American Beauty

American Beauty

“Are you sure we should be doing this?” Oliver whispered to his best friend squatting beside him, his forehead creased with worry and drenched in sweat.

“Yeah! We are, dude. Why the hell do you have to be such a chicken every time I try to get us to do something new? I think the room has a TV…American Beauty is on!” Gareth replied in a whisper, his gaze straight ahead.

“Because this is crazy, Gary! We’re spying on the Reverend’s daughter, for heaven’s sake! On a particularly warm summer night!” Oliver whispered, squinting to get a better look inside the window of what they assumed was Reverend Morgan’s daughter Angela’s bedroom. Oliver left his glasses behind in his house when Gary had sneaked inside his bedroom and asked him to follow him for a nighttime adventure.

“Why do you wanna do this anyway?” Oliver asked.

“Are you kidding me? Haven’t you seen Angie Morgan? She’s like the prettiest girl in class! What with those blue eyes, and those gorgeous lips…and don’t get me started about that butt of hers…it’s like a peach! I’m not a religious person, but that girl’s beauty is divine!” Gary replied.

“Of course I have seen Angela, and she is beautiful. But still, we are a pair of peeping Toms looking inside a girl’s bedroom. We’re violating her privacy!” Oliver observed.

“Don’t be such a goody-goody, Oliver. And why the hell are you squinting inside her bedroom if…wait a second…what the hell!” Gareth whispered, staring inside the , which was wide open, with his eyes as wide as tennis balls.

“What? What is it, Gary? What’s happening? Tell me!” Oliver whispered.

“What is the Reverend doing in Angie’s bedroom? Where the hell is she?” Gary whispered.

“What’re you talking about?”

“Reverend Morgan just entered Angie’s room…he looks gross in those shorts and vest. He’s watching American Beauty, for God’s sake! What a pervert!” Gary whispered.

“Seriously? He’s the pervert? We’re trespassing inside someone’s property to peep inside a girl’s bedroom and he’s the pervert for watching American Beauty?” Oliver whispered, smacking the back of his friend’s head.

“Stop playing the moral police, you moron! Angie’s the Reverend’s daughter so I can never hang out with her in public or make her my girlfriend. This is my only way to be near her. Plus, the Reverend is a man of God and men of God don’t watch a sexy hot movie,” Gary whispered in reply.

“That’s a load of bullcrap!”

“Shut up! Let me watch, now!”

Five minutes passed with both friends squatting in silence in the bushes, with only the sounds of the insects chirping around them and the cover of darkness for company.

“What’s happening inside?” Oliver whispered.

“Getting bored, huh! Well…the Reverend seems to be enjoying the movie. Ah gross!” Gary exclaimed in a whisper.

“What?”

“He just put his hand inside his shorts. There’s a racy scene going on in the movie. Guy’s a hypocrite. Disgusting!” Gary whispered.

“Yikes. It’s a good thing I didn’t get my glasses,” Oliver observed.

“Yeah…it’s not a pretty site. Wait, what the hell!” Gary whispered urgently.

“What now?”

“Angie just entered the room…wow! She’s wearing…shorts and a tank top! Ummmm!” Gary replied with a whisper, licking his lower lip with his tongue.

“Are you sure you should look?” Oliver asked.

“Cut the crap…wait! Oliver! Something’s going on here. Angie has a gun in her hands!”

“What? What gun?” Oliver asked, squinting inside the window.

“It’s a Colt .45. What the…she’s coming up behind her father…holy crap!”

“What’s happening? Gary? What’s going on?”

“Angie’s aimed the gun at the back of her father’s head.”

“Oh my God! Do you think we should…”

BANG.BANG.BANG.

Both boys were so startled that they fell backwards, their heads hitting the hard ground with a soft thud, their mouths instinctively clamped shut with their hands to suppress their screams of panic.

“Gary?” Oliver whispered.

“Yeah?” Gary whispered in reply.

“Were these gunshots?”

“Yeah. Yeah, Oliver. Angie shot her father. Three times. Oh God,” Gary replied, closing his eyes.

He opened them immediately, because with his eyes closed he could only see the horrible visage of the back of the Reverend’s head exploding like a ripe watermelon and a river of blood gushing out- some of it also spraying on Angie.

“I doubt there is a God if that angel of a girl can shoot her father,” Oliver commented, wiping some sweat off his face. He realized his shirt was drenched too and stuck to his chest.

It was the second time that night he was thankful he had forgotten his glasses at home.

“Oliver?” Gary whispered.

“Yeah?”

“This is our little secret, okay? No one ever needs to know what we just saw.”

“Don’t you think we should call the police and report the crime?”

“And getting caught for trespassing and trying to peep in Angie’s house? No thank you!”

“You’re right. I didn’t think of that eventuality.”

“Besides you just called her an angel yourself. Do you really wanna see her in jail for patricide?”

“No, I don’t. You’re right. We will take this secret with us to the grave.”

“Yeah. Now let’s scoot from here before the whole neighborhood realizes what happened and comes running here,” Gary replied, and tried to think of how to manage sitting up without the top of his head showing above the bushes. If Angela happened to see Oliver and him, he was sure their heads would be the next to explode like watermelons.

“You think the neighbors heard the shots? Angie shot the Reverend point blank,” Oliver whispered, lifting his body off the ground and trying to get his bearings in the dark.

“Yeah, but the sound wasn’t that muted. If we heard it then the immediate neighbors must have heard it too. Shit, someone’s coming. Come on!”

Both boys managed to run away just before the first neighbor knocked on the Reverend’s door three minutes later.

WIP Blog Contest

Thanks to Reet Singh (http://www.reetsingh.in/wip-amitree.php) for nominating me. Here is a fascimile from the first few chapters of my WIP- The Mystery of Stokerville. This is my first foray into the interesting but tough genre of horror.

Blurb: Jenny and her friends go to a cabin, named Stokerville, owned by one of Jenny’s uncle- who mysteriously disappeared in the mansion some years back Things start to go wrong from day one of their stay. The girls feel watched while in the shower or changing clothes, the boys discover mysterious bite marks on their bodies when they wake up in the morning. All of them have terrible, recurrent, vivid nightmares. Something lurks in the basement. Creepy shadows steal across the hallways and rooms, even during the day time. There is also a stunning discovery- the diary of Jenny’s uncle, written in the days before his disappearance. The kids try to escape...but discover they can't, and then they come face to face with the evil that forms the foundation of the house

First chapter: “Help! Somebody help me!” she screamed, running along the long, twisting corridor. The walls had wall brackets with lamps illuminating the passageway, and also some strange drawings on the wallpaper- women screaming, people ripping out other people with knives, the face of The Beast and other such grotesque illustrations.

Second Chapter: “Are we sure we should be doing this?” Jenny asked, looking at the looming edifice towering in front of her. The first seed of doubt had crept into her mind the moment they had turned onto the dirt road, branching off from the Maine-New Hampshire Interstate. The seed had grown into a full-fledged plant of doubt when she saw the abandoned cabin, firmly ensconced in the shadow of the dense canopy of trees looming over and around it, giving it a strangely creepy look. It didn’t help that the place was called as Stokerville- apparently in honor of Bram Stoker.

Third chapter: “I must tell you, Jenny, weird or not, your uncle had a fantastic idea of building a bachelor pad,” Tashi commented, as they had dinner at the glass dining table in the kitchen.

“Yeah! I mean…I’m seriously impressed by his collection of books. I could sit in that study for days on end and read. It’s perfect- volumes of horror anthologies and tomes of horror novels by authors around the world…in a cabin called Stokerville in the middle of nowhere. Just perfect,” Rudy added.

The Nightmare on Loony Street

She is standing in the middle of a desolate road, bordered on both sides by dense forests. She’s dressed in a white dress which comes halfway down her thighs. In her hand, she holds an axe. Beside her lies a white paint can. It is actually filled with vermilion, sticky fluid which looks like blood.

In front of her is a car. All the windows and doors are open. Bodies lie halfway in, halfway outside the open doors. Rivers of blood and gore flow in all directions, the bright vermilion interspersed with the dull grey.

But there is no blood on her dress or bare legs. Her face is covered completely by a blue bag- there are no slits for eyes or lips or nose. Suddenly, her whole body shakes in spasmodic intervals, her limbs moving in a methodical madness to some rhythm.

“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! They’re all dead…hahahahaha!” a disembodied voice comes out of nowhere.

                                         ***********

Nightmares. So many of them exist, so varied in their horrors, sometimes so vivid in their presentation. They may come only in the night to other people, but not to me. Nightmares are a part of my routine thoughts- they come and go anytime they please. People have nightmares when they sleep- I have waking nightmares too. It’s been like this for a really long time, so I have made my peace with them. I have had to do so, even though these nightmares scare the hell out of me- every damn time.

I have seen a whole lot of nightmarish visions. Some are bright, Technicolor  MGM movies, while others are old black and white videos, blurred and flitting. Some come often, some only once and some are frequent. All of them are scary and creepy.

But the most frightening one is the one with the woman in white. This woman is particularly special, because she haunts me even in my waking dreams.

She appears of out of nowhere, anywhere and everywhere, and just stands nearby me, with an axe in her hand and her face obscured by a light blue bag-like thing. She has never shown her face till now. I have wondered often as to her identity, but I daren’t go near her and try to lift the bag from over her head. Something I’ve been dying to do for a long time.

This lady is not the only one whom I see everywhere. There is the man in the brown suit who sits on the swing, outside the house, when nobody else is there.

There is the old lady, in a red gown and with long, silver hair and heavily wrinkled skin who sits on the rocking chair in my room and oscillates it noisily, anytime she so pleases. If I happen to drop in on her while she’s at it, I find her staring at me with a constancy that sends a chill down my spine.

There are the twin sisters, very young, who often sneak around in the basement.

 There is the boy, covered in blood and mud, who roams around in the backyard frequently.

There’s the robed and hooded figure that appears outside my classroom window at school.

There’s the girl, in tattered clothes and a burnt face, who often sits beside my desk in the classroom.

There’s the other girl, with most of her lower jaw blown away and the blood and bones showing beneath, who appears in the lavatory when I’m the only one there.

Sounds crazy, right? I know. Everybody thinks I’m crazy. My parents, my teachers, my classmates. They all think I should be in a mental asylum. I have heard them say it.

People at the school call me Crazy Vera. I know it because they call me that to my face. I don’t care much for it. They call me crazy because I can see people who’re invisible to them. In their terms, I see people who’re not there in reality.

They don’t understand. Not even a little bit. Their world is limited to popularity, puppy romance, fashion, good food and stupid chick-lit movies and football games. Nothing in their horizon of interest has an iota of reality. I can see reality, and I’m the only one who can do so.

My parents even took me to a psychiatrist. She asked me about what I keep seeing, and I told her the truth. Every little bit of it. And she told my parents to give me some white pills- to stop the nightmares and visions, I suppose.

The waking dreams got a little blurred, like I was looking at them through a translucent glass pane. I started sleeping anytime, anywhere and everywhere- in the shower, in the classroom, in the school bathroom, in the kitchen, in the backyard.

The meds suddenly stopped. My mother told me I’d nearly drowned in the swimming pool of my school’s gym, when I chose to doze off during a swim lesson.

That was it. My parents stopped trying to ‘cure’ me of my nightmares and visions, still thinking I’m crazy. I chose to lie to them and say that the visions have disappeared, along with the bad dreams. It was then that I found Harry.

He is the only vision whom I can talk to. He appears as a hazy, background character in the nightmares. In my waking dreams, he is a tall, dark-haired, handsome boy, who tells me he’s 17- my age- and that he likes talking to me. Harry and I have long conversations in my bedroom. Sometimes he stands beside my desk in the classroom and smiles at me. Sometimes he appears outside the shower curtain and we talk while I’m bathing. I really like Harry. I want to kiss him some day.

He tells me not to be scared of the old lady in red, the hooded figure, or the girl with the burnt face. He also tells me to ignore the other people I see- they’re harmless. I want to ask him who these people really are, but am too scared of the answer.

I did ask Harry if he’ll be with me forever- because I’m so lonely in this world and he’s the only one who gets me. He has said yes, that he’ll never leave me because he also likes me and my company. That makes me very happy.

                                            ************

 Ward 201, Baltimore Psychiatric Hospital For The Criminally Insane

“I’m telling you, this chick’s super crazy,” Nurse Greene says to Nurse Linden.

Nurse Linden: Yeah. Unbelievable, this is. I heard she killed her own family. She’s Vera Morgan, right?

Nurse Greene: Yeah. Hacked them all to death with an axe. Have you heard the whole story?

Nurse Linden: No, tell me.

Nurse Greene: The way I hear it, the Morgans were driving to Vera’s grandparents’ estate in Maryland. Their car broke down on the highway outside of Newport. Apparently, she killed her father, mother and two brothers with an axe. When they found her, she was standing in the middle of the road, holding the bloody murder weapon, and she was laughing continuously, while her family’s corpses bled, lying halfway in, halfway out of the Morgan’s car. She was wearing this white dress, which was also covered in blood. Also, she had a paint can beside her, filled with blood.

Nurse Linden: Wow. That is one of the weirdest and craziest things I have heard in my life. How do you know so many details?

Nurse Greene: Vera’s dad, Dr. Brent Morgan, was a friend of our chief, Dr. Leeds. I overheard the police detective talking to him the other day.

Nurse Linden: I’ve never seen a loony like Vera. She doesn’t eat, doesn’t sleep, doesn’t do anything. Just sits and mutters something all day.

Nurse Greene: I know. I’ve heard her talking to someone called Harry. She even scratches his name on the walls.

Nurse Linden: The scratching is worse. She has broken her nails and bled her fingertips with that.

Nurse Greene: She’s stuck in her own brain, poor kid. Let’s go and have some coffee.

Nurse Linden: Yeah. Lets’ go.

                                                    **********

 Some days after this conversation, Nurses Greene and Linden were the ones who found Vera Morgan dead in her ward. She’d died by slitting her wrists and throat with a pointed piece of wood she had managed to find somewhere. But there was something, written in blood, on the walls of the ward. It was interpreted by the cops as a suicide note.

I LIFTED THE BLUE BAG.

I KNOW THAT GIRL IS ME.

I DON’T WANNA SEE ANYMORE.

I WANT TO BE WITH HARRY FOREVER.

Copyright @ Percy Kerry 2014

Project 52- Week 4- Fidelity

"I hate you, Mark! I hate you so, so much!"

"What the hell have I done now?"

"Who is she?”

“Who the hell are you talking about?”

“The woman you’re sleeping with! Behind my back! Who the hell is the bitch?”

“For god’s sake, Lydia! I’m not having an affair!”

“Yes you are, liar ! You think I’m an idiot? That I don’t notice what’s going on?”

“Really? What is it that you don’t notice?”

“The lipstick stains on the collar of your shirt! Plus the smell of a woman’s perfume that comes from your clothes!”

“Seriously? That was just one time, Lydia! I told you, a colleague of mind, who happens to be shorter than me, bumped into me in the corridor and so I got her lipstick on my shirt. And I don’t smell any feminine perfume on my clothes, for the record.”

“So you think I’m crazy, huh?”

“Yes! Yes, definitely. You’re stir crazy, Lydia! All you ever do is doubt me. You have never, ever placed an iota of trust in me. I don’t know why you do this. I love you, and all I get for that is your suspicion and your acerbic remarks. You have never said a good thing to me as a spouse, and treat me as if I’m some low-life lecher. I don’t even know why I’m married to you anymore!”

“Don’t you dare pile on me, you pervert! All you men are the same. First you treat women as objects and cheat on them, then you accuse them of being crazy!”

“Enough! I’m done with you, Lydia! I’m really, really done. I agreed to stay trapped with you in this shit-hole of a marriage because I thought that someday, you will see my love for you and we can relive our relationship again. But you refuse to change. Alright, it’s over. I’m getting a divorce.”

“What? You’re…divorcing me?”

“Yes. Neither of us are happy in this marriage, so it’s best to end it. I want to marry someone who puts some faith in me as a husband.”

“But…but…I go all psycho on you only because I want to see how much you love me, Mark! How much you can put up with to stay in this marriage!”

“Oh God! You need a psychiatrist, Lydia!”

The Face-Off Killer #9

Gina Coleman tried to contain her panic, which rose in her throat like bile after the chilling vision of the life-like painted faces of women. Goosebumps rose on her skin as she couldn't suppress the feeling that the women were staring at her- through their dead eyes- as if envying her for being alive while they had to face the horrible fate of an untimely, painful death at the hands of a psychopath.

My mind is playing tricks on me, she decided.

She remembered a fact she had once learnt in class- whenever one feels the oncoming of a possible panic attack, the solution is to take deep breaths and tell oneself to calm down- which works both psychologically and physiologically.
"Come on Gina! Don't be scared...you can do it! Come on!" she told herself, taking deep, quick breaths, while another part of her brain continued to look for a way out of the hell-hole.
Then it came to her, as a bright flash of epiphany. Her hands, which were tied behind her back. They both went all around the back of the chair, where they were bound together by a rope at the wrist. But I'm not bound to the chair, she realized.
Which means that if I try to move my bound hands in an upward direction, I can pull them over the backrest, and subsequently manage to at least stand up, she mused.
Her ears first strained themselves for any sound of footsteps on the other side of the basement door, which faced her. It was dead silence.
Gina started to try and move her tied hands upwards, at the same time trying to stand up, moving her body and hands in the same rhythm. She grimaced in pain as the exercise ensured maximum stretching of her shoulder muscles. She was sure she was going to sprain her scapula in the process.
Try, try, try again, she mentally kept on repeating to herself, as she pulled and pushed and continually readjusted her movements.
After about ten minutes, she finally managed to get her hands out from behind the chair, to now right behind her back and managed to stand up. Then she almost fell forwards, realizing her legs were bound to the legs of the chair. She sat back, wondering what to do next.
Remember not to despair, honey, you got a plan now. You're gonna get out of here alive, she told herself mentally.
It was only then that she remembered that, beside the stand where those hideous faces were kept, she has seen a tray full of bright, shiny stuff. She stood up again, and looked left. Trying to ignore the faces, she saw that the ' bright, shiny' stuff was actually a tray of instruments. Instruments she'd seen, actually worked with in  the neurobiology lab.
Yes!, she mumbled, and came up with a new plan to untie her hands and legs. She sat back on the chair again.
Using the chair as a battering ram and her legs as pivot, she slowly dragged her body forwards, the chair along with it, towards the huge table on which the tray was kept.
On finally having reached the table, which wasn't that far, she stood again and turned her upper body sideways. Even with her hands bound, she managed to lift a scalpel off the tray with her fingers.
Fortunately, there was a huge mirror above the table. Her torso still turned sideways, she tried to cut through the rope. It was a difficult exercise, due to the thickness of the rope, but because the scalpel was new, it managed to slice part of the rope in half within five minutes. That was enough for her to quickly untie her hands.
She then used the scalpel to untie her legs.
Trying to suppress her joy and relief, she reminded herself there was still the problem of getting out- of the basement and of the house.
She took the scalpel, and a few other instruments, and kept them in the pocket of her jeans.
Suddenly, her ears picked up a sound. She instinctively turned to the basement door, and made out footsteps coming down the stairs. Panic rose inside her, again, but she decided to contain it. She remembered that the table which had the tray of instruments was covered with a large blue table cloth, the hem of which touched the ground.
Gina ran to the table, fell to her knees, and quickly ducked under the table, remembering not to keep her legs sticking out- a stupid mistake she'd seen being committed by abduction victims in thriller movies.
Seconds after her legs disappeared under the hem of the tablecloth, the basement door opened and he stepped inside.
"Hey Azalea...see what I got for you..." he stopped speaking when he noticed the empty chair, and the rope lying in pieces on the ground.
Gina put a hand on her moth and nose, trying to breath as noiselessly as possible, the scalpel poised in her hand, which she kept behind her back. She tried not to freak out at the cold, creepy voice of the kidnapper, which sent a chill down her spine.
"Azalea...you bitch! Where did you run off to, Azalea!" he cried.

Coming in your sleep soon!

The Face-Off Killer #8

Gina Coleman's eyes opened slowly and steadily, the upper and lower lids taking a lot of time to part ways. Her head felt unnaturally heavy, as if it was made of a 100 pound stone, and not the cranium, brain and meninges. At first, her vision was a total blur. She blinked again and again till it cleared, and she could see properly. All she saw was a room, one she'd never seen before. She registered her head was lolling to one side, and automatically straightened it.
Her head feeling a little less heavy, she looked around her, and it slowly dawned on her that she was in some sort of a basement, because it felt unnaturally cold, and the lighting was different from that usually in rooms above ground. She felt that she was alone in the room, and tried moving her hands and feet, only to discover they were tied to a chair on which she was seated. Despite the headache she had, she tried to remember what had happened to place her in this strange place. Gradually she recalled flashes of it- walking back to her dorm, hearing noises behind her, being grabbed from behind and suddenly passing out. She realized she'd been abducted and was being held as a captive.
And yet, she was surprised by how coolly and calmly she was playing over the facts in her mind, as if she was a student back at the School of Medical Sciences, doing a psychobiologic case study on fear in abduction victims, and not a victim lying tied up in some psycho's basement herself. Perhaps Professor Higgins was right about her well adjusted personality, and what a great neurobiologist she would make.
Well, the time was to get out of that damned place, and not think of future laurels.
She looked at the room around her with renewed eyes, looking for anything that might help her free herself. And felt a wave of revulsion travel through her body when she saw the painted, decorated faces of various women balanced on stands. The faces looked real, almost life-like- like they'd been that of real women rather than mannequins.
What kind of a kidnapper had she fallen a victim to?
 
                                                ************

"I think it's time we drew up a rough profile of our Face-Off Killer, detectives," Lieutenant Will Masters said to Ansen Cole and Lance Carter, as they sat in his cabin at the Boston PD HQ.
"Yes. A prelim profile might help us narrow down the kind of killer we're looking for," Ansen Cole observed.
"Okay. Let's take this to our murder-board," saying this, Masters got up from his seat, took a black marker pen from his desk and went up to a whiteboard to the right of his desk.
THE FACE-OFF KILLER, he write on the board.
"So what do we know about this killer as of now?" he asked the two detectives.
"The killer is a male in his late-twenties or early thirties," said Ansen Cole.
"Good, what else?" Masters said, writing down Cole's point on the board.
"He's trained in the medical sciences, because of the way he perfectly defaced his victims with a scalpel. Most probably he's a surgeon," said Lance Carter.
"And he just took a third victim. Gina Coleman, student at the School of Medical Sciences at Boston University, was kidnapped last night," Ansen Cole announced, his voice grim, his eyes on his pager.