Fear has a thousand faces… Are you prepared to meet yours?
In August, this great collection of short stories (each with a unique phobia) will be coming out in ebook and paperback formats.
I am also deep into my latest rough draft for ECLIPSE! I will be finishing this story and publishing by the end of the year. ECLIPSE: Part One will be included and reprinted along with the rest of the story! I am super excited to bring this out to you. Keep alert! You don’t want Mitch to sneak up on you…
And lastly, I wanted to share another of the stories from our first edition of With Malice Magazine that came out in 2023. This is mine, actually! This is Chap 1. Some day I hope to expand on this story, I Still Burn, into a horror novel. For now, this teaser will have to do!
I am toying with the idea of an early edition by the end of the year, but definitely you can count on four issues coming out in 2027.
Enjoy!!
I STILL BURN
Sammy Samuels wasn’t bothered by the late-night Philly air. In fact, he rather enjoyed its touch of briskness. Made him feel more alive on his walks home. His breath plumed, funneling out and trailed behind the old man’s head. As he walked along the street, he whistled an old favorite R & B tune to himself. A large smile was stretched across his face. There were touches of gray along the edges of his afro. In his left hand, he held a smoldering, snubbed cigar, and in the other, he carried a bottle of Jimmy Bean Bourbon.
As Sammy crested the hill on Jacobson St., he first spotted it. He nearly skidded to a stop, and he stiffened despite himself. “Wow. What in the hell is that?” he muttered under his breath.
At the bottom, in the hollow, at the corner of Jacobson and Alan Derry St., sat one of the ugliest statues he’d ever seen in his life. It was of a dog, a large one like a German Shepherd. It was placed to sit facing back up at the hill. The streetlamp overhead gave it a wide spotlight of yellowish light. The statue’s fur was a natural patchwork of tan, brown, and black. However, above its snout was a red plastic mask, white X’s over its eyes.
Never seen that here before, he mused. Sick joke or something.
He didn’t find it amusing. He’d come down this way a few times before from Delta Blues Liquor Store if he had to – when he’d miss the last running Metro bus like he did tonight. He was sure he’d have noticed that gawdy thing.
Sammy shook his head, chuckled, and returned to whistling his favorite song. One of them millennial artists musta placed it there recently. Prolly got some sort of statement and story behind it. Nowadays, everyone got something to say, an opinion that everyone just has to listen to!
He shook his head once more disdainfully. At halfway down the hill, he stopped abruptly again. He nearly dropped his half-finished bottle. To the right of the street and sitting dutifully on both sides of a door were two more of the statues. Same red masks with the white Xs, different shades of fur. The pair were placed in front of Rawley’s Deli.
Sammy instinctively glanced to the left to see if there were dog statues posted as the others. Nothing. As habit, he scratched one temple with an index finger as he stood confused.
Instead of more statues, he found a small alley entrance, cluttered by two tall brick buildings and several brown, city garbage bins. A flickering light hung off one building, but it was further back at the end.
He looked back at the three dogs one by one, looking for a poster or sign to further elaborate on the work’s meanings. Nothing.
Sammy shrugged, took a long swig from the bottle, which he followed with a deep drag from his cigar.
He stepped forward, cursing the way the world was so over-populated with opinionated assholes and full of self-righteousness these darkening days, when he saw the fourth dog statue. It was sitting motionless next to the first one at Jacobson St.
The bottle dropped and shattered at his feet. He blurted, “What da hell?” Where did that one come from?
The dogs tilted their heads together, slowly to the right as dogs do, as if listening to his inner questions.
Sammy’s heart raced, and his chest tightened with sudden fear. He took an involuntary step backward. Swiveling his head to the left then right, he looked to see if anyone else happened to be out in this late hour. He prayed he would spy someone—anyone—and not another dog statue!
Were they statues? The shocking question bubbled up in his mind.
No one else was out; most of the storefronts were dark and closed up. Due to the recent cold spell, no one was out or near the apartment buildings or out on their stoops.
Three more dogs appeared. They lazily strolled out from another alleyway ahead of him, walking in a line. They sat upon their haunches, sitting on the sidewalk in formation, then they too tilted their heads in question.
Almost like they asking me ‘what the fuck you gonna do, old man? What’s your thoughts?’
His tongue snaked out quick and wet his lips. Sammy had grown up on the streets and had toughened it out, surviving many fights and ambushes. He was cagey, yet it had been some time since he’d had to use those skills.
Whatcha gonna do?
He lurched forward to the left, but after two steps, he stutter-stepped then spun on his sneaker heels to bolt back up the hill as fast as his arthritic joints would carry him. When he topped it, a fist caught him squarely in the nose and rocked him off his feet. He never saw it coming. Helplessly, he tumbled backwards and rolled along the street’s gutter.
When he came to a stop at the bottom, Sammy sputtered and spit blood as he lay panting heavily on his back. He moaned but held out a motioning hand in the air. “Wait! Wait, please.”
His hand dropped down and rummaged in his jeans’ pocket. He produced a faded tan leather wallet, thin and very used.
“I ain’t got much, mister, but it’s your’s,” he said as he waved it out. He kept his eyes squeezed shut.
However, no one took his wallet. Nothing was said. He didn’t hear dog or man.
“Look! It’s okay. I get it. But I didn’t see you, only your dogs. I can’t ID you. I wouldn’t. Hell, dude, who’s gonna believe an old drunk anyway? You take what I have, just don’t hurt me anymore, okay?”
Someone snapped their fingers.
Sammy heard the approach of a soft patter of paws. The old man gulped and held brave to the thought he’d be alright. He’d be home soon, safe and relaxing in his comfy recliner and eating a microwave dinner in a quick hour. You’ll see. They’ll leave ya alone as you ain’t got nothin’.
He tried to ignore the painful sharp stings as their jaws clamped onto his wrists. As well, he didn’t resist as they dragged him toward the empty, shadowy alley. Inside the alley’s dark confines, more jaws snapped close upon his limbs.
Lord, I’ve been a good man for some time now. Please see me through this, he prayed inside. While he did have a strong faith, he also believed in the idea that the blessed be those who help themselves too.
He opened one eye, then the other. The pack of dogs surrounded him, their hot breaths baked his skin. Their fur was spikey, greasy, and matted with mud and feces. A rotted, fetid stench from their breath and bodies soured his stomach, nearly making him vomit. His arms and legs were held aloft by two dogs each. They were keeping him down but hadn’t actually torn at him, only imprisoning him. The person who struck him on the street was nowhere in sight.
“What? Hello?” Sammy’s voice was shaky and shrill, pleading.
As an answer, a massive jaw gripped his thin throat, choking him. Trickles of blood droplets dripped to the dirty concrete beneath him.
A gravely yet smug voice called out from somewhere above Sammy. “Samuel Jeremiah Samuels. Born in 1948, survived a pair of ex-wives. Father to two sons whom you haven’t spoken to in years. Retired as a building engineer when we all know you were just a glorified handyman. Now pitiful, broke, and useless to all around him.” The voice droned on, in the same masculine and judgmental tirade. A pair of slick, lime green boots slowly appeared next to his head. They were wet and caked in odd, slimy mud that smelled faintly fishy or maybe wormy.
“What do you want? Lemme go! You have no right to do this to me!” Sammy weakly gasped out from under the mane of the dog.
“Oh, Sammy. Really going to go there? Deep down you know what’s happening. You know what I’m doing and why. It’s your Judgment Day. No right? No, sir, I have every right, and from the day you first understood your ol’ mama’s words — she taught you that sins pile up and you’d one day have to atone.”
“Bullshit,” the weak dismissal didn’t have much strength behind it.
A flash of memory popped in Sammy’s head. It was of the Sunday he’d been five years old and had been caught with his two friends trying to snake out dollar bills from the church’s tithe baskets while everyone was supposed to be in Sunday School. His Granny Josie had used a thin tree branch to deliver his punishment, followed up with a fifteen-minute sermon on sinnin’ and doin’ the devil’s work. The Devil to Sammy became the worst of the world’s boogeymen to him, but the world had a multitude of monsters to keep him up at night. Whoever his attacker was, he was right about him; he knew what sinning was from an early age.
Another snap of fingers.
Excruciating pain filled Sammy. Every nerve inside shrieked with agony; muscles and skin tore, blood poured or fountained all about the alley. His screams were muffled and garbled by the penetrating fangs in his throat. His limbs flailed and writhed but were not released.
An orange aura of energy flowed over him as white flickering lightning bolts popped and lit up the alley. It blinded him so he couldn’t see much of the shadowy dark profile standing over him anyway.
“I can keep you like this as long as I want, Sammy. I won’t let you die. You see you cannot escape me so easily. You cannot outlast me either. It’s a new trick I picked up. This pain, this Rending of your soul, can last for eternity. I have brought your mama’s Hell to you!” the Dark Form laughed.
Then Sammy’s Granny Josie’s voice howled out of his mouth, “Sammy! Sammy, you stop livin’ like this, you be a good man. Those gangs are not for you. They pretendin’ to be your family. They usin’ you up and will throw you away just as easy! Stop your sinnin’!”
Those were the actual words she had used when she bailed him out the third time. The drive home had seemed torturous and infinite to him. But now… after she was long gone and buried, the words seemed like purity and wisdom. If only it hadn’t been another four years before he straightened up and wanted more in life.
The laughter continued as the pain ratcheted up. The dogs yanked and thrust all about, tearing his arms from the elbow joints first, then the shoulders. His legs were severed at the ankles, then gnawed apart at the knees.
The Dark Form’s words oozed into his ears; the menacing tone flooded him over the sounds of his screams and begging pleas for mercy. “This will all end. You’ll be forgiven if you only say the words. You only need to give everything to Her. Appeals for mercy are sweet and savory, but She demands more! Give Her all, follow what you are told. If you ask for Her name, I’ll give it to you, and then you can be released. Can you do that, Sammy? Are you going to beg me for Her name and Her mercy?”
The jaws at his throat tightened further and crushed his windpipe. Blood poured up and out of his mouth, splattering his face and chest. His skull cracked hard on the concrete as it separated from his shoulders. Agony and fire filled his mind, consuming him.
“SAY IT, SAMMY! GIVE YOUR SOUL TO HER TO SAVE IT, OR THE HOUNDS WILL TEAR YOU INTO HUNDREDS OF PIECES WHICH YOU WILL FEEL EACH AND EVERY BIT OF!” The Dark Form screeched in a mad frenzy.
As two hounds gnawed at his face and ears, pulling and stretching, Sammy gave in. He bent to Her will. TELL ME HER NAME, I AM HER’S. PLEASE STOP!!
The Dark Form complied.
It didn’t stop the relentless mauling right away.
Dogs were at his neck, drinking and lapping up his blood. Others were eating his intestines and finding other organ delicacies. His genitals were caught in a vicious three-way tug of war.
All of it, Samuel Jeremiah Samuels felt and heard in a suspended state of life.
The Dark Form snapped its fingers once more. The carnage came to a bloody, frothy end. The Rending ceased.
“Your life is over as you know it. Your life and oath are bound to us now. You will serve, but you will serve…” The sentence of damnation was paused, then a single word was uttered. This time Sammy felt it rather than heard.
“Whole.”
Sammy lay unconscious, breathing shallowly in the dirt of the alley for a few hours behind the garbage bins. Eventually, he sat up and looked around him. He was alone. No dog or man. He absently scratched at his temple, stood and hugged his arms to his chest. It was still cold that early Philadelphia morning as he made the rest of his trip home.
