Scary Holiday Tales to Make You Scream (21 page)

Black Elvira was at his throat. She raised herself up and looked into the bawling man's eyes.

"Don't you want me now?" she asked. "You've got me." She clamped razor sharp teeth down onto his throat and ripped it open.

The Were-Fairy-Princess ripped open Jake's shirt at his stomach. Then she ripped open Jake's stomach and scooped out his soft insides and fed upon them.

For a time only the sound of smacking lips and chewing was heard inside Monster Mart.

The dragon backed away from what was left of Bobby's body and went behind the counter. He started to shake all over so fast that his green skin became a blur. The shape of the dragon's body changed. The back legs grew longer. His spine straightened out. The lizard snout receded into the face. The old oriental man was now back to looking human again. He quickly dressed into the clothes he'd left behind the counter.

Master Po, as he was known to the Monster Community, would let the girls finish their meal. He knew they dropped by to pick up Vampire's Nectar, a beer laced with blood, produced by Monsters Inc. The beer and other beverages were made to curb the cravings of members of the Monster Community. Po was Chicago's distributor of these products.

His mission, as with all the members of Monsters Inc., was to help the young of their kind find ways to fit into society as useful productive citizens.

Sometimes, the humans didn't make this easy.

Po watched the two girls as they finished up with Jake and moved on to what he had left of Bobby. They attacked his body voraciously. Po's appetite wasn't what it used to be. He was getting old. The girls wouldn't even leave bones behind.

They were good girls. Po knew them from the neighborhood. He hoped that tonight wouldn't influence them toward feeding on humans unnecessarily when there were alternatives available.

He brought the girls two rolls of paper towels. One for each of them. They were good girls, but their table manners left something to be desired.

Bob L. Morgan Jr.

lives in a suburb of Seattle Washington with his wonderful wife Judi, stepdaughter Natalie and their insane cats Patty and Fritz. In the late 1980's and early 1990's he went to college In Victoria Texas and saw print in several college publications. He then didn't write for publication for the next 10 years. Bob's wife talked him into giving fiction writing another shot after she read some of his old stories and was impressed. His short fiction has been featured in House Of Pain, The Writers Hood, Splatter Punk, Short Scary Tales, The Murder Hole, and Savage Night. He currently is a staff writer at SavageNight.com where he reviews books, and movies.

Current projects include the novel, Blood For The Masses as John Dark and as always several short stories are being worked on at the same time. He welcomes any comments and questions and can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected].

The tradition of celebrating love on February 14 originates with the Roman Empire. It was the time to honor Juno, queen of the Roman gods, also considered by Romans the goddess of marriage and women. February 15 was the Feast of Lupercalia. On the night before the Lupercalia celebrations boys would draw the names of girls from jars; they would then be paired with the girl for the festival. Often these pairings were to last an entire year. As one might imagine, this frequently led to marriage.

The Catholic Church recognizes three different saints bearing the name Valentine/Vanlentinus, all of whom were martyred. As for the Saint Valentine after whom the holiday is named, there are many legends. Three facts are constant in all the tales: Valentine was a priest, he lived during the third century AD, and he fell out of favor with Emperor Claudius II (also known as Claudius the Cruel). It seems he was beaten to death and then beheaded.

In one legend he was jailed and eventually slain for refusing to give up his belief in Christ. After being caught worshipping in a temple he was imprisoned, but during this time Valentine's romantic side showed itself and the jailer's daughter fell in love with him. When the time of his execution arrived he left her a letter, signing it "From your Valentine." A second legend states that Claudius banned marriage because it not only prevented men from joining the military, but married men in the army pined for the loved ones. Despite the ban Valentine continued to perform Christian marriages in secret. He was caught and sentenced to die. In some tales Claudius attempts to convert Valentine to the worship of Roman gods only to have Valentine attempt converting him to Christianity, after which Valentine is sentenced to die. In any event, he was declared a saint and in 496 AD Pope Gelasius declared St. Valentine's Day.

Eventually the Catholic Church attempted to subvert and eliminate the Lupercalia celebration traditions by substituting the names of young women with those of saints. They were only partly successful, as the act of young men and women choosing each other on Valentine's Day became intermingled with the act of choosing patron saints for the coming year.

During the Middle Ages young people would draw names of the opposite sex from a large bowl. Then they would wear the name on their sleeve for a week, originating the term "wearing your heart on your sleeve." In fact, the day only became increasingly superstitious (or "pagan") with additional beliefs heaped on over time: if a woman saw a sparrow on Valentine's Day she would live happily with a poor man, a robin meant her destiny was to marry a sailor, a goldfinch meant a millionaire; cutting an apple in half and counting the seeds would also reveal how many children you'd have. Today people merely celebrate with the exchange of cards, candy, and flowers. The first of these St. Valentine's Day cards was sent by the Duke of Orleans to his wife in 1415; he was imprisoned in the Tower of London at the time after being captured at the Battle of Agincourt.

For couples, the day is used to add a bit of romance to relationships, while for singles the suicide rate spikes (ending the "suicide season"). The day is also remembered for the St. Valentine's Day Massacre of 1929, during which organized criminals butchered their rivals in broad daylight. Other St. Valentine's Day facts from the United States: fifteen percent of women send themselves flowers, three percent of pet owners give gifts to their pets, children give each other and teachers over 650 million cards, crime rates tend to go down, and many stalkers use this day as an excuse to finally introduce themselves to their victims.

- John Edward Lawson

By Shawn P. Madison

Click.

Cupid Montgomery walked down the center aisle of the large parking garage toward the mall entrance on Level B-2, her two week old red convertible parked about forty feet behind. Her heels clacked loudly on the pale concrete of the platform, the sound reverberating off the walls in the confined space. Such a lonely sound, it reminded him of just how lonely his life had become.

Click.

He watched as she almost stumbled in her rush to make it into the huge glamour store anchor of the enormous shopping mall, it was three minutes to five and she was working a last minute shift to cover for a co-worker

Click.

His camera began to whiz and whir as it automatically rewound the film. Cupid Montgomery, looking stunning in a tight blue dress that fit her curves in all the right places, dark stockings complimenting the creamy tones of her face, disappeared through the thick glass doors and glitzy lights of the mall entrance.

It was February 14
^th
, Valentine's Day, and Detective Ian Phillips wasn't about to allow a Cupid in his town to become the twenty-second victim of the Cupid Killer.

"Damn," he muttered and shook his head in grief as he scanned the many computer printouts of photos lying atop the dark manila folder sitting in his lap. There was just enough light in this section of the parking garage to allow him to see the terror that the twenty-one pictures contained. Pictures of young women, once beautiful, now nothing but horrible figures depicted in death. The long-lasting legacy of the Cupid Killer.

Every one of them missing their hearts…no…not missing them, that was wrong. They still had their hearts, all of them, when they had been discovered. When these pictures had been taken. Just not in their chests where they should have been.

Instead, the hearts had been…had been placed in…

Ian Phillips wiped sweat from his brow and upper lip with his sleeve. The terror etched on the faces of the dead women in the pictures was starting to get to him. No matter how many times he scanned those faces, mourned them for the atrocities they had been subject to, it didn't matter. The fear in their eyes, frozen there over time, called to him through the years…

Twenty-one years in twenty-one different cities. All major metropolitan areas. Always the same MO. Always in the same manner. Always the same type of girl. All of them named Cupid. All of them young or relatively young. All of them beautiful.

He'd been following the case for the past six years, ever since Cupid Montgomery turned sixteen. There were twelve females named Cupid in this town, a relatively big town but not a huge metropolis. Eleven of his Cupids were too young, too old or too ugly to fit the profile. But Cupid Montgomery was just right. A stunningly gorgeous young woman from a wealthy family. Not into drugs, not too overly promiscuous.

No, Cupid Montgomery was just right.

Detective Ian Phillips hoped this Valentine's Day would be just like the past five; uneventful. There were more than fourteen thousand women named Cupid currently living in the continental United States, nearly three-thousand of them fit the Cupid Killer's profile.

But only Cupid Montgomery both fit the profile and lived in his town. Phillips tore his eyes away from the terrifying pictures, wiped a bit of wetness from his right eye and took a deep breath. There were more photos in an envelope on the passenger seat, but those were of Cupid. His Cupid. The pictures he had just snapped off would be added to his collection once he got them developed. Pictures of Cupid Montgomery on each Valentine's Day since she had turned sixteen. Pictures that he hoped would be added to next year when he snapped off some more shots of the beautiful red head, still alive and breathing. Still with her heart where it should be.

The odds were against the Cupid Killer striking in his town this year, Phillips knew. Especially with another lunatic running loose in the local area. The Hangman Killer, as the media had dubbed him, had proven to be slick with a belt and hard to capture. He had killed twelve so far in a three-state area, the epicenter of which lay just a few miles from where Phillip's car now sat parked. Serial Killers seldom intruded on each other's territory, at least according to all the studies those psych-jobs at Central Precinct were always quoting. So why did he feel something different this year?

Why the feeling of deep foreboding, of doom and gloom?

Phillips shook himself in the cramped driver's seat of the unmarked car. Pulling a double-shift tonight was not something he had been looking forward to. Yet, he felt a need to be closer to Cupid this year than ever before. Felt it deep inside. Call it a cop's intuition but Phillips just had the damnedest feeling that tonight was going to be different.

It was a cold February evening and the car stank of stale cigarette smoke and the cheap cologne he still got from his kids each Christmas. His small apartment across town was dark and lifeless, had been for the past three years, ever since the ugly divorce. He wasn't about to sit there on his couch watching any of those annoying romantic Valentine's Day movies on the tube. Besides, Cupid Montgomery was only working a five-hour shift tonight.

Five hours. Not too long to sit here and wait for his Cupid to leave the mall and drive back home to her plush apartment in the Hill-Court Estates. Paid for by her rich daddy, of course.

No, Phillips decided as he glanced one more time at the disturbing pictures sitting in his lap. Not too long at all.

"Hey, Cupie Doll," Buddy Daniels said and winked as Cupid walked past. She gave him a sly smile and walked over to the time clock to punch in. "I didn't know you were working tonight."

"Yeah, me neither, until about two hours ago," she said and noticed, once again, exactly how cute he was. Buddy had only started working here about three weeks ago but the two of them had immediately hit it off. They were both currently single and, although he was a little quiet, that smile of his always got to her. She wondered often, with just a little disappointment, why he hadn't asked her out yet.

God, he's so cute…and me on Valentine's Day without a date…

"Hey…Cupid," Buddy called to her back as she was about to enter the sales floor. She turned and tried to hide the smile that had been trying to play across her lips. "Do you want to maybe get together after work, you know, for a little dinner or something? I mean, it's Valentine's Day and we're both just gonna go home afterwards and I just thought…"
"Of course, Buddy," she interrupted. "I'd like that."

She saw the ends of his mouth curl up into a smile and a softness came into his eyes. "Great, that's really great."

She nodded at him, slipped him that sly smile again, and left the employee break-room. Maybe Valentine's Day would turn out all right after all…

A door opened in the pasty gray corridor, about thirty yards down from his hiding spot beside the dumpster, and he watched an older gentleman dressed in a maroon apron and work clothes drag two bags of trash his way.

There were more than forty doors lining both sides of this corridor, rear access ways for various employees to rid their stores of trash unseen by the ever important consumers who kept them in business. People who handed over their cash and swiped their little plastic cards to the tune of nearly a billion dollars a year in this mall alone.

The corridor itself was nothing spectacular, bare cinder block walls and concrete flooring lit only by dim lamps spaced every twenty feet or so and covered with small metal cages as if the bulbs trapped within were hot items on someone's theft list.