The Cannibal's Guide to Fine Dining

By Brennan Haley

Cannibals have palates and crave good food just like anyone else. Here is a recipe book of thirteen horror short stories that are chunky enough to eat with a fork but good enough to eat with a spoon. Just be very careful though, because these stories bite back. Bon Appetit!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brennan Haley
• Release date: Nov 22, 2010
• ISBN: 9781458138910

Brennan Haley

I've been a writer since I saw STAR WARS at twelve. First short stories, then movie scripts, and now books. I'm publishing my short stories to help understand ebooks and Smashwords better, and when I'm ready, I'll work my way to putting a book up here.I have a son who just turned one, and is way more fun than a monkey on a bun (and I can watch one of those for hours). If you want to see a picture of what Jordan the Pirate looked like when he was younger, go to my Facebook page and see our little boy Noli. Neat kid, huh? He said it'd be okay if I shared his bedtime stories with you, so enjoy.

Book preview

THE CANNIBAL'S GUIDE TO FINE DINING

Smashwords Edition

PUBLISHED BY:

Brennan Haley on Smashwords

Copyright 2010 Brennan Haley

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. Besides, it's less than a buck. Anyone reading this laid out $400 for a Kindle or a PDA or more for a PC/Mac. They or you have a couple more dollars to put some cool stories on it, I'm confident.

CHAPTER 1 - PROLOGUE

I wrote my first horror short story while I was in university. I was sitting beside the classroom window, day dreaming as I had been doing since kindergarten. There was a pretty good view of the downtown core of Regina from the window, and I could see a girder hanging from a crane over an unfinished building.

For some reason I wondered what it would be like to wake up strapped to the underside of it. I figured that would be pretty terrifying, then I wondered what would have to happen to a person to put them in that position.

I went home to my dad’s house where I was staying while I was flunking out of school. Instead of studying, I wrote out the first half of the story and put my guy on the girder. But I was stuck on what to do once he was there. The story sat there on my desk for months until one night I happened to have a dream about the story and the conclusion occurred to me. It was so clear of a thought that it woke me from a sound sleep. I stumbled over to the typewriter and got it all down. Then I went back to bed, my mind free of the tale.

The next morning I woke and saw the small stack of paper sitting on the desk with a vague idea of what had happened. I read the story and got a chuckle, because it seemed to work. I’d actually written a story and to have successfully completed it was far more important in my mind than what writing about a disturbing subject might say about my personality.

Any time I've read a disturbing story, I immediately give it to my younger brother to try and gross him out. He read THE CRANE, seemed to like it, then asked me if I could do that again. I went out for a walk to think, and came back with an idea about what if the Sphinx was alive. My brother dug that one too, and taunted me by asking if I could do something scarier. It went that way for the whole summer, me trying to scare my little brother and him egging me on to be grosser and nastier. Then I wrote FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS and we both agreed I should back off before our parents found out and sent me to a doctor.

He never seemed to look at me the same way again.

I grew up loving the stories of Stephen King, probably that’s an obvious sentiment. I miss those stories because either he’s changed or I have, but they don’t seem the same. Then I recently read BLOCKADE BILLY and MORALITY and I felt like I was twelve again sitting down to read NIGHT SHIFT for the hundredth time. He can still write like that!

The thought then occurred to me, could I still write like I had before? Since that year in school, I had been trying like hell to break through as a screenwriter to no avail. I’m now trying like hell to break through as a novelist by having my hand at online publishing. It seemed like a good idea to first get my feet wet with a collection of horror short stories. I retrieved all those stories from a box in the basement, blew the dust off the yellowed pages, and put them into my computer. There's nothing like retyping finished stories to make you feel like you're being productive. Much better than the battle to crank out something new on a blank page.

It was tempting to rewrite and fix the old stories up, because I like rewriting far more than putting together a first draft. But I vaguely remember John D. MacDonald writing something to the effect of why would you want to do something like that?

So I guess they'll have to sink or swim on their own (for the most part). But as I said, I also wondered if I could still do it again. So I dug in and out came some decent new stuff: THE SCARY PART, TEQUILA, HUNTER’S STEW, and GRANNY APPLE FACE.

THE SCARY PART was an attempt at having a quick little homemade scary story to tell around a campfire. It’s short enough for me to remember how to tell it and I can usually get a quick scare without boring anybody to death. Which would actually be great plot device for a horror story if a person could figure out how to do just that.

HUNTER’S STEW came from a place where my mind wandered to during a seriously long drive to and from a recent fishing trip. The people in the story bear absolutely no resemblance to anyone I know or am related to. I need to make that distinction so that nobody I know or am related to tries to eat me.

TEQUILA came out of a bored moment at work. I simply thought it would be interesting to write about tequila, and about what if the worm ate you?

GRANNY APPLE FACE is an off hand tribute to my wonderful grandmother in law who earned that nickname by being a rosy cheeked sweetie pie. Originally it was just the two girls, Granny vs Lucy. But it occurred to me that the classic Hansel and Gretel could be given a modern take by setting it in the setting of a children’s home care. I had a lot of the same apprehensions when it finally came time for me to leave my infant son in the care of others so I could go to work, and obviously those tensions would be true for many parents. So Gretel would need a Hansel and I volunteered my little boy Nolan to stand in as the other character. I gave him the name Wyatt, my second choice for him which I couldn’t sell my wife on (nor my first choice of Brian. Get it? It’s a smaller version of Brennan? Made sense to me, anyways.). The badoop badoop is pure Nolan and he provided me the ending that had eluded me at first. I put Lucy and Wyatt in the crawlspace and had no idea how to get them out. I simply pictured my little Noli in that circumstance and he offered the answer as easily as sharing a cookie.

So hopefully these stories will do it for you and pass the time away better than watching something awful on TV or surfing yourmomma'ssofatjokes.com. I also hope the title works for you. It was a slog coming up with it, being that SKELETON CREW was already taken. CANNIBAL GAS came in a distant second and believe it or not, this collection was that close to be called CORN ON THE MACABRE.

Yeesh.

To all those fine young cannibals out there who are hungry for something tasty and nasty with a little heat, the buffet line starts right here. Dish up and please be sure to save the Pope's nose for me.

CHAPTER 2 - BABY

The sun was everywhere.

It shimmered off the Pacific in blinding sparkles. It broiled the deck of the aircraft carrier Nimitz, which looked like a toy in a bathtub when compared to the expanse of the warm, never ending horizon of water. It gave life and prosperity to the small tropical island a mile away, life to the trees and vegetation surrounding the small range of mountain peaks centered on the island. It also glistened off the side of an approaching helicopter as it descended down to the carrier.

A small group of men rushed out under the flurry of the helicopter's blades and were led by their escorts into the heart of the great ship. They stood on the bridge with the carrier group's commander and a grinning Army general, while crew members rushed about maintaining the ship. There was a nervous tension in the air and one of the men who'd just boarded looked on with curiosity.

He was one of a group of Pentagon defense planners and had been flown out here in the middle of the night without one word about why he was here. The general interrupted his thoughts in a loud, brash voice.

Gentlemen, you're all probably wondering why you were brought here on this lovely ocean cruise., he paused to smile at his own joke.

The Army is about to test a new weapon. He slapped the commander on the back and laughed.

With a little help from the Navy, of course!

The commander nodded weakly at the general and said nothing. The defense planner noticed this and particularly didn't care for the reaction of the commander, a rear admiral charged with leading an entire US carrier battle group, making him one of the most powerful people on the planet. He had looked scared.

The general strode about the room, waving his arms and grinning broadly.

If you'll now observe, we are ready to begin testing. Admiral, if you please.

The commander hesitated, then called for Broadsword One to be launched. Broadsword One was a Boeing F-18 Super Hornet, armed to the teeth, a sleek and dangerous looking aircraft. Mach 1.8, 4 AIM-120 AMRAAM air to air's with a 30 mile range and a 95% kill rate, 20mm Vulcan cannon, and the world's most sophisticated avionics system. In other words, one ass-kicking piece of machinery.

The Hornet exploded and shot down the runway. As it left the flight deck, it dipped, then rose and took up a circling pattern over the carrier and her escort ships.

On instruction from the bridge, it rolled and came screaming down at the little island. Everyone on the carrier's bridge watched as the plane pulled up and blew over the island at better than Mach 1.2. As it skimmed over the mountains, a huge claw appeared from behind the peaks and snatched the plane right out of the air. An impossibly huge lizard-like head appeared and gobbled the plane up. It seemed to smile a little, then ducked back behind the island mountains.

The defense planner stood with his eyes open and his jaw hanging down. He was positive he'd seen a symbol either painted or grown on the forehead of the incredible beast. An American Star and Stripes.

The general jumped up and down, with tears coming out of his eyes because he was laughing so hard.

A little something our biology boys whipped up!

He slapped his knee and wheezed. His name's Baby. You should see him when HE'S ALL GROWN UP!!

THE END

CHAPTER 3 - THE CRANE

4:45pm Friday. Everyone in the office was glancing at the large wall clock, or their watches, or the bottom right hand corner of their computer monitor every, oh, three seconds or so.

You probably know how it is. Monday was a dreary haze and Tuesday was about the only day you ever got anything done. Wednesday was hump day, the half way marker. From there it was all down hill. Thursday looked a little brighter, especially if it was somebody's birthday and there was cake in the lunchroom, and then Friday?

T.G.I.F.

A Miracle!

Never thought it would happen.

It'll wait till Monday. and of course:

Oh yeah, what a great day to be alive.

Till 4:45.

That's when all the time you lost during the week came back with a vengeance. Every clock and watch seemed to cram in an extra minute for each second of normal time and all you could do was to sweat it out.

Which is what Grant Berrenger was doing in his office. He tapped his pen mindlessly on the document which sat half-finished in front of him. His eyes roamed around his desk.

Same old thing. Scattered pens, the last little bit of a memo pad, a huge stack of papers that were just going to have to wait there till Monday whether they liked it or not and beside his coffee cup with a picture of some bloated cartoon cat riding on a retarded looking dog, was a picture of his wife and daughters.

Same old thing.

His wife was technically very pretty, and all his friends called him a lucky man. He sometimes thought of her as picture perfect, probably because when he turned the picture around to look at the back, it was blank. She could hide nothing because she had nothing. The two daughters were absolute carbon copies and the three of them looked like a clothes ad in a Sears catalogue. They looked almost manufactured.

A computer's wet dream. He mused aloud to himself. Berrenger never really knew what he had wanted out of a woman, till he married his wife and found out she didn't have it. It was if she'd sensed that somehow and in a fit of spitefulness, she had passed it on to their daughters so they could rule the house together. Everything those females said and did seemed so trite and unimportant to him, Grant longed for a son to be on his side and to agree with what he said, or to even just to get his jokes.

Berrenger remembered back to when they decided to get a family pet. He had fought long and hard for a smelly, hairy old dog. When she'd finally broken down and agreed, he came home one day not to find a husky or a German Sheppard or anything with gonads bigger than marbles. But some nameless little creature with hair instead of fur, and which was yapping incessantly. Then she smiled.

Tikki, say hi to Daddy.

The ball of hair jumped up and down and fell on it's ass, yapping and panting in short little breaths.

So much for man's best friend. She always grated at him like that and always savored her victories with that same smile. The one that she was staring out at him from the photo with. Watching him. Keeping an eye on him. He wondered if she practiced that smile in the mirror, instructing her daughters on how to follow suit.

If Grant had gone to pick up the dog himself instead of leaving it for someone else to do, he might have gotten what he wanted. But that thought hadn't really occurred to him and now it was too late. Grant looked at the picture of his family and wondered for the thousandth time. What had he done wrong?

Berrenger's attention drifted back and he became aware of what was behind the picture. The slight curve of a belly denting the smooth flow of tan silk that led up and up to a v-neck opening exposing a great deal of cleavage (no bra, he noticed) as he met the glance of his secretary.

I have the Oberst reply finished for you, Mr. Berrenger. she breathed.

Bending down to set the papers on his desk and conveniently shooting him a flash of her tan line, she looked up and asked.

Is there anything else you want?

Yeah sure, I'd love to lay you down on my desk and, etc. etc. etc.

She rose (he started to, as well), winked at him, and strutted out, letting it all shake, rattle and roll. Now that was a little more what he had in mind, alright. Still, he didn't take his secretary up on any of her almost daily passes at him. It was all power politics and though he admired her ambition to fuck her way to the top, he didn't feel like being a rung in her ladder to success. Or anybody's for that matter.

Grant Berrenger was a mover and a shaker, and he was the one who did the using and abusing, not the other way around. Berrenger took one last appreciative glance at his secretary's enticing business end and regretfully put her out of his mind. By reflex, his attention drew to the large mirrored wall clock in his office.

He smiled. The big hand had magically drawn clean with the uppermost slash of the time piece and the pen hanging between his fingers went flying over his shoulder.

5:00 had done come his way and before you could say Martini!, he was out the door and heading for the elevator.

Like everything else in Grant Berrenger's carefully conceived and flawlessly executed world, Friday afternoon was pretty much the same old thing too.

His deep blue Mercedes with the license plate reading INVEST slid into the small parking lot in back of Harry's Bar and Grill, just like it always did. Berrenger strode in, slammed his briefcase and jacket down on the stool beside him to be reserved for any pretty a young thing who happened on by, and ordered a vodka martini (Shaken not stirred he chimed), same as usual. he then proceeded to get piss