennis Moore

Rudy stared at the dead baby in his trash can and could form no coherent thought more elaborate than What the fuck!?

There he stood in the freezing night air with a full bag of garbage in one hand, and the mysteriously weighted supposed-to-be-empty trash can in the other, and he couldn't make himself figure out what to do next. Put the trash down and go inside? Or take the trash with him? Should he haul the can inside, too, or leave it out here? Was the thing inside even real?

The weather decided for him and Rudy turned back to the house, set the can just outside the back door, and went inside again. The heavy plastic bag was set on the floor with the rattle of empty cans and the rustle of hollow boxes inside and Rudy picked up the phone and dialed 911.

Patty sat in the living room and the sound of the television mingled in Rudy's head with the ringing on the other end. When a shiver ran through his body, he didn't know if it was the cold outside, or the dead baby lying twisted at the bottom of the big gray barrel. He shook it off, then spoke into the phone when the operator answered.

"I need the police."

He hung up a few minutes later, then shuffled into the living room.

Patty was watching a Seinfeld re-run, but when she laughed and he didn't, she glanced over at him. His silence and his expression were enough for his wife.

"What?" she asked.

He started to tell her about it, but nothing came out as he tried to figure out how you told someone about a thing like this. Then he realized he'd done it with the police, all he had to do was repeat what he'd told them.

"I was taking the trash out," he said, "and when I took the lid off the can and was about to toss the bag in, I glanced in and there was, uh . . ." He took a breath and forced out the rest of the words. "There was a dead baby in the bottom of the can."

He wasn't sure what reaction he expected from her.

"Oh my God. What? Are you sure it wasn't a doll someone tossed in there?"

"No, it wasn't," he said. "I picked up the can, I brought it into the back porch light and looked. It's a dead baby down there, so help me God, I don't know who or why or what the hell, but I swear on my life, Patty, there's a dead fucking baby in our trash can outside. The police are on their way."

"Oh my God," Patty said again. "Are you positive it was a baby? It wasn't a dead animal or something? Are you sure?"

"It doesn't take a long look to tell the difference between a dead cat and a dead baby."

"Maybe it was a dog?"

"No."

"Oh my God," she said for the third time.

When the police came, the baby was bagged and taken away and Rudy was questioned.

No, he didn't know anything about it. No, he didn't know anyone who might know anything about it. No, he hadn't touched it. Yes, he'd be glad to help in any way he could.

Yes, he would be available to answer any questions they might have.

It took a very long time for them to leave. There were prints taken from the trash can and lid, from the gate at the back of the fence. There were pictures taken. And more and more questions asked as the night wore on.

By the time the police left, Rudy and Patty were exhausted, yet both of them lay awake most of the night. After a couple hours of tossing and sighing, they sought their comfort in each other the only way they knew how, but even afterward they both had a hard time falling asleep.

In the morning, the world, unfortunately, had not undergone a magical transformation and become a good place to be again. The first thought to cross Rudy's mind as he stood in the bathroom trying to empty his bladder was one of irony. He and Patty had waited three years to start trying to have children, and here someone's had one and thrown it out like garbage, literally.

He looked down into the bowl and wondered where was the justice in the world. Three years they waited, sure, but when they finally decided they were stable enough to take on a baby, every test they took came out with the same result. Patty couldn't have children. There was some line the doctor'd given them about Patty being incompatible with Rudy. What was that all about? They were both people, weren't they? How much more compatible did they have to be? Rudy didn't understand, and right now, he decided, wasn't the time or place to get worked up over it. The facts remained the same. He and Patty couldn't conceive, while someone who could and did, cared enough about their child to dump it into the Butlers' trash.

He wanted to call the police and see if they'd found out anything.

When he got into the kitchen, Patty was already at the table, her head in her hands, staring down at the surface of the table. He imagined she felt pretty much the same as he did.

"You okay?" he asked.

"I just can't believe this," she said.

"I know."

He ran his hand across her back as he passed her and grabbed the phone.

Patty got up and left the room. He heard a door close, but couldn't tell if it had been the bedroom or bathroom.

The officer who'd questioned him last night had left a card and Rudy dialed the number while he stood at the back door, staring out at the snow-covered yard. The phone was answered, but all they could tell him was the officer Rudy was calling was off and wouldn't be in until that night. He hung up and stared at the empty spot in his backyard where the trash can should be. The police had taken it. The garbage bag he'd been taking out last night sat on the back stoop just outside the door. One of the neighborhood animals had torn it open in the night and the corner of an empty frozen fish stick box stuck out of the hole.

He wanted to call in that day, but the last thing he really wanted was to be stuck here with nothing to but think about the baby.

* * *

Rudy was "payroll man" for a local company that ground and processed chickens for dog and cat food companies in the area. While his official title was Accountant, most of the guys just called him "payroll man" because that was the only function he performed that they cared about.

The place always stank from the chicken blood, but he could close his door and muffle that a little. Not much, though, and definitely not enough.

Rudy whiled away his day on the phone to a number of insurance companies, searching for a better deal for the company. His plan was to set this place to rights, prove he had what it took to get his job done, then when one of the bigger companies recognized Rudy's talent, they'd offer him the dream job with a better office, one that didn't reek of chicken blood.

At lunch, he got as far as the menu board before seeing the naked flaps of roast beef draped over buns and covered in red sauce. His stomach did a flip and he had to pull out of line and go back to work empty-handed.

As he sat in the lot while the other guys filed back into the building carrying their sacks, Richard, the assistant manager and part-time salesman, stopped by to ask, "Not eating today?"

"Not today, man," Rudy said.

"Sick?"

"No, just some crazy shit going down last night. Can't even go into it right now."

"You alright?"

Rudy shook his head, then said, "I'll tell you about it later. I just gotta get some fresh air before I go back in there."

"Fresh air? It's got to be twenty degrees out here. Just give it a few years," Richard said, "you won't even notice the smell."

I don't plan on being here in a few years, Rudy thought. Richard went inside, leaving Rudy to his fresh air and the steering wheel his fingers held like grim death.

He sat there thinking about two things: the baby he and Patty couldn't have, and the mangled one he'd found. He couldn't imagine what it must take for someone to do a thing like that, but there was also nothing he could imagine that would justify someone doing it, especially when he and Patty would have been more than happy to take the baby as their own. And how was Patty taking all this? She'd seemed detached this morning, like she was walking through life without really experiencing what she was doing. If this was hitting Rudy this hard, was it worse for her? After all, she was the one who couldn't conceive. Did that make this harder on her, or was she thinking about the dead baby itself, and nothing of their own situation? That was a good point, Rudy realized. Was he taking this whole thing too personal, being too selfish in his grief, more worried about himself and not enough about the dead infant? Probably, he decided.

"What a jackass," he told himself.

A few minutes later, he got as far as the front door before deciding he just couldn't go back in there. He stopped one of the stragglers ambling back into the building, a big sack full of roast beef in his hand, and asked him to tell Richard he'd gone home sick.

"Gotcha, Payroll Man," the straggler said.

* * *

Patty was still at work, so Rudy would have the house to himself for a good four hours. It was a rare day all around, he thought. Normally he was home last. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had the house to himself.

He walked in the door, dragging behind him a new trash can he'd picked up, and his first smell of the place stopped him.

"What the hell is that?" he said under his breath. The heavy scent of ammonia hung in the air. He almost gagged at the strength of it.

He pushed open one of the living room windows, then walked further into the house.
He'd worry later about where it came from. Right now he only wanted to find it and clean it before Patty came home.

In the kitchen, he opened the window above the sink, and that's when he found his wife.

Patty was outside, stalking around the edge of the back fence, her eyes centered on something Rudy couldn't see. The wind blew against her, sweeping her hair away from her face, and the sun shone on her skin. She quietly inched closer to whatever was out there. Rudy wanted to call to her through the open window, but whatever she was doing she was concentrating awful hard on it and he didn't want to frighten her or whatever she was after.

She broke into a run and was across the yard in a second. "Come here, you little bastard," she said. Her prey was quick and Patty leaped sideways to head it off, but it eluded her and she changed direction again. Rudy'd never seen anyone move so fast. She slipped in melting snow, made a sound like a loud bark, and got her footing again. Her hands flew out and down and when they came up she held a large cat by the neck. It was dirty and ragged and looked to Rudy like it had been living off garbage for months. When she grabbed it, she'd apparently snapped the thing's neck and now the head hung to the side like a broken jack-in-the-box. She made a sound like a manic howl and Rudy joined her with a loud, "Caught that fucker, didn't you?"

Patty jumped and almost dropped the cat, then she found Rudy through the window and her face changed.

While she stood there holding it, Rudy half-expected her to bite into the thing. Instead she said, "Yeah, I did."

"Teach him to piss in our house again. That's what that smell is?" Patty looked at him as if she didn't understand, and he said, "I came home early today, I couldn't concentrate with all that stuff last night. Did you see where it pissed?"

Rudy headed out, setting the new trash can by the porch.

"Oh," she said, nodding, "right, yeah. No, I didn't find it."

"How did it get in?"

"I don't know."

"You gonna stand there all day holding it, or what?"

Patty looked down at it, then she lifted the new trash can lid, dropped the thing inside, and walked into the house.

Inside, Rudy went for the towels, telling Patty, "I just couldn't sit there all day talking about interest and premiums, knowing what we found and trying to make everything seem normal."

"Yeah, I had to come home, too," she said, washing her hands with a squirt of dish soap.

Rudy came back in, soaked up a large yellow puddle he couldn't believe he'd missed stepping in, and said, "So what are we supposed to do? Get on with our lives, I guess. For starters, I've got to get a new job."

"Really?" she asked. "Where?"

"I don't know yet," he said, "but that place is killing me. It reeks. Have you ever worked eight hours straight in a place that smells like blood?"

"Sure," she said.

"Right. Forgot." Patty's first job had been in a meat packing plant her father supervised when she was sixteen. "Well, I can't take it. I gotta work in some fresh air."

"What do you want to eat tonight?"

"I don't care," he said, tossing the soaked towel into the washer and heading back to the bathroom for another one.

Patty grabbed a can of fabric freshener from under the sink, handed it to him when he came back, and asked, "Tenderloins?"

"Fine." He took the can and went back to ridding the house of the smell of cat piss.

That's an awful lot of piss for a cat that size, he thought. What was it doing, marking its territory?

* * *

Rudy called the officer back that night and asked if they'd found out anything. The cop, Campbell was the name on his card, said no, but he would almost definitely be getting back to Rudy and Patty within the next few days.

It was actually almost two weeks before Officer Campbell called back, and in those eleven or twelve days, Rudy had finally begun to put it out of his mind and decide to let the police handle it. After all, what could Rudy do? He hadn't seen whoever left it there, and he knew it hadn't been himself or Patty, so there wasn't much help he could offer. Patty had also begun to get back some of the spring she'd lost those first few days.

The day Officer Campbell came over, Rudy'd only thought about it twice, and both times only for a second.

Then the knock came on the door.

Rudy answered and when he saw Officer Campbell standing there, his first thought was They caught them. "They" were the police, and "them" was whoever dumped the dead baby into his trash can. But that wasn't why he was there. Officer Campbell had a request.

"Mr. Butler, I wonder if we can get you and your wife to take a test for us."

"Um, I guess," Rudy said. "What kind of test?"

"A DNA test, sir. We just need to pursue every avenue we can in this case."

"No problem. But it's been so long, why now?"

"Yes, sir, it has been a while. These things take time, Mr. Butler. We can get it scheduled within the next couple days if that's alright with you, sir?"

Rudy looked over his shoulder at Patty who sat on the couch watching television.

"Sure," he said. "I can get off work and come down. Where to?"

Officer Campbell gave him the address, a clinic a few blocks from the police station, and told Rudy he'd call again when the appointment was made.

When Rudy returned to the living room, Patty glanced over and asked, "What was that?"

"That cop," he answered, and didn't have to tell her which cop, "he wants us to go down and get a DNA test."

"What for?"

"I don't know," he said. "They just want to 'pursue every avenue.'"

* * *

"I just don't see why we'd have to come down here and do this," Patty said.

Rudy sat next to her flipping through a magazine. Officer Campbell had called day before yesterday and told them when to be at the clinic.

"I mean everyone in the free world knows there's no way it could have been ours."

"Look at this," Rudy said, turning his magazine toward her. He wanted to distract her because, although he agreed with her, he also knew there was no harm since the outcome was evident. "It says here a rat is only pregnant for up to twenty-two days. Whales can be pregnant up to seventeen months."

"We should have just told him to call Dr. Trimbal. He'd have told the cops not to bother."

"Exactly," he finally said, "because it's not ours. We'll do their test, they'll see that, and that'll be it and we can put it out of our minds and get back to our lives."

"I just don't see why we had to bother."

"You'd rather be entering data all day?"

"That's not all I do, you know."

"You know what I mean."

"I'd rather not have to be here."

"Dogs are only pregnant up to two months."

"What are you reading?" He showed her the cover of the science journal, then both their names were called and they went to their tests.

The tests were simple, a blood sample from each, plus a swab from the insides of the mouths. They were also photographed and fingerprinted as an identification safeguard.

The samples were labeled and that was the last Rudy or Patty saw of them.

Outside, each of them returning to work, Patty said, "I don't know about all that."

"The cop just said they want to--."

"I know," she said, "they want to pursue--."

"Yeah, so it's just to make sure, you know?"

"These tests aren't always right anyway, so what if it came back it was our baby?"

"Then we'll call Dr. Trimbal."

For the first time, Rudy felt a hint of relief that Patty couldn't have children.

"Everything'll be okay," he said. "I can't promise they'll find who did it, but they will see it wasn't us and sooner or later none of this will be our problem anymore."

He leaned in for a kiss and she gave him her cheek, then he left. A minute later, Patty got into her car and went to work.

* * *

Officer Campbell called Rudy at work a week later to thank him for their samples and to tell him they'd have results in about a month.

"It takes that long?" he asked.

"Usually two to three weeks, but things are backed up and I found out this morning they're hiring more technicians to help with the load, so it's probably going to be longer. But I'll get back to you sooner if we have any more questions."

"Okay, thanks," he said, and hung up.

He was gathering his things when Richard leaned in and asked if he wanted to do something after work.

"Not tonight," Rudy said. "I've got a headache, I just want to go home."

"Headache? From what?"

"The stink in this place, I think," he said, then shut down his computer and followed Richard to the parking lot.

He walked in the door, ready to announce his arrival, but realized immediately Patty wasn't home yet.

He went into the kitchen and tossed his keys and wallet onto the table. His gloves went into his coat pockets and his coat went onto the back of one of the chairs. It was another minute before he caught the heavy smell of ammonia, and the further into the house he got, the closer to the source, the less it smelled like ammonia, and the more certain he was someone had pissed on the floor. There must be another cat.

He found the puddle in the bedroom on the floor on Patty's side of the bed. There was another under her dresser, and one more in front of her closet.

"It only went after Patty's stuff?" he asked out loud.

Rudy grabbed a towel from the bathroom and knelt, mopping it up, trying not to scrub and grind it into the carpet, but still wanting to press the towel deep enough to soak it up, and while he did he kept looking around the room, trying to figure out how it had gotten into the house. But as far as he could tell, there were no other signs of an animal.

He soaked up the other puddles, then tossed the towels into the dirty clothes, grabbed the whole basket and headed for the washer. There he found what he assumed was the entrance. The dryer hose had come unattached from the wall vent, and the cold winter outside was blowing in.

He'd put this load in, put the hose back on, then search the rest of the house.

Whatever'd come inside had been lucky enough to get back out before Rudy found it. He went back to the bedroom and sprayed refresher on the floor.

* * *

The test results weren't ready when Officer Campbell had said they would be and after two weeks with no word from him, Rudy had finally begun to put the ordeal out of his mind. Patty had been moody lately, and that added to his constant search for a better job, he just hadn't had time to dwell on the baby.

Two months had passed since that night and Rudy hadn't thought about it in almost a full week. He sat at the kitchen table, staring at the job listings and wishing summer was here. Suddenly a scream came from the bathroom, Patty's voice at full-blast and full of wretched pain.

He dropped the paper, bolted down the hall, and slammed into the bathroom door. It was locked from the inside.

"Patty," he called. "Baby, what's wrong? Open the door."

She screamed again and it sounded like she fell.

"Patty!"

A hundred things flew through his mind, none of them good. She'd burned herself on the curling iron, or cut herself shaving. Neither seemed too terrible, unless the burn was severe or the cut hit an artery.

The screams stopped and he heard her inside panting, grunting, and he wondered what the hell she was doing in there.

With sounds like that, he wasn't sure he wanted to know. Then she screamed again and he pressed himself against the door again, trying to force it open.

"Patty, open up," he said.

Her answer was another scream. Then more panting and grunting.

"Open up or I'm breaking the door in."

"No," she managed to say through her pain, whatever was causing it. "Not yet. Not now."

"Open up," he yelled.

There was a silence, a split second, somehow timed just right, when he managed to hear the pounding on the front door and Officer Campbell's voice calling, "Mr. Butler, sir, it's the police."

Rudy stood for a moment, wondering which problem to focus on.

Patty screamed, but the cops pounded again and there was something in the sound that made Rudy believe he'd better open the door.

"Sweetheart, I'll be right back, okay, that cop's at the door, and he's gonna be able to help you. Hang on."

He ran to the door, opened it, but before he could move, Campbell was inside with handcuffs in one hand and a piece of paper in the other. When he saw Rudy's state, he dropped the paper and his hand went to his gun.

"Mr. Butler," the cop said, "I'm gonna have to ask you to calm down, sir, we got our test results and they show with a ninety-eight percent certainty that you and your wife are the parents of the infant that was found in your garbage can. I'm gonna have to ask--."

But that was all Rudy heard. His mind now had this new thing to work around, in addition to Patty's screams which seemed to be getting louder and more constant.

Campbell heard them, too, and he quickly looked over his shoulder to the other officer behind him. The other officer nodded, blocked the door, and Campbell took off down the hall.

"It's my wife," Rudy yelled after him. "She's locked in. I don't know what's wrong."

Campbell told him, "Keep back, Mr. Butler," but Rudy joined him at the door anyway.

"Can you get her out of there?"

"Ma'am?" Campbell asked. "Ma'am, it's Officer Campbell, I'm here to help you. Can you tell me what happened?"

From inside, Patty panted, grunted, and then issued one final agonizing scream that made both men move away from the door as if she might burst through it any second.

Campbell flashed Rudy a look and Rudy felt the sudden need to proclaim his innocence.

Patty stopped screaming as suddenly as she started and in the silence Rudy heard his heart pounding in his head.

Campbell yelled into the living room, "Call for an ambulance," then turned back to the door and rammed it with his shoulder. The door rattled in the frame, but didn't open. From the other room, Rudy heard the officer speaking into his radio. In the bathroom, he thought he heard something laugh, but that couldn't have been Patty because no one who screamed like that was going to laugh ten seconds later.

The only time he'd ever heard of something like that was--.

"Did you say your tests said we were the parents?" he asked the cop.

"That's right," Campbell said, readying for another charge at the door. "The tests are almost completely accurate, and we're going to have to take both you and your wife into custody."

"But the test is wrong, then," Rudy said. "Patty can't have children."

Campbell threw himself into the door again, and this time it burst inward. A chunk of the doorjamb flew off, bounced off the wall. Rudy tried to rush in, but Campbell held him back and stepped in first. Then both men stopped.

Patty lay on the floor, blood under her. In her arms, wrapped in a towel, was a baby.

The last time Rudy'd been this confused, this paralyzed, this numb, had been two months earlier when he found the dead baby. And now here he was full-circle, only this one was alive.

How was it here at all, that's what he wanted to know. Patty wasn't pregnant. Even if she could get pregnant, shouldn't he have noticed? She would have told him. Wouldn't she? Looking down at the small thing in her arms, he couldn't say. And now that he looked, this baby was very small, small enough he might not have noticed after all. But still, she would have told him.

"What did you people do?" the cop asked.

"I don't know what you mean," Rudy said.

"He's fine," Patty said from the floor. "He's perfect."

"Patty?"

"The first one was wrong," she said. She swallowed, sighed. "He came out wrong first, I didn't know he'd change afterward. It wasn't supposed to be a big deal, just a dead dog in the trash. But this one's fine," she said again. "Look at him. I think he's hungry.

She was looking up at Rudy and Campbell.

She didn't look down when the child's coos became yaps, didn't look down when it's form changed in her arms, didn't even flinch when the thing opened its snout and clamped down on her breast. She didn't cry when it sank its teeth in and tried to tear away a piece of her.

END

4748 words

"Terrible Thrills"

Terrible Thrills
(orginally published in Terrible Thrills, Silver Lake Publishing 2005)
C. Dennis Moore

Track One: The Murder

"TERRIBLE THRILLS," the CD cover announced. "Horrible Halloween Sound Effects Sure to Thrill You, Chill You, and Keep You Up All Night." There were two tracks.

Chris put the CD in his player and pushed PLAY, put the player in his window, and waited for the trick-or-treaters to show up.

The CD started quiet, and if Chris hadn't been listening, he wouldn't have been sure anything was coming out at all. But he heard it, just there, in the back. Breathing. Further away, metal clinked against metal.

Whoever was breathing let go a hitch, like they were trying to control their crying, and then Chris heard it. She wasn't breathing, she was whining, very high and in the back of her throat. Her voice was nearly gone from crying and screaming. And being strapped to a pole with her arms above her head so she could hardly catch a decent breath didn't help.

The doorbell rang and Chris leapt up, grabbed the candy bowl, and opened the door.

A small group of early starters stood huddled on his porch, bags at the ready, chanting the way children have, never really falling in all together, "Trick or treat." Chris made a comment about their scary costumes, then tossed a candy bar into each bag. They all said, "Thank you," and Chris closed the door as they were turning to step off the porch.

He sat back down and listened again to the CD.

The man wheeling the tray sneered and uttered something Chris couldn't make out, but the evil grin on the man's face was unmistakable. Chris felt his heart thud in his chest, wondering what the man was going to do to with the instrument he picked up. It was like a--.

The doorbell rang again and Chris hopped up and dragged his attention to the kids on his porch. After doling out the treats, he returned to his chair.

The man was pressing his blade into the woman's skin, slowly, and just the tip. The woman was grunting in the back of her throat, desperate not to scream, not to give him the satisfaction. But that blade was moving; not really pressing into her skin, rather moving slowly through it. And the ease with which he was doing it made it hurt worse. Of all the things he'd done to her tonight, this probably hurt more than all of them.

The doorbell rang again.

When he returned, Chris turned the CD player away from the window, turned it down a little, and moved up next to the speaker.

The man removed the blade and the woman let out her breath in a huge rush. He giggled. Her head lolled sideways, and her eyes moved up to his face and she asked, "Why?"

Chris sat up.

Had he been seeing this, or only hearing it? And if he was only hearing it, how was he filing in the rest of the details. He tried to think and remember what he'd actually *heard*, and what his mind had added.

Naturally, he'd only heard the woman's breathing, the instruments, then the woman making some noise in her effort not to scream. But where did the rest come from? He realized he'd even been about to name the man.

On the CD, the woman said, "Please, Edward. Please stop."

Edward. That's exactly what Chris was about to name him. Had she already said it earlier and Chris let it slip through his mind? He had been getting up every few minutes for the trick-or-treaters. She must have mentioned it before and he forgot.

The doorbell rang and Chris ignored it. He got up and shut off the porch light. The doorbell rang again, but he was already sitting with his ear to the speaker. After a few seconds, the footsteps went down his porch steps and vanished up the sidewalk to the next house.

Chris listened.

Edward looked at the girl and grinned--but how did Chris know this?--then reached up and grabbed her by the throat. He squeezed. Her eyes bulged and she tried to cough, but Edward's grip was too tight. Spit gathered on her lips. Her eyes bulged. Her face was red. With his free hand, Edward sliced off one of her nipples. She didn't have enough strength or breath to scream.

Alice--that was her name, Chris was sure of it--made some gurgling sound, trying to cough, trying to force air through her throat despite Edward's iron hands. Then he let go and she collapsed, pulling the restraints taut, hanging halfway down the pole he'd strapped her to. Alice glanced up. There was T-bar at the top of the pole. That's what Edward had strapped her to and if she could just . . . no, she saw that even getting the straps off the bar, she'd still be wrapped around the pole. She wasn't going to get out of here, not until Edward was finished with her, and she knew she'd be dead by then. The pain in her nipple drowned out most of the other pain in her body now.

She struggled to get her feet under her again. At least then she'd be able to breathe.

Edward slapped her. Her eyes opened and she lifted her head, more aware now. Edward held up a curling iron. The red light in the handle was glowing.

"Shh," Edward said. He put the hot metal against her nipple.

She leapt backward, struggling in her restraints like an animal in a trap, trying to move, to get away, to just stay alive long enough for him to stop. But Edward grabbed her body and held her tight so her struggles were small and insignificant.

He let her go again, vanished, and when he came back into view, he was rolling a television up close to her.

"Watch this," he said. He turned on the screen and Alice was horrified to see herself. The quality was bad, the light was barely there, but it was enough to know what was happening. She couldn't see him, but she knew she was watching herself on top of Tony. She knew that because Tony liked her on top. Edward preferred her in the submissive and he never let her get on top. But Tony loved it, and Edward had somehow got it on tape.

At least now she understood why he was doing this. But how far would it go? Would he really kill her? She'd thought it just a second ago, but would he really? He would almost have to, wouldn't he? He couldn't do all the things he'd done to her tonight and just let her go.

"This is my favorite part," Edward said. She watched herself in the middle of an orgasm, whining and writhing on Tony. "You really like what he's got, don't you?" Edward asked.

Alice watched the screen. Edward stepped in front of her, punched her in the face and yelled, "I said you really like what he's got, don't you?"

She nodded her head. No point in lying, was there?

"Well, if you like it so much, you might as well have it," he said. She didn't see where he pulled it from, but something hit her in the face. He held it up for her to see. It hung limp in his fingers, shriveled and hairy.

All doubts she had about how far Edward would go were wiped away. She knew now he wouldn't stop until he simply couldn't go any further. But how far would that be?

"Here, watch this part," Edward said.

She looked up again. Tony was on his back. She bent over him, her head bobbing up and down.

"You look like you're enjoying that, too," Edward said. "Let's see how much you really like what he's got."

He wrenched open her jaw and shoved the whole thing in her mouth. He snapped her mouth shut, slapped a length of duct tape over it, and stood back.

Chris lurched backward, his leg flew up, and he knocked his CD player onto the floor. The door fell open and the CD rolled across the floor. He sat up.

"What?" he said. The phone was ringing.

He struggled up to get it, but the machine was quicker.

"Hey man," Eric's voice came through the speaker. "Just got home, thought I'd see what's going on. Call me later."

Chris looked around. It was dark outside now. Trick-or-treaters walked up and down the sidewalks, all of them passing his house without stopping. He remembered he'd shut out the porch light. He turned it back on now.

He turned on the light and located the CD, then put it into its jewel case and set it aside. He must have dozed off or something. With that thing playing in the background, he'd had one hell of a dream. And it had seemed so real.

His chest itched, but when he scratched it, he flinched when his fingers brushed his nipple. He pulled his shirt collar down and saw somehow he'd gotten a burn on his nipple.

"Hmm," he said. "Wonder when I did that." But before he could think about it any longer, the doorbell rang. He opened it to an uneven chorus of kids chanting "Trick or treat!"

Track Two: The Mayhem

Eric hung up the phone and picked up the CD. Terrible Thrills, huh? he thought. We'll see.

He put the CD in his stereo, hit PLAY, and looked at the back cover while the first track started. There was silence, and then, very quiet, breathing and metal instruments.

"What's this crap?" he asked. "The Murder? Sure thing." Heard that cheap ass stuff before. More bad actresses and their pathetic screaming. He hit the forward track button and was met by a ringing chorus of bells and whistles, sirens and screams. "That's mayhem, all right," Eric said.

He let the track play while he opened the bags of candy and dumped them into a big plastic bowl. Before he could even set it down, the doorbell rang.

"Trick or treat," the two kids on the porch cried. One was dressed as a clown. The other some cartoon character Eric had seen but wasn't familiar with.

"Nice costumes," he said, lowering the bowl so the kids could grab what they wanted.

Behind him, the sounds got louder and more frenzied. There was a bass beat underneath the chaos. He glanced up at the kids' father who was standing just off to the side of the porch. The father caught his eye, smiled like people do when they don't know what else to do . . . then his expression changed.

The brow furrowed and the eyes got dark. The father's chest puffed out and he stepped up onto the porch, shoved his way between the two kids, and stepped into Eric's living room.

Eric stepped back and asked, "What are you doing?" but that was as far as he got. The man raised a fist and punched Eric in the nose. Eric fell down and tried to catch the blood gushing down his face.

"What the fuck?" he asked. The man ignored him and stepped up between Eric's legs, brought his arms up. Eric rolled out of the way before the man brought his elbow into the floor.

He got to his feet and rushed at the crazy man like a football player, carrying him back through the door and shoving him off the porch. Eric ran inside, slammed and locked the door, and looked out the window to see what was happening.

There was a siren and a scream and he thought Did someone call the police? Then he realized the sounds were coming from his stereo. He turned around and was going to shut it off, but before he hit the button, there came a BANG and a rattle. He turned toward the sound. The crazy man was pounding on the window. He'll break it soon, Eric thought.

Another sound from the other window and Eric turned to see the man's kids staring at him, their palms against the glass, fingers splayed. Their eyes were blank.

"What's going on here?" he asked, but they didn't hear. He doubted they would have answered anyway.

He watched Dad disappear from view, come back a second later with a fallen branch. Dad swung it, shattered the glass, and climbed into the house. Eric noticed a dribble of blood from the man's ear just before he turned and dashed into the kitchen.

He grabbed a knife from the block, then went for the phone. Dad beat him to it, swung the log again and shattered the plastic.

"Get out of here!" Eric yelled over the crashes and squeals coming from his stereo.

Dad grinned and showed bloody teeth. The blood from his ear had ran down to his neck and was soaking into the collar of his shirt.

"What's your problem, man?"

The children were trying to climb in through the broken window, but they were too short. Dad stood still for a second, he and Eric waiting for the other to make their move.

This is like that Romero movie, Eric thought. He slashed out with the knife, but was too far away, and not really committed to the act and his swing came up far too short. Dad, however, was fully invested and when he swung the log, it knocked Eric into the wall. Eric dropped the knife, tried to grab it, missed, and decided to just get away.

He ran for the front door; he'd call the police from the neighbor's.

He opened it and stepped out, tripped over one of the children. Eric hit his face on the porch. The Clown grabbed his leg and bit into it. Eric screamed. The Cartoon Kid stood over him and started beating him with a smaller log than his father held, but still big enough to hurt.

Eric put his arms up for protection and didn't see Dad stumbling outside. But he felt the blow when the man brought the log down hard into Eric's groin. He wanted to pass out, but survival is a tough instinct to beat. He managed to twist himself so the blows connected with his back. He pushed himself up, shook the Clown off his leg, suffering horrible pain when the kid tore away a piece of Eric with him, and was able to shove Dad aside. Dad tripped over The Cartoon Kid and fell backward.

From inside glass shattered, dogs barked, horns blared. The mayhem played on.

Eric went in, closed and locked the door again, then went to the broken window.

There were more people on the street and Eric yelled at one, "Hey! You! Call the police, man, this dude's trying to kill me!"

The trick-or-treater, a pre-teen dressed as a hobo, came closer and asked, "What?"

Another siren went off, followed by an electric sizzle.

The Hobo stopped in his tracks, got the strangest look on his face, and suddenly ran and charged Eric's front door. He hit it straight on with his head, bust it open, and fell forward.

Eric couldn't believe any of this. What the hell was happening to people?

Through the open window, Dad grabbed Eric's shirt and hauled him backward through the pane. Glass snagged Eric's shirt, ripped it, tore into his back. He screamed.

Dad pulled him out to the middle of the front yard.

Eric's next door neighbor, an old man who'd always seemed like a pleasant guy if Eric had gotten to know him, came out onto his porch and shouted, "What the hell is all this--," and then he stopped. He stared into space for a second and, in the pause, Eric heard bells ringing. Then the old man looked down at Eric, stepped off his porch, and came around his fence to Eric's yard. Dad had stopped moving and seemed to be waiting. Eric, too. The old man came up next to Eric, then kicked him in the head.

Eric struggled to get up, but the more people who came to help him, the more people it seemed were suddenly trying to kill him. And the wounds from the glass didn't help. He tried again to get up, but The Hobo stepped on his chest. The Clown found his place again and gnawed on Eric's leg.

He heard whistles and sirens.

Dad leaned down and bit into Eric's side. The Cartoon Kid picked up Eric's arm. The Hobo put his mouth over Eric's face and tried to tear it off. With his sight gone, Eric didn't see the old man pick up the rock. He wanted to open the skull and get to the brain.

The bells rang, sirens wailed, horns sounded, dogs barked, wind blew, demons screamed, angels cried, the dead pleaded mercy, and every trick-or-treater who tried to come to Eric's rescue was soon swayed by the chorus and joined in the feast.

The stereo played on into the morning.

END

"Revenge of the Roach King"

Revenge of the Roach King

(originally published in The Blackest Death II)

C. Dennis Moore

I pulled up outside my brother's building the night after he called. He'd said the noises were finally too much for him. Said he couldn't sleep with the constant scritching and scratching in the walls and over the floors. The heat was bad enough, but those sounds were likely to drive a man crazy. He said as long as I was coming over anyway--we did have a funeral to discuss--could I bring my equipment?

My brother's building was a dump. I'd only been there once before and I must have forgotten what a hole it was. I went in the front door, stepped over a puddle of . . . something, and climbed the stairs, passed a door covered in police tape, and knocked on Jerry's door. When he let me in, I was reluctant to take the offered seat--who knew what was living in that couch--and instead walked around inspecting the place.

Jerry's kitchen, really just a sink, stove, and refrigerator along a far wall of the one-room apartment, was a haven for the bastards, trash can full, dirty dishes on the counter, some with food dried onto them, open cans half-full of sticky, sugary bait for the little things. I wanted to tell him he probably wouldn't attract them like he did if he'd just clean the place up a little, but in the end, in a place like this, I knew that wasn't true. This building was infested and Jerry emptying his trash and wiping off the counter wasn't going to change that.

"I can take care of the problem in here," I told him, "but you really probably ought to get the landlord to call somebody."

"You're somebody."

"I'm not on the clock. This is a favor. I'm only here so we can decide what we want to do with our mother."

"Later," he said, "just get rid of them, will you? I can't take them anymore. If it's money, I got some money, I'll pay you."

"It's not that, it's just you should get the owner involved. It's his building, make him foot the bill."

"Landlord's a jackass. For me, okay?"

"Alright," I said. "I'll start in here, then check the basement, that's a common area, while you think about how you want to go on mom's funeral." I took a shaker of boric acid powder from my pocket and explained to him that it's harmless to people, but it's about as effective as you can get when dealing with cockroaches.

I put some behind his trash can, sending a small wave of roaches scurrying under the refrigerator, away from the light. I tried to stomp them all, but only managed to get two. A few things fell from the overflowing trash can, bits of crumpled paper and a couple of empty beer cans. Roaches love beer, I don't know why. I put them back, shoved the trash down further.

I sprinkled more around the sink, and was moving away from the "kitchen", around the room. When I reached the closet and was about to open the door to put the powder in there, Jerry quickly said, "What are you doing?"

"Cool dark place," I said, indicating the closet. "One of the first places to check."

"Oh, you don't need to worry about the closet."

Now I was curious. Was he hiding something? I wanted to ask, but with my little brother, I figured that's here he kept his weed.

* * *

Let's face it, exterminator isn't a glamorous job, some of us go into it because we hate them that much. What Jerry was dealing with was cockroaches, and anyone who's ever had a problem with them can tell you, they are one of the most persistent of insects, difficult to get rid of, more difficult still to keep out once they're gone.

The basement turned out to be a wash. I found nothing down there except a washer and dryer that probably didn't even work. I sprinkled boric acid powder into the corners and along the walls anyway.

The problem remained of finding the nest. I decided to return upstairs to Jerry's apartment, but first I made another circuit of the basement, just to double check. On the way to Jerry's door, I passed the taped-off apartment again. I'd have to ask about that one.

I found Jerry in his closet, shoving something aside, cursing, and tumbling over something, like he wanted to get whatever was in there out of sight before I saw it.

Unless it was a giant cockroach, I wasn't interested in any of Jerry's dirty laundry.

"Did you find them?" he asked, shutting the closet door and turning to face me again. Whatever was in that closet, his face was all the admission anyone would need; it was something good, and he didn't want anyone else to get it. Yeah, I thought, probably his weed.

"There's more to it than that," I said. "Besides, I didn't find anything in the basement. What's in that taped-off apartment?" I asked, figuring an undisturbed room, dark and empty, might just be the perfect place for a nest

"Um, I don't know," he said.

"I wonder if I should talk to the landlord about checking it out for infestation."

"You can talk to him but he won't let you in. It's sealed off for a reason."

"I know that. But you let a bug problem get out of hand and it can become a health hazard. I'm not saying I wanna inspect a crime scene--", that was obviously the reason for the tape, whatever the crime was. Murder was my guess, but that's nothing new in this town. "--I'm just saying I want to check for a nest. I mean so far I've only seen roaches in your apartment. Far as I can tell, you're the only one with an obvious problem, but that can't be because roaches, once they get in, they breed and they infest the building. If I'm gonna get rid of them, I need to find out where they're coming from."

"Can you just get rid of them, please? I can't help you with that apartment, just forget that one, and please find them and kill them."

I'd already spent more time in this building tonight than I wanted to.

"They're all over this place and I can't take 'em," he said. "I can't even sleep at night."

"I'm not doubting they're here," I said. I wanted to tell him the big surprise would be if a dump like this didn't have bugs, but instead I said, "Before I go door to door asking to check for nests, I think we should discuss mom. She said she wanted to be cremated, but I just don't know if I can--."

"Don't worry about the funeral," he said. "I got it covered."

His eyes flashed to the closet, I don't even think he noticed it, and I wondered after all just what was in there.

"I'd really just as soon discuss it first, if you don't mind."

His reluctance shone through, but he agreed.

* * *

There was no way I was knocking on any doors anyway, not until we'd settled the matter. I came here tonight for our mother's funeral and dammit we were going to get it out of the way. What did he think, that I just wandered around town at night looking for infestations to exterminate? I was doing him a favor here, the least he could do was hear me out.

So we settled it. Our mother wanted to be cremated, but neither of us wanted to do that deed just yet. We thought maybe we'd have a viewing first, a nice affair like she deserved with all her family and friends, a last chance to see her. We could have her cremated afterward, couldn't we? The only problem I could see was the cost. She hadn't left much in her will, barely enough to cover the costs of a bottom-dollar funeral, a ten-spot away from a pine-box affair, but we were giving her better than that. If we could afford it.

By my watch it was after nine when I started knocking on doors. Still fairly early, so I wasn't worried about waking anyone, but late enough I was disturbing them during dinner. I'd have to interrupt a few sitcom reruns, probably, but other than that, I figured the tenants wouldn't mind too much in helping to get rid of the bug problem.

Shows what I know.

The first door I came to was answered by an old man in a dirty tank top who thought I was the police and slammed the door in my face, yelling, "I didn't hear anything, leave me alone."

The next door was different, but I still didn't get in. I'm not surprised, not many people, especially in a neighborhood like this one, are going to let a stranger in this late at night, no matter who he says he is, or what he wants. I could have come to the door bleeding and half-dead and I still wouldn't have made it inside. From the few apartments I'd caught glimpses of from the door, they didn't look half as bad as Jerry's so chances were none of them were being used as nests.

I tried three more apartments, all unsuccessfully. I stood in the hall, looking at that taped apartment door, covered in strips of yellow. Then I went down to the entryway.

I went to the row of mailboxes and found the one I wanted. Whatever'd happened in the cordoned apartment, no one had changed the mailbox label. Apartment 3B was rented to Ronnie Gallagher. As I read the name, a sense of deja vu came over me. I knew I'd seen that name before, and I stood there trying to force the memory, to remember where I'd seen it. Then it hit me, it had been written on something in Jerry's trash can. Ronnie G., it said. Had to be the same guy. But so what? What was I trying to prove?

Only that Jerry'd lied to me. He might not know what happened to Ronnie, and probably he didn't, not everything, but if he'd known the man, he had to know something, right?

Again, so what? I know, it was no big deal, none of my business. His life is his, I told myself. I don't tell him everything.

But dammit, if he'd known the man was dead, he could have just said it.

"Yeah, guy I know used to live there. He died, though."

Simple, right? But he hadn't said that. He'd lied and said he didn't know anything.

Why?

I didn't know, but now that it was on my mind, the question was burning into me and I wanted to find out, wanted it more than I wanted to find the nest and get out of here, even, because I could tell already that I was on to something.

* * *

So I did a little lying of my own. I was glad I'd worn a button up shirt because they look more professional when you're pretending to be a cop.

The first floor apartments were out of the question, I'd already knocked on them, so I climbed the stairs, went to the door furthest down the hall, and asked if I could speak to them about Ronnie Gallagher.

"We already talked to you guys," the old woman said when she opened the door. "There's nothing else to tell. Go away."

"Ma'am," I said, putting my foot in the door before she closed it, "we're just here to make sure we've got it all straight. People remember things over time, you know, we just want to get all the facts we can."

"Well if you want all the facts," she said, "you ask that man down there." She motioned with her head. I turned around and saw she was looking at Jerry's door.

"Does Mr. Boyer know what happened?"

"He ought to," she said. "He was there. I heard 'em come in together that night. Out all night at the bars, I'd say. Both of 'em so drunk it's a wonder they got up the stairs."

"I see. So then, when it happened--."

"When he was killed."

"Yes," I said, "when Mr. Gallagher died, was Mr. Boyer actually in the apartment with him? Or did they part company before that?"

"'Part company'? Where you from? No, no, they went into that man's place together. Don't ask me what they was doing, I mind my own business around here. But it was probably something queer, you know I always said there was something wrong with those two, I bet they was doing something nasty together."

"Fine, thank you, I think we've got enough for now."

I pulled my foot back, but I guess she wasn't finished.

"You tell him," she said, "nothing good comes from that kind of sin. He's going to hell, you just wait and see."

I nodded, said thank you again, and backed away.

Then I stopped and went back to her to ask, "Ma'am, have you had any problems lately with pests? Cockroaches? Anything?"

"Of course not," she almost cried, "I keep a clean house, you better believe that. I wouldn't let nothing like that into my place, who are you talking to?"

I turned around and let her keep going as I left. I glanced down, then, and saw it.

A cockroach scurried under the door to Ronnie's apartment.

I stood in front of it, wondering what was on the other side, put my ear to the door to see if I could hear anything, then realized it would have to be one huge nest for me to hear it, and with the former occupant dead, there wouldn't be any other sounds in there.

But there was.

As hard as it was to believe, I did hear something, a scraping, and a low hum. I couldn't say what the noises were, but whatever, they sure as anything shouldn't have been there, because this apartment was not only empty, but sealed off as well.

I looked around, looked at everything, waiting for an idea to come to me. Then I saw the stairs leading up, I glanced out a hallway window to the street, and there it was.

I took off up the stairs, climbed past the third and fourth floors, and got outside onto the roof. From here, I had to figure out which direction I was looking for--Ronnie and Jerry's apartments were on the left when you came in the front door--and when I was oriented I went to the fire escape.

Now, this might be a little risky because the fire escape that covered Ronnie's window, would probably be the same one that ran in front of Jerry's and when I left his apartment last he'd been standing in front of the window. If I was quiet and careful enough, he might not notice me.

Unless he was still standing at the window.

The night was hot, no breeze blew nor did any clouds threaten rain. It was one of those summer nights a person suffers through in bed, tossing and turning, searching for the cool spot on the sheet, the cool side of the pillow, the few seconds of air as the fan sweeps past.

The streets were about as empty as they ever got.

Strange for the city to be so quiet. Like everyone knew something was coming, and they were trying to stay out of it. Even the prostitutes had abandoned their posts tonight. The junkies had stayed home. The bums had found some other alley to live in for the night.

From here it was four stories to the second floor. As I made my way past the fifth and fourth floors, I was trying to make out from above where I was in relation to Jerry's and Ronnie's apartments, trying to figure out which one I would pass first. On the third floor, I had it pretty much figured out. On the second floor, I had to stop before I went in front of Jerry's window.

It figured I'd have to cross his to get to the one I wanted.

I tried to use the light from inside to tell if he was standing in front of the window, or if he was further inside. But even if he was back further in the room, he could still be watching out the window. How could I be sure?

Then I heard something I hoped was coming from his room and not from next door, or above, or from anywhere else in the building. A toilet flushed. I prayed it was Jerry's as I leaped across the fire escape, past his window, and stopped in front of Ronnie's. I didn't bother to look inside and see if Jerry was there or not, I just wanted to get across.

I cupped my hands over the glass and tried to see inside the supposedly empty apartment.

I would never be able to unsee what I'd seen.

Instead of an empty apartment with a few bugs crawling across the floor, I saw that black room, every inch of it moving, writhing and shifting as if the walls and floor were alive, but it wasn't the room that was moving. It was the bugs. They filled the room. I'd never seen so many damn bugs all at once, and I had to stand a second staring and it and force myself to breath.

It was 10:30 by that time and the whole world was dark, but I saw their black and brown bodies reflecting in the streetlight. Seeing them like that, with something so innocuous as a streetlight mingling with their wretched little selves somehow made the scene more grotesque.

My pathetic little shaker of boric acid powder wasn't gong to do any good in here.

I backed away from the glass.

Before I could turn from the window, though, I saw something even worse.

There was something under the bugs, something big and sprawled and when a naked knee raised up, followed by a shoulder and then a head as the body sat up, I wanted to scream.

The body stood. Bugs fell from it, clattering onto their brothers in the dark before rejoining the scurrying mass on the floor. The streetlight shone on the body's eyes, and those eyes were directed at me. The body took a step and I could already feel its fingers grabbing my shirt collar, even through the window and across the room I knew what it would feel like.

I darted away, pounded on Jerry's window, screaming "Let me in! Open up! Jerry, open the window!"

I spotted him kneeling in the closet, and when he heard me, he leapt up, slammed the door, and ran to the window.

"What is it?" he called through the glass.

"Open the fucking window!" I yelled again.

I heard Ronnie's window go up.

Jerry got the lock on his own window undone and hauled up the pane.

Before ducking inside I glanced over. The foot was on the fire escape, one hand curled around the ledge to pull himself out.

I threw myself into Jerry's apartment, telling him, "Close it, close it!"

He did, then locked it again, and before he could even step away, the naked man was at the window, smiling in. His eyes found Jerry and his grin went evil, as if he knew a secret about the man and was glad to tell it to anyone who'd listen.

"Shit," Jerry said.

The man outside turned his head toward Ronnie's apartment and we heard the bugs over there growing angry, loud, clattering over the floor as they hurried toward us. I expected to see them racing under the door, gathering to cover and eat us. Roaches will eat anything.

Jerry turned toward the sound, then back to the window and I heard him say, in a very frightened and breaking voice, "Ronnie? Please."

I looked at the man outside, and echoed Jerry.

"Ronnie? Gallagher? I thought he was dead."

Jerry looked back at me, and Ronnie followed, staring at me with dead eyes and his wicked grin. Jerry's face was the opposite, slack with fear, twitching around the mouth and eyes, ready to cry with dread.

"What did you do?" I asked Jerry.

Before he could answer, the walls began to crack. Roaches spilled from them like water, out of the walls, and down them, crawling for the floor. I had a second to wonder where they'd go once they got there, for me or Jerry, before I regained my senses, got to my feet, and grabbed Jerry's shirt.

I hauled him toward the door, threw it open, ready to get downstairs and outside, out of this place, and away. I didn't know how soon I could get the police here, but I was gonna find out.

We got as far as the hallway.

When I opened the door and made for the stairs, I saw the hall was full of bugs, too. The sound they made clacking over the floor, and worse, over each other, made my stomach turn.

From down the hall, the old woman I'd talked to earlier opened her door and yelled, "What the hell is all this noise out here? What in the world is going on?" But when she got out there and saw what it was, she screamed, flew back into her apartment, and slammed the door.

"Call the police!" I yelled, knowing she wouldn't. You live in a neighborhood like this, you see all the bad stuff that goes down day to day, and you slowly lose faith in the ones who are supposed to take care of you.

I heard something slam, then rattle behind me, and I turned in time to see Ronnie throw a punch at the window. His fist cracked the glass. Another punch and he'd shatter it. Jerry and I didn't have much choice; no matter how horrible their crunching bodies were going to sound and feel under our heels, we had to get out of here.

I needed to think, and I desperately wanted to know what the hell was going on.

"Come on." I grabbed Jerry and pulled him out. He shook loose and ran back into the apartment, nearly slipping on the moving bodies under his feet. I wondered what the hell he'd gone back inside for, until I saw him head for the closet. He pulled it open, sweeping a pile of roaches out of the way. They gathered, fell over each other, and kept on crawling, oblivious. Jerry stepped into the closet and came back out with a suitcase in each hand.

He glanced over at Ronnie who was climbing in through the open pane. I half expected rain and thunder to start any second, adding to the ominous mood, but outside was calm and dark. Ronnie set his foot on the floor and the roaches parted for him.

I looked at him, then at Jerry. The last ten seconds had seemed to take minutes. The bugs were still spilling from the cracks in the wall, as well as coming now from under Ronnie's apartment door. The hallway was flooded with them, a glistening wave of shiny bodies.

"Let's go," I yelled at Jerry. He'd stopped in the middle of the room and was staring at Ronnie, but my voice brought him back and he got moving again.

Bodies crunched under us as we ran for the stairs.

I was only too happy to leave the mess and weirdness behind and get outside into the nighttime city and fresh air. I got into the van and unlocked the passenger door for Jerry. He climbed in beside me, locked his door, and put one suitcase between his feet, the other on his lap.

I started the van and took off.

* * *

I didn't know how long we'd been driving or how far we'd gone, but Ronnie and his cockroaches were behind us and right then that was all that mattered.

But after a while, the silence got to me and, because it was all connected somehow, I said, "You wanna tell me what's in those cases that warrants what just happened?"

"Not really," Jerry said.

I rephrased.

"Tell me what's going on or I'm driving you back and you can deal with it on your own."

He was silent for a while, breathing and looking out the window.

Eventually he said, "Money, of course. Isn't that what it's always about? Money or women, and I don't have a woman in here."

I looked over at him, then back to the road.

I'd ended up on the other side of town, somehow, and I wondered if I should go to the police. But did I really think they could take care of Ronnie?

"I'm listening," I said.

He kept his eyes on the suitcase in his lap as he laid it all out for me. Jerry, Ronnie and some guy named Brown had done a job a few weeks back. Brown had been the brains, Jerry and Ronnie the muscle, and the money had been meant for a big man who ran a few illegal operations around town. Brown and company had intercepted the transfer, made off with the money, and should have been long gone by now. Except Brown was fingered and disposed of. Jerry and Ronnie had been pretty confident they hadn't been ID'd, but they also wanted to hold off spending any of the money just yet in case someone put two and two together and came after them.

But, like all things of this nature that involve more than one person, Ronnie got impatient and wanted to split with his half of the cash. Things got bad and he and Jerry got into it pretty bad one night. Jerry knocked him on the head and Ronnie went down. Not knowing what to do next, Jerry left him there. He took Ronnie's half the stash, but he'd left the body.

I was glad our mother hadn't lived to hear any of this.

He said he wasn't afraid of fingerprints in the apartment or anything, he and Ronnie'd been partners a long time, everyone knew they hung out. But no one knew about the money, so hopefully, he reasoned, no one would have reason to suspect him. As simple as that reasoning was, it worked, and Jerry was never arrested. He was questioned, of course, so was everyone in the building, but never was a finger pointed at him.

"But what's with all the bug?" I asked. "How does he do that with them? And more important, why isn't he still dead?"

"I don't know how he's still alive," Jerry said. "He was dead and gone, I know it, everyone did. And I don't know about the bugs. He'd always had roaches real bad, but he didn't seem to mind and they had only just started working their way to the rest of the building."

"I didn't see them anywhere except his place and yours."

"Maybe he was sending them to watch me."

"He can talk to them?"

"I don't know," Jerry said. "That's kind of stupid, isn't it? Talking to bugs? But so is Ronnie coming back from the dead."

I didn't tell him how I'd seen Ronnie emerge from the mass of bugs back in the dark apartment, or how I saw them part to let him walk on the floor.

"Just give him his money," I said. It was the only thing I could think of that might make this all go away. What else were we supposed to do? Kill him again? Have him arrested? Sprinkle him with boric acid powder?

"And what's he gonna do with it? Spend it in hell? No."

"Then what do you suggest? You think he's just gonna let you go, like that?" I asked. "He came back for something, and I bet he's only gonna be satisfied leaving with one of two things, his money or you."

"He's not getting the money," Jerry said. "He can try to take it, but he's not getting it."

"How much is it?"

"Half a million."

I stopped the van. I stared at him.

"You're life isn't worth two hundred and fifty thousand? You could keep your half and still live better than most of the folks in this town. Just give him the money and be done with it."

"No."

I started the van again, but made a U-turn in the middle of the street.

"Where you going?" Jerry asked.

"I'm taking you back," I said. "This is stupid, you'd have more left over than I'll ever see in my life and you won't even do it to save yourself. You know I hate it when you're being an ass. You're dealing with this on your own."

He looked at me, incredulous.

"You can't take me back," he said. "He'll kill me and take the whole stash."

I glanced at him a second, then turned back to the road.

"Isn't that what you did? Grow up, man," I said. "You got yourself into this mess."

"Are you crazy?" I saw him try to get the door open, probably wanting to jump out and save himself, but the street was packed and when I swerved further to the right, he knew he wasn't getting the door open. I ran a stop sign, sped up, and ignored his pleas to let him go.

Okay, so it might not have been the most brotherly move, but I grew up with him, and anyway I wasn't going to let him face his alone. He's still my brother, right?

When I pulled up in front of his building, he was still trying to convince me.

I turned off the engine and got out. He was trying to open the door and take off before I got to him, but I ran around, cut him off, and grabbed his shirt, hauled him from the van and shoved him toward his front door.

I took out the suitcases, held one in my hands and tossed the other one at him.

"Take that to him," I ordered. "When you come back empty-handed, you can have the other one."

He looked up at me from the stoop, like a child begging for another chance before being sent to the corner. But his eyes met mine and he knew I was serious. He wasn't going anywhere except back inside that building.

"What if I take off with this? Up to the roof, then down the fire escape in back?"

"Then I'll take this one inside and give it to Ronnie. Either way," I told him, "he's getting what he came for."

"You can't do this. It's not your money."

"Because I didn't steal it fair and square? It's not yours, either, if you want to get technical."

He stood up, put out his chest and was about to say something, but the front door opened and we both turned toward it. The entryway was covered in roaches.

"Go on," I said.

He looked at me, no longer like the punished child, now like the one who knows his parent is going away and doesn't want to be left in the classroom alone.

I shook my head, telling him I wasn't helping him, that this was his to deal with.

He picked up the suitcase and turned toward the door, but didn't step inside.

The bugs parted for him, clicking along the backs of their brothers as they moved out of Jerry's way.

In the second before he stepped in, I wondered how they'd opened the door. How did they turn the knob?

And then Jerry was walking, very slowly, almost shuffling forward like his legs were heavy steel, but he was moving at least. He climbed the two steps to the doorway, then took a deep breath before crossing the threshold. Another two steps and he was well inside.

The door closed behind him.

* * *

When Jerry was up the stairs and out of sight, I got in the van and grabbed a canister of insecticide. What was I going to do with this, spray Ronnie with it? He wasn't a cockroach himself. He wasn't even alive. But at least his army would be stopped by it. I pumped the handle and carried it with me to the fire escape. I'd told him this was his problem to deal with, but if history had shown him anything, it should have shown him I'd always be there to back him up.

The fire escape was a challenge, but I finally managed to wheel a dumpster beneath it, balance the canister on the edge while I climbed on, then hit the ladder with the sprayer in one hand. Climbing a fire escape with what amounts to three or four gallons of liquid isn't something I'd recommend to anyone, and when my fingers almost slipped off the rung, I thought for sure I was going to end up with my back broken over the side of the dumpster. But I managed to hold on and finally make my way up to the first fire escape landing. From there it was a lot easier.

I had to stop once and wonder where I would find them, in Jerry's apartment or Ronnie's. It made sense they'd be in Ronnie's, though, that being where the deed had taken place.

I found Ronnie's window, crouched outside it and tried to look in.

All I could see was dark, with specks of what I can only call "less dark" breaking through. I didn't understand it at first, then I realized I was seeing the darkness in the room through the cockroaches that covered the pane. They were crawling around each other, making what little light there was dance as it broke through the spaces between their bodies.

I imagined for a second how horrible it would be to have them crawling over my skin and I shuddered, trying to shake off invisible roaches.

I couldn't hear anything outside, but I didn't want to put my ear to the glass. If I heard anything at all then, it would only be the clack of their tiny feet against the glass. Instead, I moved as close as I could without touching the glass, and tried to hear anything I could through their horrible sound.

I put the canister between my feet, held the nozzle close to me with my hand around the trigger, just in case.

I waited, for what I wasn't sure, but I knew something had to happen.

And then it did.

I heard the yelling from inside, even over the clack of the roaches on the window, and the whine of the city sounds all around me. Jerry's voice came through first.

"You're not getting it," I heard him say. "You can't take it with you, isn't that what they always say?"

Didn't I just tell him to give the man his cut of the money? Was he insane or just stupid? I wanted to kick his ass right there for not doing what I said.

"You're not just taking off with my share," Ronnie said. It was the first thing I'd heard him say. "You do what you did to me, and then expect me to let you just take it from me?"

"Life ain't cut and dried. Things happen, man. I can't help the way things went down."

"You're the one who caused it!"

I heard a noise and looked down. A roach was crawling over the bars that made up the floor of the landing, swerving toward my feet. Without thinking, I aimed the nozzle at it and fired a blast of bug spray in its face. It stumbled off the rail, tried to cling to the side, but couldn't, and it vanished into the dark as it fell. The roaches on the window didn't seem to care for what I'd done, or maybe they were reacting to what was gong on inside, I couldn't tell, but they were certainly a lot angrier than they'd been. They swarmed over and around the window pane, clacking like mad and I thought if they'd had voices they'd have been roaring.

I moved to the window again and tried to listen, but the voices were drowned out by the roaches. All I could hear was something being smashed and a voice crying "No, don't!"

I grabbed the canister by the handle and swung it up, shattering the window, and sending the bugs to fall out, covering my hands and arms until I shook them off in a near-panic, their tiny legs a disgusting reminder of why I usually wore the coveralls. I wished I'd left them on.

When the rush of bugs had fallen aside, I looked into the room, but could make out nothing in the dark. Whatever or whoever was in there, I stood there like an idiot, frozen, and giving anyone a clear shot at me. After a second I forced myself into the room, knocking out the jagged glass with the canister and stepping onto the pane, then into the room.

More roaches crunched under my feet.

Without seeing anything in the dark--it seemed none of the meager light from outside had found its way in--I began spraying everything in front of me, dousing anything in my path.

The bugs scurried away from the poison, but I still crushed hundreds of them as I walked through the room.

I looked around, trying to find Jerry. I was beginning to rethink sending him in here.

The room appeared empty, but it had also appeared empty when I looked in earlier and saw Ronnie rise through the bugs like a vampire leaving his coffin at night.

"Jerry!" I called out, but no one answered.

Ronnie's apartment was a one-room, like Jerry's, so when I didn't find anyone in the bathroom, I figured they'd left. Hoped anyway. If Ronnie'd pulled the rising from the bugs routine in reverse, and if he'd taken Jerry with him somehow, I didn't know what I was going to do or how I could follow them.

Getting out of the apartment was a chore, having to keep the spray trained on the knob to keep the bugs off it, and still grab and turn it to open the door. In the hall, I wiped my poison-coated hand on my shirt, and went to Jerry's door. I didn't bother knocking. More bugs were shoved out of the way as I opened it.

And more bugs died under my feet when I stepped in.

The light was out, and when I used the spray nozzle to hit the switch, nothing happened. I left the door open for the hall light.

Jerry was across the room, lying on the floor, covered in swirling brown and black bodies. I couldn't tell if he was alive or not, but I prayed for merely unconscious. I hated to think I'd sent him inside only to kill him. My mother would have killed me.

Ronnie was nowhere.

I went to Jerry and kicked bugs off him, sprayed them, crushed them, anything I could.

The door slammed shut and I whirled. Something was moving toward me, I felt it, but couldn't see. The spray nozzle went out and I hit the trigger, splashing whatever was out there in poison. Roaches skittered and clacked. The thing in front of me advanced, oblivious of the spray, and knocked me in the chest. I flew backward and fell to the floor.

Bugs covered me in seconds.

I managed to stand and wiped frantically at my body to wash the bugs off it, but the second I moved one, another took its place.

I heard a groan, and Jerry was moving. Thank God he was alive.

"Get up," I told him. "Get out of here, hurry!"

I heard him moving, but saw nothing. The bugs had made it to my face.

I felt them trying to crawl into my mouth, and I rubbed my shoulder against them, crushing and smearing their tiny puss-filled bodies against my cheek and chin.

He groaned again. I heard something move on the other side of the room and I stumbled toward it in the dark, blind for the cockroaches.

The canister was still in one hand. I'd been holding it like grim death.

I reached the mass, grabbed it. It was a man, Ronnie, and I held his shoulder, took him to the ground and, through the haze of bugs on my face, I straddled him, opened his dead mouth and shoved the nozzle of the spray can down his throat. I wasn't careful like a doctor, searching for the right tube, I just slide it into his throat like a sword, not caring where it went. I heard him under me, struggling and gasping, gurgling in his throat, trying to scream. But I wasn't letting him get away. Even returned from the dead, this had to work. I found the trigger, squeezed it. With the nozzle filling Ronnie with insect poison, I stood up and held the trigger with one hand while I used the other to pump the handle, making sure the pressure never slackened, that the poison never stopped spraying.

His struggles grew more frenzied for a second, then, after his fight, he stopped moving.

The bugs clacked no longer. The seemed to fall away from my body, my skin, my eyes. I heard them hit the ground, then scurry away.

I'd done it. Whatever hold he'd had on them, it was over now that he was dead. Again.

I wiped away bug smears from my face and took a deep breath, stifled a little by the stench of insecticide filling the room, but it was still a sweet breath nonetheless.

I let go of the handle, looked around. The room was still dark and I couldn't see Jerry anywhere. I wondered if he'd gotten out while I was at work on Ronnie. Then I spotted him. He was standing near the door with the suitcase in his hand.

"I guess the whole thing is yours after all," I said.

"You keep the other half," he said. But it wasn't Jerry. Ronnie opened the door and I saw him full length in the hall light. Naked and dead, but moving and carrying the suitcase with a quarter million dollars in it, hijacked from a big man in town. He closed the door behind him and a second later I heard him enter and close the door of his own apartment. I didn't want to know where he was going from there.

I went to the wall, flipped the light, then remembered it didn't work.

I opened the door again and saw him there from the hall light. Jerry lay dead and straining, his eyes bulging and spit and poison spilling from his mouth.

* * *

I left the apartment, knowing I had a few hours still to get away. There was two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in my van and that would help in getting out of the country. I didn't see being able to explain any of this and expect to be believed, so I really didn't see any other option.

I got in my van and drove off. I had to get home, clean up, hide the money, then come back and do something with Jerry's body to make sure he wasn't found for at least a few days. I couldn't skip town just yet; I had a very big funeral to plan first.

END

"Renovation"

Renovation
(originally published in the MONSTERS INK anthology)
by C. Dennis Moore

Jack thought, I need a job.

He didn't think this because he and Amanda needed the money (although it wouldn't hurt). Nor did he think it because for the first time in five years he felt he wasn't contributing (although he did feel that way).

He thought it because here he was at twelve-thirty in the afternoon on a Tuesday, standing outside his son's bedroom door, listening to make sure Max was asleep, and Jack couldn't think of a damn thing he should be doing otherwise. The laundry was done. The dishes were washed. The trash was changed.

And it's only Tuesday, he thought.

The other side of the door was quiet and he decided Max was out for the next few hours.

I need a job, he thought again.

Maybe I need to vacuum. No, Max is asleep.

Well, he had to do something. He wasn't going to stand outside the bedroom door all day.
Halfway down the stairs, he stopped. Listening. He cocked his head, frowned, thought
What the hell is that?

From somewhere in the house, something hummed through the walls. It came in waves, like a metal heartbeat.

WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU.

The dryer? No, the laundry was done. At least, he thought it was. Maybe he'd forgotten a last load. But a check of the dryer proved it to be empty. So what was that hum?

He stood up, listened again, but it was gone now.

Maybe a truck had gone by, something with big bass speakers so deep all you could hear was the thump. Yeah, maybe.

Whatever it was is gone now.

Right, he agreed. No point losing sleep over it. He had other things to do.

(Not really, he thought. But I'm sure I can find something.)

Like a job. After checking his email, he went to the local newspaper's site and checked the want ads.

"Too bad I'm neither a truck driver nor a CNA," he mumbled as he scanned down the list. There were a dozen ads for temporary services around town, but Jack had been on one of those lists for two weeks and so far had been offered nothing.

It wasn't that he didn't enjoy the rest after so many years working all the time. And it wasn't that he really wanted to get out and start a whole new job from scratch, either. But he felt so useless around the house. He cleaned and took care of Max, just like Amanda had done when she wasn't working and Jack was, but this was different.

Why? he wondered. What makes it different?

Because for so many years, Jack was the one who supported his family. To have all that taken away and be put into this situation where Jack contributed squat other than clean dishes and an empty trash can . . . it felt wrong.

He needed to be doing something.

Jack shut off the computer and went to make another pot of coffee.

In the kitchen he heard that noise again.

WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU.

Then something rumbled under his feet, like someone rolling something big and heavy across the basement.

He looked out the window to see if that truck was coming again, but the street was empty.

Of course it is, he thought. The street's empty 'cause everyone's at work. 'Cept me.

So what's that noise? Max?

He started the coffee and went up the stairs, careful of the one that creaked near the top. He stopped outside the bedroom and peered through the keyhole. Max's head lay turned toward him, eyes closed, face the peaceful innocence of a sleeping child.

Okay, it wasn't Max.

Maybe he'd only thought he heard something.

No, because he'd felt the rumbling under him. Something had moved and when it did, it shook through the floor in the kitchen.

And that other sound, the "heartbeat".

You know what? he thought. You're not hearing things. Nothing that's not always there anyway. Today the house is silent and all the stuff that's normally there, you're just hearing finally. It's the central air kicking on or the refrigerator. It's sounds houses make, nothing else.

Yeah, maybe. Probably.

He didn't know, he was only getting used to being home all day.

Maybe if he had a hobby. No, a hobby would only distract him long enough to make him stop feeling guilty about unemployment. Eventually he'd stop feeling useless and worrying about a job and he'd let Amanda support him forever. She could do it on what she made, but they'd be a lot better off with two paychecks.

She's the one who told you to quit, a voice spoke up in his head.

And it was right, she had. But only because he hated driving forty-five minutes to and from, and he hated not knowing if he was going in for a ten-, twelve-, or more-hour shift. All he did when he was home was complain about never seeing his family. So she said it one day. "We'll be fine, really. For a while anyway. Just quit."

So why should he feel guilty now when it was her idea in the first place?

You don't really feel bad because you don't have a job, do you? the other voice asked.

He thought about it and realized, no, it wasn't that. It was because he didn't want a job. That was where the guilt lay, his indifference. If it wasn't for the nagging urge at the base of his skull to get a job and support his family, Jack thought he could stay home all day every day for a very long time.

But not if that fucking noise didn't stop. What the hell was that!?

WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU.

It was stronger, louder, like it was gaining momentum

WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU.

And then, just under that, he heard something else.

HHHHSSSSSSSHHHHHH HHHHSSSSSSSHHHHHH.

Jack cocked his head, held his breath, listened.

WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU.

HHHHSSSSSSSHHHHHH HHHHSSSSSSSHHHHHH.

It was going to drive him crazy if he didn't at least find out what it was.

He leaned forward, trying to follow the sound, and he caught it a bit louder near the hall by the stairs. He went out there and knelt down, feeling slight vibrations in the floor. It tickled his knees and hands when he touched the wood.

Jack put his ear to the wall and wondered what could make those noises. They sounded familiar, but not very. Like he'd heard variations of them before, but couldn't place them.

He listened, concentrated, thought.

When he realized he felt the wall pressing out toward his face, then pulling back, and pressing out again, he thought he'd lost his mind. He skittered away from the wall, pressed his back against the stairs, and stared at it.

It moved back and forth and he thought, What is that? Breathing??

No. That wasn't possible. Because Max was asleep upstairs and in a sane world where his beautiful son could sleep without fear of monsters, walls didn't breathe.

Something thumped below him again.

Jack got up and ran for the basement stairs. He threw the door open, flipped on the light, and tried to leap down the stairs without falling or cracking his head on the overhang.

The basement walls were concrete block and Jack saw what that thumping had been. Dozens of blocks lie scattered around the floor, some broken in the fall, some shattered against the opposite wall, white chalk dust marking the impact.

"The fuck is this?" Jack said.

Another brick popped out across from him, fell to the floor, broke in two.

He moved back, put his hand on the rail. The walls were moving, like upstairs. Swelling out. Pulling back. Swelling out.

HHHHSSSSSSSHHHHHH HHHHSSSSSSSHHHHHH.

One of the swells kept growing, swelling, until the bricks burst out in a spray, flying across the room, pelting Jack with broken pieces of concrete.

He fell backward against the wall and felt that vibration again, tickling.

WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU.

It grew stronger, humming through everything now.

The boards cracked above him and one fell, a spray of old wood falling like beige snow.

Jack looked up and saw what was beneath the ceiling. A dark green membrane with what looked like half a dozen thick vines hanging down from it. The vines were crooked, ragged, and it was only when they moved that Jack saw the crooks were joints, the vines more like fingers.

Something crashed in the kitchen and he welcomed the chance to get out of the basement.

The refrigerator lay on its face. The wall behind it pulsed with life, breathing its HHHHSSSSSSSHHHHHH HHHHSSSSSSSHHHHHH. The wall split and one of those vines fell from the crack.

Jack backed away, trying to get through the dining room, out into the hall, without turning his back on the scene in front of him. There was another of those HHHHSSSSSSSHHHHHH sounds and a stench hit Jack in the face, like a backed-up sink full of sewage.

He winced, covered his mouth and nose, said "Aw, man, that's horrible," and finally managed to turn away. The doorjam burst as he passed through. The walls of the dining room were breathing.

The heartbeat vibrated through the house and the thump of it in his head made Jack think if he wasn't crazy before, he might well be if that noise didn't stop. And it was getting louder.

WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU.

He watched the breathing walls expand again and the sheetrock cracked. The finger vines slipped through, flexing, reaching, knocking off more broken wall pieces. One wall was gone, replaced by that dark green . . . skin? . . . was that what it was?

"I don't think our insurance is gonna cover this," Jack said. Then he thought, I could have laughed at that, if this weren't happening.

And what was happening? The walls were breathing, the house was beating, and were those the house's fingers coming for him? What would happen if (when?) they caught him? Then he thought: Max.

"Shit."

He took off for the hall and fell flat on his face. When he looked back at his feet, he saw one of the vines had him by the ankle. He tugged, but the grip was too tight.

That smell of backed-up sewage filled the hall and Jack would have gagged if he weren't so desperate to get out of the finger and up to his son.

When it was clear he couldn't pull free, he did what he was trying to avoid in the first place--he grabbed the vine. It was cool, dry, like a tree branch made of old, wrinkled leather. He grabbed one of the end joints and pulled, trying to force its grip loose enough to get free. But the harder he pulled, the tighter it clung.

He let go, twisted himself sideways, moved closer to the finger for leverage, then brought up his free leg. He chopped at the finger with his heel and it snapped like the branch it resembled. He was free.

Jack stumbled to his feet and lurched up the stairs on all fours.

WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU.

The stairs shook, the railing fell free and landed on top of the four or five fingers growing from the hall floor.

Below him, he heard an incredible SNAP of wood and he looked over the stairs to see the doorway to the living room was gone. The wood surrounding it was splintered and had been replaced by teeth, a row on each side. They looked as big as plates, but the doorway had no jaw, and couldn't close, so it resembled the gaping, grinning mouth of an idiot.

One of the stairs behind him snapped and Jack shook off the image of the plate-like teeth and took the last half dozen steps in two strides.

Max's bedroom door was cracked. Jack kicked it and it fell away.

Max was awake. And clutched in the grip of three fingers that grew up from the floor. One of them wrapped around his mouth, cutting off the scream Jack saw in Max's eyes. Jack leapt onto that one and it snapped. He pulled it from Max's face and his son screamed, "Daddy!"

"I know," Jack said. He wanted to sound calm, but all he thought he was managing was not sounding terrified, which wasn't the same thing. He kicked at another finger and, with this leverage, was able to snap the last with his hands. "Come on."

He pulled Max to his chest and wished he could have just the next few minutes to hold him, to revel in the fact he was okay. Granted, Max would have nightmares for the next several years--so would Jack, most likely--but physically he was okay.

In the time it took Jack to get Max free, the doorway had broken away and the teeth had come through.

"Close your eyes, Max," Jack said, burying his son's face in his chest. He wrapped his arms tighter around him and readied for the dash out of the room. Looking at the one downstairs, he was sure it couldn't close on him. Now, standing in front of one and having to get through it, he wasn't sure. Given what had happened already today, he didn't want to say it couldn't happen.

Before he ran, he had two thoughts. First, if this was happening inside, what was going on outside, was it doing the same thing? And second, was it happening to any other houses?

Then he ran. Holding Max close enough to him to be another layer of himself, he leapt through the doorway in one long stride, yanking his feet free of the teeth in a blink and cracking his knee on the banister. He didn't look--didn't want to lose that last bit of sanity by seeing the reality--but he was sure he heard those teeth snap closed just as he got through.

Max was crying against him.

"Shh," Jack soothed. "You're alright, Max. Dad wouldn't let anything hurt you."

"I know," Max whined. "But I'm still scared."

You and me both, he wanted to say. Instead, it was, "It's okay. We're getting out of here."

The fingers were growing through cracks in the stairs and some of the planks had broken away, revealing humps of strange muscle that pulsed with the heartbeat.

WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU.

He carried Max to the top and looked down, wondering how he was going to get down without being tangled in the vines, without falling and dropping Max to the house. He stood frozen in his daze for some time, half his mind working out the problem, the other half trying to answer his third question: Why was this happening?

What brought him out of his stupor was a loud hiss, coming from all around, and the hiss sounded like his name. jjjaaaaaaaacckkk. The sound came out of the walls and he thought, It knows me.

If he'd had any doubts about getting down the stairs, they were gone. The door was at the bottom and he needed only to reach that. The fingers curled, opened, curled, inviting him to try.

"Where's Mommy?" Max asked against Jack's chest.

"She's at work," he said.

Right. He had Max. He had to get out for him, if for nothing else.

He clutched him tight again, kept his eyes on the stairs, and stepped down.

A finger snapped under his foot and the house shook. He stepped down again, snapping another finger. The house rumbled.

If I can just keep stepping on them all the way down, I think I can make it.

Another step. Another snap. Another step. Then one grabbed his wrist. He almost stopped to fight it off, but he knew if he stopped, he lost, because the house would use it and take him down, so he kept going, tugging at the finger around his arm, trying to hold onto Max and keep stepping on the vines as he went down. Toward the bottom, he reached his limit. His arm stretched out behind him and the finger was pulled straight, too, save for the joint holding him. The door was maybe six feet away. He could make that in one jump if he could get free. But his leverage was gone. He couldn't do a thing without his other arm.

"I'm gonna have to put you down, Max," he said.

"No," Max whined, trying to hold tighter, to climb higher on Jack, onto his shoulders if he had to, anything to keep away from the floor.

"You'll be okay," Jack assured him. "I'm gonna put you down by the door and you're gonna get out. You go next door, you just get away, okay? And I'll be right behind you."

"No," Max whined again.

"Come on, Max, I can't get out of this unless I've got my arm. I have to put you down. Can you get ready to run as soon as I do it?"

"No."

Jack grabbed Max by the arm, under his shoulder, and hauled him off, reached out as far as he could. Max's feet dangled, kicking in tiny arcs, and Max was whining the whole time, terrified.

He hated himself for doing this to his son, but he didn't have any choice.

"As soon as you touch the floor," he told him, "you get that door open and get out."

And he let go. Max hit the floor and did exactly as told, yanking the door open--thank God Jack hadn't locked it; Max couldn't reach the lock--and shoving the storm door out of the way on his dash out of the house.

Jack turned back to the vine around his arm now with his full attention.

He'd snap it and get out of here.

Before he could, another wrapped around his ankle, pulled him off his feet, and he smashed his face against the stairs that hadn't popped off yet. His nose gushed blood. His vision was gone for a second, whirling to black with stars blooming in the midst of the haze. Slowly--too slowly for Jack--things came into focus only to find he was pinned down, hands and ankles snared.

His head filled with sounds.

WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU, humming through the house below.

HHHHSSSSSSSHHHHHH HHHHSSSSSSSHHHHHH, coming from the ceiling.

And from the wall next to him, jjjaaaaaaaacckkk.

He jerked, then fell again, held fast by the finger-vines.

Max was outside now, crying. He could hear that even through the other sounds inside and it made him lift his head, trying to focus on his son, hoping to draw strength to get out from that.

This is too insane, he thought. What the hell is going on? This isn't real.

But the crushing pain in his wrists said it was.

The stairs below him cracked and were shoved out of the way, clattering to the floor in piles of broken wood. The smell of backed-up pipes seeped from the muscle, assaulting him, making him want to vomit.

But with the stairs out of the way, he thought he might be able to get out yet. The thought only made him want to vomit again, but it was better than lying here and letting the house . . . do whatever it was going to do with him.

He took a breath, held it, opened his mouth, bit into the stinking muscle in front of his face, ground his teeth on it until something sour and wet filled his mouth. He hoped it was only more blood from his nose.

The house groaned around him, the muscles shook, the vines loosened. Not much. But it was enough.

He pushed himself up, rolled to the side, dangled over the edge of the rise from the stairs, until his weight snapped the fingers holding him up and he fell to the floor.

He cracked his head and everything faded again. But he couldn't spare the seconds this time and he lurched for the door.

Vines grabbed at him, but he was able to kick them away or step on them and he got to the door in a few seconds, panting and still bleeding from the nose. He saw Max through the window in the door, standing in the front yard, staring up at the house and crying.

Then the door was smashed, glass shattering and clinking around his feet, wood splintering and flying past his head. The teeth in the doorframe snapped shut, daring Jack to pass.

jjjaaaaaaaacckkk.

He took half a second--less--to consider his options. They were limited to one: get out.

The teeth snapped shut again, like a huge bear trap set just for him.

Nothing to do but go for it. If he stayed or was caught in the teeth, the outcome was the same, so why not try? And what if he made it? Yeah, what he was fast enough?

The heartbeat came louder and with more beat behind it, pulsing through every inch of the house now. He could almost feel it closing in on him. WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU.

He took a final look around. The house was mostly dry muscle and flexing finger-vines. A few spots still sported the wood and walls of a house, but amid the living thing underneath, it all looked false and badly-placed.

WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU.

HHHHSSSSSSSHHHHHH HHHHSSSSSSSHHHHHH.

jjjaaaaaaaacckkk.

He charged through the gaping hole, his hands out to his sides to catch the teeth if they started to close, and was through before he knew he'd taken off.

The teeth snapped behind him, a fraction of a second too slow, while Jack tumbled and rolled across the porch. He stopped at its edge and snapped his head back to see that he was clear and parts of him weren't severed and hanging in the teeth.

At the reality of his escape, Jack was filled with completeness and finality. From this point on nothing else mattered but that he and Max were free.

Max ran and leapt at him, wrapping his arms and legs around Jack, burying his face in his father's shoulder and wailing now.

Jack hugged him tight, kissed the side of Max's head, and leaned up to stand.

The boards on the porch exploded and the fingers flew out, grabbing for him.

Jack had time enough to toss Max to the grass before snatching one of them from the air, snapping it in half, and leaping out of the way.

It was like the last ditch effort of the monster in the movies and Jack escaped, like the hero always did. Except now he didn't feel like the hero anymore, so much as he was the lucky bastard who got away.

He hauled Max onto his shoulder, took a breath and wished he could calm down. But that damned WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU WWWHHHUUU still reverberated through him.

He moved toward the street, then turned back to his house. The siding was being ripped apart from the inside, broken and pushed away. Windows shattered. The roof shingles peeled away and side down to fall on the ground. The whole mess took almost a minute, the racket was incredible, and the stench of backed-up pipes was worse, emanating from the house now strong enough to gag him from twenty feet away.

Then he noticed what he'd missed since getting outside.

He wasn't alone in the street.

A few errant people, home in the day like himself, stood out there with him, lined up along the block, looking haggard, and staring at their houses.

Jack looked at the other homes lining his street and saw the same thing from every one. The houses were gone, replaced by giant lumps of beating, breathing muscle.

What happens, he wondered. What happens if they begin to move? What happens if they aren't restricted by foundations? What happens if they come after us?

END

"Obsessive Compulsive Dismemberment"

Obsessive Compulsive Dismemberment
(originally published in Scared Naked Magazine)

C. Dennis Moore

Grady was in the bathroom, grabbing everything he'd need, tweezers, plastic bags, his cup. He was reaching for the soap when the phone rang. He stood beside it until it rang a second time, then a third. If whoever was on the other end knew him at all, they'd hang up and call again. If there was a fourth ring, he didn't know them, and he wouldn't answer.

The phone was silent a good ten seconds. Then it rang again. On the third ring, he picked up.

"Hello? . . . I'm getting ready to leave . . . Just out for a while . . . I don't know, later. Yeah, okay. I'll call you then. Love you, too. Bye."

He hung up, picked his bag off the floor beside him, grabbed his keys from the hook by the door, and was gone before his mother could call back.

He locked the door, put the keys in his pocket, patted his pocket to make sure the keys had gone to the bottom and hadn't fallen out as soon as he let go of them, and the walked to the stairs. His mother's call must have distracted him more than he thought because he reached the stairs, ready to step down with the wrong foot. He walked back to the door, took the keys out of his pocket, unlocked, then re-locked the door, stuffed the keys into his pocket--patting the pocket to make sure the keys had gone to the bottom--and walked to the stairs again, this time arriving with the correct foot. He stepped down onto the first step with his left, reached the bottom on his right, and was out the front door three steps later.

He'd gone left last time, so tonight he would go right.

He passed the adult bookstore, glanced in and counted the racks: one, two, three, then the wall. He passed the coffee shop, glanced in, counted the booths: one, two, three, four. Now his rhythm was off and he'd have to walk until he found a business with either two to make up for the extra booth, or five to get to the next set. It was a struggle to keep his eyes off the outside wall of the theater; it had only one movie poster. There was a bar up ahead. It had two windows. And the gas station after that had two pumps. If he was quick, before he passed it and lost the chance--.

He glanced at the movie poster, counted it as one, then went on, looking for the bar and the gas station to keep him on track and get to twelve.

With all this trouble staying on track, Grady could already tell the night was going to be a rough one.

* * *

He'd been making his way through the buildings three at a time, but then he realized that was a predictable pattern for anyone to discover, so he started working backward, counting the one before his last one as one, and going to them by threes from there. It was a difficult pattern to see, he knew, unless he showed it to someone, and that made him even more comfortable with it. It made sense to him, and if, in the process, it kept everyone else off track, all the better.

However, he couldn't always remember which was next, so he sometimes ended up walking four miles out of his way--after all, it wasn't like the buildings were placed right next to each other--and then backtracking, keeping count as he went.

It was almost midnight before he made his way back down the street to the building he was going to. The address was 571. All prime numbers, and all odd. No way to divide that one in half. Nor were any of them multiples of three. It was bad enough they were prime and odd, but at least if he could divide them by three, he would have been more comfortable with things. He had a bad feeling about this one.

He went up the steps, opened the door--thank God for the landlords too cheap to install the security locks--and looked at the mailboxes.

Siddons in 2 would have been a possibility if not for that final "s" throwing everything out of symmetry. There was a Possop in 5, but palindromes had never proved to be easy for him. They felt wrong from the moment he saw the names. All he needed was a good, even-lettered name. Here was Walker. Looks like we have a winner, he thought. And it was his third choice. Even better. Maybe the address wouldn't prove to be such a hindrance after all.

Walker was in 7, on the second floor.

Grady went upstairs, stopped outside Walker's door, and prepared.

He knocked and heard a voice inside say, "Who the hell is knocking at this time of night. There was a pause, movement toward the door that Grady discerned through the floorboards in the apartment creaking, and then the voice asked, "Who the hell is it?"

"Mr. Walker?"

"Who's asking?"

"Sir, I need you to open the door, please."

"Who is it? The police? What do you want?"

"Sir, I need you to open the door, please," Grady repeated.

There was a sigh, then the unlocking of several locks. Grady only counted four, and he kept waiting for more to even it out, but he knew that would be an awful lot of locks because he couldn't top on six, either. It was three or nine at least. Nothing in between. On rare occasions five would do, but with the building numbers so bad already, and Walker being in apartment he'd need three or nine to put him at ease. The four was all he got. He'd just make sure to lock and unlock them enough times from the inside to make up for it.

The door came open a crack and Grady kicked it in, stepped inside, then closed it again with his foot.

Walker . . . wasn't where Grady'd expected him.

There he was . . . three feet below where Grady was looking . . . in a wheelchair.

"What the hell is all this happy horseshit?" Walker asked, looking up at the crazy man.

"Shh," Grady said. He slapped a piece of tape over the man's mouth, then punched him in the face. Walker went out like a light.

Grady turned back to the door, locked and unlocked the doors until a pleasing pattern had been achieved. And then he turned back to Walker.

* * *

For Grady, the joy was in the doing.

He went into Walker's bedroom, stripped the sheet off, and spread it across the living room floor. He took the unconscious man out of the wheelchair and laid him flat. He taped Walker's wrists together. He straddled the crippled man's chest, then leaned over his face. He tapped Walker in the head, whispering, "Wake up, Mr. Walker."

Walker's eyes fluttered and he moaned through the tape. Then he came to, saw the man over him, and tried to scream. The tape kept him muffled.

When Walker was fully awake, Grady stabbed him in the throat.

The planning was just so much consideration and finding the patterns in things, enough to keep him at ease. But when he was killing, he was free. Free of the patterns and the numbers and the symmetry, and he could finally breathe easy.

When he was dissecting, he wasn't concerned with how many fingers he took off, or how many inches long was the length of intestine he wrapped around the victim's neck. He didn't have to abide by any patterns when it came to scooping someone's eyeballs out. If he felt like grabbing the right one first, it didn't matter if he'd taken the right one first last time. When he broke off someone's teeth, they didn't have to be removed in a symmetrical pattern. And when he was standing over the ruined corpse, masturbating into his collection cup, he didn't have to count the strokes to make sure he ended on a multiple of three.

When Grady was killing, it was the only time he was able to just be. So he did it as often as he could manage.

Grady came into his cup, put the lid on, wrapped tape around it so the lid didn't pop off and spill semen all over the place, then put the cup into his bag. He got the tweezers from his bag, next, and crawled around the body, grabbing any hairs he saw, because he never knew if one of them might be his.

When the sheet was clean of everything except the dead Mr. Walker and Mr. remnants, Grady went back into his bag to get his soap.

He moved aside the spare gloves, the roll of tape. The soap wasn't under his spool of fishing line. And he didn't find it behind the ball gag.

Then he remembered his mother calling right before he grabbed the fresh box with the unused bar out of his cabinet.

Shit.

This couldn't be happening. Grady was always so careful, how could he have let something like a bar of soap slip his mind? All he had to do was grab it, then go listen for the fourth ring, whether it came or not. He knew he wasn't going to pick up the phone right then, so why the hell did he stop what he was doing and go wait by it? Now he didn't have his soap, and God knew if this guy would have the stuff he needed.

Could he even use someone else's soap? He wasn't sure. It had never come up before. But now that it had, would his DNA be able to be tracked back to him through a bar of soap?

Granted, he ran that chance every time he used his own soap; with Grady's skin condition, he had to rely on a few specific soaps, stuff the common man in the city wouldn't have. If the police ever realized that, it wouldn't take too very long to track it back to Grady. After all, there couldn't have been more than a few dozen people in the city who'd even heard of his soap.

Surely, the chances of Mr. Walker here knowing about it were slim and none.

But Grady had to wash up. There was no way around that fact. Not only did killing allow him the chance to act regardless of patterns and numbers, it also allowed him to get dirty. He always had to wash up afterward. It was either that, or get caught the second he stepped out of the door.

He got a large square of cheesecloth from his bag, spread it over the shower drain, and then weighed the side down with whatever he could find. The cloth would catch any stray hairs before they went down the drain.

Grady stripped, folded his clothes neatly, laid them on the toilet seat lid, then climbed into the shower.

He sniffed the soap before picking it up. It didn't smell too bad. It was only a half bar, so the original shape was gone, and the original color had been melted and worn down to a light green. Well, that shouldn't be too bad. There were a number of soaps he shouldn't use, but only three he absolutely could not use. And they were all white.

He wasn't crazy about the thought of using someone else's soap. It was too much like using their toothbrush. God knew where Mr. Walker'd had this thing.

He picked it up, scrubbed thoroughly, but as quickly as possible, and set the bar back in its tray. He rinsed and inspected his body. He found no signs of blood spatter. The cheesecloth was pink now.

He turned off the shower, folded the ends of the cloth over each other, slipped it into a plastic bag, and dried off. He would take the towel with him, burn it in the incinerator at his building.
Grady was looking at himself in the mirror to make sure he really had washed off all the blood, when his glance shifted down for just a second, into the trash can beside Mr. Walker's toilet.

"What's this?" he asked.

He leaned over, stared at the box, and had to turn his head upside down to read the label. NEW PINE GREEN SCENT, the box announced. But the name of the soap . . . Grady couldn't believe how utterly wrong his luck had been tonight. Of all the soaps in the world for Mr. Walker to use, it would be one of the three he could not use, now in green.

Grady felt the burning in his skin almost immediately after his realization.

He looked in the mirror and saw his skin turning red, blisters breaking out in a rash all over him. His face was like one huge sack of pus, ready to burst. He rubbed his eyes, trying to make the vision go away, but there must have been soap on his hands still because then his eyes burned, and then he couldn't see anymore because of the blisters forming on his eyeballs.

He thrashed around the bathroom, trying to get past the pain of his entire body revolting over one stupid mistake like the wrong soap.

He bit his lip while fighting back his screams, but that only made him rub the bleeding lip, and from there it was all over in seconds. The poison got into his mouth and formed blisters, it got into his blood and ran to his entire body and formed blisters, from his eyes and mouth both it got to his brain and formed blisters.

Grady was dead three minutes after he collapsed on the bathroom floor. He knew it took that long, because all he could do while he lay there dying was count. He got to one hundred eighty before he blacked out.

END

"Billy Ray's a Good Boy"

Featuring my story "Billy Ray's a Good Boy", the Absent Willow Review's THE BEST OF 2009 anthology was released today. Click the ad for a purchase link. Otherwise you'll be left out, and all the cool kids will laugh at you.

The Laughing Picture

The Laughing Picture

(originally published in AURA: Literary Arts Magazine, Fall 2001, Vol. 27, #2)

C. Dennis Moore

It laughed, and that's all it did, all night, her picture which stood across the room. I lay in bed, the pillow pulled tight over my head, trying to force myself into sleep, but the giggling, the cackling, the roaring laughter kept that blessed state away.

She'd been so smug that day, shrugging off my pledges of devotion, laughing at my need of her as she walked away. And that night, the picture I had, the one she never knew I'd taken, laughed at me. It laughed until the day I killed her.

After that, at night, the picture screamed.

END