Tales From Under the Concrete

Tales From Under the Concrete

Tales From Under the Concrete Douglas S. Taylor

Copyright Protected @ 2012 by DarkWorks Entertainment, L.L.C. All rights reserved. No part of this e-book shall be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, magnetic, or photographic including photocopying, recording of any information storage or retrieval system, without prior written permission of DarkWorks Entertainment, L.L.C.

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Douglas S. Taylor

For Annette, Joseph, Mark, Donna, Laura, and to all the fans of adult horror

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Monster End this god damned suffering! You made a monster of me through all your wicked lies forever tortured by you Abandoned at death’s cold door Until I said no more Don’t look away you’re just a former regret of mine And when you want, just look away you’re just a mistake in living Erasing now You made a horrid rock star of me Gave me this wicked vile life Living, I paid to be tortured by you A life I now abhor And still I say, no more Think over all of the rancid shit in your mind Think over and come to grip with it Think over all of the shit in your little twisted sick mind, all said 4

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You made a fucking monster of me Don’t look away you’re just a former regret of mine Lying in a pool of crimson blood before my feet, your life drains out Erasing now

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Sins and Shadows Sometimes in the dead of night at Soul’s Midnight my spirit trembles with trepidation in the recognition that my sins shall return to me and in this, it would be more than I can bare knowing in my life is filled with the misgivings and deeds that burden my own that is stained by blood. Tonight, I fear is the last of such a night. On this quiet night, I can almost hear the hounds of hell just off in the distant hills coming from afar to gather me. I can also sense a shadow through the night past the darkness, past the sheeting ice and snow blowing down a bitter breath with seething dim red eyes caressing his calloused hands abiding in the thought that my time is drawing to a final close. The shadow, like the hounds of hell itself also draws closer to me as winter is joining with them and before the white blanket of snow covers the season’s past. I too, my mortal remains that is; shall be resting with my fathers and my soul awaiting the hell that shall take me in open arms as the very dogs I speak of 6

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will rip and gnash at me in the dance of doom and despair in the eternity made specifically for me. As my flesh rots from the bone, as the worms eat away at my brain, my soul will already suffer a thousand torments as I look upon the sea of the damned and will recognize those that I have expeditiously sent before in dispatching their lives from this earth before us. The grimacing shadow lurks outside my window in the storm, I know he is there, and the hounds close in. Still I wish as my fading eyes look upon the candlelight at my nightstand as it flickers in the damp chilling draft through this old dark house that has seen more death and suffering than any abode ever should that I would have the strength to kill one more. Oh, to drag one soul with me on this eternal ride into the bosom of eternal life-everlasting of suffering and true pain. It is a pain that I too must endure through the ages of time, least so it seems. Cursed is this place I live filled with the many horrid sights and blood curling screams of those who pleaded, who begged relentlessly before I would end 7

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the suffering of their very lives as their blood would bathe and soak my talented hands in their deserving deaths. My basement from under the bloodstained floorboards into the damp soul below, a graveyard of fellow miscreants that I sent to the very place I too shall join forevermore. Beyond my own window of my dying bed, there lies a forest, a black forest where the mighty dark pines stand as witnesses to the grim burials, the disposals of the villages below along with the wayward traveler that lost his or her way through the thick maze I know like the back of my now trembling hand. These haunted woods on where I freely and masterfully stalked. In my last moments, one might think that I would have sympathy for all those that I have savagely slain. Besides, you will find “sympathy” between “shit” and “syphilis” in the dictionary. For I have none for any of them. I just wish, desire that I killed so much more. They all needed to die, alas, everyone. Some whores, tramps, trysts of most every kind. Those I 8

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especially love to take my hands and squeeze the rancid life from within them. Then there were the lustful who feed on the flesh of the young, the too young such as the very late Father Thomas indeed. Yet, one would call me a monster. Father Thomas would coax these tender young boys to his rectory. I guess to have at their innocence attacked like a wolf to a lamb. This is what happened to the Anderson lads who are marked for life. Joseph and James will never be the same who offer tossing of hands to pleasure men and more behind the taverns throughout my little village and the next. Most men at my age would find themselves surrounded by grandchildren and loved ones as he waits for death that will inevitably come. Death will whisk him into the damnation waiting on the other side. No, I lie here in near darkness only surrounded by the ghosts of those I violently dispatched. The only other satisfaction that I have and hold dear is one day, on terrible and dark day, the authorities will come to know all those that I have slaughtered. They will find all the wretched as I laid them in the shallow graves. Some of them quite dismembered, others whole only missing their heads 9

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or mix-matched that I so often enjoyed doing as I did with young Sister Lorraine Grattan, the silent Catholic Nun by day, the moaning harlot who favored older married men by night. Least in her darker and unquenchable mission of the lusting desire for ignorant niggardly black slaves housed behind the mansions she frequently visited were so readily available to put her into the arms of god, so it were. These very same slaves, all who should have seen the brutal end of a lash before having their necks stretched hanging on some old oak by a road as a morbid sign as to warn all the others of their kind. Likewise, this will certainly happen to them if they should mess with the local white women as the beasts that they are. I am most certain hell is busting at the seams with these lost souls of ignorant slaves. What would heaven be like if the souls of these people were made to flourish there? Thinking of this young whore, this Sister Lorraine Grattan gives me some measure of joy that the hottest flames of hell are reserved for all those raven10

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haired Irish wenches such as herself and her deceptive ways. I see her even now upon her frail pink knobby knees sobbing bitterly as a black demon takes her by her filthy ass stretching it beyond one’s own imagination as she counts her beloved rosary beads in her trembling adulterous hands in repentance to a god she so mocked in life. Now as the dark shadows come up like the dark mist from the basement they draw nearer to me in hopes of some measure of retribution of their untimely demise as I recollect thoughts of their last moments in this life as they relish in my very own among them now. Oh, how I wish I could have killed so many more, so many more indeed. Still, the shadows draw near and my heart heavy with the burden of my sins now beginning to come and visit upon me now in my last moments as the hounds of hell draw nearer, and nearer still, the hooded dark one behind the storm. I shall die with a frozen smile upon my face… 11

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The Lady in the Black Veil Deep in the remote central part of America nearly lost, there lies a museum in heart of a small northern Black Hills town of Deadwood. Inside this small museum that most people pass in their day to day, passed the Bill Hickok pistols and historical souvenirs under glass, up the steps and to the right lies a picture of an era nearly long forgotten. In this faded picture in a tint of cigarette smoke brown, is a woman standing in a black dress and matching veil facing the camera’s eye. She stands on the corner deep in Deadwood’s past and because of the veil covering her face, little is known. If it were not for the fact that she was standing on this corner in front of the first rendition of the Franklin Hotel that was burned down to the ground in a heap of ashes just days after this picture was presumably taken so long ago. It would be lost to all of humanity to this very day. Nonetheless this photo, this image casts an eerie spell on whomever walks up the polished wooden steps of the museum and gaze upon the woman, the lady in black looking back at them ever so strongly 12

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through the veil. Some say, the “Lady in Black” peers into their very souls, disturbing as it may seem to all that is caught in her haunting gaze, gripped in momentary fear, little if anything is known with the exception noted by the few. A group of old men share a table with a single candle burning and the flame reflected off their glasses of brandy, behind them a soft glow cinders from the fireplace. It will be dawn soon and beyond them, the soft snow falls on a windless morning. The elderly men, the oldest a white haired man in his mid-nineties glares down at his glass and begins to speak after gently clearing his throat that the other old men, most in their late seventies and early eighties can listen carefully. “I believe she is returned from whatever hell has released her in her continuance to exact revenge.” His voice through the gaze of his cloudy grey eyes that lost eyesight a couple of decades before seems to light up only a bit in recalling his thoughts as this mystery relives in his mind as only as if it were yesterday nearly ten decades before this night, before this telling. 13

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“I’ve only seen her once when I was a small lad, just after my father died… Before he was found killed in such a way...” His voice faded slightly as he gained his breath and strength into telling of his account reliving within him. The youngest, a man in balding reddish hair smoking a pipe sat there looking off into the darkness as his father, the older began to talk gently drawing in the smoke and exhaling the smoke taking a drift, a life of its own above the men below. “Cora Sanders is her name and every so often as the nearly forgotten story goes, her ghost walks these very streets as she did in life. However, she stalks those responsible for her murder and their offspring. All those who were directly responsible now find themselves lying in a cold depth upon Mariah Cemetery keeping Wild Bill and those odd fellows company in the eternal shade of the pines for some time. This fact doesn’t stop her from going after their children, and children’s children. Cora, this mystery of bitterness to those who have seen and even less of those who dare speak of 14

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her sighting was a whore and quite an opportunist

that originally ventured out west from a place called Danville, Illinois so I remember, so I am told…” His voice fades again slightly and then pauses only for a moment. “Cora in life came out with her husband, a man much older than her. Some say that she was barely fourteen and her husband in his early forties, a doctor of sorts who later died around 1880 from an Indian attack near Spearfish. Falling suddenly to her ill misfortune and from what some men have said was quite a favorite of the gold-panners and miners. She became a common whore. This of course, Sanders quickly became nothing but a curse on many a wives’ lips. Occupational hazard, I suppose.” He slowly drank from his glass as his arm and hand tremors due to the mix of old age and the telling of this woman. “She then started a brothel here in town, no more than a stone’s throws away…” He pointed over into the darkness in the direction of the only window in the room. 15

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“…It is said that old man Adams even called upon her from time to time. Her kind only saw the more elite of Deadwood’s society back in those days. The religious and the wives tried a couple of times running her and the other whores out of town. It is said that she was with Sherriff Bullock himself more than just on one occasion… She got around.” A ghost of a smile crossed the old man’s face as he continued. “I was a small boy when I saw her, she always wore black and in the finest of clothing. Her eyes were a penetrating blue, her skin like whitewashed porcelain, and her dark ruby thin lips adorn in a snarl by nature. I remember how she turned my blood to ice in just a quick gaze before my mother drew me away by the arm from her cold callous shadow cast.” He drew another sip from his leaded crystal glass as the other men in the room all hung on bated breath. “She died violently…” “…Cora died by being stung by the hatred of others by the old cemetery. Though you will not read anywhere about it in any paper from the day. The religious people caught Cora, bound her, and fueled 16

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by some false sense of self-righteousness and indignation of the wives in whose husbands catered to made damn sure Sanders was going to with her life in which they made for certain that

the she pay she

did. Cora was old then, that was sometime in the mid 1920’s I believe…” Pausing only once more looking over at his son smoking the pipe and looking at his old father who looks upon him realizing his dad is actually seeing him and continues, “…Before they stretched her neck, she vowed that hell itself would not stop her from coming back and exacting her revenge upon all those there. Also the revenge would carry on to their children and children’s children, right! After the hanging, they cut the rope, left the noose around her neck, buried her in an unmarked grave, and face down without so much as a casket. She has stood good on this promise of hers decades before. Now she has returned once again standing good on this very promise. But she will not have me; she will not drag my soul down with here in that wretched abyss…” 17

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The oldest of the men then rested leaning fully back into his chair drawing up his blanket and turning his direction to the slow burning fireplace.

His eyes frosted over once more, as the others to include his son looked at him and watched him draw his last breath as his living spirit left this world. “Hey, did you read this morning’s paper?” A blonde busty woman wearing pink looking somewhat surprised as she read the Black Hills Pioneer paper while her hair is being dried under the buzzing salon hair dryer while she is chewing gum and not waiting for anyone to reply, she continues. “Old man Harley Johnston passed away early this morning. Damn, he was such a nice man.” She continued reading in silence with a concerned look upon her brow. “Fuck, says he lived ‘till he was ninety-six. Man, that’s a fucking long time, right?” Her dark eyes darting through the article before she read it aloud by the request of two other ladies, one on each side of her also getting their hair dried. 18

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“Yeah, no shit. It says…” She begins reading aloud. “Harley Damon Phillips Johnston died early this morning of complications resulting in a heart attack. His son, David Johnston says that he died in the company of him and several others while drinking a brandy and sharing some history of Deadwood when he passed on. David Johnson, 74 says that his father passed quietly. Police and an ambulance were called. Mr. Harley Johnston was pronounced dead on arrival at the local hospital…” The beautiful blonde is cut off by the brunette woman to her right, “Oh that’s so sad. I liked Harley; he was such a nice man, always a smile and something nice to say always, Annette.” The lady in the middle holding the paper looked at her, “No shit, that’s so sad.” The other lady just nodded her head in silent reflection in agreement. Annette continued reading aloud as before, “… Funeral services are yet to be announced. Mr. Harley Damon Phillips Johnston is survived by his son, David Johnson, and two daughters, Bridget Morris, 68 of Spearfish, and Elizabeth Kroner, 66 of Rapid 19

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City. Harley was a loving father, hard worker, and a laymen historian of the region…” Annette paused with a certain genuine sense of remorse as with the other two women listening.

“Looks like old Harley sure had a lot of grand children not to mention a lot of great grandchildren too.” Annette added. “That’s a shame. Least he lived a long life…” She paused putting down the paper and looking at the other two ladies briefly in wonderment. Meanwhile across town in a seedy bar on the south side a man walks into a small bar beneath the busy Deadwood Street above, the former jail of the town now a smoke shop as well. The slender man in a red baseball cap sporting a black tee shirt sits up next to the bar as a much larger and blond bearded man turns to look at his latest and only customer through his thick wire-rimmed glasses. “Joe, how the hell are you?” The bigger man, the bartender asks with a smile. 20

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“Fucking fine, I suppose.” “Hard day at work or something...?” Careful not to pry too much into Joe’s uncharacterized morose attitude as Joe takes off his hat exposing his low-cut balding scalp. “Something along those lines, I suppose. The usual, John...” “Sure thing...” John the bartender sets Joe up with a draft beer as Joe puts some of his balled up money from his right front pocket haphazardly on the bar along with fetching a pack of half-opened smokes from his shirt pocket and lighter. “No, today at work was fine, I suppose. No, it’s something else…” Joe grabs a clean ashtray from the top of a couple stacked to the right of him. He looks up at the television and watches a music video of his favorite band, Mushroomhead. “Damn, that’s a kick-ass band.” As he fetches one of his smokes from the pack and purses it on his bottom lip as he looks over at John pouring a frosty mug of Budweiser under the tap. 21

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“Business slow today...?” Joe answers back with a smile of concern, as his left hand is ready to light up the small black Bic lighter as his arm is now resting on the bar by his elbow.

“Yeah a bit… Should pick up a bit later when the suits get off work in about an hour.” Slides the draft beer a foot to Joe’s left. “This one is on me, Joe?” John sits back down on his stool directing his attention at the television, widescreen plasma playing a music video. “Hey thanks John, how’s your babe, Vaughn doing? I haven’t seen her in a while?” John turns his head slightly as “Simple Survival” by this band begins on the television without making eye contact to his only customer and answers, “She’s fine… Doing great...”

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Joe takes a deep drink from his mug of beer and then puts the cigarette back into his mouth and lights it. “How’s your fucking sister?” John says with some measure of false contempt raising a smile on both of them in doing so. “Bitch is probably still at the salon no doubt. If not, on her laptop shopping at ‘Etsy’ or some bullshit like that.” Joe’s smile leaves looking back at the television and enjoying the music. Joe raises his eyes and then remembering something that he heard earlier today at work, “John did you hear some shit about all those wolves everyone was supposed to be hearing up in the hills above town the other night?” John turned down the television slightly with the use of the remote lying nearby turning to Joe fully, “Yeah, you know that half fucking crazy guy?” He pauses looking down at the wooden floor at his feet attempting to conjure up the name. “Fuck, Vaughn knows his fucking name. However, he’s that asshole-author, writer, or 23

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something. I think you met him down here once, a big guy, long hair, and a loud motherfucker?” “Big guys, big mouths, and long hair...? Shit that doesn’t narrow the field here in Deadwood.” Joe just smiles as if he just ate the cat. “His wife works at the hospital or something. She’s a receptionist of some sort.” John looking a little puzzled in the attempts to figure out the man’s name. “Laura?” Joe asks.

John’s face lightens up a bit, “Yeah, she’s all right but her husband is something else.” “Yeah, I know who you are talking about. Shit, can’t think of his name either. However, he’s the fuck that found you in the cooler all fucking locked in there one day, right? Same person I am assuming.... You were all fucking passed out stoned to the bone sitting on top of a keg of beer, right?” John’s ghost of a smile just left him. “Yeah, motherfucker, that guy.” 24

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“When I saw you like that, I about lost it, funny as hell. Yeah, I know who you’re talkin’ about now.” “Funny fucker, John... Yeah, anyway my sister Annette knows him better than I do. He wrote something on her Facebook the other day when she got off work and she called me all fucking crying and acting like an ass-clown. I thought she was hurt or something at first, but she was laughing and trying to tell me some shit he wrote… John gets up from his stool and adjusts it so he can easily sit down directly on the other side of the bar, directly across from Joe as he leans closer as to have more of an intimate conversation. “Let’s make damn sure that Vaughn never finds out by you that I passed out in the cooler, right?” Joe leans back slightly looking serious at John, “Sure, dude. Whatta ‘bout Laura’s husband...?” “I’ll catch him when he’s alone and tell him to keep his fuckin’ mouth shut.” John paused looking back at the television and then back to Joe. “Anyway, this fuck comes down here talking about it – The wolves’ thing. Vaughn was working 25

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over there, he was bringing her the shop’s computer back he just fixed, and he was telling her about the wolves howling up by the Mariah Cemetery the other night. Somehow he hears shit, shit no one else hears and tells her that some people living up by there said they saw things, you know, strange shit.” John pauses. “What kind of strange shit?” “Strange shit that kind of shit…” Pauses again before he continues waiting for Joe to gulp down the rest of the beer and gets up to re-load his mug

drawing a couple of bucks from the balled up money on the table. “…Yeah, that fucker smiles at her and she falls for his shit all the damned time, and goes on to say that a couple of people swears that they were seeing some sort of animals walking on their hind legs and running around up there in the woods. Police were called, but nothing said, nothing in the papers anyway.” John sits the mug down in front of Joe and continues talking as before, “Anyway, this fuck says 26

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that he doesn’t believe what a couple of these people thought they saw, but the wolf population is coming back into the Hills. That’s the shit he tells Vaughn. Now that’s bullshit enough, right?” Joe thinks for a second, “No John, I just read in the Black Hills Pioneer that the Game, Fish, and Parks said the same fucking thing and there is more than enough physical evidence and all. John, yeah man, it’s true.” “No shit?” John looks seriously at Joe. “No shit… So this guy comes in and says that to Vaughn, big deal, right?” “Yeah, she believes in that sort of thing though?” “Wolves...?” “No, the fucking werewolves and shit... She already thinks this place is haunted.” “Heard that too... Listen, Deadwood is full of spooks, right?” “No, not just Deadwood, but the shop here...”

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“Used to be an old jail once upon a time, right?” Joe quips. “You believe in ghosts?” John asks back looking as serious as ever at the smaller man. “Sure, why not?” “Fuck me…” John pauses for a second, “Mobley, you’re fucked in the head. I think your sister kicked your fucking ass one too many times when you was growing up as kids. “Shit no, she was too busy shopping and sucking dick when she was growing up.” Joe begins to laugh as John looks seriously at him as his smile is returning.

“You’re a sick fuck, Mobley!” “Werewolves in this day and age…” Joe pauses as the two turn their direction to a woman standing before them by the side door in the darkness. Neither of them heard her come in. Both take notice that she is wearing a black old fashion dress and a black veil covering her face. 28

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She seems to glide over to the two in her high heel leather boots. She moves right up to the bar next to Joe Mobley as John rises up. The television is disrupted and clicks off killing the music as Joe notices the change in temperature. The neon sign above the bar behind John also shuts off. “Didn’t hear you come in. Can I help you?” Under the veil, she turns to look up at the towering man through the veil losing his smile. Joe flashes to John standing there looking oddly as his lips are turning blue and John beginning to grab his chest in pain as terror wreaks across his face.

“What the fuck? John, are you okay?” John doesn’t answer and falls to the floor lying on his back thrashing with his legs in unrelenting pain. Joe leaps up and goes around the bar looking at the woman in black, but she is gone as quickly and as mysteriously as she appeared. Joe checks John who is lying very still with his eyes gleaming up at the ceiling.

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“John, fuck John, can you hear me man!” Joe finds no pulse frantically and dials 911 on his cell phone from his left pants pocket. Joe sees before him, John’s eyes glaze over in death and his skin turning pale and then slightly purple. Joe yells on the phone to get an ambulance to the small bar. John is caught eternally in death as Joe looms helplessly over him… Joe now standing back away from his dead friend looking up in the thick glaze of morbid fear in death at the ceiling of his shop as the white blanket is now covered across his bearded face.

“So tell me again, Joe…” A tall baldheaded policeman stood there questioning Mobley as he shook barely believing all that he just saw. “It was a woman about five-foot-three or so all in some old fashioned black dress.” Joe is now looking down at his dead friend on the gurney and 30

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now being rolled to the doorway leaving the shop to the ambulance on the street just outside. “What color were her eyes, what did she look like?” The policeman writing everything down as Joseph spoke. “Her face was covered up by some sort of a veil from her hat or something. You know it was like something from a funeral that a woman might wear in going to or something.” He moved his hands over his face as he sat back down on the stool. The policeman didn’t get much more from the only witness to John’s bizarre death that seized his face in mortal and fatal fear that would at a glance disturbed the most veteran in homicides and deaths. Deadwood doesn’t see that many deaths let alone homicides. Sure, there is always some stingy and greedy old fogy that has a heart attack or animism and keels over still clutching a coin or a bill to stick in the slots but as for this, well, this was something different entirely. Shitting their drawers on the way down to the casino floor… The officer thought in reflection. 31

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The policeman looked down at Mobley sitting there trembling and going for a cigarette, another policeman was calling John’s wife. There will be two policemen arriving at her house to tell her about her husband’s death. The security tapes were being pulled as the tall bald policeman was looking at Joe. This would tell a lot more as two policemen were in the other room looking at them right now. This would of course, clears Joe and show what really may have just happened. Joe drew in deep from his cigarette as the two policemen came out and pulled the older balder one away out of Joe’s hearing. The shorter of the three, the one with dark blue eyes and raven short hair with a long slender white nose that reminded Joe of a man that looks more like Washington Irvine’s Sleepy Hollow’s Ichabod Crane than a cop in Deadwood.

Sure, Joe knew this cop well, he should. The cop was caught fucking his sister back in junior high school when Joe was in Deadwood Elementary. Joe 32

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glances over at the skinny nervous excuse for a cop in a look of unconcealed contempt. Joe sat there looking at the three cops and something came over Joe as he thought about when he caught Ichabod Crane literally caught with his pants down around his knobby ankles in Joe’s father’s barn. Ichabod had his index finger up his sister’s ass with her legs spread as wide as she could spread them and nude from the tits down trying to shove his half-limp dick in her. The thought, this awkward memory of his sister’s precarious position resting up against the fresh hay was a sight to be seen when Joe stood there as his father opened the barn door did raise a smile to his face. As Joe recollected, the surprise of his sister’s face covered in fear, anger, and shame decades ago brought another flash of a smile across his face looking at Ichabod still trying to shove his prick in something that didn’t belong to him anyway. Joe remembered his dad sending the scruff off his daughter and across the barn’s floor as the boy manages to get away running past Joe standing there in shock before laughter would consume and send his own little body to the ground in utter hysterics. 33

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Ichabod has a real name, but Joe couldn’t remember it just now. His sister, a popular girl throughout school had so many boyfriends. Annette loved the boys, and the boys certainly loved her back in spades! In this issue alone about his sister, his father sent her young ass to boarding school down in Spearfish and if her father had his way, she would have entered a covenant. Joe thought about that and had to look away so the others standing talking there wouldn’t see him smile. They would ask at all the goddamned oddness of it all, and how the fuck would explain that one! “We couldn’t see shit on the video. None of the cameras showed anything unusual except for that side door opening up itself and then closing like someone was standing there opening it to come in. Nothing more, and then of course, the two men looking at something that just wasn’t there – Like a fucking ghost!”

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“Keep it down for god sakes; this is impossible, are you saying like a ghost or something did this?” The balding cop asked. “Yeah, well I mean no, but it wasn’t Mobley doing anything. It clears him and backs up his story.” The younger man said. “Okay, he can go then, get a fucking copy of the tape, the chief will want to see it. Have the lab look it over too. Maybe they can pick something up that we ain’t seeing. The last thing I need is the fucking public learning we have another genuine ghost in this town.” An hour later Joe was sitting in shock before his sister Annette telling her of the latest news. News, especially bad news travels lightning fast in this small mountain town. He wanted to tell her before she would hear it from someone else. Sitting at the bar he began to tell her as her blue eyes darted back and forth and before she began to hug him for his loss. After all, she loved her brother. Rumors would begin and the truth is strange enough, something that Joe himself witnessed firsthand is having more than enough trouble with rationalizing.

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In over 100 hundred years as Joe began telling his sister about the death of his friend, John. Many years before all of this strangeness, along a forgotten logging road west of Deadwood on a bright unusually warm day a tall dark man, a logger was just finished with his team of horses with the logs he just cut down. The man, a Scotsman wiped the sweat from his thick red brow. He looked over and could see a small figure of a woman walking up the rugged path. He knew in an instant she was lost as he could see the confusion in her face in that white dress and corset. He figured her for under the age of eighteen. He also recognized her as the well proportionate whore from the Swearinger Saloon, a former young wife if his memory served him correctly. Least her snatch may be broken in, the fucking whore. I’ll teach her but good…” “Looks like mill will have to wait for the logs while I may plant my own, ladies.” He whispered into the ear of one of the horses he was holding the reigns before letting go and moving closer to the woman unknowing to her. 36

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A moment, he ripped off her dress and began raping the woman as he used his large hunting knife cutting through her corset and using it as a weapon. He exposed her pink supple nipples of her breast not to mention, exposing her ivory ass in the air. He then put the knife to her throat, “You struggle, I will gut you bitch!” as his drool came down on her cheek as with his other hand undone his dirty bibs pulling them down passed his hair ass and skinny long pink legs. “It just ain’t your day, you nasty slag!” He then rammed his well endowment of his nationality deep into her resisting ass, missing the vagina completely and not carrying in the least as the pain riddles across her face as she is being solemnized. She began to bleed as he thrusts in her like a brutally wild animal under the warm sun and gentle breeze of the northern Black Hills. The young woman would be repeatedly brutally raped by this man, this foreigner then beat senseless and left for dead if it were not for a young mountain boy finding her bent unconscious over a log in her filth and mire. It would be the last she would ever 37

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wear white, and it would be the last she ever would be unarmed and taken advantage again. The young boy was sworn to secrecy about the whole affair and something that he would take to the grave with him. As for the logger, he was never brought before the law. Though justice sought him out soon enough as they would find his body chained upside down to a tree with his throat cut and left to bleed out. Some of the folks at the time suggested his naked body was hoisted up and then these misgivings were then done to him. There was no evidence as to whom it may have been or how many there were. “Someone with a shitload of hate…” were the whispers going through camp. Some say, he had it coming as if some folks knew of the evils this man was akin to in the least. Others just didn’t like him, said he was marked by the devil due to his lazy left eye. As sensational as his death and those things surrounding his death may have been, the locals quickly forgotten themselves with it – It’s the Black Hills way, just turn away, and forget things and with 38

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hope, the problem will just go away – The South Dakota way. As for the woman brutally raped and solemnized by the logger, some say that she beamed a smile that last several days, a smile that just seemed to lower the temperature to near freezing in most any room she walked into. Others spoke about her natural beauty in like manner; she is beautiful like a dark rose in a bitter wind turning your blood to ice in the latter years. However, she became a very popular whore among the married men of the town that eventually led to her own demise. As for the logger, he had children, all boys, seven in total that came over from Scotland as grown men conducting in some part, an investigation into their father’s strange and vengeful death without any success. The sons settled down, two became loggers and assumed their father’s business. One of the boys was found near Strawberry Hill dead. He too was strung up, and some say, lynched like his father. Others say it was the second eldest, a son as “shit house crazy as the father” who wanted the business all to himself. 39

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One thing led to another and the crazy son soon found his neck in the noose as the horse was slapped from under his tied hands in the name of justice, which was in 1900 by Sheriff Bullock himself. By 1912 or 13 most of the older sons were killed in some sort of strange accident or death of some sort. As the years passed, a mining accident, a suicide, a jealous husband of one of the boys having an affair with an underage daughter and some began to speak of some sort of a curse among the family of the logger. Some years later, there would be a succession of shallow graves exposed up where the old logging camp was. All these graves were of underage girls, all showing signs of the throat-slashing ending in violent deaths. As years passed, there were many odd deaths in Deadwood, mostly from the gold mining’s darker elements, gambling, crooked saloons, whores, and thieves of the not so Wild West days as these days faded. Nonetheless one thing lingered on in area, the curse of the logger’s sons continued and were visited to their children and then when the old whore was finally put to death up at Deadwood Mountain where 40

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the bones of Wild Bill Hickok reside conducted by the angry Christian mob and the jealous vengeful wives things grew almost quiet. Even in spite of a world war and statehood, the whispers of the old whore never went completely out of mind. There were these gossips who said that the whore who got her neck stretched would make good on her promise as those directly responsible where tormented by the haunting of the “Lady in the Black Veil” and those knowing knew this apparition of a woman was far from being a lady. Some of the less inept to things of this matter said that the ghost of this woman would come around ever ten to twenty years collecting the souls and lives of the children and the children’s children of those that murdered her in the name of God. Some even said that she might have made a direct deal with the devil himself. Pastor “Big Al” Burns was the first to find himself as a result of the whore’s promise. They found him hung in a whorehouse on the south side of town. Two eyewitnesses, two German whores about seventeen years old said that a dark woman with a veil 41

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came and forced the Pastor to hang himself. Then there were several of the church elders and their wives driven to madness and rage. Three were shot down in this rage; one imprisoned and later hung in Yankton for the slaughter of some of the churchgoers, these same churchgoers who were there in the hanging up at the Marias Cemetery. Some say that there was no escaping the curse of this woman. Others say it was nothing but just bad karma going around, and others just buried themselves in whiskey. Still, her ghost would come around and exact her pound of flesh. Little to Joe’s knowledge that the ghost of Cora was exactly what he saw as he sat there talking to his sister about the details of his friend’s death and the woman in black. “Wow, you expect this ghost is out to get people?” She sat there halfway drinking a cup of coffee in waiting for Joe’s response. “Yeah, I mean, yeah, I do. I mean there she was an all. Do you remember when we were kids about that old story about the whore that they hung up on Deadwood Mountain, do you remember?” His 42

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blonde headed sister took a sip of coffee and in doing so, she remembered part of the old story, a nursery rhyme that the little kids used to sing, a perverted one in today’s standards. “Yeah…” Her eyes reflected to a time long ago, long before she was haphazardly giving Ichabod her first blowjob as he fumbled around exploring her anal and vaginal cavities back in her dad’s old barn. “Joe, it was just a fucking story to freak us out when we were little. Shit, come on…” She paused looking at him from across the table. “Maybe there’s more to the old nursery rhyme. Maybe Cora really existed, maybe the ghost of that woman I saw that killed John is that old whore?” Joe’s eyes lighten up at the possibilities that this whole thing could be true. “No fucking way, Joe….” Annette slammed her coffee cup down firmly on the table and pointed a harsh warning with her finger just inches away from her brother’s nose. “…Fuck, people already think you’re different, half in the bag and all. You and that fucking Dave 43

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Sulentic doing all those drugs back in high school and all. I mean, just keep that shit to your-fucking-self…” She withdrew her slender French manicured finger from out of his face. Joe just looked at his sister with a measure of contempt and lit up a cigarette, “You should quit that nasty habit.” She said with a scornful grimace. “Speaking about bad habits, I saw your boy, Ichabod today. He was at the scene.” Joes couldn’t help but to smile as he could see his sister nearly squirm. “Whatever did you see in that boy anyway, you know with such a baby dick and all?” He giggled slightly. “Fuck you, Joe…” She looked away. “Anyway, what about Vaughn, she must be a complete mess with John now dead and all.” Joe changed the subject. As the two talked at the small restaurant casino, across town in another casino is an owly older lady, a lady by the name of Roz Peirce. Roz is sitting in her high chair tending the casino's cage where she is reading from the Black Hills Pioneer paper through her horn-rimmed cat-eye glasses. 44

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Deep in her reading, she barely saw a slender woman in an oddly black dress and veil come up to the cage rather slowly. “Can I help you?” A question bitterly seasoned with contempt of the interruption of her reading and a response that most people received from her. The woman stopped directly on the other side of the barred window and lifted up her veil exposing the half-rotting fleshly skull and empty black eye sockets that looked like two windows deep into the bowels of hell as the jaw dropped hissing Roz’s name. This revolting apparition sent the Roz leading back against the far wall grabbing her small-depleted breast in agonizing pain, as she could not take her eyes off the apparition’s nightmarish face. “So who was the first to find her?” The big balding policeman was talking to an Indian man who had beer on his breath and seemed a little too drunk to be seen as anything credible in his eyes.

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“The fucking midge…” The Indian pointed at an older woman nearly bald herself with thinning blond neck-length hair. This woman is Ardene, an overly plumb midget with a scorn for a smile by default. Ardene was now sobbing and talking to another policeman. The bigger cop turned to the Indian, “Okay, chief, you just had your last beer here, so if you are not ready to join the rest of your fucking tribe in jail, I’d beat it, okay?” The Indian man said nothing else and left in a stumbling hurry out of the small casino. The officer then went over to the gurney and lifted the sheet looking at Roz’s stone cold face stretched in morbid fear. “Boy, the fucking undertaker is gonna have his hands full with that old whore?” The heckling voice belonged to another bald headed man, a fat older man about six foot five by the name of Waldo Taylor, a cheap owner of this seedy casino barely staying afloat in the great depression plaguing the nation. Waldo was certainly right about two things, Rozella was an old whore before it all ended back in 1986, she gave Waldo and the cop himself, their first blowjob while they were juniors in High School. 46

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Secondly, it would take a Leonardo da Vinci on his very best day to make Roz look presentable – Old age is something that Roz was never graceful in pulling off.

“But she sure could smoke a good cock back in the day, right, Dan?” Waldo smiled and reminding Dan towering next to him still holding the sheet up on Roz that Dan was like summer school in having no class at all. “Anyone ever fucking told you, Waldo that you look like the phantom of the opera these days?” The comment didn’t faze Waldo. “Took you long enough to get here…” Waldo continued and then his voice changed into a tone more serious. “There was nothing on the tapes, I mean it showed the Midge serving the drinks and getting her fat ass felt up by the chief you just kicked out and Roz reading a paper but…” He paused and giving Dan a moment to glare back at him. “And...?”

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“That old cunt acted like she was talking to someone right in front of her before she grabbed her sagging tit and fell back.” It was the second time today that Dan heard this from someone. “Did you give a copy to us?” Dan asked. “Yeah, yeah, whatta make of that, you know, with Roz and all?” Waldo asked. Dan shrugged his shoulders, “Who knows who really knows with these bitches anymore.” He said looking down at Roz’s covered body as he looked at two of the EMS guys motioning them to take the body away. Dan is very troubled about the whole thing. Two dead and two by semi-natural causes no doubt. As the midget began to explain in detail to the other officer about a woman dressed in, all black to include a veil over her head stood before the deceased. Can’t bring a fucking ghost to jail and it isn’t murder otherwise. Still, something is scaring the life out of these people. Dan thought to himself in troubling silence.

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Yet there would be a third strange accident before this gloomy day would finally end. Joe got into his car and realizing the snow was coming down harder than before. He needed to get a few things at the grocery store up in Lead’s DakotaMart. In doing so, he pulled out his small pipe from the glove box and looking both ways seeing his sister on her cell phone getting into her own car watching her drive off and no one around. He lit the wellpacked bowl with his lighter as his eager lips sealed the mouthpiece he drew in the smoke of the high grade Marijuana. “Damn, Noodles grows the fucking best around, and that ain’t no bullshit!” he says as he turned up the stereo in his older late model AMC Gremlin. A few hits of this shit will put me smooth together… He thought to himself. He then started the car that seriously needed a new exhaust system and began heading away only after taking a few tokes more before putting the pipe away. As he drove feeling the full effects of the herb taking hold of him and the music of Mushroomhead’s latest album as he sensed a delayed reaction of 49

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someone or something looking at him from behind him. It is she, the woman in the black veil in his horror sitting right behind him as the blood left his brain causing him to pass out as he drove headlong into an oncoming snowplow that lost control. Most folks would say, “Joe fucking fainted like a twelve year old sissy shitting himself…” and they would be right. In a huge ball of flames, Joe awoke only to find him crushed and being burnt alive. He saw a shadow of a man on the other side with a small fire extinguisher but it was no use. The fire then consumed Joe causing him to scream in the sheer agony as the music played louder and the ringing of a cold-blooded laughter of a woman filled his ears, as was the last thing he would ever hear in this world. Later from the wreckage as the first responders would pull the smoldering remains of one Joseph Mobley from the ashes, clutched in his right hand was a piece of fabric, dark black, and later to be found as a woman’s 19th century veil that survived the flames.

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The Revelation As I stand on the precipice of my own life, I stare into the dark abyss and know what I am, and all the things that I know I shall become. The dreadful apparition of these things to come, I fully embrace. For too long I have rejected the Darkness and only drawn from the Light foregoing all that I can be. Yet, always drawn to the Darkness, I now understand completely those things that providence demands upon my very soul. With all, that I suffered feeling like a criminal with this dark burden revealed I know what must be done, what I must do to be complete, to be whole, to be… Me. The pain of my soul that screams through the frosting doors of my very heart I now embrace, to consummate this Darkness in the purest evil, in the purest of unadulterated energy as I now reckon with completely. I lift my arms up to the unforgiving turbulent sky and peer through the four chaotic winds in all the 51

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loathing they carry. I see the eyes of the One who created me for his own design, as I am now the instrument forged from the foundry of the whitest and hottest of flames looking down upon me. I am drawn from the very steel of the seven hinges of Hell itself as I am beaten upon the anvils of the damned through my life’s experiences of both pain and suffering the mysteries now come clear. As I see myself in my truest ominous form that knows no bounds of these mortal coils of life that held me back so long that deceives no longer, my mission, my purpose is now with the absolution of clarity as I shall not waiver, I shall not fail, and only persevere victorious. Fear has left me, trepidation removed, and Hell itself has no grasp for I am one with the dark forces that made me of what I am. My resolve passed that of any commonality I find foreign to me now and all the former now passed. I see beyond the trivial of the mortal man that feels, touches, and comprehends. I am far beyond that now as there is no turning back as I see you like a cowering dog retching and hiding among the refuse in the bowels of all humanity. 52

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The Promise of Pain Everlasting I draw strength from in this misery. I see the pastures before me of the Promise Land of the multitudes from the Fields of Sorrow that each wretched soul will spend an eternity grazing from that I bring upon in this place, this world, this realm I know as the Dark Heaven and the vast Oceans of Violence beyond the bleak horizon stained with apathy that describes those I feel here trapped for all eternity I bring. I see revelations upon revelations, schemes within schemes like many mirrors held against one another, and plans within plans as a cacophony of madness fills my ears of the Sirens of Insanity that steady me, encourage me, and excites me for the purposes that will come to absolute fruition. Now cloaked in deception, betrayal, and conquest I will prevail. There is no peace there is only contempt. There is no love there is only hate. There is no remorse there is only bitterness. There is no compassion there is only violence. As I turn from this realm and peer into yours. I see you cities, your marvels, your skyscrapers that 53

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look like tombstones against your skies. I shall come on the wings of disease, pestilence, vengeance, death, and Hell will follow. None shall be spared, none shall escape, all shall cry out to the heavens that will remain silent in your just demise. I shall use the Sand of Time to wash away the vile traces of your legacy as if you never existed at all. Your newborn shall die as they sleep, your children destroyed before your eyes, the mothers wail in grief, and in this, I shall rejoice as your world is blackened as you dine upon the ash of the ultimate inescapable destruction. For it is I, the Desolate One, the Harbinger of Doom that shall come forth only to return once more…

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Promise the Moon I don’t remember how it started, I don’t know how it ends World keeps turnin’ makin’ me dizzy, feels like I blew it again Living in the judgment of others and feeling the guilt I know everyone has their own problems When I was young, they told me this would be easy When times got tough they were changin’ their tune They should of told me that they were teas’n When they promised the moon I walked through all the doors, read all the signs Felt I had nothing’ to lose Each of us you know we’ve got our own problems We wear the same kind of shoes, Yet I feel I was always walking’ alone Why do they lie Why do they promise you can touch the sky Why do they lie Why do they promise the moon I always tried but it never seemed good enough I always tried to make others happy but it never 55

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was enough, Always seemed so alone when they promised the moon For Steve Anderson, RIP and Godspeed…

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Opiate of Innocence I smoke the toenails and hair of the wise man under a black god’s thumb. We dance like painted puppets as I eat the wise man’s eyes in hopes that I may see. She bleeds orgasms in techno-color as an ocean of alien mystery of revelation in hopes that we might flame the lights fast enough to see the darkness if we kill quickly enough. I burn the dry dead shell left behind as the virgin swallows my promise of acrid pride. A funeral chant that our eyes can open wide enough as the pulse quickens as we dance we eat the brain and pray this celebration of dead skin that is scattering into dust to the four bitter winds as the blossoms fall screaming to consume you in the glory of pain you have suffered throughout the winters of your life. I feel every flower that is the earth and the sky you have cradled. So is the way of forever, the earth and sky entwined in your beatings in the cold damp tombs teeming with simple dark cruelties of wretched hands and dark hearts deep in the abyss of madness? 57

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There she is seen with flowers in her hair smiling like a child with blood on her hands lifting up her dress and beneath it, her gaping vagina gives birth to a demon to devour its mother in violence. The dark whispers of madmen chant as all rejoice in the afterbirth given. Still, like the child who smiles even in death that consumes her. Like a butterfly dancing upon the stream she begins to scream only to be revisited upon her again, and again drowning in her insanity. High above the precipice of the fading realities, the cloud of lies come with the scent of many horrors to deny the wretched of the truth crushing the hopes of the faithful who dine upon the turbulence of despair. Far away, a death toll is heard in a chilling chime rolling in the acrid air that burns the lungs with the swarm of pestilence as the dark circles come clear around your eyes blackened. Your soul now discarded, disgraced, and dismembered only after impaled upon the stake of a thousand sorrows from atop a hill of hot coals of morbidity’s temple. Your bones pounded to dust and smoked in the bowls of lusting demons that wait for the opiate of innocence that intoxicates the maddening minds sung by the sirens of whoredom. 58

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Diamond in the Rough For my Laura… I was walking along under a terrible storm where most would stay safely indoors. There in the mud I stood where most would call me a fool. There under the flash of deadly brilliance, I saw you lying there. I picked you up and cleaned you off stunned by the utter good fortune bestowed as if the gods smiled upon me in that very instance. I smiled and whispered in my most solemn and ancient of tongues on how beautiful and how much a treasure you are to me and for my soul. For you are the diamond in the rough and the storm loses it foreboding sting and the danger passes above me. For it is I that is truly blessed beyond the realm of reason…

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Lust under the Full Moon Under shimmering glare of the full moon and where only the clouds pregnant of rain as my only witness of the spell I lay upon my latest victim ripe for the taking. Something deep within me begins to stir and the lust rises up white hot for the brunette tasty treat wrapped all up in a nice tight and very sweet ass. You know the kind that makes you easily murder another for without giving another thought as I did so many times before? I desire her so very much that I will rip out a beating heart out of a wife-beating chest just for the asking, just for the single opportunity for some midnight mayhem as to stretch her long white neck as I enter her body while sinking my longing fangs deep in her neck in doing so. Her body in my will, in my grasp, desires me, aches for me to be inside her as she gasps in the fulfillment under the mystical moon where time itself seems to pause for this one special moment. As to feel her quiver, as her tender body is wrapped around me while inside of hers in a deadly 61

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passionate embrace is the very thing that keeps me going throughout all the centuries? I begin nibbling on her earlobe tenderly as the blood released from my bite runs down her porcelain neck like black ink under the moonlight down across her supple heaving breast in knowing full well she desires nothing less than for me to ravage her, to have my complete unnatural way with her, and making her body and soul ache as one desperately waiting for the release. Her breath is warm and becomes quickened by my long swelling deep inside of her as no other man can touch as I can feel her nectar begin to flow down from within her to the very tip of myself and down my legs as I know that she struggles to maintain a sense of control as her body begins to spasm with each gentle but deliberate deep thrust within her. Her dark eyes barely open as I continue to feed upon her sweet blood and enjoying her special fragrance of her trembling body in my strong embrace of her in my arms. I lift her up so that I may fully enter her as she cannot stand no more and is released as her body grows limp and lifeless as the lovemaking becomes too much for her as my body becomes one with her, and her soul becomes one with my dark and powerful soul. 62

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I too, caught in this moment cannot stop as I begin to fill her, biting and sucking even more deeply until I completely drain here of her life, this life, in this reality. As for tomorrow night, I shall take another soul, and with it, the very same…

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The Dark Knight You’re nothing more than just another nightmare fucking with me. Who will remember your name when I am finished with you? You’re just another dead one living and in that, your time draws so very near… I swear upon the Seven Stones of my ancient bloodline that you too shall come to know your bloody end and in this fact alone, I swear it by the very blood that courses through my very veins… Let I, Douglas Scott Taylor, the last of the ancient Pictish come and stand before the vast brink and with this I shall stand and draw the very life from within you. I shall dine upon your demise and rejoice with the children of the Nameless One upon your very death. The heavens will watch as my ancestor will be vindicated and my linage proven true as Hell will tremble with trepidation. All that shall remain will be your bleaching bones picked clean by the vultures that already surround you.

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Come forth demon of the night and taste my resolve in cold steel. Look upon my seething hatred forged from the purest of ingots of contempt I have for you in knowing all created from the very foundries of the Hell you claim to be from — Demon… Your false religions and beliefs shall become exposed in your final moments as your own deception is unveiled as you look up into my eyes of revelation upon revelation played out, as I am the very last face you shall see on this earth – This I promise with all my beating heart. Your trickery, deceit, and maligned false power shall evaporate before you like the darkness that cannot comprehend the light. For it will be I that shall overcome your deception and see you for who you actually are. Oh yes, be it known demon-bitch, you are truly revealed unto me and there is no place in this life or the next that can conceal you from my gaze that stretch beyond the four corners of reality and the skies above me…

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Come and embrace my power through the wielding of the cold steel of truth. Taste the biting and gnawing bitterness that awaits you as your blood shall warm my blade. Know that there is nothing you can do but to feed my blood lust in spilling yours who torments only in the shadows and dare not comes out into the light of day. I shall come into your den and drag you out for all the world to see and free you from the very coils that bind you to this bleak existence you call a wretched life. Reckon the foreboding fear that troubles and quickens deep within you for the first time as you realize the Charger standing before you is not as of a child but as a warrior who treads heavily upon your dark and sinister soul and boldly mocks you in your treachery demon-whore…

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Jack Be Quick Jack be nimble, Jack be quick… Picks your pockets, turns some tricks… Selling his soul for a gram of grime… Jack heats the spoon over the candlestick… Slow and steady, he has the time… Lacing the strap, looking for the Promise Land, true in finding his mark… Jack draws back riding the lightening… Enjoying the show, he shutters, he shuffles, he stumbles… The heart beats like a dozen monkeys on the trampoline… White to red, red to gray, gray to black, he falters… Mouth goes dry and eyes roll to times past… Jack be quick, Jack be dead… Nobody will miss, nobody will care… Remember: The more medicated, the more dedicated…

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Love Lost As I stand before the single solitary marble and granite monument of the only remnants of the life of my truest love ripped from my being, my soul, my heart, my life from me now remains in the loudest silence I have ever come to dreadfully know – The colors of this world dim to only shades of gray and the skies are forever darken – She has passed from this life to the other. I pray through my tear-stained eyes that she will not languish for anything anymore. My heart cracks a thousand times a day and my spirit is saturated and forever stained in sorrow. I wonder through the shards of despair if I too will not collapse in the final rest that awaits in the distance where I too will shed my coils of this life and join her in eternity – My death cannot come quick enough as I am consumed in utter crippling despair. Akin to the inseparable bonds that shall hold past mortality is my only hope as the final day is my only resolve. Nevertheless, will she come across the troubling seas of both time and space for me who waits on bated breath?

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My soul silently screams within me, “I want to die…” as I pain for deliverance to be with her through time without end. The loss is far too much for me to bare that crushes me, causes me to lash out in bitter anguish as my fist trembles as it smashes against the cold dark marker of her epitaph. In my mind, I am tormented, haunted by the memories that I have taken in a tragic loss of not seizing every moment of being with her as I took these very things as for granted and now I must pay as seconds have turned to hours, and hours into months. However shall I go on, must I go on, and for what? How shall I continue in a wretched world of loss, my love? There is of no answer to comfort me…

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Breakfast A murky shadow of murder crosses my tainted callous seething heart of hatred and malcontent as I stand here. My eyes darken with a sign of a welcomed demonic presence as the unadulterated venom pumps through my adrenaline-fueled arteries of raging revulsion of the one who is below unaware as to her own fate to unfold. The exciting scenes of aversion fills my thoughts like ghastly depictions of rising doom for the one sitting below me as I raise my claw hammer to dispense the very first of many a fatal blow down upon the revile I know simply as “Cunt.” Eat up, bitch, eat up you miserable rotten street-corner whore! Only a sinister voice inside the chasms deep in my own ominous mind lashes out knowing full well that no one else can possibly hear the murderous opus. The orchestration of Death’s certain coming satiates my mind as the chords are played out in this macabre symphony that only I can hear, only I can taste, only I can feel. The hammer raised in tempo 70

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waits for the climax of the decisive notes and then as the queue from the malevolent sprite signals the blow in the wicked epitaph to befall. I stretch forth as high as I can raise the deadly weapon as my eyes gaze upon the redheaded crown belonging to the rancid whore below. Nerves of hell-pressed steel I wait for the addendum of signaling the bone-crushing drop of sudden death as I now receive from the pensive demonic note gathering of the horrid musicians within my own lunacy as the hammer falls with the great vengeance of all out hell itself! With each menacing strike of my noxious blow, the musician of hell itself follows so precisely. Blood splashes with the mix of both brain and bone against my face and not one utter from the quarry below. I rise up methodically to the beat of the music within my clear and nefarious mind plays viciously out. Again, and again, I strike, and as the same as before, more blood sprays upon me exiting my senses of arousal as a man. 71

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She falls in her bloodstained robe as the cereal mixed with emerging from her atrocious mouth usually spewing a cacophony of insults under a torrential cloud of obscenities in her abrupt past. Her bereavement of this life now spared along with my disdain fully consumed, I pause only momentarily to gleam over the horror I created. I sit the blood soaked weapon down next to the box of cereal in which she was reading moments before the Sirens of Hell sung unto me, strengthening me for the dejection that unfolded. Yes, she twitches in her mortality as I read upon the blood-spattered orange box, “Breakfast of Champions!” Indeed, mother, indeed, causing a brief glance down at her shattered skull of a face that will be next to impossible to discern. A closed casket funeral will be in order I am afraid. Pity, she would have made a wonderful corpse to gaze upon before feeding the worms in the hereafter in the gaping wound of a bitterly dark grave. Nonetheless, I am ravished from my latest exploit. I now sit down without another care to her on the floor and the pooling blood forming. I begin 72

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to eat where she had left off, and now, the only sound is the resonance of my own pet that I call “Sophie.”

My calico cat quietly and gracefully glides across the kitchen floor to feed upon the dark pool of blood. Kitty must dine well on the latest rendered spoils that I created, “Eat well, my precious, eat well.”

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The Vision I, son of Kromaethius, son of Metetitus, son of Partheaus, the last of the loyal prophets of the forgotten nameless gods in which I dare to travel as a vestige with purpose of the telling of the things to come. As I weather across both the seas of time and space to stand before the Furies. The Seven Sisters of the Ancient Stones of Caledonia — The Painted People, I arrive. It is here in these highlands that know of no conqueror that has yet to tame the savage hearts of these people known as the Pictish. In these lands to the far south beyond is a wall created by the hands of the Romans who have tried to stretch forth their abhorrent rule only to be never found again as the will of this land now covers their rotting bones and turning armor to rust in returning back to the earth once more. Over five-thousand of the wretched fell to their deaths preying to their false gods to include their golden idols as this army was utterly destroyed before the runes and sacred stones of the blue people of the horned gods. Some, those from the foreign land who escaped were only later caught and like those before, 74

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slaughtered upon the natural alters surrounding the dark forest among me now. It is here among these hollow woods that I come to be aware of the bleak runes that remind me of the telling of the bloody accounts of this feral now lying just under the moss beneath my very feet. Not even they, the foreigner’s animals survived. None were spared, no not even one to allow a harkening of the impending doom as a warning to others south of the wall of their own halfhearted spineless monarch in a distant land of debauchery, harlotry, and immorality to dare defy the gods and go as those before them suffering the very same fate. Here I am the servant of the resolve, the very will of those mysteries that has sent me to presage both the mind and soul of the children of this land. Let it be known that I, greater than the charlatans who call themselves druids that has become as blind as those from the south of the truest path come and show you the truest sight. I come only to enlighten. Take all those that speak in opposition of the revelation, the, prescience, the prophecy and spare none with their lives. For they are the children of desolation and the Great Whore… 75

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There will come many from both the east and to the west that will bring the tyranny of their false god who shall claim many miracles done by the works of a demigod. Behold, this too shall be deceptive. Take sword, stone, ax in hand and smite them that bring these deceitful teachings in the times of your children’s great grandchildren, as the “Age of Great Bondage” will indeed be visited upon the nations of the Sea People and your realm as well. From the dark waters, I was drawn as the antediluvians showed me this formidable revelation through a still pool… Among the shadows of the four great angels who faced in all four directions apposed from one another; north, east, south, and west in their midst arose the dark one known as ‘The Fifth Angel.’ This, the Fifth Angel stood among the others with a skin of whitewashed porcelain without blemish and hair as black as coal. His eyes are two dark mirrored maroon orbs cooling to a pitch soulless black and with him a long blinding sword to smite all those to oppose his purpose, which was at the time, a mystery to me to become known through the Sirens of Rapture who ushered in their calling yet another angel. This angel, one unlike the rest that I ever seen came down from 76

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the heavens in a shroud of thunder and light. As it stood towering before me, I fell to my wretched knees and legs give way in absolute fear. In that moment, a voice of many waters spoke to me inculcating to rise upon my feet and face the one who is standing before me with a human head of four faces akin to those standing with the Fifth Angel; each face looked upon all four directions as I took notice it was the Angel’s western face looking upon me through his dark crimson eyes peering into the recess of the deepest portion of my very soul. As I rose with my staff in hand, I rested my weight against as I have become weary of the very things I am seeing. My lips parched and throat dry, I endeavor to stand strong and true though in a futility that my kind agonizes proving that I like you, is only a mortal. In this vivid visualization of the things happening and those things that are about to happen. I bore witness to these fascinations as these obscurities in their secrecies became revealed only to me by the winged creature standing in bronze. 77

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I studied myself, I can see two sets of these wings of claret outstretched from behind him as in his hand he had a scroll made of what favors the human skin tied in a maroon ribbon of sash and a great seal. When he broke the seal and removed the sash to open the scroll, a great clap of thunder shook both the heavens and the river Styx far below. I fell once more and like before, told to stand. In doing so, my very bones rattled in dread as I grew as cold as the dead. In human blood the words of tongues long forgotten lost, I bore witness to as he spoke on. “Listen Son of Man and be forever warned of the mercilessness coming from the east across the sea. For I tell you of these things now. In the domain of the desert people arises a bitter religion of hatred though boasting love from a single god in a paradox of three. This false belief is laced with the abhorrent hypocrisies within hypocrisies, and stolen all from the former before it…” I gazed upon a field of woe and desolation of untold suffering of this mystery revealed to me. I stood there with my mouth open and unable to close as I saw man against brother, sister against mother, and kingdom against kingdom in strife and death in 78

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spreading these deceitful deadly lies. My heart heavy

with the insurmountable sorrow of the lies and myths spread forth out of the great sands. “Now Son of Man, look once more and see the things to come…” I looked up through my own watering eyes and like before, the landscape opened and I am able to see those mysteries shown to me once more by the great angel reading from the scroll. “A thousand terrors are yet to be revealed as the Great Whore of Babylon mocks the children of the innocents and drinks from her golden chalice with her bloodstained grimace as she wipes the lies with the sleeve of her crimson dark robe. She is the living embodiment of the great temple built by the perdition of wickedness in where the Seven Hills of Rome surround her as she sits upon her thrown. Look up here dais built upon the countless souls who hold her up as this is known as heaven of these forever damned…”

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Yet, I see these very things and their meanings revealed of things to come and to be suffered upon the innocence. “Look to see her vile that carries across the oceans as she knows of no bounds of her wickedness as the heavens trembles with trepidation…" I look once more down below my feet now as if I am standing above in the heavens where the gods reign and see three great ships and upon their sails is the mark of their untrue religion, the mark of both the Great Whore and the vicious lie of the one called to be sitting to the right of this abhorrent beast, this god of deception. “See how the seeds, the minions of the Great Harlot spreads to all the four corners of the known world…” As he spoke, I surely saw these things with absolute certainty upon the children of the Great Whore. I saw them divide into additional untruths from the one terrible lie making further accusations, lies, falsehoods, and works of boundless depravities upon one another in the name of their deity. I saw the persecution of those souls who stood against the 80

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mark of the Great Whore and to die and be tortured through unspeakable means. The divisions, these multitudes of disunions spread into building fantastic works to their own, for their own in an insincere humility and piety towards their very own divisions and each to their idolatry. They began worshiping their own works in the very name of their fictitious god stealing the blackest of lies and untruths from former religions and these wretched works of iniquities. All struggled to become as great and as powerful as their mother, the Great Whore of Babylon. She sits upon her throne in the Seven Hills of Rome as the greatest and most powerful mother of them all. The angel of the scroll began showing me of mighty wars, pestilences, diseases, and weapons brighter than a thousand suns burning both sea and stone into ash. As he read, I saw another religion born and spreading. Even in this bore, the seeds of damnation as the children of the desert proved no better than the wickedness before them. Seas of men prayed feverishly as they would come against all that were to be counted against them. 81

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As before in a time past from this one, the Great Whore, the harlot of them all turned and raised her arm against them, killing untold millions in the wake of her wrath spoken her ill will through a single man, one of yet to be many of her sons who dwells under her in what the angel of the scroll refers to as the “Great See.” Like a whirlwind, those things shown to me, and the mysteries revealed through these revelations unfolding I saw the end of this strange age fall in utter chaos and ruin as the great desert could not give up the murkiest of its own blood to fuel the children of the Great Whore. Kingdoms perished and whither. The desert dies as the blood of this earth ceases to flow. The Great Whore looks to the east and then begins to eat upon her own sparing no one. Scores of millions I see perishing long into the very dark night as even the water becomes too scarce to quench the thirsts of far too many for me to perceive. It is time of the great dying of man… All I see is lost as the armies of man die and become carrion, then bone, then dust into nothing more. The world becomes hot with wrath and the Fifth Angel is released to draw his heavy sword 82

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striking the Great Whore – She too dies wailing empty fruitless curses as her head becomes separated from her shoulders. Those minions, her children long dead she joins and becomes forgotten in this new age of despair and ruin.

All becomes black as I turn to face the angel of the scroll as he rolls it back as it was before. In a roaring of a thousand lions, he goes far into the heavens until I could not see no more. I look and all those others including the Fifth Angel are removed from my sight. I would think of it as all but a dreadful aberration of a dream if it were not for the mark that is placed above my brow to witness evermore that this not a dream but a prophecy from the heavens. Again, I see this world as the vision fades away embracing the familiarity surrounding me. I the Seven Sisters of the Ancient Stones looking down upon me as the runes etched into them are completely known only to comfort my soul in its truest meaning. Darius, the Elder 83

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Dark Justice The incessant ringing filled her ears and her vision was near dark except for the little blurred light at the end of the dim tunnel in the center of her limited vision. She felt a wave of cold numbness with a twinge of nausea from the rising after-taste in her mouth. Confused, bewildered, she struggled to regain consciousness, and attempting to gain control of herself in a state that she has no idea of in the first place in how all this has come to be. Her thoughts, confusing, bewildering, and with the rising fear is almost entirely too much for her. She is realizing two immediate things; she is bond and sitting down in a chair. Her vision was slowly coming into focus and at the end of the blurred light she was seeing; she could see a dark silhouette moving but couldn’t make it out. The wave she was just feeling moments ago subsided, her mouth dry and tongue swollen, still very confused as to what and where she is. There is something covering her mouth though troublesome to discern due to the numbness and confusion. 85

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A few moments ago, though it seemed to her blurred recollection, she was bent over her Formica kitchen table and Toby, her much younger boyfriend was pounding ever so feverishly inside of her. She remembered telling him, pleading with him, to put more of the K-Y lubricant on his penis to ease the jackhammering inconsiderate effects of their more or less, the lop-sided lovemaking. Toby was short on ‘the short strokes’ as he called it up inside of her, and she desperately remembered him to slow down. She remembers the downside of dating younger men; they tend to cum too fast. He wanted, pleaded on several occasions to have anal-sex with her. She wanted him to have a special moment, after all… She is 48, and Toby is not nor more than three days over 19. She wanted to do something special, something for his birthday. She obviously couldn’t take him out to her favorite Goth club for a few drinks since he isn’t old enough to drink alcohol, legally. This was the other thing to add to the 86

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downside of dating younger men, young men in fact. In some circles, some would say too damned young. However, she looked younger than most any 48year-olds, ‘three-time loser’ in marriage as he mother so often said in condescending negative tone, and not to mention, again, divorced with no kids. There was the often painful and very deliberate verbal lashing from her last husband as his brilliantly over-played, “Hell, you fucking kids now? You should be a fuckin’ teacher in Florida. Heard they’re lookin’ for people like you…” followed by the traditional and always expected clincher of, “…bitch!” at the end of the sentence resulting in the immediate conclusion of the abrupt conversations with the slamming of the phone on her part. He is just another asshole, why did I ever marry him in the fucking first place? She thought only for a microsecond as she struggled with the here and now. As she realized, she is still naked, still feeling Toby’s semen ebbing from the orifice, her anus as it is running down, pooling on the plastic leathered chair she is now sitting in. Oh, fuck what is happening to me did I fall or something? Then she realized by feel that her hands were resting 87

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on the table, but she was holding something with both hands. She tried to move her fingers, they are stuck on the surface of this object, and when she tried to move her naked sweating body, she couldn’t. She felt the thick tape around her waist and around the chair. The suddenness of the realization that she is bound to the chair caused her to attempt to break free – uselessly. She is bound… She can’t even move her feet as they were somehow stuck to the old and tarnish tiled floor. She tried with all of her might as she realized that she is securely bound. Her body, feet, and to include her hands affixed to this object that is somehow fixed to the top of the kitchen table. She comes to the painful conclusion, she is stuck, glued, or something. Laughter broke from the other side of her kitchen table, the shadowy reflection of a dark silhouette. She froze in utter fear as she struggles fruitlessly. “Go ahead, move if you want to, and struggle if you can.” The shadow’s voice, a deep rough 88

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unfamiliar male voice came for directly in front of her. It is one that she can’t quite place, and the dialect, American, but not from around here and saturated with utter mockery at her attempts. The tape, duct tape that she figured covered her lipstick smeared ruby red lips that Toby made a mess of in her brief oral escapades leading her up to bending over the table spreading her ass cheeks routine for her young boyfriend. Besides, that was the last things leading up to the moment of coming out of this darkness. The darkness she has no idea as to the nature of in the first place. Her flaring nostrils picked up a mixture of “sex,” sweat, K-Y jelly, deodorant, and her perfume with a biting twinge of something in the air around her lying underneath. There is the overbearing smell of some somewhat chemical like paint but only stronger. Then she remembers the unmistakable scent of gunpowder, but there is something else. Something that her everaccelerating heart and mind kept from her upon the smell of spent gunpowder. “You’re probably wondering what the fuck is happening to you…” She froze from struggling and 89

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attempting to control her almost insurmountable fear rising within her as more details are coming from this stranger’s voice. Her eye vision was just making out clearer shapes and in more light. Her overhead kitchen light was on, as if it was before as her boyfriend was thrashing inside her. “I know, I know, the fuckin’ million-dollar question.” The voice paused as she struggles to say something but obviously couldn’t. “You’re kept from talking, wouldn’t want your neighbors being disturbed of their watching of ‘True Blood’ or something, would we?” He paused again in a self-reflection blossoming in a small self-amused chuckle given. His voice seemed very confident and in control, she knew that much as her mind raced to struggle to figure out where he came from. He sounds like a typical ‘hood’ or someone on the “Sopranos” that Toby would like to watch on HBO. Toby, before he would have enough of the gangsters and divert his attention to her as he began rubbing on her tits, his hands fumbling under her shirt and bra on her rising and erect nipples leading to a short but furious 90

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episode of couch-sex before the ending credits would even begin roll on the particular episode. She would have to watch the encore presentation later after he went home to his parents. The thought of this almost caused her to roll her eyes in review of her misguided lust for younger men if it were not for the immediate predicament that she finds herself currently in. “Yeah, fuck it…” He spoke again as she realized that this man wasn’t from New Jersey, Brooklyn, or for that matter, on the east coast, but from a city, a big city and then it hit here somewhere in what he is continue to say. “Sorry about that fucking jack-off of a boyfriend of yours. I mean, I assume he is your boyfriend. However, don’t you fucking think so slut? I would assume, that is if I didn’t know any better, that he is more than young enough to be your own son” It was how he said “…jack-off” that sounded exactly like, “jagg-ofv.” He second husband was from McHenery, Illinois and once they went to a Cubs game some years ago, visiting relatives in Chicago. His cousin was a 91

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loudmouth gregarious sort, a real asshole that was born and raised on the south side and a notorious “White Sox” fan. Nonetheless, the voice belonging to the clearing silhouette coming into full view isn’t her second husband’s cousin in the least.

She struggled to scream through the tape of “What the fuck do you want, asshole!” “What’s that, bitch?” “Can’t quite make it out?” He mocked with laughter again. She heard him lay down something heavy down on the table before him. The light from above caught a reflection of it, it looks stainless or silver in color and by the sound of it being laid on the table with the thick scent of gunpowder in the air, she could only conclude it is his gun. Oh shit, where’s the fuck is Toby? The mystery man knew about Toby and her, he must have been watching. She figured that out now as she tried with all of her strength to break free. Her feet 92

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were as she realized earlier is glued to the floor as well has her fingers cemented into some object that she could, again, conclude was glued to the table. This explained the mystery of the strong chemical smell. “Oh, please, go ahead, keep trying. It will help you get through the little additives that I added to your mix of coke and meth you keep in the tiny packet of aluminum on the backside of your toilet bowl.” He laughed again as the overwhelming wave; a torrent of panic hit her as she realizes that she has been watched for some measure of time by this man, this dark and sinister silhouette on the other side of the table. She froze in fear blinking, crying at him, but still couldn’t make out much more as she is coming up with in the last few passing moments. “As you can figure out I had you pegged as ‘not as a brilliant person’. I have you pegged as crafty dodgy sort, an opportunist rather. Yeah, that’s it, fucking sure of it.” Her heart pounded so hard she thought it was going to burst with fear as he spoke. 93

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“Well I know you must be wondering about your boy you’ve been fuckin’, right? I mean, you just gotta be wondering, ‘where the fuck is Toby?’” He just blinked through her blue crying eyes at the figure now coming into full view. “Turn to your right.” He said coldly hinting to the floor next to her. Doing so, the terror seized her as she could see the blurring naked body lying in a pool of blood and her young boyfriend’s brain matter on the floor and up along the cabinet doors under the stainless steel sink of hers just a few feet away. Oh God, no, fuck no, not this, oh god! Her thoughts screamed as she tried to scream that was only a muffle. “Yes, take a few moments to let that all sink in there for you. Shit, it’s the fucking least that I can do for you…” The man paused as she looked down at the naked fetal position of Toby freshly bathed in his own blood. She looked down at the dead body of her young boyfriend as her heart is breaking. “Sorry about that, really am…” He said with almost a hint of remorse for her young boyfriend. 94

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“Young Toby was at the wrong place at the right time, sort of speaking that is.” She reeled her head around and yelling as loud as she can, “You fucking bastard!” “Yes, yes, I am almost certain of what you are saying, and we’ll leave it at that.” She could see the man make out a smile across his white granite chiseled shaven face. The other scent she couldn’t place was the blood and brains of her boyfriend in the air about them. He’s just been shot and killed before she came around. The shot should have gathered the attention of the neighbors. There is a moment of hope that help would arrive. She can see that this huge man, a powerful man with dark circles around his gleaming emerald eye blazing at her. She could almost taste the hatred and anger in them even in spite of her immediate condition. He is wearing a long black fabric coat, black leather gloved hands, a black baseball cap that read the White Sox “Sox” logo. His hair is a dark blondebrunette with red highlights. It is her job to take notice; she owns a hair salon down the road. 95

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“I seem to have gotten some of him in your blonde hair.” He flashed another smile as he nodded towards the direction of the top of her chemically worked blonde hair. The mere thought of Toby’s brains, or blood caught in her hair upon her head and now realizing from the left side of her face is almost too much as she struggles to keep from gagging. “Easy, old girl,” the man smiled again. She looks back at him desperately blinking to make out more detail of her captor. Her eyes meet the large stainless-steel cannon of a semi-automatic lying on the table with a silencer fixed to the end of the barrel. She began crying again, more so now, more so naturally. Her hope is dashed realizing that no one, no neighbor could have heard the shot being fired. Somehow, she is concluding that she isn’t going to survive this night. Her ass with the mixture of herself and Toby was causing her round ass cheeks to stick and a small measure of discomfort barely worth noticing under these conditions caused her to roll her hips slightly towards Toby’s direction to keep from sticking to the seat of the chair. 96

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“Yeah sorry for breaking up the wonderful act you two were engaging in. In addition, if it is any worth mentioning, I did wait until your young boy was finished. I then I walked up behind him when the special mix took hold of you – Took a little longer than expected, I admit. Nonetheless, hey, for what it’s worth, he didn’t feel a fucking thing. He literally fell right out of your asshole just fine and to the floor there.” He laughed a bit and rubbed the bottom of his chin with his left hand smiling and shaking his head in dismay slightly to her breaking heart, not to mention, a fake empty at of dismay on his part. She turned back to Toby lying on the floor; it was too much for her to take to look upon him any longer as she now focused on the captor before her. She is seeing clearly enough, in spite of the tears more so now. “So, I bet you’re fuckin’ wondering what this whole thing is about.” He paused as she just returned the same fevered pitch of hatred and contempt for this stranger as her fear is subsiding into the latter. “Oh that’s better. I can see you’re pissed, this is good, this is real fucking good!” She could make out he, this man is in his mid-40 and wearing under the 97

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unbuttoned and partially unzipped jacket an AC/DC black T-shit in white faded letters. I so hate that fucking band! She thought as her fear was subsiding more into rising anger. “Well, you fucking twisted bitch, I am going to tell you so listen up.” He then leaned towards and pulled back the large caliber pistol slowly as he looked right into her blue eyes. “About a year ago you were doing some other piece of young meat. What was his name?” He looked

at her and paused expecting her to answer which is nearly impossible. “Oh yeah, that’s right, Mark, it was Mark, wasn’t it?” He leaned back with gun in tow into the chair and flashed another pretty smile at her. “Mark, how old was Mark, let’s see…” He paused in a fake reflection and then back into her eyes.

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“Mark was 22 years old, and married, but you didn’t fucking care, did you, bitch!” His voice thickened in judgment and growing contempt. She knows those these tones all too well. “Mark was too drunk to drive you both home from that club of yours. So, you drove and in doing so, you couldn’t wait to get little Mark home so he can bang you up your not-so tight little asshole like good ole’ Toby I suppose. He is now pointing the gun over at Toby’s body. “Mark; now how he is doing now these days? At home with his loving wife, two kids, a dog by the name of ‘Bobo’ and sucking life through a fucking straw, I suppose, right?” He flashed a grimacing smile as he continues to speak. “So you both end up into a little fender bender, and Mark gets paralyzed from the eyebrows down…” The man paused and met her with his revived matching hatred as her mind is now filled with images of that fateful night. She recalls the night she drove Mark and her heading back to her place when they went through a red light at 50 miles per hour in a 20 mile per hour 99

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zone and crashing into a late model sand colored Impala killing the single occupant that was some middle aged woman, a married woman of Deadwood, South Dakota. She can’t recall anything more about it as to the woman’s name. “Well, you fucking twisted bitch, I am going to tell you.” He then leaned towards and pulled back the large caliber pistol slowly as he looked right into her blue eyes. “Yeah, you killed her…” As if the man could see her thoughts, revealing into his own as she looked back up with her eyes filled full of tear. “Save your bullshit tears, you have no fuckin’ shame. It’s clearly not in you. Besides, there is no need to pony up some false humanity for the loss of this innocent woman, not to mention, fucking up Mark on a permanent plan is there? Fuck no. I can only conclude, probably in your coked out meth mind, mind you, that you had more than enough time in jail rationalizing a death of a fellow human being. Not to include poor Mark’s condition…”

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He paused only for a moment, “Well, I am not here for him, besides, if he was home with his family, he would still be working as a bartender down at First Gold.” All this is coming clearly into in her mind, this whole affair. This must be that woman’s husband… “No, I am not her husband, if that’s what you’re thinkin’.” Her eyes widen further for a moment as he continues. “Not the widower you made, and for a lousy sixfucking-months in jail for vehicular manslaughter of a wonderful woman that many folks appreciated and loved!” His voice rose up with over-flowing anger. “It seems that you are over your fear now, and there may be some feeling of real reckoning for your deeds. Yeah, anyway I see no sense in pleading for your miserable life in this late stage whore. After all, you did what you did, and there isn’t any amount of sorrow, passion, and no real measure of remorse in those pretty blue empty eyes of yours…” He paused and then looking down at the gun now pointing right at her as she looked down and could see her hands, each on each side of the 1 inch 101

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by what looked like 12 inch wide by another 16 inches across piece of wood. A piece of fresh cut unfinished wood. She could see the board was at the perfect height of her breast and upper abdomen and she thought this mystery as odd indeed – In fact, everything about it all. What is the purpose, she thought only for a moment. “No, her husband still mourns her. I am not that man. No, he is a kind and gentle man who is in the dark fit of depression as to why God has taken her from him. You know, in such a bullshit way. I mean, it was a closed casket, after all. Shit, he couldn’t give her the proper goodbye because of you, slut. He finds himself alone in his grieving sorrow…” He paused and then looked back up from his weapon poised at her, “…the measures of him sitting here holding this at you. However, there was a fucking time or six back in the day.” He smiled and said ever so coldly as he continued. “The best thing about all of this, he doesn’t even know I am here. You see, I am doing this for him. 102

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Fuck, he would do the same for me though I just know it. Hell of a friend, right?” He paused in just looking at her. He reached in with his left hand inside the jacket and pulled out a cigarette from his inner coat pocket exposing more of his powerful chest and that AC/DC logo T-Shit that may have seen some better days. He then lit it from a bic lighter in his outer coat pocket and inhaled deliberately and slowly as to take in as much of the nicotine as he could as he paused is speaking. This gave his captive enough time to take it all in fully as she began to weep bitterly. “Yeah, little late for that now, sunshine…” She looked back up at him, glaring at him, cursing him as best she could with her eyes. “Not to worry, her, the woman you slaughtered with your drunkenness using your car as a weapon. Yeah he’ll read all about it in the papers tomorrow of what I’ve done for him tonight no doubt. In fact so will Toby’s parents, you know?” He motioned with the cannon aimed at her now shortly being swayed at the body on the floor. 103

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“Six months wasn’t enough, no, not by any measure, not by any fucking means. I realized that you had a good lawyer, sucked his cock a couple of times too, no doubt. I mean, on top of what little you could afford just so he could come all over your little titties too. Yeah, he told me before he died suddenly too…” She tried to scream, “You fucking bastard” again, and again like before, it was muffled. The dark man took another drag from his cigarette slowly like before and eased further back into his chair. “Mighty fine weapon isn’t it?” He looked down at it as her eyes drawn to the very instrument that would be used to end her life tonight. “Got it from you drug dealer, you know, where you get all the coke and meth from, what’s his name?” He didn’t wait, “Mick Jacobson, right? Sure, fuck that’s the cocksucker’s name, yeah, it’ll look like that you were getting tired of swallowing his pathetic baby-dick not to mention, pay him for all that laced drugs of yours you’ve been getting. Oh, and that added ingredient, they’ll, the cops, they’ll find that shit to at his house among other things, I might add. After 104

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all, it is his prints they find on the gun here; after all, it’s not fucking mine, right?” He smiled once more and took another drag. “The wood, the piece of wood, yeah he was building some sort of cabinet, it’s from his stock he bought and shit, a real masterpiece for the police. They’ll find out it was cut my his own table saw, the wood is the same, and hell they’ll find his fucking dead body next to all the drugs he had spread out there in the tool shed. It would look like he died of a brokenhearted overdose, shit the shame in it all, a low-life fucking psychotic murderin’ deadbeat. A real rat bastard if you ask me.” He took another drag as his right hand firmly gripped the weapon through the sounds of his leathered glove tightening. “Cops don’t care about drug-using whores, or bullshit two-bit drug dealers, do they?” Again, he didn’t wait for a response. “No, they won’t look any further, besides there is no need, right?” The man paused as the lights above danced off his gleaming eyes, “This cocksucking Mick came into your house earlier today, and he didn’t ring the 105

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doorbell. He brought you your latest fix, you sucked him off, and he knocked off twenty bucks in doing so. What a bargain for ‘em, right?” He knew he is a little more than correct. He had been watching this bitch’s comings and goings for a while, and she is realizing this. “They’ll find his prints on the door; he came in, and saw you getting your ass bagged by this fuck. He went ‘over the tops’ and capped you both after he exacted his revenge.” The man left the smoke in his mouth as he pulled out a larger aluminum foil of the coke and meth. “It has the same shit in your bloodstream…” He laid it out on the table aimlessly. She saw it slid over to him. “The glue, they’ll find that in the sink, he bought it on his credit card down at the hardware store, the fucking receipt they’ll find in his pocket soon enough.” He pulled the cigarette out of his mouth with his left hand, and from outside the kitchen window through the thin olive colored curtains, several flashes of gunfire was seen, seen if there were anyone there, anyone noticing. 106

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There was none. He shot several .50 caliber shots through the soft pine board shattering the piece and making an entire mess of her abdomen and chest as the bullets fired, ripping through her in tearing out lung tissue and intestines as her body twitching and urinating unto the floor along with bile and dark oozing blood. He arose from the chair and seeing there was still life in those blue eyes of her, he pushed the chair cautiously back into the table, aimed the cannon at her forehead, and fired two more shots sending skull and brain matter to the cabinets, kitchen appliances behind her. He nearly vaporized her skull as the gun smoke whips from her exposed cranium as well as the weapon he had that was now emptied as he look down at her. He tossed the weapon aimlessly on the table. It would be very easy for police to find it in the morning, not to mention, any new rookie solving the crime over a cup of coffee. He walked to his left side with the cigarette in his mouth and said aloud, “Goodbye love.” He walked to the outer door and stood there with the door behind him partially opened to see if there is, anyone out that would act as a witness in 107

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telling the authorities that some stranger was seen leaving. Down below him, he saw a little tabby calico cat, a female come up purring and meowing wanting in. It was her cat, she was the only witness, and since he loved animals, and knew the little cat who took an instant liking to him in the previous times he entered the house and had a “look see” and spike the dope the cat’s owner was stashing, he grew fond of her. “Well hello little one, you want in, yes?” He opened the door wider to allow her in, and she zipped passed him into the kitchen where she would find a little more to dine upon tonight that just her normal cat food. “Kitty’s got to eat well too, bon apatite!” He smiled looking on as the cat went on, he closed the door and walked across the street and down through the embracing dark pines along a gravel path and was seen no more…

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The Sickness “So, tell me, how did the mirror break?” The older man sitting across a cluttered desk began to sit back deeply into his old leather office chair with patches of dark green duct tape as he spoke softly but directly to the other in the room. The sound of the springs in the chair gave a popping and straining sound, a very distracting, and irritating as the patient cringed over the sound it gave. From across the desk, a younger man sitting opposite in a cold stainless steel and vinyl chair looked at the man leaning into his chair with the measure of disdain as to the obnoxious noise. “Sorry about that, older chair and all…” The older, balding man apologized and continued with a quick and useless story on how the chair was given to him by his friend now, long dead — a meaningless and empty apology. The older man has said this countless of times to the one sitting on the other end as well as to others with no apparent action as to replace the chair in the least.

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The older man dressed in an olive drab green sweater and pea-green tie with a white shirt underneath realized that the younger man, a man in his early thirties in long thick oily raven hair looked away growing even more disdain about the whole affair. Agitated with all of this, the younger man sniffled and snorted. Seeing this first-hand, the older man begins to speak as if the agitation from the younger man gave some comfort of enjoyment to himself, “Okay Nathan, so how did the mirror in the bathroom break?” The older man asked. Nathan sat there, his disdain left his face to one of wonderment and one of certain trepidation that darted across his something in the room with them both – Something rather impossible and quickly dismissed by the older balding man. Still, the older man saw a reflection of something in Nathan’s eyes just the same. This fleeting instant caused the older man to rise up from his chair as quietly as he could drawing closer to his own cluttered desk looking into the dark blue eyes of Nathan as Nathan is desperately struggling for an answer. 110

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“I don’t know, I mean…” Nathan’s voice deep and riddled with his nervousness desperately struggles on. “Tell me Nathan. It is how I can be truly helpful to you. If you cannot be honest with me, I cannot help you. Do you understand, Nathan?” “Yes… Yes, I know… I know…” as the beads of sweat began to form on Nathan’s thick brow as he lifted his right hand to wipe it away. On his wrist is a white hospital medical tag with his name and other information to include his doctor. The man sitting across the desk asking the questions, the psychiatrist then began taking a few quick notes that further seem to disturb the patient looking on. In addition, there are the stainless steel hand restraints attached to both his wrists. Nathan, dressed in the usual white plain patience robe and attire, began to weep fighting back the 111

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horror within him in the struggling attempts to try to recall the moments leading up the broken mirror in the men’s restroom. The restroom in questions is just down the hall passed the heavy bulletproof electromagnetic doors separating the patients of the psycho ward from the rest of the world – Keeping them safe as well as the public. “Nathan, you were the only one in the men’s room and when the guards came in, you hurt both of them too. Now tell me, Nathan, how did all of this come about?” “You, you won’t believe me…” Nathan lifted his padded sandal feet up on the chair holding his legs tightly in a ball in the chair as he sobbed upon his kneecaps resting his lower face upon them. Nathan’s tears running down the side of his nose and pooling on them both. “Just tell me the truth. Remember, the truth is much easier to remember, right?” The older man softly spoken with some measure of certainty in hopes to spring up some of the former things discussed with his patient in time’s past.

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As the doctor asked the question looking deeply into the dark blue eyes, he could almost see a face, though fleeting and only for a partial second of time, a mere fraction causing the doctor himself to lean

back only for a second somewhat startled but remaining calm. Nathan then began to cry a little more and then as if he was seeing something, something that was not in the room with the two, and something though the room, through the table and into another realm, Nathan smiled nervously at the hell he was seeing. Then a wave of calmness cooled over his brow as he stopped smiling. The doctor has seen this in Nathan before on other occasions but nothing quite like this. Then like a bolt, Nathan’s voice deepens and sounding rather unfamiliar to the doctor, “Drowning deep in my sea of loathing… Broken, your servant, I kneel. Will you give in to me? It seems what’s left of my human side is slowly changing in me… Will you give in to me? Looking at my own reflection, when suddenly it changes, violently it changes. Oh, no, there is no turning back now; you’ve woken up the demon in me, doc.’” 113

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As Nathan spoke in a trance-like state, the doctor could see the horrid reflection becoming clear and apparent in Nathan’s eyes glaring back at the doctor in contempt or hatred as Nathan’s eyes transformed into nothing less than two solid black orbs like that of an abyss void of Nathan’s own troubled and tormented soul. Alarmed by what the Doctor is both seeing and feeling, an animalistic and demonic presence is clearly seen in Nathan, he reels back into the chair as his mind races to gain a mental foothold, a higher ground in the situation. Something supernatural and beyond the means of the doctor’s own understanding is now unfolding. Seeing this transition and fighting to struggle with his own feelings, the doctor struggles to hit the silent alarm that will notify the guards to come in and subdue a patient that is obvious going south. Nathan is now under the control of this spirit, the demonic apparition, as seen clearly by the doctor’s own eyes before him. Nathan’s own voice is now much deeper and darker than ever before as Nathan continues under the control of something that the doctor is struggling desperately to understand.

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“’’I can see inside you, the sickness is rising, don’t try to deny what you feel. Will you give in to me? It seems that all that was good has died and is decaying in me. Will you give in to me? It seems you’re having some trouble, in dealing with these changes, living with these changes. Oh, no the world is a scary place now that you’ve woken up the demon in me.’”

Just then, Nathan leaps upon the top of his chair perfectly balancing himself like a bird of prey as it is beginning to take flight lunging at whoever the prey or threat may be, in this case, the doctor. The doctor under the controlling mysterious spell of the demonic force is now gipping his very soul as in Nathan’s is now coming to understand a portion of what Nathan must really be suffering. “Nathan!” The doctor yells as the door opened abruptly at two strong male attendants grabbed Nathan from the chair and in doing so, Nathan easily shoved each of these men off as others came in the room successfully subduing him. They manage to get him flat on his belly to the floor as the doctor arose from behind his desk shocked at his own experience that he is forcing himself in his mind as, it just didn’t 115

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happen followed by his learning, it just doesn’t exist and there is a medical or psychological explanation to it all. “Sodium pentothal, 50 milligrams, STAT…!” The doctor barked regaining control of this extraordinary situation. Another man entered the room and gave the hypodermic to the doctor, which in turn shot the loaded hypodermic into the neck of Nathan struggling on the floor screaming and yelling that was almost as just as strong as the four powerful male nurses on top of him who are feverishly restraining him until the drug begins to take effect. “Fuck you, fuck you doctor Neilson, I know who you are, and I mean to tell you, I am coming for you and yours. I will slaughter all that you know and love. I will whisper your name to all the damned in hell so that they will know that you will soon be with us. I am so gonna fist-fuck your stinking soul!” The heavy dark voice bellowed out from Nathan. More medication is needed and issued as the comment just made caught one of the nurses, unnerving the strong man. “Don’t pay no fucking mind to him. Concentrate on your work, your training.” The doctor insisted, “Besides, he’s fucking shithouse crazy!” 116

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Two hasty injections later given by the doctor himself, the large and powerful male nurses of the facility find Nathan more manageable to say without exception. Nathan now is ushered away safely strapped back to his bed in his padded room subdued by the drug flowing within his body along with Phenobarbital now given.

“Sleep you sick-ass motherfucker!” One of the male nurses said as he lifted his baton striking Nathan across the shoulders and the small of his back causing Nathan to yelp in spite of the medication. “That’s for being a sick motherfucker…” The nurse strikes Nathan again, “And fuck you, you little rat bastard!” The nurse puts the baton back into his holster and adjusts himself looking satisfied in tossing Nathan a little beating of his own and leaves the room as he mumbles, “Take that to hell with you, dickweed!” Across and up the hall, the doctor was in his bathroom is rinsing his face in cold running water above his sink and looked into the mirror seeing his 117

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own reflection and calming himself down in rationalizing and through the reasoning processes of his own. Shockingly in doing so, there in his own eyes is the demonic apparition forming. In sudden panic, the doctor smashes his fist into the mirror shattering it instantly. “This shit cannot happen! It can’t happen!” He turns to look up as he can feel this ominous force like a worm travelling deep into his mind and taking control of his soul nearly snapping his own spine in the effect. Whatever it is, it lets frees him only for the moment. He struggles and falls to his knees alone in the bathroom shivering. The doctor’s head snaps up looking into the ceiling as if he is seeing well passed this world into another dimension as his eyes darken into two black orbs and the voice, the very same as the one in Nathan’s begins to speak. “’Drowning deep in my sea of loathing… Broken, your servant, I kneel. Will you give in to me? It seems what’s left of my human side is slowly changing in me… Will you give in to me? Looking at my own reflection, when suddenly it changes, 118

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violently it changes! Oh, no, there is no turning back now; you’ve woken up the motherfucking demon in me!’” Beyond the door, one could hear a wretched cold-blooded sinister laugh coming from the other side and within the doctor’s own bathroom…

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Blackstone Rising; Slipping Away “I just have to say…” As only, a single dark and sinister silhouette stood between a high-powered surgical lamp and the frightened female victim bound and gagged on the cold stainless-steel table lying naked except for the stainless steel bondages that held her from resisting let alone, escaping. Her dark emerald green eye showing only the filling insurmountable rising terror within her troubling soul spoke volumes to the man looking down upon her bloodstained and bruised face with several lacerations to accompany a fight, a struggle for her very life. A struggle by the obvious looks of things has bitterly lost. He’s seen this look in one’s eyes before, many times before and it is something that would never persuade him to stop. Let alone, show any mercy in his dark craft that made him what he is, what he will always continue to be. The woman’s green eye shadow begins running down from the sockets of her terrorized eyes unto her 120

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dirty soiled cheeks as she tried to moan in begging for her life. “Your perseverance, your fortitude, your tenacious ability, and bloodhound-like ability to not give up has brought your to my table. However, you will not survive this day. Trust me in saying that I appreciate all that you have done.” She struggles once more at her bindings of stainless-steel handcuffs on both her hands and ankles that force her legs to be spread wide to the railings on both sides of this glistening autopsy table. She is fully exposed to him. He looks down across her ivory body free of hair of any kind and takes notice only momentarily of her genitalia, her glistening vagina, her darken anus. His shadow looms quickly back over her head casting a shadow down upon her. She sees in his right hand a weapon, a tool, and then it dawns upon her as she begins to thrash even more violently. She realizes it’s a sharp scalpel that the light reflects and dances upon the very sharp edge in a menacing tempo.

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“Leastwise you have a clean snatch. You won’t be stinking up my little accommodations down here, will you, bitch?”

She begins to struggle violently once more rattling her restrainments against the thick stainlesssteel table’s railing to no avail as he looked in a coldblooded smile that began to blossom across his granite face. “Too scared to be mad I suppose. Well, okay then, it will be just fine with me. I mean, fuck, it ain’t gonna stop me in the least. Is it?” She struggles violently, “I don’t think you’re gonna break your own set of handcuffs.” He pauses with a cold flash of his smile before he continues on, “And for this, you know all your hard work to end up here, I shall make you bleed out while listening to some righteous Testament. Oh, I know that you are not familiar with this band; the album is called none other than ‘The Ritual’ that I will play for you from my personal music collection. 122

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How fitting isn’t it? The ritual yes in-fuckingdeed.” She toils at her bondages. He pays no mind as he turns to the small stainless table with a surgical cloth below the surgical instruments and a small electronic device, his remote to the surround sound system in the dark basement out of her eyesight. She begins to hear the abrasive music rise up around them both. He turns back to her after sitting down this remote device back on the top of the table still holding the scalpel carefully in his right gloved hand. His black long hair tied tightly into a single ponytail then sits down the scalpel as if a thought comes to him, causing him to give more thought as his head turns cocking an ear to the song with his back still towards her as she turns to see him through the lenses of her insurmountable trepidation. “I really don’t believe I have had someone on the slab sort of speak, while listening to this wonderful band…” He says in almost a whisper. “…until now.”

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“Well…” He whispers like before picking up the scalpel again and turning his direction to her dressed in his black rubber apron reaching for his face shield lying on a larger table before the two as he puts it on with his left hand securely upon his head. Closing the clear shield down before his stern face as she begins to panic at the ghastly site of the realization of her own demise is about to play out before them. “The end, it is precarious to some…” He stops momentarily giving away to the music before continuing. “Sorry, I mean to say, life is so precarious. I mean one moment you’re sitting in your office and running good people’s name into the motherfucking ground. After all, that’s what you goddamn cops do other than eating doughnuts and drinking coffee. The next, you’re doing a line of cocaine taken from your own evidence room with a dear friend you have known since grammar school. Then as you leave the ladies room to head back to your table rubbing your nose and taking what you have on your finger and rubbing the coke on your gums. Yeah bitch, I was paying attention through you weren’t. Didn’t think anyone was paying attention while you were at the 124

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Number 10 Saloon. And by the way, when I say ‘ladies’ for you, I use that term in the widest sense of the very word. Nonetheless, I am there in the shadows waiting with a warm cloth to place over your mouth and off to sleep you go. Right…?” He continues on talking, “But that was only the latter. I mean, you’re a fucking cop, a goddamned badge that thought you were onto something. You know, with all the killings that have been mysteriously going on around here in Deadwood. First it was that fucking whore that was fucking all those high school lads, you know, the basketball players giving them a hot dose of the goddamn clap and sucking their little dicks, and shit. Then it was from that murder, the shooting of your fellow pig, the cop in his SUV one morning in which I had absolutely nothing about and of course. However, you’re right about the whore found with her fucking throat slashed from ear to ear and shoved in the garbage can on her fucking head. Then there is the matter of one Mick Jacobson and some of the others motherfuckers I personally dispatched.” Raven pauses momentarily, “Well you are right about me though. I am fucking insane, I am a likely 125

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fucking suspect, and the most likely but you had no proof.” He looks into her dark emerald eyes and could see there in them, a measure of surprise as how he knows about what was said, what she said to someone else a few days back in her office in Deadwood’s police department’s homicide division.

Blackstone continues on smiling as he spoke, “Yeah, like most of the fucking cunts in this town, they can’t keep their crotches closed let alone their fucking gaping mouths shut. Anyway, fuck it. I am that fucking monster you were talking about in spite of all the evidence you didn’t have as you can see now.” Blackstone smiled as he is caught in his own thoughts and amusement, “Your own police chief, you know the one you call a ‘faggot’ who indeed enjoys wearing his wife’s undergarments and bangs young boys in Rapid City? Yeah, anyways, he told you that you were looking in the wrong direction. However, you weren’t, were you? No bitch, you were, as we can 126

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clearly see right the fuck now, you’re right on the goddamn money.” Raven pauses once more to cool his anger, “Maybe you were just trying to make a name for yourself, and maybe you were genuinely trying to stop a fucking monster. Maybe you were trying to stop me. Many have tried. Yeah, you can take that bit of information to the cold grave with you too – Fucking cop.” Blackstone smiles again but this time looking more oddly at her as his face darkens as something even more sinister than himself takes a strong hold upon him. “Since you’re a fucking cop, ever had your ass brutally fucked? Not to worry cunt, you’ll be dead when I do it, you fucking bitch.” She bucks violently moaning through the duct tape over her mouth as she attempts to respond with a defiant “Fuck you!” “Fuck me is it?” He giggles, “You’re the one getting’ fucked bitch – Not me!” He pauses once more in listening to the music not giving a care to her response. “Maybe I’ll just cut 127

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your ass up and feed you to the wolves here in the Black Hills after I suck on your clit. Would you like that?” Blackstone then snaps back around towards her looking strongly into her eyes, “Like I said, you just didn’t give up. You got too close, too close for my fuckin’ liking. Therefore, you rose up through the humdrum of the bullshit mind numbing day to day. This causing me to perked my interest in you. I’ve began to follow you around, taking notes of everything you’re doing, finding patterns, routines, and shit like that. I too have uncovered things about you, seedy things, things better kept on the ‘downlow’, and out of the public eye.” Raven laughed and then took the same demeanor upon her once more, “I will tell you this, you have proved once, and for fucking all, there is no such thing as a ‘good fucking cop.’” A chilling smirk and he continues, “Yeah bitch, I have never met a cop who wasn’t on the take, who wasn’t slapping his wife around, who wasn’t blackmailing some skank into sex or worse for 128

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something the whore got doing, and pushing his weight around. A fucking bully with a badge and gun – Nothing more.” Raven then flashed the scalpel making the reflection dance upon the light given above the surgical lamp above in. She panics once more in thrashing about with no effect on him in the least knowing full well that she is bound securely. Blackstone slaps her with his right hand with the scalpel still in his hands across her face stunning her as her eyes roll back momentarily. “Now just relax if you can, get into the music, and worry not. I promise that this won’t hurt a bit; A bit of a prick and nothing more.” He pauses in her relentless response of panic, “Okie Dokie, good then?” Then as he finished speaking, he slammed her head hard to the back of the table stunning her senses once again. He is a powerfully built man. “I don’t usually bang women around, but then again, you’re nothing but a fucking cop, a goddamn bully yourself.” Letting go of her hair only momentarily.

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“Just returning the favor a tad bit. Hey, you remember that woman; you know the one you shoved your nightstick up her skirt when you were interrogating her for the murder of that cop buddy of yours that you guys thought might have had something to do with getting his head blown off? Anyways, as you later found out, she had absolutely nothing to do with the killing. It was her boyfriend that fed that fucker some much-needed lead. The guy found out that your cop buddy was fucking her. Yeah, you see, I stood on my porch early one morning and saw the whole goddamn thing myself. It was wonderful, really. The fucking cop that couldn’t keep his willy in his pants was sleeping on duty and though he never saw it coming, it made my fucking day. It really did” Blackstone then grabs another handful of her red and blonde chemically processed short hair like before a moment ago. Holding her head secure as she whimpers through the olive colored duct tape covering her mouth. “Now listen and comprehend if you can, cunt. It will feel like you are slipping into a warm bath, a little light-headed, and then sleepy…” 130

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Raven without hesitation then punctures both of her jugular veins on each side of her neck as the blood begins to spurt out. He then moves down to each side of her inner thighs and does the same to her main arteries there as she thrashes. Arterial spray splatters against his clean shield. He does not blink or flinch in this process. When he is done, he turns aimlessly away removing his face shield and turning up the music as he drops the scalpel in a stainless steel open tray filled full of sterilizing fluid as her bloody body and jets of raw blood arch about in the air around her. Her body slows with the drastic loss of blood as she arches her spine and slams against the table until she grows quiet as Raven Blackstone peers into the darkness before him with his back turned. He then removes his gloves without ever looking back to her. Raven himself slips off into the darkness letting the music continue. He doesn’t need the light to see, he knows this place all too well. With a flick of a switch on the wall, the entire basement grows as black as a moonless night.

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Raven Blackstone quietly walks up the wooden staircase without saying another word and opens another door leading into a well lit room before him. The light from the other room momentarily lights up a portion of the stairway and his silhouette slips through the open door, closing it, and the light from behind him. A noise of a talkative cat is barely heard greeting him. The woman, his latest victim is now still in her own death as her emerald green eyes freeze over in a blanket of death as the song “Deadline” begins to play on as he blood flows from the table and her body into dark pools on the cold concrete floor below.

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Dead Indian There in the darkest of gloom, even in the midday’s cool summer sun barely touches this place in the Siskiyou Mountains that chills the bones of the bravest of outdoorsmen. There in this remote region of wilderness along what many have come to know and call that has survived the freak accidents, deaths, and a history of mayhem bitterly calls, “…A very miserable haunting region of woods…” is a place seldom nowadays knows much about. In this expanse of tall Douglas Firs that covers this area within is so thick that sunlight dare not penetrate. This region is far too dangerous for the locals to hunt, only for the foolhardy, and the inexperienced who ultimately seek out their own illfated demise. Past the little-known stretch of highway known as Oregon Route 66 that begins east along Ashland’s city limits is the start of something dreadful. The road quickly begins in its ascension up into the mountains and in them, their dark secrets. 133

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Among only a handful of former logging roads, now known to a few seasoned hunters that most drive past are such a road, an unpaved road that leads sharply from the main road into a wide area for many who quickly turn around in realizing that they have made a dreadfully wrong turn indeed. Past this point, the rugged mountain road then climbs up a steep menacing hill. In this region, the road is known among the locals as Dead Indian Road. Some say it was a name after someone, an Indian long ago killed, or found a dead Indian there. Some say that this Indian where the road has gotten its name was indeed murdered – An unnatural death by all accounts of the legend. Some even say that there is some sort of an ancient burial ground far back where the sun dares not to shine upon. Even by some accounts of this legend are a bit more revealing as to how this road, this trail has received its foreboding name. Some say it is a dark and baleful place where the Klamath Indians ashamed of those of their family buried these remains in so all the world would eventually forget the memories of their shameful kin. 134

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Nonetheless, Dead Indian or Dead Indian Road is aptly named for the countless rows of dead undergrowth, lightning struck towering dead shattered pines, and a creek bed dried under years of debris that many would miss hiking or driving by on their way further in to the wilderness. Even in the wet winter months, there is never any water flowing through or from it. This is only the beginning of the oddities of this territory and this fact must be understood before continuing with the re-telling of this legend. As the road continues its perilous winding path further into the obscure woods, the road comes across another creek coming out of the darkest of the old growth Douglas Firs guarding it called, “Murder’s Creek.” Murder’s Creek flows with water throughout most of the autumn and winter months as the creek travels into an underground cavern by a nearby fork into the road and is never seen again like a good many things as the legend foretells. 135

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There are rumors of a cavern lying below filled with the bones of those that fell into its unforgiving clutches. It is also said that this creek seldom gives up its dead. There is even a story of two young men who jumped into a pool of water where the creek deepens and slows. The story goes that when they blindly leaped in that the water was so cold that it instantly killed one of them, giving him a heart attack. The other died of hypothermia. It was in the middle of what many say was one of the hottest summers in the history of Southern Oregon. If one turns up through the path, a path that is nearly impossible for any four-wheel drive vehicle that heads east into a small meadow, a clearing that you shall find an old dilapidated cabin covered in moss, spider webs glistening off the midday sun, and a few abandon birds’ nest of long ago, of an age forgotten. The midday sun in its few hours is the only duration that the sunlight makes it upon the cabin during the summer. For the rest of the year, the sunlight never touches the cursed surroundings. This cabin you shall find all but gone with the exception of a couple of fallen beams and for the 136

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door of this cabin, you’ll find lying flat on a rotting porch. The walls of the cabin are dangerously ready to fall as most of the stone chimney has already fallen years before during the heavy snowfalls during the bitter winters that visit the higher elevations. On this rotting porch covered in the pine needles accumulated over the untold years of the passing of seasons, old moss, and dust that would not hold the weight of a man. There upon this wretched derelict you can see proof of the rotting wood that broke through by those who have tried to venture inside for whatever reason that they may have had at the time. You will also find on this old porch, an old rocking chair covered in webs. It is said, the legend, that during a chilling October wind, the chair will begin to rick back and forth as if an unseen specter is sitting in it as it slowly rocks and occasionally stops now and then as if the one sitting in it takes notice of something off into the woods. This old ruin is surrounded in an old Black Berry briar and Poison Oak that guard this place that many 137

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say; that fewer have seen is haunted and littered with a history of malice and contempt. A history drenched in misery and shrouded in perils death. Just the mere sight of the old remains is as only a few have come to describe as “demoralizing” at best. The creek that flows just behind the cabin winds its way through the granite and quartz rock like a coiled death that fetches its grisly name after the name of this cabin, which is known as none other than “Murder’s Cabin.” According to legend, these ruins were once built by a man named as “Ole Man Collins” or “Ole Man Dan Collins.” Historical documents states that it was Daniel Collins who was a gold digger who struck enough of the pay dirt in Northern California to buy the land and doing this before marrying a half-breed Klamath Indian as the old legend also suggests, “…traded her for a few beads, a blanket, and some dust at an old trading post.” According to the legend of “Murder’s Cabin” or “Creek,” Ole Dan Collins is synonymous with one another into the “Dead Indian” legend of nowadays. 138

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As for his wife, this “half-breed” woman of his, in the dark passage of this story is repeated through several generations of the local hunters and campers

around a good many campfires at night that this woman, she was a very pretty. So much in fact that most men would find very difficult to resist. As the telling goes, “…she was also a woman who enjoyed the company of other men, or at least that is what Ole Man Collins thought as he had more than enough of her acclaimed adulterous behavior before he killed her brutally and buried her body under the cabin.” The legend goes on to say that Ole Man Collins would have gotten completely away with the murder in which ended his wife’s adulterous ways with only one odd exception; He went to the authorities himself a few years later in Klamath Falls and confessed to this brutal murder of his wife. He admitted in a full confession.

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The folktale claims that the authorities back in the fall of 1886 went out to his cabin and there under the floorboards found her remains in a shallow grave. Now only a nearly rotting corpse, they found her remains in a white dress covered in blood and her skull crushed in as Collins himself admitted doing with his hammer several times over and over again. In the folklore, he reasoning for this confession is because of her malicious spirit began haunting him shortly after he murdered her up unto the time of his actual confession. Some say, “…he went mad with visions of her haunting, of her tormenting him into confessing…” Consequently, Ole Man Collins was hung, his neck stretched in Klamath Falls shortly after the trial. Record show that Dan Collins was found guilty, hung, and buried there in Klamath shortly after the New Year of 1887. The legend doesn’t stop with the justice served in regards to Ole Man Collins. A few years later, some say in 1899 or 1900 and as a legend goes, another couple moved in to the cabin. However, this couple didn’t stay long because of “hauntings” and reports of 140

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seeing the spirit of Ole Man Collins’ wife lurking about the woods and finally chasing the new couple out. Whatever actually happened, they moved on and never returned.

In 1910, there was an old veteran from the Civil War that moved in alone, a “Southerner” according to the tale. He was alone, a hermit, and some say, “…not of sound mind…” to begin with in the first place. Years later, a couple of loggers that became lost in the woods arrived at the old cabin and found the old man’s skeleton swinging by a decaying rope he had thrown over one of the heavy roof beams inside the cabin. The testimony stated that he, the old Southerner killed himself and there was a note, a suicide note that said something to the effect of his mortal sins of raping slave women, white women, and performing hideous acts during the Civil War. The legend claims that this man has said in this note left behind that John Wilkes Booth was a “goddamn hero of the South.” 141

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One thing about this man, he was responsible for several deaths, as the authorities would find a series of shallow graves in the small meadow. The remains were at best, young women, girls, and a few adults all strangled with barbed wire around their necks. As to their true identities, no one will ever really know. Nothing more is said about this troubled man other than he claims in this note of a “…half-breed Indian whore…” that would in his words, “…keep my bed good and warm now and then. She enjoyed a good fuckin’ on her backside tossed her way. I know that I’m goin’ to hell anyways… Besides, this bitch is the best I’ve had that would ever ball for beads…” and followed by a haunting passage, “…besides, this bitch unlike the others, I didn’t have to kill. She’s already dead…” These colorful remarks from this man are in every account of the legend told. Many suggest that this Indian woman was indeed, the ghost or apparition of Ole Man Collins’ wife. Naturally, through the telling of a few, she was more than just a whore or a ghost but something more sinister. 142

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After the old Southerner’s death, there is no other reports or at least in the telling of this legend that anyone else ever lived there in the cabin.

Years later in the mid-1950s, a couple stranded during a lightning storm apparently took shelter in the remains of the cabin, as the local Sheriff’s Office would come to know. Apparently, time had passed and the family of these folks notified the local authorities. The authorities then sent out search teams into the region. One of these search teams lead by a local sheriff as the story goes, found the couple’s car back on Dead Indian Road, and simply followed the tracks into the woods. It is said the car was perfectly fine and in operational order. The legend continues in saying that the authorities found the two people face down and floating aimlessly in the creek behind the cabin as their throats have been severely cut on both the man and younger woman. A woman that in some of these 143

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tellings was “…a young woman barely of marrying age…” The authorities never found out who killed them and their murders were consequently never solved. The folktale goes on as to say that their belongings of this married couple, the couple that walked away from their perfectly fine car grew lost somehow. There was a fierce storm that hit them causing them to seek shelter in the old cabin took some things with them such as money, jewelry, and other trinkets of value that they didn’t leave behind in the car. Why did they leave the safety of the car? This is a common question that many ask and that few can offer as to a reason why they might have left. As one other odd thing around Ole Man Collin’s cabin is the simple fact that not even the animals are known to stay long nor do the birds sing in the dark trees surrounding the meadow and the audience of the ruin there. In fact, according to the legend, that those who do walk across or enter the meadow have an eerie feeling of dread and that someone or something is watching them constantly. 144

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“Not even the animals risk drinking the water from Murder’s Creek.” As the story goes surrounding the cabin is found another “consistency” told in every telling. There are reports since the death of Ole Man Collins and his wife that people have seen a likeness of “... a woman in dark long hair walking along the woods around Murder’s Creek and up along Dead Indian’s Road” up to present day. There are even some eyewitness accounts that state the woman is seen removing her clothing completely and bathing in Murder’s Creek. Some even say that she is something more than a “…whorish enticing ghost…” but perhaps a demon, a succubus of sorts. There are stories of young men being lured away from their hunting posts and camps only to have sex with her. There are other stories that it is her apparition luring men to their sudden deaths. There is no account or report of anyone other than the old Southerner successfully having sex with her ghost or living to tell about it.

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Leading away from the immediate telling of the legend of Murder’s Creek back to the Dead Indian Road and heading north you will find only signs of old hunting and camping fires only on the east of Dead Indian Road itself going through the outer pines into yet another old opening in the heavy timber. Very few hunt there to this day because of reports of paranormal activity and the lack of available game. In the opening, here along the moss-covered field of an old and former clear-cutting that was done by the loggers decades ago is another ghastly hallmark of the story of “Dead Indian” Legend. The year was 1940, as the account goes on in the telling; “There was this small Klamath logging company that was clear-cutting the area. Time progressed and most went into town to resupply and to take a much-needed break. However, there were those loggers who stayed behind guarding the equipment such as the chuck wagon, tools, and belongings…” These loggers left behind soon suffered a fate that still brings chills up 146

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the sturdy spines of the most season woodsmen of Southern Oregon. The loggers left behind, all four of them in total were found chained upside down along the furthest most of the tall pines of the logging camp naked, and their windpipes severed, bled completely out left for

dead when their comrades returned in the following days. According to the Sheriff’s report, “…The bodies were stripped down and according to what we can see, strung up by their own heavy logging chains. My god, they were hung up high in the trees. I can’t imagine them being strung up like that by a single man while they were still alive.” The legend also says that the sheriff resigned later in the investigation due to, “…nightmares of a demonic woman…” shortly after being there where the loggers were found. The site was immediately abandoned by the logging company as word spread that there was some sinister homicidal killer up there along Murder’s 147

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Creek and the Dead Indian Road. The grisly news spread worse than any wild fire in the driest of summers in Oregon. The legends between Dead Indian and Murder’s Creek really became one at this point. All these ghastly stories are now one simply known as “Dead Indian.” The news of these loggers horrific fate were printed in newspapers as far south as San Francisco and as north as Seattle, Washington. Even the Federal Bureau of Investigations was called in to help in the local investigation. No one was ever brought to justice, and sure, there were some suspects, but nothing according to legend or otherwise was convicted. A shroud or rumors and storms of speculations were conceived in regards to what actually happened. In some newspapers, a couple of these men were beheaded and their heads were put upon long wooden spikes alongside the logging road. In other telling’s of this legend, one man’s penis was “... hacked off completely.” 148

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The legend and the newspapers of that time just doesn’t stop there in the least and like the ominous path of Dead Indian Road going further back into the wilderness, the grimacing tale continues as well. The legend says in all accounts that some, those still bold enough to camp or hunt along the area where the loggers fell prey to someone or something long ago claim that they hear the voices and screams of these ill-fated men can still be heard under a moonless night throughout the woods on the east side. Others say that they hear a woman’s voice uttering terrible and frightful words accompanying by her laughter. Some of these local lawmen that went looking for the killer or those responsible for the loggers’ death and even a few of these experienced lawmen found themselves killed in freakish accidents further into the dark woods. One event is that of two men that were killed suddenly when a “Widow-Maker” a derelict tall Douglas fir that was struck by lightning years before was caught and hung into some pines. 149

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An eye-witness to this accident, a nameless man who grew tired of the terrain stopped to rest and then to catch with them is to have said, “…a bone-chilling wind came up out of nowhere, and caused the tree to fall upon them both…” killing his two friends immediately in the early fall of 1940. There is another telling of an event of three others who met an uninviting end. One was crossing an old bridge, “…fell through the rotting timber and falling to his death in the rocky ravine waiting below…” Another man, a local lawman was shot and killed by accident by his friend’s hand. His friend, a local Baptist preacher said that he saw “a demon coming out of the woods.” This demon as it turned out being his friend. Consequently as the police report stated, “…and he emptied both barrels of his shotgun into his friend killing him instantly. The Baptist preacher stuck to his story and though many thought it was an accident, a few claim that it was a trick of Satan or of the ghost of the woods. One thing is also certain other than another horrible death even the local preacher was eventually driven into utter madness from the event, a madness 150

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resulting from the event in taking his own life a couple of years later. The additional death, an experienced man of these woods, leastwise, of the region during this time of the accidental shooting was following a set of tracks along Dead Indian Road. This man travelled past the logging site, passed the old bridge, down through the ravine where he found the remains of the one that fell through the old bridge shortly before he came upon the scene. After the body was recovered, this man, another local lawman according to legend hiked up the ravine heading east after the recovery point. The experienced man, a man without a name according to the story said he was tracking a woman he seen earlier that day wearing, “… a tattered white dress.” He too, was never seen alive again. In 1962, a native of the town of Ashland found his remains partially exposed with a skeletal hand stretching up through a pile of rocks that fell from a cliff above killing the person instantly. Some say that the remains found were of this nameless man. 151

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The myth of Dead Indian continues to spread through the local region as another account claims that in 1956 as a group of California hunters with a guide, an Indian man of the Klamath Tribe took these men on horseback to the near end of Dead Indian Road. The guide, a man by all accounts called Jerry Red-Eagle took the men towards the end where the road ends into a scant old deer path. The group is said that it headed up to a thickly covered hillside. There upon this hillside they all stumble upon and finding the remains of an ancient Indian burial ground. The story continues to say that Jerry Red-Eagle realizing quickly what they walked into persuaded the hunters to head back quickly. “…The old Indian was sober enough to realize that he walked into one of his people’s old cemetery…” as told in one telling. Nonetheless, in doing so, the band of hunters became separated from their guide in another “freak storm.” The hunters, they all made it out alive. Oddly, they never searched for Jerry Red-Eagle and figured as to their reasoning given to the local sheriff’s office as to 152

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why, “…that their guide must have found his own way out…” Jerry Red-Eagle as it turns out, is just one more casualty in the legend. It was in 1970 when a group from Southern Oregon University along with some representatives of the Klamath Indian Tribe went looking for this old burial ground. There were other reports in the discovery or sighting of the ancient burial grounds. One is the telling that one of the students began convulsing and died shortly afterwards. Another is claimed that there was some Indian spotted just off in the tree line with his face blackened with “war paint” and “blood-red ink upon his face.” Some say, the Klamath Tribe even suggests that this apparition was that of some ancient powerful Shaman that watches over the dead here. Even fewer suggests that it is his spirit that has been taking the lives of all those since. Another expedition lead by the same collage recovered along with a good many things discovered the remains of Jerry Red-Eagle as his bones were then 153

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picked clean by the rock ravens in the area. They found Red-Eagle’s remains like that of those loggers; his body was apparently hung upside down. RedEagle’s body was found in a nearby tree leading into the sacred ground. Since 1956, whoever, whatever has been “taken care of things protecting the burial grounds…” As the legend states, “…there has been a collection of things ranging from human bones of which are from more modern and recent times, weapons such as hunting rifles, shiny wheel covers, and more sinister, even a few skulls, heads of hunters and people gone missing in the area all displayed ceremonially on display…” as the legend states. After a heated public outcry and debate of the ancient Indian Burial Ground of the Klamath Indians, this area just off Dead Indian Road heading north has been closed off from the public and forbidden for anyone without permission to enter. According to the various telling of this legend, there were a few who did enter illegally. These illegal entries some have ended in perilous experiences and some fell prey to all kinds of anomalous endings. 154

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As a local notoriety and historian of the lore of “Dead Indian” a man named, Mark Lappin suggests, “There’s been a lot of talk about the killings up there in those woods; there’s been talk about the hauntings, the ghosts, and things that live in those woods. Nevertheless, one thing is for certain, well two things. We know how Dead Indian Road got its fuckin’ name, we know that all those bodies, bones, and other artifacts just don’t lie. Do they?”

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The Warning There is a foreboding legend of a dark and powerful sorcerer amongst the Jyn that rides upon the black wings of tyranny upon the winds of vile and desolation. I dare not utter his name in his native tongue, no not here, no not ever. I know of the signs of his coming, wrath, vengeance of the most merciless, murder, evil deeds amuck, and even the sun dims. Know of these signs, take notice, and make hasty tracks for elsewhere. To the east a gray witch, a harbinger of his impending arrival that will amass a horde of the damned that no bow, no sword, no weapon of mankind can destroy. They say this harbinger is a soulless bitch-whore of hades herself; half god, half demon and even the cunting Sisters of Fate cower in their utter shame in uselessness. Others say she is the princess of Danville, sister of the

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ominous necromancy spirit of none other than the wretched ghost of Joseph Mobley. Be warned; the children of the Oracle are already slaughtered and buried with severed heads. Your priests defile themselves in their maddening lusts that turns on to the innocence that follow them and who have trusted in their deceit. You have lost your spiritual sight. To the north, the second sign of the black sails of the progenies of the lands of both fire and ice come. They will raze your most sacred places into burning heaps of bone and ash. You shall dine in your own bitter tears and sorrow. To the south, the descendants of the Seven Stones of Talorc shall rise bringing with them the blistering plagues that shall spare no one of their deadly unrelenting talons striking into the hearts of all mortals. None shall survive.

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To the west past the Silver Mountains shall come the black-hearted warriors of the Steppes to rape, pillage, and plunder those that await their final moments of hellfire eternal. Heaven and Hell both will tremble with trepidation and your God has once again already failed you all in your superstitious ignorance. You are already damned throughout the ages to come as I peer into the dark pool of virgin blood and draw heavily into my lungs the Black Lotus. These are the very things that give me the unrelenting ability to see with second sight beyond the present, to speak of your doom, and a nation of many sorrows to come.

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The Dream of the Burning Witch In this vivid and surreal dream, I found myself standing in a crowd. The time was somewhere in the 13th Century Europe and before me was a woman as I would find out through the violent course of this nightmare’s telling is that this woman was accused, sentenced, and her punishment carried forth before me in this striking ominous envisage. I can clearly see that this woman was tied to the stake surrounded by several cords of wood saturated in pitch. The day was dark and sinister as I remembered I was cutting through the crowd who were all yelling obscenities at her and I remembered that she was crying most bitterly as she was bound to the single pole. I grabbed one of the peasant women by the back of her oily and nappy head, forcing her to look into my furious eyes I asked this woman what the accused and condemned is sentenced for as to the crime that brought her to such a place?

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She told me that the “harlot-witch” was caught, “Sucking some married man’s cock and practicing witchcraft…” In her immediate and simply put words of this ignorant filthy woman with rotting teeth and her remarkably, black lips. Absolutely stunned and appalled, I let go of the woman’s head and hair. I then walked up next to the condemned woman as the guards allowed me without question. In the dream, I must have been a man of great means in my black armor and robe. I walked right up to the woman that I never met face to face and I looked deeply into her eyes, removed the gag from her mouth, and asked her if she was practicing “witchcraft.” As to the “sucking dick” part, I could care less. Besides most of the bitches below in the crowd, screaming, and yelling for her death are as guilty of such natural things as the condemned woman on the stake as I stood appalled to all the things I was seeing. Looking back at the crowd demanding this woman’s life, I seen plenty of scum that should have taken the condemned’s place. 160

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I looked back at this woman. The woman cried bitterly and said, “No, I don’t even know what that is?” Believing her as my heart broke as the priests giving her the “Last Rites” as one of the other priests, a bishop of the region whispers into my ear of all the “evil” atrocities she did against God and the Church to bring her to this moment. I couldn’t help but as to wonder if this pretty woman sentenced, to die was coerced into her confession due to the various bruising and lacerations given. Torture is nothing less than an excuse for exorcising the very demons in anyone conducting such a thing. I know beating another human being in torture is of no use to obtaining or extracting the truth of the matter. In my mind, she may have been guilty of just poor judgment and nothing more. Of course, the bishop was all too ready to tell me the seedy details on how she used the ledged black magic in seducing the man, a man I do not know into having or performing oral sex. 161

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The hypocrisy was astounding from the bishop and that of the crowd. I looked into this woman’s eyes and could see the fear and confusion, the dread that she is about to die a horrible death. I remember feeling so helpless; there was nothing that I could do to get her out, to spare her life. The pit in my stomach was at the time growing as I know my history well of this time period. She was nothing less than doomed. The priest backed up as the executioner smiling through his black veil lit up the prepared wood. I remember backing up as the flames were beginning to take hold as she screamed looking at me to help her. Knowing that I couldn’t help her the way she needed to as the flames began to engulf her as the wind picked up. I remember hearing the vile hatred of the people. Even the priests were all gloating over her impending death of the worse kind. My eyes filled with tears and anger of the helplessness, I turned away as she screamed for me to help her since I was the only one among the countless 162

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that showed her any measure of compassion. I looked up at a tower behind me, behind the fist-shaking mob that demanded her horrible death and could see a man standing high above, a black silhouette against a brooding sky. I raised my gloved hand and signaled to him as I can clearly see he drew back the bow and taking aim. The shadowy figure of the man then released a black arrow that sang through the air passing just inches above my head sure of his aim. True to its mark, the woman’s screaming abruptly stopped as I turned back to her as I can see that the black arrow found its mark between her eyes through the flames. She died instantly. I did, we did, only what we could do. When I awoke, I realized that mercy comes in many different forms…

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Standing on the Edge “Well damn Joe, here we are at the 40th floor just like you wanted to be at. I mean right here standing on the ledge and facing the park. I think you are taking it all a wee bit extreme myself, and just one man speaking here of course. I mean, just because you lost your job and that bitch of a wife of yours left you for a teenage girl she coached in Girls’ Volleyball is bad enough and eating more snatch than either of us ever will. It’s pretty glib when you think about it. Being ‘Out-snatched’ by a hag of a woman as it were, if I may say. Nevertheless, to become a fucking grease-spot way the fuck down there on the cold concrete and unforgiving asphalt all is quite another, entirely. One thing for sure, a lovely night to end yourself like this. Truly, I must say that the weather is to die for. No, I mean, no pun intended, Joe — Shit man! Some of the dumbest things to say, right? 164

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Forgive me… I guess it doesn’t matter much at this moment in time, but you know your oldest daughter? Yeah man, the boys and me… Well what I am trying to delinquently say here is that we fucked the living shit outta her last Friday Night when she came jonesing around for some weed and needing to make some quick cash. I gotta say we spread her out pretty thin, sort of speak. Nevertheless, look at it this way; she does gonna be a real fucking pro. I mean, I needed to tell you this before you take your final swan dive way the fuck down there. Not to worry man, we’ll all look in on her from time to time, giving her our very best. Besides, I believe she is gonna be one hell of a porn queen when she grows up if she stays away from the Crack and Meth. Seems to me that you have everything well under control here, Joe. Shit, that is such a long way down and after all, it is getting dark. 165

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Joe, listen man, you are the fucking man, and I always thought that since your beginning. I love your energy and resolve in this matter. True, a bit over the top but just the same. You know what I’m trying to say here and all. Listen; looking at my watch here, I do have to go. I have others to help out tonight as I helped you out, and I am certain you understand, right Joe? See you soon, my man…” Satan.

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The Wretched Curse Like some hauntingly vivid nightmare, I come to know all too often, I find myself standing in the Dark Woods of my beloved Black Hills of South Dakota in that I find myself alone and naked. I desperately grasp on the reasons why I am standing here as the events race in my mind. I remember hearing screams suddenly cut short. These latest of screams was actually from the very same of a series of identical screams in the past that are all too familiar to me. These latest screams are to be added to my morbid collection into memory are of a woman fighting for her life in a very dark reality of mine. A reality in which, none have ever survived from in the past. My heart still pounding as a whirlwind of these evil and menacing visions cut across my own eyesight nearly causing me to collapse on my knees. I can clearly taste the fresh human blood in my mouth ebbing out onto my chin and naked bare chest as I struggle only momentarily to keep my balance and wits about me.

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This blood belongs to a woman, and just like all the screams before, her blood tastes like all the blood of the other women before. I can clearly taste the estrogen and the smell her body upon my own body through my unnatural heighten acute sense of smell. As the adrenaline takes its course through me, I carefully listen with my abnormal sense of hearing and can easily tell that I am standing nearly alone in these woods and the only exception is the sounds coming from other animals nearby beginning to stir back to their otherwise, normal day after the slaughter. I look over and can see her mutilated body twisted and ripped apart. Looking down at my own hands trembling, I know it is I. I know as a natural fact revealing that I am responsible for another horrid killing here in Deadwood as I turn and look down the hillside to see my tiny town and the thunderous sights and sounds of all those motorcycles and people. It is time of the “Sturgis Rally” and like all the years that I can remember before it, many of these bikers have fell prey to me and have fell prey to my kind.

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I walked up next to the body of this once, beautiful woman, and realized that she died like all the others so brutally without remorse as if her otherwise innocent existence is the source of my primordial savage rage. I look back at her dismembered body now below my own bare feet and can see that her neck is completely broke as her steel blue eyes frosted over in death gaze up through the towering dark pines into the empty sky above as if she were asking “Where is God in my demise?” A god that will never came or offered her some sort of rescue. Her matted blond hair saturated in blood as her skull nearly crushed with her gray brain matter about the grasses above her head tells me that I killed her swiftly and the only true peace of mind for me is that she didn’t suffer, least for long – Leastwise, my hope in the matter. In thinking this, I realize that I am not entirely or truly evil. Still trembling due to my change and the “hunt of the kill” that I felt many times, so many times 169

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before, I kneel before her fallen body, the same old questions come to bare in my own mind. Why was she in my haunted woods in the first place?

Why didn’t she heed the warning signs posted of some lurking danger? Not even the local people from the town and area dread enter these woods in fear of the history of the violent and often unexplainable numerous deaths. Still, she was somewhere where she shouldn’t be. Did she walk up through the old path by the now ancient graveyard, passed the dead trees, through the ravine where Murder’s Creek runs through? What possessed her in doing so? A series of questions I asked myself on every vehement account of the past of my own apparent killings. Now I can see by the blood-soaked remains, she was a biker, and picking up her wallet in her shredded leather pants, I can see that she wasn’t from around here but of several states away, that is obviously unaware of the dark legends surrounding 170

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these ominous woods. Consequently, the very same yarns that many old-timers dare not openly speak of and whisper only through the light of day. I look upon her blood-splattered identification and think of the “how’s and the whys” of what may have led her to her grisly death. The end-result for me, the “how’s” is not a mystery to me indeed. Nevertheless, what could have led her up here? Did I lure her while I was in human form, or did someone else do that for me? As I look down, my mind continues to race about those events before her death, before butchered her in my ferocious supernatural fits. I cannot clearly see as many things are clouded. I can only remember sitting in the cool darkness of the late evening before in my office at home while listening to some music, some powerfully dark music that I so enjoy, that I so love. I remember my cell phone ringing and my good friend, Helen’s voice on the other end telling me, warning me of something. I struggle as to remember her words, the conversation, and the details that are 171

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just as elusive as to the reasons leading up to this woman’s death. I resolve as I have done so in the times past, that I cannot recall clearly and this mystery I must sit aside. However, as to the curse of mine, the supernatural curse of mine has been with me all my life. I was not “Made” into such a creature. I was what I am. Still, I feel it is a curse upon my dark and tormented soul just the same. I place her identification, her motorcycle’s endorsement carefully back in her wallet among her credit cards and several hundred dollars of cash that she will not need any longer. Oddly, I smile at the mere thought and place her leather wallet firmly in my right hand as I can hear several large animals in the distant coming my way. Maybe I will use the money to buy my pack a couple of rounds down at the Gallows… The slightest breeze coming upon me from the northeast breaks my immediate thoughts. I can smell the scent of the creatures’ responsible for the scurrying noise coming forth from the thick canvas of 172

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the woods surrounding me. It is of my brethren, those like me as I catch glimpses of their silhouettes now surrounding me, as I know the scent of the kill itself they have picked up signaling a human kill. Now before me, the leader of the group, a large wolf comes forth snarling his long unnatural fangs with his own saliva dripping from the bloodstained ivory teeth with his crimson eyes fixed upon me. Though it is a menacing sight, I am not fearful or in the least, startled. The others begin to reveal themselves circling around the gruesome sight. Growling and showing signs of hostility towards me, I know they indeed know who I am, and that I am very much a part of them. For if, I was someone or something else and not of them, I would already be dead like the woman below my feet. I rise up slowly knowing their intentions, as they are hungry, paining for the very thing that drove me to her death – The taste of human flesh. The thought of knowing I ate upon her flesh sickens me deeply and at the same time excites me, all a part of my curse. Still, I draw safely back as they 173

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close in, passing harmlessly around me towards the kill that I brought down and begin to feed only after the leader snarls and tares into her flesh and sinew stripping it off her bone. Fascinated still, I saw this enactment many times in the past, more times that I can clearly count, I am drawn in my own curiosity looking on at my pack. I do turn once more and look down upon the town below as I can clearly see, no one knows the wiser and it will be some time before her family realizes that she will not return and the authorities will once again be notified. However, nothing I shall worry about like all those times before. However, somewhere in the dark, somewhere far away, there will be her people that will be in the gripping pain of never knowing why, never having closure of what terrible fate befell her. The authorities will never come to know and eventually call off the search for her. Many conclusions will be drawn as to the possible reasons of her mysterious disappearance. Some will say that she was a victim of some homicide, some killing perhaps perpetrated by some faceless serial killer somewhere between the “Sturgis Rally” and the road home. 174

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None will figure that her violent demise was in fact at the claws and fangs of some supernatural creature called a “werewolf” and as I think of these things, like so many times in the past, oddly I smirk. I quietly walk away from the murderous scene back down an old deer path leading to the back of my house. There I will shred and lose the evidence only after picking up the ruminants of her leather clothing and artifacts such as her jewelry and belongings while my kind continue to eat and get their fill. Whatever may be left upon them doing so, they will take care of and somewhere in the not so distant future and her disappearance will remain forever a mystery. One of the bitches from the kill, from my pack will come and join me in the moments to come. We will make love over the latest kill, an ancient ceremony of things – If you would. It is what I do; it is what we do…

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Sketches “So, what’s the fuckin’ story on our next ‘Norman Rockwell’, Doc?” The cop asked the psychiatrist sitting behind his desk as the good doctor examined the various chalk, pencil, and watercolor sketches as he is closely looking for any insight into the case at hand. “Well, since you’re a simple homicide detective and you obviously don’t know much about these sorts of things — Lemme break it down for you…” The doctor said in a condescending voice laced with resentment as to the police detective standing on the other side of the desk. “You don’t like cops, do you doc?” The detective said lighting up a cigarette after moving across the room and sitting on an armchair of a plush chair on the other side as to give the doctor some breathing room in his evaluation. “I wish you wouldn’t smoke in my god damn office. I asked you before.” The doctor scowled looking over at the detective that is obviously 176

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enjoying the fact of smoking the long slender cigarette. “As to your question; No, I don’t like cops…” The psychiatrist looks down at the artwork laid haphazardly on the table by the detective as he continues to speak. “No, not at all.” The doctor looks down and fetches one of the sketches up from the desk and using his glasses in his hand as a magnifying glass paying no mind that his response to the police detective’s dismay that the doctor just smeared across his face. “They all say that until they need a cop, Doc? And one day, you may need a cop?” “I seriously doubt that. I really do. My life and things I do, well, I just don’t need the goddamn police. You all are utterly useless and nothing but some reflection of a schoolyard bully with a badge and a fucking gun; Nothing more.” The doctor stated focusing on the detail of the artwork. Paying no mind to the insult handed to the detective, the doctor continues, “You see, this kind of 177

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person is controlled by the right hemisphere of his brain, the creative, the non-rational, his dominating, and thusly, his darker side.”

“You sure about that doc? I mean, that’s not a bad angle on that you know.” The doctor looks over at the cop, “What angle? It is what it is. Besides, the artwork is quite exceptional for a homicidal serial killer. I mean, this is some really good work. Notice that the exquisite detailing in these drawings and sketches?” The Doctor then put the larger sketch back with the others on top of his desk. “You’ll go on record saying that, Doc?” The psychiatrist glances up at him, “Certainly and I will go on record with this as well. I’m sure gonna miss this guy when you all catch him. I mean, there won’t be a chance that once he is apprehended within some small miracle he should survive in the first place with the vernacular term, ‘Cop Justice’.” The doctor leans back in his chair looking at the detective now beginning to smile. 178

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“Why’s that doc, do you like his artwork or something?” The detective exhales a large puff of smoke in the direction of the psychiatrist. “No, not at all. I am gonna miss him killing you simple-minded Neanderthal motherfuckers. I mean, this ‘Cop Killer’ has been the only excitement that this town has had in a long fucking time. Besides, it really does my heart good each morning when his work is on the front page of the newspaper after savagely carving one of you cops wide open for all the world to see. After all Detective Johnson, there are some people out here in society that believes you all have it coming. Leastwise, your killer for certain.” The detective’s face darkens with rage and contempt and responds, “Fuck you, Doc — Fuck you!” The detective pauses, “Lemme tell you something right now, Doc. When we corner this son of a bitch, oh yeah, we’re gunning this pathetic fuck down and doin’ everyone a big fucking favor too.” “Yes, yes and if I were a betting man, which I am not, I would have bet the house that you would say something like that in your, how shall I say? Oh yeah, 179

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a simpleton response. Now listen, Detective Dick Johnson as closely as you can here. I mean in light of this new evidence and all…”

“You got to be fucking with me, Doc?” Quipped the Detective sitting there. “Not at all. Lemme explain…” The psychiatrist leaned further back in his chair smiling though serious, “I doubt that you will personally catch him yourself. I seriously doubt that you will bring him in, or whatever. The police won’t allow him to live, you know, with the bitter hate you all for him. You said it yourself just a moment ago. A police rage of sorts will prevent the suspect, this killer to remain alive to face justice and of course, face the possibilities of the death penalty. Not to mention the factors that this man is very smart, intelligent, and has the skills of some sort of a cunning predator besides. You’re no fucking match for this type of element. No, you are way out of your league here….” 180

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The psychiatrist paused only to allow Detective Johnson to take his words in. “Again, if I was a betting man, I bet the fucking house it will be him indeed that will come and catch you. Yes, yes indeed. You will be the next on the slab Detective Johnson. He’ll kill you first, and I highly suspect, fuck your wife and daughter after he is through with you.” The detective is mortified as the doctor continued this outlandish and chilling conversation, “How old is your daughter now; Fourteen or so?” “What?” The Detective is utterly stunned. “I am certain she has already had her first period by now. Am I right?” The detective gets up from the armrest of the chair and puts his cigarette out on the doctor’s carpet sniffing it out with his foot. “You are one sick motherfucker, Doctor. Yeah, one sick son of a bitch, you fucker, and if you know what is good for you, you’ll leave my family out of this shit!” The detective then leaves the smiling psychiatrist in his office slamming the door behind him as he leaves. 181

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Shaking his head, the doctor pulls back his long brown hair and giving a few moments in reflection of his conversation with Detective Dick Johnson of the Deadwood Police. He begins to chuckle, and then opens a drawer on the right-hand side of his desk and pulls out a small cell phone and presses a single button, a speed dial number and leans back in his large leather chair waiting for the other end to pick up in which it does immediately. “Yes, listen…” The doctor pauses as the smile leaves his face and he then leans into his desk looking at all the sketches. “They found your artwork and brought it to me. His name is Detective Dick Johnson. Dick Johnson, you got that?” “Good, and do me a favor on this one, make a real fucking statement out of him, will you? Moreover, oh yes, one other thing, Look into his wife and daughter for me too and bring me back something wet…. Hang on; I’ll give you their address…”

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The Sirens South of Heaven It grips my soul in a paralyzing icy grip riding up my spine into the back of my neck I feel it like electricity arching and sparking as it dances up my back deep into my brain It is the beginning I first hear them as they draw unto me to ring inside my ears of the wretched screams The Sirens South of Heaven as I come to know them overtake me in their bidding For what am I to do? The Sirens, the maidens of hell, the sisters of pain and woe beckons to me now as images of the most heinous scenes plays out like pictures upon the silver screen of a theater of the most macabre The change begins, as the beckoning grows louder

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The change begins as the Sirens South of Heaven wail as the moon no longer holds her sway I begin to crave for human blood and the flesh of man I see my own body before me alter and change as the sounds of my own sinew and bone begins to stress under the mysteries that make me in whom, in what I truly am The Sirens South of Heaven are now within me singing the ancient song of death and horror untold Rage and anger now overtake as I have the need to leave these confines that hold me I shed the coils of humanity as I look up into the pitch-black sky of night My own eyes now saturated with the lust of the kill that lies before me I fully rejoice Still, the Sirens South of Heaven are with me singing songs of death and madness soothing my animalistic and tormented soul 184

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For indeed; what I am to do but to fully embrace the Sirens South of Heaven and rejoice in this night’s kill.

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Change in the Autumn Air “Oh good god, really...?” Exclaimed Daniel sawing his gums on a rib bone of the steer up to a few hours ago was chewing his cud in the field by the barn behind the bonfire and what would look like a huge gathering under the October’s full moon casting its gaze down upon the meadow of Roubaix, South Dakota. It was something in his mind, a thought of long ago that caused his sudden though, unnoticed outburst. The firelight dances off the surface of Elk Creek that runs alongside the road to Nemo in what many call, “God’s Country.” The creek runs before the old cabin that was formerly the Roubaix Post Office back when the 4-Leaf Clover Mine was in full operation and Roubaix was formerly called Perry. Just beyond in the darkness there is an old railway running between the abandoned mine and the cabin that is now nothing more than the meeting place of the Elders of the Werewolf Pack of Deadwood, a village located some seven miles below the winding pass of Strawberry Hill. 186

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Beyond the light of the bonfire and the women, the females of the pack dance nearly naked holding hands in a complete circle begin to howl an ancient chant causing Daniel, an old half-blind and craggy coot nearly as bald as he is blind turn to face the beautiful women dancing that brings a smile to his face as the fire light dance in his silver-gray eyes. Far above the festivities is a cave and within the cave is an ancient painting that perplexed the miners of the late 19th Century on their quest for gold and silver who uncovered it. The painting that many believed now forevermore lost was that of some old Indian Cave Drawing that was done by those the Sioux would later massacre in droves. You see, the Sioux Indians were far from some peaceful race of people; they had a lust for land and killed anyone who stood in their way. It was a near genocide committed by these “savages” in the late 18th Century. Nothing is much else known about these paintings showing under what looks like a full moon of sorts, the indigenous Indians being attacked what looked to be like animalistic men towering above them in these gruesome depictions.

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The miners who came after the Federal Government of the United States drove the Sioux out of the Black Hills upon the discovery of the precious metals had no idea that there was an ancient creature lurking among the ancient Indians, let alone right alongside of them. The painting also showed those Indians that were attacked that lived, transformed into the creatures that first attacked them. However, the uneducated minds of many of these miners hadn’t a clue of the macabre telling of these paintings and the true as well as brutal accounts this art was attempting to transpire as if in a dreadful warning of its truest intent. That of course, was some time ago. As Daniel watched the beautiful women of his pack continue dancing around the bonfire singing chants in an ancient language far older that the Sioux or for that matter, any existing peoples of the last three centuries would come to know. His kind, the Werewolf has been in the area long before the “white men” had come across the land and the Black Hills. 188

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In fact, some of the elders, the religious and spiritual leaders of his kind that also keep the peace in the region argue that they were here nearly several thousand years before the coming of the Sioux and some say, were here before the last Wholly Mammoth fell and vanished from the local fauna. Records if there were such a thing couldn’t support that. Still, a few believe it as to be true. The cave paintings would be the oldest record to substantiate these supernatural creatures though the paintings, and for that matter, the cave itself has been sealed and over time, forgotten by the generations passing. Regardless, that was such a very long time ago, and there isn’t anyone living among the werewolves that know about it now. A secret now well kept and intended to remain so. Daniel continued to watch and looking up into the dark blue and black night sky at the moon and then at the shadows of the women dancing in the firelight on the large home next to the bonfire that used to belong to a crazy half-white and Indian woman who in the sake of the pack needed to be put away. Being “put away” meant really one thing, “put 189

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down.” Every wolf knew what that meant. Her unmarked grave lies next to her son’s matching and like manner grave down below the earth resting in the field of cattle. Her remains are not fully intact giving sign to her overdue and violent death. Daniel himself was part of the three that was sent to put the pack’s little problem away there in Roubaix. He remembers the night that she, what they only know as the “Crazy Bitch” was put down, and put away for good. They were going to bury her and her son, what was left of them in the old Roubaix Graveyard on the other side of the hill but the Elders would not have it, it has become sacred ground to them some time ago that Daniel and crew were unaware of for whatever reason – He never asked. As Daniel thought about that night, it brought a cold smile across his otherwise weathered face in a deadly and menacing bloom. He enjoyed killing her, but that wasn’t the only thing that he that they did to her. Far from it as her final moments were spent performing sexual acts against her will, and so as with her teenage son. It was Daniel’s idea in the first place to have what he called, “a little fun” before slashing and ripping them to literal shreds afterwards. 190

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As far as the rest of the community up there in Roubaix, not many asked about the “Crazy Bitch” known as Karla. She caused too much animosity, too much hatred with her otherwise, bullshit antics. Most people were simply glad the bitch was gone and no one, not one single soul would question as to why or how. Daniel then remembered the time when the early white settlers came into the area driven by gold, the werewolf blended in with them seemingly unnoticed for the most part and those that did realize that there was something menacing or supernatural afoot, they were immediately “put away.” Besides, tragic accidents, logging, mining, and whatnot happened daily. Because of the lawlessness, the rugged life of the early day miners, whores, and society’s least desirables flocked to the town, there was always murder in the air. To this day, contractors and construction outfits uncover the occasional human grave – A perfect environment for the ‘wolf to take hold and continue to thrive. As many a good ‘wolf knows the werewolf is not the only supernatural creature out here in the Black 191

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Hills. Once there was a vampire coven that was located in Lead, South Dakota up before the troubles broke out between the two supernatural species. Thanks be to a young and powerful werewolf that thought outside the box and went up to Lead on one sunny spring day to open a few drapes and windows on the home of the coven exposing all the vampires to a little daylight and fresh air. Indeed, the young wolf who was formerly targeted for death by the vampire coven took it upon himself to “deal” with the problem. Young Connelly Pettimore, the young wolf in question became quite the “rage” as it was and the bane of the vampire. A continued story for another time… There are two kinds of history in the Deadwood area, the one that the humans know about, and the real history of things in darker detail. Daniel sat there thinking of such things at the table where he is the only one sitting as all the others are among their friends and family. Daniel could clearly see he was quickly becoming “long in the tooth” as far as a member of the pack is concerned. 192

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He would have been tapped on his shoulder some years back to become part of the Elders and the Council but there was too much blood on his “claws” and he enjoyed killing entirely too much. Choosing him could have been a problem bringing entirely too much attention to him and his kind and something that the werewolves as well as the surviving vampires now living in Wyoming and in Northern Colorado are concerned. Daniel knows that he will spend his final days in quiet reflection of his otherwise psychotically chaotic past. Besides, he had plenty of memories to keep him “warm and glowing” through another cold winter – It was the least of his worries. Regardless of how the Elders and the Council may feel, Daniel was treated with a rightful measure of respect and to him that was more than enough. For Daniel in his reflection as he continued to watch the women dance and sing, his mind continued to remain in the past in something that he found his mind doing quite a lot these days, so it seems. He remembered the early times of his childhood growing up in Maine back before the birth of the United States. He remembers the time he spent as a “young 193

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pup” abroad in Europe visiting his surviving family members there, the Revolutionary War that brought him back to the colonies, and then the beginning of the Civil War in which he came out to South Dakota and the Black Hills. He has seen the Indians, the murderous Sioux kill all those in their wake only to “cry” about the injustices visited upon them in return by the white settlers and army forcing their relocation all for the white man’s lust for gold. In Daniel’s eyes, gold meant nothing to him. In the past, if he wanted something, he just took it. Daniel isn’t the only old wolf that was here, that saw all of this happening. There were of course, others as well. Some are still around as he looked at the various tables and the active various conversations going on. He then took a deep sip of his glass of beer and carefully sat it back down taking his direction back at the beauty of the women dancing. Soon it will be his time to join his fathers and all his friends who have gone before him as he thought about this very thing though it did not bother him. His thoughts or remorse would be in the future of his 194

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kind, his pack here in the Deadwood area and by all signs, and they would be fine and continue to thrive. Something he didn’t really have to worry too much about – Still something deep down was stirring within him. There were growing rumors he would hear about time to time of a human, a serial killer that knows about his kind, something that the Elders and the Council has allowed for whatever reason that is beyond his immediate understanding to continue to live. However, he also heard that this serial killer would meet his own fate soon enough as his purpose would come to a conclusion. Daniel didn’t know of this serial killer, it is nothing for one to openly to talk about. However, he did know his name, Raven Blackstone. Daniel gave thought in the moment to Raven Blackstone in knowing that Blackstone was given an ultimatum to leave town or to be “put away” as it were. Daniel heard nothing more of this matter than this Mister Blackstone was causing some problems, and ‘wolves don’t do problems – leastwise, very long.

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Deadwood is indeed changing, the new sanitarium run by the federal government is all but ready to be open known as the “Whispering Pines Sanitarium” for the criminally insane, and otherwise that of the government want to sweep under the proverbial carpet as it were to live out the rest of their miserable condemned lives. Then there is the matter that this sanitarium brought in additional families causing the population to swell in the town of Deadwood as the town of Lead continues to dwindle even more since some federal science project went bust with the American Government nearly tanking thanks to the bloodsucking covens running Wall Street. Daniel shook his head slightly – It isn’t his problem after all – Nothing to get worked up about. Daniel takes another sip of beer from his glass as he rises up slowly and walks away from the festivities into the shadows of the night unnoticed by the others.

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Miss Little Red Riding Hood “Oh no not some blood sucking slut, nothing like that. No, this little bitch is something completely different she’s human. Least that’s what everyone keeps telling me.” An older wolf sat there at the picnic table smoking his cigarette looking though his bifocals as he flicked his ashes gingerly into the ashtray as to others from the same clan listened on. “She’s a hot looking bitch, well, so I’m told.” He smiled as his silver-grey hair reflected the big bon fire up in Roubaix with the Black Hills as his backdrop as the sun was already set. There were others at other picnic tables around the fire, plenty of food and drink as there is plenty of laughter and other discussions were taken place around them. His hands and fingers were covered in silver rings and jewelry as he flicked his ashes and continued to talk. “All’s I know, this little cute cocksucker is from Aberdeen or someplace like that. I guess as the story goes, she got herself ass-fucked by some werewolf in 197

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the past.” He paused to draw in his cigarette deep into his lungs as the other wolves intently listened on as he continued. “Shit, you boys ain’t gonna believe this shit, but she goes by, ‘Miss Little Red Riding Hood’.” The other, a big dark and powerful looking wolf, a man dressed head to toe in black attire smiled coldly, “Motherfucker, you gotta be putting us on or something, right?” “No man…” He laughed shaking his head negatively as the third; a smaller and darker wolf sat listening contently as the fire’s reflection danced off of his eyes. “That’s what the bitch calls herself these days, I mean, before she ran into a wolf that was, well, on to her and all.” “Fuck me, you gotta be fucking pulling my god damned leg or something? This is bullshit.” The taller, the bigger one spoke once more pulling back his long shoulder length brown hair.

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“Sal…” The bigger wolf looked over to his right, “You believing this shit?” He smiled at the third one there at the picnic table that remained quiet. “I ‘m fucking serious…” The silver and grey haired wolf wearing bifocals seemed to get somewhat upset as Gary, the owner of the Gallows came up next to them and sat down at the table with a huge plate of half-cooked steak, potatoes, a couple of home-made biscuits, and gravy. “You lads better get some of this. This shit is great.” He looked at the three and smiled as he began to eat from his over-burden paper plate. “Donny, you were fuckin’ talking about Little Red Riding Hood, were you not?” “Oh shit, you know something about this fucking story?” The talkative one asked Gary. “Yeah, who don’t? It’s a good yarn. Has everything a growing boy needs.” Gary added as he began to eat motioning with his free hand for Donny to continue the story while he ate. “Yeah, like I said, she became hell on wheels when she got sodomized in the fucking ass. She was 199

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something like fourteen or so…” He was cut off by Gary struggling to talk as he had a mouthful of food. “No, she was sixteen, not a day younger.” “Okay man, so she was sixteen…” Donny said and then turned his direction to the others careful as to no other would hear the story passed the table as the quiet one sitting there slowly drank his bottled beer. “The story goes that after her asshole got stretched a mile or so…” The others began to laugh as the vulgarity of Donny’s telling, “…she moved to Hill City to live with her Grandmother. You know therapy and all. Besides, I guess they didn’t realize that she went smack-dab into a whole pack of our brothers and sisters there.” This caused the others to laugh once more as Donny looked over both of his shoulders to make sure no one else was casually listening as he took a swig from his own bottle of beer. “So, if you fuckers quit interrupting me, I’ll go on…” They all grew as silent as Sal sitting there.

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“Okay, so she starts taking shit like martial arts or some shit like that and learning to use knives. She becomes quite good at it and all. She even makes herself quite the red cape costume and all.” The others just smiled as Gary soaks up some of the blood from his steak with one of the homemade biscuits. “Fucking cunt then goes out and spoiling for a fight boards a bus and heads back to Aberdeen where she finds that wolf that showed her a little love and shit…” The others laugh only for a moment. “She finds the old wolf and cuts his fucking balls off and kills him. I mean the authorities only find a man holding his fucking nut-sack in his dead decapitated body; a true death. I don’t know what was said or transpired in the little skirmish, but he must have said something to the bitch because she didn’t stop there. She killed herself a couple of other wolves and along with them, a couple of bikers who wanted a piece of her too. All ended up the same fucking way.” He drank again until the bottle was empty as Gary yelled to a woman standing up, “Hey Sweetie, how about getting Donny another beer, will you?” She smiled and shook her head. 201

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“Nice, thanks babe... Thanks!” Donny continues, “Thanks Gary, shit… Anyway, the police there begin looking for a killer, but beings it was only a couple of dick-hard bikers and some low-life wolves that they knew nothing really about,

right? Anyways, feeling the heat a bit, she gets her sweet ass back out here in the Hills.” The woman, a younger busty woman brings Donny the beer, “Thank you sweetie.” He greets her with his own smile and begins to tell the rest of the story uninterrupted. “Making quite a scene in Aberdeen, she heads back to Granny’s house. She not only caught the attention of the wolf pack in Aberdeen, but also raises a few brows of the local cunting vampire community there. I hear that those bloodsuckers try to recruit her before she left. Nonetheless, she heads back to the Hills where she begins to lay low as it were. She takes a fucking job being some sort of an office assistant at a small 202

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lumber mill or yard there. She then gets involved in sucking some married man dick, an ax-toting logger. The married logger takes her like three times a week out in the woods. I guess she never did quite get the wolf-experience out of her that way. You know, being a fucking slut and all.” Donny takes another drink. “However, the missus finds out about her hubby, the logger planting his stiff little tree up the ass of Miss Little Red Riding Hood. This is where the story gets fucking good. You see, the jealous middle-aged logger’s wife isn’t half-bad in the sack. She gets her freak on with the local ‘talent’ at the neighborhood bar there and sucks, fucks, and whatever she needs to do on all fours or on her knees and gets a couple of hard-asses to go and take care of this woodsman and shit.” Donny lights up another cigarette as Gary nods on while he continues to eat. “Little does the logger’s, Woodsman’s wife know, she hooks up and is double-teamed by a couple of wolves. They have their suspicions of this ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ bitch and decides to check into it. I mean, one of the wolves tells the Woodsman’s wife, 203

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‘Damn, I am circumcised, but please, you can suck on the second one and shit.” This odd comment got all three of the others laughing. “I mean this woman; she would do anything short of murder to see her husband and the little red riding whore get some retribution. I mean, so I am told. This bitch even has a couple of videos made of her fucking like three or four guys all at the same time on YouTube while getting one hell of a fucking facial and all.” Donny drinks from his beer and somewhat excited in the telling, continues with some enthusiasm. “These guys go and pay the Woodsman a fucking little visit up in the hills. They find the motherfucker banging away on the young and not so tender, Riding Hood. They wait until she pulls it out of her wet ass and sucks the woodsman clean after a picnic lunch…” Gary nods with a grin stretching from ear to ear. 204

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“Anyways, I don’t know shit about logging, but the woodsman is hard at his work when one of the wolves comes right up to him in broad daylight as a man of course, and pulls out his smart-phone and shows a couple of videos of the Woodsman’s wife smoking some serious cock. Yeah, the Woodman is plenty pissed as he finds out that his own wife is some kind of a fucking whore herself. The other wolf then changes out of sight and dropped a fucking dead tree on the Woodman’s ass. I mean, the authorities call it a ‘widow-maker’ you know with the dead tree falling on him and all. Making everything looking like a fucking accident.” Gary still smiling as the others on the edge of their bench in anticipation as Donny takes another sip of his beer, “I guess Little Red Riding Hood doesn’t believe the so-called accident and finds werewolf tracks left by the second wolf that the woodsman’s wife was banging. Therefore, she goes and suits up to get even. Meanwhile, the local wolf pack gets their tip from the pack in Aberdeen and come calling.” He takes another drink. “Miss Red Riding Hood is out and about a couple of evenings later and a couple of other wolves 205

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that the wife of the late woodman, this logger comes calling on Grandmother. Fuck, it wasn’t all too pretty for Grandmother if you know what I mean.” Gary begins to choke up a bit laughing and shaking his head as the second, the quiet wolf looked over at him in some measure of wonderment. “Granny gets gang-raped, tortured a bit, and sings like a fucking canary telling the two wolves as they were now policing up their wet cocks covered in little Granny’s cunt as they listened on. I guess Granny was such a good lay, you know, good pussy and ass; they let her live with a warning that they would be back and finish the job. Besides, they got all the information they needed and one of them called Aberdeen to let them know that the wolf-killing bitch was out here in Hill City. Confirmed it and all...” Donny put out his cigarette and finished his beer. “It was Connelly Pettimore and one other that was called up by our own council as it were to go and find this ‘Miss Little Red Riding Hood’ before things 206

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get too fucking outta whack and bring the authorities down on everyone, and like we all need that shit..” He paused and knowing no one else was listening he lit up another smoke and continued, “It was that fucking Pettimore sitting at a biker bar when she came in all dressed up in her knives and scant little outfit. I mean I don’t fucking know how Connelly could keep from laughing, but she took an instant liking to him and all. She began telling him about the werewolves, he must have gone nuts with this shit. Nevertheless, what I was told, he played along just great. He ended up walking her back to Granny’s house, he knew that a couple of the wolves came to pay Grandmother a fucking visit and in spite of Little Red Riding Hood’s skill set, he wasn’t worried in the least. Man, does that motherfucker have some balls…” He paused in reflection and took a drag from his cigarette as the others remained quiet. “The story goes that they were taking some sort of a ‘short-cut’ when Connelly was checking out her 207

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fucking ass when she turned and said, ‘Do you believe in what I am saying about werewolves?’ So Connelly not taking any more of the bullshit and smelling her wet cunt started to change and that must have been a real bitch for the bitch, right? I mean right before her fucking eyes, this tall dark and handsome turns into a fucking werewolf!”

The others begin to laugh aloud. “So he slaps the long knife right out over her hands, rips her top clean the fuck off, lifts her up, bends her over, and like so long ago, spits on her notso-tight asshole and drives it home. No, she still tries to put up a fight screaming and going for her other knives and some other bladed weapons. Too bad for her, she is completely disarmed and is brutally raped repeatedly. You all know Connelly, right?” They nod and continue to laugh hysterically.

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“I mean, I bet she would like to have shit when she realized that a fucking werewolf was walking her home the whole fucking time, right?” The laughing grew as Donny waited until they settled down a bit before continuing. “The dark little red head getting ass-raped and forced to suck his ten inch cock in the ally way must have been a sight to see. Anyways, after he jizzes all over her face and tits he breaks her neck like a fucking twig. I mean, after all, he had to kill her – Aberdeen ordered the hit and shit, right?” “So then what happens?” The first one asks. “Connelly changes back quickly and takes her body to a nearby truck, his pickup behind the bar and covers her body under a tarp and in a hurry drives to Smitty’s shop on the other side of town. It’s a meat processing plant of all things.” “No shit?” Sal remarked. “No fucking shit…” Gary said finishing up his plate of food.

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“Yeah, so he brings her to old man Smitty himself and shows him the body. Fuck me, the story goes that even in death she still looks hot and Smitty has a go at her before the body gets too fucking cold.” The gang erupts in ear-splitting laughter. “After Smitty gets done sinking his baby-dick in her swollen bruised snatch, he removes the jewelry and shit from her and then dumps her body in the fucking big ass huge meat grinder.” Even Donny joins the others in laughter as Gary wipes his eyes from under his glasses with a clean napkin.

“Fuck me, Smitty makes hamburger out of her one-hundred-and fifteen pound ass!” Again as before, the table erupts into laughter. “You all will never look at hamburger the same way again!” Gary exasperated as the first wolf fell off the table laughing and rolling on the ground kicking and thrashing.

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“Now I love this story about Little Red Riding Hood far fucking better than the traditional story.” The long hair wolf said in bouts of laughter as the tears rolled down his eyes and cheeks. “Good god damned story, Donny!” “Story, hell... It’s all true, because I should know; I was the one that balled both Granny and the Woodsman’s wife!” Gary is now pointing to his chest with his crooked right thumb looking down at the one lying in a convulsion of laughter.

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Douglas S. Taylor

Epilog I would like to thank everyone who has had the wonderful opportunity to read this volume of short stories. As the writer, I can assure you that I had a grand time writing and of course, publishing the material throughout the Internet. Needless to say, I would love to invite each of you to the Douginator Online Magazine at http://douglinator.wordpress.com/ Thanks again and until next time…

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