Horror d’ouvres
By Lisa McCourt Hollar
First publication 2011
All rights reserved
Copyright ©2012 by Lisa McCourt Hollar
Cover Art ©Janet Sked
Jezri’s Nightmares
https://www.lisamccourthollar.com
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Don’t Play With Your Food
A short story from
Flashes From The Grave
Don’t Play With Your Food
Galan sharpened his teeth while he watched the couple setting up their camp site in the clearing below his perch. He had been there for two days, waiting patiently for his prey and was pleased to see his persistence rewarded. When he’d first seen the two a week ago, buying supplies in the feed store, he knew they would eventually make their way to the clearing. Hikers always found their way there eventually, though they didn’t always make it back down the mountain. These two would be some of the misfortunates.
The woman looked a bit scrawny for his taste, but her tits were huge. He licked his lips thinking about how they would feel in his mouth. Of course he would have to take care of the man first and he wasn’t so small. That’s what his .30-06 was for, to take care of the heavyweight from a distance. Then the real fun would begin.
Galan enjoyed this part of the game though, watching the couple in secret, as they went about their business, unaware they were being stalked. They’d finished setting up the tent and were starting a fire. The man set a pot over the flames, hanging from a stand that straddled the flames. The woman was cutting vegetables and meat, making some kind of stew for them to have for their dinner. She dumped the ingredients into the pot and then stretched, smiling at the man. Her breasts were pushing against the thin t-shirt she wore and Galen groaned, his cock growing hard. The man came up behind her and kissed her neck, his hands reaching under her shirt and squeezing her nipples, which Galen could see harden, even from his distance. They were fat, plump nipples, the kind he could roll around on his tongue.
The couple kissed and Galan reached into his pants, rubbing himself. He wasn’t sure he could wait until tonight to start the fun. Then the couple disappeared into the tent and Galen nearly screamed in frustration.
The next few hours dragged slowly. The two emerged from the tent after only fifteen minutes, the man looking embarrassed, the woman annoyed. Galan chuckled as the man reached out, trying to run his fingers through her hair and she pulled away. Looked like being a hulking muscle man didn’t mean the muscle that really counted did so well. The bitch might welcome his attention.
Absentmindedly he pulled out his file and began scraping it across his teeth, sharpening the edges. It was more fun when they were willing; it made their fear greater when they realized what he had in store for them. Of course that also meant abandoning his station and taking care of the male one on one. The tasty treat down there wouldn’t likely be eager to have him on top of her if she saw her man’s head splattered all over the trees. It was approaching dusk. If he wanted to get there before they retired, he had better get moving. Climbing down from the tree, he headed down the steep path that led to the campground.
“What was that?” Amy looked around; peering into the woods, hoping it wasn’t a bear that made the snapping sound of a trig breaking beneath something heavy.
“What was what,” Steve asked in-between belches.
“I heard something in the woods,” Amy said, shooting her fiancé a disgusted look, wondering if he could he be any more vulgar?
“Probably just a deer, maybe an opossum or a raccoon, there isn’t anything more wild in these woods.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Galan said, stepping into the open and offering a friendly smile. He was amused at how the woman jumped when he’d made his presence known.
Amy stared at the man a moment, surprised to see another human this far in the wild, then breathed a sigh of relief, recognizing him from the feed store where they had purchased their supplies.
“I’m glad to see you found the place easily enough. Takes some hikers a week before they reach it.”
“What are you doing out here.” Amy asked, a little leery at his appearance twice on their camping trip. He seemed a little too redneck and possibly a little inbred. Movies had taught her to watch out for this type.
“There’s a coyote loose in the woods somewhere. Killed a couple of chickens and my neighbor’s dog.”
“Oh my God,” Amy said, standing up and looking around.
“Oh, I don’t think he’s anywhere around here, but I saw your campfire and thought least I could do was warn you. Even if it is around here, he’ll steer clear of you, but it wouldn’t hurt to put your food up where the beast can’t get it.
“Of course,” Steve said, nodding to a bag that was swinging from a tree at the edge of their camp site.
“Oh, not there,” Galan said, “that will attract them to your campsite. You need to take it a ways into the woods.”
“Them,” Amy asked, shivering. “I thought you said there was just one.”
“One that we know of, but coyote are like vermin, where there’s one, there’s two, or three.”
“Two or three?”
“Or four, you never know.” Galan tried not to look smug at the fear in her eyes.
“Are you kidding me,” the man said, sounding irritated. Looking over his handy work that he was now being told he would need to take down and string up elsewhere, he shook his head, “No, it’s staying where it is.”
“Your call,” Galan said, “but if you wake up with a coyote gnawing at your foot, you only have yourself to blame.”
“Steve,” Amy said, a warning sound at the back of her throat.
“How far out do I need to take it,” Steve asked Galan.
“I’ll show you,” Galan said, smiling to himself as he helped the dumbass take down the sack.
As they trekked into the woods, Steve grumbled about what a waste this week had been.
“I don’t even know why I let her talk me into this, camping is her thing, not mine.”
“She goes camping a lot,” Galan asked, trying to keep Steve distracted until the time came.
“Her family used to camp all the time when she was a girl. They went on some kind of a trip when she was fifteen and they all died in some kind of accident, except for her. This was her idea to get over her fears before we get married.”
“Nice quiet area for a little romance,” Galan said, smirking at the loser.
“What romance,” Steve snorted. “Tried getting it on with her earlier, but everything I did was wrong. She complained about everything, a stick poking her in the back, the way I was kissing her, even the condoms I brought weren’t the right ones. I finally called it quits.”
Galan thought they had come far enough and stopped. Looking at Steve he scratched his head and said, “Well maybe she just didn’t think you were man enough.”
“What,” Steve asked, turning to look at the inbred freak.
“Maybe she didn’t think you were man enough.” Then Galen pointed his gun at Steve and pulled the trigger, splattering Steve’s brains on the tree behind him. Untying the bag, Galan fastened the rope to the man’s feet and hung his body from the tree.
Back at the camp, Amy was waiting at the table they’d set up when Galan came back from the hike alone. “Where’s Steve,” she asked, looking at Galan expectantly.
“He’ll be along,” Galan lied. “I think he wanted to take a bit of a walk.”
; “In the dark?”
“He said the two of you had a fight earlier and he thought it best if he stayed away for a bit.”
“Fine with me,” Amy said, looking confused.
Galan reached out and touched her hand, “If you ask me, he’s being stupid. Out here in the middle of nowhere with only the birds and squirrels around, he should be making love with you, not war.”
Amy was quiet for a moment, letting him keep his hand where it was. Galan moved it up her arm, over her shoulder and back down. When she didn’t stop him, he moved it back up again, and then touching her cheek, he leaned in and kissed her.
Amy slipped her tongue in his mouth and Galan struggled to control himself. He wanted to sink his teeth into the tender flesh, but that would ruin the rest of the game. She leaned into him, pressing her breasts against him. Galan had twisted his fingers into her hair, but he relaxed his grip, letting her dark tresses fall to her shoulder as his hands sought the mounds that were stretching her shirt to capacity. They were real! He had been worried about that, having once killed a woman that had implants; her breasts had been completely inedible.
Amy reached down and touched his cock, pressing hard against the jeans so he could feel her hand more closely. “I think,” she whispered in his ear, “I’m going to eat that first.”
“Go ahead,” he moaned, pushing her head down, his eyes closed as he felt her unzip his pants. It had been a while since he’d had a woman willingly do this to him; most usually were sobbing at this point and, while he got a rush from their fear, there was no way he would trust them not to bite his dick off, not that he could blame them if they did, since he was going to kill them and eat their body parts. But he wasn’t the food, they were. ‘Nothing wrong with playing with my food though,’ he thought, feeling her mouth close around him. A moment later his eyes popped open, a sharp pain paralyzing him as she bit into it, sinking her teeth into his hardened cock and severing his penis from his body in two sharp bites.
Leaning back, Amy held the organ in her hand, licking the blood from it and smiling at him coyly. He struggled to speak, but the pain was so intense that he couldn’t move.
“You don’t recognize me, do you?”
Galan stared at the woman as though she’d grown a second head, his fingers grasping for his firearm. Amy followed his movements and pulled the gun out of his reach.
“It’s been seven years, but I recognized you the minute I saw you in the feed store. It helps that I was looking for you though…or your father. Is he still alive?”
Galan shook his head, beginning to get his senses back. He reached behind him, looking for the knife he kept in his back pocket.
“You looking for this?” The woman held his knife up, laughing at how easy it had been to lift it. He should have bit her tongue off when he had the chance. “Well it’s too bad he’s not around anymore. I had plans for that bastard.”
“Who are you,” Galan asked.
“Look at my face,” Amy said, “and picture me as a fifteen year old girl. I was blond then and I didn’t have this scar.” Amy lifted up her shirt, revealing her breasts. The right one was perfect, but the left one was scarred from where Galan’s father had tried to cut it off seven years earlier, showing his son the proper way to ‘filet’ a breast.
“That’s right,” Amy said, seeing that he knew her now, “I was the one that got away. But before I did, I had to watch as you and your father killed my dad!
Amy kicked Galan in the face then, knocking him backwards. His head hit a rock on the ground and he shook his head, trying to sit up whilst the world spun out of control.
“Then,” she said, continuing her tirade, her booted foot landing in his side, “I had to watch your fat fuck of a father rape my mother and my sister and then kill them too.”
Amy’s boot connected with Galan’s mouth and he felt a sharpened tooth break. Amy leaned forward, grabbing his jaw and staring into his eyes. “Your filthy paw,” she said, purposely putting a hillbilly twang in her voice, “threatened to cut my eyes out and make me eat them if I didn’t watch, so I did, hoping that somehow I would wake up and the nightmare would be over. Then, after he’d killed them, cut their bodies up in front of me, your mousey hag of a mother cooked them, making me… ME, help her in the kitchen and then I had to sit at that filthy slab you called a dining room table and eat my family, while your dad held my mouth shut so I couldn’t spit it out. And then I had to endure being raped by you on that very same slab, my mother’s head staring back at me! But in the end, I got away. I survived and I vowed I would come back and kill you.”
She had been stalking around his body as she spoke, the memory of the nightmare she survived spurring her on. “I’ll never forget the look on your mother’s face when I grabbed that knife and shoved it into her piggy little throat, or how you screamed when I slashed into your arm. I see you still have the scar…fitting since I will have mine forever.”
Circling him, enjoying the game, she stopped in front of Galan and slashed at his throat, grazing the skin but not cutting deep enough to do any damage. Reaching out, Galan grabbed her wrists, pulling her down on top of him, trying to wrestle the knife from her. Amy laughed, and then bit into his ear. Screaming, Galan let go and rolled away, his ear tearing from his head.
“I still don’t know how I got down the mountain, but I did. I’d lost a lot of blood and was stark raving mad when I stumbled into the feed store, babbling about a family of inbreeds that ate my family. It was the thing of horror films and at first I think they thought I was delusional, but then my family never came back down and they found signs that there had been a struggle at the camp site…a lot of blood and a finger, my sisters. The thing is,” Amy said, “no one believed me when I told them about what happened, even after the evidence they’d found. I’d been in a mental institute for a while; this camping trip was a celebration of my renewed health. When it became clear something had happened, they thought I was the one that killed my family and it was back to the loony bin for me…but you know what, I’d learned something from you.”
Amy leaned in towards Galan again, licking the blood that was trickling from his mouth. “You know what that is? I learned I loved human flesh. So when I got out, I started hunting my own prey. Steve was going to be dinner tomorrow night if you didn’t show up, thank God for him you did. Where is he by the way? Oh it doesn’t matter,” Amy said, not giving Galan a chance to answer, “I’m sure I’ll find him, strung up in a tree somewhere. I’ve got time, since I’m not going to look for him til morning. Tonight though, is for you my love.”
Amy took the knife and plunged it into Galan, right at the base of his throat, then pulled down. It happened so fast, Galan didn’t have a chance to react. He knelt there on his knees, speechless as his intestines spilled onto the ground. Then he fell backwards, wondering how this had happened.
“Now what is it your mother told you,” Amy asked, “just before I killed her? I remember it clearly, because you were torturing me, forcing me to do all kinds of obscene things, in the hopes I could live another day. Don’t play with your food.” Then Amy laughed as she sliced into his side and cut out his liver.
Other stories in Flashes From the Grave include:
Zombie Beach
The Rat King
The Vampires Hunter’s Wife
The Zombie Reunification Act
Don’t Play With Your Food
The Bearded Man
The Birth Of Evil
No Respect For The Dead
The Uninvited
Dead Charlie
The Circle Of Life
Til Death We Meet Again
Caged
Dinner
A short story from
Tales of Terror
Dinner
Humming to herself and sashaying to the salsa music playing on the radio, Stella was in a good mood.
"You know," she said to her neighbor who was sitting at the kitchen table, "I love to
salsa, especially when I'm cooking."
Kim didn't answer, but Stella didn't mind. The two hadn't been the best of friends. Their fights were famous around the neighborhood and if anyone had seen them together now, they would have been shocked. Stella was glad though that they were working their differences out.
Filling in the silence, Stella said, "I tried to get Howard to take salsa lessons with me, but he hates dancing. He's more comfortable sitting in front of the telly with a beer in his hand. So I took them on my own. That's how I met Stan."
Finished with the onions, Stella placed them in a bowl and stared out the window. Sighing, she said, "Stan is the one that showed me how Howard was just holding me back. When I first started my affair with him, I was only looking for a little fun. Instead, I found my soul. He's coming for dinner tonight. I think you'll like him."
Kim's eyes widened and Stella laughed. "I know, it takes some gall to have your lover come to dinner with your husband, but somehow I don't think Howard will mind. Will you Howard?"
Stella reached into a bag and pulled her husband's head out, waving it gleefully in her neighbor's face. Trying to push herself away from Howard's severed head, Kim's eyes nearly popped from their sockets. Her throat strained, attempting to scream, but all she could do was make panicked grunts through the duct tape covering her mouth.
"Awww, what's the matter Kim? Don't you think he looks good?" Stella pushed Howard's head towards Kim's face, mashing his lips against her skin. The blood had already drained, so there wasn't any gore to drip on the woman, who seemed close to having a heart attack.
"Don't you want to kiss him, Kim? You didn't seem to mind last night, when he was panting all over you."
Sobbing now, Kim's eyes filled up with tears that spilled over and ran down the side of her face. Then a door at the front of the house slammed shut, causing Kim to jump. Hope shined in her eyes when a voice called out, "Hey mom, I'm home!"
"Straight to your room, young lady," Stella called out. "You have homework to do." She shook her head when a few moments later the sound of some metal band came blaring into the kitchen. "I swear Miranda is going to ruin her ears."
Kim made some more noise through the duct tape and Stella tilted her head, trying to make out what she was saying. "I'm sorry," she said, shaking her head, "I don't understand. Maybe when Stan gets here...he is a speech therapist. He's good at figuring out what people are saying."
Ignoring Kim's muffled outburst, Stella began dicing something that looked like a heart. "It's Howard's," she explained. "I was actually surprised he had one."
Stella laughed at her joke, but when Kim didn't join in, she shook her head. "I don't know about you Kim. Maybe if you had more of a sense of humor, you would get more joy out of life. Then you wouldn't need to go sleep with other women's husbands."
Pausing, Stella looked at her neighbor thoughtfully. "I know, that sounds hypocritical, considering my affair with Stan, but that began because Howard had already left me for you, emotionally, if not physically. So I suppose I should be thanking you."
"Anyway, my first date with Stan was a misunderstanding. I thought he was inviting me to dinner, when really he was inviting me to be dinner. He thought my thighs looked tasty." Stella chuckled at that. "I have been doing Richard Simmons, Dancing to the Oldies for five years now, they had better look tasty. Anyway, there I was, trussed up on his dining room table, waiting for him to take a slice out of me and instead, he looked into my eyes and fell in love. Ruined his dinner plans. But it worked out. He ended up luring a little boy over and he made a quick stew out of him. I was of course horrified at first, but I didn't want to be rude, so I took a bite. Imagine my surprise when I discovered it was delicious."
By now, Stella had diced Howard's liver and spleen and was mixing them with the onions. Sprinkling in a bit of seasoning, she poured the mixture into Howard's mouth and sewed his lips and neck closed with some heavy twine. Stella then placed her husband's head into a pressure cooker and surrounded it with potatoes and carrots. "Stan gave me the recipe. It's a favorite of his, from when he was a boy. His mother called it Cheaters Delight. She went through a lot of husbands."
There was a knock at the back door. "Oh, he's here!" Excited, Stella ran over and opened the door, falling into Stan's arms. They kissed a moment and then Stella moved aside so Stan could inspect her handiwork. He entered the kitchen, carrying a bottle of wine and sniffing the air, breathing in the aroma that was coming from the stove."
"It smells divine." Then he turned his attention to Kim. "Has it been long enough?"
"I think so."
Stan removed the duct tape and Kim coughed, trying to clear her throat. Dozens of black bugs came crawling out of her mouth, leaving their secretions on her tongue. "You wouldn't know it from the smell," Stan said, "but the dung beetle's secretions are a great marinade."
The kitchen door burst open and Miranda came in, yelling, "Hungry child here. You have to feed me. Oh, Hi Stan." Then, spying Kim, "Ooh I call dibs on the eyes!"
Other stories in Tales of Terror include,
The Dagger
The Dead Husbands Club
The Widow and the Fat Man
The Woodshed
Dolly
Dark Magic
Dinner
The Dress’s Curse
The Truth About Vampires
Bloodrite
Greenlawn Mental Institution
Love Me Daddy
The Search For A Cure
The Costume Ball
Hell’s Tower
Fire
A short story from
Psychotic Mumblings
Fire