The Drink Ain’t That Strong

For those of you who may be wondering if I ever actually complete a story, I’ve included one that I wrote back in August that I’ve recently pulled out of the dust. Please remember that this story is not biographical in nature, and that I’ve never killed my wife (Love you, honey!). I’ve never killed anyone else either, for that matter.

This is one of those stories that just comes out. I wrote it in one day, in one sitting, then went back a few weeks later and corrected (mostofthe) grammar and misspellings. I had just read Stephen King’s short story The Man Who Loved Flowers a month or two before. I thought the story was interesting, and that the premise was great, and I cam up with the idea to turn the story backwards and have a woman kill her boyfriend in a moment of heated passion. As you’ll see, that didn’t happen.

What did happen is that a story came out that I think is entertaining and certainly creepy. I hope you enjoy reading it.

Voila!

———

“Aw, dammit, I loved that girl!” Harry Mitchell puts his head down on the bar and blubbers like a kid. Weak sobs escape the fold of his arm and cause his body to hiccup on the wooden bar stool. He thinks of the way she used to look at him when they first became involved, with those deep blue eyes so dark they were almost violet.

“What the helldya mean ‘loved’, Harry?” says Reggie, curiosity peaking out from behind the drunken stupor that he visits like an old friend, maybe a lover. “Last night, you were in here, same as today, but when you said you love her, you love her. Love like right now, not some time ago.”

Harry pulls his head up off the bartop. Tears have carved trails down his cheeks and his eyes were red, puffy. He looks around, and sees the glow of the barback mirror shimmering like a halo over some disenchanted angel. He stops crying and the smoke begins to sting his eyes. Bad-tempered and meddlesome stares pierce the back of his skull like a knife sunk to the hilt. Some of Callahan’s other patrons have begun to watch Harry, the way one would watch ants devouring a bumblebee. He’s making quite a scene.

“I mean just that, Reggie. I loved her. Loved. As in past tense. Don’t you know how to speak the goddammed English language?” Harry begins to sob again, and lays his head back across the bar. Sterling, the gray-haired bartender on Tuesday nights, saunters over and addresses Reggie. Reg and Harry have been coming to Callahan’s for drinks since not long after they both barely slid out of the Trimble County High School. Sterling has worked here longer still and knows these good ol’ boys well.

“Reg, you gotta get your friend outta here. Walk’im home or somethin. ‘Sbad for business to see a grown man, especially a big’n like Harry, cryin his beer. No hard feelins, uh? Go on, now.” Reggie knew that the bartender meant no harm, and he knew what bad for business was like. He himself was drowning his financial woes just like everyone else. Everyone except Harry, that is. To Reggit, it seems Harry might be worried about something worse that finances.

Reggie gathers Harry’s composure, pays both their tabs even though it makes his drink fund smaller, and they walk toward the door, Reg wearing his best sober face. He may not be as fargone as Harry, but he ain’t far behind. The sideways glances of the other bargoers follow the two straight out the door, and when they’re gone the customers return to their tales and ales as if there hadn’t ever been a distraction in the history of this hole-in-the-wall.

Outside, the cool night air is refreshing for Reggie, but Harry seems to take an affront to Mother Nature’s sweet attempt to quench a Texan’s soul. Falling to his knees, Harry howls at the moon, just like some old coyote in the plains. He begins to cry. Reggie hopes that this is mostly the drunk talking. In the alley that serves as the face of Callahan’s, there are overflowing trash cans, empty beer bottles tinkling along the ground. At the far end of the alleyway, a cat yowls with delight. Reggie is certain he does not want to know what’s happening over there, no sir. He looks up at twinkling stars overhead. There is definitely something about a small town’s natural lighting, even in the dark, that gets Reggie. Harry is still sitting on his knees just outside the bar door. He’s beginning to calm down a little.

“C’mon, Harry. It’s time to go. We’re gonna walk, so get ahold of yourself. I ain’t gonna carry you all the way home.” Reg gets a hand under Harry’s arm and starts to haul him up, unconcerned by how big Harry is. Reggie isn’t exactly a pup himself.

“Aw, Reggie, what am I gonna do? I really loved her.” Harry staggers a bit, nearly falls back to the ground, and catches himself in flails of arm and hair.

“Right now, you’re gonna walk with me, and tell me what’s got you all riled up.”

“Ok, Reg. But don’t think no worse of me after’d.” Harry gave him a drunken half-grin.

“No promises, Harry. I was all excited for another couple MGDs when Sterling kicked us outta there. I blame you, fuckface.”

Harry crowed a crazy, high pitched laugh and slapped his knee. “Goddammit, Reggie, you crazy sombitch, let’s get walkin and I’ll tell ya.”

Four days ago it started. Friday. Regular night, like tonight, but with even more drinking. Harry has taken to reading some of the books Ann leaves lying around the run down apartment up on the northwest side of town, and during the afternoon when she’s at work and he has worked off the morning headache and is on to the mid-day headache, he misses Ann. The simple activity of reading the books she leaves out helps him feel less downtrodden about the whole situation. She has noticed that he does this, and has recently started leaving targeted items that she thinks Harry will enjoy. A chasm is widening between Harry and Ann. It’s the drinking; she says it has got to stop. Harry says it ain’t that bad.

That afternoon Harry picked up an old book from the coffee table. The spine said, in faded silver foil letters, Night Shift. Harry picked out a story about a man who loved flowers. It started off nice, and most of the other folks thought that this man was a good fella. He must’ve been, right? He stopped and picked up flowers for his girl! What girl wouldn’t love that? The old lady passed on her way, thinking: He’s in love. Harry liked the story, thought he might take a few pointers and pick Ann up a patch of flowers himself. He didn’t have to tell her where he got the idea, even if she might figure it out..

But then the hammer fell. And it fell again, and again. With a blinding rage, the man who loved flowers killed a woman who looked like his girl but wasn’t. He pounded that hammer through her skull again and again and wouldn’t stop, and couldn’t stop. He had mistaken the girl in the alley for his lover, and she had been a little scared when she realized he thought she was someone else, but the hammer didn’t scare her. There hadn’t been time enough to be scared.

Sweet mother Mary, what a horrible story! Harry threw the book down without finishing, without even a second glance, picked up his coat, and walked on out the door. It fucked him a good one, and Harry decided that it was time for a drink. Callahan’s, here comes Harry Mitchell, bringer of the almighty buck. Hail be to the king of beers.

After four, or six, or maybe fifteen frosty Buds, Harry was beginning to forget the tragic events to which the girl in the alley had been privy. What he didn’t forget, after three or maybe four more tallboys, was to stop and pick up flowers for Ann on the way home. Violets, to match her pretty eyes. It was a nice night, and he decided to walk the twelve blocks back to Ann’s place. He could pick up his truck tomorrow, when the air was less bubbly and the lights weren’t so bright.

The bar spat Harry Mitchell out into the street. Right across the alley, standing in front of his flower cart, was a man in khaki pants, with an overlarge, dark blue polo shirt and a floppy hat, the kind they wear in Manchester, England, England, the kind of hat that says “Hey buddy, come buy some flowers.” And Harry almost did.

“That’s a nice story,” says Reggie. “Let’s keep walkin.”

“Well, that’s what I did, I kept walkin. I walked past the flower vendor, straight on home. I was pretty tore up. Decided that it wasn’t a good night to get flowers for Annie. Cause what if I grabbed a hammer too? A great drunken guffaw escapes Harry’s rubbery lips, and he lets go of Reggie and buckles to his knees again. He sits there and laughs for a minute or two. “But I still tried to get my piece anyway, if you know what I mean.”

Reg tosses his cigarette down on the ground and mashes it with one square-toed shitkicker.

“C’mon, Harry. That ain’t no way to talk about Ann.”

“Ok, ok.” Harry is trying to stand. Reg gives him an arm for support and the two walk on. “Yeah, respect. I really loved that girl, Reg. But the time for respect’s not right now, cause me almost getting some is part o’ the story.”

“You’re a crazy sonofabitch. Keep talkin.” Reggie is getting tired of this. His drunk has leveled off to a warm buzz, still fending off the cool, late-night air, but he wishes he had thrown Harry in the bed of his truck.

“Yeah, so anyway, I go home and sneak in the door…”

The lights are all out. That’s how he knows Ann is pissed at him, cause she turns the lights out. It’s like a woman’s secret code. Harry clambers across the small apartment to the kitchenette, and finds the stove. Shit! It’s still hot from whatever Ann cooked for dinner. He puts his finger in his mouth to drown the pain, and takes in a faint whiff of the main course. Smells like chicken, maybe. Or pork. Harry can’t quite pick the odor out of the torpor of his drunken nose. He flicks on the light above the stove, because of all the lights in the apartment, this one’s the least bright. He doesn’t want to wake Ann. Yet. But there is a stirring in his groin and a smirk across his mouth that says he’ll want to soon.

The fridge door opens with a loud snap and Harry’s coaxing. About a quarter of the way, he takes it easy because the door always settles with a loud bang there. Somehow, in his inebriation, he is able to quell the fridge door into issuing just a soft pop. No beer. Damn. He throws the door shut, and cringes as the loud bang at a quarter-open and the sucking smack at full-closed fill the galley, then exit, leaving the apartment ghastly quiet.

He pulls his boots off, thunk, thunk, nearly falling on his ass with the second one.

Harry tiptoes to the bedroom, and, Thank Christ and Sonny Jesus, after opening the door he finds the nightlight on. He drops his pants by the door, his belt buckle jingling without a care, and takes his socks off in two steps, flinging them.

The covers have already been pulled back on his side of the bed. Aw, honey. Harry slides between the sheets and sits halfway up. He leans over, and just as he’s about to cop a feel and give her a hickey –

“Couch.”

Harry sits back, awestruck by a woman’s ability to hear a man scramble like a herd of goats through a house.

“Aw, honey. I’m sorry.” Harry leans in again to make his move.

“Couch.” Ann makes her statement without so much as a squirm or wiggle.

“Crazy bitch. I can’t believe you’re gonna send me to sleep out there on the couch! That thing’s older’n dirt and hard as rocks!”

“Like your head, dick.” Ann still has not noticeably moved. “Couch.”

Harry sleeps on the couch.

Saturday. Drunk again.

The drinks are heavier this afternoon, maybe because of the crick in Harry’s neck from sleeping on the couch. After four shots of tequila (the cheap stuff, not Cuervo), he feels a little better. After six beers (the good stuff, Budweiser), the pain is gone. But the drinks are still heavy, weighing down his brain.

A man named Stuart saunters in just as if he owns the place. “Hullo, Sterling. How ya doin?”

“Fine, Stu, fine. You? Want the usual?”

“Can’t complain. Yeah, my poison.” This is same conversation that Stuart and Sterling had yesterday, the day before, the day before that.

“Hullo Harry, how ya doin?” Stu pulls out a stool beside Harry and takes a seat. “Ain’t seen you in a while.”

Harry pulls his head around and looks drunkenly at Stuart. His eyes are glazed and the stink of his breath is enough even to put Stu on edge. But, as old friends know, sometimes the demons just need to take a swim. Stuart dismisses the ridiculous amount of alcoholic fume wafted to him as a rough day for Harry.

Harry belches. The smell fills Stuart’s nostrils, and his face crinkles in dismay. “Geez, Harry, take it easy!”

“Me ‘n Ann, we had a… a fff… we had words. She hates me, Stu. Goddammed… woman. She hates me, says I drink too goddam much. Can you believe that? Says she won’t keep me ’round if I don’t curtail it.” Harry’s speech is hard to understand through the mask of grog, the disjointed sentences bursting in short pops and sputters. He looks around the smokey bar and his eyes land on a blonde barfly whose magnificent tits are anxiously trying to escape from their restraints. She looks back at him through a haze of smoke from the drag that is now hovering in her mouth, just moments away from being sucked into that cacophonous throat and absorbed through spongy, black lungs that have – so far – stood the test of time. His gaze lingers a little longer than it ought to. “Probly batshit crazy.” Harry mutters.

“I’m goin home, Stu. See ya, later. Bye, Sterling.”

Harry half falls, half steps down from his stool, rights himself, sneaks one more glance over to the blonde, and heads out the door. For a moment, Stuart gazes after him, wondering if he should drive him home, and decides that Harry knows he’s had too much to drink and will leave his truck parked right outside. Sometimes, Sterling says he should get a can of yellow spray paint and make Harry an honorary reserved parking spot, his truck’s here so much. Probably more than Sterling’s is.

Harry opens the door and his body pours out into the staggeringly bright sunlight. His eyes close nearly up, and he lifts one numb arm above them to provide some shade. The sun is low in the west, and will be set in half an hour, but Harry’s eyes might as well be staring straight upward at high noon. The light hurts. The sun really isn’t that bright, but the dregs of the alcohol filter it the way kids use a magnifying glass to pop ants. And Harry’s the ant today.

But fuck it.

He plugs on in his drunken torpor, deciding that the canopy of his arm is too much work, and he takes to staggering along the sidewalk in the wrong direction. Home’s the other way. After what seems to Harry a long journey, he finds the alleyway beside Callahan’s and turns in. A stinking homeless man exits the alleyway at the same time, and Harry bumps him hard enough to knock him over. When trying to help the man up, Harry himself falls down, and begins to laugh. The homeless man stands up and mutters something about “they wouldn’t treat him this way,” then continues on down the road, in the direction from which Harry came. The darkness hankered in between the bar and the antique store next door looks the way a mirage must look to a weary desert traveler who hasn’t had anywhere near as much to drink as Harry has. In that darkness hides an empty Budweiser beer can, and it catches his left foot just right and sends him crashing down on top of yesterday’s Hefty-bagged empties. Harry decides that now is a good time for a nap. A better time than any other. The best time… And he sleeps a deep sleep.

“You know what, Reggie?” Harry said. His tone was warm and thoughtful. “That was the best dream I ever had.”

“Yeah? What about?”

“I’m not tellin, Reg. It was so special, and Ann was so pretty, and I just want to keep that dream to myself, if ya don’t mind. Sorry, friend,” Harry said.

“Up to you, Harry. No problem.” Reggie was complacent toward his friend. Really, all Reg wanted to do was get Harry home and move himself past all this rediculosity into another bottle o’ suds. Frankly, Harry was getting on Reggie’s nerves. He had a pretty good idea what the dream was about, and didn’t give a shit. Impatiently, he suggested that they hurry along.

“But you know what, Reg?” Harry said. Reggie turned wordlessly toward Harry in response, and saw a strange introspection on his face. It was a dark look, his eyes little more than shadows across his face. Harry stood up straight, remarkably so for a man as drunk as he was, and Reggie let him go. Harry took a few steps. His thoughts sobered him better than Reg had seen a cuppa joe ever do, and Harry looked up toward the sky. The stars blanketed out across the inky black night and their twinkling seemed to billow with the breeze. The wind tousled his dark hair. He turned around and said, “I think that it was fer the best. I think it was the best I coulda done.”

Still vociferously drunk and now smelling of garbage and homeless people, Harry meanders back to the apartment he and Ann share. When he steps inside, there is a new painting on the wall. Well, actually, it is a print of a painting, in a nice frame with a glass providing a glare that blocks out the backside of the horse, leaving only the Indian and the horse’s head. Feathers blow in the mock breeze away from the decoration that accessorizes the horse. The Native American, in a breechcloth and leather  leggings, looks downtrodden. Harry thinks they must have made a journey even longer than his, and laughs sullenly at their misfortune. It is a cold laugh.

He walks into the kitchen, grabs an icy Lonestar Light from the fridge, pops the tab, and drinks. Swallow after blissful swallow pours down his throat. He feels better than he has in ages. Even in the inebriated state that plows over his brain, he feels a particular clarity overtake him. The hammer sitting on the counter smiles up at him as he places it in the back pocket of his Wranglers. He steps lightly from the kitchen into the bedroom. It is thirty-seven minutes past midnight.

Ann is awake, sitting in the dark.

“You asshole,” Ann says, hardly moving. She has obviously been crying.

Harry stops just inside the doorway, stunned at the rapidity with which the situation has declined. His smile melts and his face turns to ash. He can’t see them, but he knows her deep blue eyes, almost violet, are flashing in the dark.

“You’re drunk aren’t you, Harry? Of course, you’re always drunk. Can’t hold down a job, and can barely hold up a beer, but always drunk.”

“Ann…” She doesn’t let him finish.

“I don’t want to hear any more excuses, Harry.”

“But Ann, I c’change, really! I love you, babe.” His words are slurred and blurry. This incites fury in Ann, and the stolid complacency that she had shown until now evaporates faster than alcohol. Ann flies at Harry, and beats him, emphasizing each contact with one exclamated word.

“You! Son! Of! A! Bitch!” She continues to curse him, swear at him.

Harry grabs the pummeling hand in one of his, draws back the other, and punches her square in the face. Blood spurts from her broken nose; she shrieks with a combination of surprise and pain and falls to the floor. Harry’s face is lax and emotionless.

Ann starts in again: “You fucker, what’d you do…” But Harry interrupts her with a surprisingly sober ferocity.

“Shut up, bitch.” Harry stands over her.

“Harry, what are you…?” But her words are broken off again.

“I said shut the fuck up, goddammit!” Harry’s eyes flash with rage.

Ann begins to slide backwards, and reaches for the phone. Harry follows, and backhands her across the back of the head with his fist. She falls onto the carpet and rolls over.

“Harry, please,” Ann whimpers between sobs. She is crying again now, but not because of her frustration with Harry. Now, she cries because he has frightened her. She is horrified, scared, and confused.

Harry speaks calmly. “I am tired of this shit, Ann. I am tired of your lip, tired of you telling me how fucking stupid I am because I like a drink or two now and again. I love you, you bitch. I fucking love you, and I don’t want you to be the hateful bitch you’ve become, and I’m going to kill you dead so I can remember you as the nice lady you used to be.”

Ann lies face down on the bedroom floor.

He draws the hammer from the back pocket of his jeans as he speaks.

He draws the hammer and brings it down, brings it down again, drops the fucking hammer like the man who loved flowers. Now he’s the man who loves Ann, and he brings the hammer down, smashing, crushing, killing her, this woman he loves.

But wait. Harry shakes himself back from the rage, trembles back into his reality, sees the blood covering the bedspread, the carpet, the nightstand. Sees Ann’s blood on his hands.

He sees inside the woman he loves still, and sees her eyes still open, still looking up at him. Her mouth opens and closes very slowly, then stops. She is dead. She is dead, ohgod, she is fucking dead. Did I do this? Harry can’t remember, but sees the hammer in his hand.

He drops it and runs into the bathroom, strips, showers, grabs fresh clothes from the closet while avoiding the horrifying scene on the other side of the bed, and runs out of the room.

Harry’s hand grabs the knob on the front door of their apartment, but doesn’t have time to turn it before hearing the most frightening sound his ears have ever whispered to his brain.

She is laughing.

Harry is frozen at the door. His breath accelerates, comes in ragged, short gasps. Harry is afraid. How can she be laughing?

The laughter continues, steadily becoming stronger, growing into a bray, swelling until it fills the whole apartment. Harry feels the cold sweep over him like a north wind. He squeezes his eyes closed, then opens them wide. This is not a dream. Dammit!

Regret wells in his stomach and Harry wishes he had just listened to her, just fucking listened, and quit drinking a long time ago. Harry turns his head, morbidly seeking the source of the cacophony of laughter. He becomes fixated on the deep blue eyes of the thing, so dark that they are almost violet.

His scream traverses the air inside the apartment building, and the cosmos that surround it, seeps through the floors and walls, drives on down the street in all directions, nestles through the trees in the park, and never comes to rest.

“I was scared shitless, Reg, right outta my wits!” Harry’s face shows a bleak reflection of that horror, even now. Reggie’s eyes are wide, but skeptical. He’s not quite sure what to make of all this.

“What happened then, Harry? This takes us up to Saturday night. What in God’s name happened next?”

“Well, Reggie, I’m not rightly sure about that…” And Harry wasn’t.

Harry burst from the apartment, ran down the stairs, skipping the one third from bottom that always creaks and gives a little; he was worried that whatever that thing was that had been in the apartment would get him if he fell down, and he wasn’t taking chances on whether it would ask him over for a poker game and a couple beers. He breaks free of the building and is out in the street. Cars honk incessantly and a woman in a blue Lowe’s work vest on the sidewalk shouts when Harry crashes over her, spilling groceries helter-skelter on the pavement. Hey! she shouts, but Harry doesn’t hear her. Or turn to see if she is OK.

Harry just runs.

Blind fear hides the pain that is shooting up each leg, silences the manic beating of his heart. He doesn’t hear the drumroll of footsteps along the sidewalk, or the wind rushing past his ears. The only thing in Harry’s world now is the thing that used to be Ann.

Now Harry stops.

The thing used to be Ann. He looks back to make sure nothing is following him. The thing used to be Ann. Nothing there but an empty street, an empty sidewalk, and the empty grass between him and them. He is in Schuler’s park. Behind him now are a merry-go-round, a see-saw, and a swing set. The thing used to be Ann. One of the swings drifts lazily in the cool night breeze, and the merry-go-round screams an indignant bellow into the dark. The thing used to be Ann. Ohgod, what’ve I done?

Harry falls to his knees, steadies himself on his hands, and retches. Oily, yellow stomach acid causes the Lone Star to froth as if he had just poured it fresh on the ground in front of him. He pants and gasps for new air; the raucous stench of his prior elbowbending has ushered in a new wave of sickness which he is able to hold back only for several seconds before he retches again. This time, the heave is dry, and only a mucusy spittle dangles from his lips. He sees it dancing in time with his rapid breathing, and fights to keep from retching again.

Pushing himself back into a sitting position, Harry looks around the park. A woman in a blue vest is standing near the merry-go-round. Harry might recognize her as the grocery woman if she were a little closer. Fear clutches his muscles, and he jumps in one fluid motion into a squatting position, ready to run again. The woman in the blue vest continues to stand there, as if waiting for Harry to come over. And so he does.

Harry sees that the woman in the blue vest is not looking at him, although Harry swears that the woman was facing him before. Harry had kept his eyes fixed on her, and plows through the short-term to see if he can recall the woman turning around. He cannot.

“Hey, miss. I’m real sorry about runnin you down back there. I was, uh, in a hurry, I guess.” Harry approaches cautiously. The woman doesn’t acknowledge that Harry has spoken.

“Excuse me, ma’am. You all right?” Harry begins to sweat. A small bead of worry begins to roll down the back of his throat, growing in size like a snowball on winter’s finest hill. He fingers the hammer that has somehow found its way back into Harry’s hind pocket.

And the laughter begins.

It is far away to Harry’s right, at first, then fades to his left, coming nearer, back and forth like a stereo recording. As the sound centers, the woman in the blue vest turns her cackling face toward Harry. Her mouth is contorted into a hideously large smile, and her teeth are elongated into sharp points. The woman’s eyes are a deeper blue than her vest, almost violet.

Harry’s body jumps into action before his brain has really clicked onto the scene, and his hand draws the hammer out, and brings it down again and again, at first on the woman’s skull, then on the soft red and gray mass the skull used to protect.

Harry is running again.

This time he boasts more confidence and more terror than before. His thoughts are focused, with one goal in mind: Get the fuck outta Dodge!

When the woman in the blue vest embraced the other side of the light, Harry had stepped back several steps, and watched the apparition unfold from her dead body the way a flower grows from a bud during the first moments of daylight. Only this was a lot scarier. And this time, Ann’s ghost was bigger. It had the same face as before, staring at him with a malicious, serpentine grin, teeth bared, but there was another face below it, protruding from the sinewy, black neck on the thing’s left side. This face gave Harry no regard, and looked troubled, pained. The howl that emitted from this second face was excrutiating, but the fear exhumed from Harry’s innards by the Ann-creature’s laugh overpowered it. The scream seemed to choke of its own accord. This is when Harry turned on the balls of his feet and broke into a sprint.

After an unknown time, Harry happens a glance back toward where he felt that the thing still was, felt as if it was always growing closer, and saw that it was not there.

Harry steps out through the doorway of the Minimart, where he has stopped to pick up a pack of Camel cigarettes. It has been about six years since his battle with tobacco addiction ended, but tonight feels like a good night for a little backslider.

The pack is gnarled and hideous by the time Harry wrenches a smoke from it; his hands shake like a tree’s leaves in late Spring. A brisk walk will surely calm him down, and he takes off in the direction of Callahan’s by habit. Three steps later, the cigarette that had hung from Harry’s lip dropped soundlessly to the sidewalk. Harry’s jaw dropped nearly as far.

Across the street, just in front of the local Germania branch, was the blonde from the bar. She is wearing the same glittering hotpants, and a black shirt that hangs loosely over her front, with four or five spaghetti straps crisscrossing her back. Her breasts have found a little more freedom by this time of night; Her chosen beau-of-the-evening seems to think that there is some sort of treasure buried between them and is working his tail off to get the prize.

He is not slackjawed over the sultry entertainment, he’s pretty certain that this ain’t her first rodeo. What has caught Harry’s attention is the growing gloom against the blood-red brick wall of the building, the finger-like strands of darkness that are growing from the shadowy mass, and the shape that is presenting itself in the assemblage of evil growing from the building’s face.

The lanky fingers reach out from the dark and grab the woman’s hair with a sharp yank. She lets out a strangely sultry sound, a quick little moan that suggests that the beau may have been doing a thing or two right. She has not grasped the seriousness of the situation, but beau does, or thinks he does, and takes off in the opposite direction, screaming and tripping his way to safety. At this point, the blonde does realize what is happening – as much as one can comprehend such a horror – and chokes out a scream into the night. It is cut short by the thing’s hand clamping down over and into one side of her mouth. Holding the blonde in place, the thing releases her hair and takes hold of the other side of her mouth, pulling and stretching the flesh as it crawls inside. The blondes already unkempt body writhes, bulges irregularly. Her arms twist and jitter as the thing envelopes her consciousness and wraps itself deep into her tissue.

For a moment, the blonde stands there, tottering, and then the head snaps forward with an audible crack. The same ludicrous smile that decorated the thing’s last victim is as predominant here as ever, the lips pulled taught against the jawbones, teeth exposed beyond the gum line. The blonde woman’s eyes are a deep, terrible blue. As Harry watches, they turn bright violet with a motion that resembles waves crashing in on themselves during the high tide.

Harry runs again, this time toward the possessed woman. He is ready for a fight, now. The demons have reared their ugly heads, and Harry knows that if he doesn’t fight, he’ll never get out of this alive.

“And here I am, you can probably guess the rest.” Harry looks at Reggie, waiting for his response.

“Jesus Mary and fuckin Joseph, Harry!” Reggie has released Harry, who can now walk mostly of his own accord. “Why are you makin up some hairbrained story like this? C’mon, Harry, the drink ain’t that strong!”

“I ain’t makin it up, Reg, and I swear to you, it ain’t the drinkin! It’s happened six times since Ann. With Ann, it makes an even seven.” He turns away from Reggie, feeling ashamed and betrayed. Why won’t Reggie believe me?

“You don’t say.” Reggie laughs, a haunting, inflating sound like the flap and flutter of bats. “You don’t say…”

For a moment, his eyes flash and Harry turns just in time to see that they are a deep blue color, beautiful, almost violet.