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Day 16

The sound of the gate, under some form of duress, caught the attention of Dani and Bob. Within an instant, they dashed out of the storage unit and made their way to the entrance of the facility. Just over the top of her Focus, parked flush against the sliding gate, Dani saw two men. Bob’s revolver, one of his many sidearms, was already drawn as they approached the two strangers. Dani drew her pistol.

“What the hell are you two doing?” Bob yelled.

The two men immediately turned their attention to Dani and Bob. They both stepped back, their hands raised. The clatter of bolt cutters hitting the ground filled the air.

“Yo, yo, hold up,” said the red-headed man. He looked to be in his late twenties or so, dressed in baggy clothes and a hoodie. His face was scruffy. He looked worn out.

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“Please, you gotta let us in,” said his companion. He looked Latino and was dressed much the same as the red-head. He was twice his friend’s weight. Dani’s dad would have called them gangbangers. She hated the term.

Dani scanned her pistol in their direction. “Why should we let you in?”

The redhead lowered his guard slightly and turned his head to the street behind him, enough to point behind him without taking his eyes off Dani’s gun. “We’re being followed. Got a shitload of those rotten fuckers on us. You gotta let us in.”

Dani looked at Bob and gestured with her own head. Bob reoriented himself to get a peek through the gate to look down the street.

“I don’t see any of ‘em,” he said.

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The Latino man furrowed his brow. “Do you think we’re fuckin’ lying? They’re coming, dude. You gotta help us.”

“Shut up,” Dani barked. She turned her ear to listen for sounds. Sure enough, there was a sustained series of low moans in the distance.

“Bob, I think they’re right.”

“Shit. Alright, plan?”

Dani looked at the strangers and lowered her gun. “Alright, listen, we have a side gate. We can’t risk a bunch of them piling up on this gate here. We want you to go around. Got it?”

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The red-head nodded. “Yeah, sure, got it. Promise you’ll let us in?”

“Provided you do your part and help us move that group along, sure.”

The men glanced at each other and nodded.

“Bob, right?” asked the bigger man, “right around the corner?”

Bob lowered his revolver. “Yeah, get in your car and get your ass in gear. I’ll be right there to get it open.”

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Alerted by the noise, Sandy finally stepped out of the administrative building holding a baseball bat.

“What is going on?”

Dani gestured to the strangers. “These guys – what are your names?”

“Jimmy,” said the redhead.

“Edgar,” said the other.

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“- Jimmy and Edgar here, they need our help, we’re gonna have them come in the side gate.”

Sandy looked incredulous. “Why in God’s name would we do that?”

As if fate, the first of the ghouls made its presence known. It stumbled into view on the street and lobbed its body in lurching motions along the pavement.

“Fuck! Bob, get it!” Sandy yelped.

The ghoul cast a pair of glassy eyes at the gate and let out a moan.

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Bob snapped at Sandy, “there’s a bunch more coming.”

He turned to Jimmy and Edgar, “We need to move now. Get goin’ boys.”

Edgar grabbed the bolt cutters from the ground. The pair scrambled to their car, a burgundy Cadillac. They practically dove inside and turned the ignition. Dani and Bob moved towards the office and escorted Sandy out of sight of the gate.

Bob turned to Dani. “Kid, you’re faster, I need you to get to the gate, now. Got it?”

Dani nodded and tucked the pistol into the waist of her jeans. She started running to the side gate, sorting through the keyring she pulled from her pocket.

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Bob pulled Sandy into the office and pointed her to the stairs.

“I need you to go up there and keep an eye on how many of those things are comin’. We need to keep as quiet as possible, so I want you to write them down on that little whiteboard, you know the one you use for the schedule?”

“Right, I have it.”

“I want you to write the number you see on that board, okay? Show it to me out the window near the bathroom, right? It’ll keep you out of sight.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I think I have a way to direct those things,” he said. “I just need to know how many there are.”

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Dani arrived at the gate with the key in hand. She could hear the engine of the car idling on the other side. The gate was reinforced with corrugated metal, but it was still a sliding gate. There was only so much weight it could bear. She worried that they were substituting one weak gate for another.

She slipped the key into the lock and ripped the chain from the assembly. She pulled the gate open for the car to drive in. As the car entered she wondered if it was already a pile of shit before the apocalypse or if the collected grime and gore was most of what she saw. The car drove down a few units and came to a stop as Dani began to slide the gate closed. She nearly shit herself when she heard the raspy moan on the other side of the metal barrier.

“Damn it!”

She leaned hard against the gate’s end, trying to roll it shut faster but there was no use. The ghoul stumbled into the property. It was a thin man, clothes tattered and stiff and stale. The scent of rot and waste made her gag. She backed off the gate and pried the pistol from her pants as the ghoul turned to her. This was the first ghoul she’d seen up close, within feet, since the day she arrived. She held her pistol up, taking a few steps back to give herself some distance, but all she could see was the face of her neighbor, torn from her memories. She took a deep breath, pulled the trigger, and popped the ghoul in the shoulder. The impact made it stumble slightly, out of sheer force rather than any sense of pain, but it didn’t stop. Dani fired another shot right into the forehead. This time the ghoul fell backward, landing in an awkward crumple. It didn’t get up. Blackened blood and discolored grey matter pooled beneath its shattered skull.

Jimmy and Edgar made their way to the gate. They finished rolling it shut. Gun still in hand, Dani strode over and looped the chain around a couple of times before locking everything down.

The pair stepped away from her, their hands open and raised to show they meant no harm. The red-head, Jimmy, kicked at the ghoul’s tattered hand and looked at Dani.

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“Now what?”

Next Installment

Thank you for reading the eighth installment of the Haunted MTL original series, The Dead Life. Please share your thoughts about the story with us.

David Davis is a writer, cartoonist, and educator in Southern California with an M.A. in literature and writing studies.

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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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