Tag: horror

Blood Money

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Woke up, no paper on my side table so I can catch up with things. Tivo’s been wiped. Went online to check my accounts, and they’re a mess. Everything’s overdrawn.
Damn servants always end up trying to stab you in the back. It’s only a matter of time, always happens.
I waste an hour with the hotlines my banks and brokers have for low-profile “after hours” customers like me. Everything’s taken care of, they should have the guy at my doorstep before midnight, as usual.
Drinking a traitor’s blood is the sweetest revenge.
Time to post on Hotjobs again: “Servant.”

Countdown

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Across the bright blue sky, a single cloud in the shape of the number nine lazily floated by.
“What’s that?” asked Sue.
Bob smiled. “God’s counting down to the end of the world.”
“Are you sure?” said Sue.
“Positive,” said Bob.
“Well… um… what should we do?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?????”
“Nothing,” said Bob. “So, have you eaten yet?”
“The end of the world is coming, and you’re thinking about food?”
“Well, we could screw,” said Bob. “But I’m hungry.”
Sue ran screaming into the street.
“Dingbat didn’t ask about the ten,” Bob chuckled. “I remember my grandfather telling me about it…”

The Running of The Scissors

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“Ole!”
Maria yanked the shears from Paco’s hand, slicing his finger.
“These are your father’s shears,” said Maria. “You are still much too young. When you are old enough, you will run with them.”
Paco sucked his finger and scowled. “Luiz is running again this year,” he whined.
“So, what of it?” snapped Maria. “Luiz can lose his other eye.” She handed him a pair of round-edged scissors. “Be content with these.”
By the time Paco’s father said he was old enough to run, Pamplona had replaced the scissors with bulls.
Not that it mattered to the blind, seven-fingered Paco.

Salvation

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Listen carefully for a moment, because both of our lives depend on this.
Ignore the paved service path. It’s a trap.
If you follow the trail through the deep woods for a mile, you will find a clearing where the mystical forcelines converge.
Several triptychs have been stacked to surround the precise convergence point, which is marked by a sigil-covered obsidian pillar.
That’s where you need to be to summon help. Unlike the rest of the godforsaken wood, you’ll get four bars of digital signal there.
Please hurry, because my leg’s bleeding through the bandage and I’m going into shock.

Weeding Out Directors

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I tug the rope, and the beam holds.
“Good,” I mumble, and I look back at Joel Schumacher. “You brought this on yourself, Hollywood.”
He’s tied up tight, lashed to the metal folding chair, rocking slightly on top of the table.
“Go ahead,” I say. “Crack your head open.”
The chair stops rocking. Joel’s eyes get wide.
They get wider when I tie the noose around his neck and kick the table away.
I wait for a few minutes, cut him down, and toss him in the basement with Oliver Stone’s corpse.
I told them Christopher Nolan or nothing, dammit.

The Wasting Curse

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Alfonse dragged the sack of bones out of the charnel house and down to the creek.
“Drown, you infernal hag,” grumbled the old monk. He emptied the bones into the water.
That’s how the Wasting Curse struck Creeksedge. Man and woman, child and beast broke out in massive, putrid boils. The sores would burst and run, making the victim mad with thirst.
More cursed water, more sores.
Then death.
Alfonse watched it all from his hut, drinking bottle after bottle of the abbey’s wine.
The witch’s ghost knocked over his candle, incinerating Alfonse as he slept.
Revenge, whispered the wind.

Ancient Indian Burial Ground Corners

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So, how did this place get the name “Ancient Indian Burial Ground Corners?”
Because it’s built on an ancient Indian burial ground.
When it rains, skeletons pop out of the weak points in the ground. Arrowheads lodge themselves in tires all the time. And cable reception’s spotty when spirits gather to unleash spectral fury upon the defilers of their graves.
Not all is gloom and doom, though. The Little League team always wins because visiting teams have the piss scared out of them when they come here.
So, do you want a brochure, or are you ready to buy now?

Rosetta Stone

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Don’t assume by Galactic Standard that writing systems are all right-to-left. Even some of that language’s progenitor scripts went left-to-right and top-to-bottom.
Plask is the best example of a back-to-front script, and the intricate concentric design on my wall is actually an inside-out Helian manuscript. Toova is read like raindrops, scattered in a seemingly incomprehensible pattern only understood to their way of perception.
I’m fond of the scent-communications of Frond myself. The order you experience the various rich smells and tastes they emit determines the conceptual order.
Of course, all it took was one horrid fart to start a genocide.

Don’t Pay The Catapultman

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“NEXT!” shouted a voice.
Arthur spat out the coin and handed it to the robed specter on the shore.
“Where’s your boat?” he asked.
“Repairs,” growled the ferryless ferryman. “Leaky hull.”
“So how do I get cross?” asked Arthur.
“Hop on,” said the ferryman, pointing to a catapult.
Arthur smirked. “Is it safe?”
“You’re already dead,” said the ferryman, shrugging. “What do you care?”
Arthur climbed on the catapult, and the ferryman grinned.
“Ready?”
“N-”
The ferryman pulled the lever, and Arthur was flung screaming into the gloomy mist.
“Replace me with a toll bridge, will they?” he grumbled. “NEXT!”

Firewall

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I don’t remember dreams. I wish I could, but I can’t.
You see, Symantec was beta-testing a firewall product, and I fell asleep with my face on the keyboard. Somehow, my brain downloaded the firewall, and I blocked my dreams out with an iptables rule.
Oh, they’re still there. Just blocked.
So I called Symantec, and forty minutes later I’m talking to some Indian:
“How am be helping you?” he says.
“I firewalled my brain,” I said. “I’m blocking my dreams now.”
“My dreams dot com?” he asks. “Dot net? Dot org?”
In the end, I was told to reboot.