HMTL Original Series: The Dead Life – #11
Day 17
Dani watched carefully as Jimmy rattled the sliding gate. The two of them had managed to get the crooked and bent gate back fully onto the track but it was uneven and rattled terribly. The metal was fatigued and out of balance. The supports were heavily bent by the front fender of the Cadillac the day before.
“Can we fix the frame?” she asked hopefully.
Jimmy took a step back to study the entirety of the gate mechanism. His red hair and beard were looking particularly vibrant in the morning sun. It was amazing what a solid night’s rest could do for anyone’s appearance, even if they were still covered in filth from who knows how many days on the run. Then again, the chance to get some rest without the fear of being eaten by the living dead seemed to be as good as it got these days.
“Well, if we could dismount the entire sliding section and set it on the concrete I think we could at least make it a little less… shitty.” He turned and smiled sheepishly. “Sorry, this was our fault. I really shouldn’t be joking.”
Dani shrugged. “Sure, but I don’t blame you two. I don’t know about Bob, though. You guys had no way of knowing anyone was here. What were the odds?”
She tapped the box of padlocks with the toe of her sneakers. She watched the locks shift slightly.
Jimmy took another step back and scratched at his beard. “Well, I think this gate is too risky to use right now. I’d really like to brace it. At least you have that side entrance.”
Dani peered into the parking lot that sat outside the gate. The moving truck was parked tightly against the front office’s shattered door. There was glass everywhere and she has still not finished reinforcing the temporary barrier to her liking. Now she had the front gate to contend with as well. So far, staying here had proven to be one setback after another in the worst possible time in history for setbacks. She sighed.
“I had a thought on that, actually.” Dani pointed to the parking spots inside the facility, just to the left of the gate, near another moving truck parked in one of the slots. Her own car, the Focus, was parked next to it. “I’m not planning to go anywhere immediately, maybe we can chain the gate up in a couple more spots and use my car to brace it. At least for now.”
“What about the truck?” he asked. “That’d be a bit sturdier, right?”
Dani shook her head.
“I’d rather save the truck for a possible run on supplies later, you know?”
Jimmy nodded. “That’s not a bad idea. That truck could hold a whole hell of a lot.” She could see the gears were turning in his head. “Let’s focus on the gate for now. We’ll see what Big Ed and Bob bring back.”
As though they were summoned, a golf cart rounded the corner from between the E and I rows of the facility, dragging behind it a small trailer. Edgar pulled up and parked the cart just off to the side of the entrance. Bob rose from the passenger seat and made his way to the trailer.
“Me n’ Edgar here combed through that contractor’s unit. Got some materials” Bob wheezed.
“Any chains,” Dani asked.
“Got evening plans, chica?” Edgar smirked.
Dani extended a middle finger toward the giant man.
“Gonna pretend you didn’t say that there, ‘Big Ed,’” Bob growled.
Edgar shrugged. “Just joking, man.”
“Big Ed” was apt. Edgar was a tall man and heavyset, but not quite fat; a burly Mexican in his early 30s. His head looked as though it was normally shaved, but given the light growth of hair on his scalp now he was unable to keep up with it. Dani understood why.
Bob’s dark, wrinkled hands dug into the trailer and pulled out a couple of lengths of chain. “These good enough, kiddo?”
“Perfect, we’re gonna need to chain this gate up nice and tight for now.” She took the chain from Bob and handed it to Jimmy. He started wrapping it around the bottom corner of the entrance slider and the frame.
“I was planning on moving my car here to block it off a bit,” she added.
Jimmy had finished wrapping the chain and fished for a padlock from the box Dani had brought out. He locked up the gate and stood back up. “Edgar and I can move the Caddie over to the exit gate, here,” he said as he approached the trailer.
“The fuck we are,” Edgar interjected, “why would we do that? We’re outta here in a bit.”
Jimmy shook his head. “We owe them, man.”
“And we’re fuckin’ helping them.”
“Look, Dani and I talked it over and I was thinking we could stay-”
Dani raised an eyebrow. “When did we talk about this?”
“I was just about to bring it up,” Jimmy beamed.
“You makin’ plans without me, Jimmy?” Edgar sounded indignant.
Bob had already taken a seat in the golf cart again, as though he expected a long discussion. Edgar stepped closer to Jimmy. He was a head shorter than Jimmy, who was strikingly tall, but Edgar was most definitely more solid. They were an odd pair. She wondered how they came into each other’s lives.
“Look, Red,” Edgar started, tightening his fists to his side and tensing his arms, “we had a plan. We’d get the weed and head to San Diego. I already lost some of it to pay them back.”
“It’s good stuff,” Bob chimed in.
Edgar stared daggers at the cart. He turned back to Jimmy. “Why do you want to stay here? Got a crush on Lucy Liu over there?”
“Fuck off,” Dani growled.
Jimmy turned to Dani and gestured toward her with his shoulders raised and hands pointing to his friend. Dani shook her head.
He turned back to Edgar. “Look, dude. You saw how many of those things were just around here, how many d’you think are gonna be on the fuckin’ way south? The freeway down there goes through some goddamn mountains.” Jimmy scratched the back of his head. “It’s a goddamn deathtrap in there,” he muttered.
Bob seemed to take notice of Jimmy’s choice of words because he had turned around in his seat to stare at the tall redheaded man. He said nothing but watched with interest.
“Yeah, but we had a plan, man,” Edgar almost sounded upset.
“The plan was shit, dude.”
Edgar lost the tension in his arms and shoulders and slumped slightly. He crossed his arms and set his eyes across the street, not looking at his friend. “You fuckin’ know why I want to get out of here, man. Don’t make me go alone.”
“We could be safe here, man.” Jimmy spread his arms and twisted his body to point out the area. “This place has some nice walls and we wouldn’t be… alone. We can come up with a plan.”
Edgar still didn’t look at Jimmy. “You don’t even know if we can even stay here, man” Edgar said quietly.
“As long as Dani and Sandy are good with it I am too,” Bob chimed in again from the cart.
Jimmy smiled and lightly punched his friend in the shoulder. “See, man, this is where you gotta be charming. We gotta win them over and you bein’ a bitch ain’t gonna help.”
Dani shook her head. “There is a woman standing right here, asshole. Expand your vocabulary.”
Bob laughed. Jimmy didn’t respond. He just stared at Edgar. Finally, Edgar turned his attention to Jimmy, uncrossed his arms, and shrugged. “If they’re cool, I guess we can stay for a bit and draw up some plans or whatever, man.”
Jimmy turned to Dani and Bob and threw them a cheesy grin and a thumb’s up. “Fuck yeah.”
Thank you for reading the eleventh installment of the Haunted MTL original series, The Dead Life. Please share your thoughts about the story with us.
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.
