Afternoon of Terror

The scorching sun poured it’s flesh blistering rays upon my face – a cascading vortex of acidic liquid light – bone charring solar beams cooking my blood into a thickened syrup. I walked down the sidewalk on 28th street, passing a nasty horde of crack dealers and prostitutes. They all stood in front of a bar named “The Crack Casket”. I thought I may have been having a fetid nightmare, but the sticky sweat dripping into my eyes was all too real. There were white, black, Vietnamese and Italian girls standing there almost naked – most dressed in tiny pieces of rags, shoddily sewn together with green fishing line. The ghastly stench of unwashed armpits and infected genitalia permeated the stagnant summer air. I mumbled, “Where’s a crisp breeze when you need one?”

A tall woman approached – so dark – she appeared to be sculpted from black butter. When she smiled, she was all gums and tarnished gold teeth. She scraped a gelatinous jelly from her forehead with a heavily corroded crack pipe, licking the putrid varnish from it with her knotted purple tongue. She sucked in air as if tasting a vintage wine and said, “Excellent bouquet with slight hints of fruit and spice. Come on inside sugar, get out of this heat.”

I asked, “I am craving a cigarette and a drink, you have all that in there?”

“For sure honey child…we got everything a man needs to quell an unquenchable craving. We got absolute satisfaction for you,” she answered while a single polished spot on her golden grill twinkled in the sunlight.

I said, “Thanks, I guess I’ll come inside.”

A one legged hag wearing a grease stained wife beater t-shirt yelled across the parking lot, “You look out of place white boy…you must be lost or something.”

I heard another voice from behind me, “Better watch your back and your wallet bitch!”

Inside The Crack Casket

I apprehensively walked inside, trying to act like I knew what I was doing. I was immediately pelted with a soupy wet fog of morbid vapor and the acrid stench of soured liquor. I sat at the bar next to an albino man with a nappy white beard. I said, “Name’s Bobby…it’s nice to meet you.”

He said, “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

“I very seriously doubt it. I’ve never been in here.”

He replied, “No…I am sure I’ve seen you before. You remember the Waffle House Massacre back in 2005? My name’s Casper by the way.”

I gulped in asphyxiating fear, “What? I might have been there. I met a guy named Casper, but that man is dead. I saw him get his head blown off with a 12 gage pump by a guy named Sweet Willie.”

The man glared at me with phosphorescent pink eyes, smiling with a sinister scowl, “I know who you are boy. Now, tell the bartender what you want…I’m buying this round.”

A luscious brunette woman with a dirt crusted face winked at me, “I’m Carnillia Longswallow, your barmaid. What would you like?”

“I’ll have Bushmill’s Irish whiskey on the rocks.”

“Damn good choice – super smooth – tastes like creamy water,” she said, grabbing the bottle with conviction, strangling and fondling the bottleneck as she poured my liquor. As she leaned forward, her breasts were exposed, hanging like pink water balloons – the right supple and tender – the left repugnant. The nipple had been bitten off, leaving a hideously morbid scar. I stared uncontrollably at the ghastly, disfigured breast. I looked up. Carnillia was staring at me, wearing an evil smile, “My preacher got a hold of it one Sunday night after he got drunk on Bushmill’s Irish whiskey. The old bastard gnawed the buttery soft areola right off my milk filled mammary gland…leaving this putridly grotesque deformity. Good thing I didn’t have twins, one of them might have starved to death…haha…get it? I only have one nipple for one baby.”

I gagged, almost puking all over her chest. I leaned away from her and said, “Yeah, good thing you didn’t  have twins. I need a cigarette, you got one?”

She smiled, “You came to the right place. I got every brand of cancer stick known to man. I got Kool filter Kings, Marlboro reds, Dunhills for fancy city folks – I even have Zig-Zag tobacco for those who roll their own. You have to French kiss me for one though.”

I felt extremely intoxicated from only a few sips of whiskey. Maybe they spiked my drink with a benzodiazepine derivative like the date rape drug, flunitrazepam. I felt mesmerized in a hypnotic stupor. Though Carnillia was short a nipple, ferociously stunk and appeared filthily unbathed; she was beautiful and unbearably sexy. She said, “Kiss me…and I want that tongue.”

I felt like a deer in headlights on a dark country road, “You need that cigarette real bad,” she psychically transmitted. I leaned in – her moist, plumped, blood red lips squished against mine – I was rigidly excited, unable to resist her nastiness. Her tongue folded ever so gently into my mouth – licking the back of my teeth, swirling and kneading my lips. She pulled away – a string of saliva connected our oral cavities – snapping like a wet rubber band – spit splattering in my eye.

The stomach wrenching flavor of rotted decomposition permeated my senses…yeeeech….bleeech…I retched a monstrous mountain of vomit all over myself – filled with half eaten chili dogs and English peas. From behind, I heard a deafening scream, “MACHETE FIGHT!!!!!”

Everyone ran towards the back door in a vicious stampede. I followed like a lost sheep, scraping slabs of puke from my shirt with cupped palm – slinging it onto the floor. All I could see was an explosion of furious anger as steel blades twirled through the air – cobras hissing in sheets of sound. They stopped for a second, opposing each other in a standoff. Casper facing a man wearing a gray shirt and khaki pants. Casper faked low – the man dropped his guard, then leaped in the air jetting a skull crushing, jump spinning back kick through the man’s cranium. A razored metallic flash – his arm was nearly severed. Casper blasted forth tearing at the wound with his teeth like a frenzied pit bull, riving the blood drenched arm from his body. He violently pulverized the man with his severed arm – beating him until he dropped from exhaustion. The man lay dead in a river of blood.

machete fight

Casper yelled, “Revellian…come here.”

I was mortified, and frozen in fear. I walked towards him slowly. He pulled a crimson stained pack of Marlboro reds out of the dead man’s pocket, “Have a cowboy killer coffin nail with me buddy…gotta light?”

“Sure Casper, anything for a friend…awesome fight by the way.”

We lit our stogies and sat on the pavement by his fresh kill. He smiled and said, “You have cancer. I’m a psychic and can see the disease in your lungs.”

I exhaled a cancerous smoke cloud – a carcinogenic tar shellacked the back of my teeth. I could almost feel the malignant tumors growing in my chest. I was a shivering, vomit encrusted fool, roasting in the blistering sun. He said, “What’s the matter Bobby? You’re as white as an albino ghost…hahaha! You know cigarette smoking is bad for your health. It causes lung cancer, emphysema, heart disease and numerous other sicknesses. Smoke it! It’s going to waste!”

I sucked in the nicotine laden smoke, feeling it glaze my lungs in blackened tar; my alveoli tissues bursting from the noxious, poisonous fumes. I hot-boxed the remainder in vacuum like drags, inhaling every last particle of deadly smoke. I said, “Ah…good to the last drag.”

death by cigarette

Casper said, “You’d better go now. You only have six months to live, I’m sure you have better things to do than hang around in this dump,” as a singular droplet of black fluid slithered down his bottom lip.

I shook his hand and said, “It’s good to see you again Casper…take it easy.”

As I walked away, he screamed, “See you in hell my friend,” his sinister laugh bellowed across the savage horizon – my hand sheathed in his filthy stink.

Shopping In WalMart

Later that day, I was shopping for antibacterial soap and antiseptic in WalMart. As I walked down the shampoo aisle, a blind man stood before me with his seeing eye dog. I said, “What a beautifully white German Shepard.”

The blind man coughed – a tiny wisp of cigarette smoke puffed from his throat, “His name is Buddy. He’s a seeing eye dog. He was trained by an institute in Belgium to smell disease in people. Dogs have 220 million smell-sensitive cells. Humans only have 5 million.”

The dog lunged forward, his paws slapping my chest. He sniffed my abdomen and chirped like a Rainbow Lorikeet Parrot from the Solomon Islands. The man smiled, “He says you have a gargantuan tumor germinating in your guts…you have five months to live.”

I ran from the store, shackled in the chains of nightmarish torture…never looking back. An ominous cloud of venomous smoke still hangs over me like a maddening hell storm.

• This happened in 2006, so I guess the diagnosis was wrong. My doctor said I was fine.
• I read the police report: an armless, blood sodden body  was discovered, stuffed in a dumpster on 28th street in Gulfport, Mississippi three weeks after the killing.
• I quit smoking and run like a frightened rabbit when I smell tobacco burning.
• The horror word art was created with Wordle, it’s very cool
• Before I left, I was able to snap the photo above as proof of what happened.

Tags: cigarette, cigarettes, horror, macabre, tales of terror