Authors: Brandon Massey
Twisted Tales (3 page)
“Slaughtered them,” I said. “There are others, Stacy. I don’t have photos, but I know that Mr. Payne has been busy ‘protecting’ you for at least the past five years. Over a dozen innocent guys have paid the price for being interested in you.”
“He’s not a killer, Nathan. Please don’t make him sound like he’s evil.”
I touched her face. I felt bad for her. She was immersed in denial.
Another howl shattered the night. It was getting closer.
I glanced at the windows, at the shadows surrounding us. He would be there soon.
Stacy straightened. “How did you learn so much about us?”
“Word gets around,” I said. “When someone has been as reckless as your dad has been, others notice. I pursued a relationship with you because I was asked to learn the full story.”
“You mean you dated me only to learn about my father?” she asked. “You used me?”
“Hold on, don’t get mad. Yes, I first wanted to date you to find out about Mr. Payne. But when it became obvious that we clicked so well, I started to fall for you.”
She smiled a little. I could not return her smile. I was conscious of the howls. They were getting much closer.
“So who sent you to me?” she asked. “What kind of police do you work for?”
Just as I opened my mouth to tell her an angry roar filled the air. A huge, dark shape hurtled like a torpedo through the living room window, shattered glass flying everywhere.
The intruder landed in the far corner of the room, an area thick with shadows. I glimpsed a hairy, hunched form, like a big man on all fours, and I heard husky breathing issuing from the beast.
Stacy grabbed my hand. “Come on. If you want to live, we’ve gotta get to my room!”
We ran to the staircase. Behind us, the creature growled. I looked over my shoulder.
The animal had moved out of the shadows. In spite of the glossy coat of gray fur, the long snout, and the sharp, canine teeth, I recognized who it was. The eyes gave it away.
Mr. Payne—the werewolf.
“Hurry!” Stacy pulled me upstairs. We scrambled into her bedroom, and then she slammed and locked the door.
“Do you want to be with me?” she asked. Her eyes blazed.
“Be with you?”
She grasped my shoulders. “Do you want to be with me? Forever?”
I stammered. “Stacy, I have to do something.”
“What?”
I opened my jacket, revealing the gun holstered on my hip. I pulled the revolver out of its sheath.
Stacy retreated a few steps. “Please, put away that gun, Nathan.”
“Sorry, but I’m only following orders.” I grabbed the doorknob and flung open the door.
“No!” she cried.
Ignoring her, I moved to the staircase. Mr. Payne, the werewolf, bounded up the steps. The beast leaped over three and four risers at a time. It snarled, saliva flying in thick ropes, eyes aflame with inhuman rage and hunger.
My hands trembled. He was so
enormous
. If I missed, I was finished.
enormous
. If I missed, I was finished.
The werewolf sprang toward me.
I squeezed off one, two, three shots, the revolver booming like a cannon. One misfired round plowed through the railing; one smacked into the creature’s chest; and the third drilled it between the eyes.
The beast shrieked. Leaking blood like a busted water hose, the werewolf rolled down the stairs. It crashed to the floor with an impact that reverberated through the house.
Then, silence. The creature lay on the floor unmoving. Dead.
I closed my eyes.
I hadn’t handled my assignment in the neat, thoroughly documented manner that my superiors would have preferred, but they would accept my work. They would have to accept it. I was one of the few detectives in the world qualified to handle this kind of case. The scarcity of individuals in my position provided job security.
“You killed him,” a guttural voice said from behind me.
It was Stacy. She was crouched in the doorway. She had begun to metamorphose, too: pretty nose lengthening into a canine snout, claws pushing through the tips of her slender fingers, coarse hair covering her creamy skin ...
“I had to kill him,” I said. “Unchecked beasts like him make it more difficult for all of us. He was violating the code.”
I thought I saw confusion on her rapidly transforming face.
I wanted to explain, so I said, “Our power lies in our secrecy. Your father was killing at will, and that isn’t allowed. Kills have to be carefully planned and concealed, or else the safety of our entire species is threatened.”
She dropped to the floor on all fours. She raised her long neck, stretched her jaws wide. Her thick tongue swept across her rows of sharp teeth.
She howled.
“I’m responsible for enforcing the laws for us,” I said. I looked at the revolver in my hand. “According to the law, I’m supposed to slay you, too. I’m not allowed to leave witnesses.”
I studied Stacy’s werewolf form. She regarded me with her dark eyes, panting softly, expectantly.
She was gorgeous.
I tossed aside the gun.
“But you know what? To hell with protocol. There’s a full moon tonight. And I don’t know about you, but that tiny steak I ate earlier left me hungrier than ever ...”
The Sting
There were only two things in the world that really frightened Anthony Morris: snakes, and winged insects with stingers, like wasps.
When Anthony reached the outside entrance to their hotel room, he spotted a wasp as long as his index finger batting against the top of the door. With each soft bump against the wood, the insect emitted a loud buzz, as if grunting from its efforts to get inside.
Anthony’s first impulse was to spin around, race across the walkway, plunge down the stairs, and wait in the car until the wasp flew away. His wife, as slow as ever, was still in their Mercedes, fiddling around with her camera, purse, and who knows what else. They had spent all day under the merciless Mississippi sun at a family reunion picnic; he could use the excuse that he wanted to find an ice-cream shop, to get a cool respite from the heat, and she would never know the true reason why he’d returned to the car. Although they had been married for three years and had known each other for five, Anthony had managed to conceal his embarrassing phobia. Letting Karen discover how deeply he feared wasps would be as bad as getting stung.
Well, not quite as bad. As a child, he had been stung several times by wasps, yellow jackets, hornets, bumblebees—all of them had gotten him at least once. Nothing else matched the agony. He believed that his admittedly paranoid fear of the insects intensified the pain of being stung. The last time a hornet had attacked him, he had nearly passed out.
In the parking lot below, a door thunked shut. Karen was on her way.
Wings fluttering, the insect had attached itself to the door. Anthony could not believe the sheer size of the wasp. Maybe insects were bigger in Mississippi, because the thing was huge. Its stinger—he thought he could actually see it—seemed to glimmer in the twilight, like the tip of a deadly needle.
From his readings about wasps, he knew that once they plunged their stinger into you, they would still survive. Unlike bumblebees, which left their stingers in your skin and soon died, a wasp retained its weapon, and could return to punish you again. And again, and again.
He shivered.
Okay, be a man about this,
he told himself.
I’m thirty years old, a successful lawyer, admired, respected, envied. It’s only a stupid bug. Kill it.
he told himself.
I’m thirty years old, a successful lawyer, admired, respected, envied. It’s only a stupid bug. Kill it.
Keeping his eye on the quivering wasp, he slipped off one of his Nikes. In a furious burst of energy, he hammered the shoe against the door.
Got it! The wasp crunched underneath the shoe sole and drifted harmlessly to the pavement.
And the verdict is: life in bug hell.
“See ya, sucker,” he said, and chuckled. He kicked aside the insect’s carcass.
As he put on his other shoe, his wife climbed the last step of the landing. With what he hoped was a nonchalant motion, he slid his room key into the narrow slot, unlocking the door.
“It’s hot as hell in here,” he blurted. “And I turned on the air conditioner before we left for the picnic. What a shitty room. I told you we should’ve stayed at the Hyatt.”
Karen trudged toward him, her normally cheerful face lined with fatigue, and browned from a full day in the sun. Her oversized purple T-shirt, which read
MORRIS FAMILY REUNION
2006 in white letters, was rumpled and probably damp with perspiration. She had pulled back her hair into a bun; several strands stood up like unruly weeds.
MORRIS FAMILY REUNION
2006 in white letters, was rumpled and probably damp with perspiration. She had pulled back her hair into a bun; several strands stood up like unruly weeds.
Anthony hated to see his wife looking worn-out like this. All she’d want to do is take a shower and flop across the bed. No loving for him tonight.
“One more night in here won’t kill us,” Karen said as she walked inside. “I only need a shower. When I hit the mattress, I’m going to pass out. Put an ice bag on your head if you need to.”
“Very funny,” he said. “I’m going to suffer heat exhaustion in here.”
“Serves you right. After what you pulled at the picnic today, you aren’t getting any sympathy from me.”
At the picnic, Anthony had been appointed gatekeeper, responsible for checking in relatives and family friends and giving them name tags. It was a humiliating, tiresome task. He was an attorney, for God’s sake, not some shiftless high school dropout—like some of his cousins. He hadn’t driven seven hours from Atlanta so he could sweat in the heat and be a receptionist. He had agreed to do it only because Ma Dear had asked him herself, and with her being ninety-two years old and this possibly being her last reunion, well, he felt obligated to comply with her wishes.
Of course, Ma Dear had asked him to do it only because she wanted to give him a lesson in humility. When folks reached Ma Dear’s age, all they thought about was trying to dispense their so-called wisdom. He was sure she was thinking, I’m gonna make Tony pass out name tags, that boy’s too proud and needs to be humbled.
He was humbled, all right. He did the job so well he was certain they’d never ask him to do it again. Everyone whom he didn’t recognize—and there were many such people—had to prove they were a legitimate relative or friend. No exceptions.
“I was only doing my job,” he said to Karen. “Rules are rules. Was I supposed to let in every stray person who comes off the road claiming some vague kinship, salivating for a plate of ribs and potato salad? Then you’d be complaining that because of me, there wasn’t enough food left for the real family members.”
“Yeah, sure, you only did your job,” she said. Sitting on the bed, she pulled off her sneakers and socks. “You had an interrogation going on there. But the elderly lady was worst of all, Anthony. What you did to her was terrible.”
Karen made it sound as though he had robbed the old woman. A short, stout lady wearing dark shades, a big hat, and a flower-patterned dress, had waddled up to the picnic. A frail young woman was leading her, which made him wonder whether the old lady was blind. In a scratchy voice, the woman said her name was Sis Maggie.
“Sister who?” Anthony had asked. “You don’t look like the sister of anyone in my family, old girl.”
Sis Maggie’s face puckered up like a prune. “I’m a friend of the family, young man. Been knowin’ your people from way back.”
“What people of mine do you know?”
In a halting voice, Sis Maggie proceeded to run down a list of names: Junebug, Little Tommy, Lillie Mae, and other names Anthony had never heard in his life. He didn’t have the patience to listen a minute longer. He cut her off in midsentence.
“Listen, I’ve never heard of those people,” he said. “Either they’re all dead, or you’re at the wrong family reunion. In any case, you wasted your time coming here. Have a good day.”
Sis Maggie frowned in confusion; so did her skinny guide girl. “Young man, listen here—”
“The exit to the park is over there.” Anthony pointed. “If your eyesight is too bad to see it, I’m sure your little nurse there can find it for you.”
Muttering under her breath, Sis Maggie and the girl huffed, turned around and shuffled away.
A handful of people had gathered around the sign-in table. Their mouths hung open in shock. Anthony only smiled. He had balls, all right. No one could pull one over on him.
Minutes later, one of Anthony’s aunts ran to him and told him he’d made a big mistake by turning Sis Maggie away. No, his aunt said, she ain’t really a friend of the family, but she lives in these parts, and only a fool dares to disrespect her. The old woman has been known to work with roots—and she holds terrible grudges.
Anthony only laughed at this backwoods’ superstition. Talk about ignorant. If Sis Maggie was so bad, let her work some roots to conjure up some ribs of her own. She wasn’t getting any from his reunion.
“It’s over now,” he told Karen. He sat on the bed. “Drop it.”
Karen rolled her eyes. She stripped down to her bra and panties, and the sight of her shapely body made his heart skip a beat. He reached for her as she walked past him. She swatted his hand away.
“None for you tonight,” she said. “I’m tired, and you’ve gotten on my damn nerves. Make friends with your hand.”
“That’s cold,” he said, watching her shuffle into the bathroom. He used the edge of his shirt to mop the sweat off his face. Waves of heat pressed upon him like heavy pillows, squeezing sticky sweat out of his pores. On the other side of the room, the air-conditioning unit rattled. Piece of shit. This is what he got for buying into the “family reunion” hotel package: two miserable nights at a cheap hotel. He had wanted to stay at the Hyatt, but Karen had insisted on staying here with the rest of his family, so his relatives wouldn’t think he assumed he was better than them. Who cared what they thought? Most of them envied his success anyway. It was lonely at the top.
Sighing, he used the remote control to click on the television.
In the bathroom, Karen screamed.
Two yellow jackets had taken hold of the bathroom. While Anthony and Karen watched from outside, the door open only an inch, the insects circled between the mirror and tub. Big suckers.
“They flew out of the drain when I turned on the water.” Karen huddled beside him, a bath towel wrapped around her. “You have to kill them, Tony. I’m allergic to bee stings.”
“Allergic?” He frowned. “Are you serious?”
She nodded, her eyes huge and scared. “The last time I was stung, six years ago, I was helping Mom in the garden. A hornet got me on the arm, and my face swelled up like a balloon. Mom had to take me to the emergency room.”
Anthony sneered. His wife was allergic to stings; he was scared to death of the beasts that could sting you. Weren’t they a well-matched couple?
He certainly wasn’t going to share the secret of his phobia with her now. It was time for him to be the man of the house. Moments like this defined marriages.
“Go back in the bedroom, honey,” he said. “I’ll take care of this. I’ll let you know when I’m done.”
She smiled gratefully and left.
He peered into the bathroom. The yellow jackets soared through the air leisurely, as if they owned the place. In the tub, hot water continued to gurgle from the faucet; if Karen had stopped up the drain, the tub surely would have overflowed by then. A fine vapor, borne of the steaming water, had begun to cloud the room.
The insects’ buzzing seemed to thrum in his eardrums. Two yellow jackets. Christ.
Although the room was as humid as a tropical rain forest, he grabbed his jacket from the closet, slid it on, and zipped it up. He was wearing shorts, so he threw on his jeans, too. He slapped on his Atlanta Braves cap.
It was as much bodily protection as he could manage at the moment. He would’ve preferred a beekeeper’s suit.
He found a copy of
USA Today
sitting by the door. He rolled it up, fashioning it into a billy club.
USA Today
sitting by the door. He rolled it up, fashioning it into a billy club.
Then, he crept into the bathroom.
Hot vapor churned in the air. The gurgling water in the tub was thunderously loud.
But the yellow jackets were gone.
“You can’t hide from me, you bastards,” Anthony muttered. They were in there, somewhere. He could feel them watching him, waiting to attack.
His fingers tightened on his newspaper club.
Moving quickly, he stepped to the tub and switched off the faucet. He wanted to clear the air.
As he was turning away from the bathtub, a yellow jacket zoomed toward him from above, like a miniature fighter plane.
Crying out, he swung the club wildly. The paper smacked the insect and knocked it into the mirror, but in the process of swinging, Anthony lost his balance, slipped on a patch of water, and tumbled into the bathtub.
“Shit!”
Hot water splashing everywhere, he rapped his head against the edge of the ceramic basin. He would have passed out, but fear kept him awake. There was one yellow jacket left, and it was waiting to make a move on him.
“Is everything okay, Tony?” Karen asked from the other side of the door.
“I’ll be out in a minute!” he shouted. His cap had flipped off, and he pulled it on again.
Soggy and dripping, his head aching, he dragged himself out of the tub. He caught a glimpse of himself in the foggy mirror—Anthony Morris, Esquire, going through hell over a couple of bees—and he was briefly embarrassed. But his embarrassment faded when he heard the loud, angry buzzing.
It was coming from right on top of his head.
Underneath his baseball cap.
Shouting and cursing, he snatched off the hat. He saw the yellow jacket creeping inside the cap. Gritting his teeth savagely, he smashed the edges of the cap together in his hands, to squash the evil insect inside.
“I’ve got you now, bastard! I’ve got you!” He laughed maniacally.
The insect buzzed furiously, trying to escape.
Anthony moved to the toilet. Like a man handling a hot potato, he flipped over the hat and cast it into the water. Then he flushed the toilet.
The sight of the bee being sucked out of the hat and into the bowels of the sewage system was one of the sweetest things he’d seen all day.
The departed yellow jacket’s fallen comrade lay on the vanity at the base of the mirror. Dead. Anthony captured it in a wad of tissue and, after removing his cap from the toilet, flushed away that one, too.
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