This is a collection of all the stories that appear on the main blog. Follow the links in the titles to find the original posts. Hope you all enjoy them!
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This is a collection of all the stories that appear on the main blog. Follow the links in the titles to find the original posts. Hope you all enjoy them!
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Bzzzzzzz.
The alarm.
Coming from the disabled toilet.
Tweedledum and Tweedledee look at each other. “You go, man…”
“Fuck that, you go!” Neither of them have moved an inch; the red light on the desk is still lit.
“One of you is going to have to go…” The manager, Mr Wilkins, stomps over from the front of the store. He stands, hands on hips, looking over his two worst employees. He sags, visibly, and huffs a heavy sigh. “Tweedledum, c’mon… get back there and see what’s up, eh?”
The boy looks back at his boss, blank. “Why am I TweedleDUM?” He tosses a scornful glance at his mate. “He’s just as thick…”
“Neither of you ever read ‘Alice in Wonderland’?” Mr Wilkins asks.
“Alice in… where?” one of them replies. Doesn’t matter which one.
Mr Wilkins shakes his head, his eyes closed.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzz.
“Fuck’s sake… one of you go and see what’s up? I don’t care who!”
Tweedledee spins on his chair behind the counter. “Did you see who went in there?”
Tweedledum pushes his lips together, an ugly expression, and shakes his head. “No idea… some retard…”
Mr Wilkins pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, squeezing hard. The end of the day is settling into a headache between his eyes, and these two are doing much to make it go away.
“One of you…” he says, eyes closed, head slightly bowed, nose still pinched, “just… go and help the poor woman.”
Tweedledee perks up in his chair. “Woman?” he says, eyes wide. “Was she hot? I’ll help her then…” he adds, beginning to push himself up.
His partner-in-crime smirks back, unimpressed. “Hot or not, she’s still a retard…” He grabs a can from the display next to the counter, pops it open, and takes a swig. Then he burps, and Mr Wilkins opens his eyes.
Mr Wilkins grabs the can with one slap of his big hand. He thumps it onto the counter, and the sticky contents fizz out and over.
Bzzzzzz.
“Go and see if that poor woman is alright.”
Tweedledum drops his eyebrows, looking every bit his couldn’t-give-a-shit-don’t-owe-the-world-nothin’ sixteen years.
“Whatever…” he says, heading off towards the back of the store. Tweedledee spins on his chair, and sticks his finger up to his friend as he leaves.
The boy reaches the toilets – men, women, and disabled. A single, unisex cubicle with a wide door and big, steel handle. He shuffles up to it, reaching out a scrawny hand and knock, knock, knock. Barely audible, even to himself.
“Y’alright in there?”
No answer.
The boy rolls his eyes, and turns back towards the store. Through the aisles he can see his boss and his friend, watching over. He shrugs, big and exaggerated.
“No answer!”
He can almost hear his boss sigh from all the way away. Mr Wilkins turns away, heading out towards the front of the store. Tweedledee laughs, spinning on his chair, then jumping up and following his boss.
Tweedledum knocks again. Louder; knock knock knock.
“Hello?”
Still nothing.
“I’m here to help you…”
Fuck that sounds dumb, he thinks. He cringes with embarrassment. Turning, he goes to walk away, and hears the buzzer sound back in the store. Craining his neck he sees the red light flash, and his boss and Tweedledee look back over at it, then at him.
“Eh?”
He tries the door, using both hands on the big handle. He pushes at the door, nothing. He pulls, nothing.
Which way does this door even go? He’s never had to use it, so he doesn’t know.
It’s locked anyway, he thinks. Makes no difference.
“Seriously… are you alright?” the boy tries again. He rests his ear on the door, feeling a bit like a pervert, remebering he is there to help. But he can hear nothing.
Someone must be in there. Mr Wilkins saw her go in…
“Let me in and I’ll help…”
Nothing.
He turns, and walks away, and that’s when he hears the lock turn open.
Mr Wilkins and Tweedledee are still paying him no attention, and he tries to ignore the sickening feeling in his stomach.
She, in there, she’s disabled. Maybe wrong in the head, he thinks. Fucking with him for a laugh, he thinks. Suddenly Tweedledum is angry…
“Retard bitch…” he hisses, and throws open the door.
There is no one inside.
The red cord, for the alarm, hangs next to the toilet. It is swaying slightly. The porcelain is bright white, as are the tiles on the walls and the floor, but there is something else. Something tiny, but it stands out and grabs Tweedledum by the crinkled collar of his shitty uniform, and pulls him inside.
Moving closer, he peers down, down, down… on the toilet seat.
There, against the white, is a drop of blood.
The boy doesn’t have a second to move before the tentacle, thick and purple, splashes out from the bowl and strikes him in the face, knocking him straight over. It thumps the door shut behind him, and another joins it, covering the boy’s mouth with a sucker. He gags against it, and feels sick shoot up his throat. But it has nowhere to go, and he chokes against it and the first tentacle wraps around his chest and begins to drag him towards the toilet.
He struggles, but he is losing consciousness fast, and as his eyes roll backwards into his head for the final time, he sees a new tentacle, with not suckers but teeth, slide out from the pipes, and that is the end.
He is chewed up in a matter of moments, as more tentacles come. They drag his remains down, disappearing from sight inside the toilet.
The blood, all his blood, is sucked up with him. The cubicle is almost entirely white again, good as new. Apart from maybe the odd drop of missed blood.
There, in the empty cubicle, a tentacle slowly creeps back out of the toilet bowl, reaches over to the red cord, and pulls.
Bzzzzzz.
Statue.
Of stone.
That’s what he looks like.
Standing on the corner of the street. He hasn’t moved.
“Hey mister!” I shout from the window. No answer. Not that I expected one, but I thought I’d try anyway.
Pushing my chair back to the desk I return to my work. But I can still see him, unmoving, in my head. He isn’t going to go anywhere. I twirl the pen in my hand, trying to focus on it. But I drop it. Try again. Drop it again. Damn. Normally I can do it without even thinking. Not today.
Shooting my chair back to the window, and there he is again. The statue on the corner. A man and a woman in business suits cross the road and walk straight past him. One goes one side of him, one the other.
He is dressed in jeans and a jacket. Simple clothes. I have to go and speak to him. Otherwise this work is never going to get done. Plus, there is something in those eyes. I can see that, even from here. They haven’t moved either. Not even blinked.
Out the house, and now I can see the clouds gathering. People are hurrying about, getting to where they are going. All except him. Still there. No hurry. Nowhere to go, perhaps. I look both ways, and cross the road.
Up close, he looks even more like a statue. Looks no more alive than when I saw him the first time when I opened my curtains this morning. That was hours ago. It’s like he isn’t even breathing. His chest doesn’t rise or fall. His arms are down by his sides, not hanging yet not held up in any way. They are just there, where they are. I look into his face, but it doesn’t give anything back. The man is old, the deep wrinkles cut roughly into the skin. There isn’t a bead of sweat on his forehead.
The air is thickening, wet and heavy. I look past his face to the dark, thick thunderclouds, and the two look quite the same. Heavy, static, and quietly threatening. I decide I don’t like the man. This statue on the corner of my street. I don’t think he is going anywhere soon. He won’t move until someone tries to move him.
All of a sudden I don’t want to be near him. I dart backwards into the road, and a car screeches to a halt. I hardly hear the shouts of the driver, as I turn away and run across to the other side of the street. Once there I turn back to the man, looking right at him as people cross in front of my vision, cars race by, but I can always see him. Not that I want to, but my eyes won’t leave him. Now I am the one who is still, static, trapped by his presence. I want to go back inside but my legs won’t let me.
I walk back across the road, and hear a rumble of thunder in the distance. The eyes. They suck me in, pulling me across the road. Next to him, I look at them. Try to look into them, but they won’t let me. There is nothing to look into. The eyeballs don’t even look real, like marbles. Or coal. Something dead but with incredible potential for energy and life and power.
I shudder. Suddenly the thick heavy air has dropped, replaced by a freezing chill. It’s dark now. The clouds completely overhead. The lightening bolt that cracks through the dark seems to jag into the man’s head. Only it is miles away.
But coming this way.
I run. Back to the house. Pound up the stairs, thump thump thump, like what my heart is doing. Out through the window, he is the only thing there now. Everyone has gone, to get out of the rain, safe inside. Between the rumbles of the thunder, there is a silence that I can’t bear.
I turn on the TV, for background noise. Anything to make looking at the man more bearable. Because still I can’t not look at him. The news is on. A news reporter is talking about something, but I’m looking out the window and all I can hear is words.
Slowly the background noise comes forward, into my ears and into my mind. “All across the city, people have been seen standing completely still, like statues, for hours on end.”
Statues.
All over the city.
“Reports indicate that there are approximately 42 such cases. None of the people have responded…” On the TV, pictures are coming in from the other statues. People are trying to talk to them, shaking them, shouting at them. They won’t get any response.
Another rumble of thunder, and the rain begins attacking the window, coming in a rush. I look out, and it looks like night out there. Not quite night, but like the day has ended.
The rain is soaking the ground. The drops are covering the window, racing down, obscuring my view. But even through the water, I see the blurred shape of the statue begin to move. Slowly, like it is coming to life for the first time.
The TV is screaming behind me. “They’re moving… THEY’RE MOVING!”
It looks through the window, at me, with those dead eyes.
I never want to sit on a white public toilet again….. super ‘short’ Chris…
Built up a perfect alternative scenario in the readers mind before literally blowing it away…. I love it. Dad