DAVID MALONEY

Death And Candy

 First published by David Maloney 2018

Copyright © 2018 by David Maloney

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,
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distribute it by any other means without permission.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters

and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s
imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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To my friend Ha-Yong Bak. Without his constant friendship and
encouragement, this book never would have happened.
 Contents

Foreword iii
Frank the Monster 1
How the Scarecrow Died 3
The Drowning 7
Voices 12
My Girlfriend the Brain-Eating Alen 16
She Says the Smell of Death Turns her On 22
God is a Waitress in Vegas 28
The Door in the Woods 33
Mr. Crow 41
The Blue-Eyed Painting 46
Parasitic 54
Fight Me, Fuck Me, BURN ME 57
Death’s Advice 62
Satan Offered me a Job. I Took It 68
Fargo 72
The Empty Body 76
Sexual Predators 79
Daniel 83
The Tokyo Subway Demon 89
Birthing a Monster 93
Dreams of Death 96
Demon Possession for Beginners 99
The First Thing to Die 102
I’m a Demon. Help Me Out? 105
Sleeping with the Corpses Next Door 109
Slaughter in the Park 115
The Box 118
Handles 121
A is for Addiction 124
The Abandoned Diary 130
Scream in a Box 134
The Yu Jia Lake Monster 140
When Stuffed Animals Start Talking, Dont Talk Back 146
My Neighbor was a Vampire 151
Thinking too Much? You’re Drinking too LIttle 158
Donnie the Skeleton 162
The Hitchhiker from Hell 168
The Strands of Fate 173
Desert Cults and Mescaline 177
Welcome to Hell, Please Take a Number 180
About the Author 187
Also by David Maloney 188
 Foreword

This copy has been provided free of charge as an advance review

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on Amazon!

iii
 1

Frank the Monster

I
was lying alone in my room when I heard the voice, deep
and crackly, coming from beneath my bed.
“Hey,” the voice called out.
I told myself I was just imagining it.
“Hey kid,” the voice repeated.
I drew my knees up to my chest and ducked my head under
the blanket, trying to shut out both the voice and the cold winter
wind that drifted in through the window, ruffling the curtains.
“Who are you?” I asked in a whisper.
“I’m the monster underneath your bed,” the voice replied.
“You mean you’re real?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” the monster said. “Of course I’m real.”
“Do you have a name?” I asked.
“Of course I have a name.”
“Oh… well what is it?”
“Frank.”
“Frank?”
“Yeah,” the monster said. “Is there something wrong with
that?”
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 DEATH AND CANDY

“No. I mean, I don’t know,” I said. “It’s just not very monster-
ly.”
“Well my parents didn’t want me to be a monster.”
“Really? What did they want you to be?”
“A dentist.”
“That’s funny,” I said. I felt myself begin to smile.
“What do your parents want you to be?” it asked.
“I don’t know…. Hey Frank?”
“Yeah?”
“Aren’t you gonna… like… scare me or something?”
“What? Why would I do that?”
“Well, you’re a monster, aren’t you?”
“Well, yeah, of course I am, but that doesn’t mean that I scare
little kids.”
“But I thought that was your job.”
“It is my job to scare people,” he replied. “But only bad people.”
“Am I a bad person?” I asked.
“No,” he said, “but you’re not the one I’m here to scare.”
“Who are you here to scare?” I asked.
There was a brief moment of silence, and then Frank said,
“The man inside your closet.”

2
 2

How the Scarecrow Died

J
osh was just one of those kids. He was built more like a
gorilla than a human teenager, and he had the disposition
of a Rottweiler someone had just unsuccessfully tried to
neuter.
There are a lot of different ways to bully people, and Josh
was an expert in all of them. He stole lunch money, shoved
heads in toilets, beat kids up and even pinched girls’ asses in
the hallways. But the thing that really made Josh such a natural
bully was his dad.
The man looked like an even bigger, uglier version of Josh,
with a thicker neck, beadier eyes, and more knuckle hair. He
basically owned the small town we all lived in, and he seemed
to think that he owned the people too.
If a teacher pointed out that Josh shouldn’t smack girls’ asses
in the hallway, you can bet a few phone calls later that that
person would be out of a job thanks to Josh’s dear old dad.
To this day I sometimes wonder if the horrible events
that would transpire in our town could have been avoided
if somebody—anybody—had just held him accountable. But
3
 DEATH AND CANDY

nobody ever did, so I guess I’ll never know.

The thing that started it was something simple: Josh took a
special interest in making one particular kid’s life miserable.
Little Billy Wilkinson was just too easy of a target. He was
skinny, pale, and other kids called him “the scarecrow” because
of the patches in his clothes.
Of course, it wasn’t Billy’s fault that his mom was too poor to
afford new clothes, but you know how cruel kids can be when
they think they smell weakness.
Myself, I always just called him Billy.
Every day Josh would call out to Billy in the halls: “Hey
scarecrow! Come over here so I can beat the stuffing out of
you!” He thought this joke was so clever that he repeated it
every single day, and if Billy didn’t laugh, then he’d end up with
his head stuck in a toilet.
Things went on like that for a while.
Nobody seemed to bother with sticking up for Billy, and his
overly large clothes hid the knife scars that had begun to grow
like tree roots down his arms. I never understood why the
people this world spits on always end up punishing themselves
more, but I guess that’s just how it goes.
Eventually, Billy shut down entirely.
He wouldn’t talk to anyone, wouldn’t look you in the eye;
would flinch at any sudden movement. We all thought things
couldn’t possibly get any worse, but I guess fate didn’t really
care too much for our ideas, because that week Billy’s mom
died, and within a few days the whole town knew that she’d
been found by the police with a needle in her arm.
If that was a cause for a reprieve then Josh didn’t see it. Rather,
he thought the opposite. To his mind, his prey was wounded,
and now was the time to move in for the kill.
4
 HOW THE SCARECROW DIED

“I heard about how your mom died,” he’d hiss under his breath
when there were no teachers around, “wish I’d have found her
first. Even for a smackhead your mom was a nice piece of ass.”
“You’re living with your grandma now, aren’t you? Maybe
I’ll pay her a visit tonight, I don’t think she’d put up much of a
fight.”
Nobody seemed to notice as the gashes on Billy’s arms spread
to his chest and his legs, or how his face would twitch whenever
Josh’s insults echoed behind his hollow eyes.
Nobody noticed that he’d started writing in his diary about
how much he’d like to steal his dead grandpa’s gun and put an
end to things his way.
Sometimes, you’ll see a story about a kid like Billy on the
news and wonder how nobody stepped in, how nobody saw
what was going on in their head. The answer to that is simple;
it’s just easier to look away.
The uglier the truth is, the less people want to face it, because
then they’ll have to ask themselves why they did nothing for so
long.
The last day before it happened Josh had cornered Billy after
school and beat him to within an inch of his life. When he got
home that day his face looked like a pound of raw ground beef,
and as he stared at himself in the mirror, he decided tomorrow
was the day he’d end it.
He snuck into his grandpa’s gun safe that night and grabbed
the old .357 revolver from inside. He knew the combina-
tion—his birthday. He didn’t know where to find more ammo,
but he knew it was kept loaded in case of a break-in.
The next morning he tucked the revolver in his waistband
and slid a long shirt over it. He didn’t verify that it was loaded;
he didn’t even want to look at it.
5
 DEATH AND CANDY

And yet he clenched his jaw with determination as he walked

outside to catch the bus. When he got to school he noticed
there was a crowd outside by the football field. Thankful for
the delay, he slid his way in between the shoulders and elbows
to the front, and that’s when he saw Josh.
His former bully was naked and strapped to the field goal post.
He had been gutted from head to toe, his organs replaced with
straw. His eyes were hollow pits, pecked out by birds before
anyone had found him. And on top of his head, someone had
placed an old scarecrow’s hat.
Billy left right then and came home. He barely glanced at me
as he passed like a ghost. Rather, he headed straight to his room
and collapsed on the bed. It was the first time he slept easy in a
long while.
It was only a few days before the news had spread around
the town that the boy had been murdered, and that when the
police went to notify his dad, well, they found him dead too.
To this day they still don’t know who did it.
The police suspected Billy at first, and they must have asked
me a dozen times if I’d seen my grandson leave the house that
night, but I told them the same thing each time.
I’d been awake all night watching TV in the den and I would
have seen him if he had left. I could tell they all thought I was
senile, but none of them dared say it to my face.
Well, I’m older now, and I don’t think I have much time left,
so now I suppose is the time for truth: I don’t know what Billy
was up to that night because I wasn’t there.
I was at Josh’s house. And I was making damn sure that
nobody ever called my grandson ‘scarecrow’ ever again.
And no one ever did.

6
 3

The Drowning

I
didn’t always want to be a lifeguard. When I was young
I wasn’t even a good swimmer; my physique had been
chiseled into shape by fast food and video games rather
than athletics. But one summer something terrible happened
that changed the course of my life forever: my little brother
drowned.
We had all been having fun at the beach, and he had only
wandered out of my parents’ sight for a few minutes. But those
few minutes were enough for him to disappear forever.
The first stage of grief I went through, and the longest, was
anger. I couldn’t understand why nobody had intervened, how
had no one seen him. But I soon learned that when people
drown it’s not like how it looks in the movies. They don’t thrash
around and scream for help. If you’re looking closely you might
see a head bobbing up and down for a few minutes before it
sinks down for the last time. You might not see anything at all.
That was the catalyst for my decision to become a lifeguard.
I wanted to prevent other people from going through what
had torn my family apart. I practiced for hours every day,
7
 DEATH AND CANDY

stealing every free minute that I could for my passion, until I

was good enough to be hired on at the local beach my brother
had drowned at.
I was never the Baywatch sort of lifeguard; I was skinny, pale
and completely incapable of tanning, and by the end of my first
week my body was covered in so many freckles I looked like
I had a skin disease. But despite the fact that I didn’t look the
part, I took my job damn seriously.
I heard the rumor about the beach being haunted from the
other lifeguards on the first day. They told me that the ghosts
of drowning victims stayed there to drag others down to the
same fate. I didn’t think there was anything to the rumor—I
figured they were just messing with the new guy who wasn’t a
part of their clique.
But before long I would find out that I was wrong.
The beach was closed that night, and I was sleeping in the
lifeguard stand. I didn’t have a girl up there or anything, it’s
just that being a lifeguard full-time didn’t really pay the bills,
and I needed a place to sleep. I was just nodding off, head on
the salt-soaked wood, when I heard the scream.
“HELP!”
I sat bolt upright, my heart nearly pounding out of my chest.
Nobody was supposed to be here this late. But the scream came
again, and louder.
“HELP!”
I heard it more clearly this time. It didn’t sound right.
Something about it sent rippling waves of gooseflesh down my
arms and legs. Rather than inspire heroics, the call frightened
me to my core.
But I knew I didn’t have a choice. If there was even the
slightest chance that someone was in danger, I needed to help
8
 THE DROWNING

them.
I slid down the ladder and scanned the beach around me.
It was completely deserted. Where the hell was the scream
coming from? I scanned the horizon of water, and that’s when
I saw it; a head bobbing up and down.
I sprinted through the sand and leapt headfirst into the icy
water. I powered through towards the person with all my might,
my nose and eyes burning as the saltwater splashed into them.
The head was staying underwater for longer each time it went
down. I knew I didn’t have much time left.
Just before I reached them, their head went down and didn’t
come back up.
I dove.
The water was murky black. My head spun in all directions
but I couldn’t see a damn thing.
I resurfaced and spit out saltwater. My mind was racing
through a million half-formed plans of how to find the person
before it was too late.
That’s when I felt icy fingers close around my ankle. My head
whipped around; but no one was there. Yet the grip was strong,
and its intention was clear as it began pulling me out to sea.
For a flash of a second I wondered if this was what had
happened to my brother. If he’d felt icy hands on him pulling
him under as his lungs filled with saltwater.
I felt my other leg bump into something under the surface. I
reached down and grabbed hold, and my hand closed around
a human arm. I yanked as hard as I could, and a woman came
up. It must have been the woman I’d seen drowning, but she’d
been under too long. We needed to get back to shore as soon as
possible. I kicked as hard as I could and I felt the icy fingers slip
off my ankle. But I realized with horror that I’d been caught in
9
 DEATH AND CANDY

the undercurrent, and it was now pulling me even farther away

from shore.
I knew there was no way I’d get us both back alive as I
watched the shore shrink in the distance. I felt the iron grip
of the icy fingers again. They grabbed beneath each one of my
shoulders and pulled hard. But this time they weren’t pulling
me out to sea, they were pulling me towards the shore, and
out of the undercurrent. I kicked my feet as hard as I could,
pulling the woman’s lifeless body along with me as I raced to
the beach where I could perform CPR. With the pulling hands
and my kicking combined we hit the shore hard fast and hard.
I stumbled out of the water and laid the woman down on her
back.
It must have only been thirty seconds of CPR, but it felt like
an eternity before she coughed up the water and sucked in a
large, groaning gasp.
I sighed in relief and collapsed on the wet sand beside her.
“Th-thank you,” the girl stammered out.
“It’s my job,” I said between heaving breaths. “I can’t believe
you managed to call for help like that.”
“Wh-what? I didn’t call for help,” she replied.
I sat back up. Was there someone still out there?
I scanned the horizon. My heart stopped.
Standing at the water’s edge was a mirage, a hallucination, a
memory of something long since gone—the evanescent ghost
of my little brother. He looked just as he did the day he died,
still in his powder blue swimming trunks. He smiled at me and
waved. I started towards him, but he shimmered like a mist and
vanished into thin air.
After that night the legend of the beach changed. Now there is
no talk of drowned victims, dragging others out to sea. Instead,
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 THE DROWNING

they say there’s a ghost of a little boy who pulls struggling

swimmers back to shore.
And they say he’s got powder blue swimming trunks.

11
 4

Voices

U
ntil last week, I thought my schizophrenia was
hereditary.
I was having one of those days where I have no
choice but to stay indoors. I had been stressed at work lately,
and as a result I was having a particularly bad bout of paranoia,
and my auditory hallucinations were far stronger than usual.
I tried tuning him out with music, but Sammy, the voice in
my head, wouldn’t leave me alone.
You know they’re watching you, he said.
“Shut up, Sammy, I’m not listening.”
Of course you are. I’m inside your head, remember? How can
you ignore something that lives inside your head? Besides, I’m only
trying to warn you. They’ll be coming to get you soon.
“You’ve been saying that for five years,” I said, trying to shut
down that mounting paranoia that this time he could be right.
And I’ve been right for five years. I’m thousands of years old, John,
five years is ‘soon’ to me.
My heart rate started to accelerate. I opened the fridge to get
a beer, hoping it would help to calm me down.
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 VOICES

You know you’re not supposed to drink those, Sammy said. They
interfere with your medication.
“I know, Sammy,” I said. I cracked open the can of Lagunitas
and drained half of it in a gulp. I calmed down a little as the
pleasant buzz began to cloud my thoughts.
I’ll tell Dr. Barksdale.
“That’d be a trick,” I said, emboldened by the alcohol. “Go
ahead and tell him. As a matter of fact, why don’t you go bother
somebody else for a while. I’m sick of you.”
You’re gonna miss me.
“No, I’m not.”
I waited for Sammy’s snappy reply, but it didn’t come—in-
stead there was only silence. Dr. Barksdale would be upset
if he knew I’d been talking to Sammy again, but it was the
most reliable way I had of getting rid of him without the harsh
side-effects of increasing my dose of Risperdal.
I told myself it wasn’t necessary, but I knew I had to do it
anyway. I went around my living room and shut the blinds,
double checked the window locks, and locked the deadbolt and
the chain on my front door.
I chided myself for being irrational and flopped down on
the couch, ready to kill an afternoon by drinking beer until
semi-comatose.
I was five minutes into sitcom re-runs when my phone rang.
The caller ID told me it was Dr. Barksdale’s office. Not wanting
the good doctor to know that I’d been drinking, I let it go to
voicemail.
But then the phone rang again.
I sighed and picked it up.
“Hello?” I said.
“John?” came Dr. Barksdale’s voice. He sounded tense.
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 DEATH AND CANDY

“Hey, Dr. B,” I said. “Is everything okay?”

“Have you been hearing voices, John?” Dr. Barksdale said.
“Just a little bit, Doctor B. It’s nothing I can’t handle.”
“You haven’t been… talking with them again, have you?”
How did he know that? I started feeling paranoid, but Sammy
didn’t say anything.
“Sorry, Doc, I know I’m not supposed to, but it helps.”
“No no, it’s fine,” said Dr. Barksdale. “Do you remember
the last thing you said to Sammy? Please concentrate, it’s very
important.”
Why did he want to know that?
“Uh, he said he was going to tell you that I’d been….”
“Drinking?”
“Yeah.”
He must have heard it in my voice. Was I slurring?
“So,” I said, “I told him to go and bother someone else for a
while instead.”
The line went silent. Not even the sound of breathing could
be heard from the other end.
“Doc?”
“I don’t know what’s going on,” said Dr. Barksdale. His voice
was thin and strained. “Logically I know it must be some sort
of shared psychosis but…”
“But what, Doc?”
“Sammy spoke to me.”
My stomach dropped. He had to be joking, right?
“He did?” I said.
“Yes. I don’t understand what’s happening, but he told me to
tell you that…”
My hands began to sweat.
“What, Doc?”
14
 VOICES

“I uh…never mind,” he said. “I must not be feeling well.”

“Okay, Doc,” I said.
I wasn’t convinced. I held the phone out with my finger above
the hang-up button, when I heard Sammy’s voice on the other
end.
I told him to tell you that they’re coming for you, he said. Right
now.
The line clicked dead, and my doorbell rang.

15
 5

My Girlfriend the Brain-Eating Alen

D
“ avid, I’m an alien.”
I rubbed the back of my neck as I stared across the
table at my girlfriend, who had brought me to my
favorite restaurant, as she said, to confess something important
to me.
“I don’t get what you mean,” I said. “Like, you’re Canadian or
something?”
“No, I mean I’m an actual extra-terrestrial being,” she said.
“I’m not even from this galaxy.”
The clink of dishes and the ambient chatter of the happy
couples around us seemed like distant echoes as the wheels in
my head ground slowly to a halt.
Thirty minutes ago I had been the most nervous I’d ever been
in my entire life, a small blue velvet box clenched tightly in my
fist as I prepared to pop the most important question I would
ever asked. And yet instead of a giddy yes and a tear-stained
hug, I was answered with an ‘Oh,’ and five minutes of awkward
silence.
I felt like all those romantic comedies lied to me.
16
 MY GIRLFRIEND THE BRAIN-EATING ALEN

Now, I was sitting across from the love of my life and she
was telling me that we couldn’t get married because she wasn’t
even human. Now I’m no stranger to excuses—I’ve been turned
down by girls because they had to wash their hair or walk their
dogs. I even got stood up once by a girl who said that her
grandma had just died. I was sympathetic until I saw her post a
video of her dancing at the club on Instagram.
Still, this was a new one.
“You look upset,” said Sarah. “What are you thinking about?”
“I uh, ahem. I don’t really know what to think,” I said. “Your
body certainly seems pretty human to me.”
“Yeah, about that…” Sarah said. “I need to show you some-
thing. Don’t freak out, okay?”
“Okay.”
Sarah lifted up her left arm and began to use her fingertip to
trace an intricate pattern across the back of her hand. There
was a click, and a blue light began to glow underneath her skin.
Suddenly, the light forked out like electricity, and then Sarah
was gone. Sitting in her place was a little blue creature that
looked a bit like a smurf with two rabbit ear shaped antennae
sticking out of the top of its head.
There was the sound of breaking glass, and I realized that
I’d dropped my wine glass and it had shattered on the floor.
The waitress rushed over to clean it up, seemingly oblivious to
the fact that there was now a three-foot-tall alien sitting across
from me instead of a human woman.
I stared around the restaurant waiting for somebody else to
take notice, but nobody did.
“Am I having a stroke?” I asked. “I thought you were supposed
to smell burnt toast when that happened.”
Sarah shook her head.
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 DEATH AND CANDY

“It’s my perceptual modulator,” she said. “It’s tuned to your

brain frequency. Only you can see my true form right now.”
“Oh right of course,” I said faintly. “A perceptual modulator.”
I reached for my glass of wine only to remember that it had
shattered only moments before.
“You’re not freaking out, are you?” asked Sarah.
I thought about her question for a moment. I probably should
have been freaking out, but it seemed more like my brain had
totally ceased all function.
“No,” I said, reaching again for the nonexistent glass of wine.
“Good,” she replied. “Because I have a confession to make.”
“You mean to say that your confession isn’t that you’re an
alien?” I asked.
“I’m afraid it’s worse than that,” said Sarah.
She nudged her glass of red wine across the table to me and I
downed it in a gulp.
“Alright,” I said. “I’m ready.”
Sarah bit her lip and swayed nervously in her chair.
“Well…” she began, “I kind of uh…. eat people.”
“You eat people?” I asked, reaching for the bottle this time.
“Yes,” she said. “But not whole people. Just the brains.”
I went to pour myself another glass, thought better of it and
downed the whole bottle instead. I coughed as the last of the
bitter taste hit my throat and then I wiped the wine stain from
my lips.
“So to recap…” I said. “You’re an alien who can only survive
by eating human brains.”
“What?” said Sarah. “No, I can survive off human food. Brains
are more like a delicacy.”
“Oh.”
There was a moment of awkward silence in which Sarah bit
18
 MY GIRLFRIEND THE BRAIN-EATING ALEN

her lip and stared at the floor.

“But, it’s not like I’m a bad person,” she said. “I only eat bad
people. Do you remember your neighbor Mr. Wallows? The
one that tried to poison your dog?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Didn’t he retire to Hawaii?”
Sarah shook her head.
“Nope,” she said. “I ate his brains.”
“Wow,” I said, scratching at the back of my head. “This is
really a lot to take in.”
“You’re still not freaking out, right?” said Sarah.
Judging by my heart rate and the intense ringing in my ears, I
was, in fact, freaking out. But Sarah looked so nervous for me,
I couldn’t help but shake my head no.
She breathed a sigh of relief and said, “Well that’s good,
because I have a confession to make.”
“You really have a lot of these, don’t you?” I said.
“This is the last one,” Sarah said. “I promise.”
“Alright,” I said, “I’m ready.”
“Actually,” Sarah said, “maybe you should have another bottle
of wine for this one.”
She reached down into her purse and pulled out my favorite
wine, uncorked it and slid it across the table to me. I upended
the bottle into my mouth and ten seconds later it was gone.
“Alright,” I said, beginning to slur. “Hit me.”
“Well,” said Sarah, failing for the first time to meet my eyes.
“You know how I insisted we come here on our first date?”
“Yeah…” I said, a sudden dread beginning to bubble in my
stomach.
Well,” said Sarah. “It’s because I know the owner, he’s actually
from my home planet.”
“Oh no,” I said. “Don’t tell me.”
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 DEATH AND CANDY

“I’m afraid so,” said Sarah. “Most of the dishes contain human
brains.”
I looked down at my volcano roll, remembering how enthu-
siastically I had proclaimed it as the best one I’d ever had.
“The volcano roll?” I said.
“I’m afraid so,” replied Sarah. “That’s what the scallops are
really made of.”
I suddenly began to feel very sick. I wasn’t sure how much of
it was the wine, and how much of it was the fact that I had just
consumed human brains. I guess it didn’t matter. Yet when I
looked at Sarah I forgot about that.
Her fingers twisted in her lap as she stared down at the floor,
the way she always did when she was nervous. She looked up
at me with doe-eyed innocence.
“Are you mad at me?” she asked.
Maybe it was the fact that even in her alien form she still
looked so much like the woman I loved. Maybe it was the fact
that Mr. Wallows had been a racist, animal-hating old bastard.
Maybe it was the fact that I’d just downed two entire bottles of
wine, but I silently shook my head no.
“So do you still want to get married?” she asked, her voice
tremulous with tentative hope.
I silently nodded, and Sarah’s face lit up with a grin the size of
Texas. She ran her finger back over her hand and resumed her
human form, still smiling bigger than I’d ever seen her smile
before.
“I’ll stay in this form from now on,” she said. “It’s the one you
fell in love with, after all.”
“Yeah,” I croaked out. “That’s probably for the best.”
Then, as the wine began to seep further into my blood, a
thought occurred to me.
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 MY GIRLFRIEND THE BRAIN-EATING ALEN

“So, that uh… perceptual modulator thing,” I said.

“Yes?” said Sarah, cocking her head to the side.
“Can it alter your appearance in other ways? Like…hypothet-
ically, could you make certain parts uh… bigger?”
Sarah threw back her head and laughed.
“Oh it can do all kinds of things,” she said. “Come on, let’s go
home. I want to show you something.”
I fumbled for my wallet in my pocket and dropped all the
cash inside on the table before getting up and rushing out the
door with Sarah.
I won’t share what happened next; I’ll only say that even
though my fiancée may be a brain-eating alien, she’s still the
woman I fell in love with and the best thing that’s ever happened
to me.
And that perceptual modulator can do anything.

21
 6

She Says the Smell of Death Turns her

On

T
he best things in life are four letter words.
Love, fuck, and free.
This is a story about the second one on my list, but
the first one makes an appearance too.
Her name was Marla and she was a real piece of artwork. Not
like a Greek statue; more like a high-end sex doll. That may
sound like an insult, but it’s not. Marla wasn’t perfect, but she
was the perfect version of what she was. In life, that’s all anyone
can aspire to be.
I first saw her smoking a cigarette outside our college’s art
building, looking bored.
“I’m out.” She announced to no one in particular when she had
finished. She looked me up and down like she was appraising a
car.
“Suck your dick for a cigarette,” she said.
I coughed so hard I nearly swallowed my own cigarette whole.
I handed her one, naturally. Later that night, after she was done
sucking my dick, she lit up from a full pack in her purse. That
22
 SHE SAYS THE SMELL OF DEATH TURNS HER ON

was just how she was. I never did truly understand Marla, but I
was happy to be along for the ride. So, when I found out she
wasn’t actually a student at the college, I shouldn’t have been
surprised. But I was.
“I just don’t get it,” I said. “Why do you hang around here?”
She shrugged.
“But—” I was interrupted as her long fingers slid down my
pants, and she slid down to her knees. When Marla didn’t want
to talk about something she always made sure her mouth was
otherwise occupied. And Marla wasn’t much for talking.
But the quickest way to a man’s heart is also the quickest way
to make him lose half his brain cells. Consequently, I missed a
lot of red flags about Marla that I should have noticed.
Like how I never saw her eat or drink. She had always just
had a full meal, or was feeling bloated.
Or how she never slept. Whenever she’d stay the night after
we’d fucked away the afternoon she’d just lay in bed and stare at
the ceiling. I’d wake up in the middle of the night to her staring
at me full on in the face, an inscrutable look in her eyes that
strongly resembled hunger.
My conviction that there was something off about Marla only
deepened when I found her driver’s license. It had spilled out
of her purse that she’d tossed carelessly on the table.
On it was a picture of Marla, just as she was today, but the
date of issue was 1979. How could someone not age a day in
thirty years?
She caught me looking at it and snatched it out of my hands.
“Like my fake ID?” she asked tossing her hair and running
her hands down my chest.
“Marla, how—oof”
She shoved me hard, and soon I was on the table and she was
23
 DEATH AND CANDY

on me.
“You’re a sick son of a bitch, you know that?” she whispered in
my ear, her hips twisting in rhythmic circles.
I had already forgotten about the driver’s license.
We’d been together six months when things began to unravel.
“Marla,” I began, as her head bobbed up and down on my
crotch, “are we exclusive?”
There was a distinct popping noise as she pulled her mouth
off me.
“Why?” she asked. “Do you wanna fuck other girls?”
“What? No, I just wanted to know if I was the only one you’re
uh…”
“Fucking?”
“Yeah, fucking.”
“Yes,” she said, going back to work.
“But where do you go all the time?” I asked.
She pulled herself off me again.
“I have things to do,” she said.
“What things?”
“Things,” she said flatly. “Do you want me to finish this or
not?”
“Oh, uh, yeah.”
Marla grinned devilishly and her head began bobbing up and
down with renewed vigor.
I know I shouldn’t have followed her that day. I should’ve
just been happy I was getting my dick sucked. But sometimes
curiosity outweighs our better senses.
The first place I followed Marla to was the bathroom. She
went into the one-person handicap bathroom in the art build-
ing, and I heard the lock click behind her. Then through the
door I heard the unmistakable sounds of vomiting, followed by
24
 SHE SAYS THE SMELL OF DEATH TURNS HER ON

a flush. Was Marla bulimic? It didn’t seem to fit with the Marla
I knew.
I hid around the corner, then went inside to investigate after
she’d left. She’d gotten most of it in the toilet, but around the
rim there were tiny droplets of blood.
What the fuck was going on?
Then Marla went to the hospital. I followed her as she visited
dozens of patients, most of whom seemed to be at death’s door.
After each time she would find a deserted bathroom and vomit.
Each time there would be little flecks of blood on the seat. I
began to worry for her health. It didn’t seem possible that
anyone could vomit up that much blood and still be alive.
Finally I followed Marla to a deserted alleyway.
What the hell was she doing here?
But she just stood there, motionless. And then—
“I know you’ve been following me,” she said. “You can come
out from behind that wall.”
I stepped out and she turned around to face me.
“How did you know?”
“I can smell you, dipshit.”
“Smell me?”
“Oh yeah. I can smell you from miles away. That’s how I found
you. You think I can’t smell you when you’re right behind me?”
Just to be safe, I gave myself a quick sniff. I smelled fine.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I said.
“You smell like death,” she said, staring at me hungrily. “You’re
a sick son of a bitch.”
“You’re not making any sense. How am I the sicko?”
Marla shrugged.
“Ask your doctor. What do I care?”
“What?”
25
 DEATH AND CANDY

“You still don’t get it? I’m feeding off your sickness. It’s what
I do.”
It was clear that Marla had lost it.
We parted ways after that, but something in my head kept
nagging at me. What if I really was sick? I went to the doctor the
next week just to rule it out. When my blood tests came back
I got an urgent call to make another appointment as soon as
possible. I found out at that appointment that by all estimations
I should’ve been dead three months ago. An MRI revealed
that the cancer, a rare and aggressive form, had spread all
throughout my body. Within a couple days I could no longer
walk and barely sit up. I was done for.
I gave Marla a call, just to say goodbye. I started to tell her
what hospital I was at when she cut me off.
“I know where you are,” she said. “I can smell you.”
She was there in five minutes flat. She pulled the privacy
curtains around the bed and started to undo my pants. I
appreciated her enthusiasm, but I knew there was no way I
could muster up the required vigor. But I was wrong, and soon
she had gone to work. I fell asleep right after, like I always did.
I woke up to the sound of vomiting and flushing, and to my
surprise I felt just like I had before I’d gotten sick.
Marla came out of the bathroom and sat at the foot of my
bed, reapplying her lipstick.
“Most vampires steal life,” she explained. “I steal sickness. But
I’ve gotta get rid of the bad parts. That’s where the vomit comes
from.”
“I don’t get it.” I said. “You can only keep me alive by sucking
my dick?”
“What?” she said in surprise. “No, that’s ridiculous. I suck the
sickness out with your blood when you’re asleep. I just suck
26
 SHE SAYS THE SMELL OF DEATH TURNS HER ON

your dick because the smell of death turns me on.”

“Oh.”
“Yeah… ” Marla stared up at the ceiling. “Want a cigarette?”
“Okay.”
I’ve been with Marla ever since, and we’ve baffled every
doctor we’ve ever come across. She still hasn’t aged a day, and
I still have yet to die. I graduated college, we got married and
moved to a little apartment next to a hospital, where she visits
patients to feed.
I used to think the best things in life were all four letter words,
but ‘Marla’ has five.
Marla says ‘suck’ has four, though.

27
 7

God is a Waitress in Vegas

I
first met God at the end of a string of bad luck in Vegas
that left me with just enough money for a cup of coffee
and some eggs at a twenty-four hour diner that the locals
had nicknamed ‘The Food Poisoning Cafe.’
It was one of those places where the fluorescent light fixtures
are filled with dead bugs and you don’t order cream with
your coffee unless you want cottage cheese. It was four in
the morning and even the drunks had gone home, leaving just
me and God alone in the empty diner.
God was the epitome of a Vegas waitress, a woman who had
probably been pretty a decade prior, but whose face was now
lined by cigarette smoke and years of hard living in the desert
sun. The first words she spoke to me were after she’d refilled
my coffee for the third time.
“How’s the coffee?” she asked.
“It’s good,” I said. “But I wish it were wine.”
God smiled at me and picked the cup up to examine it. When
she set it back down it was full of what looked like red wine.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Try it.”
28
 GOD IS A WAITRESS IN VEGAS

I took a sip and my tongue was hit by the familiar taste of

fermented grapes.
“How did you do that?” I asked.
“It’s easy when you’re God,” she said, sitting down in the chair
across from me.
At this point I probably should have freaked out, but there
was something calming about the waitress’s presence that set
me at ease.
“You’re God?” I said. “What are you doing working at a Vegas
diner?”
“I’m a people person, I guess,” she said. “Feels like Vegas is the
perfect place to see people at their worst.”
“Why do you want to see people at their worst?” I asked.
God conjured a cup of black tea and a couple of sugar cubes
of thin air. She stirred the cubes into her drink with my spoon.
“Flaws are what define humanity,” she said. “Well, that and
free will, both of which the angels lack. That’s what makes
humans so interesting, and angels so god-damned boring.”
“If people are so flawed, why did you make us that way?” I
asked.
God stared wistfully down into her tea for a moment before
she raised her eyes back up to mine.
“I didn’t mean to,” she said. “You just sort of turned out that
way. Side-effect of too much free will.”
“Why don’t you fix us?” I asked.
God shook her head and put on a wry smile as she looked up
at the dead bugs in the fluorescent light above the table.
“I can’t,” she replied. “At least not anymore.”
“Why not?” I asked.
She took a sip of her tea and then sighed.
“Do you really want to know?” she asked.
29
 DEATH AND CANDY

“At this point I think I have to,” I said.

“Well,” she began, “the other gods took away my ability to
create when they cast me out of Heaven.”
“Wait a second,” I said. “There are other gods?”
“Of course,” she said. “They’re the ones that created all the
different races of angels.”
I leaned back in my seat and took a deep breath as I processed
what she had just told me.
“So why did they cast you out?” I asked.
God took another sip of her tea and wrinkled her lips into a
frown.
“Because I broke the cardinal rule of the gods,” she said. “You
never endow a lesser being with free will.”
“Why not?” I asked.
God finished her tea, and then the cup filled back up. She
materialized a few more sugar cubes and stirred them in.
“Why do you think?” she said. “Just look around you. Look
at this place. It’s full of desperation and suffering. It’s full of
crushed dreams and hopes for a better future that are never
realized. And once people get tired of that, they come to this
side of town to drown themselves in a bottle.”
“That’s a bleak outlook,” I replied.
“You only say that because you know don’t know what I
know,” said God.
I took a sip of my wine and frowned.
“Well what is it that you know?” I asked.
“The forbidden knowledge,” she said. “Trust me, you’re better
off in ignorance.”
“You’re probably right, but tell me anyway.”
A shadow passed over God’s face, and for the first time I
could sense an unease in the diner. She took a deep breath and
30
 GOD IS A WAITRESS IN VEGAS

continued on.
“I’m not the first god to fail,” she said. “There have been
other gods before me—ancient gods with cruel and twisted
motivations. They created creatures of nightmare and horror,
dark things that exist only to hurt, consume, and kill.”
I could feel goosebumps prickling up my arms.
“Where are these creatures now?” I asked.
“They’re down below,” she said. “Where all the failed gods and
their broken creatures are cast away after death—the eternal
lake of fire.”
My heart sank into my stomach.
“So is that where we all go when we die then?” I asked.
“Straight to Hell? There’s no chance for redemption?”
“No chance for redemption,” said God. “Only more pain than
you can possibly imagine.”
We sat in silence for a while, listening to the sounds of the
diner: the steady hum of the fluorescent lights, the slow drip of
the coffee machine, and the occasional rush of a car whizzing
by on the highway outside.
“I shouldn’t have sat down across from you,” said God. “But
sometimes I get lonely. I’m a people person after all.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I guess if I’m going to Hell it’s
better to know.”
God shook her head.
“No it’s not,” she said.
She pushed herself up from her chair and went behind the
counter to turn off the coffee machine.
“Your meal is on the house,” she said. “Why don’t you take
the money down to the casino down the road and put it on
twenty-six black. That ought to get you enough money for a
proper meal at least.”
31
 DEATH AND CANDY

“Thanks,” I said.
I got up to leave, yet when I got to the door I stopped. I took
one last look at God, busying herself by cleaning the counter. I
thought about saying goodbye, but I didn’t. God’s advice turned
out to be right, and I ended my string of bad luck at the casino
down the road.
I never forgot what she told me, and I still wonder what
horrors await me when I die. Yet even though I know she was
right, that it was better not to know, I cannot help but feel glad
that she told me—I’m only human, after all.

32
 8

The Door in the Woods

W
“ hat the hell?—”
“What is it, honey?” I heard my wife call out
from behind me.
“It’s a door.”
She laughed.
“Did you break into the mushrooms early? We’re in the
middle of the woods, why would there be a—oh, huh.”
Ellen stopped when she saw it, and we stood shoulder to
shoulder looking at it, an old wooden door built into the side
of a hill in the middle of nowhere.
“It really is crazy what you can find out on these expeditions
sometimes, huh honey?” she said, smiling. “Should we knock?”
I shook my head.
“I’m not really sure I want to meet the kind of person that
lives inside a hill in the woods.”
“Oh come on.” Ellen punched my shoulder. “Where’s your
sense of adventure?”
Ellen strode up to the door and gave it a polite knock.
33
 DEATH AND CANDY

“Hello, I’m looking for a Mister Beard, a Mister Tree Beard?”

I chuckled and shook my head. Ellen never let me forget the
little wonderful things about her that had made me fall in love
with her. She turned to me in mock disappointment.
“I don’t think anybody’s home, honey,” she said.
“Alright, come on,” I said. “We’ve got enough shrooms for
now, let’s find a good place to trip.”
“Are you kidding? God, I married the most boring man in the
universe! We’ve got to go inside!”
“What if someone lives there?”
“What if somebody lives in a hill in the woods?” said Ellen. “I
think the man who built his house underground in a forest will
be understanding if we offer to share some of our weed with
him.”
“You assume that just because he lives in a hill he smokes
weed? I don’t know, Ellen, that’s pretty racist.”
“Racist? Against who?”
“Tree people, obviously. Who else?”
Ellen laughed and punched me in the shoulder again. I feigned
being hurt, though I loved it when she did that.
“Alright,” I finally agreed. “After all, if I didn’t completely
ignore common sense sometimes, I wouldn’t be married to you
in the first place.”
“You’re really funny,” she shot back. “After I kick you out of
the house maybe you can live with Mr. Tree Beard out here in
the woods.”
I chuckled and tried the knob. The door was unlocked. As we
pushed it open we were greeted by a damp, mossy smell. The
room inside was pitch black, but it seemed to be made entirely
of rock, not dirt like I had expected.
“Hold on a second,” I said, sliding my pack off onto the ground
34
 THE DOOR IN THE WOODS

and fumbling around inside for the flashlight.

I flipped it on and scanned the walls.
“What the…”
The walls were all covered in some sort of nonsensical
carvings. It reminded me of when we’d studied Egyptian
hieroglyphics in school.
“Whoa,” said Ellen. “What do you think it means?”
I didn’t answer. I had gotten the sudden feeling that I was
being watched. I swung the flashlight to the back wall, only
to discover that there wasn’t one. The passage continued
downward until the flashlight beam ended on the ceiling about
thirty feet away.
“Ellen, I think we should—”
“Hold on, what’s that?”
Ellen pointed to a dark spot on the floor, and I pointed the
flashlight down to illuminate it. It was some kind of black
liquid.
“Motor oil?” I joked. But Ellen’s wasn’t joking around. She
knelt down to look at the puddle.
“It’s blood, Danny,” she said. “And look, it’s leading down
inside.”
I tilted the flashlight up. She was right, there was a blood trail
leading deeper into the cavern.
“It’s probably just an animal,” I said. “We should go.” But
Ellen was already tying her hair up the way she did at work.
She cupped her hands to her mouth.
“Hello!” she called out. Judging by the call’s echo, the chamber
must have been much larger than I had originally thought. “Is
anybody down there?”
Silence. But then, a barely audible call answered.
…h-help…
35
 DEATH AND CANDY

The call sounded like it was coming from deep within the
cavern. When I heard it all the hairs on the back of my neck
stood up and there was a sinking feeling in my chest. My every
instinct screamed at me to turn around and get as far away from
this place as I could.
“Ellen, it could be some sort of trap,” I said. “Let’s call the
park rangers and then get the fuck out of here.”
“Somebody’s hurt down there, Danny,” she said sternly. But
then her expression softened a bit. “Sorry, honey, this is what
you got yourself into when you decided to marry a nurse.”
I sighed. I knew there was no stopping Ellen once she had set
her mind to do something, but I kept a tight grip on the heavy
Mag flashlight as we proceeded down the passageway.
The blood trail got thinner as we walked deeper into the
cavern. Whoever it was must have lost most of their blood in
the antechamber.
But if they were hurt out there, why had they retreated further into
the cavern? Why not go outside where they had a chance of being
found?
It didn’t make any sense.
The air grew hotter and more humid as we went further
down the increasingly steep slope, and a pungent smell of mold
invaded our nostrils. I coughed as I breathed the horrid air.
Where had all this dust come from? As my flashlight beam
swept over the stone walls of the cave, I could see that they had
been cracked open by tree roots.
“What the fuck is this place?” I whispered to Ellen.
“Maybe some sort of makeshift survival bunker?” she guessed.
She cupped her hands to her mouth again. “HELLO-O!”
Her shout echoed down the hallway. “If you can hear us stay
calm! We’re going to help you get out to safety!”
36
 THE DOOR IN THE WOODS

“…h-help….”
The voice was a little louder this time. We must be getting
closer, I thought. But the sense of revulsion I felt on hearing the
voice only got worse. Did she not feel it?
As we went deeper inside we found where the blood trail
ended. There was a long smear of it on the ground. It looked
like somebody had been dragged across the floor while bleeding
heavily. And then it just stopped. Not even a drop after
that. The walls of the cavern had now been almost completely
overrun by roots, and breathing was getting ever more difficult
as the air had grown hotter and more choked with dust.
“…h…help….”
The voice was very close now, and I could make it out more
clearly. It sounded strange, all breathy and raspy, like a crude
imitation of what a person should sound like. The floor had
become so steep it was impossible to go any further without
risking a fall into God-knows-what.
“We’ve got to get down to him somehow,” Ellen wheezed. She
must have been having even more trouble breathing than I was.
“I’ve got it,” I said. “You step back.”
I pulled out the length of rope we’d brought in our emergency
gear and tied it to one of the thick roots springing through the
walls of the cave. I gave it a few firm tugs to make sure it was
secure, before tying the other end around my waist. I’d never
wanted to turn around and go home so badly, but I knew there
was no way Ellen would leave without seeing this through.
I started the climb down carefully, leaning over and moving
the flashlight around to try to see what was going on without
slipping and falling. I could see the vague outline of a man in
the darkness, and I swung the flashlight beam over him.
My blood went cold.
37
 DEATH AND CANDY

“Ellen… run.”
“What?”
“RUN!”
My breath was knocked out as the rope yanked back against
my waist. I hoped it was Ellen pulling, but I knew it wasn’t. She
wasn’t that strong. I landed on the ground hard, and the rope
continued to pull me backwards.
“Danny, what the fuck is-”
“RUN GOD DAMN IT!”
She started to back away as the roots on the walls began to
move, slowly snaking their way towards us. I sawed through the
rope with my pocket knife and stumbled forward into a sprint,
yanking Ellen along with me. She wouldn’t have hesitated if
she’d seen what I had. At the bottom of the cavern a man had
been suspended above the ground in a giant web of roots that
were writhing and sliding through him. Little bulges were
moving slowly up the roots that led away from his collapsed
and shriveled body, one root jutting into his throat and twisting
around every time he called for help, working his voice box like
a puppet.
We abandoned our flashlight and gear bag in the cave behind
us as we sprinted towards the exit in total darkness, hacking
and coughing as the moldy, dusty air of the cavern filled our
lungs. I could feel myself tripping on roots that had not been
there on the way in. I felt a yank on my hand as Ellen fell, and
we both tumbled down onto the writhing tentacle-like mass
which circled around our limbs and began to drag us backwards.
I started hacking desperately at them with my survival knife.
The roots recoiled as I struck them, and I managed to free my
legs. I pulled at Ellen’s hands, but the roots were stronger than
I was.
38
 THE DOOR IN THE WOODS

“Just leave me!” she shouted at me.

“Fuck no!” I swung blindly at her legs, and the knife connected
with a sick thud. I swung a dozen more times, slashing her legs
a few times by mistake before she was loose enough to yank
free.
We kept running towards the door, and I could feel the air
getting cooler and fresher, and the floor beginning to level out.
We had almost made it. Now I could see the outline of light
around the door. We ran full force into it, ricocheting off and
bouncing back onto the ground. I scrambled up.
Please be open.
I grabbed the knob and yanked, and a torrent of fresh air and
sunlight poured into the cavern. I grabbed Ellen’s arm and half-
dragged her through the open door before collapsing exhausted
on the ground.
“We made it,” I gasped. My chest was heaving as I lay on my
back and coughed up all the dust from the cavern air.
“Yeah.” Ellen was bright red with exhaustion, her arms and
legs covered in scratch marks, her legs scored by slash marks
from my knife. I don’t imagine I looked much better.
“What the fuck was that?” I said breathlessly, getting up.
Ellen shook her head.
“I don’t know… but let’s get the fuck out of here.”
I helped Ellen to her feet, and we both stood there panting
and coughing with our hands on our knees. Ellen coughed
something up into her hand.
“Danny?” she said, showing it to me.
It was a small leaf. I watched her face as little green tendrils
began to spread out and coil around underneath her skin, and I
realized with horror that it hadn’t been dust we were breathing
in.
39
 DEATH AND CANDY

It had been spores.

40
 9

Mr. Crow

I
used to look out the rusted iron bars of my window and
dream about being a bird.
The chain that shackled me to my bed was just long
enough to reach the windowsill, and so every night after my
father would visit my room I would lie awake and wait for the
first rays of light to creep over the horizon, then walk over to my
window to listen to the morning’s first few notes of birdsong.
Their melodies were so beautiful, I knew that they must have
been singing about places far away and wonderful, about sailing
on the wind through endless blue skies, looking down at the
treetops that seemed so small from so high up.
Then, one morning as I lay in bed, something impossible
happened. I had fallen asleep the night before, and would have
missed my morning birdsong but for a tapping on my window.
I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and sat up to see a crow sitting
outside on the sill, tapping my window with his beak.
I crept over to the window and smiled at the bird.
“Hello, Mr. Crow,” I said.
“Hello little girl,” said the crow.
41
 DEATH AND CANDY

I stood there awkwardly for a moment, not knowing what to

say. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, I forced myself
to speak.
“You know how to talk?” I said.
“All birds know how to talk,” he replied. “It’s just that not all
humans know how to listen.”
I pushed my window open a crack until it hit against the bars.
The bird cocked its head in curiosity.
“Why are you in a cage?” it asked.
“I think it’s my destiny,” I said. “It’s always been this way.”
“You look quite thin,” replied the crow. “Would you like
something to eat?”
My stomach gave a weak growl.
“Yes,” I said. “That would be wonderful.”
Without another word the crow took flight. A few minutes
later he returned with a small branch of figs. The crow watched
me as I greedily devoured the fruit. After I had finished he
stared at me for a moment before speaking again.
“I didn’t know they put people in cages,” he said. “Do you
think they mistook you for a bird?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“I guess it’s possible,” I said.
We whiled away the rest of that day talking. The crow told me
all about what it was like to fly, how there was no better feeling
in the world. He told me about the faraway lands he had visited
when he was a young bird and could still make the journey
north with the changing of the seasons. Finally, evening came
and the crow said that he had to go. The next morning he was
back, however, with two more branches of figs.
I thanked him for his generosity, and we talked another day
away. That day he even sang me a song. He didn’t have a very
42
 MR. CROW

good voice, but I thought his song was beautiful anyway.

We passed the entire fall that way, and the bird’s visits became
the only bright spot in my life. He brought me not only figs,
but cherries and walnuts too—anything small enough for him
to carry.
Soon, however, winter came, and with it the frosts that
destroyed the figs and cherries that the crow had used to bring
me. His gifts became fewer and fewer, and I could tell from the
strain in his voice that he was flying farther and farther away
to get them.
One morning, when the first snows of winter had fallen, the
crow asked me a question.
“What would you do to leave this place?” he asked, cocking
his head to the side.
I thought for a moment, but I wasn’t sure how to answer.
Finally, I told the truth.
“I would do anything to leave this place,” I said. “Anything at
all.”
The crow solemnly nodded and said, “The frost isn’t the only
thing that winter brings.”
He flapped his wings once and jumped from the windowsill,
and I didn’t see him for three days. Every morning I would
still listen to the birdsong, but it sounded forlorn and empty
without my friend there to listen with me.
The morning after the third day my crow friend returned. It
was so beautiful that day; the sun had come out from behind
the clouds to melt the snow—one of the last green days before
winter came in earnest. As the shadow passed over the valley
in which we lived, I first mistook it for a storm cloud, but then
I heard the sound. It was loud enough rattle the walls and
windows, but it wasn’t thunder—it was birds.
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 DEATH AND CANDY

Thousands upon thousands of them descended on our house.

A whirling storm of beating wings and shrieking caws, they
crashed into the walls and windows, pecking at them with wild
ferocity. The house shook under their assault, and their calls
were so loud that I didn’t even hear the windows breaking.
They were not so loud, however, that I could not hear my
father scream. It was over in a matter of minutes, and the key to
my shackles slipped under the door. I rushed over and picked
it up with trembling hands, sliding it into the metal cuff around
my ankle and turning it.
The cuff came loose with a heavy click, and for the first time
I was free.
The key to my bedroom door slipped under the jamb as well,
and I pushed my way into the rest of the house. The place had
been all but destroyed. There was splintered wood and broken
glass everywhere, and in the center of the living room was what
remained of my father—a pile of bloodstained feathers.
The birds had all flown off, but Mr. Crow sat on top of the
living room fireplace, regarding me with a curious look.
“Now you can fly free, little girl,” he said. “No more cages for
you.”
“Thank you, Mr. Crow,” I said. “Will you come with me?”
Mr. Crow shook his head.
“I am an old bird,” he said. “And my journey is coming to a
close. I’m afraid that I would be poor company for a young,
lively thing like you.”
Mr. Crow flapped his wings and took flight, and I never saw
him again. As I stepped out of the front door my bare feet
touched the grass for the very first time, and I could smell the
flowers on the breeze as it drifted over me.
At that moment, though my feet were firmly on the ground,
44
 MR. CROW

my heart took flight and soared through endless blue sky, far
above the world that I had left behind.
I still wake up every morning to hear the birds sing, and when
the first few notes break the silence of the early dawn, I think
of Mr. Crow and smile.

45
 10

The Blue-Eyed Painting

S
“ o… what are we doing here?”
“We’re uh… appreciating art.”
“How do you appreciate art?”
“I think you just stand there and look at it.”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“Danny we’re staring at a nine-foot painting of a triangle. No
offense, but even your hipster girlfriend knew this was bullshit.
Which is why she crapped out of going and you dragged me
along.”
I blew air at my bangs from the bottom of my mouth.
“Alright,” I said. “Fuck it, let’s go get drunk.”
Jason grinned, and we started walking towards the exit.
“That’s more like it. You know that beard makes you look
like a douchebag?”
“I think it looks manly. And Ellen likes it.”
“Manly? Danny you look like the kind of guy who owns a
special little comb for picking semen out of his beard.”
“How long did it take you to come up with that one?”
46
 THE BLUE-EYED PAINTING

“About at long as it took you to…whoa, hold on. Look at this

one.”
Jason had stopped in front of a small painting of a face.
“Shit, yeah.”
The painting was of the bust of a woman, and looked like
something out of the Renaissance. It was strangely out of place
in the modernist gallery around us.
“Look at her eyes, Danny. Holy shit, I’m doing it. I’m
appreciating art.”
The woman’s eyes were sky blue, and they bore a sort
of dreamy expression which only seemed to enhance the
strangeness of her beauty.
“It gives me the creeps,” I said.
“It looks like she’s naked,” said Jason. “Do you think they’ve
got a painting of the rest of her?”
“Seriously, it’s creeping me out. Let’s go.”
But as we turned around to go we were approached by a
woman with wire rimmed glasses and hair pulled back so tight
that her forehead reflected the gallery lights.
“Do you like this one?” she asked.
“I, uh. Yeah, my friend likes it.”
Jason was too busy ogling the painting to respond.
“Who painted it?” I asked.
“An unknown Renaissance artist. It was donated to the gallery
and we display it here to demonstrate the contrast between
modern and traditional forms of art.”
“Is it for sale?” Jason asked.
“You seem really taken with it,” the woman said with a smile.
“Go on and take it. Maybe it can inspire a love of art in you.”
“Wait, are you serious?” I asked.
Jason shrugged and lifted the painting off the wall.
47
 DEATH AND CANDY

“Come on, sexy. You’re coming with me.”

***
“I can’t believe you brought a painting to a bar.”
“It’s called peacocking, Danny.”
“What-ing?”
“It’s when you bring something flashy to a bar to attract the
attention of women.”
“Sounds like a good idea. You want the girls to think you’re
some kind of psycho, right?”
“Shit, that could work. Maybe I can hook up with one of
those girls that writes letters to serial killers in prison. Besides,
I wanted to look at it some more. I’ve always had a thing for
green eyes.”
“Are you drunk already? She’s got blue eyes, dipshit.”
“Dude get your vision checked. This must be why you’re such
a shitty driver. You think all the traffic lights are blue.”
I was about to tell Jason what a dumbass he was when a girl
walked up to us and interrupted.
“Cool painting,” she said.
“It’s mine.” Jason puffed out his chest, perhaps taking the
word ‘peacocking’ a little too literally.
“I really like the expression in her eyes,” the girl went on. “So
vulnerable, it’s like she’s really baring her soul.”
“Yeah,” Jason eagerly agreed. “But there’s something more,
like a fierceness. It’s beautiful.”
The girl looked at the painting quizzically.
“I don’t see it,” she said.
Jason and the girl went on talking while I drained my whisky
and started texting Ellen that Jason had met a girl and was
ignoring me again. He was always like this around pretty girls.
He said he fell in love at least twice a day. Eventually they went
48
 THE BLUE-EYED PAINTING

off to her apartment and I went home to our dorm.

***
I woke up on the couch the next morning with a splitting
headache. Jason must have gotten home last night sometime
after I passed out, because his coat was on the rack. As I became
more aware of my surroundings I noticed a powerful burning
smell. I jumped up and saw smoke billowing out from the oven.
“Jason, you fucking idiot,” I grumbled.
This wasn’t the first time he’d stuck a pizza in the oven and
then passed out before it was done. I switched off the oven and
went to pound on Jason’s door.
“Hey, wake up numbnuts. You nearly burned us alive again
last night.”
No answer.
“What a lazy fucker.”
I turned the knob and saw that he was still in bed, but
obviously awake.
“Hey idiot,” I said.
“Get up and clean the—” but the words died in my throat.
As I got closer I saw the black pool of blood that had spilled
from his mouth. His eyes were wide open and still.
“Shit!”
I ran over and shook him, but he was already ice cold. When
the ambulance got there they took him away in a bag. They
asked me if I knew what had happened but I couldn’t answer.
I just kept going over the same thing in my mind. Jason had
brown eyes, I was sure of it. But when I found him lying there,
in a pool of his own blood, his eyes had been green.
***
The next week was a blur for me. I numbly floated through
the days. People’s consolations and pitying looks were just
49
 DEATH AND CANDY

mundane platitudes that could not reach me. The university

held a memorial service for Jason. They printed out a big
version of the picture from his student ID and placed it next to
the arts building so people could come and pay their respects.
I went the long way around the building to avoid seeing it.
I didn’t want to be reminded of what had happened. But I
couldn’t hide from it forever—after class on Friday there was
an urgent knock on my door, and when I opened it Ellen was
standing there looking upset.
“I tried calling you,” she said. “Are you okay?”
I shrugged.
“I’m surviving I guess.”
“Have you…” Ellen seemed nervous about something. “Have
you been by the arts building?”
“Not recently, why?”
“I, uh… I don’t want to upset you. But I figured it had best
come from me.”
“What are you talking about?”
Ellen pulled up a picture on her phone and handed it to me.
“What the fuck?”
It was Jason’s picture by the arts building. But someone had
gouged out the eyes and spray painted a big red X over his face.
“Who the fuck would do something like this?” I asked.
“I don’t know. The university police are looking into it.”
I saw red. A thought had been nagging at the back of my mind
for days now. I grabbed my keys off the hook and marched out
to the parking lot.
“Where are you going?” I heard Ellen calling after me.
“I’m going back to that fucking art gallery.”
I’m not sure what I expected to find. An answer, I guess. Some
sort of closure. But I definitely didn’t expect to find what I did.
50
 THE BLUE-EYED PAINTING

Hanging right there in the very same spot was the painting of
the blue-eyed woman. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I
just stood there staring at it.
“Do you like this one?”
I turned to see who had spoken. It was the same woman that
had given Jason the painting.
“Oh,” she said. “You’re back.”
“Where did you get this?” I sputtered.
The gallery owner stroked the painting’s cheek.
“She always seems to find her way back home,” she said. “I
think she misses her spot on the wall.”
I felt something in me break; my emotional numbness was
replaced by a flood of anger. I grabbed the woman’s collar and
yanked her towards me.
“I know it was you,” I said, shaking her. “I know what you
did.”
“Are you going to hurt me?” she asked. Her eyes moved over
to the painting, and I followed them. The painting’s eyes had
changed. They were now a brilliant shade of green. I gasped
and let go of her collar, and watched as the eyes slowly changed
back to blue. The gallery owner straightened her shirt.
“I don’t decide who she goes home with,” she said softly. “She
does.”
I started to back away slowly, and the woman watched me. I
could have sworn the painting was watching me too as I turned
around and ran.
***
When I got home Ellen was waiting for me, worry written all
over her face.
“Danny, what’s going on?”
“I don’t know.” I said breathlessly. “But I know who killed
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 DEATH AND CANDY

Jason.”
“You do?”
“It was that woman,” I said. “The one that works at that art
gallery.”
“What? Why the hell would some strange woman kill Jason?”
“Because she’s crazy. She’s some kind of witch, Ellen.”
Ellen frowned.
“Are you feeling ok?” She asked. “Jason died in bed, Danny.
Why do you think he was murdered?”
“I just…” I was breathing heavily. “You didn’t see it… The
painting… “I trailed off. Even I could hear how crazy the words
sounded as they came out of my mouth. I knew what I had seen,
but I also knew no one else would believe me.
“Nothing,” I said. “Sorry, I’m just a little upset. Never mind.”
“Let’s just relax for a while. Do you wanna watch a movie?”
I agreed more for Ellen’s sake than my own. After all, I was
sure I’d just frightened her. We set up the movie and Ellen
went off to the bathroom like she always did at the start of
movies. While she was inside I saw a text message from her
friend Brittany pop up on her phone. Ellen didn’t mind when I
read her messages, so grabbed the phone and swiped it open.
All the message said was, “have u told him about Jason yet?”
I heard the toilet flush and the faucet go on and then Ellen
walked back and plopped down next to me.
“What is this?” I held the phone up to her face.
“It’s nothing, Danny. Why don’t we talk about it when you’re
feeling better?”
“No. Something is going on and I want to know what the
fuck it is.”
Ellen sighed.
“Alright,” she said. “After they put Jason’s picture up, there
52
 THE BLUE-EYED PAINTING

were some rumors that started going around.”

“Rumors? What rumors?”
“Some girls said some things about Jason assaulting them.
And then more girls started to come forward. The police looked
into it, Danny. They’re saying…”
“They’re saying what?”
“They’re saying his DNA ties back to open rape cases a couple
years back.”
“What!?”
“I’m sorry, Danny. I know he was your friend.”
It felt like all the air had rushed out of the room. There was no
way it could be true. Jason had always been a bit of a chauvinist,
but he was no rapist. Was he?
***
A few weeks later the dust had settled and the truth had come
out about Jason. It felt like he had died a second time. All of my
good memories of him were now replaced by some sick feeling
I couldn’t even begin to untangle. Seventeen women. And those
were just the ones who had come forward. The school took
down the picture and got rid of the flowers people had left.
Some people were saying they were glad he was dead. Those
were the same people that gave me dirty looks when I passed
them in the hallways. Whatever. It didn’t matter. I didn’t know
what had really happened with the painting, but I decided to
just let it go. Thinking about it hurt, anyway. I eventually went
back to the gallery owner to apologize for my outburst. I found
her near the painting of the blue-eyed woman. She smiled and
told me I had a good heart. As I was leaving I could hear the
faint sounds of her talking with someone.
“You seem to really like it,” she said. “Why don’t you take it
home with you?”
53
 11

Parasitic

S
ometimes when I’m lying in bed at night and staring
up at the ceiling, an overwhelming feeling of sadness
begins to break over my body in crushing waves.
I think about my past relationships, the girls I never asked
out, the friends I let drift away; all the roads I could’ve gone
down but didn’t, and my heart throbs with a keen awareness of
every loss.
It’s a sad thing to put to paper, but the only friend I have
left now is regret, the familiar misery of its embrace strangely
comforting as it crushes me more and more each day.
Yet however trying they are, it is in these moments of deep
sadness that I feel most like myself. I’ve hurt for so long that I’ve
forgotten what it feels like to be happy; my pain has swallowed
me; it has become me.
These feelings are my humanity, the essence of my being, but
I am certainly not human. I may talk like a human, look like
a human, even feel like a human. But my insides are ugly and
rotted, and the things that sustain living creatures are poison
to me.
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 PARASITIC

Light, food, water.

The base comforts of a warm day, a full belly and a quenched
thirst are denied me as the price of immortality. My sunshine
is darkness, my food hunger, and my water thirst.
Like a vampire, I feed on people.
But I have no fangs to sink into your neck; just a touch of the
hand or a brush on the cheek is enough for me to steal away
what I need. Another few years of life, and another bad memory
to add to the carousel that revolves in my head as I lie awake
each night.
My last victim was just sixteen years old. I met her down
a dark alley, living under a cardboard box. She had run away
from home, and now she had nowhere left to go.
We talked for a long time that night. I asked her why she ran
away, and she said she didn’t have a reason. Her parents were
good to her, she had friends at school; her life should’ve been
perfect.
But there was pain on the inside that pulled her down like a
weight inside her chest, a pain that refused to go away. She had
thought that if she could just run far enough away, maybe she
could escape her pain.
But it had followed her here, never losing sight of her for a
moment.
I smiled at her sadly and asked her to take my hand.
“Where are we going?” she asked, a small note of hope in her
voice.
“Somewhere happy,” I replied.
As she grasped my hand I felt the familiar cold flowing
through my fingertips and up my arm as I stole her humanity
from her.
I sank to my knees as all her pain, her insecurities, and her
55
 DEATH AND CANDY

bad memories became my own, flowing throughout my body

like a cold river of misery.
When it was over, I lay on the ground, weak and broken. She
regarded me with some confusion and then smiled down at me.
“Did you trip or something?” she asked, her voice noticably
upbeat.
“Yes… I… I tripped.” I did my best to smile back at her.
“Thank you so much for listening to me,” she said. “I guess
I needed to talk. It really feels like a weight has been lifted off
me.”
I smiled silently back at her as my heart ached with all her
pain.
“I uh… think I need to go home,” she said.
“Yes,” I replied, “I think you do too.”

56
 12

Fight Me, Fuck Me, BURN ME

S
ome relationships are sustained by nothing more than
the fact that at any given moment it’s easier to make up,
have sex and go to sleep than to tear your life apart.
That’s how it was with me and Marla. We met at a bar, fucked
all night, and she never left. And because of her, I’m gonna die.
I said she never left, but it’s more like she wouldn’t leave. I
was surprised when I woke up in the morning and she was still
there. Usually they skip out on me during the night. I guess
I’m not really anyone’s idea of Mr. Right, more of a Mr. Right
Now. And that’s only after a lot of drinks.
I wrote it off and figured I’d let her sleep in and she’d be gone
when I got home from work that evening. Nope. I got home
and there she was, just staring at me like, “Where’ve you been?”
That’s when I realized that there was something seriously
wrong with her.
I ate in silence, and she just stared at me, wide-eyed, unblink-
ing. Her gaze made me feel like there were bugs under my
skin.
I wanted her gone; but I was too weak to stick up for myself.
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 DEATH AND CANDY

That night we wound up fucking again. When the sun came up

and I was still inside her, reality set in and I felt disgusted with
myself. How could anyone be so weak?
I promised I’d make sure she was gone by the time I got back
from work next day.
Of course when I got home that day she was still there. She
was just lying in bed with the TV on, and she smelled like she
hadn’t showered in three days.
She didn’t even look away from the TV when I came in. I
didn’t bother asking her to leave; I knew she’d just ignore me.
We had one of those relationships where your partner is just
a better version of your right hand. We didn’t talk, we had no
connection, we just fucked.
We fucked on the counter, on the bathroom floor, on the
dining room table, wherever there was space, we fucked. Our
sex started getting violent, and that’s when I first noticed the
puddles.
I came home from work one day and there it was; a puddle of
milky yellow fluid right in the middle of the living room floor. I
couldn’t figure out what it was, but it smelled like rotting fruit.
I was too tired to clean it up, told Marla she might as well do
something to help out. We fought about it, fucked about it, and
then we slept. Same as always.
The next day there was another puddle.
Things went on like this for a while, every day a new fight, a
new fuck and a new puddle. I started pouring bleach on them
and pushing them into the yard with a mop, but the house still
reeked. I had nightmares about drowning in a giant puddle that
smelled like rotting fruit.
Then it took an even more drastic turn for the worse. One
night while I was inside Marla I heard her whisper in my ear.
58
 FIGHT ME, FUCK ME, BURN ME

“Burn me.”
“What?” I sputtered.
“Burn me.“
I fumbled around in my pockets and pulled out my lighter,
flicking it on an inch from her skin.
“Like this?”
I looked at her for approval, but she just stared, her wide,
black eyes unblinking.
“Don’t just hurt me, she hissed, “burn me.”
I moved the lighter closer and watched as her skin began to
melt like wax.
“More,” she whispered.
“M-more?”
“More.” She looked up at the bottle of Everclear on top of the
fridge.
“M-Marla I don’t think that—”
“MORE!” She screamed at me and I tumbled off the bed and
ran to the fridge to grab the bottle.
I poured some on her arm, but spilled out way too much on
the bed as my hands violently shook.
I held the lighter to her skin, flicked it and—
“SHIT!”
I hit the ground as a column of flame shot up and licked the
ceiling. Marla just lay there moaning like I’d never heard her
moan before.
I ran to the sink and yanked out the miniature fire extin-
guisher, praying it still worked.
I emptied out the whole thing before the fire was finally out.
Marla’s arm was a mangled mess of scorched bone and melted
flesh.
“Good job,” she whispered.
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 DEATH AND CANDY

She seemed pretty pleased with me as I climbed weakly back

into bed with her.
“Daniel?” she whispered.
“Yes Marla?”
“Burn me more.”
“To…tomorrow I will. Just let me sleep.”
“Do you promise?”
“Y-yes… I promise…”
But I broke my promise. When I got off work the next day I
went to a hotel. I didn’t even want to look at Marla, and I was
sure she would be there waiting for me when I got home.
It took two bottles of whisky from the minibar for me to start
feeling drowsy that night. It wasn’t until three in the morning
that I finally started to drift off. Then I heard her voice.
“Burn me, Daniel. Like you promised.”
I sat bolt upright. I knew I’d imagined her voice, but I had
the sudden feeling that I wasn’t alone in the room.
And then I smelled it. Rotting fruit.
“Wh-where are you?” I whispered into the darkness.
“You know where I am, Daniel.”
“I-I just want to go home,” I pleaded.
“So do I. But I need you to burn me first.”
There was nothing for it. I knew what I had to do. I got up,
got dressed and drove home.
I pulled into the driveway, popped open the trunk and
grabbed the can of spare gasoline I kept for emergencies.
I went inside to the bedroom and emptied it all over Marla,
along with the bottle of Everclear. She didn’t move. She just
stared at me, looking pleased with herself. Then I went to the
kitchen drawer for matches. No way was I getting close enough
to use my lighter.
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 FIGHT ME, FUCK ME, BURN ME

I tossed the match, and the bed burst into flames, turning the
whole room into a glowing orange inferno.
“Thank you,” Marla whispered as she burned.
“I’m sorry Marla,” I said. “The first night we met…. I’d never
choked someone during sex before. I didn’t mean to do it so
hard. I didn’t mean to kill you.”
“I know,” Marla whispered as her face melted, and the maggots
popped in the flames like overgrown, pus-filled pimples.
“I just need one more thing before I can leave you alone, Daniel.”
“Y-yes?”
I thought I could see the barest trace of a smile steal over her
face.
“Burn with me.”

61
 13

Death’s Advice

T
he cold steel barrel of the gun wobbled against my skin
as I pressed it to the underside of my chin.
You can do this, I thought.
I closed my eyes tight, and clenched my jaw hard, trying to
work up the courage to pull the trigger.
It’s not even going to hurt.
My sweat covered fingers slipped, and time slowed to a crawl
as I heard the shot, then felt the white-hot fire of the muzzle
flare against my skin. For a moment everything was black, and
a deep cold cut through my center. And then suddenly I was
no longer in my own body, but looking down on my myself
slumped over with the gun resting in my limp fingers. All I
could think of was how sad I looked, dead and alone in the
vacant, messy room. The cold in the room deepened, and a
shadowy figure materialized next to my corpse and grabbed me
by the chin, lifting my head up and staring into my now vacant
eyes.
A long, spindly finger reached out and tapped my forehead,
drawing out a silvery string of glowing light that became a ball
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 DEATH’S ADVICE

as the shadow dropped it into a little glass vial.

The shadow motioned as if to leave, but then paused, turning
its head towards me. As we locked eyes, it materialized fully as
a young, gaunt looking woman. She was pale white, with bags
under her eyes and a ragged black robe that hung limply off of
her thin frame.
“Wh-what are you?” I heard myself ask.
The young woman eyed me suspiciously.
“You can see me,” she said. “You’re not supposed to be able to
see me.”
She reached out as if to draw herself a chair, and as she did
one materialized at her fingertips as if it had been painted on
the air. She sat down and the chair rose up to the ceiling, so that
she was sitting directly across from me. She crossed her legs
and stared at me, resting her chin on outstretched intertwined
fingers.
“I…”
“You’re dead,” she said unceremoniously.
“Yeah… are you Death, then?”
“Yes.”
“Did you…just now…did you take my soul?”
“I did,” she replied.
“Why?”
Death cocked her head to the side.
“Because I’m Death,” she said. “It’s my job.”
“What will you do with it?”
“Deliver it to the afterlife.”
“Oh…” I paused. A thought occurred.“Can you…. put it back?”
Death shook her head.
I averted my gaze from my body, its cold lifelessness like a
searing white glare that burned my eyes.
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 DEATH AND CANDY

“So…” I began, desperate to change the subject. “Will I go to

heaven? Or hell?”
“No.”
I waited to see if Death would elaborate, but she didn’t.
“So, what? I’ll just disappear?” I asked.
“Not exactly.”
“Then what?”
Death paused for a moment.
“Can I ask you a question?” she said thoughtfully.
I shrugged.
“Okay, sure,” I replied.
“Why did you kill yourself?”
“I uh…”
I paused. I’d never said it all out loud before.
“I guess I couldn’t stand being a loser.”
“Who told you that you were a loser?”
“Well, no one really. I just always felt like one.”
“Why?”
“I uh…I don’t know? I guess I always thought I would be
someone special, you know? And when I was a kid I really
believed it. But now that I’m grown up I’ve got to face the fact
that I’m just average. Below average, actually. I work a crappy
job for eight hours a day and go home to no one. I’ve got no
one I care about and no one who cares about me. What’s the
point?”
Death nodded silently.
“You wished you could be something other than what you
were,” she said.
“Yeah, I guess so. But it’s not possible. Not for people like me
anyway. I tried hiding from that in a lot of bottles and needles.
But it caught up with me anyway, and here I am.”
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 DEATH’S ADVICE

Death stroked her chin.

“But that’s what I’ve never understood about your kind,” she
said. “Why hide at all?”
“What?”
“Most people spend their lives trying to hide from pain,” she
said. “They hide from it with alcohol, materialism, relation-
ships… Why not just accept it? To be human is to suffer. You
can’t hide from something that’s a part of you; you can’t run
from something that is always with you.”
“What… just accept it, and let it swallow you whole?”
“There’s a difference between accepting something as fact
and letting it swallow you without a fight. You were never a
loser because you were hurting; you were just a human.”
“Oh…so what’s the difference?”
Death paused for a moment. “Human thought is light,” she
said. “It illuminates the truth that hides in the darkness of the
world around you. But too much light, and a speck on the lens
can cast a shadow over everything you see.”
“You’re saying I think too much?”
“Yes.”
“But thinking is what I do… It’s what makes us human. How
can you stop thinking?”
“I suppose it must not be much different than stopping any
other bad habit, like smoking. Keep trying until you get it right.”
“Trying is exhausting.”
“It is.”
We stopped for a moment and stared at each other.
“You’re Death,” I said after a moment, detecting a note of anger
in my own voice. “You’ve been around for as long as people
have—longer even. And your advice to stop being miserable
is to just stop thinking too much? I figured you would have
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 DEATH AND CANDY

something better than that.”

Death shrugged, and pulled out the little glass bottle contain-
ing my soul.
“Do you know what this is?” She asked.
“You said it was my soul.”
“It is.”
“So?” I was beginning to grow impatient.
“A soul is the essence of life,” sShe said. “It’s a pure experience
of the world that’s not filtered through things like self-doubt
and disappointment. It sees things exactly for what they are,
and experiences them with the whole of its being.”
“So… it’s what I would be like if I weren’t miserable?”
Death shook her head.
“A soul is not a person,” She said. “It’s the spark of life. It’s
what drives human beings on… until they give it up.”
“And now?”
“And now it goes to someone else.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes.”
“What will happen to me?”
“I don’t know.”
“How can you not know?”
Death shrugged. “It’s not my job,” she said.
I could feel tears gathering at the edges of my eyes.
“Can you… please give it back?”
Death cocked her head to the side again.
“Maybe,” she said.
“Wait, really? Just like that?”
“Nobody’s stayed around long enough to talk with me like
this before. Maybe it’s possible. But I want you to promise to
do something for me first.”
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 DEATH’S ADVICE

“A-anything,” I coughed out. “What do you want me to do?”

“Try to remember what I said.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Why?”
“Maybe it will help someday.”
“Why would you want to help me?”
“I’ve been doing this job for a very long time,” Death said.
“There have been precious few occasions where I have arrived
in time to help someone. Usually the most I can do is clean up
the mess.”
“Oh… but what if it doesn’t make any difference?”
Death shrugged.
“Then… maybe I can think of something better to say next
time.”
Then, without saying anything else, she twisted the cork off
the bottle and I watched as the string of light twirled its way
out, pausing in the air above her hand. Her face was lit by its
silvery glow as she held my soul above her outstretched palm.
She rounded her lips and blew gently, and the string floated
like a dandelion on the breeze back into my body.
The world around me began to shimmer and glow, the colors
of reality melting like crayons left in the sun until all I could
see was a bright silver sheen that overtook my whole being.
My vision went black, and I could feel the cold steel gun
barrel pushing against my trembling chin. I set the gun down,
sat down on the floor, and cried until I couldn’t anymore.
I knew that I couldn’t follow Death’s advice. Not that day.
But I have hope that I will be able to someday. And that’s
enough.

67
 14

Satan Offered me a Job. I Took It

I
“ ’m sorry, did you say Satan?”
The young man standing on my porch nodded eagerly.
“Yes, sir!” he said. “We have come to spread the message
of our lord and savior Satan.”
I looked from him to his companion. Both were dressed in ill-
fitting white button-down shirts and black slacks, with gelled
up side part haircuts and slightly manic smiles.
“Okay…” I said. “Well, I’m not really into the lord and savior
thing so I think I’m gonna have to pass.”
I closed the door only to find the young man’s foot obstructing
it. I opened it back up and sighed.
“Just a moment of your time, sir,” the young man said.
“Perhaps a look at our literature could convince you.”
The other young man lifted up his suitcase and popped open
the latches. When I saw what was inside, my heart nearly
jumped out of my chest.
“Is that…real?” I asked.
“Oh yes sir,” the first man said, “Go ahead and take a closer
look.”
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 SATAN OFFERED ME A JOB. I TOOK IT

I slowly reached out and picked up one of the bundles and

inspected it. I’m no expert, but it certainly looked like a real
stack of hundred-dollar bills to me.
I looked from the money, to the creepy but overall harmless
seeming young men, and then I waved them inside. We sat
down around my coffee table and there was a moment of
awkward silence.
“So uh,” I began, clearing my throat, “My name’s David. And
you two are?”
“Oh, forgive my rudeness, sir,” the first young man replied. “I
am acolyte Paul, and this is acolyte Stephen.”
“Uh… well, would you like anything to drink?”
“Oh no, sir. We do not require sustenance as mortals do,” said
Paul.
“…Right,” I replied.
I picked up my half-finished beer from the night before and
took a swig.
The two young men just sat in silence, grinning at me as I
drank. I coughed a little bit at the end and wiped the stale beer
from my lips.
“You said you came to spread a message, right?” I asked. “So,
what’s the message?”
“We’re really glad you asked,” said Paul. “Satan is recruiting
for skilled labor positions in Hell, and we’ve identified you as a
top candidate! Congratulations, sir—this is fantastic news for
you.”
My eyes wandered to the suitcase full of money.
“And uh… what does this job consist of?” I asked.
“Asking all the right questions,” Paul replied. “You’re a real
sharp customer, David. The details are all laid out in this
contract here. Stephen?”
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 DEATH AND CANDY

Stephen produced a single piece of paper from somewhere I

couldn’t see and laid it on the coffee table.
I picked up the paper and stared at it.
“This is a contract?” I asked.
“Oh yes sir,” said Paul.
“What language is this?”
“It’s written in Old Enochian, sir, the language of angels.”
I set the contract back down on the table.
“Well, what’s it say?” I asked.
“I’m sorry sir,” said Paul. “I can’t read Old Enochian. We were
just instructed by our superior to deliver the contract along
with your signing bonus.”
“Signing bonus?” I asked.
Stephen popped open the latches to the suitcase once again.
“So you’re telling me,” I said, setting down my beer, “that if I
sign that piece of paper, you’re just going to give me a suitcase
full of money.”
“Yes sir, that’s the deal!” Paul said enthusiastically.
I took another swig of beer.
“Got a pen?” I asked.
Paul handed me the pen and I scribbled my name messily on
the bottom of the paper, which Stephen promptly snatched up
and stowed away somewhere I didn’t see.
“Wow, that’s great,” said Paul. “I guess we’d better go now.”
“Alright,” I said. “I’ll see you later.”
“Very funny sir,” said Paul. “Of course I meant we three had
better go.”
“What do you mean by—”
My voice was cut off by a roaring sound as the three of us fell
through the floor. Hot air rushed past us as we fell towards a
distant red glow. Paul and Stephen’s faces remained frozen in
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 SATAN OFFERED ME A JOB. I TOOK IT

their manic grins as their ties flapped up and whipped around

their heads.
We fell hard on the glowing red dirt below, sending up a
cloud of dust around us. When the dust cleared I found myself
in a strange cross between a cave and an office, facing a large
obsidian desk behind which sat a high-backed leather chair.
The chair slowly swung around to reveal a smiling red demon
in a suit.
“Hi David,” he said. “I’m Satan. Now let’s talk about that job.”

71
 15

Fargo

T
hough he wasn’t real, Fargo was the best friend I ever
had. We moved a lot, sometimes twice in one year, to
wherever my dad could find work, so it was hard to
make any real friends. New toys weren’t a luxury we could
afford, but I didn’t mind—I loved Fargo more than any kid ever
loved their new PlayStation or trampoline.
He was a breadbasket sized stuffed dog we had bought from
the flea market when I was seven. He looked like a mutt, and
had soulful chocolate brown eyes.
The old woman who sold him to us said that he contained
the soul of an ancient guard dog. She also said, however, that
she had removed all her dental fillings so that the CIA could no
longer track her, so I don’t think my parents took her seriously.
Her word was enough for my imagination, though, and soon
Fargo had come to life, even if I’d forgotten the stuff about
fillings and the CIA.
Every day after school Fargo and I would go treasure hunting
around the neighborhood together. He led me to all sorts
of amazing things: a stick that was a magic wand, a piece
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 FARGO

of glass that was a diamond, and a bird’s nest that was a

king’s crown—those are just a few examples of the wonderful
treasures we found.
Fargo made me the happiest kid in the world. Until the day
he got ripped.
It had started off the same as any other day, Fargo had told
me that there were mermaid scales down by the creek, and
so we went looking for them. We had just found a big one
when I heard a low rumble coming from beside me—Fargo was
growling.
He was turned away from the creek, looking at something
behind me. I turned around to see a man I didn’t know. He
wore a washed-out denim jacket and he smelled like cigarettes.
When I looked at him I couldn’t help but get a sinking, uneasy
feeling in my stomach. He smiled.
“Hey kid,” he said, “what are you doing?”
“Collecting mermaid scales,” I answered.
“Oh, is that right?” the man asked, edging towards me. “Well
I’ve got a whole real-life mermaid back at my house, and she’s
just giving away her scales for free. Wanna see?”
I backed up towards the creek.
“Um, no thanks,” I said. “My mom says I’m not supposed to
go off with strangers.”
I could hear Fargo growling again, but the man didn’t seem
to notice.
“Come on, kid, you gonna pass up the chance to see real life
mermaid?” he said, and his grin widened to reveal gaps in his
crooked yellow teeth.
He was still edging closer to me, and I got the sudden urge
to run. I glanced around and saw I was in an elbow in the
creek—the only way out was forward. I picked Fargo up and
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 DEATH AND CANDY

held him out in front of me like a shield. He barked and snapped

at the man, but the man still didn’t stop moving forward.
“Is that for me?” the man asked. He lunged at me. I pulled
back but it was too late, he had swiped Fargo from my hands.
“He’s a cute dog,” the man said.
He reached in his pocket and pulled out a little brown knife.
He clicked a silver button on the side, and a blade popped out.
He stuck the blade into Fargo’s stomach, and Fargo let out a
yelp that the man couldn’t hear. He threw Fargo on the ground
and Fargo lay there whimpering, staring at me with pleading
eyes as his stuffing leaked out onto the ground.
I took another step back and felt my foot sink into the mud.
I had reached the embankment of the creek. I tried to swallow,
but my mouth was dry. My heart pounded in my ears. I had to
run.
The man lunged for me again. I felt his fingers close around
my wrist. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to pretend I was
somewhere else. I heard a scream, and I opened my eyes again
to see the man stumbling backwards, swinging his arms around
wildly. A stray dog was leaping at him, barking and snapping.
The dog clamped his jaws around the arm that wielded the
knife, and the arm spurted blood.
There was a loud rip, and the dog’s jaws came unglued from
the man’s wrist, taking part of the denim jacket with it. The
man slashed the dog across the face, and the dog yelped and
fell back. The man charged, but the dog crouched down low,
sending the man tumbling headlong into the mud of the creek.
The dog leapt at him, and the man scrambled up and bolted,
little flecks of mud flying off behind him as he ran. I could
hear the dog growling somewhere behind me as I watched the
man disappear into the distance. The growling stopped, and I
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 FARGO

turned around to see the dog was gone.

I walked over and picked Fargo up. He wasn’t alive anymore.
His little brown eyes stared at nothing, plastic and empty, and
his stuffing spilled out of the rips in his belly and face.
It wasn’t until I leaned closer and saw the little piece of washed
out denim sticking out of Fargo’s mouth and the flecks of
blood that dotted his muzzle that I remembered the man hadn’t
slashed Fargo’s face at all. He had slashed the stray’s face. My
arms prickled up with goosebumps, and I gently tugged at the
scrap of denim. It slid out of Fargo’s mouth, and the seam that
had always closed up his snout sealed up behind it.
I took Fargo back to my mom, telling her nothing of what
had happened. She stitched him up, admonished me for not
being careful and handed him back. I held him up to my face,
and his eyes sparkled with life.

75
 16

The Empty Body

W
hen we opened the body there was nothing inside.
No organs, no bones—nothing. We were hard-
pressed to even explain how the skin retained its
shape, instead of collapsing like an empty glove. We called the
feds on that one—way above our pay grade, we decided.
A pair of feds was there in an hour. They didn’t look like I
expected. I thought they’d be wearing black suits, sunglasses
and earpieces. Instead they were dressed in white lab coats and
scrubs.
“It’s our job to blend in with the environment,” the first fed
said. “Can you show us to the body?”
I did as I was asked, and we four stared down at the body,
the feds, my technician and me. There’s something about the
fluorescent lights of the morgue that makes the bodies look
unreal. Their flesh is pallid and dull, like a statue from a wax
museum.
“We’re gonna have to call this in,” the first fed said.
The second one reached for his phone, but he never got to
it. The body lurched upright and seized the two agents by the
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 THE EMPTY BODY

throats. Slowly, the flesh of his Y-incision began to knit back

together.
The feds reached for their guns and I collapsed to the ground
with my hand on my heart.
The gunshots tore through the hollow flesh suit, but the
creature continued to squeeze. The agents’ faces turned red
and then purple, their eyes bulging and shot with blood. For a
moment I thought that they were going to pop right off, but I
didn’t stay to find out.
As soon as I got my wits about me I bolted, smashing through
the metal double doors and sprinting up the stairs to the first
floor. My heart was pounding hard in my chest, racing to catch
up with my breath, but my mind was focused on one thought
only: Get as far away from this place as you can.
I hoped my morgue technician had gotten out too, but I didn’t
turn around to check. I jumped in my car and with shaking
hands thrust the key in the ignition. I peeled out of the lot and
onto the main road, frantically swerving my way through the
traffic as I raced towards the police station.
I didn’t know what I’d just seen, but I knew I had to warn
someone. I arrived at the police station a babbling mess. They
sat me in a room with a mirror in it and gave me some water.
They told me to calm down, and there were murmurs behind
my back about putting me in the psych ward for a seventy-two
hour hold.
As soon as I heard that I knew that I had to leave. But as
I opened the door and stepped out into the hallway, I saw
something that made me stop. Four people had come into
the station in lab coats: my technician, the feds, and the man
who’d been on my table.
I went out the back hallway and through the emergency exit.
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 DEATH AND CANDY

I managed to circle back to my car before I heard gunshots

inside.
That night I drove as far as a tank of gas would take me, and
checked into a motel under a fake name. Over the next few
days I watched the news reports for the town, but they didn’t
report anything strange.
Some nights I lie awake and wonder what happened. Were
the police able to put them down? Did the feds come in and
cover it up? Or is there a small town in the American Midwest
that’s full of hollow people, just waiting for the chance to tear
somebody open and hollow them out?
I’m not sure I want to find out.

78
 17

Sexual Predators

S
“ o uh… what do you do for a living?”
“What do I do?” The woman on the barstool next to
me cocked an inquisitive eyebrow. “You’ve been staring
across the bar at me all night,” she said. “You’ve bought me two
drinks, I’ve seen you look at my cleavage no less than three
times, and you want to know what I do for a living?”
“Uhh…”
“You want to fuck me,” she said.
I wasn’t really sure what to say, but I wish I’d at least
remembered to close my mouth.
“Does it really matter what I do?” she went on. “Would
you not want to fuck me if I were an evolutionary biologist
or something?”
“No, I—”
“Good, then let’s get out of here and go fuck each other’s
brains into jelly.”
“Uh, did you say—oof!”
She grabbed my hand and practically yanked me off the bar
stool, dragging me out the door to a black BMW sedan.
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 DEATH AND CANDY

“Oh by the way,” she said once we’d gotten seated, “you’re not
a murderer, right?”
“I—what? Why?” I said flabbergasted. “Do I look like a
murderer?”
“No, but neither did Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer or Rodney
Alcala.”
“Well—”
“Gacy and Manson did though, so I’d say the odds are about
fifty-fifty. I know Krav Maga, just so you know.”
She didn’t wait for my response, she just threw the car into
gear and stomped the gas pedal like she was angry with it.
When we got to her place the clothes flew off so fast I would’ve
thought she had at least eight hands, and it wasn’t two minutes
before she was naked and lowering herself down onto my lap.
“Ahh-” she gasped as she slipped me inside of her, rocking her
hips gently back and forth. The way her body moved was unlike
anything I’d ever seen before, the rhythmic, fluid contortions
like some surreal dance.
My face grew hot and my mind heavy, and soon I could no
longer remember who this woman was, who I was, or where
we were. There was nothing left in the world but the sensual
twisting of her body.
We reached the climax together, and the moans of pleasure
turned into screams as we twisted our sweat-slicked bodies
together.
After it was over I couldn’t move. The whole world was a
haze of pleasure and warm comfort—soft and silent.
And then my lover’s face began to twist, stretching and
bulging out like a rubber mask about to burst at the seams,
and burst it did.
Out of the blood and torn shreds of face emerged a large
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 SEXUAL PREDATORS

insectoid head. I willed my muscles to move, but they would

not cooperate. I realized with horror that she must have done
something to paralyze me.
The insect’s jaw unhinged, stretching wide over my head,
its hot breath invading my nostrils as a ragged black tongue
slid up my cheek. My head slid down the gullet and its throat
squeezed me down like a fleshy vice-grip. And then, for no
discernible reason, I could feel my head sliding back out of the
beast’s maw, the putrid stink of its insides replaced by the cool,
calm fragrance of fresh air.
“Huh,” the insect said.
My heart raced as if trying to catch up with the thoughts in
my head.
“This is usually the part where I would eat you— but…”
My throat made an involuntary gurgling sound and I realized
I’d regained the use of my voice.
“I uh… don’t taste good?” I managed to squeak out.
What a stupid thing to say.
“No, it’s not that,” she said. “You just seem really sweet. I’m
not sure that I want to eat you.”
Her head morphed back into the beautiful woman I’d met at
the bar, and my heart slowed down just a little.
“I don’t think I will,” she said, staring down at me from her
mounted position on my lap.
“Oh, that’s uhh… really great,” I gasped, not knowing what
else to say.
The logical half of my brain was screaming at me to shove her
off of my lap and run as fast as I could in the opposite direction.
But the lonely, desperate half was telling me that there was a
beautiful woman sitting naked on my lap, and what’s more,
she actually seemed to like me. And, that if I offended her, she
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 DEATH AND CANDY

might decide to eat me after all. So I figured I’d better at least

try to make conversation.
“So uh…” my voice sounded dusty and hoarse, “are you a
m-monster?”
“What?” She seemed taken aback. “You think I’m a monster
just because I eat people? Do you think cats are monsters
because they eat mice, or people are monsters for eating
chickens?”
“Uhh…”
“Of course you don’t,” she said. “Although, the chickens
probably think of you as monsters. Then again, chickens are
assholes. Who cares what they think?”
“Oh…okay?”
The room fell silent as we stared at each other for a moment.
“So—”
“You were about to ask me if I wanted go again, right?” she
said, interrupting.
“Um, yeah.”
She grinned devilishly and my mind once again melted away.
My last thought before my consciousness gave way was that I
was lucky she’d interrupted me before I asked what she did for
a living again.

82
 18

Daniel

W
hen I was young I wanted to become a psychiatrist.
My college years, however, proved that I had a
greater aptitude for smoking weed and playing
video games than reading medical textbooks, and when I went
up for medical school I couldn’t get in.
I stayed in college a few more years, racking up debt and
adding another major to my degree so I wouldn’t have to go
to grad school. Eventually, I ended up as a social worker. I did
that job for seven years before I became a teacher, and I’ve got
quite a few stories from that time in my life, some strange and
some sad. This one is both.
I’ve reconstructed below an interview with Daniel ————, a
seven-year-old boy who shot his father to death after the father
murdered Daniel’s mother. The case has stuck with me for
many years, and I’d like to share it with you now.
***
tape clicks on
ME: It’s nice to see you again Daniel.
At this point in the interview Daniel is looking at the floor.
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 DEATH AND CANDY

ME: Do you know why I’m here?

DANIEL: ….
ME: I want to talk about what happened to your father. Do you
remember the story you told detectives?
DANIEL: Yes, sir.
I can hear rustling on the audio tape as I reach into my coat pocket
for a candy, handing it to Daniel.
DANIEL: Thank you, sir.
ME: You’re welcome, Daniel. You’re a very polite young man.
Daniel looks up for a moment before looking at the floor again.
DANIEL: Do you think I’m good, sir?
ME: Yes, Daniel. I think you’re good.
DANIEL: Thank you.
ME: Can you tell me what happened that night, Daniel?
Daniel paused. He rocked uneasily back and forth in his chair.
DANIEL: My dad came home from the bar. He was yelling.
ME: How do you know he came from the bar?
DANIEL: He smelled.
I can hear scribbling as I make a note in my pad.
ME: And then what happened?
DANIEL: He….
ME: It’s okay, Daniel. Just take a deep breath. This is the last time
you’ll have to talk about it.
Daniel’s shoulders slump, and he digs his foot into the carpet.
DANIEL: He started hitting my mom.
ME: And then?
DANIEL: Then he stopped. My mom was crying, so I gave her
Joseph.
ME: Who is Joseph?
DANIEL: He’s my teddy bear. He always makes me feel better
when I’m crying. I thought he would make my mom feel better too.
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 DANIEL

ME: Did he make her feel better?

Daniel nods his head a bit.
DANIEL: I think so. She smiled, but…
ME: But what?
DANIEL: It was the sad kind of smile.
I can hear my pen scribbling against the notepad again. I wince
as I’m listening. This is the part I don’t like to hear.
ME: What happened then, Daniel?
There is a long pause as Daniel stares at the ground. He doesn’t
want to say it, and I don’t blame him. I hear my own voice again,
soft, cajoling, and I feel a twinge of guilt for making him relive those
moments.
ME: It’s okay, Daniel. It’s the last time, I promise.
Daniel’s voice is small and wavering as he answers.
DANIEL: He got his gun.
ME: And then?
DANIEL: He… he shot my mom.
ME: And after that, you ran to your room?
DANIEL: No.
ME: No?
DANIEL: I mean yes. But first I had to grab Joseph.
ME: You had to grab your teddy bear?
DANIEL: Yes. I didn’t want to leave him alone with my dad. He’d
be scared.
I clear my throat.
ME: I see. And then?
DANIEL: I ran into my room and locked my door. My dad tried
to get in. He hit the door. It was really loud, and Joseph was really
scared.
ME: How did he get in?
DANIEL: He broke the door. It was really loud.
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 DEATH AND CANDY

ME: And then?

DANIEL: He pointed the gun at me.
ME: And?
DANIEL: I asked him not to shoot Joseph, but I don’t think he
heard me.
ME: Why’s that?
DANIEL: Because he pulled the trigger anyway.
ME: But he didn’t shoot you.
DANIEL: No. The gun didn’t work. He threw it on the floor.
ME: Then what?
DANIEL: He tried to get me. But he fell. He smashed his nose.
I could hear clothes rustling as I leaned forward.
ME: What happened to the gun, Daniel?
DANIEL: It started floating.
ME: Are you sure?
DANIEL: Yes.
ME: What happened then?
DANIEL: I heard my mom whisper in my ear. She told me to close
my eyes.
ME: And did you?
DANIEL: Yes.
ME: And?
DANIEL: The gun went off.
ME: Did you see what happened to your dad?
DANIEL: No. I kept my eyes closed. Like my mom told me.
ME: Did anything else happen?
DANIEL: No. The police came and put a blanket on me and took
me somewhere. I don’t really remember that part.
ME: You’re sure that’s what happened?
DANIEL: Yes.
ME: Thank you for your time, Daniel. I promise that’s the last
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 DANIEL

time you’ll have to tell that story.

DANIEL: Thank you. I don’t like to tell that story.
ME: I need to go make my report now; I’m going to leave you here
with your aunt and uncle, okay?
DANIEL: Okay.
There’s the sound of a chair being pushed back as I stand up to go.
DANIEL: Mr. Robbins?
ME: Yes, Daniel?
DANIEL: I think about it a lot. Right before I go to sleep.
ME: Well, we can arrange for a counselor to talk—
DANIEL: It’s okay. When I can’t sleep my mom comes. I can’t see
her, but she tells me to close my eyes, and I fall asleep.
ME: That’s good, Daniel. Tell her I said hi.
DANIEL: I will.
***
The recording shuts off there. We did arrange for a counselor
for Daniel, of course. As far as I know he never changed his
testimony.
There was never any real question of who shot Daniel’s dad.
The statements of the neighbors who heard the conflict very
clearly indicated a series of shots followed by silence from the
mother, a series of loud bangs as the father broke down the
door, and finally three more shots, which corresponded with
death of the father. No one else was in the house, and ballistics
showed that the shots were fired from six feet away. Daniel was
the only choice, and officially, he’s the one who shot his father.
Yet I stayed up for a long time that night, wondering if Daniel
had it right. I didn’t really believe that his mother had come
back as a ghost to save him. But in Daniel’s version of reality,
his mother wasn’t just a battered woman who died a pointless
and violent death, she was a hero who defied death to save her
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 DEATH AND CANDY

son. In Daniel’s version he wasn’t scared, he was protecting his

teddy bear, Joseoph. I think, after all he’d been through, that he
deserved to remember the story that way.
Finally, around three in the morning, I gave up thinking about
it. I was only tying myself in knots. But of course, the sleep
would not come. I had just about resigned myself to getting up
early and starting the next day, when I heard a soft whisper in
my ears, telling me to close my eyes.
I slept well that night.

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 19

The Tokyo Subway Demon

T
his story is a retelling of something that happened to
me when I was seven years old. As the years have gone
by and I’ve grown up, I’ve realized that the story cannot
possibly be true, yet I still cannot shake the feeling, deep down,
that it is.
It happened in Tokyo, in the subway station. I don’t remember
which one. I was standing with my father when I saw the demon,
a monstrously tall and furry creature with leathery black wings
and an anteater’s snout. I must have stared at him for close to
ten minutes before he finally spoke, in a soft mutter that was
clearly intended for his ears only.
“This human is creeping me out,” he said. “It almost looks
like it’s looking right at me.”
“I am looking right at you,” I said.
The demon nearly jumped out of his skin. “You can see me?”
he asked.
“Yes. Can’t everybody?”
“Not unless they’re in the fifth dimension.”
“Am I in the fifth dimension?” I asked.
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 DEATH AND CANDY

“Your mind must have slipped over here by mistake. What

were you thinking about before you saw me?”
I thought for a moment, and then smiled.
“Trains.”
“Oh, well trains are the link between our dimensions. I guess
your mind must have just wandered over here. Either that or
you’re going crazy.”
“I hope I’m not going crazy,” I said.
“Being crazy is a good thing in the fifth dimension,” the demon
replied.
I laughed.
“Do you have subway lines in the fifth dimension?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said. “How else would we get to work?”
“You’ve got wings!” I said.
“Yes, but who wants to fly? Taking the train is so much faster,
and if I fly to work then I’m all sweaty when I get there.”
“So what do you use your wings for?” I asked.
“I put them over my head when it rains.”
“Can I see?” I asked.
“Sure,” the demon said. My hair blew back as he swooped his
enormous wings over his head.
I laughed again.
“You’re funny,” I said.
The demon laughed too, but then his expression changed.
“Are you okay?” I asked. “You seem sad.”
“Yes, yes,” the demon replied, not looking at me but at
something behind me. “Say, would you like to see a magic
trick?”
“Okay.”
The demon reached up and tugged a big rainbow handker-
chief out of his snout. He must have pulled out twenty feet
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 THE TOKYO SUBWAY DEMON

before the handkerchief finally stopped.

I laughed, but stopped when I realized I wasn’t holding my
dad’s hand anymore.
I looked around and saw the subway station had disappeared,
replaced by flowing green meadows that were full of old trains.
“I can’t see the subway station anymore,” I said.
“That’s okay,” said the demon. “Sometimes it’s better to see
what isn’t there instead of what is.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sometimes when I’m bored or sad, my mind slips off to the
third dimension, and I see people like you.”
“That’s funny,” I said, laughing. “Can you go to other
dimensions, too?”
But the demon didn’t answer, he was looking up at the sky.
“It’s starting to rain,” he said, whooshing his wings up over
his head.
Warm droplets of water began to hit my face.
“Can I get under your wings with you?” I asked.
“Not now,” he replied. “You’ve got to go home.”
The world began to shimmer and flow together like different
shades of green and golden paint, spinning around faster and
faster in circles until everything was bright white light. I started
to feel a little sick, and I closed my eyes. The world stopped
spinning, but warm droplets of water still fell on my face.
I opened my eyes and saw my mom crying over me, but I
didn’t see my dad.
“Where’s dad?” I asked her. “Did he bring me home?”
“Yes, honey,” she said, although she didn’t look at me when
she said it. “He brought you home and then he had to go away.”
“Oh,” I replied. “When will he be back?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
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My dad never did come back, and it was years before I found
out the truth—he had killed himself that day. That morning he
had written a note to my mother explaining that he intended
to bring me along and step in front of the train with me. My
mother found it when she got home from work and called the
police, but it was too late to stop my father. The witnesses say
that just before he jumped I pulled away from his hand and ran
off, fainting right after. But one of the witnesses, a little boy
around my age, said that he saw something take my hand and
lead me away from the speeding train.
He said it was a monstrously tall and furry creature, with
leathery black wings and an anteater’s snout.

92
 20

Birthing a Monster

I
n the eighth month of her pregnancy, my wife suffered a
complication that required emergency surgery. When she
woke up and I told her the surgery had been successful,
her reaction was nothing short of terrifying.
She didn’t seem happy, didn’t utter any words of relief, she
just slowly reached down to her belly; her eyes widened for a
moment, and then she began to cry.
The tears were silent, but the expression on her face made
the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I had to repress a
shudder as I asked her what was wrong, but she ignored me.
Instead of answering she began to scream; her whole body
shaking as she thrashed and wailed; tearing out tufts of her hair
and throwing them on the ground. I kept asking her what was
wrong but she wouldn’t answer.
All of a sudden she went completely silent. She raised one
hand. She paused for a moment—our eyes locked—and she
brought her hand down with all her strength, plunging her long
fingernails into her stomach. She tore at her stomach with such
fevered ferocity that I was sure she would rip it open.
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 DEATH AND CANDY

I grabbed hold of her wrists and with great effort I managed to

wrestle them down next to her sides. I had to use the restraints
on the rails of the bed; once I did her whole body suddenly
went limp, as if she was too weak to move.
I sat down beside her bed; I could hear my voice shaking as I
tried desperately to calm her down.
“It’s alright, honey. It was just a small complication after all.
Soon we’ll have a beautiful baby boy. Our son. It’ll all be worth
it then.”
She slowly turned her head towards me. Her eyes were dead,
devoid of humanity. She began whispering, her head rolling
limply to one shoulder. I leaned in close to hear what she was
saying. It was just one sentence, repeated over and over.
Get it out of me.
She refused to speak at all for the next week. Sometimes she
would just lay there, totally limp and motionless. Other times
she would scream and pull at her restraints until her wrists
bled. I tried calming her down, telling her that this was a good
thing. I brought her baby clothes and her favorite foods, but
nothing I did could reach her. Finally, after a week, she went
into contractions.
As soon as the baby came out, it was clear that something
had gone horribly wrong. The stench was unbearable; a sick,
nauseatingly sweet smell—but the baby was worse. Its head was
overly large, its eyes bulging and bloodshot, and the skin was
black and ragged; sloughing off in my hands when I touched it.
It was a miracle that my wife survived the birth. I tell myself
that we’re lucky for that, even if our son was born dead. She
seems to be relieved that the pregnancy is over, but I just keep
going over everything horrible that’s happened in my head. It
tore my heart out when she gave birth to our third stillborn
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 BIRTHING A MONSTER

son, and it was even worse when I had to force-feed her those
pills so that I could perform the surgery to put him back inside
of her.
I know that if we’re going to hold our marriage together
through this tragedy we’ll both need something to look forward
to. I think I’ll go tell her I’m ready to try again; maybe it will
cheer her up.

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 21

Dreams of Death

E
very night when I go to sleep I watch somebody die.
For a long time I thought it was only nightmares,
until I watched my sixth-grade teacher Ms. Harden
die of a heart attack in her sleep, and the next day discovered
that she really had died. I’ve seen a few other people I know die
since then, but usually it’s strangers.
It’s a terrible curse to have—watching people die in your
dreams, and I’ve tried everything from hypnosis to antipsy-
chotics to get rid of it. But I’m not writing this to tell you about
my bizarre medical condition. I’m writing it because of the last
dream that I had.
After two days straight of being awake I finally resigned
myself to my nightmares and succumbed to sleep. That night’s
dream was… well, I don’t know how to describe it. So I’ll just
tell you what I saw.
The dream was in a darkened room, lit by a circle of flickering
candles that lined the walls. In the center was a chair, and on
the chair sat a woman, naked, bound and gagged, her body
convulsing with violent sobs.
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 DREAMS OF DEATH

A robed figure approached from the shadows. As he drew

closer, the woman began to struggle violently against her bonds,
so that the screeching sounds of the metal chair rocking back
and forth on cement echoed in the silence of the room.
The man let down his hood, and I was surprised to see that
he looked perfectly ordinary. If he felt any emotion his face did
not betray it as he drew a long and slender blade from beneath
his robes. He plunged it into the woman’s chest, and she began
to shriek and moan, pulling so hard against her restraints that
her wrists sprayed blood all over her surroundings.
She didn’t die, though. At least not right away.
The man twisted the knife and then pulled it out. The
woman’s breath came in ragged gasps around her gag. And then
I saw something that made me physically sick. Two shadowy
black hands reached out from the wound in her chest and sunk
their claws into her flesh, causing little rivulets of blood to
bubble out where they had pierced the skin.
Then they began to push, spreading the wound wider and
wider.
The woman shrieked and moaned, and her body shook with
frantic spasms, but the hands continued to pull.
Soon the hole was large enough for a shadowy black head
to emerge, dripping some sort of black goo that sizzled and
smoked as it dripped on the woman’s flesh. The creature
pushed its shoulders out next, and I could hear the sound of
the woman’s ribs snapping like twigs as her body folded and
collapsed in on itself, peeled off of the shadow body like a rubber
glove.
The shadowy black form fully emerged, and the robed man
came forth and draped a crimson robe just like his own around
it.
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 DEATH AND CANDY

The creature’s face began to change texture and color, until it

resembled a human with no face. The robed man touched the
creature’s forehead, and the skin began to bubble and melt like
hot wax, until the creature had taken on the appearance of an
ordinary human.
I realized with sudden urgency that I’d been holding my
breath the whole time this was happening, and I began to gasp
as my heart beat loudly in my ears. The man turned in my
direction, and for a moment I thought he’d noticed me.
But he turned back to the creature and whispered something
in its ear before fading back to the shadows.
The newly robed creature, now with the appearance of a
man, walked over to the crumpled and eviscerated body of the
woman and dipped its hand inside her chest.
He began drawing something on the floor. My view was
obstructed by its back, so I could not see what it was writing.
When it was finished it rose to his feet and followed the robed
man into the shadows.
I squinted at what was written in the blood on the floor, and
through the flickering candlelight I could only just make out
the words, “We know you’re watching.”

98
 22

Demon Possession for Beginners

W
hen most people think of demon possession
they picture the classic projectile vomiting, head
spinning around variety. While that does happen,
it’s mostly novice demons who cause that, the vomiting and
abnormal behavior being a result of the host’s mind rejecting
the possession. In reality, most demon possessions are a lot
subtler. They’re the little voice that tells you that you’re fine
to drive when you know you’ve had too much, or that you can
cheat on your wife just this once and no one will ever find
out. Or, if you’ve ever known someone with dementia who got
really mean towards the end, you’re like as not looking at the
work of a demon.
Dementia demons are mostly novices though. They do it
because old broken minds don’t fight back, so it’s pretty much
impossible to screw up. And if you’re in hell you want good stats
on your first possession, otherwise you’ll get kicked right to the
back of the line and you won’t see another chance for thousands
of years. Oh, I almost forgot about the line. Everybody in hell
gets a number in the line, and the more evil you do with each
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 DEATH AND CANDY

possession, the better your place in line next time around. So

if you’re lucky enough to get a possession, you’d better wreak
havoc, and try not to get exorcised or killed. It used to be Hell
trying to keep track of the paperwork of who went where, but
things are running a lot more smoothly with the new computer
system. We’re still way behind earth technology of course—we
don’t get a lot of computer engineers down here for some
reason. Though for some reason we’ve got an overabundance
of salespeople though.
But back to the line. Before you can even hop in the line,
you’ve got to go through what basically amounts to demon
college. They call it a college but it’s really more like those
corporate training seminars they have in America. Satan
wanted it to be soul crushing, after all. Most of the introductory
stuff is boring, like how to take control of the mind of your
victim. That really is the foundation for everything though,
because if you can’t do that your victim’s mind will kick you
right out and you’ll be back in Hell, at the back of the line
with a failure of possession charge on your record. And you
definitely don’t want that. The advanced stuff is where it gets
more interesting, and you get to choose a specialty.
Most people go into Addiction, because it’s one of the easiest
majors and you get a reasonable amount of time before your
host OD’s or just gets used up. Some people go into Mental
Illness, but that can get you institutionalized, and you don’t
really get to have fun with your new body if you’re stuck in a
padded room all day. There’s also a dictator class-Professor
Hitler teaches that one. But not many people take it. Not only is
it impractical, Hitler always ends up going on some tangential
rant about Jews for like forty minutes every class. We get it
Hitler, you don’t like Jews. The professional serial killer class is
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 DEMON POSSESSION FOR BEGINNERS

pretty popular though. There are a lot of wannabe serial killers

in hell, and it gives amazing stats if you can pull it off on earth.
Ten or more victims and you’re allowed to jump the line and
possess another body without even going back to Hell first.
The last thing you should know about demon possession
is how it happens. After all, you want to avoid it if you can.
The most common is Ouija board use. People will accidentally
summon up a demon , and by letting it control their hands they
allow their consciousness to overlap with that of the demon.
The demon sneaks in through that window. If it’s a particularly
talented demon it can fragment its consciousness and possess
everyone with their hands on the board. The same thing can
happen with séances. Most demons will choose the weakest
link, but some will be able to possess everyone in the room.
Anyway, I’m afraid this is where my story ends. My host body
is dying and typing is getting pretty exhausting. But before I
leave you there’s one more thing I want to tell you. The most
ancient and skilled demons need only the tiniest overlap in
consciousness to possess you. They may only need to converse
with you for a moment, or even just trick you into reading
something that they’ve written. Maybe a story that distracts
you just long enough for them to slip in unnoticed. You may feel
uneasy or paranoid when it happens, or you may feel nothing
at all.
How do you feel now?

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 23

The First Thing to Die

T
he goldfish was the first thing to die. Goldfish die
sometimes, right? That’s no reason to suspect foul
play, certainly no reason to suspect the children had
anything to do with it.
Only then all the class potato plants died. The class project,
shriveled up, blackened and dead. The kids said the plants
looked just like dead snakes. You know kids; they’ve got such
vivid imaginations.
Ms. Robbins died next. She had a heart attack right there
in class, and the kids just sat there and watched. They found
her dead with the phone in her hand, the line cut clean in two.
Must have been some kid playing with scissors, right?
The substitute broke her leg on the way to work; slipped on
a patch of ice—would you believe it? Had to have surgery to
get it fixed. There was a complication and she died on the table.
Too much anesthesia.
The class pen pals stopped writing back. When the adminis-
tration tried to contact the other school, nobody answered the
phone. Maybe the secretary was let go.
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 THE FIRST THING TO DIE

It was old John Anderson who found the abandoned church

in the woods. He said he found it by the smell. The place was
littered with torn up animal carcasses. We always thought there
were coyotes in those woods. Can’t let kids go playing out there
anymore.
The town pets started to disappear; we figured the coyotes
must be coming into town. People started carrying their guns
with them; never know when you might see a coyote.
John Anderson had his throat cut, and his children disap-
peared. Could have been those child traffickers. Sometimes
they come up from the border and take kids back down to
Mexico.
Paula Torrini vanished too, but they found her intestines
smeared on the ceiling. The kids were gone, and there was a
trail of blood leading out to the forest. The town police started
shooting coyotes on sight.
The kids started to sing nursery rhymes about Ms. Robbins,
John Anderson and Paula Torrini. They sang about the devil’s
hands, dragging us down to Hell. The school banned nursery
rhymes. It didn’t help.
People barricaded themselves in their homes; the phone lines
all went dead. Some people tried to leave, but their cars went
off the road. People fell asleep at the wheel or blew a tire. It
happens.
On the night of June the seventh, the kids all disappeared.
Bloody trails led out to the woods, but the church was burnt to
ash. They couldn’t figure out the cause. The fire marshal said
lightning must have hit the roof. Set the dry wood off.
After the kids left the adults all drifted out of town. No sense
sticking around. It’s the strangest thing: I can’t remember the
place’s name. People forget things, I guess.
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 DEATH AND CANDY

The plants in my garden died last night. Went all black and
shriveled up.
Look like dead snakes.
Sometimes at night, I can hear the voices of children, singing
nursery rhymes.
They sing about Ms. Robbins, Darren Anderson and Paula
Torrini, being dragged down to Hell by the devil’s hands.
Last night, after the plants in my garden died, they added my
name to the list.

104
 24

I’m a Demon. Help Me Out?

I
’m a monster.
I don’t mean that in the sense that I’m a terrible person
or anything like that; I mean it in the sense that I’m a
monstrous Hell-creature that feeds off human fear and misery.
You may be wondering why I’m writing this to you, and I’d be
glad to tell you the reason. It’s because I need your help. I’ll get
to the specifics in a moment, but first I’d like to explain why it
is that I need your help.
About sixteen hundred years ago, some practitioners of black
magic discovered an ancient Latin text and summoned me to
this plane of existence to do their bidding. Only, one of the
warlocks, Adriel I think his name was, messed the ritual up so
badly that I was no longer bound to do their will. Apparently,
they wanted me to enact an apocalypse that would destroy the
current world order and set them up as leaders. I decided that
sounded like quite a bit of work, and wound up eviscerating
them instead.
I might have enacted the apocalypse anyway, after a good long
nap, but Adriel’s screw-up also caused me to be summoned with
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 DEATH AND CANDY

only a tiny fraction of my power.

Even so, I left Adriel alive, mostly because he seemed like
a good lad. He went on to become a baker later on if I recall
correctly.
So, with nothing else to do, I burned the summoning scroll
and went back to my own plane of existence, where I had been
tormenting lost souls with my kids. However, it seems like I
should have killed Adriel after all, because unbeknownst to me,
he had transcribed the summoning ritual and bequeathed it to
his children after he died. The scroll was lost for centuries, until
one of Adriel’s modern descendants discovered it in his great-
grandfather’s attic while preparing for an after-death estate
sale.
He decided to get it translated out of curiosity, and afterwards
he decided that the contents would make a great foundation
for one of those dumb creepy stories that people post on the
internet. He even included the original Latin incantation for
flavor. This was a few years ago when the fad of internet horror
stories was still booming. To my great surprise and distress, my
summoning instructions became somewhat popular. At this
point, I hadn’t been to Earth in over a thousand years, and at
that time I had been summoned by the most powerful of dark
wizards.
Now, every few days I was being whisked out of Hell by some
drunk teenagers shining flashlights up at their face in their
bathroom trying to scare each other.
You see, a long time ago, when literacy was exceptionally rare,
my summoning ritual was extremely complicated. But in the
days of booming literacy rates and Google translate, it’s become
absurdly easy.
Luckily for me, though, Adriel didn’t just fuck up when he
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 I’M A DEMON. HELP ME OUT?

summoned me, he fucked up when he transcribed the ritual

as well, so that I’m not bound to anyone’s will when I get sum-
moned. That’s a good thing, because drunk human teenagers
usually ask me to do some pretty weird stuff. However, I still
only get summoned with a tiny fraction of my full power, so I
usually just terrify them to their very core before dashing off
back to Hell so to play with my kids.
That was until Lucy.
Last month some six-year-old girl found my summoning
ritual online, and decided to try it out. By chance, she got the
ending right. I suppose it was bound to happen eventually;
it was only a small mistake that Adriel had made in the
transcription after all.
The problem is that she’s not actually evil in any sense of the
word. She’s managed to summon a demon capable of bringing
about the Apocalypse, and she has me do things like materialize
cotton candy and puppies out of thin air.
Her parents are always flabbergasted when they arrive to
pick her up from school and she’s surrounded by at least eight
puppies.
At this point, I don’t even care about destroying humans and
feasting on their souls anymore, I’d really just like to go back
home. So I’m asking for your help. I need someone here to
complete my banishing ritual so I can go back to Hell and live
in peace.
It’s actually quite simple, you just draw a pentagram in a
mirror, light seven candles and read the following words:
Daemonum Magister ab antiquo,
dono tibi mea corpus, gratia liberabo vos
ego vivere invite vos intra corpus mea
ego immolo anima mea
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 DEATH AND CANDY

nos vanae humanae creaturae,

nos apetimus mortis et infernus
producat in fine hominis
Amen
So if anyone could help me out it would be greatly appreci-
ated.

108
 25

Sleeping with the Corpses Next Door

T
he doctors have always told my mom that I have
something called ‘dissociative hallucinations.’ They
think that just because I’m a kid I don’t know what
that means, but I do. It means they think I’m crazy. Adults all
think that just because they can’t see something that means it
isn’t real, but the truth is that the things I see are just as real as
what they see—maybe even more real.
That’s because when I look at people, I see what they look like
on the inside. I don’t mean that I see their organs and bones
and stuff, I mean that I see who they really are. A kind-hearted
old woman looks like a radiant angel to me, and a vacuous
supermodel like someone suffering from an unfortunate birth
defect.
When I look at pictures in my school textbooks of notorious
dictators or criminals throughout history, all I can see are
bloated corpses with worms poking out of holes in their rotted
flesh.
So when our new neighbor moved in, his head caved in
and maggots nesting in his brain, I knew that he was not to
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be trusted. He came by the same afternoon he moved in to

introduce himself.
“My name’s Jim,” he said, extending a hand to my mother and
grinning. I gagged as black pus oozed out of the lines in his
cheeks.
“Oh, it’s nice to meet you!” my mom said. “I was wondering
who had moved in across the street.”
Jim crouched down so that his rotted face was at eye level
with me.
“And what’s your name, little girl?” he asked, grinning even
wider and sticking his hand out at me.
I didn’t say anything.
“Oh Annie, you’re being so rude,” my mom said with her
customary exasperated sigh. “Sorry Jim, she’s a bit shy.”
“Oh that’s okay,” Jim said, grinning with every part of his
rotted face except for his eyes. “I’m sure she’ll grow out of that
soon.”
He placed his hands on his knees and pushed himself back to
his feet.
“I’ve got a daughter her age, too,” he said. “Annie ought to
come visit for a sleepover, sometime. I’d love for little Lucy to
have some friends in the neighborhood.”
“Oh that sounds like a great idea,” my mom replied. “How
about we set one up this weekend?”
“Sounds good to me,” Jim said. “Well, I’ve got some errands
to run, so I’ll see you later, neighbor.” He gave my mother a
cheerful grin and looked at me one last time before he left.
I looked up my mom as soon as she shut the door.
“That man’s a bad man,” I said.
My mom sighed.
“Don’t be silly, Annie.” She paused, then added nervously,
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 SLEEPING WITH THE CORPSES NEXT DOOR

“You’re not…seeing things again are you?”

“No, mom.”
It had been a very long time since I had answered that question
honestly.
Despite my protests, that weekend I met Lucy. She was a
pleasant girl, and pretty despite a few scars. Most children are
pure-hearted and blemish-free, so I was surprised to see the
scars, but they didn’t bother me.
The sleepover came and went without event, the only weird
part being when Mr. Avery made us sit on his lap so he could
read us a story.
The weekend sleepovers continued after that, and although I
liked Lucy a lot, I always felt a bit uneasy at her house. At first
it was just the walking corpse of her father that set me on edge,
but soon I noticed that every time I visited Lucy would have
at least one more scar. The more time passed, the more she
began to resemble her dad, her flesh slowly becoming a ragged
patchwork of scars and bruises, her eyes seething with quiet
rage that hid beneath a placid exterior.
The day that things came to a head was just a normal sleep
over like any other, until Lucy’s father came home, clothes
askew and smelling like the bottle of rubbing alcohol my mother
kept under the kitchen sink. He barged into Lucy’s room,
interrupting our game of truth-or-dare and seizing Lucy by the
arm, bending down to whisper something in her ear.
As Lucy listened her eyes widened to the size of milk saucers,
and a terrified look stole over the patchwork of scars that made
up her face.
“Y-you can’t…” she mumbled. “Annie’s here…”
Mr. Avery’s grip tightened around his daughter’s arm until
his knuckles were white, and the whispering grew into a hiss.
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Her shoulders slumped, and her whole body seemed to go limp

with resignation. And then, something terrible happened.
As Mr. Avery whispered in his daughter’s ear, the skin of her
face began to stretch, pulling apart down the middle like cloth
tearing at the seams, black pus slowly oozing down from the
wound. A new scar was being formed, right before my very
eyes.
I knew I couldn’t just stand by and watch, and so I screamed
the first thing that popped into my head.
“I know what you are!”
The words sounded stupid coming out of my mouth, but
Mr. Avery’s jaw dropped a bit, and his grip around Lucy’s arm
slackened.
“You…what?” he said, seemingly dumbfounded that a
stranger’s child had dared to question his authority in his
own house.
“I know what you are,” I said. “You’re a monster. And you’re
hurting her. I won’t let you do it anymore.”
Mr. Avery let go of Lucy’s arm and stood up straight as a rail.
His surprise had turned to anger, and his eyes narrowed into
slits.
“I will not have my parenting questioned by a child,” he said
through clenched teeth. “You get out of my house right now,
and don’t you ever come back.”
I wanted to hit him. I wanted to grab Lucy by the arm and run
away with her, but the sight of that disfigured monster rooted
my feet to the ground. And then, like a coward, I turned tail
and ran.
I got grounded for two weeks for my disrespect to Lucy’s
father, and the next time I saw Lucy around the neighborhood
she was covered in so many scars that she was completely
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 SLEEPING WITH THE CORPSES NEXT DOOR

unrecognizable. I only knew it was her by her clothes and

her ragged denim backpack with pink marker drawings of cats
all over it.
As I saw Lucy becoming more and more disfigured, I began
to grow angry. That man had taken my friend from me, he had
taken away her happiness and nobody around me seemed to
care. The more I thought about it the more hateful I grew, and
before long ugly red scars began to rip their way through my
own face.
I knew I couldn’t let him win. I couldn’t let him get away with
whatever he was doing to hurt my friend.
So, I hatched a plan.
One day when my parents were working late I snuck into my
dad’s closet and opened his safe. I knew the combination was
my parent’s anniversary. Inside I found what I was looking for:
my father’s antique Colt .45 revolver and a cardboard box of
ammo. I loaded the gun and wrapped it up in grocery bags so
nobody would see what it was. Then I walked across the street
to Lucy’s house.
I rang the doorbell and as I stood on the porch a panicked
thought suddenly rushed through my head—what if someone
else opened the door? What would I do? What would I say?
My heartbeat pounded in my ears as I heard footsteps
approach from the other side. The knob turned, my mouth
went dry, and the gun seemed to grow heavier in my grip.
The door opened and there stood Mr. Avery, mouth slightly
agape.
His expression quickly turned to anger. “I thought I told you
that you weren’t—”
BANG
The gunshot shattered the peaceful air of the quiet suburban
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neighborhood, and Mr. Avery stumbled back, clutching his

bleeding stomach.
I hit the ground as the gun kicked me back, ears ringing from
the shot. I struggled back to my feet as the world span and
blood rushed into my head.
BANG
The air shattered again, and Mr. Avery fell down. He didn’t
get back up. The ground beneath me span so fast I felt as if I
would fly off the earth. And then, I felt myself falling, and all I
saw was darkness.
I woke up in the hospital two weeks later. The doctors said
I’d hit my head on the pavement when the gun kicked back, and
slipped into a coma when I got to the hospital. In the two weeks
that I was out, girls in the neighborhood had come out about
horrible things that had happened at Mr. Avery’s sleepovers.
The adults assumed he’d done the same to me, and they told
me that the DA had declined to press charges against me, even
as a juvenile.
To this day, I still know that what I did that day wasn’t justice.
But I also know something else.
I know that every time I saw Lucy after that, she had at least
one less scar. And that’s good enough for me.

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 26

Slaughter in the Park

A
girl alone on a bench—a strange sight at two A.M.
It piqued my curiosity, and so I went and sat down
beside her.
“It’s not often you see a pretty girl alone so late at night,” I
said.
“Is that what I am?” she asked. “A pretty girl?”
“Yes,” I replied. “I think so, anyway.”
“Thank you,” she said. “He thought so too.”
“Who is that?” I asked.
The woman didn’t answer. A cool breeze rustled through the
trees behind us, carrying with it the scent of a coming nighttime
rain.
“You’d better get inside,” I said. “You can smell the rain on the
air.”
“I like the rain,” she said. “It makes me feel at peace.”
I paused for a moment and scanned the park. The moonlight
shone through the trees on empty patches of grass. No one else
was here.
“Did you have a fight with your boyfriend?” I asked. “Is that
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why you’re out here all alone?”

“Not with my boyfriend, no,” she replied.
“So you had a fight with somebody then,” I said.
“In a manner of speaking yes,” she replied. “And in another
manner of speaking, no.”
“I don’t get what you mean.”
For the first time the woman turned to me, and I noticed
there was something off about her eyes, a peculiar glassed-over
quality.
“Is it a fight when you slaughter an animal?” she said.
At this I felt a cold prickling up the back of my neck, and I had
the distinct sense that somebody was behind me, watching. I
wanted to turn around, but I dared not tear my eyes away from
the woman. So instead I swallowed hard and answered.
“No,” I replied. “It’s not a fight.”
“Then it wasn’t a fight I had,” she said. “It was a slaughter.”
She looked up to the moon and let out a heavy sigh.
“It’s almost funny,” she said. “That in the span of a few short
seconds a life can be snuffed out, forever.”
My hands gripped painfully tight against the wood of the
bench as I tried to remain calm.
“I think I’d better go now,” I said, making a motion to rise.
“No,” the woman said, surprisingly forcefully. “You can go in
a moment. But for now you have to stay.”
At that very moment I heard footsteps coming from behind,
crushing the dead fall leaves as they approached.
“Don’t turn around,” said the woman. “You’ll ruin everything.”
The footsteps continued to approach, growing steadily closer.
“It’s almost time,” the woman whispered.
The steps were right behind us now, and I heard the sound
of a gun being cocked behind my head. Paralyzed with fear,
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I closed my eyes and said my prayers. Suddenly there was a

scream, and I could move again.
I leapt up from the bench and turned around to see something
impossible. A man was sprawled on the ground, a gun inches
away from his outstretched fingers. The woman dug her
fingernails into the man’s throat and ripped it out, tossing his
windpipe aside like garbage before dissolving into nothing, like
an ephemeral morning mist chased off by the day’s first hint of
wind.
When the police questioned me that night, I told them I had
found the man like that. My lawyer got me out of jail in a few
days, and later on informed me that they police declined to
pursue an investigation into me when the ballistics run on the
man’s gun matched seventeen open murders in the city.
His last victim had been a nineteen-year-old girl named
Annabelle. I saw her picture when the news broke about the
man’s murder. Chills ran down my spine. I’d seen that woman
before, on a park bench at two in the morning.

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 27

The Box

I
t seemed like just an ordinary box.
The wood was old and weathered, the fastenings were
heavy brass, and the lid was inlaid with an ornate silver
symbol a bit like a sickle.
My father had willed it to me after the state executed him for
murder. He left no explanation or instructions, only the small,
mysterious wooden box.
At first, I considered tossing it into the river. The last thing I
wanted was a reminder of the man that had abandoned his son
in favor of a life of violence.
But, curiosity won out, and I decided I might as well look
inside. Opening the box, however, was easier said than done.
Attempts to pry open the latches with my hands yielded only
abraded fingers and broken nails.
Screwdrivers were snapped, hammers were shattered, and
drill motors were burnt out. Yet the contents of the box
remained out of reach, encased in a wooden tomb determined
not to yield its secrets.
Eventually I gave up. I told myself that whatever was inside
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was not worth the effort, and I did my best to forget about it.
But the box would not allow me to forget so easily, and, one
night while I was sleeping, it opened of its own accord.
I awoke to an eerie silver luminescence that filled my bed-
room. A deep sense of pervasive cold chilled the surroundings
to absolute stillness. As I sat up in my bed I was overwhelmed by
a sense of unfamiliarity, as if I had been transported somewhere
that looked very much like my bedroom, but was home to
someone, or something else.
The silver light emanated from beneath my closet door,
lending a sense of unreality to everything that it bathed in its
pallid sheen; casting odd shadows that seemed to creep and
move in unnatural ways.
I could feel myself standing up, though I had not willed myself
to do so, and slowly, quietly, I crept towards the closet. My
fingertips brushed the knob, recoiling for a moment from the
penetrating cold. Then resolutely, firmly, I grasped it, and
pulled the door open to reveal the box.
The hinges had sprung wide open. The light that spilled
forth was piercing and intense. The light burned my eyes, yet I
could not tear my gaze away. I could feel myself falling slowly
forward into an abyss of silver light that enveloped my horizon
and became my entire being.
Just before it swallowed me, the box snapped shut, and I found
myself on the floor, my sweat-drenched cheek pressed tight
against the cold rough wood of the lid.
I pushed myself back to my feet. The eerie silver light was
gone, and my room seemed once again my own. Yet something
was still not right. The cheek that had touched the box, was
throbbing with a burning pain. I wandered into the bathroom
and flipped on the light, and gasped at the reflection staring
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back at me from the mirror.

The symbol on top of the box was burned into my cheek. I
reached up to touch it, but as I did so it faded.
My experience with the box changed me. I can feel a
malevolent presence inside, an unwelcome guest inside my
mind.
I find myself missing time, awaking in strange locales with
blood splattered on my clothing. Animals started going missing
in my neighborhood. After that, it was people.
And yesterday, I received from my lawyer, asking for clarifi-
cation on the amendment I had made to my will.
He wondered why the only thing I wanted to leave my son
when I died was an antique wooden box.

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 28

Handles

T
he first time I saw one of the handles I thought I
was dreaming. My mother had just woken me up for
school, and when she turned to leave the room I saw a
big brass handle sticking out of the back of her head. The hair
around it was matted with blood from where it plunged into
her skin, and it was slowly and steadily revolving like one of
those old-fashioned wind-up toys.
Before I could process what I’d seen, my little sister ran into
my room screaming “Wake up lazy!” and started spinning
around in circles as she jumped on my bed. She had a handle too,
a small silver one that poked through her dark hair, spinning
so fast that it was nearly just a silvery blur flicking little drops
of blood around as it spun.
When I went to school that day I saw that everybody had a
handle, some silver, some brass, some copper and some even
gold. Most of the students had small silver ones like my sister,
spinning so fast you could hardly see them, and most of the
adults had handles that spun slowly steadily like my mother’s.
The old history teacher Mr. Binns had a big copper handle
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that was creaking so slowly it looked like it could stop at any

moment.
Being young and stupid, I decided to see what would happen
if I touched one. I figured Mr. Binns would be the safest choice.
After class I walked up behind him and touched it with my index
finger. As soon as my finger brushed the cold metal, Mr. Binns
let out a loud gasp and collapsed like wet paper. His handle had
stopped and fallen out of the back of his head. Black smoke
billowed from the hole it had left behind.
There was shouting, panic; chaos. Someone called an
ambulance and the paramedics pronounced him dead on arrival.
They later said that it was a brain aneurysm, and that he had
died instantly. But I felt responsible, whether it had been my
fault or not, and I resolved never to touch another handle again.
Unfortunately, I would make a mistake. I allowed myself to
go out on a few dates with a girl from my math class named Lily,
and as time went on, I knew it was unavoidable that at some
point I would accidentally touch her handle. I told myself there
was no reason to worry, over and over again until I started to
believe it. After all, I couldn’t be totally sure that it was really
me who’d caused Mr. Binns’s death. He had been old. Perhaps
it had only been a coincidence.
One night, when my parents were out on the town, I invited
Lily over. While we were kissing on the couch my hands strayed
just a little too far. I’d no sooner felt the metal than she had
collapsed on top of me.
Her breathing went from hot and fast, to wheezing gasps, to
nothing at all in the span of a few seconds; I panicked and did
the first thing that came to mind—I seized her handle in my
hands and began cranking it back with all my might. When I
couldn’t force it back anymore I let go and it started spinning
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again, but slowly. Her breath came back to her, but she never
woke up again. She died two days later, and when I tried to
crank her handle up again, it just came off in my hands, and
black smoke poured out the back of her head.
I took her death a lot harder than Mr. Binns’s. I became
a shut-in; swore that I’d never accidentally touch anyone
else’s handle again. And that’s how I’ve been living ever
since. It’s not easy, but I get by. I work from home, and I
get supplemental disability checks from the government. My
existence is tolerable monotony.
Only, yesterday, I noticed something strange. Overnight my
own handle had gone from one that was small, fast, and silver,
to a large copper one that spun so slowly it was barely moving.
I never knew that facing death would hit me so hard. After
all, my entire life has been spent in loneliness and misery.
Yet there’s something about the imminent finality of total
nothingness that makes you want to drink in every detail
around you, every sight; every sound; every touch. And so
I decided to break my rule, and to set out to enjoy my last few
days on Earth. But I have found no pleasure in outside life, only
horror.
Every person I’ve seen since leaving the house has the same
big, copper handle as mine. And they’re all spinning in sync, so
slowly they could stop at any moment.

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 29

A is for Addiction

T
he day I met Annie was the day fate threw me under
the bus.
I first saw her standing outside of a head shop in the
freezing rain. She looked as if she’d once been pretty, but the
skin of her face had hollowed and shrunken around the bones
into the unmistakable mask of a habitual drug user. I stood
under the overhang of the shop and held my hand out, letting a
few drops of the icy rain splatter across my palm.
“If you just stay outside in the rain you’re gonna get pneumo-
nis,” I said.
The movement of her lips was barely perceptible in the neon
red glow of the shop’s signs as she responded, “That’s the plan.”
“There are quicker ways to kill yourself,” I said.
“I don’t want to kill myself,” she replied. “I just want to go to
the hospital.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Pain meds.”
“You get pain meds for pneumonia?”
“Codeine cough syrup if I’m coughing blood,” she said.
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“Maybe better if I’m lucky enough to deflate a lung.”

I handed her a cigarette.
“That should help you get pneumonia,” I said.
She moved under the shop’s overhang with me and pulled a
lighter out from her soaked jacket.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Nobody gives anything away for free. Especially not to girls
and especially not to girls like me. If you want me to suck your
dick for oxy you’re barking up the wrong tree. I’d rather just
get pneumonia.”
“I don’t have any oxy,” I said flatly.
“Well we’ve got that in common, at least.”
She took a long drag and eyed me up and down.
“What’s your problem?” she asked.
I pulled out the little purple baggie containing the ‘synthetic
weed’ I’d purchased from the shop.
“Are you retarded?” she scoffed. “That shit is toxic.”
“More toxic than pneumonia?”
She clicked her tongue.
“You want some better shit?” she asked.
I shrugged. “I’m up for it,” I replied.
“Good,” she said. “You’re buying, and I get twenty percent for
introducing you.”
I shrugged again.
“You can drive,” she said. “I don’t have a car.”
After we got the heroin, Annie insisted on following me back
to my place to make sure I didn’t, in her words, “nod out and die
like a bitch.” She also invited a friend, Darren, to come along
with one of his ‘girlfriends.’ We had a good time that night, and
soon, I was part of a smoke circle. They were the closest thing
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I’d ever had to real friends. We were fully disillusioned; it was

us against the normal people.
But any group is only as stable as its foundation, and we were
on one hell of an unstable foundation.
The first clue that something wrong was happening was when
we all started waking up with cuts and bruises. Every night
Darren, Annie and I would black out, and the next morning
we’d be beat to shit.
After a week we looked like a museum exhibit on the life cycle
of bruises. First there’s purple, then a sickly yellow, and finally
they fade away into nothing, but not before three or four more
have cropped up in their place.
Of course, we didn’t stop using. A couple of times I tried to
cut back, but nobody else seemed to care, so I just let it slide.
We looked worse and worse day by day, gram by gram.
If I didn’t stop when the bruises started, then I should have
stopped when Darren’s ‘girlfriends’ started to disappear. But I
didn’t.
Every night we’d pass out as four and wake up as three. I told
myself they were just prostitutes bailing out on three wasters
that they couldn’t squeeze any more money out of. I’m not sure
I ever really believed it though.
I soon found out the truth.
It was one of those shitty Saturday mornings that aren’t good
for anything except getting high. I rolled up to the head shop
to find my regular brand of synthetic weed had gone, and in its
place was something called Rainbow Road. The cashier assured
me that it was just as good, but later that night I’d find out it
was way weaker—weak enough for me to keep my wits about
me.
I was slumped down in the smoke circle with my eyes barely
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open when Annie slithered up to me.

“Ok, he’s out,” she said to someone behind her. She pulled
a pill bottle out and rattled a single white pill into her palm
with one hand, before slipping it between my lips. She tilted my
head up and slid her hand over my mouth, gripping my throat
with the other hand and massaging it. I felt a powerful urge to
swallow, but I managed to slip the pill under my tongue before
I did.
“It’s down,” Annie said. “Is the bitch out?”
“Yep,” Darren answered. “Let’s get her naked.”
Darren and Annie began stripping the clothes from the
unconscious woman like dogs stripping meat from a bone.
When they had finished, Darren reached into his pants and
began to fondle himself.
“Damn,” he said, “this one looks too good to waste. Think
she’s got AIDS?”
Annie clicked her tongue.
“You never learn, do you?” she said. “You really want your
DNA all over that bitch?”
“Naw, I guess not,” he said. “We’re gonna clean her anyway,
though, what’s the harm?”
“Just keep it in your pants,” Annie replied. “You’ll have plenty
of money to buy yourself a whore later.”
“Yeah, but whores fight back,” said Darren.
“Whatever,” Annie said. “Just help me pep him up.”
Darren withdrew his crack pipe from one of the deep
pockets in his tattered jeans. He loaded it up and held the
lighter underneath, taking in a deep draw. But he didn’t
inhale—instead he blew it directly into my face. I tried not
to cough as the acrid smoke filled my nose and throat. It didn’t
smell like just crack in the pipe though—it smelled like PCP.
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 DEATH AND CANDY

“Hit him again,” Annie said.

Darren hit my face with the smoke again, and I couldn’t
help but inhale some. My face began to experience a familiar
numbing sensation as Darren hit me three more times.
“Good, now get him up,” Annie said.
Darren seized me by the armpits and yanked me to my feet. I
thought about running for a flash of a second, but a mixture of
morbid curiosity and fear kept me rooted to the spot.
“I still don’t get how this works,” Darren said.
“I told you,” Annie said. “It’s scopo-something. The zombie
drug. They use it on people in Africa all the time.”
“Whatever,” Darren replied. “I wasn’t really asking.”
He walked over and reached inside his bag, pulling out a
surprisingly new-looking computer. He opened it up and
fidgeted around for a moment before stepping away to reveal a
shining green light above the monitor, which was pointed at
the naked girl whose name I’d forgotten. The camera was on.
“You’re out of frame,” he said to Annie. “We’re live on the site
now.”
Annie slid up to me again, standing on her tiptoes and
whispering in my ear.
“You see that girl, Danny?” she said. “That’s a bad, bad, girl.
You remember what we do to bad, bad, girls, right? We beat
them, Danny. We beat them until there’s nothing left. Beat the
bitch, Danny. Beat her to death.”
My heart was yammering wildly in my ears. My mind was
screaming at my feet to run, but they would not cooperate.
My hesitation was noted. Soon Annie was hissing in my ear
again, flicking spit with every word.
“What the fuck are you doing, Danny?” she said. “That girl’s
a BAD GIRL. You need to KILL HER, Danny.”
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I still couldn’t move.

Darren crossed over to the two of us, striding in a great arc
to make sure he stayed out of frame of the camera.
“What the fuck’s wrong with him?” he whispered in Annie’s
ear.
“Maybe he needs another dose,” Annie said, rummaging in
her pockets for the bottle. As she did so I became aware
of something. The pill I had been hiding under my tongue
had crumbled into powder, and while I had been concerned
with what was going on with Annie and Darren, it was being
absorbed into my bloodstream.
Any pillhead will tell you that sublingual administration is
much faster than oral. I began to feel my consciousness slipping
away, dissolving into nothingness. I slipped the remains of the
pill into my cheek, but it was too late.
I was dimly aware of a blind rage as I started towards the
naked woman.
I awoke the next morning to find that there was once again
only three of us. I didn’t say anything about it to Annie and
Darren. Instead, I mixed rat poison in with their heroin and
left after they nodded out and died.
I never said shit to the police, either. I took the laptop, which
wasn’t even password protected, and deleted the videos, all
twenty-six of them, before throwing it in the lake. It’s been a
long time since that night, and I’ve managed to clean myself
up and hold down a day job. Even so, sometimes I wake up in
the middle of the night in a cold sweat, wondering if there’s
still copies of those videos floating around on the internet
somewhere.
I hope I never find out.

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 30

The Abandoned Diary

A
couple of days ago I was riding the bus to work when I
noticed that somebody had left their notebook behind.
By the time I saw it on the seat, the guy was gone and
the bus was moving, so I grabbed it in the hopes of seeing him
again on the bus and giving it back. After I read what was inside,
however, I stopped taking the bus to work. I sincerely hope
what I’ve read is fiction.
I’ve typed out the first entry below:
***
There is a limit to human happiness, but not to human misery.
I realized that last week when I saw a homeless man picking
food out of the trash. I was returning from the coffee shop, and
the irony struck me like a hammer. Here this man was, digging
scraps out of the dumpster just to stay alive, and here I was,
having just spent four dollars on a cup of tea-flavored sugar.
I handed him a twenty and told him to get a real meal, but
my guilt was not assuaged. I could tell myself that I was a
better person than all the people who saw him and did nothing,
but the truth is that it didn’t matter how good of a person I
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was—after that twenty dollars was gone he’d be right back to

digging around in dumpsters. And what if I hadn’t had a twenty?
Would I have gone to the ATM and gotten him one?
The truth was that I had only helped him because it was easy,
and nobody else would help him because doing nothing is easier,
if only by a little.
I promised myself that the next time I saw him I’d do
something about it. And I did.
It was two days later, and he was digging through the trash
again.
I walked up to him and got his attention.
“Hey,” I said. “Remember me?”
The man turned and squinted his eyes at me, but didn’t say
anything.
“What do you say to a real meal?” I asked him. “I’m cooking
spaghetti tonight.”
I thought from the look he gave me that he was going to say
no, but then he looked at the old takeout container in his hand,
sighed, and nodded.
That night I made spaghetti and meatballs, my mother’s
recipe. The homeless man, Abe, inhaled it like he hadn’t had a
proper meal in years. He probably hadn’t.
I uncorked a bottle of wine, and we sat across the dinner room
table in silence as the bottle got emptier and we got drunker.
Abe’s face had gotten red by the time he uttered his first words
of the night.
“I killed people,” he said.
“You did?” I asked.
“Oh yeah,” he replied, staring into his glass. “Lots of ‘em.”
“Why?”
“It was the war,” he said. He raised his bloodshot eyes to mine.
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“You know what war is for?” he asked.

“What?”
“It’s for turning young men into corpses, and old men into
drunks.”
Abe downed the glass, and before long he was asleep, and my
eyes were growing heavy. As I stared at him sitting slumped in
his chair, dribble running down his chin, I had an idea. I knew
how I could make a difference for Abe, and all those others like
him.
I picked the knife up from the table and shoved it into his
throat. Abe awoke with a jolt, and his eyes went wide as he
saw the knife protruding from his windpipe. His hands closed
tightly around my own, but they soon went slack as he began
to gurgle blood.
Finally, they closed, and Abe rattled out his last breath.
I hung his body from a telephone pole that night, and waited
for the news the next day. But there was no front page story
for Abe. In fact, he never got a mention at all. Nobody cared.
What he did get was a single policeman questioning the entire
neighborhood. When he came to my door I couldn’t help myself,
I had to ask him about the news.
“I just don’t get it,” I said. “Abe has been a fixture of this
neighborhood for years. Now he’s dead, and no one cares? I
expected there to be an outcry…an outpouring of love for the
people on the streets with no one to protect them.”
The policeman shrugged.
“That’s just the way the world works,” he said. “Abe was
a homeless old drunk. It may not be right, but it’s hard to
sympathize with a person like that. Just look at the news. Maybe
if he was an attractive blonde girl there’d be an outcry, but it’s
just not gonna happen for him.”
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 THE ABANDONED DIARY

After he was finished with his questions he thanked me for

my time and left. Society had let me down. There would be no
outcry, nobody would come to the aid of those that had fallen
through the cracks. I had killed Abe for nothing.
But I promised myself that I would make the next kill count.
And I always keep my promises.

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 31

Scream in a Box

I
“ ’m afraid I have some terrible news.”
“What is it, honey?” Dean looked over at me worriedly
from the driver’s seat.
I paused dramatically.
“I have to pee.”
“Now? You’re joking, right?”
“Yeah, I’m joking. Because ‘I have to pee’ is such a great
punchline.”
Dean half chuckled and half groaned.
“Remember the last road sign? The next town isn’t for sixty
miles.”
“Then turn around.”
“I’m not going to turn around and drive twenty miles in the
wrong direction. Look, I’ll pull over here and you can go on
the side of the road.”
“Sorry to break it to you Dean, but I can’t pee standing up
like you can. If I could I don’t think we’d be married.”
Dean laughed.
“You think that I’d stop loving you just because you had a
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penis?” he said. “You really think I’m that shallow? Here.”

He handed me an empty water bottle. I raised an eyebrow.
“What is this for?” I asked, hoping he wasn’t going to say what
I thought he was.
“You know, to go in.”
I stared at him silently.
“What?” he said, the ghost of a smirk creeping across his
handsome features.
“Oh nothing,” I replied. “I’m just wondering whether if I could
concentrate hard enough to make your head explode.”
Dean laughed again, this time a little louder.
“Maybe you should try concentrating on finding a place to
pee, and then one might appear magically on the side of the
road,” he said.
“Maybe I will.”
I closed my eyes and held out my hands in mock meditation.
“Oh spirits of the great full bladder,” I began in a mystical
sort of voice. “We pray to you in these dark and troubled times,
that you may show us the path to true righteousness. That you
might provide us a place to relieve our souls of their wearisome
burdens, and our bladders of their wearisome fullness.”
Dean laughed so hard that he swerved a little. When he was
done wiping the tears from his eyes he pointed to a spot on the
horizon.
“Looks like your prayer’s been heard, honey,” he said.
Sure enough, I looked to where he was pointing and saw a
building ahead. Dean took the exit, but as we got closer I could
see it looked like the kind of place where you have to hover
six inches above the seat to pee. If somebody had magically
enlarged a run-down wooden shack to the size of a small
warehouse and then sprinkled it with cobwebs and garbage
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 DEATH AND CANDY

for good measure, then it would look like this place. There was
a crooked wooden sign on the front that read ‘Oddments and
Curiosities’ in peeling white paint. Once we pulled into the lot
and saw the garbage up close we could make out that it was
mostly rusted out appliances. By the front door sat a pile of
dirty doll heads.
“What the fuck?” I mouthed to Dean.
But he was already unbuckling his seatbelt excitedly. He loves
places like this; says they ‘keep the spirit of the road alive,’ which
is his poetic way of saying that he has a morbid fascination for
weird and creepy shit. We got out and went inside.
***
If the outside of the place was dirty, the inside looked like
someone had set off a garbage bomb. Most of the stuff was
old, rusted or broken, and the signs above each item were
coated in a thick black grime that made them impossible to
read. There were long wooden canes that were topped with
little replicas of shrunken heads, keychains with bits of animal
bone on them, and little glass orbs that looked a bit too much
like real eyeballs—all kinds of horrible looking stuff. Dean
looked like a kid in a candy store, so I left him to wander the
aisles while I found the bathroom.
I had just finished up when I heard a terrible, visceral wail
that sounded more animal than human. I yanked up my pants
and ran outside to find Dean standing next to a large display of
what looked like black shoeboxes, grinning like a big kid who’d
just found a new toy.
“Honey look,” he said, pointing to the yellow plastic sign
that hung over the display. I could barely make out the words
through the grime.
“Scream in a box,” I read.
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 SCREAM IN A BOX

Dean nodded. “I’m gonna wrap it up and give it to my brother

when we get there,” he said, beaming. “He’s gonna hate it.”
“Okay,” I said. “But let’s buy it quick and get out of here. This
place gives me the creeps.”
Dean took one last wistful look at the items around him
before agreeing.
“Yeah alright,” he said, somewhat sadly. We made our way up
to the counter but there was no one there, not even when Dean
called out for someone.
“Did you see a price tag?” he asked.
I shook my head, so Dean shrugged, pulled out a twenty dollar
bill and set it on the counter.
“Alright,” he said. “Let’s go.”
***
When we got into the car Dean handed me the box and I was
surprised to find it was no heavier than an ordinary shoebox.
“How does this thing work then?” I asked. “Does it take
batteries?”
“No clue.”
I held the box up to my ear and shook it lightly. I could hear
something rattling inside.
“What’s inside?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said, pulling out of the lot and getting us back
onto the road.
I shook the box a little harder and a chill went down my spine.
It sounded like the box was… crying?
“There’s something not right about this box, Dean.”
“What do you mean?”
“Listen,” I said, shaking it more vigorously and holding it up
to his ear.
It wasn’t crying this time that greeted our ears, but a woman’s
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voice.
p-please…. why are you doing this to me?
There was no answer.
“What the fuck?” I heard Dean swear under his breath.
I shook the box again, but there was nothing. I heard a deep
voice in my ear.
I know you’re listening, it said. Would you like to join us?
I couldn’t help what happened next; I threw the box on the
ground and began stomping on it like it was a cockroach. And
every time my foot made contact it would scream, louder and
louder until it felt like little needles were stabbing into my
eardrums. And then the blood began to pour, bursting out in
spurts and soaking the floorboard. The tires screeched as Dean
slammed on the brakes and the car span to a halt, sideways in
the road. He scooped up the box and hurled it out the open
window and then slammed on the gas. I could hear the screams
growing fainter and fainter behind us as we sped away.
For the next three hours neither one of us dared to break the
silence. I took off my blood-soaked shoes and put them in our
road trip garbage bag. When we had almost arrived Dean got a
call from his mother; he pushed the hands-free call button on
the steering wheel and her voice came through the car speakers.
“Oh Dean, thank God you answered,” she said. “Where are
you two now?”
“We’re right outside the city limits. Why, what’s going on?”
“Oh it’s terrible. We just saw it on the news.”
“Saw what?” I could see Dean clenching his jaw, and I began
to feel sick to my stomach.
“They found that missing teenager, Abby something, on the
side of the road.”
“They did?” Dean’s knuckles went white on the steering
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wheel, and blackness started creeping in at the edges of my

vision.
“Oh, yes, it’s horrible. So young, and to die like that. It’s just
too terrible to think about.”
“How did she die?” Dean’s voice was beginning to shake, and
I felt as if I was falling.
“They said her body was covered in shoe prints and road
rash,” Dean’s mom went on in a low voice. “They said it looked
like someone had stomped all over her and threw her out of a
moving car.”
I could hear tires screeching as if from far away, and darkness
began to glide over my vision in a solid black line, like a lid
sliding over a box.

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 32

The Yu Jia Lake Monster

W
hen I felt particularly down, I used to wander the
old dirt trails by the lake to the east of the city. In
the early morning hours, when the first rays of light
spread across the horizon in a golden line, I would breathe in
the scent of the pines and the dew-dampened grass. I would
let the smell settle in my nose, and then spread throughout my
body, bringing the peace of the calm, still lake with it. One by
one my worries would drift away, until my mind was empty
except for the lapping of water and the sweep of a gentle breeze
across my face.
It was in one of these meditative states that I met the monster
of the lake.
My eyes were closed as I took in the quiet noises of the early
morning, insects and early-rising birds calling in the distance. I
heard a bubbling noise from the water beside me, and I opened
my eyes to see a hideous creature bobbing up and down among
the lily pads. His skin was rough and green like a frog’s, and his
eyes were huge, glassy orbs that seemed to look right through
me.
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 THE YU JIA LAKE MONSTER

When those eyes were fixed upon me, I found that I could
not move.
“Welcome to my lake,” said the monster.
His voice was deep and croaked like a frog’s.
“Thank you,” I replied, not knowing what else to say.
“Hmm…” said the monster. “Is something troubling you?”
I felt an uncomfortable squirm in my stomach.
“How did you know?” I asked.
The monster gave a throaty chuckle.
“It’s easy to see when you’re really looking,” he said. “So tell
me, human, what are you running from, all the way out here at
my lake?”
I looked at the sky and watched a feathery cloud drift
eastward on the wind.
“I’m running from the noise,” I said. “From the neon lights and
the music, and the endless drunk conversations that I can’t even
remember the next morning.” I paused for a moment before I
continued. “Sometimes… I wish I could go back to before, when
the city was just a village, and words actually meant something.”
The monster chuckled again.
“A long time ago,” he began, “before the neon lights and the
music, when the city was just a small fishing village, there
were still conversations full of words that meant nothing.
Only sometimes, if you knew where to look, could you find
something worth listening to.”
“So it’s always been this way, then,” I said.
“Yes,” the monster replied. “That is the nature of the world.”
I stared past the monster at the vast expanse of gently rippling
steel-gray waters.
“Do you know what I came here to do?” I asked.
The monster nodded.
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 DEATH AND CANDY

“You came to seek peace inside my lake,” he replied. “Quiet

dark beneath the still waters of death.”
“Yes,” I whispered.
My stomach sunk.
“Are you going to stop me?” I asked.
“I’m going to guide you,” he replied. “Come beneath the
waters with me.”
I took a deep breath and steeled myself, and then I waded into
the cold waters of the lake. As I walked towards the monster
the water first reached my ankles, then my knees, my waist and
then my neck. By the time I had reached where he was floating,
the water was above my head. The monster sank below the
surface of the lake and took my hand, pulling me deep into the
lake.
As we went deeper, the water grew darker, and soon the weak
sunlight of the early morning could no longer penetrate the
murky depths. The monster led me to the bottom, to a bed of
seaweed and algae.
“You can rest here,” he said, bubbles drifting out of his mouth
as he spoke, “Far away from the city noise.”
As I stared at the bed of seaweed and algae swaying gently
under the water, I suddenly realized I could no longer breathe.
My lungs burned for oxygen, and my brain screamed at me
to get to the surface. I kicked off and began to swim upward
with all my might. But I felt a hand close around my ankle, and
suddenly I was being pulled back down to the bottom. I looked
down to see a rotted hand clasped around my ankle, yellowed
ancient bones poking through rotted flesh as it held it me in its
death grip. As I sank lower and lower I saw other dead faces,
looming hollow and white through the darkness, strands of
pale gray hair drifting eerily through the water.
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 THE YU JIA LAKE MONSTER

“Your place is here,” they chanted. “Beneath the silent black

waters. With us.”
I kicked hard at the one who held my ankle, my foot taking
with it a piece of fragile, waterlogged flesh as it collided with
its skull, and I felt its grip relax.
I kicked off again and propelled myself towards the surface as
fast as I could. Dead faces whirled around me, looming in and
out of view. The dead screeched as I shot towards the surface,
lunging at me and digging long fingernails deep into my flesh
as their chase became more frantic.
I was able to distance myself from the crowd, but my muscles
grew clumsy and heavy. Purple stars danced in my vision.
I knew, right then, that I was not going to make it to the
surface.
But just when I was about to give up I saw a faint light,
glimmering gray through the water above me. I forced my
burning, heavy limbs to move; I forced my frantic oxygen-
starved brain to focus on only one thought—get to the light.
Slowly, the light grew brighter, and soon it was no longer
gray but gold—I had almost returned to the surface, towards
fresh air and sunshine, towards the wonderful fresh air and
morning light, and the soft singing of birds.
I burst through the surface of the water and sucked in the
fresh lake-scented air. The sunlight of the early morning
dazzled in my eyes as I took in each heady lungful. Finally,
my breathing began to steady.
I scanned the flat gray waters of the lake, looking for the
shore. But it was nowhere to be seen.
Before I could decide which direction to go, the monster
surfaced a few feet from me.
I raised my fist to strike him, but as he fixed his glassy black
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eyes on me, I realized I could no longer move.

“Come with me,” he said.
The monster grabbed my arm and began to swim along the
lake’s surface, away from the horizon. Before long the shore
came into view, and the monster deposited me on the edge of
the lake, soaked and shivering, next to one of the old dirt trails.
I lay flat on my back and regarded him warily as he stared up
at the sky.
“You tried to kill me,” I said.
“I tried to help you do what you came to do,” said the monster.
“But you chose to fight back.”
He once again fixed me with his glassy black stare.
“There’s a quiet loneliness in the scent of the early morning
air,” he said. “But there is far more loneliness in a bed of seaweed
and algae beneath the black waters of the lake.”
We locked eyes for a long moment, the water lapping at the
monster as he bobbed up and down among the lily pads.
Then, without a word further, he sank beneath the surface,
and the water closed over his head. I never saw him again.
I sat for a while and watched the sun creep further and further
up into the sky. I breathed in the scent of the pine trees and
the dew-dampened grass, and slowly, I tried to will myself to
forget the horror that I had just witnessed.
It’s been many years since I last visited the lake. I know that
time has a way of distorting our memories, and in the years
since I met the monster, I’ve often tried to convince myself that
what I saw was just a fabrication of an oxygen-starved brain.
But there is one thing that prevents me from believing that.
The scars that the dead gave me that day have never faded,
and when my thoughts turn to darkness and death the scars
burn red and painful like fire under my skin until I push the
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 THE YU JIA LAKE MONSTER

dark clouds from my mind.

And when the clouds part I can close my eyes and see the
lake as I saw it that day, mirror-gray waters reflecting the first
golden light to spread across the horizon.
I hear the insects and the birds, smell the trees, the damp
earth and grass, and feel the cool kiss of wind across my face.
And I am at peace.

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 33

When Stuffed Animals Start Talking,

Dont Talk Back

O
ne ear missing, covered in blood and broken glass,
it had been tossed clear of the now smoking heap
of twisted metal that had once been a small family’s
SUV. I don’t know why I bent down to pick it up—maybe it
reminded me of a stuffed animal I had had as a kid or something.
I stared at it; my thoughts wandered off on a tangent. Had
the little girl in the back seat been holding it when the car had
smashed into the the tree? Was it her blood? Did she even
know what had happened? Or had it been too quick? My mind
drifted off into introspective reverie. I carried the little pink
bunny to my work truck and stuck it in the passenger seat.
Now I knew I would have to figure out how to get the crushed
remains of the SUV on the back of my truck so I could haul it
off the road.
“Hello?” came a voice.
I started, looked around, but saw nobody. The police had left
with the paramedics. I was alone.
“Hello?” the voice repeated.
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 WHEN STUFFED ANIMALS START TALKING, DONT TALK BACK

I looked down, at the bunny. Was I cracking up?

“Mister?” said the bunny. “I can’t move. I’m scared.”
I cleared my throat. My voice came out as a rasp.
“Just relax,” I said. “You’re alright. Were you—are you… the
little girl who was in the car?”
“Yes,” said the stuffed animal. A pause. “Have you seen my
parents? I want to see my mom and dad.”
I’d seen what was left of them, sure, before they zipped them
up in the black rubber bags and carted them off.
“They’re waiting for you,” I lied. “At the hospital. They’re
fine.”
“Oh, okay,” said the voice. It sounded unconvinced. “Mister?”
“Yes?”
“Do I need to go to the hospital?”
I shook my head.
“I don’t think they can do much to help you, honey.”
There was a pause.
“I want to see myself,” said the voice. “Can you show me?”
“I… don’t know if that’s a good idea,” I replied.
Did she know she was inside her stuffed animal? Did she suspect?
A silent, tense moment passed, and then she said, “Are you lying
to me?”
“Yes,” I said before I could stop myself. “I’m so sorry.”
“My parents are dead, aren’t they?”
“Yes.”
“And I’m dead, too.”
“Yes.”
“It’s okay,” said the girl. “I knew that I was dead. And I know
why you lied to me.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
“It’s really okay,” replied the girl. “This…has happened
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before.”
“What?”
When she spoke again, her voice was hushed.
“I go inside him sometimes,” she said. “My bunny, Mr. Frank.
When I’m upset. Sometimes I can even go inside other people,
but only if I know them really well. I try not to, though. They
get squeezed when I do, into the corner of their minds. They
don’t like it.”
“Oh,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say.
“Mister?” said the girl.
“Yes?”
“Can you help me?”
“Of course,” I said.
“Can you take me to my sister? I want to see her.”
“No problem,” I said. “I’m sure she’ll be happy to see you.”
Without any further discussion I climbed into the driver’s
seat and we set off. I followed the directions as the girl gave
them to me, and fourty-five minutes later we had arrived at
the parking lot to a dormitory building at the local community
college. The police station and my boss had called me a few
times, no doubt wondering why I hadn’t cleaned up the wreck,
but I had sent their calls straight to voicemail. I’d figure out
how to explain myself later.
I took the stuffed bunny from the passenger seat and walked
to the sister’s door, number 401. Three solemn knocks and
twenty seconds later the door was answered by a young blond
girl in her early twenties.
“Yes?” she said. “Can I help you?”
Her face bore a tired expression; her eyes were puffy from
crying. So she’d already heard about the accident.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” I said. “But I have something for
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you.”
I held the bunny out to her at arm’s length.
“What the fuck?” she said, staring wide-eyed at the bloodied
bunny with the missing ear.
How could I possibly explain?
“Your sister…” I trailed off.
“My sister,” she said. “Oh my god. This is my sister’s…no—”
She slammed the door in my face.
“Open the door,” said the bunny.
Without thinking, I complied.
“I know you’re upset,” I said.
“Get the fuck away from me!” shouted the young woman.
She began hurling whatever her hands could reach straight at
me.
“I just wanted to tell you that—”
“Get the fuck——”
The words froze in her throat. Her body went slack. Her
eyes rolled back in her head, and she collapsed on the floor in a
boneless heap.
The boneless heap groaned. Then, in the voice of a little girl,
it spoke.
“Thank you,” it said.
“Are you…?” I said. “I don’t understand.”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s me.”
“But how?”
“I already told you. It’s not the first time. I can go into people,
too.” She paused.
“Didn’t you wonder?” she said. “About the accident?”
“What do you mean?”
“The only tree for miles, and we crashed into it,” she said. “It
was me. I did it. My dad was yelling at me—he deserved it.”
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 DEATH AND CANDY

“No,” I said. “No.”

I couldn’t say anything else. A thousand broken thoughts and
ugly feelings were fighting a melee in my head.
“It’s okay,” she said. “You saved me. I won’t hurt you. Unless
you make me. You won’t make me, will you?”
I froze for a moment, unable to speak. I shook my head.
“No,” I said, “I won’t.”

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 34

My Neighbor was a Vampire

E
verybody knew old Ms. Robbins was a vampire. Our
parents said that we were just being paranoid, but we
had evidence. The first piece of evidence was that she
almost never left the house, and never during the daytime. The
second piece of evidence was that she always dressed in black.
The third, and most compelling piece of evidence was that
Billy Atkins said he once saw her watching the sunrise on her
porch one time, and when the sun came up she clutched her
chest and ran inside.
It hadn’t been so bad at first, having a vampire in the
neighborhood. We knew that we were safe in the daytime, and
we’d be locked in our houses at night. And everybody knows
that a vampire can’t come in unless you invite it.
But then Ms. Robbins began to venture out of the house more
often. She’d only go out at night, and she’d only go as far as
the lawn. She did the same thing every time. She’d stand there,
staring out into the night, not moving. Then slowly, she’d reach
into her pocket and pull out her keys, rattling them with a back
and forth motion of the wrist as if she were playing with an
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invisible baby.
Sometimes she’d stay until the sun came up, and then she’d
clutch her chest and run inside. This went on for a couple of
weeks. Every night, she would get a little closer to the street.
First she was fifteen feet away. A few nights later she was ten.
And then she was five. Every night she would rattle the keys
harder, until the neighbor’s dog began to bark at her.
But Ms. Robbins didn’t pay the dog any mind. She just stood
there rattling her keys.
That’s when Billy Atkins came up with the mission: we’d
sneak into Ms. Robbins’s house at night, and get a picture of
her coffin.
“All vampires sleep in a coffin,” Billy had said, “and if we can
get a picture of it then our parents will have to believe us.”
It was sound logic. We drew straws to see who would be
the one to sneak into Ms. Robbins’s house while she was out
rattling her keys, and, of course, I drew the shortest one.
The next night while Ms. Robbins was on her lawn I snuck
in behind her. It wasn’t hard; she had left the front door wide
open. As I stepped over the threshold I noted that the place had
an oppressive air to it—it was stiflingly hot and smelled like
mothballs. I held my phone clutched tight in my sweaty hand
as I scanned the living room, searching for the coffin. There
was no sign of it, but then I guess there wouldn’t be.
My best bet would be to check the bedroom.
I forced myself down the hall, each footstep feeling as if it
weighed a thousand pounds. I pushed the door to the bedroom
open and it gave a loud creak. I whipped my head around to see
if Ms. Robbins had heard me, but I didn’t hear any footsteps,
so I guessed that
I was safe.
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 MY NEIGHBOR WAS A VAMPIRE

There was no coffin in the bedroom either. I wondered if it

was in the basement.
I found the entry in the laundry room. The door was old and
the paint was peeling. I felt sweat beading up on my forehead
as I stared at the door. I couldn’t tell if it was nerves or just the
heat.
I pushed the door open and switched on the flashlight on my
phone, but it only lit about halfway down the staircase. I took
a hesitant step down, and that’s when I heard the front door
close, following by gentle footsteps.
I couldn’t run—my only chance was to hide. I closed the door
to the basement as quietly as I could and started down the steps,
but there must have been one missing, because my foot found
only air and I tumbled headlong rest of the way down. My
phone screen shattered, but the flashlight stayed on.
I swept the beam of light around the room and it landed on
something shiny—a shelf full of glass jars. The jars were filled
with a murky green liquid, and each one had something floating
in it. As my eyes focused in the dim light, I saw what was inside
the glass jars.
A scream gathered in my throat, but came out as a whimper.
The whimper was loud enough, however, for Ms. Robbins to
hear me.
The basement door was flung open, and light poured into the
room.
“Who’s there?” Ms. Robbins called out. My head whipped
this way and that as I scanned the walls for another exit, but
there was only one way out, and Ms. Robbins was standing
between me and it.
She swung a flashlight beam over me, and I was blinded as
the light washed out my vision.
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I dropped to my knees.
“Please,” I said. “Please don’t kill me.”
I heard a click, and the overhead light of the basement came
on. I dared not look to my right, where I knew the jars of human
remains were.
“So you’ve found my children,” Ms. Robbins said, giving me
a hard look.
“I won’t tell anybody,” I said. “I swear.”
“I’d prefer that you didn’t,” Ms. Robbins replied. “But you can
relax, son. You’re not in any danger.”
She walked over to the jars and sighed as she rested a hand
on one of them. She shook her head.
“These were the only children I ever had,” she said. “but none
of them ever made it out alive.”
I looked at the shelf of jars again, and I realized that they were
fetuses, not children. In the dark they had seemed much larger.
“Come on, boy,” Ms. Robbins said, “have a cup of tea with me
and I won’t tell your parents that you snuck in here.”
Ms. Robbins turned and walked up the stairs without waiting
for my response, and, after a moment’s hesitation, I followed
her.
I sat on Ms. Robbins’s old red corduroy couch as she put
the kettle on, and a couple minutes later we were both sipping
rose petal tea out of delicate china glasses. I noticed that Ms.
Robbins’s hand shook as she lifted the cup to her mouth.
“Ms. Robbins?” I hazarded.
“Yes, boy?”
“You said those were your children?”
Ms. Robbins shifted uncomfortably in her seat.
“That’s right,” she said.
“How come they came out like that? All twisted up and…”
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“Deformed?” she finished for me.

My face flushed red, and she sighed.
“Are your parents good to you, boy?” she asked.
“Yeah, I guess so,” I replied.
“Well, my father wasn’t good to me and my sisters,” she said.
“He hurt us something awful. He messed me up inside, and
years later when I wanted to have kids, they all came out like
that.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Me too,” she replied.
I stared into my teacup for a few minutes, before speaking up
again.
“Ms. Robbins?” I said.
“Yes, boy?”
“You said you had sisters?”
“Yes,” she said, frowning. “I had three. Now I’ve got one.”
“How come she never visits you?” I asked.
Ms. Robbins shook her head.
“I shouldn’t tell you any of this,” she said. “but I guess if you
ask an old woman like me a question they’ll tell you their whole
life story. The world forgets about us old people, boy, so when
someone wants to talk to us we can’t shut up.”
She took another shaky-handed sip of her tea and continued.
“This is the house I grew up in,” she said. “All of my sisters
moved away and lived their lives, but I could never manage
leave this place. Back when I was a girl, they didn’t have a name
for that. Now they call it agoraphobia. Do you know what that
is, boy?”
I shook my head.
“It means I can’t go outside,” she said. “Too much open space,
too much noise and too many people—it’s suffocating to me. I
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 DEATH AND CANDY

can make it as far as the lawn some nights, but then the daylight
comes and the world opens up, and I’ve got to come back inside.”
“But you’ve been going outside every single night,” I said. “I’ve
seen you.”
“So I have,” she replied.
She stared into her tea with a troubled look on her face.
“My sister is dying,” she said. “They say she’s still got a few
months left, but it’s my last chance to see her before she goes.”
“Why do you rattle your keys?”
“They’re my car keys,” she said. “And anything I hold these
days rattles. But I’m fooling myself,” she went on. “I haven’t
driven that car in over ten years. Even if I could make it there
it probably wouldn’t start.”
“Huh,” I said. “We just thought you were a vampire.”
Ms. Robbins snorted in her tea.
“You what?” she said.
“Well, you only ever come out at night, and Billy said that
meant that you were a vampire.”
To my surprise, Ms. Robbins began to laugh.
“I suppose that makes more sense than someone being afraid
of the outside,” she said.
“Well sure,” I replied. “Everybody’s heard of vampires, but I
don’t think anybody knows what gorophobia is.”
“Agorophobia,” Ms. Robbins said, a soft smile softening her
face.
“Right,” I replied. “But Ms. Robbins?”
“Yes?”
“How can anybody be afraid of the outside?”
Her lips creased into a frown.
“Well,” she said. “if there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s
that living in fear is like standing under an avalanche. If you
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 MY NEIGHBOR WAS A VAMPIRE

don’t move out of the way, the snow just keeps piling higher
and higher, and eventually you get so deep that you can never
dig your way out.”
There was an awkward pause.
“It’s a shame you’re not a vampire,” I said.
“Why’s that?”
“Well if you were a vampire you wouldn’t have to be afraid.
I don’t thing there’s anything in the outside tougher than a
vampire. Billy says that vampires can’t go out in the sunlight,
but I figure that they could just wear sunblock.”
Ms. Robbins smiled.
“Yes,” she said. “I suppose they could.”
I went home not long after, but that wasn’t the last time I
had tea at Ms. Robbins’s place. Once we knew she wasn’t a
vampire, the other kids and I started to stop by sometimes. She
would make us rose petal tea with honey in it, and to this day
I’ve never had tea that tasted so good.
The very last time I went to Ms. Robbins’s house she wasn’t
there. Instead, there was a note taped to the door that simply
read:

I’ve decided to be a vampire.

Her car was gone, and our parents said that she had moved out
to the mid-west to be with her sister. She died out there a few
years after her sister did. I only knew Ms. Robbins for a short
time, but I’ve never forgotten her.
Every time I am too afraid to do something that I really want
to do, I remind myself of Ms. Robbins, and how she decided to
be a vampire.

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 35

Thinking too Much? You’re Drinking

too LIttle

H
“ ey Bob, guess what?”
“Fuck off, Eric, I know that look.”
“What look?” I said, feigning ignorance.
Bob’s big stomach blew up, then shrank as he let out a long,
world-weary sigh.
“Okay, get on with it,” he said.
I grinned despite myself.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ve come up with the perfect nickname for
you.”
Bob took a long drink and wiped his lips.
“Well, go on then.”
I raised my hands up and parted them as I spoke, as if I were
highlighting the word in the air between us.
“The seahorse,” I said.
Bob frowned; scratched at his beard.
“Fuck you,” he said.
“Why?”
“I know about seahorses,” he replied. “Those are the ones
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 THINKING TOO MUCH? YOU’RE DRINKING TOO LITTLE

where the man gets pregnant. You’re making fun of my stomach.

Well you can fuck right off.”
“No,” I protested, “that’s not it.”
“Well, then what is it?”
“You’re a seahorse,” I said. “Because you eat like a horse and
drink like a fish.”
Bob snorted.
“Ha,” he said. “You’re right. Guess I better live up to my
reputation.”
He tore a big chunk of meat off with his teeth. His jaw muscles
worked furiously for a few seconds, before he swallowed the
half chewed mouthful and followed it with a long, indulgent
drink.
“Hah, you’re an animal, Bob.”
“Yeah, I know it,” he said. “But it’s better than being a man.”
I chuckled, but soon the laugh died out and gave way to the
kind of awkward silence that births uncomfortable thoughts.
I could tell that Bob felt the mood shift too. Somehow, our
conversations always found their way down this unfortunate
avenue.
“Hey Bob?” I said.
“Not this shit again,” said Bob.
“Come on,” I said. “I know you think about it too.”
“I don’t,” said Bob. “No good comes from that kind of
thinking.”
“I know that,” I said. “But… don’t you ever get tired of it?”
“Of course I do,” said Bob, “but what’s the alternative?”
He formed his fingers in the shape of a gun, and pressed them
to his temple.
“Kaboom,” he said. “Dead. Now have a drink and shut up.”
I shook my head.
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 DEATH AND CANDY

“I’m not drinking tonight,” I said. “And you make fun of it,
but lots of people have done it.”
“You’re right,” said Bob. He reached into his pocket and pulled
out his knife, flicked the blade out of a bone handle well-worn
with use. He pushed the tip into my chest.
“What do you say?” he said. “Ready to make good on all that
talk?”
I stared into his eyes. I had no doubt that if I said yes, Bob
would plunge the knife into my chest, and then twist it for good
measure. That’s just the way he was.
“Put the knife away, Bob,” I said.
His face lit up with an impish grin. He pushed the blade back
in and put the knife inside his pocket.
“You’re a pussy, Eric,” he said. “All talk and no show.”
“Yeah,” I said, “I know. But it bothers me.”
“I don’t blame you,” said Bob. “Being a pussy would bother
me, too.”
“Now you fuck off,” I said. “You know that’s not what I meant.”
Bob rolled his eyes and then took another drink.
“I know what you meant,” he said.
“Come on, Bob,” I said. “I’ve been at this for seven-hundred
years, and you’ve been at it twice as long. What’s your secret?
How do you not get tired?”
“My secret,” said Bob, “Is that I don’t have a hyperactive
hamster spinning his wheel inside my head like you do. And
when I start to feel an overly complicated thought come on,
I don’t indulge it, I push it out of my head and have another
drink. Which is exactly what you should be doing.”
Bob gestured at the table, where the groaning, half-dead
woman lay naked before us. He had already taken off a good
few chunks of her flesh. The skinless muscles of her wounds
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 THINKING TOO MUCH? YOU’RE DRINKING TOO LITTLE

pulsed and quivered, leaking little droplets of red. Two bloody

puncture marks stood out crimson against the white of her
neck.
“Go on,” said Bob. “Have a drink. You’ll feel better.”
I sighed.
“Well,” I said. “If you insist.”
I bent over the woman’s neck, sank my teeth into her flesh,
and took a drink. Her body gave a weak shudder, and, with a
gasp, she died.
“Oh shit, sorry Bob,” I said. “I didn’t mean to finish it.”
Bob laughed and clapped me on the back.
“Don’t worry about it, kid, you needed it more than me. Now
come on, and let’s go get another drink.”
I smiled despite myself. Bob always knew how to cheer me
up.
“Alright,” I said. “Let’s go.”

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 36

Donnie the Skeleton

S
“ o how do I look?”
“Honestly? Like a skeleton with AIDS.”
Donnie laughed, and the skin of his face crinkled
around his bones like old leather.
“You’re right,” he said. “I look like shit. But I feel amazing.”
“So the treatment worked, then?”
Donnie drained the rest of his beer and set the glass down on
the bar. He gestured for the bartender Adrianne to bring him
another.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “My brain MRI was totally clear—no more
scar tissue.”
“And they told you this?” I asked.
“Ayup,” said Donnie. “And I thought they were full of shit.
Just like you think I am right now. That’s why I had it rechecked
at a hospital stateside.”
He opened his phone and slid it across the bar to me. The
screen held a photo of Donnie’s brain MRI. True to his word, it
was clear. The plaques that used to dot it like chickenpox had
gone.
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 DONNIE THE SKELETON

“Fuckin’ unreal,” I said.

“Yep,” agreed Donnie. “Pays to be desperate, I guess.”
“Where did you say this place was?”
Adrianne brought Donnie his beer, setting it down on a
cardboard coaster bearing the bar’s logo, a red cartoon devil
chugging a beer.
Donnie took another long draught.
“I didn’t,” he said. “That was part of the deal, remember?
Non-disclosure and a bunch of other legal witchcraft.”
“Yeah, but Donnie,” I said, leaning in and lowering my voice,
“this is big. They cured your MS. People need to know.”
For the first time since he’d flown back in this morning, I
saw his composure slip. The joy vanished from his face, and he
once again just looked like a sick, slight man.
But he slipped his smile back on almost immediately—he’d
always been good at that.
“Well, I’ll think about it,” he said. “I assume you know I’ll be
crashing on your couch, so you’ll have plenty of time to vent
your conscience on me.”
I laughed.
“You know,” I said. “I wasn’t totally convinced it was actually
you until invited yourself over. Let me guess, I’m picking up
the tab, too?”
“Of course,” said Donnie. “I know how important it is for you
to feel like a big shot, with the micropenis situation and all.”
True to form, Donnie timed the micropenis comment to
coincide perfectly with Adrianne coming back to check on
us. The corners of her mouth twitched as she fought off a smile.
“Hello there, pretty lady,” said Donnie. “I know I look like
shit, but I can assure you that my penis is completely functional
and not at all micro.”
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 DEATH AND CANDY

Adrianne laughed, and after about three more hours and more
shots than a reasonable person consumes in a month, Donnie,
she and I were staggering up the walkway to my apartment
building.
Somehow, we managed to struggle up the three flights of
stairs, and by the time we were inside I was ready to collapse.
And I did exactly that, face first on the floor.
Donnie seized me under the armpits and hauled me to my
feet.
“Easy there, buddy,” he said. “I know you want a smaller nose,
but smashing it on the floor is not the way to get it.”
He walked me to the couch and laid me gently down.
“Donnie,” I whispered, “I’ve got to say something to you.”
“Yeah?” said Donnie. He looked worried.
“You’re the ugliest motherfucker I’ve ever seen.”
Donnie’s face cracked into a wide smile, and, winking, he
said, “Don’t worry buddy, we’ll get you a mirror. Then I’ll only
be the second ugliest motherfucker you’ve ever seen.”
I laughed myself into sleep as Donnie and Adrianne adjourned
to the guest bedroom.
***
The next morning I got my first hint that something was
wrong with Donnie.
I awoke to the sizzle of meat cooking on the skillet. Sitting
by my head on the ottoman was a plate piled high with eggs.
Next to that was a can of beer frosted with condensation.
The perfect breakfast to fight off a hangover. Donnie turned
off the burner to the stove and plucked the some sausage patties
out of the pan, then brought the plate to me and set it down on
the ottoman.
“Morning, sleeping beauty’s rotting corpse,” he said.
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 DONNIE THE SKELETON

“This coming from the skeleton with—hey.”

“What?”
“Er, nothing.”
But it wasn’t nothing. Donnie’s appearance had changed. He
looked like he had gained twenty pounds and lost ten years
overnight. It was strange not to say anything, but a wriggle in
my stomach made me keep my mouth shut.
“You’re wondering how I look so good, huh?” said Donnie.
I paused halfway through my drink to set my beer on the
floor.
“Yeah, kind of,” I said. “I mean, what the fuck?”
Donnie laughed and winked at me.
“Guess it’d just been too long I’d gotten laid,” he said. “Anyway,
eat up champ. No offense, but you look like a beer shit the
morning after a night out.”
“Er, right,” I said, and set myself to work on the breakfast he
had prepared for me.
I felt a little better off a few bites of sausage and a spoonful
of garlic eggs with parmesan sprinkled on top.
“What about Adrianne?” I asked. “Is she up yet?”
“Oh, she took off early,” said Donnie. “Apparently my charm
is more effective the night before than the morning after.”
I chuckled and finished my beer, not knowing that Adrianne
would never be seen again.
***
It was the next evening when the police came looking for her.
The officers were middle aged, grim-faced and tired.
The officer who looked in charge spoke first. The name on
his badge was Whent.
“Daniel Collins?”
“Yes,” I said, “that’s me.”
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 DEATH AND CANDY

“Do you know a young woman by the name of Adrianne

Lima?”
My stomach wavered.
“Er, yes,” I said. “She’s the bartender at The Factory. I go there
all the time.”
Officer Whent arched an eyebrow. The younger officer,
Williams, remained stonefaced and silent.
“Is that all?”
“No,” I said. “She was here last night with my friend. Has
something happened?”
“That is what we are trying to determine,” said Whent. “And
what did you say the name of your friend was?”
“Er, Donnie,” I said. I felt a sudden wave of guilt. I was sure
Donnie had not done anything and I did not want to sell him
out. Then again, if he hadn’t done anything bad did it really
count as selling him out? Before I could come to a definitive
answer the words were on my lips. “Donnie Abrams. But I’m
sure he had nothing to do with whatever happened.”
“Mhm,” said Whent. “Do you mind if we come inside and
have a look around?”
“Of course not,” I said, even though I didn’t mean it. I stepped
aside and gestured for the officers to come in.
“Sorry about the mess,” I said.
Officer Whent waved me off.
“So you said they were together?” he asked.
“Uh, yeah. They spent the night in the guest bedroom.”
“This one here?” asked Whent, pointing to the guest bedroom
door.
“Yes, that’s the one.”
He went inside, but Williams stayed in the living room, eyes
firmly fixed on me.
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 DONNIE THE SKELETON

I tried to ignore him, instead turning my attention to Whent.

Slowly and meticulously he worked his way through the room.
He found nothing.
With a long sigh, he sat down on the bed. That’s when his
face changed, and he jumped back up to his feet.
“Hey Williams,” he called. “Come in here.”
Williams obliged.
“Help me flip this mattress over, will you?”
Inexplicably, my heart began to pound in my chest. Looking
at the mattress, I had an ugly feeling in the pit of my stomach.
The two of them seized if by the side and lifted it up.
Something fell out. At first I didn’t know what I was looking
at. Then the knowledge hit me all at once.
I was looking at a face, or what remained of a face. Through
the blood and missing skin, I could just make out the teeth
marks.
There was one last realization that hit me before I fainted.
I had had eggs in my apartment when Donnie had come over,
but I definitely hadn’t had any sausage patties.

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 37

The Hitchhiker from Hell

W
hat the hell was she doing out here at a time like this?
I eased my foot down onto the brake pedal, and
the car slowed to a stop. I looked out the window at
the woman. She cut a pitiful figure—shoulders slumped, head
down, all while the rain poured down on her in heavy sheets.
I rolled down the window.
“Looking for a ride?” I asked.
She lifted her head and nodded. I undid my seatbelt with a
click, leaned over and opened the passenger’s side door. She
climbed inside and brushed her soaking wet hair out of her
face.
“Where you headed?” I asked.
“Oh,” she said quietly, “to Hell, I guess.”
I laughed at the perceived joke, but my laughter turned into
awkward silence when I saw the grave expression her face.
“Well,” I said. “I can get you as far as Los Angeles. I guess
that’s about as close to Hell as you can get without dying.”
Her face eased into a wry smile.
“Okay,” she said. “Los Angeles it is.”
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 THE HITCHHIKER FROM HELL

I smiled at her and hit the gas. Silence settled over us as we

drove, and the rain came down heavier and heavier. Even with
the wipers on full speed, it was impossible to see through the
endless gray curtain of water.
“So what brings you out here in weather like this?” I finally
said.
She looked a bit startled by my question.
“Oh,” she said, “I hate the rain.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s a good thing I found you when I did. This
area is prone to flash floods, you know.”
A convulsive shiver shook her entire body. I cranked up the
heat.
“Hey, not to sound like a pervert, but shouldn’t you get out of
those wet clothes? I have some spare dry ones in the back, and
I won’t watch you change, I promise.”
“Okay,” she said. She pulled her coat and shirt off right then,
before reaching in the back and grabbing an old T-shirt I kept
as a spare in the back and sliding it on.
“Oh my god,” I said.
Now that her coat was off I could see her neck. A thick, purple
bruise encircled it. She looked like she had been strangled.
“Are you okay?” I asked. “Do you need medical attention?”
“Ambulances don’t come out here,” she said. “Same for police.
It’s too remote.”
“Er, right,” I said. This woman was starting to make me
uncomfortable, and our conversation once again faded into
silence. It was a few minutes before she spoke again, right as
the car was about to crest a large hill.
“Stop the car,” she said.
I slowed, but didn’t stop.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
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 DEATH AND CANDY

“Stop the car.”

“I can’t do that,” I said, “I’m on a tight schedule, you know?
And besides, I can’t just leave you out here in this weather.”
She turned to me. The look on her face was totally blank
as she seized the wheel and pulled. The truck jerked to the
right, and tires squealed as I slammed on the brakes. I jerked
the wheel back but it was no good; the truck slammed into the
guard rail, sheared off a post and slammed into the slushy mud.
“God damn it!” I yelled. “What the hell is wrong with—what
the fuck?”
The woman had disappeared. I squinted out the window into
the shifting gray canvas of rain.
Had she somehow fallen out while the car was skidding?
I looked at her seatbelt, still buckled. This was too weird for
me. I hit the gas, but the truck’s wheels only spun. I was stuck.
I pulled out my phone and called the police to let them know
where I was, but they said they couldn’t reach me until weather
conditions improved.
I resigned myself to wait, flipped on the radio and, after the
adrenaline shakes wore off, I took a nap.
I awoke to a knock on my window. I opened my eyes to see
a policeman, motioning for me to roll down the window. I
obliged.
“Well,” he said in a thick Southern accent. “Believe it or not
you might just be the luckiest son of a bitch on the planet.”
“Excuse me?”
“Come on out, I’ll show you.”
I did as I was told, and the two of us walked to the top of the
hill. Lying in the middle of the road below, lodged in a massive
swell of mud, was a rock about half the size of my truck.
“If you had come over that hill,” said the policeman, “I guess
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 THE HITCHHIKER FROM HELL

you never would have seen it in the rain. It’s a lucky thing you
lost control when you did, otherwise, well…”
He looked at me pointedly.
“But I didn’t lose control,” I said. “This woman I picked up—a
hitchhiker—she jerked the wheel and sent me into the mud.”
“That right?” he said. “Where’d she go?”
“She, uh, disappeared.”
A peculiar expression stole over his face.
“Remember what she looked like?”
“Er, yeah,” I said. “Black hair, blue eyes, and…”
“And what?”
“A bruise around her neck. It was a bad one.”
The policeman nodded and sighed.
“Looks like you ran into Maggie. She’s the local legend round
here.”
“Legend?”
The officer nodded, and explained.
Apparently Maggie had been a single mother who had locked
her daughter in her room for weeks, in order to keep the girl
from running off with an abusive boyfriend. One day, when
she went off to work with her daughter locked in the house,
it rained hard. The house flooded, and was swept away. The
daughter’s remains were never found, and it is presumed she
drowned.
Maggie was inconsolable—she hanged herself a week later.
Her note said that she was going to Hell to atone for her sins.
But she didn’t go to Hell. According to the legend, she stayed
on Earth to atone by saving wayward travelers from the same
fate her daughter had suffered.
I supposed I might have bumped my head in the crash, that
Maggie might have been nothing more than a hallucination—ex-
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 DEATH AND CANDY

cept for one thing. When I went back to my truck, the shirt
and jacket she had been wearing were sitting there still, soaking
wet, on my passenger seat.
I still have them.

172
 38

The Strands of Fate

I
first met the demon when I was seventeen, and on that
night he saved my life.
I was standing at the bus stop, waiting to catch a ride
home from my after-school job. I had forgotten my umbrella
that day, and, as you know, it always rains when you forget your
umbrella.
It was coming down in freezing torrents, and I was trying to
ignore the fact that I was floating in my own shoes. Suddenly,
the rain above me stopped, and I looked up to see him—the
demon, shielding me with his umbrella.
He looked like a person put together by someone who didn’t
know what a human being should look like. He was long and
lanky, six and a half feet at least, and his shoulders were hunched
forward so that his profile resembled that of a giant vulture.
His face was gaunt, all sharp edges and deep hollows, and
across it was plastered a wide, friendly smile of crooked gray
teeth.
“Haven’t you heard, friend?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “Heard what?”
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 DEATH AND CANDY

“The bus isn’t coming today. The driver was drunk and got
into a crash. Everybody on board was killed.”
The way he said this last part—cheerful, almost—made my
stomach turn.
I wasn’t sure if I really believed him, but I decided that I
would leave anyway. I felt a strong urge to put as much distance
between him and me as possible.
“Oh,” I replied. “I guess I’ll have to walk it.”
“Yes,” he said. “You will. Here, take my umbrella.”
He extended the umbrella out toward me, and without
thinking, I accepted it. My fingers briefly brushed the skin
of his hand, and a revulsive shiver shot through my entire body.
I left him standing there, grinning the wide smile of crooked
gray teeth.
***
The next day I saw the bus crash on the news—except it had
happened after my stop. Just as the man had said, everyone on
board had died. And if it weren’t for him, I would have been
on board too. As I watched the news, I felt a tingle in my hand
where the mysterious man had touched me. My core went cold,
and I turned off the news.
***
The next time I saw the demon was during my sophomore
year of college. He was waiting for me in my dorm room,
hunched over my desk and reading one of my books.
“It’s you,” I said.
“Yes,” he replied. “It’s me.”
He calmly shut the book and turned to face me, beaming his
crooked-toothed grin.
“I brought you a present,” he said.
My stomach squirmed.
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 THE STRANDS OF FATE

“You did?” I asked.

“Oh yes.”
He reached a hand inside the lapel of his jacket and retrieved
a pink spiral notebook. The name ‘Ellen Hartwell’ was printed
on the cover.
“This belongs to the pretty brunette in your psychology class,”
he said. “The one you’re always staring at. You will tell her you
found it, and then you will ask her out to dinner. She will say
yes.”
He set it down on my desk.
“Oh,” I said. “Thanks.”
“No thanks necessary,” said the man. “I’ll see you again.”
In that moment I blinked, and he disappeared.
***
The final time I saw the demon was the night my son was
conceived. My wife Ellen was waiting in the bedroom while I
took a quick shower. I stepped out naked and dripping wet to
see the man standing in my bathroom.
“Hello again, friend,” he said.
“You scared me,” I replied.
“I know,” he said, a soft smile on his lips. “I want you to listen
to me. Tonight you are going to talk to your wife. She is ready
to have children, but she doesn’t know it yet. She will conceive
your son tonight.”
My heart swelled at the thought of a son, but my stomach
was less optimistic, and it squirmed with uneasiness.
“Why are you helping me?” I asked.
The man smiled widely.
“The strands of fate are long,” he said. “Much longer than a
single human life.”
He snapped his fingers, and disappeared in a mist of blue-gray
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 DEATH AND CANDY

smoke.
The man never visited again after that, but sometimes I
would get that uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach that
accompanied his presence. Years passed, then decades, and
gradually, I forgot about him—until the day the police came.
They came with bloodhounds and shovels, and they turned
my entire property inside out.
After all was said and done, they’d found the remains of thirty-
seven women, and arrested my only son.
My son claimed throughout the trial that a demon had forced
him to commit the murders, but the prosecution did not believe
it, and he was sentenced to death.
But I knew better. I recognized the demon from the thou-
sands of sketches that filled his notebooks.
All the drawing were the same—a gaunt-faced man with a
wide, friendly smile of crooked, dead gray teeth.

176
 39

Desert Cults and Mescaline

I
used to think cults were fun.
You get to hang out in the desert with your friends, do
some mescaline and hallucinate a religion into existence.
Our cult was my life.
My buddy Orin and I started it out of a decommissioned
school bus we bought off a guy on Craigslist. The bus is rusted
out and half the windows are broken. We smeared the name,
‘The Beast’ on the side in blood-red paint.
We had seventeen members, all of them burnt out junkie
losers just like Orin and me. We cruised The Beast around the
desert looking for portals to the Otherrealm.
The Otherrealm was Orin’s idea. It was kind of like the
Lust circle of Hell from Dante’s Inferno—a giant tornado of
naked writhing bodies eternally slamming into each other. Our
version was supposed to be fun, though.
One day, we found a portal.
It didn’t look like much at first—there was nothing there
except an old sunbleached cow skull. But Orin said it was the
place, so we pulled the bus over and piled out.
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We got out the ceremonial peace pipe made from the hol-
lowed out hip bone of an animal carcass and loaded up some
weed. Orin passed around bits of San Pedro cactus and we all
ate it raw, looking forward to tripping off the mescaline.
Orin and I began to smoke while the followers built the
bonfire. The sky faded into a glowing orange as the sun set
over the glistening desert sands. By the time the sky had faded
into a bruised purple twilight, the fire was a roaring twenty
foot inferno, writhing into the sky like a giant orange serpent.
The pipe was passed around, and time slowed to a crawl.
Shadows danced in the warm firelight that bathed the skull of
the cow, and then, the demon emerged.
It appeared at first as a tongue of blue gray smoke, slithering
from the left eye of the skull and twisting its way up into the sky.
It began to curl, swirling itself into a whirlpool that slowly took
on edges to form the head of a great wolf, with shimmering fur
of silver thread, and teeth that gleamed like ivory daggers.
“I am the Great Wolf Spirit,” it announced. Its voice was
sonorous and deep, like the tolling of a bell.
I looked around for the other cult members, but I realized
that the Wolf Spirit and I were alone, drifting on a sea of milky
white stars.
I wished to speak but words would not come.
“The Great Wolf Spirit is the spirit of the predator,” intoned
the wolf. “It is the spirit of The Beast. It is the enforcer of the
natural order, wherein the strong devour the weak. Your friend
has sought me out, thinking to find paradise. But there is no
paradise. The strong will always eat the weak, and the weak will
always suffer. Now, open your mind, and become the Wolf.”
He opened his mouth and howled, a low, chilling sound that
gripped my bones and shook them, and the stars exploded into
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silver fireworks and I fell, forever, into oblivion.

When I awoke I was naked, and the fire had long since burned
to ash which the winds had scattered, leaving only a faint black
spot in the dirt. I must have been out for days, maybe weeks,
and unease crept in as I realized that I was alone.
Orin was gone, and the rest of the cult too. The Beast was
nowhere to be seen.
I did not know why the others had abandoned me, nor how I
had survived alone in the desert while wandering through the
drug-induced psychotic haze that exists beyond the grasp of
memory.
The only half-formed plan that my muddled mind could seize
was to get to higher ground, so that I might be able to find my
bearings.
I sighted a canyon in my distance, and over the next two hours
I made the grueling hike. My feet were bloody when I reached
the top, but my heart was light with joy, because on the distant
horizon I saw salvation—our cult’s bus, The Beast.
It was mid-afternoon when I came upon it. I sprinted to the
bus with rising spirits, ready to see my friends. They were there,
alright. The insides of The Beast were painted with their blood
and viscera.
The world tilted and spun, and I had to grip a seat to stay
upright. I felt my guts heave in protest, and then the torrent of
hot vomit exploded from my throat.
I stared at it in horror as I realized how, during my time
unconscious in the desert, I had not starved to death.
On top of the pile of blood red vomit, I saw a partially digested
human toe.

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 40

Welcome to Hell, Please Take a

Number

I
t never ceases to amaze me how much trouble my daughter
can get up to in the milliseconds a day I’m not watching
her like a hawk. I once left her alone for two minutes to
take a phone call and I came back to find she had somehow
stripped naked, opened the front door, and gone outside to use
the front lawn sprinklers as a shower.
Kids, right?
Still, I don’t know what I’d do without her. She just started
the fall semester of third grade last year, and the house felt
strangely empty without her. My days were calm and without
incident, and I grew to miss the very things that once drove
me crazy. I missed the Legos hidden in the carpet, how every
doorknob was somehow sticky, even the crayon drawings on
the wall.
But something I’ve learned about parenting is that you are
only allowed a few brief moments of calm before another
disaster arises, and unbeknownst to me, I was about to face
the biggest disaster of them all.
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 WELCOME TO HELL, PLEASE TAKE A NUMBER

The problem began with Ms. Robinson. Ms. Robinson was

my daughter’s homeroom teacher, and a woman who harbored
an enduring obsession with two things: the army of stray cats
that besieged her home year-round, and the yuletide season. So,
at the beginning of last November, Ms. Robinson decided that
it was high time to begin her Christmas-themed lesson plans,
one of which was writing letters to Santa Claus.
Harmless, right?
Sadly, no.
As Ms. Robinson’s teaching abilities have never quite
matched her enthusiasm for cats and candy cane flavored
liqueur, the students’ letters got sent out with some spelling
errors. As far as I can tell though, my daughter is the only one
who sent her letter out to Satan.
That shouldn’t have been a problem—just another funny story
to add to the highlight reel of hijinks that gets told when the
family gets together at Christmas. The problem was that we
got a letter back.
It was a lazy Sunday afternoon and I was napping in my
recliner when I was awoken by an urgent knocking at the door.
I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and pushed myself out of the
chair to go see who was at the door and what they could have
possibly needed that was so urgent.
Yet when I opened the door, nobody was there.
I leaned out and scanned the street, but it was empty. There
were no people around, no running cars—even the birds were
quiet. I was about to write it off as a prank when I noticed an
envelope sitting on my doormat.
I bent down and picked it up, staring at it as I carried it inside
my house.
The envelope was black and smelled faintly of charcoal.
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 DEATH AND CANDY

‘Sarah,’ my daughter’s name, was written on the front in blood

red ink.
My first instinct was to wonder what kind of person would
hand-deliver a letter to a five-year-old girl. Turning the
envelope over, I slid my thumb under the seal and tore it open.
I pulled the paper out with care. It looked to be at least a
hundred years old, and I feared it might crumble in my hands
at any moment. The letter was written in loopy cursive with
the same blood red ink that was on the envelope.
I felt a growing sense of unease in the pit of my stomach as
I read the letter, the contents of which I will replicate for you
here.
Dear Sarah,
Thank you so much for your letter. Almost nobody takes
the time to write me anymore. I usually only get letters from
Satanists, and they are an awfully strange group of people. I
have carefully considered your request for a ‘life-sized, living
and breathing teddy bear’ and I believe that our scientists down
here have been able to put together a reasonable approximation
of your request. Franken Teddy is scheduled to arrive at your
doorstep shortly after you receive this letter.
Yours Truly,
Satan
I must have looked rather stupid as I stood there staring at
the letter in my hands, my mouth hanging open as I tried to put
my thoughts in order. Yet I wager I looked even stupider when
I turned around to see a seven-foot tall teddy bear standing
behind me and I screamed like a little girl.
Franken Teddy seemed unfazed by my reaction, and judging
by his appearance, I’d guess that he was used to such receptions.
He had matted brown fur that was patched together with
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 WELCOME TO HELL, PLEASE TAKE A NUMBER

various bits of ragged cloth and covered in what looked

suspiciously like blood stains. One of his eyes was a little
black button, and the other looked like a glowing ember set
somewhere deep in the back of his head. He spoke in a booming
monotonous baritone that made me wonder if his vocal chords
had been singed by Hellfire.
“I….AM FRANKEN TEDDY,” he said. “I AM HERE…. TO
LOVE YOU.”
I tried to force my mouth to form words, but all that came
out was a small squeaking noise.
“ARE YOU SARAH?” Franken Teddy boomed.
“I uh, no. I’m Sarah’s dad,” I replied. “Listen, I don’t really
think that—”
“WHERE IS SARAH?” said Franken Teddy.
“Well, she’s at school right now and—”
“THEN I WILL GO TO SCHOOL SO THAT I MAY LOVE
HER.”
“Wait a second. School is over now and she’ll be home any
moment. But you can’t—”
“THEN I SHALL WAIT HERE,” Teddy finished.
He promptly turned around and made his way to my couch.
The couch groaned and sagged under his enormous weight.
He turned towards me.
“DO YOU HAVE ANY SOULS OF THE DAMNED?” he
asked. “I MUST CONSUME SOULS OF THE DAMNED TO
SUSTAIN MYSELF.”
“Er, no,” I replied. “I’m afraid we don’t.”
He made a vague grumbling noise in his throat and said,
“CHEETOS ARE ALSO FINE.”
“Oh, well we do have those.”
“I’LL HELP MYSELF.”
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 DEATH AND CANDY

I looked back down at the letter as Franken Teddy wandered

into my kitchen, and saw that there was a customer service
number written on the back. I got out my phone to call it,
but before I finished dialing I heard a scream sound out from
behind me.
I turned around to see Sarah standing in the doorway, mouth
hanging open as she stared at Franken Teddy rummaging
through our cabinets and throwing things on the floor in his
search for Cheetos.
“Sarah, honey, don’t be scared,” I said.
But Sarah wasn’t scared in the least. She shot past me like a
bolt of little blonde lightning and leapt on Franken Teddy’s leg,
wrapping herself so tightly around it that she was lifted off the
ground whenever he took a step.
“He’s perfect, Daddy!” she screamed. “I can’t wait to take him
to show and tell!”
I was flabbergasted.
“Wait, really?” I asked.
“Of course!” Sarah squealed.
“Oh,” I said. “But you can’t bring a monster teddy bear to—”
“ARE YOU SARAH?” Franken Teddy’s booming voice cut me
off yet again.
“Yes!” Sarah shouted.
Franken Teddy took a knee.
“MY LADY,” he said. “I HAVE BEEN ENLISTED BY THE
DARK LORD SATAN TO SERVE AT YOUR PLEASURE. I
SHALL LOVE AND PROTECT YOU WITH MY LIFE, AND I
SHALL TEAR YOUR ENEMIES TO SHREDS NEED BE.”
“Cool!” Sarah shouted. She leapt to her feet and began
hopping around Franken Teddy in circles. Not knowing what
else to do, I finished typing the customer service number into
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 WELCOME TO HELL, PLEASE TAKE A NUMBER

my phone with shaking hands. The line rang once, and then a
tired female voice answered.
“Hell customer service,” it said, “how may I Hell you today?”
“Listen, I—wait, did you just say how may I Hell you?”
The voice on the other end sighed.
“It’s not my joke,” she said. “It’s just something management
forces us to say.”
“I uh, okay,” I replied. “Listen, I think there’s been some sort
of mistake.”
The woman sighed again.
“All Heaven and Hell placements are final,” she said. “The
appeals process is really more of a formality.”
“What?” I said. “No, I’m talking about the seven-foot tall
monster teddy bear that just showed up at my house.”
“Oh,” the woman said, her tone relaxing a bit. “You must be
the Rogers household.”
“Yes, that’s right,” I replied.
“Satan wanted to let you know that he hopes your daughter
enjoys the gift. He regrets to inform you, however, that he will
be out of the office until next Wednesday, so he won’t be able
to check back with you until then.”
I turned and watched Franken Teddy open a family-sized bag
of Cheetos and dump its entire contests into his mouth. Several
handfuls fell onto the floor, and Sarah trampled them into dust
as she hopped around in excitement.
“Well, can I maybe return him until then?” I asked.
“No,” the woman said flatly.
“So I’m stuck with a giant monster teddy bear until Satan
calls me next week?”
“No, of course not,” the woman said.
“Oh thank God,” I replied, somewhat regretting my phrasing.
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 DEATH AND CANDY

“Satan won’t be calling you,” she said. “He has you scheduled
for a face to face.”
My throat tightened up and my mouth went dry. I tried to
tell her that wasn’t necessary, but all I could get out was a few
squeaking sounds. She muttered something about ‘humans
with no manners’ and hung up the phone with a decisive click.
I turned back around to see Sarah screaming with laughter
as Franken Teddy tossed her up and the air and caught her over
and over again. Her hair had fallen over her face and her eyes
were bright with joy. I couldn’t help but smile a little despite
myself.
Still, the problem remained of how I was going to keep a
seven-foot tall teddy bear hidden from the rest of the neighbor-
hood until Wednesday. And that was a relatively small problem
compared with deciding what to do when Satan himself showed
up on my doorstep.
Yet as I watched Franken Teddy tear apart my kitchen, the
most pressing issue became clear. I was going to have to buy
more Cheetos.

186
 About the Author

Not much to say here. I sincerely hoped you enjoyed my stories.

You can connect with me on:

http://davidmaloneystories.com
http://facebook.com/lifeisstrangemetoo

Subscribe to my newsletter:
https://mailchi.mp/f8839a613384/deathandcandy

187
 Also by David Maloney

Welcome to Hell, Please take a Number

Coming Soon! If you enjoyed the final story of this book you
definitely want to check out the novelized version that will be
out later this year.

188