ABANDON: 13 Tales of Impulse, Betrayal, Surrender, & Withdrawal

By The Great Lakes Horror Company

To act with abandon, in any sense of the word, is human. Whether it’s the sudden, strong urge to do something, either good or bad, or the act of betraying someone you love, we make choices that forever change our lives. Do you give into something or someone completely, or withdraw wholly into yourself? These thirteen stories run the gamut of emotions and express horror as you’ve never imagined it.

The story of a woman alone at the end of the world and the small lifeline she hopes will prove humanity still exists challenges the search for anything left behind after the death of a child. What if you hid a secret you’d thought no one else knew? Would its revelation spark the monster hiding within? A downward spiral into madness juxtaposes the ultimate, but impossible, (re)birth. Would you choose the frigid winds of winter over the warmth and safety of your lover’s arms?

Abandon hope, all who enter here...

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Great Lakes Horror Company
• Release date: May 25, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463144152

The Great Lakes Horror Company

The Great Lakes Horror Company is both an indie publishing house and a popular horror-themed podcast. The podcast features special guests, panels and information on all things related to writing horror. It can be found on iTunes or at the Library of the Damned website. GLHC also publishes horror anthologies every year, featuring bestselling authors, cult favourites and bold and bloody newcomers.

Book preview

ABANDON

13 Stories of Impulse, Betrayal, Surrender, and Withdrawal

Collected & Edited by

Julianne Snow

Great Lakes Horror Company

ABANDON:

13 Stories of Impulse, Betrayal, Surrender, and Withdrawal

A GREAT LAKES HORROR COMPANY BOOK

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by an information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher and the author(s), except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

The stories in this anthology are works of fiction. People, places, events and situations are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to an actual person, living or dead, events or locales is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2018 Great Lakes Horror Company

Smashwords Edition

Individual stories are the copyright of their respective authors

Edited by Julianne Snow

Cover Design © Julianne Snow

Interior Formatted by Julianne Snow — www.juliannesnow.com

All artwork is copyright © the artists, used where no attribution is required.

The Great Lakes Horror Company

presents

ABANDON

13 New Works Exploring the Themes of Impulse, Betrayal, Surrender, and Withdrawal

Collected & Edited by Julianne Snow

Published by the Great Lakes Horror Company

Featuring stories from Ted Bergeron, Chantal Boudreau, Crystal Bourque, Suzanne Church, Brian F.H. Clement, Sèphera Girón, Danann Hawes, Repo Kempt, Caitlin Marceau, Jon Olson, James Pyne, Andrew Robertson, and A. F. Stewart.

THE STORIES

IMPULSE

Tinderbox

Andrew Robertson

White Out

Caitlin Marceau

Looking for Mrs. Peepers

Sèphera Girón

BETRAYAL

Slaughter-Greedy

Suzanne Church

Forsaken

A. F. Stewart

Toss Away

Jon Olson

Santa Muerte

James Pyne

SURRENDER

Collared

Crystal Bourque

Scuttle

Chantal Boudreau

To His Own Devices

Brian F.H. Clement

WITHDRAWAL

Down the Dark Path Alone

Ted Bergeron

Old Branch

Repo Kempt

Puppy Dog Tails

Danann Hawes

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

IMPULSE

Tinderbox

Andrew Robertson

Some of the lights down in the streets still work, coming on at night like they always did. Not on every street, but on mine they do. Maybe the lines are broken, or maybe there’s one generator still pushing on despite everything that’s happened. Many storeys down in front of my apartment building, the lampposts still make an effort, pushing back the shadows that only seem to get bigger, darker and stronger every night—a tide of deep velvet in which to drown.

When I moved in, I picked this place because it seemed safe for a young woman, even at night. Everyone said it was a great neighbourhood with cute local antique shops, old-fashioned ice cream parlours, diners, and people walking fluffy dogs. Families walked to the playground at dusk to play on the swings and slides. Teenagers even had the respect to smoke weed hidden in the woods behind my apartment building.

Around the circular driveway below, like a keyhole, the flickering lights reveal a parked or maybe abandoned car. It’s been there a few days. I didn’t see the owner parking, so I'm not sure where they went or if they walked, ran, or were dragged away. The luminescent halo beyond shows me a pool full of floating debris and a few bodies, wet leaves stuck to their backs. At the very edges of their yellowing effort, the lights reveal the deep greens and browns of the cedar hedges once used for privacy but now just hide the monsters. Beyond that, I can see the long road leading to the residential area where no one seems to have stuck around. Either that or they're lying on their expensive hardwood floors in shreds while some newly orphaned child sits choking out pleas for their late mother at the exposed brick and wall treatments upstairs. It became far too clear things were going horribly wrong when I could hear the cries and commotion coming from the million dollar mansions. All that gorgeous design hardly seems to matter now.

Crown moulding.

Spa-like bathrooms. Vagina fountains if you’re too lazy to fold some toilet paper.

I guess you really can’t take it with you.

And none of them were rushing out to help either, locked up in their urban palaces, believing their money and power, or maybe the government, would protect them from the things that didn’t need or want money and held all of the power.

Still, these remaining lights are my only fucking companions through the hours of darkness, sentinels of an era quickly passed who don’t yet know the time of their usefulness could be almost at its end. It’s so sad really. All they can do now is shine a yellow and unreliable glow on suffering, a spotlight for things no one wants to see. They are like me, waiting to be of use, waiting for a change that won’t come.

A light. What a difference it can make. Illuminating the golden days and the darkest moments.

I worry part of me wants to see them go out and give up. Maybe I want to. It’s always easier to make mistakes in the dark. You forget a condom, or bury a body. Isn’t that how it goes?

Of course it would be worse without them. I don’t think our imaginations ever have more energy than when we are alone in the dark, especially when we try to make no sound. Every creak is a spectre. Every groaning floorboard is a monster under the bed. And the eerie noise coming from downstairs, like a claw across the hardwood, leads to a chilling sweat under the covers.

I can’t help but think of every damn dystopian teen novel I had read as a girl, but it’s like something got fucked up and the dream team of outsiders, nerds, sexy adolescents and their fearless leader never had a chance. But then again, it all happened in an inconceivable way. No one would have seen this shit coming.

By the time the Mexico video appeared, hysteria was all around us.

Before that video, official news reports ignored the speculation online and the message boards, instead suggesting gang activity, drug warlords, or terrorists as the cause of the multitude of violent and bloody attacks. Talking heads were blaming the government, throwing out conspiracy theories and straight up panicking on-air. And of course the fucking religious crazy people were claiming it was God’s wrath for all our consumerism and sodomy. But we didn’t have to speculate long. Proof of just why bodies were turning up in mangled piles came quickly.

No one wanted to believe it could be so much worse, and in the absence of a picture or some proof, it was hard to believe it was possible. After all, it’s not like Mexico wasn’t known for pick-up trucks full of severed heads appearing at the side of the highway. It was easy to think all the bad things would just happen there, far away.

Then some tourists found a deep cavern filled with bits of people: hollowed out heads, fingertips, shards of bone, and piles of clothing cast to the side. They captured the first sighting of one in a blurred video clip, streaming it online while running up a cliff before the inevitable. It was undeniable at that point. Nothing could move like the thing in the video.

No one found those tourists, just the mobile phone and its indisputable evidence of how the world was going to end. That’s when the South American media started calling the creatures the Chupacabra. The Americans lined up to protect their borders, but the live coverage ended more abruptly than anyone could have thought as night fell. Pink tracers in the hundreds flew across the sky on the 24-hour news channel’s livestream. When the firing stopped, all you heard was screaming. That same day, the nation declared a state of emergency and short days after that, no one was left at the wheel.

I got a few video calls after it all began because the internet was still fully functional, albeit on its own clock. Most calls were so… horrifying… the blood and tears and confusion. They begged for help like I was a superhero taking my sweet time. A lot of people knew I boxed and did martial arts, but what good was that now? And half of them had made fun of me, like it was the most dykey thing ever. For the record, I am strictly dickly.

In those first days, I had friends calling to see what I had heard, asking if they should make a run for it, asking what I had seen. I didn’t know what to tell them, I was scared shitless and living a five-hour drive from family. None of us knew what the actual fuck was happening, or if the army was battling these things, if there was any help at all.

The connections quickly became terrible and the video feeds stalled constantly, making decent communication increasingly difficult.

Then there were images online of torn rags with names. Mom. Dad. Daughter. And all the message boards saying it was a hoax, aliens, an experiment gone wrong, hairless apes the size of bears, mythical monsters.

One of the last texts I got was from my mother: I’m almost out of batteries, Dad gone, trying to get car to start and come get u. Be safe. <3 you.

I tried to wait calmly for the five hours it would take her to get here. She never arrived. I hate to think of one of those fucking things getting my mom. The image can’t even form in my mind. I won’t let it. Right after the text came, I tried to call her just to hear her voice and know she was with me, but all I was met with was silence, followed by the disconnection. The deepest silence is a cell phone doing nothing.

After the video surfaced, the world of social media looked like some third-world country in the grip of civil war. There were even hashtags, but this time, it wasn’t about something happening in a land far, far away. There were so many graphic images of bodies, carnage, cities on fire, and soldiers without a clear course of action screaming at citizens fleeing big cities until darkness fell. In the background, the Statue of Liberty, Times Square, the Golden Gate Bridge, the CN Tower, Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon, everywhere and anywhere. This shit was everywhere. That was when the screams changed from frustration to terror.

The Internet was slowly starting to come apart, the service overwhelmed by asylum seekers desperate to connect before it all crashed, and the only clouds left were the ones in the sky.

But where do you seek asylum when the danger is all around you? When all you have known is total and complete connection, where do you turn?

Every country was telling the story of the tall monsters ripping through cities. No one had enough guns or any idea how to stop them.

When the news reported the creatures moving north, many tenants in my building were on watch around the clock. Crows nests were set up on the balconies which started on the fourth floor above the retail and office space on the lower levels. No one really believed this could or would happen, but it’s hard to do nothing. We knew there were police, the army, all our guns, and tanks. The government wouldn’t let them in.

But one did come and it did get in anyway—just like we had all seen online. It must have come up through the parking garage before finding a way in, because no one saw it coming. Then an awful sound like wet wood in a hollow rattle echoed up the stairwell as it breathed deep and damp, mucus hitting a ragged exhale. The sound of splintering beams and metal bending would signal its arrival on each floor as it broke through their meagre defences. Some tenants felt trapped and chose to escape by making ropes out of clothing and sheets, taking their chances outside. That’s when I realized there must be many more monsters than I thought with all the guns going off. You didn’t even have to look outside to know what had happened. This one inside was just trying to start the stampede.

I chose to stay inside my unit, locking all four of my deadbolts, and pushing bookcases and furniture against my door, cruelly hoping it wouldn’t be hungry by the time it got to my floor. Then I poured vinegar, dish soap and pickle juice near my doorway, hoping the concoction would cover the scent of a live woman behind the debris. I can’t say for certain it’s worked, but the last noises I heard from the hallway came ages ago.

I look around at what I was left with: a shitty Ikea couch I promised myself I would replace with my next paycheque, some paintings I did at one of those singles mixer painting nights that I’ve hated ever since I hung them, a rug full of gritty bits of crap I can’t clean, a frying pan with a loose handle, and an overwhelming sense of regret. Everything is incomplete and unfinished.

In contrast, when my phone blinks to life, it’s like a perfect amber gem sitting in my hand. When it shines, my screensaver shows a photo of a black cat named Crayon that once lived in this unit with me. She was out in the halls when it started. Each time I see her image I’m filled with the embarrassed knowledge that I’m happy the cat is gone because I’m about to starve. There must be an awful meme in there.

I used to be so excited to get a text, a call, or a notification. Maybe I got that new job or there’s an amazing party or a date for the weekend. Someone may have swiped right because I had a hot new pic up on Tinder.

Now my only job is to stay alive while trying to find a way to connect with anyone I know in this world, or anyone at all before the power goes out for good.

That day the creature made it inside, I sent a mass text to everyone I could. In the panic, so few responded. And then too soon, there was no one messaging or texting back at all. They could have run out of power or run away without the phone, or worse I guessed.

A sound came from the hallway. I held still, breath trapped in my throat.

It’s nothing, the wind through broken glass and some garbage in the hall.

I realize I’m biting my nails again, and the taste of greasy dirt fills my mouth. Maybe even the tang of nickel caused by bleeding cuticles.

Most of my day involved me staring at my phone like it was the key to my escape, but who was I supposed to contact? In the first days all you could hear were sirens and gunfire, then the sounds of bigger guns and explosions. Planes flew overhead, helicopters dotted the sky, but then there were none. Those first responders couldn’t stop them even when they were around, and I wasn’t about to risk my life for a chance at running toward nothing. If only they would leave.

They. It made my legs turn to water. My stomach felt like I had just drank cheap draft beer for twelve hours. Where did they come from?

I had seen one through my bedroom window during the stampede. From my vantage point, they didn’t look like apes to me. More like very tall men but with their skin on inside out, all long purple veins and blood coloured folds. They moved quickly, and at night they seemed to absorb the only light around them becoming somehow darker and harder to see clearly. They looked wet and sore, with nimble feet like a goat’s, and strong, curved backs. I knew I didn’t ever want to see one up close.

Stuck in my own filth, with a flat full of garbage and what I’d recently stolen from other apartments to survive, I moved to look over the edge of the balcony, always expecting to see something horrible, and always hoping to see someone. Someone normal. Hear something normal. For many nights the silence had only been broken by breaking glass, a car alarm, or a distant scream. It was just like every scary movie, but the sounds meant there were still some people out there fighting. Too bad they were losing.

A bleep lets me know there’s a new notification. It’s a tweet that mentions a college friend, tagged with her handle showing she was dead. She had reached someone who came over to help and for whatever reason, they posted an image of what was left of her on her wall. Literally on her actual wall. It