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larissazageris · 2 years ago

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Something In the Night

A woman tries to escape heartbreak with her first-ever highway drive — but must survive some truly monstrous road rage to do so.

It was a long and lonesome stretch of highway.

It shouldn’t have been.

It was supposed to be full of snacks and songs and laughter. A fall drive out through the wine country to celebrate Frankie’s thirty-fifth birthday with Alex, her longtime boyfriend. The man she thought she would marry. The man who, one week ago, she discovered was cheating on her with a woman he had insisted many times he was not.

She left the man, but kept the reservations. She could drive herself to the vineyard B&B. She could have fun without Alex. She would.

But Alex had always been the driver.

Frankie hadn’t driven a car herself since she was a teenager. She had never driven on a real highway — ever.

She’d remembered enough to get a new license, to rent a new car, and to drive the neighborhood roads up to the highway on-ramp. But, Frankie thought, as she gripped the steering wheel with the strength of twenty men — she had done it all in a rage.

But now the rage had run out.

All she had now were her own white knuckles and an empty on-ramp staring her down. The sky bloomed pink and blue, the last bit of brightness before twilight. The street rumbled underneath her. Cars were coming. Semis, probably. Fleets and fleets of them would be upon her soon, whizzing by, quick as death, and she and her sensible Subaru were not going to be able to face them and live to tell the tale.

Just as soon as she had almost turned onto her first highway, she turned off of it.

“I can take backroads,” Frankie said, in a cheery voice masquerading as a confident one. “It’ll just take a little longer, that’s all.” She scrolled and pinched around her phone’s GPS, then added, “It’s not lying to yourself if you do it out loud in a car.”

It felt so stupid and shameful to feel this scared. To have the whole world waiting on an open road — and to know she wasn’t strong enough to drive it alone.

Forty minutes later, she was hopelessly lost in the endless backroads between her home and her hotel. She’d stress-eaten half the snack-packs in a little snack bag she’d brought with her, and rolled the window down to ditch the crumbs.

An hour and twenty minutes later, her phone battery was halfway dead. WiFi and cellular service was gone, and so was any light in the sky. Every lonely so-often, a streetlamp glowed yellow over otherwise pitch-black fields. She hoped to find a one-streetlight town, but when she did, the only light on in it was the streetlight itself, painting the broken-down clapboard town red.

Frankie’s hands twitched in pain from her too-tight grip on the wheel. She turned on the car radio for company, but it only fuzzed. The radio snow’s only competition for sound was her helicopter heartbeat and the howling wind.

Her heart almost shot out of her chest when she realized there was something else in the sound — the roar of an animal. Or, her thoughts corrected, an engine. Lights glimmered at the edge of her vision, then flashed in her rearview mirror, dazzling her.

Frankie was no longer on the road alone.

“You runnin’ to, or runnin’ from?”

A long, lean man in a pale denim shirt bent over the idling car. Frankie didn’t remember parking it. She stared at her hand on the gearshift handle. How did it get there?

“Ma’am?”

Frankie looked up too quickly. Her neck sparkled with pain. She ignored it, and focused on the man’s handsome face. He looked a little like a movie star cowboy. She was dazzled again. He leaned in closer to the window.

“You alright?”

“You a cop?”

Her sharp tone surprised them both. He put his hands up in a show of surrender, then flashed a badge. “U.S. Marshals Service. Just passing through. Only stopping you on account of the speeding.”

“Was I speeding?” “One could say so.” The handsome marshal laughed. It was a pleasant, rich sound. “I’d ask the little critter family we passed some miles back, but I think they might’ve asphyxiated on the jet stream you left behind.”

His face seemed too young for the silver in his hair. He was so close she could smell the peppermint on his breath. The sandalwood on his neck. And something else she couldn’t name, deep and sweet and strange. “I’m just hoping you have a good reason for the lead foot.”

He smiled down at her through the open window. Just like a movie star on a screen. She exhaled for the first time in what felt like hours. “Why’s that?”

“Well…” the long man’s pretty eyes twinkled. “Let’s just say I would much rather take you out than bring you in.”

Frankie’s head swam. She had thought she was in the start of horror movie. But maybe she was in the start of a porno? Or at the very least, a rom com?

“Good reasons do not include knocking over banks, killing families as they sleep, or drug runnin’,” he said, ticking off reasons on elegant fingers that were as long and strong as the rest of him. “Just so we’re clear. I really want to set you up for success.”

He smirked pleasantly. So did she.

“Would you believe me if I told you I got lost going to my own birthday party?”

“That I’d have to see to believe. License and registration?”

She handed it over, trying to be composed. But this man was having an effect.

“Frankie. That’s a fun name.” His eyes glittered as he scanned the rest of the card. He arched an eyebrow. “No way this birthday’s right, though. I don’t put you a day over twenty-five.”

“Then I put you in league with the devil sir, the way you lie.”

“Gilding the lily a bit, am I?”

“Yeah. Be careful, pardner. It’s yours to lose.”

She quirked an eyebrow at him. He smiled, as pleased as she was with the flirtation. But not half as surprised. Had Frankie forgotten she was funny? Had Frankie forgotten she was hot? Things with Alex had been so different. She had been so different. So muted. Alex had lied to her so much, and stayed with her so long — she had stopped knowing what gut feelings to trust.

She knew she had overlooked a lot with Alex in the name of love, but what had spending so much time with him really cost her? Had she forgotten what she wanted? Forgotten she liked this kind of connection, this back-and-forth? That she liked to charm and be charmed?

Had she forgotten who she was like she’d forgotten how to drive?

“First time driving in a while?”

Frankie startled back into herself.

“How did you –”

“Could tell you I’m a mind reader,” he raised his (handsome) eyebrows. “But this license is hot off the press. New drivers get jumpy, let their nerves take the wheel. Just relax. Ease up. Give yourself to the road, and it will give itself to you.”

He handed the license back to her. His fingertips grazed hers. She bit her tongue to keep from gasping. They let their hands linger, frozen in place, burning up against each other.

“You’re not far from home. I can point you back in that direction–”

“I’m not going home.”

“Oh.” He kept his voice even and smooth. “Where you headed, then?” She gave the name of the vineyard B&B. “It’s not far, either.”

“Guess I’m not as lost as I thought.” Frankie moved her fingers to the inside of the long man’s palm.

“Oh, I think you’re still plenty lost.” He leaned his head closer to hers, through the window, close enough that the smell of him overwhelmed her senses. “Would you like me to help you find the way?”

Frankie nodded. The man smiled, and gently twined his fingers with hers. The roar of an animal, an engine, flooded the car — Frankie’s heart, she thought. The sound subsided when the man spoke.

“Take a left at the fork. Head dead ahead forty miles – bout forty minutes if you do the limit.” He laughed. “Then it’s a right at the first streetlight you see. I have to pay a call first, but I’ll meet you there.”

She nodded. Like all this was natural. Destined. Like it happened every day —

“Don’t stop for anybody.” He said, almost an afterthought. But his eyes fixed on hers, intense. “Don’t listen to any sob stories. Don’t help anybody. Lot of folks are con artists out here. Just waiting to take advantage of a young girl out on her own at night.”

“Not that I’m all that young,” she smiled.

“Young enough,” he smiled back. He slowly withdrew her hand from hers — and for a moment, she thought she saw something at his wrist shimmer. Not a watch, not jewelry. But at the edge of the pale denim sleeves, rolled down all the way, something the color of a bruise was pulsing and sparkling inside him.

Under the skin.

But maybe, she thought, as she watched his pale shirt dim into darkness and listened to their engines start — that was just her heart-eyes playing tricks.

The road she followed now was even darker than the roads before, but Frankie was no longer afraid. Her phone was near-dead, service still gone, but she was close to something now. Something so much better than what she thought she’d find.

The long man had turned right when she turned left. She’d watched his headlights run parallel to hers, miles away, for a while. Then he had made another turn. What was he doing? What was his name?

Would he really meet her at the vineyard B&B? Should he? All of this felt like life tilting towards fantasy. A handsome man on a lonesome highway, out looking for her. Not someone else. Mystery men never happened in real life — or at least, they never happened to Frankie.

Maybe, she thought, trying to clear her chest of Alex’s rejection and the new driver fears, all tangled up with the hope of the evening — maybe this mystery man hadn’t happened to Frankie at all. Maybe all of this just some elaborate, desperate dream?

No. She knew it wasn’t, because of his smell. That strange smell was too real to dream. But the memory of it was so recent, so powerful, that it seemed to fill the car. She was so distracted by thinking of him, so close to her — that she didn’t see the old woman in the road until it was almost too late.

She slammed the brakes. The woman was paler than the man’s shirt had been. So pale, she was almost see-through. She didn’t startle at Frankie’s scream, or the screeching brakes. Instead, the old woman slowly walked back to an ancient, rusty pickup truck on the side of the road and leaned against an open door.

Frankie’s body felt like jelly. She threw the car into park, and caught her breath. She watched the old woman tilt her head back, eyes closed, breathing heavy. It looked like the truck was breathing with her.

Frankie blinked her eyes — and the truck came into focus. It was rusted. Something from the ‘40s. It looked like that was the last time it had ever run. There was no way the woman could have driven at all, let alone driven that truck.

Frankie looked around — there were no buildings she could make out. Just fallow fields. How did this woman get here?

As if in answer, the woman raised a paper-thin hand. She beckoned to Frankie.

“Don’t stop for anybody,” the long man’s words rang in Frankie’s ears.

Well, Frankie thought, whoever this lady she is, she’s sure not just “anybody.”

“Ma’am?” Frankie called out. “Are you alright?”

The old woman slipped down to the ground.

“Ma’am! Ma’am!”

Frankie raced to her. The old woman moaned. Her dress was simple and plain, printed with a tiny cornflower pattern. As old and as dirty as the pickup. Almost like both were from an old photograph come to life. The woman had a familiar smell that Frankie couldn’t exactly place, something odd but familiar. Too sweet. Rotten and forgotten, like an onion in a drawer.

Frankie dropped to her knees, and looked for the sign of the old woman’s car keys or a phone. Her heart stuck in her throat. How lost was this poor woman? Was anyone out looking for her?

“Someone’s drainin’ my power,” the woman spoke. Her voice was thinner than she was. “Someone’s takin’ it for themselves.”

“Ma’am, where do you live? Are you –”

“I ain’t lost. My power’s lost,” the old woman was even quieter this time.

Frankie wanted to help the woman, but the smell was so strong, she was choking on it. The rot of it. “Is there someone I can call –”

The old woman vice-gripped Frankie’s arm. Frankie, heart racing, struggled to rip her arm away. The old woman tightened her grip, and ignored Frankie’s squirming. She spoke through the whipping winds and the dry grass, the night bird’s scream, and the rush of Frankie’s own blood.

“I NEED TO EAT.”

She flung Frankie back towards the Subaru, then slumped into the gravel road.

Frankie scrambled up into the car, jelly hands flopping to find the gearshift — but finding the bag of snack-packs instead.

She looked at the old woman’s small crumpled form. If someone drove past her, whoever or whatever she was, they would mistake her for trash on the side of the road. Tears sprang to Frankie’s eyes. A lump stabbed at her throat. She grabbed the snack bag.

Frankie, on jelly legs to match her jelly hands, crunched through gravel and dirt to the old woman’s side. Very gently, she sat the old woman up and leaned her against the rusted-out truck for support.

The old woman sucked in a deep sniff as Frankie, with shaking fingers, started pulling open the snack-packs. “I have peanut butter cookies, fudge stripes, some cheese curls.” The old woman’s fingers fluttered like butterfly wings against Frankie’s arms, following the length of them until she reached the bags in Frankie’s hands. “I don’t know what you like best, or want first, but –”

The old woman gently gathered the six or so little snack-pack bags up in her hands.

Then she unhinged her jaw, and swallowed them whole – bags and all.

Frankie froze. The old woman reset her jaw, then opened her eyes, revealing shocking, ghost-blue cataracts. She blinked a few times, then patted Frankie’s arm, and twisted her terrifying face into a smile. “I just gets hungry, is all. And when I gets hungry, I gets confused.”

And with that, the old woman got up, dusted herself off, yanked the rusty pickup door open, got in — and fell right asleep.

Frankie shut it softly — then sprinted to her car, spraying gravel with her escape.

Frankie didn’t know if her eyes or the fear was playing tricks on her, but for a moment, she thought she saw the same bruise-colored shimmer she saw on the handsome man’s wrist under her own skin — right where the old woman had grabbed her.

But almost as soon as she glanced at it, it was gone — if it ever was there in the first place.

Frankie floored it the rest of the way to make her final turn. It was a night for strange happenings, and she far preferred strange happenings with handsome strangers.

She saw the lone streetlight, and every cell in her body braced to relax at the relaxing sight of the vineyard B&B.

Instead, she found more backroad to drive. Out in the distance stood an abandoned farmhouse, watched over by a headless scarecrow and a rusted-out backhoe from yesteryear.

The streetlight swayed in the wind, endlessly blinking yellow, washing the road in a sickly, slow-motion strobe.

“Maybe,” Frankie said out loud to herself, “The B&B is right past that farmhouse.”

Frankie drove slowly towards the building. A loose shutter cracked against the siding with every shift in the wind. For the first time since she’d gotten her new license, Frankie wished she weren’t the only car on the road.

As if the road had heard her wish, a set of headlights appeared in the distance. Frankie was relieved — until she saw that the road she was on was just a dirt track. A backroad’s backroad — and one far too narrow for two-way traffic.

She looked up to see the headlights had eaten half the distance between them. The other driver flashed their brights, just off-beat from the yellow streetlight.

She flashed her own brights. Honked her horn. But the car sped towards her. Somehow not seeing her — or determined not to?

She rolled down her window and screamed. “Stop! Stop! Reverse!”

But the other car’s engine roared in a way she was sickened to recognize. The other car cut their lights. And for a brief, terrible moment, Frankie saw who was at the wheel — the long man in the pale denim shirt.

Smiling at her.

He whistled out his open window.

“Hiya, sweetheart. Miss me?”

His hands pulsed and glowed. The electric, cosmic bruise sparkled up his wrists, up his neck. Something spreading in him. Growing stronger. He laughed, for the sheer joy of it.

For a moment, she tried to make some stupid sense of it. This was still part of a game, this was still part of a promising change in luck —

And then he stepped on the gas.

She tried to share the road, but her right wheels dipped too low, and she swerved back onto the main road. So. If she veered off the road, she’d flip her car.

But if she stayed on the main road….

The long man was gaining on her, fast.

She had to think faster. She grabbed the gearshift, and threw the car in reverse. To her shock and the long man’s delight, she kept the vehicle in a straight line for sixty whole seconds. Just long enough to put spitting distance between her car and the farmhouse.

Until she crashed into the scarecrow at full force.

The airbags hit her like a punch to the gut. To the face. But pain was an abstract concept to her now – just another sensation to ignore on the quest to fulfill her goal: to run like hell.

“You a runner, Frankie?” the long man called out, cool and calm as ever, into the black and yellow sky. “Cause I am.”

Of course he was.

Frankie tripped, hard, and swallowed her scream. She couldn’t let him know where she was. She had to get to the farmhouse.

She had seen enough horror movies to know that she had an equal chance of being killed by some terrible horror inside the farmhouse, or finding an ax in there so she could become a terrible horror herself.

Right then, the man was prowling around her car, looking for her hiding spot. But Frankie was nowhere near it. She was almost to the rusty backhoe — the halfway point between her crashed car and the farmhouse.

Spindly, broken wheat and tall grass slapped her in the face as she ran. She could only run when the streetlight was off – the little blinks of darkness and thin patches of dead crops were her only cover. That, and the whipping winds that seemed to get louder the more Frankie ran.

The backhoe was so close now, she could smell the metal tang of rust. The air was thick, ozoney, sweet and sour and confusing. The scent of gasoline almost overwhelmed her. Frankie used the scent of metal as a lifeline.

The backhoe was cover unto itself — so big, she’d have plenty of options to hide if the man got close. She sprinted straight for it — then let out a scream even louder than the wind.

Frankie had run straight into an old fallen fence. One topped with old, rusty barbed wire.

Frankie screamed again as she fell forward, hands out to catch herself — on even more old, rusty barbed wire.

The pain was impossible. So big, it felt like it belonged to someone else. Like she did — she was hardly herself anymore, just a thing meant to die by a thousand ragged cuts.

She had also seen enough horror movies to know that writhing in barbed wire was a sure sign she was doomed — but no movie ever did justice to the searing pain. The helplessness of being caught in a trap you couldn’t see coming. One you fell into because you thought you were saving yourself.

“Frankie, Frankie, Frankie.”

The wind tamed at the sound of the long man’s wicked whiskey voice.

She tried to stay still, but even breathing hurt her.

The long man cut what light there was with his handsome figure. He blinked, black and yellow, yellow and black. He smiled, and crunched up close to her carefully.

“Just look at you.”

She was eye-level with his white cowboy boots. They didn’t have a speck of dirt on them. But they were embroidered with a flaming wagon wheel and the words “king of the road.”

“Serving yourself up to me on a plate. Twice in one night.”

Very slowly, he crouched down so they were face to face. His was still beautiful. Hers was slashed and bloody. He reached out and traced a rivulet down her cheek with one elegant, bruise-light shimmering hand, catching enough blood to drop a salty drop onto her lower lip.

Frankie winced. But the long man just smiled, and licked her blood off his finger.

“Now, that’s what I call finger lick–” but the man cut himself off with his own scream.

Because while he was mocking her, Frankie had wrapped her hands around barbed wire — and chosen just the right moment to yank it up and across the handsome man’s face.

Little purple and green droplets of sparkling blood dripped down on Frankie. The man staggered backwards and screamed again, a withering scream.

He rustled for something in the brush.

Frankie stood, only to fall back on the wire again. He was hurt, but she was still more hurt than him. He found whatever he was looking for, grunting in triumph.

He lunged back to her, looming over her, an ax gripped in his hands.

That was supposed to be her ax. Just like this was supposed to be the dawning of her new age. Her new license.

This was not how she was supposed to end.

But, as Frankie writhed to free herself from the wire — it looked like it was going to be.

She had to stop moving. But she had to keep going. She had to —

“Quit your wigglin’, girl,” a paper-thin voice tickled her ear. Frankie flicked her eyes up, to the right. There, curled in the backhoe’s little wheel well, was the old woman from before!

Her ghost-blue cataracts glowed brighter. Her terrible face smiled.

“You,” Frankie whispered.

“You.” The long man spit, at the sight of the old woman.

“YOU,” the old woman spoke through the whipping winds and the dry grass, the night bird’s scream and the rush of Frankie’s own blood – and the long man’s too. The wind quieted, and the old woman’s voice was thin as paper again. “This’n helped me home. Now let me help you get back to the hole you crawled out of, hm?”

The handsome man swung the ax higher on his shoulder and smiled. “Oh, old woman. I’d like to see you try.”

“Mmhm,” the old woman nodded. “Okie.”

Almost at the end of the word, a hundred glimmering, shimmering bruise-colored tentacles burst from all over the dead earth. From the fields, from under fallen fences, from the belly of the backhoe and the depths of the outbuildings, even from the farmhouse itself — thick, fleshy, bruise-bright appendages shot forth to capture the long man in their fearsome grasp.

They tore him limb from limb.

The tentacles grew tendrils, and those pushed through his tenderest bits. His pretty eyes, his beautiful mouth, his perfect nose — all invaded and infested.

His well-turned arms — torn.

His comely legs — shredded.

His beautiful body, squeezed and popped and pulled until every bit of him, every morsel, was in the tentacles’ grip.

Then, in awful concert, they took all of what was once the long man, and sucked the bits down into the earth to plant them deep.

The sound was terrible.

The smell was wonderful.

And when the tentacles had done their job, the old woman — eyes blue and clear now, skin old but full — smiled warmly at Frankie.

“Don’t you worry, girl. Nothin’ ever grows on this farm but me.”

Then the old woman rose up in the sky, as big and bright as a sunrise.

“Go on now,” the old woman thing spoke through a soft rushing wind. She petted Frankie’s face with one tentacle, and lifted her car back onto the road with another, turning it to face the way she came. “Don’t you got some place to be?”

Frankie nodded.

Then took off running for her car.

The whipping winds pushed at her back so fiercely, it felt like she was flying.

In the driver’s seat, Frankie brought a hand to her face, shimmering and healing under the old woman’s powers. The woman was shrinking back to size now. Surveying her farm. Clucking at the damage. Making little plans, quietly, out loud to herself.

“Thank you!” Frankie called out from the car. The old woman nodded, and raised her hand. Waved her off.

“Shoo, girl. Shoo.”

Frankie smiled. Shook her head. And started the car. Just as she moved the gearshift into drive, a tentacle shot through the open window, and stopped her.

“Girl?” the old woman’s face appeared at the window, smiling like a corn husk doll. “You got any more of them snacky packs?”

Frankie handed her the snack bag. The old woman smiled. Then unhinged her jaw.

Frankie drove for what seemed like hours.

Then took the first highway on-ramp she saw.

#larissa zageris #short story #road horror #horror romance #horror comedy #cosmic horror #eldritch horror #justified #tentacle #snacks

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larissazageris · 2 years ago

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The Creature from Lagoona High

A slime-green horror comedy by Andrew Melzer and Larissa Zageris

Everyone at Lagoona High loved Layla Turner. Jessie couldn’t understand it, aside from the obvious reason that Layla was pretty and mean. And she smoked clove cigarettes like a bandit.

Once, Layla did let Jessie try a clove. Jessie had wanted to make a cool friend, and Layla had wanted to laugh her ass off watching Jessie gasp for air.

“Can’t handle your smoke, skank?” Layla cackled and spat candy-sweet spit onto Jessie’s shoes.

Jessie tried to wash the taste out of her mouth with a regular cigarette she had stolen from her friend Max. The end result cured her of her smoking habit before it started. It definitely cured her of her desire to befriend Layla. She would forever associate the smell of cigarettes with the acid joy of Layla’s laughter, which, Jessie thought, was strangely vibrant for someone who never seemed to like anything or anyone.

Still. Loving Layla was a Lagoona High religion. There was something about that remote, cruel manner that made people hot.

And maybe that wouldn’t have really gotten so under her skin, Jessie thought, if some people you really trusted, really cared about, didn’t fall for the whole too-cool-for-school, too-mean-to-dream act so hook, line and sinker.

“She’s brave, man. She does what she wants, when she wants.” Max Reed was watching Layla smirk and roll her eyes at some of the yearbook girls cheesing about layouts at the next table.

“Like when she banged Danny Vanderplow on the wrestling mats during Daily Health & Fitness?” Jessie raised her eyebrows, and jabbed at her garden salad.

She didn’t know when their daily lunchtime conversation had become a Max monologue on the thoughts and movements of Layla Turner. They used to talk about songs they wanted to write, shows they would play with their band, when they finally got it together and learned to play instruments. Hell, they used to talk about anything other than Layla Friggin’ Turner.

Max was staring so hard at Layla, Jessie thought his contacts were going to dry out.

“She knew Vanderplow would go apeshit and ship Danny off to that weird military school on the site of the old sanitorium.”

“Some guys have all the luck,” Max laughed, and a knot at the base of Jessie’s brain untied itself. Max’s laugh always felt like home.

She took in the lightly muscled line of his neck, and followed it as it slipped into the slope of his shoulder, and the slightly freckled skin above the top button of his red flannel shirt. She knew Max could be stupid. So stupid. But he was her Max, and-

“I’m going to ask her to The Swamp Meet on Saturday,” Max said suddenly.

The Swamp Meet was one of the few things kids actually looked forward to in this bog-town. It was mostly just an excuse for the boys to show off their fan boats and the girls to underage drink until they thought the fan boats were impressive.

“Everyone is going to the Swamp Meet on Saturday.” Jessie spat.

“Yeah,” Max said, in a faraway way. “But I want her to go with me.”

He got up, raked his hand through his hair and Jessie’s heart, and disappeared into the blare of first bell.

That night Jessie dreamt of being alone with Max. They had dream-driven out past the real-life football fields and the Target, along the marshy outlands of the last ring of fully developed subdivisions, cresting the hill with the mad scientist’s house on one side and the old-sanitorium-new-military-school on the other, before dipping deep into the swamp.

Then the dream really got rolling. Max’s hands in her hair, them in the bed of his truck. Stars and moonlight, his breath in her ear, his hands on her waist. “We’re sinking,” she said to him, but it came out in a whisper. “We’re sinking,” she repeated, because she could feel the truck getting sucked into the mud. Max ignored her or just didn’t hear her, and kissed her harder.

At first she liked it. Until Max’s mouth started stealing the breath from hers, leeching her of her lifeforce. She pushed him off, and screamed soundlessly when she saw that the Max she had been kissing was now Layla, fully equipped with an oozing, sucking, tentacle-thing mouth straight out of H.R. Giger’s wet dreams.

“SSSSSsssssssssssskaaaaaaaaaaaaaank!” The impossible mouth hissed, and for a second, Jessie thought she saw Max tied up in Swamp Layla’s vine-like vocal chords, trapped inside her shimmering prison.

Jessie woke up wondering if Max had had the same dream.

Max had spent the night making out, but it wasn’t with Jessie and it wasn’t in a dream. He had found Layla after school, keying staff cars in the parking lot. Once she had worked through four or five second-hand mid-range sedans, Max broke in with a half-scared, half turned-on laugh.

“Hey,” he said. ‘What are you doing?”

“Making my mark,” she answered, in a low voice she knew would make him sway a little.

Max steadied himself. “Well, don’t make it on my car.”

She actually smiled. Who knew moon-eyed Max had a little fire in him. “C’mere,” she said. “I want to show you something.”

“What?” Max asked, his voice hitching.

“This,” she said, and pulled him into a kiss he would write songs about until the day he died. The only thing that pulled him back to earth was the sound of a text “swooping” off to a recipient.

“What...was...that?” he asked.

“Just a little video text to Jessie. She wouldn’t stop staring at me during lunch,” Layla laughed. “Now she has something better to look at.”

If Max could feel anything other than lust and confusion, he might have. Instead, he leaned in for more. Layla brushed him off, and dragged her key along a nearby car as she made her grand exit.

The next morning, Layla sat in the front office, pulling the threads from her frayed sweatshirt sleeve. She was waiting to have “a talk” with Principal Lumbar for the third time this month. Her teachers thought sending her to the principal's office was some form of punishment, but she’d rather hang out in the office then listen to some menopausal skank prattle about Romeo and Juliet or the Pythagorean theorem or whatever bullshit they thought she should know.

Layla was confident she already knew what she needed to know. About everything.

“I already know what I need to know, skank,” was something she told her step-mother Carol last week, after Carol caught Layla drinking her margarita mix straight from the comically large bottle. Carol had tried to tell her the mix was non-alcoholic. The idiot.

Still, being sent to Principal Lumbar for the third time this month wasn’t going to be good. Layla was probably facing some serious detention for keying a couple raggedy-ass faculty Buicks. Looking over at the vacant office bathroom, Layla sneered at the privacy these worker bees allowed themselves and planned to fake a massive period to delay her punishment.

They’d likely try to hit her with a Saturday In-School for the car shit, and she didn’t want to miss the Swamp Meet.

The Swamp Meet was a yearly party down on a hidden marsh the cops didn’t patrol. Layla thought the swamp events were lame. Mostly it was hicks showing off how uncultured they were, but there would be booze.

Layla knew Max Reed had been dying to ask her to the Swamp Meet. Max was smart, kept his body tight, did regular volunteer shifts at the old folks’ home and was loved by all. But to Layla, he was just a kind-of good-looking representation of everything this loser town respected.

He was just so obvious.

“The principal will see you in a moment.” Mrs. Batshee, the frumpy office drone, announced.

Layla belched in response, and was a little horrified when the room became overpowered with the stench of tuna. “But all I ate for breakfast was cheese curls,” Layla whispered to herself as she was blindsided by the most stunning creature to ever grace Lagoona High.

She must have missed him come in to use the restroom he was currently leaving. He had a real swimmer’s body. Broad shouldered, six feet tall, and wrapped in a tattered letterman jacket that looked like he found it at the bottom of a lake.

He oozed a confidence that left a thin green trail over everything he touched.

One side glance from his beady red eyes and a flare of the delicate gills on his emerald green neck, and Layla thought she might melt.

“You must be Alex Phibian, the new transfer student,” Mrs. Batshee droned, without missing a beat. “Take these forms and fill them out for your New Student ID.”

Alex Phibian took a pen from Mrs. Batshee, and the vacant chair next to Layla. As he sat, dripping iridescent green slime through the plastic slats of the seat. His musk overwhelmed Layla. He smelled like the dumpster behind Long John Silver. But he also smelled like adventure.

He leaned forward to focus on the clipboard Mrs. Batshee had handed him, and the pen slipped out of his clawed green hand. Layla dove to save it before it hit the floor, and handed it back to him in a way that she thought might scream “I am worthy of love”. But Alex was just as fast as her. Layla’s hand ended up closing over his outstretched, webbed fingers and the two of them grasped each other in a way that seemed to electrify the room.

Like the cherry bomb she stuck in Principal Lumbar’s mailbox last Halloween, Layla was blown asunder. She and Alex met face-to-face. His beautiful chartreuse skin, his lipless smile shot through with razor sharp fangs, the decorative fan elements where his ears might be--she was lost in his beauty.

Say something, Layla thought, but the words wouldn’t come. You have to say something. Anything! She lost any capacity to say anything at all when she caught herself reflected in Alex’s eyes. He blinked when blinked slowly, left to right.

“LAYLA TURNER. MY OFFICE. NOW!” Principal Lumbar’s bark shattered the magic.

Layla handed Alex his goo-covered pen. And her heart.

They were serving fish sticks for lunch in the cafeteria later that day, but Max knew they didn’t account for the stench of alewives coming from the new kid making out with Layla Turner in the middle of the goddam cafeteria like there was no tomorrow.

“Jesus,” Max stabbed his plastic fork into a heap of fish sticks. “Come up for air, already.”

“He doesn’t need to,” Jessie said, staring blankly at her own pile of fish sticks. “He has gills.” Jessie simmered. Even a freaking gilled creature was crazy about freaking Layla!

She could still barely register the events of the morning. Waking up to video proof of your true love tongue-kissing the most nasty, vacuous girl in school will do a lot to undo your sense of self. At least for a couple hours.

Max didn’t notice. He was too wrapped up in his own sinking heartbreak.

“She said no,” he spat out, finally. “She said she wouldn’t go with me to the Swamp Meet.”

“Did she.” Jessie pressed her fork into her fish sticks in a brutal visual metaphor for her feelings that was lost on Max.

“Yeah,” Max half-said, half-sobbed. “She said she was already going with Amp.”

“Amp?”

“Yeah. Amp.” Max said, his voice dripping acid.

“Why do they call him that?” Jessie asked.

“Because,” Max jerked his head towards Alex “Amp” Phibian, who was taking a break from sucking face with Layla to literally eat a can of Amp energy drink in two bites.

“Oh,” Jessie said, blank again.

“Yeah,” Max responded, his heart breaking.

Amp ate another can of Amp. Layla shuddered with delight. “You’re so different,” she sighed, and kissed him again.

Amp screeched in response and scurried up a nearby wall.

“What do you think he’s saying?” Jessie asked Max.

“Something perfect,” Max was full-sobbing now.

“Hey, Max?” she asked, and handed him a napkin to dry his eyes. “I have an idea.”

“Yeah?” Max sniffed.

“Want to go with me to the Swamp Meet?”

Max’s shoulders slumped. “Sure,” he said.

Amp ate another can of Amp.

The Swamp Meet was always something Jessie and Max thought about trying to play. “We could be the house band,” one of them would say, lounging on the other’s bed, still not knowing how to play guitar but daydreaming of a future where they could and would always be part of each other’s world.

In reality, in the Right Now, there was no band at the Swamp Meet. The only soundtrack to the night was the hum of fan boats and the low roar of unsupervised, uninterrupted, underage drinking.

Here and there, angry whoops from the human boys and eerie screeches from Amp pierced the thick sheet of humidity that hung over the swamp like a spectre. Cries in the dark.

Max watched Layla nervously smoke a clove as Amp geared up his fan boat.

“Layla,” he said, as wretchedly as he felt.

Layla shot him a haunted look. “What, Max?”

“I love you.”

“Yeah,” she said. “But I love Amp.”

“I know,” he said. Because he did. “But-”

“Can you win my heart if you win a fan boat drag race, you spineless chicken bitch?” she asked, giving chalkboard-scraping voice to Max’s deepest desire. Her eyebrow was arched to lethal levels, even for her. Max’s heart sunk.

“Well-”

“Why the fuck not?” Layla asked, and lit another clove. Amp wasn’t watching her just now. He was too focused on the churning water. “Whoever wins is my boyfriend for life.”

Max didn’t know whether to cry or kiss her.

Jessie watched as Max geared up his fan boat for the big fan boat drag race. “Let me do it,” she said. “Let me race for you. Your head isn’t clear. It’s all full of...love and bullshit.”

Max sighed. Jessie wasn’t wrong. But still. ”It won’t prove anything if you race for me,” he said.

“But you’re a shit racer,” she laughed, heartlessly. “You’re better company. You’re not even a strong swimmer. You can barely doggy paddle..”

“I know,” Max said sadly.

“You know what I wish, Max?” Jessie steadied her slightly drunk self by putting her hand on Max’s shoulder.

“What do you wish, Jessie?” Max asked.

“I wish that I had been The Boy, sometimes.”

Max thought about it. “Yeah,” was all he could say.

“I just feel like I wouldn’t have wasted it.” For one sheer moment, Jessie could feel Max wondering what it would be like to kiss her. But Jessie was done with all that.

“Jessie-” Max said, and a shot rang out in the dark.

“It’s TIME!” some hick kid hollered. “It’s mutherfekkin’ time!”

Amp pierced the night with a midnight screech, and Layla actually laughed. It made Jessie’s skin scrawl.

“Let the fan boat drag race begin, y’all!” the hick kid cried, and the swamp exploded in battle whoops.

Amp screeched again, and ate another can of Amp.

Max almost flooded his engine.

“Let’s ride, Fish Stick!” he screamed over the roar.

No one heard him, but the water churned black.

While the boys fan boat drag raced, Jessie had a waking dream. She dreamt that none of this had to happen. She dreamt that Max knew a good thing when he had it, and a heartless thing when it had him. She dreamt of them kissing in the back of his pickup truck, and the flat bottom of his fan boat. She thought of his body in all the ways it should be thought of, in all the ways Layla didn’t think about it. With all the fervor Layla probably reserved for thinking about casually ruining other people’s lives with incredibly focused acts of cruelty and pettiness.

But it didn’t matter how much Jessie thought about Max, or how deeply she felt for him. He still crashed his fan boat into a cluster of sunken rocks.

He still died; his beautiful, tight little body split like rotting fruit on a sharp outcropping of hell in the Savannah swamp.

And while Jessie cried and Layla cheered, Amp the Fish-Man bent to the broken body of Max the Human Boy, and slit his own fishy forearm with one of his claws. He dripped his fish-goop into Max’s mouth, and into his wounds.

There, broken on the rocks, Max’s body began to fuse and heal.

The boy glowed green and the fish-man shimmered. Together, they shared a bond of healing and impossible hope.

Amp pulled Max into his arms, and lifted the boy’s weakened body onto his own fan boat.

“Ew,” Layla said, and then Amp’s boat crashed, too.

The fish-man and human boy were lost in a screech, a scream, and a spray of swamp foam.

Max woke up in Jessie’s arms, under a weeping willow.

“I thought you were a goner,” Jessie laughed, but there was no humor in it. Only relief.

“So did I,” Max wheezed, and noticed the beauty he had almost always been immune to when it came to Jessie. “So did I,” he repeated, and struggled for breath. “Where’s...Amp?” he managed.

“I’m not sure,” Jessie answered honestly. “After he saved you, it seemed like he just sort of...sunk into the swamp again. Layla didn’t seem too bothered by it.”

Layla glared at them briefly from further up the shore.

Jessie pushed a slimy lock of hair out of Max’s eyes. “I think she was annoyed he saved you. She said it was ‘typical of a hero skank.’”

Jessie laughed. But her laughter was cut short by Max coughing up a giant egg sac.

“NO!” she screamed, as the egg sac swelled and released hundreds of tiny new gill-men; mini-Amps swimming out and over Max’s dead skin and into the great world beyond.

“Noooooo!” She screamed again. Almost in answer, Amp screeched, and dripped a fresh batch of his green bodily fluids into Max’s broken mouth. Max spasmed in a come-to, just as the last of Amp’s hatchlings fled his mouth.

Together, Amp and his Amplings screeched into the moonlight, before sinking deep into the bowels of the swamp.

“BUT LIKE, NO!” Layla screamed, her beautiful face sharpened by moonlight, ragged with bitter disappointment.

Jessie didn’t have the energy to laugh. She didn’t have the energy to feel. Instead, she reached out and touched Max’s chest, knowing he was safe, alive, healed.

“See you at school on Monday,” she said.

And then she left the swamp.

#larissa zageris #andrew melzer #horror comedy #short story #slime #amp #creature from the black lagoon

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larissazageris · 2 years ago

Text

The Strand

A scientist and a poet make strange discoveries beyond the sea.

Day One

I did not come to Ballymore Strand for her. I came for the Nautilus Bloom.

I am a scientist. She is a poet. However romantic that sounds on paper, we’ve proven it isn’t romantic at all. Whatever was between us is over now — except the public collaboration, of course, for the funding.

The poet has spent half of hers already. On watercolors. I have never seen her pick up a brush in my life. But she has a rather florid style. Maybe it will translate.

She calls herself a “student of the shore.” She is here to write poems. I am here to make discoveries.

I will prove the Nautilus Bloom moss in fact exists here, in fact it thrives, in fact it heals — and she will write a little ditty about it.

The things papers wish to print. The hoops men of science must jump through.

We arrived at the seaside this morning. It is beautiful and cruel. The waves are music to me — the sound of work. The air tastes of salt and sunrise. Even now, in early evening — rays of day streak the sky.

The poet may have influenced me some.

She stays up at the Strandhill Inn. I am safely tucked into The Ballymore. Work begins tomorrow. Work, and only work.

My wife never knew. And now there is nothing to know. I have told Rosemary not to worry. I am a scientist. And a man of my word.

Day Two

Stormed all night and day. Then into night again.

She came to me with wine. A toast. “A rolling stone gathers no moss, and neither it seems, can we.”

I’m sure she practiced it.

Anyway. At least that temptation is out of the way now.

Now I can focus. No more of her.

I know tomorrow the sun will shine.

Day Three

Took driftwood samples today. All of it, smooth as bone.

Every piece bobs at high and low tide along the shore, tethered to something beneath the water by pale, silvery strands. The threads are thin as a spider’s web. They smell of salt and burnt sugar.

I cut one with my pocket knife. It bled an impossibly thin sliver of jelly that sparkled when it dropped into the sea. The released fiber swirled into a delicate rosette. I reached out to touch it, and it disappeared.

Patel was right — these conditions are best for it.

And I am right — the moss responds negatively to human touch.

I must find a way to keep the bloom. To put it to work healing something more significant than wood.

Day Five

She tells me the waves are her lullaby. And that her poems are “coming along.”

I ask her to show me some of them over dinner. She says they are not ready to share yet, and is hurt when I scoff.

She says her work is like mine — “iterative.” I don’t know why it irks me to hear it. I tell her, my work is work and hers is play.

“Play is as important,” she says. She means it. I wonder if that’s what it is for her, all day and night. Playing.

“It’s discovery of a different type,” she says — choosing to ignore my “pouting,” as she calls it. She raises her eyebrow as if to say, “I am teaching you something, and you love me for it.”

But I do not love her.

“It’s what the paper likes to print,” I smile. I don’t want to fight with her tonight. I want to get back to my notes. I want to harness the bloom. Make medicine out of it. Make history.

“What would this world be without those who would study the sea, and those who would love it for its mystery?” she asks.

“Are you asking me or are you drafting, darling?” My voice is dry as toast.

She loves this about me, I know — my wit. My cruelty.

That night, I walk her to the hotel.

We make love furiously behind it.

It is always this way with us — stealing time. Even when not a soul is around to charge us with the crime.

I must stop. I will stop.

Why doesn’t she?

Day Seven

Some women have a way of staring at you when they want you. A way they think is hidden, and is not.

The poet does this.

She wanted to show me something at dinner tonight — a small rosette, no bigger than the pen-tip she carried it on, pulsing like a faint heartbeat.

A Nautilus Bloom.

She slid the bloom from her pen-tip to her fingertip. Then she angled her finger, and let the rosette slip into her palm. She opened my hand with hers, then tipped the bloom into my open palm.

It evaporated on contact. As if my hand were a poison, and so unlike her own.

She had the nerve to ask me, “Is this what you’re always searching for? Something you love but cannot keep?”

I left the stupid cow to pay her own bill.

I spent the rest of my night hunting blooms in the moonlight.

I only saw three.

All of them recoiled at my touch.

Now my legs are chapped from the sea. But my heart is stout.

I will get my name on that damned moss if it kills me.

Day Ten

The sun is harsh today.

I have sent for Patel.

I cannot stand sharing discoveries with this poet. I need a brilliant scientific mind to approach this with me. Not an artist who doesn’t know what she’s playing with.

I have asked him to bring along the Roberts Notebooks on the Nautilus Bloom, from the Old Age. To read them hurts my eyes, but I need to.

There has to be something we can use in them. Something I’m missing while I’m out here, distracted by her.

Patel and I will get somewhere.

And then I can get away from her.

Day Fourteen

Rained again.

Patel is delayed. His train makes the crossing tomorrow.

The poet and I pass the time.

Why do I do this? Surely in the city affairs can be more pleasant than this.

She is in love and I am not. I know this. She knows this.

She weeps after, every time, at what she and I both know will not change.

Still, she comes to me.

I do not go to her.

But I never have to wait long.

Day Seventeen

I have not seen the bloom in days. But the poet has. Damn her.

Patel came with the books. I found him at the restaurant downstairs, poring over them with her.

The way he moons over her. Is he aware he’s half her age? Is she?

Obscene.

If she is trying to make me jealous she should consider herself instead. Patel is a young man. Marriage is not on his mind. And she grows older every day.

I sent Patel home. Blamed the rain — didn’t want him stuck up here on the coast in bad weather. Take him from his studies, etc.

I will learn the secrets of the bloom myself, not with the help of a lovesick college boy.

Day Twenty

I went walking tonight. I wanted to clear my head. Process my reading. To take the air and, really – to be away from her.

I must remember Rosemary and the children. I must remember myself and my place, and forget for one moment the taste of her.

The curl of her hand around her pen. The shape of her, walking the beach, waiting for me to join her, in the nights after my study.

All of this has to stop.

I was going to tell her so in the morning, after a night of pious and reformed sleep.

But then she was outside The Ballymore.

It was dark, but for the moon. It was very late, since there was moon at all, and not the infernal northern near-midnight sun.

She is a plain girl some nights. Not tonight.

She had climbed down into the tide, using the small stone steps The Ballymore had lain in the sea. She looked like a creature risen from the water. Skirts wet against her legs. Surf crashing against her.

She looked like a god.

I went to her. She touched my arm. I kissed her, and pulled her hair.

Oh, how she undoes me.

We undid each other, there, in the water.

After, she asked me if I would leave her — Rosemary.

Again, I said no.

She made a terrible sound, something between a laugh and a cry. She fled, but tripped going up the stone steps. She can be so graceless when she’s upset.

She fell and cried out. I went to her again, but she jerked away — she had cut herself on the stone step.

Blood shone, almost green, in the dark. I reached for her.

“Don’t,” she spat. No love in her voice now.

I was wrong to ever begin with her.

These spinsters can’t be happy with anything they get.

Day Twenty-One

I have avoided her all day, and been rewarded for my effort.

I saw another bloom. It disappeared again at my touch — but then I saw a small thrall of blooms working on a piece of wood. Many little rosettes lined a seam, weaving it back together.

I could not shake the sense that the moss was letting me watch it work. Letting me observe the healing. Urging me on my quest.

We are in league, the moss and I.

I feel renewed.

Day Twenty-Three

She was in the water again tonight.

I wasn’t going to her — I was going to the blooms.

I wanted to see if, in moonlight, I could trap one.

Instead, she trapped me.

We were voracious.

The things she makes me feel…

The sense she makes me lose.

After, she pulled me close again. Her eyes were bright, and she kissed me hard. Filling my nose with salt spray and burnt sugar scent.

She pulled my hair, pressed against me harder — not kissing. Taking. Sucking life. I jerked away from her. I thought we would drown.

“We already have,” she said. Her voice was not her own. It was bolder. Strong.

I hastened to leave her, and cut myself on the same stone she had.

She stayed in the water, laughing.

I could still hear her after I was safe inside the hotel.

Day Twenty-Four

Damn woman. I have not done work today. I have not left the room.

I am ill.

But the strangest thing — the wound has healed.

Day Twenty-Seven

She will not come out of the water.

I do not know if she will not, or she cannot. I do not care.

Still, I watch her from my window.

I feel better now.

But where my wound was, something grows. Under the skin.

I think I see something moving inside me — but perhaps my eyes are playing tricks.

Perhaps I should send for Patel.

I feel strange.

The sound of waves crashing never stops.

The poet is wrong — the sound doesn’t lull me.

It beckons.

Day Twenty-Eight

I went to her again.

I cannot stop. Neither can she.

She is tethered to the shore now. She is tethered to the sea.

She is woven into it, with the same silvery threads as the bobbing driftwood.

But she is alive, and the driftwood is not.

It is a dead witness to better work wrought. The lace of life.

I was right, after all.

I have measured the strands.

They are of her flesh, and of the sea. Thin as seaweed. Fine as silk.

She is covered in small, silvery rosettes.

I do not try to cut the strands — and they do not recoil from me.

The blooms do not reject my touch.

Neither does she.

She kisses me — but she does not speak.

I think she will if I swim with her. If I stand with her.

If I stay with her — whatever she is.

Was she always this beautiful?

#larissa zageris #short story #coastal #horror romance #weird horror #coastal core #sci fi horror

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