PAPYRUS CURSES

Something peeped around the open door and run past. The shadow it left was the size of a tall man but the footfalls were those of a child. Aggrey hadn't expected some crazy employee would be playing hide and seek at 9pm but it was true and he was sure something had been there because he saw it on the polished frame of the picture on his desk and heard the footfalls. 

In the dim hallway Aggrey found a piece of bandage and he felt his heart sink when he realised that it was not from the same century as him. It was old and dusty like it had been on a shelf for a long time but it was made out of papyrus not the modern synthetic fabric that athletes use; this bandage did not stretch. 

Aggrey knew that he was stupid when he followed the sound down the hall and should have just shut down his computer and gone home. It was too late and he was supposed to be at a digging site the next day but ever since video chat and coffee were invented people could act normal on just one or two hours of sleep. 

In the morning there was panic all over the fourteenth floor as people returned to their offices to start the days work. When Inspector Alec was called he was not pleased when he reached the fourteenth floor and found the paramedics had already dropped the corpse into a large black rubber sack. He had been told that the cause of death was nothing to worry about but he wanted to see the body for himself incase there was something he missed. 

Inspector Alec rose from his squat and motioned for the paramedic to cover the corpse. It was a mystery that burned in his mind but he didn't have the resources to follow it any further so he tucked his notepad into his pocket and walked out of the old shack hoping he would never, ever come back.

THERE IS A DEALER IN THE ALLEY

When Loppi arrived the place was almost empty. The man at the bar reminded him of Stalin as he wiped the counter like a crime scene of many secrets without looking to see who walked into the front door. Loppi looked around and knew that the dealer couldn't be among the last customers. 

At the far corner a drunk sat slumped with his head thrown back in a doze. Three tables forward, a woman sat next to a man who was probably touching her from beneath the table. Loppi walked over to the counter and the barman walked over to where he was. 

“Are you looking for someone?” The man at the bar asked. Loppi instead noticed the cross over the shelves of bottles. It was a simple wooden cross but it did not mean anything in such a place unless it meant something to the barman. 

“Yeah.” Loppi replied as he sat down. 

“What does he look like?” The man at the bar asked but Loppi didn't want to go into specifics. 

“I don't know. He said he would be here.” Loppi replied. 

“Do you have a phone?” The barman asked. 

“Yeah.” Loppi replied. 

“Call him and find out.” The bar man suggested. 

“Later. Gin and Sprite.” Loppi said. The barman sighed and went to make the drink. Loppi set a five dollar note on the counter before the drink arrived as he scanned for any signals that the dealer would be inside the bar. Nothing. 

The third gin and spirte made Loppi think the dealer was not coming or maybe he was somewhere else. He looked back at the cross over the bar and scoffed at the irony of having faith in a place so faithless. He chose not to ask the man at the bar but wondered what the name of the man was. The man was washing glasses and looked too busy to be disturbed so Loppi swallowed his question. 

Loppi patted his jacket and felt his lighter. He had a packet of cigarettes in the opposite pocket and decided to smoke them before he went home. He rose and left the bar without leaving a tip for the guy. He made his way to the back and went out into the alley. Gangster movies had made him paranoid of being shot out infront of the bar or getting caught in the cross fire as something went south. He had never witnessed a shoot out but he still wanted to smoke in the alley rather than in the open. 

The chilled night air promised rain as he stepped out hoping the door would open both ways. He checked it to make sure before he let it close. He took out the cigarettes and put one in his mouth before he started to check for the lighter. 

“Hey Lip.” A voice said to his right. It was strange because there was a brickwall that way and the the alley led off to his left, Loppi would have seen anyone standing in the dirty yellow light from the street lamp but it was too late. The figure was real and moved swiftly. It bumped into him like a person pushing to get past and before he could make out anything more than the black silhouette of the figure he was knocked into the piled garbage bags by the door with an old aluminium garbage can. He felt the garbage can crumple under her weight and then the shot of electricity rack through his body. 

“I'm being jacked.” His mind screamed at him. 

“No, you're not.” The same voice whispered but it was inside his mind not outside his body. The strange thing was the figure had managed to get inside him and Loppi could feel the stranger wearing his body like a glove. The figure felt large almost like a cow wearing a goat. 

“He's looking for something.” Loppi thought as he felt a hundred hands rummage through his body like they were checking a jacket for some key or a phone. The burning sensation of their clawed finger tips was unbearable. 

“Of course I am looking for something. Give me what you owe me. You cannot scream. We had a deal.” The voice hissed from inside his head like a broken pipe. 

Loppi could feel his body thrash on the ground and the cold rought tarmac scrape his exposed skin. He heard his clothes rip from the violent siezures that racked him on the ground and the rough scratching of the hands inside his entire body. 

The absence of his scream made everything feel muted but the pain was a reality checker. It felt like an eternity as hundreds of claw tipped hands rummaged around inside his body like a desperate person checking a jacket for a lost set of keys or phone. It felt worse than death; Loppi wished he would die. 

“I will let you die in a minute but first let me find what I am looking for and I'll be out of your hair.” The presence rasped in his mind. 

Eventually, Loppi’s eyes rolled up and his body went limp in the darkness. It took thirteen minutes for it to be over but to Loppi it was forever.

The footsteps that retreated into the darkness did not run, they walked calmly as they disappeared unseen into the darkness. 

The deal was done. 

Inspector Norris asked for the tapes to be sent to him the next day afte the squad had found nothing suspicious in or around the alley to suggest Loppi was with someone other than the confession of the barman. He sat in his dimmed office and played the video through with his headphones on. 

In the dim lighting the back door opened and Loppi stepped out into the alley. Loppi looks around and then puts a cigarette in his mouth. He pats his jacket and then is knocked into the garbage cans. Inspector Norris can hear the grunt like someone knocked him over and the crumple of the garbage cans but when Loppi opens his mouth to scream, there is no sound. 

On the surface it looks like a fit of epilepsy but the doctor claimed Loppi never suffered from the condition. The rolled back eyes and spasms should have broken him in two as the back of his head touched the back of his heels making him a figure zero on the tarmac. It was only thirteen minutes long and Inspector Norris could only claim that Loppi had been drugged but there was no residue in his glass even though the barman never touched the glasses.

HALLOW GAMES

The wind promised the storm of the century and Morticia considered tossing the basket of apples in her mad dash through the darkening forest. The branches snagged and ripped as they reached out like fans at a red carpet event. 

Morticia did not remember where the basket landed or if tossing it was a conscious idea or just a reflex in her getaway scheme but she did not stop to consider the contraband. The wrath of a dwarf was legendary not to mention a hive of waist-high demons that would rip flesh from bone with bare hands and teeth. 

It was official that the Snow-white was done for and Morticia had to get out of the blast radius of seven vengeful dwarves before the cordite of her scheme ignited. The creatures of Longwood forest shared the solidarity of silence before the unimaginable happened. Morticia cursed her aging feet for not taking her fast enough and she would prpbably felt better to flap her arms and shoot off into orbit but her bone density obeyed gravity more than her panic.  

Morticia crashed through her front door in her arrival and heard the lock splinter, crack and fail as the bolt shot across the small cottage and landed somewhere across the room. Huge bullets of rain volleyed the forest as the wind swept through the woods with almost a deadly wrath. Morticia flew across the open space and over the table cluttered with viles, guards and crockery. The smashed glass was the least of het worries as she hoped her imvisibility cantation would work and maybe last as long as she hoped. The fate of the forest was up to whatever force of mercy exisited but Morticia had lost the contest before it was ever considered. 

The dusty book was almost ripped when she opened it and inhaled half of the air in the house and then began her rumbling cantation of the cloaking spell. Her voice boomed deep enough to tinckle  the glass and rattle the windows as her body began to disappear from the visble spectrum. 

Morticia held her breath as she backed away into the shadows of the spell. There was something behind her and the stabbing she felt in her buttocks was an erection, not part of tbe furniture. It rumbled a deep mocking chuckle and Morticia fought the urge to scream even as she felt her mind snap with panic. Two thousand lives would not have explained to her how this thing had gotten into her cloaking realm, now nobody could see them and nobody could help her. 

It swiped at her head from the back, the blow caught her on her temple and the last sound Morticia heard before she hit the adjacent wall was the sound of her skull cracking. She hoped on all her demons that the blow would kill her because whatever was next would only make the devil puke. 

VISITING CHILDREN

Out of the dark came the two figures clutching at each other through the rain as the black night sky cracked, boomed and whipped the sky with huge bolts of lightening. It was clear that they were lost, hungry, tired and definitely scared. Yulga watched them through the small window as they approached. It was too late for visitors as the pair stumbled towards the small house. This forest had rules that were as old as they were cruel, the discipline of the silence wad evidence of it’s authority. 

Yulga understood the cruelty of the forest and without anyone escorting the children; their shambling figures spelled only one thing…food. Yulga drooled at the thought of the approaching food and had already decided the boy would be eaten first before the girl. The boy would be locked in a cage and fattened before he could be eaten. The girl would work before she was locked up, killed and eaten. 

When Yulga crept into the dark and made her way unoticed around the children, the two clobbered children lay inside her house unconscious as a pair of rabbits in a hunter's cove. Yulga left the club by the door and carried the boy into the small cage. She struggled with his weight even though he was definitely at death’s door and begging for a room but Yulga shoved his unconscious body into the small cage and with a grunt of triumph she turned for the girl. 

Yulga turned and noticed the girl was missing. She hissed, cursed and spat as she searched frantically for the girl in the small room. Yulga’s hunched figure prevented her from looking up where the girl crawled on the ceiling. It had been a while since she had eaten anything  and Yulga had no idea what these unfortunate creatures were.

 The girl tracked Yulga around the room as her finger gripped the ceiling like a spider. The girl’s head turned all the way back enough to loom straight down at Yulga as she frantically rummaged for the girl on the floor and under the furniture. 

Yulga did not stand a chance by the time she heard the hiss from above sher. Yulga’s stooped figure turned sideways to avoid throwing out her back and two inches from her face was the girl. The long face on the girl made her look like she had actually been dead a long time before Yulga noticed the yellow stained teeth that had become pointed but not very sharp. There was enough in her teeth to rip flesh from bone with a bite but as  Yulga tried to remember how to scream for help, the demon on her celing dropped onto her. It was quick, Yulga did not fight alot after ward. The forest fell silent again. 

FOREST HOUSE

I was hungry.

I found the house with the door already smashed open, there were claw marks in the mahogany and blood stains on the wall, no survivors in sight.

There was a way that war makes the world a dull experience. In this case I lost my gun and the k-bar was as dangerous as I got.

Whoever lost their right arm in the dinning probablx knew what had happened but I was more interested in the three bowls of porridge.

I already told you I was hungry. Deal with it.

It was fortunate that I heard them before they heard me and I was catching forty winks upstairs after I decided the living room was too exposed.

So I jumped from the window and sprained my ankle, that was when I was spotted.

The thing that came at me could have been a bear but was too tall, had orange eyes and black to be part of God's humor.

I was knocked into the foliage before my k-bar sliced through the fur a trade for the scratch on my shoulder.

If all three find me under this log I could lose a right arm too.

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THE EATING COAT

The coat started eating Lionel a day after he found it at the park. It was slumped over the edge innocently but everyone who walked past the bench seemed to ignore it or simply did not pay any attention to it at all. He was a kleptomaniac and the sight of an abandoned coat on a cold morning was too much for his fingers to remain in his pockets. 

Lionel picked the coat and draped it over his forearm before walking off with it like he had just forgotten it on the bench and had come back to get it. The silence even of the  birds and the lack in of wind did not seem strange to Lionel as he causally walked away with the coat and neither did he realise that signs of life came back after the coat had left the immediate area. 

The police found Lionel seated on the Willoe Creek park bench after a woman called them out and reported his body. As the police officers walked to the bench they did not see anything strange other than a man wearing a black long coat seated on a bench alone with the his head  hanging forward like he was asleep. There was no blood to be seen but as the  police officers drew closer they saw the coat edge flap in the wind and they understood why the woman was catatonic. 

Officer Bently moved closer and opened the coat for a better look and the full height horror emerged into day light. Lionel’s arms were bare dry bone all the way to the exposed wrists, his empty ribcage propped his shoulders and head on top of them at a delicate angle. Lionel still had his body from the waist down, but his upper body and arms had been removed for lack of a better word because there was no blood, just a raw wound at the edges like he was healed that way weeks ago. 

The body was  taken away and the case was filed, opened… and closed with abrupt ease.  No suspects or signs of foul play. It was strange how the coat wound up on the back of the bench as the rest of the victim was removed from the scene, either they forgot it there or nobody noticed it was left behind…or nobody wanted to touch it.

Sergeant Claymore walked over to the bench with tape stretched all around it and  looked at the coat and thought it was ridiculous that people with common sense would fear such a simple thing as a coat. 

“Bullshit.” Sergeant whispered picked up the coat, draped it over his arm and walked off.

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LADY OF THE JUNGLE

Run through the jungle before a mosquitoe can bite you. That was the phrase used instead of the usual ‘break a leg’....and then what?

… get caught…

This jungle was large and special. The biting mosquitoe would be the kindest creature to encounter in it. The leaves all around were either barbed, barbed with poison, barbed with insects, poisonous or canivorous. There was no time to stop for a botany lesson which meant a marathon sprint through the jungle for four days. Two hours was enough to kill anyone, six hours for the toughest but after two days Jaxon and Lionel felt invincible. 

Freedom or fall was the only thing going. Hunger was a luxury before the escapee died and was caught either by the mosquitoe, dogs, foliage….you get the point….whatever. 

Jaxon was wanted for rape, Lionel was wanted for agrivated assault with a deadly weapon but these were nothing compared to what was in the cell. The cell was the name of the place they held them because once you were inside you only had to survive. There was no parole and no more jurisdiction that could try anyone. The only thing that mattered is where to end your days. Inside or outside. 

Jaxon did not like the idea of being cannibalized after death, his corpse desecrated and Lionel was stupid to think there was a chance of escaping the place. The legend of the others always provided context for an escape

Maybe they made it 

Jaxon crashed through a clearing with Lionel stumbing over something on the ground before crashing into Jaxon. The exhausted mess tumbled to the ground and rose. Their muscles were flexed and ready to fight. They scanned the surrounding and were not surprised to find it littered with human bones and other types of bones. 

When the old woman sitting by the fire looked up at the confused pair there was something wrong about her sharpened teeth. This would have been one of the others but what Jaxon was not told was that if he could survive one night in their company then he was worthy to be part of them. Lionel did not seem to know anything as he offered a hand to the cannibal by the fire that did not react. It stared at them through the body of an old woman as they tried to find a medium of communication. 

Jaxon felt his heart sink as he realised there was only one solution left and the scattered bones on the ground told the whole story about those who wished to keep the company of the old woman. It was not who they were seeing but, who they had not yet seen. 

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