The Life

Hi everyone!

It’s been a long time between posts, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been sitting still.  Here are a few updates behind the scenes:

I finished a horror novel that has been nearly two years in the making.  Unfortunately, my head was not in the right place while writing it – too many doubts, too much pressure on myself to get it done, too many stop and go’s.  Nothing will kill the flow of a manuscript faster than leaving it unattended for weeks and months at a time.  But I ground it out, finished it, and realized my story still needed an overhaul in areas before it could actually go to editing.  That’s not a bad thing, and there’s certainly no head hanging on my part.  It’s been a great learning experience for me, namely how to push through adversity and writer’s block.  The fact that I was able to reach two very important words – THE END – is a win.  My story has a ton of potential and I look forward to its evolution.

I bounced back and immersed myself in writing a second new horror novel and this time, I’m on point.  I’m excited about this story and its pace.

And finally, soon to be published in the near future…a new book!  But it’s not what you might expect…  More news to come.

But enough with all that.  I’d rather share things of substance, so here goes!  It’s a little tale that first appeared on the Pen of the Damned called ‘THE LIFE.’

Thank you for continuing to follow me; I promise I won’t let you down.  Now sit back, relax, and enjoy a day in ‘THE LIFE.’

 

THE LIFE

I led the life once.

Once.

“Excuse me.  I was hoping we could talk a minute.  Something about what your daughter said to mine.”

It felt another lifetime ago.  For all intents and purposes, it was.

“You know how kids can be.  So I was hoping you could find out what was said?”

I was born into the life.  Into the family.  And when you’re born into the family, you’re expected to act a certain way.  There’s a creed that’s followed, one that’s not ever questioned.  Not ever.

“See, my little girl came home yesterday.  She told me your daughter told her that she can’t be on safety patrol.”

You lead two lives.  The person you are, and the person the family needs you to be.  You’re molded without ever feeling the hands.  It starts early, when you’re still too young to understand.  But you’re molded.  You’re taught there’s only one way, the family way.  No right, no wrong.

“She told me that your daughter told her that she’s too awkward to be on safety patrol.  That she’s not normal.  That she’s got issues.  My little girl cried all night.  It tore me up inside, you know?”

But times change.  Families change.  Values, the way of going about yourself.  Conducting business.  This new age took over and old school thinking got pushed further and further from the mind.  It went the way of the dinosaurs.  Extinct.

“Children shouldn’t have to deal with hurtful words, not at this age.  So I was hoping you could find out.  And if it’s true what she said, then maybe you could…you know…just talk to your daughter.”

Some things don’t ever die out, though.  Some things adapt, learn to survive.  Respect is one them.  It’s all in the way the family molds you.  My pop, for instance.  He did his thing, day in, day out, setting an example.  Simply by emulating him, I earned his respect.  Day in, day out.  The family way.  The only way he knew.

“There’s nothing got to be talked about.”  This father I had never met before, this father who I wanted to believe was as protective of his own daughter as I was of mine, waved his hand in front of my face.  I took note of his rail thin arms, his mismatched tattoos.  He leaned close to my face; a little too close.  “My woman raised our kid right, so your girl, she’s lying.  My kid ain’t done nothing wrong.”

“How can you say that if you haven’t even asked—”

There was this one time my pop and I sat eating lunch.  Respect, he blurted while we both chewed my Nonna’s tripe, is the most important thing in this world.  More important than money.  It shows up on the job long before you do.  You don’t have respect, you got nothing.  Nothing.  He chewed and chewed on that tripe and then smiled, a rubbery piece of cow intestines caught in his teeth.  But sometimes, you need to teach it.

“Ain’t nothing got to be talked about!  Your girl is lying and that’s that.”  This father I never met before, this father who I still wanted to believe was as protective of his own daughter as I was of mine, still leaned close to my face; a little too close.  “Maybe there’s a reason your girl can’t make safety patrol.  Maybe you and your girl should figure it out yourselves.”

Sometimes you need to send them a message.

The father I had never met before smirked and stepped away. A young woman in skin-tight jeggings wearing a PINK hoodie two sizes too small sashayed over to him.  She stared, cracked her gum as he whispered in her ear, then they laughed. Laughed, all shits and giggles; the barbell through her tongue shiny under the sun.  They shared a sloppy kiss.

Stunods, real stunods, both of them.  The school doors opened, and again, for another day, my little girl was mine.

***

I led the life once.

Once.

But the life can’t always be what it was.  It can’t be.  Upbringings change, morals change.  The hands that once molded you disappear.  Disappear, and eventually you realize your own hands are meant to mold a new life.

I lay beside my daughter reading her a bedtime story.  Lightly, she touched my arm.  “Daddy, will I ever be on safety patrol?”

I closed the book.

“Daddy, I don’t want to be not normal.”

I listened.

“It’s okay though, Daddy, because I don’t need a lot of friends.  But I really want to be on safety patrol.  I can be really good at it, Daddy.”  Her hands flapped in front of her, limbs so rigid in her excitement.  “I can be really good.  Really good.”

Silently I seethed, cursing the unfairness of my daughter’s disabilities and for the first time in my life, I suddenly felt those hands upon me, the ones that had molded the life I once knew.  The life I thought was done.

Sometimes you need to teach it.  Sometimes you need to send them a message.

I took my little girl and hugged her, hugged and kissed her, reassuring her that all her life was going to be really good, really, really good.  I sang her a song about sunshine until she slipped into dreamland’s arms.  Then I locked myself in my room and wept before making the decision to step back into the life again.

***

It took a few days to learn his pattern.  It wasn’t hard.

I found him alone on a Tuesday night, the bar a quiet place right on the fringe of town.  I knew the bartender there.  Quite well.

A tiny bell sounded above the door as I stepped inside, but the father I had never met before didn’t turn around.  The bartender nodded toward me, then offered his only customer a shot that was greedily knocked back by a wobbly hand.

“I think there’s been a misunderstanding.”

He didn’t acknowledge me, not at first, his eyes bleary with liquor.  I took the stool beside him.  “See, I said I was hoping you could find out if it’s true, what your daughter said to mine, but you never bothered.  You never took the time.  You never took the effort.”

Recognition finally creased the face of the father I had never met before.  Before he could get in a slurred word, I leaned close to his face.  A little too close.  “Respect, my friend, is the most important thing in this world.  But you, you showed me none.”

He listened hard, my words whispered between my lips the way they were.  “You don’t have someone’s respect, then you have nothing.  You said your woman raised your kid right.  Your woman…”

His eyes followed the small box I placed between us atop the bar.  “I’m going to teach you something now.”  My fingers lingered, then drew from the box.  I patted his shoulder.  Hard.  I put my lips to his ear.  “Respect starts at home,” then I turned and left.

I was in no hurry.  My daughter would be home, sound asleep.  Tomorrow, I’d help her with her homework as I always did, then we’d talk about her joining safety patrol.  Tomorrow, I’d go back to being her dad.

But not tonight.

I rolled down the truck window and waited, waited until I heard the screams from the father I had never met before penetrate the bar walls.  Waited until I knew he had opened the box and found his woman’s pierced tongue inside.

Finally, I started my truck and headed home.  I had an irresistible urge to teach my wife Nonna’s old recipe for tripe once I got there.

© Copyright 2016 Joseph A. Pinto. All Rights Reserved.

Fated

FATED

 

whispers into

her ear:

you kill

me with

need.

~ Joseph A. Pinto

© Copyright 2017 Joseph A. Pinto. All Rights Reserved.

Boston’s Bad Day

A very belated happy 2017 to all!

Few can predict what will happen over the course of a year, but I can – I foresee plenty of great horror fiction coming your way!  Don’t believe me?  Then read my story BOSTON’S BAD DAY!

It first appeared on the Pen of the Damned.  If you’re not familiar with our group, here’s our simple premise: stories or prose of horror and angst in under 2,500 words.  It’s that simple.  Yet anything but.

So pull a chair up.  Be thankful for what you have this year.  And try not to let a bad day get to you…

BOSTON’S BAD DAY

They unfurled from the sky, glistening against the hatching sun, glistening with their own secretions; glistening with newly absorbed blood.

At first, Boston thought them to be a series of banners trailing behind prop planes high above the city’s stretching fingers, marketing genius promoting a new brand. Down, down, curling down in slow motion, cleaving with surgical precision the clouds. Boston sipped his bitter coffee, wincing as it singed his tongue, noting how odd the greenish-gray hue of those tentacles appeared towering over his head.

He spit caffeine from his mouth.

Tentacles.

Gathering beneath the common din of the city, the marching feet, the impatient idling of cars, Boston heard it at last. Suction, similar to that from a vacuum; felt it, the popping inside his ears.

A final tentacle unfurled.

The woman ahead of Boston seized his attention. Slowly, her long, ebony hair lifted until taut at the roots. Beginning at the hem, her sundress flipped upside down, rising up, up, exposing an hourglass figure, thong, strapless bra. Rising up, up as her arms jut crooked over her head, mere tree branches; rising up, up, tearing free from her body, along with her hair.

With morbid curiosity, Boston stared at the bloody scalp, drifting skyward, a lost balloon.

A man clutched Boston’s forearm. Boston met his panicked eyes, two bloodshot orbs overcome with stress, a long night of gin. Like grapes, they popped from the man’s skull, claimed by the mounting suction. Sightless, the man staggered; his arms as well snapped above his head, the sky snatching his suit clean; his jacket, the pants. His tie a noose around his throat, the man gasped until his head parted from his shoulders.

Boston walked into the scalpless woman, outstretched hands sticky against her tissue exposed back. Yelping, he pulled away, pulled away from the muscle parting her bones.

High, high above, the tentacles undulated; the blood, the gristle rose.

The city reacted the way a city would react; a breakdown of cohesion; a canyon of screams. People scrambled; people shoved. Boston shoved with them, elbowing his way without direction, pumping his limbs without momentum. The morning crashed, an ocean rippled by pulpy waves of red.

A bus jumped the curb, slamming into a newspaper stand. Headlines fluttered, black and white confetti telling of a world gone mad. Frantic hands beat upon glass; Boston watched skin flutter from open windows of the bus like toilet paper spun from its reel. He looked away.

From baby strollers burst small fountains of pink spray.

Lower, lower the tentacles rolled, revealing serrated suckers, awful, greedy mouths absorbing human existence, its inherent disease. Boston struggled against the tide of commuters; the surge swept him away. Ahead, he spied a bodega.

Feverishly, Boston pushed against fleshless mannequins, shoving aside bones. Seconds thundered in his ears. He battled across the street until breathlessly grabbing the door; a pair of liver spotted hands resisted opposite the glass. Boston tugged, felt the tug matched in turn. “Open the door,” Boston hissed, wrenching the handle from the hands. The old man jerked forward; utilizing the momentum against him, Boston flung him into the frenzy of the crowd. Boston slammed the door shut as the suction teased the top of his head.

“Poppa,” the choked voice of a clerk from behind the register. Boston ignored her. Death, dust; Boston inhaled it all. His eyes darted about the store, spying shelves pockmarked with emptiness, crumbling walls.

Crumbling walls. Boston exhaled; he would survive this. “Lock the door.”

“Mi esposo se ha ido!”

“Lady, lock the door.”

“Mi esposo, mi esposo!”

Chaos splattered the windows; the glass blew inward. Boston fell, toppling a display case of Goya beans. He kicked them from beneath his feet, propelling his body forward toward the crumbling walls. Boston sunk his hands into a hole of deteriorating drywall, yanking frantically. Dust caught in his throat; he kept pulling, widening the hole, exposing the crumbling lath behind the wall, the electrical wires running along a wooden stud. Just enough space existed between the lath, the drywall, for him to squeeze between.

The clerk’s hysterical shouts for her husband transformed into something far worse. Boston refused to turn; he heard the tear of fabric, the wet pluck of teeth from the jaw. He tore free another section of drywall then hauled himself face first inside the space. Boston whimpered as a nail dug into his back. Inch by inch, he wiggled deeper along the interior of the wall, nose scraping the lath.

Boston held his breath a long, long time.

He held his breath even as his flesh slathered the lath. Craning his skinless neck, Boston glimpsed a tentacular club molesting the wall studs. His eyes ruptured; the world turned dark save the sound, the sound of vacuumed suckling, a newborn at the breast.

The sloppy sound of marrow drawn straight from Boston’s bones.

© Copyright 2016 Joseph A. Pinto. All Rights Reserved.

LUNCH

The sandwich remains uneaten and forgotten, long since ravaged by mold.  Beside it, the milk in the glass is nothing but crusty, yellow mud.  The lunch now a mockery of what once was.

He leans against the doorway, peering into the fruitless dark of his son’s room.  Clothes cling to his skin.  Thirty minutes prior, he stood within the foyer, dripping in static silence after stumbling in from the rain.  He realizes that nothing carries weight anymore.  Except maybe his sodden clothes.

He wavers.  A car passes somewhere in the night.  Light cuts rudely through the room; shadows jump stiffly about the walls, scurrying into corners.  Stuffed animals squat atop the bed, solemn smiles unflinching across their faces.  A sliver of headlight touches the uneaten sandwich, illuminating the plate like a stage.  It fades away—the show over, curtain drawn on yet another day.  He hesitates, breath snagging in his throat.  Eventually, he backs away.

He forgets to take his loafers off and like frightened mice, they squeak across the wood floor.  In the hallway, he freezes and absently touches his cheek.  Something vague flits pass his eyes.  He blinks and peers through it—too busy grieving to take notice.

His wife’s hand, barely perceptible upon his elbow, leads him into his bedroom.  A time existed when her touch soothed him; now she is nothing but a phantom, much like everything else.  She peels the clothes from his skin; they fall heavy to the floor.  He stands naked, shivering in his loafers, her eyes unable to warm him.  “Come,” she whispers and pulls the covers back from the bed.

He plummets face first into his pillow and dreams, still wearing his loafers.

***

He drowns under the bridge, tied in cord, wrapped in linen, weighted with stones.  A rush of icy fluid fills his nose and mouth as he submerges, singing him like liquid fire.  The linen entangles and constricts his limbs.  Crystalline patterns soon flutter within his tomb; quickly he realizes that he will never again be able to grasp his own tears.  He thumps the bottom of the river, stones sharp into his back, ice in his lungs lending an odd, displaced sort of serenity.  How he wishes to slip his eyes shut a final time, but his linen tomb suddenly jerks back to the surface.  The fire within his lungs burns out; his cords somehow undone, the linen and stones stripped free.  He finds himself drifting upon the river’s surface now, under that dark and brooding bridge.  The shapes flutter before his eyes again.  This time, he snatches those tears into his palm.  Something breaks the surface alongside him; he gropes for its swollen form.  The tears, however, leave his grip slick, and he watches it float away.  Its misshapen head bobs the river.  Water fills its blackened mouth.

He chokes.

***

He chokes upon the memory of his languishing dream—along with the ice water in his lungs.  Limbs spasm, desperate to stay afloat in the current of his reverie.  A coffee cup shatters, bringing him back around.  Eyes snap—the crystalline tears gone, replaced by the image of his wife.  He gasps, clutching at the linen blanket hanging from his shoulders.  Still naked beneath it, still in his loafers.  Brain dull.  “How did I get here?”  Words equally laggard.

His wife scrutinizes him, then rises from the table to get a dustpan and broom.  The shards littering his feet sweep easily into the pan; the remainder of their life, not so much.  “I woke you nearly half an hour ago.  You walked into the kitchen without saying a word and fell asleep at the table again.  Then you had another bad dream.”  She glances at the floor.  “You twitched around pretty good.  Thankfully your cup was empty.”

He says nothing.  Listens to the scrape of broken ceramic against tile, its sad plunk into plastic.

“Aren’t you concerned about this?” she asks, not bothering to lift her eyes.  Shards are much more important when nothing else remains.

His throat constricts, full of icy water.  “About falling asleep that way or…the dream?”  The last word lingers, thick and black.

“You tell me.”  But she knows a real answer will never follow.

He shudders.  “I couldn’t save him again,” and wraps himself in his linen shroud.

***

Her fingers entwining his own are meant to soothe; sandpaper against his skin, they instead scratch.  He fidgets until his wife turns to him, her weak smile like a smudge across the chalkboard of her face.  She used to glow, he thinks, but now her color has been robbed.  He cannot bear to look anymore.

“Robert?  Do you appreciate watching your son suffer a dull aching pain?” their therapist prods.

He tosses his wife’s hand aside.  “What?”

“Robert?  I asked if your wife appreciates you walking in the rain.”

The therapist’s office spins a moment.  “I don’t know,” his mouth puckers.  “I just…walk.  I don’t know how else to answer that.”

“Perhaps you can start by addressing it with your wife.”

He watches the therapist flatten the frill of her skirt, her fingers slender, smooth.  He wonders how scratchy they might be.  “I suppose she doesn’t appreciate it,” voice trailing like vapor along the walls.  His eyes roaming, cloudy.  “She’s always left drying the foyer after me.”

“That’s hardly the point,” his wife whispers.

***

Back home, and the afternoon presses down upon his shoulders.  His wife leaves wordlessly for the market—their therapy session tragically useless.  He has no intention of attending another.

He starts a shower, the hot water blinding.  Soon the stall fills with the steam of a shattered life.  A cerulean sky swirls down the drain along with every vestige of happiness once held in his eyes.  He cries, allowing soap and hot water to steal it away.  When he hears his son’s voice, his knees buckle.

Daddy don’t leave me alone

The gurgle of the drain creates its own resonance in unison with the rush of water; the white noise floods his brain.  He cringes as a voice surrounds him, reverberating against the slick tile, echoing in the mist.  With a trembling hand, he pushes the shower door open.  Silence, save the pitter-patter of water; silence, save the slow throb in his head. “Karen?”

Closing the door, the white noise plays with his ears once more.

Daddy don’t leave me alone

Water fills his screaming mouth.  He slams the door open this time, stumbling out from the bathroom into the hallway.  Drops to a knee, retching bile hotter than the water he just escaped.  Through blurry eyes, he glimpses something vague flit pass.

This time, he takes full notice.

The formless shadow dissipates inside his son’s room.  He staggers forward, skin feeling heavy on his bones, halting at the doorway, unable to cross its threshold.  He gawks at the ruined sandwich, so lonely atop its plate, and the diseased milk.  The voice in his son’s room ratchets in strength; a thousand dissonant shrieks rip through his head.

He chokes.

***

They sit face to face.  She wishes to touch him, realizing what once remained of him is gone.  A delusion, much like everything else.  “So what happened?” Karen’s tone thick with exasperation.  She wraps her arms around her chest.

Robert shrugs.  “I heard him.”

“Him?  You mean Sean?”

“Yes, of course.  Sean.  Who else?”

She grimaces, the stifled breath within her chest unbearable.  “Robert, our son is dead.”

He shudders, wishing himself wrapped in linen.  “I heard him, Karen.  He can’t be dead if I heard him,” he says matter-of-factly.

She carefully considers her next words, wondering when he will realize their life has been mercilessly hanging by a thread the past six months.  “He isn’t coming back to us, Robert.  No matter how much we want it otherwise, how much our heart tells us he’s still here…no matter what you thought you heard…he’s not coming back to us.”

He blinks, eyes glazing over; he wishes he could walk in the rain.  “He was always a good swimmer.  The river, it—”

Her stifled breath explodes; a wall juts between them.  “Dammit, let it go!  Sean is gone.  He isn’t coming back to us.  It was an accident.  He slipped on a rock, struck his head.  You said you couldn’t reach him in time.  Even if you could have…you can’t swim.  You could do nothing!”

“There it is.”

Karen withdrew.  “There what is?  Do you think I’m saying I blame you?”

“You don’t have to.  We could go to that shrink forever and she wouldn’t be able to extract what you just spat out.  You do blame me.  It’s in your eyes.  Questioning why I allowed Sean to walk those icy rocks.  The disgust you have that I’ve never learned to swim.  It’s all there.  It’s always been there.”

“No, Robert, I blame you for not letting go!  I blame you for turning our son’s bedroom into a memorial.  His belongings…pack them away.  Just do it already.  The constant reminder…is it really needed?  Isn’t it already painful enough?”  She sobs, thick, rolling.  “For God’s sake, Robert, throw away that miserable sandwich!  I understand not doing it the first few days after it happened…but it’s been months now.  He’s not coming back to eat it.  Sean is not coming back to eat that fucking sandwich or drink that fucking milk!  What has happened to you, Robert?  Instead of picking up the pieces, you’ve become the pieces.”

He stares off into the hallway.  A vaporous blob hesitates in the center, almost as if in waiting.  Just the right height for a little boy.  Just the right spot where his son would sometimes kiss him goodnight.  He touches his cheek, allowing his fingers to linger.  “He can’t be dead if I heard him.”

***

He refuses to do it, refuses to discard the sandwich or dispose of the milk.  He has become oblivious to the fetid stench poisoning his son’s room.  His senses, much like his mind, shut down a long time ago.

His wife goes on with therapy over the weeks that follow.  Without him.  He believes that a shrink should not go probing around inside his head.  Not when his dead son speaks to him every day.

He hears his son in the morning, above the sizzle of bacon in the pan.  Above the long drip of coffee into its pot.

He hears his son in the thick of night as heat pings the baseboards, and boughs outside the window creak and sway.  Always a whisper.  Close; still so far away.

He hears his son most from the memorial once the boy’s room.  Wispy verbiage, here then gone; a cursed hymn echoing dolefully inside his brain.

Daddy don’t leave me alone

The more his dead son speaks, the more Robert loses his mind.

***

“Are you going for a walk tonight?”

The rain pelts the glass, turning the street into a twinkling kaleidoscope.  Its chill permeates straight through into Robert’s core.  “Yes.  I believe so.”

His wife’s exhalation is sharp and taut, something his mind used to be.  Her reflection trembles in the glass.  He looks away, eventually slipping into his loafers.  “If you step out that door, Robert, it’ll all be gone.  I’ll throw it away.  The fact I’ve respected your wishes this long is sheer madness.  Our lives need to move forward.”

His hand hovers above the knob.  “You wouldn’t dare do that to him.”

“No, I wouldn’t.  Not to our son.  I’d do that to you.”

“You’re so cruel,” he says through clenched teeth.

“Only as much as you’ve been to us.”

The door slams; a cold rain swallows him, sluicing his face with biting truths.  He walks and does not stop.  He drifts like mist between street blocks, flickering in and out beneath the tremulous glow of streetlamps, his wife’s threat long forgotten.  Eventually, he comes upon the river, jumping the railing along its banks.  His loafers sink into muck.

Tonight the river grumbles, slapping the shore.  Rain riddles its churning surface like bullet holes from an unseen marksman.  The high grass yields to him, the angry congregation of the river filling his ears.

Daddy don’t leave me alone

His son’s voice is here yet should not be.  It belongs in his room, where the heat pings through the baseboards, where scores of stuffed animals keep hollow-eyed vigil while he is away.  His son’s voice belongs there; where one day he will thank his father for making that sandwich.  Where one day the boy will eat it in appreciation, without the need to hurry along.

Tonight the river grumbles while his little boy cries.

Rain fills his mouth.

He chokes.

***

He peers through the clotted dark, struggling to keep his balance in the foyer—his sodden clothes dripping.

This time, he pries his loafers from his feet and shambles through the hallway.  A chill raises his flesh; a figure wafts beside him, grotesquely swollen, lips crudely blue.  Robert brings his fingers to his cheek, waiting for his kiss.  But it does not come.  The silhouette gazes at him with eyes long devoured by the river and nods toward his son’s bedroom.  Robert stumbles to its threshold.

A car screams in the night.  Light rips through the room; shadows pounce, rending the stuffed animals lining the bed, strewing their innards in cotton shreds.  He gapes, wondering if what he sees is real.  Then he notices it…a ring staining the dresser’s surface.

And the sandwich…gone.

He storms into his own bedroom, roughly shoving through the phantom.  “What have you done?”

Karen waits coolly, sitting cross-legged at the end of the bed.  “I’ve moved our lives along.  Don’t act so surprised.”

He shivers, aching for his linen tomb.  “He never touched his lunch.  He never touched his lunch!  He’s going to be hungry when he gets home.”

Her eyes churn.  “Goddamn you.”

“Our son could never slow down, could he?  I took time to make his lunch.  He could’ve taken the time to eat it.”

“You need help, Robert.  Please…oh please, listen to me.”

“But Sean never listened to me.  Did he?  Did he, Karen?”

The rain drums upon the roof.  The ghost in the hallway moans.

Daddy don’t leave me alone

“If he ate his lunch, maybe things would’ve been different.  But he was in a rush to meet his friends that day.”

Karen’s brow wrinkles.

“No one ever listens to me in this house.  Not you.  Not Sean.  He never ate his lunch.  He rushed out…and I followed after him.”

She rises from the bed.

“I asked him to stop, Karen.  Asked him to slow down.  Nine years old.  He should’ve shown more respect.  But he ignored the lunch I made him.  He rushed to be with his friends.  They were more important.”

She covers her mouth with shaking hands.

“I followed him down to the river.  He always used the bridge as a shortcut.  We always used the bridge as a shortcut.  All I asked of him was to stop.  All I asked of him was to eat the lunch I’d made.”

“What are you saying, Robert?  Jesus Christ, what are you saying?”

He hears the river grumbling in his ears.

“I grabbed him by the elbow, but he tried to pull away from me.  My own son.”

“Robert?”

He glances solemnly at his wife.  “He tried to pull away.”

“Robert?!”

He hears his son crying in his head.

Daddy don’t leave me alone

“I don’t ever remember picking up the stone.”  He raises a trembling hand above his head…and drives it down toward the floor.  Again, and again, and again.

Daddy don’t!

LEAVE ME ALONE!!

She collapses to her knees, sobbing.  The truth looms before her, now a grey, shadowy wisp of the man she used to love.  She cannot find air for her lungs.  She cannot breathe life to the grief upon her lips.  Robert’s hands wrap around her throat.  “I’m sorry, Karen,” he whispers as his grip tightens.  He gazes upon the vaporous blob watching from the hallway.  Just the right height for a little boy.  “Tell him I never meant to do it.”

© Copyright 2013 Joseph A. Pinto. All Rights Reserved.

‘MEMORIAL’

‘MEMORIAL‘

Treat yourself for under a buck to dark horror fiction perfect for the haunting season now on your Kindle.

EXCERPT:

“I believe it’s pointless to ask, Anthony. Those days have long past. Plainly you can see this.” With mournful eyes, the man sipped his bourbon, while into his chest, as if some wounded animal, burrowed a mercilessly bandaged hand.

Anthony’s hand lingered across the tacky remnants of liquor upon the table; within balled fist, a cold wad of bills. He glared upon the sullen man seated before him. “See? Yes, I can.” Fist inched forward, awkward in its urgency. “And as you can plainly see, a job well done will be rewarded.”

“What I do…what I did…never constituted a job. A job does nothing to stir the soul. Only passion achieves such a state of grace.” The man inhaled deeply—of the bourbon or the proposal, left to dangle in air—Anthony was not sure. But he did not appreciate the smooth impassiveness across the man’s alabaster face. Did not appreciate it in the least.

“Passion?”

“Yes. A job is measured by hours. But passion’s hours are timeless.”

“It seems your passion has nearly left you a cripple, while my job has left me a wealthy, wealthy man,” Anthony sneered.

“You are my brother, Anthony. And had you not been, I’d find your gaffe of words truly insulting.”

“At last, bravado found at the bottom of your glass. Is that the residue of passion, Nicholas, or merely passion’s inspiration?”

A thread’s breadth parted Nicholas’ lips as bourbon drizzled tongue. Eyes danced but to the song of another day, transfixed by noiseless, ghostly chords. “Some people wish to choose their vice. But for others, the vice chooses them.”

“Killing yourself slowly with alcohol now, then.”

“It’s not alcohol of which I speak.” The words hung between them.

Hesitation. Eventually Anthony loomed over the table. “She’s gone, Nicholas,” and instantly the music ceased; a blackened veil draped his features. Hand plummeted to the table, the snifter nearly shattering atop the sticky grain. Bourbon splashed Anthony’s knuckles, but fast his posture remained. He studied his brother with dulled satisfaction. Slowly, by inches, he lowered his considerable frame, pouring his bulk into the opposite seat. Watching intently. Silence, broken only by Nicholas’ strangled mewls.

Nicholas dabbed at the corner of his trembling lips. “When?” his voice a hoarse murmur.

“Six months ago. You’ve changed your haunts. It’s made finding you difficult, but not impossible. I thought you had fallen from the face of the earth, too. Like Catarina.”

Stinging, the words. Nicholas winced, eyes searching. Searching.

“The illness…came on suddenly. The doctors could do nothing. Her body already rampant with disease, but Catarina, she said little. You should know well of my wife’s strength.” Anthony’s back stiffened in anticipation, but his brother, snared within the throes of paralysis, offered nothing. “You should know well of many things concerning my wife.”

MEMORIAL

Nicholas is a sculptor, renowned throughout the land.

But now he suffers from a ruined hand; worse yet, a fractured soul.

When his brother hires his talents for a final time, however, Nicholas suddenly finds himself at a crossroads: sculpt the only love he has ever known – his own brother’s wife.

Or carve a memorial for her heart…

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© Copyright 2015 Joseph A. Pinto. All Rights Reserved.

BEAST

Enter.

Sit before the Tale Weaver.

Be still; your incessant fidgeting only diminishes your concentration. Do you not hear it? There. There. Aah, stark terror glazes your eyes…but it should not be so. Relish instead, such a strange and horrid note, that awful baying from beyond the window sash. Silence yourself! I share with you now what knowledge I possess of the beast.

Yes, beast I say, but beast quite not. An unspeakably magnificent specimen of what should not be yet most certainly is. Born to walk this earth of two legs, but through the nether, hunts upon four. A most fascinating creature of wretched beauty, resigned in its existence of perpetual condemnation between its own genesis of dawn and gloam. Humanity its filthy cage. Bestiality its cherished home. Torn and ravaged by the tumult within its sorrowful soul.

You gaze upon me in naked incredulity, yet persistent your hands do wring; aye, even you cannot deny the awful splendor laced within the hoarseness of its throaty howls. Be attentive! Open not only ears but your narrow mind…listen beyond the ferocity of the echoes in the valley. Tis true, this abhorrence of nature will rend of you flesh and bone as a child strips wrappings from a gift if its disposition should see fit. The hunt it relishes, for only then does it truly live, the timbre of its environment razor-sharp, ally to its preternatural senses. You cannot outrun this thing, for how do you outrun that which already resides within you?

Swift, powerful, majestic…a wholly somber and evil thing. But I inquire of you – what is the gist of evil? The unnatural to your eyes; the obscene to your senses? Or is evil some broken yet unbowed pet, unwilling to yield to the shackles that seek it bound? If you should learn one thing from me this moonlit night, then heed this—true evil is the fiend that hides behind man’s mask, not the beast that allows its mask known.

Listen closely to that mourning song, that pitiful melody lamenting of deprived freedom from behind unseen bars, for tis the true conflict deep within its dark, fated core, and so it starves. Longing for the wild. Longing for the matte of fresh dew beneath its pads and the sparkle-slivered caress of Mother Moon across its rippled back. Longing…forever longing…this beast so much more than man.

Leave now then, but be mindful to keep a hastened pace along the timber’s fringe. Pull tight the collar to your neck, and do not afford yourself a moment to pause. For if the long howl of a doleful ballad plucks at your heartstrings, and the hapless allure of eye shine keeps measure with your gait, pray to your god that on this night the beast remains satiated.

And the man within it holds fast to its rein.

Until next I summon you, be gone.

So the Tale Weaver speaks.

~ Joseph A. Pinto as the Tale Weaver

© Copyright 2012 Joseph A. Pinto. All Rights Reserved.

*’BEAST’ first appeared in Pen of the Damned June 2012

IT DRIVES ME MAD

Hello!  I hope you’ve all been well since last we met.

The dog days of summer are upon us, so what better way to cool off than by actually getting hotter: courtesy of horror fiction, that is.  I offer for your reading pleasure my latest tale to appear on Pen of the Damned titled It Drives Me Mad.

If you love short horror fiction, remember to stop by the Pen of the Damned blog each Tuesday as a different member of our writer’s group proffers their talent for your reading pleasure.  There aren’t many things that are free in this world, but we, the Damned, offer our conjurings free of charge – if you don’t count the small bit of soul we siphon in exchange! 😉

Kick back, relax and allow my latest yarn to drive you mad…

 

IT DRIVES ME MAD

It drives me mad.

That wet smack.

It is all I ever hear.

I watch them in my shower. Wispy bodies through beaded glass.

He is a strong man. Muscle fibers twitch, bounce within his thighs. The fog does not hide everything; not yet.

I see his face, his head thrown back, eyes clenched as if he is in pain. But I know he is not in pain.

Not yet.

That wet smack drives me mad.

It used to be me in the shower. My wife clings to him now. Legs wrapped around his hips, her perfect feet locked together. Locking her; locking them. He holds her, supports her effortlessly the way I once did; the way I want to.

That wet smack intensifies. His urgent groans fill the stall; my wife remains silent. Fog steals them from me. I am allowed the occasional glimpse of her breast pressed against his chest, the way she used to press against mine.

I am not jealous. I cannot be. This is our lifestyle. We share then come back to one another. But I can no longer come back. I cannot have my wife anymore. Not that way, no longer.

I watch them. Wispy bodies within the billowy fog; within the concealing vapor.

That wet smack.

That wet smack.

Then a thud.

The shower stall erupts in a geyser of red. The glass trickles red; all is red. Now that wet smack turns into a moist suckling.

Moist suckling.

I turn away.

***

The doorbell rings.

I am prepared; I am always prepared.

I greet him, make eye contact as always. It excites them. The eye contact. Knowing you offer your wife so willingly; knowing you offer your wife with such confidence. I lead him upstairs. I lead him to the shower. I watch him undress; he knows the rules. They all know the rules. I watch—I must always watch.

She waits for him in the shower. Perfect body glistening, hair dripping along her back; expectant Goddess. How I once loved to pull that hair; how I once loved to ball it within my fist.

She cracks the stall door open for him, beckoning. Her knowing smile arouses him; her knowing smile cuts me at the knees. He steps inside. The fog claims him; claims them. Water splattering the door as I watch. Beaded bodies through beaded glass. That smack.

That wet smack.

The man is anxious, too anxious. My wife is not pleased.

She ends him.

***

Months.

It has been months since my wife has been mine.

I have lost much sleep wondering how; I have lost much sleep wondering why.

I hear her, the same way I hear her every night; night after night. Her voice echoing down the hall; her voice echoing down my spine. Sweet as ever; suggestive as ever. She does not come out of the shower anymore.

Not anymore.

Tonight as she turns the water on, I imagine her perfect body moving through it. I imagine the water sluicing over her skin. She likes the water hot; she always did. Hot water; hot flesh. It disguises the cold, clammy death she has become.

I hear her calling.

Calling.

But she is not my wife. Not anymore.

I pull the covers over my head; she croons to me.

…please

pleeeeeease…

I no longer trust who she is; I no longer trust what she has become. I know that if I enter the shower, I am lost.

I will get through this night, somehow. I will get through.

When the doorbell rings tomorrow, I will feed her again.

Even as that wet smack drives me mad.
~ Joseph A. Pinto

© Copyright 2015 Joseph A. Pinto. All Rights Reserved.