CHAPTER 36
Why I Don’t Like Dolls
By WiSpY
Dolls give me the creeps.
I guess it goes back to the time my step sister gave me that special gift from the Caribbean trip she took when we both were nine. It’s weird having a sister who’s your age and not your twin, but my step-mother didn’t ask me when she brought Anna into my life; a package deal when she married Dad after mom died in the accident. Anna’s dad was still alive, and he took Anna to the sunny south in the winter she brought me the doll.
I hated it on sight; shell eyes and a big creepy mouth full of big, creepy teeth, all framed by a mane of what looked like monkey fur and settled into skin that felt disgustingly like real, human skin when you touched it.
The first night it stayed in my room we had a big storm. I couldn’t sleep, cause I hate lightning, so I sat and stared at the window.
Stared at the sill where the doll sat.
And I swear to God, that thing was moving. Sure, it could have been the lightning flashes playing shadows across its face, but the mouth seemed to move and in the thunder I could swear I heard its voice; a terrible gravely rumble mocking me in my fear.
I must have fallen asleep because I remember a loud crack of thunder woke me and a flash of lightning lit up the night sky and illuminated the bare window sill where the doll had been.
I didn’t really register the difference in the window view until the next morning when the screams of my step mother and step sister woke me. I shot bolt upright in bed and the first thing my eyes set upon was that creepy ass little doll, sitting on the floor, its big creepy mouth and all of its big creepy teeth smeared in blood.
*****
The police had a lot of questions for my sister and me. That doll they wanted to keep.
I learned a lot of new words that day. Some were curse words my step-mother uttered, but the really interesting ones had to do with Anna’s trip and her Daddy.
They’d been to a nasty sounding place called Hatey, which seemed like a miserable name to me.
Her Daddy’s name was Bokor, I think he was a doctor or something…
Anyway, my own Daddy I never saw again, except at the funeral, and I never did see that doll again …
CHAPTER 37
The Grange
By Lindsey J. Parsons
She should go straight home, the light was beginning to fail with the onset of evening. It was never a comfortable place to be in daylight, in the evening... A shiver ran up her spine.
Pulling up to the top of the drive and turning off the car lights, May grabbed the keys to The Grange.
“It’s not dark yet, if I’m quick I can be round and out in ten minutes,” She tried to reassure herself.
Hurrying across the little court yard to the back door, May kept her eyes down staring at the keys in her hand. The back of the old Victorian house was three stories high with plain blank windows. May always felt as if there were someone watching from inside, even though the house was empty.
This was the last place she wanted to be, but being the office junior there was no one to pass the job on too. It always fell to her to check the place over between tenants. It was an increasingly regular job as tenants never seemed to stay long. The crying that could be heard in the room above the kitchen, the footsteps in the hallway and one tenant said he’d seen the ghost of a girl stood over him as he lay in bed. These were some of the reasons cited for moving on.
Letting herself in, May first inspected the utility room. Clean and empty thankfully, nothing to make a note of there. The Grange was a Victorian building with high ceilings and leaded windows to the main rooms. The kitchen was big and airy with a range cooker and loads of cupboards. She hurried though checking them before moving on to the rest of the house.
As May entered the main hallway silence fell around her and the light faded into heavy gloom. The sound of footsteps on the flagstone floor echoed through the house causing her to gasp and break out in a sweat. Her heart stared beating faster as the cold air chilled the sweat on her skin.
A sudden loud ringing sound caused May to scream, then realising it was just the telephone she laughed at herself.
“Can I speak to Mr. Freeman?” a sharp voice asked.
“I’m sorry he doesn’t live here anymore.” May replaced the receiver and turning was engulfed in a silvery white mist.
After a three day search May Jeffrie’s body was discovered hanging from the banister in the old house known as The Grange.
CHAPTER 38
Revelations
By Quenntis Ashby
You say, “Tin!” and then live another 830 years. You can’t have children. Instead you have another vision and see an open door floating in front of you. A voice that sounds like a trumpet speaks, “Come up here! I will show you what must happen after this.” At once something takes control of you. Once up there you see your empty throne. A face in the mirror gleams like jasper and carnelian and everywhere are emerald greens. In a circle round your seat are four-and-twenty more thrones, on which sit elderly but virile creatures of every beautiful and cruel design. They are naked but for strong binding chains of titanium gold around their temples, necks, waists, and genitalia. Flashes of lightning, grumblings, and peals of maniacal laughter thunder in your very bones. Seven lighted torches are burning fiercely, giving off more than light. A sea of rippling molten glass makes up the floor you walk on. Clear as crystal, it hums.
The vision fades from you. You awake feverish hot somewhere in a hut in Africa. Your seventh comfort wife is sleeping on your right. Two small male children snuggle between you. Surely not yours? It is time. You feel the changes taking place the longer you keep from feeding. You thirst for warm blood. You hunger for meat off the bone, the varied succulent tastes and textures of various organs steaming in their still-living-dying human owners. You sigh. You look at this latest attempt to masquerade as a family and feel love tainted with disgust for these creatures you have to feed off to survive. You curse your curse. Your nails are long and diamond sharp. Teeth multiply in your mouth and your tongue splits into two. You don’t have much time.
She murmurs another man’s name, “Shaka ka Senzangakhona,” in her sleep and turns on her side with an arm curled around the two children. You stand in the doorway to salvation, lifting your uncircumcised weapon with both hands as you unsheathe it in the full moonlight. A long forked tail uncurls and snakes out of your ass. Your heels grow hooves. Your smooth skin reddens. You dare not howl at the moon, but you desperately want to. Your heart and soul are fighting a losing battle against your unnatural instincts – your body’s immortal curse. You growl because you cannot speak now.
You turn and bend down to eat. She opens her eyes and smiles and says, “I love you.” You say nothing.
CHAPTER 39
It Started With A Kiss
By Quenntis Ashby
“It’s tar!”
Ted, with Akis’s lips wrapped around a car, a moving car.
Ted, with Akis in the begging position, scolding her for disobedience.
Ted, with the remains of the car in a shoebox, delivering it to grieving parents.
Ted, with Akis now on a leash in the park, then at the zoo, and then illegally in the air.
Ted, with a Police Witch on a broomstick waving a ticket and a wand at them both.
Ted in handcuffs, with Akis in wing-irons and a muzzle.
Ted, with a sapphire credit card out on bail.
Akis, still in the massive holding cell, with wings tied back and mouth muzzled.
Akis, pining for her owner, awaiting the lethal injection.
Akis, surviving the injection, then the electrocution, then the hanging.
Akis, with a temper growing out of control.
“It’s a star!”
Ted, with a new wet girlfriend in tow, bruised lips locked, teeth chipped, tongues tired.
Ted, with one des
perate eye on the sky and the other buried in scaly cleavage.
Ted, going blue, unable to breathe underwater with a mermaid who can.
Akis, now free again, diving to the rescue.
Akis’s flame put out by salty seawater and the mermaid’s father’s magical trident.
Akis, accused of murder and sentenced to moon duty by a jury of peers.
“It started with Akis!”
Ted, with video proof on his cellphone.
Parents, with pictures of small children smiling between the gaps in their teeth.
Police Witch, with air speed trap photo in hand.
Prison Guards, bandaged and missing limbs in the failed executions of their duties.
Akis, with a mouthful of broken teeth and clipped wings, singed and lisping.
Ted, with another shovel full of excellent tar, fresh from the pits of hell itself.
Akis, fully healed, burping furious tar bubbles from afar.
World, on the brink of annihilation, and the extinction of every living thing on two legs on land, in the air, and in the sea.
Akis Armageddon, the dragon who dared to kiss and lived to swish a fiery tail to end the fairytales of a fantastical earth gone bad, for good.
Ted Bloonder, the boy who dared to love a dragon, the last of the great monsters, who died because of his inability to control the beast without.
Mermaid Lithe, the silliest little mermaid to ever get killed in the course of feeding on a human boy, a supposedly easy meal-in-sneakers.
It started with a kiss and ended with a hiss.
CHAPTER 40
Worms
By William Holt
Have you ever noticed how something you can't see, like the exhaust from an automobile, can still cast a shadow on the pavement in bright sunlight? When I see this phenomenon, I remember my high school friend's funeral.
Sixth period biology. The dissecting pans, one for every two students, held one large dead earthworm each. Mr. Burns said, "Today we're doing a basic dissection of Lumbricus terrestris. You have a scalpel, scissors, forceps, and pins. Please try hard to avoid cutting into the intestine, and be ready to make a drawing of your completed work. Each of you is responsible for his or her own drawing; you may divide the actual cutting and pinning any way you wish. Steady hands, now." And he sat down, leaving us to our task.
Jerry Grant, my partner, was more interested in girls than in biology, but he set to work with a delicate touch, and soon the worm was open from stem to stern, its digestive tract unmarred. Suddenly he turned, distracted, and said, "What's she doing here? She's gorgeous!"
I saw no one. But he continued to stare at an empty spot in the room. Then his head tilted back and he sighed with pleasure--just before collapsing to the floor in what appeared to be an epileptic seizure. We all cleared a space for him, and Mr. Burns called the school nurse, who evidently summoned an ambulance, since I heard a siren approaching fast just as Jerry's spasms started to lessen.
When he could speak, he muttered, "Something got inside me when she kissed me. It felt like a worm."
He grabbed for his groin. "It's in here," he muttered.
But then he writhed around and put a hand on his lower back. "It's moving up!" he said, sounding panicky, as paramedics arrived with a stretcher.
Then Jerry was clutching his head, his face gray and his breathing labored.
Once at the hospital, Jerry got steadily worse, the grayish pallor suffusing his whole body. The doctors in Intensive Care could do nothing for him, nor could they diagnose his condition, though one suggested a psychosomatic reaction.
His words were worse than his physical deterioration. Pointing with a quivering finger, he rasped, "She's right here. Don't you see her? She's here in the corner of the room! Help!"
My friend died at four the next morning. The funeral took place two days later. Throughout his graveside service, a girl shaped shadow moved on the grass. I watched, terrified.
CHAPTER 41
Witches, Daemons and Magi, Oh My
By David J. Muir
By David J. Muir
Gabriel of Alba, Magi War Master and his partner in the United Magical Investigations Agency, Susie Owens, Mancunian Wizard, looked over the wall at the Black Witch Kabal as they prepared to sacrifice the Magi child, for their ritual.
“So, how we going to play this?” She asked him, her Mancunian accent shining through.
“I thought we’d kill them before they killed the kid.” He replied in a Glaswegian accent.
“Simple but affective,” she nodded, “What about the daemon?”
“I thought a bit of banishment would do the trick.” He replied taking a look at the six foot, five hundred pounds, heavily scaled Sapakna Daemon.
“A tad on the obvious side.” She replied with a snort, six months of working together and it was like they had known each other their whole lives.
“You get the kid; I’ll distract the bad guys.” He said, jumping over the wall, he lobbed fire balls and ice blades at the Black witches, who lost their concentration. He could hear the baby Magi cry, as they were siphoning the power from her.
The rage filled him and he launched himself at the daemon, ice sword appearing in his hand, they battled left and right, spells from the Black witches pinging off his shield, though it wouldn’t last long.
Susie, taking advantage of the distraction, picked the baby Magi from the altar, cooing at her to keep her quiet. The distraction didn’t last too long. She had already shielded herself, and the baby in her arms was protected too, but like Gabriel it wasn’t going to last.
“A little help.” She shouted at him, as his Ice sword sliced through the shoulder of the Daemon, down through its torso diagonally, and then pulled the human heart that housed the soul that was used to summon it. Gabriel turned and began lobbing more fireballs and ice blades, blasting through and exploding the Dark Witches shields. “Come on, we need to get out of here.”
“I think I can handle that.” He said waiting until the girl wizard had got to the exit. He boosted his shield, then lowered his hands, threw them up and slammed down again, pulling the ceiling down on top of the Witch Kabal. Bits of masonry and wood impacted off his shield as he ran towards the exit.
He found Susie up on the surface, baby in her arms.
“So much for them,” he said, and saw Susie’s shocked and surprised face. “What’s wrong?”
“The kid’s only asleep.”
CHAPTER42
Old Memories
By Will Macmillan Jones
Although the day was warm, the drive lay in tree-haunted shadow, and the gate was cold against my hand. The Estate Agent looked back, impatiently.
“I’ve another viewing in an hour,” she said. Her heels clicked on the drive as she walked away. Still with a strange chill in my hand, I followed. This had been my grandparent’s house: I’d come to view it – for sale yet again. Round the corner of the drive, and there it lay wrapped in silence. The windows glowered down the drive at the intruders..
“Come on,” called the Estate Agent, and opened the oaken door, with the little black studs I recalled so well. “Been empty for a month, that’s why it’s cold,” she added. But the chill drifting from the hall into the sunshine told other stories, and even the agent shivered. I wasn’t too comfortable as the front door closed behind me, but she was already off down the hall into the front room, which served as both library and dining room. Books ran the length of the wall, floor to ceiling, as they had done when I last walked into this room. Had it ever changed, as the years fled past?
The chill lessened, as I followed her and looked around the well-remembered room. All those family Christmases spent here, my sister and I excited; not noticing the occasional odd look shared by the adults.
“Upstairs we have three bedrooms, and the bathroom,” she read from her clipboard, and led the way up the stairs. I waited, and then just as I had all those years ago, ran up
the stairs, and into the safety of the front bedroom.
“You’ve found the front bedroom,” she said, and went off to the master bedroom. An ancient yet familiar feeling came over me, and I pushed the door very tightly shut. Was that an almost breath on the landing? Not quite a footfall? A heavy velvet curtain hung there, and I pulled it across the doorway. Her feet, heels clicking fast, started down onto the stairs; reached the half landing, and stopped abruptly. After counting to ten, I opened the door, and walked firmly down the echoing, empty stairway, across the hall and out through the open front door, not looking behind. The chill followed me out and the door of the empty house slid closed behind me. The windows glowered as I made my solitary way down the drive. I would never want to own my grandparents’ house.
CHAPTER 43
Feeding Time
By Kira Morgana