Fishing in Brains for an Eye with Teeth (Thirteen Tales of Terror) (35 page)

When he finally stops stomping, panting, he realizes he could have used the intestines like a lasso to rope the body parts in his brain.

Too late now.  The intestines— like all the other Real Body Parts— are now nothing but a splat on the floor.

Bob looks through the plate glass window, out at the dark street, remembering the college girl pulling out her cell phone.

He looks at all the blood on the floor and decides he doesn’t want to explain to the police that, while there’s not a scratch on him, all this blood belongs to him.

His eleventh finger twitching in the brain matter just behind his third eye, chattering teeth munching on the back of his mind, Bob flees the laundry mat and runs home.  Instead of using the sidewalk by the street, he dashes through people’s yards, hiding behind trees and houses whenever he can.

Minutes later, he’s back at his apartment.

Once he’s inside and the door is locked behind him, he doesn’t know what to do.

If the police come— and they
will
come; he believes, somehow, some way, they’ll find him— he knows they’ll think he’s insane.  Bob understands he probably is a little bit insane by now but that’s because the finger, teeth, and eye inside his skull are very real.  They aren’t figments of his imagination.  The extra body parts are causing his insanity; it isn’t insanity causing delusions of extra body parts.

No one will ever believe him.

He’s desperate, frantic, crying without even being aware of it.  He
must
get these hellish things out of his head before the police come!  Otherwise, he knows, there’s a good chance They might lock him up in a place where he’ll never be able to get the necessary tools to extract the seeing, chattering, feeling body parts!

He must get them out
now!

There’s nothing to be gained by waiting.  The machine is broken, it has no more Real Body Parts to dispense; Bob can’t expect any more help there.

He’s on his own.

He moves to the dresser where he put his keys and wallet, snatching up his pocket knife.  He opens up the biggest blade, looks at it, and thinks it’s entirely too puny to cut through bone.

Seeing and feeling brains, hearing chattering teeth, Bob goes into his kitchen, opening up his silverware drawer.   He takes out a long, sharp, serrated knife.  He chooses it over a butcher knife, knowing he’ll need to do some sawing in order to uncap his tortured brain.

He doesn’t know if he’ll survive the procedure and he doesn’t care.  He dimly remembers that the brain feels no pain, so, once he gets through the sensitive scalp, he thinks he might actually have a chance of saving himself before the police come.

Bob guzzles all that’s left of his Captain Morgan’s, polishing off the bottle.  He hopes he has more than just a little pirate in him.  He hopes there is also a little brain surgeon in there somewhere.

The chattering teeth seem particularly furious and they—  even more than the sight of his finger submerged in bloody brains— are making it harder and harder for him to think.  And yet he still has enough presence of mind to wrap his head in a couple of towels before beginning, intending to shield his old eyes. 

Having one eye seeing through blood is more than enough for him.

Bob looks at his face in the mirror as he brings the knife to his forehead.            

His entire body clenching up, Bob begins to cut.         

The blood flows in a torrent, attempting to break over the towel dam in order to get to his face.  The pain is bad but not hideous.  He finds that by concentrating on chattering teeth, he’s able to ignore his screaming nerves (and screaming throat) and keep right on cutting.

Bob attempts making a circle completely around his head.  He hopes to slice all the way to the bone, so he can lift off his scalp like a cap.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t cut deep enough in spots.  He has to go back and do more gouging, and even then, he seems to be just making a mess.

Finally, bleeding profusely, he suddenly shrieks at the top of his lungs as he reaches up with both hands, grabs his hair, and yanks as hard as he can.

There is not only pain but a terrible pulling and, even through his wailing, he can also hear the rip of skin being flayed.  A large irregular chunk of scalp comes off in his hands, exposing his bloody skull.

Bob drops his hair in the toilet, then puts his head between his legs, afraid he’s going to pass out.

The teeth in his brain quickly drive away unconsciousness with their chatter.

Bob turns on the faucet, splashing cold water on his face.

He looks again in the mirror at his exposed skull.

Smiling, seeing and feeling brains, hearing chattering teeth, Bob picks up his knife again.

He begins sawing into bone.

******

The college girl Bob frightened in the laundry mat does indeed call the police, who respond quite quickly. She is just down the street from the laundry mat, standing outside the closed liquor store, when she sees Bob exit the laundry mat and run off into the night.

The police arrive a few minutes later and the girl takes them into the laundry mat.

Bob didn’t realize it but he squashed every single body part, more than three dozen of them, and every one created an enormous bloodstain.  Discovering enough blood to easily fill a real human body, the patrolmen call for back-up.

Only a few minutes later, police dispatch receives a call from two of Bob’s neighbors, who have been awakened by his screaming.

Four police units converge on Bob’s apartment building.

After speaking with the neighbors, the police knock on Bob’s door.

When he doesn’t answer, they eventually break in.

By a weird coincidence, just as the police break into Bob’s apartment, Bob finally breaks open his own skull.  Out of sheer persistence (and aided by an electric knife he retrieved when the manual kind proved less than effective), Bob has made a hole in his skull big enough for his hand.

His third eye watches, amazed, as the entire top of the skull is removed, allowing direct light to make bloody brains even brighter.

His eleventh finger twitches in anticipation.

His chattering teeth are eager as ever for more fingers to bite.

Watching himself in the mirror, Bob plunges his hand into his own open skull and begins rooting around in brains for stray body parts.

He dies with his hand in his head, just as the police burst into his bathroom, pointing guns at him.

On the coffee table in the living room, on top of a stack of
Playboy
magazines, beneath Bob’s shirt, a tiny heart in a plastic egg stops beating.

The autopsy is performed by a veteran coroner with thirty-six years of forensic experience.  What he finds in the victim’s head, still glaring and chattering away, causes him to scream.

THE END

   THIS HAS BEEN….
Fishing in
BRAINS

         for an
EYE

       with
TEETH

 By William Markly O’Neal

Author’s Note to You, the Reader….

The cover artwork for this book is by Aleksandar Žiljak.   Thank you, Aleksandar, for your help with this!  Also thanks to Ruth Egan: my wonderful editor.  This anthology is dedicated to Ruth.

Trinity County and everything I describe there— including Bullet Lake and the city of Middleridge— exist only in my mind.  Trinity County is based loosely on Wabash County, the rural Indiana County where I grew up.  My late father first told me a version of The Legend of Bullet Lake when I was very young.

If you enjoyed this collection, please recommend it to a friend or two.  Also please return to the Amazon page where you purchased it to rank it from 1-5 Stars as you see fit.   If you would write a short review of it, I’d be especially grateful.  The success of
FISHING in BRAINS for an EYE with TEETH
depends on people like you!  I would
greatly
appreciate anything you could do to help me spread the word about this horror collection.

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Thank you
very much
for purchasing this book!  I hope you enjoyed these
Thirteen Tales of Terror!
William Markly O’Neal
[email protected]

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