Wednesday, September 14, 2016

First Day


He had everything; a multitude of pens and pencils safely stashed away in their pouch, his folders neatly stacked next to each other in his canvas backpack. He walked timidly out of his suburban home clutching a wrinkled paper bag in his right hand.
            “Have a great day at school, sweetheart,” his mom called after him, watching him with love in her eyes as he swung his backpack over his shoulder and stumbled off the step onto the sidewalk. The school wasn’t far, but she worried anyway. It was her job as a mother.
            To be technical, she wasn’t his real mother, but she loved the eight-year-old as if he were her own. Her husband was barren, something they had recently discovered when trying to conceive several years earlier. It was the custom in their family, as it was in the families in the surrounding neighborhood, to have at least one child so as to keep their traditions alive. After all, who else would the older neighbors hand down their cherished Christmas cookie recipes to? Who else could they trust with the secret ingredient to the Thanksgiving turkey? (It was marmalade.)
            So in the year prior, the happy couple decided to adopt the grinning eight-year-old boy they’d seen skipping rope at the orphanage. And today was his first day of public school.
            He walked along the sidewalk and tried his best to avoid treading on the chalk drawings of other children; hearts, tic-tac-toe, monsters, families. A lump caught in his throat as he stepped over a crudely drawn chalk picture of a stick figure bleeding to death. Something about the way it was sketched in happy pastel colors set him on edge even more than he already was. But he kept on.
            Sixteen minutes passed and the school came into view. It looked no different than he’d imagined. It had a huge flagpole out front, surrounded by a lush patch of big pink and blue flowers. The windows were clean, the concrete walkways were swept and the grass was green and mowed. He exhaled, a feeling of calm taking over. He tried to smile at his new classmates, shaking the feeling that they were all staring at him (like kids do).
            He walked through one of the glass double-doors, thanking a young blonde girl in a gingham jumper that held it open. She nodded politely. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad, he thought.
            Soon after he found his classroom and sat at the desk with his name taped to it, the bell rang, a long, low-pitched dong, dong, dong and the stragglers took their seats. Class was about to begin.
            The teacher, a put-together-looking lady of about fifty, skinny, with cat eye glasses and a polka dot dress stood at the front of the class and introduced herself.
            “But you already knew that, my children,” she said, “It’s wonderful to see you all again after our summer vacation. My, how some of you have grown in the short while we’ve been apart.”
            Some of the stronger, more athletic boys near the back of the class flexed their muscles as the girls around them giggled. The teacher chuckled and shook her head.
            “Students,” she began again, “I would like to introduce you to Kimberly, a student teacher from the local university. She’s studying to become an art teacher and she’ll be with us for a short while to see what it’s like in a classroom setting. I want you all on your best behavior.”
            Kimberly smiled and waved awkwardly. She was pretty. Hair like fall leaves. Soft lips. A delicate frame and small features, but big round eyes like a doe.
            “Now, class, if you’ll take out your textbooks and turn to chapter four. As most of you remember, we went pretty far last year and this is where we ended. Let’s review and see what you remember.”
            At that, she jammed a needle into the poor student teacher’s neck and pushed an amount of liquid deep into her veins. The girl dropped. The students shifted in their seats- some from excitement, some from regret that they should have paid far more attention in class last year. The boy sat motionless, breathless.
            Once the teacher had managed to pick the twenty-something up from the laminate tiles and hoist her to her desk, she then instructed her students to get out a pencil and a sheet of paper for notetaking. She then went to a large closet in the back of the room, labeled SUPPLIES, and pulled down a plastic bin. She walked among the desks, distributing newly sharpened knives. One to each student.
            “Ugh,” said a boy in the front row, “I’ve got the chipped one again.”
            “I’m afraid the school didn’t get that grant like the Headmaster said we might,” responded the teacher, continuing to pass out knives until each desk had a blade.
            The teacher set the plastic bin on the floor. “Alright students, does anyone know what we do first?”
            A boy wearing a sports jersey raised his hand and answered, “We strip her clothes off.”
            “No, not quite yet. Anyone else?”
            “We light the candles,” said a girl in thick glasses.
            “Right you are! But for today, we’ll just dim the lights. They won’t let us have candles anymore after what happened last year.” At this, she stepped over to the door and pulled down on a little switch to the right of the frame. The lights dimmed. The boy could barely make out the teacher’s face, let alone any of the students’.
            “And now we say the chant, right? And take her clothes off?” Another student to the right of the boy.
            “You’re correct! We’re off to a good start,” praised the teacher. “Class?”
            All at once the students began repeating a low hymn in a language the boy didn’t understand. It was low and guttural and terrifying. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Should he run? If he ran, what would happen? Would they catch him?
            As the assembly of students echoed their song (some of them off of cheat sheets), the teacher untied the woman’s boots, then began slowly and gently cutting off her assistant’s sweater, then jeans, until she was fully nude, laying sprawled on the desk.
            Some of the boys in the back giggled.
            “Boys!” the teacher whispered harshly in the midst of the chanting, “I will write you up and send you to the Headmaster. Be respectful.”
            As the low rasping of the students continued, the teacher stood at the front of the class, behind her desk, and waved on the first row of students to come to the front.
            “Go ahead,” she urged.
            And there it was.
            The slicing, slaughtering, slashing of this unconscious woman. Was she dead? Or was she simply unconscious? Or perhaps fully conscious, though paralyzed? Could she feel what these children were doing to her?
            “Gently,” the teacher reminded, “the Headmaster has very strict ways of doing things. Our lord must be pleased. Why is that, children?”
            The students resonated, “For he is the giver of knowledge. Knowledge is all that we seek. Please him and he will pour onto us the fountain of knowledge of all things.”
            The boy sat at his desk, faint, feeling sick and on the verge of tears. But the fear in his gut was too much for him to cry. Not right now. Not while a million thoughts were scrambling through his psyche. Not while the students around the body made cuts to the woman’s abdomen, chest, legs, arms.
            Next row, please.
            And the first group sat down, splattered in dark blood, while the next group stood to continue the mutilation.
            More chanting. The chant seemed to go on forever, until the boy realized that his classmates had stopped singing and he was now hearing the chorus of a hundred students in the surrounding classrooms.
            An eternity passed and his row was called to the front. The other pupils stood and grabbed their knives, anxious to put their mark on the student teacher, anxious to please their Headmaster.
            As the students at the front of the classroom dug their blades into flesh, the teacher called out, startling the boy.
            “Heavens! Oh, my sweet dear, I’m so sorry! Class, we have a new student joining us this year.”
            The weight of thirty faces was upon the boy. Faces with fire in their eyes, bloody faces, tired faces, brainwashed faces, faces that had given up and given in.
            “Let us make him at home.” The dim light flashed in their instructor’s cat eye glasses.
            The blonde girl in the gingham dress, now drenched in blood, walked around the desk and stood in front of the boy. She smiled. Whether it was menacing or meant to be a welcome, he couldn’t tell, especially in the dim lighting.
            She pocketed her blade and picked up the one on his desk. She looked at it, ran her thumb down the edge. A line of bright red appeared on her skin. She pointed it at him, admiring the shine on the steel. She flipped the weapon and thrust the handle toward the boy.
            “You can stand with me,” she whispered.

            And the blonde girl in the bloody gingham jumper smiled, and handed him the knife.

Saturday, September 10, 2016

Monster

            I need to write something. Any fucking thing.

I really wish I had some form of fucking inspiration. Anything. Just a beginning, a middle, and an end. That’s all I really want. Just to write some fucking thing that even remotely makes sense that’s longer than a paragraph. Or a sentence. Or a fragment.

Do you want to go on a walk? I really need to get out. Find inspiration. Find something. Maybe I’ll ask him when he gets home. I don’t work tomorrow, maybe I’ll go see a friend.

Maybe I’ll finally feed that thing I keep in the closet next to my skeletons. Somehow I guess I’ve always just been afraid of it getting bigger. But it’s been making these noises at night- these horrible cracking, grinding, sobbing noises that I can’t even try to describe- and I can’t fucking sleep. I can hear it through the door. Maybe it’s hungry. What does that thing even eat? Does it even have a mouth? Probably, I can hear it breathing sometimes. God, this would be so much easier if I could actually see it.
Sometimes I lay awake thinking of what it might look like. Sometimes I convince myself that I can catch it off guard but when I rip the doors open, it’s just… nothing. Empty. The closet light’s still there, swaying on the cord, but other than that- nothing. Once I could have sworn I saw a shadow but I’m sure it was just my desire to actually see this thing. Maybe it wouldn’t freak me out so much if I knew where it was, what it looked like.
I think it follows me. I can’t see it, but I think it trails me everywhere I go. Do you ever feel like you’re being watched? But you look around and there’s no one there? It’s like that, but I can sometimes feel it’s sticky breath on my shoulders. My shoulders… it must be tall.
I can feel it now, as I write this. My closet door is open, maybe it’s decided to come out for a little while. My feet are warm- is it lying on me? Like some huge, ethereal cat at the foot of my bed? I can almost feel its weight, feel it shifting as it inhales.
Look, I just want it to be quiet at night. Want it to stay in the closet so I know where it’s at. So I can keep track of it, keep it safe. Keep us safe.
But God those noises! I can hear its invisible bones breaking in the middle of the night, can hear it licking the walls with an undetectable tongue and every creak, scratch, or drip seems to come from my closet.
What if it gets so hungry that it bursts out? What if, after that, I can’t find it? Does it have the ability to kill, without a solid body? What damage could it do? If I don’t feed it?
Was it wrong of me to create it? Over the years it’s just grown and grown, but has it grown too big? Can I still control it? Or has it grown so big that it’s now controlling me?
I know the answer. I guess I just don’t want to admit it. The truth is, and I’ve always known, that we’re one and the same. I’m it, and it’s me. When it feeds, I’ll get stronger. And when it dies, I die.
My blood, my mind, my monster.


Sunday, May 11, 2014

Xander's Transformation - A Slaughtertown Circus Teaser

Xander's been feeling a little under the weather, but he'll soon learn that he'll have to deal with more than just a runny nose and bad cough...



Thursday, May 8, 2014

Giveaway and Interview: Slaughtertown Circus

Do you like free stuff? Free books? Free books full of super hot, ultra-weird bizarro?

Sure you do! And I'm teaming up with Horror After Dark to do a giveaway for a chance to win one of two Kindle copies or one paperback copy of Slaughtertown Circus! Click here for details.

And check out their recent interview with me where Nikki Howard asks me a ton-o-random stuff about the book.

TLDR: We're giving a way some copies of STC and I answer questions.

Strange the World: John Bruni

If you missed last night's Strange the World vidcast, catch up on YouTube! This edition:

John Bruni, author of Tales of Questionable Taste, and editor of Strange Story Saturdays joins the StrangeHouse crew to talk about what it takes to be a writer, his work, and upcoming news for StrangeHouse.

ATTENTION WRITERS!

John Bruni and Strange Story Saturdays are looking for
flash fiction
(less than 1500 words) for the website!

Email your submissions to strangestorysaturdays@gmail.com