Haunted MTL Original – Algea Reid – Tyler R. Martin
“Algea Reid” by Tyler R. Martin
“She’s cutting my fucking throat!” he shouted as I walked into the room.
The man was quite an interesting sight. Tall, skinny, brown hair, blue eyes, strong jaw, hadn’t shaved in days, and the perpetual jitterers of a man truly frightened to his core. The officer who escorted me in told me his name was Travis McCurry and that he was just another run of the mill wackjob adamantly admitting to a crime which probably hasn’t taken place, at least not by Travis. However he was an interesting wackjob, the officer told me, so apparently worthy of some psychoanalysis.
“Who fucked him up?” I asked the officer as I had watched Travis through mirrored glass.
The officer, a fat, squat, bald little man in his late thirties, just chuckled, “you’ll have to ask him, Doc, ‘cause we surely didn’t believe it.”
“Wasn’t you guys?” I inquired.
“No man,” said the officer, “he came in like that.”
“She’s cutting my fucking throat.”
“Who?”
“The woman I killed a year ago.”
I sat down across from Travis McCurry. He wasn’t handcuffed but he was beaten to a bloody pulp. Two black eyes, nose still dripping blood, swelling on his cheekbones, split lips, top and bottom, his neck looked as if someone had already cut it, deeply, but it had already begun healing and was knitting together cleanly. Additionally, he had two large patches of dried blood on his shirt, one on each pectoral. He sat uncomfortably in a graywhite chair in a graywhite room with a graywhite table. A pale florescent light flickered on the ceiling and glimmered just slightly on the mirrored glass behind which the officers watched us.
“Killed?” I inquire.
He looked exapersated and utterly exhausted. “You’re the third cop I’ve told this too! Is this a joke to you?”
“I’m not a police officer, Travis,” I replied, paused, then quickly added, “is it ok to call you Travis?”
He took a deep breath and leaned back in the wooden chair, “its fine….but if you’re not a cop what are you?”
I introduced myself as a clinical psychiatrist that the police employ from time to time to sus out various confusing situations and talk to people in certain predicaments where police are inadequate.
Travis stared at me for a moment, then stood up and, in dramatic fashion, took off his bloody shirt and threw it on the floor.
His nipples, still bleeding, had been cleanly sliced off leaving two dark-red oozing patches on his chest.
“Sus that out…they literally rotted off me, before my very eyes, decayed and turned to dust over just a few months….the doctors couldn’t explain it, and once it got this bad they tell me there’s no way a sharp instrument hadn’t done this….they thought I did it to myself! Tried to commit me! And look at my fucking throat, man! I’m days away, hours, minutes maybe! ”
I took a deep breath in an effort to retain my composure.
“….do you wanna tell me what happened?…”
“Already told them…”
“Yes, but they don’t believe you…try me.”
“Look, that’s what happens next, after the nipples, I swear, she’s gonna cut my throat!”
Hysterics were setting in. I instruct him to take a deep breath and he does.
He was calming down, tired now, having exerted himself.
“Tell me what happened, Travis.”
He exhaled, sighing audibility to demonstrate his displeasure, gathered his thoughts and began.
“The night I buried her I started to feel it…gentle at first, just a light stinging on my ass cheeks, then, over the next few weeks it got more and more intense, a slapping, like someone was smacking my ass. Within a month or so the red ass graduated to these…inexplicable…bumps and bruises…”
He pointed to large, severe and obviously fresh scrapes and bruises all over his torso and face.
“…these have been here for six months.” he looked me sternly in the eye, “and they fucking hurt, worse every day.”
“Then my nipples….a burning at first, like a paper cut, then it started to feel like someone was slicing them off…I went to the doctor, stitches, cauterizations, referral after referral…”
“No results?” I ask calmly, to break the silence.
“No,” he replied after a moment. “It just kept getting worse, my face has looked like this for months… months! It looks like I got my ass kicked yesterday but I haven’t gotten my ass kicked in years, not like this anyway…
“Then my neck started, a little sting at first, then the same feeling I had in my nipples: a slow deliberate slicing that gets worse every minute, every second of everyday, deeper and deeper into my throat…and you don’t believe a word of it…”
I leaned across the table slowly and made eye contact.
“I believe that you believe it, Travis.”
“But?” he returned eye contact in a confrontational manner.
I choose my words carefully, “…but…I think it would be quite difficult for a dead woman to do this to you…”
He stayed silent, looking down at his lap, eyes welling with tears.
“What do you want us to do, Travis? How can we protect you?”
He looked up, “I don’t know, I feel like this will stop if I confess and…I don’t know, am punished, if justice is served or something… maybe if I tell what I did to her it won’t happen to me…I don’t know! It’s a year now and I’m out of options…”
Long gone now was the man yelling at me just a few minutes ago. Now he had broken down, looking beaten and without hope. At that moment nothing remained of his spirit…I pitied him, pitied him more than I have pitied any man in a very long time.
I stood up and placed my hand comfortingly on Travis’ shoulder. “Tell me her name.”
“Algea….Algea Reid, I still have her school I.D, I tried to show them but…..why do you ask?”
“Well,” I explained, “I’m going to ask the police to search her name up, and if your story about killing her checks out, and she’s missing or had been found dead then you’ll get to make your confession, I’ll talk to the police, you have my word.”
He said nothing but I noticed a very faint glimmer of hope in his bloodshot eyes.
I patted him on the shoulder once more and exited.
“Run that name please.”
“Already on it,” one officer replied.
I poured myself a steaming cup of coffee, black with just a bit of sugar.
“What had he done to that girl?” I wondered aloud.
I had recognized no guilt in his eyes, only fear, only self-preservation. It was an intense fear, a bone rattling fear, the fear of a man facing the abyss of death…but a fear not based on guilt.
Only someone who feels guilty would self-mulatate in his position, he doesn’t qualify, screams a voice in my head
“Got her!” I heard an officer shout victoriously behind me, startling me.
I sip my coffee and turn around to hear.
“I guess Mr. Crazy’s story sorta checks out,” he began to read from the printout, “Algea Reid…white, female 21, attending Huntington Nursing school, goes missing from her birthday party on January 28th…hell!….exactly one year ago today!”
“Happy birthday, Algea!” another officer rudley interjects. Everyone laughs.
“…goes to bar “the Nite Owl” with friends celebrating her 21st birthday, leaves with older man in mid thirties, described as tall, well dressed and handsome by her friends…who apparently recognised little else through their vodka goggles…”
There was a brief pause, then the officer looked up from the printout with a perplexed expression, “I don’t know, Sergeant Baxter, should I get a statement from him?”
“A bit late for that,” I say cutting off Sergeant Baxter’s reply as I look through the mirrored glass.
The officers crowd around me to see the brutal site.
Travis McCurry’s throat had been cut, deeply, and he had bled to death, likely in a matter of minutes, on a cold concrete floor, bruised and battered, in a pool of his own blood…alone in the room…
Hello! My name is Tyler R. Martin. I’m a 22 year old U.S Army veteran of the Iraq conflict and am now a full time writer/poet. I run a poetry blog called Bourbon, Cigarettes and Syllables at bourboncigarettesandsyllables.com. Please enjoy my submissions and thank you in advance for taking the time to read my work!
So, as you may have noticed, we have a special fondness for spiders here on Nightmarish Nature. Well, they are kind of the spokes-critters for horrifying animalia, perhaps because they are so freakishly different from us. Or maybe it’s because I find them a little disconcerting for all that I try to take the “you mind your business, I’ll mind mine” approach, at least if they stay outdoors. Or just because I really like to draw spiders for all that I prefer not to find them sharing my home (though I’ll gladly take spiders over other bugs or mice or larger critters who didn’t get an invite).
Anyway, this segment is devoted to the largest Giants Among Spiders, as if you didn’t have enough to worry about already. And the top place is contested based upon body mass or leg length. Most of these are tarantulas, which globally take top place among the large arachnids.
Goliath Birdeater Tarantula
The Goliath Birdeater Tarantula of South America is the biggest brute of spiderdom, weighing in at over 6 ounces. They build funnel burrows and are known to eat birds (although rarely), mice, lizards, frogs, and snakes, but largely any big insects including other species of spiders. They have urticating barbed hairs that they fling at would-be attackers as an irritant to escape. And people even eat them after they singe the bristles off. Here’s a National Geographic video showing this spider in action, in case you wanted to see a giant spider take out a mouse.
Giant Huntsman Spider
And with the longest legs, we have the Giant Huntsman Spider of Laos, with a leg-span of 12 inches. Their legs have twisted joints and they move in a crab-like manner, which furthers their impressive appearance. ‘Cause they’ve got legs, and know how to use ’em. They prefer to live in underbrush and cave entrances. These are like the big relatives of their Australian cousins, which we’ve all seen online and developed a healthy aversion to.
Brazilian Salmon Pink Birdeater & Brazilian Giant Tawny Red Tarantulas
Next we have two more South American species: the Brazilian Salmon Pink Birdeater, which boasts one-inch fangs, and the Brazilian Giant Tawny Red, believed to be the longest-lived spider with a lifespan of up to thirty years. Both are in the tarantula family and have urticating hairs, a word you probably never read much before today unless you are in the hobby. So apparently South America is not the best travel destination for you if you struggle with arachnophobia, though I suspect you’d figured that out already. (I wouldn’t recommend Australia or Southeast Asia either.)
Face Size Tarantula
And finally the Face Size Tarantula, which has a very terror-inducing name reminiscent of the Face Huggers of Alien-glory. Anyway, these spiders have an 8-inch leg-span and live in India and Sri Lanka. They look kind of like big hairy wolf spiders with stripey legs, sometimes with pink and daffodil coloring.
If you enjoyed this eight-legged segment of Nightmarish Nature on Giants Among Spiders and their larger than life kin, please check out past segments:
So here is our last installment of our AI journey exploring the idea of Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad wolf being one and the same. All of these are based upon the AI generated art and prompts using NightCafe and then created as posters in Canva. Feel free to check out Part 1 and Part 2 of this exploration if you missed them.
A non sequitur I know, but I couldn’t resist. If you picked up where we left off you’ll get it.
Seriously?! Again with the cropped off head cop out…
Finally! That was a journey. And not even worth the result, in my opinion.
Anyway, here is a bonus montage I made out of a bunch of additional Red Riding Hood prompts for an article that never happened…
Prompts for Montage:
1.) What if Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf were one and the same being?
2.) Her wolf face peering out of her red cloak, fangs dripping with the blood of another victim, lost in the forest and never found.
3.) Little Red Riding Hood closes in for the kill, lunging from her red cloak, her wolf fangs dripping with blood.
4.) I am Little Red Riding Hood. I am the Big Bad Wolf. I am coming for you.
5.) Howling within, the rage sears forth from the red cloak, discarded in the deep woods. Red Riding Hood succumbs to the lycanthropy.
6.) Heaving breaths. Dripping blood. Red Riding Hood is not what she appears. She is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
7.) Her red cloak masks the fangs hidden below the surface.
8.) It starts with a long sighing breath. Waiting. The wolf within stirs.
9.) Red Riding Hood trembles. She succumbs to the lycanthropy.
10.) The wolf bursts forth from within. It takes over Little Red Riding Hood’s mind, her body, her being.
11.) Red Riding Hood howls. She is ravenous with hunger for blood. The wolf within has taken over. Mind, spirit, body. She feasts on the blood of the moon.
12.) Big Bad Wolf Red Riding Hood ravenous blood moon feast
13.) Blood moon beckons. I. Little Red Big Bad Riding Hood Wolf. Freedom howling night curse.
14.) Beware. Bewolf. BeRedRidingHood. Betwixt. Beyond.
15.) I pad quietly as the forest dissolves around me. Red Riding Hood and Wolf, one and the same.
16.) Wolf within howling dark recesses of the mind, Red Riding Hood lost
17.) Red Riding Hood HOWL wolf bane true existence polymorph within-and-without.
18.) Red howl Riding Wolf dark existence brooding within
So thank you for joining us on another AI art journey. You can still catch the last AI art journey on Haunted MTL here. To see more such devolutions into AI generated art, check out the Will the Real Jennifer Weigel Please Stand Up? blog.
Continuing our AI journey from last time exploring Little Red Riding Hood herself as the Big Bad Wolf… All of these are based upon the AI generated art and prompts using NightCafe and then created as posters in Canva.
How very… Phantom of the Opera predatory… this is definitely not what I had in mind. Maybe something more cutesy?
Ugh. Maybe not.
Wow, that seems like such a cop out, cropping off the head so you don’t have to depict it. And I don’t want to lose the Little Red Riding Hood reference completely.
So no surprise there, I knew that was too many references to work.
And we continued to devolve, join us again next week for the final installment to see how this ended… And again, if you want to catch the last AI art journey, you can find it on Haunted MTL here. To see more such devolutions into AI generated art, check out the Will the Real Jennifer Weigel Please Stand Up? blog.
