Tag: horror

Toddler Life, Chapter 171: Covered in Poop

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My children know when their daddy is holding them. They say that the mother releases chemicals that calm her child when she holds them, and these chemicals strengthen the bonding instinct, encourage the child to relax, and so forth–all the things needed to foster a good relationship. I’m convinced that the father emits pheromones of his own, and these pheromones encourage the child to evacuate all of his or her fluids as soon as possible.

I know, I know. I’m the parent of a toddler and an infant, of course I’m going to encounter my share of poop and barf and pee.

But this is more than that. If they were capable of rational, malicious thought, I’d swear it was deliberate. A conspiracy, even. But they’re not. Which means it’s chemical.

  • Exhibit A: My son is three weeks old, and spending another (thankfully) uneventful day in the NICU. At about one in the afternoon, I’m burping him after a feeding and he has a rather violent projectile vomiting incident which bounces off my shoulder, splashes down my back, and splats satisfyingly on the floor. That’s not a big deal; he had digestive issues and spit-ups were all too common. Then an hour later, I’m rocking him in the chair and I feel a warm patch on my stomach. He’s peed through the diaper and soiled my shirt for the second time that day. Okay, that’s a heck of a coincidence–pee and barf on the same shirt in the space of an hour–but it doesn’t mean anything. Until I’m changing his diaper about another hour on, and a fountain of poo erupts from his tiny little butt and sprays out to a distance of four or five feet on the hospital floor, in a horrible messy line up my pants and across my shoes. I take to calling this the trifecta, a day which will live in toddler poop infamy.
  • Exhibit B: My son is about a year and a half old, and he has the stomach flu. If you’ve had a toddler with the stomach flu, you know the pain. If not, I’ll spare you. Anyway, he’s got a happy strain of it, which gives him no ill effects aside from explosive diarrhea, so he’s merrily gallivanting around the house, then he turns to me and says, “stomach!” So I scoop him up and run for the tub, because I know what’s coming, and to my credit, I got him there, but he and I were both doused in poop as he went into the tub. Sigh.
  • Exhibit C: It’s two days after Exhibit B, and we are having a lovely day on a weekend. Mom’s in the kitchen, cooking or doing whatever moms do in the kitchen on a weekend. He’s in my lap and we’re watching an episode of something awful. Barney, maybe, or Yo Gabba Gabba. With no warning at all, his stomach erupts and blankets me and the sofa in a thin film of white, curdled, toddler spew. To his credit, this scares the hell out of him, and he starts crying, which makes it even worse. That couch has never been the same.
  • Exhibit D: We fast-forward to two days ago. I’ve been at work for an extra-long day (soccer practice is starting up after school, so I’m pulling 11-hour days) and I arrive home to find my wife exhausted and frazzled, so I gladly take my five-month-old daughter off her hands so that she can go do whatever moms do in their bathrooms on a weeknight. I’m cradling the baby and cooing and giggling at her and she rips loose with a projectile vomit that ricochets off my shoulder, douses her and me, and covers the bottom half of my face with a fine mist of baby barf. This child never spits up. She chose to have her inaugural barf-your-brains-out movement all over daddy. This moment makes me glad we replaced the carpet in that room with laminate last year.
  • Exhibit E: FINALLY, DADDY CATCHES A BREAK. It’s yesterday. Friday night, and everything’s allllllll right. Baby girl gets grumpy every night in the five o’clock hour, and the best remedy is putting her in the Baby Bjorn carrier, better known in our house as the Daddy Caddy (since I used it the most with sprout #1, though mommy sure gets her fair share with it as well). I think that’s important to point out, because my smell is ALL UP IN that thing. Anyway, mommy’s got her in the Daddy Caddy, and all of a sudden asks me if I smell poop. Well, I don’t, but I do see the poop stain creeping down baby’s leg and the bottom of mommy’s shirt. I’m trying not to laugh but inside I’m turning somersaults because finally, FINALLY, mommy got pooped on instead of me. She even got it on her hands while she was trying to clean up. Life is good.
  • Exhibit F: But payback is a beesting. It’s today. I’ve got baby girl in the Daddy Caddy, and it might as well be a shot-for-shot remake of Exhibit E, except it’s me this time. Poop all over the baby, poop all over the Caddy, poop all over daddy. It’s on my hands as I clean her. I might even have touched my face in there by accident–I couldn’t even tell you. It’s all a haze of wet wipes and orange goop.

This list is by no means exhaustive. I can’t even recount all the times I’ve been sneezed on or drooled on, unsuspectingly touched pee or poop, ended up wearing barf or spit-up. Of course there was the great tub-turd incident back in July. My point is, this is all too much bodily fluids to write off as the by-product of toddler interaction. Either the sprouts are actively targeting me, or, as I posit, something about me causes them to swell to bursting.

The only natural course is to buy a hazmat suit for all future interactions with the kids. For their protection, not mine. And the house’s. And, yeah, okay, also mine.

Self-Inflicted

Pavowski10 Comments

Chuck’s challenge for the week: Diseased Horror.

I loved the idea at first but struggled to find a direction to take it in.  Then it struck me that while bugs that travel through the air or the water or various bodily fluids are horrible enough in their own right, what about one that could travel even more insidiously — through the mind itself, or even just through eye contact?

The only thing I’m not really sure about is the ending.  I’d love to hear some alternate thoughts, but I definitely wanted to convey that the disease doesn’t stop with the hero.

This initially came in way over the limit at about 1400 words, and I managed to trim the fat down to a very terse 999.  I hope you enjoy it.

 

Self-Inflicted

The bus is running late, and my coffee is too hot.  Ellen’s sent me a text message reminding me that she loves me — she knows this time of year can run me a little ragged.

I feel a prickle on my neck.  I look up and lock eyes with this guy across the aisle.  He’s staring at me, the top of his newspaper folded down covering his face below the nose, his eyebrows pulled together in an expression of cold fury.  I look back at my phone.

He’s still staring at me.

I meet his eyes again and then there’s this pressure in my head, like I’m in an airplane that’s just climbed thirty thousand feet in thirty seconds, like I might get squeezed out through my own ears.  There’s something strange about him.  He’s got a horrible scar from his hairline to his cheek, but that’s not it.  Then it strikes.  He looks like me.

Not quite like me — the eyes are a little bit smaller, the chin stronger, the cheekbones sharper — but it’s too much like looking in a mirror.  With a crack like a starter pistol, he snaps his newspaper back in front of his face.

I feel dizzy.  My ears are ringing and there’s a cloudiness in my head that wasn’t there a minute ago.  My phone buzzes.  It’s Ellen, asking if I got her text.  The bus driver is announcing my stop, fifteen minutes early. My coffee is barely lukewarm.

*****

By the end of the shift, my head is pounding.  The bus home is standing room only, and it feels as if everybody on the bus is staring at me.  Every time I try to catch one of them at it, though, their eyes dart away like startled goldfish.  When the driver lets me off at my stop, he tells me to have a good night, and I swear it sounds like me talking.

*****

When I wake up, the pain in my head is unbearable.  It feels like there’s some thing in my skull, skittering along on tiny insect legs, tearing at the grey matter with its rending beak.  I can’t call in sick, though — it’s tax time and the firm is understaffed — so I lurch into the bathroom and pop a handful of Tylenol.  I brace myself against the sink, taking deep, unhelpful breaths, then slam the cabinet shut.  The mirror cracks from the impact, and I see it — a bright red weal, the skin puckered and angry — running from my hairline to my jaw, just around the outside of my eye.

It’s hideous.  I’m hideous.  I go into Ellen’s makeup drawer, rummage through piles of mascara and foundation, and find the concealer.  In great gobs I smear it on the scar, smoothing it out like plaster.  The skin underneath feels hot to the touch, like a pan left on the cooktop.  I go to ask Ellen how it looks.  Her body rises and falls beneath the sheet, and I decide not to disturb her.  No sense in making this her problem.

*****

The boss calls me into his office and slaps down a pile of returns on the desk.  Yesterday’s.  I’ve screwed them up, apparently.  My head starts throbbing and I can’t make out a word. All of a sudden he’s looking at me funny, and then his face changes.  His sallow, pale skin tightens up and tones, his receding hairline creeps forward.  The angry red scar I saw in my mirror this morning blooms on the side of his face.  The eyes scowling at me are my eyes.  Rage overtakes me.  I leap from my chair, my fist finds his face — my face — and for a split second, the thunderstorm in my head goes quiet.  The relief is so overwhelming that I grab the phone off his desk — one of those old-school jobs, stamped metal on the bottom — and smash it into his head, opening up a wicked gash to mirror the one that’s already there.  He ragdolls to the floor.  I straighten my suit and leave the office early.

My head feels better.

*****

I walk instead of waiting for the bus.  Every face is a shadow of mine: my jaw here, my nose there.  Every eye follows me as I hurry past.  I’m bumped, then shoved, then I break into a run, throwing the false mes aside, ignoring their protests as they topple from my path.  My headache creeps back in, threatening to sunder my skull.  My own voice shouts at me from a hundred mouths.

*****

I hear Ellen moving around in the bedroom, just waking up.  I sit down and turn on the television, and my fingers leave vivid bloodstains on the remote.  I turn and see her in the doorway, but she’s not Ellen.  She’s me.  My face, imploring me in confusion and mounting panic.  My voice, asking me if I’m all right.  The only thing missing is the scar, so I grab a kitchen knife.

*****

The headache is better now that I’ve dispatched that pretender.  My own distorted face leers at me from every person I pass.  It’s too ludicrous not to laugh.  I sit down for lunch and a cup of coffee, watching all the pale imitations of myself, and there — there — is somebody who looks different.  She’s normal.  I can’t take my eyes away.  She sees me, and looks uncomfortably away, but I am spellbound.

A lightness builds in my head and then a stretching, like some invisible tail reaching up out of my head and spanning the distance between us.  Then I have her eyes again and there’s a feeling of sweet release, like taking off tight shoes at the end of the day.  The scar opens up on her cheek, invisible, beneath her skin, but glowing, white-hot.

A passing me asks if I’d like a refill.  I scowl and tell me to get lost.

When I look up, the girl across the aisle looks just like me.

You’ll Join Eventually, Anyway

Pavowski8 Comments

Chuck’s challenge for the week:  SpammerPunk Horror.  In short, mash up the horror genre with spam e-mail.

Here’s a goofy entry.  Inspiration drawn in part from “Re: Your Brains” by Johnathan Coulton.

 

You’ll Join Eventually, Anyway.

 

Congratulations!

You are receiving this message because we have determined that you are Horde material.  We are contacting you in the hopes that you’ll seriously consider joining our ORGANization — one of the fastest-growing in North America, and soon, the world!  Many of your friends are already a part of the movement.  Join now and see what all the buzz is about?  (Flies are only part of it!)

What is the Horde?

It’s a group of like-minded individuals who share similar interests, such as shambling around aimlessly, eating, hunting for food, and losing weight holistically (sometimes even losing entire limbs at once — name a weight-loss program that can boast that).  Members of the horde eat together, walk together, and hunt together, but what we really enjoy doing is recruiting new members to our ever-growing movement.  Sound like fun?  Contact a representative today!

Why should you join?

Because the Horde is inevitable.  Our numbers are growing daily, and the more members we have, the more we grow.  Soon there will be nobody left.  You will be one of us one day anyway — why not get in now and start enjoying the benefits of membership today?

What do you get for joining?

Life eternal, for one thing (as long as your body stays in one piece — or maybe two).  You’ll never need to sleep again once you’re exposed to our patented lifestyle secrets (many of our members report that they have literally stopped aging!).  And you will have a worldwide community to which you will always belong.

Still not convinced?  Here are some member success stories…

I lived alone my whole life.  When the Horde came and got me, I found myself instantly surrounded by friends.  Now I walk with them every day.  -Jim, former introvert

I can remember a time in my life when I was scared to break a nail.  Well, I lost three fingers the other day and most of my foot a week ago, and I didn’t feel a thing.  Thanks, Horde!  -Sally, former secretary

I never thought I’d acquire a taste for human flesh.  Now, I hardly eat anything else.  -Arthur, former vegetarian

What are you waiting for?

Contact one of our representatives today.  You can find us anywhere: we usually roam the streets or cluster in dark basements, looking dusty, sometimes moaning or drooling.  Don’t be alarmed — that’s just the Horde having fun!  If you’re lucky, there may be Horde members outside your door right now, just waiting to accept you into our ranks.

You can’t hold out forever.  There’s only so much food.

 

Do not respond to this e-mail, as zombies have difficulty navigating an inbox.

There are Things in the Well

Pavowski1 Comment

I’m in just under the wire for this week’s flash fiction challenge.

Chuck’s challenge for the week:  The beginning of a story.  With no further guidance than that, I foundered for a while before settling on this.  I can only imagine that the challenge for this week will be to complete the story started by another writer, so I wanted to make sure there’s lots of room for interpretation while still setting a mood, should anybody end up finishing this one.  This beginning certainly makes me uncomfortable, so I guess it’s a success, at that.

 

There Are Things in the Well

“Here she comes, Elvy.”

Elvert crunched on a handful of candy and shaded his eyes against the sun.  “New girl?”

Trom kicked at a snail and nodded toward the twig of a girl walking down the dirt road about fifty yards distant.  “Leza, I think.”

The stones of the well were cool against his back, and in the sweltering humidity he was reluctant to leave them behind.  Still, she’d only be new in town for so long.  He stood and stretched and spit his lime candy into the well, and jogged off to intercept her, with Trom following like a hungry cat in his wake.

“Leez!” Elvert called when he was close enough to make out the pattern on her backpack.  The new girl said nothing, just quickened her pace.

“Hey, Leez!”  Trom shouted.

She folded her arms and bowed her head, stringy blond hair falling in a curtain across her face.  The boys fell into step beside her while she did her best to ignore them.  They dogged her steps, staring at her, until she felt uncomfortable enough to speak.  “It’s Leza.”

“You’re new here, ain’t ya?”  Elvert spit a pink gob on the grass next to the road.

Leza gave the tiniest of nods.  Trom stepped in front of her and she had to pull up short, hugging her notebook to her chest.  He folded his arms and laughed.  “You don’t know about the initiation, do you?”

She rolled her eyes and tried to step around Trom, but Elvert cut her off.  “Of course she don’t know, Trom.  We gotta show her.”

“I’m gonna be late for dinner,” Leza protested uselessly.

“Won’t take long.  It’s right over there,” Elvert said, pointing over her shoulder.

“What is?”

“The well,” Trom said, drawing his lips into a silent “ooh” after he said it.

Leza turned to look.  There was nothing in the field but the squat, dingy-looking well sticking up like a tombstone in the tall grass.  Her stomach felt heavy looking at it.  She thought to run, but Elvert’s sweaty arm wrapped around her shoulder and she felt herself being pulled toward the well.

“I can’t,” she wailed, but in a few seconds the boys pressed her belly against the grimy stones and she felt them leaning with her over the lip to peer down into the depths.  Strands of hair wafted into her eyes and mouth in the sudden breeze that issued from the dark. The bottom of the well was eclipsed in blackness, but silvery reflections twisted and writhed far below.  The faraway hissing she’d thought was the sound of water now seemed alive and excited at the three heads peeking over the edge.

But her head was the only one peeking over.  The boys had disappeared behind her back.  She lifted herself to find them, but just as she moved she felt strong hands on her back and then she was tumbling through space, the cold stones racing past her, the hissing growing louder.

 

The Dressmaker’s Last Call

Pavowski4 Comments

Chuck’s challenge this week:  The classic Random Title Challenge.  I did this one properly, rolling the dice before I even looked at the possible titles, coming up with the bizarre title “The Dressmaker’s Last Call.”  I balked at it, not knowing how I’d possibly approach it.  But no, the challenge is in working outside of your comfort zone, so I set it on to percolate.

I went through a lot of different concepts and plots before ultimately arriving at this one.  My Five Stories, One Title exercise has taught me that I get my best work done after I flush out the pipes a little bit first.  I pushed away my initial ideas of thieving and murder in favor of something entirely different.  I actually ended up liking this little story quite a lot.

Clocking in at 989 words, here it is.

 

The Dressmaker’s Last Call

******

As she stepped into the light and spun delicately on her toes, tears sprung into Tanner’s eyes.  He had woven nightsilk garments before, but never one so fine as this, and he would never weave another.  Myra was a miracle cloaked in the night; as she spun the candles seemed to gutter and fail, lending their light to hers.  The dress pulled the luminescence in and suffused her with it; setting her aglow in the sudden dimness, radiance spilling out from her skin.

“It’s incredible,” said Myra, laying her fingers lightly on her arms as if she were afraid to touch it.  In truth, she was, a little.

“Let me,” Tanner said.

He began the work of making tiny adjustments to the garment.  The shimmering material flowed through his hands like water; it cascaded over his fingertips and pooled in gathering incorporeal heaps and whispered as his needle pierced it again and again.  Darkly it billowed in swirling waves of deepest purple, midnight blue, and the black of the void; the fabric so light its touch on the skin was almost imperceptible, if it could be called fabric at all.  Far too fine and fragile for any machine to ever touch, the nightsilk, once stitched, seemed to mold and shape itself to itself and to Myra; a seeking thing almost merging with her porcelain skin, a congealed shadow, a living darkness.

Tanner stepped back and regarded his work with a frown.  It was immaculate, but his exacting eye picked out the flaws nobody else would ever see.  There was nothing for it; the shadowed silk was a mystery even to him, each garment unique, each swatch of silk with a personality all its own.  Even before his eyes, the dress bent and twisted with tiny imperceptible ripples, the thrashings of light and vibration that would ultimately tear the dress to pieces.

The room was alive with the flames of a hundred candles, guttering dimly, but the dress and their faces were barely visible. He clasped her by the hand.  “The dress will hide you from the eyes of the living wherever you walk.  You will appear as but a shadow, if they can bring themselves to look upon you at all.  Even now, it turns my eyes.”  It was true.  The longer she stood in the tiny room, the more she seemed to fade at the edges, the more she seemed just an extension of the shadows stretching across the floor.  His eyes hurt with the effort of keeping her in focus.

“But I’ll be able to see her?”  Myra stared back into the old man’s eyes, brushing his cheek with her hand.  The gesture seemed to calm him.  “And she, me?”

His lips pressed into a thin line, and he inclined his head ever so slightly.  “The dead walk in shadow.  To become a shadow yourself is to become like them.”  He squeezed her hand with a grimace and walked across the room.  Picking up a lantern, he turned to her and scratched his head in hesitation — he could no longer see her.  Myra reached out to take his hand, and he relaxed.  “Keep this near you, lest the darkness take you forever.”  She took the lantern and hung it in the crook of her arm.  Kissing him on the cheek like a whisper of autumn air, she left without another word.  He knew she was gone when the candles blazed back to life.  He gave the last scrap of the nightsilk to the flames and watched as it convulsed, shriveled, and died on the floor in an ashless wisp of smoke.

***

The sun had set and the stars did not show their faces — their tiny pinpoints of light drunk up by the nightsilk.  Myra made her way to the graveyard and hesitated; before her, in the dark, were the shuffling, aimless shapes of neighbors and friends long dead.  They floated in the darkness, gossamer and grey, barely visible, gazing back at her with wonder and contempt.  They spoke in words she could not hear and prodded at her with fingers she could not feel.  Seeing that she was not like them, they lost interest, allowing her to pass unmolested through their ranks.  There were more gravestones than living people in the town, and the yard was thick with their shadows, but they parted wordlessly before her as she pressed on toward the small, unmarked stone in a lonely corner, where a small wispy shade of a girl sat singing to herself, tunelessly, the way Myra’s husband used to do.

Myra’s voice caught in her throat.  She reached for the girl but pulled her hand back, tears in a river down her cheeks. Finally, she choked, “Clara?”

The girl spun and regarded her strangely, expressionlessly, then stood and faced her.  Myra felt sobs wracking her body, but made no sound.  The girl’s mouth seemed to move, but Myra could not hear the words.

“I can’t hear you, darling,” Myra protested.  She longed to grasp her, to squeeze her as if she could somehow share her own light with the girl, but Myra’s hand passed through her as through a fog.  Myra drew her hand back in horror as the girl recoiled from her, shielding her eyes.

In an instant, Myra forgot the Weaver’s warning.  The light hurt her little girl’s eyes; she must put it out.  The lantern shattered, the oil taking flame in a tiny gout that sputtered and faded in the night.  As the lantern’s light died, Myra felt her daughter’s tiny arms closing around her shoulders, felt the dress shifting and changing into the gossamer grey that the other dead wore.  The voices of the dead became a sudden clamor in her ears; Myra fought the rising panic until she heard her daughter’s voice, tiny and sweet and real again, after so long.

“Mommy, it’s safe.  You’re with me now.”