“What the hell is wrong with you?!”  I kicked the stupid juke but it went on playing some sappy song about an earth angel.  I musta dropped ten quarters in, but it wouldn’t play my song.  Earth Angel, huh?  “That’s a laugh,” I thought to myself.  “Ain’t no angels here at End of the Road.”

I looked around.  What a dump.  Half-drunk beers littered the tabletops, the glasses clouded with gray fingersmears.  The neon over the bar blinked and fizzled; made me sick to look at it.  And there was Jake, just slingin’ drinks and ignoring me, like I was invisible or somethin’.  He’s still royally pissed, I guess.  When he found the wedding ring that jerk-off Stan forgot to put back on after we did it, he looked like I’d stuck him in the chest with an ice pick.  “Christ, Jake,” I told him, “you’re only my boyfriend.  It ain’t like we’s married or nothing.”

Somewhere a phone was ringing, but nobody would pick it up; it was driving me buggy.  Well, screw Jake if he couldn’t take a little innocent banging.  Wasn’t the first time, and won’t be the last.

I drifted out the door, just to get away from the damn racket, and this big bruiser pulls up on his hog.  He’s wearing one of those leather jackets with the skull painted on, big tough guy.  Well, he gets off, all that leather creaking like an old couch, and then he walks right into me, practically knocks me over!

“Hey, what the hell am I, chopped liver?” I screamed after him, but he just pretended he didn’t hear and hauled open the door to the End and disappeared.  “Crap,” I thought, “I can still hear that phone.  Why don’t they pick it up?”

I stood there for a minute, looking at the sky.  “Why does Jake have to be so pissed?  It’s Friday night, for Chrissake!”  Well, the moon didn’t give a rat’s ass about my troubles, so I decided just to walk on home.

I started down Route 8 and it was weird, ‘cause it was so quiet I could still hear that phone ringing.  Only it wasn’t coming from behind me, back at the End.  It sounded like it was in front of me.  Coming from the mill.  I couldn’t even hear my footsteps on the road.  Just that sound.  Riiing, riiing.

I came ‘round the corner they call Deadman’s Curve (on account of so many drunks taking it way too fast) and saw the mill there across the weedy lot.  It looked huge and dark, and, I know this sounds nuts, but kinda hungry, too.  Like it was crouching.  Waiting.  And damn if the sound of that phone wasn’t coming from somewhere’s inside.

Gelson’s Mill had been out of there for nigh on twenty-five years, but someone was still calling.  What a hoot.  I decided, “What the hell, let’s find out who’s on the horn.”

I made my way across the weed-a-thon some uptight management-type probably once called a ‘lawn’, with that incessant riiiing, riiing of a phone echoing somewhere’s inside.  I pushed in the door to the front area, and the moonlight spilled in, making these shadows in the archway to the main part of the plant.  I knew where that archway led.  I’d been here before.  In fact, this is where I done it the first time with Jake.  Inside, on the floor of the abandoned mill, on a cheap K-mart blanket.  How romantic it all was!  What a glorious first date!  What a bunch of bull!

The phone was in there, somewhere.  Now I was getting sick of this stupid game, so I just waltzed right into the plant and took a look around.  Enough moonlight was getting in the broken windows that I could see all right, but there were weird shadows all over the place.  And someone was in here with me.  I could feel it.

The sound of the phone was coming from the left, behind some big oil-clotted machine.  There was all kinds of stuff here, catwalks and channels in the floor, so you really had to watch where you were going.  I said, to hell with whoever’s here, I’m answering that damn phone.

I moved off to the left and came around the big machine, and that’s when I saw it.  There, in an open space behind all the mill works, was a blanket.  It was sitting just as pert as you please in a patch of white moonlight.  And there was a phone in the middle.  Jangling away, just scraping at my last nerve ending.  I didn’t care that there was no cord to the phone - hell, maybe it was one of those cordless things they got nowadays.  I strode right over to it and picked it up.

“Hello?”  I said.  Just “hello” like it was an ordinary phone call on an ordinary day.  The person on the other end breathed for a minute.  I waited.  Then she spoke.

“Wake up, sister,” she said.  “Look around.”  Only it wasn’t a she.  It was me.

I looked around, just like me had asked me to, and then I saw it.  Leaning up against that steel thing.  Sitting in a puddle of black ink, only it wasn’t ink, if you know what I mean.  There I was, well, part of me anyway.  The top part.  I guess Jake had decided he would do away with the bottom half.  The naughty half.  What he did with it, I can’t imagine.  But he left the nice part sitting up, hands folded neatly in a lap that no longer existed.  He cared enough to do that much.

I turned back and spoke into the phone, spoke to me a little sadly, a little ruefully maybe.  “I guess I’m chopped liver after all,” I said.

—
© 2009 MK Wolfe.  All Rights Reserved.
www.wordzworthproductions.com

1942, as the Second World War raged, a Portuguese coal miner in Pennsylvania collapsed and died. He was one of Grandma Winter’s boarders from the Old Country. Since he had no relatives in America, Grandma arranged a proper Catholic burial.

His body was laid out in Grandma’s parlor. On the evening of the wake, friends arrived, prayed, and pondered their own eventual return to dust. Women in black mourned in high-pitched, wailing voices.

“What’s a wake, Mommy?” three-year old Billy asked, as they headed for Grandma’s house.

“A party. But without cake and ice cream.”

They passed a house where boy scouts were placing a coffin onto the front porch.

“What’s that?” Billy asked.

“Hitler’s coffin.”

“What’s a Hitler?”

“The name of a very bad man. He started the war.”

“The war my daddy went to?”

“Yes. The boys are collecting money for our soldiers. People give them a nickel so they can hammer a nail in Hitler’s coffin.”

“What’s a coffin?”

“A box they put bad people into.”

“If I’m bad will you put me in a coffin?”

“No. I would never do that.”

They ran into Billy’s twelve-year-old cousin, Carl.

“Hi, Aunt Emma. Where you going?”

“To the boarder’s wake. How about you?”

“I’m going to the movies.”

Emma took Carl aside. “I couldn’t get a sitter for Billy. And I don’t want him to see a dead body in a coffin. It might give him nightmares. If I give you twelve cents for his ticket, will you take him? He’ll be nice and quiet. He loves the movies. He sat through Bambi and Fantasia without making a sound. I’ll even give you some pennies to buy candy. ”

Carl agreed.

Emma never thought to ask what was playing.

Wishing to spare Billy from the sights and sounds of a dead man’s wake, Billy’s mom inadvertently consigned him to something worse. Showing that night were two of Universal International’s most intense horror movies. Both featured Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Wolfman.

Billy was so shocked by the hideous images, he forgot to eat his candy. The sight of Dracula lying in a coffin petrified him. He screamed along with everybody else when the vampire drank people’s blood.

The Wolfman looked like Billy’s uncle—until the full moon rose. Billy cringed when he saw on ordinary man transforming into a hairy beast.

The Frankenstein Monster drew the most screams. His head was flat. Screws protruded from his neck. He roared ferociously and strangled everybody who crossed his path.

After the show, Carl took a very frightened three-year old to Grandma’s. Once inside, Emma covered her son’s eyes when walking him through the parlor. She didn’t want him to be shocked by the sight of a corpse in a coffin. But she didn’t block his ears. To him, the women who wailed over the dead Portuguese sounded like the women who wailed over the victims of Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Wolfman.

Because his mom was staying over to help Grandma cook for funeral attendees, Billy was taken upstairs and put to bed. He kept looking around nervously, saying “Franken-stink…Franken-stink.”

Emma didn’t grasp what he was saying. She figured a bedtime story would settle him. So, she told him the story of the three little pigs that were gobbled up by a big bad wolf.

She left when Billy fell asleep.

Sometime later, he woke up and scampered down the dimly lit hall to the bathroom. While he was on the toilet, air raid sirens sounded signaling a blackout drill. To Billy, they sounded like screams he heard at the horror movies.

The town’s entire electrical power was turned off from a central switchboard. When the bathroom turned pitch black, Billy cried out. That’s when he saw Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Wolfman moving toward him. His screams pierced the entire house, shattering the frayed nerves of the mourners.

Stumbling through the darkness, Emma hurried upstairs. But it was too late. The monsters had already ripped Billy’s psyche apart.

A patrolling Air Raid Warden heard the commotion and ran into Grandma’s house to investigate. A doctor was called. Questions were asked.

Carl ran away and hid for two days.

* * *

In 1992, Billy, now known as Dr. William Winters, was about to give the keynote address at the International Robotics Association convention. He had a dynamite speech, fantastic visuals, terrific stage effects. At the point where he’d have the audience completely captivated, three of his company’s most advanced robots would enter and dance a ballet.

Nobody except Billy’s wife knew he was tottering on the edge of nervous collapse from overwork.

“And now, members of the Association,” Billy said to the audience, “I present the most amazing robots in the entire world.”

Lights dimmed. Spotlights focused on the stage. Three robots appeared and began to dance gracefully to tremendous applause.

Suddenly, a power failure darkened the room. Women’s screams jolted Billy’s raw nerves. Though the screaming stopped, they kept repeating in his head. Trembling, he found himself fighting an overwhelming urge to run for his life.

Somebody shined a flashlight onto the stage. The robots were no longer dancing. Now one had screws in its neck. Another was turning into a bat. The third howled as hair covered his face and arms.

When power was restored, Dr. William Winters was gone.

They found him in a fetal position in a closet, muttering, “Franken-stink…Franken-stink.”

On the way to the hospital, he fell into a catatonic state.

Failing to revive him to normalcy, psychiatrists tried insulin shock. Though the effects would be temporary, he’d become lucid enough to communicate with them for a few minutes.

When they injected Billy, he sat straight up in bed.

“You’re in a hospital,” a doctor said. “Can you tell us what happened?”

Billy muttered something, then went unconscious.

“What did he say?” asked a doctor.

“Strangest thing I ever heard: If only the Portuguese hadn’t died.”

—
© 2009 Michael A. Kechula

Michael A. Kechula is a retired tech writer. His fiction has won first place in seven contests and placed in six others. He’s also won Editor’s Choice awards four times. His stories have been published by 124 magazines and anthologies in Australia, Canada, England, India, Scotland, and US. He’s authored a book of flash and micro-fiction stories: “A Full Deck of Zombies–61 Speculative Fiction Tales.” eBook available at www.BooksForABuck.com and www.fictionwise.com. Paperback available at www.amazon.com.