His body parts easily fit into an industrial strength, black trash bag. The tools, bloody plastic sheeting, overalls, and gloves went in a separate one. As I lifted the bag filled with Julie’s killer and swung it into the trunk, I was happy, smiling…vindicated.
The Our Father and Hail Mary.
Nothing will ever be found. I am sure of this. There is no longer anything left to find. It is after midnight when I pull the Lincoln into the garage bay where justice was served. The door rolls down behind me and I let out a long exhale as the final notes of “She’s Leaving Home” play. I eject the CD, snap it in half, and put the pieces in my coat pocket.
The alibi.
When I get to the bedroom, my wife is sitting up, looking concerned. I crack a smile, nod, and she smiles back as I climb in beside her. We now have peace, closure, and a secret that we alone will share. We cry, holding each other, knowing we will be able to sleep tonight. I have been home with her all night and she will never crack or deviate from that story. I am sure of this.
Sean Patrick Reardon is an aspiring writer from Massachusetts and author of the crime thriller "Mindjacker". His stories have appeared in Thrillers Killers 'n' Chillers, A Twist of Noir, and Do Some Damage.
Visit Sean’s blog at https://seanpatrickreardon.blogspot.com
**MIM**
Still Alive
Erin Cole
[United States of America Presidential News Conference; May 10th, 2022]
Our nation is under attack. But do not doubt, for a second, that we will prevail. America is one of the greatest countries and we will persevere through this difficult time—today, tomorrow, and in our children’s future.
* * *
The sun faded into a black and green curtain of light from a debris-filled cloud. Her memory flashed—an explosion—the punch of thunder—shards of glass and metal lacerating her chest and limbs.
Smoke burned air from her lungs (though others could still scream) and something else in the dust stung, like the sharp acidity of chemicals.
Leona gasped. Awake. Her eyes blinked open to a dim space. The smell reminded her of a hospital, astringent with medicine and cleaning solutions, but the room stretched long and narrow, with grooved aluminum walls suggestive of some type of disaster relief shelter. A circle of spotlights shined above her, blinding, but warm.
Whatever had happened, she was still alive.
Without access to memories, Leona didn’t know who she was or much of anything else, just an awareness of the present filled with uncertainty—the fear of what doctors would tell her about the extent of her injuries. From what she could remember, it couldn’t be good.
[Two men were talking]
What are the commonalities among them?
Most share your typical impact injuries: severed subclavian arteries, radial fractures, and chemical burns over most…
What? Leona thought, panic-stricken. She’d been burned? She tried to imagine how she must look, the hideousness of her face and body, but it was too much for her to take in, and she focused on her immediate surroundings.
[A news station broadcasted]
Are you saying these are terrorist cells were dealing with, Nancy?
Yes, Jim. That’s what the FBI is telling us. So far, they believe that this was a biological attack—a new strain of anthrax laced with a synthetic spore.
A synthetic spore?
That’s right. But the physicians at Emanuel Institute won’t say anything else until more tests are concluded.
Dread sunk into Leona’s gut, thick as oil. Charged with fear, she needed to get up, walk around, eat something—pretend that things were normal again. Her stomach growled with an appetite ferocious enough to be its own separate entity that wanted to climb from her jaws. She tried moving her limbs, suddenly fearing that she might not have all of them. Her legs jerked and her arms flinched under a crisp sheet.
She, at least, still had those.
“What the hell?” One of the doctors said. Pitch shook in his voice—something was wrong.
Leona sat up, but with difficulty. The sensation that her head was larger than usual pained her neck. The room swayed. She fell back onto a bed, colder than a mountain river.
One of the doctors leaned over the foot of her bed, starring Leona into stillness. His eyes resembled those on fish, all round and big like. His mouth fell agape. He was trying to scream. When he finally found his voice, it came out shrill and pain-ridden, and he tripped over a tray dangling with bags of yellow and clear liquids.
He crashed to the floor, whimpering like a kicked dog.
Leona rolled her head sideways. The other doctor, staring at her in the same way, grabbed the fallen doctor’s arm, and pulled him to the wall where they both shouted into a speaker next to the door. Dear Lord, Leona thought. I look worse than I can possibly imagine.
She slid her eyes downward and lifted the sheet. Terror stormed through her. The kind of terror when your child runs into the house with blood spilling from somewhere on his face; terror like the laws of nature have fractured and the gates of hell have opened. Her body had been severely cut up. No. Not cut up. Sliced apart, into two gory sections of flesh and muscle. One long line that started below her naval ripped up the charred flesh of her torso to where she could see the curvature of rib bone beneath.
How can this be? She questioned. How could she still be alive? Or even conscious?
[A lab technician beeped through the intercom]
Dr. Gerald, it looks like we’re dealing with a more serious strain of anthrax than we originally hypothesized, one that sustains metabolic processes and prevents organic decomposition through bacteria eating sporophytes. What this means is that the injured might not die, no matter the extent of their injuries. I advise everyone to evacuate, this strain is highly contag…
The doctors, with mannerisms of wild chimpanzees, neglected to hear the voice from the intercom speaker over their yelling and banging on the door.
Leona sat up again. Blood-covered organs glistened and slopped from her gut. She pushed her hand (good Lord, she had only two fingers!) against her gut to hold them in place, but at the touch of warm, squishy tissue, the sweet, coppery smell of blood, her hunger overrode reason. Leona took a bite of her own liver. Madness—hot, black tar—spilled into her thoughts.
What is wrong with me? She pleaded, before taking another bite. She couldn’t help it. It was one the best things she could ever remember eating. And she couldn’t stop. Didn’t want to. Leona yelled for the doctors. “Doctors? Please, help me! Please!”
She couldn’t tell if she was actually talking, but the doctors wouldn’t hear her anyway. They had already opened the door and were scrambling from the facility, moving their arms and legs faster than they could effectively function. Leona wanted to do the same. How could they leave her? Like this?—Eating her own body parts. “Please, somebody, help me.”
Emotions, as feral as primitive reptiles, stirred her with strength and determination. She crawled off the cold bed. One foot gave way under her weight and twisted sideways. Oddly, it didn’t hurt. She tried to look up, grappling to lift her head. It fell to the side, but she could lift it enough to look in the mirror, as much as she didn’t want to. She had to look at herself, like gawking at a car accident or descending into a blackened basement. You don’t want to do it, but you do anyway—darkness has a place in every mind and it must be replenished.
Leona hobbled over to the mirror. Though pain should have immobilized her, it was tolerable—actually, it felt good. When she steered her eyes up and saw the grotesqueness of her own body, she froze, unable to recognize herself. But…but…No. Don’t say it! She screamed at her thoughts. Because her ruined body looked gorgeous, with all the cuts, burns, and broken bones. The severity of her wounds gladdened her.
She wasn’t afraid. Or maybe, just too hungry to care.
In the mirror, behind her, sh
e realized that she wasn’t the only one like that. There were others and they were waking up too. Leona turned for the door. She wanted to talk to those doctors. Before she ate them.
Shuffling down rickety platform steps, confusion haunted her. She looked around, struggling to fathom just what it was she had wanted to do. She walked ahead, following the scent of people.
More hot, black tar erased her thoughts. Time lapsed with it. She was standing at a door, not knowing why, or how she was to get through it, but one thing was clear—she could smell people behind it. They smelled like a barbeque and she moaned to devour meat from bone.
Shouts echoed across the street. Leona turned to find two uniformed men in army-green, crouched behind cars. The expressions on the men’s faces resembled those of the doctors’—fish out of water.
Their arms extended with long black objects. She knew what they were, that they were dangerous, but she couldn’t think of the name for them.
“Shoot it!” The first one hollered.
—memories suddenly crammed into Leona’s conscience. She was a mother. A wife.
“Shoot Higgins!”
—she went to the market for vegetables to make soup.
“Now!”
—she had just run into a friend she hadn’t seen in months when a blast exploded everything around them.
“God dammit, shoot it!”
—and now, she was an it.
A loud pop ricocheted through the streets. Then again and again, a violent crackle of fireworks. Leona felt an invisible punch throw her backward into asphalt. She pushed herself back up. More fireworks boomed, but it didn’t stop her from reaching the door to the building.
How to open? She grabbed the handle and pulled. The hinges snapped and the door fell off the frame. The people inside looked like fish too. Leona grabbed one by the head, went for the neck.
Yes, she was still alive.
Erin Cole has been published in various online magazines and print anthologies, including 'The Best of Lame Goat Press,' 'Back to the Middle of Nowhere: More Horror in Rural America,' and 'Howl: Dark Tales of the Feral and Infernal.' Her stories have been shortlisted in the 2009 Tom Howard / John H. Reid Short Story Contest and won honourable mention in the 2009 Kay Snow Contest. She is the author of Grave Echoes: A Kate Waters Mystery and is currently working on the sequel.
Visit Erin online at https://erincolelive.blogspot.com/
**MIM**
Living in a Box
Lily Childs
Quivering, vaporous forms. They are indistinct as my eyes open to the familiar pale green of the box. Walking, talking photographs, paintings even - that morph back and forth.
My mouth is dry – it’s always that way. Someone sticks a tube between my teeth and I suck in the salty, pale-orange liquid. It tastes of electricity and saccharine.
The figures are clearer now. I recognise them from yesterday and the day before that. One’s a man – an old man. The other is young; his daughter perhaps. She is so thin I call her the Spindle Queen. Inquisitive, her tight face bears more lines than the father, but she has scarlet lips; lips that pout, lips that squeeze when she is angry. I’d like to eat them but she draws back as I lunge, a fruitless effort.
“God, she’s fast.”
They nod heads and play out a psst, psst, psst tittle-tattle game of whispers before turning back to face me. My head dips to one side and I carefully emulate the woman’s fake smile. Mine reaches my eyes where hers does not. With a little flare of the nostrils she backs away, fading though the door until it is an empty picture frame.
I would love to stand up. When did I last use my feet? There are straps at my wrists, at my ankles; around my calves, my thighs and up, up, up to my chest where, without warning my heart swells hot then cold – freezing cold; pulsing fast, fast, faster. I can’t bear the panic. I need to run away. The chair is bolted to the floor but still I try to rock my way out of it, going nowhere. Quickly, my body gathers momentum until with every spasm the leather cuts into my skin, spraying blood over the thin gown. It spreads.
The old man calls into the wall.
“Assistance!”
I’ve heard that word before. It makes everything go black.
From somewhere within my belly I feel the squeal. It mounts and grows, taking my soul with it to the ceiling as its pitch rises. From a great height I circle the seated echo of me and join in with the scream pouring from my other throat. We labour as twins to fill the room with unique harmony.
Assistance arrives through another door. It’s the Spindle Queen. She winces at my song. She calls me Banshee.
I can do that. I’ll visit her in her dreams later, steal her children.
My ethereal being flails at Assistance as the needle is rammed into my corporeal arm. Although she cannot see my wraith she swipes at it anyway, but no matter - I am already sliding back inside. I have just enough time to spit in her face. There is red in it. I have bitten off the end my tongue.
***
Black.
***
“She’s not who she says she is,” the old man tells a gaggle of bespectacled onlookers. He smiles benignly at me so I guess it’s time to show him my claws. Midnight blue. I stretch them out as far as I am able.
“Can you tell our guests your name?” He is bent towards me, not too close but near enough that I can smell pipe tobacco.
“Lompster. Snap, snap.”
The visitors scribble onto notepads and clipboards, muttering and frowning. Old Man Pipe speaks again without averting his gaze from my lovely claws.
“Miss Pearce believes she is a lobster, for today at least.”
One of the group stares at me longer than the others. I wiggle my antenna and hope he will fall into my trap. I’m hungry.
Sniggers and half-concealed smirks ripple through the rabble, and then I spot her; Pipey’s daughter. She’s telling them I claimed I was a doctor last week. That’s ridiculous. I’m only twelve years old. Look at them – they’re the deluded ones in their white coats, writing and gossiping as though they can see inside my head. It’s the reverse. It’s me that knows they’re all after Thermidor for dinner; wondering whether to cook me gently, turning the heat up until I fall asleep – or plunge me into a boiling vat.
I don’t like it. I start to rock. Here it comes...
***
Black.
***
Get it out! Get it out! It’s stuck in my throat. What are you do...?
***
Black.
***
Apparently I’ve been so well-behaved I can go home to Daddy tomorrow.
I don’t know what they’re talking about.
I only arrived here yesterday. Didn’t I?
I’d rather eat razor blades.
***
Black.
***
London. Gerard’s come to collect me. His tone is laden with pity as he rolls out the questions they’ve prompted him with. He must ask them every day.
“What’s your name?” he says as we sidle through traffic in his battered heap.
I clutch my plastic handbag and reply. “Grace Pearce.”
“How old are you Grace?”
“I’m fifteen.” I don’t know if this is true – I’ve just learned to repeat what they told me.
“Where do you live?”
Nothing, silence. I have no idea.
“C’mon Gracey,” he nags. “Hammersmith. You live in Hammersmith, by the weir.”
Something’s wrong. I may not know who I am but I know there’s no weir in Hammersmith. I turn to examine Gerard’s profile. It is bloated, his face scarred and pocked. There’s a scent of turned vinegar about him.
“You’re not my brother,” I say.
Gerard’s plump hands grasp the wheel for a moment. I watch the set of his expression change to one he must have been practising.
“Sure I am, Grace.” He pats my leg. “The doctors said you might have trouble remembering some of the fami
ly as you’ve been... away for so long.
I turn the tables. “Tell me about the family, Gerard. Who’s waiting for me at home?”
He won’t look at me. Won’t. Look. At. Me. He’s not my brother. He’s...
“Dad. Dad’ll be there. With Uncle Barry. And, erm, Uncle Roger.”
Men. All men. I’ve never heard of them.
Sunlight hits the wing-mirror so hard the flash is blinding. I squeeze my eyes shut - once, twice. And there, unmistakable – is the shift. With absolute clarity I recall the day I entered Marston Hospital – Marston Asylum for the Clinically Insane, as it is no longer called. Mama. Mama killing Daddy for loving someone else in their bed. Blood all over her hands and the quilt and the scissors she’s used to stab Daddy and the girl – and she is just a girl; she’s my best friend from school. She’s twelve like me. And now she’s dead. And Daddy’s dead. And by the time the police arrive – because I am clever and phoned them – Mama is dead too. She has cut her own throat. I scream and don’t stop until they give me the needle and...
Black. But there’s no black now. Gerard’s calmly driving, his hand still on my knee, rubbing it too hard. He isn’t my brother. I never had a brother. I think back to the green box, Dr Pipe and his daughter and... Gerard. Gerard was in that group of visitors – how long ago was that? He was the one that paid me extra attention then went off to talk to the Spindle Queen while they shot me full of dope.
I hang my head. It’s obvious.
“How much?”
Gerard slams the breaks on to avoid hitting the back of a bus. “What? What are you talking about?”
“I know what you did. You bought me. She sold you to me.”
He doesn’t even attempt to deny it; simply shrugs his shoulders.
“You were cheap; getting a bit long in the tooth. If you didn’t look so young I wouldn’t have bothered.”
I grab at the door-handle but of course he has put the child-locks on. There’s nothing for it.
The bus pulls into a stop and we draw alongside it; the lights ahead are red. I turn to the window and hammer, hammer, hammer with my fists. A few passengers turn to see what the fuss is about. Beside me Gerard unbuckles his seatbelt and draws a knife; he pokes it into my side. The pain is nothing. I don’t care if he kills me or not. I bite – hard. Red spittle sprays over the window and I bite again. On the bus, children are crying and pointing. A woman has her phone out. “Help!” I mouth; my teeth coated with shards of tongue. In front of us the lights turn green. Gerard, already in gear rams his foot down but the bus-driver is faster, twisting the vehicle into our lane. The car hits it at speed. I fly forward, then back; whiplash tearing through my neck. The last thing I see is Gerard’s broken face the other side of the windscreen. Between his legs the knife he was holding has punctured his groin. I am glad.