Shawn Cook (A.K.A. bagabones) Gives Me a Pretty Death

Look someone else kills the hell outta me!

A few months ago we played a game over at the Library of the Living Dead forum where I slaughtered my friends one by one while they all pointed at each other. Killing games are fun games. So, anyways, after I gutted everyone I, being the cool mofo I am, offered them all the chance to kill me back od buddy/co-author Tim Long took me up on it and turned it into one of the coolest birthday presents I've ever gotten. My editor and good friend Stephanie Kincaid brought Heinous to life to teach me a lesson in curse words, hooks and tentacles. And now Shawn Cook, the talented recluse known as bagabones on a number of forums,has given me a beautiful demise. Without any further chatter....my pretty death...

The cities and villages belonged to the ghosts now. Bodies lay in decaying repose as the world slowly faded to silence around them. Here and there they eroded to their base elements; in cars, houses and beds. Streets were desolate as fear had forced most indoors, perhaps one or two littered the pavement unable to go any farther towards their destination.

Birds, once immune to the pandemic, now lay alongside the carcasses of cat, dog, pig, cattle and human. The virus was eating the life from the world with a professional’s ease and a mountain’s patience. Only the ghosts, multitude in their silent witness, gained any number.

Jonathan pushed onward while the fever ravaged his brain and his skin burned; his guts were ice cold and shivering. He’d held out longer than the millions who’d gone before, had held out as long as he could. Now, he was nearing the end.

The car slalomed as consciousness tried to escape into feversleep and he forced his eyes open a little wider. The roar of rumble strips as his car eased to the shoulder whipped him back to wakefulness.

Tears slipped down his cheeks, mingled with sweat and dropped onto his stained shirt. His right hand skittered across the passenger seat like a palsied spider, searching out that hidden half-pack of cigarettes under the detritus of travel.

It was there, buried under the crinkled paper with the screaming headline: “SUPERVIRUS DEVISTATES EASTERN SEABOARD!”

A pop of flame, inhale deeply, fight the urge to cough, exhale. Fuck cancer, man; that shit takes too long. Smoke fills the car and he cracks the window. As he eases past an overturned tractor-trailer the stereo begins to hum a tuneless white noise.

“Jonathan.”

The whisper was barely audible.

“Jonathan.” The voice was low and flat, oozing from the speakers. The radio has been broken for weeks. “Where are you going, Jonathan?”

“The beach.” His voice rasps into the stale air. “Wanna see the ocean before I go.”

A burst of static. “Ah, of course. I shall wait for you there.”

The odd conversation had barely registered. In a mind scarred by nightmarish hallucinations this was little more than a hiccup. Within minutes the memory of the voice had been scorched from his mind.


He sat behind the wheel and watched the ocean roll itself upon the shore. He didn’t remember most of his trip, only flashes of clarity he wished to forget. Hastily dug mass graves and funeral pyres long extinguished, suicides hanging from trees and burnt houses. Lucidity had returned, his body exhausted from fighting, the heat under his skin lowered to a dull throb.

A figure appeared from behind a dune, far enough away for the features to be indistinct but Jonathan could tell it was a man.

A survivor, untouched and healthy? Doubtful. Perhaps another like-minded individual, plague ridden and dying, such as himself. He sneezed once, twice explosively into the air and tried to ignore the blood that now coated the steering wheel, dash and windshield.



************************************************


The sun felt good upon his shoulders. The sand pulled at his shoes. The sea driven breeze was almost cleansing. His fever began to return, snarling through his body; deadlier this time. He didn’t have long. Not long at all.

As he approached the figure, Jonathan began to tremble. Not entirely from the sickness. Although he looked human, this man was neither survivor nor victim, he was something else entirely. The pale skin and worn clothing had marked him as a shut-in lucky enough to have outlasted the plague. The eyes, black as the deepest ocean trench said otherwise.

“Hello, Jonathan.” The stranger’s mouth never moved.

Vertigo flooded into the spaces from which equilibrium fled and Jonathan slipped to the sand, sick and dizzy.

His mouth worked the word twice before his voice managed to speak.

“Who….?”

“An escort, if you will. You are one of the last.”


The stranger placed a knee in the sand next to where Jonathan rested and laid a boney hand upon the nape of his fevered neck. Jonathan’s eyes never left the restless, eternal ocean. The voice of the strange man spoke softly into Jonathan’s ear, one syllable; drawn out to coalesce with the crashing tide.

“Breathe.”

He inhaled as the world grew black at the edges and could feel his body being laid on its back in the sand.

“Let it go, Jonathan. Let it all go.”

Jonathan exhaled his last breath as those long past welcomed him with open arms.

The Eerily Realistic Demise of Mr. Moon by Stephaine Kincaid

(A little bit of back ground....months ago a group of us on The Library of the Living Dead forum played a Murder Mystery game when I was the murderer! I tore my friends from the board into tiny wet pieces one by one while they tried to figure out who was behind the killings. Since I'm the nice guy I am I offered those I killed a chance to do the same to me and I would post it up here on the Monkey Faced Demon. Tim Long killed the hell outta me on my birthday. Zombie Zak is supposedly killing me soon. Mrs. Kincaid took it upon her self to kill me this morning...and she does a damn fine, if not personally terrifying job!)

Mr. Moon let forth a flood of expletives so venomous that his features seemed to melt away in the face of his vicious cursing, leaving only an overflowing potty mouth with nary a plunger in sight. There were curses that boomed and curses that tiptoed, curses that shone with demonic light, and curses so foul that a scent of sulfur floated in their wake. Small animals cowered in terror at the blasphemous filth pouring from his lips, and flowers wilted and blackened, blighted by the unholy pestilence of his utterances.
Borne on the torrent of filth was one word, one little syllable that warranted repeating in decent company.
“Why?”
But let’s back up a little, shall we?

It had been a pleasant evening for Moon. He’d been reviewing the latest edits for the re-release of his most deliciously foul work ever: Heinous, the story of a sadistic demon and the unfortunate boy he possesses. This version was longer, more brutal, and far more disturbing than the original. Sometimes, when he worked on the book into the wee hours, he even gave himself nightmares. Those were his favorite nights.
Tonight, however, would be an early night. Once he wrapped up the edits, he felt sure he’d rest in peace. He had no idea how right he was.
Moon clicked through the document, accepting the last few changes with a grin. He’d done it! Heinous was ready to go. He opened his email, all set to send a victorious message to his editor, only to discover that she was way ahead of him.
“From: Stephanie Kincaid,” he read. “Subject: CONGRATULATORY TENTACLES.”
Chuckling, he opened the message.
“Congrats on finishing Heinous,” it said. “Click here to retrieve your bouquet of a dozen writhing tentacles. Talk too you soon, Stephanie.”
“Weird,” muttered Moon. “Talk too you soon?” He’d never known Stephanie to make grammatical errors. Maybe she’d just made a typo in her excitement about the book. It was possible. But something about it didn’t sit well with him. Still … he could worry about his editor later. There were tentacles to be retrieved, damn it!
Moon was not one to pass up a single tentacle, let alone a dozen!
Especially when they were writhing.
Click.
The graphic to which he was redirected was adorable. Twelve chubby purple tentacles with lime-green suction cups, tied into a bouquet with a sweet pink bow, wiggled and waved in a merry little dance from the screen. In the background, a saccharine version of “If You’re Happy and You Know it” played nonstop, sung by a chorus of what might have been kindergarteners but might also have been elves on speed; Moon couldn’t quite tell—and wasn’t sure there was that much of a difference. It was at once the most grotesque email he’d ever received and the cutest. Even as he considered how very nauseating the song was—particularly this squeaky, smarmy incarnation of it—he found himself bobbing his head to what passed for a beat.
“Stephanie, you are one sick lady,” he said to his computer screen.
“You have no idea,” growled a voice from within the machine.
“What the hell?” Moon made a mental catalog of all the substances he’d ingested that day, but failed to turn up anything that would produce hallucinations of a gravelly-voiced computer-dwelling creature. It had been a slow day.
As he sat there, gaping at the computer, the image of the waving tentacles flickered, and the screen cracked—just a little at first, but a small crack in one corner soon became a spider web that covered the screen. All at once, the screen fell away with a horrible rasping sound, and a dozen slimy, sinewy tentacles—not nearly so cute now—burst from the machine and wrapped themselves around Moon’s torso, hoisting him into the air. The more he struggled, the tighter the tentacles gripped him, crushing him from all sides. He was sure he could feel his organs turning to pulp.
“Look on the bright side,” said a woman’s voice. “Your innards will make a lovely smoothie. High in protein, low in fat. Healthy and tasty.”
Beneath the desk on which the shattered remains of his computer lay, the floor seemed to fall away, exposing a pit that, from his airborne vantage point, looked forbiddingly deep. And from this pit crawled none other than the woman who had sent the email that started this nightmare.
“Stephanie?” Moon gasped. “Help me, please!” To his brain, scrambled as it was by panic and pain, the woman who had just climbed up into his home from the bowels of the earth … the woman whose appearance had been heralded by a dozen tentacles doing an excellent boa constrictor impersonation … the woman who wielded a red pen more vicious than a wolverine with PMS … this woman still looked like a friend.
Until, that is, she hoisted a wicked gleaming hook into the air. The short brunette had looked much less threatening on Facebook.
She waved the hook like a conductor’s baton, and five of the twelve tentacles released their hold on Moon. The other seven squeezed even tighter to compensate, and Moon had a sudden empathy for every stress toy ever manufactured. The five tentacles plunged into the pit and emerged bearing hooks just like Stephanie’s. She continued to weave her hook in intricate patterns, directing a balletic masterpiece in fear. The tentacles that held him turned him so that he dangled upside down and rearranged themselves to leave his head and torso exposed. Several tentacles held him by the legs; the rest bound his arms to limit his flailing. The tentacles with the hooks danced and swerved, ultimately poising themselves before Moon’s poor abused body. One waited right before his forehead, one before each eye, one over his heart, and one in front of his stomach.
Stephanie grinned with manic glee. “Any last words?” she asked, her tone mocking.
That was when the flood of expletives began. It ran its course until the lone sad syllable hung on the fear-charged air.
“Why?”
“Because you created me. And there’s only one way to be stronger than the one who made you.” The words came from Stephanie’s mouth, but the voice was not hers. And all at once, Moon knew. He knew the voice, recognized it from his own mind, from his nightmares. It was the voice of Heinous, the demon he himself had created.
In one fluid move, Stephanie swung her hook up and brained herself, the hook entering through one nostril and exiting through the top of her head. The crazy grin stayed plastered on her face. It was an unnerving sight made even more so by the fact that he was viewing it upside down.
“But … but …” stammered Moon, “you just killed your host.”
“Bitch kept correcting my grammar,” growled Heinous through Stephanie’s lips.
“But you need a living host!” Moon cried, spotting his opportunity. “You can’t survive in our plane of existence without a human to possess. I can save you!”
Heinous laughed, a sound more terrifying than the screams of all the souls in Hell. “Yeah, and I can’t travel via computer either, right? Or open a pit to Hell in the middle of your house, huh?”
The hooks before Moon’s eyes looked especially pointy. This wasn’t going well.
“You wanted an upgraded Heinous, right, Moon? Well, you got it. Meet Heinous 2.0,” the demon growled.
And the hooks struck home.


AWESOME! Uh, thanks for the slaughter, Steph! You can catch her chatting with Lori Titus and Tonia Brown right here.

Bugs Of Dhoooooooooom by Timothy W. Long

(The following is a story my good friend and co-author Tim Long wrote for me on my thirty third birthday. What a cool dude, right?)

Bugs of Dhoooooooooom



The day Mr. MoOn died was a fine one indeed. Not even a summers eve douche commercial could match it’s brilliance. From chirping cicadas to neighbors - who for once, did not require any help moving items around their house – leaving Mr. MoOn to his own devices.


McDonalds was out of the question. Our crack-mac-daddy of dhoom required a breakfast of sustenance. Thus, he arose to an eerily quite house and set about making the largest pile of Belgian Waffles the county had ever seen. The plan, such that it was, involved blending the ingredients in his bathtub. Unfortunately, his last batch of LSD had been created here. Yes, his wacky tik-taky’s, his trip, his dots of love, mixed with the batter.


Son of a bitch Leon had been by. Probably that very night. Ghosted in like he owned the place. Mr. MoOn’s traps were nothing to this man. There existed a school of secretive men in Koga – Shiga Prefecture, Japan that didn’t possess half the prowess that Leon did. They would weep at his fleet footedness, toss shuriken like popcorn at his fleeing form and yet none would ever be the wiser to his passing.


The waffles were prepared and set out on a eighty seven foot long table. Towns people came from near and far to partake. They brought a collection of honeys, syrups, and toppings of various girths, like a tidal wave of sweets. They rolled in, backed across his lawn, tore up tulips and daisys, cut down trees to make room, and even used the house across the street as a giant shitter.


Fun and games it was. Love and beer flowed like urine at a portapotty in Bangladesh. Chicken nuggets were brought in on a flat bread truck to join the waffle convention. A dump truck filled with gravy joined the hijinks. Mr. MoOn slaved over the hot griddle until it was night fall. Exhausted to his very core, he finally went outside to consider his constituents.


They lay in piles, sat in clumps, and ran in naked gangs that abused the wildlife in the area. A crafty raccoon saw the writing on the wall and high tailed it to the roof. He set up a video camera and sent the feed directly to Fox News who latched onto it like a junkie with a fresh bag of heroin.


The orgy started at midnight and ended in blood. MoOn, for his part, had grown tired of cooking Belgium Waffles one at a time. He heated a brick of aluminum to the point of melting, then shaped it into a giant circle and used the old waffle iron to stamp little nubs in it. As it flattened it grew until the new waffle iron took up then entire floor.


The revelers, upon learning of a new batch of super waffles, abandoned beating the shit out of each other to join together in a mass psychosis dream of forty foot tall grasshoppers. MoOn grew wise to the hallucinations and popped a series of pills to offset the images. Uppers, downers, sidwaysers. He finished it off with a cake of hash the size of a gold bar and promptly passed out.


Bathed in waffle batter, honey, syrup and massive piles of powdered sugar (more than once mistaken for cocaine), the party goers, led by a one armed monkey, scampered into the city proper and ate most of it.


Mr. MoOn woke a few moments later to a scene of devastation. His city burned. Flames rose into the night painting the sky a patina of randy hues. Across this nightscape strode things from nightmares. Grasshoppers the size of sky scrapers marched to the beat of a Ramstein dirge. The noise pulsed against the air as did the howl of party goers as they were consumed by the waffle seeking bugs.


Upon eating all the partygoers, the grasshoppers started on Mr. MoOn’s house. They ate the chimney, then the roof. They went at a bedroom and then patio. They found the kitchen and lowered arm sized extruders to lap at the batter - which didn’t last long.



This meant that they also found the trace amounts of bathtub LSD and consumed it.


Then, with visions of headless unicorns emoting rainbows and broken dreams from their asses, the grasshoppers consumed Mr. MoOn and his marvelous waffle maker. Leon watched from a shadow the size of a postage stamp. He cackled with glee and then faded into the night on ghost feet.


Then the grasshoppers started on the rest of Idaho.