Okay, it’s October, and October means Halloween, and Halloween means there’s no way we do straight sci-fi or fantasy. It’s all horror this month, folks. Horror can take many forms, including SF and fantasy, and it doesn’t require supernatural elements. But this flash-fiction column is about speculative fiction, so lets find a few vampires, werewolves, zombies, and ghosts, and celebrate the stuff that creeps us out. But we’ll start with one that doesn’t quite do that.

“Ethical Dilemma”
Horror
By David M. Fitzpatrick

The bite hadn’t killed Victor. He’d survived, thanks to the silvered knife he’d plunged into the beast and sent it howling off. As the full moon shined like a dim sun over the midnight forest, he crawled, gasping for air and bleeding from a half-dozen bite wounds. He prayed he wasn’t infected. The change would destroy him. If he could get home in time, perhaps he could fend off the lycanthropy. His ethics depended on it.

At home, he tended to his wounds and waited. For a month, he tended his fields—the golden corn, the green pea pods, the bulging squashes, the fat red radishes. He munched on those delicious foods as he worked—a cucumber here, a leaf of lettuce there, string beans off the vine. Oh, he couldn’t become a werewolf!

But when the full moon returned, he changed. He screamed through the agony as the hair sprouted and grew, as his face elongated into a snout, as his ears grew tall, as claws burst from his hands and feet, as muscles and bones rearranged and metamorphosed.

The last thing he remembered before the werewolf took over was that it wasn’t his fault that he’d be killing and eating living things.

Still, it pained him to know he’d be doing it – dedicated vegetarian that he was.

“Zombie Puckerlips”
Horror
By David M. Fitzpatrick

Andy’s naked wife tried to eat his flesh in the bedroom when he got home. He knew immediately what was up: the inhuman eyes, the foaming mouth, the death-gray skin; she’d become a zombie. The damn things were everywhere. He wondered how she’d gotten bitten.

He hit her with his briefcase and she toppled, facedown, to the bed, out cold. Well, she was technically dead anyway. The law said you had to call the Zombie Squad to do it. He found some rope and quickly tied her to all four bedposts.

He didn’t cry. His marriage had been cold, loveless, and nearly sexless for years. He got laid maybe once a month by a cold fish who spread her legs and watched TV while he worked. He’d always suspected she’d cheated on him over the years, but could never prove it. And all he got was sloppy seconds and a frigid bitch.

And thinking of that, with her lying there naked, gave him an idea.

He’d just finished disrobing when she returned to zombie consciousness, growling and drooling and thrashing wildly against the ropes. It was arousing as hell to watch. Zombie or not, she still had a porn star’s body. Her splayed thighs, wiggling ass, and pink lady parts quickly aroused him. Her labia, parted and swollen, were all but begging him to use her mindless body.

He had to keep away from her mouth, but managed to get inside her from behind—where he found the frigid bitch surprisingly warm. He wondered how long she’d “live” like this. And he wondered again how she’d been bitten, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t need to know. He just needed to use the cold, cheating wench until she was dead for good.

He was working up a good pace as she snarled and thrashed beneath him, and was almost at his peak when he heard the noise behind him. He turned his head to see the naked man lurch out of the bathroom, slavering and growling, and he screamed as the zombie sunk its teeth into his throat. She’d been cheating, all right—with an infected man.

Fucking slut! he thought. That was the most unsafe sex ever!

“Haunting That House”
Horror
By David M. Fitzpatrick

She’d married Jim when she was thirty-two and he was sixty-eight. He was loaded, and in failing health, and she’d expected him to die soon. But ten years later, he was alive and well. Her life was wasting away, and she was sick of faking love for him. She just wanted his money. She’d earned it.

She loosened the bulb in the third-floor hallway, near the big window, and told him it needed changing. When he was atop the stepladder, she ran at him and pushed. He crashed through the glass and screamed as he fell. She heard his old body crunch as it hit.

Outside, he was still alive. Broken, twisted, bleeding, and paralyzed, he begged for her to help him.

“Just hurry up and die,” she snarled.

He was shocked and hurt. “But I’ve loved you…given you everything.”

“Because I want that everything—without you,” she said.

She stood over him, listening to him cry for three hours, until he lapsed into unconsciousness. Impatient, she found a two-wheeled dolly, loaded him on it, and laboriously thumped him back up to the third floor—and there, she pushed him out the window again. This time he landed on his head, snapping his neck and killing him.

Then she went shopping for a few hours to give him time to grow very cold before she’d “discover” him.

***

A month later, she heard him crying in agony as he died. She came awake, terrified, thinking it a dream, but there was no doubt it was Jim. She rushed to the hallway and looked out the recently replaced window, and saw him on the lawn, wailing in the darkness. She ran screaming to her bed, hiding beneath the covers, but his spirit kept her awake all night.

It continued for weeks, even in daylight. She wouldn’t stay in a house haunted by the old bastard, so she put her inheritance to work buying a new house a hundred miles away. Even as she supervised the movers loading the truck at the old house, she could hear his tormented wailing as he cried for help. The movers didn’t notice.

***

The first night in her new house, she woke to his cries outside. Terror overwhelmed her as she rushed downstairs and out the door—and found him on the lawn, just as he’d been at the old house. His ghostly body was ethereal, and in shades of gray like in an old photograph. He writhed in agony as he cried for her to help him.

“You can’t be here!” she screamed. “You’re supposed to haunt your house!”

Jim looked up with phantom eyes and said, “You selfish bitch… I’m haunting you. And I always will.”

And he began to wail again, and she began to scream.

“Blood and Flesh”
Horror
By David M. Fitzpatrick

Jenna was ravenous in bed. I don’t mean she liked to screw—because man, did she ever. But I mean literally ravenous: She loved to bite. The first time we rolled in the sack, I spent a week in turtlenecks to hide the hickeys at work.

We never talked about it much. She just bit a lot. I could sense she was hiding something, but instead of putting me on guard it intrigued me—probably because I had my own secret. I should have told her, but it isn’t the kind of secret you ever share with anyone besides your fabled soul mate. I’d never found mine.

As our relationship progressed, she became more ravenous. She’d hickey me everywhere—around my nipples, on my belly, down my limbs. She especially enjoyed nipping dangerously around my groin, too close to my balls for comfort. And oral sex… well, let’s just say I held my breath a lot. She never bit anything important off, luckily.

But she could never stay away from my neck. She stayed close to my throat and made me nervous, One night, after an insane hour of lovemaking, with me bleeding lightly from a dozen spots, I felt her tongue on my neck, licking.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

She was silent in the darkness.

“Are you licking my blood?” I said.

“I have a… thing for blood,” she said, her voice trembling. “ I should have told you. Do you... want to leave me now?”

I laughed and cuddled her closer. “Of course not.” I felt guilty then, because she was so remorseful about hiding that from me. Of course, my secret was far beyond something as trivial as hiding a love for blood.

“I’m a vampire,” she said.

“So you like a little blood. No big deal.”

“No—I mean, a real vampire.” She sat up quickly, pulling away from me, and I could barely see her form in the darkness. “It happened ten years ago. It isn’t like the folklore... I don’t need it to survive. But the bloodlust is so powerful…”

I felt her lean over, and she snapped the light on. She knelt on the bed above me, regarding me with eyes that blazed red. Long fangs protruded from her open mouth.

“I know you’ll want to leave me,” she said, her red eyes mournful. “I’m a liar and a vampire. But I love you—you know I do, or I’d have killed you long ago.”

I laughed, long and loud, and Jenna looked at me in confusion.

“I have a secret of my own that I should have told you,” I said. “I like meat. I mean, I really like meat.”

***

During the next full moon, I showed her what a werewolf looks like. We make a pretty unique pair. We work together; she drinks, and I eat.

Soul mates? I think so. If nothing else, we’re damn good hunting partners.

“Revenge of a Nerd”
Horror
By David M. Fitzpatrick

Max had had it. None of the girls in college gave him a look, but they were all quick to use him—designated driver, give them a ride, help with homework, hand over notes. They didn’t give a shit about him. And now three of them and their boyfriends wanted him to sleep over at the abandoned McCarthy Mansion.

They didn’t want him, really; they needed him. Everyone in town knew about the mansion—how Hendricus McCarthy snapped and killed his four sons and three of their girlfriends a half-century before. For years, college kids had broken in to spend the night for some cheap horror thrill. And they needed a fourth guy, a loner, to go along, to recreate the original conditions.

Oh, he’d go, like so many kids had before. But the stupid ritual would be different this time. He was sick of always being the extra baggage, or never getting the girl.

They all began the night in the four bedrooms the sons had had. That made it easy for Max. He’d smuggled in a wide-bladed axe in earlier that day, and once he heard the girls squealing and the guys grunting, he went into action. He just had to make sure none of them made a sound.

In the first room, the couple was screwing, missionary style, by the light of a fluorescent lantern. Their heads were side by side, which was perfect. He swung the ax over his head and severed two heads in one blow. Blood sprayed his face, but they never made a sound. He grinned with glee as their headless bodies convulsed like epileptics on the floor.

In the next room, two flashlights on the floor illuminated the lovers, who were doing it doggy style. Max swung the ax at the hip-pumping jock and cleaved his head right off his shoulders. It was almost funny, because the jock’s ass kept thrusting for several seconds. The wailing girl never even realized what had happened until she saw Max beside her, bearing down on her with the ax—and her head bounced to the floor before her scream could sound.

The final pair also had a lantern, with the door barely ajar. Max peeked in; the boy was on his back, the chick riding him reverse-cowgirl style. There was no way to be sure he could get them both. He hung back in the dark hallway and waited patiently. They screamed and moaned and made lewd slurping sounds for a while before they climaxed and collapsed together onto their sleeping bag.

No worry about noise now. He burst into the room, surprising them, and his first slice took the boyfriend’s head clean off. The naked girl leaped to her feet, screaming for help, as he backed her towards the corner. His first swing missed completely. The second one took her left arm off and elevated her screaming to slasher-film levels. He put her out of her misery with the last; her head bounced across the room, and her body staggered for a moment before toppling.

Max tossed the axe aside and breathed a satisfied sigh of relief. He knew he couldn’t waste time. He’d burn his clothes and sleeping bag, take a bleach bath, and head home for the weekend. Later, he’d tell the authorities he’d been invited but hadn’t wanted to be the only guy there without a chick. And now there would be a new horror story to tell about the McCarthy Mansion.

“Excellent,” came a voice from behind him. Max spun around.

The tall, hefty man had a broad smile and slightly crazed eyes. He wore a suit and tie, and Max felt the hair on his neck stand up when he realized he could see right through him. And the man held the bloody ax.

“You’ve preserved the truth,” the man said. “I didn’t kill them all. My son killed his brothers and their girlfriends. And when I discovered what he’d done, I lost my mind and killed him.”

“No,” Max said.

“Oh, yes,” the old man said, and swung the ax over his head.

“Face the Music”
Horror
By David M. Fitzpatrick

The car was upside-down, lights on, in the woods. The broken, bloody woman was on the ground, impaled on a thin tree stump. John tried to ignore his arousal at her swelling breasts, her short-shorts, and especially those big, pouty lips on her pale face. He checked her pulse. She was alive, barely. He whipped out his cell phone. No signal.

He’d happened on the car crash on a rural road that cut through a swath of unorganized land. There wasn’t a house or business for thirty miles. If he pulled her off the stump, she’d be gutted, or at least bleed to death in minutes. She was as good as dead.

But… why let those perfect lips go to waste?

Her pulse was weak and slow. By the time he got back from his car with gloves, nature had taken its course. He knelt down, flipped open his pocketknife, and speared it into her forehead. He drew it sharply towards her ear. Blood seeped as he sliced down her head, under her chin, up the other side, until he completed the circle. Then he jammed the knife under the skin and sawed back and forth, separating flesh from bone, until he peeled her face right off her skull.

He held it up, enthralled. The eerie mask dripped with blood, eyelids flapping. Her full, luscious lips were a perfect fantasy. He’d never be able to experience them wrapped around him, but he could sure imagine it.

He shut off the car’s ignition, plunging the accident scene into blackness, and hurried back to his car.

***

John preserved the face, displaying it in a shallow glass case on which he mounted a cheap painting, hung over his fireplace. When nobody was around, which was most of the time, he’d remove the painting, sit in his living room, and look at it. Often, he’d pleasure himself, imagining those lips sucking him. He’d never had such explosive orgasms.

***

A young lady, dressed in pink and carrying a makeup kit, knocked at his door one day.

“Carrie Lee Cosmetics!” she said with a broad smile, a city girl way out of her element in the back woods. “Is the lady of the house home?”

John opened his mouth to tell her that there was no lady of the house, but stopped. She was so beautiful, with perfect skin and alluring eye makeup, and with full, blowjob lips painted bright red. They’d look great on his wall...

“My wife’s in the shower,” he said, smiling.

The cheap painting presided over them as the girl prattled on about mascara and skin lotions and lipstick, but John wasn’t listening. He’d kill her and move her car into his old garage. He’d dispose of it, piece by piece, at his leisure. He walked to the door as she chattered on, to see what kind of car she was driving, but saw nothing in the driveway. “Where’s your car?” he asked.

“I’m on foot, sir,” she said behind him.

“You’re selling makeup on foot—out here?”

“Not really. I just came here to get something.”

He turned back to her and froze.

She was at his fireplace and had ripped the cheap painting off the box. The dead woman’s face was exposed. He felt himself turning white as she ripped the mask free and turned back to him.

“ I love makeup,” she said, holding the face before her. “You can do anything with it.”

She reached up with one hand and peeled the makeup off. It was like latex, layers of perfectly blended cosmetics that came off like an old sunburn. Beneath was white bone and exposed muscle. Blood ran everywhere.

“I’ve been missing this,” she said through her lipless teeth, her eyeballs bulging out of her skull at him.

She brought the face up and pushed it against her skull, her hands fitting it into place, even as John felt the hot piss streaming down his leg. When her face was back in place, she smiled at him with those lips.

“That wasn’t very nice what you did,” she said, reaching for him. “And jacking off to my face just isn’t very gentlemanly.”

He screamed as her fingers sank into his flesh.

***

His brother found him two weeks later, dead in his blood-soaked chair. He looked comfortable, his dead eyes staring up above his fireplace. In the shallow box there, his penis and testicles were mounted and displayed.
 

David M. Fitzpatrick is a fiction writer in Maine, USA. His many short-stories have appeared in print magazines and anthologies around the world. He writes for a newspaper, writes fiction, edits anthologies and teaches creative writing. Visit him at www.fitz42.net/writer to learn more.