Fishing in Brains for an Eye with Teeth (Thirteen Tales of Terror) (31 page)

Then suddenly sleepiness hit him hard.

He fought his eyelids for supremacy and lost. 

            ******

As Frank regained consciousness, he was aware of three things simultaneously.

He had fallen asleep!

Someone was trying to quietly open the door to his bedroom and that meant. . . .

He was about to be killed.

Beneath the covers, he released the safety on his gun.  Opening his eyes, he thrust the pistol forward and pulled the trigger.

The dark figure in the doorway lurched.  Screaming inarticulately, Frank fired the gun again and again and again.

The third shot was the one that caused his target to drop to the floor like a bag of concrete.

Frank had shot right through his covers, which were now smoldering.  Pushing them off him, he looked over and wasn’t the least bit surprised to find his wife’s side of the bed was vacant.

He knew where she was: downstairs in the basement.

Drenched in sweat, terrified, understanding that because he felt asleep he was nearly killed, Frank steeled himself and turned on the light.

The figure lying on the floor in a spreading puddle of blood wasn’t a stranger.

It was Faith.

Gun smoke wafted through the bedroom.

He winced, averting his eyes.

Frank had never seen so much blood in his life.

His stomach lurching, he realized,
The hit man is still out there!

Faith must have been on her way downstairs to let the assassin in!

Frank tried to avoid stepping in Faith’s blood as he slipped past her, out of the bedroom, but his heel caught part of a puddle and he tracked red all the way down the hall.

His gun raised, clutched in two sweaty hands, Frank rushed outside to confront Faith’s hired hit man.

His street was deserted.  The only sign of life was the neighbor’s black cat slinking across her yard.

Frank circumnavigated his house, searching the back yard, his shed, his garage. 

He found no one.

Where is he? 

Frank assumed the assassin hadn’t shown up yet.  He would probably need to wait a little longer.

As he went back inside and locked the door, he decided to search the house. Just as he began, the phone started ringing, startling him.

He wondered who could be calling at this time of night.  He wondered if the neighbors heard gunshots.

His hands trembling, Frank picked up the phone.

“Frank?  It’s Annie.  It’s an emergency!  I need to talk to Faith!”

“Faith is . . .”
Dead,
was what he thought, then almost edited himself and said
indisposed
.  Instead of choosing either word, he avoided the question altogether.  “What’s
wrong
, Annie?”  He could hear her crying.

Annie whined, “Someone broke into our house!  I was in the kitchen at the time and I heard gunshots upstairs, up where Stan is!  I hid in the basement!  I didn’t know what to do! I think they were looking for money!”  She wailed, “I think they shot Stan!”

Frank’s entire body went cold.  He was shocked to his core, too staggered to think.

“I need to talk to Faith, Frank!”  She whined (and her whining sounded
very
familiar), “Can I
please
talk to Faith!”

Barely able to breathe, Frank asked, “Have you called the police yet?”

“Not yet . . . I was about to . . . I was just so
scared
, I wanted to talk to Faith first!”

Nearly frantic, Frank lied, “Faith and I are on our way over there!  Give us at least ten minutes before you call the police!”

“Okay, but— ”

Frank hung up the phone.

A bundle of nerves and a bag of sweat, Frank grabbed his car keys and rushed out of the house.  He didn’t bother with shoes and was unaware he was barefoot.

He drove like a bat out of hell.

Frank found himself remembering how Faith always referred to ‘
the kids
’ when she talked in her sleep.

That wasn’t like Faith.  Faith always referred to Blake and Bobby as ‘
the boys
.’

Annie and Stan had two girls and a boy. 
They
refer to
their
children as, ‘
the kids
.’

“No,” Frank gasped.  “It doesn’t make any sense.”

Was
Annie
the one who was having the affair?

“This can’t be happening!”

When he arrived at the Katzenberg house, there were no police cars in sight. 
Good
, he thought, determined to talk to Annie alone.

As he rushed up the sidewalk to her house, the front door opened and Annie stepped out onto the porch.  Immediately, she asked, “Where’s Faith?”

Frank gave Annie a violent shove, pushing her back into the house.

Annie squealed.

Frank entered the house and closed the door behind him.  “We need to talk.”

Annie looked nearly as panicked as Frank felt.  She wanted to know, “Where’s Faith?”

“Faith—” Frank choked up.  His voice quavered as he finished, “is dead.”

“What?”  All pigment evaporated from Annie’s face.

“Faith was trying to kill me, or at least I
thought
she was, but,” he took his gun out, “I killed her first.”

“Oh, Sweet Jesus, no!”

It dawned on Frank that Annie was religious.  He remembered Faith saying, “
Pray for me
” in her sleep and knew that sentiment was Annie’s, not hers.

“Oh my God, NO!”  Annie collapsed as surely as if her legs just turned to butter.

Frank knew Annie was to
blame
for all this.  Hatred filled his heart with black fury.  He strode over to Annie and grabbed her by the hair.

Annie shrieked, “I HATE YOU!”

In their mutual loathing, the connection was formed. 

Images flooded Frank’s mind.

He saw Annie in her car, Annie looking up at bright lights in the sky.

He saw Annie become paralyzed as a gray-skinned otherworldly creature approached her.  Just as in one of the nightmares she unwittingly shared with Faith, Annie gasped, “He isn’t
human
!”

He saw Annie in a dazzling white room (inside a spaceship), strapped down on a table, shrieking at the top of her lungs as aliens manhandled her.

He saw Annie being placed back into her automobile.  An otherworldly being then wiped away her memories of the last three hours. 

Frank now knew when the alien shut down one part of Annie’s mind, he accidentally awoke another part. 

As mind-boggling as the images of the gray extraterrestrials were, Frank was even more rattled when he saw Annie and Faith in bed together, naked, making love.  He saw blissful expressions on Faith’s face that he hadn’t seen since they were newlyweds.  When Annie performed cunnilingus on his wife, Faith made sounds Frank had
never
heard before.

Faith
was
having an affair but not with a man.  Faith was sleeping with Annie!

And just as Annie and Frank had now been connected telepathically by their hatred, Annie and Faith were previously linked by their love.

Neither Faith or Annie were aware of it but when Annie dreamed, it was
Faith
who sometimes talked in her sleep.  Because of an alien touch, Annie’s subconscious was brimming with the newly-awakened ability to connect her to her most cherished soul mate… in her dreams.

Annie hated Stan.  She hired a man named Franz to kill him, a man now on his way to Germany.

It was Annie who was desperate to end her marriage, not Faith.

It was Annie.  It was all Annie!

Frank Farnsworth pushed Annie Katzenberg away from him, severing the mental connection.

Behind him, outside, Frank heard a car door slam and assumed the police had arrived.

He raised his pistol and shot Annie over and over and over.

He was still shooting her when the police broke down the door and shot him.

He died on the floor next to Annie, a believer in extraterrestrials.

On the police band radio, an officer across town radioed in a report of strange lights in the sky.

THE END

Graveside Games 

“Truth or dare?” asks Jack.

“Truth,” says Jill.

Strolling through the remote old cemetery just after midnight, Jack pauses to read a crumbling tombstone before turning to Jill and asking, “How old were you the first time you were kissed?”

Jill understands the meaning hidden behind the word: “kiss.”  She tells him she was only, “Sixteen.”

Jack hopes she will elaborate but she doesn’t.  She asks him, “Truth or dare?”

“Truth.”

Instead of mimicking his question (as so many normal girls would) and inquiring about his first kiss, she surprises him by asking, “How old were you the first time you penetrated someone?”

He smiles darkly.  “You’re going to be a challenge, aren’t you?”

Refusing to smile back at him, she insists he, “Answer the question.”

“I was nineteen.”

Jill appears skeptical.

Jack frowns, telling her, “I never lie when I play Truth or Dare.”

She nods and declares, “I’ll take another Truth.”

It annoys him that she didn’t wait to be asked.

She ducks behind a marble sepulcher, dashing deeper into the graveyard, making him follow her, frustrating him further.  He quickly catches up to her, grabs her arm, and spins her around, asking,  “When you were first penetrated . . . did you fight him?”  He grins wickedly.  “Or did you
want
it?”

“That’s
two
questions,” she feels obligated to point out.  But then she shrugs off his grasp and answers him, “I didn’t fight it, no.”  Her eyes sparkle with ebon energy.  “I did want it.”  She darts away from him again, teasing, “And who said the penetrator was a ‘he’?”

“What?” he exclaims, genuinely surprised.

From the darkness, Jill giggles.

Jack finds her lying on a grave, staring up at the stars.

“Truth or dare?” she asks him.

Lying down on the grave next to her, Jack says, “Truth.”

Once again, Jill surprises him.  She wants to know, “Have you always killed alone?”

Startled, he takes a chill, rolling on his side to stare at her.

She stares back.  “Answer the question.” 

Unhappily, he admits, “Yes.”  He’s embarrassed to realize, “I’ve always
hunted
alone.”

“Kind of a lone wolf, huh?” she says sarcastically.

“You could say that.”  He can’t help but smile.   “Truth or dare?”  

Totally unexpected, she calls for a “Dare.”  This is the first time Jack has ever been disappointed when a beautiful woman didn’t pick Truth.

After licking his lips, he boldly says, “I dare you to suck me.”

“You dare me to suck you?” she repeats.  The way
she
says it is so much more erotic than the way he says it.

“Yes,” Jack says, grinning.  “I dare you to suck me.”

“Okay,” Jill says, grinning back.

After a short wait, he asks, “Well?”

“You didn’t say
when
I should suck you.  I’ll be getting around to that later.”  Her grin broadens.  “Truth or dare.”

He snickers, looks at her, and then openly laughs.  “Dare,” he replies.

Without hesitation, she says, “I dare you to hunt and kill a man of my choosing.” Breathlessly, she admits, “I want to watch you penetrate a man.”

He winces and then looks properly disgusted.

She titters, giving him a poke in the side. “You generally kill only women, don’t you?”

“Yes,” he says, breaking eye contact.

“Hot, sexy,
juicy
young women, I’ll bet.  Women like
me
, I’m guessing.”  She pokes him again. “Am I right?”

Tired of being poked, he grabs her hands, locking his fingers with hers.  For a moment they push and pull, him fighting to hold on, her fighting to free herself, neither trying very hard.  Rolling on top of her, holding her hands caught over her head, he tells her, “There’s no one like you.”

She stops fighting him.

He kisses her passionately, eventually releasing her hands.  She embraces him, nibbling at his lips, licking his tongue.  Mouth to mouth, she tempts him, “Just think about how naughty it would be to do another man.  Some hot-blooded testosterone-filled hunk.  There’s a singles bar a few miles from here.  We’ll find a guy out on the prowl tonight, looking to get laid, looking to
penetrate
, and we’ll turn the tables on him.”  She giggles with malicious glee.  “You can penetrate him . . . ” Jill licks her lips.  “ . . .while
I
watch.”  Enthusiastically, she asks Jack, “Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

Jack wonders if this is how Adam felt when dealing with Eve.  He hides the fact he’s titillated by affecting a casual shrug.  “Maybe.”

Pressing tighter against him, Jill declares, “I’m ready to suck you now.”

Jack is instantly aroused.  “All right, baby!” he says.  “Go for it!”  Closing his eyes, he shudders with the most intense desire he’s ever known.  His voice is raspy as he begs her to, “Suck me.”

Jill opens her mouth unnaturally wide, extends her fangs, and sinks them into Jack’s neck.

His black blood flows over her tongue.

His sins issue forth with his liquids.  Jill learns his darkest thoughts and deeds.

For his part, Jack’s consciousness is obliterated by pleasure.  His head rolls back and, upside-down, he reads the names on the headstone, seeing the graves they are lying on belong to another long dead couple named Jack and Jill.

The young vampire woman drinks enough of the young male vampire’s blood to weaken him.  Jill fiercely absorbs Jack’s most hideous secrets.  Then, when she’s glutted with the essence of him, she offers up her own jugular, saying, “Now you suck me.”

Eagerly, gleefully, reverently, he complies.

Once this most intimate of acts is completed, they rise to their feet, standing together for the first time as dark soul mates. 

Each knows the depths of depravity within the other.  A childish game has resulted in a lasting bond.