Tag: Horror

Poetry-Thing Thursday: Mr. Fizzie’s House of Tizzies

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Mr. Fizzie’s House of Tizzies,
where courageous cats meet buxom old bats,
and slithering snakes eat vile rattling rats,
and seldom sits the fury-faced gnats.

So come one, come all, this righteous fall,
for pigs in pants that tell crowds that chants,
of plans profound that’ll make ransom rounds,
of national nouns and kowtowing clowns.

Yes step right up, the future is fucked,
because outward oinkers are running rampant,
and glowing gaudy with envious-eyes empty,
while moral peasants gobble up their sparkling spunk.

It’s the Outrageous Orangutan vs the Mad-Hatted Hag,
and neither nitwit is more than a personal puppet,
for their monstrous masters and controlling corporate cum-pit,
and they’ll sell our souls for green and gold greed.

So cast your vote for the villainous goat,
and put your head to bed, to kiss your ass dead,
‘Cause at Mr. Fizzie’s House of Tizzies, it’s quite a pity,
to be one who’s witty,
for no matter which way you vote,
the result’ll be shitty.

Bonus Short Story: Wraith

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

The pulsing throb of a sub-woofer sounded in the distance. The reverb of a wide, open room made fools of the treble and mid-range frequencies while an erratic strobe added to the place’s confusion. Below it and the disco ball, center stage, was Candy. She gripped and mounted the greased pole better than any other girl in the joint. Her body whirled and spun, unfurled and contorted with sexual predation and temptation.

Soren watched a cascade of bills flutter out around her from some jackass at the pit. Another one with more money than sense. Candy dipped low to show her tits from an upside down angle. To her credit, she was more an expert than any other girl Soren had. She swung past while upside down, gripping the pole, and managed to pull twenties from between his teeth with her own. She was an earner, and damned if she didn’t deserve every penny liberated from dumbasses like him.

Soren threw back the last of his straight scotch, made a come hither motion toward one of the other girls– a waitress in nothing but a G-string and two tassels. Soren ordered up another drink, stuffed an extra twenty in the side of her thong. She sauntered to the bar for his drink as he focused on the American across the curved booth from him.

The guy was well-dressed. No suit or anything, but he had a certain flair of style that said he liked fast women and expensive cars– or perhaps it was the other way around. In either case, he’d come in looking for more blow than anyone Soren had ever met. It wasn’t unusual that someone came to him for drugs. He ran the club, after all, and everyone knew if you blew enough cash on strippers you were probably doing coke off their tits at some point.

Still, Soren had gotten out of the game years ago. More importantly, there was something about this guy he didn’t like. Something in his features. They were American features, but with an almost translucent skin that he swore showed bone beneath. That’s not to say that Soren was prejudiced. One man’s money was as good as any others’ and he’d happily take it regardless. In fact, most of his best girls were Americans working off debts back home. The exchange rate nowadays was enough to bring in scores of ’em, even with his high standards.

This guy though, there was something in the way he held himself. He seemed not to inhabit the room, or even reality around it. It sent a chill down Soren’s spine. He didn’t like that. He’d learned to trust his gut long ago, and it was telling him to lose the guy. Something else though– curiosity, maybe– told him to understand the gut feeling better before deciding.

So, instead of sending the guy straight to the bouncer, who’d escort him out back to the dealer, Soren sat him down for a drink. He was going to do his best to suss out the guy’s overwhelming creep-factor. The thong and tassels girl brought Soren his scotch and something equally strong for the American. He watched her leave again, then refocused on the American before him.

“What you’re asking for,” he said casually, testing him. “It’s not something many people could get. Even if I were so inclined to make deals of that nature, it would be beyond me.”

The guy was clearly disappointed, but his face suggested he wouldn’t give so easily. He spoke with half-ridicule, half scorn, and in a tone so cold it froze Soren’s veins, “I thought you were a player, man. Cock of the walk, and all that shit.”

There it was, Soren thought. That was what he’d sensed, the thing he disliked, that he didn’t trust. At least, he was pretty sure that was it. The tone of voice had thrown him. Anyway, he should’ve guessed it; everything with this guy was dominance and alpha-level bullshit. He looked as though he had no idea how the game was played. Even if Soren were still in it, he wasn’t stupid; he wouldn’t have been so easily baited even on his worst days.

“Get out of here,” he said firmly.

The guy didn’t budge, only his jaw tightened. Soren made eye-contact with a bouncer. Bane was a thing of meat so wide he had to angle through the club’s doors to avoid getting stuck. He looked like he could lift a semi, and at that, Soren was pretty sure he did it regularly, just to pass the time.

Bane appeared as Soren rose. He drained the last of his scotch and buttoned his blazer, “Escort our friend outside. He’s hereby barred from the club for life.” The guy made to speak through his teeth but Soren spoke over him, “If he resists, break his knee caps.”

The guy held his tongue with a snarl. He stood to be escorted away. Soren blew a relieved breath feeling his blood warm again, “Americans.”

He made for the club’s rear, passed through the long room of lighted mirrors. The other girls were half-naked or getting there for their shifts while Candy finished being eye-fucked on-stage. His eyes skirted the girls for anything unusual, came away satisfied.

Past a door at the back of the dressing room, he entered his office. It was small, with just enough room for a desk, some chairs, and a couch along one wall. A laptop was closed and powered down on the desk. Behind them, a wall of flat-screen TVs showed feeds from cameras across the club. Soren gave them a passing glance then sank into his chair and opened the laptop.

It was roughly a half-hour later that the hairs on the back of his neck upended. He smoothed them with a hand. The same shiver from earlier coursed through him, made his shoulders buck and jostle with a shudder. His blood froze again. He swallowed hard, audibly.

“Something wrong?” A familiar voice said.

Soren spun ’round, a pistol out to see the American a little beside and behind him.

He raised the gun, “You!”

His features pointed lethally, “Me.”

“What the hell are you doing here!?” Soren demanded. “How the fuck did you get in?”

His face angled downward. Shadows played across it. He looked downright demonic now. His eyes glowed yellow from fury rather than light. His translucent skin iced over until his whole body was almost opaque.

Soren barked an order at him, “Get out!”

The man stared. The yellow eyes glowed in transparent sockets. Soren went pale as the wall behind the man appeared.

“You should’ve taken my offer, Mr. Soren. I could’ve made you rich.”

Soren thumbed the pistol’s hammer, ready to fire, “I’m warning you!”

There was a sudden flash. An icy wind impaled Soren. His innards froze. Ice crystals formed on his hands, froze the gun to them. He fell to the ground. His still-warm legs bucked him onto his back. He gasped for breath against frozen lungs. The man approached and Soren’s eyes widened.

“You wonder what I am,” he said, his voice now discordant with grating harmonies. “But a wraith is nothingness, that primal terror no man wishes to accept as true. It is for ego’s sake alone. He fears nothingness, for in it, he is nothing. And man must always be something.” He hesitated with a snarl. His eyes flared brighter, “But you will not be a man when I am finished with you. You will be nothingness too.”

The man suddenly disintegrated into a fog. It fired at Soren like a missile. He screamed, but it was drowned out by a climax of laughter in the dressing room and the pounding beat of a dancer on-stage. When Bane came looking later, he found nothing. There the wraith was proved honest; nothingness where once there’d been a man.

Short Story: Ode to Shadows

~ S.M. Nolan ~ 2 Comments

The ocean is an abyss, more desert than plain or forest teeming with life. The thought is a difficult one for humans to grasp when deserts have become synonymous with arid, barren, wastelands. The ocean is seemingly its antithesis, most would think. In truth, it is but one face of a two-sided coin. Humans have descended little more than six miles in one, lone spot, only to find emptiness, darkness. They have mapped little more than five-percent of this lifeless zone with primitive instruments put to shame by even their lesser-advanced, contemporary achievements.

What they have found (or rather, not) is nothing in comparison to what lies hidden in the deepest, unexplored recesses. In places where neither men nor beast can reach, there dwells a spark of existence known only as Shadows. They are unlike their surface counterparts in uncountably unimaginable ways. They’ve no physical bodies, not as a man could touch or feel; no eyes or ears, nor mouths with which to speak. Instead, they communicate with only thoughts projected between one another. Each Shadow is a floating consciousness with no more aim but to continue floating. Were any man or animal to stumble upon their confines, an intentional, psychic transmission would destroy them. It is not with malice nor anger, but merely an effect of Shadows’ extreme differences.

Had someone known this before NOAA sent down their prized research team, perhaps things would have gone differently. But once more humanity was slighted for their curiosity, blissful ignorance. In time, each researcher was subjected to that pulse of mental power, overwhelmed to death by it.

The team of six arrived at a previously undocumented area of sea-floor. Their mission was to map it and catalog its biome. In their specialized submarine– not unlike a ballistic missile design, but different entirely in its purpose– they laid anchor somewhere in the southern Atlantic. The trough they took residence in was three miles deep, enough to require mixtures of exotic gasses to replace oxygen. Those gases of helium and oxygen were necessary given the dangerous nature of Oxygen at such depths and pressures.

The first day of their two-week stay was uneventful, spent largely in configuring their diving gear to the intense pressure outside. By the second day acting leader of the team, Karen West, had ordered they make their first foray into the deep. Through a moon pool in a central compartment, they plunged into blackness without fear, unaware of what lay beyond their ship’s powerful lighting.

Split into pairs, one third was to head for a geothermal vent to the South. Another was to map the extent of the vent’s radiant heat to the North. It was, by way of deduction, in hopes of creating a mapped radius of a possible live-zone. Such is the sea’s nature that, as the desert’s inverse, heat is the life-giving force in the freezing depths. The final third of the group was to remain in range of the ship, collecting sediment samples to determine the anchorage area’s age and composition.

Instructed as they were, the pairs broke ranks and ventured forth in their enormous pressure-suits like over-inflated astronauts. Indeed, the aquanauts’ steps in the low gravity of the Ocean made the comparison all the more apt. Not even the strongest suits could protect them for what was to come.

It was Donald that first saw the shadows. Though the others wouldn’t come to know that until it was too late. He and his partner, in charge of mapping the radiant heat’s outermost reaches, came upon a Shadow without knowing it. They bounced between their feet in a low-G moonwalk, appeared as great, shuffling, tire-clad men with flood-lights atop their heads.

When something skirted the edge of a light, Donald pursued it. A moment later he was stopped dead. Pressure built in his suit. Screams sliced through his comm. It linked to his partner and the rest of the team. Before they could react, there was a shrieking crescendo. A loud, wet pop! Then, his suit toppled over, face-mask spattered with blood and brain in a viscous carnage.

Karen recalled everyone to the ship at-once. It wasn’t enough. As different as Shadows are, like man they shared an intrinsic trait; curiosity. Donald’s partner barely made to flee before he too screamed, silenced by another, wet pop! Karen and the others were already double-timing it to the ship, hoping its poly-alloy walls would protect them.

If only they’d known what they were up against, perhaps they wouldn’t have been so foolish. But how could they have? The only reason anything is known of their encounter is due to a real-time black-box system linked into their comms and embedded in the submarines controls. The black-box was near-indestructible, only discovered when the submarine’s scheduled rise came. Crew or not, the sub was fated to ascend.

When it appeared at the surface, there were only the vaguest of hints of what had gone wrong. After a quarantine period, its exterior was examined and found to be immaculate. Nothing more could be learned without boarding.

Scattered around the sealed, moon-pool doors, NOAA rescue crews in hazmat gear found their four researchers. Audio of a final, few minutes preceded dead-silent comms that lasted two-straight weeks. After the routine, first day, and the chilling events of Donald’s death, leader Karen and the others’ final moments were discovered.

A mixture of swears and cries bled through the comms. Debates about what might have happened, what to do now. Then, with an almost audible breath, a silence. A thump against the sub’s outer-hull gave way to a collective groan. Someone said something about a nose bleed to Karen. Another thump. Then, two more in succession. A crew-member’s screams terrified someone to tears– or perhaps it was the pain of the slow, further succession of thumps omnipresent against the hull.

Before long, little else was to be heard but cries and thumps. Sounds of four men and women dying grated investigators’ ears, whom listened to the thumps for five full minutes. Then came screams. Like Donald and his partner’s, that apexed in shrill cries.

Then, pop, pop, pop… pop!

The deaths were ruled an accident, but NOAA barred return to the site. If only they’d known the Shadows, like humans, were a global pandemic in the ocean’s deepest recesses, perhaps they’d have never again set foot on a ship. Instead, man continued on unawares. But such is the nature of his ignorance and fragility that he might be at death’s door one day, then sailing the high-seas unbidden the next. Alas, that matters not to the Shadows, for they are eternally patient, curious, and wait only to investigate with a wet, solemn, pop!