The Horror... The Horror... Can You Handle The Entire Horror?

I don't usually read anything horrific. I prefer humor to horror, as a general rule. But when I was thinking about what I found horror-filled ( in stories) I decided to try and write it, instead of explain it. Anyway, this is full of exploding heads and religious knocks, so read at your own descretion. I haven't decided if it's done or not, maybe you'll let me know?

--Sunday Prey Or Service--


The hair should have suggested much, but was contradictory. It shone like a worn nickel and had lost the dark brown tone years ago. Now it was fully silver and grown out and pulled into a single mass and held by a rubber band. It was a simple ponytail- the token symbolism of a recognizable social process. When you walked behind a man who wore this hair style, you thought you knew something about him.

Malcolm looked the part and had played the part- down to the leather sandals and loose fitting hand-dyed trousers - but had decided to forego the part in one angry instant and now here he was.

Even the deep cuts of wrinkles that bracketed his mouth and spelled out a habitual smile contradicted the two guns visibly tucked into his waist, and the shotgun he held resolutely in his thin and lengthy arms. His new part required the loss of the old, and a vacancy could be seen where once a peaceful man stood. It was the vacuousness of a man whose life had been removed from him. The pony-tail still hanging long along his bony back, but the ideals that had grown it there smashed and blown away into a frightening new perception of everything.

Eight well-dressed and cowering Baptists- three men and five women- were huddled together like puppies on the floor of their small Baptist church, shivering and silently praying while Malcolm paced amongst their hands, offered to him in gestures of supplication, his smiling face and determined mien far above their down-turned eyes.

“None of you will of course mind dying,” Malcolm was saying. “You got better places to be than this shit-hole, and you’ve been waiting for me for a long time. If you don’t mind me saying, I’d be thanking me for what I plan to do. They say when you get there, angels will be waiting, and eternal bliss will be your reward.”

“Why are you doing this?” rose the timid voice of the town’s banker. They spoke only to a salty pair of leather sandals.

“And y’all can surely relay a message for me, which is the point of this exercise, in case you were wondering. When you get there, amongst all the wings and halos and all that shit, I want you to tell them for me now, something very important. I want you to tell them, that Malcolm says “fuck you”. “Fuck every damn one of you”. Can you do that for me?”

Unspoken was the unanimous retort of “go to hell” by the cowering mass at Malcolm’s feet.

“If I go to hell” Malcolm answered, anticipating this, “I’ll be sure and say hello for all of y’all.”

Fire erupted from the barrel of the shotgun and the blast was deafening. A head exploded on the floor and now the small town’s only banker was separated from his body. There lay his pudgy frame, more on its side than on its belly, and there was the spreading pool of blood. Hidden in the echoing noise were the screams of five women and two of the men, erupting from the sound of the blast like a screaming train just leaving a noisy tunnel. The moment was not a real one and far beyond the understanding of the nine who were still alive, but the brain matter that slid out of its shell and quivered onto the hardwood floor was as real as one in a science-class jar.

Where there was once a pious man who loved pastries and coffee, now there was not.

All screams turned to hyperventilated whimpering as Malcolm’s voice roared above them.

“OK. Who wants to go next? The wheel that squeaks the loudest gets the lead.”

The blast of the shotgun had jumped into Malcolm’s heart and was bouncing around in there. His whole chest pounded from inside out. He needed to move around and calm himself down, but he had no plans to go. He began pacing around the eight cowering parishioners while nervously firing off questions.

“Did you think it would come to this, Mrs. Browning? When you started this, did you see how it would end? What were you thinking, Mrs. Browning? What made you into such a cruel old despicable witch?”

Mrs. Browning had brought the refreshments today. On her finely ironed blouse remained the smudge of fudge that she had not the time to wash with water. Entering the small church this morning, she had tilted her plate clumsily while trying to open the door into the tiny kitchen that flanked the bathrooms at the rear of the church. A brownie had tumbled toward her, and she had caught it between an arm and her well-concealed breast. She had smiled at Mr. Gregory, the pastor, who stared at the mark and said nothing as the moment passed.

“ANSWER ME!” Malcolm screamed.

Mrs. Browning began to sob. Out of her mouth came nonsensical sentence fragments and several appeals to God. From her nostrils runny mucous flowed, her powdered cheeks streaking and caking, her lips hanging like the loose labia of fornicating sinners. Her answer boiled down to God intervening and Malcolm granting pity, and neither seemed plausible under the circumstances.

“I do pity you, Mrs. Browning. I do. I really, truly and most sincerely do. But I will not HAVE pity on you. I will not TAKE pity on you. You are a chosen one. You are one of God’s messengers. I need you, Mrs. Browning, to take a message for me on your way to meet your maker. You do remember what the message is, don’t you Mrs. Browning? WHAT’S THE MESSAGE MRS. BROWNING?”

“Fuck you.”

“Yes! FUCK YOU! That’s what it is! You tell them Malcolm sent you, you hear? And you make sure you don’t mumble, ok? You won’t mumble, will you, Mrs. Browning?

WILL YOU, Mrs. Browning?”

Malcolm placed the warm barrel-end of the shotgun against her temple. Her body froze and shook as she tried to stay silent while her body ignored her. All she knew to do was close her eyes and tighten herself around herself. If His will had come, Thy will be done…

“THY WILL BE DONE?” read Malcolm from her quivering lips. “Thy will be done? You need to have that conversation with ME, Mrs. Browning. You need to ask yourself why MY WILL is about to blow your mother fucking head off! You’re talking to the wrong dude, Mrs. Browning. You should be talking TO ME!”

As Mrs. Browning arched her back to scream at Malcolm, fire erupted from the end of the shotgun barrel once again. The blast was not as loud as the first blast- it had a ring of familiarity to it now- but the screams were louder, and the head that exploded spat more blood laterally than the first shot, which had been straight down. Mrs. Browning slumped to the floor as she realized it had not been her that had been shot, but Gertrude, who played the organ. In a brave attempt to stop the taunting, Gertrude had made a sudden move that cost her her face and the back half of her head. Her last words had indeed been “fuck you!”

Malcolm wondered if they’d ever get to where he had intended to send them?

“Does someone want to say a prayer for the organ lady? Anyone? How about you Bob? Are you feeling really pious and holy today? Would you like to sing a hymn?”

Bob was all lean sinew and leather. He butchered pigs and cows, grew corn and tomatoes and watermelon, and dressed in an outdated but finely made suit every Sunday. In his mind, he was the hero here. He would be the one to pounce on this hippy man. He would be the one to grab the gun away. If there was a physical presence within this group that was capable, it was he. But fear actually paralyzed him, and he was as immobile as a carcass. When the question came to him, he could do nothing but mouth half a word and cry.

“Oh Bob… Now Bob…” Malcolm said soothingly. “You know you want to. I can see it in your eyes… Come on, Bob. Just a lunge. Just a quick dive over here to grab my legs. You know you have it in you. I mean, who else but you, right Bob? You’re the heroic, manly American. You were a soldier in the war, were you not? Oh that’s right… you were stateside, sweeping barracks or some such thing. You never did have a gun pointed in your face, did you Bob?--

Was it prayers Bob? You think God chose you to stay here while guys like me went over there and fought? Did God like you better, Bob? Is that it? That is it, isn’t it? God liked you better? Would you send a message to God for me, Bob? Can you do that? Are you gonna be capable of opening that mouth of yours when you get up there and give God a message for me? Come on, Bob. Let me hear you say it. Say it or I’ll shoot you in the foot.”

Bob was frozen. Everything trembled but nothing moved.

There was a fire leaping from the end of the barrel. There was another booming blast. There were screams coming out of the noise like there had been the last time; but this time, one was the scream of a wounded beast.

This time, there was the scream of an insane amount of pain being described by a sinewy old man who had just lost his foot at the ankle.

Blood pulsed out in rapidly shrinking intervals, and the entire floor of bodies writhed in fear and agony and incredible subjugation, the kind that torments the mind in our evilest of dreams- the suffocation of the senses by an overwhelming fire-storm of terror- and Malcolm paced around this small herd of locals like a tyrant unrepentant.

“Say it, Bob. SAY IT!”

“FUCK YOU!” Bob wailed. It was long and drawn out like a howl. There was a wounded animal hidden in the words. There was the pain of slaughter in the trailing “ooooooo”… and there was fear and lots and lots of doubt.

“Good.” said Malcolm. “Very good.”

There was a flash from the end of a hot barrel and an enormous boom, and Bob’s chest turned instantly hollow at a point where there was once a beating heart.

“Do you think there is a God Mrs. Browning? Are you prepared to see him on this glorious Sunday? What about you Katherine? Would you like to go to him now?”

The scene was already over-run by horrific images. There was a chubby body laying on its side without a head. There was a sinewy body missing a foot with a hole where there was once a heart. Gertrude, the organ player, lay sprawled in the center of the clustered group with her face imploded and the back of her head gone. Blood had showered the scene and covered its participants, who were whining and huddling in sobbing and convulsing terror.

Katherine would not look beyond the bloodied space in front of her on the hardwood to speak. The hair that hid her face was dark and sticky like raspberry chocolate.

“Kath-e-rine…” Malcolm sang. “Kath-e-rine…”

“I hope you rot in hell!” said one of the other women. It was not Mrs. Browning and in no way Katherine. Malcolm began pacing around the group with his shotgun pointing at them, its barrel smoking.

“Do you believe in hell? Didn’t you just say that Mrs. White? Isn’t that just beautiful! Heaven and hell! It’s so easy. You’re good, I am bad. You’re all going to heaven. I’m going to hell. I get the satisfaction of revenging my daughter’s death, and y’all get to go to heaven and talk about ME! Ain’t that something? Don’t ch’all just wanna shout Hallelujah! And AMEN! Ain’t that what ch’all are suppose to say?”

Malcolm seemed to be spurred by an idea. His body language grew more pronounced as he pointed and commanded.

“Alrighty, then! I think it’s time we moved this party. Those three are making me sick. If any of y’all are wondering how many shells this here shotgun is still holding, thank ol’ Bob for modifying it for me last summer. It holds eight 12 gauge magnum-power-loaded SOB’s… The pellets are steel-alloy, as heavy as lead, and they’re not rounded balls, neither. Each one is as sharp on its edges as a rusty old tin-can, and you’ve seen what they can do. You should be proud of this old hippy man from up north. Y’all taught him some pretty neat tricks!

Now come on. Gather your wits and scoot on over to that wall. I want the rest of y’all sitting up and staring at me so we can have a conversation.”

Malcolm shoved the hot barrel of the shotgun into Mrs. Browning’s back.

“You first, Karen,” he told her. “GO!”

Not Karen Browning but Katherine was the first to scoot. Never looking up, she pushed herself along the slippery floor smearing blood in a path toward the wall. Mrs. White wanted away from the headless corpse that lay beside her and she too scooted like an odd animal over to the wall. Nancy was now left exposed by the two women who had abandoned the tight knot of bodies. Nancy was a widow and a bit of a looker. Nancy dared show a bit of chest in her Sunday dress, but now was not the time to be noticed for anything.

“You too, Nancy. Go on. Scoot on over there.”

Nancy’s dress flipped up and showed off ageless legs as she scooted away from Mrs. Browning and the pastor, who was also the town’s local Sherriff. He was the fourth body sprawled amongst the bloody spatter, only he was still whole, and still breathing, having been pistol-whipped what seemed like three lifetimes ago, but was, in fact, not many minutes.

“Mrs. Browning. What is it you are going to say when you get to heaven? You have been anointed my humble messenger. I have selected you to be my next martyr, to pass my glorious message onto God and the angels. You, dear woman, have the choice between scooting over to that wall, or Fed Ex’ing yourself right on up outta here. Do you have a preference?”

Mrs. Browning began a slow and methodical- and defiant- scoot.

“Fuck you.” she spit. “Fuck you and damn your soul for all eternity.”

Malcolm smiled.

“You did that last year, already,” he said. “Now get your fat, southern ass against that wall.”

Malcolm wiped his face with his arm. It was hot and humid here. This southern heat was unwelcome to him now that he needed to keep his cool. This was the heat that first drew him down into northern Louisiana, as it seemed to help his arthritic knees- knees which had been nearly destroyed fighting a war over thirty-seven years ago. Small chunks of steel- perhaps even pieces of tin cans- shredded both patellae when a thin and unseen wire was tripped by a fellow soldier. Malcolm had been cut down just two weeks into his tour of duty, and he had been sent home.

God was never given credit for the pain that Malcolm felt from then until now, but many attributed Malcolm’s good fortune to God nonetheless.

“God was looking out for you that day,” was often heard. Malcolm couldn’t see the logic there, and became an Atheist.

The only man left alive was Mr. Gregory, and he was unconscious. For a Sherriff, Malcolm thought, he sure was a puny bastard.

Malcolm took the tie off of Bob’s lanky neck, and tied Mr. Gregory’s ankles in a knot so tight it had to be cut off later. He then found another tie which he slipped off of the unencumbered neck of Mr. White, the pot-bellied banker. Mrs. White shrunk in horror and covered her face, while Malcolm tied Mr. Gregory’s hands to his belt behind his back. The other blood-spattered women stared frozen in disbelief, as numb as trauma would allow them to be, as dead as much alive by virtue of unfathomable fear.

Mrs. Browning and Kathy and Mrs. White the newly widowed, leaned against a red-speckled wall, wrapping their arms around tucked-in knees and peering over them with frightened, traumatized eyes. Nancy had turned completely around. It was the wall that held her vacant stare. Her one bare shoulder was the only lovely thing still visible to Malcolm within this tiny church. Nancy scratched at the old white plaster. She was silently scratching her way out of here.

Malcolm grabbed Mr. Gregory by his Sunday preaching robe, and dragged him over to near the others. His last preparatory move was to unfold himself a chair, facing the four women and the hog-tied pastor, and sit down on it.

The sawed shotgun barrel pointed off into the empty pews, and Malcolm could make out the two pieces of paper Mr. Gregory had read this morning’s sermon from. Having missed the services once again, Malcolm wondered if his name or the name of his dead daughter had been the oratory center of things today? His curiosity was drawing his mind to the pulpit, but he sat and did nothing, faking a yawn, actually, while he let the atmosphere in the room quiet down into a somber sinking-in for all who still lived.

Time was measured in the beats of still-beating hearts. Those that still lived marked the moments by hearing them tick off inside themselves. Fear was speeding up time for its victims. Resignation was slowing it down for Malcolm. The end of this was a foregone conclusion. The pulpit had dictated this outcome, and faith had made it come to this. It was prayer that had collected these people here to take part in this. It was scripture that had led all to this horrific scene for dying. Of this, Malcolm sat resolutely certain.

In less than five minutes, three earnestly pious people had been vacated from their bodies. The exorcism had been immediate and final, with no turning back. Gertrude had gone quickly- she wasn’t part of the original plan. Bob had died screaming, exactly as Malcolm wanted. Mr. White had simply shut the fuck up. It had been easier than Malcolm could have ever thought possible. You pointed the menacing gun. You simply pulled the trigger.

The fear he had lined up against the wall was the fear of lifetimes. Every moment where death was feared in each of these four cowering women was collected and displayed by their body language and the tremors they could not contain.

Malcolm wondered just what was it, then, that led to this fear? These bodies were so ugly. Other than Nancy. You had a pear-shaped grotesque figure in Mrs. Browning, stuffed in her stretchy pants and powdered like a pastry. You had Mrs. White, as square as a box of matches with a face like a paper plate. You had Katherine, so thin she resembled her own bones. And then you had Mr. Gregory, so puny one wanted to pat his head and send him to the store to fetch a paper. How could one fear leaving all that awkward flesh behind? The pain of being inside one’s skin? The legs that scorched you from the knees upward?


It was perhaps ten minutes later when Malcolm spoke again, his thoughts calming and turning to simply violent pictures of exploding parts of bodies, and then turning away again.

“Did you pray for this, Mrs. Browning?”

Four women jumped inside their skins. He was talking again.

“When you knelt on your fat knees, did you pray for me to come here and send you on your way?”

Even from afar, it looked like Malcolm was a crazy man, talking to a wall lined with dolls.

“Did you say “Oh Lord, please bring Malcolm forth to carry me into your arms? Oh Lord, please instruct Malcolm, through your good graces, to put a gun in my mouth and send me to you? Is that what you prayed for, Mrs. Browning? A fast-track to heaven?

And Katherine. Did you lay you down to sleep after begging God to bring me here today for your salvation? “

Katherine’s head shook almost imperceptibly “no”, but in this scenario, it amplified into a scream.

“No? You mean your prayers weren’t about ME? You didn’t pray for ME to come here today and relieve you all of your earthly bodies? You mean to say that I just came out of some evil world to kill you all? Didn’t God listen? Wasn’t God paying attention? Doesn’t God care enough about you to jam my gun, to deprive me of sight, to smite me dead? Where the hell are all of your angels? What the hell could be keeping them? Time’s running out ladies. I’d suggest that y’all get down on your knees and pray before me! TURN AROUND Nancy! My daughter looked up to you more than any of these other witches!”

Nobody moved.

A flash left the barrel of the gun, and there was that painful, all-encompassing boom. Just above Nancy’s clawing fingers, a new hole opened in an instant puff that led outside and let in sunlight uncolored by stained-glass windows. The stirred-up plaster dust swirled around and highlighted a light-beam, which pointed at Malcolm’s feet by some obscene coincidence, giving him his own religious air of unwarranted authority.

Only Nancy screamed, but the noise had brought poor Mr. Gregory back into consciousness, where he squirmed and struggled in his bindings, trying to get a focus and a rational understanding of what he was awakening to.

“Welcome to hell, Mr. Gregory. Take a number and I’ll be with you shortly.”

Malcolm’s eyes went back to Nancy.

“NOW! Or I will shoot Mrs. White in the face. NOW! Nancy, NOW!”

Nancy turned. Like a defiant child, she met him half-way. She would look at him, but she would keep her left hip facing him. There was no purpose for this defiant act. There was far too much fear to create purpose from almost any action undertaken as a response to this much fear. This circle of fear was small and impenetrable like the windings of a baseball. Underneath the windings of this fear, there was a hard bit of disappointing truth. Nancy had always felt as disappointing as that tiny rubber ball, and sure, fear protected that while it was all wrapped nicely in a beautiful package.

Malcolm now had the view of Nancy that satisfied him, and he turned to Katherine.

“Pray to me Katherine.”

Mr. Gregory squirmed a bit on his belly. There were blank, almost dead female eyes staring back at Malcolm, as well as Nancy’s long pair of blood-smeared finely-shaped legs. To Katherine, the first offer of life came, amid the pointing of a shotgun. Malcolm spoke slow and deliberate.

“I am going to let your prayers decide whether you live or die. If they feel repentant and earnest, I will let you walk out that door over there and you will have the rest of your life to imagine what heaven will be like once you leave this hell you call Waterford Parish. I am giving you the same choice you gave my daughter. I think you should take it, Katherine. You’re too skinny to bury as it is.”

“We offered your daughter a passage to heaven,” came the unexpected answer from Katherine.

“You kidnapped my daughter and filled her head with nonsense! What the hell were you thinking?”

“Your daughter was going to hell. You were sending her there…”

There was a flash of fire from the barrel of the gun. The enormous blast removed the argument from all thoughts momentarily. Katherine’s neck had been blown apart, and her head rolled simply sideways and hung by a thin flap of skin. Blood erupted from the top of her shredded torso and flooded over the rest of her, which remained eerily seated. Another hole had been opened in the plaster where her head had been. Small, pellet-sized beams of light shined in on the floor and stretched into streaks across the hardwood. Malcolm marveled how it looked like Katherine had unhinged her head to shoot out these thin, finely focused beams.

Several minutes would pass before Mrs. White and Mrs. Browning and Nancy would stop their hysterical screaming. Mr. Gregory seemed disbelieving and frozen in fear. He said nothing. His eyes were squeezed closed and his face simply flattened on the hardwood floor.

Malcolm took this time to take out a pistol and set it down on the ground next to him. It’s barrel had been poking him in the soft flesh below his belt line, and he had been ignoring it. Killing these people had made him calmer than he had thought it was possible. He was actually acting far more rational than he could have ever imagined. There was no reason for hysterics now. There was a predetermined outcome to all of this, and the end was looking just as he had imagined the end to look.

When the screams had subsided into large gulping for air, Malcolm turned back to Mrs. Browning.

“Karen?

KAREN? Do you think Katherine gave them my message? Should I send you along to make sure she gets it right? Did you hear what she said about Annabelle? She said Annabelle was going to hell. Do you think Annabelle is in hell, Karen? Do you think you were able to save her soul before you killed her? When she was laying in your cellar, with no food or water, do you think she was seeing God and his infinite wisdom? Do you think she was praying to God to come and find her? Do you think she wondered why God was punishing her for simply being born to an Atheist father? You starved my poor daughter to death and you sit there and look at me like you don’t know what I am talking about. I am talking about your soulless existence, Karen. I am talking about how you know nothing about anything and yet you profess great knowledge about everything. Fuck you! That’s my message to all of you. Fuck you! And fuck God and fuck all the angels and fuck the whole notion of heaven and hell! Fuck all of it! If God were so great, why am I still standing while half of your little cabal is spilling blood in giant puddles? Look around Karen. Does it look like this is a House of God?”

Mr. White, the pot-bellied banker, was collecting flies around his oozing neck. Bob’s foot had gone white and was laying next to his oozing stump of an ankle. All around his chest, flies darted in and out of the large hole over his heart. The missing face of Gertrude was gelatinous and crusty. Part of her brain was visible from the back, where flies delighted as they lit. Katherine was seated and her head hung down and rested on a bony shoulder. Light from the world outside shone out of the space that should have contained her head, and streaked along the hardwood floor. A singular beam of light shone through the dancing dust and spot-lit a pair of salty hippy sandals, a hand gun, and the spattering of the blood of the dead.

Outside the church, crickets tested out their legs in the afternoon shadows, but were mostly silent. Six cars sat heating in the Louisiana summer sun, some without owners, some without future owners. Down the extended narrow road, almost a quarter of a mile away, a small highway was alive with the occasional passing of a car or truck, some containing passengers coming from another church in the area, some containing outsiders who saw the signs and saw the advertisements, but never turned to see the town. There was a bank and a small grocery store and a fruit and vegetable stand. That was the extent of Waterford Parish. Although across the highway, down a narrow road lined in shrub and boxwoods and scrubby pines, was a church of God.