Nathaniel Lambert - The Horribles

Published by Grindhouse Press

POB 292644

Dayton, OH 45429

www.grindhousepress.com

The Horribles

Grindhouse Press #003

ISBN-13: 978-0-9826281-5-7 (Trade Paperback)

ISBN-10: 0982628153 (Trade Paperback)

Copyright 2010 by Nathaniel Lambert. All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction.

Cover art and design copyright 2010 by Brandon Duncan

www.corporatedemon.com

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author or publisher.

Also by Nathaniel Lambert

Sideshow PI: The Devils Garden (with Kevin Sweeney)

Its Okay to be a Zombie: An UnChildrens Book

(Illustrated by Danny Evarts)

The

Horribles

To Melissa, my wife, thank you for helping me face my own parade of horribles.

CAUSATION

Momma was listening to Billie Holiday on a summer day when it was a little too hot outside but the breeze was just right. Sheldon was latched on to the hem of Mommas dress while she swayed her hips back and forth and hummed along to Lady Sings the Blues.

Why you wanna listen to something so sad , Momma? he asked while she spun around him with ease to the opposite side of the small kitchen.

Baby , this here just reminds me how happy I am .

She moved like water across a smooth rock, navigating around the little boy without even making a ripple. Sheldons small hand clinging to the neatly pressed fabric of her dress was more an extension of his mothers grace than a hindrance. He could watch her dance forever.

Just as Ms. Holiday was wrapping up her last lament, Daddy hollered from the shed out back. Momma stopped dancing and set down the plate she was drying. She tilted her head to the side, her face worried. Sheldon liked the way the sunlight shining in from the kitchen window reflected off her lovely, dark skin. On tip-toes, she leaned against the counter to get a better look outside. Sheldon wasnt too worried. Daddy probably just hit his thumb with the hammer again. Momma must have thought the same thing, cause that knitted up look loosened around the edges just a bit.

Go out there and see what your father is up to, Sheldon. Momma gently nudged him toward the back door. Make sure he didnt hurt himself. When you get back, well have to break out that rhubarb pie youve been eyeballin like a starving vulture.

Ok, Momma, Sheldon said on the way out. Halfway through the back porch he stopped, turned around, and gasped. I forgot my boat , he thought. He left the toy sailboat, the one his father had made from a piece of fine oak, on the top of the front stairs. Someone was sure to snatch it up. If something were to happen to it... hed just die.

With the same grace of his mother he maneuvered around the kitchen table, dashed through the living room, and out the front door. Momma looked up from behind the open icebox when her boys bare feet slapped against the hardwood floors. She shook her head, stepped back holding a freshly baked rhubarb pie and shut the door with her hip.

Praise Jesus! Sheldon cried softly so his Momma couldnt hear. His boat sat up against the wrought iron railing where hed left it, untouched. He scooped the polished wood up in his arms and squeezed gently. The soft cloth of the miniature sail tickled his cheek. Safe and sound. Now he could go check on Daddy and, as Momma said, make sure he hadnt hammered his hand to a board.

Daddy must have been tired, cause he decided to take a nap right there on all that dirt. Even though it was warm enough to make the Devil sweat, he shivered something awful. Sheldons first thought, when he rounded the corner of the old shed and saw Daddy lying on the ground, was to run back inside and get him a blanket and maybe a pillow. It couldnt be comfortable sprawled out on that hard, dirty ground. There was something dark and thick spilt all around Daddys head. Sheldon thought Daddy must have dumped a can of motor oil and accidentally lay down in it. The boy also saw a track of oily footprints leading from the bigger puddle back around the shed toward the house.

He quit moving toward his spasming father. A different thought occurred to him. He hugged the wooden toy tighter and swallowed hard. What if he wasnt sleeping? What if Daddy slipped in the oil and hurt himself?

Sprinting closer to Daddy, Sheldon collapsed. The oil splashed up on his bare knees and he slid uncontrollably, crashing into the no longer shivering body.

Everything was wrong. Daddys perfectly shaved head, normally shiny and smooth, had a big uneven crater on the top. Large jagged shards of white bone were buried in all the red and greyish speckles of foamy fat bubbling out. Sheldon realized what he lay in wasnt oil at all.

He finally dropped the boat and put two tiny, innocent hands over the hole to try to stop the blood from flowing out. It seeped up to his knuckles. He tried to stop the seepage until it grew sticky and stopped altogether. At the end, Sheldon looked hard into his Daddys fading eyes expecting him to wink and let the boy in on the joke. Hed stand up and theyd both go in for a piece of pie. Daddy was always playing jokes, like making it look like his thumb came off his hand. But he never did see a wink. His Daddys pursed lips relaxed and Sheldon leaned in close, looking down at his father, to feel one last hot breath rasp out onto his cheek. He breathed in his Daddys last breath.

Momma screamed from inside the house.

The distance between what used to be Daddy and the screen door was short, but to Sheldon it felt as long as a football field. He sucked in all the air his tiny lungs would hold and pistoned his legs up and down. He followed the footprints, the bloody ones, back around the shed, up the stairs, crashing right through the metal screen. The burning air he had fought so hard for while running came rushing out when he stepped into the kitchen. All his muscles went loose and his spine melted. He collapsed into a pile on the gore covered floor and curled into a ball. His thumb traveled to his mouth. He didnt blink and his chest rose up and down rapidly. He wanted to close his eyes and sleep, but the scene before him had shackled them open. He stared straight ahead.

Momma had sprung a leak.

Slumped over the counter with her upper half forcefully crammed into the small sink basin, Mommas head was completely submerged. The bubbly dishwater spilled over onto the linoleum and left a contrasting trail of white through all the venous red running in a crooked line toward the terrified boy. The angle of her spine was all wrong, too, not so straight, but more like the angle where two walls meet. He wanted to get up off the floor and lift her head out of the water so she could breathe but he couldnt. Not even parents could stay underwater that long. All he could do was lie completely still with every muscle tightened in his small frame, and suck his thumb like a baby, not an eight-year-old boy.

Mommad lost a shoe and her bare foot twitched.

Sheldon was saturated from head to toe with the blood of his parents.

Daddys axe was neatly placed up against the wooden cupboard like his sailboat against wrought iron railing.

Mommas homemade pie fell to the floor and exploded.

Its fleshy insides looked a lot like Mommas.

Sheldon messed himself when he looked at what stood on the counter above his Momma.

It wore large leather boots with too many metal buckles. Straddling the upper half of Momma, it jerked and hitched from side to side like some type of clockwork machine. Sheldon couldnt make out its face, because it was hidden by the hood of a thick wool coat. Its too damn hot for wool . Thats what his Daddy wouldve said. But his parents would never say anything again. This thing rocking back and forth, slowly shaking a very human index finger at the boy, had made sure of that.