Author's Notes: "The Summer I Fell in Love"

So... May has come and gone without a single blog post. Bad writer.

But June brings a few new publications, including "The Summer I Fell in Love" in Niteblade #28. I've had a few other stories in Niteblade in the past, including "Bait Worms" way back in Niteblade #6... nearly six years ago.

"The Summer I Fell in Love" is a personal favorite of mine, originally written for an anthology of southern zombie tales. Yes, I wrote the "z" word. Dirty, dirty "z" word. Only this story is different. (We--meaning writers--all say that, don't we?)

Spoilers ahead. Please Read "The Summer I Fell in Love" before moving forward (if you are so inclined).

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Still here?

My story is more about a small town's hate and the irrational ends to which people will go in the face of horrible situations thank the "z" word. The narrator, a teenage girl, falls in love with another girl. Some of the details, lipstick tasting of soap, are fragments from my own memory. I dated a girl whose lipstick tasted like soap, but I was a teenage boy. My small town accepted such things (boys and girls together--not the soap-flavored lipstick). Fictional Connelly, somewhat modeled after my own as every other town I imagine, does not accept two girls falling in love.

When things turn sour, when the zombies show up, the town's angry voices need a target. Julie, the narrator's first love, is an outsider, not from "'round here" and therefore an easy mark. The memories and feelings of falling in love are there, even if the words and point of view aren't mine. The narrator's ache is my own.

This story earned one of my favorite titles--a title even more meaningful because the story is easily about the year of the zombie outbreak, the undead plague. But for the narrator, the real story was Julie--falling in love and Julie's sad fate at the hands of the real monsters. It will always be "the summer I fell in love."

I said there would be spoilers, didn't I?

Thanks for reading and thanks to editor Rhonda Parrish for another chance to have my words read. Please consider supporting Niteblade so they can continue to share fiction with the world. You'll find a "donate" button the right side of the site (scroll down a bit).

Have a beautiful summer.  I hope it brings you much love but none of the "z" word.

Author's Notes: "13 Pieces, Also the Dark"

Friday was one of those strange days in which two stories of mine were made available on the same day after months of nothing. If you missed "13 Pieces, Also the Dark," don't be surprised. I pimped "Digging Deep" with more gusto because it was the featured story at Every Day Fiction.

Today, I want to tell you about "13 Pieces, Also the Dark" which is available to read as a free PDF download from Black Frost Media. Please read it--it costs you nothing more than a few minutes of your time, and I am forever grateful for each reader.

And now, the obligatory spoiler alert...

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The title of this piece, I'm somewhat ashamed to admit, is an un-abashed knock-off of Kij Johnson's "26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss". Please know the story, other than an experiment in style and the titular hack, has nothing to do with Johnson's. I like to experiment, and that's how this piece started.

The narrator is a voyeur, at first describing the slow death of his neighbor and the comings and goings of said neighbor's children. If any of you dear readers remember Gary Sump, you'll note this isn't the first time I've written from the POV of a voyeuristic narrator. As the story progresses, however, the reader learns the narrator's past and what he suspects happened in the house across the street.

As a guidance counselor (and English teacher when I wrote "13 Pieces, Also the Dark"), I see into the lives of my students--tiny little peeks--and construct their realities from these fragments. Maybe that's what bubbled to the surface with this story; the "pieces" are the bits from which one can fashion a whole life story.

Of course, in my tale, the pieces are also, quite literaly, the parts of the dying man our narrator helps carry away in the end.

I wrote this one before my self-imposed hiatus, and upon re-reading it a year+ later, still felt a good amount of discomfort. More maybe than "a good amount". And that, dear readers, is what indicates, to me, a fine story.

Please give "13 Pieces, Also the Dark" a read if you have the chance. I'd love to hear what you think.

Now How Creepy is Free?

Free can be pretty creepy, I suppose, depending on what is being given away. This Friday, it's written words from yours truly and several other authors,  Bob Eccles,  James Garcia Jr.,  and Michelle Ann King thanks to the wonderful  Milo James Fowler.

Here's what I can give you today: a free digital copy of Loathsome, Dark and Deep. Go to Smashwords and use code SW24Q to grab a copy for zero money.

You also have a chance to win a paperback (yes, actual dead trees!) copy of The Bottom Feeders and Other Stories signed by yours truly. I hear it makes great kindling or a shim to hold wobbly table legs steady. You might even want to read a few stories. For your chance, simply toss your name in the virtual hat. 

So what, exactly, are you waiting for? Free is free... and I won't even make you read a word.

Too Many Buckets, Not Enough Water

I've been thinking about this pirating thing...

Especially in light of the 2011 Book Buying Survey presented at Digital Book World. Check it out. 

Some highlights:

• 64% of "avid" book buyers are female
• 33% of book purchases are for entertainment/leisure

These are only numbers from a single survey, of course, but they are in step with my anecdotal experience as a bookseller (I managed a bookstore back in '98).  Fiction was the single largest space in the store, but we sold less fiction titles (proportionately) than other books combined.  

Why is this important?

I don't have survey results or any scientific data to back this up, but plenty of anecdotal experience and reports from other authors: the vast majority of wannabe writers pen fiction. All of these books--now readily available because of digital publishing--are the too many buckets in my title metaphor. The water? Book buyers.

If only 33% of the purchases made by "avid" readers are for leisure/entertainment (and not all of that 33% must be fiction) and the majority (by far) of authors write fiction... Yesh.

No wonder it's so damn hard to break through.

What does this have to do with pirates?

Well, if most wannabe writers write fiction and it's damn hard to make it, maybe some pirate/resellers are just feeding the urge to put their name on something.

Hell, I don't know.

What I do know is I don't mind giving away my stories if I'm doing it. I'm not going to crawl under a rock and hide from the basement-dwelling morlocks who'd do such things. I'm not going to stop writing because of this crap. I'm not going to change a single bit of my behavior just because other people don't want to play nice.

For the next two days, Echoes of the Dead (the thieved book) is free at Amazon. Take that, J.K. "Fake-Name-If-I've-Ever-Seen-One" Patterson.

In the Memory House, Chapter 1 (and a free story)

If you've bought an e-copy of In the Memory House (or plan to do so before the end of the month), email me at aaron.polson(at)gmail.com for a free bonus story. 

In the Memory House is currently available at Amazon.com and Smashwords.

Chapter 1 - In the Memory House

Kelsey hated the club.

She hated the noise, the sweat-slicked men bumping and grabbing and oozing all over her. She hated the way the throbbing beat worked into her brain, and how she woke the morning after a dancing with the beat still pounding in her blood. She knew these were things a fit, attractive, twenty-seven-year-old woman was supposed to like.

But she didn’t.

She went to Tremors with Brit and Caitlin because she didn’t want to be alone, not after the dreams came back. Jared had haunted her dreams for the past week, Jared and the dead man with no blood. Even during waking hours, if Kelsey closed her eyes, the puckered-white flesh of the dead man’s gashes blinked in her memory. It haunted her more than the wreck, but Jared’s disappearance and the dull ached it caused weighed more than the dead man.

Nearly five years later, and the dreams were as bad as they’d ever been.

Even though she hated it, the club banished demons better than graduate studies ever had—much better than Human Lifespan Development or Principles of Testing and Measurement. A PhD in psychology seemed rather meaningless after what happened in the house. The world felt rather purposeless after Jared vanished without a trace.

“Hey, Kels? Where are you?” Brit asked. She’d been Kelsey’s friend since high school and still wore her dark hair past shoulder length. Kelsey had always thought of Brit—short for Brittany—as pretty, but in a vaguely Eastern European and mysterious way.

“Sorry,” Kelsey said. “Sorry… Just thinking.”

Brit flashed her news-desk-perfect teeth. “You need more booze, girlie.” She pushed a plastic cup filled with bright green liquid across the table. “This isn’t the time for thinking. It’s the time for drinking and getting stupid.”

Kelsey looked at the cup. The drink, whatever it was, glowed like radioactive Kool-Aid in a bad science fiction movie. Her eyebrows rose.

“Chill out. It’s a Midori Sour. Tastes like a Jolly Rancher but numbs the worry center.” Brit’s forefinger tapped her temple. “You’ve got way too much on your brain, sweetie. I don’t know why you’d want to stuff your pretty little head with all that psychobabble anyway.” 

“It’s not that.”

Brit nodded. “Right.”

She shook her hair, and long black strands flopped over her shoulders. Her eyes—almost as dark as her hair—drilled through bone, mining Kelsey’s secret thoughts. At least Kelsey felt she was. They’d been friends for a long time, true, but Brit hadn’t gone on the ski trip. Brit hadn’t clutched the door handle in Johnny’s SUV while the vehicle spun out of control and landed in a ditch. She hadn’t felt the brutal, numbing cold from the snow, the endless white blanket which plagued them to the porch, which forced them inside. She wasn’t the one to find the dead man, wrists splayed open in his bathtub. She didn’t lose Jared.

“Earth to Kelsey. I’ve lost you again. Go on and take a drink.”

Kelsey touched the cold plastic cup.  She brought it to her lips and took a drink. The alcohol was cool and sweet and sour as it washed over her tongue.  It warmed her chest as it slid down her throat. Maybe she did need to loosen up and get, as Brit so eloquently said, stupid. Maybe she needed to bury the past and try and forget Jared, forget the house, and forget the dead man. Just dreams… Dreams and bad memories. She closed her eyes and took another sip. It did taste a bit like a Jolly Rancher.

“Watermelon,” Kelsey said.

“You like?”

Kelsey smiled. “I like.  Let’s dance.”

Bodies shook and cavorted on the dance floor, all awash with flashing lights.  Throbbing music—a pop tune with relentless, pounding beat—swayed arms and legs in unison. Kelsey followed Brit to an empty corner, and both joined the frenzy. Kelsey’s eyes roved the crowd. Even at twenty-seven, she was toward the upper age limit at Tremors. Some faces looked like children—a few might have been students from the abnormal psychology lecture for which she was the teaching assistant. 

Three men—boys, Kelsey thought—in matching silver silk shirts made their way through the crowded dance floor. Each carried a plastic cup and faux-danced so as not to spill. Sweat slicked their faces so each sparkled under the bright, flickering lights. Kelsey watched them as she shuffled her feet. Some malaise and inhibition sloughed from her skin as she let the beat take her body. She hated the club, but Brit was right about one thing. She needed to let loose, get stupid. She hated the club, but dancing felt good.

She leaned close to Brit. “Those three are on the move.  I think they’re looking for wounded members of the herd.”

Brit laughed. “The lead is cute. Kind of. But his nose.” She scowled and shook her head so her hair spun from side to side.

“It’s huge,” Kelsey said.

“You know what they say about boys with big noses.” Brit ran her hands down her body, rolling her eyes in mock ecstasy.

As they both laughed, Caitlin, the shortest of the three, joined them. Kelsey felt Caitlin had the best body, busty but lithe with just enough ass to shake.  Her blue eyes were monstrous, near Anime size, and hair in dirty blonde ropes offered a sweet, innocent disguise. Caitlin was always happy and Kelsey a little jealous.

“I thought I’d lost you two.”

The music shifted. The three silver-shirted boys danced toward them.

“I’m taking a break,” Kelsey said.

“Me too. I need another drink.” Brit grabbed Caitlin by the wrist.

“What?” Caitlin’s alcohol-slick eyes were on the boys in silver.

“We don’t want to lose you to the wolf pack.”

The three friends skirted to the crowded dance floor’s edge. Caitlin craned her neck to watch the boys in silver. Kelsey fell into her chair, suddenly feeling very tired.

“You two want anything? Another Midori Sour?”

Kelsey shook her head. “I’m good, thanks.”

“I could use another screwdriver.” Caitlin held out her half-empty glass. “Pretty please.”

Brit rolled her eyes and headed for the bar.

Caitlin pulled her glass to her lips. Kelsey grabbed her forearm before she took a drink.

“You don’t want to do that.”

“I don’t?” Caitlin pouted. “Why not?”

“You left it at the table. Anybody could have slipped something in there.”

“Oh my God.” Caitlin snorted. “You are such a mother, Kels.  Lighten up.” Caitlin pulled her arm away, and a little liquid sloshed from the glass as the lights went out over the table.

“We hoped you ladies would have stayed on the dance floor.”

It was the nose, the leader of the silver-shirted wolf pack. His buddies grinned at either shoulder. Up close, his nose was big, ridiculously big, and Kelsey couldn’t stifle a giggle when she remembered what Brit suggested about boys with big noses. Big noses mean big…

“Some of us would have,” Caitlin said. She wrapped her tongue around the tiny black straw in her glass.

Kelsey rolled her eyes.  She let her gaze stray across the room and fall on a tall man near the entrance. A flare burst in her memory. Johnny.  She hadn’t seen him in almost five years, not since graduation, but it was him. His tall, cut features gave him away. Several years hadn’t changed anything about his face, his sleek, angular cheekbones and firm chin. Kelsey could almost feel his blue eyes, even across a dim club filled with people. He wasn’t dancing, just standing near the wall, almost like he was waiting for someone. Maybe looking for someone. Kelsey’s stomach knotted.

“…and our unit ships out at month’s end.”

Kelsey snapped back to her immediate vicinity. “What? Are you trying that old line?  C’mon, boys. Really?”

Big nose blinked hard at the word boys.

Caitlin kicked Kelsey’s leg under the table.

“Whatever.” Big Nose frowned. “I can see you’re not interested.  We were talking to your friend.”

Brit returned balancing three drinks in her hands. She read the look on Kelsey’s face. “Looks like I’m missing the party.”

Kelsey glanced at Johnny again. The dance floor lights flashed red and blue and white. “I was just leaving.” She climbed from her chair. Big Nose looked her up and down as she stood, and the two baboons at his shoulders did the same. She hated feeling dirty when a greasy boy eyed her like a cut of meat. She wanted a shower, to clean off the slime he’d heaped on her.

“Not bad,” he said.

Kelsey’s fingers curled into a fist at her side. “Fuck off.” She started to walk away.

He grabbed her wrist. “You wish, honey.”

Kelsey yanked her arm from his grasp. The flight across the club blurred in her head along with the music’s pound and her feet against the floor. She heard Brit’s voice bark her name twice, “Kels—Kels.” Shapes shifted and contorted, silhouettes of people, cardboard cutouts.  Her head spun.  By the time she worked her way across the room, Johnny was gone.

#samplesunday Borrowed Saints

From Chapter 1: Smoke and Mirrors of Borrowed Saints, available on Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (soon).

Phoebe Ellison hated mirrors, and mirrors shared the sentiment.

She stood before a mirror in one of the less-traveled ladies restrooms in Springdale High, exchanging a glare with the reflection. Tiny white lines on her forearms reached from the glass and shouted in her ears. Phoebe ran a finger across her skin, wondering if it was her imagination or the truth she felt in those little, rigid scars.

Muffled voices sounded in the hall. Phoebe’s hands worked without thought—her left turned the hot water tap, and her right reached for the soap dispenser. The bathroom door crashed open. Haley Garret and her entourage brushed behind her, close enough Phoebe could smell Haley’s perfume, sick and sweet and stinging her eyes like rubbing alcohol.

If she only had a match, they would all go up in flames.

“Lookie here,” Haley said. She positioned her well-tanned face over Phoebe’s shoulder in the mirror. “A piece of fresh meat. A newbie.”

Phoebe’s neck bristled. She could leave—walk out now and not look back.

“Whatcha doing, fresh meat?”

Haley’s clones giggled.

“Washing my hands.” Steam began to rise in the basin, distorting the faces in the mirror. “Going back to class.”

“Right.” Haley pushed her shoulder into Phoebe’s back as she turned. “Don’t be late, fresh meat. Bad things happen to newbies who are late. Bad things.” Haley’s breath was close enough for Phoebe to taste.

The giggling trio disappeared through the door. Water vapor condensed on the mirror, blurring it to a white haze. The steam began to tease Phoebe’s dark hair. She smelled fire—felt it burn her nose. Smoke and ash. Voices crying. The voices always blended into a memory of her parents’ final cries. How long had it been—three months? Only three months. Pain radiated through Phoebe’s forearm, to her shoulder, across her back, and into her lips. Sweet pain. When she pulled back her hand, the hot water had seared a red mark on her skin.

She wanted to smash the mirror. She wanted to crush it into a million pieces and grind the pieces beneath her sneakers. Her right hand balled into a fist. Maybe she’d cut her knuckles on the shards. There’d be blood. Blood and pain. Phoebe fought the smile at the thought, and the bell rang, forcing her out of the bathroom, right hand clutched over the left to hide the burn.

Borrowed Saints for Kindle

Borrowed Saints for Nook (soon)

We are the Monsters #samplesunday

Welcome to Sample Sunday...

We are the Monsters is available at Amazon.com.

1: We’re All Liars Here, or The Death of Leonard Jantz

Here’s the truth about growing up in a small town: you tell lies to survive.

I worked at a grocery store during high school, part time on the evenings and weekends. I saw plenty of strange things there: avocados stuffed in a barrel of fresh popcorn left to rot, a coworker who punched holes in the caps of beer bottles with an awl, pies marked “Verda’s own home-baked” which came frozen on pallets with the Sunday dairy truck. I found a body in the trash bin once, but nobody can prove who put it there. No one can prove it was there.

There were too many bodies for a town the size of Springdale. The name of the town is a lie, but the bodies aren’t. All of them. When you find a body lying with the outdated yogurt, wilted lettuce, and cardboard boxes, you make up stories to cope. You can’t process a body in the grocery store trash bin. A trick of the light, you say. The way the shadows fell across certain bits of debris like the coat hanger beast in a little boy’s bedroom. That head of lettuce, there, in the corner, looks like a human hand.

Bodies are bodies.

Dead is dead.

And lies are lies.

~

We killed a man during the fall of 1992, our senior year. I say we, but BJ did the killing. The rest of us were just there.

BJ was a big kid, six-feet tall, four feet wide, all linebacker. The local team, the Saints, kind of sucked—sucked as in they won seven football games during our four years—but BJ made all-league three times. He managed forty-six tackles for losses during his career and dished out seven concussions. One guy, a lanky kid from Abilene, still gets tingles in his toes when the weather changes. At least he says as much on Facebook. BJ was boiled over anger and clenched fists, and he hated Leonard Jantz.

Jantz had fired BJ’s father from the grain elevator.

Mike, Dan, and Tony were all there when BJ killed Leonard. I was there, too, after my shift at Larry’s Grocery. We were all drunk, either from stolen beer or revved hormones. I’d met them at the Shack after work. I still wore the red polo from Larry’s. Red polo and jeans, the store dress code. The other guys, little Mike with his embarrassing mustache, fat-mouthed Dan, and Tony the liar, had been hanging out at the Shack, telling stories and passing out a battered copy of playboy Tony had stolen from his father’s stash. The beer was his dad’s, too.

Tony lied so well his old man never suspected a single can went missing. The lies came easily, especially after years of practice. By the time he was sixteen, Tony had lied about grades at school, fights, which girl he kissed at recess, and even how Max, the Robertson’s cat, died. That was a big one, but not as big as Leonard Jantz. The big lies he reserved for special occasions, but all of them—big or small—came from his lips with a sliver of magic.

Lies can be a shield, a force field, a special aura of protection.

Lies can keep you from seeing the truth, no matter how grim.

~

The truth bends in small towns, and the lies come like fog, constructions of mirrors and smoke machines, odd noises and flashing lights, or funhouse effects to bend the truth back, to stuff all the weirdness into its place. Soon the lies look like the truth.

I lied about loving a girl when I was seventeen. She was new in town, beautiful, and utterly untouchable. I met her two days after Leonard Jantz died, in study hall, room 178, Spring County High School. She sat beside me and borrowed a pencil on Tuesday. By the end of the week, she asked if I knew Leonard Jantz.

I say I lied about loving her because I didn’t love her at seventeen, not really. Love was little more than some overwrought hormones and a wish to see her naked, with me, in the backseat of my Mustang. My imagination didn’t really take it any further than lying there, smashed together, skin against skin in the back of the car. She’s the real problem in this story; Leonard Jantz just kicked things off.

I didn’t really love her at seventeen, but I do now. It feels like a chunk has been sawed from my chest and I’ll never have it back.

~

Leonard Jantz died because he was in the wrong place.

We left The Shack and cruised south of town in Mike’s truck, a red, rust-flanked Ford F-150. Mike wasn’t a truck guy, but his dad, a perpetual drunk since Mike’s sister died, had nothing else to offer. Mike was thin, always pale. Big, lost eyes. He’d tried to grow a mustache since our sophomore year. BJ rode up front, on the other end of the bench seat. Dan, Tony, and I were in the back. We had a bat, smashing mailboxes as we sped down gravel roads and asphalt county highways. The bat sang when it struck a mailbox—it sang and sent a sharp shiver into your bones.

We found Leonard’s car on the shoulder of E1450 Road.

He was standing in the ditch, taking a piss.

Tony swung for his mirror, and missed.

“Turn it back around,” he hollered, handing the bat to Dan.

Dan wasn’t a fat kid, but he had a big mouth, big enough to stuff a five pound bag of flour inside and make him look like a squirrel. But it was dark out there. I couldn’t see his face. Maybe he smiled; maybe he didn’t. Dan had moved to town at the beginning of the year. He was a kindred spirit, meaning another boy with too much anger stuffed down inside and not enough places to aim it. The town welcomed boys like Dan. The town was hungry.

When the truck sped past the car, Dan planted the bat right on the side of Leonard’s head. An accident. The old man had finished pissing and was staggering back to his car, the driver’s side, right beside the mirror. Dan wasn’t one of us, yet. His aim was off.

“Jesus,” he said. “Oh Jesus.”

I never hit anyone with a bat from the back of a speeding truck, but I imagine how it must have felt: a sudden jolt, but the target of the bat gave a little, soft because of the skin and flesh pulled over the skull. Even worse than the jolt, I imagine the realization which might have shot through Dan’s arm to his brain, a brain which had already processed the image of a pale face nanoseconds before a baseball bat collided with it.

But Jantz wasn’t dead. Not yet.

~

Uncle Elmer was my first dead body. I was four.

Lying in his coffin, Elmer’s face looked like a pale yellow hunk of taffy, stretched too long and covered with a thin layer of wax to preserve it. His eyes were shut, but it didn’t look like Elmer. Even at four, I knew these shut eyes wouldn’t open, even when Aunt Gladys leaned over, stinking of talcum powder and mouthwash, and said, “He just fell asleep.”

I couldn’t sleep alone for years.

By seventeen, the body count in Springdale toughened my nerve.

~

BJ killed Leonard Jantz like this:

We huddled around the crumpled body. Dan pissed his pants a little, just the hint of a darker stain on the inside upper thigh of his blue jeans. He kept muttering, “Jesus,” like a prayer. He hopped from the truck first, pale and shaking, and staggered to the side of Jantz’s mint green Chevelle. “Oh Jesus.”

Leonard Jantz’s fingers twitched. His mouth opened like he was trying to talk. Movies always made it look like someone who got knocked in the head hard enough would be out cold, unconscious if not dead. Not in real life. Not Jantz. A little kiss of blood marred the side of his head where Dan’s blow struck. His mouth flapped open and shut and a little noise, not quite a squeak, came bubbling out.

“The fucker isn’t even dead,” BJ muttered. His fists clenched and unclenched, whitening at the knuckles each time. Little half-moon marks marred his palms as he released his fists. He was angry. Anger stuffed into linebacker’s skin.

“N-not d-dead?” Dan wiped his nose on the sleeve of his shirt. “N-not d-dead?”

That was when BJ snapped, sort of like somebody yanked his human cord from the socket and left pure animal in charge, like a feral dog or hungry lion or even a shark from one of those nature shows. He always wore these scuffed, black, steel-toed boots, hand-me-downs from his father. BJ drew back one foot and gave Leonard Jantz a vicious jab in the side of his ribs, lading a solid kick with his right foot. The old man jumped like he’d been hit with an electric shock and coughed. The night grabbed my stomach with cold fingers and squeezed.

“Get the bat,” BJ said.

“Shit BJ, don’t…” Dan stopped blubbering, but he was pale, almost pleading.

I looked at Tony and Mike. They were frozen. I’ve lied so much about killing Leonard Jantz since that chilly evening in October, 1992, but here’s the truth: I handed BJ the bat. I went to the truck and touched the cold aluminum and brought it back to our little cabal at the side of the road and handed it to him. Maybe he needed an accomplice. An accessory before the fact for a potential court case. BJ, all linebacker and fast twitch muscle, wasn’t capable of long term thought, but maybe, just maybe a bit of him, deep down, understood the gravity of swinging an aluminum baseball bat down on an old man’s head until it split open and more than blood came out of the crack.

“Dead now,” BJ said. The bat dropped to the ground, rattling and hollow.

Dead. But Tony was there, and Tony would save us with a lie.

At least he would try.

~

Tony Manning held the record for consecutive world championships for lying. This is how he lied about how his neighbor’s cat, Max, died:

In fifth grade, Tony built a ramp in front of his house with spare plywood and two-by-fours his father had discarded. It wasn’t much of a thing, only two, maybe two and a half feet at the apex, but we spent hours after school riding various wheeled contraptions over the top: skateboards, bikes, and even Mike’s homemade go-cart. Once. The rear axle shattered upon crash landing.

Max watched. He was that kind of cat. Especially as dusk gathered, and we filled those last fleeting moments of freedom with frantic activity before scurrying to our homes, dinner, and homework with a few hours of mindless television afterward. Max seldom did anything but watch until one night he plopped in front of the ramp and stared at BJ.

BJ was ready for his final run, one foot on his skateboard, the other pressed against the gravel.

“Move the fucking cat,” he said.

I took a step toward the ramp. Max’s eyes glinted yellow and mean. He pushed back his ears and hissed.

“Scat,” I cried.

Max didn’t move.

“Move the fucking cat,” BJ said again.

“Just go,” I said. “He’ll move.”

But Max didn’t flinch. BJ stuck Max at full speed, lost his balance, and tumbled to the ground at the side of the ramp. His elbow dragged against the ground and his right knee skidded on asphalt before he was able to tuck over and roll toward the curb. BJ staggered to his feet, a dark patch of blood already seeping through the knee of his jeans.

“Fucking cat…” BJ stooped, picking up his skateboard.

Max still didn’t move. Another hiss slipped out of his mouth. Green eyes flickered. BJ brandished the skateboard over one shoulder like a club, like the little plastic caveman in my dollar dinosaur box from Duckwalls. He hammered Max with the board, cracked it down on the cat’s sleek skull. It sounded like smashing an egg, but amplified.

Nobody said anything.

Headlights peered over the hill a block away from Tony’s place.

“Move the ramp,” he said.

BJ stumbled toward the lawn, tossing his skateboard onto the grass. Mike and I tugged the plywood contraption to the curb. Tony closed his eyes. The headlights swelled. Tony ran toward the car, waving his hands. Tires screeched. Voices rose and fell in the street. The headlights rested against pavement, slumped and tired. A car door opened.

“Hey,” a voice called. “Hey, kid. Jesus I’m sorry. Is this your cat? Oh, Jesus I’m sorry.”

Tony glanced toward us and smiled.

BJ touched his knee. No blood, no wound. At least we didn’t see the blood anymore. An illusion. Isn’t that how magic works? “Tony?”

Tony waved him off. He turned back to the back-lit figure at the side of the road, the driver of the car.“I-I tried to stop him,” he sobbed. He held his scratched and bloody hands out as proof. “I t-tried.”

“I’m sorry kid. Man, I’m sorry,” the driver said.

Tony could lie really well. Like magic.

~

Tony worked his magic with Leonard. He tried to save us.

“Aaron, get Jantz’s keys. We’ve got to move the car, take it down to the river.”

My head tingled like the sensation you feel when you stand up too quickly and the blood can’t keep up. I walked over to the body and fished out the keys. The fact I was picking a dead man’s pocket washed over me like a warm breeze. Warm, not cold. I didn’t flinch. Tony could do that—he could make magic happen. He made BJ’s scrapes vanish six years ago. He made a middle-aged stiff think he hit Tony’s cat, even though the cat wasn’t Tony’s and Max was already dead.

He could make Leonard Jantz go away, too.

“The river bridge,” he said. “Head for the bridge. We’ll meet there.”

And then I climbed into the Chevelle. Mike and BJ had already put the body in the passenger seat. I didn’t look. I wouldn’t. Looking might break the spell, might make what happened more real than it was. The V-8 under the Chevelle’s hood growled to life; the seat rattled with the throaty voice of the engine. I followed Mike to the Republic River Bridge southeast of town. The others were already standing in a small group as the Chevelle’s headlamps swung toward the river. I climbed out and joined them.

“We fucking killed that old guy. We fucking killed him.” Dan glared at Tony. “We killed him. I-I killed him.”

Tony shook his head. “Calm yourself, Dan.”

“The body…”

“What are you talking about?”

“Jant. Jantz. Whatever his name.”

Mike pulled at his lower lip. BJ shook his head.

Tony smiled. “Damn, Dan. You make up some stupid stories.”

BJ looked up. His face brightened. “Yeah, Danny. You are such a pansy. Listen to Tony. He’s our man.”

Tony nodded. “That old fucker got wasted and drove himself into the river.”

Mike hesitated, but it was clearly his turn. Both BJ and Tony stared at him until he opened his mouth. “Yeah. Yeah, Dan. Hopefully the cops will find him in the next couple of days. Leonard doesn’t have any family.”

“Those fucking bottom feeders will have a good time with my boy Leonard,” BJ said. He couldn’t hold back a crooked grin. “Fucking catfish like pickled meat.”

I felt it in my stomach, the cold fingers again. We were all in deep.

Ken leaned forward, searching Tony’s eyes. “I hit him with a bat. On accident.”

“God-damn, you’re a good liar, Dan.” Tony looked at the rest of us. “He’s a good liar, right?”

“Sure.” Mike nodded.

The aluminum bat wagged in Tony’s hand. “You didn’t hit anybody. Just a drunk old fucker who drove his sorry ass into the river. There’s not even a bat.” He heaved the bat into the air where it tumbled like a baton and splashed into the river beyond. It glinted with moonlight before splashdown. “Poor bastard just drowned.”

On cue, I slipped the Chevelle into neutral. BJ pushed at the passenger door, helping me shove it toward the river.

“You were just confused about what you saw, right?” Tony asked.

Ken flexed his fingers, staring at the back of his hand. He glanced at his jeans. He swallowed hard. “I-I don’t, I suppose.”

“You do this enough, Dan, and it gets really easy.” Tony gave Dan’s shoulder a slight squeeze. “Like magic.”

We were all parts of the same whole. BJ channeled our anger; Dan our panic, our raw, childish fear. Tony lied for us, became our sly, devious halves, the part which is really afraid, deep down. Mike watched, our moral compass, and he swallowed our guilt, too much of it in the end. I was the last shove over the cliff. I wasn’t proud of it; it just was.

Magic. Sure. Sometimes you have to tell lies to survive.

Sometimes the lies don’t work, and the dead don’t stay dead.

We are the Monsters is available at Amazon.com.

Night Lights

On the outside, the lights shine brighter than I remember as a kid, but inside the old man is dying. That’s what Mom says anyway, that’s what she tells me while we drive the boys around town so they can see Christmas lights. She’s Grandma to them, and she doesn’t say anything about the man dying loud enough for them to hear.

“He has cancer. The bad kind,” she whispers.

I nod, wondering just what the good kind of cancer is.

She continues. “A nurse comes in twice a week, that’s what Mary Ann says anyway. Really bad shape.”

“How’d he do the lights?”

“The town helped out—some volunteers at the church. Downtown businesses. It’ll be too bad when he’s gone, an end to an era. Do you remember when we used to drive by here.”

My hands tighten on the wheel. “Sure.”

The boys are still gawking at the house, their bundled little faces pale and slack as they drink in all the twinkles, the thousands of tiny sparkles. Out, out brief candle, I think, but the candles won’t go out. The town won’t let them go out. I step on the gas and pull away from house, a little disgusted with myself, a little disgusted with us all.

At the Phillips 66 station three blocks down from the house, I turn onto the highway and head home. In the review mirror, I see the boys yawn. They’re up past bedtime, and tomorrow is Christmas. Mom looks at me, and I can tell she’s frowning a little from the droop at the corners of her mouth. Probably a response to my scowl. I try to relax, but all I can think about is the old man rotting inside his house.

Liz meets us at the door. “How was everything?”

I shrug. “The boys need to get to bed. Tomorrow’s Christmas.”

She backs away a little, probably sensing one of my moods. Before helping Nick and Nate into their pajamas, we lay out three sugar cookies—the flaky kind Mom makes with red sprinkles—and set them on the table with a glass of milk. “For Santa,” Liz tells the boys.

We tuck them in upstairs, and I crash in the living room, flipping through TV stations trying to find A Christmas Carol. I only like the version with Alastair Sim. In every advertisement, the houses are decorated with little lights. I can’t escape the thoughts of the old man. Mom and Liz are talking while I surf; I can hear a little of their mumbles.

“What’s eating him?” Liz asks.

“I don’t know…we drove by all the places he liked as a kid.”

I smash the power button on the remote, and march into the kitchen.

“I’m going to bed,” I announce.

On the way to my old bedroom, I pause outside the boys’ room and peek in. They’re tucked neatly under fat comforters, sleeping peacefully with visions of Santa and the gifts to come in the morning. Nothing is out of order for them, only me.

I’ve been lying in bed for thirty minutes, staring at the ceiling, before Liz comes upstairs. She undresses, folds over the blankets, and slips inside. She’s trying to be quiet, probably sure I’m asleep.

“I’m not asleep,” I say.

A pause. “Oh, sorry.”

Another pause. I feel the air in the room thicken.

“What’s wrong, Bub?”

“Nothing.” I close my eyes and wait a few moments. Maybe sleep will come. Maybe not. “We drove by a few houses I remember from when I was a kid.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. This one house, well Mom said the owner was dying. Cancer. He’s in bad shape.”

“That’s too bad.”

I suck in a lungful of stale air. “The town won’t let him die.”

“What?”

“They put up lights on the house.”

“Who did? I don’t understand.”

No, Liz, you don’t understand. You never will. She’s from Chicago and doesn’t appreciate traditions in a small town. “The town did it. They won’t let him die in peace. He’s in that house, dying, alone, and the town won’t let him go. He should be in a nursing home or a hospice. Someplace else.”

“Maybe he wants to die in his own house.” She touches my arm under the blanket. I pull away.

“I’m sorry. Goodnight,” she whispers. Within minutes, I hear her breathing slow to a steady rate.

The boys are asleep, dreaming of Santa on the roof, but I can’t sleep thinking of how many times I’ve driven past that house. I don’t even know the old guy’s name. I’m a leech—the whole town is full of leeches—sucking pleasure from his Christmas display for thirty years, and now he’s rotting from the inside and no one seems to care about anything but the lights.

I climb out of bed and slip downstairs as quietly as possible. In the kitchen, I eat one of the cookies. The red sprinkles look like splatters of blood in the dim light. I swallow the milk in three big gulps. The boys will think Santa did it.

In the garage, I rummage through Mom’s tools, looking for something to do the job.

I leave the house through the back door and drive away without headlights so they won’t see the glare and wake. A fragment of moon hangs limply in the midnight sky; I glance at it, half expecting to see a sleigh pass across its yellow face.

At the Phillips 66 station, I turn and drive three blocks. The lights are still on, even at midnight. I look closer at the house this time and notice peeling paint. The house is rotting outside just like the man is dying on the inside. Volunteers put up the lights, but can’t paint the place? All people care about are those goddamn traditions—shitty town. They don’t care about his pain, suffering. He’s dying for Christ’s sake.

I pull around to the alley, sure that the loud Christmas music pumped on an endless loop will cover the sound of the back door splintering around the lock. Maybe he wants to die in his own house. I take up the hammer, feel its weight in my hand, and imagine the peace the old man will feel once I’ve cracked open his skull and ended his misery. That will be a real Christmas gift.

Then, I’ll take down the lights.

(originally appeared in Nothing to Dread: a Niteblade Anthology edited by Rhonda Parrish)