When the police came, they found a broken door, and a dead silent house. No body. No victim.
Not even a fly.
CHAPTER 7
Stoned
By Diane Dickson
2024 You’d have thought by now they’d have a kinder way to do this thing. From what I’ve heard the rocks are thrown by guys specially trained to hurl hard and hurl fast. I did hear that it was considered some sort of mercy but I don’t know that word has any place in this thing. They do say that once it starts it’s not long before you’re out of it, I hope that’s true.
I can’t complain I know that, I knew this could happen. I knew the rules, we all do.
I don’t know when it’s going to happen but not very long now. They’ve just brought me back from the court room. I’m not sure it’s sunk in yet to be honest, I’m shaking a bit and feeling sick but that’s all. My main concern was not to let myself down in front of everyone, not to wet myself, have hysterics or whatever. I didn’t, I’m proud of the way I held myself together.
I almost lost it when I saw the children. I wouldn’t have had them there but it’s part of the whole deal. I think it’s like watching the …well you know the other thing, its’ supposed to teach them what will happen. They’re very small though and the baby was crying and holding out her arms. Yes I nearly lost it then.
Anyway I just feel kinda numb really, it doesn’t feel real. With the overcrowding and everything they don’t like to keep you around once you’ve been convicted so it won’t be long. I don't know the difference between what’s true and what they used to call “urban myth” back in the twentieth century. Anyway I guess all there is to do now is to wait and try to keep calm.
I think I hear them coming now and admit I’m pretty scared. With any choice I would never have done it but it was so long since I’d seen Mike and before the crack down we used to email all the time to the moon bases. I didn’t prebook space on the web and the rules are unbreakable. I couldn’t wait six months and that’s the normal queuing time now.
They’ve stopped outside the door, I wish this was back in the nineteen hundreds when they had electric for executions, I hope it’s true what they say and not just urban myth and that after that first hit you’re out of it. The door is opening.
CHAPTER 8
The Green-Eyed Monster
By Stephanie King
He never lied to me, not once. I was less honest with him. I never told him he was ripping my heart out. I was afraid he’d end it if he knew how I felt and I couldn’t let that happen. So we played at being ‘lovers’, without ever using THAT word.
Of course, I don’t know if he lied to her. Is not telling the whole truth the same as lying? Who knows? He didn’t want to hurt her, that’s for sure and he didn’t know he was hurting me. I could live with that for a while until I saw them together.
I had no right to be angry; no right at all. He’d told me about her from the start but seeing them window shopping, arm-in-arm on their way to the restaurant, I started to hate her. I’d never had dinner with him sitting opposite and gazing into my eyes. He’d never smiled at me that way. Our nights together consisted of a pizza and a bottle of wine at my flat after work followed by almost frantic fucking. Then he’d leave and I would wait until he needed or wanted me again. But, he didn’t ever pretend that it was anything serious, so he’s not to blame for what I did.
He hadn’t called for a week and I was lonely, so I took a walk into town. That’s when I saw them and the craziness started. I watched through the window of the restaurant as he paid the bill and helped her into her jacket. I ducked into a doorway as they left and kept out of sight as I followed them. They stopped outside the door leading to the flat above the butcher’s shop. It was her place, but he didn’t go in. They kissed and laughed a little and she went in alone. He stood and watched until the light came on upstairs and she waved from the window, then he turned away. I stayed where I was until he had turned the corner.
It was easy to persuade her to let me in, another woman in distress. It wasn’t difficult to strike her head with the bronze statuette and render her unconscious. Cutting her heart out was much harder, her kitchen knives weren’t all that sharp and if I hadn’t tied her up and stuffed a dishcloth in her mouth it would have been impossible. The bitch wanted to scream and struggle.
He’ll get over it. I’ll help.
CHAPTER 9
Eternal
By Rose Wall
Silence is the worst. Screaming shows that the adrenaline is still running, that your body is still prepared to fight, or flight, if it is capable.
Real horror is when the silence falls. When you know that there is nowhere to run, and there is no fight left in you. Adrenaline then fails you, and you are left helpless, facing the reality before you, unable to do anything but accept your fate.
I sat there, in complete silence, unable to do anything, watching the scene before me. My voice had deserted me during self preservation - screaming for help, screaming to stop, screaming that they be spared. None of it made any difference, they didn’t listen. If I’d been able to see their faces through the masks, I bet they’d have been laughing.
I’d been the first victim, or so they thought. Tied up, bound so tightly that the blood quickly oozed down my wrists. Then the cutting had started. Not stabbing, that would have been simple, and quick. This was slow and deliberate. Just deep enough to nick the veins so that I slowly bled to death while watching the show in front of me. The pool surrounding me on the floor gradually grew bigger as my life ebbed away. Finally they came to finish me off, but not before the real torture began.
One by one they danced, in the shadow of the flames that surrounded what had been my home. They wanted to show me, to torture me, to make me suffer as they thought I had made them suffer. That was my job, to discipline them, teach them, and empower them to discover truths for themselves; to teach them how to behave properly, and not like a newborn. What I had done bore no resemblance to this.
They took my companions, the books that I had clung to, my photographs, my life, defiling everything before casting them onto the flames. I watched, helpless, as everything and everyone was destroyed before my eyes.
They thought that they tortured me with this. Thinking that, other than the pain of my injuries, this was how to hurt me most. After all, to them I had no soul, no family, no feelings. All I had was my work.
Once the silence settled, I accepted my fate gladly. The torture for me had been life. The three hundred years I had been forced to live, devouring blood, hating myself for the lives I took. Death was peace.
CHAPTER 10
Immortal Beloved
By Sharon Van Orman
He stood at the window watching the bustling of the city below. The clop of the carriage horses, the buzzing of the voices of hundreds of people playing a deep harmony to the muttering of the river beyond.
Or at least that is what he presumed it sounded like. What he remembered it to sound like. With an inarticulate growl he threw the glass against the wall. Watching in satisfaction as the fine crystal shattered into a thousand pieces. A crimson drop stained his white shirt when a shard laid open a small cut on his cheek.
He cursed, his fingers going to the cut. His words lost to the quiet void of his world. It had not always been so.
A slight movement caught his attention. The lifting of the curtains on the breeze. But then the window was not open. Inexplicably, there she stood. The only door to the room was behind him, she had not entered there.
Her gown flowed behind her as she walked sheerest white. A few shades paler than her hair that seemed to have been kissed by the moon. Her eyes were dark as midnight.
His conversation books, where were they? He cast about looking for them. There on the piano he found one. Hastily he flipped past the pages that lamented his hearing loss. The pages that suggested it would be easier not to go on, and past the pages that detailed all the variou
s ways to accomplish such a deed.
She took the stylus and wrote one word. Aoide. Her name. She took a step forward and ran her fingers through is wild tangle of hair and kissed him. As her cool lips touched his, he heard music. Layers of octaves, crescendoing notes that spoke to him, and made his fingers twitch.
He gasped, though silent to him, it was true music to her, and she smiled. He laughed, and stopped, unable to remember when the last time that had occurred. Deep into the night he wrote. He wrote until the music in his head, if not quite vanquished, was content to be still for a bit.
As he recorded the last note, he looked up. She was gone, as he knew she would be. She was not of this world. He had accepted that moment after he saw her. The admission of her name labeled her Muse. But no matter what history had called her, or would call her, she would always be his....... Immortal Beloved.
CHAPTER 11
Howl At The Moon
By Paul Freeman
They say the wolves howled nonstop at the moon the night he was born. Certainly his mother’s screams could be heard echoing around the mountain until the sun broke over those dark hills, it was a hard birth for her, her only one. As morning broke he was dragged screaming and bawling into the world, claiming his first life while he was at it. She held her new babe in her arms, gave him his first and last kiss and then she died.
His father buried her the next morning, with a tear in his eye and a curse in his heart. They were supposed to be a family, a unit, them against the world. He had dreamed of holding his newborn son in his arms with his woman by his side. But the mother was dead, killed giving birth to the son, the unexpected is always the hardest. The father was confused, should he love the babe or hate it, how could a husband not feel resentment towards the creature who had killed his wife?
Born into a world that took his mother as he entered it, left with a father who neither cared for nor loved him. Did he ever have a chance? Was there ever the remotest possibility he would be normal.
Who knows when it first happened, how it had happened even. Was it a bite from some demonic beast or a curse from a witch or warlock? What had triggered his lust for blood, his need to feed off the fear of his own kind. To absorb the spirit of his victim as he gorges on the flesh of man.
Only strangers and those touched by the sickness of the moon would be caught unawares and alone in the darkness of the night. To feel his hot breath upon your throat is to know terror and death. To hear his howl is to know how it would feel to have your bones turn to ice. Never look into his glowing yellow eyes or gaze upon his bloody maw. If you hear him come it is already too late.
The mountain folk know him well, they lock their doors and bar their windows on nights when the moon is a round silver disc in the sky. They can hear the wolves howling still, now he is with them. Leading the pack, hunting, waiting to catch the unwary. His prey is man, all men. No one is safe while the unholy beast roams.
CHAPTER 12
Proverbs 4 Verse 16 – “Wicked people cannot sleep unless they have done something wrong.”
By Quenntis Ashby
The numbers kept adding up to eleven. There they were. “2-2-1-2-2-2”. Five twos and a one. Avakka smiled nervously at his boss, Doctor Aliater. Avakka’s teeth were missing and something was wrong with his vision. He lisped when he spoke, sounding like the mop he kept pushing ahead of him after wetting it in the bucket he dragged behind him – four wobbly wheels squeaked in Micenese, “Silly-silly-weak-silly-silly-silly.” He counted the syllables like his poetry teacher taught him to. Always one too many. It was driving him insane.
“Ay Doc’,” his gums slapped in quiet greeting again. Only a grunt from behind the dimly-lit white of Doctor Aliater’s coat. He held up a marker and drew some lines on the soles of a baby’s wriggling feet.
“Must be ticklish as all hell. Poor baby!” thought Avakka to himself. He heard the baby gurgle and giggle before another blinding headache forced him to drop onto his sore knees again. He counted to eleven as he held onto the mop with both hands before pulling himself up again. “1-2, 1-2, 1, 1-2, 1-2 , 1-2”. He never gave up – something his dad taught him after he got back from serving in Afghanistan...
“Son, ya’ enemee keeps wantin’ ta keep puttin’ ya’ down. You gots ta keep gettin’ up, no matter wha’! You stay down, you gonna keep on dyin’! Up, soldier! Up.”
Avakka looked down the double row of hospital beds stretched out on both sides. His job was to keep mopping up the floor while the doctor worked on the patients. Everyone was asleep because the lights were on dim – twilight grays lit his every step. He listened to the baby girl giggle some more before she started crying in earnest. Doctor Aliater was cutting deep and carefully along the lines he’d previously drawn with a marker. Blood was spurting out of her mutilated feet as he peeled the flaps of skin off both tiny leg bones. Half a liter of blood quickly made a puddle. It wasn’t much, but it was everything.
“Whadda fukya’ doin’ Doc’?” he mumbled as another headache hit. This time he blacked out.
The dead bodies on the gurneys lay still, covered in blue lines and recently missing large sections of flesh peeled right down to the bone. Doctor Aliater chewed thoughtfully on another fresh morsel. Avakka had two narrow steel tubes conveniently protruding upwards from his skull. Aliater took another small sip before pushing the tubes in slightly deeper.
“Thank you, brother.”
CHAPTER 13
Baby Monitor
By Gretchen Steen
“I’m late, everybody doing OK tonight?” as the old building’s heavy door slammed.
“Old” Harry, our security guard, sat chuckling maliciously behind his desk. “Crazy” Grace, clapping, whistling, and skipping up the hall, was grinning like a Cheshire cat. “Chicken” Joyce, bow-legged and limping, carefully climbed the basement stairs and yelled, “Wash is in…”
Desks were dusted, carpets vacuumed and bathrooms stocked, scrubbed and disinfected. All that was left…fresh bathroom towels for the “prissy” executives, they had their ‘own’. What made them think they were too good for the employees’ facilities and TOO GOOD for paper towels?
Lifting the wet towels from the washer, Joyce filled the oversized dryer. Stepping back, she peered into the dark rooms of the old basement. She heard something, sounded like breathing. Quickly throwing in softener sheets, she slammed the door, turned on the timer and pressed the start button. Her heart beat faster. She limped around the corner and looked back. The breathing was louder…closer…
Finished upstairs, Amy walked to the main staircase and down to the first floor open lobby. “Grace is in the kitchen…” Harry said, sitting cross-legged, tapping his nightstick against his shoe.
Passing the basement door, she could faintly hear the dryer running. Amy waited, and watched as Joyce scuffled to the stairs, nervously looked around again, grabbed the railing and, step by step, meticulously returned.
“How much longer…”
She was well behind the regular schedule. “Another hour…my legs are really bad tonight, sorry,” she replied, with a phony smile. “Would you mind getting them when they’re done?”
“You know the schedule…tonight’s your night, sorry!” You only clean the president’s office and do the laundry ONCE a week…lazy ass!
An hour passed, limping out of the office, she made her way slowly to the basement.
Harry wasn’t at his desk…apparently on his nightly rounds. Grace, coming up the hall from the kitchen, dragging a full garbage bag, called out, “Towels done yet?”
“She’s doing them now.”
Harry was on the steps outside the building and Grace stopped at the basement door. She gave him a wink and laughed uncontrollably.
As she folded, the breathing began again…heavy and forceful. “Joyce…JOYCE…GET OUT…I’m coming for YOU!!”
Grace flipped the basement lights off, back on and waited.
Joyce ran up the stair
s, two at a time, white as a sheet, eyes saucer wide. “This place IS HAUNTED!” Pushing Grace aside, she bolted passed Harry and out the door.
Laughing wildly, we all came to the same conclusion…her legs were FINE!!
CHAPTER 14
The Runaway Elevator
By Eve Menteuse
“I have strange dreams about angels taking me to Heaven,” said Sister Agnes. “Anyone else had a strange dream?”
There was a long silence. I don’t like silence much, so I spoke.
“I had a dream last night that scared me.”
“Tell us about it, my dear.” All eyes were upon me and I couldn’t really back out.
“Well,” I began. “In this dream, I got into a lift in a very tall building. I was all alone and very scared because I suffer from claustrophobia. Well, it’s not really claustrophobia as such. I don’t mind being confined in small spaces, as long as I’m not alone, but in the dream, I was alone and I had to go to the top floor.”