Ghoulishous

By Mordechai Lazarus

Eddie Dorvek is a young, semi-aimless, and mostly normal guy. Sure, Eddie has grown up in an slightly odd little community with some unusual dietary restrictions, but otherwise, he has a loving family, a couple of good friends, and a favourite pub. Unfortunately, Eddie also has a nose for blood that is going to land him with a gutload of trouble.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mordechai Lazarus
• Release date: Apr 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310906534

Mordechai Lazarus

Mordechai Lazarus writes things that he hopes you will find entertaining.

Book preview

Ghoulishous

by Mordechai Lazarus

Lark Publishing 2014

Smashwords edition

For more stories, visit http://subsidingsun.uk/lark/

GHOULISHOUS

The stairs creaked as I headed up, following my nose. Two steps from the top, I almost tripped over some frayed and faded blue carpet that has quietly peeled itself off.

The smell was big and blooming perfect now and I pushed open the door. There it was. She looked like she'd been dead a while, and she was slumped over her side in the bed, all wrapped up in a grey dressing gown, like she was just on her way to get a glass of water when she stopped living. Surprisingly, no animals or bugs seemed to have got to her, although I could smell that she's been here a while.

I tip-toed over towards her. She had an old face but it looked saggy and unreal now. One of her hands was poking out a finger with a ring on it towards me.

I took a deep breath, leaned over that finger, and bit it off.

Now, this is where you are getting all judgey. You lot are very strange about corpses. You think your sausage casing and stack of bones is something magical and special, probably because you don't want to think about how unremarkable you are and how little it'll matter when you're gone. I get that, I do. But my people are not like you. Sure, we look a lot like you, more or less, and there's nothing particularly special about us either. We're just more comfortable with it, I guess. It's a cultural thing.

Also, unlike you lot, I forgot to mention, we need to eat matured meat. It's something to do with our systems, but we die without the occasional bit of meaty nourishment. We get by on all sorts of dead animals, like you do, although we prefer ours a lot older and more tender (because of decomposition and organic chemistry or something like that, my older brother once explained it to me). And occasionally, just occasionally, we need to eat some meat made out of one of you. Or else we die. We don't take a lot and we never kill you for it - we've got a whole heap of other ways of getting what we need, and besides, it's not like you are using the stuff once you're gone anyway, is it? No need to be wasteful.

So I crunched the former old lady's finger and enjoyed the hell out the taste. I admit I felt a tiny tinge of guilt, not because I was eating her finger - like I said, that's something you lot are weird about - no, it was because we have it drummed into us from an early age about hiding ourselves, because we know how irrational you get about our dietary needs. That's why you haven't heard of us, or at least, why you don't believe in us. We're a very private people. But because I'm young and a bit dumb, I'd been carried away by the scent here and had broken in to have a bite. It's like people telling you that you haven't tasted real chicken until you've had organic free-range chicken. That bit of finger was like my delicious bit of free-range chicken. I could already hear my Mum's voice in my head, telling me off for being thoughtless and careless and a fool, and how their parents didn't move to this country for me to cause this sort of trouble in the community, and all the rest of it. But as I swallowed the last of the finger-tip and licked my teeth, enjoying the taste that lingered in my mouth, I figured it had been worth it, whatever mother's real or imagined might say. Anyway, it's not like anyone would know I'd been here. It was just a little bit of a finger and the world hadn't bloody collapsed, despite what mum-in-my-head might say.

Then I noticed something wrong with her neck.

I'm not a doctor or anything, but there were some nasty deep lines on the late old lady's neck. She might have been lying here for a few days, but this lady hadn't gone in the everyday fashion. Someone had strangled her.

If I didn't get out of here, this had the potential to go very badly for me. I gave a quick check to make sure I hadn't left any traces of myself in the house, and then I heard a police siren outside.

I forgot how to breathe for a bit. There were footsteps outside heading towards this run-down place and I was stuck in here with a strangled body I had just nibbled a finger off of.

Mum is right. I am an idiot.

***

I ran like crazy and basically threw myself through the open window I'd used as an entrance, collapsing ungracefully in a pile of sun-hardened cat crap. Scrabbling to my feet, I thought I heard insistent knocking from the front door of the house. There was nothing much going on in my head now except blind panic and it took me a couple of goes to scrabble over the back fence. My shirt snagged on something as I came down the other side into the alleyway and made a definite ripping sound.

I heard the police calling out now for a Mrs. Whateverhername is. One guy and one lady officer, it sounded like. My brain noted, irrelevantly, that the lady had a very nice voice, and started wondering what she might look like. Now was not the time, brain.

I sort of half slinked, half dashed down the alleyway, trying to avoid looking suspicious as I got the heck out of there. At certain points, I suspected that I looked like I'm skipping. Skipping stupidly away from the law

Thankful that I've managed to scrabble out of a potentially awkward situation, I decided that was it for work for me today and I headed home to the Dumpatorium to change shirts and wash any traces of stray cat crap off.

The Dumpatorium was a dark little single-bedroom flat in a block full of neighbours who never talk to each other and would probably have a heart-attack if you ever smiled at them. That more or less suited me. The rent wasn't ridiculous - and it was worth its weight in gold to have my own space sort of free from my parents. That said, Mum and Dad were constantly showing up with various bits and pieces of supposedly antique furniture and assorted junk that they have found stored somewhere and felt would brighten my place up. My family was like that. They weren't big on throwing things away, which meant I ended up with a lot of things that should probably be thrown away. Hence: the Dumpatorium. I had three clocks (only one works and it runs slow) a solid oak dining table with room to seat six (if I ever had anybody over), several smaller tables, a collection of mouldy books nobody would ever want to read (with titles like 'The Grey Matter of Ivan'), four rusty old lamps, three battered armchairs, and a pretty substantial collection of oil paintings of cows standing looking confused in landscapes. In fact, almost nothing in the Dumpatorium was mine by choice, except a framed poster of 'Casablanca' my older brother got me back when we all lived at Mum and Dad's.

I gave my teeth a good guilty brush and stared at myself in the mirror. We don't smile much in public, because our teeth are just a bit sharper than yours and it creeps you lot out a tad. We're supposed to be all about keeping our heads down.

My phone rang and I scrabbled past various pieces of furniture to get there before the last ring, bumping my knee painfully on the edge of the dining table.

Ah. It was the parents. Of course. I'd almost managed to forget that it was Friday.

Lo?

"Chi, ghindiku."

Oh, hullo, Mum, I said.

"Tzah! Don't sound so upset, Vhardinku, to talk to your mother!"

Sorry, Mum.

So, what time are you going to be over for dinner then? You haven't forgotten?

No, Mum,

Actually, what with my guilty weakness for a bite and finding a murdered woman, I had indeed completely forgotten.

Your father needs to do something with some wires. Pick up some of that wire he uses.

Solder, d'y'mean? Yes, Mum.

And some ice-cream. But that low-fat kind, your father has to watch his weight.

Sure, Mum.

Six-thirty! she declared, Don't be late! You can't keep people waiting!

"I'll be there, mum, don't worry. Afachi. I'll see you soon."

"Yes, yes, afachi."

There was the standard fiddling as my mum tried to hang up the phone, along with the background rumbling of my father reminding her which button to press, and after some of this distant arguing, she managed to hang up and I was left alone.

Stress always makes me tired. I tried to have a head-clearing quick panic doze in one of my inherited armchairs - a cracked leather seat that had carried the weight of many a snoring man before me, I presumed. I liked to imagine it had been previously owned by a pompous bank-manager.

After more napping than was probably appropriate, I got up and cricked my back, then spent time trying to make myself look presentable. Hair was washed thoroughly and combed obsessively, cheeks were carefully shaved, and teeth were scrubbed violently.

I examined myself in the mirror and sighed. Mum would invariably find something to comment on.

I found another shirt that looked reasonably clean and decided it looked fine without needing an iron. I couldn't remember where the iron was among all the junk of the Dumpatorium, anyway.

As I was about to head out, I did my little ritual dance of jiggling and patting my pockets to to make sure that I had my keys, wallet, and phone. Phone. Phonephonephone. Wedged at the back of the armchair, of course. I groaned when I pulled it out. Voice message. Geez, I hoped Dad and Mum hadn't decided they needed something else. I was going to struggle to get the icecream and make it on time as it was.

The bored automatic phone lady said something about my having one new message.

I swallowed hard. It wasn’t my parents.

Mr. Dorvek? This is Constable Langi from the local station. As far as our information shows, Mr. Dorvek, you are employed by, uh, Gas-safe in the east-side area. We were wondering if you might be able to come into the station tomorrow morning as part of an ongoing investigation.

Ah, damnit.

I figured that I'd deal with one problem at a time. My poor simple brain can only handle so much, after all.

So I trained towards my parents. They lived in an ugly block of flat built in the sixties that faced proudly out towards the street with immigrant pride. Old Philip waved at me as I went past. He'd been there forever, metalworking or something since the year dot. Phil had a huge