Barney MacDonald Meets the Men in Pink

Barney MacDonald got out of the car and slammed the door in disgust.  It had taken him two hours longer than it should have to find this place.  The funeral had been last week, and nobody else had known about this house, not even his parents.  Why his grandparents had left it to him, he had no clue.  He was more interested in why his father, aunts, and uncles all were kept in the dark about it!

            Why had it taken so long?  His GPS kept suggesting roads that it turned out his car couldn’t safely navigate.  Or that didn’t actually go where it thought they did.  On top of that, he had a thirty-year-old photo, the wrong street name, and two different house numbers.  Not to mention it was pretty much in the middle of nowhere.  Barney couldn’t figure out how the lawyers could be so lazy.

            There was another reason that he now faced: there hadn’t been a driveway, mailbox, or even a sign.  So he was parked on the shoulder of the road, hoping the fog that was developing wouldn’t cause an accident.  He looked through the trees at the old house, double checked with the photo in his hand, and decided he really did have the right place.

            It took a few minutes for Barney to navigate the front yard; there was no path and he was a city-boy.  The grass was waist high.  At least it was where there was still grass.  Most of the yard was taken over by trees and shrubs, not to mention thorn bushes.

            He paused at the bottom of the front steps.  They didn’t look safe.  He closed his eyes for a second, took a deep breath, and started up.  The boards creaked and bent alarmingly, but he didn’t go through.  Barney fumbled with the key ring until he found the one tagged ‘front door’.  For a second he thought he had the wrong key because it didn’t go all the way in, but with an unwise application of extra force it slid the rest of the way.  The lock was a little stiff, but he got it to turn without snapping the key.

            The door needed quite the shove to get it open.  When it finally gave way, he fell to his knees inside.  As he lurched back to his feet, he thought he heard something moving in the yard behind him, so he looked.  A petite girl with cherry red hair cut in a bob was sitting cross legged on the back of a buck.  She looked straight at him, and he could have sworn he heard her say “shit.”

            Something grabbed his ankles and yanked him off his feet.  Barney hit the floor hard, and his breath was knocked out.  He was dragged backwards into the dark house with alarming speed.  He took a crack to the head and blacked out.

            When he was next aware, everything was dark.  Gradually his eyes adjusted, or maybe the moon came out from behind a cloud.  He was wrapped from his toes to his neck in some sort of sticky rope.  Multi-coloured rope, to be exact.  And the thing that was moving?  It was a giant spider on the ceiling.  No, it was on the floor.  Barney was hanging upside down.

            The spider had an eight-eyed human head with furry fangs hanging from his mouth.  Clown makeup covered the face, and a colourful wig seemed to be grafted to the top of its head.  All eight legs ended in human hands and protruded from a clown costume.

            Barney didn’t know whether to scream or laugh.

            The blood rushing to Barney’s head was starting to hurt when there was a lot of noise and he was blinded by bright lights.  As his vision cleared, Barney could see half a dozen old men in pink dresses firing on the dazed clown-spider.  He had fallen to the floor and now felt his bonds being cut.  It was the red-haired girl.

            Barney didn’t even say thank-you: he just bolted.

            It was dark outside and he was now in the back yard.  He was having trouble thinking clearly, though, and just ran away from the house.  His limbs weren’t working right and it was more of a stumble than a run; he tripped over something and caught himself on a tree.  Barney gave up on flight for the moment and sat down.

            He nearly jumped out of his skin when he was tapped on the shoulder.

            “Gordy is sorry for tripping the Master,” said a bearded toddler.

            Barney rubbed his eyes.  The thing was still there.  How much weirder could this night get?

            “Gordy saw Master go into the house; Gordy was hiding from the spider-man what took his kin.  Is Master okay?”

            “You’re Gordy?”  He got a nod.  “Why do you call me master?  My name is Barney.”

            “Gordy calls you Master because Master is owning the house Gordy is sworn to.”

            “So I inherited you, too?”  Another nod.  “What are you?  Not human, I hope.  Dwarf, gnome, Halfling … Leprechaun?”

            “We is biggest of the little people.  Not dwarf.  What is Halfling?”

            “Never mind….”

            “Uh, hi there.”  Barney looked up from Gordy the not-dwarf.  The redhead was coming toward him.

            “Hi?  Mind telling me who you are?  What is going on here?”

            She stopped a few feet away and sat down facing him.  She took a deep breath before she started talking.  “My name is Millicent Brody, an independent contractor who often works with the Men in Pink.  They were once part of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but their work became more and more secret until they started operating completely independently.  Their purpose is to eliminate monsters such as that poor clown.”

            “Poor clown?  That was a man-spider thing that was probably planning on eating me!”

            “Two months ago he was just a middle-aged man who earned a bit of extra money making kids laugh at parties.  He was performing at a girl’s birthday party when he decided to do a simple trick he often did with pets.  But this girl’s pet was a tarantula, and it died during the act.  She wished he knew what it felt like to be a spider, and poof!  He became what you saw in there.  If it had only been his appearance that had changed, he would have been taken somewhere safe to live.  But no, he developed a taste for children.  The Men in Pink underestimated him and he got away from us three times.  Two days ago he attacked an elementary school, and I was sent to track him down.”

            “So why do they wear pink dresses?”

            Millicent choked back a laugh, a smirk on her face.  “Budget cuts,” she said.  “They should be done cleaning up now.  Normally you’d be in a cage on your way to headquarters to be interrogated and your memory modified, but today they’re letting me deal with you.”

            “Nice of them, I suppose.”

            “You have no idea.  Now, what were you even doing here?”

            “My grandparents died in an accident two weeks ago.  I inherited a house my father had never heard of, and neither had his brothers or sisters.  Today was the first day I could get out here to check it out.”

            “Poor thing.  Would you like me to stay while you check it out?  I’m guessing you’ve never encountered gnomes before either.”

            “Yeah, I think I would like that, actually.”

            Together he and Millicent went inside, Gordy following behind happy that he had a Master again.

A Dream of Dying Summer

Michael was running down a field. It was like two soccer fields end to end, but instead of stands or benches on the sides, there were rows of huge trees.  The branches met overhead, completely shading over the field.  At regular intervals he had to jump through what appeared to be sections of scaffolding.  It was odd though, they were merged together several sections high and wide, randomly so that sometimes he had to move to one side or the other to get a hole instead of a ladder.  He must have been slipped something, too.  It felt more like he were running in place and his surroundings were scrolling past him, like in an old video game, or a cheesy cartoon movie.

            A monster was charging towards him now.  Not a real one, it looked like it was a paper bag stuffed with leaves, shaped and painted like Frankenstein’s Monster.  Michael tried to dodge, but the monster moved to block his way.  Michael pointed his stick – had he had a stick all along? – at the monster and impaled it.  It fell, dead.  He pulled his pointy stick out and kept going, hardly breaking stride.  More were coming, all crude likenesses of stereotypical Halloween monsters.

            Michael couldn’t see the strings the monster-puppets were guided by, but that’s what they were moving like.  Someone must have been controlling them somehow.  He didn’t have time to worry about it, though.  They kept coming.

            Something shot past him – like a bolt of lightning.  He looked over his shoulder and saw spirits chasing him.  Not like the bag-monsters, these were opaque and fluid.   When Michael looked forward again, he was nearly face-to-face with a humanoid bubble.  It made a threatening gesture and threw a bubble at him.  Michael avoided the projectile and casually reached out with his stick and popped the bubble.  He continued on.

            Up ahead on the left Michael saw a door set in concrete, like a bunker of some sort.  He veered left and starts to slow down, but one of the elementals chasing him gets a lucky zap in; Michael collapses against the door, everything going black for a second.  The pain faded as his vision cleared.

Turning to face his attackers he finds them nowhere to be seen.  In fact, the soccer field obstacle course he just ran through isn’t there, either.  Instead it’s a grassy meadow cut through by a murmuring stream.  On its banks sit a group of beings that remind Michael of demons from various Anime he had seen over the years.  They were having a picnic and giggling, controlling giant black slugs that occasionally take on a dog-like appearance, if only briefly.  They were forcing the creatures to copulate.

“I think you should make yours mount him,” one said to another, pointing directly at Michael.

Michael turned, opened the door, and looked back out of morbid curiosity.

The scene had changed again.  He was now standing on a fairly standard front porch, stairs with an iron railing going down to a walkway of concrete paving blocks.  But the walk didn’t cut through a lawn to a road, it cut across the roof of a building lower than its neighbours.  He could see that it ended at a ladder going down out of sight.  There were no demons, only a group of teenagers hanging around on a different level of rooftop.  He didn’t care if the teenagers were drinking or using drugs; they were calm and happy, minding their own business.

He went inside.

Michael was in his apartment now; he shut and bolted the door.  He took of his shoes and then yanked off his socks as he walked around the corner to the right into his living room.  His hoodie was tossed on the back of the couch which sat in the middle of the room, facing the TV.  But what he saw through the window distracted him.

He could see the same rooftop scene he had just left, but now he noticed there were no guys in the group.  They were all girls, and they didn’t look like they were joking around anymore.  They were talking and smiling, but they were also cuddled together.  He could hear voices … after a moment he could make out what they were saying.  They were talking about sex and how horny they were.

Michael found he had already made his way around the couch and halfway to the window.  He whipped off his shirt and dropped his pants, despite being in full view of the girls through the window.  He reached up to close the curtains and bounced a bit as he did to cause his genitals to flop about.

His vision blurred as if he were looking through a massive heat shimmer; it didn’t even last a second, but when it faded there was only one girl standing there.  She was studying him with a thoughtful look on her face, but she also looked sad.  Michael guessed she was in her early to mid-twenties and was nearly six feet tall.  She was blond, with her hair cut fairly short, but not a masculine style.  She wore a red and black plaid shirt partially closed with a white camisole underneath.  Her jeans were a tad loose and worn, not just ripped to be stylish.

“Okay, I’ll play your game,” she said.  The words hit Michael with force, as if they were pushing him.  It also sounded as if she spoke right into his ear instead of through a window from fifty feet away.

He let her in, and despite not knowing one another they hugged.  He kissed her on the cheek, bolted the door behind her, and led her back to the couch.  She slipped out of the plaid shirt but stood there hugging herself, as if she were reluctant now.  Michael started rubbing her back and shoulders, and she sat down.

Michael spoke as he did so, but he didn’t pay any attention to what he was saying.  He was concentrating on his tone of voice, as if he were calming a spooked animal.  Her top came off, followed quickly by her bra.  The shoulder rub had turned into a massage, but when he undid her pants and tugged them down, she looked about to cry as she kicked them off.

He made a quick decision: he held her and asked her a few questions, and they talked until they fell asleep.

*                                  *                                  *

Michael was sitting on a bench, looking out over a lake.  It’s on his parents’ cottage’s front deck, and it’s getting close to sunset.  This stretch of the lake shore has several more cottages than Michael remembered from when he first started coming here, but one of them was his, so he didn’t complain.  Even if it seemed like there was another cottage every fifty feet.  Decks and docks jutted out into the lake in either direction, as numerous as the cottages.  The dock that stretched out in front of him had grown into a marina over the years.

            “Looks like fun, don’t it?” said the guy sitting next to him.  Michael didn’t know who this guy was; he didn’t know half the people up there that weekend.  There was a big party going on.  He liked the guy, though, from what he had seen and heard.  He looked to where the guy was pointing.  There were boats pulling various floats, the most common being a large tube.  But the float the two boats at the dock were waiting to be loaded looked more like a plastic loveseat.

            “Yeah, it does, actually,” Michael replied.

            “You going?”

            “I dunno.  Maybe.  You?”

            “If you come too.”

            “Sure.”

            Michael had forgotten he was wearing a PFD still.  For some reason it had a heavier harness to it, with D-rings and carabineers.  The guy jumped up, hauled Michael to his feet, and clipped a short lanyard between the back of his PFD and the front of Michael’s.  He leaned forward, causing Michael to go up on his toes and hunch forward, and dragged Michael stumbling behind him down to the dock where the floats were being loaded.

            Being in a rather adventurous mood, Michael resisted the urge to dig in his heels and point out what he felt should have been rather obvious: this is hardly what he had had in mind.  Instead he played along out of curiosity.

            When they reached the loading dock, all the boats were out again.  The sky had turned a brilliant orange, the sun was setting.  “Think we’ll get a chance?” buddy asked.

            “Maybe, but I think I’d rather get another swim in before dark.”

            “Sounds good to me.”

            Michael unclipped his PFD and stepped off the dock into the water, swimming around as the sun sank lower.  They swam around for a bit, finding big rocks to climb up on and see how close to the surface they were.  When the solar lights started coming on, Michael started swimming for the little beach next to the cottage.  Buddy passed him as if it were a race.

            Halfway to shore, Michael ducked under water and swam around the cottage between his parents and his own, surfacing between the two decks.  His deck had stairs made of large pieces of lumber, like railway ties, that came all the way down into the water.  The bottom three steps were submerged, and Michael crawled out onto them.  He slipped into his cottage in the growing darkness, escaping the crowd.

            Michael rarely bothered showering while at the cottage, but at the moment it sounded like such a good idea that he didn’t even turn the lights on, he headed straight to the bathroom.  He was half-undressed when he heard movement down the hall and a familiar voice call “Michael?”

            He smiled.  After their all-night naked chat session, Michael had invited Mallory to the party.  She had made it.  “In here,” he called out.  He looked around the tiny bathroom with its shower stall he could barely fit in.  She wasn’t big, but there was no room for the two of them.

            “Well, get in,” he heard her say.  He turned, his face lightening with a big grin.  A second figure pushed past Mallory.  It was obviously a sister, a younger one.  She was a few inches shorter, with her hair buzzed on the sides in a more artsy cut.  She wore glasses and had grommets in her ears.  She looked him up and down.

            “Let’s see if you live up to your reputation.  Mal had quite a bit to say about you!”

            “Daphne, right?  I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage.”

            A mischievous smile crept onto her face and she shrugged out of the loose top she was wearing.  Her breasts were significantly smaller than her sisters, and she hadn’t bothered with a bra.  She twirled around and dropped her pants as she walked out of the bathroom.

            Michael followed her, hugging Mallory and giving her a kiss.

            Daphne had circular marks across her back and over her shoulders.  They looked more like scars than tattoos.  Almost as if she had been lying on one of those old rubber tub mats suction-cup side up, but that wouldn’t explain how they wrapped around her.  Michael darted forward and caught her by the hips, pulling her backwards to press up against him.  He ran his left hand up over her firm stomach and his right down over her thigh to brush up against her neatly trimmed pubic hair.

            “I love the Poseidon shit,” she said, turning to face him.  He wasn’t sure what she was talking about, but he came from several generations of fishermen and sailors, and it showed in some of his décor.  He assumed that was it, but completely forgot her comment when she grabbed his face and kissed him.

            They found themselves sitting on the couch, and Mallory sat behind Michael, her hands on his back as if she was considering joining in.  Michael soon found himself with a girl on either knee, but soon the touching and groping entangled the three of them to the point Michael couldn’t say who was sitting on which knee.

            “Ooh, the show has started!”  Michael saw a weird looking man in his forties sitting in the chair across the coffee table from them.  It was a little off-putting, but Daphne was quite adept at making him forget the man was there.

Escaping the Rescue

Summer was dying.  It was beautiful, but that’s what was happening, and it was sad.  Angelina had had a good summer; a bit of travel, a couple flings at the beach, and an amazing tan.  Now she was back in her studies full force, and life was getting boring and even a little stressful.

            So she put an ad up online, looking for a guy to go on a weekend road trip with.  It wasn’t easy going through the two hundred replies she received, but she forced herself to do so.  She only met up with five of them, and only one met her standards.

            Jacques wasn’t all that tall, but he was taller than Angelina at five foot ten.  He had a chiseled chin and strong jaw, his nose was sharp and his brow not too deep.  He had short dark hair, not quite black, and hazel eyes.  And he was ripped; she could see that through his hoodie.

            She had planned on renting a car – an unnecessary expense living downtown – but Jacques insisted they take his.  She was up all Thursday night making sure she was caught up on her work.  She made it through her only class Friday morning, and then went back to her place to grab her bag and meet up with Jacques.

            The afternoon sun beat in through the windows, and she curled up in the passenger seat, basking in the warmth.  The conversation dwindled off awkwardly and Jacques turned up the radio.  He had it tuned to an obnoxious top forty pop station that Angelina didn’t mind when it was one of her girlfriends, but it wasn’t.  It was a guy.

            She dozed off.

            She woke when the hit a dirt road.

            Angelina had planned this trip, and there weren’t any dirt roads on the route she had picked.

            “Where are we?” she asked as she opened her eyes.  The sunshine had gone; it was now foggy and drizzling slightly.

            “It’s a shortcut,” Jacques said.  He didn’t elaborate.

            “Okay,” she said, though she certainly didn’t feel okay.  A red flag had gone up.

            The further down the road they went, the closer the trees got on either side, and they got bigger and darker.  Instead of a beautiful array of autumn colours, they were now threatening silhouettes in the fog, most having lost all but a few of their leaves.  Angelina definitely wasn’t feeling comfortable anymore.  She hugged herself and leaned against the door, trying not to shiver.

            When Jacques turned down an even narrower road, Angelina got really nervous.  For one thing, she was sure he would scratch his car, rocks and trees were so close.  If they broke down, how would they get help?  She checked her phone; there was no cell service out here.

            “Are you sure this is a shortcut?” she asked.

            “No, but I’ve been here before.  You’ll love it.”

            “It’s not where I wanted to go.”

            “Yeah, about that….”

            The car stopped.  They were next to an old cabin, little more than a shack.  Several shakes were missing from the sides, and the roof was so covered in moss she couldn’t tell what the roof had been made of.

            Angelina got out of the car and stood, not thinking.  The eerie silence of the place and old sense was awe-inspiring, but not peaceful.  It made her spine tense up.

            A hand grabbed her elbow, and another settled on the small of her back, pushing her towards the door.  She panicked for a second, and then recognized Jacques.  She tried to pull away, but he had a good grip, and at the moment he was all that was familiar.

            The inside of the cabin smelled musty and earthy, but also as if something small and furry had been living there.  There were spider webs everywhere.  Jacques gently propelled her towards a bed covered in ratty blankets.  She tripped and fell into them, rolling so she could see him again.  A cloud of dust hung around her, and she coughed.

            Jacques lit a fire and stood to face her.  He wore a creepy smile and stalked toward her, placing a hand on each knee and pulling them apart.  She tried to kick him but she didn’t have the room.  She couldn’t get away, she was backed against a wall and he had her by the legs.  She noticed a rusty knife embedded in the wall, but couldn’t reach it.

            “What do you think you’re doing?  This isn’t cool, Jacques!”

            He paused, looking hurt and confused.  Then he flipped her skirt up over her stomach – why hadn’t she worn tight jeans? – And ran a hand down her thigh to pinch her panties and start to tug.

            There was a loud bang behind him.  Angelina was blinded by a flash of light, and Jacques fell on top of her.  She struggled and rolled him off of her, then fell to the floor and started crawling toward the door.  Her eyesight returned but was of no real use; a cloud of smoke and dust hung in the air and she couldn’t see anything but the door and a broken window.

            She was having trouble breathing.  Her head was spinning and she felt like she had been drugged.  A pair of small, filthy, callused feet walked by her, and another pair stopped just out of her reach.  Rough hands with a greenish hues grabbed her arms; claws dug into her skin.  She blacked out.

            The next thing Angelina was aware of was that she was in a cage.  It was dark, and she was in a cage of branches lashed together with leather.  Her first thought was “that bastard!” but when she turned her head – which hurt – she saw Jacques was in the cage as well.  Seeing he was also a captive inspired a slew of conflicting emotions that left her so confused she pushed it away to study what was around her.

            There was a bonfire on the ground in front of her.  She could see that.  The figures that sat around it were humanoid but not human.  Not unless they were a group of dwarves who didn’t wash and routinely mutilated themselves.  They were talking, but Angelina couldn’t understand a word of it.  It almost sounded like arguing.  Suddenly the whole lot quieted down and one particularly large and ugly one stalked triumphantly to the cage.

            Jacques was hauled out and dragged to the fire.  There a jagged knife was drawn and his clothes ripped off.  Jacques’ genitals were sliced off, but it wasn’t a clean cut.  Blood gushed out into a bucket, but before he could lose enough blood to be in danger, a hot metal rod was jammed into the wound.  The scream set Angelina’s heart racing, the stench of burned flesh her stomach turning.

            The grotesque creature held the severed piece of Jacques in tongs and thrust it into the fire, turning it this way and that, taking it out a few times to inspect it.  He then shook it, blew on it, and shoved it in his mouth whole.  Angelina nearly vomited.

            A second of the things forced some concoction down Jacques’ throat while a third picked up the knife and removed a finger.  The process continued again and again until all that remained of Jacques was a skull and a ribcage with the vital organs still inside.

            And the whole time, Jacques screamed.  They kept him alive and awake.

            Then they drove a spit through him and laid him across the fire.

            Fed now, the cannibals sat around, joking and drinking what Angelina assumed to be some sort of alcohol.  She started looking around; examining the cage she hung in.  Suddenly the door was yanked open again, and rough clawed hands grabbed at her and pulled her out.  She was pinched, poked, stroked, fondled, caressed, groped, and even licked by the time she was sat down in the middle of the gathering.  Her clothes were tattered.

            One of the torturers approached with a large bowl.  He put it to Angelina’s lips and tipped it up until its contents splashed down the front of her and it covered her face.  Unable to breathe, she couldn’t help but swallow some as she gulped for air.

            Whatever the liquid was, it was disgustingly sweet and sticky.  It was also quite heady.  She saw all the leering faces magnified and distorted by the sharp contrast of the flickering firelight.  She fell and felt something metal under her arm.  The knife, she realized.  They didn’t seem to care.  One ripped off her shirt, and she leapt to action before she could even think.

            She had the knife in her hand.  She swung wildly, and felt it catch in flesh.  Kicking and screaming she got to her feet and stabbed and slashed blindly, startling her captors.  She turned and leapt through the fire, charging off into the trees and running as fast as she could.

            Hooting and whooping followed her as she ran, and she fell more than once.  She just got back up and kept running.  She lost the knife at some point, but that didn’t slow her.  It had made it harder to run, anyway.  Her stamina was starting to run out when she jumped over a rock and landed in water over her head.  She hadn’t heard the river; she was so focused on the sound of her pursuers.  She came to the surface and sputtered for breath, then let the current pull her downstream.

            She saw them a few times, running along the riverbank.  They ranged ahead, but didn’t try to enter the water to intercept her.  Afraid of getting clean, she thought to herself, and laughed.  She wasn’t feeling right, but she didn’t care.  She just had to get away from the monsters.

            She was numb and soaked through, with wrinkled fingertips she couldn’t feel and hair plastered to her face that just got worse when she tried to push it aside.  She wasn’t swimming; she was just keeping her head above the water.

            The current all but stopped, and she snagged on the muddy bottom.  Angelina forced herself to make it to shore, crawled out, and headed into the woods.  She heard howls but ignored them, moving steadily away.

            At some point, Angelina had made it back to her feet.  She knew this, because when she came to the house, she fell to her knees.  She couldn’t have done that if she hadn’t been standing.  A dog barked at her.  She crawled forward and tried to kiss it, but it kept backing away and growling.

            A sleepy old woman opened the door and snapped at the dog loud enough to get Angelina’s attention.  She looked up and the woman’s eyes went wide.

            “Get in here dear, these woods aren’t safe at night, even for the locals.”  Hands like sandpaper helped her to her feet, and she went inside.  It wasn’t until the door was bolted behind her that it occurred to her that the woman might know just what sort of things were going on in the woods.  That maybe she knew, but didn’t report it.