Monsters!

By Bernard Sell

Who's that scratching at your bedroom door? or the inside of your brain?

Monsters!

Jon Nichols and Bernard Sell team up to bring you a sometimes haunting, sometimes hilarious, always thought-provoking collection of shorts that will keep you looking over your shoulder and looking into your very soul.

This collection includes "Seizure," "Nothing Left but the Cockroaches," "As I No Longer Lay Dying," "Gerlach Sees It, Why Can't I?" "The Welder Mask Man Killer," "The Requiem," "Dr. Ramses Ozymandias and the Frankenstein Complex," "Inevitable," "Buck," "The Outsider," "They Who Inherit," and "Sacrifices."

Whatever monsters currently inhabit your nightmares, tell them to make room for new terrors. Werewolves with a taste for motel art. Deranged ex-baseball players. War criminals fleeing their pasts. Corn cults.

They invite you to stare them down. To stare yourself down.

But beware...you might not like what you find!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bernard Sell
• Release date: Jun 8, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458187178

Bernard Sell

Bernard Sell is the author of Ghosty: This Fenceless World and its sequel, Ghosty: White Cloud, Blue Mountain. He has co-authored a short story anthology with Jon Nichols.He is married to his girlfriend, has three children, and his day job is teaching American Literature at a rural Indiana high school.

Book preview

MONSTERS!

A SHORT STORY ANTHOLOGY

by

Jon Nichols and Bernard Sell

SMASHWORDS EDITION

PUBLISHED BY:

Bernard Sell on Smashwords

Monsters!:

A Short Story Anthology

Copyright © 2010 by This Fenceless World

Also explore Ghosty: This Fenceless World by Bernard Sell

And Ghosty: White Cloud, Blue Mountain

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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 authors’ work.

Introduction by Jon Nichols

Pleased to meet you. Won't you guess my name?

That's a crib of course from a wiredrawn song by Mick and Keith, but it really gets at what I've tried to do here, which is have a little sympathy for the devil, that most human of monsters. For all their abominations and perfidy, is there anything redeemable in a human monster? Can grace somehow intervene and actually make a beautiful soul out of an ugly thing? Can sinners sometimes make the best saints?

I hope so.

Then I might actually have a chance.

Introduction by Bernard Sell

The word ‘monster’ may come from either the Latin word, monstrare, ‘to point out or show’ or possibly monere, which means ‘to warn.’ Either way, in the history of literature, high-brow to pulp, monsters have been used to teach and to caution. Grendel taught us the value of keeping the volume down when you have cranky neighbors. Jason taught us that premarital sex is fraught with danger. No matter how bright you think you are, you can always outthink yourself when it comes to the super-science.

And even though monsters are out there, salivating over us and waiting for their chances to strike, the danger is almost never entirely from without. More often than not, on some level, the victim usually had it coming. We should always remember what Walt Kelly’s Pogo would say:

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

Table of Contents

Seizure (Bernard Sell)

Nothing Left but the Cockroaches (Jon Nichols)

As I No Longer Lay Dying (Bernard Sell)

Gerlach Sees It, Why Can’t I? (Jon Nichols)

The Welder Mask Man Killer (Bernard Sell)

The Requiem (Jon Nichols)

Dr.Ramses Ozymandias and the Frankenstein Complex (Bernard Sell)

Inevitable (Bernard Sell)

Buck (Jon Nichols)

The Outsider (Bernard Sell)

They Who Inherit (Bernard Sell)

Sacrifices (Bernard Sell)

Seizure

By Bernard Sell

Following the death of their mother, three sisters take a cross-country road trip. But what begins as a journey of healing takes an unexpected turn when the youngest shows signs of a strange disease…

Road Trip

Tess drove with sweating rage even in the rural town she lived in, and getting stuck behind Garrett Simpkins on 116, when his cell phone was cemented to his face, she pounded the steering wheel with her fist.

Soon, sensing malignant intent in Garrett, an unaccountable fury crowded her thoughts. She was convinced that, to prevent her from passing him, he was drifting over; positioning oneself so on this country road effectively transformed it into a one-lane. She turned her head in horror when, instead of joining her in her complaint, Maggie told her to calm down. But she tried to do it in a nice way, as related here:

I mean this in a nice way—calm down. Now that everything is set up and my stuff is waiting for me and we’re on the road, we can relax and enjoy the trip—we’ve got all week to get out there. There’s no reason to freak out five minutes from home.

Amanda, who was sitting in the backseat despite the fact it was her car, because she had had her license suspended for too many speeding tickets, suddenly and peppily stuck her head into the front seat.

I gotta side with Mags. If you keep this up, you’re going to have an aneurysm before we get out of the state. You’ve been acting like a lunatic all week. I mean, what is your deal? You were really bitchy with Dad when we left.

She blew her bangs out of her face with a mighty puff, for she had little room to move her arms because of all the bags and suitcases pinning her in.

Like I said before, that is a situation that has nothing to do with you two, Tess said with what she hoped was inarguable finality.

Nothing to do with us! Amanda said incredulously, tapping Maggie on the shoulder and thumbing in Tess’s direction. If this situation has nothing to do with us, Tess, then maybe you can explain to us—she presented her palms—why you’ve been glaring at Dad all week like he stole something from you. He can’t say anything without you barking at him! We couldn’t even have breakfast together this morning because you stormed out! What would it have cost, I ask you—to put all your issues aside for one morning? Someday you’ll learn that being on the rag doesn’t mean you get to act like a three year-old! she mused, leaning her head back and rolling her eyes.

On the rag, right, Tess growled. Every time I do something you don’t like, it must be Tess’s time of the month…

As she trailed off, she sniffed an opportunity to pass Garrett. Maggie straightened and didn’t quite seem to know where to put her hands. For a moment Tess hesitated, then, sensing the window closing, gunned the Jetta and committed herself. Amanda gripped the front seats and braced for an impact. However, Tess drove it onto the gravel shoulder and maneuvered the car around the steadily leftward-drifting Garrett Simpkins. The clamor of the gravel distracted them from the fact that they had not actually crashed: Tess unleashed a finger on Garrett, nearly hitting Maggie in the face when she reached back. Amanda immediately warned Tess that if she was going to drive like a maniac, then Maggie would have to drive herself to Vegas.

Jesus, Maggie said, addressing no one in particular, I want to get there alive. She then spoke to Amanda over her shoulder. She is not the only one who needs to calm down. We’re not ten minutes from our house and we’re already bickering.

I will calm down when Unibrow Kyle Busch here stops trying to kill us, Amanda said pungently.

"Bitch! Shut up! I do not have a unibrow!" Tess shouted.

I’m only saying what everyone can already see, Amanda declared.

What is it with you two? I want a peaceful trip! A relaxing trip! I—

I swear I had meant to be on my best behavior on this trip, Tess sighed. "I was apprehensive about this trip because I know whenever we’re together it gets hairy—and I know I just said hairy, Amanda, so you can stop snickering. At least I have tits. But you’re right, though, that there is something going on between me and Dad and I’m really sorry that it’s upsetting you guys. However, there is no way I’m going to talk about it with you."

Well, if it’s not betraying some big secret, maybe you could inform us as to why he had to take you to the doctor? Amanda replied tartly, this time saying it as much to Maggie as to Tess.

Why’s it important for us to know? Maggie offered. If she doesn’t want to tell us, she shouldn’t have to if she doesn’t want to.

Tess, who a week ago had had her conception of what constituted a necessary secret violently obliterated, calmly said:

Dad took me to the hospital because I had been having seizures, Tess said quickly, in a neutral tone. It’s nothing, okay? she added, sensing concern. It’s not like I get the shakes or black out. So relax. They call it catamenial epilepsy, on account of it’s women who get it and it tends to get worse during a woman’s period. It’s not full-blown epilepsy. The doctor spent a lot of time explaining that to me and Dad. And it’s okay for me to be driving a car. Hearing about all this, of course, it explained some symptoms I’d been having—obviously I’ve been really distracted and anxious lately, and not for all the usual teenage drama reasons. But the main reason I asked him to take me was because I was wetting the bed. I would appreciate it very much if you didn’t make fun of me for this—you both have plenty of things I can make fun of and, I swear to God if you start in on me about it, I will drive this car into oncoming traffic. I admit I was planning on keeping it from you two, but I guess I should have told you, now that I look at it, especially with things as they are, because we’re sisters. There you go, that’s my…big secret.

I don’t see, Amanda said, how Dad could let you go on this trip when you have epilepsy. Let alone drive—

You didn’t hear a single word I said! Tess cried, losing patience. These are not convulsing seizures and they are not loss of consciousness seizures. Sometimes I don’t know why I even open my mouth around you.

If the doctor says you’re okay to drive, I’m fine with it, Maggie told Tess.

Assume crash positions, everyone! Amanda remarked.

They got on the interstate and after some awkward silence passed, Maggie asked Tess to explain her condition again and Tess explained it as simply and completely as she could. In truth, had her sisters ever paid as much attention to her as they did to themselves, they should have been able to tell that even now she was keeping something colossally worse from them. She didn’t tell them about the heightened senses or the hallucinations just as she and her Dad had withheld these things from the doctor, choosing instead to roam at length on how optimistic she was about the medicine she had been prescribed. And, indeed, Maggie seemed comforted by this tale, although no amount of verbal petting was going to penetrate the rind around Amanda’s cerebral cortex.

Tess! Amanda waved her hand. This is my car! I may not be allowed to drive it right now, but I still have a say in who does! I don’t think it’s safe to have an epileptic driving the car!

Amanda, shut your stupid mouth! Maggie said decisively.

Amanda said nothing. They settled into their respective places in the car. After a while Tess asked Maggie a series of questions about the cooking school in Vegas and pointedly ignored her sulking sister in the backseat. Meanwhile, her hands began itching so much that she was afraid that her sisters would notice her discomfort. Fortunately, however, Maggie heedlessly walked into the jaws of her trap, extemporizing at great length about the many things she had to look forward to.

Wait! You changed the subject! Maggie shouted. Tess! You sneaky minx, you!

Maggie smiled and this time an air of amity finally seemed to be taking hold. The feeling turned out to be infectious: Amanda had already become bored with her sullen gloom—another few minutes and she would be texting her girlfriends. Maggie started fishing around in her purse for her MP3 player.

You know, she still hasn’t explained why Dad and her were going at it today, Amanda said, in a tone of weary acceptance. Tess, distracted by the pins and needles boring their way into her hands, couldn’t keep her thoughts straight long enough to formulate a response. Tess swallowed, looked at Maggie, and, very quickly, with the deliberateness of someone drunk trying to feign sobriety, turned her head and covered a manufactured yawn.

The stinging subsided. Tess drove on utterly taxed and struggling not to pant. They took I-65 up to da Region and hopped onto I-80, which would take them all the way to Las Vegas. Stopping at Arby’s for lunch, Tess skipped the salad and pressed her sisters to get her a large roast beef as she darted for the restroom. But she didn’t need to go: when she closed the stall door behind her, it was as if she had happened upon van Gogh’s toilet, and the brilliant flood of vivid colors that had been surging about her finally triumphed, she fell against the wall and wordlessly slid to the floor. Clarity overwhelmed her and seconds seemed to stretch out into hours, days, aeons. These things passed. She left the restroom and rejoined her sisters.

Omaha

Tess drove until they reached Omaha just after twilight, adamant in her refusal to cede the wheel to Maggie. She wanted to prove to herself that her episodes were unobtrusive and controllable by the exercise of her will. Midway through the afternoon, at a rest stop near the Illinois-Iowa border, Tess had a bizarre exchange with a five year-old boy while Maggie and Amanda were in line for the restroom. Tess had left the car to stretch her legs, and then, as she smiled at the towheaded lad making a starfighter fly up and down the sidewalk, witnessing his consciousness completely subsumed in an epic intergalactic struggle, she was taken aback when he suddenly pulled up as if slapped and stared at her. A young child has never stared as intently at a television screen as this little boy stared at her, and it required his parents physically moving him and driving away for the link to be severed.

Was he staring at your unibrow? Amanda remarked impudently as they carried their bags to their hotel room.

Why do I even open my mouth? Tess said, pushing past her and entering the room.

You can bite my head off if you want, but you have to admit that that was really weird, Amanda said, delighted with her bon mot.

"It is weird, Maggie said resolutely. This kid, he sounds like something out of The Children of the Corn."

It was a flawed analogy and Tess knew it. The child was normal and, had she never appeared at the rest stop, he would have continued to be normal.

Amanda stretched out on the sofa. She had dropped a lot of weight over the summer. Maggie sat down at the desk next to her, casually flipping through the hotel guide and making notes on the complimentary notepad. Tess walked by both of them and claimed the bed by the window. This declaration was too much of an insult for Amanda to bear.

I’m sleeping by the window, Tess.

The hell you are.

Excuse me?

You heard me.

"You think you’re the big sister now?"

Only if you’re talking about maturity.

Let her have the bed, Maggie said, irritated. "Why shouldn’t she get the bed she wants since she’s been driving the whole way? Why should you care who sleeps where since you’re probably going to be out half the night with whatever boys you can find around here?"

That’s not what I was going to do.

Isn’t it?

For a moment Amanda was silent. Tess watched from the doorway.

Maybe.

So you’ll take the couch then?

"Yeah. Fine."

You want to sleep in my bed?

No.

A painting hung on the wall above the couch. It was Thomas Kinkade’s Cobblestone Bridge. As a rule, Tess had always found motel and bank art contemptible—it was the maudlin nadir of contemporary vulgar kitsch. She could not look away. It appeared as if the elements of the painting were moving and that, in addition to the swaths of pigment burning afterimages onto her retinas, so it seemed, the glow from the house in the painting was escaping from off the canvas into the room, cascading onto and pooling around Amanda in an effervescent pool of light, and immolating her senses and stymieing her every impulse to move. What sublime beauty she now beheld! Before long she felt tears running down her cheeks, began to shake, and started gasping for air as if she were drowning.

I don’t think she’s staring at it because she likes it. I think she’s having some sort of attack, like she said, Maggie seemed to say, from somewhere distant, as if she were shouting from the bottom of a very deep pit.

I think we should slap her.

You’re not touching her.

What should we do then?

I think we better just wait.

"‘We better just wait?’"

I think it’s like sleepwalking. I think I heard somewhere that you don’t want to try to wake them up. It looks like she’s starting to come out of it.

And you said you were fine with her driving, Amanda scoffed.

If I had known this might happen, don’t you think I would said differently?

If this had happened when she was driving, we’d all be dead right now.

You’re being overdramatic. Look, she’s coming around.

Tess waved off Maggie’s helping hands, wiped her brow clear of sweat, and sat down in the chair Maggie had vacated. The world was coming back into focus, muted and duller to the power of ten and worse off for it. What once had been a pyrogenic shearing of the color spectrum was now a cloying, saccharine, ordinary painting. Amanda, whom Tess had always held up as a standard of beauty, who moments before bathed in the nimbus of an archangel, now seemed plain, even ugly.

We lost you for a few minutes, Maggie said with a mixture of concern and relief.

Tess forced a smile.

I guess I won’t be driving anymore.

No. You won’t. Maggie’s lustrous chestnut hair, her best feature, fell against Tess as she tended to her. Now it felt like coarse dry straw.

So everything’s good here? Amanda said, unzipping her suitcase.

The pool is open until eleven. Maggie did not have to look to know that Amanda was getting out her precious white bikini. "Not rushing off to slut it up with strange boys doesn’t make you uncool; staying here with Tess would make you a good sister. Then again, you shouldn’t let your sister’s medical condition get in the way of your social life."

"I know I’m not as perfect as you are, but bitch, don’t tell me I’m not a good sister—"

Go ahead and go. Don’t pretend like you’re not going to. Tess and I will stay here and play gin.

Amanda went into the bathroom to change.

The Delta of Confidences

Amanda got back to the hotel room around three a.m. and she had the exaggerated, giggling stealth of the intoxicated that created more noise than it prevented. Both Maggie and Tess had known that Amanda’s promises to stay dry during this trip were worthless. The main reason behind her father allowing her to go on the trip was largely the confluence of three factors: Maggie’s promise to keep her dry, which was farcical; the attractive idea, proposed by a neighbor, that the three sisters would bond, helping to ease the pain of their mother’s death, six months past but still an open sore; and simple distraction, fallout from a confession to Tess after his return from Malaysia, a conversation that revealed either pronounced schizophrenia on his part, or dark portends indeed for his daughter.

A few days after his return from the mountains and jungles of Southeast Asia, David M. Murphy took his daughter Tess aside for a serious talk on the veranda on the secluded south side of their mansion. The purpose of his trip, as everyone had been led to believe, had not been pharmaceutical research, the foundation on which his company and the house they lived in had been built, at least, he clarified, in the strict terms of his shareholders. Because similar jaunts in the past had met with wild success, there was no reason for anyone to doubt him. In response to a rather impertinently unfunny quip from Amanda (about the quality of weed he had brought back), David boasted to the homecoming reception that their stock was getting ready to crap diamonds. But, even then, Tess could tell that this swagger was false. Her sisters insisted that Dad had found the magical plants as he had done so many times before, that he had once again gone out into the savage places and seized its mysteries, and in doing so, as was their habit, they were confident that their lifestyles were about to soar upward once again. Sensing when her father was lying, or even simply concealing something, had always been a singular skill of Tess’s and one that assured that she would be the delta toward which all confidences flow. Now, as he poured himself a snifter of brandy, Tess noticed with foreboding that her father only looked at her indirectly and fleetingly.

Such shiftiness in expression always appeared foreign to David Murphy’s face. Like Maggie and Amanda, David was tall and prepossessing, and, like Maggie and Amanda, his eyes were the color of Arctic seas. His skin was weather-beaten and coarse, reminding one of a leather basketball left out in the yard all winter. Except for the uncanny similarity of their facial shape, there was little to link Tess to her father or sisters physically (making her, it seemed, an orphan of sorts when her mother died). Perhaps these dissimilarities, because of the distancing that always seemed to occur when they were brought up, were the basis on which Tess’s amazing insights were built. Moreover, her similarity to her mother prompted David to treat her with an almost doting sentiment, a tendency, ever more pronounced since her mother’s death, that hardly escaped her sisters’ notice.

Her father sat in silence not only because he was marshalling the courage to speak—itself a phenomenon incongruous with his personality—but also because, to both his regret and pride, he had discovered Tess to be utterly unafraid of long silences, a streak of cruelty he himself had often employed in his dealings with troublesome rivals and subordinates. Suddenly, her father straightened himself as if he were going to break the news of someone’s termination. Tess tensed perceptibly. Her father took another draught of his brandy and, placing it on the table (the clink of glass on glass), began:

"For some time I’ve been rehearsing what I was going to say to you now—ever since your mother died, in fact…I thought, hmm—I really have no idea how you’re going to react to any of this—I believe that you deserve the truth, regardless of the improbability or impossibility of it. Hmm. Of course, you’re going to think the old man has lost his mind. I’ve gone all Heart of Darkness on you. On the other hand, it is my duty to tell you, there are things in this world that defy explanation, and disbelief in them does not make them any less true. And I have sat you down to tell you some things that defy explanation but are nonetheless true. Now, it looks like you are thinking exactly the things at this point that I would have thought you would be thinking, because your face is abjectly incapable of disguising your thoughts. Hmm…that’s exactly the expression your mother had on her face when she and I began this very same conversation. Have I told you lately how much you remind me of your mother?"

Here her father paused as though seriously awaiting an answer. Tess detested rhetorical questions masked in serious inquiry.

Never heard that one before! Tess said quickly and somewhat sneeringly, irritated by the idea that her time, evidently unlike that of anyone who spoke with her, was a consumable scarcely worth considering. Did you have something momentous to tell me, or are you having second thoughts now? You would like to postpone this until you got your courage up or your thoughts together, perhaps?

These were confrontational words reminding her father that the direct and simple were far superior to the circumspect and convoluted, words that hit home with a man of action! All the fumbling and dithering began to disperse, and a mindful confidence took its place. A new aspect emerged—the face of the merciless, ruthless businessman, one whose streak of cruelty often served his ends. Taking such barbs from others, namely, Tess’s older sisters, he considered intolerable because they were invariably executed in passionate fits or without weighed premeditation. Amanda in particular had always found her father’s indulgence toward Tess’s comments shocking and unfair, but what she neglected to bear in mind was that her father placed a high premium on effective verbal jousting, a skill for which Amanda’s poor brain would never be wired.

Well played, and now we’ll get on to the bad news.

He frowned.

"Well, I’ve already told you what kind of story to expect. You are frequently going to want to react adversely to what I’m telling you, but I would ask that you bottle it up until I’m all finished. I’ve been to a lot of places since your mother died—the deserts of Australia, dozens of islands in Indonesia, and up and down the Malay Peninsula. I’ve seen some strange things. Because I had to find, God help me, the sorcerer who extended your mother’s life and try to undo our deal. And on your face is exactly the expression I expected to see at this moment. I, too, scoffed at his claims and discounted them as the ravings of a lunatic and in doing so, maintained my faith in the rational and empirical. I assure you, Tess, were I not so harrowed at the thought of losing her, or if medical science could have saved her, I never would have went down such a crazy, dark road. The truth is that I didn’t think I had anything to lose, and I wasn’t ready to let your mom go. It all started in the Kerguelen Archipelago in the south Indian Ocean: this is where I met Kastorsis the Wicked. I’m there looking for a very special fungus, a smut that I projected had the power to repair spinal cord damage and reverse the necrosis that was killing Theresa. Now this place basically is a rock pile out in the middle of the ocean, understand, and there is nothing tremendously green about it. Aside from me and my men, there are about a hundred French seismologists, geologists, rocket scientists, and some poor government schmucks who must have pissed someone off really bad to get exiled to this slag heap. So you can understand the shock I experienced when I stumble across a half-acre on that barren island that was completely lush, Tess, like a doggone botanical garden! This is about two clicks away from a glacier with penguins on it. That ecosystem hadn’t been able to support flora like that for about 50 million years and it should have been the subject of intensive scientific study. In this transplanted tropical paradise, an old man hobbles out to meet us and he’s the kind of graybeard who seems to clutch at your thoughts as you’re thinking them. So, was I surprised when he refused to speak to anyone but me? Not at all, strange to say. The rest of my team leaves, without saying a word, as if it’s a logical necessity. Bear with me—this is the part of the story that gets really weird. After everyone leaves, I follow this man to his hut and I go inside; this man’s hut is smallish on the outside, but on the inside it’s like a colonial manse. I tried to harness my tongue and jaw to speak, but I found those parts of me paralyzed, and besides, despite the fact that we had not spoken a word aloud, we were communicating like it was the Algonquin Round Table. Kastorsis made an offer to me. He pulled what I most desired right out of my brain. The deal was, he granted Theresa seven years of perfect health—she would die immediately thereafter. Kastorsis kept his part of the deal: miraculously your mom got better, and was in perfect health for exactly seven years. And then she died on her next heartbeat. The price I paid for extra time with my wife was you. I granted him license to transform you and to take possession. In fact, you may already be experiencing the change. He said it would begin on your seventeenth birthday. I understand this makes me a monster. I was so besotted by grief at the time, I would have promised anything and sacrificed anyone to keep my wife alive. After your mother died, I returned to Kerguelen to try to get out of the pact, but it was as if he had never been there. I have spent the last six months trying to find Kastorsis, or some shaman or wizard who can save you, but I am ashamed to say I have uncovered nothing."

Tess stared at her father, completely thunderstruck by this tale, and, despite herself, deeply resentful of her father, who would, even in a made-up story, choose her mother’s life over her own and relate this fact to her.

I do not find this remotely funny and all the thought you’ve obviously put into this joke I consider borderline psychopathic, she told her father, who seemed unprepared for the bitter restraint of her response.

I wish what I was telling you was only a joke. And I’m afraid that I have not yet relayed the worst of it, as far as it pertains to your role in the story.

Well, I was wondering exactly how this all would play out. Is Kastorsis handsome? Or at least wealthy? This may yet work out.

Like I said, you will start to notice some changes—they may seem very minor at first, David said. Maggie tells me you have a hard time waking up nowadays. Yesterday, at the homecoming party, you tore into the Mongolian beef, but you’re supposed to be a vegetarian. And your arm hair is a lot darker than it used to be. Of course, these are only things I picked up because I knew to look for them and I am sure there are things that are happening that you wouldn’t be telling me about.

I got my first period when I was twelve, Dad.

Trying to shock me won’t change anything. I said that you might be experiencing some weird things right now, but am I right?

There’s always weird things going on with me, but you’ve always warned me about Occam’s razor, she said admonishingly. Maybe you can tell me why I keep getting these hangnails. I clip and clip and they always come back. Must mean I’m a werewolf. She giggled.

I can offer you proof of a sort. But of course, I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this because I don’t think you’ll like the form it will take. You may be angry with me for a while.

"I may be angry with you? What makes you think I’m not angry with you now?"

David stood up with a tired sigh. Indifferent to her daughter’s look of apprehension, he circled behind her and reached into his jacket. Abruptly, he grabbed her wrist, pinned it to the table. Ruthlessly, he slid the sharpened edge of the letter-opener across the back of her splayed hand. It must be said that he took exceeding care to slice shallowly. Still, the assault had taken her completely by surprise and she began to shriek even before she realized how painful it was. It was more excruciating than any sensation she had ever known: she looked down, expecting to see carnage, but through the mists of agony was dumbfounded to see a modest two-inch scratch the width of a line of ink.

This is no doubt the worst pain you’ve ever felt, David whispered over his daughter’s shoulder, who was now clutching her hand to her chest, tears streaming down her cheeks. Look at it. Use your Reason. A cut so minor shouldn’t possibly hurt this much, should it?

What did you do to me? Poison? Tess cried.

This letter-opener is 95 percent sterling silver. And surely you’ve heard what they say about werewolves and silver weapons, David said, wiping the tool clean with a small cloth and putting both back in his jacket.

I’m not a werewolf. There’s no such thing as werewolves.

"Sure. There’s no such thing as werewolves. But what are you?"

After racking her ankle on the coffee table, Amanda turned on the light and jumped back in surprise. Tess had been sitting in the dark, her eyes narrowed into somber, soulless, predatory slits. Her nostrils flared.

Aftermath

from the Omaha World-Herald

TWO SLAIN, ONE MISSING IN ANIMAL ATTACK

WESTBROOK—Investigators from the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office on Thursday said that the deaths of two women found brutally slain at the Saleen Regency Hotel now appear to be the result of an animal attack, and not a human attack as first believed. According to Deputy Chief Victoria Flint, preliminary reports indicate that injuries sustained by Margaret Murphy, 24, and her sister Amanda Murphy, 20, are consistent with that of a large animal, although the Coroner’s Office has not completed the final autopsy report.

We don’t know what [type of animal] could have done this, and to that end we are enlisting help from the University of Nebraska Medical Center, Flint said.

The two sisters were found about 10 a.m. last Tuesday in their hotel room by cleaning personnel. A third sister, Tess Murphy, 17, was confirmed to have checked into the room, but her whereabouts remain unknown.

We haven’t received any tips, Flint said. We are doing canvasses of the area, talking to witnesses, and hoping for the best. That’s all we can do at this point.

Asked about the lack of forced entry, Flint admitted that it was bizarre, but declined to speculate on possible scenarios.

Community reaction has been vengeful.

They need to find this animal and kill it, said Josh Bucket, an area businessman. Anything that can tear up two young women like that and drag off a third shouldn’t be allowed to live.

Nothing Left but the Cockroaches

by Jon Nichols

What do you do when the environment is trashed and standards of living decline by the day? Answer: turn yourself into the one creature that can survive anything. A work of satire that blends Voltaire and Kafka...with a bit of The A-Team for good measure.

My name is Cameron Candy Prince.

I am a cockroach.

I’m not insulting myself. And I don’t mean it in that Franz Kafka kind of way, either. To really understand how I got this roachy bod, I suppose we need to go back to the year 2016.

***

I used to live at my Mom and Dad’s house in Indiana back then. Even now I can smell the chlorine of the swimming pool and the magnolias around the tennis court. Yeah, my Dad was loaded. Mitt Prince II made a killing with hedge funds in the first decade of the century and then went into defense contracting. With his hard-earned profits he built our family a palatial estate to the north of Indianapolis, complete with an entryway that was lined with 12 gold crosses. Sometimes on summer nights we’d all sit on the back patio and watch the light of sunset turn funny colors in the smoke of Dad’s LandDrone™ and ROV plants.

My Mom, Elizabeth Grosselin-Prince, was a true beauty queen. No, really. She was once a Miss Indiana and before that she was a Miss Pork Queen. She kept her looks, too. I’d keep getting older but she’d still look the same with that bronze skin and sunshine blonde hair. Every now and then I’d hear Daddy thanking Jesus for stuff like liposuction and Botox.

I grew up a happy kid. When I was little I smiled all the time. That’s why the family gave me the nickname Candy. Aw, ‘eez sweet as candy! someone like my aunt or grandma would say. If ya’ll don’t look out, I’m a gonna steal all ‘eez sugar! Then they’d run their noses all over me while making pig noises. The nickname stuck with me, mostly because I really am a heckuva nice guy.

It’s not like I didn’t have to take a bit of ribbing for it from other kids. Candy is after all, a name for a girl. I don’t know how many times I’d get do you melt in the mouth or in the hand? or heard you got a girl pregnant and she’s gonna have a Baby Ruth. But all that was nothing compared to the accusations that I wasn’t my Mom’s son. Some miscreant got it in his head that I was really born to Penelope, our maid from Tijuana, Mexico.

She was one of the few survivors of a horde of Mexicans that tried to rush the Arizona border once food grew scarce from a drought down south. National Guard troops opened fire on the crowd, later claiming that they saw a man with a missile launcher in the mob. But am I Penelope’s kid? Sure, my skin’s always been a bit on the olive side, neither one of my parents have black hair like I do, and every once in a while I crave chicken mole like you wouldn’t believe, but that’s got nothin’ to do with nothin’.

One day I went to a NASCAR race with a few other kids. They wouldn’t let up on the entire Penelope thing so when we got back I finally asked our family Pastor if my Daddy would ever do such a thing. Pastor Longson stuttered in shock. Not really, he told me, just before he said he had to go tap a keg of Pabst Blue Ribbon. That was good enough for me. In fact I think I freaked poor Pastor Longson out just by making him think of my Dad with any woman besides my Mom.

Like any good ol’ American boy, my love was always the girl next door. Or the next mansion over, anyway. My dear Jennifer Lynn Kane. I held so many dreams in my head for us. Getting married and taking her name so I could be Candy Kane, a house of our own bought with my Daddy’s money, going to hear Tobey Keith belt out Let’s Bomb Europe every time he played the Jasper County Fair, and the peaceful, easy feeling of falling asleep together every night to Fox News. But we had the whole deck stacked against us it seemed.

You see, Jen demanded to be called Razor. She put a ring in her nose, wore a spiked dog collar, and colored her spiky hair half pink and half purple. Often times she’d get citations from the police as she violated the Public Appearance Law, running up quite a tab for her folks. They even had her committed at one point, but word round the campfire was that she scared the psychologists so much that she was summarily released. Once back in public, well… that just meant more PAL violation fines for Ma and Pa Kane.

Hang on. I probably need to back up. Bear with me as I digress and explain that last bit via a series of twists and turns. First off, I was homeschooled. My parents kept me out of the public school system because they wanted a quality education for me. I asked my Daddy once why I got to stay home with a private tutor while every kid I knew slogged off to crumbling buildings to watch movies on how to select the right bubble on standardized tests. Son, those kids have parents who just don’t work hard enough, Daddy told me. If they did, they’d be getting what you’re getting.

My live-in private tutor was a brilliant man named Dr. Richard von Schweenson. He was the one who taught me that in America, we live in the best of all possible worlds. America is a nation of strength unparalleled in human history. And not since the halcyon days of Gerald Ford has our economy been so strong. He also taught me to always make my words about America sweet, else they become the bitter seeds of treason and that taxes were born of copulation between Satan and Lenin. Every American is born with an inalienable right to everything under the sun, but under no obligation to pay for it with taxes, he furthered.

Not only was he good with words but he was also a brilliant guy to boot. I absorbed all I could from my conservative master. I was Neo to his Morpheus. His knowledge of history and philosophy inspired me at