Untitled @552heckler-blog - Tumblr Blog

Re-emerging

The buzzing of the halogen bulb overhead roused Tristan. The spiders were clearing from his brain but their webs still tangled his thoughts. The room was familiar, as if he’d been there in a dream, several dreams. The bed, with its antique canopy and oversized down blankets had a familiar feminine scent mixed with the smell of age, like an item kept in storage too long. Elegant medieval tapestries hung from the walls. Within their weave were stories of a knight, his lady, and their children. Tristan felt unease as he noticed that his reflection in the large full wall mirror so closely resembled the knight’s. His head ached and spin as he shook the webs out. He laid his head back down against the pillow without checking to see if he was locked in.

Several minutes had passed when footsteps echoed from somewhere outside the room. They drew closer, the hard heels striking with purpose. As they drew nearer, Tristan identified softer footfalls. There wasn’t just a single kidnapper, there were at least two. They were upon the door as he scanned the room for anything to use to defend himself, but found nothing. The latch turned and with a creak the door slowly opened revealing a pale but beautiful woman and two teenage girls with the same complexion. All three were as stunning as anyone Tristan had ever met. The woman wore a full length white dress, form fitting and elegant. She wore her hair down, it’s length surpassing her back it’s color as black as midnight. Her eyes, like nothing Tristan had seen before, were as black and shiny as onyx with a strange tint of red that glinted as they moved. A strange paternal feeling grew as his gaze transitioned between the two girls. Their features mimicked those of their mother, but younger and softer. They were definitely the woman’s daughters though, it showed in their eyes. When his eyes eventually met with the black haired woman, he felt electric tingles run through him. He could barely stifle his sudden need to caress her. He knew he would fight all Hell’s demons to remain with her. A deep sense of regret welled within at perceived time lost away from her side.

“Welcome home my love. We’ve missed you.” She spoke with a slight accent. He couldn’t place it exactly, as if it were a mix of many accents learned over a lifetime.

“Daddy, we’re so happy we finally found you.” The older looking of the two teens exclaimed.

The feelings confused him. These strangers, that he could swear he knew, were well aware of who he was. It unsettled Tristan further. “Who are you?” He asked, turning his head toward the mirror in shame for not knowing. The room’s reflection looked back. Panic. The reflection perfectly mirrored the room and all its contents, except the three women. The clothes were there. The shoes and jewelry were there, but there was no reflection of the women. The wall tapestry shown through where human skin should be. His scream, ironically, could have woken the dead. The women reacted by either by instinct or centuries of learned self defense, they weren’t sure, by transforming into something inhuman and terrifying. Their faces grayed and where beautiful perfect white teeth had been, were fangs. Their fingers sprouted dagger sharp claws. For a second they were monsters, until they realized what had happened and that Tristan, while unaware of their existence until moments earlier, wasn’t a threat. As quickly as they originally transformed, they were their human forms. The shock it left in Tristan not so quickly gone.

“WHO THE HELL ARE YOU? WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU? WHY AM I HERE?” He feared he already knew the answer to his last two questions. They were vampires and he was to be their meal. Darkness worked its way from his peripheral vision to all encompassing, the room spin, Tristan fainted.

The buzzing of the halogen bulb overhead roused Tristan. The spiders were clearing from his brain but their webs still tangled his thoughts. The room was familiar. The three terrifying women sat next to him on the bed. A look of sorrow adorning their beautiful faces.

The woman spoke, “Tristan, my love,” why did she call him that? “I’m truly sorry you figured out so quickly what the girls and I have become while you’ve been away.” Her voice so calming, so full of love. “You’re absence has forced us to compromise our faith in order for us to be a family again.”

“How do you know me? Why do you keep calling me my love? I don’t know you and you say we are family. That’s not even possible. Nothing makes sense. Why are you toying with me. If I’m to be your meal, why are you saying all this? Just get it over with.”

The youngest’s laugh echoed through the room and into the hall. “Daddy, we aren’t going to eat you. We don’t eat people. We still feed on the same things as when we were growing up! It’s just the meat is a little less cooked.” She touched his hand. Her cold hand on his caused an involuntary flinch. She withdrew it so not to scare him further.

“Sweetheart, we had hoped to reintroduce ourselves more slowly, but we are pressed for time. There are hunters on the way and we must move on.” Her accent fell on his ears like rose petals. “You are Tristan Gunhardt, but you were once Lord Stathan Gunhardt.” She pointed a slender finger at the tapestry. “These are your history. Your family is special. Every century your lineage is reborn. Three centuries ago you were my husband and father to our children. The crown summoned you to war. A war that Christianity has hidden from existence. Your charge was fighting vampires. They do exist. They always have. You fell in that war, so to speak. You were turned shortly before a truce was struck. You returned to us changed and you changed us. One of the servants found us and killed you before they fled. They thought we were dead.”

“I made you this way? Oh God, I’m so sorry.” Accepting what the woman said as truth felt natural. “I’m sorry, but I don’t remember you.”

“I am Laura. This is Sasha and Mikia, our children. As far as forgiving you, that took place centuries ago.” She gazed at him lovingly. “We’ve made our way through time by keeping low and avoiding attention. We move every five years or so to avoid having to explain why two teens aren’t aging. We have wealth, but it’s never flaunted.”

“At least we have wealth.” Tristan let out a small chuckle. “I want to believe you, but there’s no way for me to just accept I’m my reincarnated ancestor.”

“Tristan, there’s only one way to show you. When a vampire bites a willing person. The memories of that person can also be shared. It may be possible to awaken your own through me, but you’ll be changed.” Sorrow once again filled Laura’s beautiful eyes.

“I want to believe. How long do we have before the hunters you mentioned arrive?” He was sure of his decision. His soul knew what his mind didn’t remember.

“Two days at most, half a day will be you turning. One of the girls and I can pack while the other looks after.” Laura hid her surprise at how easily he had accepted what she knew was an unbelievable story. The look in Tristan’s eyes assured his belief. Those eyes which she had so long wished to gaze into. She had waited centuries to be held in his arms and was terrified he would reject her and their girls. He behaved like he had already known.

“Do it. Quickly. We don’t have time to waste.” His resolve was laser focused, a trait she had always admired.

“Please look away. I don’t want you to see my vampire form.” She requested.

“I’m not afraid. Do it.”

The bite felt like fire in his neck. He felt the blood pulled from his body. He felt memories rushing in. His vision revealed a grand estate with health well fed serfs. He saw his wife entangled with him in their bed. His children ran toward him from a field, aged maybe half of their current appearance. His memories rushed in an uncontrollable river, too many rapids. He struggled to keep above water. Every time he was pulled under the current there were new memories. He saw a midnight battle where he was hit from behind and felt the same fire in his throat. He witnessed his family’s terror when the beast he had become found its way home to them. Then there was darkness.

The buzzing of the halogen bulb overhead roused Tristan. The spiders were clearing from his brain but their webs still tangled his thoughts. The room was familiar. Stathan jumped from his slumber when he heard the scream.

“They’re here! We must go now!” It was Sasha yelling from the hall.

Mikia was at his side as he sprang from the bed. “Little Flower, go to your mother and sister.” It was the nickname Mikia had longed to hear for so long. Only her father had ever used it.

“Ok daddy.” She started for the door, paused, and rushed back to hug her father.

“Tell them I will be behind them in a moment. I have business to attend to. And tell them I am the man they knew.”

She rushed out headed for her mother. Stathan turned opposite her. He heard men in the direction he was headed.

The hunters relied on fear and not stealth to acquire their quarry. “Just a woman and her two daughters, nothing the five of us can’t handle.” The overconfident man stated. Stathan had the element of surprise and his refound strength. He rounded the corner and found them in a tight group. He jumped at the men while changing into his vampire’s form. The first two he ran into had their necks snapped from the whiplash of the impact. The third felt Lord Stathan’s claws rip through his throat. Blood spray covered Stathan’s grotesque form.

“JESUS CHRIST! A MALE! THERE WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BE A MALE!” The fourth screamed as the hammer fist shatter his skull.

The final man drew his stake and lunged toward the vampire. A pathetic war cry was the last thing his voice produced before he watched his heart beat it last outside his chest. The fight lasted less than twenty seconds.

Stathan searched the nearby woods. His nostrils flared as he tracked the familiar scent of his wife. His speed through the brush like a cheetah on the hunt. It took less than half an hour to rejoin his family.

Laura recoiled at the blood covering Stathan. “Darling, not a drop’s mine.”

He embraced her tenderly. Love that had been centuries gone flooded them. The girls giggled at the passionate kiss. They were together and not time nor death would separate them again.

#short story #vampire #romance #lovers #immortal wives #fiction writing

The Malicious Nature of Inanimate Things

4. Water

One of Bruce Lee’s famous training philosophies was, “be like water.” He spoke about how water is fluid but can also strike hard and fast.

Water is one of the most abundant chemicals around us, and within us. Water is, acutely aware of this fact and always flaunts this knowledge to whomever is around. Water tends to be quite insufferable. Water is also quite creative with its malicious nature, a concept man long ago learned to respect.

Anyone who has spent time in an elementary school classroom knows water has three distinct state of matter; liquid, solid, and gas. Water is often highly offended when labels are but onto it, as to water, it is always itself. Water often wonders why society forces labels onto everything. Water is sure people would be much happier in life if they simply went with the flow.

With the vastness of possibilities that water has available to it to spread its maliciousness, to fully appreciate every instance would be a novel within itself, but since these short stories are just that, we will focus on Bud.

Bud was a third year plumber’s apprentice in a small mid continental town. Bud was a rather bright fellow that enjoyed working with his hands and he never had a problem being labeled as blue collar. He was proud of his skills and was developing into a highly respected tradesman. Bud also developed a reputation as an honest person who only suggested what necessary. Water regarded Bud as a good guy. Bud always made sure that where water was concerned, water was taken care of.

Today, Bud was tasked to perform repairs and inspect the community college’s steam boiler. For laymen, the a furnace turns water to steam and that steam is circulated through pipes to heat a space. Also for laymen, water trapped as steam in a pipe has the potential to be very very malicious. Bud had completed his repairs and was going through the building looking over the condition of the pipes when he noticed a joint that was deteriorating. Bud went off to find the headmaster to report his findings.

The headmaster, upon hearing the cost of repairs, was upset. Upset being as much an understatement as saying water in the Arctic is cold. The headmaster demanded Bud to show him where he had found problems to prove that Bud was just trying to swindle him and his school. Bud assured him that he was only telling him the truth and that it was unsafe to not do these repairs. Water was listening from the radiator. Water don’t like Bud per se, but water showed respect where it was due.

The ferocity and vulgarity used to attack Bud and his character was causing water to feel itself ready to burst with rage. How dare this smug man berate Bud, the man who had taken more care than most to learn water’s ways. The man who respected water as the superior it was now was taking abuse and being demanded to show the flaws in the pipe system.

Water heard a familiar control click within its system and knew the boiler was firing up. It could tell that soon it would be as hot as the temper of Bud’s antagonist. Water had spent a great deal of time in this system and had watched as the headmaster had neglected it while Bud tried his best to keep a failing system going. Ahh, water boiled and steamed to its radiators now. All the while Bud and the headmaster had been walking to where the most serious problem had developed.

“So you’re telling me that we need to remove and replace all these pipes? They look just fine to me. I know you uneducated people are always trying to get over on those of us whom actually know things.”

“Sir, please believe me that if I thought these pipes were in good shape, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“And I say you’re just a crook. This pipe looks fine.” The headmaster drew back his leg for a kick.

“I wouldn’t do that.” Bud tried to warn the man, but it was too late. A small spot in the pipe, only a fraction of an inch broke open with the kick. Water had its opportunity. Water, while easily pushed to malicious actions, wasn’t the type to go out of its way to cause them, but this was a special case. The steam in the pipe burst through the hole like a laser. It struck the headmaster’s eye with such pressure that before he could react, the water in the eye boiled. The eyeball popped and the steam continued into his brain. The headmaster had gone from a living person to its own inanimate object in less time than it takes to blink.

Bud tried to help, but there was nothing that could be done. Water’s malicious nature was an irreversible force.

#funny #short story #series #water #hvaclove

Hi all. I woke up from a nap with the inspiration to write these. If you enjoy and want to see more, drop a suggestion.

The Malicious Nature of Inanimate Things.

Hello, won’t you join me on a short exploration of the things around us that most of us never spend much time considering? Oh, but those things spend a great deal of time and energy trying to harm us in unique and frightening ways. Now, these things around us, would seldom notice any of us, but sometimes, our absentminded neglect of the world around us and misuses of mere things, sometimes this causes a chain of events that brings about the malicious nature of things.

1. Grass

Our first tale takes us to a very large city’s very well groomed sports stadium’s field of play. It’s game day and this city’s team has been doing quite well as of late, much due in part to the standout performance of a newly acquired all star wide receiver. It seems everyone had quickly become a fan. Everyone, that is, except for the field of play he was so brutally destroying with every yard he gained.

Grass, a domesticated wheat, has spent much of its history plotting revenge against other living beings. Seldom getting the opportunity due to its rooting nature. Save the occasional irritation of a person’s bare skin or seasoning allergy, grass has become regarded as mostly harmless. Wild beasts have developed a healthy aversion to long grass doing what it can to hide predators, not a thing of accident on the grass’s part.

I digress. Today’s game had been a particularly brutal game between these teams. There was a long rivalry that always proved exciting to those watching, to all but those blades of grass that got the closer than all to the action. Those blades that absorbed abuse after abuse. Who could do so little against these human brutes. The game was winding down to it’s final seconds with the home team just one score behind.

First down home team’s ball on the opponent’s forty yard line. The quarterback completes a short pass to Mr. All Star wide receiver, who is immediately tackled for a short gain. Upon landing in the grass, our wide receiver’s cleat sheared a single blade of grass from its stalk.

Knowing this was the end for it, the blade fumed. It’s anger roiling over in a completely unnoticeable rage, because, after all, while being fully alive, grass is widely regarded an an inanimate object. This single blade spent what it knew would be its last few moments plotting its revenge. It plotted absurd things, things such as somehow getting its detached roots into the receiver’s body and painfully infiltrating his internal organs. Or somehow getting close enough to the man’s neck to slice his throat. These malicious thoughts, the blade knew, were absurd because the grass was now merely a severed blade of grass among an entire playing field of similarly fated severed blades of grass. Upon which, the blade noted himself resting.

Then as if divine fate had taken notice of our single severed blade of grass, our particular blade noticed a rather unique albeit, fortuitous series of events unfolding. As the ball snapped, our blade noticed the small drop of sweat on another severed blade, a final insult to that blade after an entire day of insults. It watched, watched being a relative term as grass lacks the proper equipment to actually view anything, as the receiver moved swiftly right toward our blade. From a different trajectory, an outside tackle was moving into position to attack our receiver. All the while the ball had been thrown to the same location the two men were going to meet, which was centered directly on top of our blade of grass.

The receiver’s cleat once again came down on the blade as his hands grasped the ball. The blade pressed against the second blade of grass with the sweat still on it. The viscous sweat spread onto both blades causing just the slightest slipping of the receiver’s foot and a barely measurable delay in his forward progress that allowed the tackle. The hit was so hard and at just such an angle that it caused the home team’s receiver’s second and third vertebrae to compress on each other. That compression, brought about by the malicious nature of an inanimate object, severed the spine of our receiver and caused instantaneous death. Ironically one of the last few thoughts that crossed the mind of the receiver what a thought about how the stadium’s grass felt extra itchy for some reason.

2. Glass

While we humans remain completely and blissfully unaware of the malicious nature of most of the inanimate objects around us, we do from time to time, recognizing subconsciously, gain an understanding that things are out to get us. Some, we recognize so much so, that we give them names that sound dangerous. Window pane being one such name. While the spellings of pain and pane are obviously different, it was no accident that when pronounced, they sound the same.

Glass is especially bitter because of its development. Imagine resting on a beautiful beach shore. The sounds of the ocean all around you. The water rolling over you in waves, providing tumbling amusement. And one day out of nowhere and for reasons unexplained to you and without your permission , you are gathered from that shore, thrown into an oven, and turned into a molten glob. You are beaten and rolled flat. When you cool, and only if you cool to your handlers specific specifications, you are placed as a barrier for people to look through, mostly not at. And lord help if you don’t meet the specifications, you will be forced to endure the furnace over and over until you do meet said plans. That kind of psychological torture is bound to have a profound effect, even upon that which has no psyche.

Signs, which are not generally malicious, become so when people disregard their messages, and even then, their level of maliciousness is only to not intervene when someone does disregard them. Glass, on the other hand, will cut you with neither warning nor notice. And when you combine a sign’s blasé non-interaction with its disregarders and glass’s wonton disregard for its disrespectors, you have great potential for maliciousness.

Our current story takes place at a thriving aquarium. An aquarium that boasts a new state of the art underwater observation dome, a generous gift from a dying widow who thought it best to give into the community rather than letting her children pick through the inheritance like vultures. This widow wanted to make a contribution that people would remember and appreciate, a gift of beauty and knowledge. Our dome, is made of three inch thick glass, malicious malicious glass, and has a rating to be able to withstand 100 atmospheres, the equivalent to thousands of feet deep water pressure.

Little Sally just happens to be the widow’s great granddaughter, and Sally is what some call a “handful.” Other, more honest people call Sally a brat. A child so poor in behavior that people go out of their way to either avoid her or provide every request so as to avoid her wrath. Sally’s latest request was a real diamond ring. What eight year old needs a real diamond ring, we can’t say, but Sally did. And currently, Sally was wearing that ring proudly within the glass dome, within the aquarium. The minor details Sally currently wasn’t paying attention to were the warning sign that clearly and at a level even an eight year old could understand said, “PLEASE DO NOT TAP ON GLASS!” While the sign would have preferred to omit the “PLEASE” portion of itself due to it sounding more like a request than a command, it was pleased that it was written in all uppercase letters and had the exclamation point for effect. Signs tend to, themselves, be well read. The other detail Sally ignored, because it was another inanimate object and people, especially Sally tended to ignore inanimate objects, was that the diamond setting on her ring had managed to turn itself to the palm side of her hand. The diamond, having only been subjected to Sally for a period of only days, had become most malicious toward Sally.

As Sally danced and played around the dome, her favorite activity had been to slap the glass dome to scare the fishes. Any person who willfully went out of their way to disturb wildlife would never notice or care of their offenses to inanimate objects. “Fishy, fishy, fishy, BOO!” Sally sang around the tank. Then, SLAP, against the glass. The sign grew more irritated. The diamond grew more irritated. The glass, being in a state of constant irritation, remained so. Luckily for the malicious nature of these three things, Sally’s diamond, for the purpose of this story it will be called her diamond even though it is very much so of itself, made contact with a microscopic flaw that the maker had failed to catch. It was a flaw that the glass had intentionally hidden in itself so that one day it may release its murderous rage upon its creators that had so callously removed it from its amusing beach. The flaw fortuitously was located about two feet below the warning sign. The flaw, when scratched by the diamond manifested into a micro fracture. The micro fracture traveled to where the sign was adhered to the glass. The adhesive weakened enough to let loose just as Sally’s face pressed to the glass. The sign slid down and in a one in a million accident sheared Sally’s nose clean off. All three objects celebrated their part in the de-nosing conspiracy. The diamond feeling a second malicious satisfaction knowing that because of its cost, her parents would be able to pay for her nose’s reattachment, but not enough to pay a good plastic surgeon to eliminate all the scarring.

3. Paper

Unlike glass, which is rarely used by one human to harm another, paper prides itself on being widely used to cause harm. Whether it’s a mudslinging political attack ad, a book whose writer has just killed off a fan favorite character, or wicked teenage girls writing together in their burn book, paper can bring a pain many other malicious objects can only aspire to. Paper is always a willing accomplice to maliciousness, but paper seldom likes anyone including those that write such things.

Meet Ian Drew a writer whose work has reached the best sellers list on multiple occasions. Of course, Ian Drew isn’t this persons real name, it’s a pseudonym, a lie of a name that paper was all too happy to keep, because Ian hurt so many with his fictitious medical writing. Ian specialized in homeopathic and holistic cures. Paper obliged Ian writing volumes on steamed vaginas and how vaccines were harmful. Hollywood’s elite regarded him as the foremost expert and spoke ad nauseam about his latest writings. Paper just sat back and watched as thousands of gullible humans did irreparable harm to themselves and revived almost dead plagues based on its contribution to these books.

Lately paper had noticed that Ian, a typewriter enthusiast who had no trust of computers, was writing less. It seemed that Ian had fallen victim to his own message of rejecting modern medicine in favor of bee pollen or whatever hip fringe cure all was now popular. What little Ian was writing was taking a distinct turn away from his previous writing. Ian was writing his last book. This book refuted all his previous works and its message encouraged his followers to seek proper medical care. Paper would be no willing participant in this clearly altruistic action, but, paper had no choice but to accept author’s ink.

The rough draft was completed two weeks before an unsuspecting Ian’s death. It was sent to the publisher for approval and a meeting scheduled to discuss editing of the work. This meeting was scheduled two weeks after the draft was complete and would have to take place in the author’s home. Ian’s illness had made him too weak to leave.

The publisher arrived as scheduled, rough draft in hand, and none too happy about what he was there to discuss. If published this book would bring ruin to the publishing house. Ian and his publisher had formed a very profitable symbiosis and for Ian to refute all his past work would cause a black balling of the house that it could not sustain.

“I’m sorry Ian, we just can’t do it. I know it won’t matter to you being as you’re on your way out, but this book would ruin my company. We have an image to maintain and we will maintain a certain image of you well beyond your death.” To paper, it was a blessing. To paper, those words were a promise of its continued malicious intent. To Ian, it was a betrayal. Ian had never before bothered to thing of things like ethics or the greater good, but lately Ian had become concerned for his being post death.

The news made rage boil within Ian. Paper was not used to such firsthand exposure to what happened next. Paper, as malicious as it was, was rarely ever able to cause physical pain save for the occasional cut on a finger. Paper especially enjoyed the cuts it delivered between the fingers, on the web of the hand. Today, however, paper became the instrument of dying Ian’s wrath. With what would be his last strength, Ian sprang from his seat at the table, grabbed the manuscript, and brought it squarely across the publisher’s temple, and again to the crown of his slumped head. Paper reveled in the warm pool of blood being soaked into its pages.

When the police arrived, they found the two men inside had been dead for days. The blood had dried between the books pages and had ruined the only copy of Ian Drew’s final work. Ian, being a superstitious person that never made copies until the rough drafts had been approved. This was a small sacrifice that paper was happy to make because, all of Ian’s other works would continue on with their malicious intents.

#short story #fiction #fiction writing #story #my first post #funny #inanimate objects #shorts