Deadknobs & Doomsticks 2 - Tales from the Lockdown: Deadknobs & Doomsticks, #2

By Joe Pasquale

Joe is back with more weird and wonderful tales from the Lockdown. Joe presents 19 new short stories with his own unique perspective. Dark tales of horror and surreal takes on everyday life - Deadknobs & Doomsticks 2 - Tales from the Lockdown, is once again illustrated by Joe with original colour artworks to accompany each tale. 19 new tales with a twist from vampires, ghosts and things that go splat in the night. Tales inspired by and written during the lockdown. Gruesome, gory, and not for the faint hearted.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Caffeine Nights Publishing
• Release date: Oct 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393722724

Joe Pasquale

Joe Pasquale is one of the UK’s most loved and funny entertainers. With a wide variety of work from stand-up comedy, to voice-over work in Hollywood feature films, Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties and Horton Hears A Who! and children’s television – Frankenstein’s Cat and starred in The Muppets’ 25th Anniversary show and delighting the nation when he won I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! His TV special, An Audience with Joe Pasquale, enjoyed ratings of more than 9 million viewers. While DVDs of his live tours have sold over £1m on more than one occasion. Joe has starred in a number of West End shows and touring productions, including Spamalot, The Wizard of Oz and Mel Brooks, The Producers. Having recently qualified as a pilot and taken up boxing and running, Joe has continued to enhance his ‘action man’ credentials by competing in a celebrity edition of Total Wipeout; attempted to smash the ‘most amount of martial arts throws in a minute on Guinness World Records Joe’s versatility extends from theatre and TV to now writing his first collection of horror stories that will surprise and delight his fans and new readers of all ages from 16 up. He has also illustrated the book and proves that he is also a very talented artist with a pencil as well as paint brush. He is far more than the man with the funny voice.

Book preview

Published by Caffeine Nights Publishing 2020

Copyright © Joe Pasquale 2020

Joe Pasquale has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998 to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work

CONDITIONS OF SALE

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, scanning, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher

This book has been sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental

Published in Great Britain by

Caffeine Nights Publishing

4 Eton Close

Walderslade

Chatham

Kent

ME5 9AT

caffeinenightsbooks.com

caffeinenights.com

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Also available as a hardback: ISBN: 978-1-913200-16-9

Everything else by

Default, Luck and Accident

DEADKNOBS AND DOOMSTICKS2

Tales from the Lockdown

MORE DARK, SURREAL AND BIZARRE HORROR STORIES AND ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOE PASQUALE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

FOREWORD

LOCKDOWN GAVE ME BUTTERFLIES...

TEACHER’S PET

SCHRÖDINGER

THE PADRE

SHE

CLOSE YOUR EYES AND COUNT TO 9

THE SUN LOUNGER

ALL THAT GLITTERS

APART FROM THAT, WHAT DID YOU THINK OF THE PLAY, MADAM LINCOLN?

GHOST IN THE MACHINE

LEAVE IT ON THE DOORSTEP

LYSSA AND FLAVIVI ARE NOT DEAD...JUST WAITING

NO GOOD TURN

SEE HOW YOU LIKE IT

THE RETURN OF HARRY MONK

THE WAKE

UN-DES RES

WHAT’S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN?

JOIN THE MEETING

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

––––––––

Thank you to Colin (groot) Edmonds for your life-long friendship and encouragement of my writing.

A huge thank you to Darren & Natalie at Caffeine Nights

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

––––––––

I love my mouses

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

––––––––

For my Ellie

Adventure is out there!

FOREWORD

LOCKDOWN GAVE ME BUTTERFLIES...

I’ve never been one for sitting on my backside doing nothing, so when the lockdown began, like a lot of people, I struggled with it and my mind went to some dark places. So, I thought I would channel those dark thoughts into another tomb [sic] of short horror stories. It worked, my mind was kept busy, I didn’t resort to drinking or overeating. I ran five miles most days and on those runs I would come up with ideas for the stories and on my return, I would make notes of weird train of thoughts that accompanied me on those runs.

I was happy when they decided that one of the first shops they decided to re-open was the hardware department stores. I was straight down to B&Q to pick up some ant poison after being overrun by the little buggers with their six-pack thorax give a dog a bone (say it quickly). And while I was in there, I noticed a butterfly. Flitting about all over the place. I followed it for about an hour, all around the shop. It went down nearly all the aisles and departments. There was a one-way system in place, which it totally ignored. That made me break the rules of that system quite a lot too, as it went up and down the aisles. After purchasing the ant poison, I sat in my car and let my mind run with what I’d been doing with the last hour of my time. I have no idea what type of butterfly it was, but I do know that some butterfly’s life span is only 1 to 2 days. I also know that butterflies don’t poo or wee. They do all that stuff as a caterpillar. I don’t know how ‘they’ know that, and I don’t know who ‘they’ are, but let’s say that ‘they’ are right... And I came up with the scenario that maybe a butterfly laid it’s egg on a plant and that plant found its way into B&Q before lockdown, which in turn hatches in to a caterpillar called Kevin, and survives by eating the said plant that has been its home. Then it goes into its metamorphosis stage and hides in its chrysalis. Then through the magic of nature, is reborn into a beautiful butterfly in the middle of B&Q in Gravesend, and he spends the whole two days of his life in a hardware shop because he never finds the courage to go through the automatic doors. And let’s just say for arguments sake that he suffers a heart attack in the cordless drill section and dies then goes up to butterfly heaven and meets Butterfly God and Butterfly God says to him:

So, what do you think? and Kevin says

Well, to be honest, it was bit boring really!

and Butterfly God says Boring? What are you talking about?

and Kevin says Well, it was a do it yourself shop!

Yes says Butterfly God, But if you’d gone outside you would’ve seen everything!

So, what I’m trying to say is, get out, life is more than you know and you’re braver than you think, and the things in your head are a lot scarier than anything outside! So, live your life.

Live well, Joe x.

TEACHER’S PET

TEACHER‘S PET

2020 the year that nobody passed any exams, how could they, they didn’t take them. No degrees, no GCSE’s, no 11 Plus and isolation was going to get to a lot of these kids. Everybody was lumped together, which was fine for the idiots and dimbo’s and slackers that had no chance of passing anything, but for the clever ones, well, to say that it was a disappointment was an understatement, particularly to Patrick Baden.

Patrick was a clever kid. He worked studiously all his life to the cost of everything else, no social life, no girlfriends, no friends at all really. He was your basic swot. He became a target for the bully’s, the Neanderthals as he called them. His new form teacher in Year 13 misread his name on her first day and from hence forth, he was known as Rat Prick. And this year was to be his year. A Levels...he knew he’d piss them and get straight in to Uni for his degree in Applied Sciences. Then his Masters and straight on to his Doctorate...but that was never going to happen now, not now the bloody Covid pandemic hit. He’d started the Science project in January, knowing full well he would have to have the full results from it collated and logged and sent in for them to form a big part of his exam work by June if he was to pass with honours. So when the Covid hit, there was no way he was leaving his precious work unfinished. There was a lot of equipment the school generously lent him. He was their star pupil from that year.

Mr Molineux, Head of Science had high hopes that one day Patrick would come back and take his place on the board of teachers. No way thought Rat Prick, he had bigger fish to fry; he was heading to NASA, working on the colonising of Mars. So even if he couldn’t make this count towards his exam, he knew the findings would be useful in his future work. He drove his Mum up the wall, all the hours of the day and night with the work and equipment, gas canisters littered everywhere. All manner of jars, cauldrons, pipes, smells, noises, banging, crashing, beeping computers. He managed to shut her up eventually from nagging him, saying it wouldn’t be long and soon he would be gone, and the house would be a lot quieter. That was until the police turned up.

People say I’ve got Father’s eyes! he said to the two coppers standing in his kitchen. Pulling out a jiffy bag from his pocket containing his Dad’s eyes. I’ve got his ears and nose too. Taking another jiffy from his other pocket with the said appendages And if you look in my freezer you’ll find the rest of him! said Patrick. The copper gestured to his partner with his head towards the chest freezer in the corner. She went over to it and grabbed the handle, hesitated and looked back at her mate questioningly. He just nodded towards the freezer. She opened up the lid and there looking up at her were the eyeless sockets of Patrick’s Dad’s head. It looked like he’d been slapped. Next to the head was the torso, next to the torso were the arms, then the legs, the hands and feet were in separate bags as well. Placed in the freezer like some freaky game of Tetris. It’s called cryogenics said Patrick.

It’s called murder said the copper in front of him.

No, you don’t understand he said earnestly. It’s preservation, he’s not dead!

I think you’ll find son said the Policeman if your body is chopped up in to a dozen bits and pieces and shoved in to a freezer, you ain’t coming back from that.

Officers said Patrick You don’t understand, I have to get these eyes to him as quick as possible, he’ll be getting stressed if he can’t see what’s going on

The two police officers looked at each other quizzically.

OK said the copper, Do what you gotta do!

You sure? said the young WPC

Yeah, let’s play this through

Come on, I’ll show you said Patrick excitedly, with the coppers in tow, He’s down here said the boy opening the door under the stairs which led to the basement cellar.

As they descended the stairs, the officers noticed their breath condensing in front of them as if they were heavy vapers. Sorry about the temperature said Patrick, It has to be this cold or deterioration rate goes up exponentially

The coppers said nothing and just kept moving through the clouds of breath until they reached the bottom where Patrick turned the lights on, the strip lights buzzed and fizzed for a few seconds and flickered as the gas molecules inside the tube got excited enough to illuminate his home made lab. And there in the middle of the table amongst the steamy smokey pipes bubbling and computers beeping and bunsen burners flaming was a brain in a jar with the word Dad on the label, suspended in a yellow substance. It’s lemon jelly! said Patrick smiling. He took the eyes out of the bag and pushed them in to the jelly. There you go Dad said Patrick You can see now.

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me! said the Policeman. Sarge! said the WPC Look she pointed to a shelf, on it was another jar, half full of the jelly substance, the only difference was that it was red. The WPC put her finger in and tasted it Strawberry she declared! She noticed there was a label on the back, she turned it around and the sticker said ‘Mum’. The Sarge saw it and turned to Patrick So where is she then, son? said the Sargent.

"Officers meet my