Rattlesnake Necktie

By Sean E. Graham

Rattlesnake Necktie is a collection of mild bizzaro and classic horror stories featuring seven works previously published in hard copy and four new stories. What happens when the world's economy is based on reality television? A mother rescues her son from his pimp, but can she break his addiction to grass...mowing? A murder trial is decided by parking lot joust. Carnivorous carpet, sentient pollen, exploding shoes, soul traders and hot tubs are just the beginning of this deadly double-Windsor.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sean E. Graham
• Release date: Sep 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466089273

Sean E. Graham

Sean lives in central Oklahoma with his beautiful wife Tammy. They share their home with a couple of short haired felines and a pair of three legged dogs. His short fiction can be found in various anthologies, e-zines and periodicals.

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Rattlesnake Necktie

By Sean E. Graham

Smashwords Edition

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PUBLISHED BY:

Sean E. Graham on Smashwords

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Rattlesnake Necktie

Copyright © 2011 by Sean E. Graham

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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 author's work.

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Table of Contents

Heads

Shag 3000

Reality Star

Allergy Season

Decisions, Decisions

Objection Sustained

Dummies

Remember Us

Five Minutes in Africa

Lawn Pimp

Jacob Fine Clothiers

Host 997

Henderson Hell Machine

Also by Sean E. Graham

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Heads

(Originally published by Pill Hill Press featured in Halloween Frights)

It was common knowledge that the dimensional wall between the living and, well, everything else was thinnest on All Hallows’ Eve—Halloween—which was all fine and good, but what was the point in knowing something if you couldn’t profit from it?

Tobias was the type of man who profited from things, all types of things: both sides of the fence, black markets, white markets and every shade of gray in between. An action wasn’t worth taking if there was no profit to be gained. That was his life philosophy: It profited or you didn’t do it—everything from flipping real estate to loaning money at preposterous interest rates so the juice just kept on coming. Tobias Jones profited, period.

He chewed on a half-smoked Cuban cigar and watched the laborers labor from behind mirrored sunglasses. Even though he stood in a warehouse gloomy and shrouded in shadow, he wore sunglasses. Impenetrable sunglasses. In addition to believing there were other dimensions and that the layers of ectoplasmic goop that separated them waxed and waned with the cyclic rotation of the earth, Tobias quite literally believed that the eyes were the window to a person’s soul. You could read a man like a book just by staring into his eyes, delving into them, caving them like a spelunker and…bend that man to your will. Tobias was not a man to be read or spelunked. And so no living being had seen his eyes since he’d left home at twelve and that had been his mother and she was dead.

The warehouse, whose deed was held three shell companies deep, was typical; exposed steel beams running vertically up walls and horizontally across the ceiling, walls of corrugated sheet metal punctuated by sections of cinderblock and a docking bay of retractable doors. Caged fluorescent lights dangled from the ceiling fifty feet overhead, casting the space in sickly green-white light. Twenty thousand square feet of chipped and cracked concrete were dotted by pillars of larger steel beams that supported the expansive ceiling at regular intervals.

The tradesmen, if you could call them that, were installing two-inch-thick panes of glass special ordered from Europe as specified between a framework of reinforced steel beams forged in Russia as specified and set at the precise angles and measurements as specified. Specified by Oleg Rasmussen, Tobias’ personal psychic and Spirit Advisor. That’s Spirit Advisor with a capital S and a capital A—it was an actual title. There was a business card to prove it. Oleg was tethered to his employer by a psychic umbilical cord and was never more than twenty feet from Tobias at any given point in time, ever. When Tobias had sex Oleg heard it. When Tobias was dropping his morning deuce Oleg smelled it. His proximity to the man was crucial to Tobias’ overall well-being; it channeled Oleg’s sight and gifted him with good fortune and Tobias believed it wholly, was serious as a heart attack about it.

Once, Jimmy The Hand Grenade Turturro over too much wine and veal remarked that it would be easier just to carry around a rabbit’s foot, and cheaper too. Grenade’s autopsy listed the cause of death as asphyxiation due to airway obstruction. He was found in a dumpster two days after the dinner with so many made-in-Korea, hot pink rabbit’s feet stuffed down his throat and in his mouth that his jaw had dislocated. No one joked about Oleg.

A black SUV pulled through the bay door of the warehouse and eased to a stop behind Tobias. The passenger-side window rolled down and Vinnie appeared inch by inch as the jet-black tint vanished.

Tobias did not turn and Vinnie did not expect him to. Vinnie said, The heads are all ready. The room’s booked.

Tobias nodded almost imperceptibly then said, And the big head?

Vinnie cringed. Twelve out of thirteen… He shrugged. That ain’t bad. He’s been…eh, a little difficult.

Are you wearing your helmets? Tobias asked. Vinnie could see the back of the man’s neck already getting red with increased blood pressure.

Vinnie made a noncommittal noise that wasn’t a word, then, Andrew won’t wear it. Says it’s silly or something.

Andrew, the SUV’s driver, slapped Vinnie in the back of the head and leaned across the passenger seat. That ain’t true, boss. It’s Vinnie. He— He was cut short with an elbow to the ribs by Vinnie.

Tobias’ head turned to Rasmussen who was sitting cross-legged on a Persian rug nineteen feet away. Rasmussen looked like a rodent. His face was long and narrow, nose was pointed. He looked at Vinnie with disgusted disappointment then back at Tobias and shook his head.

Still without facing Vinnie Tobias said, We need all thirteen, and Big Head most of all. He’s the key.

A loud crash made even louder by the echo created by the cavernous expanse of the warehouse rolled over them. Two men, probably drunks found on the street that very morning, stood near a fallen beam looking at it and each other, scratching their heads as if the idea that a heavy object, mishandled, could ever come crashing down was an absurdity.

Tobias winced inwardly as he thought of the favor-debt he incurred just to get the Siberian foundry built in the first place in a collapsing Russian government. Favors from powerful men who would one day call on Tobias for even greater favors, compromising favors. And just to have these two dipshits drop them? They would have to die on general principle when this was all over. But that was a given, wasn’t it? None of the laborers could be allowed to live. If Rule #1 was Profit Always, Rule #2 was No Witnesses. The beams wouldn’t break of course, but they needed to be unmarred by man in order to harness the proper energy and contain it.

Oh! shouted a familiar voice. Tito Hernandez stepped from one of the back rooms of the warehouse wearing a suit that had never seen a price tag, only a designer’s name label. If you had to ask how much, you were in the wrong store. You two shitheads better straighten up posthaste or it’s your asses.

If Rasmussen was Tobias’ Spirit Advisor, Tito was his Financial Advisor, his lead counsel. They were attached not by psychic medium but by a train of green, dead presidents. Tito had an MBA from Michigan State hanging on his office wall and his lucky shiv, a sharpened toothbrush handle, from Rikers Island tucked in his boot, which was a much more comfortable place than where it had been tucked on the inside. At least he could sit down now. No one believed he had actually earned the MBA, or had even attended a single semester hour at Michigan State for that matter, but the numbers didn’t lie. Together, he and Tobias had made many people many millions of dollars.

Tito saw Vinnie and sort of waved. Vinnie sort of waved back with a two-fingered Boy Scout salute.

Okay then, Vinnie said to Tobias. We’ll make reservations for Big Head first thing.

And wear your fucking helmets. They cost a lot of money. Wear ’em or buy ’em, Tobias snapped. Tomorrow night is Halloween. No time for your usual fuckups.

Sure thing, chief. When the window was completely rolled up Vinnie, looking at Rasmussen, said to Andrew, That dude creeps me the fuck out, man.

Andrew clapped his hands over his ears. Oh! Earmuffs, fuck! La-la-la, I didn’t hear that. I did not hear that. You trying to get us killed? Warn me before you say some shit like that.

*

Jeremy was homeschooled. He didn’t fit in well with his peers. He moved things with his mind.

He was down in the basement building an expansive railroad landscape that looked to be a combination of World War II and War of the Worlds. Inch-high German soldiers floated through the air, drifting across hills and valleys of green foam and rivers of blue-painted gel. When they reached a particular bomb-ravaged building they were lowered into place, taking up positions at the four corners of the structure. A squad of Americans charged down one flank, little flicks of orange flame emitting from their rifles. Down the building’s opposite flank stood a tentacled sluglike thing made of foam rings painted green and stuck together with toothpicks. Its pipe-cleaner tentacles held it frozen in mid-shamble. Proportionately the size of a cow or a small car, its annelid, offset foam-segmented body appeared to work overtime inching itself along the plywood base towards its Nazi prey. Around the bend, worming through more war debris in a building across the avenue were three similar creatures busy with the act of ripping a German soldier to pieces. Red paint nearly filled the room. Written in this red were the scrawled words THEY OF THE DEEP. On the crest of a hill overlooking the building were three Russian tanks, T-26s. An armored cavalry captain peered through binoculars at the town below. You couldn’t tell by looking at his plastic, painted face, but there was menace in his heart. You did not want to be a soldier of the Third Reich in this mish-mash world.

Jeremy thought about moving the tanks, envisioned it in his mind’s eye, and it was so. The lead tank pulled forward and began its descent down the hill, the plastic captain wobbling in the hatch, followed by the other two war machines. It was that easy. And it was not limited to toys and model tanks either. Jeremy once rescued three kids and a driver from a bus crash, saved an old woman from a house fire that never was, thanks to his control over matter and insight into the near future and a myriad other helpful things. He was generally a good kid, better than most, and with the exception of the time he prevented Billy Johnson’s pants from being unbuttoned, resulting in young Billy filling said pants with a healthy sampling of crap as he ran to the bathroom, he had not used his powers for anything remotely evil or ill willed. And Billy had been extorting lunch money from Jeremy’s classmates, so poopy pants were more than justified. That was Jeremy’s last day in public school, but boy what a day.

The tank rolled into the burned-out cityscape and fired its heavy gun. An imaginary shell, a projection of Jeremy’s mind, blew particles of papier-mâché from what was left of the roof of the Germans’ hideout.

From upstairs his mother shouted that lunch was ready, but he already knew that and he knew that she already knew that. She knew that he could have easily made his own lunch while simultaneously destroying the Germans, but she insisted on doing it. Mom clung to normalcy like a drowning rat clings to a floating turd. And because he loved her, he respected her wishes and did not make his own lunch or do anything else that a mother was generally expected to do for her eight-year-old child.

Except he wasn’t eight. He was forty.

Jeremy was eight only in mind and he struggled at that. In body he was middle-aged, pudgy and balding. Glasses so thick they magnified the sun into deadly intensity framed wide, peaceful eyes. On Jeremy’s eighth birthday his father had taken him to the lake to fish. It was their favorite thing to do. And after a long day on the water bobbing idly in their flat-bottom boat Jeremy’s dad had had one or five too many and dozed off. Jeremy fished on quietly, basking in the summer heat, content with the buzz of insects. Hours passed uneventfully and the sun had begun to fade before his line finally jerked; the float bobbed, sank and didn’t come back. Sweet.

The line zigged and zagged cutting across the water and Jeremy held tight. Pink knuckles turned white then…the line went slack. Jeremy relaxed, dropped one arm and shook out the tension, holding the rod with the other. And almost had it popped from its socket. The fish pulled so hard and so suddenly that Jeremy was yanked off-balance and wobbled over the side. His legs dragged, caught the edge of the boat, and his momentum along with his father’s slumbering, lopsided weight flipped the boat.

Jeremy swallowed water, gulped and swallowed more water, remembered crushing pain as his head struck something and then he was staring into blackness complete and deep. He watched his father’s sinking corpse vanish in an ink swirl of jet black like a herd of octopus had fled across him. He disappeared in the murk and was never seen again.

Jeremy floated in the cloud of black smog. A slab of nothingness, black darker than the surrounding smog, materialized and hung before him. It was the absence of matter—a doorway, he was sure, but did not know how he knew. From within the gap beings reached out to him with their minds, calling him, inviting him. For a long time afterward he told himself it had all been a dream, imagined. That the obscured shapes moving just behind the blackness had been fish or turtles even, but when They of the Deep continued to call to him in his darkest hours of rehabilitation the ridiculousness of that theory was washed away. Further contact, relentless hammering from beyond forced him to admit that he had left this world in that moment under the water, somehow parting the dimensional barrier without fully leaving it. In his fractured mind something had opened, a doorway, and now there was no closing it.

They were real and he knew it. They of the Deep they called themselves and they wanted out and wanted Jeremy to get them out because they knew he could, because the damage to his brain had somehow changed his makeup, rewired his synapses, made him more than human while at the same time making him less. He had to relearn to walk, but he could halt an out-of-control bus with a thought, fasten pant buttons tight. He soiled himself daily for years, but he could speak to beings beyond this world if he let his mind drift into that darkness. And those beings wanted out.

But he wouldn’t let them out. He knew as he knew old lady Johnson’s house was going to burn down that Sunday morning that they were trapped for a reason, imprisoned by some greater force. That they were terrible beasts and needed to remain locked up. And so they raged on in his mind, crying, moaning, pleading.

He tried to ignore them, use his abilities to push them away, but as he looked over his foam-and-particle-board world full of They of the Deep, the crayon drawings of octo-slugs that lined his walls, he knew he could never truly silence their pleas. They would manage to slip out through the weak points in his new mind, if only to manifest as toys and eight-year-old’s artwork.

Jeremy’s mom yelled for him again and Stalin’s tanks stopped rolling, to the clear relief of the cornered Germans, and Jeremy climbed the steps while still producing shooting noises with pursed lips. Upon reaching the top floor he sensed that something was wrong in his home but couldn’t quite place it, but when he rounded the living room wall and entered the kitchen he didn’t need a sixth