The Tooth Collector (and Other Tales of Terror) (14 page)

“I'm sorry. I'm not following. W-what do you
mean?”

His teeth seemed too large when he smiled.
“He deserves a little payback, don't you think?”

“For... for what?”

“For what? Why, for threatening to feed your
pet rabbit to his snake. And in public. I imagine he's even worse
when you two are alone.”

She had nodded. He'd certainly hit the nail
on the head there. She felt odd opening up to a stranger this way,
but she nodded all the same.

Harvey had embarrassed her, that was true.
This was a business meeting, nothing more. The man she sat with at
the lobby bar was a dealer of rare animals. Vivica had been hoping
to retire Abra Cadabra and introduce a more exotic rabbit to the
act.

But Harvey had come through the hotel and
spotted them at the bar together. He'd made a scene, made
accusations. As if she were the unfaithful one! Ha! She knew about
Harvey's indiscretions in the matters of monogamy. Still, he always
found a way to point the finger at her.

“I've got a rabbit that is very different
from the rest.” He flashed that peculiar smile again, all tooth and
no lip. “She's a biter. Positively vicious. You won't need to
handle her, of course. I'll take care of everything.” He winked.
“Just imagine, if you will, the great and powerful Harvey,
humiliated by a rabbit!”

Why had she agreed to such a reckless prank?
The memory pained her now.

The spotlights dimmed as crew members
trickled out from backstage. The audience fell silent. Harvey's
body convulsed against the floor. His eyes rolled back in his
head.

The color drained from Harvey's face, and his
movements slowed to a stop. One last, shaky breath left his lungs.
And then, Harvey started to change...

Thick fur sprouted from his skin. It covered
his neck, his cheeks, his nose—every part of him. His missing
fingers grew back. Then all ten digits fused together into a
disturbing human-like paw. Curved claws grew from the tips. His
ears grew, too, rising up from his head, and he rolled to the side,
coughing, sprinkling the floor with human teeth. Saliva glistened
on his freshly grown fangs.

She scrambled back and rose to her feet just
as Harvey sprang to his. Well, it was really more of a
hop
than anything. He tracked her with his beady red eyes. His
still-human lips curled into a sneer beneath thick fur, and she
could see the sharp points of his teeth.

She removed her high heels and prepared to
run. He lunged at her, but she managed to sidestep him and bolt in
the other direction.

Her bare feet slid in a river of blood. Blood
from when Harvey had died. Time seemed to slow down as she fell,
and all she could think was:
He did die. I saw it with my own
eyes. He did. The Harvey I know is long gone.

She hit the ground, flipped over, saw him
closing in.

Beside her was a table with a mirror affixed
to the front. On any other night, the mirror was just another prop
used for an optical illusion. But tonight, it was a godsend.

She tightened her grip on the stiletto shoe
in her hand and smashed the metal heel into the glass—once, twice,
three times. It shattered. She selected a long, jagged piece,
squeezing it so hard that it sliced into her palm. Blood trickled
down her wrist as he fell onto her, straddled her, opened his mouth
wide, ready to rip her throat out.

She stabbed the piece of glass into the side
of his head directly below his giant ears. It sliced into his
temple. Blood rained down on her face. The glass maimed her hand,
but she kept on pushing, driving the shard deeper and deeper into
his head, until his clawed paws loosened their grip and Harvey's
mutated body slumped to the side.

She crawled away from the monster that had
once been Harvey. Trembling and hysterical, she cried on stage
before an audience of horrified faces. And in that sea of faces,
for the briefest of moments, she could swear she glimpsed a
familiar one. His eyes so dark they glimmered black. A toothy grin,
too big for his head. She was certain he'd been there...
smiling.

All The
Rage

The rock god clenched his jaw as he fought an
overwhelming urge to feed. He gazed into the eyes of his next
meal—baby blue orbs trimmed with long, black lashes. The girl's
attention never wavered from his face. She admired his every
move.

She pursed her curvy, pink lips and waited
for him to speak—waited so that she could nod and eagerly agree. He
was an idol to this girl. A deity. A god.

A wolf in sheep's clothing
, his mind
whispered.
A false god.
He frowned, shook his head. Things
hadn't been the same since the old days. He had grown tired of this
act.

“Wha-what's wrong?” The girl's voice was a
choked whisper, shaky. His eyes locked on hers, a deep russet brown
atop his perfectly chiseled cheekbones. He said nothing, just
observed her with a far-off look in his eye that made her shift
uncomfortably in her seat.

He poured two glasses of champagne and raised
one to his lips. He lowered it slightly and said, “I'm sorry. What
was your name again? It's been a very long tour. My memory is
failing.”

The girl looked down at her hands,
disappointed that her name had been forgotten so quickly. There was
a long pause before she found her voice. “Natalie,” she managed to
say. Her hand trembled as she reached for the glass, unable to
ignore the way he stared at her like a mouthwatering treat.

He studied her, scarcely blinking, a palpable
hunger in his gaze. “Well, Natalie, you are beautiful.” The rock
god flashed his winning smile, and Natalie blushed. She raised the
glass and took a sip. Then a long gulp as he slid closer to her,
his leather pants sliding along the cushions with ease.

He brushed a golden lock of hair from her
face. “Your eyes are such a light blue. So lovely,” he said.

She gazed up at him, wide-eyed, biting her
lip. Her skin was flush with blood; her body radiated warmth. She
let out a shaky breath. It felt hot against his neck. She blinked
slowly as if reluctant to peel her eyes from his perfection. “Thank
you,” she said in a whisper.

The rock god leaned in. He planted a kiss on
her mouth. Their lips parted, tongues roaming.

Her eyes widened. She pressed both hands to
his chest and tried to push away. She moaned in terror as a sharp
pain grew from the pit of her stomach and exploded through every
inch of her body. She flailed her limbs and tried desperately to
pull away, but their lips were sealed by an unnatural force. His
mouth clamped over hers with magnetic strength. Baby blue eyes
bulged from their sockets as she scrambled beneath his weight.
Tears streamed down her cheeks, trailing makeup across her
skin.

She grew pale. She tried to scream but only
managed a faint squeak as she squirmed in his grip, the death
throes of a mouse caught in a trap. She threw feeble punches at her
assailant, exhausting herself in the process.

The girl's life essence poured into his body.
It pulsed through him, filling him up. It didn't have a taste, per
se, but a warm and tingly heat that satiated his hunger. He'd heard
many humans refer to it as a “soul”, this strange energy inside
them. To the rock god, it was merely dinner. More of an appetizer,
really. The main course would be much larger.

He felt the girl weaken in his arms. She
bucked one last time, then fell still. When there was nothing left
of the pretty blonde but the fleshy vessel which had housed her
soul, he pushed the corpse aside. It fell sideways on the sofa,
lifeless limbs drooping over the side of the cushions like a rag
doll.

He crinkled his nose when he realized the
girl's bowels had released and ruined the velvet upholstery. He
stood. He examined the mess and shook his head as if the girl had
done it on purpose, just to spite him.

Oh well. One of his people would clean it up.
The rock god was never in short supply of humans willing to do his
bidding. They found his dark charm irresistible—feeble slaves to
the hypnotic twinkle in his eye.

He swaggered over to the mirror and adjusted
his white leather jacket. He squeezed a dab of mouse into his palm
and applied a second layer of product to his short, perfectly
styled hair. For a long moment, he gazed at his reflection and
frowned. Who was this person in the mirror? Not a rock star. Not
anymore.

He was a puppet, a choreographed pretty boy.
He gave the masses what they wanted—flashy outfits, catchy beats,
bullshit rhymes about love. Mainstream dance music, that's what the
people craved. Rock 'n' roll was dead, some cynics would say.

The rock god didn't like this human vessel: a
well-groomed young man who wore expensive, color-coordinated
outfits. He had plucked eyebrows, perfectly manicured nails. His
earrings alone cost more money than a Fender Strat. The stranger in
the mirror had porcelain veneers, and even his smile was fake.

The rock god squeezed his eyes shut.
Just
one more night as a pop star. And soon the world will see.

Over the decades, the rock god had possessed
many bodies. He couldn't stand to watch humans have all the fun
while he observed their lives from the foggy haze of the spirit
realm. There were things he couldn't experience in his incorporeal
form. Things he wanted—needed—to experience. Mortal sensations:
touch, taste, smell. He wanted to try it all. Everything. To
indulge in the pleasures of the flesh.

He went through human bodies too quickly—he
knew. But how could he resist? He was a passionate god, willed into
existence by thrashing guitar riffs and sweaty bodies driven to
madness by the beat of a drum. He lived life (or rather, the lives
of others) with reckless abandon.

The human bodies he possessed couldn't keep
up. They sustained fatal injuries, stopped working, gave out. They
“died too young”, as most people would say. He could only shrug
when he looked back on his many lives, ended by tragic deaths. The
rock god was accustomed to dying. It was inconsequential, a means
to an end. He didn't like being trapped in the same body for too
long, and the only way out was to die.

Besides, the humans whose lives he borrowed
were forever immortalized, chosen by a god and put on a pedestal by
society. They would go down in history as rock gods, little
reflections of himself. He thought that was repayment enough.

He looked again at his reflection in the
mirror. He recognized the dark, pensive eyes staring back at him
from an unfamiliar, cleanly shaven face. The rock god was in there,
hiding beneath the pop star facade. An omnipotent being who had
spent time as a leather-clad poet, a self-destructive drummer, a
long-haired, V-wing guitarist. He had chugged whiskey on stage,
wrecked hotel rooms, neglected shaving for months on end. He'd been
tattooed from neck to fingertip and growled into the microphone
until his throat was raw and bleeding. In the brown eyes that once
belonged to Triston Seever, the rock god recognized a spark of his
own sinful knowledge. A strange amalgamation of his past lives
swirled in the pupils. He smiled. Yes, he was in there, waiting to
explode.

There was a knock on the door. The rock god
turned and strolled through his stylish hotel suite, past the sofa
where the stiffening corpse lay, slumped over in mess of her own
creation. In the dim light of the lamp, which he'd turned on low to
set the mood, the girl seemed to watch him with puppy love still
burning in her eyes. Her mouth was open, as if frozen in awe. He'd
left countless humans that way.

Muffled by the door, a familiar voice called,
“You ready, kid?” It was Arty, his agent. Or rather, Triston
Seever's agent. Unlike in past lives, the rock god didn't feel a
connection with this one. He didn't bond with this existence,
didn't want to stick around. This new body was temporary (more-so
than in the past), just another means to an end.

He pitied the vapid humans who spoiled the
pop star. He made no effort to understand them. This was a mission,
plain and simple, and Arty was a pawn, a useful piece in the game.
In fact, he often thought about having him for dinner. Maybe lunch.
Possibly even breakfast.

He opened the door, and Arty greeted him.
“Lookin' good, kid.” His smile glowed against his fake tan, his
coiffure of hair plugs barely moving as he nodded his approval. He
gripped the door frame and tried to poke his head into the room.
“You uh... need any assistance in there?”

The rock god laid his palm on Arty's
shoulder. It was meant as a friendly gesture, but Arty jumped back.
He eyed the hand on his shoulder with skittish concern.

“What would I do without you, Arty? Yes,
please send in the cleaner. ”

A bead of sweat formed on Arty's temple, and
the rock god saw it in his eyes again: fear. The Hollywood agent
had been around a long time, and no doubt had seen a lot of things.
He didn't fall for the young man's politeness, not for a second. He
countered it with an equally disingenuous brand of flattery. The
words were all empty. This was show business, after all.

If it wasn't for the thousands upon thousands
of dollars Triston Seever lined Arty's pockets with every week, the
rock god knew he wouldn't tolerate the star's new habits—the most
disturbing of which was slaughtering young girls by the dozens.
Triston Seever was a fraud; Arty knew this. (He was a man who knew
a thing or two about fraud.) The little charmer was no longer an
innocent kid. Something dark had taken hold of his body.