Frosty - part 1

Rough draft, first write through.  All the writing here is in its rawest, pulpiest form.  After review this all has the potential to change drastically as all writing does; I am posting these as more of a driving factor to getting work done for myself.  The more I post the more I am motivated to post and work on more.  The Decapitator, The Strange Case of Madame Web, Frosty, Empire of Ants....will all be revised and tightened into better works.  My hope is to someday include them all in an anthology novel, but first my brain needs to puke out these words.  The fanzine will continue as well.  Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

Frosty

It was night again outside, a brief shade from the cold sun whose warmth never seemed to reach them.  The nights were short this time of year; the days in contrast were unbearably long.  Insomnia had set in for the first couple months working there, something he was warned about but never thought it would happen to him.  It was strange; he thought the loneliness of being separated from friends and family would get to him first, but it was his internal clock that sabotaged his sleep and sanity.  He barely thought of his family, or friends; society seemed so distant and inconsequential to him.  All he could think of was Patrick and his rage.  He wanted to lose himself in his work but found it hard to concentrate on anything in particular.  He wasn’t even sure if he remembered his first couple months here at all.  It was all such a blur.  Everything was out of focus, he looked at himself in the mirror and did not recognize his face, for it was not his own.

His partner in crime, a brilliant recluse named Patrick Murray, had been locked in the Arctic Circle for months trying to crack the cryogenics problem.  The idea was nothing new; cryogenic research had been around since the 60’s.  Aspiring immortals, some of the rich and fool hardy subscribed to the idea of freezing their brains after death and slow rot claimed the rest of their bodies.  The hope was that a few hundred years from now technology would make brain transplanting possible, but the reality was the that freezing flesh caused significant damage to the host, ice crystals would crudely cut through precious brain matter as they formed.  If technology ever made brain transplants possible it was likely the rich “corpsicles” of 1966 would come back mentally retarded, vegetative, or worse.

Murray was a spindly man with wild inquisitive eyes, a stern face outlined by a salt and pepper beard that betrayed his kinder side.  His energy and enthusiasm were contagious; he had a self-professed love of life that Carl found inspirational in these dour times.  Murray was always talking self-improvement, he held strong to the overly optimistic belief that anybody can accomplish anything with enough time and drive. 

When he wasn’t peering into a microscope he was doing Pilates and pushups in his personal quarters, squats by the mess hall.  He was so obsessed with health and physical conditioning that Carl remembers when they first met during a company get together at a pizza parlor back in the states that Patrick had to excuse himself mid meal to run a couple miles around the strip mall because he was worried about consuming too many carbs.  Coworkers were reaching for bread sticks and seconds while Patrick ran alone outside, shirt slogged with sweat in the mid-July sun.  Despite being older than Carl he looked to be in far better shape.  Carl had the middle age bulge, where Patrick had a perfect six pack.  To try to close the gap Carl took to the gym several months before being deployed to Outpost 13149, but he found out quickly that he couldn’t compete with Patrick’s fanatical workout schedule.  It certainly took his confidence down a few pegs to know that for months on end he would be locked in a rigorous work schedule with someone who appeared smarter and stronger than he was in nearly every way, but the research was too exciting to pass up for personal reasons.   

 Murray had developed a means of plastination that would keep the structural integrity of the brain intact for centuries.  Using an aldehyde-stabilized method of cryopreservation he could capture the center of personality and identity in the brain, the connectdome, and essentially copy it to a hard drive where it would be stored digitally.  From there he could reproduce the flesh in a plastic mold for the brain, and duplicate the synaptic structures with great fidelity using 3D printing techniques.  The only downside was that the process involved destructive scanning of the host brain; when the brain is analyzed it is immersed in a toxic chemical bath that destroyed the cellular structure of the tissue, and once the brain is frozen it is cut into fine slices for analysis.  The original brain would be entirely destroyed, replaced with something closer to a plastic brain.  

For months Patrick and Carl would replicate the process on rabbits, goats, and pigs with successful brain transplants to all of them.  The real hurdle was human trials.  Because of the sensitive nature of the experiments and the need to sub artic temperatures for the cryogenics the company that funded them had decided to send them to a remote outpost in the Arctic Circle where the Geneva Convention had no reach.  There they could begin analyzing and plasticizing brains from human cadavers.

For several months the team hit setback after setback.  The first twenty some samples were disasters, the plastination of the cerebral cortex proved to be a massive challenge.  More samples were hastily flown in from Russia.  Carl didn’t want to imagine how they came across so many new samples that were entirely intact.  These people looked like they died in their sleep.

After months of failures the normally optimistic and sunny Murray had become introverted and non-conversational.  They would sit in silence for hours contemplating the specimen under the objective lens of the microscope, and then he would toss the slide away with a sigh like it offended him.  Carl would hear the delicate slide shatter in the biological waste bin.  Hundreds of brain slices left to rot in a trash bag.  Hundreds of memories and personalities callously discarded.  The situation was tense; nerves were on edge. 

One day Carl decided to get some fresh Artic air to clear his head.  The area had just been pounded with another snow blizzard, a heavy snow drift had threatened to collapse part of their tool shed where they kept the Snow Cats snow-mobiles, really their only means of escape if any emergency happened.  Carl propped a ladder against the frost covered shed.  The aluminum bent in a bit bringing down some tumbling icicles but seemed stable enough.  The roof was dense with ice, but he felt like he could hoist his body on top despite the slippery slope ahead of him.  He cautiously began lifting his body and then his snow shovel on to the roof but felt his body slowly start to slide down the frictionless surface of the packed ice.  He rammed his fist into the adjacent undisturbed snow but it wasn’t enough to hold his body weight, and he suddenly fell back.  His fingers caught the edge, one last gallant effort to not fall off the roof, but the fingertips painfully caught the sharp edge of the metal gutter, slicing off the tips of his index and middle finger before falling backward into the snow below.  He was more embarrassed than anything.  The fall wasn’t far, just enough to knock some of the wind out of him, but the snow softened most of the blow.  He was calling himself a fool under his breath when he heard the tool shed buckle, dumping the roof top of snow directly on top of him.  There were a few desperate breathes, a muffled cry, then all faded to black.

Carl woke up later in Patrick’s room to the smell of ammonia and tickling numbness on his lips.  Patrick kept Spartan living quarters, the bare essentials only so that he could focus entirely on his work.  Carl’s eyes were blurry, unfocused.  He felt dazed.  He suspected he had been concussed by the snow and Patrick carried his limp body here to recover and regain some warmth.  The idea of Patrick finding him like that embarrassed him further.  He was wearing fresh clothes, so he was sure his co-worker and part-time mentor had redressed him when he found him soaked in his own sweat under the snow drift, probably on the verge of hypothermia.  He had to thank him; he had probably saved his life.  He already felt overshadowed by Patrick is almost every way, he was sure this would swell his ego to astronomical proportions had he not hit a wall with his cryogenic research. 

Carl’s head felt like it was swimming in the bottom of the ocean as he turned around to look and see where Patrick was.  He was startled to see Patrick had been sitting silently in a dark corner of the room, observing Carl carefully, expectation fat and pregnant in his eyes.   He explained how he found Carl, and his embarrassing story was re-animated with words.  Carl wanted to hate this man, there was a bitter jealousy welling up inside him.  He hardly heard Patrick talk, all he could see where the strands of his neck stand up, and the urge to yank one out, dig his teeth into it, and pull like a dog tugging at his rope.  His irrational feelings made him feel like a monster, but he could do little to stiffen them.  Any lingering bitterness towards Patrick before the accident seemed amplified tenfold by his concussion.

When Carl found the strength to move his legs Patrick carefully helped him wobble to the mirror above the sink to examine the bump on his head.   Patrick claimed he received the nasty gash from the fall.  He didn’t remember hitting his head in particular but was sure those details would pronounce themselves after he has had time to recover.  Carl fingered the back of his skull where an ugly new scar seemed to part his hair while Patrick smugly explained how he required stitches as well, and that he was very lucky that Patrick knew basic first aid.  Yeah, real lucky.  He knew the swelling should concern him, but for some reason outside of the unexplainable seething anger he felt towards Patrick he was generally numb to his situation.  He felt like he was sleepwalking, even though he never suffered from the malady himself, he felt like he could injure himself with little consequence.  The oddest thing about it all was that although Carl could tell it was his face in the mirror he felt like he was staring at a stranger, like he didn’t identify with his own image.  Everything felt like a bad copy of a bad copy.  He had to stand in the mirror, staring deep in his own eyes looking for the spark that was him.  He was an alien intruder in his own body, operating the body’s gears and levers but divorced from it all the same.   He huffed into his palm to smell his own breath, and then grabbed a toothbrush.  It flexed and snapped immediately in his grip.

Carl giggled; the cartoonish way it easy sheered in half struck him as funny.  He grabbed the floss and the entire plastic container folded and fell to the floor in a bird’s nest of string. It was if his hands had lost all gentile tactility and have become deadly instruments.  When he grabbed an object he had lost all sense of when to stop squeezing, how much pressure to apply.  They had become industrial strength vices.  He grabbed the sink facet and it twisted off with ease, sending water jetting from its rivets.  Patrick seemed astonished, frantically scribbling notes into his flip book; a Cheshire cat smile crossed his lips.  Carl caught it from the edge of his vision and blacked out for the second time that day.

There wasn’t much left of Patrick after Carl tore through his body, tearing it limb from limb like a rabid animal.  His perfect abs were shredded and laid over the back of a chair like a blanket.  Carl pulled the biceps right out of his arm as Patrick howled; in a distant corner of his mind he begged forgiveness but ignored his pleas.  Laugh at me?  Laugh at my failures?  My pain amuses you, now your pain will amuse me.  Patrick’s shredded arm was slick with blood; Carl had trouble holding the slippery tendons between his fingers and he yanked and tore at his flesh.  

The Decapitator - part 7

The Decapitator Part 7 –

The process of transmogrification from human to Grave Dog is a slow and excruciating ordeal with many opportunities for folly; a carefully crafted form of torture with the aim of erasing personality through pain.  To purge the sentient human, uproot the soul from the frame through extreme pain, and then replace it with a bounty of pure necro-slime, is a process that can take months even for a witch or warlock with close ties to the spiritual realm.  Preparation for the grim ritual can take even longer.  Necro-slime is mined from the deepest dead pits; mold choked chambers where offspring of the old ones pack the ancient dead, lost rulers of the reclaimed world.  A burial mound of at least fifty cadavers is left to ferment with bundles of spider moss and albino bat droppings for years, even decades, slowly rotting, the flesh eventually coagulates into a green slime on the cold dungeon floor.  The chamber must be made of strong stone or granite or lime, none of the noxious gases from the exposed decay can be allowed to slip away into the Earth.  If the necro-slime is exposed to fresh air before it has properly fermented it will lose its deadly potency.  Many witches and vampires of the new world have spent years using zombies and other indentured slaves carving out these chambers in the deep Earth with their bare hands, scabbed palms, and bent back fingernails; many were left to rot in the same spot they died toiling under the witch’s watchful gaze, their bodies dropping dead from complete exhaustion in these dark subterranean chambers.  If the witches let their slaves eat at all their feast would likely be a hardy plate of rat guts and insect stew, or even a cannibalized fellow worker, most witches are happy to let their slaves starve to death and replace them with fresh meat.   

The victim to be transformed into a Grave Dog is placed in a metal contraption that should invoke images of the medieval iron maiden; after the chalk board of the mind’s eye is erased by horror they are strapped inside and encased within the artfully crafted metal casket.  These devices are said to resemble gargoyles and demons whose names have been lost in time along with the tongue of their language.  After the mortal mind withers and dies as it retreats from the horror of this realm and is replaced by the chaos mind induced by necro-slime.  This imbues the master with total authority over the Grave Dog vessel.  The slime is carefully poured through inseam holes in the mouth, nose, and eyes; great caution is taken to ensure none of the precious burial chamber sludge is lost in the process.  The slime is also said to cause total seething madness if ingested or if left on exposed skin for a short duration, the only remedy for it is suicide or death.  All of the slime is used during the ceremony to ensure successful transformation.  Incantations are intoned in a semicircle around it to impress its master’s name deep into the flailing psyche of the victim.  The screams of the victim are slowly replaced with more bestial tones, it is said that leaving the victim exposed to pure moonlight will also strengthen the blood bond of the necro-slime.

The future Grave Dog is left in a heavy steel cage for several days as the process winds down; its un-needed internal organs bubble into mush.  A Grave Dog has no need for lungs or a stomach; it will no longer draw air or attain sustenance from food for it is an instrument of death; it only needs blood.  The flesh grows pale, almost translucent, the muscles bind and form knots under the skin.  The Grave Dog’s head is covered and concealed by an ancient ceremonial helmet or magic bound leather straps to bind it from biting at its handlers in its rabidity; a muzzle to stiffen its strength until unleashed.  While a proper Grave Dog will never attack its true master its ferocious nature will lead it to attack anything and everything that moves around it.  The mere hint of life can cause a Grave Dog to roar with quaking anger; it is only content with absolute still silence, perhaps a reflection of their nature as undead, for the dead seek the comfort of the quiet eternity of the grave to reflect on life.  In this way the Grave Dog is like the ancient ones, the old ones, the space eaters who raged at the intrusion of light into their dark realm after the explosion of the Big Bang, and vowed vengeance on all life for its noisy trespass.

The Strange Case of Madame Web part 3

But Clarissa died silently screaming in the dark at what she found at the bottom of the old well.  Her mind could barely comprehend such a creature, the mummified remains of a giant.  And it moved and spoke to her in her mind; each thought nails on the chalk board.  It’s intelligence old and reptilian.  The treasure clutched to his chest, the promise it made, all a dark lie.  It promised to grant her wish, just like the old fairy tales.  Clarissa could hardly resist; I never want to be lonely again.  The mummy never moved, but its rictus grin grew wide in Clarissa’s minds eye.  A cold blanket of air drew over her, she screamed but no sound came out, she could feel her heart beating wildly, threatening to burst from her ribs, then the dark.  Her wish was granted.

The Massacre of the Si-Te-Cah Giants

The Massacre of the Si-Te-Cah

The red haired giants of the Si-Te-Cah had troubled the dreams and startled the curiosity of the Paiutes tribes for long enough; soon the fragile vision of the noble savage would be dispelled.  They seemed to have appeared all at once in the great lake of their ancestors, carried by large rafts held together by leathery strips of Tule, a plant which they were also seen eating in great quantity.  The most trusted scouts reported the absurd impossibility of their long limbs and bright red hair, an exotic prize of nature sought after by the Paiute chiefs.  Shamans warned of demon plague, all were cautious of approach.  Arrows had been given flight, keeping the intruders off shore, but under the shroud of the night it was feared the giants stalked Paitue prey.  Their monstrous girth and appearance gave rise to stories of cannibalism.  They called them flesh eaters.

The truth was the Si-Te-Cah giants were famished; driven to a more bestial means of survival by extreme starvation; they feasted on the dead of their own tribe, cracked open bones and suckled on the marrows of their own brethren to etch out a few more days of survival.  Their large frames required more sustenance than their prized Tule would provide.  Their lungs sought a more oxygen than the dust choked planes of the surrounding desert would afford.  These once proud tribes of warrior kings, descendants of ancient Babylonia, were on the brink. 

The attack came swiftly, the Paiutes gathered the best warriors, 2000 strong, and under secret sign launched a volley of fire branded arrows at the Si-Te-Cah’s river community.  Despite being on water their makeshift huts burst into flames immediately, the tinder of their boats kindled for hours like a funeral barge.   Hundreds of giants burned, red hair aflame, screaming as their family’s charred carcasses sunk into the murk of the lake below.  No respite was given to the survivors that managed to swim ashore, many with arrows poking out of their backs like bloody porcupines.  Frantic warriors with blue face paint descended on them from all directions.  Some Si-Te-Cah had large spears which quickly became barbed in the flesh of their attackers; one Paiute would impale himself on the weapon in brutal self-sacrifice brought on by a high of peyote and violence, the others would circle the giant with hatchets, hacking at the legs then scalping flesh for the precious red prize secured to their skulls as they dropped to their knees.     

This hair would be used for mourning dress and trophy, trade and commerce; proof of the Paiute conquering spirit and nobility.  After purging the land of the Si-Te-Cah all that remained was bundles of the crimson stained hair, to be passed from generation to generation for hundreds of years, along with the lie of the red haired cannibal monsters that faced the noble savage and lost.   

The Strange Case of Madame Web - part 2

Madame Web began as the shape of a human, for all anyone in town could tell she was born Clarissa Clarmont, lovely heir to the Clarmont fortune, in a life that Madame Web couldn't even remember, but could only feel like a phantom pain.  Clarissa had a miscarriage; the respected and very public Clarmont family tried their best to cover it up.  Gossip ran amok in the prude town.  Speculation that she had sex with a vagrant from out of town ran through the phone wires, that the baby was misshapen and deformed.  Clarissa had been pulled from school and all but disappeared from town life.  Her friends were denied visitation by her staunch Christian father, Christopher Clarmont. 

Chris was with her now, so was everyone that has ever been to the house and died in its cold embrace.  She could call on him anytime she wants, but he always says the same thing.  They all do, and they are so boring and annoying.  They all just want to leave her like everybody ever has, until now.  They know the answer to their query.  Escape?  Never.

Clarissa spent her lonely life looking out windows, always waiting for people, always wanting company.  Her childhood was spent in the secluded Cider House manor, one of the first houses built in town, taking advantage of the deep well thought to be dug by the very first Dutch colonists that settled the land.  Her great grandfather and his family of 12 sons built several additions to the old house in the late 1800’s, many of which survived through the Great Depression.  Some of the additions never made sense to Clarissa.  There were doors that led to steep drops to the basement.  Some rooms seem uneven and tilted; earning the nick name the “Slanty Shanty” from some of the maids that toiled there.  There was a hand cart that went up from the first floor instead of down to the basement.  When she asked her father about all the strange dimensions of the house he only offered a glib reply and sardonic smile; something to the effect of “old gramps was quite the prankster”.

To many people around town her great grandfather was more than an idle prankster.  Some speculated that he made a deal with the devil, got greedy and traded his soul for smiling dollar bills.

Clarissa was home tutored and kept from school.  Her parents treated her as their own personal treasure, not to be shared or touched.  Her entire universe was the house but she was not allowed to explore it all in the day time with adult eyes watching.  That was her great secret; during the night she would slip from her covers and explore the house in the gloom, carefully avoiding the creaky steps and floorboards she committed to memory, just like a Nancy Drew detective novel she read.  This was her proudest accomplishment; to slip around the house freely and undetected like a night shade.  Sometimes Clarissa fancied herself a ghost.  Maybe then she could leave her suburban confines and explore the world beyond the mortar and dry wall of this aging relic of a house.  As a ghost she could sneak right out the door, maybe visit the local matinee and see some, oh my gosh, real live boys that seemed to populate her more perversely colored dreams of late.  She blushed at the thought as her undercarriage moistened, sex was beyond her nubile understanding but her body reacted to her perversions none the less.

Clarissa would never know what it felt like to have sex with a man.  Clarissa died in her own bed under her pink polka dot blankets at the age of twenty, still a shut in to the adult world.  The diagnosis was pneumonia but everyone seemed to think it happened too quickly for that slow disease.  She was her typical plucky self the day before, practically bursting with youthful energy.  Now she was silent and stiff, cadaver showing no sign of struggle, the maids agreed “at least she died in peace”.       

The Strange Case of Madame Web

The Strange Case of Madame Web -

The house on Cider Hill grew from the shadows like a tumorous lump on the landscape.  Its menace greeted new comers to the sleepy suburb; the once prominent family household sat on a hill overlooking the interstate exit leading into the town; for many it was the first thing they saw coming into town and the last thing they saw leaving.  For many winding down the interstate road the house itself piqued the curiosity and stirred images of the ghostly inhabitants in the mind’s eye.  Weary travelers might imagine some yellow eyed ghoul peering from behind the slats of one of its boarded up windows; a chill running down their spine.  It was the house the children always pumped their bike pedals a little faster as they rode by, fear triggered by a silent animal alarm within.   The elders of the town, who could still see farmland where municipal buildings now stood, would offer strange stories of a lone widow that used to live there, but even their fanciest yarns and wildest recollections would not do the true story any justice.  The being that denned inside the house on Cider Hill, the one the dead called “Madame Web” in whispers spoken into the midnight wind, was a night creature without comparison, the only kind on this continent and certainly this century.

The Scene of a Hanging

The scene of a hanging:

The guilty walked slowly as their heads were covered in white linen, they could only see their feet as they awkwardly stumble walked to their hanging fate.  Their motorization restricted by tightly bound ropes which twist in the dirt and rake the skin red on their bare legs, goose pimpled from their short but cold journey.  They are covered by dirt smudged sheets, like pretend ghosts; some rank drunk offering foul repentance for any approaching onlookers, others chillingly quiet and resolved as they make their death march.  

The warden leads them one by one into a cart, led by pike and sword to be dragged behind a horse’s ass and displayed to the carnival that waits.   More indignation before the end; the town is crossed, a half mile march to the gibbet.  They can smell the thunderous aroma of horse shit; hear the gaffs of the quant village folk further condemning them, mind split between the spectacle passing by in the street and their morning choirs.  A chaplain sings verses and offers final salvation expertly ignoring the bellow of the buzzing crowd assaulting the cart from all sides, natives now thirsty to see the final act of the bloody ritual.  As the fevered pitch of slurs peaks the chaplain hits an even higher octave, until at last all singing is done, and there are no more psalms to offer.     

The noose is placed, the cart is pulled, and all hang as one.  The friends and relatives of the damned pull at their feet to ease their way to death’s embrace.  After a few moments the sky dance ends, and it is over.

But the hangman’s job is never done, he strips the clothes from the bodies of a few, sells their final fur to relatives, and the rest of the mess goes to surgeons.  Teeth are pulled by pliers and placed in decorative baubles to be used later as dentures.  The truly damned are left to hang, covered in fat and tallow, bound by heavy chains; there they rot in public until they are reclaimed by dust.