Twilight Nightmares (Twisted Tales Special Edition Book 1) (8 page)

Once upon a time, there was a man that worked and lived with his kin, and his family did not cooperate with him. Though his mother called him something other, he lovingly called himself Tim. He boarded with three others, his daughter Karen, his son Daren, and a wife named Kim.

Tim and Kim and Karen
and Daren lived at odds with each other in that house. Tim had to work while Daren loudly played with his mouse. Karen always screamed on her phone while Kim cleaned and dusted their house. Everything was as it should be, but Tim could never focus, causing him to become a raging spouse.

One day Tim took the time to take Karen and Daren to a faraway park while Kim cleaned the floor. The kids played and played, and they played some more. Soon passed an hour, maybe two—maybe four. When they looked up Tim had gone, and they let out a loud cry as loud as a lion's roar.

When he got home, Tim axed Kim in the back. He gave her one, two, maybe four times the whack. With Karen and Daren gone, Tim hid Kim in the shack. An hour later, the bell rang, and behind the door with Karen and Daren there
was a man named
Zach. He took the kids into the house, and Tim began to yack.

"You see, kids, your mother has left us. Karen, Daren... I must put you on a bus. You will ride and ride, and ride some more until you reach your aunt May and your uncle Russ. Just know I love you, now please leave without a fuss."

And so
the kids left the house, Karen with her phone and Daren with his mouse. Finally, Tim found the time to work, three less a louse. At the end of the day, he cleaned the house and rid any trace of his family, even burning his wife in her favorite blue blouse.

There are usually two types of addicts. One type knows control. They can stay away from their addictions. They get the support they need from their friends, family, and their sponsor. They do everything in their power to avoid becoming the monster they believe themselves to be. They are strong and empowered.

The other type only pretends long enough until their hunger
must
be satiated. Some people guess that it's because their addiction is too strong or their will is too weak. Well, Germaine
Ferghoof
was neither of those. No. He held on because he loved to savor the taste of gratifying that deep unrelenting hunger.

The sweet smell of marinated steak permeated the dark kitchen. Germaine stood at the range and cooked his meal on medium. The only light was a small LED shining down from the lamp under the microwave. A brilliantly flavored miasma of steam and smoke from the searing flesh billowed from the pan.

Germaine grabbed the handle, shook his meal off onto a nearby porcelain plate decorated with crude images of lilacs and roses, and set the pan aside to cool. He took the plate to his table, and sat across from Chyna Shearson. They smiled cheerfully at each other.

Chyna said nothing; only stared as he cut his meal. She watched him take a bite, close his eyes, and roll the salty meat over his tongue. He opened his eyes, and she continued to smile.

He'd met her just a few days ago, and because they had such an amazing first date, he decided they should have dinner together once again.
So
, there she sat, her eyes held open by surgical stitches. Each corner of her mouth pulled back into a grin by two fishing hooks bound together with a heavy-duty rubber band. She wore a beautiful red silk dress, and her skin was soft all the way down to her hands. Well, only the one hand because he'd relocated the other to his plate.

"You have such beautiful eyes," he said as he gestured to those cold milky orbs, and then he picked her hand up and bit one of her fingers off.

He began to chew, and the juices squished between his teeth. The bone softly crunched and popped under the powerful weight of his jaw, and a small piece suddenly shot into the back of his throat.

He coughed hard—even spit some of his food out—but there still remained a large chunk blocking his air. He
heaved and choked and coughed
and wheezed. Finally, he fell dead onto the plate. She continued to smile.

Germaine learned the hard way that night that one should never bite the hand that feeds.

The trees danced with a hot intermittent breeze as the sun's rays of death bled through the leaves. California wiped the sweat from her brow, released the trigger handle of the mower, and listened to the motor die. She closed her eyes, leaned her head back, and breathed deep the scent of freshly cut grass. When she opened her eyes and grasped the ripcord to start the mower's engine, she noticed a large hole had suddenly appeared in the ground directly in front of her.

"What the..." She said.

She used her hand as a visor to get a better look without the sun blinding her. Sure enough, it was a hole, and it was large enough to have swallowed her and the mower if she’d kept walking. She looked toward the halfway house she lived in and wondered if anyone was available to investigate the strange hole with her. Seeing no one within earshot of her call, she moved around the lawnmower.

As she approached the deep pocket of missing earth, she scratched the pit of her elbow. Though three months sober from the needle, she still felt a soft tickle on her skin. She still had the desire to alleviate that itch with a fresh new prick, but she couldn't. She'd almost killed herself the last time, and made a promise to herself never to do it again.

She looked into the hole, fully expecting to see nothing but darkness. Instead, it was her childhood bedroom. The dark room contained many stuffed animals along with her favorite animatronic teddy bear, Mr.
Ruxy
. Snuggled in a warm white blanket, she saw eleven-year-old California, sleeping soundly upon the bed.

She looked up again, and wondered if she should find someone and tell them about it, but she soon remembered that night, which stole away her interest in other people. It wasn’t just any one of the many black night in her life.
It was the one that started her down a path of self-destruction,
and the memories suddenly caused tears to roll down her face.

She didn’t know for sure what would happen if she stepped into that dark room, into the hole that showed a moment in her life that changed her forever, but she found herself climbing into it. The bottom half of her body seemed to fall down, consistent with the gravity change since she climbed in though the wall from the ground.

When she entered the bedroom completely, she remained quiet. The soft tick of a Barbie clock on the wall slowly counted down to one of the darkest moments a young girl could ever experience. She looked down at the girl wrapped in the soft white blanket, and began to weep for herself. It was a moment in time she’d wished she could go back and change, and suddenly, she wondered if she could. She wondered if that hole had appeared to allow her a second chance. She didn’t know if it was real or only a dream, but she had to try nevertheless.

California quietly left the room, crossed the hall, and entered the guest room. A light burned brightly from an emerald lamp that sat in the corner upon a small brown nightstand. The cream and tan bed was ruffled as though someone had slept in it recently, and she knew exactly whom.

To her left, steam billowed from a cracked door, which she recalled led to a bathroom. She approached the door, and her heart raced. Twenty-two years had passed, and he still had an effect on her. Twenty-two years and she still wanted to run and hide, but this time, she wouldn’t. Not only for her sake, but also for the sake of that little girl.

She pushed the door open, and the steam wetted her face, making her skin feel clammy. As she approached the running shower, she reached down to a sheath and retrieved the small trowel she used to dig out weeds. She reached up as her heart slammed even harder, threatening to explode through her chest, and she threw the shower curtain aside.

“Who the fuck?” The man screamed.

With zero hesitation, she stabbed the makeshift knife into him. Each thrust was a comparative thrust to all the times he’d
stabbed
her. Tears bled from her eyes as he bled into the shower, swirling and swirling with the water just as
her
blood had done so long ago.

He screamed with pain and attempted to fight her off, but the sweat on her skin had mixed with the water and made her slippery. She stabbed, stabbed, and stabbed, absolving her life of the future destruction of the innocence of a child.

California didn’t stop until she realized she was stabbing the water spraying from the showerhead. She looked down, and the man stared back at her, choking on blood and water. She wanted so badly to keep stabbing him, make him pay for three years of emotional and physical torture, but she couldn’t. She needed to get away before anyone saw her.

She snuck back into her old room, and she looked down at the girl in the bed. Young California snuggled into Mr.
Rux
and turned over toward the window. The moon now shined softly into a room that no would no longer wreak of that man’s disturbing intrusions.

“Sleep sweetly, little Cali.”

After taking a deep breath, she stepped back through the hole and into her own world.

On the other side of that portal was an office building. She stood there for a moment wondering where she’d come from. Her friends and coworkers buzzed busily from office to office as a soft tickle formed at the pit of her elbow. She looked down at a stack of legal papers that pinched her skin, and remembered that she had to file them before the deadline to save her father who
had been convicted and sentenced to death twenty-two years ago for the murder of a man that stayed in their home
.

“You suck!” The man screamed from the back of the crowd.

Jeff “King of Laughs” Ronin continued his final joke, but tried to sift through the glaring spotlights to find the heckler. He failed, but hit the chord he expected when he finished the joke and the crowd roared with laughter. Well, almost the entire crowd, because there arose a singular boo of contempt uttered from the mouth of the fan that never was.

The curtains slammed together, cutting him off from the crowd and taking away any chance he might find the man who showed intense disapproval of his jokes. He took a deep breath, and exited the stage.

The thin corridor leading to his dressing room was dark. He knew there were men and women working in those walls, the ones that kept the show fluid and perfect. He knew they were there, but they felt like ghosts that watched him from the shadows. He couldn’t help but feel a tinge of fear grasp his spine, which made him walk faster to his room.

When he arrived, the name on the door, which was his, pealed at one corner. It was, after all, just a sticker with handwriting on it. Since he wasn’t a regular, he didn’t have a door with a nameplate attached to it.

Once inside, he closed the door and twisted the nub on the handle to lock it. He didn’t like to be bothered after his shows. He only had maybe twenty-five minutes to enjoy a moment alone before they kicked him out of the room to close the building, so he wanted as much of that time as possible without being bothered.

After filling a small paper cup with water at a cooler, he sat down at the vanity mirror, which had several photographs of various comedians who’d performed there over the years wedged into the edge of the frame. He recognized all of them, but saw none of his favorites. His picture wasn’t there, but he preferred it that way. He didn’t like having his photo taken, and certainly wasn’t vain enough to take his own and stick it up there. That’s probably how most of those got up there anyway.

As he took a sip of the cold liquid, someone banged at the door.

Whump! Whump! Whump!

It startled Jeff, and he crushed the cup. Water splashed over him as his heart raced and fluttered with fright.

“What?” He called curtly as he wiped the water from his face and shirt. “God damn it.”

No answer.

Then in succession, the sounds rapped in threes upon the door like the gallop of an annoying horse.

WhumpWhumpWhump
!

“Who the hell is out there?”

WhumpWhumpWhump
!

“Really?” He said, and stood.

WhumpWhumpWhump
!

He quickly moved to the door, unlocked it, and yanked on it. The door argued with a slight groan, and didn’t open.

“What the fuck is going on here?” Jeff said, and then banged on the door. “What kind of game are you guys playing?”

He let go of the door and walked across the room to the courtesy phone. He picked it up, and tried to dial the owner of Club Comedy, but there was no dial tone. He pressed the switch to try to free up the line, but it remained quiet.

Then a voice arose from that silence and spoke to him through the phone, “You sucked so hard on that stage.”

“Who the—” he began to say, but recognized the voice as the man from the crowd. “This isn’t funny, asshole.”

“No!” The angry fan screamed into the phone, and the phlegmy growl scared Jeff into silence. “You know what’s not funny? Murder.”

“
Wha
—what are you talking about?”

“Come on, man, I know what you did.”

”I didn’t do anything.” He lied.

“Ten years ago, long before this filthy place was called Club Comedy, you performed on stage. Your name back then was Ricky Robin, a new performer just starting in the trade.”

Jeff swallowed hard. He’d taken considerable effort to rid himself of that old name, and even more effort to rid himself of the memories associated with it.

The man continued, “The crowd wasn’t impressed with your performance, if you could call it that. Shit, if they could make a Viagra pill for comedic
performance
, you’d need to down the whole bottle.”

“What do you want from me?”

“I want my book of jokes back.”

Jeff’s free hand immediately reached for his right pocket, which bulged with a square formation. He squeezed the book, and his heart pounded even heavier than before.

“What book?”

“Don’t play stupid with me.” The man said, “You know what I’m talking about. You know who I am, and what I want.”

Jeff shook his head.

“Don’t fucking shake your
head!
”

“How did you—”

“Shut up! Just shut up!” The man screamed, and then calmed his voice. “You know what?
How about I just take the book?
You know, they say that when people die, they take with them all the things they have on them at the time. If you hadn’t stolen my book, if you’d killed me with my book…”

“Gerald…”

“Ah, now you get it.” The man said, and coughed hoarsely into the phone. He wheezed a bit and said in a rough phlegmy voice, “Do you have any idea what it’s like to burn to death?”

Smoke suddenly began to billow from the under the door. Yellow light flickered behind it, a constant flash of lightning from a violent thermal source.

Jeff dropped the phone and ran to the door. He snared the handle and pulled as hard as he could, but it resisted. He placed his hand on the frame and attempted to use brute strength to tear it open.

Whumpwhumpwhump
!

Two nails pushed through the frame, one of which burrowed its way through his hand. He screamed, let go of the door, and coughed. After removing his hand from the nail, he backed away.

Eventually, the fire broke through and began to spread through the room. He back against the far wall. Soon, the flames reached him, and they licked him voraciously as if his skin were the sweetest, most savory flavor ever tasted. He screamed in pain as his clothes caught fire and his flesh began to boil. He breathed deep, and the flames entered through his mouth, destroying the flesh on its way down. From the inside, the heat burned and burned, eventually causing so much pressure that his midsection distended. A moment later, he exploded, taking the book with him to the afterworld.