Archive for January, 2009

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MR. BUNNY By: Alex Moisi

Saturday, January 31st, 2009

“Mr. Bunny is not dead!” my brother’s voice echoed from behind us.

“Jake, what are you doing here? Go home,” I exclaimed a bit harsher than I wanted. “You’re too young to be at the junkyard,” I quickly added, trying to sound like a responsible older brother.

“I’m already five, you’re only two years older,” he protested, his lower lip trembling slightly. “What are you doing with Mr. Bunny?”

My friends behind me were snickering. Mr. Bunny, as my brother insisted on calling it, was just a small wild rabbit that Fred’s dog had caught that morning. He saved it, then put an old leash on the poor creature and gathered us all to see it.

“So what does it do?” one of us asked, as the rabbit stared back with wide, terrified eyes.

“What do you want it to do? It’s just a scared baby,” I said.

“Yeah, this is lame, Fred,” someone chimed in.

“It doesn’t move, like it’s dead,” another boy said.

Fred narrowed his eyes as his cheeks blushed. At eight he was the oldest among us and he hated being the butt of a joke.

“Yeah, it does look dead,” he suddenly grinned. “We should have a funeral for the damned thing.”

At first we were all silent, surprised by the idea. But after a minute or so, we were cutting each other short, planning the new game. My dad had some broken planks we could use as a cross and someone else knew where we could get a shovel and then Fred proposed we bury it in the junkyard.

“Ashes to ashes and trash to trash,” he said with a mocking grin.

Before we knew it, there we were: five second graders holding a scared rabbit next to a shallow hole and my brother with tears in his eyes, begging us to stop.

“Oh poor, Mr. Bunny,” Fred whispered to the others with a grin. Their giggles turned into full out laughter and my cheeks turned red.

“Go home,” I said, harder than I should have.

“Please don’t hurt Mr. Bunny,” my brother said, his voice wavering.

“It’s not a Mr.” I replied. “It’s just a stupid wild animal, and we can do whatever we want.”

My brother gave me one last, hurt look before he ran away. For a second I wanted to go after him, apologize, and tell my friends we’d gone too far, but I was too scared they’d laugh at me. Instead, I took my place around the shallow grave and listened as Fred continued with his improvised sermon. It wasn’t really funny, but we all grinned as if it were. Then, someone brought over a battered suitcase and declared it would be a great coffin. It was a bad joke, but we laughed nonetheless. What else could we do? Fred shoved the trembling rabbit in the case, snapping it closed with a loud, final bang.

The sound scared me. I wanted to stop the whole thing by saying something clever like a hero would, but I couldn’t think of anything. As the earth hit the suitcase with hollow thumps, my mind froze. When we were done, we stared at each other, dumb grins plastered on our faces.

“So, when are we going to let it out?” someone asked.

“How long do you think a rabbit can breathe in a buried, locked suitcase?” Fred asked, without looking up.

“You mean, its dead? We killed it?” the same boy whispered. Instead of answering Fred just slapped him. He had never hit someone before, but things were somehow different now.

***

We all went home in silence.

That evening, my brother was late for dinner. When he finally showed up, his clothes were dirty with mud and his eyes red from crying. He wouldn’t say where he’d been or what he did. I felt sick and went to bed without finishing my food.

The next morning my brother’s voice woke me up. To my surprise, he sounded cheerful.

“Mr. Bunny is not dead,” he said, smiling.

It took me a second to see the dirty, old leash in his hand. He was holding something but I couldn’t see what, the bed-frame blocking my view. A faint, putrid smell filled the room.

“I prayed all night, and it worked,” my brother said as the leash moved slightly and something scraped against the floor.

“Mr. Bunny is not dead,” my brother repeated as the rabbit’s carcass crawled into my view.

___

©2009 Alex Moisi

My name is Alex Moisi and I am a Chicago based horror and SF author. My work has been published or is upcoming in the following anthologies: Northern Haunts by Shroud Publishing, Malpractice by Necrotic Tissue, Desolated Places by Hadley Rille books and various magazine and e-zines. For more informations about me please visit dracken.co.nr

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BLOOD By: L. V. Gaudet

Friday, January 30th, 2009

He dipped a finger into the pool of blood. It was a casual gesture, dabbing at it lazily like paint in a paint cup. Careful not to drip the crimson wetness from his finger tip, he brought it to the canvas. Gently and with great care he spread the blood about the canvas, creating a brightly splashed picture.

He didn’t know who’s blood it was, nor even if it were human, animal, or something else. Where the blood came from didn’t matter. It was the magic, the life that once throbbed through the veins of something living and feeling; that is what mattered. The odor of the blood filled his nostrils. It was a little sharp, kind of salty. If he tasted it, he knew it would taste salty, red, and a little bit like iron. It smelled good, fresh. It had to be fresh or the magic would have faded away.

The canvas he painted always changed. Sometimes it was large, an entire field of battle. Sometimes it was smaller, a group of marauders falling upon a caravan, or an attack in the dark dirty recesses of a city’s worst areas. Sometimes it was tiny, the sweet breath of an infant drifting through tiny pouty lips.

The canvas he worked today with such care was the rocky crags of a mountain. As he painted, the canvas vibrated with a dull rumble as of a thousand distant hooves stampeding. This was no stampede, however; at least, not one of living creatures rushing across the ground in a frenzy of fear. A few pebbles clattered across the rocky terrain, kicking up tiny puffs of dust as they went.

The group travelling low on the side of the mountain paused, looking around with startled eyes. They felt the faint vibration of the ground, their ears barely picking up the distant rumble. A child stared curiously at a small rock that rolled and clattered past.

With a deliberate and practiced hand, he painted the mountain side, coloring bright red trails down the rock face. The rumbling grew louder, the ground shaking with increasing fury. The pebbles and rocks were chased downhill by larger rocks, boulders, and clouds of billowing un-breathable dust.

The small group, related families forced to relocate, began to scramble in a frightened panic. They grabbed at children, dropping some belongings, keeping only that which was essential for survival. They ran this way and that, growing confused with fear, running for their lives. One woman tripped and fell, her infant clutched protectively in her arms, scraping her arm and leg on one side on the sharp rocks. A little stunned, she lay there breathing hard, staring at her husband who had been hurriedly picking through their meager belongings, discarding anything they couldn’t eat.

He gently dabbed a spot of red upon the head of the man.

Looking almost bewildered, the man stared at his fallen wife, pleading with his eyes for her to hurry to her feet and run. A boulder seemed to be hurled from the mountain as if by a giant invisible hand, flying past between the two with unstoppable momentum. After it had passed by the man’s headless body stood there, wavering slightly, his head a small red smear being painted down the mountain by the rolling boulder.

So intent were the terrified people on fleeing the rockslide that most of them didn’t even notice the dark and terrible winged creature that swooped down silently from the sky, its tattered cloak flapping like the rotting sheet wrapped about a corpse. The creature seemed somehow indistinct, as though only a shadow of it could touch this world.

The man’s wife watched in horror, a terrible scream tearing from her throat as she watched the monster swoop down, grab her husband’s headless shoulder with the long fingers of one taloned hand, reach down into the new orifice that used to be his neck, and tear away the shadowy shade of the man writhing and fighting to remain sheltered inside the dead body. The creature’s blood red eyes remained motionless and locked on her as it stole her husband’s soul. With incredible speed it lifted off, swooping away into the sky with its still struggling cargo. The man tried to scream as he fought the powerful monster that spirited him away, but couldn’t. He was but a shadow, without form or a body. On the ground his body still stood there, wavering slightly, then slumped slowly to the ground, its heartbeat slowing, slower, stuttering to a stop. Perhaps half a minute had passed.

He continued to paint his canvas of rock and lives. Very few would survive.

The mountain shook violently, those who were not crushed by the falling rocks found themselves gasping and choking on air that had been replaced by dust, unable to breathe, suffocating.

The black creature swooped down from the sky again and again, stealing souls from the broken bodies as their life ebbed away. Always it moved swiftly and silently, with deadly precision.

When at last the violent shaking of the ground stopped, the rumbling faded away into the past, and the dust began to clear on the soft breath of the air, the aftermath became apparent. An ugly gash scraped down the mountainside, a trail of broken debris showing the path the rockslide had taken. Red smears of blood marred the scene, a gruesome testimony to the death and destruction, matching exactly the red smears of blood he lovingly painted on his canvas.

A child wailed. A woman’s hand poked feebly from the ground, waving weakly.

He had a name once. It has been so long since he’s heard the name uttered that he could no longer remember it. Most called him by another name. Death.

His dark cloaked shoulders shook, the rotting fabric shreds moving as though its tattered remains were made of delicate gauze. He wept for the newly collected souls.

___

© 2009 L.V. Gaudet

L. V. Gaudet is a fiction writer. More samples of work can be found on the blog site at http://lvgwriting.wordpress.com

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