HMTL Original Series: The Dead Life – #15
Day 17
The “office” was just a small box of a room, not built into the original construction of the pharmacy but rather a prefabricated addition. It was ugly, too, the walls made up of plywood treated to look like it was made of boards, and the frames being exposed metal. It was a cramped, thin-walled cube slapped into a musty warehouse.
There was no sound as Dani had approached and she had begun to grow nervous. Had the ghoul wandered out into the store, or was it lying in wait? What about the door out to the back alley? Had it pushed its way through, somehow. The lack of knowledge irked her. The lack of control quickly became the worst part of the apocalypse.
She paused at the door of the office. Things were quiet and the inside was darkened. The door was ajar, slightly, and a foul stench wafted out from the crack of the door and the frame. She didn’t approach closer, or dare put her face near enough to look through.
“Is it in there?”
The quiet voice of the teenager behind her made Dani practically jump out of her skin. She whirled around and saw the teen standing here, cringing slightly. Dani furrowed her brow and wildly waved her free hand to shoo the girl away. She acquiesced, her eyes wide.
Dani took a step closer to the door and rest the point of the fireplace poker against it. She gave it a brief shove, but the door didn’t move inward much. Something was blocking it.
Shit. Shit.
She tried again, giving it a harder push, but the resistance was so great the tip of the poker slid across the plywood and hit the frame with a clang. Danny retracted her weapon and took a step back, listening. Something began to move inside and in a moment the door clicked shut.
“Did it just close the door?”
Dani turned back at the girl. She shook her head. “Not on purpose… these things are dumb. Really dumb.”
“So it can’t get out?”
Dani shrugged as she gazed at the office. “Probably not, but I still need to get in there,” she turned back to the teen, “you should keep an eye on your mom for a few minutes. I’ll take care of this.”
The girl trudged away as Dani turned her attention toward the office. The first step was to open the door, but now there was definite shuffling going on behind it. Within an instant, a bloody and rotted hand slapped against the thing pane of glass that served as a window and then the rest of the ghoul rolled into view.
It was thin, most of these things were, and skin hung loosely from its torso. The shirt was once a blood button-up, but now it was mostly dull and grey with deep brown stains down the neck and chest. A moldy green and brown striped tie hung loosely from the creature’s neck. The face, or at least what hadn’t slid off from the skull, had the faintest trace of a mustache and the top of the head had thin patches of hair. On the hip was a walkie-talky in a holster.
The ghoul was far enough from the door she could open it and then step back to regroup. She grabbed the doorknob and gave it a turn, only for it to rattle ineffectively. The office was locked. Of course. What were the options? She watched the ghoul trace her movements at the window. It slapped at the glass which rattled loudly given the quiet of the storeroom. It wasn’t strong glass at all but breaking glass was noisy. She scanned for a key nearby but saw nothing. There was no choice in the matter.
That is when she heard the click of the doorknob.
The ghoul was still at the window, far enough away from opening the door, but somehow the knob had turned. Not missing a moment, Dani kicked the door open. It slammed against the wall and the ghoul, who had been tethered to the knob by a lanyard and keyring, flew back into a filing cabinet and collapsed into a heap. Dani took two huge steps into the darkened office and put all her weight into driving the poker deep into the ghoul’s eye socket. The ghoul flailed a bit as the poker stirred the brain matter within the skull and after a few moments of vigorous stirring, it was now completely still.
Dani dutifully pulled at the poker from inside the skull, but it became wedged on bone, likely the orbital of the skull. She gave it another tug, but still no motion. Annoyed, she placed a foot on the former manager’s chest and grabbed the handle with both hands. After a mental count of three and a deep breath, she pulled with all her might.
The poker ripped free from the skull, arcing a trail of blood. brain and shards of bone in the air as she lost her balance. The poker traveled full speed back behind her and shattered the tiny office’s window. Noisy cracking and splintering echoed in the storeroom. The poker’s hook lodged itself on the frame and rocked violently before clattering on the plywood floor. Dani studied the window, and just beyond she saw the teen who was overlooking the chaos. Gore dripped down the shards of glass that still remained lodged in the window frame.
“Gross,” she said.
Edgar stood near the front of the store staring out at the parking lot. His cart was as full as he could arrange. Anything that seemed edible or not damaged beyond being safe to eat was piled in, There was no ordering to the stacks, and he’d considered going through and making his assemblage less chaotic. Ultimately, it didn’t matter.
Beyond the parking lot, he noticed a gas station kitty-corner from the pharmacy. The place had clearly been hit by people for whatever gas they could find. Was there any more left? he wondered. What had really caught his attention, however, was the sight of a ghoul tangled up in a seatbelt, attempting to escape the opened door of a sedan. The bastard didn’t have enough sense to unbuckle the belt or even twist its own body in such a way that it could free itself. It simply would extend itself and the belt as far as it could go before the belt automatically retracted, pulling it back into the car, violently. Each time a limb or its head would bash against the frame, at least from what Edgar could see from this distance.
Eventually, Edgar figured, the thing would eventually saw itself free from the car from the constant friction of the belt.
“Fuckin’ crazy,” he mumbled.
“What is?”
Jimmy rolled his cart toward the door, not full, but still, a fair amount of medical supplies rattled inside.
“Those things. I’ve been watching this dumb dude across the street trying to get out of a car.”
Jimmy set the cart aside and squinted into the distance. “How the hell are your eyes so good?”
Edgar shrugged. “How are yours so goddamn bad.”
“You saw my glasses got smashed, right, asshole?”
Edgar smirked. Jimmy paused a moment, staring into the distance, and then huffed.
“Fuck it. Gonna grab some pairs from the pharmacy, I think there may be a couple left.” He whirled around and made his way from the front entrance, “be back in a minute.”
“Make sure they look good, some nice bifocals, maybe,” Edgar said.
He turned to see Jimmy walking into the darkness, his arms raised above his head, his middle finger higher. His friend vanished into an aisle. Edgar turned back to the entrance and continued to watch the ghoul. It snapped back again, the back of its head smashing into the door frame in what seemed like a black mist. It slumped behind the door for a moment. There was no movement and Edgar wondered if it had finally bashed its own brain in.
A moment later, a familiar figure rose up from behind the door, wriggling, and thrashing. After some struggle it finally untangled itself from the seatbelt, taking strained, wobbling steps from the car door.
“There you go,” Edgar muttered.
The ghoul hit the curb of the gas mart and smashed into a wall, scrunching up like a sack of rotten meat and sliding down the surface.
“Hey, are you Edgar?” asked a whispered voice.
He glanced to his side at a teenage girl, her brown hair was a tangled mess. She looked at him and shrugged. She made her way to one of the shopping carts in the corral and started to pull it loose from the others.
“Dani said you can help carry my mom to the car.”
The Dead Life is a Haunted MTL original fiction series.
This is the kickoff to a new series exploring nature that is kind of horrifying, at least in ways. Our first subject is Vampires Among Us. There are lots of animals named for vampires, sometimes due to folklore and sometimes for their appearance (like the Vampire Squid), but most of these animals don’t have blood sucking tendencies.
Bats & Birds
There are legit vampire leaf-nosed bats in Central and South America that drink blood. They feed on mammals and are often shown to feed on livestock. They’d be kinda cute if they weren’t so creepy. There are also vampiric birds: some finches in the Galapagos have developed the taste for blood of other birds, mainly seabirds that flock to the islands to raise their young.
Leeches & Lampreys & More
And then you get into leeches and lampreys and other denizens of the water that are known to attach themselves to larger creatures and drink their blood. Leeches were even believed to have medicinal value (and still are in certain circumstances). And there are also numerous plants that are known to be parasitic and feed on other plants, wrapping their roots or vines around others to steal nutrients.
Spiders
Now I’m going to drift off into the realm where this becomes truly horrific. Spiders. Now, spiders aren’t vampires per se, seeing as how they actually kill their prey – they don’t just feed off of it while it remains living and wanders about its business. But because of their structure, they cannot eat solid foods, so they have to inject their prey with enzymes to liquefy it so they can slurp it out like a protein shake. That’s sort of vampirism on steroids if you ask me, just the kind that no one is coming back from.
Bloodsucking Bugs
But let’s get back on topic. Now let’s consider mites and ticks and fleas and mosquitoes and the like. Some drink blood for their survival; others do so as part of their reproductive cycle (like mosquitoes which otherwise eat fruit and nectar but need the extra protein from blood to grow their eggs).
Ticks need to feed on blood once at every stage of their life cycle and can pick up diseases along the way (like Lyme Disease) but don’t always do so. Different ticks are more likely to come in contact with different things and often humans are not their preferred meal but they are opportunistic and will feed on whatever is available when necessary. Symptoms of illness from tick bites may take years to develop and can have really weird side effects (like the allergy associated with Lone Star Ticks which makes a person unable to consume mammalian flesh).
Anyway, here are some brief glimpses of vampirism in nature. Thank you for joining us for Nightmarish Nature and may you avoid getting bitten by any true vampires among us… And I still think spiders take first place in the creepy eating category here, even if they aren’t technically vampiric.
This story came to me in a sort of roundabout way from a rather unusual source. So I thought I’d share it with you, dear readership, and see if you can make heads or tails of it. – Jennifer Weigel
Dread Pirate Rum Tum Tugger could tell this was the right spot.
The site, beneath the sweeping limbs of the Live Oak, Spanish Moss swaying gently in the breeze, was a perfect match to the crude map he had bought off that soothsayer Deuteronomy.
The earth moved easily, as if it had been excavated previously. He dug in with greater fervor with each swipe. The sandy soil gave way to reveal something hard. He scooped and smoothed the remaining detritus from the surface as he uncovered a box.
The carton was simple.
No markings; no ornamentation; no writing. Just a plain cardboard crate, brittle from having been buried for so long but still sturdy. He hoisted it from its burrow.
“Ha HO!” he shouted to the passing breeze, rousing a small cloud of birds that erupted from a nearby thicket. They captured his attention for a moment, but he quickly refocused and returned to his task.
The box was locked but no difference.
Any self-respecting ruffian like himself could pick a lock in seconds. And he did so with panache, as was his way. He pried the lid open and licked his lips.
Inside was the legendary Kernel of Eternal Life, a small sparrow’s heart, still beating.
Artwork description: Myself as Dread Pirate Queen Miss Kitty wearing black bell sleeve shirt and black vinyl skirt with strapping leather belt over leopard print shirt and tights, with strapping leather boots, pirate head wrap and leopard cat ears.
Image text reads: Purr! Avast ye mateys, Dread Pirate Queen Miss Kitty invites ye to check out her booty stash and dig ye up a dungbie prize. Seek ye some buried treasure! Just grab ye a plastic litter scoop and dig… dig… dig… to ye heart’s content.
I created this image for a promotional poster for a performance piece in a charity art show in which I, as Dread Pirate Queen Miss Kitty, hawked a carnival sideshow style sidewalk installation. For a mere $5 donation to the animal shelter the show supported, gallery goers could dig around in a kiddie pool full of litter to find a prize: a cheap plastic trinket from the dollar store. I had some takers, including one kid who seemed to really enjoy the digging and whose parents were all in, saying “You know, you can totally do that at home too.”
For more cat antics, we invite you to read C-2747’s logbook here on Haunted MTL. Feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or on her writing, fine art, and conceptual projects websites.
Happy Mother’s Day to the Queen of Everything… nothing gets by you.
Artwork description: A Happy Mother’s Day card featuring a picture of a Nefertiti doll with swooping hair, glitter makeup, and elaborate gold and blue headdress and evening gown.
Image text reads: Happy Mother’s Day! You are the Queen of Everything and you shimmer brighter than the twinkliest star in the sky. Stay sparkly and shine on in your magnificent glitter bombasticness. You ARE truly everything everywhere all at once and you’ve seen and heard it all. Eyes in the back of your head and superpowered hearing mean we can’t get away with much no matter how hard we try. So Queen on and rule over home in sparkly sentinel.
And may this be a testament to why us kids shalt never get you out of bed too early or run amok while you are getting ready to start your day… Because being the Queen of Everything takes planning and preparation…
Feel free to check out this Mummy Dearest Mother’s Day card from 2021 here on Haunted MTL.
