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There was a new Chinese restaurant in town.  The Red Devil.  Odd name for a Chinese restaurant but no difference; maybe it was a translation issue.  There was a huge sinewy red dragon snaking around the edge of the sign after all…  The Red Devil had gone in overnight without warning where the sleazy Fast Joe’s grease-fest burger joint had been, attached to the Lucky Strike bowling alley.  Not the best part of town, on the outskirts, and the restaurant still had that greasy burger joint funk to it, giving off a vibe that one didn’t want to linger in.

Alex and her BFFs had ordered take out and had split as soon as possible, what with the slow older woman running the show taking her sweet time with everything.  They were gathered at the picnic shelter in the park, which was notably less seedy and had fewer disheveled old men ogling them.

Their food was good, almost too good.  But why?  There was no real reason for it.  It should have been just another greasy dish of standard Kung Pao Pork like any other generic Chinese American place, especially given the location.  Yet Alex couldn’t stop eating, well devouring, it.  It was almost as if she hadn’t eaten in days and this was just what she’d been waiting for.  Hell, it tasted so good it almost seemed as if she’d been waiting for this Kung Pao Pork all her life.  Her friends were just as immersed in their own food, and no one said a word until they’d literally licked their to-go foil pans clean.

Even after they’d decimated every scrap of food they had, no one said a word.  Until finally Kari prompted, “Wait, what about our fortunes?!”

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“Oh yeah, I forgot,” Alex replied.  Trudi nodded along, her tongue still occupied with licking what remained of her General Tso Chicken from between her teeth.  How could they neglect the fortune cookies?  The fortunes were usually the best part of the meal.  They savored each and every one, hanging on to every word and giggling as they added “in bed” to the end of each to glorify or chastise the fortune-reader about her suggested imaginary sex life and future exploits…

Kari tossed a fortune cookie to each of them.  Alex caught hers and studied it intently.  It was unlike any fortune cookie she’d ever seen.  It still resembled a little folded over coin-purse wafer, but it was red and meaty looking, not cookie colored, and the outer plastic package printing made it look like a wide-grinning smile.  The strangest part was the fangs printed to line up with the edge of the cookie, as if the cookie itself were lips parted slightly exposing vampire teeth.  It was extremely well done, and quite unsettling.  The other side of the package simply read, “The Red Devil.”

“I’ll go first,” Kari exclaimed briskly, shredding the wrapping and snapping the blood red cookie in two without taking any real notice of it… typical, seeing how Kari was always the one to jump head first into the deep end of anything without studying it beforehand.  It was part of her charm, really.  And it was a large part of why Trudi and Alex followed her.  She drew attention wherever she went, and the whole school had taken note when she moved here earlier their Junior year.

“You will die tomorrow…,” she read matter-of-factly until suddenly taken aback.  “Wait, what?!”

Kari paled, losing her usual snarky comeback attitude.  She turned the tongue of paper over and back again.  “You will die tomorrow,” she repeated.  She handed the note to Trudi, who read back at her,” You will die tomorrow,” before tossing it abruptly back at Kari as if to rid herself of something that might be contagious.

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“Not funny,” Kari stuttered, flustered.  She pointed at Trudi, her finger trembling accusingly.  “This can’t, er… you go next.”

Trudi gulped.  She was always the next in line and obeyed Kari’s every word.  She hesitantly fingered her fortune cookie.

“I said, ‘You go next!’” Kari echoed a little louder this time, her eyes staring daggers into Trudi.  She wasn’t going to be alone in this.  Trudi slowly tugged apart the sheath of plastic to expose the blood red cookie inside.  She shook the cookie out into her hand and broke it in two.  She looked at the tongue of paper and blanched, her eyes wide.

“Well…” snapped Kari.  “What does Yours say?”

Trudi shook her head and opened her mouth as if to speak, but all that came out was a shrill sigh.  Kari snatched the paper fortune and gasped.  She tossed it away hurriedly.  The paper twisted and twirled through the air as it fell in seemingly slow motion.  Alex studied it intently as it floated towards the ground, making out the words.

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You…

will…

die…

tomorrow…

Trudi whimpered.  Kari suddenly exploded, grabbed the two fortunes, and set them ablaze with her lighter.  They burned, shriveled to a charred black line, and then into a fine ash, which scattered like a hundred dandelion seeds.

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“Well, that’s that,” Kari said matter-of-factly.  She mustered a faint grimace and lauded, “Fortune smiles upon thee” as if knighting Trudi in some sort of bad joke movie.  But it felt too forced, and she was just not her usual Comeback Queen self for all that she tried not to appear shaken.  She ignored the remaining cookie in Alex’s hand and brushed herself off, signaling it was time to move on to bigger and better things.  In actually, all she did was drive Trudi and Alex home, with the three of them sitting in silence the whole way.  Trudi stared out the passenger side window.  Alex huddled in the back and stared at the blood red pursed lip fortune cookie in her hand, squinting at it as if to try to focus on the tongue of paper enfolded within but to no avail.

Alex was dropped off at her doorstep in a whirlwind as Kari and Trudi sped off.  She stumbled inside, gasped a rushed” Hi,I-haveto-homewrk…” at her parents as she dashed up the stairs to her bedroom and slammed the door behind her.  She tossed the creepy fortune cookie on her dresser and stared at her reflection in the mirror for a long time before she buried herself in a cheap romance novel.

At some point, she must have gotten ready for bed and gone to sleep but she didn’t recall doing so.  She woke abruptly the next morning, as if jostled from her sleep by a nagging sense of dread.

Kari picked up Alex at home and the trio drove to school together as usual, Trudi sprawled out in front gesturing wildly and singing along with the radio and Alex scrunched up in the back.  Kari was still unusually reserved.

The day itself was uneventful.  Alex couldn’t focus on her studies and kept ruminating on The Red Devil, the fortunes, and the sudden shift in Kari’s demeanor.  The elderly Asian woman who worked the register and fried up everything for them in the back whistled quietly while cooking.  Kari had heckled her, asking “C’mon Grandma, can’t you do it any faster?!  You’d think she was building The Great Wall back there…”

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The elderly Asian woman explained that she loved her work and put a little of herself into everything she did.  “In due time,” she sang, continuing to whistle as she flipped and scattered the food in the giant wok.  “In due time,” she whispered as she’d placed the fortune cookies in their bag.  When they’d paid and erupted out of the restaurant, she’d echoed the same as they were leaving, “In due time…”

You… will… die… tomorrow…

The words were etched in Alex’s mind.  She still hadn’t opened her fortune and wondered what was written there.  She wasn’t all too eager to find out.  She glanced over at Kari and Trudi passing notes in the back behind the teacher’s back.  When the lunch bell rang, they sidled up to her.

“Let’s blow this joint,” Kari said.  “We have a bone to pick with that Chinese lady…”  Trudi nodded along.

They hopped into Kari’s hand-me-down Chrysler and blasted across town to the Lucky Strike Bowling Alley.  The Red Devil was gone!  Just a sign that said “For Lease” in the window remained.  In fact, there was no evidence that there had ever been a Chinese restaurant there.  No sign, no red sinewy dragon, nothing… just a vacant shell of a greasy burger joint.

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“Dammit,” Kari shouted and kicked the rear front tire.  A catcall whistled at them from a neighboring car.

“Lookin’ for someone?” a low voice snaked out of a shiny new Miata convertible, orange with black racing stripes – Brad.  Of course it would be Brad.  He was used to getting everything he wanted and he’d set his sights on Kari, following her like a lost prep-school puppy ever since she’d moved to Springdale.

Kari sighed and glared at him.  She was not in the mood for casual flirting or “priming the payload” as she called it.  “Get in,” she barked at Trudi and Alex.  They did as she commanded.  She was usually so uninhibited and this newfound sternness was out of place.

Brad smiled.  “Aww c’mon.  Why else would you lovelies bust out of school?”

“Not now, Brad,” Kari grumbled as she revved the engine.

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“At least race me back,” Brad smirked as he whirled around.

Kari smiled wild in response, her eyes alight, “You’re on.”

The cars started off neck and neck but Kari’s beater couldn’t keep up and she knew it.  But she had a secret weapon.  She was going to take the shortcut, and she ripped onto the gravel road at breakneck speed.

“Wait!,” Trudi screamed as the car spun out and the world went black.

Alex awoke to a rhythmic beeping.  Bright lights and visions of angels in scrubs hovered over her.  “You’re going to be okay,” one of the angels said.  Alex’s mom rushed over, her red face streaked with tears and grabbed her in a bear hug.

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“Wh… what happened?” Alex quipped.  “Where am I?  Where’re Kari and Trudi?”

Her mom blanched.  “They didn’t make it.  It’s a Godsend you’re alive.  The whole front end of that car was…” her voice faded out as she evaded saying anything more.

The angel-nurse looked Alex over.  “You’re very lucky.  All you’ve got to show for it are a few scratches and a broken rib.   You can go home.  Just try to rest and don’t overexert yourself…”

Alex’s mom escorted her out of the hospital and into their Ford “Capri Sun” as the trio used to joke.  (It was even the right shade of turquoise.)  Alex’s head was a blur.  She didn’t remember getting home or the trek to her bedroom, but there she was, staring once again at the mirror.  She glanced down to find the fortune cookie.

It lay there on her dresser, plastic wrapping split open like a flower unfolded, forking a tongue of paper at her like an invitation.  Still foggy, Alex reached for it as if possessed and turned it over in her palm before it fully sank in what she was doing.

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“In due time,” it read.

eerie red fortune cookie wrapped in plastic
Portrait of myself with dark makeup and crow skull headdress, backlit by the sun.

Jennifer Weigel is a multi-disciplinary mixed media conceptual artist residing in Kansas USA. Weigel utilizes a wide range of media to convey her ideas, including assemblage, drawing, fibers, installation, jewelry, painting, performance, photography, sculpture, video and writing. You can find more of her work at: https://www.jenniferweigelart.com/ https://www.jenniferweigelprojects.com/ https://jenniferweigelwords.wordpress.com/

Original Series

Nightmarish Nature: Horrifying Humans

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So we’re going out on a limb here in this segment of Nightmarish Nature and exploring one of the most terrifying, most dangerous, most impactful species to walk this planet. I’m talking about us of course. Sure, as humans, we may not seem all that horrific to ourselves, but to many other creatures we have been a force of nightmares.

Humans male as drawn by Jennifer Weigel
Humans male as drawn by Jennifer Weigel

Why are we terrifying?

Humans are among those species that engage in massive modifications to our environment to serve our needs, like beavers who dam rivers, elephants who eat all of the new growth scrub to keep the savannahs tree-free, and so on. Yeah, all creatures have some impact on their surroundings, but some take it up a notch, and we do so at an order of magnitude higher still. And we have gotten so good at it that we have managed to exist and thrive in places that would otherwise be inhospitable. We are outwardly adaptive and opportunistic to the point of being exploitative. We are the apex predators now.

Sabertooth cowering as drawn by Jennifer Weigel
Sabertooth cowering as drawn by Jennifer Weigel

We have forced many creatures into extinction, intentionally and not, and have sped up these effects enormously. The National Audobon Society chose the egret as its symbol after it made a comeback from being hunted to near extinction, and it was one of the lucky ones. Many weren’t so lucky, especially if they came in direct conflict with humans, such as wolves and the big cats who were in direct competition, or those who were really specialized in really specific niche circumstances that we pushed out of the way. And this is in only a very very limited scope of our earth’s history, and has since been even more ramped up with industrialization.

Humans female as drawn by Jennifer Weigel
Humans female as drawn by Jennifer Weigel

But humans aren’t all bad are we?

Depends on who you ask… We have created all sorts of incredible opportunities for some species too. Take mice for example. And coyotes. And kudzu. And a whole host of animals whom we’ve domesticated, some of whom wouldn’t have continued to exist otherwise or certainly wouldn’t exist in anything resembling their current forms. And the most massive extinctions occurred long before our arrival, when the earth was still forming and underwent rapid catastrophic changes and swings, decimating critters as they were trying to get a foothold. Nothing is constant except for change; that has always been true.

Wolf begging for cheezborger drawn by Jennifer Weigel
Wolf begging for cheezborger drawn by Jennifer Weigel

So it isn’t my goal to get all eco-con​scious and environmentalist here. Just that I feel if we are going to explore some of the more terrifying aspects of nature, we need to look in the mirror. Because if a consensus were taken right here, right now of all living beings globally as to what is among the most terrifying creatures among us, I’m sure we’d appear on that list.

If you enjoyed this closer-than-kissing-cousins segment of Nightmarish Nature on Horrifying Humans, please check out past segments:

Vampires Among Us

Perilous Parenting

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Freaky Fungus

Worrisome Wasps

Cannibalism

Terrifying Tardigrades

Reindeer Give Pause

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Komodo Dragons

Zombie Snails

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Original Creations

Werewolf-ing It Well, Part 3 by Jennifer Weigel

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Continuing our junkyard dawg werewolf story from the previous two St. Patrick’s Days… Here are Part 1 from 2022 and Part 2 from 2023 if you want to catch up.


Werewolf transformation digital art by Jennifer Weigel
Werewolf transformation digital art by Jennifer Weigel

So apparently it really was my lucky day at that suburban gas mart last St. Patrick’s Day. I got the mother lode of all Scratchers. I hit it big time. I had no real idea of what that meant, but it looked promising. Maybe I could get a Cadillac to tour Route 66 AND a cabin in the woods… But who was gonna drive?

Now apparently you can’t just cash these things in at the register. You have to mail them in or something. Why does life have to be so complicated? Anything involving those good for nothing mailmen has to be rigged or part of some larger conspiracy, I’m sure. But I pocketed my prize and made some plans. I couldn’t rely on old Sal not to just pocket my prize for himself; he wasn’t the sort that would let me have my dream. Or even understood that I had dreams beyond just chasing rabbits (though those are the best).

The next full moon I whined and howled at Sal to take me in to work with him. Sal just patted me on the head. Didn’t even offer a treat or nothing. Seriously, I had to get out of there, this suburban situation was the pits. I couldn’t do another year of it, watching my life tick away. So, when that didn’t work, I gently grabbed my Scratchers ticket like I was retrieving a very important slipper and slunk over and hid in his truck under that ratty blanket he kept in the back.

I managed to creep into the junkyard office and hide there while Sal was sleeping on the job. Those mastiffs nearly ratted me out, but fortunately they were chained up, and they weren’t all that bright anyway. Just growled a string of profanities at my cur form, like I hadn’t heard that before. Anyway, I waited it out and before long I heard Monty’s car pull up, rattling like the dilapidated Honda Civic held together with duct tape that it was. Sal’s truck pulled off, spitting gravel and exhaust in its wake as always.

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Dusk was setting in and I could feel the change starting. Nothing to do for it, guess I’d just have to run with it then. Monty had settled in as usual, watching bad porn and staring off into nothing. He still smelled like day old jelly donuts (the kind you can get a whole bag for $1) and coffee, as usual. Good boy Monty, how I’ve missed you and the occasional stale donut, even if it wasn’t a cookie. I approached him from behind and coughed.

Monty nearly leapt out of his skin. He blanched as if he’d seen a ghost before he managed to find his voice. “Shit, that wasn’t a dream,” he stammered, pointing. As he realized I meant him no harm, he regained his composure and even offered me a day-old jelly donut, which I accepted gratefully. I think he could tell that my tail would have been wagging if I’d still had one at that time.

“Lucky, what in all of hell are you doing here?” he asked, eyes still wide as saucers. “And for Christ’s sake, put on some pants.” He offered up the spare uniform that still just hung from the hook behind the door. I guess in my fervor to talk to him I’d forgotten to dress. Oops.

Werewolf transformation digital art by Jennifer Weigel
Werewolf transformation digital art by Jennifer Weigel

“Monty, old friend, I need a favor,” I barked. I handed him the Scratchers. His eyes grew wider.

“Shit, where’d you get this?” That’s a lot of money,” Monty exclaimed. “They’ve been looking for the winner of this one…”

“I’d stashed it in my hidey spot under the place where the carpet peels up after I got it… It’s our ticket out of here,” I retorted. “You don’t think I want to spend the rest of my days laying around suburbia with tightwad treat-skimping Sal do you?”

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“I suppose not,” Monty quipped. “But what’d you have in mind?”

“You and me, we could get a cabin in the woods, live off the land. Get out of this shit-hole. Hell, you could even get a real car, one of those big-boat Cadillacs with the wide tongue-lolling windows…”

“Um, you could do a lot more than that with this, but I catch your drift. And I want out of this hellhole too. But, like…? I mean, you aren’t gonna bite me or anything, or get all weird.” Monty fidgeted like he did when he was nervous. “I guess I knew but didn’t want to admit it – dude you’re a freak show.”

“Gee thanks. Trust me, being a dog is better any day except that you can’t drive or get your own treats and crap,” I retorted. “And if was gonna bite you I’d have done so a long time ago. It doesn’t work that way, anyway. Seriously, you don’t believe all that werewolf mumbo jumbo on Netflix too, do you?”

Werewolf transformation digital art by Jennifer Weigel
Werewolf transformation digital art by Jennifer Weigel

Monty shook his head tentatively. “I don’t really know what to believe. I mean, I guess I always knew you were like this, but I didn’t let it sink in.”

“Well, get over it and help me get my dream cabin,” I snipped. “Seriously don’t just stand there gawking all night; I put on clothes and everything. I only have tonight.”

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“You mean before you turn back into a dog?” Monty asked.

I nodded, still licking the jelly off my lips.

“But I thought werewolf changes happened every full moon,” Monty asked.

“I do, but these Scratchers change like the wind. We gotta cash in quick,” I growled. “And if you try to turn on me, I’ll hunt you down. That’s OUR ticket outta here.”

“No, no, I get it,” Monty said. “I’ll make good on it, I promise. I can follow up on the ticket first thing tomorrow; it says to mail it in or go to the courthouse or something. I’ll figure it out… I guess you can stay with me until we get it sorted, but you have to be really quiet about it. I’m not supposed to have pets in that crap apartment for all that a little dog hair would be an improvement.”

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Portrait of myself with dark makeup and crow skull headdress, backlit by the sun.
Portrait of myself with dark makeup and crow skull headdress, backlit by the sun.

Check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s writing here at Jennifer Weigel Words.

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Lighter than Dark

LTD: The Firing Squad

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So you’ve just gotten the pink slip.

Work is letting you go. Amidst all of the layoffs, you just didn’t make the cut. Well, I’m sorry to say, but it behooves you to go quietly. And quickly. Because you don’t want to stick around for the Firing Squad…

In fact, if your HR department is outsourced to one of those Eldritch contractors like so many are nowadays, get outta dodge NOW. Like seriously. Leave the lunch you brought in the fridge; leave the personal items in and on and around your desk. Hell, leave your coat and purse if you are not near them. You can get new ones. Maybe one of your ex-coworkers can help you retrieve your stuff later. Because you need to get out while the getting is still good.

The Firing Squad is coming.

And if they so much as see a pink slip anywhere in your immediate vicinity, it is complete and total annihilation…

Ready Aim Fire...  The Firing Squad appears digital art by Jennifer Weigel
Ready Aim Fire… The Firing Squad appears
Wing Shot...  The Firing Squad takes aim digital art by Jennifer Weigel
Wing Shot… The Firing Squad takes aim
Sharp Shooter...  You're a goner! digital art by Jennifer Weigel
Sharp Shooter… You’re a goner!

I warned you… Those Eldritch contractor HR departments mean business… It’s like going to the Library. Or making Jell-O.

Portrait of myself with dark makeup and crow skull headdress, backlit by the sun.
Portrait of myself with dark makeup and crow skull headdress, backlit by the sun.

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