Love & Other Dead Things

By Astrid Addams

From Astrid Addams, author of The Haunting of Hacket House and the Zombie Santa Claus series, comes Love & Other Dead Things: A Collection.
Within these pages you will find eleven tales of terror, from the chilling to the outright horrifying. Nothing is ever as it seems as each story takes unexpected turns - vengeance is sought, blood is spilled, and death is the only certainty.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red Cape Publishing
• Release date: Apr 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201732318

Book preview

Love & Other Dead Things

A Collection

Astrid Addams

DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2022 Red Cape Publishing

Copyright 2022 Astrid Addams

All rights reserved.

Interior Artwork by Astrid Addams

Cover Design by Red Cape Graphic Design

www.redcapepublishing.com/red-cape-graphic-design

Dedication

To my friend Lyla, for listening to and critiquing my stories.

Also my mum, dad, and Joe, for their unconditional support and the ever-evolving mischief that gets me out of bed in the morning.

Jimmy’s Fucked Up

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What the fuck had he been drinking? Jimmy’s head felt like Keith Moon was inside it, going mental on a set of drums. How the hell was he still sat up? That’s when Jimmy, with a sinking feeling in his gut, realised that straps secured him upright. With a groan, Jimmy lifted his drooping head and instantly regretted it. How the hell had it become so heavy on his raw neck? Jimmy kept his eyes closed, trying to ignore the pounding of the internal drummer and remember where he’d been last night. He’d been drinking alone at a dive bar somewhere downtown, making the most of the last of his wad before he went back to work. Somehow, he didn’t think that was going to happen any time soon.

He’d seen that weirdo with the mask again. Jimmy remembered the glow of the almost florescent yellow suit. That green plastic face, the one he always wanted to slash, grinning down at him like a loon. He’d noticed the guy hanging around some of his regular haunts after the last job. He was always alone, but everyone knew not to bother him. He gave Jimmy the creeps and he knew others felt the same. Jimmy wasn’t interested in fights or being a hard man, all he wanted was booze, pussy, and dough so the weirdo in the dumb mask never hassled him. Had he actually been drinking with that creep? He must have been more wasted than he’d realised, unless Green Face had been paying, of course. That must be it, but where the fuck had he ended up this time?

It was thirst that drove Jimmy to open his eyes and peer at his surroundings. Red paint flaked off the walls, a bog without a lid or seat squatted next to the bolted-down iron bed with the lumpy mattress which someone had made up using kiddies dinosaur bedding. A large new flatscreen TV was bolted to the wall he faced, the screen blank. The only door was iron and contained a small hatch in the bottom. Cameras peered at him from all angles, and Jimmy wondered who was at the other end… watching him. There was no shortage of people who’d love to lock him up in his own dungeon and leave him there to rot. Yes, he was tied to a chair in his own escape-proof shit hole dungeon. He’d bought the place for cash from a gaunt old timer called Mr White who he’d met somewhere whilst high and loaded, he couldn’t remember where. Along with the underground rooms and corridors had come the plans. He hadn’t known what a sick fuck he’d been dealing with, until the next day. When finally sober, and with Mr White long gone, he’d driven to the place, opened it up with the rusty bunch of keys and found the bodies and the torture shit. Still, a deal was a deal, so he got rid of the bodies and modernised the place. Made it suitable for his purposes, made it his own. Only the bedding and the telly were new.

A faint beep drew his attention to the metal collar fastened around his neck. He should have known they’d be using White’s own collar on him. The question was, who had he pissed off who was psycho enough to get revenge like this? A picture appeared on the screen and Jimmy found himself looking at his own familiar tiger mask.

‘‘Hello Jimmy,’’ a deep electric voice said. ‘‘I want to play a game.’’

Jimmy threw his head back and howled with laughter. Who the fuck were these idiots? What cheesy horror crap… Jimmy stopped laughing, he wasn’t immune to the odd torture. Removing fingers and ears, the odd taser zap or deep throat, sometimes needs must in life. The thought of his own pain and what might be done to him, however, sent a cold chill through his spine and he shivered.

‘‘I raise in the morning and lower in the evening. What am I?’ the stupid electronic voice asked as his own tiger face grinned on.

‘Fuck you!’ Jimmy screamed at the screen, thrashing and yanking at his bonds. A strong electric shock hit him from the collar, making his muscles spasm painfully against his bonds, leaving him gasping as he struggled to stem the adrenaline flooding his system. At last, breathing heavily, Jimmy managed to get himself under control.

The food hatch in the bottom of the door slid open and a slate board with a piece of chalk was pushed through. Someone slammed the hatch shut, and with a click the bonds binding his ankles and wrists released. Slowly, Jimmy got up and cautiously crossed his dungeon. Hurriedly he snatched up the board and chalk and turned it over. Just a dumb slate board and a worn piece of chalk, like his folks had given him as a kid. They’d even passed it on to his kids now. Annie and Teddy had lived with Jimmy’s parents for years whilst he’d kept a low profile, only coming back to the family home when he had no money and nowhere else to go. Jimmy wrote the answer on the board and held it up to the camera on top of the telly. Jimmy jumped as the food hatch scraped open and a full toilet roll was shoved through it. Jimmy threw his head back and barked a laugh. A couple of Christmases ago, when he’d been totally off his head, he’d been wasted enough to decide to go round to his parents’ with a gift for the kids. He’d never forget the joy on their faces when they saw the box after they’d handed over the shitty ornaments they’d made for him. The looks on their faces had been priceless when they’d opened the box and dug through the polystyrene peanuts, only to unearth the cheap-ass toilet roll he’d swiped from McD’s. The ungrateful little shits! By the time he’d got round to coming over, six months after the latest job, he’d been broke. As he’d told his old mum, while the brats whined and sobbed and his dad dragged him from the room, coke and strippers aren’t cheap. Boy, could Jimmy use some right now.

It was the fifth day as far as Jimmy could tell in the windowless cell. He found himself pacing the concrete dungeon like a lion in a cat carrier. Jimmy was so restless, he did press ups and sit ups, jogged around his cell, anything to burn off the restless energy. His growing beard scratched and every day brought a new riddle for him. He’d just solved the fifth gobbledegook riddle and had been rewarded with a cheap electric razor and the usual slimy slop of a meal. Today’s was even worse than the usual tasteless mush; a kid would be able to cook better than the jackass keeping him here.

He tried not to think too much, but it was inevitable. Once he’d solved the daily riddle, there was nothing else to occupy his mind. By day two he’d got bored of wondering who Green Mask was and why he’d locked him up in his own cell. With no drugs, money, luxury lifestyle items, or plans to put together, Jimmy’s mind began to wander. For the first time since he was a boy, Jimmy began to reflect on his life and the man that he had become. Over the years, Jimmy and some associates had worked as professional kidnappers, kidnapping wealthy, important or famous people, setting them free only once the ransoms had been successfully collected. Sometimes it had got ugly, especially when people refused to pay, and Jimmy had been forced to cut off hair, ears, fingers and toes right here in this room. They’d even filmed some of it and sent it to the hostage’s family or lover, especially if the captive was a hot chick. The money was the most important, but Jimmy and his associates liked pretty girls. They’d kept copies for themselves too, a ‘Wank Bank’ as Jimmy called it. He kept it just down the hall where the camera monitors were.

Sometimes, when he woke up in the middle of the night, under the kiddies bedding, he’d fancy he saw a figure in the darkness. Stood by the door, the almost florescent suit casting a faint light in the otherwise total darkness. He’d try to get up, but the electric charge through the collar would force him to stay in bed. He’d call out to Green Mask but he’d never get an answer. By breakfast the man would be gone, a nightmare brought on by his growing fixation with Green Mask who he was now certain had been stalking him for months.

Green Mask was sat down the corridor, watching Jimmy’s boredom eat at his brain like a parasite. At times like this, Jimmy would roam the four walls in a rage, shouting and charging at the walls. Slamming his head into the flaking paint work until the electric current brought Jimmy to his knees. Other times, especially at night, Jimmy would fancy he smelled pussy or blood and that the screams still echoed around the cell. Then he would hide in the dinosaur bedding and attempt to block out everything he’d ever done.

Every one of their targets had paid up sooner or later and Jimmy and his associates had lived lives of luxury on the money, without a thought about the blood they’d spilt to get it. Not until the money ran out, then they’d lock down and begin scanning social media, newspapers, and magazines, anywhere people with money or minted families could be found. Then, from the rich, dumb ranks of the famous, they’d pick their next target and the cycle would start all over again.

Jimmy and some of his other associates had all tried to live normal lives at one time or another. Jimmy had done the whole marriage thing to some ordinary chick who’d worked in the shop around the corner from his parents. He’d even thought he’d loved her as she’d walked down the aisle towards him, a vision in dazzling white. It wasn’t until they’d moved into a little flat together that Jimmy had got bored and the screaming and the punching had started. She’d been far stronger than she’d looked, even managing to put him in the hospital. He’d given as good as he got of course, even when she got knocked up and swelled like a beach ball. He’d been out drinking when she pushed out the baby girl he didn’t want; if they were going to spawn the screaming shitting machines, the least he wanted was a boy to make a man out off. Bring him up in his own image, teach him the ways of the world and the shit his old man had never taught him.

So after the birth of their son the next year, Jimmy had stuck around for a bit. But the boy was just as useless as his sister, so Jimmy decided marriage wasn’t for him and disappeared, emptying the family bank account for good measure. It was all his money after all. Well, it turned out that motherhood wasn’t for Louise either, because she dumped the kids on his parents’ doorstep the next day and took off. Jimmy didn’t care where. So Jimmy’s parents were raising their grand kids in the same kind of poverty they’d raised him. Donated clothes, handmade toys, fuck all snack food and too poor to attend the school for gifted kids which his mum swore they’d been accepted into. They’d survive like he had, a little poverty for his kids wasn’t the end of the world. Not his anyway.

It was only when the weird shit happened, as it did occasionally, that Jimmy wished he had an ordinary life. Stuff like the bad trips that made porn stars climb out of the screen, the withdrawals that made him dream of Louise, sobbing and bleeding in the way he couldn’t stand. The psycho in the green mask that had started haunting him when he was living it up after the job with the blond chick. Jimmy had been in a sleazy strip club, licking strawberry sauce from some stripper’s boob job. After he’d shoved a fifty in her thong and she’d gone back to humping the pole, Jimmy had first noticed Green Mask. Sat directly opposite him, he was hard to miss in the green full-head mask and bright yellow suit. He barely looked at the stripper as he squirted red sauce onto her hairless cunt and the top of her thighs, as he stared at Jimmy. As if he knew the fucked-up shit Jimmy had done to the blond girl. Worse still, Jimmy had the awful feeling that Green Mask wanted to do the same fucked-up shit he’d done to her, but to him. The thought of Green Mask being a poof who targeted men petrified Jimmy with a fear that only macho homophobes know. Jimmy found poofs and what they might want to do to him nightmare inducing, far worse than the thought of any other torture. Under the kiddie bedding each night, Jimmy prayed to the God of pussy-loving real men that Green Mask wouldn’t come, or would at least keep his distance. At least the son