Flash Fiction 40 Anthology - July 2009

  Okay. So for years I'd been telling the police who was taking these precious girls. I'd seen every one of them go in and not come out. When a disappearance happened, I'd go to the police. But they didn't believe me. They said I had no proof. Without proof they wouldn't investigate. They even accused me of having a personal grief against this person.

  What could I do? By the time I could get a cop to come with me, there would be nothing to find. All evidence gone by the time they got there. After awhile they started to investigate me! Can you believe it? I was the one under suspicion because I knew too much about each victim.

  I guess I did. I knew what each of them had been wearing the day they disappeared. Even the fact that every one of them had long, beautiful hair with hair clips. Their smiles had been beautiful with voices sweet as the spring. Anyways, for being innocent I knew too much.

  The cops wouldn't arrest the guilty one, they were focused on me. I knew others would die if someone didn't do something. I've never thought of myself as a vigilante, and killing a person wasn't something I thought I could do. So I waited and I searched for proof.

  They say that all killers keep trophies from their kills, to revisit the thrill. I've only had experience with one murderer. I don't know why the locks of hair were kept in the hair bows, but I found a box full of them. I'd finally found the evidence to put him away.

  I was on my way to the cops when my whole world changed.

  Coming down the stairs, sprawled on the floor like a forgotten doll, I found the body of my daughter, April, in my living room. Blood seemed to come from everywhere, puddles and rivers all around. I don't think there was any left in her little body.

  On the floor next to her, a lock of her blond curls clasped neatly in a hair bow.

  Blood. Anger. Pain. Fury. All of them red. Red is all I saw as I made my way to the kitchen. The smug bastard sat there eating a ham sandwich, calm as can be.

  Death was too good for him, but putting that knife into him made me feel good. Watching his blood spill was a release for me. As the good book says 'an eye for an eye' and all that.

  So you see, I am guilty. I killed my husband, but not those little angels.

  His body? Oh, I put it with the bodies of his victims, so their ghosts can torture him.

  The clocks run down, it's midnight and man's law states it's time for me to die. Ironic, don't you think?

  Reporters Note: The bodies of serial killer David Fellman and several young females were discovered deep in the marshes, exactly where Kaitlynn Fellman said they'd be.

  The Brain Eaters

  By Terri Lynn Coop

  It took me seven years to decide to kill my husband.

  Before I get to "the how," let me briefly tell you about "the why."

  I met Kevin in college. We were literature majors and fell in love over Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. We talked endlessly of writing husband-and-wife "whodunits" that would reflect the best of suspense fiction. Our wedding reception was on the Orient Express Mystery Murder Train. It was a dream come true.

  Until "The Brain-Eaters."

  The what?

  Let me explain. We were poor. Few make a living writing fiction, and we were no exception. We sold some short stories, and won a few contests, but that didn't pay the bills. I took a job teaching high school English, and Kevin took any freelance job he could find.

  That's how he met Rick. That bastard.

  Kevin and Rick regularly freelanced for a heavy metal rag called "Slimy Groove." They reviewed records by bands such as "Smashed Flat Shit," and "Necrotic Virginity." They reported on rock concerts and wrote advertising copy for head shops. It was disgusting, but it paid the bills.

  One night, they got together and wrote a short story called "The Brain-Eaters." It was about a heavy metal band made up of cannibalistic zombies. It was the perfect gag. The band only worked at night, and had no problem getting victims to come backstage after the show. I'll leave the rest to your imagination.

  It sold.

  It sold tens of thousands of copies. The magazine ended up doing twenty reprints of the initial story. A first edition of the story sells for up to $800 in mint condition.

  "The Brain-Eaters" spawned several generations of demon seed. "Brain-Eaters II: Zombies Gone Wild," "Brain-Eaters III: Revenge of the Zombies." All the way up to "Brain-Eaters X: Zombies Go to College."

  Did I mention the franchise was picked up by Hollywood and made into movies? Dreadful movies. Movies played to packed houses of stoned and screaming teens and college students. Disgraceful.

  At first, I was fine with it. The money was good and Kevin was happy. We didn't talk as much, and instead of spending Friday nights cuddled up with our well-worn copy of "The Maltese Falcon," Kevin usually had a promotional event. I willingly put aside my own literary aspirations to further Kevin's career.

  However, I knew that it had to end the day I went into the butcher shop and asked for two pounds of pork chops. The butcher leaned across the counter and said, "We don't have any pork chops, but we have some incredible BRAAAAAIIIIINNNNNSSSSS!" He then held out a copy of Slimy Groove and asked me if Kevin would autograph it for him. I smiled and found another butcher.

  That's the first time I fantasized about killing Kevin. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. It's not like I knew him anymore.

  It wasn't just about the money. In fact, Kevin and his zombie franchise was probably worth more to me with him alive than dead. It's just that I was disgusted by our life and the man that I'd married.

  But, how to do it?

  I went about it in my best Agatha Christie fashion. An obscure poison would be best. Preferably one that accentuated Kevin's mild heart condition and would pass for a heart attack.

  I studied and studied and finally found the compound I needed. A rare plant from India produced a poisonous seed that when baked into bread caused heart failure. Bless the Internet. In less than a month, I had the seedlings in my hand.

  However, I wasn't content with just the seedlings. As a mystery writer, I studied crime and police procedure. I knew how sophisticated forensics had become and that I would have to be crafty to produce an undetectable poison.

  Well, I won't bore you with details. I crossbred the original plant with another and another and in a few generations had a toxin that when bonded with the gluten in wheat flour was as close to undetectable as a poison could be.

  I practiced on stray animals. At first, they convulsed and foamed at the mouth. Too much. Then, the animals revived and recovered after a day or so. Too little. Finally, a dog ate my bread, shivered for a few moments, yelped, and fell still. Just right. I took the dog to a vet in another town and ordered a necropsy and toxicology screen on the pretense that I believed my evil neighbor had poisoned poor Fluffy. The results? No toxic substances. Death by heart attack.

  I was ready.

  Kevin liked home-baked cloverleaf dinner rolls. In fact, he swore by them and insisted on them at every meal. I was an expert. Every stinking day, I rolled out dough, and dropped three little dough balls into each compartment of the damned muffin tin.

  Except last night, I added a special surprise ingredient.

  I put out the pot roast, potatoes, salad, and rolls. I hadn't served pork chops since my visit to the brain-loving butcher so many years ago.

  Kevin took two helpings of meat and some salad. I passed him the rolls and he said, "no thanks."

  "NO THANKS?"

  When I asked him why he doesn't want any of the rolls he has insisted on every damned day for the last ten years, he answered, "Atkins."

  "ATKINS?"

  He then told me he'd put on some weight and was cutting carbs on the Atkins Diet until he slimmed down, and that I could stand to lose a few pounds as well, and would I like some pot roast?

  I insisted he have a roll.

  He resisted.

  I insisted.

  He resisted.

  I won that argument, although it took a
baseball bat to do it. And you know what, Mr. Detective? When licked off your fingers, brains aren't all that bad after all.

  Buck and the Twee Fairies of Interstate 20

  By Gary Cuba https://www.thefoggiestnotion.com

  Buck Logan pulled his semi off the side of the road, brought it to a lurching halt, and heaved his bulky body out of the cab. It was time to scrape the latest accumulated layer of splattered fairy carcasses off his windshield.

  He'd been forced to do the same thing only ten miles back. They were damned thick along this stretch, all the way between Aiken and Atlanta. His windshield washers couldn't keep up, and only ended up smearing the stuff into a near-opaque coating. He muttered to himself as traffic streamed by, slipping and sliding on the slick roadway of Interstate 20, which in spots was covered over completely with fairy guts.

  "Damn things are gettin' to be a nuisance around these parts. Worse than the love bug season in Florida. A real twee pestilence, ya ask me!"

  The air was thick with them, thicker than dragonflies on a stagnant Carolina pond in the springtime. One of the critters landed on his ear, apparently having fallen in love with its fat, fleshy lobe. The thing whispered something to Buck, which, by the time it crossed his corpus callosum and registered in his higher brain centers, got interpreted there as a very indecent proposition.

  "Like hell I will, you ? you prevert!" Buck said, swatting at the fairy. "Besides, what would my dear wife Ida think, if she ever found out? Ya'll need to take your twee niminy-piminy asses back to wherever ya'll came from. You're costin' me money, here!"

  And that was a fact: miles defined his livelihood, and he wasn't racking them up quickly enough along this stretch. And Ida? Well, that was always a thought worth serious rumination. She'd slap him silly if she ever found out about him messing around. Hell's fury, she outweighed him by a good 50 pounds!

  Buck pulled himself back up inside his cab and arranged his massive, protruding belly properly and comfortably behind the wheel. Shoot, he thought. There's a truck stop ten more miles up the road, might as well stop there, drain the dragon, take a shower, get some grub, shut down. Closing in on the day's log limit, anyhow. Today turned out to be a real bust, no twee ways about it.

  Buck shook his head vigorously. Two ways! Jeezus.

  ***

  Buck cleaned himself up and headed to the truck stop's restaurant. He paused outside the cafe's entrance for a moment and farted loudly there before entering, exercising a modicum of thoughtfulness for any of his colleagues who might be chowing down inside. Not that the food in this hash house was any more appealing than a good juicy fart, he thought, chuckling.

  He spotted a trucker friend inside, Myron Smoat, who he knew ran a route for Sysco, delivering cheap consumer goods to cheap discount stores, earmarked for consumption by cheap people living equally cheap lives. Myron looked up and hailed Buck over to his booth.

  "Looks like you're off-schedule too, Buck," Myron said.

  "Goddamned fairies. Somethin' oughta be done about 'em." Buck hitched up his jeans and eased his buttocks onto the sticky bench seat opposite Myron. The foam padding already trying to escape its cracked vinyl covering made another increment of progress toward ultimate freedom.

  Myron wiped his beard with his napkin, missing a spot of mayonnaise. "I know they tried fogging this stretch with insecticide. Didn't do squat. And I also read where some scientists down in Atlanta are trying to concoct a designer hormone spray that'll make the things sterile."

  Buck knew that Myron was once a professor at some fancy college, although he couldn't remember which one. Was it Georgia Tech? In Buck's book, he was definitely a smart guy-not the least for realizing that medium-haul trucking could bring him a hell of a lot more income than babysitting rich kids. Buck had always been impressed with Myron's intellectual grasp on things. "The things do seem a might overly interested in sexual matters-or so I've noted."

  "Best to maintain a withdrawn attitude about that, Buck."

  "Anybody know where they came from?"

  Myron took another bite out of his BLT sandwich and stared into space, somewhere in between here and there. "Where, indeed? Or more importantly, why? I have some ideas on that score. But since they're strictly in the realm of speculation, I hesitate to share them."

  "Oh, come on, Myron! I ain't one of your ivory tusk-tower cronies. I'm just askin' you casual-like, one buddy to another. Sheesh!"

  Myron's eyes fixed on Buck. "Some species of cicadas only come out every seventeen years. Fairies? Maybe they gestate for a lot longer, maybe a millennium or more. It's just their time, friend. Their time to do whatever Mother Nature intends for them to do. That's all I'll say on the matter. Don't let the things get under your skin, is what I advise. However twee they may be."

  ***

  Buck lifted himself back into his truck and prepared to ease off into slumberland as he nestled back into his sleeper. He called to check in with Ida, then cut on his LCD TV and watched a little bit of the nightly news. All of it was people killing each other in one fashion or another, so far as Buck could tell. He grunted and shut the thing off, set his alarm clock, turned off the tiny cab light, and pulled a spread over his portly frame. He belched one time, a long, wet one. Damned hash. He closed his eyes.

  And somewhere in that mystical gap between waking apprehension and unconscious reverie, he thought he heard a buzzing. A buzzing with a mincing lilt to it. A twee sound, inside the cab. But he was too tired to care. The dream he began having was too lucid, too exquisite to ever want to wake up from. Ida would kill him, if she only knew.

  ***

  Myron noticed Buck's semi on his next run, still parked in the same exact spot it had occupied the week before. After banging on the door and checking the truck stop thoroughly, he notified the Highway Patrol. They jimmied open the cab, but found no trace of Buck inside.

  Myron shook his head sadly. The twee fairies of I-20 had claimed another one.

  Circles

  By David Gillett

  Earl pushed back his chair from the kitchen table and bent down to pick up his knapsack. His wife glared at him from the full sink, arms clasped, and not caring that soap suds dripped off her wrists. He had seen the look before and it never ended well.

  "Honey, I've got to do something. We've talked about this a hundred times," he explained. "We've called the police and you know that they can't do anything about it. It's going to cost us thousands of dollars just like last year and the year before. I'm not going to take it anymore."

  "What are you going to do if there are a dozen of them? What if they are armed?" she asked and looked out the window into the expanse of cornfields beyond the tractors. The sun had set hours ago and the tall stalks were only swaying shadows now.

  "I've got my phone with me. Besides these are just punk kids. They aren't the type to have weapons. I'm going to scare them off and that will be it," he swung the sack over his shoulder. She didn't look convinced.

  "What if my brother is right?" she asked.

  "No offense but your brother is a little off his rocker," he said and opened the door.

  Stepping off the porch, Earl headed down the gravel path towards the cornfield. He rummaged through the sack for the loaded revolver and jammed it into his jacket. Taking a deep breath, he turned on the flashlight and headed into the darkness. He knew where to go.

  Cupping the end of the flashlight to dim the light, he made his way down the narrow rows of corn, listening for any noise. Within minutes he heard a distinct snapping of stalks and he turned off the flashlight. His heart pounded and he forced himself to relax. The sound grew louder and he noticed that it was coming right at him. He fumbled for his gun, but it was too late. Someone crashed through the corn and knocked him over. He grabbed the person and they both tumbled to the ground. He felt fists strike him in the head but he had the leverage and held the figure down. It was too dark to see who it was, but he leaned all his weight on the man's arms.

  "Don't you move,
" Earl yelled. "I'm armed."

  "Earl? Is that you?" asked the stranger and Earl instantly recognized the voice. It was Junior, his neighbor and cattle rancher.

  "What are you doing here?" Earl asked.

  "Get off me, you big buffoon. I can't breathe," Junior harrumphed. Earl got up and dusted himself off. Junior coughed as he rose and proceeded to circle around him. "What's in the sack?"

  "Why?" Earl answered and held the bag to his chest.

  "Just show me?" Junior asked and Earl complied.

  "It's just some bullets. I had my gun and flashlight in it. Now why are you in my field?"

  "I'm chasing someone."

  "Who?"

  "I don't know but someone has been slaughtering my cattle."

  "You saw them run in here?"

  "Well no, but the last couple of years my cows have shown up dead on this exact day. The only way they could get to them without my dogs getting wind of them is through this field. I was going to catch 'em in the act," Junior said.

  Just as Junior finished, a whirling noise came from the center of the cornfield. They both looked at each other and ran towards the sound. As they tiptoed towards the noise, a light shined through the stalks. They came to a row of cornstalks that formed a circle. In the center of the circle hovered a round silver craft. Two humanoid figures with elongated necks and large dark eyes waddled about in the dim light emanating from the ship's base. They dragged a box and placed it near a hole in the side of the craft. One of the creatures opened the box and smoke rose from inside it. The other figure grabbed what looked like bloody steaks and began to load it into the box. When they finished, they stuffed ears of corn into the box. When that was done, they closed the lid and the box floated into the ship. They followed the box through the hole and in a flash the craft was gone.

  Earl looked over at Junior whose mouth was wide open. He didn't know what to say.

  After a few seconds, Junior said, "I think that I'll head home."

  "Yeah, same here. Nice seeing you," Earl replied and put the gun into the sack.

  "See you in church?"

  "We'll be there. Say hello to Darlene for me."

  "Will do." And with that Junior disappeared into the pitch.