Terrorized: Five Horror Tales

By Ethan Lee

There is nothing to protect you from the terror lurking just outside the comforts of modern life, no saving grace or hand from heaven to wrap you in a warm embrace when the abyss opens. We are nothing against the horror of the universe. Miniscule and insignificant compared to the darkness that presses all around. In these five stories, prepare to embrace the nothingness of existence, and the total all encompassing dread of the forces that view us as little more than prey. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ethan Lee
• Release date: May 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215013991

Book preview

The King’s Trailer

When the car stops , Semele can't see the road. She groans internally. She gags, tasting hot bile in her throat. It's humiliating enough to have her body scrunched up in the front seat, her head dipped low with her face pressed into Joseph Corinth's lap—getting arrested would be cause for suicide.

Could you ever live this down? asks her incessant inner monologue. The voice sounds cruel and menacing, with just a hint of her mother's New Jersey accent. The whole firm already thinks you're a joke for attending a school outside the top twenty. Now imagine this? It would be just like high school and college. You'll be the campus slut again. Well, that's really all you were ever good for, right? Brains and athleticism only made it better when—

Semele shuts her eyes tight to still the rabid voice.

She wants to be home. Images of her bed, the unfinished beach thriller on her nightstand, and the new peppermint candle come to mind. That's where she wants to be; that's where she should have stayed. Instead, she'd gotten all dressed in a tight black jumpsuit. She wore thick lines of eyeshadow and enough mascara to hide the color of her eyes. The makeup had taken forty-five minutes. Then she'd spent another sixty curling and teasing her dyed blonde hair. Stupidly, pathetically, she was wearing the equivalent in jewelry to what she made in three months. For what? So a senior partner could buy her a few drinks, a couple of lines of blow, and get her into the front seat of his car.

You really are a vapid skank.

Someone knocks at the driver's side window.

Semele feels Joseph's testicles scrunch up into his stomach. It takes all of her effort to suppress a laugh. So, there it is—a cop at the window. Now that it's happening, Semele finds it oddly exhilarating. It's not the voyeurism but rather the utter catastrophic embarrassment. Most of the excitement comes from Joseph—fat, balding, middle-aged creep—getting caught with a young associate's mouth wrapped around his groin. She smiles, thinking of Mrs. Corinth refusing to bail her husband out of jail.

Another knock at the window.

Semele laughs to herself and picks up her head. She wonders if this looks sexy to the cop or if what for her is a taboo event is just another routine traffic stop. Maybe she doesn't even look as attractive as she imagines. Her eyes are bloodshot, and there's likely mascara all over her cheeks. Cocaine makes her nose run, which isn't helped at all by the activity in which she was just engaged.

At first look, Semele's breath catches—a scream lodges in her throat. She can't quite make the noise and finds herself choking for air. A shirtless man stands outside the driver side window. His flesh is pale, hairy, and stained with soot. Rivulets of mud-stained sweat drip down his chest. He's not fit like the Instagram models Semele follows, but thickly muscled and firm. There is no eight-pack abs but a single intimidating stretch of taut muscle. The man's tattered jeans hang low on his hips so Semele can see the top of his brown pubic hair.

The goat head the man wears makes Semele finally start screaming. Blood drips from the matted fur. Yellow gnarled teeth glare at her from the mouth, and human eyes blink from the carved eye sockets.

Semele scampers backward towards the door. She's panting. It takes a moment before she realizes that the yelps of fear she hears are coming from her mouth.

The goat-man knocks again with the shooting end of a 9mm. Semele screams at Joseph to drive, which is when she finally looks out the front window. Six women stand in a line across the darkened road. They're all as ragged as the goat man—long matted hair, dirt-covered faces, soiled white dresses, and bare feet. The first idiotic thought to cross her mind is about the group’s diversity. There's a tall, thin blonde in the front of the pack, bent at the waist with her arms outstretched as if holding the others back from pouncing. A darker woman, with dreaded braids nearly to her ankles, stalks along the shoulder. Semele sees a redhead with skin so pale she can make out the blue veins on her neck.

It occurs to Semele—somewhere in the back of her mind—that Corinth, disgusting pervert that he is, chose to take the most out-of-the-way road to Semele's apartment complex. What should've been a fifteen-minute drive from the bar has now turned into a half-hour excursion. They're on an empty road somewhere out by the reservoir. Semele can't see any lights other