HauntedMTL Original – Dead Rights – Isaac Thorne
Will was alone in the dissection lab the night the bodies sat up. There were two of them, one male and one female. Both were naked but only one, the man, had been cut into so far. The other anatomy students had named him Joe because his generic white dad bod, chestnut hair, and unremarkable face made him appear—to the fresh young anatomy students, anyway—as average as they come. The female, on the other hand, they had named Kim after the most famous Kardashian. Will assumed this was because of her almond eyes, elvish nose and chin, and voluptuous hips. Well, her hips would have been voluptuous in life. By the time the anatomy students at this university got their hands on the dead, the chemically preserved bodies were already deflated and dry, like an old shed snakeskin lying about in the hot sun of a late summer day.
Kim, who was Will’s project alone for the evening, so much resembled her namesake that the lad had been unable to stop himself from taking a series of photographs of her as she lay before him awaiting the first incisions. He briefly considered Instagramming the images but figured that the ensuing kerfuffle would probably get his account suspended. Instead, he planned to share them with only his fellow anatomy students, those who had yet to come face-to-face with the reality television star’s dead doppelgänger and wouldn’t believe him if he told them she exists.
The corpses rose from the cadaver tables in unison, bending at the waist until they sat upright, their arms at their sides, their legs straight forward, and their tagged toes still pointed skyward. Will happened to be standing between their respective tables when the duo roused, and the shock of it sent him reeling backward into a shelf that was full of disinfectants and other tools of the trade. His phone, the camera of which had been aimed at Kim’s head and torso, went flying out of his right hand and clattered against the door of a metal storage closet. Will’s ass hit the floor, his lab coat splayed wide beneath it. One of the bottles of disinfectant tumbled from the edge of the shelf and smacked him squarely on the noggin. He yelped in surprise.
“D’ja hurt yourself?” Joe croaked, his voice raspy with disuse. In spite of his deflated flesh, he managed to screw up his lips into something that resembled a bemused grin.
“Where are we?” Kim said. Her voice was higher pitched than Joe’s but no more melodic. “And what the hell were you doing just now?”
Will swallowed thickly, tasting bile. “I ju—I just—you look—I mean…”
“This ain’t history class, boy,” Joe said. “Stop repeating yourself! Tell the lady what you were doing. Don’t lie about it, either. My eyes were open the whole time.”
Will blinked at him. “You. You could see? How long have you been able to see?”
“Never you mind that,” Joe said. “Just tell her.”
“You look like Kim Kardashian,” Will mumbled. He was looking at his hands more than at the suddenly animated female cadaver. “That’s all. I was taking a picture. Didn’t think anybody would believe me.”
The corpse’s eyes narrowed. “You were taking a picture of me?” she said. “You were taking a picture of me like this?”
Will managed to look at her. “You’re dead,” he said. “At least I thought you were. I really didn’t think you’d mind.”
Kim threw up her hands in disgust and looked at Joe, whose crusty yellow and lifeless eyes somehow managed to positively gleam back at her. “Didn’t think I’d mind, he says. Didn’t think I’d mind. And why? Because I’m not among the living anymore? Because I no longer have a soul?” She glared back at Will. “Is that it? You’re really something, you know that? You really are, all you living people. You sit there with your money and your jobs and your cars and your computers and your phones and you think, ‘Well, I’m just top of the world, and I can do whatever I want to anybody I want.’ Right? Is that it?”
From his own cadaver table beside her, Joe whooped. “You go, girl!”
Will eyeballed his hands again.
“Well, let me tell you something, Mr. Breathing Guy,” Kim went on. “I didn’t spend my time alive smashing all the barriers that slobbering guys who refused to think of me as anything but a hot fuck built around me just so I could be ogled and felt up by the likes of you after I died. Do you have any idea who I was when I was alive? Do you? Does it even matter to you that I was the only girl in the engineering department at this so-called school? Do you care that I was top of my class and was well on my way to getting my hands around a small fortune in research grants that would help me permanently fix this country’s crumbling infrastructure?”
“Preach it!” Joe shouted. “Preeeach it! I don’t want to go falling off a bridge!”
“And do you know what killed me? Do you know what took all that away from me? I can tell you that. It was a slobbering guy who roofied me. I overdosed. He was in almost all my classes. I had dinner with him because I thought he wanted to talk about my infrastructure research. He didn’t. He wanted a hot fuck and didn’t think he’d be able to get it unless I was unconscious.”
“Uh,” Will said.
Joe managed to look stricken.
“No, you didn’t know any of that, did you?” Kim continued. “You didn’t know any of that because instead of doing your job down here with all these dead people who have donated their bodies to science, you wanted a little trophy to send to your buddies. Well, you know what, Mr. Breathing Guy? Fuck you. Fuck you and fuck your stupid little stuck-in-their-pants buddies. Now the dead are rising, you arrogant little shit. We’re rising tonight and we’re not going to take any more of your abuse.”
“Damn right!” Joe echoed. “You tell it!”
Kim turned on the table and hefted herself off its edge. She stood before Will, who remained splayed on the floor, in all her post-mortem nakedness. She seemed a little unsteady on her gray, Formaldehyde-clad feet. Gravity made her dead, deflated skin appear draped over her frame. Joe, who hadn’t budged since sitting up except for his two attempts at facial expressions and the occasional one-liner, leaned back on his elbows on the cadaver table and spoke as if he were commiserating with old friends.
“Well, they always say your past comes back to bite you in the ass,” he said. “Guess it doesn’t get more past than a woman scorned and dearly departed, does it? Nope, it doesn’t. But listen to me now, Bubba. My story ain’t nothing like the lady’s here. Nobody ever stopped me from doing what I was supposed to do to make it in life. As far as I know, the only fellow who ever slipped anything into my drinks was me. I’ll tell you, though. Folks sure do want to stop you from doing what you want to do with your own death. Lord, do they ever!
“I don’t even know how I ended up in this place. I never went to a university and I sure as hell didn’t donate myself to be no lab rat. I just went through my life, doing everything I was told to do, just like they wanted it done. Figured being a good boy would end up getting me something somewhere down the line.”
“Sometimes,” Will interrupted meekly, “there are mix-ups. It’s rare, but…”
“I don’t give a lab rat’s tortured asshole about mix-ups,” Joe replied. “I ain’t supposed to be here. I’m a veteran, you know? I was in the National Guard for damn near ten years. Honorably discharged. Like I was saying, I always did as they told me to do, what I was supposed to be doing. I’m supposed to be buried with a flag and military honors. I’m supposed to be respected and taken care of, you little asshole, not cut up like a slice of roast beef for your amusement. Look at my chest. Somebody’s gone and sliced a big old notch in it!”
Kim spoke up. “That’s right,” she said. “Dead right. We’re not pieces of meat. I donated my body to science, but that doesn’t mean you’re allowed to disrespect me. And you shouldn’t be cutting him at all!”
Joe straightened and slid himself off his own cadaver table, managing a wobbly few steps to finally stand beside Kim. Now both preserved relics from a not-too-distant past stood glaring down at the autopsy student who had intended to spend his evening making up for lost time because he’d slept through that morning’s class. Joe’s skin was even more drape-like than Kim’s. He stood with his knees together. The deflated flesh hanging off them caused him to look as if he’d grown an extra scrotum in an unfortunate place.
“So,” Joe said, his attempt at a shit-eating grin still smeared across his features. “It’s kind of funny, ain’t it? What you thought was dead and gone ain’t ever really dead and gone. It’s just waiting for the right time to come back and get you. Looks like now’s the time, hey? What’ve you got to say about all this, lab rat? What’ve you got to say about the dead folks who ain’t gonna take all the live folks’ shit anymore? What’ve you got to say about the past coming back to bite you in the ass?”
A beat, and it came to him: “I’m sorry?” Will said. He straightened himself, rising on his knees from where he’d landed when the bodies rose up and allowing his hands to clasp together at his lap. He nodded at the corpses and made sure that he looked them each in the eye. “I’m sorry. I apologize to both of you. On behalf of the living, I ask your forgiveness. I have no excuse for the way you were treated in life or the way you were treated in death. All I can say for myself and everyone else is that I’m sorry.”
He looked at Kim. “I’m especially sorry for my behavior here tonight,” he said. “Honestly, we thought you were just a couple of empty shells. Your soul or brain activity or whatever you believe in should have been long gone. Really, we had no idea that you were people.”
Kim’s eyebrows shot upward. She turned to Joe.
“Oh my God, did you hear that?” she said. “They didn’t know we were people! Honest mistake? Is that what you’re saying? We just didn’t know! Look at me. Dude, just look at me. How could you not know? We move, just like you. We talk, just like you. We feel, just like you. Hath not a dead woman eyes? Hath not a dead woman hands? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you prick us, do we not bleed?”
“Well, not anymore,” said Joe matter-of-factly. He closed his mouth when Kim shot him a look.
“If you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”
“I loved that play when I was alive!” Joe interjected.
“There!” Kim said, gesturing to the other dead person. “There’s more proof for you. Do dogs like Shakespeare? Do cats recite poetry? Asshole, I was once an embryo, just like you. I was once a child, just like you. I went to school and learned the same alphabet and number system that you did. I worked hard, just like you. No, you know what? I worked harder than you because I had to. Because of people like you who didn’t believe I was man enough to do a math problem or change a tire or conjure up a complicated formula in an Excel spreadsheet.
“God! Seriously? Do I really have to explain all this to you? What are you, 18? 19? Weren’t you born at least close to this century? Why can’t you see me as your equal?”
“It,” Will stammered. “It’s just what’s accepted. It’s just how things are.
“But I’m sorry,” he repeated. “We didn’t know any better. I’m so sorry.”
Kim leaned toward him, her milky dead eyes mere slits. “Not anymore,” she said. “It’s not how things are anymore, and all the ‘sorry’ in the world is not going to change that.”
She straightened and motioned to Joe without looking at him. “Come on,” she said to the other corpse. “Let’s get out of this dungeon of knives and nightmares and go change the world.”
She took two ambling steps toward the door, and then seemed to rediscover the strength in her legs. As she reached for the doorknob and stepped over the transition, into the brightly lit hallway beyond, Will thought she looked taller somehow, even regal. She looked like a woman with a purpose, an energetic and motivated leader who was striding out of ages of darkness to drag the world into new enlightenment. She was Liberty resurrected, lighting the way once again for a world that had too long suffered the night.
Kim turned left just outside the door and disappeared from his sight. Will sat on his heels, his palms on his thighs, and smiled after her. The secrets of his heart spread over his face like the rosy rays of dawn over the fields. She could change the world, he thought. She would. She was right. She had made him a believer. It was long past time.
Joe, who for some reason had yet to follow Kim out the door, noted Will’s face and leaned down toward him, close to his ear. The stench of the Joe’s dead breath wafted to Will’s nostrils when he spoke.
“Hey,” he said. “I know what you’re looking at. I was looking, too. Heh. And I agree with you, Bubba. Nice ass, hey?”
Isaac Thorne is a nice man who has, over the course of his life, developed a modest ability to spin a good yarn. Really. He promises. He also avoids public men’s restrooms at all costs. He considers himself a lover of books, music, movies, and other forms of pop culture. When he is not writing fiction, Isaac reviews movies and other content for The Dead Walk (www.thedeadwalk.org), TN Horror News and Promotions (tnhorror.com), and The Horrorcist (thehorrorcist.com). Isaac also hosts two audio programs on SCRMRadio.com: “Thorne’s Theater of Terror” and “Classic Cuts.” Isaac Thorne Short Tales of Dark Comic Horror www.isaacthorne.com
You can follow him on Twitter: @isaacrthorne and IG: isaacrthorne
What if ours weren’t the only reality? What if the past paths converged, if those moments that led to our current circumstances got tangled together with their alternates and we found ourselves caught up in the threads?
Marla returned home after the funeral and wake. She drew the key in the lock and opened the door slowly, the looming dread of coming back to an empty house finally sinking in. Everyone else had gone home with their loved ones. They had all said, “goodbye,” and moved along.
Her daughter Misty and son-in-law Joel had caught a flight to Springfield so he could be at work the next day for the big meeting. Her brother Darcy was on his way back to Montreal. Emmett and Ruth were at home next door, probably washing dishes from the big meal they had helped to provide afterward, seeing as their kitchen light was on. Marla remembered there being food but couldn’t recall what exactly as she hadn’t felt like eating. Sandwiches probably… she’d have to thank them later.
Marla had felt supported up until she turned the key in the lock after the services, but then the realization sank deep in her throat like acid reflux, hanging heavy on her heart – everyone else had other lives to return to except for her. She sighed and stepped through the threshold onto the outdated beige linoleum tile and the braided rag rug that stretched across it. She closed the door behind herself and sighed again. She wiped her shoes reflexively on the mat before just kicking them off to land in a haphazard heap in the entryway.
The still silence of the house enveloped her, its oppressive emptiness palpable – she could feel it on her skin, taste it on her tongue. It was bitter. She sighed and walked purposefully to the living room, the large rust-orange sofa waiting to greet her. She flopped into its empty embrace, dropping her purse at her side as she did so.
A familiar, husky voice greeted her from deeper within the large, empty house. “Where have you been?”
Marla looked up and glanced around. Her husband Frank was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, drying a bowl. Marla gasped, her hand shooting to her mouth. Her clutched appendage took on a life of its own, slowly relinquishing itself of her gaping jaw and extending a first finger to point at the specter.
“Frank?” she spoke hesitantly.
“Yeah,” the man replied, holding the now-dry bowl nestled in the faded blue-and-white-checkered kitchen towel in both hands. “Who else would you expect?”
“But you’re dead,” Marla spat, the words falling limply from her mouth of their own accord.
The 66-year old man looked around confusedly and turned to face Marla, his silver hair sparkling in the light from the kitchen, illuminated from behind like a halo. “What are you talking about? I’m just here washing up after lunch. You were gone so I made myself some soup. Where have you been?”
“No, I just got home from your funeral,” Marla spoke quietly. “You are dead. After the boating accident… You drowned. I went along to the hospital – they pronounced you dead on arrival.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Frank said. “What boating accident?”
“The sailboat… You were going to take me out,” Marla coughed, her brown eyes glossed over with tears.
“We don’t own a sailboat,” Frank said bluntly. “Sure, I’d thought about it – it seems like a cool retirement hobby – but it’s just too expensive. We’ve talked about this, we can’t afford it.”
Marla glanced out the bay window towards the driveway where the small sailboat sat on its trailer, its orange hull reminiscent of the Florida citrus industry, and also of the life jacket Frank should have been wearing when he’d been pulled under. Marla cringed and turned back toward the kitchen. She sighed and spoke again, “But the boat’s out front. The guys at the marina helped to bring it back… after you… drowned.”
Frank had retreated to the kitchen to put away the bowl. Marla followed. She stood in the doorway and studied the man intently. He was unmistakably her husband, there was no denying it even despite her having just witnessed his waxen lifeless body in the coffin at the wake before the burial, though this Frank was a slight bit more overweight than she remembered.
“Well, that’s not possible. Because I’m still here,” Frank grumbled. He turned to face her, his blue eyes edged with worry. “There now, it was probably just a dream. You knew I wanted a boat and your anxiety just formulated the worst-case scenario…”
“See for yourself,” Marla said, her voice lilting with every syllable.
Frank strode into the living room and stared out the bay window. The driveway was vacant save for some bits of Spanish moss strewn over the concrete from the neighboring live oak tree. He turned towards his wife.
“But there’s no boat,” he sighed. “You must have had a bad dream. Did you fall asleep in the car in the garage again?” Concern was written all over his face, deepening every crease and wrinkle. “Is that where you were? The garage?”
Marla glanced again at the boat, plain as day, and turned to face Frank. Her voice grew stubborn. “It’s right here. How can you miss it?” she said, pointing at the orange behemoth.
“Honey, there’s nothing there,” Frank exclaimed, exasperation creeping into his voice.
Marla huffed and strode to the entryway, gathering her shoes from where they waited in their haphazard heap alongside the braided rag run on the worn linoleum floor. She marched out the door as Frank took vigil in its open frame, still staring at her. She stomped out to the boat and slapped her hand on the fiberglass surface with a resounding smack. The boat was warm to the touch, having baked in the Florida sun. She turned back towards the front door.
“See!” she bellowed.
The door stood open, empty. No one was there, watching. Marla sighed again and walked back inside. The vacant house once again enveloped her in its oppressive emptiness. Frank was nowhere to be found.
So I guess it’s goodbye for now. Feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website.
Today on Nightmarish Nature we’re gonna revisit The Blob and jiggle our way to terror. Why? ‘Cause we’re just jellies – looking at those gelatinous denizens of the deep, as well as some snot-like land-bound monstrosities, and wishing we could ooze on down for some snoozy booze schmoozing action. Or something.
Honestly, I don’t know what exactly it is that jellyfish and slime molds do but whatever it is they do it well, which is why they’re still around despite being among the more ancient organism templates still in common use.
Jellyfish are on the rise.
Yeah, yeah, some species like moon jellies will hang out in huge blooms near the surface feeding, but that’s not what I meant. Jellyfish populations are up. They’re honing in on the open over-fished ocean and making themselves at home. Again.
And, although this makes the sea turtles happy since jellies are a favorite food staple of theirs, not much else is excited about the development. Except for those fish that like to hide out inside of their bells, assuming they don’t accidentally get eaten hanging out in there. But that’s a risk you gotta take when you’re trying to escape predation by surrounding yourself in a bubble of danger that itself wants to eat you. Be eaten or be eaten. Oh, wait…
So what makes jellies so scary?
Jellyfish pack some mighty venom. Despite obvious differences in mobility, they are related to anemones and corals. But not the Man o’ War which looks similar but is actually a community of microorganisms that function together as a whole, not one creature. Not that it matters when you’re on the wrong end of a nematocyst, really. Because regardless what it’s attached to, that stings.
Box jellies are among the most venomous creatures in the world and can move of their own accord rather than just drifting about like many smaller jellyfish do. And even if they aren’t deadly, the venom from many jellyfish species will cause blisters and lesions that can take a long time to heal. So even if they do resemble free-floating plastic grocery bags, you’d do best to steer clear. Because those are some dangerous curves.
But what does this have to do with slime molds?
Absolutely nothing. I honestly don’t know enough about jellyfish or slime molds to devote the whole of a Nightmarish Nature segment to either, so they had to share. Essentially, this bit is what happened when I decided to toast a bagel before coming up with something to write about and spent a tad too much time in contemplation of my breakfast. I guess we’re lucky I didn’t have any cream cheese or clotted cream…
Oh, and also thinking about gelatinous cubes and oozes in the role-playing game sense – because those sort of seem like a weird hybrid between jellies and slime molds, as does The Blob. Any of those amoeba influenced creatures are horrific by their very nature – they don’t even need to be souped up, just ask anyone who’s had dysentery.
And one of the most interesting thing about slime molds is that they can take the shortest path to food even when confronted with very complex barriers. They are maze masterminds and would give the Minotaur more than a run for his money, especially if he had or was food. They have even proven capable of determining the most efficient paths for water lines or railways in metropolitan regions, which is kind of crazy when you really think about it. Check it out in Scientific American here. So, if we assume that this is essentially the model upon which The Blob was built, then it’s kind of a miracle anything got away. And slime molds are coming under closer scrutiny and study as alternative means of creating computer components are being explored.
Jellies are the Wave of the Future.
We are learning that there may be a myriad of uses for jellyfish from foodstuffs to cosmetic products as we rethink how we interact with them. They are even proving useful in cleaning up plastic pollution. I don’t know how I feel about the foodstuff angle for all that they’ve been a part of various recipes for a long time. From what I’ve seen of the jellyfish cookbook recipes, they just don’t look that appealing. But then again I hate boba with a passion, so I’m probably not the best candidate to consider the possibility.
So it seems that jellies are kind of the wave of the future as we find that they can help solve our problems. That’s pretty impressive for some brainless millions of years old critter condiments. Past – present – perpetuity! Who knows what else we’d have found if evolution hadn’t cleaned out the fridge every so often?
Feel free to check out more Nightmarish Nature here.
Continuing our junkyard dawg werewolf story from the previous St. Patrick’s Days… though technically he’s more of a wolfwere but wolfwhatever. Anyway, here are Part 1 from 2022, Part 2 from 2023 and Part 3 from 2024 if you want to catch up.
Yeah I don’t know how you managed to find me after all this time. We haven’t been the easiest to track down, Monty and I, and we like it that way. Though actually, you’ve managed to find me every St. Patrick’s Day since 2022 despite me being someplace else every single time. It’s a little disconcerting, like I’m starting to wonder if I was microchipped way back in the day in 2021 when I was out lollygagging around and blacked out behind that taco hut…
Anyway as I’d mentioned before, that Scratchers was a winner. And I’d already moved in with Monty come last St. Patrick’s Day. Hell, he’d already begun the process of cashing in the Scratchers, and what a process that was. It made my head spin, like too many squirrels chirping at you from three different trees at once. We did get the money eventually though.
Since I saw you last, we were kicked out of Monty’s crap apartment and had gone to live with his parents while we sorted things out. Thank goodness that was short-lived; his mother is a nosy one for sure, and Monty didn’t want to let on he was sitting on a gold mine as he knew they’d want a cut even though they had it made already. She did make a mean brisket though, and it sure beat living with Sal. Just sayin.
Anyway, we finally got a better beater car and headed west. I was livin’ the dream. We were seeing the country, driving out along old Route 66, for the most part. At least until our car broke down just outside of Roswell near the mountains and we decided to just shack it up there. (Boy, Monty sure can pick ‘em. It’s like he has radar for bad cars. Calling them lemons would be generous. At least it’s not high maintenance women who won’t toss you table scraps or let you up on the sofa.)
We found ourselves the perfect little cabin in the woods. And it turns out we were in the heart of Bigfoot Country, depending on who you ask. I wouldn’t know, I’ve never seen one. But it seems that Monty was all into all of those supernatural things: aliens, Bigfoot, even werewolves. And finding out his instincts on me were legit only added fuel to that fire. So now he sees himself as some sort of paranormal investigator.
Whatever. I keep telling him this werewolf gig isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, and it doesn’t work like in the movies. I wasn’t bitten, and I generally don’t bite unless provoked. He says technically I’m a wolfwere, to which I just reply “Where?” and smile. Whatever. It’s the little things I guess. I just wish everything didn’t come out as a bark most of the time, though Monty’s gotten pretty good at interpreting… As long as he doesn’t get the government involved, and considering his take on the government himself that would seem to be a long stretch. We both prefer the down low.
So here we are, still livin’ the dream. There aren’t all that many rabbits out here but it’s quiet and the locals don’t seem to notice me all that much. And Monty can run around and make like he’s gonna have some kind of sighting of Bigfoot or aliens or the like. As long as the pantry’s stocked it’s no hair off my back. Sure, there are scads of tourists, but they can be fun to mess around with, especially at that time of the month if I happen to catch them out and about.
Speaking of tourists, I even ran into that misspent youth from way back in 2021 at the convenience store; I spotted him at the Quickie Mart along the highway here. I guess he and his girlfriend were apparently on walkabout (or car-about) perhaps making their way to California or something. He even bought me another cookie. Small world. But we all knew that already…
If you enjoyed this werewolf wolfwere wolfwhatever saga, feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website.
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