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January 22, 2012

the night guard

This is the third short story in the horror series I’ve been working on. I guess I’ll continue writing these until people chase me out of the internet.

Milo sipped his coffee and delighted in the fact that in only three more hours, he’d finish up his security night shift and head back to his apartment where his girlfriend, Elena, would be waiting for him. Ah, his girlfriend. Just saying that word made Milo’s whole body glow an intense warmth.

Milo was 29, stocky, with a lingering shyness that traced back to his childhood when he immigrated to New York from Prague and the American kids made fun of the pressed white shirt and khaki pants that he wore every single day throughout middle school. It didn’t help that he had a thick, Eastern European accent that the kids mistook for Russian, calling him everything from Commie Pinko to Dolph Lundgren. But Dolph Lundgren was Swedish! Milo couldn’t get a break.

Growing up, Milo ignored girls because they ignored him. He had never really had a girlfriend prior to Elena and he was impatient to go home and be with her and hold her as if to make up for lost time. But his reverie broke when he looked at the security monitor and noticed a figure walking around the lobby.

The Sullivan was a small building on the East Side, near the UN, and occupied by NGOs, law firms, and doctor’s offices. It was rare to see anyone coming by at 11 pm. Especially the night before Thanksgiving.

Milo looked at the monitor more closely.

Crap.

It was her.

Milo set his coffee down and made his way from the basement to the lobby, ready to deal with the most notorious visitor to The Sullivan.

Dr. Patel was in a faded blue bathrobe and slippers. The gray hair she used to don in a tight, no nonsense bun is now as frazzled as her brain.  She is talking to herself and walking around in circles.

“Ms. Patel, you’re not allowed in this building. I’m sorry. You have to go home.”

She didn’t even notice Milo, just muttered to herself, “It’s coming. It’s coming.”

The other security officers warned Milo about Dr. Patel. 

“She’s a fucking nut job. Harmless. But coocoo for Cocao Puffs.”

Milo didn’t know much about her but from what he could piece together from the other guards she used to be a pretty respectable medical researcher. Graduated from Harvard undergrad and med school. Taught at Stanford. Supposedly she once worked for the US military. And she was attractive too. Milo saw her old ID card when she used to work for one of the medical NGOs in the building. No one knows why but one day she was inexplicably let go. She had no husband. No family. But she’d still come back to the building, demanding to be let back into the office.

“Ms. Patel, you have to go home.”

He had no idea how the old lady even had access to the building. He was pretty sure the guards confiscated her keys last time. God, maybe she just lived in the hallways and closets like a ghost.

The old woman stopped muttering. She looked at Milo. Her eyes wide and dry as if she hadn’t blinked in days. Then she screamed and thrusted her hand in front of Milo’s face.

“I am DOCTOR Patel. DOCTOR. You hear me?!?!”

She inched closer to him, her eyes expanding even wider.

“That’s why they bombed Geneva! They said no one will know but they will. We’ll all know.”

“What?” 

“You’ll see. You’ll see why. Sooner or later they’ll come here.”

“Who’s they?” Maybe the crazy lady was onto something.

“They’re in my brain. All in my brain. They’re watching me.”

Milo sighed. No, the crazy lady was just on something. 

She must have exhausted the little energy she had because she retracted after that, hunching her shoulders and muttering whatever gibberish she was saying to herself. Milo hated pushing the old lady out of the building—especially onto the street this late at night. He thought of someone doing that to his own mother and he cringed. So he tried to be gentle with her, not like the other guards who called her whacko to her face and barked at her to leave.

“Miss, er, Doctor Patel, do you need money for a taxi?”

She just stared at him as if he were speaking in another language. Then she continued muttering, turned around, and just like a ghost, vanished from the building.

Milo shook his head. He knew he shouldn’t be creeped out by old ladies but he was. He was relieved Benny or the other guards weren’t there. It was bad enough they still made fun of him for the time he got stuck in the elevator and peed himself. 

He cracked his neck as if that would help brush off the run in with the old crazy doctor. He tried to think about Elena and her sweet perfume of cinnamon and apples. Milo never told Elena that he thought she smelled that way for fear she would label him as some fattie who only thought about food. Well, he did. But he also thought about Elena alot too.

Milo finished locking up the doors and was walking away when he heard someone furiously pounding on it again.

Oh, god, not the crazy lady again. 

Milo turned around but it wasn’t Miss Patel at the door. A woman. Maybe in her early thirties. She looked like a jogger with her running shoes and sweat pants. 

“Please let me in! Someone’s coming after me!”

She looked normal enough. Milo opened the door and quickly locked it behind him.

“Are you okay?”

The woman stopped to catch her breath. Then.

“I was running along the East River. And, yes, I know it’s late at night and stupid of me but, fuck, I didn’t know this was gonna happen.  I was running and I could hear someone behind me. And I turned around and it was a man. Even though it was dark I could just tell he was creepy. My heart started pounding. He said he spotted me a couple of weeks ago and had been following my move ever since. He was a big guy. I freaked out. So I ran. I’m a fast runner but it was dark out and I couldn’t see very well. He was catching up to me, telling me to slow down, he loved me. And then I heard more footsteps. I freaked out that he had brought other people with him to help him, I don’t know..”

She covered her face in her hands.

“So these guys were chasing you?”

“They weren’t guys. They weren’t human.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There must’ve been two or three. They came out of nowhere. It was hard to see but I could HEAR them. This awful moan. One of them grabbed at me but somehow I fought back and managed to pull away. But the other guy. The guy who was stalking me. He…He was screaming. I’ve never heard anyone scream for help like that. They were mauling him. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t help him. I couldn’t. So I ran as fast as i could. I could hear one of them running after me. This is the first building I saw.”

“Don’t worry, you’re safe here. I’ll call the police and you can wait till they get here.”

“Thanks.” She started crying. “I’m sorry. I’ve had a pretty crappy week and now this. Oh, shit.” She noticed a cut on her arm. 

“It’s okay, we have a first aid kit downstairs. You wait here for the police and I’ll go grab it.” 

Tags: zombies horror infected

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November 07, 2011
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chapter two: the comedy intern

Several hours later and a couple of avenues over, Enjoli spends another Friday night cleaning up piss and toilet paper left over by comedy nerds and girls visiting from Long Island hoping to catch a glimpse of that cute guy from SNL. 

Bathroom duty was her most loathed responsibility as an intern at Renegade Denizens, an alternative comedy theater that mostly featured middle class white male performers. It was Enjoli’s dream to one day make an improv team and perform on their stage but that afternoon she got rejected from yet another audition, sealing her role as the piss cleaning intern. She liked to blame it on the fact that she was a black female. They don’t get my sense of humor! They want me to snap my fingers and circle my head!  

But in the back of her mind, she worried she wasn’t getting very far because, well, maybe she wasn’t that funny.

She squeezed the mop in the bucket and tried to nudge out those negative thoughts when she heard Barry, the house manager, yell, “Hey we’re closed for the night!” Barry didn’t like staying in the theater past 2 AM and especially hated the drunk Long Island teens straggling in because they missed their train out of Penn Station. 

Enjoli was moving her way to the last stall when she heard a shriek. A shriek so loud and painful her stomach turned.

She opened the door. Most of the house lights were off but it was a small black box theater and she could see Barry’s massive physique being pinned down by a woman half his size. 

Barry struggled to keep the woman’s head away from him, both hands tied around her neck. Enjoli gasped when she saw the woman’s face. It was pale and white with twin pools of blood for eyes and cuts all over her neck. The woman moaned and hissed at Barry, thrashing her skinny arms all around him. 

“Get her off me!”

Enjoli rushed over to Barry with nothing but her mop. She had never hit any living thing in her life. Once she saw a mouse scurrying in her apartment and she made her super come over and kill it. 

Her hands shook as she wildly batted at the woman. When Barry saw the woman’s mouth grab for the mop, he used the opportunity to slam her down on the floor. With her jaws still clamping at him, Barry did what to him was the unthinkable and punched her in the face. She was out.

“Put the mop in her mouth.”

Enjoli couldn’t move. 

“NOW.”

Enjoli gagged the woman while Barry tied her arms together with curtain rope. 

“We have to put her in the storage closet. Lock her in there till the cops come.” 

Barry dragged the cold, lifeless body into the closet. Enjoli should’ve offered to help but her sense of social propriety was overwhelmed by what just happened. 

Barry stacks a couple of chairs in front of the storage closet. Out of all the comedy nerds at the theater, Enjoli liked Barry best. Maybe because they were both relegated to these house jobs when all they wanted to do was perform. 

Enjoli can see Barry’s hands trembling. The right hand has a huge gash in it.

“We need to call an ambulance. Have’m look at your hand.”

Enjoli takes out her phone but, as usual, there’s no service in the basement theater.  

“Let’s go to the box office. There’s gauze in the first aid kit and I could use the phone. Do you think…do you think that thing will stay in there?”

“I don’t wanna find out.”

They both raced around stacking whatever they could find in front of the storage closet. Then walked out of the black box and down the hall into the box office. Each hoped the thing wouldn’t escape from the closet door and slip out of the black box’s swinging doors but neither said anything outloud.

Down the hall at the box office, Enjoli waited for the ambulance to arrive and noticed Barry’s flushed face covered in sweat. She put her palm against his forehead but jumped back when he started violently coughing.

“What the hell.” Barry saw that he had coughed up blood. 

“Maybe we should wait for them outside.”  Enjoli didn’t wanna be in the same building as that thing. But it was pouring outside and probably wouldnt help Barry’s fever to wait out there.

Just then they heard a crash from the other room. 

“We have to get outta here.” Enjoli’s comment was met with more coughing. And Barry’s eyes were now stark white but looked like they were bleeding from the corners. His body convulses and his head rolls from side to side. He grabs Enjoli’s wrist, his grip tightening until it suddenly releases.

“Barry?” Enjoli cries. The last time she saw someone die was when she was a teenager in Haiti at her grandmother’s hospital bed. She remembers her grandmother’s hand holding onto her and then relaxing as she drew her last breath, slowly releasing her life. 

The theater door swings open and the unruly shuffles her way in. She looked like those heroin users in Tompkins Square Park with their limp bodies and blood shot eyes but a hundred times more terrifying with her vicious mouth. The unruly dragged herself toward the box office, fidgeting with the door knob. Enjoli’s eyes widened with terror as she saw the door knob move back and forth.

At that moment a cold hand siezes her wrist and Enjoli screams as she sees Barry’s once expired body transform into a growling, feral thing. 

Her improv teachers used to criticize her for not using her instincts. She was too much in her head. What she did next would’ve silenced even her harshest teachers.

She spots an umbrella on the counter. One of those black, five dollar umbrellas they sell on street corners and you throw away in cabs. She stabs the bottom hook into his gripped hand and across his face.  When his face lurches toward her, Enjoli closes her eyes as she pierces the umbrella hook into his red orb. The door opens and now Enjoli is faced with two blood thirsty things. With reflexes she didn’t even know she had, she leaps onto the counter and  jumps through the small, circular box office window. Landing with a hard thud she lifts her head to see a pair of battered legs edging out of the box office. 

Enjoli forces herself up and races up the stairs and opens the door, escaping the hell that was below, unwittingly entering a new one on the Manhattan streets.   

Tags: zombie the infected horror nanowrimo

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November 03, 2011

chapter one: the babysitter

Anna first noticed something was wrong when Walt, the doorman, wasn’t at his station. As the main sentinel of this soaring, Chelsea apartment building—the kind that was rapidly built in only a few months and the floor to ceiling windows now shake at the mere hint of wind as a result—Walt was usually behind the desk watching Jeopardy or surreptitiously sipping a bottle of whiskey, cradled in his crinkly, weathered hand. His was the only warm, albeit slightly alcoholic, presence in that stark building.

Walt had greeted Anna every Friday night for the past six months before she made her way up to the 20th floor to babysit for Denise and Adam Chadwick and their four year old son, Brendan. Maybe old Walt was walking the chihuahuas for Marcus Fitch, the artist famous for his sculpture of Jackie O defecating on a donut.

Anna headed inside the elevator and pressed 20. “Another night, another dolla,” she said deflatedly. 

The Chadwicks were 35. Only 5 years older than Anna but in a completely different socio-economic stratosphere with their 1.5 million dollar apartment and weekend home in the Berkshires. Anna was a receptionist at a law firm in Midtown but told everyone she moonlighted as an Etsy crafter so as to seem bohemian.

Babysitting for the Chadwicks was easy money but hard on her ego. She always told herself this weekend would be the last weekend but she always ended up coming back. That $150 a night gig funded a whole weekend of drinking. How could she say no to that?

The elevator opened up to the Chadwick’s expansive apartment. Anna immediately shielded her nose with her hand. A rotten stench enveloped the empty, modern space. Atypical for a clean freak family like the Chadwicks. 

“Hello?” Anna called out. 

No answer.

Their bedroom door was closed but she could see a light underneath. Ugh. It wasn’t unusual for Anna to walk into the apartment without anyone to greet her. When she used to babysit for them during the day, the Chadwicks were fond of engaging in what Manhattan married couples liked to call a “nooner”. She prayed to god they weren’t getting it on now. She was running out of different ways to pretend she didn’t hear anything.

What was odd was that Brendan wasn’t sitting at his usual spot on the couch watching TV.

She looked down the hall to her left and could see Brendan’s door was closed. Maybe he was sleeping already. It was 8:00 and Brendan had been feeling sick all week. She was kinda relieved that she didn’t have to deal with the rigorous task of forcing a 4 year old to go to bed. 

Anna was about to plop herself on the couch and text her boyfriend when she heard growling sounds coming from the Chadwicks’ bedroom. She froze. She could hear fingernails scratching behind it. Either this was some seriously effed up sexual shit or some thing or some one was seriously hurt.

“Denise? Is everything okay?”

The moaning heightened. Anna has never heard anything like this before. It didn’t sound human or even like an animal. A voice tells her to race out of the apartment and get the hell out of there. But what if the Chadwicks are hurt? What about little Brendan? 

Okay, I’ll go downstairs and find Walt. He’ll know what to do. Someone will know what to do.

And just then, the door opens. 

Mr. Chadwick’s suit is torn, revealing a bloody wound in his stomach. His head is cocked to the side, his usually slicked back hair was now mottled as if someone tore tufts out of it.  And as he begins to lift his head, his moans become louder, more furious. Anna can feel her scream locked in her throat. 

His face, or at least half what remains of it, is gray, caked with dried, purple blood, and his eyes are vacant yet fixated on Anna. He lunges at her and Anna runs down the hall into the kitchen. She tries to close and lock the door behind her but this ostensibly simple task, this mundane act she has done countless times every single day for almost her whole life, is impossible. Her sweaty hands slipping. around the knob. 

C’mon! Damnit! 

She wipes her hands down her side and locks the door.

Anna’s eyes dart around the kitchen, looking for something to either barricade the door or something sharp to defend her. 

“Somebody help me!!! Somebody please fucking help me!!!!” 

She hears him pounding on the door. It now sounds like two people are pounding and growling. Maybe three. 

Anna eyes the counter tops. No knives. No pans. Mrs. Chadwick never cooked. She hardly ever ate. She liked to spray PAM on a cherry tomato and call it dinner. Anna resented her empty kitchen whenever she searched for food and tonight was no exception. 

Think, Anna. THINK. 

She looked at the kitchen counter. She looked at the fridge. If she were stronger and had more time she could move the steel behemoth in front of the door. But Mr. Chadwick’s hand already pounded through and she probably only had a minute. Maybe less. Why was she wasting time calculating time right now?

She jumped on top of the island counter when they broke the door down. She barely recognized Mrs. Chadwick. She was wearing her uniform of a tight black dress and sky high stilletoes. She would wear those stillettos everywhere, even in the middle of the blizzard. Leave it to Mrs. Chadwick to still be wearing her stilletos while transformed into a rabid, raging beast.

They circled her. Grabbing at her ankles with their hands. When Mr. Chadwick’s mouth headed for Anna’s ankle, Anna kicked him in the head with her steel toe boots, causing him to fall back. Anna turned and kicked Mrs. Chadwick in the head. 

Mrs. Chadwick always made fun of these boots. Saying they were for lesbians.

Anna jumped off the counter but had nowhere to go. There were floor to ceiling windows along the perimeter of the kitchen. There was nowhere she could escape. She could try to run past the Chadwicks but they were already up and moving towards her. 

As soon as Mr. Chadwick lunged for her, Anna rolled underneath a table, and Mr. Chadwick crashed through the window, falling 20 stories to the ground. 

Anna was never more relieved to see faulty Manhattan building codes at play. 

But she still had Mrs. Chadwick to deal with.

The defiant beast hissed and moaned and headed for Anna only to trip over the sheet of shattered glass. Shouldn’t have worn those stillettos. But the resilient thing picked herself back up, snarling, and chomping her teeth. Anna had never seen Mrs. Chadwick so hungry before. 

When Mrs. Chadwick raced towards her, Anna picked up a metal chair and slammed the back across Mrs. Chadwick’s face. For an anorexic woman she was still very ferocious. Anna must have tried this slamming move twenty more times before Mrs. Chadwick finally fell down. 

Anna sobbed.

Her clothes drenched in sweat, marred with blood. Every muscle ached. She looked over Mrs. Chadwick’s body. What just happened? What was going on? As if someone was going to answer these questions. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. Anna kept repeating. But when she felt a bony hand grab her ankle, Anna picked up the chair and used the metal leg to pound through Mrs. Chadwick’s skull. 

She had to get out of there. Were the other apartments like this? Was it safe to ride the elevator? She walked past Brendan’s bedroom and convinced herself she was only imagining the growling sounds emanating behind his door. 

She pressed the down button on the elevator. Before this day she was never that religious, but she made a small prayer as she braced heself for what she would see next when the doors opened.

Tags: zombies infected horror nanowrimo