An arrogant amateur horror author faces a terror he does not expect. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned in this humorous horror tale.!
Katrina’s Horror
By Cat Muldoon
I tagged along with Greg to his writers' critique group. He was the most published author there, and he took great pleasure in letting everyone know he was a Big Deal. He trimmed his goatee and polished his head before he left the house. Greg thought so much of himself that he always carried a few resumes with him everywhere he went, just in case he got lucky. I might as well have been invisible. Damn self-absorbed bastard.
Dripping with sleazy charm, Greg swaggered into the greasy spoon as if he owned not only this dumpy health-violation-waiting-to-happen, but also the whole dinky town. The dive was dripping with as much grease as Greg was with self-importance.
All conversation stopped between the three men at the table when the audacious author arrived.
"Hey, it's Gruesome Greg!" Sam clapped him on the back with his fat left fist as he pumped Greg's right hand. "Good to see ya. What horrible things did you do to Katrina this week?"
"He poisoned her," I said, "but she has a surprise for him."
Greg spoke on top of my words, "Poor lonely bitch. She had one too many glasses of champagne and my serial killer slipped her a deadly poison."
"Not very imaginative," Critical Carl said. He pointed a long finger at Greg. "You're usually much more innovative than that." Everything about Carl was long: face, arms, fingers, legs. I wondered if his south brain was long too.
"But it has an unexpected effect," Greg explained, puffing with pride. "It makes her see ghosts. And she sure gets an eyeful in Chapter Three."
Little he knows. I told them, "Oh, but Katrina could see ghosts long before the snake venom."
Mousy Marvin practically trembled in the chair nearest the wall. "How can you write stuff like that?"
Greg leaned over the table, being purposely intimidating. "What would a mainstream writer know about …HORROR?" He brought his hands up, waving his fingers menacingly and laughing maniacally. Sam and Carl laughed.
Marvin was startled but tried to hide it. "Not much, I suppose."
Still amused beyond all reason, Sam shoveled a large bite of greasy potatoes into his mouth. "You're eefil, Greg," he muffled around his food.
"You're right. He is evil," I agreed.
"Who, me?" Greg said, feigning innocence. He ordered a fried cherry pie with ice cream.
Sam engulfed another mound of food and crammed a bit of roll in after it. A bread chaser, I guessed. Maybe he would choke to death on his own gluttony one day. He lost a few morsels as he asked "Fo what'du editor fay about yer fort fory, Carl?"
The three men looked at him.
I rolled my eyes. "Sam, you're such a disgusting pig!" I told him. He is without a doubt one of the more revolting humans on the planet -- After Greg, of course.
Carl said, "Took my spit decoder a minute to process that mouthful. God, Sam, didn't your mother ever tell you not to talk with your mouth full?"
"I bet he never listened," I quipped.
"Yeah, she told me all the time, but I never listened."
"Obviously," Greg returned.
"Back to business, guys," Carl demanded. "You mean the editor of Strange Times Magazine? He passed the story along to some damn assistant editor who said If I'd read the guidelines, I would have known they wouldn't take a story like mine."
"That's unprofessional," Marvin whined.
"Bitch," I added. "That was a good story."
Sam swallowed half a glass of water in one gulp. "Was it a female assistant editor?" he asked, his mouth empty for once.
"Yes."
"I knew it," I said triumphantly. "I bet you read the guidelines and the magazine."
"Yeah, I read a whole issue of the damn magazine and the guidelines. She said they don't like first person. The guidelines don't say anything about that. They didn't give me any reason to think strange Times wouldn't take my story. I've already got it sent off somewhere else, but it's just irritating when an editor treats a pro like an idiot."
"No accounting for taste," Marvin said.
"You, a pro?" Greg said. "Not hardly."
""Hey Hot Shot, stuff it up your—"
"Break it up assholes," Carl said. "Show us what you got."
Greg passed around copies of his work.
They discussed everyone's stories in turn and the meeting broke up until the next week. On the way home, Greg muttered about some of the comments. "Sam's a goddamn slob and he has no imagination, Carl is comma crazy, and Marvin? Well, he's not so bad I guess. He actually has some pretty good insights for a 'commoner'."
"And you're just a butterfly among dung beetles, aren’t you."
Greg sighed. "I don't know. I may not keep up with the group."
"You're a paragon of perfection. All should bow to your brilliance."
Greg laughed. "That was a good line.” A pause. “Sam's pretty quick sometimes, picking up on that assistant editor being a female."
"Oh, he's a laugh riot."
Greg grabbed the mail on his way in, got himself a beer and plopped into his favorite smelly armchair to read the latest scandalous pseudo-memoir.
I went to the computer. He had left the novel onscreen. Perfect. He had written the hero to be a lot like himself – well, a lot like he imagined himself to be. All the better for me.
The cursor blinked invitingly at just the right place. I had learned how to type. It wasn't easy, but I had gotten the hang of it. Following Greg around and reading over his shoulder, I had even gleaned a thing or two about writing. I had also learned a dozen ways to kill people, thanks to Greg and a mystery writer he was dating. It was, I discovered, medically possible to scare a person to death. It didn’t only happen in fiction.
That is exactly what I planned to do. Kill him. Plan A
And if he did not die, he would lose his mind. Plan B.
And if he did not lose his mind, everyone would think he had. Plan C.
I read where he left off so I could create a seamless transition.
"Clint crossed the room to where Katrina lay in a drunken heap. He touched her golden hair. She looked up at him through glazed eyes. 'You found me,' she said weakly."
Greg liked to write helpless females, but this time he had more than met his match. It never occurred to him that all the characters he supposedly created were actually communicating with him. He never wrote me the way I really am. He always changed what I said and turned me into a sniveling, whining, pathetic cardboard cutout of a woman.
I hated him for that.
Horror he writes and horror he shall have!
His time had come. I typed:
"Katrina's eyes slowly focused on Clint. He watched in dread as their beautiful brown turned to a brutal black like the eyes of the snake whose venom now ran through her veins. She rose to her feet as if she had no bones and stared at him. A forked tongue darted out of her mouth, tasting his lips. Tasting his terror."
Greg sauntered into the room and sat down in his chair in front of the computer. He poised his hands over the keyboard, ready to work, but they hovered uselessly in the air as he read what I was writing.
Greg watched as letters magically appeared on his screen. He just never got it that I was real.
I continued: "Clint stood stunned, unable to move, frozen in time. Katrina's spiked tongue tasted the speeding pulse at his throat. She pressed against him and, like living lightning, sunk her teeth into his neck. Clint's mouth formed a silent O as he slumped dead to the floor."
Greg's heart went into overdrive. His eyes bulged and his mouth formed a silent O. I slid into his body and screamed into his mind. His heart came to an explosive halt as his own anguished scream emanated and dissipated. Greg took one last shuddering breath as he clutched his chest.
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," I reminded him.
Greg tried to push the monitor aside, but he was too weak.
Foam frothed from his mouth as he fell gracelessly onto the floor beside his first novel. I'd say he was a flop.
The fortunate inherit riches, prestige, positive notoriety. Those not so lucky bear legacies filled with poverty, infamy or, worse yet, the unhinged insanity and murderous urges of their ancestors.
Grab those side-irons, saddle up and join former Civil War sharpshooter Luther Henry for a ride into pure terror, western-style…think ‘Wild Wild West’ meets ‘The X-Files’.
The Butcher's Boy
- 2011 Readers Favorite Award Silver Medal Winner in Horror - Fiction
A Paranormal/Chiller by Michael Robb
Thirty-one years ago, Buxly the Butcher went to trial for killing h
