Unsettling Stories

Bubbles

aliens

I was getting my hand stitched up in the ER last night when a series of rapid beeps sounded on the intercom, followed by an announcement of “ABD, code A, bay 1.” Every doctor and nurse in the area stopped what they were doing and rushed to the main ER entrance. They got there just in time to meet the ambulances.

I couldn’t see anything, so I waited. I figured there had to have been a serious accident. My phone rang. It was Lucy, my wife. She asked how my hand was. I told her they were still stitching it up. I apologized for getting blood all over her bagel, and she laughed and said she told me not to cut it that way.

There was a pause while Lucy answered one of the kids’ questions in the background. Then she came back on the line and asked if I saw that really bright light about a half hour ago. I didn’t know what she was talking about, so she went on.

“It was crazy bright – the whole sky was this weird, pastel pink color. Then it turned white. It almost hurt to look at it was so bright.”

“Huh,” I replied. “Maybe it was a UFO.” I craned my neck to see over the mass of people still huddled by the ambulance bay. Still nothing.

Lucy laughed. “Yeah, must’ve been aliens.” She said something to one of the kids again, then came back on the line. “Ok, I’m gonna go. Joey said he’s about to throw up.”

I said goodbye and ended the call. The commotion on the other end of the ER was growing as more people from other parts of the hospital had gotten there. Something smelled terrible.

I covered my nose and mouth with my shirt and stood up. I walked over to the window so I could get a better look at what was happening. The crowd had thinned slightly. I saw a few nurses running off, probably to pick up supplies. At the end of the hall were two gurneys with medical personnel hovering over them.

The smell got worse and I gagged inside my shirt. One of the gurneys began to move as someone pushed it down the hall.

I stood in the doorway and watched. As the victim came into view, my eyes widened. It was a young woman, covered from head to toe in what I could only describe as bubbles. Some were as small as a pea, others were the size of a grapefruit. They all throbbed and pulsated from some pressure inside them, and every so often, one would tear open and weep yellow fluid onto the gurney. The smell was overwhelming.

They pushed her into the room next to mine. I could see everything from the window in the wall. They didn’t bother closing the curtains. I heard the other gurney being pushed by and glanced over at it. A girl, maybe 12 or 13. I shuddered.

I directed my gaze back at the person in the adjacent room. The doctors were popping bubbles to insert an IV. Fluid oozed onto the floor and I used every bit of self-control I could muster to avoid throwing up.

The woman’s eyes were wide and darting back and forth. It was an expression of terror. Terror and agony. As if sensing my stare, a thin stalk slid from the center of her left eye. The doctors shouted and backed up. The stalk elongated a little over a foot, and its tip grew a bubble of its own. The bubble expanded and the weight caused the stalk to droop. When it was the size of an orange, it stopped growing. It hung like an obscene fruit.

There was a yell from the room where they’d brought the other victim. I assumed it was for the same reason. On the other side of the window, more stalks emerged in a cluster from the woman’s other eye. All of them produced bubbles like a bunch of grapes.

My phone beeped. It was a text from Lucy. “Can you go look outside? It’s that light again!”

As if on cue, every light in the hospital went out. The emergency lights clicked on for half a second, then they went dead. There was nothing – nothing but the stream of pink light coming in from the open ambulance bay doors.

I stepped in the hall and asked, to no one in particular, what was happening. I doubt anyone heard me, because the light shifted from pink to white, accompanied by a blast of noise I can only describe as static. It caused me to clasp my hands to my ears and retreat backward into the room, where I cowered in the corner.

I saw shadows passing in front of the white light reflecting off the floor. Bizarrely-shaped shadows. They moved in a way that was both jerky and fluid, like jelly suspended on bone. The shadows darkened as whatever was making them got closer. Doctors and nurses in the next room shrieked, and there was a flash which silenced them. Then, two feet away in the hall, harshly illuminated from the back by the piercing, white light, I saw it.

My initial thought of jelly suspended on bone wasn’t very far off. Six ossified tubes carried heavy, segmented portions of sloshing, semi-transparent sacks. The first thing that came to mind was the body of a jellyfish. Bubbles and waving stalks decorated the entirety of its trunk and it walked by, either not noticing me or not caring about my presence. It reached the room of the other victim. Just like before, there was a scream, a flash of light, and then silence.

The light outside went dark. The sound stopped. The emergency lights in the hospital clicked on.

I scrambled to my feet and looked through the window at the room next to me. The doctors were writhing on the ground with burns on their exposed skin. The burns didn’t look life threatening. But the woman on the gurney was gone. Nothing was left but the sticky, yellow fluid on the floor.

“What the fuck was that?!,” I yelled, and banged on the window. The person who’d been stitching me up got off the floor, came back into the room, and asked me to sit down so he could finish. A nasty burn on the bridge of his nose wept tears of lymphatic fluid down his mouth and chin.

“ABD code,” he said. “Abduction. We’ve trained for them, but it was the first one I ever saw. They’re not supposed to come back for the abductees, though. I wonder why they did that.”

I sputtered and asked, “You..you people have dealt with this? How isn’t this going to be on the front page of every paper?”

“Well, you’ll forget about it in a couple hours. Everyone will. Better write down what you remember so you can tell your friends. You’ll recall something happening, but you won’t remember what it was.”

I looked at him, stupefied. “So how could you train for something like that? And how do you know it was your first one if you can’t remember?”

He shrugged. “It’s just what I was told. And good point about that other thing.” He paused and I saw a series of nearly invisible, faded scars around his hairline. He smiled and nodded. “Very good point.”

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The Least Satisfying Explanation

Before my husband died, our daughter, Veronica, was diagnosed with childhood schizophrenia. We brought her to countless specialists and nearly all of them came to the same conclusion. The condition is rare, but certainly not unheard of. We were devastated. The doctors suggested that we not start her on medication right away. They were concerned the chemicals might interfere with the development of her brain. At five years old, when proper brain development is critical, they didn’t want to chance it. Only if the hallucinations became severe would they prescribe antipsychotics.

Paul said it might help if we could identify the hallucinations over the course of the next year so we might know what to expect before she started school. This was pretty hard for me to agree with. I’d wanted her to start kindergarten right away. She’d demonstrated she was smart enough and more than capable, but eventually I caved. I just didn’t want to admit that Veronica needed special attention. We needed to separate her hallucinations from the normal, everyday make-believe that every kid her age does.

We started to pick up on a few outliers. One was a big dog who played with her while she was supposed to be sleeping. The other was a fish who followed her around and talked to her about cartoons. Most disconcerting to both of us, though, was the dark man with no eyes, nose, or ears who said how much fun it would be if she ran out and played in the street. More than once, Paul told me he’d chased after Veronica after she opened the screen door and ran toward the busy road.

After the third time, Paul got up at dawn, called in sick, and spent the day putting up a fence. It was summertime, and as much as I wanted to keep Veronica indoors, I knew sunshine and fresh air were too important for her to miss out on. Still, whenever Veronica played outside, she would make a beeline for the fence and start crying whenever she couldn’t go beyond it. I remember sitting with her on the grass next to the fence as she sobbed and talked to the fish about how the dark man was mad at her and had told the dog to be mean when they played. Then she screamed for a long time. When I finally got her to tell me what was wrong, all she said was that the fish got hit by a car and died. I did my best to console her, but it was useless.

Paul and I had a long talk that night. We decided her condition might be bad enough to require the medication we’d desperately tried to avoid giving her. After a trip to the doctor, who listened intently to all the observations we’d made, he agreed her condition was potentially severe and prescribed the drugs. We were told to observe her very, very carefully. The medication could cause the hallucinations to get worse before they got better.

Three days into Veronica’s medication experiment, her hallucinations became violent. I’d never seen our daughter so frightened. Over the course of two terrifying days, she’d describe to us how the fish turned into a monster after he died and made her water taste rotten; how the dog would hurt her whenever she was alone; how the dark man without the nose, ears, or eyes scratched her tummy so hard she’d start bleeding. Then she lifted her shirt. There were fresh scratches all over her belly. I looked at her fingernails, and sure enough, I could see tiny scraps of skin and blood underneath. Paul and I were at a loss.

The stress of Veronica’s episodes strained the relationship between me and my husband. I could tell his depression had reemerged. Still, I cared more about my innocent daughter than my adult spouse. The doctors asked that we begin to taper off Veronica’s medication to see if things got any better. I couldn’t see any difference. Veronica was always scared and kept scratching herself when we weren’t around, usually when she was asleep.

Paul and I began trading off nights where we slept in Veronica’s room to keep an eye on her. Still, I’d find blood on her sheets and clothes and under her nails whenever I’d check. Each of her hallucinations had become violent. The fish would bite her, the dog would lie on top of her so she couldn’t breathe, and the dark man would scratch her. I seriously wondered if Veronica needed to be institutionalized.

Paul shot himself in the head on a Sunday morning while Veronica and I were in the kitchen eating breakfast. I won’t bother detailing the shock, the feeling of betrayal, and the sheer sensation of helplessness that followed. I was left alone to care for a dreadfully ill daughter.

A couple weeks after his funeral, I was cleaning the house with Veronica by my side, proudly displaying the new mittens her aunt had purchased for her in hopes that she might stop scratching. So far, they’d worked pretty well. For whatever reason, Veronica was in one of her rare good moods as we went through the house. I was boxing up small stuff that had belonged to Paul. It hurt too much to see it every day.

Veronica chattered idly about sleeping a lot better lately with no bad dreams and the dog not getting on top of her anymore and the fish being kind and funny again. I told her how nice that was and we brought the box I was carrying out back to Paul’s shed. I thought about asking her if the dark man with the scary face was still asking her to hurt herself. Before I could speak, I saw her furiously scratching her belly. I sighed. Thank goodness for the mittens.

After trying about 15 of the 30-or-so keys Paul had kept on his keyring, I finally chose the right one for the shed. I opened the door and Veronica ran inside to explore. She turned left, I turned right, looking for a place to put the box. Veronica giggled and exclaimed, “now I’m on top of you!” I turned toward her to see who she was talking to. Crumpled up in the corner, underneath Veronica, was a dog suit.

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30 years ago today, my neighbor’s son disappeared.

ghost

30 years ago, my neighbors across the street, Mr. and Mrs. Stein, endured a terrible loss. Their son, Adam, disappeared on Halloween. It was assumed he was kidnapped, as there was a rash of kidnappings in the area at the time. The kidnapper was never found, though. Neither was Adam.

Today’s the 30th anniversary of his disappearance. To the Steins, the wounds are still fresh. They refuse to decorate their yard, despite all the houses on the street going out of their way to be as festive as possible. They don’t give out candy, despite the rest of the houses on the street trying to one-up each other by giving out better loot than their neighbors.

The Steins mourn quietly in their dark house; the television being the only light emanating from their window. Kids are advised by their parents not to knock.

I’ve always felt bad for them. I’ve lived here for 40 years. I remember the frantic search and rescue efforts that swept through our town. Even though I was barely 20 years old and living with my unemployed father while working double shifts to pay our mortgage, I did my part and joined the search. It was the least I could do.

Like all futile searches, it ended after a while. Adam was presumed dead. The Steins grew old and the neighborhood changed around us. New families moved in and old ones either died off or moved out. Aside from me and the Steins, I’d say the average age of the homeowners here is 35. And they all have lots of kids.

A terrible rumor started to spread a couple years ago. I know who started it – an older kid named Chuck Demopoulos. He told his younger brothers and neighborhood friends that Adam’s ghost haunts the woods behind our street. He said Mr. Stein killed him and chopped him up into little bits.

When I learned about the rumor, I was disgusted. The disrespect was so vulgar and uncalled for. I prayed the Steins wouldn’t hear about it, but I’m sure they must have. It was pervasive. I called Chuck’s father and told him what I heard, and I suspect Chuck caught a beating for it. Still, I’m afraid the damage had already been done.

Despite pitying the Steins, I don’t express my sympathy by refusing to decorate my house and yard. I love Halloween. Always have. I like to see parents beaming from the street while their kids nervously ring doorbells and collect piles of candy. The spirit of the season keeps me feeling young, despite being well past my prime and dealing with high blood-pressure.

Being an old timer has its perks sometimes. I have Halloween decorations they don’t sell anymore. Ghoulish stuff like hangman’s nooses – things that are too politically incorrect for stores to sell. I firmly believe Halloween shouldn’t be sanitized. It should be scary and unsettling.

That said, there needs to be an emotional component, too. Not just blood and guts for the sake of blood and guts. There needs to be poignancy. Something that’ll stick with you after you see it.

That’s why Adam helps me decorate.

After Dad died in 1989, I emptied out his safety deposit box. There was an envelope with note a note and a Polaroid photograph. All the note said was, “I caught him snooping around the cellar. I had to teach him a lesson.” The photograph was of fresh cement drying on the basement wall.

In the middle of the night, I went into the cellar and opened the wall. Adam’s body was inside. My instinctive reaction was to call the police, but I was terrified I’d be arrested. They’d never believe the note.

So I sealed the wall. After a while, I stopped thinking about the dead boy in the bowels of my house. Many years later, after talking with Mrs. Stein about Adam on a Halloween afternoon, I knew what I had to do.

I took his remains out of the wall in 2014. He was only a skeleton. I separated the bones, splashed them with fake blood, and incorporated them into my Halloween decorations. At first, I was worried. As the days went by, though, I realized I didn’t need to be concerned. The bones blended in with the rest of my decorations. Just more festive material in a neighborhood chock full of it.

This morning, when I went out to get the paper, Mr. Stein was doing the same. We met in the street and chatted for a while. We talked about the Cowboys game from last night and he mentioned his wife made a spectacular coffee cake that he’d bring me a piece of later. I smiled and told him that would be real nice.

Before we parted ways, Mr. Stein said, “I never told you how much Shannon and I appreciated all the help you gave us back when we lost Adam. We knew how busy you were. It’s been 30 years today, you know. 30 years.”

I felt guilt and sadness wash over me. “I’m sure he’s in a better place,” I told him.

He nodded, and I saw tears in his eyes. “He was a good boy. I know wherever he is, he’s watching over us.”

We hugged briefly, then went back to our respective homes. I walked up the driveway, past the ghosts dangling from my trees by their nooses, and headed up my front steps. I looked at the skull hanging above the doorway. It was pointed at the Stein’s house. Watching.

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The perks of working in a funeral home.

Working in a funeral home doesn’t have many perks, so when one presents itself, it’s important to jump on it. That’s why closed-casket funerals are the best. You know the ones I’m talking about. People who died in car accidents. Fires. Shotgun suicides. Anything that destroys the face and head of the deceased. No one wants to look at hamburger meat in a suit.

I was in charge of preparing the carcass of a middle-aged woman who’d gotten half her head blown off in a gas explosion. We didn’t even offer her family the option of an open casket. She was really fucked up.

The family gave us the dead lady’s favorite dress and some of her jewelry. This is where the perks I mentioned come in. The bereaved are always so trusting. Over the course of the three years I’ve had that job, I must have pawned $10,000 worth of necklaces and engagement rings and all sorts of other sentimental crap.

I figure it’s a victimless crime. The families think it’s in the coffin with their busted-up relative, so they’re happy, and the dead person’s dead, so they don’t care. They’re in a better place, right?

Anyway, you should’ve seen my face when I got the jewelry to bury with the gas-explosion lady. One locket caught my attention immediately. It was huge and looked like solid gold. I opened it up and saw pictures of the dead woman and others who looked like her mother, grandmother, and maybe even great grandmother, all smiling happily for the camera. The locket had space for five or six pictures. I figured it’d be perfect for my girlfriend. She loves big and gaudy shit. We live three towns over, so there wasn’t a chance she’d get caught wearing it.

I pocketed the locket after everyone had left and I finished working on the dead chick. I wheeled the coffin into the fridge and headed out.

Liz was making dinner when I got home. I figured I’d wait until bedtime to give her the present. We ate, watched a movie, and got ready to turn in.

After Liz got out of the shower, I surprised her with the locket. As I’d expected, she loved the thing. It looked comically large on her tiny frame; the golden heart full of pictures was the size of a deck of cards against her chest. I thought she looked ridiculous, but she couldn’t get enough. She opened it up and flipped through the photographs. Then she closed it, sat me down at her desk chair, and unzipped my pants.

Toward the end of one of the greatest blowjobs of my life, the sound of the dangling locket banging against the hardwood floor was starting to break my concentration. But then Liz did something she’d never done and went all the way down. And I mean all the way. And that was all it took.

When the world had unblurred and I could move my body again, I patted Liz’s head and told her I didn’t want to know where she’d learned to do that, but if she wanted to do it every time she should feel free. Liz remained with her head between my legs. She didn’t move.

“Ok Liz,” I said, starting to feel over sensitive and uncomfortable. Still, no response.

“Liz?,” I asked, starting to worry. I realized she wasn’t breathing. “Oh my God, what the fuck!,” I yelled, and pushed her back. She separated from me and collapsed on the floor. Her eyes and nose were bleeding. Panic filled me as I stared at her motionless body.

Her bloody face was horrifying, but that wasn’t what I was focusing on. It was the locket on her chest. The bright gold locket that now glowed dull red. It opened on its own. My eyes widened as I saw that the oldest picture, the one of the great grandmother, had changed. Her smile had become a scowl of rage. Page after page turned and I saw the once-smiling women were all frowning with hatred and indignity.

The photo of the women I’d stolen the locket from was next. Her expression was one of seething animosity. My paralyzing terror kept me rooted to the chair, and I wondered how it could possibly get any worse. Then the page turned again. There was another picture. One that hadn’t been there until right that very moment.

The photograph was of Liz, with blood streaming from her eyes and nose. In the picture, carved across her forehead with vicious precision, was the word “THIEF.” Only once the word started to appear on her forehead in real life, invisibly etched by some malevolent, ghostly hand, did I begin to scream.

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There’s something very wrong with my parrot.

parrot

I have an African grey parrot named Perry. He’s been part of the family for 25 years. I’ve known him my whole life. When my parents were alive, they taught him a bunch of words and phrases and he’d always make us laugh.

Lately, though, he’s been saying things we never taught him. Certainly not things we’d ever say, either. Nancy, my wife, was in the kitchen with her friends the other day when they all heard Perry squawk, “it bathes in tears and reigns beneath our feet.”

They all laughed and wondered what the hell I could’ve been watching on TV for the bird to pick up a phrase like that. They continued their lunch, but ten minutes later, Perry started again:

“It reigns beneath our feet. It reigns beneath our feet. It reigns beneath our feet.”

Then he squawked and screamed and rattled his cage so hard that he almost fell off the table. Nancy checked to see if he was okay, and he chirped and allowed her to stroke his head with her finger. He seemed no worse for wear.

That night, after I’d gotten home and Nancy had told me about Perry’s weirdness, I let him out of his cage to fly around the house. He was always well behaved and never knocked anything off shelves or shit on things we cared about. He stepped out of the cage and onto the table, but he didn’t take off. He just stood there, looking around.

“Go ahead, Perry,” I coaxed. “Go get some exercise.”

He remained stationary, but he watched me; the pupils wide in his beige eyes.

“You okay buddy?,” I asked. I was concerned for the little guy. He’d always been in great health and never acted weird. This was entirely unlike him.

Perry cocked his head and stared into my eyes. For some reason, I felt a chill run down my spine even before he spoke – almost like I knew he was about to frighten me.

In a deep tone I’d never heard from him in all my years, he uttered, “beneath your feet.”

Something knocked on the floor directly below where I was standing. I jumped about a mile and stepped away from the bird, who hadn’t moved. “Still beneath your feet,” he said.

The knock came again. It was a hundred times louder and so powerful my ankle twisted under me and I fell sideways onto the couch. The floorboards where I’d been standing bulged upward. One had cracked. Nancy came running downstairs asking, “what the hell was that?” I told her to go in the kitchen and call the police – someone was in the cellar.

Nancy and I waited by the door for the police to arrive. They got there quickly. We let them in and they went into the basement. A couple minutes later, they came back up. “No one’s there,” they told us.

“Wait, then what –”

The older cop cut us off. “Can you come look at something with us?”

“Okay,” Nancy said, “but what is it?”

“Just come downstairs.”

We followed the cops into the basement. Neither Nancy nor I go down there very often. I was a little embarrassed by how gross and dusty it was until I saw marks in the dust-covered floor and countertops.

“Are those footprints?,” I asked, more to myself than to anyone around.

“That’s what we thought,” said the younger officer. “But they look pretty weird for footprints.”

We got to the part of the cellar that was under where I’d been standing. The cops aimed their flashlights at the wood above our heads. An indentation was clearly visible. It almost looked like a punch, but the shape wasn’t of any hand we’d ever seen. It looked like it had too many knuckles; too many bones.

“What the hell?” I traced my finger over the indentations. I shivered.

Upstairs, Perry squawked. The floorboards around the indentation began to leak. Liquid dripped into my mouth and I sputtered. It was salty and reminded me of the taste you get after crying for a long time.

“Did something spill upstairs?,” the older cop asked.

“Yeah, maybe the bird knocked something over.”

“Is that him making all that noise?”

I nodded. “He’s been weird all day.”

We headed back upstairs and the cops told us to call if we have any other concerns about someone being in our house. Nancy and I thanked them, and they left.

I stared at the damage to the living room floor. Perry hadn’t knocked anything over, but there was a small puddle on the wood. He’d gone back into his cage and sat in the corner, quietly clucking. I approached the cage. There were little, wet footprints around it. They were his prints. It looked like he might’ve lapped up some of the water that’d been on the floor while we were in the cellar.

“What’s going on, bud? You having a rough day?” I tried not to think about what had happened. There had to be a reason for it. Maybe the wood had warped. The basement’s always been damp and gross. That had to have been it. The wood warped and trapped moisture was dripping out of the fracture point. But then there was Perry.

Perry stared at the bottom of the cage, still clucking. He didn’t look up. I reached out to pet his head, but he struck my finger with his beak. Not hard enough to do any damage, but with enough force to let me know he wanted none of my affection.

I looked at my pet with sympathy, wondering if he was just getting old and losing his mind. He remained in the corner, trembling slightly. Something caught my eye. There was red on the cage where he was sitting. I looked closer. It was blood.

“What happened, Perry?,” I asked, and reached inside to pick him up, knowing I was in for a pecking. Before I could grab him, he spoke in that same, chilling voice:

“It will bathe in blood and claim the sky.” He paused, then slowly spoke. “Twenty…. seven… days.”

I picked up my bird to see how badly he was hurt. But before I could assess his wound, I saw what was in the corner where he was sitting. Something entirely unexpected.

Perry, my male, African grey parrot, had been sitting on a bloody, black egg.

It’s been 24 hours since all this started. Perry seems no worse for wear, but he fights whenever we try to pick him up. He does everything he can to remain by the egg. I don’t know what’s happening to him and I have no idea what he means with any of the stuff he’s saying. Whenever he talks now, it’s just “26 days” followed by the word “hours.” The number of hours keeps going down. And I haven’t heard it, but Nancy swears she hears soft knocking coming from the basement each time Perry makes his announcements.

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Far Too Much Sex

“My wife’s going to be the death of me.” The thought preoccupied me for almost eight weeks. All she cared about was sex. And it’s not like I’m some kind of Adonis or even particularly good in bed, either. Something just clicked one day and she became utterly insatiable. I’m 90% sure it’s because of that vegan diet we started two months ago with all the mushrooms and stuff, but the diet’s effect on me was nothing compared to how she reacted. She never seemed interested in analyzing the reasons. She just knew what she wanted, and that’s all there was to it.

At first, I thought it was great. She’d be waiting for me in bed when I got home from work, we’d have a few minutes of fun, and that was that. For me, at least. Dianna, it seemed, needed more than I could give her. I felt pretty bad because I wasn’t able to provide it.

I know part of my terrible performance had to do with my diet. It’d been awful. Since I’m so busy with work, I’d been stress eating fast food and other processed garbage. Even though I was eating the vegan stuff too, I’d supplement it with Burger King. I’d gained weight, I felt awful, and I was tired all the time. When Dianna’s insatiability became apparent and my own inability to satisfy her was weighing heavily on my confidence, I set out to get healthier. I mean, it was the least I could do; not only for Dianna, but for my own well-being.

It’s worked, too. The last week has been incredible. I’ve taken time off work. I’ve exercised every day and all my meals are healthy, vegan, and loaded with good stuff like kale and quinoa and tons of local mushrooms. I think Dianna was pleased with the positive changes in me, although her sex drive was still astronomical and hard for me to match. I felt better about myself and I enjoyed our lovemaking a lot more. There was just less pressure, if that makes sense.

Last night was our anniversary, so I wanted to do something special. Something non-vegan as a treat. I made steaks with portobello nouveau and peppercorn cream sauce. I remember laughing to myself as I reduced the pan sauce and plated our meals. Dianna always used to be allergic to mushrooms. Deathly allergic, in fact. I don’t know what compelled her to serve them for dinner a couple months ago when we started doing the vegan thing, but the difference it made was staggering. Ever since she went to bed that night, she’s been a different woman.

I brought our meals up to the bedroom. Dianna was waiting for me. She looked beautiful. Sexy, too. She was sprawled across the bed on her back, presenting herself to me. It was her favorite position ever since her sex drive skyrocketed. I told her to hold her horses; she could wait until after dinner. She didn’t reply, but she let me feed her bits of steak and mushrooms. I emptied her perfect mouth of the food I’d put there at dinner the night before and replaced it with our anniversary meal. My head spun with love and affection as I carefully pushed a piece of juicy steak down her throat. I marveled at how the hot meal warmed her mouth.

After dinner, I could no longer resist my wife’s allure. We made quiet love in our candlelit bedroom. When we were finished, as I was tucking her into bed, I noticed small growths in her armpits and behind her ears. I turned on the lights and looked more closely. Tiny, stringy mushrooms. New life. I smiled. We were going to be a family.

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The Last of the Trick-or-Treaters

Last Halloween at 11:25 pm, the doorbell rang. I’d just gotten into bed. Thinking I could ignore it and go to sleep, I clicked off the TV and pulled the covers up. The doorbell sounded again. And again. And again.

I threw off the covers, put on my bathrobe, and stormed out of the bedroom. If it was a group of kids playing a prank, I told myself, even their parents wouldn’t be able to identify their bodies. I unlocked and opened the front door.

On the doorstep was a young boy wearing a Native American headdress and an ornately-beaded leather vest and pants. He was clutching a bag of candy to his chest. No one else was around.

It was unseasonably cold that night, and without any adults around, I couldn’t let the kid stay out there and freeze. He looked miserable. I held him by his shoulder and guided him inside, then I picked him up and placed him on the couch. I didn’t know what to do. Calling the police seemed like the only safe bet, so I dialed the non-emergency number. While I waited on hold, I heated up some water to make the kid a mug of hot chocolate.

The kid stared at me while I stood in the kitchen. He didn’t say a word. I felt bad for the little guy.

The receptionist at the police station answered and I told her what was going on. She said she hadn’t heard about any missing kids, but as soon as a car was free, one would be sent over. She cautioned it might be a while, though. Apparently Halloween’s a busy time for them over there.

With the water boiled and the instant hot chocolate made, I went over to the kid and sat down next to him on the couch. I placed the mug on the table across from us. After cautioning him that it was hot, I figured I needed to talk to him.

“Nice costume,” I told him. It wasn’t really that nice. Pretty culturally insensitive nowadays. But whatever.

“Thanks,” he replied.

“So, um, did you lose your parents?,” I asked.

The kid shook his head.

“How about your brothers or sisters? Or friends?”

Again, no.

“Want to try the hot chocolate? It’s really good.”

“I don’t like chocolate.”

“Oh, okay.” I picked up the mug and started drinking, wondering if the kid was slow or something. Who doesn’t like chocolate?

We sat in silence for a little while. He kept his eyes on the unpowered television while I did everything in my power to not appear creepy. I never know how to act around kids.

“Did you have a good time trick-or-treating?,” I asked, then realized it was a stupid question. He’d gotten separated from his family or friends, for fuck’s sake. How good could it have been?

The kid, to my surprise, nodded. “I got what I wanted,” he said.

“Oh? And what was that?”

The doorbell rang and I hopped off the couch and answered it. Two officers. I invited them in and they saw the boy on the sofa. They greeted him and asked the same questions I had. He had nothing to say to them, though. In fact, he looked angry – almost like he hated them.

After a few minutes of getting nowhere, the officers said they were going to bring him back to the station. There still hadn’t been any reports of a missing child.

As they were about to leave, there was a call on the police radio. Something about a murder on 113 Chestnut Place. The three of us stood very still for a moment. I live at 115 Chestnut. My neighbors, Paul and Lynn Chesney, had lived there for decades and were the curators at the local museum.

The officers answered the call on their radio said they were nearby. They were told backup would be there shortly.

“Wait here,” the cops ordered, and the kid and I just looked at each other while the two men left the house and headed next door.

“Don’t worry, it’s okay,” I promised the boy. He looked flat. Unaffected. Then he turned and looked straight at me.

“Bring this to the MTIC. It all belongs to them.” He handed me his bag. I was extremely confused for a second, wondering why the local Mohegan tribe would want Halloween candy. I opened the bag and gasped.

A bloody, stone knife sat atop a pile of beautiful, beaded vestments, ornate carvings, and other, old-looking artifacts.

“Your neighbors have been keeping these from us. We tried to get them back, but they just laughed and mocked our efforts. But they’re too important to give up – especially after we’ve been forced to give up so much.”

I stood like an idiot, holding the bag as sirens approached and the commotion outside grew.

“Give it to them,” the kid shouted with a deep, adult voice that was entirely out of place coming from his small body. And with that, he vanished. The headdress and pants and vest dropped in a pile on the rug. I spent a good 45 minutes convincing myself I hadn’t gone nuts.

Hours later, an officer came back for the boy. “What happened over there?,” I asked the cop. I already knew, but I needed confirmation.

“Looks like the couple got killed in a robbery attempt,” he told me. “Their daughter came home from a Halloween party and found them with their throats cut. I’m sorry.”

I let out a long sigh and nodded.

“Where’s the kid?,” the officer asked.

I had an answer ready. “There was a family going door to door with a picture of him. I guess he’d run away. But he’s back with them now.”

The cop shook his head. “And they didn’t even call us? Christ.” He paused. “Well, okay. Goodnight. I’m sorry about your neighbors – we’ll have officers in the area until whoever did it is found.”

I thanked him and closed the door. It was almost 5:00 am. It was too late to go to bed; I had work in a couple hours. So I sat down at my computer, and with the kid’s bag on the desk next to me, I mapped out directions for my drive to the MTIC.

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