Gleefully Macabre Tales Read online

  GLEEFULLY MACABRE TALES

  A Short Story Collection

  by Jeff Strand

  Dark Regions Press

  2010

  First DIGITAL Edition

  Text © 2009 by Jeff Strand

  Cover Art © 2009 by Frank Walls

  Cover design and Kindle formatting by David G. Barnett/Fat Cat Graphic Design

  Also available in a trade paperback

  ISBN-13: 978-1-888993-76-9

  "Really, Really Ferocious" Small Bites, 2004

  "Socially Awkward Moments With An Aspiring Lunatic" Chapbook, 2005.

  "High Stakes" Planet Relish, 2000

  "Special Features" Post Mortem #4, 2006

  "Sex Potion #147" Funny Stories of Scary Sex, 2006

  "The Three Little Pigs" Wicked Karnival #5, 2005

  "Everything Has a Purpose" Scratching the Surface, 2000

  "Them Old West Mutations" Trip the Light Horrific, 2005

  "Wasting Grandpa" Scratching the Surface, 2000

  "A Bite For a Bite" Small Bites, 2004

  "Glimpses" Bare Bone #8, 2005

  "Common Sense" Necon XXV Program Book, 2005

  "Gross-Out!" Transcript of live performances, 2006 & 2007, with commentary, 2007.

  "Bad Coffee" Insidious Publications coffee mug, 2005

  "Werewolf Porno" Funny Stories of Scary Sex, 2006

  "An Admittedly Pointless But Mercifully Brief Story With Aliens In It" Previously unpublished, 2000

  "Munchies" Just Adventure website, 2002

  "Roasting Weenies By Hellfire" New Voices in Horror, 2004

  "Quite a Mess" Fusing Horizons, 2003

  "I Hold the Stick" The Absinthe Literary Review, 2000

  "Scarecrow’s Discovery" Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, 1998

  "Howard, the Tenth Reindeer" Christmas card, 1996

  "Howard Rises Again" Christmas card, 1998

  "BrainBugs" Eros & Rust, 2004

  "Cap’n Hank’s Five Alarm Nuclear Lava Wings" 2007. Previously unpublished.

  "A Call For Mr. Potty-Mouth" The Horror Fiction Review #16, 2007

  "The Bad Man in the Blue House" 2007. Previously unpublished.

  "Abbey’s Shriek" Beyond the Mundane: Unravelings, 2004

  "The Socket" Deathgrip: Exit Laughing, 2006

  "One of Them" Side Show: Tales of the Big Top and Bizarre, 2002

  "Secret Message" 2007. Previously unpublished.

  "Mr. Sensitive" Two Twisted Nuts, 2005

  "The Bad Candy House" Hallow’s Eve, 2006

  "Disposal" Published as a stand-alone novella by Biting Dog Press, 2007

  Dark Regions Press

  PO Box 1264

  Colusa, CA 95932

  www.darkregions.com

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  Really, Really Ferocious

  Socially Awkward Moments With An Aspiring Lunatic

  High Stakes

  Special Features

  Sex Potion #147

  The Three Little Pigs

  Everything Has a Purpose

  Them Old West Mutations

  Wasting Grandpa

  A Bite For a Bite

  Glimpses

  Common Sense

  Gross-Out!

  Bad Coffee

  Werewolf Porno

  An Admittedly Pointless But Mercifully Brief Story With Aliens In It

  Munchies

  Roasting Weenies By Hellfire

  Quite a Mess

  I Hold the Stick

  Scarecrow’s Discovery

  Howard, the Tenth Reindeer/Howard Rises Again

  BrainBugs

  Cap’n Hank’s Five Alarm Nuclear Lava Wings

  A Call For Mr. Potty-Mouth

  The Bad Man in the Blue House

  Abbey’s Shriek

  The Socket

  One of Them

  Secret Message

  Mr. Sensitive

  The Bad Candy House

  Disposal

  Story Notes

  Biography

  Introduction

  Welcome to the Dark Regions Press edition of Gleefully Macabre Tales, brought to you in convenient paperback and e-book editions. They’re both the same content—the only difference is what kind of virus they contain. It’ll either erase your hard drive or give you malaria. Apologies in advance.

  This is not a "Best Of" collection, because I really don’t have enough short fiction out there to pick and choose only the gems. Nor is it a "Complete Short Works" collection, because I’m not at a level of popularity where I can justify including crappy stories just for their historical significance. So it’s basically a "Most Of" collection: the complete short works of Jeff Strand minus the really bad ones (hopefully), the too-recently-published-to-reprint-quite-yet ones, and a few bits and pieces that didn’t seem to fit.

  As much as possible, I tried to make this a collection of stories that are...well, gleefully macabre. They aren’t all funny—sure, there’s humor in stories like "Abbey’s Shriek," "One of Them," and "Glimpses," but I certainly wouldn’t classify them as humorous horror. And they aren’t all horror stories, especially "Howard, The Tenth Reindeer," which is shamelessly silly yet does have a slightly macabre ending.

  Most of the tales in this book, however, fall into the category of "horror/comedy." Sometimes they’re blatantly funny stories with a horror premise, sometimes they’re comedies so pitch-black that they become horror, and sometimes they’re horror stories with a tongue-in-cheek tone—a severed tongue, possibly forked, and hopefully not your own.

  Within these pages, I want to make you laugh. I want to make you scream. (You probably won’t, though—seriously, have you ever screamed at the scariness of a book? If you have, e-mail me to tell me about it. That would be pretty cool.) I want to disturb you. I want you to giggle while getting completely creeped out. I want you to shout "What a cruel injustice that Stephen King’s Just After Sunset won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Collection while Gleefully Macabre Tales was merely a finalist! Does King’s collection have an awesome wiener dog story? I think not!"

  As a special bonus, this new edition of Gleefully Macabre Tales includes my novella Disposal, previously available only as a super-pricey hardcover limited edition. Had Disposal been part of the original edition of this book, it totally would have won the Stoker, I just know it.

  Very special thanks must go to my elite team of test readers, who read the various tales and said "Why, yes, Jeff, this should be included!" or "No! Dear God, no! What the hell were you thinking?" So let’s hear it for Mike Myers (not the actor, and not the serial killer), Nick Cato, Greg Lamberson, Jim Moore, Susan Bodendorfer, Linda Bleser, Moni Draper, Kenyon Charboneaux, and Tod Clark. Also Shane Ryan Staley and Dave Dinsmore. And Joe Morey and Norman Rubenstein.

  I’d also like to thank all of the editors and publishers who gave these tales life for the first time, even the stories that appeared in anthologies that sold fewer copies than there were contributors. (However, I exclude the two editors who have yet to send me author copies. Bastards.)

  Okay, enough of my incessant babbling. Enjoy the stories!

  Jeff Strand

  Tampa, Florida

  Wayyyyyyy past deadline

  Really, Really Ferocious

  "Get off my property, or Silas here will tear the flesh right off your bones!" shouted the old man, angrily tapping his finger against the No Solicitors sign next to his front door. "He’ll rip out your throat and lap up your blood, then he’ll bury your mangled corpse in our backyard with the rest of ’em!"

  The teenager looked down at the animal lying at the old man’s feet. "But he’s a wiener dog."

  "Don’t you call Silas a wiener dog, y
ou son of a bitch! He’s a dachshund! And he’ll shred your disrespectful ass into Alpo if you don’t get off my porch!"

  The dog panted happily.

  "He’s kind of cute," said the teenager, bending down and scratching Silas behind the ears. "Hi, Silas. Are you a good boy? Yes you are, yes you are!"

  "Are you freakin’ insane? For the love of God, pull your hand away before he bites it clean off!"

  "Noooo, Silas wouldn’t bite me, no he wouldn’t, no he wouldn’t! He’s a gooooood boy. Yes, I just wuvs my Silas. He’s the best wiener dog in the whole wide world!"

  The old man hurriedly scooped the dog into his arms. "You’re living dangerously, son. Don’t let his loving eyes and cylindrical body fool you…this animal is really, really ferocious. Now get off my porch."

  "Are you sure you’re not interested?" asked the teenager. "Because for only three dollars and fifty-eight cents a month you can—"

  "Kill!" shouted the old man, thrusting Silas at the teenager. "Bite his nose off! Claw his eyeballs out!"

  "Okay, stop poking me with the dog."

  "Kill him, Silas! Kill, kill, kill!"

  "I mean it; you’re starting to piss me off."

  The old man shifted so that he gripped the dachshund by the hind legs, and then bashed the animal against the teenager’s face. The teenager stumbled backwards a few steps, taken by surprise.

  "Rip him apart, Silas!"

  The old man swung the dachshund again, smashing it into the side of the teenager’s head. The teenager fell to his knees and held up his hand to defend himself.

  "Ow! What the hell are you doing?"

  The old man hoisted the dachshund over his head and then brought it down upon the teenager as hard as he could. There was a "Yip!" from the dog, a "Shit!" from the teenager, and a spurt of blood from each. He struck the teenager with the dog over and over, screaming with rage, until the teenager lay motionless, not breathing, his face a ruined mess.

  "Aw, jeez, Silas, look what he did to you," said the old man, cradling the dead dog in his arms. "But you were a good dog. You fought bravely. I’ll make sure you get a special memorial."

  He wandered into the backyard, past five or six memorials and an equal number of unmarked graves.

  Maybe now Denise would finally let him get a pit bull.

  Socially Awkward Moments with an Aspiring Lunatic

  Question of the day: What is insanity? Is it tying a woman to a bed and giggling with maniacal glee as you slice off her extremities with a chainsaw? Or is it simply taking ten minutes to decide what you want to order at McDonalds?

  The chainsawed extremities thing is probably a better example, so we’ll go with that one. Keep it in mind because we’ll get back to it in a bit.

  Anyway, on the day that I turned thirty, I decided that I wanted to be insane. I’d tried three decades of sanity and it just wasn’t working out. I was bored with my tedious, intellectual, clear-focused existence. I wanted to lose my mind.

  But how to do this? I thought about hallucinogens, but that would just turn me into a druggie. That had no appeal. Any cretin off the street could be a druggie. I wanted to become a lunatic through natural means.

  I’d always had a spider phobia, so I drove around to all of the pet stores in town, bought out their tarantula stock, and then lay on my living room floor and let them crawl all over me. What I realized is that spiders aren’t so bad. They’re kind of soothing, actually. I only squished one.

  I spent an entire weekend watching the goriest films ever made, back to back, stopping only for a bathroom break every other movie. I even watched The Evil Dead twice because it was so cool. But that didn’t work, either. Being able to separate fantasy from reality was a real bummer.

  I tried a bit of self-mutilation but it hurt too much.

  Even when I simply practiced expressions of insanity in the mirror, none of them were convincing. I could successfully look like I was confused, frightened, sleepy, or suffering from testicular distress, but I couldn’t look crazed. I remained completely, miserably sane.

  Depressed, I went for a long walk to figure out what to do about my healthy mental state. Didn’t electroshock therapy mess up your mind if you were sane when they zapped you? I thought I’d read something about that somewhere, but I also didn’t have access to an electroshock therapy device. The best I could do was stick my finger in a light bulb socket. That didn’t seem like the answer.

  What did insane people do?

  Well, for one thing, they tied women to beds and giggled with maniacal glee as they sliced off their extremities with a chainsaw. I wasn’t insane enough to want to do something like that (yet), but maybe if I did it before I was insane, the insanity would follow. It was certainly worth a shot.

  The first thing I needed was a victim. Maybe a prostitute; after all, that was good enough for Jack the Ripper. Of course, if she turned out to be an undercover cop, I could end up getting arrested, and while I didn’t mind going to jail for committing gruesome cold-blooded murder, going to jail for hiring a hooker would be way too embarrassing. My mom would freak.

  Prostitutes were out.

  So was stalking a potential victim. I’d always been a major klutz, and I’d probably end up tripping or doing something else stupid that gave away my position, and then she’d blast me in the eyes with pepper spray or something like that. I’d been hit in the eyes with pepper spray once, during an ill-fated self-performed experiment to find out what it felt like to get hit in the eyes with pepper spray, and I had no desire to repeat the experience.

  No, the best way to find a victim was to go on a successful date, invite her back to my place, knock her out with chloroform, and then begin the chainsaw festivities. My friend Tracy had spent the last few years constantly trying to set me up on blind dates, so I gave her a call.

  "I’m in the mood to go out tomorrow night," I explained. "Got anybody you could hook me up with?"

  "Probably, yeah," she said, amused. "Let me think…"

  "Do you know anybody who looks like my mother?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "My mom. You’ve met her, haven’t you?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "Do you have any friends who look like her? Not that old, of course, but the way my mom would look if she were our age."

  "You’re kidding, right?"

  "No. I just thought it was time to date somebody who looks like my mom. Everybody’s doing it these days. Oedipus Complexes are in."

  "Well, my friend Sandy is a blonde. Is that close enough?"

  "That works."

  "She broke up with her boyfriend a few weeks ago and I think she’s looking to start dating again. Let me find her phone number."

  After I got the number, I called Sandy, chatted for a bit (about non-insanity-related topics), and arranged to pick her up at her apartment the next evening.

  I looked around my own apartment. So many things to do to prepare!

  Now that I’d committed myself to this act of atrocity, it was clear that the whole chainsaw idea had to go. Chainsaws made way too much noise and the neighbors would complain. I’d have to go with an axe. I didn’t own an axe, so I added it to the shopping list.

  I’d also need duct tape to put over her mouth, handcuffs to bind her to the bed, plastic covers to keep blood from soaking into my mattress, something to shield the walls from any excess spray, chloroform, mood music, and scented candles. Insanity was going to be expensive, but hopefully worth it.

  The hardware store had several varieties of axes to choose from, and I ended up going with the standard woodcutting model. I wasn’t sure that I could take off an entire limb in one chop with this thing, but two or three would get the job done. Because the cashier forgot to offer me a receipt I got a five dollar discount, which was nice.

  Have you ever tried to find chloroform? I see it used in movies all the time and kind of figured that I could get it at Wal-Mart or something, but it’s really not easily available. I decided that I’d have to replace t
he chloroform with a good solid whack to the back of the head with the dull side of the axe.

  I finished my shopping and went home to get a good night’s sleep.

  ««—»»

  I woke up the next morning pissed off at myself. A bad night’s sleep was conducive to insanity, not a good one! If I didn’t get with the program I’d be sane for the rest of my life. But there was nothing I could do about it now, so I got up and spent the day preparing for my pre-insanity activities. I sat on the couch for about twenty minutes, staring at a picture of my mother and thinking about how much I hated that bitch. It was a bit tricky, because my mother had always been loving and supportive and even a friend to me, but still, there had to be something about her that I despised.

  Her fettuccini alfredo sucked.

  I stared at her photo. You bitch. You crappy fettuccini alfredo-making bitch. You’ve ruined my life.

  At five o’clock, I showered, dressed, primped, and then drove to pick up Sandy. She met me at her front door, looking absolutely radiant. She didn’t look anything like my mother (her hair was dishwater blonde, while my mom was more of a bleach blonde), but she did get the same little crinkle in her nose when she smiled, sort of.

  We drove to the restaurant, joking and laughing and enjoying each other’s company. We got an excellent table, ordered drinks, and spent a moment perusing the menu. When the waiter arrived, I stared at Sandy, mentally pleading with her to order the fettuccini alfredo to set me off.

  "I’ll have the lasagna," she said.