Twisted Reunion Read online

  Twisted

  Reunion

  MARK TULLIUS

  "Time-honored frights with innovation infused throughout."- Kirkus Reviews

  "Disturbing and weird; unflinchingly grim at every turn, TWISTED REUNION shocks and even charms." -IndieReader

  Published by Vincere Press

  65 Pine Ave., Ste. 806

  Long Beach, CA 90802

  Twisted Reunion

  Copyright © 2015 by Mark Tullius

  All rights reserved.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Vincere Press, 65 Pine Avenue Ste. 806,

  Long Beach, CA 90802

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters and events portrayed in this book are either fictitious or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Edition

  ISBN: 978-1-938475-18-4

  Library of Congress: 2015917301

  Cover design by Predrag Markovic

  Graphic Design by Florencio Ares [email protected]

  Cover of Each Dawn I Die

  Cover design by Luis Vega [email protected]

  Graphic Design by Florencio Ares [email protected]

  Cover of Every One’s Lethal

  Cover design by Brian Shepard

  Graphic Design by Florencio Ares [email protected]

  Cover of Repackaged Presents

  Cover illustration by Martin Kelly

  Cover graphic design by Brian Esquivel

  “Out There” first published by On the Premises, 2007

  “Group Session” first published as “Judge, Juror, and Executioner” by Meat Grinder Press 2006

  “Split Decision” first published by Wild Child, 2003

  “The Artist” first published by Nossa Morte 2008

  “Bad Habits” first published by Black Ink Horror #4, Sideshow Press 2008

  “When it Rains” first published by Abominations, Shroud Publishing 2008

  “To Feed an Army” first published by Black Ink Horror #0, Sideshow Press 2006

  “Instant Terror” first published by Dredtales, 2005

  “Midnight Snack” first published by Wicked Karnival, Sideshow Press 2005

  “Shooting Flies” first published as “Drawing Flies” by Black Ink Horror #1, Sideshow Press 2007

  “Surviving the Holidays” first published by Black Ink Horror #5, Sideshow Press 2008

  “Shades of Death” first published by Magus Press 2007

  “Book of Revelation” first published by Bound for Evil, Dead Letter Press 2008

  “Every Precious Second” first published by Vincere Press 2014

  All other stories first published by Vincere Press 2015 in Every One’s Lethal and Each Dawn I Die

  Criminally Insane

  Words and Music by Jeffery John Hanneman and Kerry Ray King

  Copyright (c) 1986 by Death's Head Music

  All Rights Administered by Universal Music - MGB Songs

  International Copyright Secured All Rights Reserved

  Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation

  For Olivia, Jake, and Bailey

  The brilliant sparks of light that keep away the darkness

  “Night will come and I will follow

  For my victims, no tomorrow”

  Slayer

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  Each Dawn I Die

  Wrong Side Tavern

  Woodshop After Math

  Twisted Memory

  Mommy’s Big Boy

  Glory

  The Infidels’ Prayer

  Out There

  Group Session

  Reunion

  The Artist

  Split Decision

  Lethal Injection

  No One’s Here

  To Catch a Killer

  Hit the Lights

  Last Embrace

  When it Rains

  Changed Man

  Bad Habits

  Every Precious Second

  To Feed an Army

  Instant Terror

  Midnight Snack

  Shooting Flies

  Surviving the Holidays

  Book of Revelation

  Shades of Death

  REVIEW

  OUT NOW

  COMING SOON

  SINCERE THANKS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  EXCERPT FROM 5 MORE PERFECT DAYS

  UNLOCKING THE CAGE

  CONNECT ONLINE

  A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  Half of the short stories you are about to read were previously published in small magazines, ezines, and anthologies between 2003 and 2008, the other half hiding on my hard drive because they just weren’t good enough. It was difficult rereading these older stories, but a lot of fun reimagining them. Villains switched jobs, motivations, and methods of murder. Some settings were rearranged and a couple good guys changed names, but they all faced the same ending. The same ending we will all face. The reason I wrote these stories.

  Each Dawn I Die

  The girl he called Laura buried her face in the pillow, her crying returned to full-blown sobs. Vic stroked her shoulder and tried to shush her, wished he could remember her real name. She eased up a little with his touch. “There you go. That’s better,” he said. “It’s not that I don’t like you, but I gotta sleep by myself.”

  She jerked away from him.

  “It’s nothing personal.”

  She screamed into the pillow. “I know!”

  Vic stopped pretending with his nice voice. “You need to get up.” He grabbed the stained wipe-up towel and wrapped it around his waist.

  She peeled her face from the pillow and looked at him, her face a black mess of smeared mascara. Sounding much younger than the eighteen years she claimed, she asked, “Where are you going now?”

  Vic opened his bedroom door and called to George, who was passed out on the couch. “Hey, I need you to help me out.”

  “No, I don’t want anybody in here,” the girl pleaded.

  George had been Vic’s boy for nearly a decade. They’d met in Principal Jenner’s office after getting caught buying ecstasy. George rubbed his eyes and ran a hand over his shaved head. “Come on, lady, you gotta go.”

  “Oh my God,” she said to Vic. “You’re such a jerk!”

  Vic turned to face her. “I’m sorry, but I have to get up early. George will take you home.”

  “I can’t go home! I told my parents I’m staying at Amy’s.”

  Vic rolled his eyes at the ridiculousness. He needed to start doing a better job of checking IDs. As he headed for the bathroom, he told George, “Handle this quietly, please.” He could hear her yells with the door closed, even with the shower running. The sound of the radio, though, made her disappear.

  When he walked out of the bathroom she was still gone. He slipped on his boxers as he fired up his laptop, opened the website. Fifteen thousand views. Not bad for a half-dead fish in the sack, he thought. Vic had been running his site, Maybe Legal, for two years. The numbers had been on the uptick for the past nine months. All of Vic’s girls were real. Real homely, real naïve. Some were real ugly, but most importantly, they were real virgins. Virgins weren’t easy to come by these days, but Vic made do by prowling the malls and local water park. Their first forays in porn were then broadcast to fifty-three countries. Vic got fan mail from all over, none stranger than the one from a guy in Bulgaria asking if he could shoot a video with a girl riding a GI Joe action figure.

  Three quick knocks at the door, and Vic jumped to his feet. He checked the eyehole. Too many of the girl
s came running back for their phone, panties, or just to see if he’d call them the next day. Most never wanted to see him again, but he was shocked at how many did.

  George entered, hand pressed to his ear, a small trail of blood running down his neck. “Stupid bitch.”

  Vic asked, “What the hell happened to you?”

  “She bit me, man! She fucking bit me!”

  “Bit you?”

  “Yeah, I was telling her how good she looked, thought maybe I’d get some seconds. And she fucking bit me!”

  George went to the bathroom to clean up, and Vic laughed, grabbed an energy drink from the fridge. He cracked it open, and took a long swig. Not really caring, he asked, “She say anything?”

  “She said maybe five words the whole ride. ‘Right here. Left there.’ Didn’t seem too happy.”

  “Can’t please ’em all.”

  George came out of the bathroom a few minutes later, three bandages awkwardly taped to his ear. His fat frame filled the doorway as he flicked on the light. “Holy shit, looks like you killed someone.”

  Vic chuckled, took a swig, and sat down at the computer, as George snapped photos of the bloody bedspread.

  George yanked off the old sheets, pulled a new set of silk linens from the closet, and slid them onto the mattress. He smoothed them down, arranged the pillows. “She any good?”

  “Eh, all right.” He refreshed his website and said, “Oh, shit; I guess no one cares. She got 34,347 views. Not bad for two hours.”

  George shoved the old sheets in the trash bag and twirled it closed, tied the end in a knot. “She was superhot though.” He nodded at the cabinet with the recording equipment. “She know?”

  “I don’t know.”

  George joined Vic in the living room. “Any new prospects?”

  “Yeah, this chick’s dad’s a pastor.”

  “Crazy.”

  Every new girl guaranteed a few new members, but subscriptions were skyrocketing. Tonight, “Laura” had already brought in seventy-four at twenty bucks a pop.

  George shook his head, helped himself to the fridge. “I don’t know how the hell you do it.”

  Vic wanted to say it was because he made them feel special, but even he didn’t believe that anymore.

  “Got anything lined up for tomorrow?” George plopped down on the couch, smacked his lips with each bite of yogurt. “Need me to stick around, or can I …”

  He was interrupted by pounding on the front door.

  “Did you not lock the gate?” Vic asked.

  “I did. I always do.”

  Vic shook his head, got up from the computer, but reconsidered answering the door. “See who it is.” He headed into the bedroom. “I’m not here.”

  Another bang.

  George took another bite of yogurt. “They’re not here for me.”

  Vic was too tired for this. “How much do I pay you? You want to get a real job?”

  George muttered under his breath and headed to the door. He opened it and said, “He’s not …”

  An old woman in a dark brown dress barged across the threshold, backed George to the wall without so much as a touch, her decrepit finger and long, brittle nail inches from his lips. He pointed towards the bedroom.

  Vic threw on his robe and barely beat the woman to the doorway, not wanting to get trapped in his room with her. The woman looked middle-eastern, like her leathery brown skin had been blown dry by wind and sand. Her angry eyes were cold and red from tears.

  Vic motioned towards the door. “You need to get out of here.”

  The woman brought her hand to her mouth, spit in it and flung the saliva toward Vic. She shouted something he couldn’t understand, but the hatred translated perfectly.

  Vic wiped the spit from his face, pushed the woman toward the front door. “Get out of here before I call the cops, you psycho bitch.”

  Vic looked to George, but George didn’t move. The woman did, turning her back on Vic. She stopped next to George and spoke in broken English. “You part of this?”

  He shook his head and kicked the trash bag. “I just clean up.”

  Vic’s face still felt wet, but his hand came away dry. “I’m calling the cops,” he said, heading for his phone. “So you better get the fuck out of here!”

  The door slammed. The woman had already left and George threw the deadbolt.

  “Why’d you let her in?” Vic said.

  George’s face was whiter than the time he’d thought he had testicular cancer. “Who was she?”

  Vic hurried to the sink and splashed water over his face. “How the hell would I know?”

  “You’ve never seen her?”

  There was a large Lebanese community on the south side of town, but Vic rarely went down there. Something about her seemed familiar, though. “Maybe from a restaurant. I got no idea.”

  George pointed to the computer. “You probably screwed her granddaughter. That wasn’t just some random nut job.”

  “Chill out.”

  “I bet you anything,” George said. Vic waved him off and George grabbed the trash bag and camera. “I’d be careful, Vic. She could come back.”

  “Then maybe I’ll have to get someone over here that could actually do something about it,” Vic said as George left.

  Vic had hired George because he was big and didn’t ask for much money. Maybe Vic needed to spend some serious cash for legitimate protection. The number of girls on the site had climbed to sixty-three, and at least half of them probably had dads in the picture. Vic threw the deadbolt and walked over to the computer. He wasn’t worried, but it’d be good just to make sure.

  Another fan had called him the “Virgin Slayer.” He liked that, thought about adding it to the masthead, then scrolled through the photos. He was three months deep when Becky’s profile and bloody sheet popped up. She’d been his waitress. They’d gone out drinking. He’d brought her home.

  Waitress. Shit. The old woman had been at the counter. Becky had introduced her as her grandmother. George had been right. But how had she found him here? Had Becky actually told her grandmother about what had happened? It’d been three months ago.

  Vic couldn’t sleep. His bedroom was pitch-dark. There was a loud noise outside; it sounded like something scraping his shuttered bedroom window.

  It’s not the old lady, he told himself, ashamed to even think of something so stupid. He was on the third floor. It was probably a bird on the window ledge. Still, the old bitch had been in his head all night long.

  It was almost six o’clock. The sun was about to come up and he needed to rest for a heavy day at the gym. Vic grabbed a pair of earplugs and a sleep mask from the nightstand. He had one earplug in when the scrape came again, deeper and louder.

  Stop being a pussy. Vic pulled back the shutters, saw the first rays of light washing away the last of the predawn shadows.

  He didn’t see it right away, not until the scraping continued, a tendril of black mist slowly swirling in the air on the other side of the window. Three beings took their forms, each floating. The one in the middle looked closest to human, a pale face wearing a black medieval doctor’s mask. He wore a dark robe, his bony hand gripping a scalpel. On either side of him were his henchmen, with the heads of jackals and talons for hands.

  “I’m fucking dreaming,” Vic said aloud to snap himself out of the nightmare. The trio floated forward, seeped through the edges of the glass. Vic slammed the shutters, but the thick black mist poured through the cracks. They began to solidify, once again taking their previous forms.

  The henchmen each grabbed an arm and dropped Vic onto the bed, pinning him down, their talons ripping through his flesh. The doctor produced a curved, metal tube from his dusty robe, inserted it between Vic’s lips. It clinked against Vic’s teeth, tore into the back of his throat.

  Vic studied the doctor’s pale, rotting face, searching the black sockets that should have held eyes. The beast’s chuckle paralyzed Vic as the blood poured down his throat.
>
  The doctor whispered something unintelligible, produced a glass jar filled with spiders and scorpions scrambling over each other. He unscrewed the lid, held it to the tube. Vic’s mind screamed as the creatures poured inside him; his body bucked against the henchmen who were holding him down.

  Soon the container was empty. The death doctor tossed it aside. Vic never heard it hit the floor. He couldn’t breathe, his windpipe clogged, thousands of bristly feet finding their way up and down every path, fire-filled stings blurring his thoughts. Vic had never wanted to die until this moment.

  He opened his eyes and found the death doctor’s decaying face just inches from his own, his foul breath tinged with rotting meat seeped through the mask. He pulled the tube from Vic’s throat then slid a magnifying monocle from his robe, placed it where his right eyeball should’ve been. A small silver dot in the eye socket grew larger in the glass. The doctor pinched Vic’s cheeks and peered down his swelling throat.

  Vic couldn’t understand the doctor’s words, but he recognized the language. It was the same nonsense as the old woman’s. And he didn’t have to speak the tongue to understand the evil dripping from those words.

  A distinctive, metallic click pulled Vic out of the panic. The doctor had just tapped the blade of his scalpel to the bedpost. Vic stayed conscious just long enough to see his belly split open, the fading doctor and his henchmen smiling as the creatures skittered out from his intestines.

  Vic shot out of bed, his mind racing, trying to get his bearings. He was in his house, the house his parents had left him when they’d passed. He saw the tripod in the closet. It was all a dream he thought as he placed his feet on the floor. A sharp pain shot through his big toe. A shard of glass was sticking out of it. He plucked it out, looked at the ground. Dozens of spiders and scorpions were racing around a pile of broken glass.

  This was no dream. It was late afternoon. He opened his shirt, felt the stitches running down his chest. “What the fuck, man?” Maybe I’m still sleeping? But he wasn’t. The blood trailing behind him as he pulled himself to the living room told him that. His computer was still up and running. Becky’s profile was on the screen. But he’d turned it off, hadn’t he?