Dark Matters

DARK MATTERS


Anne Price lay face down on a pink bed in the corner of her bright yellow room, face buried in the pistachio green afghan her granny had crocheted long ago. Anne had taken a pair of hedge trimmers to her long blond hair the night before, but what little remained was dyed violet. It flopped in her face as she rolled over to stare at the ceiling for awhile. Anne was sixteen, and for the past two days, she had been in this room, rolling back and forth on the bed, chopping her hair, cutting her leg with a disposable razor, and fighting the demon within her.

         As Anne stared up at the bumps on her ceiling, they seemed to twist and bulge, crawling together here, ripping apart there. They were forming obscene pictures; Anne beating her step-mother’s beloved Chihuahua to death with a baseball bat, Anne carrying severed heads, Anne burning in hell. Then the bumps tittered and crawled into new formations, sometimes words. Kill, or Eat flesh. They didn’t bother Anne as much as one might think, though, because she knew all she had to do to make them stop was roll back over. They were perfectly natural. What wasn’t right, what did bother her, was the fact that she felt herself slipping away, down a deep, lightless rip in reality where monsters gibbered with a horrible, mindless glee and unseen rodents chewed at her eyes. She could feel them there now, and screamed in her head, scratching frantically at her face, falling and falling. Anne’s body showed no sign its internal struggle,  just sighed and rolled back over, tired of watching the bumps do their silly tricks. Her body was waiting.

         Suddenly, Anne sat bolt upright in bed, her purple hair falling into eyes that were rolled back, showing only white. Mouth gaping, a strand of saliva hung between her lips like spider silk. It was coming, the shadow that the body so wanted to incubate. It entered through the ear and settled inside Anne’s brain, spreading out gossamer wings and digging in with unimaginably sharp talons. Anne screamed again, trapped inside her own soul, as the dark thing settled its icy presence on everything it touched. She began to fall faster and faster, flailing her arms and legs in a desperate attempt to escape from hell. The dark thing chuckled wetly and swept out its wings, creating a frozen, howling wind that obliterated her shrieks of horror as she was devoured. That done, there were other, more important things to focus on.

         While the part of her that had been rational screamed eternally inside, the part that housed the demon was overjoyed, was eating it up, was rolling off the bed and practically dancing over to the nightstand and reaching into the bottom drawer. Anne’s fingers closed on cool steel and pulled out a sleek Colt .44, so new that the pungent aroma of gun oil was all the thing could smell. It had never been fired, But that, it thought, will soon be remedied. Wrapped in a yellow tank top was a small cardboard carton of ammunition. Anne grimaced with distaste, hating all things bright and cheerful,and flung away the shirt and cracking open the chamber, her fingers loading with special care; six hollow bullets for six hollow bodies. Anne spun the chamber and tested the weight of the gun in her hand. It was heavy, but not too much. She took aim at herself in the mirror and pretended to pull the trigger.

         “Bang!” She whispered. “And so falls Caesar.” The darkness peered into Anne’s empty eyes, and was satisfied with whatever it saw. Smiling, she put the half empty box of bullets back into the drawer and tucked the Colt into her waistband. She opened the door for the first time in several days and walked downstairs, to the dining room where her ‘family’ was undoubtedly partaking in that old deadly sin, gluttony. Perhaps there was a little sloth and greed going on in there, too. Anne grinned horribly, showing all of her teeth, and gums that were white and bloodless. Sure enough, the four of them were sitting at the dinner table, talking, arguing, being assholes. They glanced up at her as she entered, momentarily breaking off conversations to take in her weird purple hair and bloodstained Levi’s.

         “Surprised to see you.” Mrs. (Evans) Price said as she went back to reading her newspaper. She always said that, every single night. The demon wallowed in joy as Anne’s bottled rage shattered and bubbled up, feeding on the sweet nectar of her pain. The older woman rustled the newspaper loudly and said, “How wonderful of you to join us.”

         Anne’s 11 year old twin stepbrothers, Steve and Paul, immediately began a verbal assault on her choice of clothing, garish hair, and blank eyes.

         “Dad,” Steve (or Paul- she wasn’t able to tell them apart) whined. “Look at her. She’s on drugs. Are you on drugs?” The other one giggled, but froze when Anne’s gaze fell on him. He thought he saw something…slither…behind her eyes.

         “Shut up. Don’t be rude.” Her father grumbled, slicing a chunk of ham as big as his fist and shoveling it into his mouth. “She can look as stupid as she wants to. Nobody cares anyway.” In a moment, he and the wicked step-thing would start arguing about the way he was treating her precious, precious boys, and Anne would be sent away, but before Mrs. (Evans) Price could even rustle the paper in indignation, Anne slammed her fists on the table so hard that two glasses toppled to the floor and shattered.

         “SHUT UP!!”  Her voice carried the weight of hell behind it, resonating in the small room. The boy who’d seen the thing move clapped his hands to his ears in terror, as Anne scanned each shocked face in turn with her yellowing, bloodshot eyes.

         “There’s something I’ve wanted to say to you all for a very long time, and, well, I think that time is now.” She whipped the gun out of her waistband, and with a flick of her wrist, aimed it right between Steve’s eyes.

         “Die.”  The little boys eyes widened in horrified revelation as he screeched and dove beneath the table. The bullet that was meant for his brain scraped down the side of his head, shaving skin and drawing blood. The thing that was Anne closed its eyes in ecstasy, drinking in the smell of hot copper, letting out an inhuman howl. The boy made a break for it and dove out the side of the table, running hellbent for the back door, but Anne’s arm snaked out and the next bullet hit him in the base of the spine, ripping a hole in his back and out the stomach. What got him though, was when his guts rolled out and he tripped over them, falling to the floor with a splat. He didn’t even try to get back up.

         Anne looked back at her remaining ‘family’, jaw aching from the grin that stretched across her face. They stared back at her with wide, uncomprehending eyes, much like the eyes of the slaughtered deer that hung on the wall in her father’s study. Her step-mother still hadn’t put the paper down, and Anne felt it was an incredibly rude gesture. She pulled the trigger and watched a crater appear in the newspaper, knocking part of the woman’s head off, instantly rendering the paper red and unreadable. Her stepmother slumped over, her mouth in a perpetual ‘O’ of surprise, and dumped the contents of her skull into a bowl of salad. Anne cackled with mad glee. It was like some kind of macabre buffet. Her father, suddenly roused out of his stupor by his daughter’s insane gibbering, jumped up and bolted, overturning his chair. He misjudged the distance through the swinging kitchen door, bounced off, and tried again. This time his fat ass slipped right through. Anne heard him hit the linoleum, slide, and scramble back to his feet, and glanced at the remaining child, who was, perhaps for the first time in his life, completely silent. His blue eyes were huge, glazed, and glistening with a sheen of terrified tears. She didn’t believe that he would be much of a problem, so she ran after her father, who was trying to open the back door by leaning all his weight on it and jiggling the handle in a frenzy. Anne laughed. The door opened in, not out. She pointed the gun at him and he moaned in horror, khaki slacks turning dark as his bladder let go.

         “Daddy.” She took a few slow, deliberate steps toward him, watching big beads of sweat roll down his face. The man was trying to back his way through the door, holding his hands out in the international ‘Don’t shoot me, I’m not armed’ gesture.

         “P…Pumpkin?” He stammered breathlessly. Anne growled and shot him in the knee, bringing him to the floor in a scream of pain. Of all the things she’d ever hated, she had despised this stupid, lazy, incestuous asshole calling her pumpkin the most.

         “May the rats eat your eyes and tongue out in hell.” She spat on him, turned, and opened the refrigerator door, selecting a raw carrot. Anne munched the carrot and watched as he screamed and writhed in a puddle of his own piss and blood.

         When she was done eating, Anne walked back into the dining room. Paul (or maybe it was Steve) was still frozen in his chair, a dot of mashed potatoes on the tip of his nose. A thick runner of drool hung from his gaping mouth, eyes glassy and unblinking as he stared at his mother’s brains all over the table and himself. He didn’t look up as Anne walked toward him, didn’t seem to notice his step-fathers shrieking from the kitchen, impervious to his twin brothers body inches from his feet, and was especially undaunted by the growing wail of sirens in the distance.

         At that moment, the former Mrs. (Evans) Price’s Chihuahua, Chi-Chi, came flying into the room, snapping and flinging foam from his tiny muzzle. Anne despised Chi-Chi, the way his eyes bugged out, his bad breath, and his endless yapping. He flung himself at her from the back of her father’s brown leather recliner, and she caught him by the throat in mid leap. He tried to bite her hand, but when she squeezed his throat, all he could manage was a choked “Aaggh!” Anne tossed him back at the chair, where he caught his breath and prepared to attack her again.

         “Oh, Chi-Chi!” She cried in mock affection. “Don’t worry! I have one for you too!” Leveling the gun at the little dog, she pulled the trigger as he leapt for her throat. The huge bullet caught him in the face, throwing him into a double back flip. Chi-Chi struck the white linoleum and slid, leaving a long red streak.

         “Oh dear! That stain’s going to be hell to get out!” Anne cackled madly. The sirens were closer now, probably no more than a few blocks away, and it sure sounded like there were a lot of them. She figured she had just enough time to finish off her wailing mess of a father with the last bullet, then run out the back door and make the twenty yard dash to the sheltering woods. Anne bolted into the kitchen, aiming the gun at her father’s face. He was crying, the big slob, begging her to spare his life.

         “I’m afraid I don’t have time to stick around and torture you, so instead, I’ll see you in hell. I’ll be the one with the pitchfork.” She squeezed the trigger, shooting him in the chest, and he tried to scream again, but all that came out was a gurgle, which quickly stopped. Anne pushed his body away from the door. She could hear screeching tires outside, and slamming doors. Anne paused for a second, for some unknown reason, as she prepared for the longest, fastest sprint of her life.

         In the same instant that she paused, several police officers had the opportunity to circle the house and crouch in the bushes. Anne saw one of them take aim at her head a split second before she slammed the door and took refuge behind the refrigerator. Her heart hammered into her ribs, and her legs suddenly felt watery and weak as she leaned against the thick metal. An ice cold sweat suddenly broke out over her entire body as her eyes fell upon the corpse of her father, and the beast inside reveled in sweet, sweet loathing as Anne went into a black, frothing rage.

         “This is your fault!” She screamed at the mangled mess on the floor, and began to kick it mercilessly, watching as now unneeded teeth flew across the floor and the bottom of her jeans turned crimson. “It’s all your fault! Why did you do this to me? Why did you do this to me?!” Anne continued kicking the body and screaming obscenities, hoping the old man was still close enough to hear some of them.

         After a moment of ‘venting’, Anne calmed down enough to wonder what had caused her to stall in the first place. She could vaguely hear someone outside, yelling through a bull horn, but she wasn’t getting any details, too busy thinking about what a nice moving target she would have made. On the other hand, would that be such a bad thing? After all, if she made it out alive, she’d be locked up forever, but if the cops took her out, well, that was a different story altogether, wasn’t it? But she wasn’t going out alone.          

The dark thing laughed uproariously.

         Anne ran into the dining room and grabbed up Vegetable Paul (Veggie Steve?) by the hair. He came compliantly enough, without so much as a whimper. She dragged him across the room, snatching her father’s stupid ass pet rock paperweight off a bookshelf with the other hand. Still holding her step-brother, the gun, and the rock, she braced herself behind the refrigerator once again, and threw the paper weight through the window. As it shattered, the cops let loose, before they even knew what they were shooting at. One of them called “Hold your fire!”

         “I’m coming out peacefully!” Anne yelled when the gunfire stopped. “But I have a hostage! I want you to cooperate!” Slowly, she opened the door (fully expecting to be shot at any moment) and stepped out into the cool evening air. She regretted having to leave the delicious aroma of extinguished lives, but took solace in the fact that soon the sweet spring breeze would smell the same. Stepping out onto the porch, Anne clutched the catatonic boy in front of her as a shield, empty gun pressed into his temple. There were at least six cops in front of her, all with weapons drawn, and she could sense a few behind her, as well. That was fine, just fine. The more, as they say, the merrier.

         “I have a list of demands.” No one said anything as she slowly walked down the steps, but they gripped their guns all the tighter, as if they could make her to let the boy go by sheer will. Closer, closer…

         Now she was completely surrounded. There were seven officers to the front and sides, three behind. Anne could smell the fear, a thick, nearly tangible thing. The young man directly behind her was a rookie, she could tell. His hands shook as he pointed his weapon at the back of her skull, panic running down his cheeks and forehead, into his eyes. He kept shaking his head, flinging drops of sweat away, and blinking furiously. Anne didn’t have to see any of this; she simply knew. She also knew that the man directly in front of her was drunk, had been drinking all day. His eyes were bloodshot and bulging, body swaying sickeningly. The officer next to him, a middle aged blond woman, was intently focused on how the boy was drooling. Her partner, to Anne’s left, was thinking about killing Anne, saving the boy, and going to a motel for a tryst with his mistress. Killing people always turned him on, as several unfortunate prostitutes already knew. Anne closed her eyes, inhaling the mingling odors of fear, anger, alcohol and disease. The bouquet of the world and all its denizens, a heady perfume to one such as she. Finally, one of the officers spoke, a man to Anne’s right, the only one of them who seemed to be untainted, the only one who actually seemed to want to resolve this peacefully.

         “What are your demands?” He asked. Anne smiled sweetly. Her hands tightened on the boy, muscles tensing, and aimed the gun at the man. The other cops didn’t move much, but Anne could smell their readiness to blow her brains out, was surprised that the rookie behind her hadn’t already. The tension was delicious.

         “I demand that you all die.” She pulled the trigger on the empty weapon, simultaneously shoving the boy toward Drunkie and diving to the ground, hands over her head. Rookie let loose with a barrage of bullets, taking off the boy’s head and spraying Drunkie’s guts all over Blondie, who in turn shot her partner, the prostitute murderer, in the shoulder. He spun and fell on another cop, while shooting his gun randomly. One bullet caught an older, heavyset fellow in the teeth, and the other got Mr. Clean Cut in the thigh. Mr. Clean Cut, however, wasn’t about to go shooting his weapon randomly, he had more sense. As he grimaced in pain and watched the scene unfolding around him, his eye fell on Anne, cowering on the ground with her hands on her head, like in that old cartoon, ‘Duck and cover.’ It wouldn’t work in a nuclear war, and it wasn’t going to work here, either. She glanced up at him, saw that she was staring into the barrel of his gun, and shrugged, smiling innocently. One bullet, right to the center of her forehead, was all it took, as he went down on his injured leg, surveying the wreckage around himself. Some good officers dead, some injured, one puking his guts out in the bushes. Some staring back at him with blank and scary eyes. Two dead children, and God only knew what had happened inside the house. More sirens were coming, ambulances, he hoped, and someone was shaking his arm and yelling in his face, but everything was going a fuzzy gray and he realized he was going out, praying that the bullet in his leg hadn’t hit an artery. He knew he had to be dying, though, when the last thing he saw was an inky black shadow rising from the dead girl’s ear, spreading what looked like wings, and flapping away, howling laughter into the night.


         Three blocks away from this carnage, a thirty year old man named Daniel sat on his son’s swing set in the cool night air, listening to the sirens and halfheartedly swaying back and forth. He stared dully at the grass, which was too long and needed to be cut. It was strange, but the shadows in the grass seemed to be moving, forming shapes and words that he would never repeat to anyone. They were obscene, laughing at him in his silent discomfort. It didn’t bother him too much though.

         He was waiting.